Two Dark Reigns

by Kendare Blake

  “They say it rises against you,” says Luca. “They are using it as a sign.”

  Katharine sinks into her chair.

  “Well,” she says. “You are my Black Council. My advisers. This is the part where you are supposed to advise.”

  “I say embrace it.” Rho Murtra places her knuckles upon the table. “Wage a war. Use it to quiet the unrest. Nothing calms the people more than having something to fight against.”

  “You would say that,” Antonin spits. “War gifted. Always spoiling for a battle.”

  “And why not, if it’s a winning battle? The queensguard army is in fine shape, despite languishing under soft poisoner leadership. It can rout a band of rebels made up of farmers and fishers.”

  “Even if those rebels are backed by every warrior in Bastian City?”

  Katharine slaps her hand down, and their arguing ceases.

  “There is still too much I do not know. About the mist. About the Blue Queen. And now about these rebels and Juillenne Milone, if that is indeed who she is.” She turns to Genevieve. “I need an oracle.”

  “I told you, my queen, none will come. They have refused us.”

  “They cannot refuse the crown!” Katharine barks. “Send the queensguard and arrest one! And bring her back here for questioning.” She presses one hand to her cold belly, where she can feel the dead queens beginning to quicken. “Then we will know what to do.”

  THE BLACK COTTAGE

  “Well?” Jules asks as she and Camden help Caragh brew another of the endless pots of nettle leaf tea. “How bad is it?”

  At the counter, chopping herbs and trying to keep cougar breath from blowing them everywhere, Caragh frowns. “It’s not good, Jules. Every day she bleeds. And every day it’s harder to stem the pains.”

  “How long will it be before it’s safe for the baby to come?”

  “Maybe it is not only the baby we should be worrying about.”

  Jules swings the hot water kettle away from the fire and wraps the handle in cloth. “Don’t tell me you believe that low magic nonsense.”

  “Whatever you think about the rightness or wrongness of it, low magic exists,” Caragh says. “And my sister has become the closest thing that the island has to a master of it.”

  “Maybe. But this time she’s wrong. Have you heard her talking about the baby? She keeps calling it ‘he.’ A boy. When we all know that Milone women only bear girls. Two girls.”

  “The old Milone rule,” Caragh says softly. “The old Milone curse. We have more than our fair share of those, don’t we?”

  Jules brings the pot, and Caragh ties the herbs in cheesecloth and drops the bundle in. The nettle tea will be bitter enough to pucker Madrigal’s cheeks, but Willa says that they cannot add even one drop of honey.

  “We thought you were dead,” Caragh says quietly. “Or at least gone. And then Worcester came with strange news: the mist was rising without cause and leaving dead bodies in its wake. Rumors of a legion-cursed naturalist who would go to war.” Caragh narrows her eyes. “I didn’t believe it was you, of course. I thought it must be an impostor. But your mother knew it had to be true.”

  “How did she know?” Jules asks.

  “Perhaps she knows her daughter.”

  “She doesn’t know me. You know me. You raised me.”

  “And then she raised you,” says Caragh. “After I came here.” She reaches out and tucks Jules’s short hair behind her ear. “You even look like a queen these days.”

  Jules brushes her away with a smile. “I never thought we would get this far. Even when Mathilde’s crazy stories started to work and people started to believe . . . and then, maybe I started to believe.”

  “Madrigal would say that is what destiny feels like.”

  “How do you know what Madrigal would say?”

  “She’s my sister, Jules. Thinking she’s dying has made her almost sweet. She’s trying to make amends. So am I, in case she’s right.” Caragh looks at her meaningfully, but Jules just sticks her lip out and blows hair away from her forehead. The baby will be fine, and Madrigal will be up to her old tricks in no time.

  She gathers a cup and saucer and assembles Madrigal’s afternoon tea service, piling on a few of the almond biscuits she likes, the only thing that Willa will consent to her eating alongside the tea.

  Halfway down the sunlit hall, Jules hears Emilia’s laughter bubble out from Madrigal’s room. It is a pretty sound, and her unwell mother sounds in good spirits, laughing back. But for some reason, the fur on Camden’s tail begins to puff with apprehension.

