The Fate of the Tearling

  “Not a chance!” Elston snapped.

  “Great God, El, do not make me go through this with every man in the Guard.”

  “Elston,” Mace said quietly. “Come on.”

  Elston cast a murderous look at the Fetch, but followed Mace back through the glassed-in doors that gave egress to the balcony. Pen and Dyer went with them. Pen showed no reluctance at all, and Kelsea felt a slight twinge, then shelved it. She would learn to live with Pen’s indifference. There were more important matters to hand. At a signal from the Fetch, his four men followed, Morgan tipping an imaginary hat to Kelsea as he went.

  As the doors closed, she turned back to the Fetch. She had not seen him for a very long time—or so it seemed—and he was as handsome as ever, but even so, she was surprised to find that his hold on her had diminished. She might be looking at the man, but she couldn’t help seeing the boy, Gavin: arrogant and careless, an easy mark for Row Finn. Seeing the foolish boy that he had been was a lessening of the man, and though Kelsea’s first reaction was disappointment, she found it followed quickly by relief.

  “You look well, Tear Queen,” he remarked. “Very well, for a girl who’s been in prison.”

  “I am well.”

  “And what became of the Mort Queen?”

  “I killed her.”

  The Fetch made a sound of amusement.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “I believe you. I’m laughing at myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Once, I thought that was what you were here for: to rid us of the Mort Queen once and for all. Now you’ve done it, and we’re no better off than we ever were. The Tear still fails.”

  “You had a hand in that failure, Gavin.”

  His breath caught, but a moment later he said, “I knew that you would eventually find me out. Row knew it too.”

  “What does he want?”

  “What he always wanted. A crown.”

  “What crown?”

  “The Tear crown. Row made it, silver and sapphire, but it was no ordinary piece of jewelry. Row said it would allow him to fix the past.”

  “Fix the past,” Kelsea repeated, wide awake now. She had spent months trying to figure out how to fix the past. “How?”

  “I don’t know. He always thought he had been robbed, that chance had stolen something from him. He was too smart to merely be Sarah Finn’s son.”

  “Where is this crown?”

  “Somewhere in New London. I’ve been hunting it for months, with no luck. The priest stole it from the Arvath when he fled—”

  “Father Tyler?”

  “Yes, but we can’t find him. I traced him as far as the Creche, but then lost the scent.”

  Kelsea nodded, though her heart ached at the idea of the old priest down there. Mace might be able to find him, but she couldn’t ask Mace to go back into that hellhole. He had told her of his Creche project over dinner the night before, and though she was pleased that he had taken her words to heart, she had wondered why he would hire the Caden for such a job. Now she knew, and how bad would such a place have to be, to frighten Mace off? He would surely scoff at all of this, crowns and magic; Kelsea could almost hear the dry skepticism in his voice. But the siren song of that idea—fix the past, fix the past—echoed in her head. She turned back to the Fetch.

  “Did you kill Jonathan Tear?”

  “No.”

  “You and Row were friends.”

  He blinked, startled by the question, and then replied, “Yes. We were. I thought we were.”

  “Why did he hate the Tears so much?”

  “Row always said that his birth was a great error.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. But he said the crown would correct the error.” The Fetch turned away, his voice cracking. “We only wanted to rebuild a decent society, like they had before the Crossing—”

  “What are you talking about?” Kelsea hissed. “The world before the Crossing was even worse than ours!”

  “But we didn’t know that!” The Fetch looked at her, his face almost pleading. “They never told us. We only knew what Row said. He said it was a better world, where smart people who worked hard were rewarded with a better life. Better houses, more food, a brighter future . . . that’s what he offered us.”

  Kelsea clenched her fists. Once upon a time, she had thought herself in love with this man, but now it seemed like an episode from someone else’s life. The boy, Gavin, overshadowed everything. If the Fetch had declared undying love for her in that moment, she would have spat in his face.

  “Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me all of this before?” she demanded. “What did you hope to gain by keeping so much from me?”

  “You credit me with more purpose than I had, Tear Queen. The answer is much simpler: I was ashamed. Would you find it so easy, to lay your worst moments bare before a stranger?”

