“Not dying today?” she asked.
“Not today,” he said with a smile. Hamon’s smile was one of the best things in her world. It was as warm as a down blanket in winter and as comforting as an embrace. It made her feel as if she were doing everything right and that everything would turn out fine. Standing, he held out his hand and helped her to her feet. Her knees felt shaky, and she drew a few deep, steadying breaths. If Naelin broke down again anytime soon, Daleina wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to face it. She’d end up as a puddle on the floor. But I may not have any choice, she thought. Protecting Aratay was her responsibility. And it should be Naelin’s as well.
“What happened?” Hamon asked as he helped her to her throne. She sank into it gratefully, smoothed her skirts, and straightened her crown. He assisted with her hair, pinning back the loose red-and-gold strands.
“The reports from the spirits are garbled, but from what I can sense, something happened to Queen Naelin’s children, and she reacted. Badly. She drove the spirits north, over the border to Semo, forcing them to attack. But it wasn’t a controlled attack. This was wild, unplanned. It . . . it makes no sense. I don’t know why she reacted the way she did, without thought, without care for the consequences.” She shook her head. “Ven will send a message when he can—he was there,” Daleina said. “Hopefully he can help explain this.” She wasn’t sure it really mattered, though. Whatever the cause, what she had to focus on was handling the aftermath.
She’d have to reach out to Queen Merecot. Attempt to salvage some kind of diplomacy. They hadn’t yet formalized their peace treaty. This would make all of that a thousand times more difficult. Merecot would see it as a breach of trust, if not an all-out act of war. Why did Naelin do it? Daleina wondered for the umpteenth time.
Regardless, reports would be coming in soon from across Aratay about the damage. She’d need to assess the level of this crisis and then issue orders to distribute emergency care. Areas near the newly barren lands would have to be prepared to accept refugees—they’d need temporary housing, emergency food, other supplies—and then she’d have to set things in motion for permanent solutions. With winter coming, her people would need both warm homes and stores of food.
The thing was, what she really needed right now was Naelin. But that wasn’t an option, and Daleina was still a queen.
“Seneschal!” she called.
The man popped through the door so fast that Daleina was certain he’d had his ear pressed to it. Considering the circumstances, she didn’t mind. “Yes, Your Majesty?”
“Summon the chancellors from western Aratay. Do not tell them why—I will explain.” As soon as she’d recovered enough, she’d be able to pinpoint the exact spots of the worst damage with greater speed than anyone could report. Help could be in place before the innocent victims even asked for it. They may need healers, she thought. “Hamon . . .”
“I’m staying here,” he told her firmly. “But I will send messages to my colleagues.”
“Good enough.” She squeezed his hands. “Don’t be specific as to the cause, just be factual with the medical need—we need them focused, not panicked. I’ll provide precise locations by morning. Go.”
He left, and she waited for the seneschal to return with the chancellors. After the rescue forces were mobilized, she would need to make a speech to her people. She realized as she thought about it that she’d already decided to lie to them, at least for now. They’d been through enough, felt enough fear.
They didn’t need to know they couldn’t trust one of their queens.
Chapter 6
Naelin woke alone in an unfamiliar bed. She stared up at the ceiling. The quilt smelled like herbs, rosemary and sage. More dried herbs hung from the rafters. I’m in Redleaf, she thought. Her head felt fuzzy, and it was hard to remember why she was here, or even where here was. Thoughts kept slipping away from her, like wriggling fish in a stream.
My children are gone, she thought.
Then: No, that can’t be right.
Erian and Llor were curled in the beds in the other rooms. If she went to the doorways, she’d hear their breathing—Erian’s soft and even, Llor with a slight snore because he’d had a bit of a cold. She’d been making him breathe in the steam from a mug of pinewood tea before bed.
