Two Dark Reigns

by Kendare Blake

  Arsinoe takes a deep breath. It is pleasant to be out, even if the warm summer air smells like city instead of the sea. Sometimes Billy’s family’s brick row house—fine though it may be—can feel so stifling. As they turn down the avenue in the midst of the crowds, she bumps a shoulder into a passerby. Before she can apologize, he recoils at the sight of her scars, still bright pink and running down the right side of her face. Billy makes a fist, and Mirabella opens her mouth, but Arsinoe pulls them back.

  “Never mind it. Let’s just go.” They do but closer to her and just ahead, their shoulders protecting her shoulders, their scowls a barrier against anyone who might slight her. “Good Goddess,” she says, and laughs. “You lot are as bad as Jules.”

  They walk on, navigating the crowds and watching the cabs and carriages pass. It is busier even than Indrid Down High Street, and never seems to slow. A cab dashes by, pulled by a poor bony horse, his back a wreck of whiplashes.

  “Oi, go easy on him, will you!” Arsinoe shouts, but the cabbie only sneers.

  “If only I had the fullness of my lightning,” Mirabella adds. “Or my fire. I would start a cozy flame in the pocket of his pants.” But she does not. Away from the island, their gifts weaken and fade. Even if Arsinoe were a true naturalist instead of a poisoner, she may not have had enough left to comfort the horse anyway.

  Billy shakes his head. “Don’t try to tell me that no one mistreated their horses on Fennbirn.” But his eyes lose focus as he tries to remember an example. Even in the capital, respect for the naturalist gift kept the worst of abuses in check.

  Arsinoe curses when someone runs into her from behind. She does not know if she will ever get used to the crowds. And somehow, she is always the one jostled. Something in Mirabella is still regal, and no one comes within a foot.

  “Oh no,” says Billy. They have reached the end of their street, the row of grand, red-brick houses with wrought iron gates and front steps of bright white stone. But clustered around their doorway is a gaggle of young ladies in dresses of pink and green and pale yellow. It can only be Christine Hollen, the governor’s daughter, and her ever-present troupe of society friends.

  Arsinoe looks up to the window of the third-floor room she shares with Mirabella. With four stories’ worth of rooms in the town house, they had not really needed to share. But when she and Mirabella had arrived on the mainland, legs shaking and clothes still soaked from the storm, they had clung to each other’s elbows and refused to let go. So Billy’s mother, Mrs. Chatworth, had directed them, lips trembling, to one of the larger guest rooms.

  “I don’t know if I have the stomach for this today,” Arsinoe mutters. Christine Hollen had apparently “set her cap” at Billy during the time he was away on the island, and no amount of Arsinoe’s presence seemed able to deter her. If Arsinoe had to endure one more tea watching Christine paw and fawn over Billy, she was likely to behave in a way that Mrs. Chatworth would deem unladylike. Or even more unladylike than usual.

  “There’s no way we can scale the bricks and sneak in through our window?”

  “Not without being seen,” Mirabella says with a smirk. She touches Arsinoe’s shoulder. “You go. Take off awhile until they have gone.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, what?” Billy asks. “I’ve no desire to be left alone in there with my mother and Christine. If you go, Arsinoe, you might return to find me gagged and engaged.”

  “Go,” Mirabella says again. “Maybe . . . maybe you should visit Joseph.”

  “Do you mean it?” Arsinoe asks.

  “Of course I do. Why ruin a perfectly lovely day?”

  “What about Miss Hollen and the governor’s girls?”

  Mirabella steps closer to Billy and slips her hand into the crook of his arm. Just that simple movement and change of posture: a subtle shift in her hips, a slight incline of her head, and anyone watching would think that she and Billy were madly in love. Well, were it not for the shocked look on Billy’s face.

  “You leave Christine Hollen to me.”

  Arsinoe glances at the girls up the street. All are girls Mrs. Chatworth will gladly welcome into her home and would gladly marry her son to. Girls who are nothing like the strange, foreign ones she took in. They dress in proper skirts and do not have deep scars on their faces. Christine Hollen, in particular, is one of the prettiest people Arsinoe has ever seen. Golden hair and peach cheeks, a smile that dazzles. That she is also quite rich seems just plain unfair.