  “No,” she replied after a moment. “But nor would I put my pride before the good of the kingdom.”

  “What good? All of that is done, three hundred years done. What can it possibly matter now?”

  “The past always matters, you fool,” Kelsea snarled. “Once and for all, who killed Jonathan Tear?”

  “Oh, Row killed him,” the Fetch replied wearily. “He killed all of them, Dorian and Virginia and Evan Alcott, anyone who would have been a problem. He even killed Ms. Ziv, the librarian, but that was too late; she had already sent most of the books from the library into hiding.”

  “He didn’t kill all of those people alone.”

  The Fetch looked up at her, his gaze stony. “Are you trying to shame me further, Tear Queen? I was a fool, but done is done. I have shed my tears for the past.”

  “What happened after Jonathan died?”

  “I helped Katie get away. It was the only good thing I ever did, because Row meant to get rid of her too. But she was pregnant, she told me so, and I couldn’t get past that; it would have been too great a sin . . .”

  “Forget that!” Katie replied shortly; the word sin never failed to irritate her, and she was sickened by the idea that he had not found Katie worth saving until she was carrying a child. “Who was the father? Jonathan?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me.” The Fetch turned away, but not before Kelsea saw a hint of old hurt in his eyes, and she suddenly remembered that he had once asked Katie to a festival. He had admired her, perhaps more, enough to help her flee . . . but not enough to help Jonathan. “She vanished, and took Row’s crown with her. When Row found out, he went mad, and I thought he would kill us all, but by then he had already started to fade. Katie had cursed us, but it took months for us to notice that something was wrong.”

  “She didn’t punish you enough.”

  The Fetch’s face went red with anger, and for a moment Kelsea thought he might try to strike her. But after another moment his fist dropped, and he leaned weakly on the balcony railing, defeated. “Say what you like, Tear Queen. But when you have lived centuries, when everyone you love has died around you and the world is full of strangers, you might know better.”

  But Kelsea was in no mood to feel empathy now. She turned to survey the land beyond the balcony, squinting northward in a futile wish to see New London. But which New London? Katie’s, or her own? Both were now under siege, and Kelsea felt a sudden stab of grief for the failed dreams of William Tear. He had worked so hard for his better world . . . all of them had, Lily and Dorian and Jonathan, all of those people who had boarded the ships. They had fought and starved and even died in pursuit of mankind’s oldest dream, but they hadn’t known that Tear’s vision was flawed. Too easy. Utopia was not the clean slate Tear had imagined, but an evolution. Humanity would have to work for that society, and work hard, dedicating themselves to an unending vigilance against the mistakes of the past. It would take generations, countless generations perhaps, but—

  “We could get there,” Kelsea murmured. “And even if not, we should always be growing closer.”
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  “What was that, Tear Queen?”

  Kelsea looked up, not seeing him, suddenly sure of what she had to do. She didn’t know whether the past could be changed, whether William Tear’s mistakes could ever be repaired. But to not even try seemed the most reckless course of all, and now Kelsea saw that she, too, had been caught by Tear’s vision, just like Lily, just like the rest of them. Mankind’s oldest dream . . . even the possibility was worth dying for. She reached beneath her shirt to clutch Tear’s sapphire, sensed his better world, hundreds of years away, yet so close she could almost touch it. And who was to say which was more real: the present, or the past? In the moment before she turned and shouted for Mace, Kelsea realized that it didn’t matter.

  She lived in both.

  Two hours later, Kelsea sat astride a horse, surrounded by her Guard, as well as Hall and his soldiers. Mace sat in front of her, and Kelsea’s arms were tied around him with thick ropes. It had been Mace’s idea, and a good one; a fugue might come upon Kelsea at any time now. If her Guard thought her bonds odd, they gave no sign of it; Coryn had bound her up and Kibb had tied his artful knots. The very act of being bound had been useful, for now it seemed too late to change her mind about going back. Kelsea wasn’t a perfect atheist, not really; she took far too much comfort in the idea of the inevitable.

