The Vanished Queen

by Lisbeth Campbell

  His cruelty does not bear thinking about. Beatings, always where the bruises will not show, insults, rape, the list goes on. Her only reassurance is that he is the same to many people; it is about him, not her. If she did not see his cruelty in so many other places, she would think she had failed, rather than been failed. In the first years he was sometimes kind and generous, convincing her that the violence was an aberration, but he no longer needs to do that. The trap has closed completely.

  He is sixteen years older than her; she is the third wife, the other two each dying in the birth of a stillborn daughter. She at least has given him the sons he wants, with only one miscarriage between them, so she has value.

  In Timor, in the only place she has ever seen as home, she leaves the infant Esvar with his nurse and takes Tevin to ride the border with her father and brother. It is summer, the days hot, the grapes swelling on the vines, the sky clear and intensely blue. Their road takes them past the lavender fields that she loves, the rounded bushes with their twilight and sunset purples. Lavender does not grow well in the north, but she has bunches of it dried, scenting her clothing, tied with ribbons and hanging from the windows and mantel in her bedroom in Karegg.

  The border is a wide muddy river, and on the other side the Tazekh peasants toil in the fields. They stare at her father and his soldiers. She cannot see the peasants’ faces clearly, but she imagines they are full of hatred. The river has been reddened with blood many times. There is a sliver of land ten miles wide between two rivers that has changed ownership repeatedly; right now it is in Vetian hands, and there is always the chance the Tazekhs will try to reclaim it. The new Tazekh king, Korikos, is reputed to be bloodthirsty and aggressive.

  Tevin, who will be six in the fall, rides ahead with her brother. Her father says, “King Piyr knows he has done you wrong. He won’t admit it, even to himself, but he will give me what I ask for you. What do you want?”

  It is, she supposes, the only sort of an apology she will get from him either.

  What does she want? No one has asked her that in years. Tevin loves her—it is the one grace of Karolje’s disinterest. As the daughter of a soldier, she can be expected to raise a brave and disciplined son, and he has mostly left the boy in her care so far. She doesn’t think she needs any other kind of love.

  But she wants a friend. The wives of Karolje’s closest companions sensed early by some alchemy of court that her friendship would be more a liability than an asset, and the other women are afraid of him. She is educated, intelligent; what she misses more than anything else is discussion. She reads poetry, politics, mathematics, often and deeply. And alone. Her mind is starved for nourishment.

  She can’t ask her father for a friend. She can, however, ask him for a tutor. Tevin is old enough. If she leaves finding a teacher to anyone else, the teacher will be a priest, who will be Karolje’s servant and want nothing to do with her.

  She says, “I want a tutor who is wise enough to teach my son and old enough that Karolje can’t be jealous. I want someone I can talk to.”

  They jog along, blackbirds trilling from the bushes. Ducks paddle on the river. A Vetian fisherman standing on the bank takes off his hat and bows to her father as they trot past. Her father raises a hand in acknowledgment. Karolje would never do such a thing.

  Her father says, “That I can arrange.”

  Ahead of them, Tevin stands in his stirrups and looks back gleefully at her. His fair hair is beginning to darken as hers never did, which increases his resemblance to Karolje. Her brother says something to him, and they turn off the road and ride across a field as fast as Tevin’s pony will go. Her heart thumps a little with fear that he will be thrown or fall, but he can ride as well as he can walk, and nothing happens.

  Her father says, indulgent, “He’s a fine boy. When he’s old enough, twelve or thirteen, send him to me for six months or a year, and I’ll train him how to ride the border.”

  “Thank you,” she says. There is no need to say it will require Karolje’s permission. They both know that.

  * * *

  The tutor, Nihalik Vetrescu, is not clerk or priest or soldier or lawyer but a little bit of all; he knows history and law, can string a bow and gut a deer, and has more than once been her father’s envoy across the border to the Tazekhs. No one can say he is an inadequate teacher for a king’s grandson. He is at least ten years older than Karolje, of unassuming stature and poise, no threat. When they set off for Karegg at the end of summer, they go slowly because he has brought chests of books and other interesting things that weigh down the luggage cart.

  The first night of travel, they stay at the home of one of King Piyr’s lords. The lord himself has not returned from Karegg for the autumn yet, and the huge house has many empty rooms. Late at night she wanders through the mansion to the garden door and steps out onto a wide patio. She finds Nihalik there, sitting next to a strong-smelling candle that keeps the insects away.

