Two Dark Reigns

by Kendare Blake

  “Are you still dreaming of Daphne?”

  She shakes her head. There have been no dreams since she decided to return to Fennbirn. It is that as much as anything that tells her she is on the right track.

  “Have you started to dream?”

  “No,” Mirabella replies. “She is still speaking only to you.” She crosses her arms and nods to Billy as he approaches from the other side of the rail. “So you know, this is probably a trap. She is probably going to deliver us right into our little sister’s clutches.”

  “Have a little faith,” Arsinoe says as Mirabella walks away.

  “Two queens die. That is just how it is.”

  “Don’t say that!” Arsinoe calls after her, then turns back to the rail and pounds it with her fist. “Why does she say that?”

  “I think she was joking.” Billy leans against the rail. He shells a nut and holds it out.

  “No, thank you. Where did you get those?”

  “The captain had them. We paid him so much for an afternoon sail that I think he feels he should provide refreshments.”

  “You’re in a fine mood. Aren’t you going to lecture me, too?”

  He shrugs.

  “I trust Mirabella to take care of that. She’ll make a very fine sister-in-law one day. Keep you in line for me.”

  Arsinoe scoffs. Then she slides her fingers into the hair at his temple. It is longer now than when they first met, long enough to blow in the strong sea wind. He called her his fiancée when they arranged for the boat. Only a lie, she knew, but it still gave her a pleasurable burst of excitement in the pit of her stomach.

  “I’m sorry for dragging you into this. Dragging you away from your mother and sister.”

  “Don’t be. I told them I was returning to find my father and bring him home. They couldn’t have been more thrilled.” He smiles, perhaps a little bitter. “But it is dangerous, Arsinoe. And you’re a fool for trying to do it alone.”

  “Dangerous.” She curls her lip.

  “Fennbirn is dangerous. You can’t deny that. Not after what we’ve lost.”

  “It’s just as safe on the island as it is back there.” She jerks her head toward the mainland.

  “You can’t be comparing the two. We don’t force our girls to compete to the death—”

  “Maybe not. But if I stayed there without you looking out for me, I might be killed. Girls like me must be killed there every day.”

  “Arsinoe . . .”

  “Maybe not executed. But dead anyway. Somewhere right now, a girl like me is being locked away to be forgotten about or thrown onto the streets to starve. Pushed down so far that no one will care what happens to her.” She swallows. “I’d rather have Katharine’s knife in my back.”

  Billy blinks and pushes himself up off the railing.

  “I don’t know how we’re supposed to make a future there, with you feeling that way.”

  “I don’t mean that I can’t—” She stops. There is danger in both places. Danger everywhere. But on the sea, sailing for the island, it feels like sailing home. “Maybe I’m just a part of the island, and you’re just a part of the mainland.”

  They stand together, shocked. She wishes she could take it back. But even if she did, it would still be true.

  He threads his fingers through hers.

  “What if we were somewhere else, then?”

  “Somewhere else?”

  “Somewhere else entirely. If you could pass through the mist and be somewhere new, where would you want to go?”

  She has to think only a moment.

  “Centra.”

  “Centra. Good. I’ve heard it’s lovely, and I’ve never been there. We could sail there, after this business is finished. After my father returns and we’re no longer in danger of losing the estate. We could go to Centra and be entirely new.”

  Arsinoe smiles. “That sounds nice. It reminds me of what Joseph used to say to me and Jules. About our happy ending.” Even though this is not the same ship, her eyes go to that place on the deck where Joseph lay dead in Jules’s arms. She can still almost see him, that pale shape, the blood so washed away by seawater that it made it even harder to believe he was gone. Jules on my queensguard and him on my council.

  She wraps her arms around Billy and holds him tight. Over his shoulder, the sky is still clear. But it will not be long before they reach the mist.

