Kingsbane

by Claire Legrand

  Once they were alone, he helped her up from the floor and carried her to the chair by the hearth. She settled in his lap, worrying her hands together restlessly.

  “You’re shaking,” he said, stilling her wrists. “What happened to you? Where did you go?”

  “I needed fresh air,” she lied, for she had no intention of telling him what had happened on the mountain, beyond the fact of Corien sending her an upsetting vision. Her daughter. An outrageous, ludicrous deception.

  “So you took Atheria and flew,” Audric said. “And this upset you?”

  She pressed her face to his neck. “The empirium spoke to me. It showed me…”

  After a moment, he prompted her. “What did it show you?”

  “Horrible things,” she whispered. “Things that make me doubt my own mind. Things that make me want to run far from here and never stop running, not until I fly apart.”

  And if she did, the dark part of her mind whispered, if she did run, if she disappeared into the far world where no one could find her, not even Corien, then Audric could be a king without distractions, and she could be free of his court, his city, the people who wanted her and hated her all at once.

  “Stay with me,” he murmured, as if sensing her conflict. He touched his brow to hers. “Stay with me, Rielle.”

  “I’m here,” she said, her voice thin, and then she had to duck her head to hide her face from him, for she could not bear to see the love shining so plainly in his eyes. If he looked for much longer into hers, he would see the truth of her laid bare—the lives she had taken. The lies she had told.

  The doubt growing like a restless storm in her heart.

  Her mind slowly tearing itself in two.

  • • •

  Rielle hurried out of the Hall of the Saints into one of the surrounding small anterooms, her bewildered guard following her as discreetly as was possible for seven soldiers outfitted in gold-plated armor.

  As soon as the door shut behind her, closing away the glittering finery of Audric’s coronation, she ran to a corner of the room, sank to her knees, and vomited. Her back to her guard, she wiped her mouth on the edge of her sleeve.

  It was not the first time she had gotten sick in the last several days. At first she had assumed the cause was from sheer exhaustion; she had hardly slept these last weeks. Corien visited her every night, and Ludivine hovered always at the edges of her mind, and the streets near the castle filled daily with people clamoring for her death, her touch, her body, her blood. They came from the capital; they came from all over the kingdom, and more arrived every day.

  And then there was that vision of the strange girl on the mountain, a memory that walked beside her always. She could not shake it. When she did sleep, she saw the girl in her mind’s eye. Her fear, the square set of her jaw.

  Rielle closed her eyes, fisting her hands in the fine golden embroidery of her gown. Every night, she laid with Audric in his bed, or hers. Every night, they moved together, each of them utterly wrung out. Their days had been full: preparations for the coronation; endless meetings with advisers, the Magisterial Council, the Archon; reports from their spies on the missing Kirvayan queen, reports from Mazabat on the quakes rattling their southern cities, reports from the Celdarian Obex on the vicious storms tearing across Meridian.

  And the Obex themselves were no help at all. They refused to help Rielle find Saint Katell’s casting. They refused to introduce her to the marques in their employ and request of them passage to Meridian, or Astavar, or Ventera—one of the kingdoms on the far western side of the world, where Rielle could continue her search for the remaining castings. When she raged at them, they reminded her of those she had killed in Mazabat. When she threatened to kill them as well, they told her calmly that then Saint Katell’s sword would truly be lost to her.

  “You would save yourselves before you allow me to save everyone else?” she had snapped at them, during one particularly contentious meeting.

  Their speaker replied at once. “Lady Rielle, it is our judgment that, as things currently stand, keeping Saint Katell’s casting out of your hands is exactly the thing that will save us all.”

  That night, she had stormed into Audric’s room, the walls and windows trembling at her approach. Though her eyes had burned from lack of sleep, and her body had still been sore from the previous night, she found him dozing by the fire, a stack of petitions on the table beside him, and climbed at once into his lap. She woke him up with her mouth and her hips and held onto him tightly as he drove into her. But even then, afterward, as they lay sweating and exhausted, she could not sleep. She returned to that black northern fortress; she ran through unfamiliar dark hallways, both chasing and fleeing the sound of Corien’s voice, both ignoring and seeking the comfort of Ludivine’s arms.

