The Fate of the Tearling

  “He saved my life, Lazarus. More, perhaps.” Kelsea closed her eyes and saw Brenna’s face, an inch from her own, her gaze digging into Kelsea’s mind, into Lily’s mind beneath.

  We were both there, Kelsea realized suddenly. Both there at once, Lily and I. How can that be?

  “Well, I will tell the rest of the Guard, Lady. If Ewen played the part of a hero, they will honor him for it.”

  “He did.” She pushed back the covers. “Toss me that dress.”

  A few minutes later, Mace led her out into a long hallway lit by torches. The walls were constructed not of the light grey stone that held up the Keep but of deep, sand-colored blocks that appeared to have been etched by wind and time. A draft whipped down the hallway, ruffling Kelsea’s hair and causing her to shiver.

  “Poor insulation,” Mace commented. “This place should have been upgraded at least ten years ago, but Lady Chilton has let it go to ruin.”

  “Did she come to my coronation? Why do I—”

  But she got no further, for Elston and Kibb suddenly came skidding around the corner, half the Guard behind them. Before Kelsea could even greet them, her hand was crushed in Elston’s massive grip.

  “Are you well, Lady?” he asked.

  “Fine, El.”

  “I prayed for you, Lady,” Dyer told her, and grinned as she slapped him lightly on the cheek. The sight of them made Kelsea smile, but at the same time, she felt uneasy. Mace, Elston, Kibb, Coryn, Galen, Dyer, Cae . . . all around her were glad faces, beloved faces, people she had missed, but beneath her joy at seeing them again lay a feeling of doom, delayed and distant but real all the same. If the Keep was truly under siege, they were all exiles now, people without a home.

  “Are you in pain, Lady?” Coryn asked. “I have my kit.”

  “I’m fine,” she replied, accepting handshakes from Kibb and Galen. Looking around, she found one face conspicuously absent.

  “Where’s Pen?”

  “I sent him off to ride the perimeter, Lady,” Elston replied. “There’s no danger out here; we’re on the plain, and any threat can be seen from miles away. But he was driving us all mad, poor lovesick—”

  “Remember yourself!” Mace barked, and Kelsea felt a blush color her cheeks.

  “Sorry, Lady,” Elston murmured, but his eyes glinted with such good humor that Kelsea shook her head and swatted him on the shoulder.

  “Who else is here?” she asked.

  “Hall and his people are downstairs. Levieux, too, and he has requested a word with you when you have a moment.”

  “Levieux?’

  “He was useful, Lady, helping us break into the Palais,” Mace replied quickly, tipping her a look that said they would talk about it later. Kelsea nodded, but when she thought of the Fetch, she could not picture the man, only the boy, Gavin. What did that mean? She looked past Elston and jumped; for a moment she was sure that someone was standing down at the end of the corridor, watching her. But when she blinked, the figure was gone.

  “Lady?”

  She turned to Mace. “I thought I saw someone, down there at the bend.”

  “You’re still not well, Lady.”

  Kelsea nodded, but the more she thought about it, the more she was certain that the figure had been there: a woman, in a long black dress and dark veil.

  Mentally unstable, she thought, and a thread of unease wormed its way inside her.

  “We’ll leave in the morning,” she told them.

  “Lady?”

  “You said that the Keep was under siege, Lazarus. We can’t simply stay here, hiding, while the kingdom burns. What sort of queen would I be?”

  “Ha!” Dyer turned to Coryn. “That’s ten pounds!”

  Mace shook his head. “We knew you were going to say that, Lady. My only question was how long it would take to come out.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “You have no army, Lady. The Holy Father has an entire battalion of Mort mercenaries. The only thing you can accomplish by returning to New London is to get yourself killed.”

  Kelsea nodded, trying to take this advice to heart, to be the smart queen that she should have become. But she couldn’t wait out here, in the middle of nowhere, away from everything. What could be fixed that way?

  “Lady.”

  She turned, and there was Pen, coming from the other end of the hallway.

  “Pen!”

  She began to run down the corridor, but Mace grabbed her wrist. “Hold, Lady.”