  She is too polite to ask him why he is awake. They talk for a while, quietly. He tells her about riding across the northern steppe with the Uzekh tribes and walking along the edge of the jungle in distant Eridia, about the ruined buildings in the far south of Milaya, about cities in the distant east that are built on hundreds of small islands. She is entranced.

  Then the conversation twists and winds its way back to Vetia, and Nihalik is looking at her, saying, “What do you want your sons to learn?”

  “Justice,” she says without thinking. She takes a breath and speaks treason. “It would be better for Vetia if Karolje never became king. But if he does, Tevin needs to be able to heal the wounds Karolje leaves.” She stares defiantly at him, chin up, feeling young.

  “Children are inclined toward justice,” he says. “Too much so, at times. They also have to learn to give. Especially children who will be kings.”

  She tries to imagine Piyr, for whom she feels affection if not love, saying that, and fails. She does not blame Karolje’s father for Karolje, but the king is weaker than his son. A weak king is a man who takes, not gives.

  “Yes,” she says. “I want them to learn that they have a duty to their people. That Vetia is a small country amid many, that history is bigger than they are. That there are other ways of doing things.”

  “Tevin has the mind for it. He will need more than me to make that duty his own. The books I have, the lessons I can give him, are things Karolje too will have studied. The education of a prince is wide. You will need to show him what justice and compassion look like.”

  In his tone she hears not a warning but a hesitancy, a doubt. He is unsure of her. Perhaps not of her capacity but of her opportunity.

  She says, “His father is not much interested in him right now. He is too young. As long as Piyr lives, there is time.”

  “I will do my best,” he says.

  The moon has risen, its misshapen disk casting shadows that flatten the vegetation. For a while they sit unspeaking, watching the shadows change as the moon moves. A cat pads softly across the patio, and an owl hoots in the darkness of a tall tree. Within the house her children are sleeping. So should she be.

  “Mirantha,” he says, breaking the silence. It is a familiarity she has not granted him, but she does not mind. He surely knows not to call her by her name in front of Karolje.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know the story of the harpy goddess?”

  She shakes her head.

  “It is an old story, far older than Vetia, thousands of years old. There was a princess who had the gift of prophecy, and she foresaw that her father’s actions would cause a war. She told him, but he did not listen, and the war started. The king lost battle after battle, and finally he asked his priests what to do. They did their divinations and told him he must sacrifice his daughter.

  “So he did. It is to save the kingdom, he told her. You die as a soldier does. He laid her on the altar with his own arms, and the priests prayed to their gods. Then they slit her throat.

  “Wh
at came out was not blood but shadow, dark as night and vast as mountains. It had the shape of a bird, and when it moved its wings, it smelled like death. Its face was the face of the princess.

  “The priests and the king fell on their faces, speechless with terror. The goddess caught them with her talons and flung them away from her. They fell bloody and broken, and died. The king’s enemies overran the country and made it their own. And ever since, the harpy goddess avenges women.”

  “Which women? All of them?”

  “The ones who are not listened to. The ones who are killed by their fathers. The ones who suffer at the hands of men.”

  “All women, then,” she says, unable to cloak the sudden bitterness in her voice. “Why did you tell me this?”

  “Do you want a way out?”

  “Are you speaking of divorce or of murder?” Pain she has pushed away threatens to leap forward. “I can’t leave the boys.”

  “I know,” he says, and the kindness in his voice nearly breaks her.

  “I don’t want escape. I want protection.” She thinks of Esvar, with the swirl of soft dark hair on his head and his sweet, milky mouth. Of Tevin, laughing in delight while her brother chased him through the garden. “I want my sons to grow up safe in body and soul.”

  He doesn’t reply. What reply is possible?

  The shadows seem darker, the candle flame more intense. The air is rich with the scents of dried grass and sage and wax and distant water. The owl hoots again overhead, and she hears the rush of air through its feathers, the rustle in the grass as it swoops upon some creature.

  She rises. “Good night,” she says.

  “Good night, my lady,” he says, standing and bowing. She knows they will never again speak so directly of such things.

  In her room, she changes into her nightclothes and blows out the flame. She goes to the window and pulls aside the linen curtain and looks out. Cicadas sing. The moon throws its light on the cypresses lining the long drive, their spiked shadows falling on the fields.

  It strikes her, then, that she is once more leaving this southern land where she grew up, the graceful arcades of the buildings, the white walls and red roofs and blue sky, the peppery food and the shining leaves of the lemon trees, for the north. The north is cold. The land is fertile enough, but the fields are cut through with gullies and steep ravines. Instead of figs, there are apples. Streets are narrow, and the square, solid buildings are clustered around courtyards without greenery. Though the Citadel has gardens and fountains and splendid views of fiery autumnal hillsides ringing the lake, she is always aware of stone and cold and edges.