  When Jules enters, all is innocent. Emilia has just returned from foraging in the woods, her hands black with dirt, her burlap sack heavy with roots and herbs.

  “What did you find?” Jules asks.

  “Big patch of fanroot.” Emilia reaches into the bag and pulls some out, a pale tuberous root still attached to its bright green leaves shaped like tiny fans. Hence its name. “I will go out again after dinner. Willa says it will keep well enough in the cellar. Before long, the frost and snow will get to the leaves, and it will be that much harder to find.”

  “More fanroot. How delicious,” says Madrigal sarcastically.

  “What brings you in to see my mother?” asks Jules, and Emilia shrugs.

  “We got on well together, after you left us for the queens at Bardon Harbor. Your mother understands the virtue of the war gift and the possibilities of your so-called legion curse.”

  Jules sets the tray of tea down beside Madrigal’s bed. She pours some of the bitter liquid into the cup and points to it. Then she takes Emilia by the arm and pulls her out of the room and down the hall.

  “What?” Emilia asks. “What is the matter?”

  “I know why you were in my mother’s room.”

  “Yes. I told you. Because it is nice to converse with someone who understands our cause—”

  “And because of the binding.”

  “What?”

  “The low magic binding. The blood. You know my mother bound my legion curse with her blood, and you know that if she dies, the war-gifted side will be let loose. Which is exactly what you’ve always wanted.”

  For a moment, Emilia stares at Jules wordlessly. Then her eyes darken, and she steps up close.

  “I would never want that. She is your mother! Have you forgotten that I had a mother who died?”

  “No,” Jules says quickly, ashamed to admit that, for the moment, she had. “This war is everything to you; that’s all I know.”

  She braces, sure that Emilia will use her war gift to shove her, to explode in her face. But instead, her shoulders slump.

  “It is not everything.”

  She turns and stalks off, and though Camden trots halfway down the hall after her, Jules cannot bring herself to.

  “Jules?” Madrigal calls. “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine.” Jules returns to her mother’s room and puts the neglected cup of nettle leaf tea into her hands. “Now drink.”

  Madrigal takes a sip. “You are a good daughter, Jules Milone.”

  “A good daughter.” Jules snorts. “I’ve only been as good a daughter as you have been a mother.” She looks at Madrigal, still small, beneath her enormous, swollen belly. “Maybe we both should have tried harder.”

  Madrigal purses her lips. “Your friend Emilia is very fond of you.”

  “Of course she is. I’m her pet queen. Ridiculous as that sounds.”

  “I think it’s more than that.”

  “Are you pleased? This is what you wanted, isn’t it? For me to go to the warriors and learn their side of my gift? Embrace some great destiny?”

  Her mother frowns at the tone that has crept into her voice. Jules had not meant for it to, but nor can she help it. It has been this way between them for too long to change, even in the face of illness.

  “Maybe once,” Madrigal says. “That was what I wanted. But now I’m dying, Jules. And I would just very much like for us t
o be able to go home.”

  “And we will. Or you and the baby will, and with luck I’ll follow, someday.”

  “I heard what you said out there, in the hall. But it isn’t true. The binding must be cut from my vein with a blade. If I die having this baby, you will remain bound, until you choose to release it.” She stares into her teacup. “I may be a bad mother, but I wouldn’t have placed a binding on you that could be broken if I died by accident.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “Never mind. I’ve left things with Cait. Thinned blood from shallow cuts. And she knows how to—”

  Madrigal groans and grasps the sides of her stomach. The cup tumbles into the bed and tea stains the quilt dark.

  “Madrigal?”

  “Call Willa. Call Caragh.”

  Jules shouts for them. Moments later, Willa limps into the room, hurrying without her cane, and shoves Jules out of the way. Willa presses her hands into Madrigal’s stomach and pulls back the blankets. There is blood, and water.

  “What do we do?” Jules asks.

  “Get your aunt from the barn. Tell her to prepare for a birth.” Willa lays Madrigal back onto the pillow with strong arms and uses gentle fingers to caress her cheeks. “There is no stopping it now.”

