One Dark Throne

by Kendare Blake

  “How would he know that?” Jules objects. “The decoy could be for us.”

  “He saw scouts on the road and followed them as they curved around the capital toward Highgate. He lost them then, but it isn’t far from there to disperse into the wood. Our wood.”

  Luke continues to serve, sliding biscuits onto each of their plates.

  “I’ll be relieved to have one done, to be honest,” he says. “I wouldn’t have thought her brave enough to come here after the way she ran from the bear onstage.”

  Joseph lowers his head.

  “What luck to have the drop on her,” Luke goes on, and smiles. “The Goddess is with you, like I’ve always said.”

  “Yes. It’s grand to have the upper hand,” Arsinoe says quietly. Luke does not know that the bear was a ruse. That she would have to walk into the fight alone. He will be so disappointed in her when she and Jules run away, to hide until Katharine is dead.

  “We don’t have long,” Luke says. “If we are right, she could be in our forests in a day or two, just behind the scouts.”

  The room falls silent. Hank pecks at the biscuit in Arsinoe’s limp fingers.

  “We . . . ,” Jules says hesitantly. “We should go. Prepare.”

  “Of course,” Luke says as they stand. “Take some biscuits with you. And some fish. I . . . I’m just so glad that I could give you this news. I almost wish I could go with you and fight.”

  He hugs her, so unafraid. Confident that she will win, and Arsinoe hugs him back tightly.

  “We’ll have to go,” Jules whispers as they go down the stairs. “If Mirabella is coming, we have no choice but to run.”

  “I can bring the horses around after dusk,” Joseph says.

  “No, I ought to bring the horses. My gift will keep them calm.”

  Arsinoe walks through the shop on wooden legs as they assure her it will not be for long. That Mirabella will turn straight around when she finds Wolf Spring empty and go for Katharine. They might be able to come back within a week.

  “I didn’t think she would attack,” Arsinoe says, dazed.

  “I told you,” Jules growls, her eyes narrowed. “I told you that she would.”

  They step out of the shop, ready to separate and race off to gather supplies, but instead run face-first into a gathered crowd. The shock is such that Camden hisses and paws the air at them.

  “What . . . uh . . . what are you doing here?” Arsinoe asks. But she knows. They have come to see her off. Luke was never very good at keeping a secret.

  “Will you bring the bear into the square before you go?” someone shouts.

  “Go?” says Jules.

  “Well, you can’t stay! You can’t let the elemental come to Wolf Spring! She’s a nightmare.”

  “They’ve had lightning strikes as far west as Kenora,” someone else calls out. “Cows burned up in their pastures.”

  “She’ll burn our boats into the harbor, looking for you!”

  Joseph shakes his head. He should have stayed still. Too many still hate him for saving Mirabella at Beltane. Some hate him just because he has lived too long on the mainland.

  “Burned-up cows in Kenora,” he mutters, looking past Jules right at Arsinoe. “As if she can command storms across the island while she sits at home in Rolanth.”

  “It doesn’t matter, does it?” Jules asks sharply. “If she’s coming here? They are right to be afraid.”

  “They are,” says Arsinoe. “If she really means to kill me, I can’t let her do it here.”

  “Right. So we run.”

  “No. I can’t let her burn down houses looking for me. I have to find her first.”

  “Arsinoe, what are you saying?” Jules asks, but Arsinoe can barely hear her over the growing noise of the crowd. Finally, Jules shouts at the people, loud enough that Arsinoe swears the planks beneath their feet quiver at the sound.

  “You’re not ready,” Jules says, and Joseph slides his hand onto her shoulder. “Your bear . . . isn’t ready!”

  “He seemed ready enough at Beltane!” someone shouts, and the crowd cheers.

  Jules grasps Arsinoe by the arm.

  “Let me slow her down. Let me be your decoy.”

  “No, Jules. You know you can’t interfere.” She turns to Joseph. “Where is Billy? He should have been here. He should know.”

  “His father sent a boat and he sailed for home. He said he wouldn’t be gone more than a couple of days. I . . .” He pauses helplessly. “If you go before he comes back, he’ll never forgive himself.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Arsinoe says. “You’ll tell him I asked about him?”

