The Queen of the Tearling

  Light blinded Thomas as soon as he opened the door. Even as he squinted, trying to adjust, the scene in the common room stopped him short. The first thing he saw were his gold-and-ruby dishes, being loaded none too carefully into an oakwood box by a manservant in the white dress of the Keep. Keep servants were never allowed in the Regent’s private quarters; they would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. But now one of them was here, and he was busy. He lifted gold plates one stack at a time and piled them into the box with a resounding crash that made Thomas shudder.

  Other changes caught his eye. His red velvet drapes were gone, pulled down from their place on the east wall. The windows were wide open, and sunlight streamed in. Both of his good statues, which had graced the far corners of the room, were gone. On the north side of the room, stacked in the corner, were some twenty kegs of beer, and beside them crates and crates of Mort wine. Another Keep servant was lining up bottles of whiskey (some of it very good stuff too, stuff Thomas had purchased himself at the Whiskey Festival that was held every July in the streets of New London). Next to the kegs was a large wagon, its function clear: they were going to cart out his entire supply of liquor as well.

  Thomas tightened his grip on the robe, whose edges were still trying to escape, and stormed over to the servant handling his gold dishes. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  The servant cocked a thumb over his shoulder without meeting Thomas’s eye. Looking beyond him, Thomas felt his heart sink further; Coryn stood behind the pile of beer kegs, making notations on a piece of paper. He wasn’t wearing his grey cloak, but he didn’t need to. The Keep servants were doing his bidding all the same.

  “Oi! Queen’s Guard!” Thomas shouted. He wished he could snap his fingers, but he didn’t dare, lest his robe fall open. “What is all this?”

  Coryn tucked his pen and paper away. “Queen’s orders. All of these items are Crown property, and they go today.”

  “What Crown property? It’s my property. I bought it.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have kept it in the Keep. Anything in the Keep is subject to seizure by the Crown.”

  “I didn’t . . .” Thomas pondered this assertion, sure there must be a loophole for the royal family. He’d never really studied the Tearling’s laws, even when he was a child and required to study; government wasn’t interesting. But hell, Elyssa hadn’t studied either, and she was the firstborn. He cast around for another argument and spotted his gold dishes in the box. “Those! Those were a gift!”

  “A gift from whom?”

  Thomas clamped his jaw shut. His robe threatened to come loose again, and he gathered a great fold of fabric in one hand, miserably aware that he was giving Coryn a glimpse of his puffy white stomach.

  “Your personal items, clothing and shoe leather, are yours, as well as any weapons you might have,” Coryn told him, his blue eyes infuriatingly impassive. “But the Crown will no longer fund your lifestyle.”

  “How am I to live then?”

  “The Queen has decreed that you have one month to vacate the Keep.”

  “What of my women?”

  Coryn’s face remained businesslike, but Thomas could feel waves of contempt coming off the man like heat. “Your women are free to do what they like. They may keep their clothing, but their jewelry has already been confiscated. If any of them are willing to leave with you, they’re welcome.”

  Thomas glared at him, trying to think of a way to explain things, how the women would otherwise have spent their lives in the most acute poverty imaginable, how they had acquiesced to the bargain—well, all of them except Marguerite, who was simply difficult. But the sun was too bright, and it made thinking hard. When was the last time he’d actually opened those curtains? Years, it had to be years. Sunlight washed the room, turning it white instead of grey, revealing cracks that had never been repaired; wine and food stains on the carpets; even a jack of diamonds that lay alone in the corner, like a raft set adrift on God’s Ocean.

  Christ, how many games did I play without that in the deck?

  “I never hit any of my women,” he told Coryn. “Not once.”

  “Well done.”

  “Sir!” a Keep servant called. “We’re ready to load the liquor!”

  “Proceed!” Coryn tipped his head at Thomas. “Any other questions?”

  He turned away without waiting for an answer and began to nail one of the boxes closed.

  “Where’s Pine?”

  “If you mean your manservant, I’ve seen no sign of him for a while. Perhaps he had other things to do.”

  “Yes,” Thomas replied, nodding. “Yes, he did. I sent him down to the market early this morning.”

  Coryn murmured something noncommittal.

  “Where are my women now?”

  “I’ve no idea. They didn’t take well to losing their jewelry.”

  Thomas winced; of course they didn’t. He ran his hands through his hair, forgetting about his robe, which billowed open. He snatched it closed. One of the Keep servants snickered, but when he looked around, they were all going about their assigned tasks.

  “I’ll call on the Queen as soon as I have the free time,” he told Coryn. “It may be several days.”

  “Yes, it may be.”

  Thomas hesitated, trying to decide if there’d been any sort of threat in the statement, then turned and trudged toward the women’s quarters, trying to think of what to say to them. Petra and Lily might go elsewhere; they’d always been the most rebellious after Marguerite. But the rest could be persuaded. Of course, he would need to find money somewhere. But he had many noble friends who would probably help him, and in the meantime, he could go and stay in the Arvath. The Holy Father wouldn’t dare turn him away, not after all the gold Thomas had given him over the years. Even the Red Queen might be willing to fund Thomas, if he could convince her that he’d be back on the throne before long. But he shuddered at the thought of asking.