  As Madrigal’s labor intensifies, Jules and Camden wait with Emilia in the sitting room, staring into the fire.

  “Is that normal?” Jules asks when Madrigal starts to scream.

  Emilia raises her brows.

  “I do not know. The war gifted often scream during birth, but it is usually more of a bellow. Like an elk.” She makes a fist. “Like triumph.”

  Madrigal’s cries do not sound like triumph.

  “Here.” Mathilde comes to them from the kitchen, carrying cups of watered wine.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Away. Keeping busy. Oracles are no comfort during times like these when we cannot foresee the outcome.” She takes a swallow from Emilia’s cup before handing it over. “And even sometimes when we can.”

  The door to Madrigal’s room opens and shuts, and Willa comes hurriedly down the hall. Her face is impassive. Calm. But the gray braid near the nape of her neck is wet with sweat.

  “What’s happening?” Jules asks. “Are they . . . will they be all right?”

  Willa ignores her and goes in to retrieve something from the kitchen. She returns in moments with a tray. It is covered over with cloth, but Jules sees the shine of silver underneath. Blades.

  “Willa?”

  “It will be over quickly, one way or the other.” She says nothing more, and they hear the door open and shut again.

  “It will be all right, Jules,” Emilia says. “Who better to deliver a baby than the Midwives of the Black Cottage?”

  “I will go outside and start a fire,” says Mathilde. “I will pray for her.”

  The door down the hall opens again, and Aria the crow comes flying out of the room in a panic. Her poor caw sounds raw to the ear, and she batters her wings against the walls.

  “Should we let her outside?” Emilia asks.

  Jules looks to Camden, and the big cat deftly stalks the crow until she is close enough to pounce, then traps the bird softly in her jaws. She lies down on the rug, purring as Aria stops flapping and calms, her little beak wide open to pant.

  “I’ll get her some water.” Emilia pauses on the way and looks gravely at Jules. “You should perhaps go and be with your mother.”

  Jules walks down the hallway on legs made of wood. And she does not have Camden to lean on, since she stayed back on the rug with Aria.

  She turns the knob and swings the door open. Her knees nearly buckle when she sees Caragh slick with bright red blood.

  “Jules,” Caragh says, and gently moves her back into the hall.

  “Is it over? Was he born?”

  Caragh wipes her hands.

  “He will not come out.”

  “Jules! I want my Jules!”

  At her mother’s cry, Jules pushes past her aunt and bursts back into the room. Madrigal is covered, her legs squirming beneath the blankets in pain. Willa stands to the side of the bed, wiping her hands on a towel.

  “She has lost a lot of blood,” says the Midwife. “Not making much sense.”

  Jules goes to the bed and takes Madrigal’s hand.

  “How are you doing?”

  “As well as I expected to.” She smiles. She is almost unrecognizable under so much paleness and sweat, thinner everywhere but in the belly. She resembles a gray corpse, like the one she said she saw in her vision. “I did a wrong taking Matthew from my own sister. Making the charm to keep him.”

  “Nothing more wrong than what you always do,” Jules says, and presses a cool, wet cloth to her forehead.

  Madrigal laughs breathlessly.

  “Should I apologize? Is there time?”

  “There’s plenty of time,” says Caragh, “when you’re up and out of this bed. I’ll accept that apology, with you down on one knee.”

  Madrigal laughs harder.

  “You know you’re nothing like me, Jules. You’re like her. So tough. So mean.” She touches Jules’s cheek with her fingertips. “Except that you’re crying.”

  Jules sniffs. She had not realized. “Just hurry up, Madrigal, will you? I’m tired of waiting for this baby.”

  Madrigal nods. She looks past Jules to Willa, who has uncovered her tray of knives.

  “Will it be fast?” Madrigal asks.

  “It will be fast, child.”

  “What are you going to do?” Jules asks, eyes wide. “Will she survive it?”

  Willa frowns. “I do not know.”

