The Queen's Choice
I glanced at Shea, my palms beginning to sweat. Should I tell her? It was possible I’d simply lost it somewhere along the way. I hadn’t needed to refer to it since Oaray. But what if it was in Luka’s hands? Did that change anything I had said? Though my conscience ached, I kept my mouth shut. Shea would panic at the truth, and she would be headstrong and foolish about it. Besides, Thatcher wanted me to protect her. I couldn’t give her a reason to run off alone with nothing to guide her but anger and anxiety.
When we finished our meager meal, Shea and I curled up together, and in that moment, we were each other’s only friend in the world. But one of us was again keeping secrets.
* * *
The next morning offered a reasonable amount of light in the cavern systems. There were dark patches that slowed our movement, but for the most part, our path was open to the river and the narrow piece of sky that beckoned above it. The sound of the coursing water, the river frothing white as it cut through the rock, was our constant companion, so deafening it was a waste of effort to listen for sounds of pursuit.
We traveled primarily in silence, Shea going ahead for a while, then switching places with me depending on our relative strength and fortitude. I had given her some of the painkiller the doctor had prescribed for my wounds, and it helped with her headache, though not much with the dizziness and fluctuating nausea. At least she wasn’t dying.
I was watching my feet during a stretch in which Shea was in the lead when she stopped dead in the pathway.
“Anya,” she called, her voice dripping with disgust. “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”
I looked up, but a pile of stones blocked my view of the river and whatever had caught her attention. Curious, I went to her side to investigate.
In an eddy between two jutting rock formations floated something large and slimy, bobbing side to side as water flowed beneath it. I stared, comprehension coming slowly; the tattered clothing that barely clung to the flesh and the mop of scraggly black hair that looked ready to fall off led me to the conclusion that I was gazing at a body—the body of Spex’s father. The corpse was bloated with gas, the skin so waxy and pale I could practically see through it. There were surprisingly few lesions, considering the fall and the resulting impact, only the gruesome nibbles of water animals. But the eyes—the eyes were open and one had been pulled from its socket by a scavenger. The rib cage was crushed, and here and there a bone stuck out of the swollen dermis. I doubted there was a single bone inside this body that wasn’t broken. One thing was certain—his death had been as horrific and painful as I’d originally hoped it would be.
“He’ll just...just rot down here,” Shea observed with a shudder. “Children play on the banks of this river outside the city in the summer. People drink from it. God. How many...bodies...do you suppose are down here?”
I swallowed with difficulty, my throat closing up. At a loss for words, I stared at the river in morbid fascination while it conducted the body in an eerie slow dance. I’d considered Evangeline’s burial profane...yet I’d wanted this for Eskander, however fleetingly. What had I thought would become of his corpse? How had I ignored that the answer would be an affront to Nature, whose spirit I professed to worship? Because it had been convenient not to consider these things.
“We have to go,” I said, giving Shea a prod. She stumbled onward, although she continued to glance over her shoulder until there was nothing left to see.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I mumbled, leaving the body behind, though I wasn’t sure to whom I was apologizing.
After a while, the tunnel narrowed and we began to ascend. We took our time for Shea’s benefit. The climb was steep and tiring, but the way had been smoothed at one time, and it was easier going than it could have been. Realizing there was light emanating from around a bend up ahead, I glanced at Shea, whose pale cheeks and wide eyes revealed that she, likewise, thought it was too soon to have arrived at the end of the cave system.
We pressed against the wall and crept cautiously forward. When we came to the bend, Shea peered around it, only to snap back to my side. I questioned her with my eyes, not daring to speak. She pointed ahead, her breathing fast and shallow, and I stuck my head around the corner.
The path curled around a wide, bright cavern, in which moist gray-brown pillars supported the ceiling, breaking up the open area. Stalactites of incredible circumference dripped clear, cold water from their tips, but the stalagmites that had been reaching to meet their kin had been for the most part demolished—by the colony of Sepulchres who considered the chamber home. Glowing white, they floated to and fro as they went about their business, appearing nearly weightless, moving gracefully despite their deadened, shrouded legs. Their clawlike fingers were enough to propel them where they desired to go.
On the floor of the cavern was a collection of what appeared to be crude treasure chests, augmented with raw gems that had probably been recovered from the recesses of this very cave system. But another moment of observation revealed the use to which the Sepulchres put these chests. Sweeping downward with a knapsack no larger than my satchel, one of the creatures opened the lid of an empty box and deposited the package inside, allowing the sack to fall open.
Bones, stripped meatless, lay within, the skeletal remains small enough to be those of a child. The Sepulchre who had carried the corpse extended one of its overlong fingers to stroke the side of the small skull, with pride or reverence I couldn’t tell. My stomach lurched. The chests were coffins where the creatures laid to rest the children they kidnapped and devoured for their purity. The skeleton was hardly as long as the finger that was fondling it.
I must have made a noise, because dozens of sickly green eyes found me with the unnatural speed I’d grown to dread. Like owls, the creatures were able to turn their heads in any direction at the blink of an eye.