  Food and paper littered the common room of the women’s quarters. The cupboards had been left open, the drawers yanked from their chests, and clothing was strewn everywhere. How long had Coryn been at work in here? He must have come in early this morning, perhaps just after Thomas had gone to bed.

  Pine let him in, Thomas realized. Pine sold me out.

  Only Anne was in the women’s quarters. She’d apparently gotten up while he was talking to Coryn, and now she was nearly dressed, her frizzy red curls pinned neatly on top of her head.

  “Where are the others?” he asked.

  Anne shrugged, reaching around behind herself and lacing up her own dress with quick, clever fingers. Thomas felt cheated: why had he been paying all those professional dressers? “What does that mean?”

  “It means I haven’t seen any of them.” Anne produced a trunk and began to pack.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Packing. But someone moved my jewelry.”

  “It’s gone,” Thomas replied slowly. “The Queen took it.” He sat down on the nearest sofa, staring at her. “What are you doing? None of you have anywhere else to go.”

  “Of course we do.” She turned, and Thomas saw a hint of the same contempt in her eyes that he’d seen in Coryn’s. A memory rippled in his mind, but he forced it away; he sensed that it was something from childhood, and very few things from childhood had been good.

  “Where will you go?”

  “To Lord Perkins.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you think? He made me an offer, months ago.”

  The betrayal! Thomas played poker with Lord Perkins, invited him to dinner once a month. The man was old enough to be Anne’s father.

  “What sort of offer?”

  “That’s between me and him.”

  “Is that where the rest of them went?”

  “Not to Perkins.” A note of pride entered Anne’s voice. “He only offered for me.”

  “This is only temporary. A few months, and I’ll be back on the throne. Then you can all come ba
ck.”

  Anne stared at him as though he were a roach in the kitchen. Memory was thrashing its way to the surface now. Thomas fought it, but suddenly it was there: Queen Arla had looked at him in exactly the same way. Thomas and Elyssa had been schooled together, and learning had always been hard for both of them, but Elyssa had understood more, so she had continued to work with the governess while Thomas simply stopped after his twelfth year. For a while, Mum had tried to talk to him about politics, the state of the kingdom, dealings with Mortmesne. But Thomas had never been able to grasp the things that he was supposed to intuitively understand, and that look in Mum’s eyes had grown stronger and stronger. Eventually the conversations stopped, and Thomas saw very little of Mum after that. He was allowed to do what he had always wanted to do in the first place: sleep all afternoon and go hellraising around the Gut at night. It had been years since anyone had dared to look at him with open contempt, but now here he was again, feeling just as small as he’d felt when he was young.

  “You really don’t understand, do you?” Anne asked. “She’s set us free, Thomas. Maybe you’ll be back on the throne, maybe not; I wouldn’t know about that. But none of us will be back.”

  “You weren’t slaves! You had the best of everything! I treated you like noblewomen. You never had to work.”

  Anne’s eyebrows lifted higher, her face darkening, and now her voice nearly thundered. “Never had to work? Pine wakes me up at three in the morning and tells me you’re ready for me. I go to your chamber and get to lick Petra’s cunt for your pleasure.”

  “I paid you,” the Regent whispered.

  “You paid my parents. You paid my parents a tidy sum when I was fourteen years old and too young to know anything about anything.”

  “I paid for your food, your clothing. Good clothing! And I gave you jewelry!”

  Now she looked straight through him. He remembered this too; this was how Queen Arla the Just had looked at him for the last ten years of her life, and nothing he could say or do had ever caused her to see him again. He had turned invisible.

  “You should leave the Tearling,” Anne remarked. “It’s not safe for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Mace is her Captain of Guard, and you tried to have her killed. If I were you, I would leave the country.”

  “This is all temporary.” Why could no one see this but him? The girl had already made enemies of both Thorne and Mortmesne. Thomas hated government, but even he’d read the Mort Treaty. The default clause would trigger in seven days. If the shipment failed to arrive in Demesne . . . he couldn’t even imagine it. No one had ever seen the Red Queen in a rage, but in her silences one could feel the world beginning to end. A picture suddenly popped into Thomas’s mind, eerie in its realism: the Keep, surrounded by Mort hawks wheeling and plunging around its many turrets, hunting, always hunting. “Her head will be hanging on the walls of Demesne by the end of the month.”

  Anne shrugged. “If you say so.”

  She crossed the room and took another pile of dresses from the chest of drawers, then picked up a hairbrush from the floor, commonplace movements that dismissed Thomas. He saw the meaning of the open chests of drawers: they’d all abandoned him and taken the clothes!

  Perhaps Anne was right. He could conceivably go to Mortmesne and beg the Red Queen for clemency. But she had tired of him long ago. She might just as easily decide to hand him over to an executioner. And how could he leave the Keep, even to make the journey? The Fetch was out there, the Fetch who seemed to know everything and anticipate everything. The stone bulwark was scant protection against him, for the Fetch could enter the Keep like a ghost, but it was better than nothing, better than being out in the open. If Thomas tried to make for the Mort border, the Fetch would find out, Thomas knew that as well as he knew his own name, and no matter how many guards he took with him, one night he would open his eyes and see that face above him, that dreadful mask.

