Fine. So long as it gets me where I’m going.
“We could split, Lady,” Mace suggested quietly. “Send you off with four or five men and—”
“No,” Kelsea replied, clutching her sapphire. “Don’t even try it, Lazarus. Turning aside would drive me mad now.”
“Perhaps you’re mad already, Majesty. Did that ever occur to you?”
It had occurred to Kelsea, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She gripped the reins and turned her horse east, allowing him to find his own way forward along the riverbank. Immediately the pressure in her chest eased, and she closed her eyes in relief.
The next day, they ran onto the ruts of enormous wheels caked into the mud of the Mort Road. The sight stopped Mace cold, and Kelsea took a spiteful pleasure in his surprise, though she could tell he still wasn’t convinced. Sometimes the tracks left the road and crossed the country, but they were always easy to spot, and Kelsea knew where Thorne was going now: cutting a nearly straight line east toward the Argive Pass, the same route always taken by the shipment. There were other places to get a caravan across the border, but the Argive gave direct access to the Pike Hill, a straight slope to Demesne. Speed would be important to Thorne, so it must be important to Kelsea as well. On the first night, when her guard made plans to camp, Kelsea told them firmly that they were welcome to stop, but she would keep riding. The resulting night’s travel earned her no friends, but Kelsea didn’t care. She was being driven now, driven by a great vein of blue fire in her head that seemed to widen with each passing hour.
On the second night, Mace finally commanded them to stop and rest. Kelsea, realizing that she had pushed herself to exhaustion, made no argument. They camped in an enormous field of wildflowers just beyond the end of the Crithe. Kelsea had never seen such a field; it stretched out like an ocean, dappled with every color of the rainbow. The flowers, unfamiliar to Kelsea, smelled like strawberries, and the grass was so soft that the troop didn’t even bother to set up tents; they simply piled onto bedrolls in the field. Kelsea, who had expected to toss and turn for hours with the torment in her head, fell asleep at once. When she woke, she felt restored, and she picked several of the flowers, tucking them into her cloak for luck. Everyone seemed to wake in a good mood, and most of her guards began to treat Kelsea in their old fashion, joking lightly with her as they rode. Even Mhurn, who had been avoiding her since the incident at her audience, dropped back to ride on her left as the morning went on.
“Well met, Mhurn.”
“Lady.”
“Come to try to talk me out of it as well?”
“No, Lady.” Mhurn shook his head. “I know you’re telling the truth.”
She looked up at him, startled. “You do?”
“Mhurn!” Mace barked from the front of the troop. “Up here now!”
Mhurn shook his reins and his horse darted around several others to reach the front. Kelsea stared after him, and then shook her head. On her other side, Pen was frowning, his hand on his sword, and Kelsea felt a pulse of low, banked anger. She wished she could forgive Pen for that scene in her chamber, but she simply couldn’t. He of all people should have believed her; he knew she was no hysteric. Pen seemed to feel her anger, for he turned to give her a defiant look.
“Yes, Lady?”
“If I’d been forced to leave the Keep alone, if Lazarus hadn’t allowed any of the Guard to come with me, would you still have come, Pen?”
“I’m sworn, Majesty.”
“But sworn to whom? If it came down to a choice between the Captain of Guard and myself, which way would you go?”
“Don’t force me to answer that, Lady.”
“I won’t, Pen, not today. But you either trust me or you don’t. And if you don’t, I no longer want you as my close guard.”
Pen stared at her, his eyes wounded. “Lady, I thought only of your safety.”
Kelsea turned away, suddenly furious with him, with all of them . . . except Mhurn. It had been more than a month, and many of them had come to know her, but nothing had really changed. She was still the girl they’d brought like a piece of baggage from Barty and Carlin’s cottage, the girl who couldn’t ride, who could barely be trusted to put up her own tent. It was Mace they listened to, whose word counted, and in the final judgment even Mace had treated her like a wayward child. When Pen tried to speak to her again, she didn’t answer.
