Wench

by Maxine Kaplan

  Just let me freeze here, she thought miserably, closing her eyes against the tears stinging them at the corners. Let the Glacier take me.

  Her eyes snapped open. She looked up, saw the icicles above her. She looked down and saw her incomplete tattoo.

  Tanya stood. She reached above her head and plucked the lowest hanging icicle, a sharp, splintery specimen. With the other hand, she unhooked the quill and scratched a twin diamond underneath the first one on her wrist.

  She replaced the quill and took a deep breath. “I can do this,” she whispered, and, before she could change her mind, plunged the icicle into her arm.

  The pain was immense.

  Tanya had expected the sting of a puncture and the panicked rush to the head of bloodletting. She had not expected an audible roar of fire to explode behind her temples or her eyes to fill with searing stars.

  Tanya felt the whole of the Glacier quake and crack. There was a distant shout and the closer crash of smashed glass—or maybe it was ice. Her tattoos exploded into rivulets of blood and the quill shot straight up, exploding with a black-and-white light.

  Gasping with effort and pain, Tanya grabbed it. She had no other surface to write on and no longer felt the cold, so she pulled off her dress and laid it on the floor.

  There was no ink, but she did have blood.

  Shivering, she drew and wrote and watched as her blood twisted on the rough cloth, forming her arm, her wrist, her fingers, the tines of the feather, its spine, and finally, its sharp point, sticking into a rough diamond on her wrist.

  And then, there it was, running through the blood, bone, muscle—

  Ice.

  Tanya smiled and stuck the quill back into her arm. The Glacier exploded into existence on her arm, the tattoos red and gold both, and everywhere she saw it: ice, ice, ice!

  She made a few quick strokes with her fingertip. Now that the quill could recognize the ice, it was as easy as she had anticipated, and within minutes it was done. Tidy caps of impenetrable ice covered twelve doorways, twelve water shafts, and twelve hearths.

  Tanya removed the quill and then, more slowly, the icicle. She lifted up the icicle, shining red, and let the quill fall to the floor.

  Her arm sewed itself back up with a crunching sound, the sound of ice freezing around wood.

  The quill snapped to attention and, careless of gravity, attached itself to her wrist, its feather a light caress against her forearm, the last sensation she was aware of before she collapsed, falling as easily and softly as snow.

  Just before she lost consciousness, she managed a single triumphant thought:

  No one else could have done that.

  Her eyes closed before she could see the tattoos turning paler and brighter, until they shone like ice streaked through with blood and then turned to gold.

  Chapter

  20

  “Tanya!” The Queen’s voice echoed up from her study. “Tanya, now!”

  It was not quite four A.M. In the months that Tanya had been serving as the Queen’s private secretary, she had never been able to break the habit of jerking awake as soon as first light hit her, but it was still full night, and so she twisted among her pillows to lie on her stomach, hoping the voice was a very irritating dream.

  There was a sound like chimes and then the very irritating dream was by her bedside, ripping off the blankets.

  “Hey!” cried Tanya. “All right, all right. I’m sorry, I thought I was dreaming.” She rubbed her bleary eyes and then looked at the Queen. She frowned. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  The Queen, plain and stern in her hooded gray work robe, didn’t choose to answer. She simply walked back to the cage and pointedly waited, her arms crossed.

  Tanya rose and dipped a quick, habitual curtsy before kicking her feet into her sheepskin slippers. She shivered and grabbed her own robe, made of soft rabbit fur; the fire had banked overnight. Most of the Glacier was kept warm by a networked overlay of magical energy the Queen maintained as easily as breathing—something to do with increasing the speed of the invisible matter of air. But Tanya’s tower room was isolated, its only point of egress being the cage that had first taken her to the Queen’s study.

  It went up higher than even Sir Lurch had been aware of. The Queen had never had a secretary before, so no one had needed to know.

  Tanya yawned and passed by her nightstand, holding out her wrist. The quill snapped off the table and into place along her arm, like a well-trained puppy.

  She joined the Queen in the cage.

