The Invasion of the Tearling

by Erika Johansen

  “Just this.”

  “That’s no good. You should always have more than one hiding place.”

  “I can’t hide anything anywhere else. Greg will find it. He does inspections now. But he never comes in here.”

  “Jonathan says you fixed the surveillance in this place.” Dorian gave her a look of frank admiration. “Where’d a wall lady learn to do something like that?”

  “My sister. She was good with computers.”

  “Well, I’d still get another hiding place. One is never enough.”

  “How many do you have?”

  “When I was a kid, dozens. But I don’t have any now.” Dorian pushed herself up and reached for the bowl of broth. “In the better world, we won’t need to hide anything.”

  “I don’t understand. Is the better world biblical? Are angels going to descend and wipe the earth clean?”

  “God, no!” Dorian replied, laughing. “In the better world, no one will need religion.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lily repeated.

  “Well, why should you? The better world’s not for people like you.”

  Lily recoiled, as though she’d been slapped. Dorian didn’t notice; she was busy eating her broth and staring out the glass doors into the backyard. She was waiting, Lily realized now, waiting for the Englishman to come and take her away. Part of her was already gone.

  Lily left the nursery, closing the door carefully behind her, and went downstairs. It was all nonsense, she told herself. Tear and his people were probably crazy, the whole lot of them. But all the same, she felt as though they had left her behind.

  When Kelsea came back to herself, she heard thunder.

  She looked up and found the blessed comfort of Carlin’s bookshelves, the long rows of volumes, each in its own place. She reached out to touch the books, but then Lily’s sorrow echoed in her mind, pulling her back across centuries.

  Why am I seeing this? Why do I have to suffer with her, when her story is already done?

  The thundering sound came again, and with it, the last of Lily’s memories faded away, and Kelsea was suddenly alert. Not thunder, but many feet, moving in the hallway outside. Kelsea turned away from the books and found Pen standing just behind her, listening intently, his manner so grave that Kelsea forgot to be angry at him.

  “Pen? What is it?”

  “I had a thought to go investigate, Lady, but I’m not supposed to leave you at such times.”

  Now Kelsea heard a hollow, muffled groan, slightly distant, as though it came from down the corridor. “Let’s go and see.”

  “I think it’s Kibb, Lady. He’s been sick for two days now, getting worse all the time.”

  “Sick with what?”

  “No one knows. Flu, maybe.”

  “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  “Kibb didn’t want us to, Lady.”

  “Well, come on.”

  She led him into the corridor, where nothing was moving, only the flicker of torches. In the dim light the hallway looked twice as long; it seemed to stretch miles from the darkened door of the guard quarters to the well-lit audience chamber.

  “What time is it?” she whispered.

  “Half past eleven.”

  The hollow groan sounded again: muffled agony, weaker this time, near the guard quarters.

  “Mace won’t want you down there, Lady.”

  “Come on.”

  Pen didn’t try to stop her, which afforded Kelsea some small satisfaction. Weak torchlight gleamed from the open door of one of the chambers near the end of the hallway, and Kelsea walked faster, her feet hurrying her along.

  Turning the corner, she found herself in what was clearly a man’s bedchamber. Everything seemed to be dark, and there was very little decoration, but Kelsea admired the room’s austerity; this was just the way she imagined her guards’ quarters.

  Kibb lay on the bed, his brow shiny with sweat, naked down to his hips. Bent over him was Schmidt, Mace’s doctor of choice for emergencies. Elston, Coryn, and Wellmer were at the bedside, and Mace, crouched at the foot of the bed, completed the tableau. As Kelsea entered the room, Mace’s face darkened, but he only muttered, “Lady.”

  “How is he?”

  Schmidt did not bow, but Kelsea did not take offense; there seemed to be no ego to compare with that of the doctor in demand. His voice revealed a heavy Mort accent. “The appendix, Majesty. I would try to operate, but it would do no good. It will burst before I am able to get in there clean. If I perform as quickly as I must, he will bleed to death. I have given him morphia for his pain, but I can do nothing else.”