The terrible pull of the east only increased as the day progressed, becoming less a physical tug than a mental compulsion. Something was dragging Kelsea’s mind along without the slightest concern whether the rest of her followed. Her chest throbbed, the sapphire throbbed, and they seemed to feed each other, the jewel and the anger, each of them growing beyond their own borders until just after noon, when Wellmer called a sudden halt.
The entire company drew rein just over the rise of a small hill that was covered with wheat and dotted with purple flowers. To the east, Mount Ellyre and Mount Willingham rose to blot out the horizon, the deep blue V between them marking the ravine of the Argive Pass. Wellmer pointed toward the base of the mountains, where the Mort Road disappeared in a series of switchbacks.
“There, Lady.”
They all stood in their stirrups, Kelsea craning her neck to get a better view. Some ten miles distant, buried in the foothills, was a long black shadow snaking its way upward.
“A fissure in the rock,” Dyer muttered.
“No, sir.” Wellmer’s face was white, but he firmed his jaw and turned to Kelsea. “Cages, Majesty, all in a line. I can see the bars.”
“How many cages?”
“Eight.”
“Bullshit!” Elston roared from the back of the troop. “How the hell could Thorne build new cages in secret?”
“It doesn’t matter how. It’s done.” Kelsea felt Mace’s eyes on her, but she didn’t look at him. On her right, Pen was staring at the foothills, his jaw twitching. “We have to reach them before they get out of the Argive. Once they come down from the mountains, Mort soldiers will be waiting to escort them to Demesne.”
“How can you know that, Majesty?” Dyer asked. His tone was remarkably humble; it sounded almost like an honest question.
“I just know.”
Now they all turned to Mace, seeking validation. An hour ago, this would have enraged Kelsea all over again, but now she could only stare at the caravan, making its slow way up the foothills. At least one of those cages was filled with children. How many villages like the one she’d seen? How many people?
Mace spoke slowly, refusing to meet Kelsea’s gaze. “I apologize, Majesty. Thorne has outsmarted me again, and I promise you, it’s the last time.”
Kelsea didn’t acknowledge his words, only shook her reins, anxious to go on. She stared at the dark line silhouetted against the foothills, shivering, trying not to wonder how she might come out of this on the other side.
East.
The voice was in her mind, but it seemed to be all around her, its words vibrating against her skin. “Let’s ride on. We need to catch them by nightfall.”
“Do we have a plan, Lady?” Dyer asked.
“Certainly.” She had no plan at all. “Come, daylight’s wasting.”
When Javel wiped his brow, his hand came away soaking wet. The day was brutally, unseasonably hot, and driving the mules forward was exhausting work. Thorne had planned the bulk of their route through the Almont to avoid the most heavily populated towns and villages; sensible enough, but as a consequence they’d sometimes been forced to take rough roads that had seen no repair for a long time. By the time they reached the end of the Crithe, Javel could already feel his sickness over this whole enterprise beginning to overtake him, but he turned forward and thought of Allie.
The people in the cages wouldn’t be quiet. They could hardly be expected to, but their pleading was something that Javel had never considered back in New London. Even Thorne might not have considered it, although being Thorne, he probably didn’t care either way. Javel
could see him up ahead through the bars of the cage, guiding his horse forward as serenely as a king out for a picnic. Javel pulled the flask from his pocket and took a sip of whiskey, which burned his parched throat. Thorne would give him hell if he saw him drinking, but Javel hardly cared at this point. He’d packed three full flasks into his saddlebags, knowing that he would need them before the journey was over.
Thorne had decided that four men were necessary to guard each cage. There were several nobles in addition to Lord Tare, as well as a fair smattering of the Tearling army. The Baedencourt brothers had also produced two more Caden, Dwyne and Avile; both were well-known fighters, which made the rest of the group feel better. But even for a conspiracy, they were all curiously detached from each other, brought together by a common purpose like a group of wanderers stranded in the Cadarese desert. There was no love, and precious little respect. Brother Matthew and the little pickpocket, Alain, had taken a palpable dislike to each other. Lord Tare kept himself removed, riding ahead as a scout. Javel resented the presence of the Baedencourt brothers, who didn’t even appear to have sobered up for the journey, and he’d spent the past few days with one eye on his cage and the other on Keller, who had begun to worry him more and more.