  And the girl on the mountain followed her every day, every night, a tenacious ghost.

  Rielle knelt on the carpet, fingers shaking against her mouth. Her head pounded, bolts of pain slicing through her temples. Neither Corien nor Ludivine were ever really gone from her. The sounds of their eternally crashing swords vibrated her every bone.

  Her vision flickered gold, then dull. The sounds of Audric’s coronation filtered through the closed door—the choir singing the “Song of Saint Katell,” the Archon intoning the coronation rites, the buzz and hum of the hundreds of people gathered to watch Saint Katell’s golden cloak tied around Audric’s shoulders and his mother’s crown placed on his head.

  Evyline stepped forward carefully. “My lady, what can I do?”

  After a moment, Rielle stood. A terrible fear was climbing up her body, warming her sweaty brow. From inside the hall, Ludivine reached out to her, but Rielle ignored the urgent press of her thoughts. She sensed Ludivine moving toward the anteroom, and felt a sudden, frantic urge to get away from her. There was a Ludivine fighting Corien in her mind; there was a Ludivine rushing through the Hall of the Saints. Rielle’s mind was full of her and was never her own.

  “I need to see Garver Randell,” she said hoarsely, fingers pressed against her temples. “Take me there quickly. We cannot be seen.”

  • • •

  Her guard stood scattered along the street, unobtrusive in common clothes and traveling cloaks. Inside Garver’s shop, Rielle told him everything she had been feeling, and then, under cover of a quilt, she lay on a small bed in a back room of his shop, and he examined her.

  Simon stood silently beside her, holding her hand, and once Garver had finished and bid her gently to sit up, Rielle saw the look on his face and knew at once what he would say.

  “I’m with child,” she said flatly. “Aren’t I, Garver?”

  He smiled a little. “You are, my lady. I’d thought this might happen. It’s been some time since you’ve come to see me. I had the maidsright sent up to the castle, but perhaps it did not arrive.”

  Rielle stood, shaky. She wiped her sweaty hands on her skirts. “It did. I’ve just been rather busy of late. I haven’t been thinking. I’ve been careless. Oh, God.” She held her head in her hands. Ludivine pressed against her mind, calling her name over and over. She was hurrying through the city; soon she would be at the shop door.

  Oh, Rielle, came Ludivine’s voice, full of tenderness. I had been wondering.

  Rielle stumbled out of the room, knocking over a chair.

  “Get away from me!” she screamed. She could not bear the sight of Ludivine’s face. It would remind her of that northern fortress, her sleepless nights, Corien’s lips against her neck, the awful push and pull of him and Ludivine between her temples. “Lu, if you come here, I’ll kill you.”

  “My lady, please sit down,” said Garver, following her. “I won’t touch you, but you need to sit. You’re not well.”

  “No, I’m not,” she said, laughing a little. “Can you believe it, Garver? Another me.” She pressed her palm against her abdomen. Ima
gining the life growing inside her, picturing some infant copy of herself being set loose upon the world, a sick wave rose hot and swift up her throat.

  Simon moved quickly, brought her a pail. She sank to her knees on the rug and emptied what remained in her stomach.

  “Two Queens will rise,” she said. “Did you know, Garver, that Audric wants to marry me? To show everyone that the House of Courverie has absolute faith in me, he says. That the crown is loyal to me, as I am to the crown. I will be queen then, a real and true queen. I will be both Sun Queen and queen of Celdaria.”

  “Lady Rielle, please don’t cry,” came Simon’s quiet voice.

  “I would wager all the power I possess that my child will be a girl,” Rielle said bitterly. “Two Queens will rise. And here we are, rising, bringing with us the very doom that Aryava foretold.”