  “Lovely of you to join me, Tanya,” she said acidly as they descended. “I had no idea having a helper at my call would be so convenient. I use ‘call’ euphemistically, you understand.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Because you quite literally weren’t at my call. The phrase isn’t ‘at my beck and fetch,’ is it?”

  “Yes, I understood, Your Majesty. I apologize.” The Queen nodded, but still had her lips pursed, annoyed, and her eyes behind her glasses were red and tired. “Is there, by any luck, coffee already made?”

  The cage landed and the Queen gave her a withering look. “I have been working since I left auditions, Tanya,” she told her, stepping through the cloud. “You tell me if you think they were enervating enough for me to forgo caffeine.”

  Tanya’s jaw clenched sympathetically. There was definitely coffee. She followed her Queen into the cloud.

  That demonstration of beautiful fighting men Tanya had witnessed upon her arrival to the Glacier had been no mere entertainment, but one of several steps in a long, long, long—as long as the Queen could manage, really—process of winnowing down the list of suitors for her hand in marriage.

  The fights were a long-standing tradition, the performances ranked by deadliness and beauty. There were a few additional trials that were also tradition, but since taking control of the Council, the Queen had invented several steps of her own.

  Some, Tanya privately thought, were rather obvious in their ridiculousness—clear delaying tactics. Tanya had never been a third-born son of a king, but she assumed that they had better things to do than compete to arrange the most artful table display. But even more suitors had arrived at the Glacier since the Queen’s bloodless coup. And what had come after.

  The Queen’s private study had transformed into a two-woman war room, but instead of troop positions and artillery stores, the variables being negotiated were grain, water, earth, gas, metal, fiber, stone, and wood. There were two large desks, but the real work took place in two other places.

  The first was the map.

  It was enormous, seven by seven feet—ten by ten when the extensions were put on. It hung on a bright gold easel contraption that either locked into place upright, or flipped ninety degrees to lie flat, as it was now. It was a colorful, detailed topography of the whole of Lode’s territory, sky, sea, and land, overflowing with words and detailing in brick-red ink—Tanya had decided to call what came out of the quill now ink, but she wasn’t quite sure that was true—alongside tidy check-marked charts, keeping track of any additions or deficits she enacted with the quill. The map took up half the room.

  The other half of the room was the Queen’s laboratory.

  The lab was a glittering cacophony of steel and glass, flame and bubble. A maze of tubes interspersed with bellowing copper pots rose two feet above the mirrored table, the remainder littered with small piles of “experiments.”

  Those experiments were why the suitors were still coming, though it was clear that the Queen had no intention of picking one of them as a partner. Those experiments were why no one was complaining that the Queen had upset the status quo of centuries when she neutralized the Council.

  A mineral compound that prevented infection, a metal alloy that was stronger than steel and lighter than tin, and, most recently, a gaseous solution that, carefully aimed, could knock a battalion unconscious with one puff without affecting any of one’s own soldiers—these were the experi
ments that were making Lode rich. Always in favor of efficiency, the Queen had readily accepted Tanya’s blood binding of the quill and left her to the map, while she strategized and dreamt at her shining laboratory.

  But that wasn’t where the Queen went this morning. After pouring another mug of coffee for herself, she went to stand at the map. “Look at this,” she said to Tanya. “I said, now.”

  Tanya had stopped by the coffeepot as well. “Listen,” Tanya said, pouring herself her own cup. “I had to sit through that table-setting contest, too, and I had to do it while keeping score—by metrics I made up.” She walked across the room and stood next to the Queen. “Now, what’s wrong?”

  “Look!”

  Tanya took another sip of coffee and looked up. “Oh no,” she sighed. “Not again.”

  One of the first acts the Queen had signed into law upon her assuming complete control of the Council established a permitting system for any aetherical manipulation over a certain quantity of matter. Any manipulations that could have a discernable effect on the economy had to be approved ahead of time—fifty clerks had been reassigned to process the requests. Hobbyists and researchers could move a little matter around—the Queen was not shortsighted enough to believe she could enforce a complete ban on the practice.

