The Invasion of the Tearling

by Erika Johansen

  “Thorne has wronged me, Lady,” Elston said quietly. “My grievance is as good as any in the Tearling. Let me be the one.”

  “Good Christ, grow up!” Thorne snapped. “It was an accident. I’d no idea what you were. Twenty years later, and you still can’t move on with your life!”

  “You flesh-peddling—”

  “Enough!” Kelsea shouted, losing patience. “Out of here now! Everyone but Pen!”

  “Lady—”

  “Out, Lazarus!”

  Mace had the good grace to look a bit ashamed as he departed, taking Elston and Coryn with him. The door closed with a thump.

  “Thank God for small favors,” Thorne muttered. He collapsed into the chair, tipped his head back, and closed his eyes.

  Kelsea was disturbed. The conversation had taken a sharp turn into uncharted territory. Mace had given her the impression that the albino was an odd remnant of Thorne’s past, a fetish that he carried around with him like a good-luck charm. But unless Thorne was playing some deeper game here—and Kelsea couldn’t imagine what it might be—what she was seeing now was a wholly altruistic act, one that did not accord with Arlen Thorne at all.

  “Where did you grow up, Arlen?”

  “You will execute me next Sunday, Majesty. I don’t owe you a biography.”

  “Perhaps not. But if something terrible was truly done to you as a child, perhaps I could prevent it from happening to others.”

  “What happens to others is their own concern. I only care what happens to Brenna.”

  Kelsea sighed. The altruism, if that was what it was, would clearly extend no further. “Assuming that I like what you’re selling, what is it that you want me to do with her?”

  “I want a place for Brenna here.”

  “In the Keep?” Kelsea asked incredulously.

  “There’s nowhere else she would be safe, Majesty. You cannot hide her; she’s too recognizable. I want her in a safe structure, decently fed and clothed, and protected by a loyal guard who cannot be suborned with bribes.”

  “Even the most loyal guard can be turned, Arlen. You destroyed one of mine.”

  “Morphia destroyed Mhurn, Lady, just as it has destroyed so many fools who try to hide from the here and now. I am merely the man who found the corpse, dusted it off, and made of it what I could.”

  “God, you’re cold, Arlen.”

  “So I’m told, Majesty. But the fact remains that only a fool blames the dealer.”

  Kelsea took a deep breath and blanked all thoughts of Mhurn out of her mind. “What makes you think Brenna would accept my protection? She doesn’t seem to care for me much.”

  “An understatement, Lady, I’m sure. But she will accept.”

  “And what do you offer in return?”

  “A bargaining chip against the Red Queen.”

  Kelsea eyed him skeptically.

  “Ours has been a long acquaintance, Majesty. No one knows the Red Queen well, but I venture to say I know her better than most men who live to tell the tale.”

  “Is your bargaining chip one that would turn her away from us, send her army home?”

  “No, Majesty. If it were, we would be dickering for my life as well as Brenna’s.”

  “If your information won’t save the Tearling, then what do I care?”

  “Only you can say, Lady.” Thorne shrugged. “But I myself have never regretted acquiring a piece of leverage. Such things often come in handy when we least expect it.”

  Kelsea winced, feeling herself maneuvered. This man was a liar, one of the best in the Tear . . . and yet she believed him. He seemed resigned to his fate. And in the scheme of things, what he asked was very small.

  “I don’t break my word, Majesty, and I’ve heard tell that you don’t either.” Thorne’s bright blue eyes glimmered through the bars of the age. “I’m not trying to cheat you. An honest bargain: the safety and care of my Brenna for a good piece of information. Do you accept?”

  Dealing with the devil, Kelsea thought. She should call Mace in here, get his opinion. But somehow this seemed like a decision that should belong to her alone. She considered for a moment longer, then sighed and nodded. “We have a bargain, Arlen.”

  Thorne offered a hand through the bars for her to shake, but Kelsea shook her head. “Not a chance. What’s your information?”

  “Your two sapphires, Majesty. She wants them, more than you can possibly imagine.”