  “What?”

  “Things are no longer the same.” Mace turned to the rest of the Guard. “All of you, back to your posts! You will see the Queen at dinner!”

  Her guards moved along, and Kelsea couldn’t help noticing that they seemed suddenly anxious to be away. Within a few seconds, they had all disappeared around various corners.

  “Lady.” Pen reached them, bowed. “It’s a pleasure to see you well.”

  She stared at him, confused. This cold man was not the Pen she knew. Then she remembered the scene on the bridge, and understood. Pen was angry with her, of course he was, just like Mace. She had fled from all of them, from her Guard, straight into the arms of the enemy. She had tried not to think of Pen while she was in prison, but of course he had still been here, stewing in that betrayal. Well, she would make it up to him. She would—

  “Pen will no longer be your close guard, Lady,” Mace said flatly.

  “What?”

  “Starting tonight, Elston will take over Pen’s duties.”

  Kelsea turned to stare at Pen, who in turn stared at the floor.

  “What’s happened?” she demanded.

  “I will give you two a few minutes, but only a few,” Mace replied, speaking to Pen. “After that, you will not be alone together again.”

  Pen nodded, but Kelsea turned on Mace. “You don’t make changes to my Guard behind my back, Lazarus! I didn’t ask for a new close guard. This isn’t your decision.”

  “No, Lady,” Pen said. “It’s mine.”

  She turned back to him, her mouth falling open. They had been sleeping together, yes, but they could end that! It was no reason to change the Guard.

  “Pen? What is this?”

  “A few minutes,” Mace repeated. Then he retreated down the hall toward Kelsea’s room. Pen waited until Mace disappeared inside before raising his eyes to Kelsea, and she almost flinched at what she saw there: utter professionalism, nothing more.

  “You don’t want me anymore, Pen?”

  “I am a guard, Lady. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be, ever since the Captain found me.” He shrugged, smiling, and for a moment the ice broke and he was the old Pen, the Pen she knew. “I love you, Lady. I think I’ve loved you ever since you asked if you could help put up that damned tent. But while you were gone, I discovered that I cannot love you and be a Queen’s Guard, all at once.”

  Kelsea nodded, but the nod was reflexive. She didn’t love Pen, did she? She no longer knew. Sex had welded them, made them something far more than they were intended to be at the outset. Something moved over Pen’s shoulder, and Kelsea thought she saw, again, a dark figure standing down at the end of the hall. Another blink and it was gone.

  She returned her attention to Pen. Her pride was wounded; of course it was. But if she gave in to that impulse, she would lose not just a bed partner but a friend as well. She firmed her jaw, doing her best to conceal her disappointment.

  “Do you mean to remain on the Guard?” she asked.

  “Yes, Lady. But I will not be your close guard. And you will have to treat me as you treat the rest, or I can’t stay.”

  She nodded slowly, feeling something like sorrow break inside her. They had not had many nights, the two of them, but they had been good nights, somewhere halfway between love and friendship, an oasis of sweetness in the harsh desert that comprised Kelsea’s life since leaving the cottage. She would miss that side of Pen, but deep within the pain was a kernel of respect for him, growing larger every second.
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  We’re alike, she thought, staring at Pen’s face. Behind her eyes, she suddenly saw her city, its rolling hillsides aflame, and she realized that this work, the great work of her life, outweighed anything that she would ever want for herself. There might be more men, many of them, but none of them would ever get in the way of the work. She would not allow it.

  Taking a deep breath, she reached out, offering her hand for Pen to shake. Pen smiled, his eyes bright and unguarded, and Kelsea realized that she would never see him this way again. They would talk, and laugh, and give each other hell, just as Kelsea did with the rest of her guards . . . but it would never again be like this. They shook hands, and Pen held on to her hand for a moment before he dropped it, swallowing. When he looked up again, Pen the man was gone, and he was now Pen the guard, his eyes flicking over her, distant and analytical.

  “You don’t look well, Lady.”

  “I just woke up.” But he was right. She had been awakened by Mace. Katie’s voice beat insistently against her mind, refusing to leave her alone.