  “Forget that damned prophecy and listen to me,” said Garver, taking her hands firmly in his. “You’re breathing too fast and too shallowly. Listen to the sound of my voice, and breathe when I tell you.”

  She wrenched herself free of him. “One of blood. One of light. Which do you think I am, Garver? Do I have the power to save the world, or destroy it? And which will my daughter be? And would it be kinder to everyone if I turned myself over to the people who hate me and let them destroy us both before it’s too late?”

  And then, Corien’s voice, haggard and horrified: It’s not true. You wouldn’t have allowed it to happen. Rielle, please tell me it isn’t true.

  She ignored him, hurried out of Garver’s shop, found Atheria waiting for her in the courtyard.

  “If you’re going to ride, do so gently,” Garver said, following her. “Otherwise you might miscarry.”

  A small crowd had gathered on the street, held off by her Sun Guard. A chunk of rotting cabbage hit her temple. A foul, wet glob she could not identify thumped against Garver’s hip.

  “Get Simon back inside, Garver,” she said, “and lock your door.” Then she climbed onto Atheria’s back, fighting hard against the urge to whirl on the people shouting her name and smash them all flat against the ground.

  She buried her face in Atheria’s soft gray mane and tried to push out of her mind the image of the girl on the mountain—her trembling words, the brave way she held her chin, how her eyes were as wide and dark as Audric’s, her mouth full, like Audric’s, and her eyebrows high and arched like her own.

  But she could not trust what she had seen. She could trust no one and nothing and certainly not her own thoughts, which briefly considered that the mountain girl was in fact speaking a wild, horrible truth. But her mind rejected the idea at once. It was too immense, too impossible. Thinking of it made her head spin and frightened her so completely that the fear hardly registered. She noticed her terror dully, as if watching the world move from a staggering height, and then turned away from it.

  The girl had been a trick of Corien’s, a deception crafted to unbalance her.

  She sent a swift thought to Ludivine: Don’t tell Audric about this, and then, if you love me as much as you claim, you’ll leave me be.

  Then she whispered, “Take me away from here. Fly for hours. Fly until I feel nothing.”

  She let the godsbeast carry her into the roaring quiet of the sky.

  46

  Eliana

  “Many of you will want to find me. You will want to see my face for yourself. But you will never find me. I am nowhere and everywhere. I fight for you in the shadows, and in the shadows I will remain, and if you ever did stumble upon me, I would tear your heart from your chest and your tongue from your throat, and the secrets of my face and name would die with you. Do not seek me. Hear me. Follow me. Trust me.”

  —The Word of the Prophet

  Eliana’s mind floated in a sea of strange colors: fuchsia, tangerine, ebony, the deep red of her recurring nightmares, the gold of embers, the roiling blue-black of the ocean at night.

  A distant voice floated on the waves. It was familiar, this voice, and she did not want to hear it. She sensed it would hurt her, or that it at least hungered to hurt her, or perhaps simply seize her for its own, but she could not move her arms to cover her ears. She had no arms; she had no ears. She was only her battered mind, and a ribbon of pain somewhere below her that grew more brilliant with every passing moment.

  Then something grabbed hold of her hard, beneath her arms. She had arms, she realized, with a dull sort of astonishment. She opened her eyes to see the world. Flickering stars floated across her vision. She shook her head to knock them loose.

  Pain gripped her head in two brittle hands.

  “I’m sorry,” said Simon, very near. “I nearly dropped you. I can hardly stand.”

  Eliana forced open her eyes, though the strange sea beckoned. She saw Simon—the flash of his eyes, blue like a summer sky, like twin hot flames, like sharp-cut jewels.

  “Your eyes are like fire,” she whispered, reaching for him.

  He staggered a little and lowered them both clumsily to the ground.

  “Someone get out here and help us!” he roared over her head, and then he smoothed her hair back from her face.

  “Let’s hope they know us,” he muttered, “and that they don’t shoot us on the spot.”

  What an odd thing to say, Eliana thought, and then she thought no more.

