by Callie Bates
Then I opened my eyes and a tall, sharp-eyed man was coming into the room. He gave Teofila a questioning look.
“This is Sophy,” she said. “She—”
I widened my stance. I’d come all this way, and I had one job. I lifted my chin and addressed Duke Ruadan myself. “I have a message for you from Mag Dunbarron.”
Ruadan looked startled. He exchanged a glance with Teofila. “Mag? Are you her daughter? Where is she?”
Duke Ruadan knew my mother by name? I wanted to melt again, though at the same time nothing seemed more natural. My mother was a force of nature; the queen of the rebels. Of course the duke who’d tried to lead a rebellion knew her. “She was in the village of Marose a few days ago.”
“Marose,” Ruadan repeated. Again, his gaze flicked to his wife.
I reached for my locket and pulled it over my head. “This is for you.”
Wordlessly, he opened the locket. But only the single, inch-long strand of red-gold hair slipped from it, still bound tightly with a black ribbon. It fell to the carpet at my feet.
I stared at it. There was no message. No carefully folded paper with a secret missive from my mother. “It’s my father’s,” I said.
Teofila crouched beside me. She handed the hair to Ruadan, and touched my cheek. “Sophy, are you sure your mother was in Marose?”
I nodded. I couldn’t escape the feeling I’d been cheated.
She drew in a breath. Ruadan was watching us, but Teofila didn’t take her eyes off me. “It’s just that we’ve had some terrible news from Marose this morning. The Butcher of Novarre had the town surrounded.”
“I know! I had to escape in a wheelbarrow.”
Teofila gripped my hands. “So you were there when it burned?”
My mouth dropped open. The hope that had been fluttering in me stilled and died. I whispered, “Burned?”
“Yes.” She held me harder, but did not spare me the truth. “Your mother must have sent you to safety. The whole village was burned to the ground, along with everyone in it. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Air whined in my ears. I was more numb than I had been when I climbed from the wheelbarrow. I couldn’t comprehend it. Everyone, dead? The rebels, the villagers? The cows?
The duke crouched beside Teofila. He reached out, touching his fingers to my chin. I looked up at him, and I knew then that he’d known my mother, because there was winter in his eyes the way there was winter in my heart. But there was also something else. Hope.
“You don’t have a message,” he said. “You are the message.”
Teofila looked at him sharply.
“She’s the future of Caeris,” he told her. “Sophy,” he said to me, with an urgency I didn’t understand, “did Mag ever tell you who your father was?”
I shook my head.
The duke gripped my shoulder. He held the locket out to me. “This hair belongs to Euan Dromahair, the rightful king of Caeris. He’s your natural father, Sophy.”
I glanced uncertainly at Teofila. Her lips were pressed together, but she nodded at me. It wasn’t entirely reassuring. My father, the man who should be king? It didn’t make sense. And yet, knowing my mother, I believed it.
“And if he doesn’t come to Caeris to claim his throne,” the duke continued, “or if his son doesn’t, do you know who will?”
“Who?” I whispered.
Ruadan Valtai looked into my eyes, searchingly, as if he were trying to find the backbone of a queen. “You.”
And I knew then that I must be brave, alone.
CHAPTER ONE
Ruadan is gone now, executed on the steps of the Tower in Laon, and all I am left with, in the cold light of dawn, is memories. And a creeping doubt about whether I can possibly become the queen he raised me to be.
There’s a soft noise outside my tent. The mountain women who form my queen’s guard shift on the other side of the flap but don’t seem alarmed, so I guess who it must be.
