Wench

by Maxine Kaplan

  And perhaps most importantly, the sleeves went all the way past her wrists.

  At Sir Lurch’s knock, she stood and took a last look in the mirror, pleased at what she saw. Tanya took his arm and allowed him to lead her out of the tower to the Queen’s private study.

  It took rather a long time. At her sigh at passing the mile mark, Sir Lurch gave Tanya a sympathetic smile. “The Queen,” he explained, “requires privacy. None of the courtiers are placed near her apartments.”

  Eventually, though, he did stop walking. “Here we are,” he said.

  Tanya looked up, expecting to see another grand door, perhaps also made of the living ice of the council room’s or some even more fantastical substance.

  Instead she saw a platinum cage reaching all the way up to the ceiling. The bars were in the shape of icicles.

  Sir Lurch stepped forward and twisted three of the icicles in a specific pattern: two triple turns, followed by a double turn. The front of the cage slid open and Sir Lurch stepped aside. It took Tanya a second to realize that he was waiting for her to actually enter the cage.

  She looked to the ceiling and the floor, but saw nothing but amber and quartz. She really would be entering a cage. Still, she was a tavern maid in the Glacier and the Queen had taken her quill. She had no choice but to do as she was told. So, smothering a gulp, she picked her skirt off the floor and walked inside . . .

  . . . And immediately began to sink.

  Chapter

  17

  “Hey!” Tanya grabbed at the icicle bars, but the bottom of the cage was descending too fast, and gravity peeled her fingers from the metal. “Sir Lurch, I formally protest! This is—oh, all the hells that ever was!” Tanya banged her fist against the wall in frustration, instantly regretting it as the fast-moving, rough-hewn stone scraped her knuckles.

  Tanya plummeted down a narrow chute of stone, a gray and unremarkable material, especially compared with the splendor of the Glacier overall.

  It was dim and cold in the chute. The light at the top shrank to a pinpoint and a flickering white illumination began to rise up around her—similar to the magical, fireless flames Sir Lurch had conjured on their way into the palace, but wilder, moving like amphibian creatures in a stream, lightning-quick and unpredictable.

  The cage picked up speed. Tanya had to grasp the back of the cage just to stay upright. And then, with a neat popping sound, the cage stopped. Cautiously, Tanya lifted her head and saw another metal grille, this one carved in the shape of stars.

  The grille slid open. Tanya stepped forward, but an explosion of light forced her back down. She threw her arms over her eyes.

  “What the—?” Tanya didn’t have the wherewithal, the words, to form the end of her question. She looked again and found that, even though the light was bright, brighter than sunshine, it didn’t hurt her eyes to look at it.

  She stepped forward hesitantly, one foot after the other, into the light. It was like stepping into a world of white. She had vaguely expected it to feel warmth on her skin, but it was cool—not the cool of a breeze, but the chill of broken ice.

  Tanya stepped deeper into the bright white and smelled something familiar—briny and smoky. Cheered, she kept walking.

  The smell grew stronger and the light dimmer, until suddenly the white floated away like smoke and she was in a round room, standing in front of a modest-size table set with Limn Bay mussels in a bacon and sage broth: a Port Cities specialty.

  “I’m so glad you could join me, Tanya.”

  Tanya whirled around and saw the Queen enter the room through a stone-bricked archway dripping with icicles. At least, she was pretty sure it was the Queen.

  The Queen was barefoot with her hair down, dressed in unadorned gray and those glasses from the council room. She wasn’t wearing the crown.

  She stopped under the arch, smiling slightly. Tanya wondered what she was waiting for, until she suddenly gulped and remembered herself, sweeping into the deepest curtsy she could manage—deeper, actually. The cage, the light, the barefoot ruler of all Lode—they all served to disorient the tavern maid and she tripped on her own feet on her way to the floor, stumbling to her knees.

  “All hells,” Tanya cursed as her bones collided with the hard, freezing floor, and then immediately bit her lip to keep her from uttering an even worse profanity.

  The Queen laughed. She stepped into the room and bent to help Tanya up with a smooth, chilly hand.

  “I don’t mind informality in this room,” she said. “No need to be embarrassed.”