  Kelsea blinked, horrified. Appendectomy had been a routine pre-Crossing surgery, so common and simple that Lily’s procedure had been done by machines rather than human hands. But the grim resignation on the doctor’s face said everything that needed to be said.

  “We’ve promised to take care of his mother, Lady,” Mace murmured. “We’ve made him as comfortable as possible. There’s little else we can do. You shouldn’t be here for this.”

  “Perhaps not, but it’s a little late to walk away.”

  “El?” Kibb asked. His voice was slurred with some kind of narcotic.

  “I’m right here, you ass,” Elston muttered. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Elston was holding Kibb’s hand, Kelsea saw. It looked odd, Kibb’s small hand buried in Elston’s giant fist, but she couldn’t even smile. They did everything together, Elston and Kibb, and Kelsea couldn’t remember a time when she had seen one without the other. Best friends . . . but now, looking at their clasped hands, at the agony that Elston was trying so desperately to hide, Kelsea’s mind came up with a third and fourth piece of information: neither Elston nor Kibb had a woman in the Keep, and their chambers adjoined.

  Elston looked up at her dumbly, and Kelsea did her best not to blush. She reached for Kibb’s other hand, which lay fisted at his side. His eyes were closed, his teeth clenched against another groan, and cords stood out on his neck. Kelsea could see individual beads of sweat as they rolled down his temples and cheeks to settle in the matting of his hair. At the touch of her hand, Kibb’s eyes opened again, and he attempted a smile through gritted teeth.

  “Majesty,” he croaked. “I am a Queen’s Guard of the Tear.”

  “Yes,” Kelsea replied, not knowing what else to say. Her own helplessness had frozen her tongue. She wormed her hand inside his, felt him clasp it gently.

  “My honor, Lady.” Kibb smiled, a smile of drugs, and his eyes slipped closed again. Elston made a choking sound and turned away, but Kelsea could not. Schmidt was undoubtedly the best doctor Mace could find, but he was only the shadow of a dead breed. There was no real medicine anymore; all of it had gone down with the White Ship, the medical personnel left behind, bobbing in the waves beneath the storm. What Kelsea wouldn’t give for even one of those doctors now! She thought of the brutal cold the survivors must have endured, treading water in the middle of God’s Ocean until exhaustion made them sink beneath the waves. By the end, they must have been in agony. Frigid air seemed to coalesce around Kelsea and she began to shiver helplessly, her legs cramping. Her vision went dark.

  “Lady?”

  A great shock slammed into Kelsea’s chest, so hard that she gasped. Pen caught her from behind, or she would have fallen backward. She clamped Kibb’s hand more tightly, struggling to hold on to him, knowing somehow that if she let go, the spell would be broken and nothing could be done—

  Her stomach imploded in pain. Kelsea clamped her mouth shut, but a shriek built behind her lips and her body bucked in rebellion. Unbearable pressure laced across her abdomen and seemed to wrench her muscles, stretching them beyond their capacity.

  “Hold her! Get her mouth open!”

  Hands were on her arms and legs, but Kelsea barely felt them. The pressure on her abdomen doubled, tripled, going up and up, a feeling that had no comparison for Kelsea beyond the increasing scream of a teakettle. Her body continued to thrash, he
r heels digging into the chamber floor, but the inner Kelsea was thousands of miles away, struggling in the dark of God’s Ocean, trying not to go under. A wave of freezing water broke on her, closed over her head, and Kelsea tasted bitter salt.

  Fingers forced her mouth open—somehow, she knew they were Pen’s—and groped for her tongue, but it all seemed very distant. There was only the shredding agony in her belly, and the cold, a paralyzing cold that seemed to have enclosed the entire world. Kelsea breathed in shallow gasps, trying not to gag at the intrusion of fingers pinning her tongue.

  “You! Doctor! Get over here!”

  Hands on her shoulders now, bruising hands, holding her down with great force. Mace’s hands, his face above her torn with anxiety, shouting commands because that’s how Mace dealt with crisis, sometimes it seemed that he could do nothing but give orders—

  The pain vanished.

  Kelsea took a deep breath and lay still. After a few moments, the hands on her relaxed, but didn’t let go entirely. She looked up and saw them crouched over her: Mace, Pen, Elston, Coryn, and Wellmer. The ceiling was a mass of incomprehensible tiles over their heads.