I throw on my riding habit and step out just as Elanna goes by, a slight figure bundled in an overlarge greatcoat, curls of chestnut hair escaping over its worn collar. As usual, she seems oblivious to my presence. I follow her out into the gray-green dawn. Light softens the rough tents that make up our run-down camp above the river Ard, near a town called Tavistock. Across the wide, rocky water, mingling with the fog, smoke drifts from the Tinani camp where King Alfred’s troops are waking to begin their latest offensive. They should have no idea that the Butcher of Novarre is here, along with Elanna and myself—or at least, I hope they don’t. The Butcher keeps claiming our ranks are littered with spies loyal to the Ereni nobles who fled the kingdom after our rebellion, and who now have the ears of King Alfred of Tinan. I’ve heard no rumors that they wish to reinstate Loyce Eyrlai, so maybe they’re simply working against us out of spite. Given the narrow-minded thinking of some of my ministers, I wouldn’t be surprised.
The guards on the edge of camp acknowledge El, but—as usual—no one seems to take much notice of me. Despite my greater height and brilliant red coat, the people only have eyes for their Caveadear. I might as well be invisible.
We leave the guards behind, though. El doesn’t want anyone to witness her weakness.
At the top of the bluff, overlooking the river, she pauses, and I step up beside her. Softly, I say, “Can I help?”
She casts me a tight, skeptical look. She’s been angry with me ever since I encouraged Jahan to go to Ida and argue our case before the emperor of Paladis, but now she simply seems condescending. “No, Sophy. There’s nothing you can do.”
I swallow down a pulse of frustration. As if she needs to remind me, again, that she possesses sorcery and I don’t. That she is the real leader of Eren and Caeris, the one they truly respect, and I am not. That she is Ruadan’s real daughter, and I am merely the one he replaced her with. As soon as she returned to Caeris, our rebellion and our lives became all about her. She is the Caveadear, the steward of the land, the future of Eren and Caeris. She’s the hope of the kingdom, the symbol of magic reemerging throughout the world.
I am the backup. A would-be Aline to her earth-shaking Wildegarde. The second choice—the girl who took her father’s throne when her dead half brother could not, and whose father has never once acknowledged her existence. Who took the throne, in some ways, because she knew her mother would expect it, encourage it, if she still lived.
I’m not proud of how I feel. I remind myself that I love El like a sister. But like a sister, I wish she would learn how to share. And take me seriously.
She’s already descending the steep trail down to the river—a spot she picked out yesterday, when the Butcher insisted a display of her magic would put the terror of the gods into the Tinani and destroy their current offensive.
I’m more worried about it destroying El.
There’s a scrape behind me. Rhia Knoll hops up through the fog, alert despite the tiredness pinching her eyes. I can feel my own exhaustion mirroring hers. As usual, a frown puckers her black eyebrows, belying her delicate features. She tugs the collar of her dark-blue coat up to her ears. The wind is sweeping down from the north, bringing the coldness of the still-snowcapped mountains in the Tail Ridge, though we’re in the north of Eren, several days’ travel from the peaks.
Rhia peers toward the foggy river. “Is she down there?”
I gesture with my chin. El has reached a rocky shelf above the water. She’s just visible through the fog, her old greatcoat rendering her shapeless.
Even though she frustrates me, I’m worried about her. Rhia and I might be tired, but Elanna’s exhaustion seems so deep it runs into the marrow of her bones—and into the land itself. The Butcher wanted her to perform this feat of magic at high noon, for the world to see, as if she could merely snap her fingers and burst the dam upstream that will flood the Ard. And perhaps, in the days afte
r she woke the land, she could. Now, though, her magic is tired and so is she. I’m afraid she won’t be able to swamp the Tinani camp, and if we have to fight this battle with guns and men and horses, we’re going to lose. Tinan’s being supplied by the empire of Paladis; they have more manpower and more guns. And it’s not been our forces that have stopped the Tinani crossing the river, despite the Butcher’s attempts to impress his superior generalship upon everyone. Elanna’s the one who has stopped them, time and again.
She needs help. A respite. Something. Yet I’m too afraid to suggest she rest. We all are.
“Are you feeling better?” Rhia asks me.
I inadvertently touch my fingertips to my stomach, then stuff my hands into the pockets of my coat. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She eyes me. “Don’t be cagey with me, Dunbarron. You looked green all last month. Father thought someone was poisoning you.”