  Joseph nods.

  “I’m going to go out and meet her,” Arsinoe says loudly. “I’m going to keep her out of our city so she can’t do any harm.”

  The people smile and cheer. They clap their hands. Someone demands that she bring Mirabella’s body back strapped to the bear for them all to see. Something flies through the air and she catches it: a bag packed with supplies.

  “A change of shirt and some food,” Madge says, and winks. “Bandages, though you won’t likely need them.”

  Arsinoe swallows, and steps down into the square.

  Jules tries to pull her back, and Camden cuts in front of her to curl around her legs.

  “You can’t. You’re not ready.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Jules. I don’t have any other choice.”

  Beneath the bent-over tree, Arsinoe sits on a small log, edging her knife with poisonous nightshade. But though the poison on the blade practically sings through her blood, she does not want to use it. She does not want to hurt Mirabella.

  But nor does she want to die.

  “It won’t come to that,” she says to herself. “She’ll see me, and I’ll see her, and we’ll figure this out. It’ll be just like before.” She looks around beneath the tree, searching for agreement from the Goddess. For some sign.

  The ancient, sunken stones are covered over with moss, and the tree has sprouted long, strange leaves, but that is only a disguise. Here in the sacred space, where the Goddess’s eye is always open, the tree does not care for summer, or winter, or time at all. Arsinoe listens to the utter silence, and wonders how much of her will be trapped here forever after she has sunk all that blood into the soil.

  She gets back to work, rubbing and squeezing the nightshade along the blade. The scars of her face begin to itch, and she nudges the mask onto her crown. A twig snaps behind her and she tugs the mask quickly back down again.

  “You don’t have to wear that thing on my account,” Madrigal says, dipping prettily below the bent branches in a bright green dress. “It can’t be that comfortable in the heat.”

  “It’s fine,” Arsinoe says.

  “You like the way that people look at you in it, you mean,” Madrigal says, and Arsinoe purses her lips. “I heard about Mirabella’s attack. I thought I might catch up with you here. I hoped that I would.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it would mean you are doing something more than walking out to face your death. Jules is going out of her mind. Not even Joseph can calm her.”

  Arsinoe looks down. She hates to think of Jules that way. Panicked. Afraid.

  “Is there anything?” she asks. “Anything that might help? Bring me luck? Make her attacks miss?”

  “What a spell that would be. There is something, though, but we will need to work fast.” Madrigal raises her brow and looks at Arsinoe’s knife, and Arsinoe discreetly tucks the nightshade up into her sleeve. Madrigal will have brought her own knife anyway.

  “What are we doing?” Arsinoe asks.

  “Calling your bear,” Madrigal replies. “The same bear that we enchanted with low magic onto the stage at the Quickening. He is the only one you can hope for, and that’s only if the spell we cast was strong enough to still bind you together.”

  “Even if it was, he will never get here in time.”

  “Perhaps not,” Madrigal says. “But it
is worth it to try.”

  “Very well, then. Let’s have your knife.”

  “What’s wrong with the one in your hand?”

  “I’m saving that one for my sister,” she says, and Madrigal tosses hers over.

  Arsinoe walks to the bent-over tree, ready to reopen the cuts in her palm, to paint the bear’s rune in blood and press it to the bark.

  “He might only cause more problems. He certainly did before.”

  “He did just what he should have.”

  “Tell that to Jules. She still holds on to that, you know. Those people he killed. Even though I was the one who got her into it. Even though she didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “Who says she didn’t do it on purpose?” Madrigal asks. “I saw the way that bear went straight for Queen Mirabella. You shouldn’t underestimate the depth of my Jules’s temper. It grows worse and worse. But when this Ascension is over, she will calm again, and we can all relax. So I’m doing this for her, and all of us, as much as for you.”

  Arsinoe touches the knife to her skin and then pulls back.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t. The low magic could go wrong again.”

  Madrigal rolls her eyes.