  Tanya privately disagreed. She allowed the Queen to help her off the floor and then bent her head respectfully, her hands clasped in front of her waist.

  She sensed the Queen stiffen in front of her. “I believe I requested that you be comfortable,” she said, her voice hard.

  Tanya raised her head a fraction of an inch. “I’m quite comfortable, Your Majesty, thank you,” she said.

  “You’re not.” The Queen’s voice was firm and dismissive. “You’re standing as if you’re here to serve the dinner rather than eat it.”

  Despite the cold of the room, Tanya felt heat begin to rise in her face. Still, Tanya answered, her voice measured and polite. “I apologize for displeasing you, Your Majesty.”

  “Again! I asked for your comfort. You don’t look comfortable; you look like a servant.”

  As the Queen’s voice reached disdain, Tanya snapped. “Perhaps I’m more comfortable as a servant,” she spat. “Has that occurred to you?”

  There was a sharp silence and Tanya contemplated imminent death. For all she knew, yelling at the Queen of Lode was treason. But the Queen laughed again and Tanya dared to look up.

  Still giggling, the Queen draped herself across one of the chairs and reached for a silver filigree carafe. She poured a bubbly golden liquid into the two waiting glasses. “Do you know, I suppose it hadn’t,” she said, eyeing Tanya with interest. “That was quite stupid of me. Arrange your body however you choose, Tanya, but please do sit. Join me in a drink.”

  Tanya forced her shoulders to unclench and obeyed, sitting across from the Queen.

  The Queen handed her a glass. “Here,” she said. “We should toast.”

  Tanya accepted the glass, wondering what she and the Queen of Lode could possibly have in common to toast. But then the Queen surprised her, clinking the glasses together, and saying, “To our quill.”

  The Queen and the wench locked eyes for a moment. Tanya once again noted the whirring chaos of the Queen’s eyes, muted by the spectacles, but not extinguished. She couldn’t read them.

  Tanya clinked her glass against the Queen’s. “To our quill,” she said quietly.

  The Queen smiled again and lifted the glass to her lips. Tanya did the same and nearly spat out its contents in confused surprise.

  “Unusual, isn’t it?” asked the Queen, taking another serene sip.

  “What is it?” Tanya examined the liquid with professional curiosity. “It doesn’t taste like any wine I’ve ever had.”

  It also didn’t feel like any wine she’d ever encountered, and she lived in a tavern in a central port of Lode. She didn’t drink much, but she’d tasted every wine that passed through the kingdom, from the sour sparkling wine fermented in the archipelago of islands between Gobel and Mourit, to the sweeter reds pumped in the cisterns of Lode’s own arid mountain plains. None of those wines’ bubbles expanded upon hitting the tongue or exploded against the back of her teeth, making them tingle and chatter.

  The Queen looked at the wine critically. “It’s something I’ve been working on with the court chemist and one of the magic makers—oh no,” she said, catching Tanya’s glance. “This has nothing to do with aetherical manipulation. It’s a little more academic that. I’ve been studying with this particular scholar since I was quite young. Tell me, what does it taste like to you?”

  Tanya was a little alarmed to hear that the Queen was a dabbler in “academic” magic, whatever that meant. But s
he was also a barmaid presented with a new alcohol, so she took another sip.

  Tanya frowned. “It’s odd,” she said. “It looks like it’s going to taste tart or fruity, because it’s so clear, but it doesn’t. It tastes . . . gamey. Salty. Maybe a little smoky? More like a whiskey, except with no sharp finish.”

  The Queen applauded lightly. “Well expressed,” she said. “You must know your business very well to give such a clever description.”

  “What makes a wine taste like that?”

  The Queen began ladling mussels into Tanya’s bowl, a translucent porcelain specimen. “Why, you do,” she said. “It’s not exactly wine. I’ve been calling it a ‘cordial.’ The clever thing about that cordial is that whatever it tastes like, feels like, even looks like, depends on the person imbibing it. It can be quite informative.”

  Tanya put the glass far away from her and the Queen laughed again. “Aren’t you going to ask what it tastes like to me?” she asked.

  “No, thank you,” answered Tanya. “That seems rather rude.”