  THE BLACK COTTAGE

  Jules, Caragh, and Emilia stand at the front windows of the Black Cottage, watching Mathilde stare into the small fire she has built on the ground. The first snow fell that morning. Clearing out the skies, Mathilde said. Making it a good night for visions. A good night to see their way ahead, now that they are leaving to continue their journey.

  “Where’s Willa?” Jules asks. “In with Fenn?”

  “Probably,” Caragh replies. “She does love that baby. More than that, though, she dislikes the sight gift. Having an oracle here makes her uneasy.”

  In the yard, the fire melts the young snow in an even circle, and Mathilde crouches on toes and knees and the tips of her fingers. Sometimes it seems that she speaks to the flames. Other times that she sings. They cannot hear her through the glass or see what it is that she sees. To Jules, Caragh, and Emilia, the flames are only flames.

  “You are sure you will be all right?” Emilia asks. “You two with the little one, until Jules’s mother returns?”

  “I should think so. We’re both Midwives.”

  Emilia rolls her shoulder, favoring a bruise that Jules gave her as they practiced sword-craft with thick sticks as the snow fell all around them.

  Caragh reaches down and slaps her brown hound on the rump. “Let’s get into the kitchen and start the stew for dinner. And I would speak to my niece a moment.”

  Emilia nudges Jules. “Go. I am going into the woods after grouse. You could send some my way, if your gift reaches that far.” She grins, but it changes quickly to a frown. “On second thought, don’t. I can’t shoot them when they come hopping into my lap.”

  “Why don’t you take Camden? She could use the run.”

  Emilia nods. Her dark hair is loose and rumpled; it looks as restless and ready to be off as the rest of her. “Fine. But make something delicious. It won’t be much longer that I will be able to get a meal from you. My queen.”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  Emilia swats her playfully. “I think you are starting to like it.”

  Out by the fire, Mathilde blows into the smoke and feeds the flames with herbs and blue-burning amber. She shakes her hair back off her shoulders, the braid of white stiff and separate in the cold evening air.

  In the kitchen, Caragh tears a large fillet of smoked fish into pieces.

  “Dinner tonight, courtesy of Braddock.”

  “Oh? He caught it just for us, did he?”

  Caragh snorts.

  “No. And to be honest it is starting to be harder to get it away from him.” She gestures to the counter, and Jules sets to chopping vegetables.

  “How long do you think it will be until Madrigal returns?” Jules asks.

  Caragh’s only response is a gentle raising of eyebrows. “Will you go to the larder for butter and cream?”

  “You have more faith in her than I do.” Jules sets the butter and cream pitcher on the counter so Caragh can add it to the stockpot. She watches her aunt closely, but all she does is reach up into a cabinet for a sack of flour. Maybe for biscuits. “You shouldn’t have let her go.”

  “Jules,” Caragh says, her voice sharp. “Who am I to tell my sister what she can and cannot do? Where she can and cannot go?” She starts to measure flour and lard. “Your Emilia is in a hurry. I wonder if that is how all warriors are. So eager to fight.”

  “Grandma Cait always said I had the worst temper she had ever seen.”

  “So she did.”

  They look at each other, remembering broken plates and screaming fits. Wondering what could be attributed to the bound war gift and wh
at was just a child needing to shout.

  “So,” Jules says. “What is this word you need to have with me?” She sweeps the chopped vegetables into her hand and adds them to the stew hanging over the fire along with a measure of fish broth. But when she turns back, her aunt is frozen, staring blankly down at the knife on her cutting board. “Aunt Caragh?”

  “I don’t know how to tell you this, Jules, so I am just going to tell you. There was a second prophecy after the oracle saw your legion curse that night.” Caragh straightens and looks into her eyes. “After the oracle saw your legion curse, she told us to drown you. Or to leave you out in the woods for the animals to find. That is just what is done, when the curse is discovered. But Madrigal refused. She wailed. I wailed. The oracle tried to take you out of your mother’s arms. And when she did, she had another vision.”

  “Another vision?”

