Two Dark Reigns

by Kendare Blake

  “I am only in the crown because of them.” She ties her dressing gown and sits at her table to rub a soothing cream into her dry, scarred hands. “It was they who brought me back. Who made me strong.”

  “I am grateful that they saved you. But it is your time to rule now, Kat, and you have always been a queen, able and blessed.”

  Katharine smiles at him from her reflection in her mirror. The young queen it shows is still pale but not so hollow. Not so sunken, and the hair falling around her in loose curls shines brightly black.

  “What am I without them? Without the dead queens lending me hints of their gifts, I have nothing. No gift of my own. The dead war queens let me throw their knives. The dead poisoners let me devour their poisons. The dead naturalists make sure that New Sweetheart does not turn on me and bite.”

  “New Sweetheart,” he says softly.

  “Yes. I figured that out, too. So perhaps they have even made me smarter.”

  “You were always clever, Kat. Clever and sweet, in equal measure.” He approaches from behind and squeezes her shoulders. “I will leave you to prepare.”

  “Indeed. We do not want to be late for Bree’s first day.”

  Katharine orders fresh pink roses to brighten the council chamber, along with plenty of cool water in silver pitchers. She has the tea cart loaded with berries and meringues and other things she has heard that elementals like to eat, and not a single drop of it is poisoned.

  “It is more than we could have expected, had things gone another way,” Pietyr says when he sees her preparations. He kisses her hand, and his teeth graze her knuckles, sending pleasurable tingles all the way up her arm. It will be hard to revert to discretion after Pietyr finds her another husband.

  The clock ticks, and the other members of the Black Council begin to arrive. Genevieve comes to curtsy and kiss her cheek, so sweet and gentle to Katharine since the crowning. Cousin Lucian bows grandly, perhaps afraid his seat could be traded back to Cousin Allegra at any time. Renata, the priestess Rho Murtra, and High Priestess Luca enter together and sit without a word, though Luca’s old eyes twinkle like stars.

  Antonin sniffs the dishes on the tea cart.

  “Not a drop of poison?” he asks. “If this is how it will be, I will have to start taking a larger breakfast.”

  Together they wait, and wait some more, some standing and chatting quietly, others seated and looking bored. Pietyr has his head propped on forefinger and thumb, staring at the untouched empty chair left specifically for Bree.

  “Perhaps her carriage was delayed?” Renata suggests, and glances around meekly. “Shall we send someone out after her?”

  “She will be here.” Every back in the room straightens when Rho speaks. Her voice is nearly too booming for the chamber to contain. “Her town house is not far. If the carriage failed, she and Elizabeth will walk.”

  “Elizabeth?” Genevieve asks. “Who is Elizabeth? Surely the Westwoods know that they are not allowed an entourage. Surely she has the backbone to come alone.”

  “Of course I do!” Bree Westwood calls out, her timing so perfect that Katharine wonders whether she was waiting just outside the door. The heels of her boots ring off the stone, and Katharine glimpses someone behind her, lingering in the hall in a white priestess robe. It must be the priestess Elizabeth. Mirabella’s other best friend.

  “Perfect,” Katharine whispers, and squeezes her hands tight to quiet the dead queens’ grumbling as Bree Westwood blows into the Black Council like a gust of cold air. She has had weeks to prepare for this, her grand arrival. And there is nothing for Katharine to do but be gracious. Bree drops half a curtsy to Katharine, and a very full bow to High Priestess Luca, and then plops into her seat. Her chin is raised, eyes defiant, and hair cascading in bright brown waves, held back by silver combs.

  Katharine nods to her.

  “Welcome to my council, Bree Westwood. I hope your journey to the capital was not difficult? And if there is anything I can do to ease the transition of your household, do not hesitate to ask.” Bree does not respond, so she goes on. “I have had a special tea prepared, to welcome you.” She gestures toward the cart.

  “No thank you,” Bree says. “And please do not go to any similar trouble. I doubt if I will ever trust this council enough to eat anything that is in this room.”

  The chamber falls silent, except for Antonin, who makes a disgusted sound.