  With a murmured apology, Pen removed his fingers from her mouth. Kelsea’s body felt light, clear, as though her blood had been replaced with water . . . the water that came from the spring near the cottage, so clean that they could prepare food with it directly from the pool. The unnatural cold had gone as well, and Kelsea was warm now, almost drowsy, as though someone had wrapped her in a blanket.

  “Lady? Are you in pain?”

  Kelsea was still gripping a hard object: Kibb’s hand. She sat up, feeling Pen move to support her shoulders. Kibb lay entirely still now, his eyes closed.

  “Is he dead?”

  Schmidt leaned over Kibb, his hands moving in a rapid, clinical way that Kelsea admired: forehead to pulse, and back to forehead again. He checked these areas with increasing agitation before finally turning to Kelsea, his face blank. “No, Majesty. The patient breathes easy.”

  He pressed downward on Kibb’s abdomen, tentatively, ready to withdraw at any twitch. But there was nothing. Even Kelsea could see Kibb’s chest rise and fall now, the deep, even breathing of a man in the darkest part of unconsciousness.

  “His fever is finished,” Schmidt murmured, pressing hard on Kibb’s stomach now, as though desperate to elicit a response. “Really, we should dry and cover him, or he will take a chill.”

  “The appendix?” Mace asked.

  Schmidt shook his head, sitting back on his heels. Kelsea reached up to clutch her two sapphires. They hadn’t spoken to her since the Argive, but still their weight was comforting, a solid thing to hold.

  “Sir?” One of the new guards was peeking around the doorway. “Is everything all right? We heard—”

  “Everything is fine,” Mace replied, turning a threatening glare on everyone in the room. “Back to your post, Aaron, and shut the door behind you.”

  “Yes sir.” Aaron vanished.

  “He’s all right?” Wellmer whispered. His face was pale and young, just as it had been months ago when Kelsea first met him, before life had begun to mature him a bit. Mace did not answer, only turned to Schmidt with a resigned expression, the face of a man waiting for a verdict who knows that he is already condemned.

  The doctor wiped his forehead. “The swelling is gone. He appears to be completely healthy, but for the perspiration . . . and even that could be explained as the cauchemar, the night terror.”

  Now they all turned to look at Kelsea, all of them except Elston, who continued to stare at Kibb.

  “Are you all right, Lady?” Pen finally asked.

  “I’m fine,” Kelsea replied. She thought of that first night when she had cut open her own arm. She had done so several times since; it was a coping mechanism, and her body was a good place to divert the rage. Her legs were better to cut than her arms, easier to hide. But was this a similar thing, or was it different? If it was her jewels, why didn’t they give any sign? Kelsea’s shoulders felt like brick. “I’m tired, though. I’ll need to sleep soon.”

  Schmidt’s face was a portrait of upset, his eyes moving swiftly between Kelsea and Kibb. “Majesty, I do not know what I have just seen, but—”

  Mace grasped the doctor’s wrist. “You saw nothing.”

  “What?”

  “None of you saw anything. Kibb was ill, but he took a turn for the better in the night.”

  Kelsea found herself nodding.

  “But—”

  “Wellmer, use the brain God gave you!” Mace snapped. “What happens if word goes out that the Queen can heal the sick?”

  “Oh.” Wellmer pondered this for a moment. Kelsea tried to think as well, but she was so tired. Mace’s words jangled in her mind: heal the sick . . .

  What did I do?

  “I see, sir,” Wellmer finally replied. “Everyone would have a sick mother, a sick child . . .”

  “Kibb!” Mace bent down and shook Kibb’s shoulder, then slapped him lightly across the face. Elston winced, but said nothing. “Kibb, wake up!”

  Kibb’s eyes opened, and by a trick of the torchlight Kelsea thought that the pupils seemed almost transparent, as though they had been cleaned out and replaced with . . . what? Light? She turned her senses inward and examined her own body, her own heartbeat. Everything was moving faster. She shook her head, trying to get rid of the rays that seemed to be shining through her mind. They went, but with a slight twinkle of mischief that did nothing to allay the feeling of unreality that swamped her.