  “Levieux is here, yes? I need to speak to him.” She needed to speak to him, all right, grab his shirt and shake him until he coughed up some answers about what had happened to Jonathan Tear. There was no need to wait for the slow pace of Katie’s vision, not when she could demand the whole story from someone who had actually been there.

  “You’ll have to wait, Lady.” Mace had reappeared behind her, with Elston in tow. Kelsea could not get her bearings in this place; there was something odd about the corridors, some proportion that was off. “Levieux left several hours ago, and said he won’t be back until late. But there’s dinner downstairs. Pen, go.”

  Pen left. Kelsea watched him go, feeling one last pang of sorrow, and then she turned back to Mace and Elston, her mouth hardening.

  The work!

  “This corridor moves, sir,” Elston muttered. “I keep catching things around corners.”

  Mace looked over his shoulder, his face tightening. “I don’t trust the mistress of the house. The sooner we’re out of here, the better.”

  “Is this agreeable to you, Lady?” Elston asked. “Me as your close guard?”

  She nodded, smiling up at him, though her heart ached.

  “Let’s get some dinner, then.”

  She followed them down the hall.

  Kelsea came awake in darkness. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was—it seemed every night was a new place to sleep these days—but then a torch snapped in its bracket and she remembered: she was in Lady Chilton’s house, in the chamber Mace had assigned her. Elston was just outside the door.

  Something was in the room.

  Kelsea had heard the softest of movements behind her, little more than a whisper of air, somewhere near the door. She debated rolling over, but when she tried, she found her muscles frozen. She didn’t want to see. Unbidden, her mind conjured up an image of the little girl in the dungeon, and Kelsea felt her entire body break out in gooseflesh. She could shout for help; Elston was just outside. But the child in the dungeon had been very quick.

  Another soft sound, closer now, the soft rasp of leather against the floor. A footstep, perhaps, but Kelsea’s imagination said differently. She pictured the child two feet from her, poised to leap.

  Not like Brenna, her mind whispered, and Kelsea felt her nerves suddenly galvanized. No, she would not be taken as she had been by Brenna, overpowered, lying helpless. Keeping still, she flexed all of her muscles, preparing them for motion. Her knife was beneath her head, tucked into its scabbard under the pillow; there was no way to grab it without giving warning. But she thought she could have it out half a second after she began to move.

  One last step, right beside Kelsea now. She whipped into motion, rolling toward the sound, and connected solidly, tumbling out of bed to land on top of her attacker. For a moment she saw a dark silhouette beneath her, and then the figure emitted a low, ratlike squeal as it fell backward. Kelsea jerked her knife from its scabbard and scrambled on top of the thing, looking for its neck. Then she drew back, horrified.

  The creature had no face.

  But a moment later, Kelsea realized how ridiculous that was. She had been fooled by the firelight, by her own overstimulated imagination. This was no monster, only a woman, wearing a long black dress and a lacy veil that covered her entire head. The woman tried to scramble backward, but Kelsea straddled her, pinning her down.

  “Lady Chilton, I presume,” she panted, exploring the veil with her hands. “And what do you want with me, that you stalk me around the house?”

  Finding the edge of the veil, she jerked hard, tearing the lace away and revealing the woman’s face to the light. But now it was Kelsea’s turn to scramble backward as fast as she could, her breath tearing from her throat in a single harsh rasp.

  The face beneath the veil belonged to her mother.

  Chapter 12

  The Mistress of the House

  Hell? Hell is a fairy tale for the gullible, for what punishment could be worse than that we inflict upon ourselves? We burn so badly in this life that there can be nothing left.

  —Father Tyler’s Collected Sermons, from the Arvath Archive

  “It was Mace’s idea,” the woman said, as though that explained everything.

  They were sitting in two high-backed armchairs, facing the chamber’s empty fireplace. It was cold, but Kelsea had taken the Red Queen’s superstitions to heart, and refused to light a fire. She didn’t understand Row Finn’s long game—not yet—but if he was truly free, Kelsea could only be a threat to him now.