  Arsinoe smiles at Mirabella gratefully. “Poor Christine doesn’t stand a chance.”

  Arsinoe takes off through the city, skirting the row houses by way of alleys and side streets. She is relieved to not face another strained meeting with Christine, who looks at her as if she is some kind of a bug when she bothers to acknowledge her at all, but the farther away she gets, the more her relief is replaced by resentment. In the gray sack of a dress, with no friends or family save Billy and Mirabella, no fortune or prospects of her own, she is no match for Christine Hollen. She would be if things were different. If she were still herself in her black trousers and vest, a fierce black and red-slashed mask over the scars on her face. If she were still a queen.

  Her legs hasten as she makes her way through the streets, heading for Joseph, ignoring the stares from people she passes by. Stares she attracts merely by running, by being a girl out on her own without the benefit of an escort or a parasol.

  She should not have gone off alone. She should have stayed and choked down her tea. It is only when she is alone that the doubt creeps in, that feeling that she does not belong here and never will.

  When they first arrived, both she and Mirabella had tried to charm Mrs. Chatworth. Arsinoe especially, had been prepared to like her or even love her. She was Billy’s mother, after all. She had raised a boy who would stand by his friends. So when they met, she expected to find someone like Cait Milone: with a stern face and a stout heart, and strong arms for holding her children. Or even someone like Ellis: never serious but always ready with advice. Instead, Billy’s mother was worse even than his father in some ways. She lacked substance, and her facial expressions vacillated between irritated and horrified.

  By the time she reaches the cemetery gates, Arsinoe’s legs burn from exertion, but her frustration has not been spent. She slows to a walk, respectful of those at rest, yet cannot help kicking feebly at pebbles on the path.

  “Parasols,” she mutters. “Frilly dresses and silly games. That is all there is for a girl to do here. Drink tea and twirl a parasol until she gets married.” And to be married on the mainland means to obey. If there is one word in the world sure to get Arsinoe’s hackles up, it is that one.

  Thank the Goddess, Billy does not want that. Her Billy, who only wants her to be what she is and for her and Mirabella to be happy. Which she is, most days. It is only when she is alone that she remembers that she is not one of them. Not even Mirabella will be accepted as one of them, and Mirabella follows all their rules.

  Arsinoe pauses and takes a breath. The cemetery where Joseph is buried is set out on the edges of the city and surrounded by stone walls. It is quiet and sunlit, marked by gentle hills and groves of trees, and overlooks the deep blue water of the bay. It is a place Jules would have liked. Arsinoe likes it, too, for it is always nearly empty.

  She follows the path through the northern entrance and past the loose bricks near the Richmond Family markers, then cuts through the grass toward the grove of elm trees. Their shade just reaches Joseph, where he rests near the top of the hill. Before she gets there, she slips into the shadow of the largest tree and strips off her gray sack of a dress. Then she shakes out her rough-cut hair and smooths her shirt—an old one that Billy grew out of—before she clears her throat and says:

  “Hallo, Joseph.”

  Hallo, Arsinoe, says the Joseph in her mind, and for a moment, her eyes blur. His grave marker is simple. Unadorned. No ornate carvings of ivy. No marble sculptures. It is not a fancy mausoleum with stai
ned glass windows and its own private gate. It is a patch of grass and a dark, rounded stone. She blinks hard and runs her fingers along the inscription.

  Here lies

  Joseph Sandrin

  Beloved of Jules

  Brother to Billy

  A friend to queens and cougars

  It is what she told them to write. It does not matter that no one on the mainland will understand what it means, that in years to come, visitors to the cemetery might puzzle over it and think it a joke. The engraving took some time, and when they buried him, the grave had to go unmarked except for a white piece of wood. When the stone was ready, they returned and mourned all over again.

  On the island, he would have been burned on a pyre and his ashes spread in Sealhead Cove. They would have stood together on the deck of the Whistler while the people of Wolf Spring threw petals and grain from the docks. Instead, he is here, under the dirt and far from home. But Arsinoe is glad of that now. At least buried, there is a place that she can come and talk to him.