They had raided twelve villages along the shores of the Crithe. There had been almost no young men and so there’d been very little actual fighting. But Javel had noticed that Keller’s disappearances into houses and huts took a long time, and that some of the women Keller brought out, particularly the young ones, had seen rough handling, their clothing ripped and stained with blood. Javel had considered raising the subject with Thorne, appealing to him on his level: wouldn’t damage to the merchandise mean reduced value? But there had been no opportunity to speak privately with Thorne, and finally Javel had swallowed his disgust, bit by bit, just as he’d been forced to swallow everything else in this business. The progression was terribly easy: one bulwark after another fell inside his mind, like sand castles under the tide, until he worried that one day he might wake up and find himself actually become Arlen Thorne, so debased that everything seemed acceptable.
Allie.
The villages were so isolated that it seemed unlikely anyone would have time to mount a pursuit, but Thorne had insisted on the extra guards all the same, and Javel was forced to admit that Thorne was right. The recent rains had raised the level of the Crithe, and extra men were needed to get the cages across the Beth Ford. It didn’t hurt to be overly cautious either, for the cages were vulnerable—made of simple wood, built to undertake only a few journeys, easier to attack.
“Please,” a woman whimpered from the cage beside Javel, so close that he jumped. “My sons. Please. Can’t they be in here with me?”
Javel shut his eyes and then opened them. The children were the worst part of this business, the worst part of every shipment. But Thorne had explained that the Red Queen valued the children highly, perhaps more than anything else they might bring. Javel himself had seized several: two small girls from Lowell, a toddler and baby boy from Haven, and, in Haymarket, a baby girl right out of her cradle. The children’s cages were fourth and fifth in line, right in the center of the shipment, and Javel thanked God that he hadn’t been assigned to guard them, though he could hear them well enough. The babies, particularly those too young for weaning, had squalled almost continuously for the first two days of the journey. Now, mercifully, they had fallen silent, and so had nearly all of the prisoners, their throats too dry to beg. Thorne had barely brought enough water for the guards and mules; he said that more than a few liters apiece would slow them down.
Right now I need you, Javel thought, staring at Thorne through the bars of the cage. But if I ever catch you alone, just once, on a dark night in the Gut . . . I won’t be fooled again.
“Please,” the woman croaked. “My little one, my baby. He’s only five months old.”
Javel shut his eyes again, wishing he had put her in a different cage. She had blonde hair, just like Allie’s, and when he had yanked her son from her arms, he’d been assaulted by a sudden and terrible certainty: Allie could see him. She could see everything he’d done. The certainty had faded a bit as the caravan moved along and dawn faded into morning, but it had raised a new problem, one that Javel had not considered before: how would he account to Allie for her release? She was a good woman; she would rather die than buy her freedom by the misery of others. What would she say when she found out what he had done?
When Javel was ten, his father had taken him to see the slaughterhouse where he worked, a squat building made of cheap wood. Maybe Father had intended it as a learning experience, or maybe he meant for Javel to follow in his footsteps, but either way, the outing had backfired. The line of steers, dozens of them, had waited dumbly to enter the building through its huge door. But the cows inside the building weren’t dumb at all; there was a cacophony of sound, mooing and screeching, and behind that the thudding of heavy blows.
“Where do they come out?” Javel asked. But his father didn’t answer, merely looked at him until Javel understood. “You kill them?”
“Where d’you think beef comes from, son? For that matter, where d’you think money comes from?”
When they entered the slaughterhouse, the smell had hit Javel instantly, blood and the rich reek of rotten entrails, and he’d lost his breakfast violently all over his father’s shoes. He would remember that smell all his life, but it was the door of the slaughterhouse that planted the real hooks in Javel’s child’s mind: the wide-open door, the yawning darkness beyond. The steers went in, they screamed in the darkness, and they didn’t come out again.