  “It’s our fault, you know,” Arsinoe says. “What happened to Jules and Joseph. It was the spell that we did, that I ruined. That’s what pushed him and Mirabella together.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  But she does. She feels it, deep down.

  “Joseph is a man,” Madrigal says, “and men are changeable. Put off their wits, they cannot resist a pretty girl on a storm-struck beach. There did not need to be low magic to cause what happened. And besides, he and Jules are back together now, and all is well. So what does it matter?” She stomps her foot, and her long, chestnut hair ripples in a sudden gust of wind. “Now make the cuts.”

  “Madrigal,” Arsinoe asks, “how did you find this place?”

  “It was a long time ago. I had to be about . . . fourteen. I was with Connor Howard. We’d gotten turned around in the woods and ended up under this tree. When I lay with him here, something inside me woke up. And I’ve been coming back ever since.”

  “Connor Howard? Mr. Howard? The baker? But he’s so old.”

  Madrigal laughs.

  “He wasn’t back then. Well, not that old, anyway.” She cocks her head. “If you do not want to make the cuts, it does not always have to be blood. Sometimes you can use spit.”

  “Spit?” Arsinoe grimaces. “Yuck. That’s worse.”

  “As you like.”

  Madrigal smiles, and Arsinoe slices into her palm. The moment her blood touches the ancient bark she feels her link to the bear pull taut and knows that he will come running.

  THE STONEGALL HILLS

  The road through the Stonegall Hills is quiet. The queen’s party has not passed anyone in half a day. Scouts were sent ahead; they have been sent more and more often now that Wolf Spring is so near. The quiet makes Mirabella nervous as she sits with Bree and Elizabeth, resting against an oak tree. The only bird sound is from Pepper, Elizabeth’s black-and-white tufted woodpecker, happily drilling into the wood.

  “It is too quiet,” Mirabella says. “As if the birds are silenced. Will they do that, Elizabeth, when a naturalist queen is nearby?”

  “I don’t think so. They certainly don’t do it for me.” Elizabeth tilts her head to look up fondly at her familiar. “She could ask them for quiet. But they wouldn’t do it on their own.”

  “A flock of birds with bowed heads,” Bree muses. “That would be some sad processional.” She sits behind Mirabella, separating the queen’s long, black hair into sections for a braid. “I wonder what fanfare she does have. I wonder what it is like when other queens leave their cities.”

  “All swords clashing and shields for a war queen in Bastian,” Elizabeth offers. “And maybe some arrows shot into the sky or hurled with their minds.”

  Mirabella chuckles.

  “They cannot do that anymore, Elizabeth. The gift has weakened.”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes it seems that the plates hover in the air when Rho slams her fists onto the table at mealtimes.” Elizabeth wrinkles her nose and giggles. Mirabella grins as she bites into one of Bree’s forbidden pears.

  Not long ago, she was the Chosen Queen and thought that she would leave Rolanth beneath banners flying. Instead, it was in the dead of night, and no one in the towns they passed has stepped out into the road to wish her well. She is in hiding, in secret, and even if she was not, Arsinoe and Katharine had such strong showings at the Quickening. There is no Chosen Queen anymore.

  “I cannot wait for this to be over,” Bree mutters, eyeing the sweet yellow pear. “When we can eat what we want and go where we want again. I am looking forward to the suitors’ arrival, when perhaps Queen Katharine will be too busy entertaining to send many poisons.”

  Bree stops short and Elizabeth looks at her sharply.

  “It is all right,” Mirabella says. It is not as if she does not know that none of the suitors requested first court.

  “It does not matter anyway,” Bree says, her chin high. “We know who you really want. That handsome naturalist boy. Perhaps you can keep him as a lover after you are married.”

  Mirabella smiles. But she cannot imagine Joseph as a lover. He would demand all of her. He would deserve all of her, and that can never be.

  “That naturalist boy will never speak to me again,” she says softly, “after I have killed Arsinoe.”

  “The scout returns.” Elizabeth nods up the road and gets to her feet. They are not far now from Wolf Spring and the meadows and streams where the spies say Arsinoe is often alone. “It’s a wonder they let her out by herself so often during an Ascension Year.”

