Thera and Johnathon turned. Thera’s heart sank. Six men clothed in cloaks the color of the rock and scree stood on the outcropping. Five held crossbows, and one, likely the leader, held a sword.
Sentries, scouts. How could she have been so foolish? The Mother Queen had not forgotten about the slave tunnels in all these years. And now Thera had just opened the surest route of attack into her own kingdom. Her heartbeat raced. There had to be a way to solve this, to undo the damage.
Johnathon stepped forward, his hands spread wide. “Peace. Let there be no bloodshed between us. We bear news from the Midlands.”
“Of course you do,” the leader, taller and thinner than the other men said. “Spies. Assassins.”
“I assure you that is not so,” Johnathon said. “Allow us to speak to your commander.”
The swordsman grunted. “If it were up to me, Midlander, I’d carry your head to the queen herself. But the captain wants spies questioned before they’re killed.” He sheathed his sword and smiled coldly. “You’ll have your say, but I’ll have your weapons.”
Johnathon inclined his head in a bow.
“These two first.” The leader pointed at Tarin and Beir. Two sentries came forward and stripped them of their swords and knives then pulled their hands behind their backs. Beir’s shoulders bunched and his hands clenched, but neither he nor Tarin resisted as the sentries bound their wrists. A sentry turned to Johnathon, tied his hands, then approached Thera.
The man smelled of wild onions. His eyes were dark and narrow, his face unshaven. He pressed his hands against her hips, then his eyes went wide.
“Well, look what they’ve brought along.” He pushed her hood and cloak back, revealing her obviously female form, though she wore shirt and trousers.
The man smiled, showing crooked teeth. “Let me make sure you don’t have anything sharp under your clothes, girl.” His hands lingered over her breasts, hips, and slid up her thighs.
The other sentries chuckled.
Thera grit her teeth and stared straight ahead.
“You feel safe enough to me.” He bit the lobe of her ear.
Anger filled her in a flash. Though she would endure many things, she was still the queen.
Thera shifted her weight and ground the heel of her boot into his insole.
The man howled and slapped her across the face. Her vision tunneled to a point of darkness and her ears rang. When her head cleared, she heard Johnathon’s voice.
“Enough! She carries no weapons. Men of the Midlands don’t need women to fight their battles.”
Thera blinked until her eyes focused. “Do not —” she began.
The sentry holding Johnathon drove a fist into his stomach. Johnathon bent at the waist, breathing heavily, his hood hiding his face.
“Let him be!” Thera commanded. She tried to move but her wrists were behind her back and a rope bit into her skin.
The swordsman glared at Thera, looked at Johnathon, then at Thera again. “Which of you is the leader?”
Thera drew a breath but Johnathon spoke first. “I am.” He straightened.
The swordsman strode forward and punched him again. Johnathon groaned.
“Tell your people to obey us,” he said to Johnathon, “or they will receive twice your punishment.” He looked over at Thera. “Do you understand?”
Johnathon straightened, slower this time. “We will listen,” he said. Thera nodded.
“Good,” the swordsman said. “The captain will not want to be kept waiting. Move.” He pointed to the thin trail that lead down the mountain side.
Johnathon started down the path, Tarin and Beir pushed into place behind him. Thera was last. Her head hurt and her right eye was swelling. The anger that had filled her seethed below the surface of her thoughts and with it, fear.
The men behind her muttered and made wagers. More than once, she heard them say “the woman” was the prize. Hands tied, weaponless, she felt vulnerable as a naked child. She pushed that thought away, and kept her gaze on the uncertain footing among the rocks. What mattered now was finding a way to save her lands. Everything else, she could endure.
The trail ended at a dirt road that brought them alongside the encampment. They stopped in the middle of the road and one of the sentries jogged off through the maze of tents and returned with a cloaked and booted woman beside him. The other sentries acknowledged the woman’s arrival with a nod.