Standing, she walked into Llor’s bedroom. She swayed as she walked, her head pounding and her vision tilting with blots of blackness that came and went. And then her mind cleared again for a moment: They’re not here. They’re gone. I lost them. The memory made her gasp as if she’d been stabbed.
Llor’s favorite stuffed animal, a squirrel he called Boo-Boo, was propped on his pillow. Erian had made it for him out of old bedsheets and had sewed buttons for the eyes, lopsided. One was cracked. Sitting on the bed, Naelin hugged the squirrel to her chest.
It smelled like him.
Lying on his pillow, she cradled the squirrel against her.
As her mind began to knit itself back together, she was clear on one important detail: she knew whom she must kill.
Of course, killing Queen Merecot of Semo would not be easy. She was powerful, possibly as powerful as Naelin and certainly better trained. She’d been through several years at the same academy as Daleina and had been a queen for longer than either Daleina or Naelin.
But it had to be done. There was no question that those spirits—the air spirits that had kidnapped her children—were foreign. They owed their allegiance to another queen. And the logical answer to the question of which queen was Merecot. They’d fled north, after all.
Perhaps she’d taken the children for revenge. Naelin had killed her sister, Alet, albeit in self-defense. Naelin had also been instrumental in thwarting her invasion plans. Or perhaps the attack was part of a broader scheme to invade Aratay again—the problem of too many spirits in Semo still remained. Perhaps Merecot sought to weaken one of Aratay’s queens, in preparation for another battle.
Naelin didn’t care what the reason was. There was no forgivable reason.
And there was nothing—absolutely nothing—Merecot could do or say that would prevent Naelin from destroying her and taking back her children.
Struggling against the fog in her mind, she tried to think through the logistics: she’d need Queen Daleina’s help. The disaster at the border had proven that an all-out attack was useless. Merecot’s borders were too well defended. Naelin also wanted Ven’s assistance. She’d have better odds with a trained warrior at her side. It might not be easy to convince him to leave the forest, though. He was a sworn champion. His duty was here in Aratay, preparing a new heir.
Well, she had a duty too.
Leaving Boo-Boo, Naelin placed her crown on her head and checked herself in the mirror. Dark circles under her eyes might have been distressing if it hadn’t been like she was staring into the eyes of a stranger. She pressed her hand against the mirror, over her own reflection.
Her vision swam again as the black blots popped like bubbles.
On an ordinary morning, Llor would have been calling for help with tying the drawstring on his pants, and Erian would be trying to slip past her without brushing her hair. Erian hated to brush her hair and would avoid it for days if allowed to, at which point it would be more snarled than a bird’s nest. Naelin would then have to brush it out strand by strand, joking about how many birds were living on Erian’s head.
Consumed by her chaotic thoughts, Naelin didn’t realize she was pushing harder and harder against the mirror until she knocked the glass out of its frame. Lunging forward, she tried to catch it, but it hit the wall and shattered in her hands.
She pulled her hands back. A shard had sliced one of her palms. Blood welled up in the cut, and she stared at it fascinated at the brilliant red against her skin. It didn’t hurt, not at first, but then it did.
Holding her wounded hand in the air, she walked to the kitchen, turned on the water, and winced as the cold hit the cut. Blood mixed with the water and pooled in the bottom
of the sink. She wrapped a towel tight around her hand and tied it off, one-handed. The cut wasn’t deep but it was long. She looked back across the kitchen to the bedroom and saw the drops of blood that she’d left in a trail. Getting to her knees, she scrubbed it with another towel.
She again lost track of who she was and why she was here.
That was how the village leader found the queen of Aratay, on her hands and knees, cleaning his floor with one hand while cradling her other bandaged hand against her.
“Your Majesty!”
She heard the shock in his voice. Didn’t care.
“Are you injured? Let me send for the doctor—”
Naelin stood as memory and awareness slammed back into her. “I’m well.”
That was a lie, though. And not because of the cut.