I retreated and shoved Shea down the passage in the vain hope we could run. Even with her belt full of bullets, she would never be able to drive off an entire colony of supernatural beings, and the Anlace, our only effective defense, was gone. But already the tunnel was irradiating, telling me we weren’t going to get far.
When a Sepulchre came from above us, slipping to the ground as though it were suspended by invisible cords, we halted and spun about to find two more closing in from the rear. Judging from the blinding light that reflected off the walls, the rest of their number occupied the passage that extended all the way back to the chamber.
Shea whipped out her pistol, but the Sepulchre closest to her plucked it from her hand, one razorlike finger hooking the trigger mechanism. The awful wheezing sound the creatures made was now everywhere, almost drowning out the river. As the horrifically scarred and stretched face loomed closer to me, I clenched my fist around the hilt of my long-knife. I was seconds away from taking a swipe at the Sepulchre’s mouthless aspect when inspiration struck—Evangeline had thought them capable of speech. I uncurled my fingers, concentration overcoming instinct, and raised both hands. If they could speak, they could recognize surrender.
The Sepulchre who had stopped us tipped its head to one side. Reaching for Shea, it tugged almost gently on her clothing until it rose to come face-to-face with her. She was defenseless, and fear emanated from her like vivid dye disseminating in clear water.
For a moment, we stood suspended in time; then one eerie finger rubbed the looking glass pendant that hung around Shea’s neck, the friction causing a high-pitched squeak. Seemingly attracted by the sound, the colony pressed in on us from behind, and I felt hands on my shoulder blades and upon the sheath at my hip where the Royal Anlace had once rested. But I had lost my chance to attack, and could do little more than hold still. Then their wheezing changed to words that emerged from no orifice I could see.
“Magic sings,” the whisper said, one voice leading, the others echoing. I was shaking head to toe, so hard I thought my joi
nts might come unhinged. Clearing my throat, I drew dozens of spectral eyes.
“What...are you...doing...beneath...Tairmor?” I asked, strange spaces between my words, for it took great effort to force each one from my mouth.
The reply was more a reverberation in my head than an actual sound, and it felt like the Sepulchres were tapping into my brain to communicate. Shea’s hands were raised as though she might cover her ears, confirming that she heard it too.
“We hide. Survive. Unseen, unwanted. Cut off from the Old Fae. Unable to be what we were.”
“The Old Fae? I don’t...understand.”
“Humans and Fae were one.” The answer thrummed in the air, and I thought it originated with the Sepulchre who was touching Shea’s necklace. “Then we were honored. Now we are banished. And abused.”
Abused... Were they talking about their involvement in the conspiracy against the Fae? It hadn’t occurred to me that the Sepulchres might be unwilling participants. The earth seemed to undulate beneath my feet.
“Who is abusing you?” I asked, looking at these hideous beings with tentative sympathy.
The Sepulchre wagged its head from side to side. “We are banished. Others are abused. They are changed. Violent. But you are friends, magic-bearers. Save us. Save us all.”
The creature released Shea’s pendant and slid to the ground, facedown, and I had the impression it was trying to bow.
The wheezing resumed, growing louder, then the creatures backed away, and it felt like part of my soul was withdrawn from my body along with their fingers. The sensation was enough to make me woozy, and, hardly aware of my descent, I hit the hard floor of the cavern and knew no more.
* * *
I was in the woods with Davic, holding his hand and skipping. We were likely the only Fae out today—it had been drizzling all morning, and a fog rose around us, heavier the farther we tried to look ahead. I let go of Davic’s hand, clamped my eyes shut against the haze of raindrops, and spun in a circle until I was dizzy and had no idea from whence we’d come. I loved the sensation of being lost. There was a surge of the heart that came with not being able to find my own way home, followed by the security of knowing that Davic would always lead me back.
He caught me before I could topple, and I beamed into his striking gray-blue eyes, about to surrender to him when I heard the scream. It came from all around us, dispersed by the fog. I pulled myself upright and clung to Davic’s jerkin, scouring our surroundings. His body was taut, while I tried my best to mute all senses except my hearing. When the sound repeated, a shrill cry that scraped down my spine, I shoved away from my promised and followed it into the mist.
“Anya!” Davic called. “Don’t—let’s go back!”
I finished the rest of his speech in my mind: You don’t know what’s making that sound, or why. It could be dangerous. It could be...
“Dying,” I murmured to myself, picking up speed. Wet leaves slapped my face and branches dripped water down the back of my shirt, but I didn’t care. Then I heard the screech a third time—nearer yet softer, as if the creature was weakening.
At the base of a tree some yards away I found the font of the cries. A baby fox, fur still peachy with fuzz, was crying piteously. Its leg was crushed, whether from a fall or an attack by another animal, I couldn’t be sure. It was difficult to tell if it had suffered other injuries. But where was its mother? Listening acutely, I could detect no sounds in the bushes. She wasn’t coming, perhaps couldn’t come, making an attack the more likely cause. The mother fox had probably fallen to the same predator. The woods were quiet, at least until Davic came jogging in my wake.
“Nature, Anya, you can’t do that. You don’t know what could be out here.”
