Two Dark Reigns

by Kendare Blake

  “Is that it? Is that all?”

  “No.” Madrigal smiles. “But I will tell you the rest when we are set to make the trade and you have cut me free.”

  The poisoner in him would like to get it out of her now, lash her to a rack, and administer scorpion venom until she could barely speak for all her screaming. But that would eventually attract attention.

  “You know there is a chance that Katharine will not survive this.”

  “What?”

  Madrigal raises her eyebrows. “Surely you must’ve considered that she may not be alive at all, except for them. She may truly be undead, and the moment she is emptied of the last of the queens, her body will break and shrivel up. Just like it would had they not intervened in the first place.”

  Pietyr freezes. For a moment, the Volroy cells are gone, and they are deep down in the heart of the island. There is no light. Only the smell of cold rot. And the feel of bony fingers wrapped around his ankle.

  “You poor thing,” Madrigal says. “You truly love her. Hasn’t anyone ever told you?”

  “Yes, yes,” he says as he stalks away. “Only a fool would love a queen.”

  Once upstairs, he intends to saddle a horse for Greavesdrake, to go there for a night and think. Instead, he wanders into the throne room, where he hears Katharine along with Bree Westwood and the one-handed priestess.

  “Pietyr,” says Katharine when she sees him enter, “you are just in time. Our good Elizabeth has consented to send her familiar, Pepper, to the naturalist rebel with a message. I was just considering calling Rho to determine the best place for the prisoner exchange.”

  “Why can you not summon the rebel here?” he asks, still dazed from his conversation below.

  “I do not think she would come. Or if she did, she may bring her entire upstart army, and I would spare the capital that. Besides, I want to march with some of my new soldiers.” She has the parchment out and has written a few lines. There is room for only a few more. It is a small roll, cut for the leg of a small bird.

  Pietyr looks at the woodpecker clinging docilely to the priestess’s shoulder. Can he really be so fast? Can such a tiny thing truly make it into the north country in winter to find a rebel camp?

  “Innisfuil Valley,” he hears himself say. “It is a neutral location, far enough from the capital and from any Bastian City reinforcements. And those devoted to the temple will look upon it as a good sign when a successful trade is held there.”

  Katharine considers, then bends to scribble on the parchment. She rolls it up and hands it to Elizabeth, and they watch with quiet wonder as the little bird sticks his leg out to receive it.

  “I never imagined you would send your own familiar, Elizabeth,” Katharine says. “I thought you would send a hawk or some other strange bird. I am truly grateful.”

  “We are happy to be of service,” the priestess replies. “Happy to help avoid a war.”

  Katharine smiles at Pietyr. He feels himself smiling back. It will not be long before they depart to march on Innisfuil Valley. Innisfuil Valley—and the Breccia Domain.

  SUNPOOL

  In the small courtyard at the rear of the castle, Mirabella watches the warrior Emilia Vatros and naturalist Jules Milone train together on the war gift. It does not look much like training: Emilia has brought a cord of wood, and the two are chopping it together. But as they work, the swing of their axes changes perceptibly; they swing straighter and faster, until the logs seem to split themselves.

  The Legion Queen. That is what they call Jules now, this rebellion that Mirabella and Arsinoe have so conveniently stumbled into. The people bestowed the title of queen so quickly. So lightly. As if it never carried any weight at all.

  “Take care!” Emilia shouts when Jules’s blade misses. She wrenches it out by the handle and swats her. “Just because it feels like nothing to move, does not mean it isn’t dangerous. It’s still an ax. Mind it!”

  Jules nods and begins again. She takes direction well. She does not seem like the same girl Mirabella met those few times before. The simmering anger is gone, and her stance is such that she seems much taller than she really is. Even the cat seems larger and more confident, lying draped across the waiting wood with her tail flicking lazily back and forth.

  Jules looks different. She is different. But she is still not a queen.

  “A break,” Jules says, and Mirabella steps out and claps softly. She joins Jules beside the cougar as she drinks a cup of water.