  The torchlight was very dim, but Kelsea could not stop staring at her mother, hoping to find a flaw in her appearance, something that would indicate that the entire thing was a trick. But she found no such reassurance. The woman before her was older than the portrait Kelsea had seen in the Keep, fine lines bracketing her mouth and eyes. The black dress and veil, indicative of mourning, aged her further. But she was unmistakably Elyssa Raleigh.

  “What was Mace’s idea?”

  “Why, to get me out.” Elyssa gave a tinkling laugh. “So many people trying to kill me. It was almost exciting.”

  Kelsea looked to the door, almost in desperation. She had ordered Elston to fetch Mace on the double, but she had done so through a closed door, and now she worried that Elston might have misunderstood her words. When Mace got here, she thought she might throttle him. All of the guilt Mace had dispensed when Kelsea kept things to herself, and here he had been holding the biggest secret of all in his hands.

  “Carroll and Mace were the best of my guards, the smartest, you know—” Elyssa paused, her doll’s mouth turning down at the corners. “Mace told me Carroll is dead.”

  “Yes,” Kelsea replied automatically, but a moment later she realized that she had never seen his body, either. Was he still out there somewhere too? Were Barty and Carlin? How could she take Mace’s word about anything now? For years, Kelsea had wanted so many things from the woman sitting before her, love and approval and vindication and, later, a chance to scream into her face. But now that the moment was here, Kelsea didn’t know what she wanted, except to wish that she were not in this room. She had gotten used to hating her mother, had grown comfortable with it. She didn’t need the status quo shaken up now.

  “They both had the idea, but Mace was the one who snuck me from the Keep. All those hiding places he has, you know. He moved me here.” Elyssa frowned again. “It’s a dull life, so far from the capital. Mace visits whenever he can, and I have my business—”

  “What business?” Kelsea asked sharply.

  “Dresses,” Elyssa replied proudly. “I’m one of the most sought-after designers in the Tear. But I have to work from here, send someone to take measurements and orders.” Her mouth drooped. “I can’t go anywhere.”

  Kelsea grimaced. Any number of harsh phrases came to her lips, but she held them in. She would give this woman her full, undiluted opinion, but only after she got the whole story. br />
  “But I am so pleased to see you!” Elyssa exclaimed, putting a hand on her arm. Kelsea tensed, but Elyssa seemed not to notice, too busy examining her, eyes roving over her face.

  “And so pretty too!”

  Kelsea recoiled, almost as though she’d been slapped. All of those days in the cottage when she had stood by the window, looking out and waiting for her mother to come . . . she had been so sure that her mother would be wise and kind and good, that she would praise Kelsea, as Carlin did not, praise her for all the things she had learned, all the work she had done. Even if Kelsea had been pretty, that was not the praise she waited for, because even in her youngest years, she had already known how little it truly meant. For a moment, she hesitated on the point of telling Elyssa that this beauty wasn’t her own, then swallowed the words.

  “I thought there was a body,” she croaked. “When you died, there was a body.”

  “So there was,” Mace replied behind her, making Kelsea jump. He had slipped silently into the room while they spoke, and now his large form emerged from the shadows to rest a hand on Elyssa’s shoulder.

  “How did you get in here?” he asked.

  “This place is full of secret passages. A trick I learned from you.”

  “The body,” Kelsea demanded. “You said there was a body.”

  “The Queen’s dead body,” Mace agreed, “lying in bed with a cut throat.”

  “How?” Kelsea demanded.

  Mace merely looked at her for a long moment.

  “Ah, Lazarus, no. A double?”

  “A perfect double, close enough to fool even the rest of the Guard.”

  “Where did you find her?”

  “Carroll found her. In the Gut, plying her trade.”

  Kelsea stared at him, as though seeing a stranger.

  “It was very clever of them, really,” Elyssa put in. “To think of it, and then find someone who looked so much like me. It was a shame she had to die, even if she was only a whore.”

  Kelsea’s hand curled into a fist, but she held it back. The creature in the other armchair wasn’t worth it. But Mace . . .