  “I see. You believe me to be rude? It’s all right,” she added, when Tanya stayed tight lipped and silent. “I imagine my servants told you that I say what I mean. I said I wanted you to approach this meeting of ours in comfort. I may be wrong, but I also imagine speaking freely is the mode in which you find the most comfort.”

  Tanya folded her arms. If the Queen wanted a freely given opinion, she’d get it. “All right then,” she said. “For starters, to be clear, I have nothing against using alcohol to manipulate. But I also think it’s the height of, if not hypocrisy, then at least obliviousness, to demand comfort of one’s subordinates, trundle them into a cage with no explanation, and, finally, use alcohol-based subterfuge in order to learn trivia of some obscure nature about them within the first five minutes.”

  Retrieving a mussel from the aromatic broth and neatly cracking it in half, the Queen listened attentively. She nodded when Tanya finished.

  “Thank you for that candor, Tanya,” she said. “Those are reasonable reactions. I will take them into consideration while conducting such interactions in the future.”

  As the Queen spoke, Tanya saw the swirling chaos of her eyes slow down, contract, and begin spinning in the opposite direction, as if a mechanical gadget were recalibrating. Was she a Queen or a machine? Tanya didn’t have an answer, so she began to eat, and nearly swooned at the taste. Mussels in sage-and-bacon broth was a dish she had made a million times a month, but she never had the time to cook a shellfish stock long enough to get this depth of flavor. It was a humble dish, but the kitchen staff had treated it with respect.

  Tanya had secretly hoped for something to criticize. It felt safer to be disappointed in the food in this place.

  The Queen wiped her mouth with a linen napkin and pulled a lever next to the hearth.

  “In the spirit of eschewing both hypocrisy and obliviousness, allow me to at least explain the cage,” said the Queen. “This, as you know, is my private study. I have gone to great lengths to keep it private. Only a few people know the passcode to the entry chamber—the cage—which is the only point of entry into this chamber large enough to fit a person.” A bell rang out and a silver door slid open above the fireplace, revealing rounds of steaming hot bread dripping with herbed butter. The Queen lifted the tray to the table. “The other point of entry,” she added, “is this dumbwaiter from the kitchen. There is another passcode for opening it from the kitchen side, and it is known only by the head pastry chef, who was my nursery maid and has my complete trust. Of course.”

  “Of course,” muttered Tanya, totally overwhelmed. She reached for a piece of bread and hissed as her finger brushed the white-hot tray. She snuck a suspicious glance at the Queen; she had pulled the tray bare-handed and her hand was as white and steady as before.

  The Queen continued. “And once the entry chamber reaches the study, any person will be scanned by the cloud.”

  “That light—that was a cloud?”

  She rolled her eyes and Tanya felt herself relax; it was a gesture she understood. “Well, no, not really,” answered the Queen. “That’s just what I call it. No, that’s another one of my experiments. The light scans whoever enters it and if they’re on my list, it dissipates.”

  “What if they aren’t?”

  The Queen only smiled and answered a different question, drawing a butter-poached porgy, arranged on a bed of crisp, many-colored tomatoes, from the dumbwaiter. “I like to keep my security measures known only to those who need to know them, which is why Sir Lurch didn’t tell you about the cage ahead of time.

  “Any other questions?” asked the Queen, pulling out the quill from her sleeve. “Because I have numerous questions.”

  Tanya’s eyes widened at the sight of the quill. Its barbs were wilted and drooping as if exhausted, gaps gaping between them as if the feather had been flattened like flowers between pages in a book.

  But the quill was still blinding white, and sparkling like a newly polished diamond. Tanya couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to have been using a lot of magic.

  “You got it to work?”

  The Queen smiled grimly. “After a fashion,” she said. “This quill should be a very handy bridge between more traditional, elemental magic and the aetheric strands, but, as you suggested, it seems to only want to work for you. I accessed its power, but I had to use brute force methods, and precision was impossible. Now,” she said, opening a drawer and pulling out two leather notebooks, a pot of ink, and a plain pigeon quill. “You made me a very generous offer in my council room, to walk me through the use of this quill.”