I will never be “well” again. I endangered my children. All of this is my fault. If I weren’t queen, they’d never have been taken. “Champion Ven and I will be returning to the capital shortly,” she said. “I thank you for your hospitality.”
She stared at the towel in her hand, wondering what she’d been doing—cleaning when she should be on her way to Mittriel. She was wasting precious time while Erian and Llor were in danger. But it was so hard to think through the throbbing in her head.
“The villagers . . . That is, we wish to hold a memorial service for your children, if you would like that. We are a small village, and it could not be anything fancy, like in Mittriel, but we wish to show our respect for your loss—”
“No.”
He looked lost. “Forgive me, Your Majesty—”
“They aren’t dead.”
“Of course.” She could tell from his voice that he didn’t believe her, but he also feared angering her. “Please, we meant no disrespect—”
Naelin brushed past him, unable to summon the strength to be polite. She stepped out of his home and into the village center. Already it was bustling with people going about their daily lives as if it were a mere ordinary day, and she felt as if she’d stepped into a bizarre dream. How could they live their lives like normal when her children were missing? How could the sun shine, the wind blow, life continue? She felt so much anger and fear and guilt and pain churning inside her that she thought it must be radiating out of her, staining everything.
Pausing, the people watched her as she passed. She heard them, distantly, as if they were speaking to her underwater. Deepest sympathy. Express our condolences. Such a tragedy. We know how you feel. We have lost—
Children.
Fathers.
Mothers.
Brothers.
Sisters.
Friends.
We have lost too. Time will help. Time heals all wounds. You must celebrate their lives. You are lucky to have had them for as long as you had. They’ll always be a part of you. Be strong. Everything happens for a reason. All things must pass.
She didn’t acknowledge them, not even to tell them they were wrong—her children weren’t dead! But she was too focused on the task ahead to care what they thought or said. First, find Ven, and then we’ll leave, return to the capital, and plot out the best way to rescue my children from Semo. She’d welcome all the help she could get—when she struck at Merecot, she wanted to be certain she would not fail.
I failed my children when it mattered most; I won’t fail them again. I will save them from Merecot, no matter what it takes.
A man stood in her path.
He looked familiar—one of the villagers she’d spoken to before? “I know why you said no,” he said. “You were afraid. Because of your kids. You didn’t want to draw spirits to your kids, and so you didn’t use your power. Fear made you say no. But you lost them anyway, because life is cruel like that, and no matter how careful we are, sometimes bad things happen. Can’t stop the bad things, no matter how much you hide.”
“Why are you saying this?” He wasn’t spouting the typical sympathetic drivel that all the other villagers had been spewing. In fact, he sounded almost hostile, on the verge of insulting her.
“Because you don’t have anything more to lose. So you might as well use your power. We heard—we all heard—what you did. Sending the spirits to their death in Semo, making more barren areas. You clearly aren’t afraid of doing harm anymore, so you shouldn’t be afraid of doing good. You’re supposed to be the Mother of Aratay, you know, not just a mother of two.”
Before he could say anything more, other villagers swarmed around them, shushing him, apologizing to her, and bowing deeply as they pulled him away. She stood, staring, as he was shepherded into one of the shops, out of sight.
How dare he? she thought.
He’s right, she also thought.
Not about the library, of course—the callousness of using her emotions to get such a trivial thing made her want to tear the man’s eyes out. But about her power in general . . .
Until Erian and Llor are back with me, I have nothing. And so, I have nothing to lose. No one can hurt me, because I am hurt beyond repair. No one can kill me, for without them, I am already dead.
Holding on to that concept like Llor held Boo-Boo, she closed her eyes and called to the spirits. She felt . . . not rage . . . but fear, their fear of her, and it tasted like copper on the back of her throat. She swallowed it down, consumed it, and wrapped it in her own fear for her children. The spirits drew closer to her.