“Oh, that.” I attempt nonchalance. “Something I picked up in Laon—stomach sickness. Everyone had it.”
Rhia raises an eyebrow but shrugs. I slowly release my breath. Rhia remained on the border the last time I went to the capital, so how would she know I’m lying? Besides, for all I know, people have been ill; it’s that time of year.
All the same, the temptation to tell her the truth presses against the back of my throat. We’re alone on the bluff—or as alone as we’re going to get—and the weight of this secret is pulling me down. I feel the need to confess like a hand between my shoulder blades. But I know what Rhia Knoll will say. She’ll tell me I’m being a fool in more ways than one. There’s only one solution for this problem, and Rhia won’t have any trouble telling me what it is.
Am I being a fool?
Of course I am. I know it, but I have no other choice. At least, not one that will let me sleep at night. Ruadan used to say that we are defined by the decisions we make, and that the larger the choice, the more we must face it head-on, clear-eyed. I made this choice; I can’t pretend, even to myself, that it was an accident.
But sometimes I wish Ruadan had said something else. That we are more than the sum of our decisions.
I fold my arms, unable to confess, and neither of us says much. The fog’s beginning to burn away as Elanna sits motionless on the shelf below us, giving no indication she’s aware of our presence. The cold seeps into my bones.
“Queen Sophy!”
I turn. A runner is coming up the hillside from our camp. “You have a visitor,” he pants.
I look past him, toward the rough, fraying tents the Butcher insisted on using, trying to disguise the fact that not only is he here, but El, Rhia, and I are, too. Our intelligence intercepted the Tinani plan to cross here, north of Tavistock, and now we can only hope that information was accurate. I wonder if the two new arrivals who have appeared outside the command tent—two men, from the looks of it, on black horses, though I can’t make out their faces from here—have anything to do with that. The Butcher’s come out to greet them; I recognize his bandy-legged silhouette.
“There’ll be hot coffee down there,” Rhia says. She’s been obsessed with the stuff since she first had it in Laon a few months ago. Now, true to form, she charges off toward camp. The messenger hesitates between her and me.
I glance down the slope, toward El. She’s still unmoving. To all appearances, she’s unaware that we’re even up here.
With a sigh, I follow the messenger and Rhia toward the command tent.
The men have gone inside by the time I arrive, along with Rhia, who’s standing in front of a silver coffeepot with a look of sweet bliss on her usually ornery face. “Here, Sophy.” She thrusts a cup at me. “It’ll do you wonders.”
One of the new arrivals swings around: a wiry dark-haired young man in a coat of green Caerisian wool. “Soph! I mean…Your Majesty,” he corrects himself, doubling over into a low bow.
I smile down at the top of his head. “Alistar.” For once, his hair isn’t in spikes, but lies flat in soft brown waves. My fingers twitch.
He looks up at me, with a grin on his narrow mischievous face, and his eyes spark in a familiar way. “You look well.”
I claim the cup of coffee from Rhia and smirk at him over the rim. But then out the corner of my eye, I catch sight of the Butcher’s disapproving scowl and sigh. Some people—Rhia, for instance—don’t care that Alistar and I are together, but I know from past conversations that the Butcher considers my relationship with Alistar a disgrace to my crown. Maybe this is just because he hates to see other people having feelings, not to mention affection, but enough other people seem to agree with him that I’ve become self-conscious. I can already feel the weight of his stare.
I give Alistar a stern glance. “What are you doing here?” I ask, striving to sound businesslike and not as if his knowing smile is unraveling me. “I thought you were evacuating the people from Tavistock.”
It’s the other new arrival who speaks, his light voice Ereni-accented. “I’m afraid I interrupted Master Connell’s work.” He bows. “Your Majesty.”
I finally look beyond Alistar and startle. His companion is a young man with cropped auburn hair and a fox’s clever face. Philippe Manceau, the minister of public works.
“Lord Philippe,” I say, and though I know my tone is starved of warmth, I can’t change it. “What are you doing here?”