  “Different than the one before.” Caragh’s brow knits. “Her discovery of your legion curse was like a healer finding a cracked bone or a rider finding a swollen pastern on a horse. The second time was like a trance.” She looks at Jules gravely. “She said you would be the fall of the island.”

  For a moment, Jules thinks she has misheard.

  “The fall of the island? Me?” She laughs. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Well, it must be a joke.”

  “It could mean nothing. Prophecies mean a lot of things. Often never the things people think they do.”

  Jules reaches for a potato and starts cutting it into chunks. The fall of the island. Her blade slows. “Or it has already come to pass. I was there when the Ascension Year failed. When the line of queens broke. I was there to help them escape. That must have been what the prophecy meant.”

  “It must have been. And now you will lead an army against Katharine, who is despised by even the mist that protects us.”

  “Yes,” Jules whispers.

  “Unless you are wrong,” says Caragh, “and the mist truly rises in response to you.”

  Jules stops. The prophecy must be wrong. The rebellion must be right. It must be, because despite herself it has won her heart and given her hope.

  She peers out the window at Mathilde.

  “Mathilde told me something back in Bastian City. She said that the oracle who saw my curse never returned.”

  Caragh adds more to the stew. Her mouth tightens.

  “Did Cait kill her?” Jules asks. “Did she kill her to keep her quiet?”

  “Yes,” Caragh replies.

  “How?”

  “The how doesn’t matter any more than where we buried her. She will never be found. We offered to pay. Everything we had. But she wouldn’t take it.”

  Jules holds her knife tightly so it will not begin to shake. So her war gift will not bury it up to the handle in the wall of the Black Cottage. She cannot look at her aunt. She cannot think of Cait. So much darkness around her birth. So much death.

  “You always told me how blessed I was.”

  “You were. That was our crime, Jules. Not yours. I never wanted to tell you. I didn’t want you to bear it.”

  “Someone always pays.”

  Caragh and Juniper jump away from Mathilde, suddenly in the doorway.

  “Mathilde!” Jules exhales. “I nearly put this knife through your head.”

  The seer’s eyes are empty. Juniper creeps close and sniffs her. She paws at her knee, then jumps up against the oracle’s chest.

  “Oh,” Mathilde says, and grasps the dog’s shoulders.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I am fine. Where is Emilia?”

  “She’s out hunting with Camden.”

  “Get her back. Get them both back. I have had a vision. We must call up the rebels now and fall back to Sunpool.” She pushes Juniper gently to the ground and comes to take Jules by the wrists. “She knows. The queen knows. And she is coming.”

  “How? How does she know?”

  “She knows because she has your mother.”

  AT SEA

  “How much farther?” the captain asks.

  “Not far,” Billy replies, but he sounds uncertain. They have sailed through the afternoon and into evening, and still there is no sign of the island.

  “Have we sailed for too long?” Arsinoe asks. “Is the mist not coming for us?”

  “You would know better than I would,” Mirabella replies. “You have sailed into it much more than I have.”

  And Billy would know best of all, having sailed into it and through many more times than either of them.

  “I thought you said this would be a few hours,” the captain says. “For what you paid, I’ve let it go on, but now, we have to turn back.”

  “A little farther!” Arsinoe walks to the fore, leans out and over. “I’ll know it when I see it!”

  “See what? There’s nothing out here to see! No land in this direction until you run straight into Valostra.”

  Billy joins her and Mirabella by the railing. “I can’t keep them out here much longer. We will have to turn and sail for home. Try again tomorrow.”

  Arsinoe grits her teeth. He is trying to sound regretful, but his tone is full of relief.

  “Look!” Mirabella lifts her hand and points. Though the horizon had been clear a moment ago, the mist stands up ahead, pale white from sea to sky. Under their feet, the little boat surges, and they hear the captain and his skeleton crew mutter in confusion.

  “A squall? We’ll have to go around.”

  “No.” Arsinoe waves her arm forward. “Straight through. Straight through!”

  They plunge into the mist.