  “You are doing very well.”

  Jules crooks her lip.

  “Thanks. I feel as wobbly as a young colt.”

  “Your war-gifted friend is clever, to combine training with a necessary chore.”

  “Always work to be done when you’re raising a rebellion,” says Jules. She holds out the cup. “Water?”

  “No thank you.”

  “Arsinoe won’t tell me much about why you all are back here. Only that you’re headed up the slope of Mount Horn.”

  Mirabella nods.

  “I am sure she would tell you if she knew more herself.”

  Jules looks down at her hands. “She says you’re going back as soon as your business is finished.”

  “I am relieved that she would say so,” Mirabella says, and exhales. “Part of me feared that the moment she saw you, she would vow to stay forever, no matter the danger.”

  “You shouldn’t have let her come, you know. You should’ve made her stay away.”

  “I do know. Just as you know how impossible that would have been, without the use of ropes and chains.”

  Jules smiles grudgingly, and Mirabella feels a surge of fondness. For ten years, all the years between the Black Cottage and the Ascension, Jules was the one who looked after Arsinoe. She saved her life on the day of the Queens’ Hunt. Saved them all on the day of the duel. But she still does not like to meet Mirabella’s eye.

  “Arsinoe says you buried him instead of burning.”

  “Yes,” Mirabella replies. “That is how they do it there. He rests atop a green hill, looking out at the sea.”

  Tears gather at the corners of Jules’s eyes, and the cougar comes to lean against her legs.

  “I wish I could see it.”

  “Maybe you can, someday.”

  “Well.” Jules blinks. “Someday seems like a far-off thing. Anyway, I’m glad Arsinoe and Billy were there. And you. I’m glad someone was there who loved him.”

  “You loved him more. I always knew that. And he loved you.” Mirabella shakes her head. “He never really loved me.”

  For a moment, Jules is silent. Then she turns and looks at her, dead-on.

  “You must think I’m really small, to think that would make me glad.”

  “I only meant—”

  “You should get back inside, Mirabella. Even with that cloak and those clothes, it won’t take anyone long to figure out who you are if they get a good look at you.”

  Jules picks up her ax and resumes chopping wood, even though Emilia has disappeared. Mirabella lingers, but Jules never again glances her way. Finally, she throws up her hands and leaves, not back into the castle as ordered but farther into the courtyard, where it wraps around to the rear.

  She walks across the grass and climbs over stones that have fallen from the wall, intrepidly making her way to the top.

  When she reaches it, the wind catches her cloak and presses it tight about her, like an embrace. How she longs to throw her hood back so the breeze can rake cold fingers through her hair. But she knows what Jules and Emilia would think of that. Besides, they are right. It is better for everyone if their presence remains a secret.

  Still, she cannot resist calling a little more wind to swirl around her body. A few more clouds to darken the sky. The nearness of her gift, the ease and strength of it, is the only joy returning to the island has brought. Everything else—the rebellion, the Legion Queen—has only shown how unneeded she was. How easily replaced.

  She is not even part of Arsinoe
’s quest to stop the mist.

  I am my sister’s keeper. Her protector.

  But is that enough? For a girl who would have been queen? The people speak of Jules already as if a legend: a naturalist with a gift as strong as a queen’s.

  No elemental queen in history has mastered all the elements so fully as I. Yet there will be no mural to remember me. Not even my name will endure.

  She lets the wind die and thinks of Bree and Elizabeth. Her friends and her home, that she may never see again.

  And then, as if it were a wish or a prayer, a black-and-white tufted woodpecker flies into her stomach, so hard she feels the slight puncture of his beak.

  “Pepper!” She gathers the little bird in the crook of her arm and looks into his bright black eyes. He is panting and afraid. “Pepper? Is that really you?” But of course it is. She has no relationship with any other bird. She strokes his chest and looks around, hoping to catch a glimpse of Elizabeth ducked down behind a rock. But he is alone. Elizabeth sent him away the day she took her priestess vows, to keep him from being crushed by horrible, brutal Rho.

