Throne Shaker (The Clash and the Heat Book 3)

by Val Saintcrowe

  “Blazes, don’t say such a thing,” said Bisset, making a face. “She would make a monster of a mother.”

  “There, you see?” I said.

  “Yes, but you’re not like her,” said Bisset.

  “Sometimes I think I am,” I said.

  “The fact that you’re concerned about wanting to be loving means you aren’t,” Bisset pronounced. “Now, cease to think of such things. Pregnant women worry too much.”

  Marguerite laughed. “And you know this how? You have a vast experience with such things?”

  “Just before I left for the musqueteers, my mother was pregnant with my youngest brother,” said Bisset. “And I had three other younger siblings besides. I don’t remember all of her pregnancies in great detail, but I was nearly fourteen then, so I remember that one. She spent the entirety of her time worrying about ridiculous things. My father would say to her that she was only worried because of her condition and that she should spend less time thinking.”

  “Oh, there is nothing good about being pregnant,” I said. “Everything about it is miserable.”

  “Don’t say that,” said Marguerite.

  “Dubois shouldn’t have left you,” said Bisset, furrowing his brow. “My mother had my father with her, and you need someone to rely on. Dubois was never exactly honorable, I suppose, but I always thought he was devoted to you, at least. I hear he’s got pirate blood, though. You can’t trust pirates. I’m so sorry that he abandoned you, my queen. You deserve better.”

  I turned to Marguerite. “You didn’t tell him.”

  Marguerite shrugged. “Oh, he’s funny about those sorts of things sometimes, so I…”

  “What?” said Bisset. “Didn’t tell me what?”

  “It’s not Guillame’s baby,” I sighed.

  “Then whose is it?” said Bisset.

  “The king’s,” said Marguerite.

  Bisset gave me a look.

  “Don’t judge me, blazes, Bisset,” I said. “Perhaps it would have been better if you didn’t know.”

  He pointed at me. “That’s the heir, then. The Dumonte heir.”

  I put my hand possessively to my belly. “The Islaigne heir. Remy has divorced me.”

  “I imagine he doesn’t know his seed took root in you, though, or he’d be singing a different tune,” said Bisset.

  “That is why he can never know,” I said.

  Bisset shook his head. “I don’t know, my queen. It’s not my business, and I know he’s a difficult man in some ways, but it isn’t right, depriving a child from its parent or a parent from his child. He has the right to know.”

  “It’s not your business, Bisset,” I said sharply. “He never finds out, do you understand?”

  Bisset nodded slowly. “Of course. My apologies.”

  I sighed. I turned back to the table. “These designs, then? What do you think of them? Do you like this one better?” I pointed. “Or this one?”

  “It’s your decision, Your Majesty,” said Bisset.

  “Yes, I know, but I can’t decide. Marguerite?”

  “Oh, this one,” said Marguerite, pointing. “Definitely this one. I think the towers are quite majestic.”

  I cocked my head. “They are majestic, aren’t they?”

  * * *

  “So, this one is what we’ll be building,” I said. “The towers are so very majestic, after all.”

  I was back in my makeshift throne room, but now Solene, Bisset, and men who would be working on constructing the castle were with me.

  I continued to speak. “I haven’t been back into the castle since we left, but I understand that most of the stone is still intact. The fires in the castle did go out. They did a lot of damage before they did, burning everything in their paths, but they left behind a significant amount of raw material. We will need more stones, however, but I am told that we know where they can be procured?”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” said one of the men, nodding at me. “We will be able to find exactly what we need. We can start on this within the month. We’ll leave tomorrow morning and begin work as soon as we’ve set up a makeshift camp near the ruins.”

  I nodded. This was what I had expected to hear. “All right. Well, what else do we need to do in order to prepare?”

  “I think you’ve covered it,” spoke up Solene. “Everything you were saying before. We’re on top of that.”

  “Good,” I said. “Well, I don’t have anything else. If anyone else has something?”

  I waited, but no one spoke up.

  “Fine, then,” I said. “We’ll adjourn for now, and we’ll be ready to see you all off in the morning.”

  The meeting broke up and the men began talking amongst themselves.

  Bisset looked at the designs. “It’s interesting the castle didn’t burn.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t have expected it to. King Remy’s power is strong, but it’s not like the true living flame. It does burn out.”

  “Well, what about the explosion that happened when you were a girl?” said Bisset. “That should have still been burning, right? Did we ever talk about this?”

  “I think so,” I said. “No one knows why that fire went out.”

  “I know,” said Solene. “Your mother put the fire out.”

  “What?” I looked at her.

  “I mean, I assume she must have done some of it,” said Solene, “because I saw her extinguishing flames that night, after she put you on the boat. She wanted everyone on, but there was only so much room. A wall of flame came up right in her face, and she put up a hand, and it went out.”

  “But my mother didn’t have the ability to put out flame,” I said.

  “She must have,” said Solene.

  I shook my head. “No,” I whispered.

  But now I understood something, something that made my stomach drop.

  * * *

  “Jalal?” I called. I was at the door to his chambers. I knocked on the door again. “Answer the door.”