  It is so thick that Arsinoe cannot see Mirabella though she is standing right beside her, and she is certain that if she breathes it in, it will stick inside her lungs and make her choke.

  “What’s happening?” The captain shouts as inside the mist, the wind dies. “Check the sails!” Mirabella and Billy grasp each of Arsinoe’s hands.

  “This . . . isn’t like what it usually is,” Billy whispers. But nor is it like when they fled. The mist is thick and pure white. No thunder or rain, and the water so still that the boat barely bobs. But it is taking too long.

  Something large splashes just off to their port side, and Arsinoe shivers, imagining it is the dark queen taking form within the mist. In her ears, every wave is the slithering of the shadow’s mermaid tail, coil after coil of it rolling through the deep, murky water.

  “Where do you think it will take us?” Mirabella asks. For the mist can take them anywhere.

  “I never thought about it,” Arsinoe admits. “I guess maybe I thought I’d pass through and be looking at Wolf Spring.”

  “And I thought of Rolanth. When the truth is we could emerge and find ourselves staring up at the twin spires of the Volroy.”

  “Or we could not emerge at all,” Billy offers.

  Arsinoe swallows. Everyone on board has fallen silent. Even the boat has ceased to creak.

  Daphne. What have you lured me into?

  “There,” Mirabella says, but the mist is too opaque to see where she points or whether she points at all. “Do you see that?”

  Arsinoe turns. She looks up and gasps. The Blue Queen is directly above them. A black shape that cuts through the white.

  “Has she always been there?” Billy murmurs as she raises her long sinewy arms. And the mist dissipates.

  The three of them exhale and lean against the railing. They laugh with relief.

  “What in the world was that?” the captain asks.

  “They did not see her.” Mirabella looks up at the now empty sky.

  “Good. If they had, they’d have taken her for a witch and probably thrown us overboard. Look.” Arsinoe gestures ahead. Across the water lies the shores of what can only be Fennbirn Island.

  “Where did that come from?” one of the fishers asks.

  “Never mind,” says Billy. “It’s what we were looking for.”

  Arsi
noe claps him on the back as he goes to make arrangements with the captain to get them ashore. Though they just sailed through the mist, they are already too close to identify what part of the island they have come upon. But it does not really matter. Daphne must have brought them there for a reason, and there are no black spires in sight.

  After speaking with the captain, Billy returns with a dubious expression.

  “Here’s a complication. There are no small crafts or rowboats on board and not a dock in sight. Do we pick a direction and sail to the nearest port or—”

  “No.” With the island so close, Arsinoe cannot wait any longer. “Have him take us as far into the shallows as he can. Then we’ll swim.”

  “Arsinoe, it’s freezing! And you have no idea how far we are from the nearest town.”

  “So we’ll start a fire.”

  Billy sputters. “What about Mira? She can’t swim in that corset and all those petticoats. She’ll drown!”

  “Actually,” Mirabella says, staring over the side, “I do not think I will drown.”

  Arsinoe leans over. Her sister is shifting the current in small swirls that as she watches grow into contrary little waves.

  Mirabella turns and shouts to the captain.

  “Take us in as far as you can!” She looks at Arsinoe and Billy, her smile broad, the happiest Arsinoe has seen her in months. “And you two. Prepare for the easiest swim of your lives.”

  Though the crew initially objects to Arsinoe and Mirabella swimming, they eventually bring the boat into the shallows. So far, in fact, that Arsinoe has to tell them to stop, for fear they will beach and have to come ashore themselves.

  As soon as they drop anchor, Mirabella dives over the side. Her splash brings the crew shouting and leaning over, too late to try and stop her.

  “Thank you, captain,” Arsinoe says, and shakes his hand. “I am truly grateful for your service. But now I had better get after my sister.” She steps up onto the rail and crouches. “Billy, don’t forget the bags!”

  She jumps in, never that much of a swimmer, and her jaw instantly locks from the cold. Her arms and legs seize up as well, so she can barely grab for the satchel that Billy throws into the water.