  If he even had any guards left. More than half of his force had been slaughtered in the attempt on the girl. No one had come to arrest Thomas yet, which had seemed an extraordinary stroke of good fortune; perhaps they thought his guards had hatched the plot on their own. But now, remembering the utter lack of concern in Coryn’s voice, Thomas realized that maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe they knew and just didn’t care.

  Anne snapped the clasps on her trunk and went to check herself in the mirror. To Thomas, she looked somewhat bare without any jewelry, but she seemed pleased enough; after tucking one wild lock of hair back behind her ear, she smiled, grabbed hold of the trunk, and turned to him. Her eyes seemed to burn right through him, and Thomas wondered why he’d never noticed them before; they were a warm, brilliant blue.

  “I never hit you,” he reminded her. “Not even one time.”

  Anne smiled, a friendly grin that failed to conceal something unpleasant lurking at the corners of her mouth. “Clothing, jewelry, food, and gold, and you think you paid, Thomas. You didn’t, not even close. But I think you will.”

  Father Tyler finished the last bit of his chicken, then set his fork down with an unsteady hand. He was frightened. The summons had come just as he was sitting down to his lunch, a simple bit of fowl that had been boiled to blandness. Tyler had never had much taste for food anyway, but in the past two days he’d eaten as an act of utter mechanics, tasting only dust.

  At first he was elated. He’d been a bit player in one of the great events of his time. There hadn’t been many great events in Tyler’s life. He’d grown up a farmer’s son in the Almont Plain, one of seven children, and when he was eight years old, his father had given him to the local priest in place of tithing. Tyler never resented his father’s decision, not even then; he had been one child among too many, and there was never enough to eat.

  The parish priest, Father Alan, was a good man. He needed an assistant, for he suffered from severe gout. He taught Tyler how to read and gave him his first Bible. By the time Tyler was thirteen, he was helping Father Alan write his sermons. The parish congregation was not large, perhaps thirty families, but the Father couldn’t get to them all. As his gout worsened, Tyler began to make the Father’s rounds, visiting families and hearing their troubles. When those too old or sick to reach the church wanted to confess, Tyler took their confessions, even though he hadn’t been ordained yet. He supposed it was technically a sin, but he also didn’t think God would mind, particularly not for those who were dying.

  When Father Alan was summoned to New London for promotion, he took Tyler with him, and Tyler finished his training in the Arvath and became ordained at the age of seventeen. He might have had his own parish, but his supervisors had already realized that Tyler was ill suited to minister to the public. He liked research more than people, liked to work with paper and ink, and so he became one of the Arvath’s thirty bookkeepers, recording tithes and tributes from the surrounding parishes. It was relaxing work; once in a while a cardinal would attempt to pad his own lifestyle by hiding his parishes’ income, and there would be some excitement for a month or so, but most of the time bookkeeping was a quiet job, leaving plenty of time to think and read.

  Tyler stared at his books, spread over ten shelves of good Tearling oak that had cost most of one year’s stipend. The first five books had come to him from a parishioner, a woman who’d died and left them to the Church with a small bequest. Cardinal Carlyle had taken the bequest and made it disappear, but he’d had no use for the books, so he dumped them on young Father Tyler’s desk, saying, “You’re her priest. Figure it out.”

  Tyler had been twenty-three. He’d read the Bible through many times, but secular books were a novelty, so he opened one and began reading, idly at first, then turning one page after another with the amazed, fortunate feeling of a man who finds money on the ground. He had become an academic that day, though he wouldn’t know it for many years.

  He could no longer delay the inevitable. Tyler left his small room and shuffled down the hallway. He ha
d suffered from arthritis in his left hip for some seven or eight years now, but his slow gait was less the effect of pain than of reluctance. He was a good bookkeeper, and life in the Arvath had been a comfortable, inexorable march of time . . . until four days ago, when everything changed.

  He’d conducted the coronation in a state of near terror, wondering what perverse twist of fate had guided the Mace to his door. Tyler was a devout priest, an ascetic, a believer in the great work of God that had brought humanity through the Crossing. But he was no performer. He’d stopped giving sermons decades before, and each year he retreated further into the world of books, of the past. He would have been the Holy Father’s last choice to perform the crowning, but the Mace had knocked on his door and Tyler had gone.

  I am part of God’s great work. The thought darted in from nowhere and disappeared with the same blinding speed. He knew the history of the Tearling monarchs in detail. The great socialist vision of William Tear had eroded after the Landing, dying in increments until it ended in bloody disaster with the assassination of Jonathan Tear. The Raleigh line had taken over the throne, but the Raleighs were not the Tears, never had been. By now they had become as fatuous and sickened as any royal line of pre-Crossing Europe. Too much intermarriage and too little education. Too little understanding of humanity’s tendency to repeat its own mistakes, over and over again. But Tyler knew that history was everything. The future was only the disasters of the past, waiting to happen anew.