  And, of course, there would always be criminals. Sir Lurch had charge of a special corps to investigate and neutralize any operation that grew large enough to pose a threat to her and Tanya’s organization of the kingdom. Rollo had stayed on at the Glacier as a consultant. Tanya believed the wizard was overly enjoying the dignity that came with a corpsman uniform—or maybe he just liked wearing pants again.

  Theoretically, these precautions should have prevented any errant junkoff from endangering commerce or, more importantly to Tanya, screwing up her calculations.

  Theoretically.

  “How?” asked Tanya. “Didn’t Sir Lurch find the last of the gang operating out of the winery?”

  “Mmmhmm. Yes, he did.”

  “Well, he must not have. I read the same intelligence reports you do. There’s no other unauthorized operation large or skillful enough to cause flooding this intense. Have him check again.”

  “It’s not the gang, Tanya.”

  “It has to be.” The Queen didn’t answer. “How do you know it’s not?”

  The Queen sipped out of her mug and pulled a long, thin pearl needle out of her hair, sending the locks tumbling over her shoulders.

  “Because I have jailed the entire town of Ruby Ridge as well as anyone found in the surrounding forest, a full thirty-mile radius. They have all been chemically subdued, therefore none could possibly be performing manipulations at this level.” She used the hairpin to point at the map. “Look closer at the flooding.”

  But Tanya couldn’t take her eyes off the Queen.

  “You jailed an entire town? What about the children?”

  “I jailed them, too. There are talented children, Tanya, I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”

  Tanya felt a lump form in her throat. “You didn’t . . . ? You didn’t drug the children, did you?”

  “Of course I did.” The Queen looked up at Tanya and blinked. “How else could I be completely sure that they weren’t causing this junkoff? It won’t do them any long-term harm. The innocents will be released eventually, not, I imagine, particularly worse for wear. They’re not hurt, merely sedated. Now, come on Tanya, look at this flood.” Tanya didn’t move. The Queen snapped her fingers in front of her face. “Tanya. Focus. The flood.”

  Tanya felt as though she were trapped in a fog. But the Queen snapped her fingers again and the quill was quivering against her skin and she looked.

  “There’s no labeling,” she said slowly. “It’s not water.”

  “No, I don’t think it is. But look where it’s coming from.” The Queen pointed.

  “Bloodstone,” breathed Tanya. Tanya drew the quill to her fingertips and placed it on the dark, spreading blot. She made some quick strokes, directing a small diamond of the stuff to the quadrant of the map she had designated as their study.

  “I’m not sure that’s wise,” began the Queen, but it was too late.

  A large, viscous bubble of writhing black sludge formed above their heads. It hovered there for a few seconds, making a sucking, slithering, whispering sound that turned Tanya’s blood to ice.

  The bubble burst and the black sludge flew across the room in countless snakes of gunk. The whispering got louder.

  Unlike anyone else Tanya had ever met, the Queen was always fast enough. She shoved Tanya to the floor.

  “Get under the map and stay there,” she ordered, and Tanya scrambled to obey.

  The Queen widened her stance and began rolling her wrists, arms, and fingers together in a swift, intricate pattern, generating a chilly white light. She shot her fingers outward, sending the light into the sludge snakes, one by one, but lightning fast. The sludge paused in midair and dropped to the ground as if concussed.

  The Queen ran to the table and grabbed as many cups and plates as she could carry. “Tanya, help me,” she called. “Trap them with whatever you can find. What I did is going to wear off.”

  Tanya scrambled out from under the map and the two rushed around until they covered each and every drop of sludge. They stood together by the map, panting, as the sludge began to rattle their prisons.

  “Let’s get out of here,” the Queen said wearily, making her way to the cage. “I’ll send word for Rollo to get a containment crew in here. Do you want breakfast?”

  Tanya quickly moved to catch up with the Queen, not eager to spend a moment longer trapped in a room with the sludge.

  “I could eat,” she said as the Queen shut the cage.