  “How fast can we ride?” she asked Mace.

  “Faster now that you’re not slowing us down, Lady,” Mace had replied, and the remark had silenced Kelsea, just as he had intended.

  Nearby sat General Hall on his grey stallion, his brother Simon beside him, and behind them the sad remnants of the Tear army. The Fetch and his people were there too; Hall and the Fetch seemed to have an affinity of sorts, for Kelsea had seen them talking during the preparations for this ride. Kelsea felt the ultimate fraud; she knew that the only reason Hall and most of the Guard had agreed to this course of action was that they believed she would take care of it somehow, equalize the odds.

  Can I do that? Kelsea wondered. How?

  She didn’t know. Tear’s sapphire was around her neck, Row’s sapphire tucked deep inside her saddlebag, nestled beside the chunk of rock she had taken from the past. But what good had these things ever done? Mace had once told her that she would have been better off without her sapphires, and Kelsea wondered if he wasn’t right. Somewhere in New London was a crown, a crown that might help her, but that might only be a fool’s hope. Chances were good that she was leading them all into a slaughter.

  But I can’t stay here, she thought, feeling resolve strengthen inside her. She looked up at the windows of her mother’s house, sparkling panes that reflected the bright desert and revealed nothing. At the idea of leaving the black-clad woman behind, Kelsea felt only relief. She would not stay here while New London burned. It was, after all, better to die clean.

  “Let’s go then,” Mace said abruptly, and turned his horse. Kelsea swayed with him, her stomach dropping; with no control of the horse and her hands tied, she sensed the journey would be extremely unpleasant. But there was no help for it. Katie was there again, her mind doubling Kelsea’s, almost overshadowing it. Kelsea remembered this from that last night in the Keep, when Lily’s mind had pulled her back constantly, beyond her control. She and Katie had moved toward each other gradually, like two spheres approaching each other in orbit, but now Kelsea felt as though the eclipse was almost upon them.

  “We ride for New London!” Mace shouted over the assembled crowd of soldiers. “We will not stop except on the Queen’s or my command! If all goes well, we should be there tomorrow evening!”

  If all goes well, Kelsea thought sickly. They turned toward the northwest, and even at this great distance, Kelsea fancied that she could hear screams.

  Please, Tear, help us, she begged silently. She even held her breath for a moment, hoping for an answer, but none came. William Tear could not help them. They were alone.

  Chapter 13

  The Tearland

  ’Tis here, but yet confus’d:

  Knavery’s plain face is never seen till us’d.

  —Othello, William Shakespeare (pre-Crossing Angl.)

  The Town had changed.

  Katie could not adequately describe the change, even to herself. But she sensed it every time she walked through the commons. The streets were different than they had been in her youth, empty and cold. Neighbors had fenced themselves in, and dilapidation had begun to set in here and there among the houses, as those who could not maintain their own dwellings were left without aid. The Town had begun to smell of blight.

  One night, forty families had simply up and left. By the time anyone realized they were gone, the group was already far out on the plain, working its way steadily south. Jonathan had wanted to go after them, but Katie had talked him out of it. None of these families were part of Row’s church, and at least half of them had reported grievances over the past year. Even if Jonathan convinced them to return, they would be met with the same persecution they had faced before: rocks thrown through windows and pets slaughtered in the dead of night. Two weeks ago, a mob had cornered Ms. Ziv and battered her with sticks, forcing her to close the library.

  Katie might have chosen to leave town as well, had her responsibility not been so great. But since Jonathan was here, she wasn’t going anywhere. All the same, the loss of those forty families had taken a toll; among them had been two of the Town’s best carpenters, several dairy farmers, and—most painful to Katie—Mr. Lynn, who ran the sheep farm. Without him, the quality of the Town’s wool was sure to go down.