  “How then are we supposed to govern together?”

  “Reconciling a new council with the old is always difficult,” High Priestess Luca says.

  “Or so you have heard,” says Rho. “The poisoners have grasped on to it for so long, who can really remember?”

  For a moment, Katharine wishes she had not dismissed Margaret Beaulin, so she might see war gift against war gift and Rho’s face smashed into the table.

  “It is so dark in here.” Bree flicks her wrist, and the flames on every candelabra flare, so high that Genevieve must move a vase of pink roses so they will not scorch. “And so still, without any windows.”

  “There is a window.” Katharine looks upward, into the shadows of the high ceiling, where windows were cut out of the stone to circulate the air in case the doors were to be sealed.

  “Well, it is so far up that it hardly matters.” Bree slips her summer wrap off her shoulders. Her dress is deep blue embroidered with black, and very elemental, the skirt swaying with movement. The V in her bodice is so deep that Pietyr must be careful to keep from looking.

  “If someone else . . .” She pauses. “Someone with a gift for weather were here, perhaps—we could draw in a decent breeze.”

  Katharine notes the delicate pulse in Bree’s throat. She notes the largeness of her eyes. The open V of the bodice exposing her heart like a bull’s-eye. So many places to sink a knife. Bree Westwood is foolish indeed to speak so when the dead queens are there to hear. To see. They boil so high inside Katharine that she can almost taste their rotten flesh on the back of her tongue.

  Quiet, quiet. To kill another queen is one thing. To kill a member of the council . . . Well, she must truly earn such a punishment.

  “Shall we to actual council business?” Pietyr cocks an eyebrow. “There has been unrest amongst the people concerning the bodies of the traitor queens. We keep expecting them to wash ashore, though I have heard some priestesses say it is more likely that the Goddess will keep them.” He looks at Luca, whose mouth has set in a grim line.

  “That may be true,” Genevieve says, all too happy to pick up this line of conversation. “Still, would it be too much to ask for the legion-cursed naturalist to wash ashore? Or the mainland suitor? I would even settle for a few pieces of the Wolf Spring boy.”

  “I would settle for the cougar,” Antonin says, and the old Black Council laughs.

  “That is enough,” Katharine interjects. But she cannot stop herself from smiling. “If it will put the people’s minds at ease, arrange for boats and small crews to sail out of the harbor to search. Pay them well, and offer an extra reward to any who return with evidence. Whole or in pieces.” She turns toward Luca and Bree. “Now. Shall we plan your welcome banquet?”

  BASTIAN CITY

  That night, Emilia takes Jules to a pub, promising that it will remind her of home and that she could even venture to bring Camden, as the proprietors are loyal to the Vatros clan. But the moment that Jules enters, through an entrance down an alley, her hackles rise. It is less a pub than an underground room of stone with a partial dirt floor, and in the many weeks that Jules has been in Bastian, Emilia has never mentioned it. Yet she is obviously a regular, touching the shoulder of nearly everyone she passes and nodding to the two men behind the bar.

  “What is this place?”

  “We call it ‘the Bronze Whistle,’” Emilia answers. “Try the chicken and the wine. Stay clear of the ale, unless Berkley pours it.”

  Jules glances at the bartenders. She could not guess which one was Berkley, though both look nice enough, sweatin
g a little and working hard. The tall one with the slight reddish beard catches her watching and gives her a wink.

  “They have food here?”

  “Of course! Takes a while to get it. We’re underneath a manor house. They let us run through their halls and use their kitchens, for a fee.”

  “So this is a club, of sorts?”

  “Of sorts.”

  Emilia leads them through the room, lit a bright gaslight yellow. It is quieter now than when they came in, as people stop talking to gawk and mutter about her cougar. Camden yowls happily at the smell of chicken and jumps onto a tabletop. The girls seated there shout, “Oi,” and move their mugs out of the way of her sweeping tail.

  “Sorry,” Jules mutters, and they cock their eyebrows. She coaxes Camden down and follows Emilia to a corner table, untucking the short hair behind her ears so it can swing past her face. She has not had so many eyes on her since the day in the arena at the Queens’ Duel.