  “It’ll be all right, my Jules. I’m paying the price of my low magic.” Madrigal lays back. “Put him on my chest when it’s over. So I might see him a moment.”

  “Madrigal?” Jules stumbles backward as Willa approaches the bed. “Mother?”

  Her eyes are blurry, but had they been clear, Caragh would have still been hard to see. She moved so fast. One second Willa was leaned over Madrigal’s belly, and the other, she had been shoved out into the hall and the door locked behind her.

  “Caragh,” Madrigal says. “What are you doing?”

  “Maddie, you have to push now.”

  “No. Let Willa back in here. I’m tired. Go with Jules into the kitchen. Or outside.”

  But Caragh does not listen. She takes up position at the foot of the bed and puts her hand on her sister’s knee.

  “Madrigal, push. You aren’t done yet.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Aunt Caragh,” Jules says quietly, “maybe let her rest a minute.”

  “She rests, she dies.” She slaps Madrigal across the hip. “Push!”

  “I can’t!”

  “Yes you can, you silly brat! You just think you can’t because of some foolish vision! Now get up and push!”

  Madrigal forces herself up onto her elbows. She bares her teeth. There is so much blood in the bed. So much sweat on her face.

  “What do you care? You’ll have everything you wanted! My baby. My Jules. You’ll have my children and Matthew back, too, so why don’t you cut him out of me and leave me alone!”

  The room falls quiet. The only sound is Madrigal’s labored breathing until Caragh reaches out and sends everything on her table crashing to the floor. A pitcher and bowls of water, bloody cloth, sharpened knives, herbs, and tea, it all clatters and splashes and breaks into pieces.

  “I don’t want your baby! I want you! I want my sister to live, and you want it, too.” Her hound bays miserably as she dives for the floor, and the discarded knives, pressing a blade into her arm. “If the low magic wants a price, then I’ll pay it.”

  “Stop! Caragh, stop. I’ll do it. I’ll push.”

  “You’ll live,” Caragh says. “You’ll live because I won’t have it any other way.”

  It is not easy. Madrigal is already weak and has lost so much blood. But in the hours before dawn, Jules’s
baby brother is born. Madrigal names him Fennbirn, for the island. Fennbirn Milone. Fenn, for short. She names him and then loses consciousness with him on her chest. But she lives.

  In the days after the baby is born, Jules lingers at the Black Cottage, watching her mother and aunt become close again. Whether it will last is anyone’s guess, but it is still nice to see.

  “Jules Milone,” Emilia says as they walk through the north woods with Camden, “how long do you intend for us to stay here staring at that baby?”

  “He’s a good baby to stare at. You don’t think he’s good-looking?”

  “He is handsome enough. Though I don’t like his name. Fennbirn. If she would call him ‘Fenn,’ why not ‘Fenton’? So many boys are already named for the island.”

  “But none called Milone.”

  Emilia makes a face like she is wondering what is so great about that, until Camden pricks her ears and grunts. Emilia puts her hand on the hilt of her sword. They are walking in search of Braddock, Arsinoe’s false-familiar bear.

  “Why are we out here looking for a bear?” Emilia asks.

  “This is the last thing I need to do before we go. Arsinoe would want me to see him. She would want me to make sure he’s all right.”

  “How do you know he is still friendly? He was not your familiar. He was not even really her familiar.”

  Jules grins. She does not know if they will be able to find him. Caragh said she had not seen him in weeks, and thought he might have followed the fish upstream. She also said he grew wilder by the day.

  “Don’t worry.” Jules looks over her shoulder and winks. “I won’t let him hurt you.”

  Emilia blushes but glances around cautiously.

  “With her gone, isn’t he only a bear now?”

  “He will never be only a bear. He was a queen’s bear. And there he is.” They have reached the widest part of the stream, and out in the middle of it, splashing down hard with his front paws, is a very handsome, shiny-coated great brown bear.

  “Is he fishing? Or trying to smash a fish flat?” Emilia asks. She partially draws her sword as Camden bounds out of the ferns, startling Braddock up onto his hind legs. Then the cougar grunts, and he comes back down so she can rub her head against his chest.