  • • •

  She awoke, clear-headed, to a familiar ceiling. She knew at once that she was in her third-floor room at Willow. Memories of the day rushed back to her: Stepping through the violently lit ring of Simon’s threads. Emerging in that black mountain forest, at first utterly disoriented. She had been expecting a castle, a city, a throne room.

  And then she had found Rielle.

  Immediately, her heartbeat returned to its wild pace from the mountain. She sat up, too quickly, and a sharp pain tore across her abdomen. She touched her stomach and felt the stretch of a bandage beneath her shirt.

  “Dani and Remy tended to your wounds,” said Simon softly. He sat in a chair beside her bed, so still and shadowed that she hadn’t at first noticed him.

  She tried to smile but could hardly hold the shape of it. “It seems to happen a lot, me waking to see you sitting at my bedside.”

  He was quiet for a moment, and then he folded her hand into his and kissed it. “I saw you fighting her, through the threads,” he whispered. “I saw you, and I could do nothing to help you. If I moved, the thread would have snapped. I would have lost you again.”

  “But you didn’t. I’m here, and so are you.”

  He shook his head against her hand. “Things are changed, just as I feared they might be.”

  “Are we safe for now?” she asked, interrupting him.

  “For now, yes.”

  “Is Remy here, and well?”

  “Yes, and he appears to be himself.”

  She pulled him gently toward her. “Then let’s not talk about it just yet. Please, come here. Even if only for a few minutes.”

  “I’ll hurt you,” he said, touching her face. “You should rest, lie still.”

  “I’m not talking about sex,” she replied, and then her voice gave out. She felt Rielle’s magic striking her body all over again and, even worse, Corien’s mind invading hers. His seeking fingers, his smooth, smiling voice.

  Simon slipped into the bed beside her, his body a warm shield between her and the rest of the room. Gently, he gathered her against him, and she hid in the shelter of his embrace, ignoring the pain striping her abdomen.

  “I can still feel him inside me,” she whispered. “I thought I would have lost him, that time would have ripped him out of me. But I still feel him, I think. Or maybe I just can’t rid myself of the memory.”

  Simon was so still that she wondered if he’d fallen asleep. Then he said quietly, “Do you mean Corien?”

  She nodded against his chest. �
�He was there. At least, I think he was. I didn’t see him, but I heard him. I felt him. I tried to get rid of him, but I didn’t know how, and he wouldn’t leave.” She let out a shaky laugh and spoke quickly, the words spilling out of her. “I don’t know half of what she said, or if anything I said made sense to her. Remy should have been there.” She wiped her cheeks on Simon’s shirt. “He could have helped us speak to each other. And he could have seen a godsbeast. Did you see it? It was enormous.”

  He began to stroke her hair. His voice was remarkably calm. “I did.”

  She closed her eyes. The rhythm of his fingers began at last to soothe her.

  “I should have listened to you,” she whispered, her voice heavy. “You wanted to wait, and I pushed you to send me anyway.”

  “I was just as eager to try as you were,” he replied. “If you hadn’t been so distraught, I wouldn’t have hesitated.”

  “So we’re both at fault, is what you’re saying.”

  “Well,” he said, his lips in her hair, “I don’t know that I would go quite that far.”

  “Are you angry with me? If I were you, I’d be angry with me.”

  “For someone who doesn’t love me, you’re terribly concerned about my regard for you.”

  “Simon.” The fragile lightness she’d managed splintered in her throat. She pressed her hands against him, as if to move away, but he caught her gently, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs.

  “I’m not angry.” His troubled gaze searched her face. “I’ve never been more terrified in my life.”

  She chased the distant ghosts in his eyes, the sharp shadows that had not been there the day before, and let him soothe her back into his arms. Soon his soft words were lost to her. She fell quietly into a still, black sleep.

  • • •

  When she next awoke, Simon had already left, the bed beside her gone cold.

  She pulled on her boots, wincing as she bent over to tie them. Wondering if she should attempt to heal her wound before heading downstairs, she held her hands out before her and reached for her castings with her mind.