They didn’t want to be afraid of her, their chosen queen, she sensed, but they’d felt her last command, felt the deaths of their brethren as they clashed with the spirits of Semo. She could feel the spirits straining, torn between the need to hide and the need to fly and run and build and destroy. Come, she told them. Build. She guided them in, toward the heart of the village, and then she pushed an image into their minds: a library with soaring turrets, spiral stairs with curled railings, shelf after shelf all engraved with images of vines and roses. She picked the most fanciful library she could imagine, a castle of a library, high in the trees, the kind that would have seen Erian squeal with joy and Llor ask to climb to the tippiest-top, and she thrust the command into the minds of the spirits.
She felt a breeze in her face, warm and smelling of spring blossoms, an impossibility this far into fall, but she breathed it in and opened her eyes, lifted her face to see the spirits spiraling above her through the branches of the tree. The tree spirits sank into the trunk of one of Redleaf’s trees, and the bark began to pulse and bubble. Yes, there, she told them, and directed them as the bubble grew and stretched and split into spires.
Naelin had the spirits hollow the spires and widen holes to be windows. They grew stairs from another branch, and vines wrapped around one another to make the railings. Swirling her finger, she told them to curl the ends into flourishes, and then raised her arms to direct them as they spun banners made of leaves out from the tips of the spires. Around her, she heard the awed murmurs of the villagers, but she didn’t let that distract her. She led the spirits like a conductor leads an orchestra, creating her own kind of music.
Fill it with stories, she ordered the spirits. She harnessed a dozen for this task—a dozen of the smartest, who could understand a complex command. Stories that will make the people laugh and cry and feel whole. Stories that break, and stories that heal. Find them stories, to give them hope in the bleakest of times. She imprinted the image of books. Cross all of Aratay. Go to the wordsmiths. The wordsmiths would provide them with books, illustrated and bound. In exchange for their books, you will strengthen their roofs, fix their doors if they need it, and repair their bridges.
As she finished issuing her orders, Naelin released them and sank back into her own body. For an instant, she felt as if she had touched something wonderful and beautiful—for an instant, she had forgotten what happened.
She’d forgotten they’d been taken.
She’d forgotten they could be dead, that it was likely they were dead, that spirits didn’t kidnap people—they killed them.
She’d forgot
ten she’d failed to save her children.
And as the knowledge crashed back into her, she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. She fell to her knees. Around her, Naelin heard the shouts of joy, the gasps of wonder, all the awe in the voices of the men, women, and children of Redleaf.
She felt arms around her—familiar arms—as the throbbing in her head finally receded and the cloudy chaos of her wriggling thoughts cleared at last. She was herself again, her mind whole and her heart broken.
Ven.
“They took them,” Naelin told him. “Erian and Llor. The spirits took them north. And they drove Bayn west, into the untamed lands.” She felt his arms tighten as he absorbed her news.
Into her ear, he said, “Just keep breathing. One breath, then another.”
“And then it will get better? Then I’ll be able to accept that they’re gone? Then I’ll admit that I failed them and the spirits killed them and rescue is hopeless?” Even she heard the danger note in her voice. With her mind clear, she remembered how Ven had shouted for her to stop, and how Daleina had interfered with her attack. Anger ate at her pain, and she wanted to scream and rage:
It’s not hopeless! The spirits took them into Semo! Alive!
He was silent a moment, only then admitting, “No. I don’t think it will get better.”
That was, oddly, the right answer. She hadn’t thought there was one. Keep breathing. It won’t get better. Keep breathing anyway. It wouldn’t be better until her children were back in her arms and Merecot was dead.
Chapter 7
Queen Merecot of Semo allowed the spirits to destroy a mountain. She watched from above, through the eyes of an air spirit, as earth spirits gnawed at the granite cliffs and ice spirits froze and thawed the mountain streams, causing the fissures to widen on the face of the mountain. Fire spirits tossed molten rock over the once-dormant crater as if they were children playing catch. She felt their glee, a wild kind of joy that burned in her veins.