  “How do you feel, Kibb?” Mace asked.

  “Light,” Kibb groaned. “All light.”

  Kelsea looked up and found the doctor staring at her again.

  “Do you remember anything?”

  Kibb laughed softly. “I was on the edge of a cliff and sliding. The Queen grabbed me back. Everything was so clear—”

  Mace crossed his arms, his jaw clenched in frustration. “He’s like a man on an opium binge.”

  “Will he sober up, Lady?” asked Coryn.

  “How would I know?” Kelsea demanded. All of them, even Pen, were looking at her with the same suspicion, as though she had hidden something from them, some longtime secret that had finally come to light. She thought of the cuts on her arms and legs again, but forced the thought away.

  Mace grunted in exasperation. “We have to hope he’ll come out of it. Leave him in here and post a guard. No visitors. Lady, you should go on back to bed.”

  This sounded so wonderful to Kelsea that she merely nodded and trudged away, ignoring Pen’s nearly silent tread behind her. She wanted to sort things out, but she was too exhausted to think. If she could heal the sick—but she shook her head, cutting off the rest. There was power there, yes, but it was a ruinous sort of power. Even now, she could feel the edges of the idea curdling inside her head.

  Heal the sick, heal the sick.

  Mace’s words rang like bells in her mind, no matter how she tried to push them away.

  The next evening, after dinner, Kelsea was in the middle of her daily argument with Arliss when a messenger arrived, bearing the news she’d been dreading: six days ago, the Mort had broken through on the border. Having been frustrated in several attacks by the line of archers in the trees, Ducarte had finally taken the most direct method and simply set the entire hillside on fire. Hall had had the good sense to withdraw his battalion back toward the Almont and avoid direct battle, but nearly all of his archers had been caught in the fire, burning to death in their treetop nests. By now the Mort would be transporting their heavy equipment over the hillside, and the bulk of their infantry would already have moved down into the Almont. On Bermond’s orders, the Tear army had pulled back to the Caddell. Fire still raged across the Border Hills; if it didn’t rain soon, thousands of acres of good timber would be destroyed.

  Kelsea had thought herself prepared for this news; after all, it had been inevitable from the start. But still it hit her hard, the idea of M
ort soldiers on Tear land. For the last two weeks a separate wing of the Mort army had been besieging the Argive Pass, just as Bermond had warned her; the Mort Road was a much more convenient route by which to move supplies from Demesne than the rough ground of the Border Hills. But so far the Argive had held, and while the Mort had been pinned inside their own territory, the invasion had seemed somehow less real. The Mort would find no reward in the Almont; the eastern half of the kingdom was nearly emptied now, but for a few isolated farming villages on the extreme northern and southern outskirts whose occupants had chosen to remain where they were. There was nothing for the Mort to pillage, but still Kelsea hated the idea of them out there, moving like a slow dark tide across her land. She crumpled the message in one fist, feeling a new cut open on the inside of her thigh. The cuts kept her anger inside her, kept it from spilling out all over everyone surrounding, but it had grown frustrating, always having to hold back. Kelsea longed for a real target, someone she could actually injure, and this longing then led her to cut herself more deeply, to relish the pain even while she bled. The cuts healed themselves at an incredible rate, sometimes even before a day had elapsed, and so they were fairly easy to hide from everyone . . . everyone except Andalie, who dealt with Kelsea’s laundry. Andalie remained silent, but Kelsea knew that she was concerned. Despite the heat of the summer, Kelsea had taken to wearing nothing but thick black dresses with long sleeves, and this only served to deepen her kinship with Lily Mayhew, who had so many things to hide. Kelsea spent long periods of time trying to understand Lily, to understand what possible connection there could be between them, for Kelsea could not believe that she would see anything so detailed, so realistic, for no reason at all. With Father Tyler’s help, she had now been through all of Carlin’s history books, and there was no record of Lily anywhere. Historically speaking, Lily was unimportant . . . but it never felt that way when Kelsea was with her, bound up inside her life. Still, she had tabled her research, for there was only so much time she could expend on Lily, on the past. The present had become too terrible.