“Tell me,” she said. Her voice was a soft alto, her unhooded face a pale oval with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes that were colorless in the moonlight. Her hair was pulled back in a peasant’s knot, yet she held herself with confidence and poise. Royalty, but too young to be the Mother Queen.
“Midlanders from the tunnels, Captain,” the sentry said. “They say they have news for the Mother Queen.”
“And the tunnels?”
“I left two behind to see.”
The woman — the captain — nodded. “Bring them.” She strode into the encampment.
In a voice they alone could hear, the swordsman said, “You have come to the wrong place this night, Midlanders.”
They were marched into the encampment, past tents where Thera heard gambling, snoring and soft prayers. In one tent, the only sound was a blade drawing again and again over a whetstone.
That, Thera thought, is the sound of my land’s death, and I their only shield.
The sentries pushed them through the door of a small tent surrounded by torches. The torchlight outside and within the tent fouled Thera’s night vision and made her eyes water and sting. Johnathon, the guards, and she, stood shoulder to shoulder, crossbows still aimed at their backs.
The woman, the captain, sat in a chair behind a dark wooden table that held a plain clay cup, parchments weighted by a rock, and a lantern.
The captain looked perhaps twenty years of age. Her cloak was drawn back to reveal the collar of a simple green tunic trimmed by gold thread and tiny jewels that winked as she breathed. But it was her eyes that caught Thera off guard.
The girl’s eyes were the unmistakable deep-set green Thera had seen reflected in each of her children. The one trait each child had inherited from their father, Vannel. A clear mark of his royal blood in their veins.
Thera’s thoughts whirled. Johnathon had said Vannel closed the slave route when his first child had been born. Was it for Thera’s first son, Gregory, or was it because of this girl, the link of royal blood between two kingdoms, that Vannel had broken the slave trade with Harthing? The girl was old enough she would have been conceived in the early years of Thera’s marriage to Vannel.
He had betrayed her. He had fathered a child, who was now a maiden, fully old enough to claim his throne. To take his lands. To take Thera’s lands.
Thera looked over at Johnathon. He nodded in silent apology.
The only child the Mother Queen had borne survived. All of Thera’s children had died, and now, too, the certainty of her husband’s faithfulness.
Thera felt sick, dizzy. Angry.
Endure.
“Who are you, and what brings you to my lands?” the captain asked.
Thera stepped forward. “I am Queen Thera Gui of the Midland Kingdom. I came to answer your summons and negotiate peace for both our lands.”
The girl’s eyebrows shot up. “Truly?” She held very still, her bright eyes never leaving Thera’s face. “Let me hear your offer.”
What could Thera offer this girl? What one thing would join both lands in peace? Looking at the girl’s eyes, Thera knew what she must do.
“I will step down from my rule, given certain conditions are met. The first of which is that you and I negotiate this peace alone.”
“My Queen. Please reconsider,” Johnathon said.
Thera did not look away from the girl. “Are you willing to speak for your lands or shall I speak with your mother?”
The girl scowled. “I am not such a fool to bring a woman claiming to be queen in front of my mother. Guards, take t
he men from my tent, but do not harm them yet.”
“As you wish, Captain.”
The guards and Johnathon were escorted away by the sentries.
“Can you prove you are indeed Queen Thera Gui?” the girl asked.
“No.”
The girl studied her, gaze flicking to her hair, the faint red line that marked the place of Vannel’s crown upon her brow, her mouth, and then her eyes. Something there made the girl nod.
“As I could not prove that I am Rynell Harthing if I were bound and tied before you.” She stood and pulled a long knife from her belt.
The girl walked behind Thera and cut free the ropes that bound her wrists, then stood in front of her, close enough she could easily strike with the knife. “Tell me what peace may be found between our lands.”
Thera pulled her hands forward and resisted the urge to rub her wrists.
“I am no longer a young woman, nor is your mother,” Thera said. “The dispute between our kingdoms could end if another woman ruled in both our steads.”
“You ask me to usurp my mother’s power?”