When he noticed where my attention was focused, his demeanor softened. He couldn’t stand an animal in pain any more than I could. He deliberated, then slipped his cloak off his shoulders, not about to leave a wounded creature to die in fear and agony. The kit shivered. Its baby coat was soaked with the day’s drizzle, and it opened and closed its mouth, emitting small whimpers. It was wary but sensed our magic. It knew we were allies, even though it had probably never come face-to-face with a Faerie before.
Davic crept up to the whimpering animal and draped the cloak over it before it could run and hurt itself further. It struggled, but he scooped it into his arms. Holding the small bundle close to his chest, he made comforting sounds for benefit of the kit, which gradually relaxed, although I suspected more out of exhaustion than trust. Either way, it was safe.
“Let’s go,” Davic said, now in a hurry.
When we arrived in Chrior, we took our charge to my alcove in the Great Redwood. A few drops of Sale down its throat sent the fox to sleep. I stroked its neck while Davic examined its tiny leg. He had never been taught medicine, but he had a penchant for putting things back together, and therefore for figuring out how they’d broken in the first place. He could design, build, repair, or deconstruct anything given the proper time, and he could do it all without writing a single step down.
“There aren’t teeth or claw marks, and there’s no blood,” he determined. “But the break can’t be from a fall. The angle of the impact isn’t right. It’s almost like...”
“What?” I pressed.
“Honestly, it looks like this was calculated. I can’t rule out that something fell on the leg, but did you see anything nearby that would be heavy enough to do this?”
I shook my head—weeds, leaves, broken branches, the density of twigs. There hadn’t been anything that could have caused the injury.
Davic nodded, eyebrows drawn close together. “Then I think someone did this, perhaps with a rock. The poor thing couldn’t have gotten far after that.”
Blood pounded in my temples, and I grasped for an explanation other than the one that frightened me. “But humans can’t cross the Road.”
“Right,” he replied, meeting my eyes.
Davic had reached the same appalling supposition I had. But how could a Faerie have done this? We were supposed to be friends with Nature and protectors of innocents like this kit. Furthermore...if we were correct about the baby’s fate, what cruelty had been inflicted upon its mother?
Regardless of how the injury had occurred, there was nothing to be done at present except straighten and bind the fox’s leg, which Davic did deftly.
“It’s a girl,” he said when he’d finished. “Pretty thing.”
“Poor thing,” I corrected.
“We can’t know for sure how this came about, Anya,” he said, seeing the sickened expression on my face. “I’m just guessing. There’s no point in worrying about it. We’ll just keep her until she can walk on that leg, then let her go where we found her.”
“We should tell my father, as Queen Ubiqua’s Lord of the Law.”
“Yes, of course, but that can wait until morning.”
My promised went home for dinner with his family on the other side of the city, leaving me with the patient, for whom I constructed a burrow of sorts with a blanket and some sticks. She was in a corner, warmed by the heated walls on both sides, so I retreated to my bedroom, confident she would feel better tomorrow. If only she could have spoken and assuaged the pit of nerves that Davic’s deductions had opened within me.
But during the night the fire in the indentations died, and when I awoke the next morning, the little fox was cold. I scrambled to hold her against me, blanketing her and sharing my body heat, but she was gone. I looked at her face with its beautiful red fur, glassy amber eyes partially open like she’d died looking for aid—for me. My throat hurt, and I let it sting, afraid that if I tried to swallow the feeling away, it would run to my eyes and escape as tears. She’d needed someone to nurture and protect her, and I hadn’t done enough.
When Davic came to check on the kit, he wrapped his arms around both
me and the dead fox, because I didn’t want to put her down. He didn’t think it was wrong or ghastly. He understood. A life had gone out of the world, a life he and I had both cared about, however little time we had spent with her.
He kissed my forehead, content to stay with me all day if that’s what I needed.
“Anya, I know it doesn’t mean much right now, but you can’t save them all. You can try, but you can’t save them all.”
* * *
I woke on my stomach in the tunnel near the Sepulchre cavern, the area around me so empty and dark that it took me a minute to determine which way was up. As my disorientation passed, I felt around for Shea. When my hands met the fabric of her clothes, I found her shoulder and shook her awake.
“What the hell happened?” she asked, nothing more than a voice in the blackness.
“I’m not sure. What do you remember?”
“Sepulchres.”
Then I hadn’t dreamt it. I’d hoped my mind had conjured the encounter, because this far underground, with no sun and not so much as the superficial reassurance of security from a crowd of people, being asked to save us all was petrifying.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
GWYNETH
Shea and I resumed our ascent through the tunnels, surfacing at last on the west side of Tairmor. Emerging into the daylight, I wondered if the tunnels were kept by the Governor and his fellows as an escape route in case of an emergency, though Tom had said the cavern system was unmonitored by Ivanova’s men. Either way, the higher-ups in the government most certainly did not know the system was occupied by Sepulchres.
A quick assessment of the area around us told me we were already a mile or two from the city gates, a safe enough distance to keep us from being of interest. We were also within sight of what Shea told me was a river station, from whence boats ferried people to and from the ocean. Having never made it all the way to Sheness in my travels, I was unfamiliar with this mode of transport, and not particularly trusting of the notion.