  “We went to the races today. We didn’t win.” She lowers herself to the ground and balls up her gray dress for something to lie upon. “And then I had to run away when Christine Hollen was at our door. Not that I wouldn’t have come to see you anyway. Christine Hollen. The governor’s daughter. Did you know her?” Arsinoe turns her head.

  “I’m sure you knew her. She probably fancied you to begin with, didn’t she? Probably fainted dead away at the sight of you; it doesn’t take much. But you weren’t from here, and you weren’t staying. And Billy’s rich and”—she clears her throat—“not bad to look at.”

  In her mind, she hears Joseph’s laughter. And then a low rumble of thunder as clouds begin to roll from over the sea.

  “It’s going to rain. I wonder if that means Mirabella’s upset about something. She swears that her gift has all but left her, but I’ve seen her close her eyes, and then felt the coolness of a breeze. And then there’s the fact that her melancholy days always seem to wind up overcast.” She snorts. “A gift like hers is too strong to be stifled. Even by the mainland.”

  She looks up at the sky. She has nothing but time now. Time to wait for Billy to make a life for them, and the thought of his needing to do that sends her stomach into knots. Who is she here? Not Queen Arsinoe, raised as a naturalist and discovered to be a poisoner. Now she is nothing. A rogue queen with no crown.

  She turns toward Joseph’s marker. “Christine is much prettier than me.”

  Lots of girls are much prettier than you, Joseph replies in her mind. But none of them are you.

  Arsinoe smiles. So he would say if he were here. If he could put an arm about her shoulders and squeeze. If he were not in a box, in the ground.

  “I miss you, Joseph,” she says, her head resting on the ball of her dress. “I miss you so much.” And then she falls asleep.

  Who knows how long later, Arsinoe wakes with a start. Her arms fly out to her sides, certain for a moment that she will find not ground at all but the water of a bay.

  “What a strange dream.” She was a girl, dressed as a boy, on a boat. It had been vivid, as vivid as being there, but as she lies still and tries to remember, it comes apart, driven back by the fading orange light and a soreness in her back from sleeping on the grass. She pushes up onto her elbow with a groan and looks toward Joseph’s grave marker.

  There is a woman in a long black dress standing behind it.

  She scrambles up onto her knee and rubs her eyes, thinking she is still dreaming. But the vision does not waver. The woman in black is darker than a shadow. Arsinoe cannot see her face or the details of her clothing. Only her shape, and her long black hair.

  “Who are you?”

  The figure raises her skeletal arm and stretches one long finger to point.

  Arsinoe turns and looks over the hilltop, toward the harbor. Nothing there but ships in the evening. At least, nothing in that direction that any mainlander would know about.

  “No,” Arsinoe says, and the woman’s sharp finger extends farther.

  “No!” She squeezes her eyes shut. When she opens them, the woman is gone. If indeed she was ever really there.

  THE VOLROY

  “It was never going to be an amicable meeting,” Pietyr says, seated upon Katharine’s sofa. “No one likes to have power wrested from them. And Luca’s choices were . . . unexpected.”

  “Unexpected!” Genevieve scoffs as she storms back and forth with her arms crossed. “They were intentionally antagonizing.”

  Katharine sighs. Pietyr has poured her a cup of tea and even added a splash of oleander milk, but she does not want it. She has been listening to him argue with Genevieve since they returned to her rooms after the meeting of the Black Council.

  “Intentional or not,” says Pietyr, “you squawked like an upset bird. Is that how Natalia would have reacted? You have none of your sister’s composure, Genevieve. Absolutely none of it.”

  Genevieve spins. “How dare you speak so to me. I am her sister. Her sister, not some errant nephew. And I am the head of the family now. Not your father.”

  “I never said it would be my father.”