  “Naturalists are not accustomed to raising a queen with a true chance,” Bree says. “They do not know how to take proper care.”

  “Perhaps they do not need to,” Mirabella says, rising. “With a great brown bear as their queen’s familiar.”

  The scout slows his mount and gives his report to the head of her guard, who nods. They are safe to advance again.

  “This close to Wolf Spring I hoped for actual news,” Mirabella says, patting Crackle on the neck and mounting. “A sighting. There have been no firm reports of the bear, and that makes me nervous.”

  “Not the bear, but the mountain cat is often with her,” Bree says. “And the Milone girl. Often”—Bree hesitates—“Joseph as well.”

  Mirabella’s eyes flash to her, and Bree drops her gaze. Mirabella will not harm Joseph. She has no wish to harm Juillenne. But if Juillenne interferes, if she sends her cougar, then she and the cat will have to die with the queen.

  WOLF SPRING

  Arsinoe leaves Wolf Spring by way of the Valleywood Road. It is the most common route to the capital, a nice, wide road covered over with trees that passes through Ashburn and Highgate on its way through the Stonegall Hills. If Luke’s spy is right, she should run into Mirabella somewhere in the Ashburn Woods.

  Perhaps Luke and his tailor friend were wrong and she will walk the Valleywood all the way to Indrid Down.

  But somehow she does not think so. It is as if she can sense Mirabella advancing through the hills. She can almost smell her, like the coming of summer rain.

  “You can’t go after her! You can’t interfere!”

  “I’m not going to interfere,” Jules says. It is difficult to pack with her mother in the room. Everything Jules tries to pack, Madrigal takes back out. Her scarf. An apple. A roll of bandage. Madrigal takes them and holds them behind her back. As if that will stop Jules. As if she will not go anyway, even empty-handed.

  “If you’re not going to try to save her, then why go? Stay here. Wait with us. You are not the only one who’s worried!”

  “She’s my best friend,” Jules says quietly. The image of Arsinoe walking away that afternoon haunts her. It was so hard to let her go, even knowing that she intended to follow.

  “You’ve b
een practically in my shadow since Beltane,” Jules says. “Why? Because you want me to forgive you for being with Matthew?”

  “No,” Madrigal says, her face full of hurt. But Madrigal can twist her face in an instant, into any expression that she thinks will earn her the most sympathy.

  “Don’t bother playing the concerned mother now. And don’t tell me not to help. You helped plenty, teaching Arsinoe low magic. And you assisted with the spell to charm the bear onto the stage at the Quickening.”

  “That was different. That was a show. That was not the Ascension. Now it is up to her.”

  “Now our role ends,” Jules says, her lip curled. “I know you haven’t been here, Madrigal, but even you should have seen. Arsinoe lives or we both die, and that is always the way it was going to be.”

  The boards in the hall creak. Cait appears outside the door to Jules and Arsinoe’s bedroom, her gray hair tied tight at the nape of her neck and her eyes wary.

  “I’m sorry for the noise, Grandma. Everything is all right.”

  “She’s going to go after the queens,” Madrigal mutters. “You should never have kept her here, so close to all this.”

  “You weren’t around to give an opinion,” Cait replies in her calm, deep voice. “But maybe we shouldn’t have. We knew it meant heartbreak when Arsinoe would die. But that’s what comes of fostering a queen.”

  “Don’t talk about her like that,” Jules growls. “Like she’s finished.”

  “You should have sent Jules away,” Madrigal says.

  “‘Away.’ Not ‘to you.’” Jules nods. “I suppose I’m glad you’re not lying and pretending you wanted me then.” She edges past her grandmother and runs down the stairs, with Camden grumbling at her heels.

  Cait and Madrigal wait until the front door slams before they speak again.

  “We should have told her,” Madrigal says.

  “No.”

  “She will find out anyway. You’re not blind. You’ve seen what’s happened since the Ascension Year began. How her temper grows. The bear she killed by the bent-over tree . . . the one she killed without touching! And how many broken plates have there been? How many vases knocked off tables? You tried to bind it, but it didn’t work.”