Again, he bows—an insistence on etiquette that sets my teeth on edge. “The ministers wished me to observe the Caveadear’s use of magic in person. I prevailed on Master Connell to guide me here.”
“I was coming this way anyhow,” Alistar says gruffly. I can tell the Master Connelling is putting his back up.
I study Philippe Manceau, the Count of Lylan. He’s the only man in the tent—in the entire camp—not in uniform or at least wearing a sash to show his allegiance to Eren and Caeris. Instead he’s in dark, somber colors, like a banker who’s gotten lost on his way to examine an investment. I don’t need to ask which ministers decided, independently, that they needed to send a representative to check up on me. The Ereni are always doing things like this, to quietly remind me that, as far as they’re concerned, I’m still on probation.
Philippe gestures toward the river. “Who can resist an opportunity to see the steward of the land in action?”
“I can think of a few,” I remark. Half of the people in my Ereni cabinet openly distrust magic—and, by extension, Elanna. They were elected, so I can’t simply throw them out, but we all know they bought those votes. We may have brought elections to Eren, but even though most commoners seem to approve of my rule, the wealthy still control their lands—and, thus, many people’s choices.
And some of those nobles are still angry that we overthrew the Eyrlais. Philippe, I suspect, is one of them, though he’s never said anything overtly against me.
The Butcher of Novarre intervenes. “You’ll see, Lord Philippe. If all goes according to plan, the Tinani will no longer pose much of a threat to Eren at all.”
“Let us pray to the gods that this is the case,” Philippe says.
“Who needs gods when we have the Caveadear?” Rhia says. She’s drunk a second cup of coffee and seems to be vibrating slightly.
I exchange a glance with Alistar. “Let’s go down to the river.”
* * *
—
DOWN BY THE shore, Elanna raises her arms. We all fall silent, watching her. She looks so small down there. A hush lifts from her, so strange and tremulous even I can feel it. My skin itches. I rub the back of my neck. I may not be a sorceress, but sometimes—often, lately—my body reacts when magic is performed nearby.
Philippe turns his head toward me, and I force myself still. At least Rhia and Alistar are also here. A loud clatter echoes from the Tinani camp, then all falls into silence like an indrawn breath. It extends and extends. The sunlight glimmers on the water. The weight of it
tugs through the reeds along the shore. On the other side, some Tinani have come down and are staring across at us, gesturing.
Pressure pulses behind my eyelids. There’s a rushing in my ears. I stumble, my body flushing with heat, my head swimming and my stomach churning—
Philippe catches me against his arm. “Are you ill?”
“I—”
Water erupts down the river. A surge of it, swelling and overflowing the reeds on the banks. Shouts rise from the Tinani camp. They’re on a curve, and the river is naturally pouring into their camp—but I can hardly hear them over the roaring in my ears. My coat seems to be strangling me. I fling out a hand—someone grasps it—but I’m blinded, my ears filled with a sweep of verdant sound—a kind of music that rises, trembling, through the layers and fissures of the land, caught on the current of the great black river. It splits through the earth’s inertia, a driving green force that transforms everything in its wake. I’m shaking, dizzy—
My knees fetch up against a rock. An arm cups my back. Alistar is hugging me to his chest; his face blurs, and then my eyes focus. His eyebrows are pinched. With worry?
“You’re ill, Soph,” he says.
I shake my head. “I’m fine.”
I’ve never felt Elanna’s magic before. Not like that. I’ve seen it, and felt the tremble of tree roots skimming the earth, but I’ve never heard it in my own body, as if it were a part of me. As if it were a song so powerful, it mingled with my very blood.
I’m still light-headed. Rhia and Philippe are hovering anxiously behind Alistar’s shoulders. When Rhia says, “Put your head between your knees,” I do.
Or at least I try. My stomach bulks up, in my way. I jerk back, glancing down at the overlarge twill waistcoat—once Ruadan’s, for he was taller than me—that I’ve been wearing for weeks over my increasingly muddy riding skirt. Its plain brown buttons seem to stare back at me, innocent.