  “What will you have?” Emilia asks. “I mean, besides the chicken?”

  “The good ale, I suppose.”

  Emilia slaps her palms down on the table and turns to a server. “Three dishes of the chicken and two mugs of Berkley’s ale. And a bowl of water, for the cat.”

  Camden, never one to skulk on the floor, hops onto the wall bench to wait for dinner. Still so many eyes on them, and just as many watching Jules as the cougar.

  “When will they stop staring?”

  Emilia pays the boy who brings their ale.

  “Maybe when you dance with them. You’re a pretty girl, Jules Milone. You can’t think that it was only your handsome mainlander would notice that.”

  “Joseph wasn’t a mainlander. He was one of us.” And he is still in her heart. Anyone who looks at her that way is a fool if they cannot see that Joseph’s ghost sits beside her.

  Emilia tips her head back and forth. She has made it plain that she does not think much of Joseph, gone so long to the mainland with Billy, but she has never spoken against him. Why would she? He is dead, and it does not matter anymore.

  Jules tries to get comfortable in her chair and rests her elbows on the table. The air in the crowded space is close, but not stifling, the freshness aided perhaps by the kitchens being so far away.

  “Oh no,” Jules groans.

  “What?”

  She pushes her chin toward the door, where the oracle Mathilde sits with her eyes on them, her yellow hair braided through with a fat twist of white.

  “Ah, Mathilde!” Emilia waves to her. “Good. Maybe I will get to hear the song of Aethiel after all.”

  “Is she really a bard?” Jules asks.

  “Of course. She is a seer and a bard. It is possible to be many things at once, Jules Milone. You of all people should know that.”

  Jules frowns as the chicken arrives, but her scowl fades as she smells the steam. The chicken is stewed in a gravy and served with a thick slice of oat bread. She has to yank Camden’s plate away to keep her from biting into it while it is still too hot. She blows on both dishes and twists off a small forkful, tender and delicious. Camden, tired of waiting, grabs hers with her forepaw and sloshes most of it onto the table. Then she licks her fur and burned paw pads.

  Emilia laughs and shakes her head.

  “Having her around is such a danger.”

  “Why?”

  “I will begin to think I can treat all mountain cats this way. And I’ll get ten claws raked down my back.”

  Jules snorts. It is not likely. Mountain cats are rare as far south as Bastian City. Camden was the only one even in the forests of Wolf Spring, as far as she knows.

  “Jules, look out!”

  The knife aimed at her is kitchen cutlery, large and sharp. She leans back as Emilia raises her hands, using her war gift to push the blade off course. Camden ducks, but not far enough, and the knife slices into her back.

  When her cougar winces, Jules sees red. She flips her chair and turns. It is not hard to find the one who threw the knife. The man behind the bar. The one who winked. But now his eyes are so wide, they could near fall out and hang on stalks.

  “You!” she shouts. Her war gift surges, unbidden, and sends him flying against the wall. Bottles and glasses fall to the floor and shatter. Camden, who was not badly hurt, leaps across the tables and onto the bar, snarling and swiping with her good paw, the cut on her back spattering blood into spilled beer.

  “Stop!” Emilia calls. “Berkley, you idiot. You were supposed to wait until she’d finished eating. And you were not to harm the cat.”

  “Was you who harmed the cat. You pushed the knife into her path.” Berkley gets to his feet and brushes at his trousers. He curses when his fingers come away bloody. “I just mended these.”

  Jules turns to Emilia. “You knew? This was planned?”

  “They needed to see your gift. Don’t get angry. You lack control.”

  “I’ll give you control,” Jules growls, and every glass on the bar begins to shake.

  No one reacts. Perhaps because they are in the city of the war gifted. But then the murmurs begin, and Jules goes cold, and Camden creeps off the bar to curl around her legs. Near the door on the far side of the room, the oracle Mathilde rises to her feet.

  “It is as I said. Juillenne Milone was once a queen. And she may yet be a queen again.”

  Jules moans. “Don’t go spreading that nonsense around!”