  “Have you been alone in the north country all this time?” she asks, and holds him up to her face. “Poor Pepper. What luck to find me here. What luck that you saw me.”

  In response, the woodpecker lifts his wing and thrusts out one tiny leg. A tiny leg with a roll of parchment tied to it.

  Bartering for supplies in the midst of a rebellion is not the easiest thing on the island, but Billy manages to do it. Somehow, despite limited funds and the fact that everyone in the marketplace is hoarding goods for the cause, he secures them warm clothing, climbing tools, and what is hopefully plenty of dried meat for the leg of the journey above the snow line.

  “There now,” he says to Arsinoe happily. “Ready to depart. Now aren’t you glad you brought me?”

  “I suppose I am.”

  He shrugs.

  “Negotiation. Buying things. They’re the only skills of value my father ever taught me. Though you could say that my success is mostly due to charisma, and you can’t really teach that.”

  “How long do you think it’ll take you to find him?”

  “I don’t know. After we’ve finished on the mountain, I thought I’d sail around to the capital. I won’t go in,” he adds, seeing her expression. “I’ll send a letter or a messenger.” He sighs. “I’ll wager that he isn’t even here.”

  “Where, then?”

  “Sailing around the world. Having a grand holiday in Salkades, maybe. Drinking wine and teaching me a lesson about life without him and the price of disobedience.”

  “He would put that hardship on your mother and Jane?”

  Billy shrugs again, and Arsinoe spots Emilia passing in the street.

  “There goes Emilia.”

  “She doesn’t seem to have seen us.”

  “Oh, she saw us,” Arsinoe says. And sure enough, the warrior drops down into the alley behind them only a minute later.

  “You both should return to the castle.”

  “We are. We’re done here.”

  Emilia smiles a smile that never reaches her eyes. “Then allow me to escort you.”

  She circles around and leads them through the side streets, taking shortcuts through rear alleys and jumping stacks of old crates. It is so quiet a route that Billy has to dodge a bucket of waste that someone empties out of an upstairs window.

  “That was close,” he says, and brushes off his shoulder. “This poor old city seems overrun. Strangers taking up residence in abandoned homes and buildings. How must the oracles and the local residents feel about your army’s sudden presence?”

  “Many of them are oracles, as you said,” Emilia replies. “They knew we were coming. And they would have vengeance, too, for the murder of Theodora Lermont. They are with us, or we wouldn’t have come.”

  “Have you come here before?” asks Arsinoe. “You seem to know your way around.”

  “I have been here with Mathilde, when we were younger. Though I would know it just as well had I only scouted it the first night. It is an aspect of the gift. We find our feet quickly in new places.”

  Arsinoe thinks back to their journey to Indrid Down, the way Jules was able to memorize the map with such ease.

  “A warrior and a poisoner in naturalist’s skins,” she murmurs. “None of us are ever who we think we are.”

  “Hurry along.” Emilia prods her in the side. “Stop muttering.”

  “Why don’t you like me?” Arsinoe asks, annoyed and rubbing her ribs from the poke.

  “Not like you?” Emilia laughs. “Why would I not like you? You inspire such loyalty. Someone or another is always looking out for you. Protecting you. Giving their lives for you.”

  “You think I’m going to get Jules hurt.”

  They stop and face each other.

  “I think your being here will ruin her chances,” says Emilia. “I think you would restore the line of queens. I think you would put her back down, in Wolf Spring or in hiding forever. Perhaps on the mainland, like you.

  “But I will tell you one thing Queen Arsinoe: Juillenne Milone is not your servant. She is not your helpmeet nor only your friend. She is our queen, the queen that the island needs, and I will be there beside her when she fulfills that promise.”

  “That’s more than one thing,” Arsinoe says, and pokes her in the chest. “And who promised? Did she promise? Or are you and your blond friend Mathilde pushing her into something she’s not ready for? It’s not up to me to speak for Jules, and I have no right to decide her path.”

  “Indeed, you do not.”