  The kitchens were always manned, so it didn’t take long for them to send fresh almond pastries and more coffee up to Tanya’s room. They often ate there. Tanya had yet to see where the Queen slept. She wasn’t sure that she did.

  “What was that?” Tanya finally asked.

  “To what are you referring? The black matter or the light?”

  Tanya shrugged. “Both. Either.”

  The Queen layered her pastry with a thin coating of honey and crammed half of it in her mouth. The Queen did eat, anyway—constantly, mechanically, and without any obvious enjoyment.

  “Do you remember what you brought through from Bloodstone that first dinner in my study?” asked the Queen. “I trapped it for my scholars to examine later.” When Tanya didn’t answer immediately, she frowned. “Did you forget?”

  “That was also the night I provided essential assistance to a coup, while also performing an unprecedented act of blood magic, so perhaps I let that particular mystery slide, thank you very much.”

  The Queen ignored the rudeness, as was her wont—Tanya had been trying to get a rise out of her for weeks, but she seemed immune to rudeness as long as the perpetrators remained useful.

  “Well, it’s the same material,” the Queen continued. “Obviously. I experimented with various levels of cold and various gasses, and finally came up with something that at least appears to stun it, temporarily. But truly, I . . .”

  Tanya leaned forward. The Queen never hesitated. “What is it?” she asked.

  The Queen frowned. “That’s just it. I don’t know what it is. The quill doesn’t even seem to know what it is, as you’ve seen. It seems to only come from Bloodstone and tonight it . . . started spreading. Rather rapidly.”

  “But what’s it doing?”

  “That’s the problem! I have no idea. None! But I did some quadrant mapping of the illegal manipulations and junkoff last night, and found something, well . . . rather disturbing.”

  More disturbing than drugging children? Tanya bit down the question. That wasn’t her job.

  The Queen continued. “There was a gang of illegal aetherical manipulators operating out of Ruby Ridge. We weren’t wrong about that. But they weren’t responsible for all the manipulations we had attributed to them�
�interrogations have made that clear.”

  Tanya shivered at the word interrogations. “Then who?”

  “The gold mine overflow, for example,” mused the Queen, not answering the question. “The tunnel through the reefs.”

  “Your Majesty . . .”

  The Queen put down her pastry and looked at Tanya.

  “The unauthorized manipulations that have had the most economic impact aren’t manipulations at all,” she said. “It’s junkoff. From somewhere else.”

  Tanya frowned. “But Sir Lurch has monitors nearly everywhere. I mean, except . . . oh no.”

  The Queen nodded. “The junkoff is being caused by the black matter,” she said. “Someone is manipulating it. And it’s coming from Bloodstone.”

  Chapter

  21

  Tanya sat back, digesting what the Queen had told her. She wasn’t sure how to feel, but soon landed on annoyed.

  “I don’t understand why we can’t have monitors in Bloodstone,” she blurted out. “Don’t get me wrong—you couldn’t pay me enough to join that corps. But it is still in Lode and you are the Queen of Lode. Why can’t we just do there what we did with Ruby Ridge?”

  The Queen raised an eyebrow.

  “You mean why can’t we just jail and drug children?” she asked archly. “I would have thought your peasant prudery would have prevented you from making such a suggestion.”

  Tanya flushed. “I don’t make policy,” she said hotly, crossing her arms. “I’m merely asking questions.”

  The Queen sighed. “Well, it’s very tiresome of you considering that it’s a question I’ve already answered,” she said. “Yes, Bloodstone is in Lode. It belongs to me. But it operates under its own rules and I can do nothing to combat that from the Glacier.”

  “Then why don’t you go to Bloodstone? Arrest them?”

  The Queen chortled. “Tanya, arrest who? Everyone in Bloodstone is a criminal—everyone. I simply don’t have the manpower and, to be honest, it wouldn’t be worth it. Crime is inevitable in any kingdom. Leaving it to freely consolidate in a particular area isn’t the worst strategic decision the Council ever made.” She took another bite of pastry and sip of coffee. “There is also the problem of the Gate.”