  “These?” Kelsea looked down, but her hand had already gone instinctively to clutch the sapphires, and now they were hidden from view. “Why didn’t she simply demand them from my mother as part of the Treaty? She could have done so.”

  “I don’t think she wanted them so badly in those days, Majesty. At any rate, she wanted slaves more. But she and I have had a long and fruitful business relationship, and while you were in hiding, I saw her longing for those jewels grow like a fever. She was just as desperate for news of them as she was for your head, and each year that your uncle failed to lay hold of them, she held him in more contempt.”

  “What does she want with them, exactly?”

  “She never told me, Majesty.”

  “Care to hazard a guess?”

  Thorne shrugged. “She’s a woman terrified of dying, of ceasing to exist. I noticed it often, though it’s a quality she tries desperately to hide. Perhaps your jewels would help?”

  Kelsea’s mind went immediately to Kibb, lying on the sickbed covered in sweat. She thought of Row Finn’s offer: a way to destroy the Red Queen. Mace said it had been years since anyone had tried to assassinate her; everyone assumed it could not be done. Was it possible that the Red Queen was still physically vulnerable somehow? But even if Row Finn knew of that vulnerability, what good could such information do Kelsea now? An army of at least fifteen thousand lay between New London and Demesne.

  “But this is conjecture, Majesty,” Thorne continued. “The Mort have designated her un maniaque . . . what we would call a control freak. You, your sapphires, these things are variables, and the Red Queen is not a woman who is comfortable with variables, not even pleasant ones.”

  Kelsea stared at him, fascinated and disgusted at the same time. “Did you sleep with her, Arlen?”

  “She wished me to. She sleeps with a man, and then feels that he is hers, neatly categorized and collected. But I am part of no one’s collection.”

  Thorne stood up and stretched. His arms were so long that he nearly reached the top of the cage. “Why delay my execution until Sunday, Majesty? I’m tired of waiting, and I’m certainly tired of Elston’s company. Why not simply do it now?”

  “Because even in death, Arlen, you will be useful. Your execution will be a public event, and announcements will go out to all corners of the kingdom. The people want this, and I will give it to them.”

  “Ah, the pleasure of the mob. It’s a wise move, I suppose.”

  “You don’t fear death?”

  Thorne shrugged. “Do you play chess, Majesty?”

  “Yes, but not well.”

  “I play a great deal of chess, and I play well. I don’t often lose, but it has happened. Always in such games, there is a point at which you realize you will be bested, that checkmate is four or ten or twelve moves away. One school of thought says you should make the best endgame you can, fighting until the bitter finish. But I have never seen any point in that. I have done the math, and I was checkmated from the moment your people grabbed my Brenna. All moves since then have been the pointless scurrying of pawns.”

  “What is Brenna to you?” Kelsea asked. “Why does she mean so much, when all other people mean nothing?”

  “Ah . . . now that story will cost you my life, Majesty. Are you willing to trade?”

  “No. But I will bring Brenna up here and allow you to say good-bye.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “Then we’re done.” Kelsea stood up from the chair. “If you change your mind, let Elston know.”

  She made it halfway to the doo
r before Thorne called, “Glynn Queen?”

  “Yes?”

  “I will not tell you the tale of my life, and neither will Brenna. But your Mace might do so, if you could force it from him.”

  Kelsea turned, considered him for a moment, then replied, “You are transparent, Arlen. You only want to drive a wedge between us.”

  Thorne’s lips thinned in a smile. “Perceptive, Majesty. But curiosity is a terrible thing. I believe my wedge will burrow deeper over time.”

  “I thought you were done.”

  “Even the checkmate phase has its entertainments.” Thorne sat back down in his chair, giving her a tiny wave of farewell. “Good day, Glynn Queen.”

  Increase the dosage.”

  “What?”

  “Increase the dosage!” the Queen snapped, doing her best to force her voice through the thick pane of glass.