Six years ago, when Allie had gone to Mortmesne, Javel had ridden quietly behind the shipment for several days, not knowing what he planned to do. He could see Allie in the fourth cage, her bright blonde hair visible even from a distance, but the bars put infinite miles between them. And even if he found a way to successfully attack the shipment—a feat no one had ever managed—where would they go?
At least the steer didn’t know what was coming. Allie’s doom had been in her eyes that entire summer; it was one of the few things Javel remembered clearly. Mortmesne would have only one use for such a beautiful woman, just as a slaughterhouse had only one use for steers. They went in, and they didn’t come out again. But now he would snatch Allie back. Javel could almost see her now, a dim shape in the darkened doorway, and he no longer heard the woman beside him, begging for her sons. Eventually she stopped.
As the day got hotter, the mules began to act up. They were Cadarese mules, bred for strain and scorching temperatures, but they seemed to like the cargo no more than Javel did. He’d avoided whipping them throughout the journey, but finally it couldn’t be helped, and he and Arne Baedencourt stationed themselves up at the front of the third cage, whips at the ready whenever a mule began to lag. It did no good. The caravan slowed, and then slowed further, until Thorne himself rode toward the cages and yelled at Ian, the mules’ handler. “We need to reach Demesne by tomorrow night! What’s wrong with your mules?”
“Can’t say!” Ian shouted back. “The heat, maybe! They need more water!”
Good luck with that, Javel thought. They’d passed the end of the Crithe yesterday, and now they were more than halfway up the foothills that set the base of the Clayton Mountains. Even after the rains, there was no water this high up. Several hundred feet ahead, they would go through the Argive Pass and then run straight down the Pike Hill to Demesne. If only the damned mules could make it a few more hours, they could rest and it would be an easy trek the rest of the way.
The heat finally reached its pinnacle and held there as the sun began to sink toward the horizon. Several times Javel saw Alain, stationed on the cage ahead of him, sneaking cups of water to the prisoners. Javel thought of reprimanding him; if Thorne caught Alain wasting water that should have gone to the mules, they would all hear about it. But Javel remained silent.
Near sunset, the woman in the cage, who
was apparently blessed with a throat of iron, started up again. She was more difficult to ignore this time; soon Javel knew that her sons were named Jeffrey and William, that her husband had been killed in a construction accident two months ago, that she was pregnant once more and sure it was a girl this time. This last fact bothered Javel most of all, though he couldn’t say why. Allie had never gotten pregnant; Gate Guards made enough to afford good contraception, and both he and Allie deemed children too much of a risk in uncertain times. The decision had seemed so clear-cut then, but now Javel was merely sorry, and wearier than he could say. He wondered why Thorne hadn’t thought of this, that they might take a woman whose pregnancy wasn’t visible yet. Very soon she would have little value as a slave; she wouldn’t be able to work, and no man wanted a pregnant woman for his toy.
It’s Thorne’s problem, it’s Thorne’s problem.
After the last excruciating mile uphill, they finished the rise at dusk and brought the line of cages into the Argive Pass. The sides of the ravine were steep but not sheer, dotted with boulders and outcroppings that jutted sharply from the slope. Broken stonework, the wreck of the Argive Tower, littered the floor of the valley. Greenery had long since deserted the Argive, and the constant trek of shipments had further eroded what arid vegetation was left. In the half-light of dusk, the pass was a deep brown gorge with dim purple sky at the top, stretching nearly a mile from east to west.
The mules were at the end of their strength, but Javel refrained from pointing this out to Thorne. He’d find out soon enough, when the poor beasts simply stopped moving despite all the whips in the world. They would have to stop for the night, although Javel didn’t expect to get any sleep, not with those cages only yards away. He thought of Allie again. What would he tell her? Not the truth, certainly; her eyes would take on that brittle, blank look, Allie’s form of disappointment.