“I ask you to take what is rightfully yours.”
They stood, eye to eye, silent.
“The invasion will cost your lands dearly, as it will cost mine,” Thera said. “There is little to gain but bloodshed. If I give you my throne, it will be on the condition that you rule with me for one year so that I may guide your hand, give you counsel.”
“And if I refuse? If I spill your blood now and take your lands?”
“Even with the tunnel open, even with my death, my kingdom will not fall easily.” It was more of a bluff than Thera liked, but there was truth in it. Her people were fiercely loyal. Peace would never be held in hearts crushed beneath Harthing’s rule.
“People you love will die,” Thera said quietly.
The girl’s eyes narrowed and she bit her bottom lip. She looked so like Vannel that Thera’s heart caught, ached.
“Child,” Thera began.
“Rynell.”
“Rynell, you are the hope of both our lands. My people will follow you if I so bid them.”
“You are so sure of this?”
“Yes. They will see their king in your eyes.”
Rynell blinked and looked as if Thera had just slapped her. Surely the girl must know who her father was, Thera thought. Anyone who saw her eyes would know.
Rynell walked behind the wooden desk.
“I have heard I resemble him greatly,” she said quietly. “Was he ashamed of me? Of a daughter?”
“He was proud of all his children.” Thera’s voice caught, but she pressed on. “He would have wanted the lands in the hands of his own blood.”
“Perhaps he would have,” Rynell said, “but I do not understand why you would want such a thing.”
“For my lands. For my people. For peace.”
“What of my mother?”
“She shall rule these lands in peace with you until her days end.”
“And you?”
“I will find my own peace. I have seen enough death.”
Rynell nodded. With the brisk formality of a captain, of a queen, she withdrew a sheet of parchment and picked up a quill.
“Let us put to ink that you and I wish peace between our lands.”
“And then?” Thera asked.
The girl looked up with a grim smile. “Then we will ask my mother to agree.”
Thera had met the Mother Queen only once, when Thera was being married to Vannel. She remembered the Mother Queen to be a stern, mid-aged woman whose scowl worsened the longer the marriage celebration continued.
Thera followed Rynell to the large tent at the east of the encampment. The moon had long gone down and false dawn caught indigo on the horizon. They strode past the Mother Queen’s guards and ducked through the wide tent flaps. The Mother Queen was a dried up husk of a woman reduced to muscle and bone, her hands like bird claws upon the arms of her padded throne. Her dress and the heavy blanket across her lap were the color of dried blood. Her eyes were iron gray, her face narrow. Prominent cheekbones stuck out like blade edges, though they lent her remarkable beauty as a younger woman.
Her voice was jagged with age, but still strong. “Who is this, Rynell?”
Thera pushed back her hood. “I am Queen Thera Gui of the Midland Kingdom.”
“She has come with an offer of peace,” Rynell said.
“Peace?” The Mother Queen’s face hardened and her voice was like steel. “King Vannel made it clear he would not negotiate with our lands, on any matter.”
“Vannel is no longer king,” Thera said. “The lands are mine, the decisions mine. Let us make decisions queens alone can make. I am willing to step down if your daughter will rule the land as her father would have wished her to.”
“Her father, Lord Frederick,” the Mother Queen said, “died just after her birth. He had no interest in your lands.”
Thera gave the Mother Queen a stony gaze. “We both know the matter of which I speak, do we not?”
The silence between them was charged with anger. Thera wanted to strike her, hurt her for her part in Vannel’s betrayal. Instead, she waited.
Finally, the Mother Queen spoke. “Did he tell you?”
“No,” Thera said honestly. She felt suddenly tired. She had spent her life on a lie, and now there seemed little reason to continue it.
“Did you love him?” Thera asked.
The Mother Queen kept her gaze steady, but Thera could see pain, such familiar pain, in her eyes.
“I loved him, too,” Thera said.