  Medire nodded and hurried around the examination table, on which was strapped a slave from Callae. The slave didn’t know it, but she was already dead. The only question was how long it would take. A thin line of reddish foam had begun to work its way from the corner of her mouth, and she gasped for breath, her fingers clenching and unclenching at her sides. The Queen wondered if the woman was making noise; the pane of glass was almost perfectly soundproof, one of Cadare’s finest achievements. She checked the watch in her hand and found that nearly seventy seconds had elapsed.

  The woman gave a final gasp, her mouth rounding like that of a fish. Then her eyes fixed on the ceiling and she was still. Medire reached for her wrist, monitored the pulse for a moment, and nodded at the Queen, who checked her watch again.

  “Seventy-four seconds,” she told Emmene, who stood beside her with his pen and paper.

  “Better than the last trial.”

  “Much better. But we should refine it even further if we can.”

  Oddly enough, the Queen owed this newest discovery to the Tearling. More than eleven hundred soldiers had died of snakebite at Lake Karczmar, and the recovered bodies had arrived in Demesne bloated black, pumped full of toxin. The toxin had been difficult to harvest, and several soldiers had died collecting specimens, but the rewards were worth it. Not only did the venom kill quickly via both injection and ingestion but it also had a sweet taste, easily hidden by wine or mead. So many poisons were bitter; this one would be a valuable addition to the Queen’s collection.

  “Your Majesty.”

  Beryll had come in behind her, his soft tread inaudible. He rarely came down to her laboratory; Beryll was the most efficient man the Queen had ever known, but he didn’t have the stomach for her experiments. He kept his eyes carefully away from the glass.

  “What is it?”

  “A rider from General Ducarte. The army has broken the Tear line in the Almont and begun to move down the Crithe. The Tear are in retreat.”

  The Queen smiled, a more genuine smile than she had produced in weeks. There had been so little good news lately. “Send some heralds out to announce it, here and in Cite Marche. That should stop their squabbling up there.”

  “The General estimates that he will advance at least three miles per day.”

  “Ducarte’s estimates are always accurate. Send him my congratulations.”

  Beryll consulted the letter in his hand. “He also reports that the villages in the eastern Almont were evacuated in advance of the army’s arrival. There was no plunder; all the army found were a few sick animals left behind. The rest of the Almont may be abandoned as well.”

  “So?”

  “Ducarte’s soldiers grow restless, Majesty. Spoils are a part of their compensation.”

  “I don’t care about spoils,” the Queen muttered, her voice petulant. Gold, slaves, livestock, lumber . . . these things would matter greatly to the army, yes, but they no longer mattered to her. What she wanted was in New London.

  Still, she reflected, this news had not come a moment too soon. Production had slowed in all sectors of the Mort economy, but the hardest hit came in mining, where the casualty rate among slaves had always been high. The Queen’s suggestion that the foremen drive their slaves a bit less harshly had been met with thinly veiled ridicule. Mining in Mortmesne was a numbers game, defined by dangerous conditions and heavy turnover. The mill needed grist, and each day it seemed as though a rash of new complaints poured in from the mining communities in the north.

  Fingers tapped on the glass behind her. Medire, his eyebrows raised, motioned toward the woman, asking if they were done. The Queen nodded and turned away as he threw a cloth over the corpse. Beryll was still waiting expectantly.

  “What?”

  “Also a message from Lieutenant Martin in the north. Three more attacks in Cite Marche. His intelligence suggests that rebels are planning to move on to other cities, including Demesne.”

  “Nothing about the man Levieux?”

  “Nothing in the note, Majesty.”

  “Wonderful.” The Queen wondered if she truly had made a tactical error in removing Ducarte to the front. Surely he would have produced some results by now. But it was too late; Ducarte was nearly halfway across the Almont, and he would not take kindly to being yanked back and forth.

  “What do I have tonight?”

  Beryll closed his eyes, consulting memory. He was over ninety years old, had fallen victim to multiple frailties, but his mind remained strong and regimented. “You have dinner with the Bells, but they won’t be here until six. You have plenty of time.”

  “I need a nap.”

  “You take too many naps, Majesty,” Beryll murmured, in a tone of heavy disapproval.

  “There’s nothing else to do. I don’t sleep at night anymore.”