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wait until you finish your meal, Your Majesty?” asked Tanya, staring as the Queen simultaneously inked the plain quill and crammed a forkful of tomatoes into her mouth. It somehow didn’t seem quite the thing for a Queen to drip sauce all over herself while taking notes on a tavern maid’s instructions.

  The Queen opened the more worn of the notebooks and frowned. “Why? I should have thought you’d be used to working through meals.”

  “I am, but . . .”

  “No buts,” said the Queen, pushing the new notebook toward Tanya. “I work through my meals, too. Teach me.”

  And so, Tanya did. As an array of dishes made their way to the chamber—chilled corn chowder with spot prawn, a frozen puree of some sharp yellow fruit, a medallion of pan-seared goose liver in a port wine sauce—Tanya stained her fingers, Jasmine’s dress, and the fine linen tablecloth with ink as she drew map after map, list after list, and arrow after arrow, to demonstrate the feats the quill could perform.

  By the time Tanya finally reached the limit of her knowledge, the fire was low and caramel custard was melting in dainty dishes. There was the detritus of half a dozen demonstrations piled around them.

  An entire charred willow branch . . .

  A small mountain of white powder lifted straight from the White . . .

  A carpet of pink rose petals from the duchess’s garden . . .

  Tanya had even attempted to pull through the aether some unidentifiable black sludge from the volcano in Bloodstone. It had worked, sort of. A fat raindrop of the stuff had materialized above them, hovered there for a moment, and then slipped to the table with an awful squelch and began crawling toward Tanya with finger-like tendrils. The Queen quite sensibly slammed a goblet over it and shunted it off to the side, to be dealt with later by one of her experts. Tanya didn’t like the sound of that particular expert, but the goblet—a heavy iron thing—seemed to be containing the sludge, so she assumed the Queen knew what she was doing.

  “And that’s basically it,” finished Tanya. “If you always keep an up-to-date map, keep it large enough and check it very regularly, theoretically you should be able to perform any feat of aetherical manipulation while also nipping any junkoff in the bud.”

  The Queen had been furiously scribbling in her notebook throughout Tanya’s entire demonstration. She held up a finger and
finished drawing some sort of figure. She put her pen down and studied what she had drawn, the room silent and even colder than before as the last of the fire died out.

  The Queen slowly pushed her glasses up from where they had drooped to the tip of her nose. She looked up at Tanya.

  “Thank you,” said the Queen. “That was very informative. Coffee?” Before Tanya could answer, she had already pushed the lever.

  “You’re welcome,” said Tanya, taking a moment to remember that customary response. She felt strangely invigorated—this had been good work! She fiddled with the quill, twirling it between her middle and forefinger.

  The coffee arrived and the Queen began fixing a cup with cream and three sugars. To Tanya’s surprise, the Queen passed it to her. Tanya accepted it, but raised an eyebrow at her host. There was no one in the Glacier in a position to tell the Queen of Lode how Tanya took her coffee. Lady of Cups, there was no one in Lode in a position to tell anyone how Tanya took her coffee; no one had ever asked. And yet the Queen, somehow, knew.

  The Queen poured herself a cup of coffee, leaving it black. “How extensive was your education, Tanya?”

  Tanya blinked. That was not a question she had expected.

  “Not very, Your Majesty,” she answered. “I went to the village schoolhouse for a month or two when I was about ten, but mostly my guardian trained me to run the tavern.”

  “And it was your guardian who taught you to read and write, to do basic math.”

  She nodded. The Queen looked thoughtful and Tanya braced for a series of questions about when her parents died, the man who had raised her, where he was now, etc.

  She was wrong. “So, you don’t know any other languages?” asked the Queen. “What about history? Economics? Any of the natural sciences?”

  Tanya swallowed a too-large gulp of hot coffee. After she had coughed herself clean, she answered, “I’ve never been anywhere but the Port Cities, but, as to languages, I could probably get by in Moray and Lumen. I’ve got a little bit of Gobi and Kiley, and I’m actually rather good at Junn. A man who stayed with us for six whole months only spoke Junn. I know at least pleasantries in most of the languages that pass through Griffin’s Port, I guess.”