And there between them was the shared knowledge of a man, of love given, of love lost. With that pain, Thera felt something else, a weary kinship with a woman she did not know, and for all accounts, should hate.
“I am an old woman,” the Mother Queen said. “And ill. There are few days left to me.”
“Mother.”
“Quiet now, Rynell. Let me speak.”
The girl nodded, but cast a worried look at Thera.
“I never asked anything of him,” the Mother Queen said. “Not even after Frederick died. But before my death, I will see my daughter’s future secured.”
“Then let Rynell become Queen of the Midlands in my place. I have no children to give the throne to.” Her voice, thankfully, did not waver. “I would give the throne to Vannel’s child so long as she rules with me for one year. Passage up the Kilscree River shall be evenly given to both lands, as, too, the share in profit from that source.”
“And in return for this?” the Mother Queen asked.
“You will not invade the Midlands, nor spill the blood of my people. Your lands will be joined to mine, co-ruled by Rynell, and your forces and allies will help us end the border skirmishes to our north. Lastly, you shall agree to abolish the slave trade.”
“And you, Queen Thera Gui, where will you reside?”
“On the western shore. A small manor I can tend on my own. I will expect a stipend to repay my years of rulership and see me through to my grave.”
Thera was shaking. Here, in her enemy’s tent, she bargained away all that her mother had expected of her, all that Vannel had given her. Lands Vannel had died for. A peace he did not want, into the hands of a woman who had loved him, and the child she had borne.
The Mother Queen looked at Rynell. “Do you want this? Two lands will be a heavy burden.”
Thera felt a pang of envy. No one had ever asked her if she wanted the life she had lived, they only expected that she would.
“I want peace,” Rynell whispered. “Yes, I will rule both lands.”
The Mother Queen nodded and her whole body lost its strength. She leaned back against her chair and Thera wondered at the will and determination it had taken for her to appear so fierce. The Mother Queen looked over at Thera and Thera saw it was not determination that gave her strength, it was endurance.
“I will call my scribes,” the Mother Queen said in a much smaller voice.
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“We’ve begun the treaty already.” Rynell handed the parchment to her mother who tipped it to better catch the light.
“Two guards and my advisor came with me,” Thera said. “I ask that my advisor also see the contract.”
“Yes, then.” The Mother Queen handed the parchment back to her daughter and Thera had no doubt she had read it all. “While our advisors finish the papers, perhaps you would care for a cup of tea?”
“Tea would be fine,” Thera said.
“I’ll see to it.” Rynell pulled a plain wooden chair Thera had not noticed from the corner of the tent and brought it over for her. Thera sank down onto the chair, her entire body trembling. When she placed her hands on the arms of the chair, the smooth wood was cool, but slowly warmed beneath her palms.
Thera tucked another piece of wood into the stove’s firebox and checked the loaf of bread baking in the oven. The gold and silver rings on her right hand flashed as she pulled out the loaf with a large wooden spatula. She had added two rings to her right hand, a gold to replace Vannel’s crown she no longer wore and, given to her as a parting gift, a silver ring with a green stone that represented Rynell — her daughter of heart, if not of flesh.
Satisfied that the bread was rising, but not yet brown, she pushed it back into the oven and turned from her small kitchen. She stepped out into the living room where she had left her shutters open to the cool autumn breeze that carried the salty tang of the nearby ocean.
It had been a year and three months since Rynell took over the rulership of the Midlands. So far, the girl had proven to be a quick learner and a compassionate soul. The Mother Queen had been true to her word, sending their forces to secure the northern border. And Rynell stood firm on the agreement of abolishing the slave trade.
Thera had journeyed to this small manor on the edge of autumn’s rainy season, and did not regret one day of her solitude.
She walked to the window that looked over the grass and stone hill to the ocean below. Waves caught in blue and gray beneath the cloudy sky. Dark clouds crowded the horizon. Rain would reach land within the hour, and by the bite in the wind, winter would be early this year. She’d need more wood cut before the snow set in, and might need to restock her larder.