  This was true. It was the dream, which never left her lately: the inferno, the man in grey, the girl. The Queen found herself unable to shake a sense of impending disaster.

  “Why not take one of Medire’s concoctions?” Beryll asked.

  “Because then I would need to take them habitually, Ryll. I have no wish to become dependent.”

  “You are dependent on me, Majesty.”

  The Queen chuckled. The rest of her servants maintained a formal distance, necessary but often tiresome, but Beryll had been with her since he was seven years old, when she had selected him from a pit of Mort nobles awaiting execution. His parents had already died in the uprising, and the Queen had been moved by the solitary child, his face full of a pain that the Queen recognized and still dimly remembered from her youth: abandonment and loss.

  “I do depend on you, Ryll. It has been a long lifetime, you and me.”

  “I would not have traded it for the wide world, Lady.” Beryll smiled, his stiff resolve breaking for a moment, and in the smile the Queen glimpsed the child she had lifted from the blood-puddled pit. She had reached down and extended a hand, and the boy had grasped it . . . the memory hurt. Time seemed to stretch over such an unbridgeable distance lately. The Queen cast around for something to lighten the mood. “At any rate, Medire isn’t half the pharmacist he thinks he is. I’ve heard some ugly rumors about side effects. Rashes and spots.”

  “It makes the pages uneasy, Majesty, knowing that you don’t sleep. Their anxiety then passes further down the chain.”

  “When we take the Tearling, I’ll sleep fine.”

  “As you say, Majesty,” he replied, in a tone that stopped just short of disbelief.

  Beryll left her when they reached the top of the stairs, heading off toward the throne room, and the Queen continued slowly on her way, perusing the two messages that Beryll had handed her. Ducarte’s note was like the man himself, brief and to the point: the invasion was proceeding as it should, the bulk of the Mort army moving steadily across the Almont Plain. But Martin’s words had been written hastily, the tone bordering on panic: three of his interrogators had been snatched off the street and found hung from the city walls four days later. Two Crown armories had burned to the ground. Vallee had taken an arrow in the knee from a sniper. Martin’s anxiety would not hel
p matters. As soon as Ducarte reached New London and got his fill of whatever he wanted there, she would put him back on this . . . this . . .

  Rebellion.

  Her mind shied away from the word, but after a moment’s thought, she was forced to acknowledge its essential truth. She had a rebellion on her hands, and none of her people were equal to quelling it.

  In the wide, high-ceilinged corridor that led to her chambers, the Queen found five pages in a cluster, talking in low voices.

  “Surely there’s something else you could be doing with your time,” she remarked acidly, and was pleased to see them jump at her voice. “Go and make yourselves useful.”

  They left, with quietly murmured apologies that the Queen did not acknowledge. Her pages behaved respectfully, but all of them occasionally betrayed the impudence of youth, impatience at having to wait on a woman they considered old. The Queen paused before entering her chamber, examining herself in one of the floor-length mirrors that stood beside the door. She was not young, no, not like these girls with their wrinkle-free eyes and upright breasts. But neither was she old. She was a grown woman, a woman who knew what she was about.

  I am changeless, the Queen thought proudly. Still vulnerable to weapons and wounds, certainly, but age, that relentless double-edged blade of decay and disease, would never touch her again. The Queen sobered, frowning. She would never grow old, but all the same, time had been growing on her lately: a sense of time as power, as a force that exerted incredible pressure. Her life had been long, but much of it had flown past unexamined. Only recently had the Queen begun to feel the passing years on her shoulders, nothing so simple as mere time . . . now it was history.

  She went on into her chambers, closing the door behind her. Beryll would bring her some hot chocolate, and that would put her to sleep for an hour or so, at least. The room was nice and warm, perfect for napping. She would—

  The Queen nearly tripped as her feet connected with a dull, lifeless heap on the ground. She looked down and found Mina, one of her pages, sprawled on the floor, her neck wrung so neatly that her head faced backward.

  The Queen spun around and stared at the fireplace. A roaring blaze was going, a pillar of flame so strong that she could feel its heat all the way across the room.