  It opened, and Jalal was standing there, looking wan and tired. “Are you going to announce my execution now?”

  “I know you killed her,” I said. “Admit it.”

  He looked down at his shoes.

  My voice lowered. “I also know why.”

  He looked up. “You do?”

  “Solene just told me that my mother was putting out fires in the castle that night,” I said. “But my mother couldn’t put out fires. Not unless… she set them herself.”

  He sucked in a breath. “You do know.”

  “You did kill her?”

  “I…” He shook his head. “I don’t know if that’s what I meant to do. She was facing the other direction, and I grabbed this rock. I didn’t think she’d die. I wasn’t thinking. I just knew I needed to stop her. But then there was blood, and she…” He grimaced.

  “She was coming back from lighting the Flainge Pass,” I said. “She set those flames.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Why did she want to burn down her own country?” I said. “What possible reason could she have? And why did she save me but not you?”

  “She wanted to get everyone out, but she missed me,” said Jalal. “The explosions were happening, and she said it wasn’t safe. She said that those of us who were left would hopefully go quickly, because the whole country was going to go up in flames.”

  My shoulders sagged. “She was trying to evacuate and then burn it all down?”

  “Yes.” He nodded.

  “Your mother? You? Why weren’t you on board the ship?”

  “The flames found my mother, and I hid. Your mother must have thought that I was dead too. And she was busy trying to get all the villagers on that other ship. Whatever happened to that ship, anyway?”

  “It went down in a storm,” I said. “Those people never made it to Dumonte.” I shook my head. “She was trying to save her people. She knew it wasn’t safe here.”

  Jalal nodded.

  “But she didn’t get ne
arly enough people out,” I said. “She was leaving half the country behind, and the fires she set killed people.”

  “That’s how I saw it,” said Jalal. “She wanted to burn everything down, kill everyone at once, end it. I thought I could save the country, be the hero of the people. I thought stopping her was the right thing to do.”

  I swallowed hard, and then I met his gaze. “It was.”

  His jaw twitched.

  “I… she was my mother, but you were right. Starting those fires, it was the wrong way to go about saving Islaigne. And she was sentencing far too many people to death in the meantime.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think your mother thought about the commoners like that. She had always been told that she mattered, that you mattered, and that her subjects were there to be ruled.”

  “But she tried to save some of them.”

  “I wasn’t brought up to think they matter either,” he said. “And they do die, Fleur. Lots of them. All at once. And it never stops. It’s hard to care when they seem like they’re always dying like that. It’s too taxing. And you get… you get sort of used to it.”

  “You’re making excuses for her,” I whispered.

  “I did it for Islaigne,” he said. “But you know what happened? We were cut off from the world, and those explosions got worse and worse, and people just died. Burned up. More of them every few weeks, it seemed like. Maybe your mother was right. Maybe it would have been easier if we’d all died back then.”

  “No,” I said. “No, she did need to be stopped. I think I understand why she did what she did, but she was wrong.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “You can put out the fires, it’s true, but how many people die instantly the minute an explosion happens? And we can’t predict them. We can’t stop them. We can’t get people out of the way before they happen. Even with your magic, our people are still in constant danger.”

  I felt sick to my stomach, and it wasn’t just because of morning sickness.

  “You’re bringing a child into this world,” said Jalal. “What if an explosion happens near your baby?”

  “She’ll… she’ll have the living flame. She’ll be protected.”

  “Not until she comes of age. Not until the ceremony.”

  He was right. I put both of my hands on my belly protectively.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I shouldn’t be frightening you.” He lifted his chin. “Are you going to have me executed?”

  “Of course not,” I whispered.

  “I’m sure we’ll all be fine, Fleur,” he said. “Maybe you are the prophesied queen. Maybe you’ll save us all.”

  I didn’t think that was true. I really didn’t.

  CHAPTER TEN

  News came that Remy had invaded Rzymn and met only token resistance. He’d burned the patriarch’s home to the ground with the patriarch in it. And that wasn’t the only news. He’d apparently gotten married again.

  To Coralie.

  Rumors were that he’d done it because she was pregnant. From the sounds of it, he would have had to have bedded her right after I left the castle, before he came after me. I shouldn’t care about the rumors or about Remy. Blazes knew I had no right to be jealous.

  But I thought of Remy taking comfort in her arms, and it made me ill. She would have welcomed him, and I believed he would have gone to her. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t chosen to be with her before. And after what had happened last time she’d claimed to be pregnant, I supposed he’d felt too guilty not to marry her this time.

  It was odd, because I did remember that he’d been ready to execute her after what she’d done to Guillame, but then he’d also tried to kill me, so he clearly confused sex and death anyway.

  It really oughtn’t matter to me, and most of the time, I convinced myself it didn’t, but sometimes when I woke early in the morning, I thought about it. I woke early much more often than I would have liked. I was exhausted constantly, so I fell asleep early, and then I would also wake early. Every day, it seemed to creep up earlier and earlier, and I would lie awake in my bed, unable to go back to sleep, knowing I would spend the day tired.