  “Oh, enough of this.” Katharine rises with a huff and goes to the window to throw open the shutters and let in the warm summer air. She breathes it in and looks down. All that sea and sky. The treetops and bright green spaces. All the good people. All hers. “Can you not see the beauty of these days? The gold in the sunlight? The crown etched into my head?” She turns to them, her smile wide. “We won! You are too entrenched in the chaos of the Ascension still to see it, but we won. And my reign will not be a time of bitterness and contention.” She steps toward them with her hands out. Pietyr scrunches his brow; Genevieve goes pale as if unsure Katharine is not about to fling a knife at her head.

  “It will be a reign of ease and prosperity.” She takes Genevieve’s hand, lightly, so she will not flinch. “And new beginnings.”

  “Are you so ready to forget the past?” Genevieve asks.

  “I am ready to set old grudges aside. And so should you. I will need the two of you in harmony now to make sure Bree Westwood does not get into any trouble.”

  Pietyr stands and straightens his cuffs. He considers shaking Genevieve’s hand but at the last moment changes his mind, and they settle on a curt nod.

  “The queen is to be commended for her optimism,” he says. “I hope she is right.”

  “I hope so, too,” says Genevieve.

  “You will see.” Katharine rises on tiptoe to kiss Pietyr fully on the mouth, her mood lifting along with her words, as though that, too, can be changed by sheer will. “To set the tone, we will hold a welcome banquet in the square. A warm gesture for the High Priestess and the Westwoods. To signal to the people that the crown is settled.”

  Pietyr cocks an eyebrow. “If Luca and the others will agree to it.”

  “Of course they will agree to it,” Katharine says, and laughs. “I am the queen.”

  Katharine invites High Priestess Luca on a tour of the capital, to reacquaint her with it after being so long away. It could be taken as a jibe, she supposes. The out-of-touch High Priestess, with her heart still in Rolanth. But she does not mean it like that.

  When she arrives at Indrid Down Temple on her fine black stallion, she and her queensguard find Luca already mounted and waiting beside three priestesses. Katharine’s eyes linger on the slivers of exposed blade at each priestess’s waist.

  “Is it the practice now that all priestesses be armed?”

  “Not all,” Luca replies. “But certainly those who are escorting the High Priestess and the Queen Crowned. Rho insisted.”

  “Did she?” Katharine swallows. War-gifted Rho. Somehow Katharine knows that, had the plan to cut off her arms and head after the Quickening come to pass, it would have been Rho doing most of the carving.

  And now she serves on the Black Council.

  Katharine looks away from the knives and back at Luca. “You look very wel
l on horseback, High Priestess.”

  Luca nods, and her horse dances in place as though it understands. “They tried to put me on a white mule.” She snorts. “But I am not that old yet.” Instead of a mule, her mount is a large white stallion. Now Katharine will have to keep their horses at a distance so their stallions will not fight, which is perhaps precisely what Luca intended.

  “How are you finding Indrid Down?” Katharine asks as they ride, making their way through High Street past her favorite cheese shop and Genevieve’s favorite dressmaker.

  “Hotter than I remember,” says Luca. “And once winter comes, I am sure I will find it colder than I remember.”

  “But not more draughty than Rolanth, surely, with its open-air temple and cliffside breezes?” How many times had Natalia hoped through gritted teeth for the damp and draughts to finally kill off old Luca?

  “Not as draughty.” Luca cocks her head. “Nor as light. Nor as lovely. The capital craves brightness and beauty. It is a good thing I appointed Bree to the council. For she is both of those things.”

  They skirt the Dowling marketplace, which they are unable to enter with their horses, and Katharine points out stalls of particular quality as Luca smiles and waves to the people. They are thrilled that the High Priestess is back in the capital where she belongs. Those closest reach out to touch the edges of her robes and ask for blessings. Katharine, they ask for nothing. To her they only bow.

  “They fear you,” Luca mutters.

  “Of course they do. But they will love me, too. Natalia always said the island loves a bloody Ascension. I was the only one who tried to give them that.”

  They stop at the bluff where the street rises before gradually sloping to the harbor, and the party members lean on their pommels, admiring the view of the sea in the afternoon light. Far to the north, around the curve of the harbor, the early, wooden skeletons of ships rise on the dry land. They are the ships that Pietyr and the council ordered built for the Martels as payment for Nicolas’s death, and Katharine does not mention them.