  There was more than one culprit here—small-mindedness fed off religion just as surely as the other way around—but Katie couldn’t help turning her eyes north, toward the steeple of the little white church at the edge of town. In the year since Row had taken over the congregation, his sermons had steadily darkened, and the church had darkened as well. Row’s God was an avid policeman of personal behavior, and the idea that such policing was anathema to the very idea of the Town no longer seemed to disturb anyone but Katie and Jonathan. Those who weren’t working seemed to be constantly at the church, which rocked and rolled all day long, whether Row was speaking or not. Katie would have liked to blame religion itself, but even she could not deceive herself that fully. A church was only as good or bad as the philosophy that emanated from the pulpit. All of her rage now focused on the people who followed Row, people who should have known better. They must have known better once, or William Tear wouldn’t have brought them on the Crossing. He had chosen his people carefully; Mum always said so. But things had shifted now, so profoundly that Katie could not predict what anyone in the Town would do, except Jonathan and, oddly enough, Row.

  She had begun to follow Row almost idly, as a sort of exercise. He was up to no good and she knew it, but that didn’t make him any easier to catch. He went to the church every day, where he gave sermons in the morning and evening to anyone who wanted to listen. Whenever he left the church, women thronged him, and there was a different woman at his house each night, though he was very circumspect; the women never arrived until midnight or one, long after most of the Town was asleep. Katie briefly considered bringing these affairs into the light, but in the end she held her hand, slightly disgusted with herself. She was attracted to Row—that day in his bedroom had never left her mind, not really—and she did not deceive herself that no envy colored her feelings, but private behavior was private behavior, and hypocrisy made it no less so. If she wanted to catch Row at something, it would have to be public, an issue that affected the whole Town. Nothing less would do.

  In between sermons, Row went to Jenna Carver’s metal shop, and as the days went on, this devotion to duty began to puzzle Katie more and more. She had asked around and found that Row’s church took care of him: the congregation maintained his house, and the women had once degenerated into an actual scratching catfight over who got to bring Row his dinner. He had no need of a day job anymore. But every day, without fail, he went to Jenna?
??s shop and stayed for five or six hours. One afternoon, when Katie had found an opportunity to sneak up to the shop and peer in the windows, she found the glass papered over, the window blocked up.

  Up to no good, she thought on the way home. She still remembered that night, long ago, when Row had taken her down to the metal shop and showed her Tear’s necklace. But years had passed, and now he might be making anything in there. Katie decided that she had to know.

  The next day, she waited outside the shop, concealed behind Ellen Wycroft’s mill. Row had left the shop to give his evening sermon, but Katie had to wait another hour, until dinnertime, before Jenna Carver left the shop as well. The sun had already set; the year was rapidly moving from autumn to winter. On Friday night, the Town would hold the autumn festival, the last party they enjoyed before it came time to seal everything up and buckle down for the snow that was surely coming. Katie had loved the festival when she was younger, but each year since William Tear’s death it seemed more grim, all gaiety forced and everyone in Town watching each other narrowly, looking for signs of weakness. But Jonathan couldn’t skip the festival, so she had to go. These days, Katie rarely let him out of her sight. Virginia and Gavin were with him now, having dinner, but even that arrangement wasn’t perfectly comfortable. Katie liked to guarantee Jonathan’s safety with her own eyes.

  Jenna’s front door was locked. Looking around the street, Katie saw no one. In the years since she and Row had come down here, a few people had built houses on the Lower Bend, but now those people were inside for dinner, their doors shut. Half of the lamps on the street hadn’t even been lit. A few streets over, Katie heard a dog barking, short, staccato yaps that repeated over and over. No one bothered to quiet the dog; all of the consideration that had marked Katie’s childhood was long gone.

  Seeing that the street was empty, she pulled her knife and bent down to the lock. Her mind remarked that William Tear wouldn’t like what she was doing, picking a lock in a town that had been built on the right to privacy. Then she realized that was nonsense; Tear was the one who had taught them to pick locks in the first place. Picking locks, constructing barricades, knifework, hand-to-hand combat, resisting interrogation . . . Tear had taught them all of these skills. Once, the only locked building in town had been the library, at night after Ms. Ziv went home. But since Tear’s death, people had begun to lock their doors, and even to install additional locks. Most of them were crude, homemade deadbolts and chains, but the lock on Jenna’s shop was real, fashioned of metal and designed to take a key.