  “But neither do you. And if your cause ends up getting Jules hurt or worse . . .”

  “What?” Emilia draws a short blade, and Arsinoe feels the chill of the metal against her neck. “What will you do?”

  “I guess I’ll poison you.”

  Emilia’s eyes narrow, and Billy steps quickly between them.

  “Now, now, ladies, let’s not dally in such idle conversation. We should get back to the castle, like you said.”

  They separate, pushing off each other. The rest of the walk to the castle is silent.

  When they reach the gate, the oracle Mathilde is there waiting.

  “Thank the Goddess, where have you been? We have had a message.”

  “What kind of message?” Emilia asks, and pushes ahead, hurrying inside and bounding up the stairs to Jules’s rooms. Arsinoe follows and finds Jules inside pacing, with Mirabella seated at a table behind her feeding what looks to be a woodpecker.

  “What’s happening?” Arsinoe asks. “Whose woodpecker is that?”

  “The bird arrived with a message,” Mathilde explains. “Queen Katharine is taking Jules’s mother and marching to Innisfuil with a force of soldiers.”

  Arsinoe looks to Jules, who looks back with large eyes.

  “She wants to trade her for me.”

  The room falls silent as they stare at each other, until Emilia stomps her foot.

  “You cannot!” she exclaims.

  “I have to,” Jules says softly.

  “You can’t! You are the Legion Queen. You are more important than one life.”

  “Not my mother’s life!” Jules growls. “Not anyone’s.”

  “Wait, Jules.” Arsinoe holds her hands up before Emilia can say anything more. “Even if you would trade, do you really think Katharine would honor it? She could take you both. Or take you and kill Madrigal anyway.”

  “Then what do we do?” Jules asks.

  “We came to fight,” says Emilia. “We will march out and meet her.”

  “We do not have the numbers,” Mathilde says quietly. “If we march now, they will have an advantage of four to one. Perhaps more.”

  “Then what are you going to do if Katharine decides to advance on Sunpool?” Billy asks curiously.

  “If they advance now, we must winter in the mountains. Hide. Let them hunt for us through the snow if they will. Let the island grow even mor
e restless as the mist rises and the Undead Queen fails to protect them from it.”

  “Why would we leave the stronghold of Sunpool for the mountains?” Emilia asks furiously.

  “Because the walls have yet to be repaired. The city yet to be fortified. Because we are not ready.”

  “We have to do something now!” Jules shouts, and Camden hisses. “She has my mother!”

  “Katharine will not kill her. It is only a tactic,” Emilia says, her tone steady.

  Jules’s eyes narrow. “Then it’s a good tactic.”

  “I don’t think it’s a tactic at all,” says Arsinoe, with a glance to Mirabella. “Our baby sister doesn’t bluff.”

  Jules stills and buries her hand in her cougar’s fur. “Ambush,” she says after a moment. “If we will lose in a battle and we can’t trust the trade, an ambush is the only way to save my mother.” She looks to Emilia. “How many warriors have come from Bastian City?”

  “Only a few dozen. The rest are entrenched, waiting for word.”

  “That’s more than enough.”

  “More than enough against the queen’s force?” Mathilde asks. “She is bound to bring at least a thousand.”

  “We’re not going to fight them. We’re going to divert and strike them.”

  Emilia shakes her head. “What diversion would be strong enough? It will not work.”

  “It will work!” Jules points to Mirabella and then to Arsinoe. “If we use them!”

  Mirabella’s eyes widen, and the woodpecker flies to her shoulder as Jules stalks toward her.

  “She can call weather and lightning. Spook the horses, blow them over. She can burn them up, and in the chaos the warriors can strike. We will grab my mother and be gone before they know which way to chase us.”

  “No,” says Emilia. “The people will hear of it. They will know the traitor queens have returned.”

  “So let them,” Jules says. “Let them see that the queens stand with me. Let them see that they stand behind me. They’ll see us united against Katharine and more will join us.”

  Emilia nods, grudgingly. “You think more like a warrior every day.”