  In those early morning imaginings, I thought of Remy and Coralie together, and that made my stomach roil. But I also imagined the future. Remy putting his hand on her swelling belly. Remy and Coralie cooing over their baby together. I thought of my own child, how I would have no one with me for any of those milestones. I hated Coralie for stealing that from me, even though I knew she hadn’t, not really. I had chosen to do this alone.

  But it wasn’t fair, truly, that Remy could have fathered two children in such a short span, that somehow his attentions and affections could be so severely diverted from me. Even though I shunned such things, I felt…

  I wished I could sleep longer in the mornings.

  Messengers came to me with news of the rebuilding of the castle. It was going well. Everything was proceeding according to plan, and we would be able to move into the new castle around the time that my baby was due.

  When I wasn’t exhausted, I went to put out fires, taking care of what explosions that had ravaged the countryside. There were three new ones, and I made it to two of them, but one of them was so far away that I didn’t make it there until it was too late to save anyone. No one came out of that explosion alive except one teenage boy named Dellon, who had been mutated by the flame, who could now call the living flame like Remy.

  There were now a contingent of several dozen firestarters, and when new ones were made, they came to live with the court, where they could be taught how to contain their powers, and where I could take their magic at the beginning, when they were too exhausted and grief-stricken to know how to try to hold it in.

  I knew that I had done more for the country than anyone else had in terms of these explosions, but it wasn’t enough.

  I spend time sometimes, kneeling outside, my hands flat against the bare earth, reaching out with my mind to try to touch that fire that raged under the earth here in Islaigne. I could feel it, and I could touch its borders. It was vast and hot and wide. It overwhelmed me with its monstrous power.

  I wanted to see if I could somehow predict the explosions before they happened. Maybe there would be a place here or there where the fire would be starting to agitate before it burst through the crust of earth.

  But I could never find anything like that.

  The explosions seemed entirely random.

  People were still dying and no one was safe. An explosion could happen anywhere, even under the new castle I was building. After Jalal had pointed out to me that my child would not necessarily be safe, I had been terrified with worries about an explosion coming up under the baby’s crib. Would I be able to put it out in time?

  Already, I felt a connection with the baby growing within me, and I knew there was nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my small one.

  My nausea had finally started to fade, and I was now feeling small flutters inside. The baby was moving! I was stunned at how much that affected me. Of course, everything these days made me feel wells of emotion. I had a permanent lump in my throat.

  But I was feeling much better, and I thought that I might make the long trip back to the coast, so that I could see how the repairs on the castle were faring. I talked to Solene about it, and she thought I was being ridiculous. In my condition, there was no reason to go on such a journey.

  I decided to seek out Bisset instead. He would know that there was nothing I couldn’t do, pregnant or not. And he would probably accompany me if I asked.

  But Bisset was nowhere to be found.

  The other men said that he had been absent for at least a day, and that he had sent word only that they should continue with their drills and formations as usual in his absence. They didn’t know where he was.

  I went to his quarters, but he wasn’t there, and neither was Marguerite.

  Well, I thought, perhaps they had gone off together for some kind of romanti
c getaway. I thought of Remy joking about being “adventurous” outdoors, and it was like a hot dagger in my heart.

  Maybe I shouldn’t take Bisset away from Marguerite after all. Of course, she could accompany us on the journey, but I didn’t want to take her from the relative comfort of the fortress here. There was a a roof over our heads here, diverted hot springs into the house. (Hot springs seemed to be all over Islaigne. I wondered if they were somehow connected to the fire beneath the kingdom. It seemed likely.)

  I left word that I’d been looking for him anyway. Might as well talk to him about it and see what he thought about the idea.

  It wasn’t until after dinner that I received a reply, in the form of Bisset at my door.

  By this time of the day, I was exhausted. I would not be awake for too many more hours. I was yawning as I let him inside.

  He looked haggard. His face was drawn and his hair looked disheveled. He looked at me with hollow eyes. “I’m sorry that I was not there when you came looking for me, my queen, but the thing is, Marguerite has gone missing.”

  I sat up straight, my lips parting. “What? What do you mean, missing?”

  “She went out yesterday afternoon, searching for herbs in the forest. She never came back. I was out most of the night looking for her and then most of today. But I can’t find her anywhere.”

  “Why is this the first I’m hearing of this? Why didn’t you tell the men? We need to have everyone out looking for her. If she’s befallen some kind of danger in the woods, or even if she’s only lost, you can’t find her alone.”

  “I… I suppose I wasn’t thinking.” He shook his head. He looked half-asleep on his feet.

  I got up from my chair. “Sit down, Bisset. Right here.”

  “My queen, I could not—”

  “Sit.” I nodded at the chair.

  He sank down into it.

  I went to the door of my chambers and called for a guard to come to me. I asked the guard to bring Solene to me. Then I went back to Bisset. I knelt next to him, taking his hand. “You know that Marguerite is as dear to me as she is to you. Well, perhaps not exactly the same, but the two of you, you are my…” I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. “We’ll find her.”