  But in the Bronze Whistle at least, it is too late, and now she knows why they have stared at her since she came in.

  “Emilia. Who are these people?”

  Emilia grins.

  “We are the queen’s revolt. And you, Jules, a gifted naturalist also gifted in war, will be the one to unite us and take the poisoner’s place.”

  She grabs Emilia by the sleeve.

  “How long have you been planning this?”

  “The seers have known of your coming for a long time.”

  “The seers are fools. They said I should be drowned at birth. Now they say I’m a queen. Or I will be. Or I was once already.”

  But Jules’s words cast no doubt across the faces in the Whistle. They are too full of hope. In her, they see a chance they have not had in generations. And Jules has heard that there is nothing a warrior loves more than to run into a battle headlong with little chance of victory. That is where the glory is, they say. That is where heroes are made.

  Jules has never heard anything quite so stupid.

  “Prophecy has many interpretations,” says Mathilde as she crosses the room to stand before them. “Unfortunately, it is often difficult to know the meaning until after it has come to pass.”

  “But it says I was once a queen. I was never.”

  “In another life, perhaps,” Mathilde replies. “Or a less literal interpretation.”

  Like when she was briefly “queen” by using her gift to impersonate Arsinoe’s hold over the bear during the Quickening Ceremony. Of course Jules does not mention that. The flames of this madness have been fanned enough already.

  “The prophecies were clearer once,” Berkley pipes up, avoiding Jules’s eyes. “Before the bleeding Black Council started drowning all the oracle queens.”

  Bitter mutters of agreement ripple through the room. It does not matter that it was an ancient council who passed that decree. Or that the same council may have been populated by those with the war gift. The words “Black Council” have become synonymous with the poisoners, and poisoners are easy to blame.

  “I’m not . . . ,” Jules starts, and then louder, “I’m not your leader. I can’t be. I’m legion cursed. And it’s called a curse for a reason.”

  “For a foolish reason. You have not gone mad.” Emilia tugs Jules closer. “What did you think you were here for? That enough time would pass, and we would move you upstairs with a patch to hide your green eye? That we would say you’re a cousin and Camden a pet cow?”

  “I don’t know what I thought.” Jules’s heart pounds as she looks into the faces at the
Bronze Whistle. The expectations there. The belief. Emilia touches Jules’s hair and gently tucks it behind her ear.

  “I know you are broken hearted. I know you lost Queen Arsinoe and that boy and you feel like you are nothing without them. But you are wrong.

  “Even if you are right, your destiny will find you anyway. Already our whisperers tell us the people have no faith in the poisoner, and the Arrons fight amongst themselves as if tugging on Natalia Arron’s bones. By the time we storm the gates of the Volroy, we will have spread tale of you, our Legion Queen, across the entire island. The people will scream your name. And we will take Katharine in chains.”

  INDRID DOWN

  Katharine oversees the setup for the welcome banquet herself. It must all be perfect. The food, the flowers, the music, and insofar as she can manage it, the company.

  “We should have held this indoors,” Genevieve grumbles. “At the Highbern, like Lucian and I suggested. These clouds . . . What if it rains?”

  “Then the elementals will enjoy it all the more,” Pietyr replies. He directs a servant as to where to place the chairs and which arrangements of flowers should go on the head table. “And stop scowling, Genevieve. People are watching.”

  Katharine glances up and sees the curious faces half hidden behind shutters and curtains. She squeezes her scarred wrists and knuckles through her light summer gloves. They ache today, as they have not ached in a long time. As they sometimes do when the dead queens are dormant. She calls for a glass of water, and as she waits, touches the healed black band of ink across her forehead. Her permanent crown, tattooed in the old fashion.

  Pietyr leans close to whisper.

  “It will be all right, Kat. You are doing the right thing. You must not let the likes of Bree Westwood get to you.”

  “It is not truly her that we have to worry about.” Genevieve takes the water from the servant and brings it to the queen. “It is the High Priestess. Luca is shrewd. Appointing herself to the council. Choosing the Westwood daughter just to make trouble.”