  Her sons will be children of that northern land. She will do whatever she must to protect them from their father.

  I WON’T ASK WHY,” Radd said, “but what are you going to do next?”

  “I’ll find a place. I have enough money. Can you give me a few hours in the afternoons to look until I do? I’ll work at night, since I’m here.” Anza’s trunk was stashed in the room in the back filled with Radd’s odds and ends.

  “You don’t have to do that,” he said dryly. He was a tall man, black haired, green eyed, dark complected, about twice her age. His children were being raised by his dead wife’s parents in Osk. “I have a task for you this afternoon. When it’s done, you can wander about Karegg as long as you need to. If you don’t find a place this afternoon or tomorrow, I’ll pay for a week or two at a lodging house. What happened to your hand?”

  “I cut it. It’s not deep.” It had scabbed over already, but she had bought a clean bandage to wrap it for protection. It was not, fortunately, on her writing hand.

  His face had on its skeptical expression. “Is Rumil responsible?”

  “No. Not at all.” She hated the obliqueness building within her. Would he know what she did not say? Absences, silences, truth in the interstices of speech. “You don’t need to pay for lodging.”

  “I don’t want you trying to save money and living somewhere dangerous. Take your time.”

  It was kind of him. Her pride rebelled, but she had decided a long time ago not to reject gifts in Karegg. A gift was its own kind of resistance against Karolje’s constant taking.

  “Thank you. What is the task?”

  He gestured at a pile of papers. “Take the revised contract to Andrei Nikovili. I don’t want to send a courier because he might want changes again. If they’re small, make them. Leave as soon as he has signed all the copies, so he doesn’t decide to insert a brand-new clause.”

  “And this morning?” She yawned.

  “Did you sleep at all last night?”

  “Not much,” she admitted. She had seen her reflection in a mirror as she was leaving Rumil’s house at dawn, and she knew she looked fatigued. Her entire body was sore from the work she had put it through on the roofs.

  Radd took a coin out of a pocket and offered it to her. “I can’t have you falling asleep on me while you’re working. Go buy some tea and hot food.”

  It was still early, even for summer with its short nights. The rain had passed, and bright sun shone on puddles and wet streets. The main streets on Citadel Island were broad, and the open space as she crossed one afforded her a view of the western hill across the lake, gold light picking out the details of the craggy summit. The water would be blue, blue, blue.

  The teahouse she liked was a few blocks away. Donkey-drawn carts rumbled by, and workers in drab and threadbare clothing hugged the edges of the street. When she first came to Karegg, the noise of the city had been overwhelming, and she had been reluctant to leave the relative quiet of the College grounds. Now the silence of the farmland she had grown up in seemed like a tale.

  Inside the teahouse, several people were standing around a table, looking at a newsbill of some sort. The woman who brought her tea and a flaky meat pie seemed distracted.

  “What’s happening?” Anza asked.

  “The king is offering an amnesty to any resisters who come forward before dawn tomorrow.” She pronounced amnesty as “anmessy.”

  “They’ll never believe him.” The resistance was like a web or a honeycomb, groups separated from each other, and one confessor could not bring it all down. But it took only one, one doubtful frightened person, one woman who was sure she would be caught soon, one man who thought he had already been betrayed, to do damage.

  The woman said, “That’s not for me to guess.”

  The prudent thing to say. Anza nodded and sipped the hot tea. The amnesty might be bait for her; they would know by now that one person had escaped. No one knew each other’s real names, so she could not be identified that way, but there were plenty of other clues. Short, young, dark hair and light olive skin, speech slightly accented, able to use a bow. Able to climb. She might have revealed other things to her companions without knowing it. Karolje’s torturers and Truth Finders were expert at unearthing secrets that had been forgotten or overlooked.

  Rumil did not know. Radd did not know. Karolje’s soldiers could not scrutinize every young dark-haired woman. She was safe.

  The pastry in her mouth tasted like wood anyway. She washed it down with tea, took another bite. A wain loaded with barrels rolled past the window. It was an ordinary day, and she had to treat it as such.

  * * *

  By the time she walked to Andrei Nikovili’s house, the sun was blazing down with full summer heat. Anza wrapped her braided hair around her head and held it in place with a pale blue scarf that protected her neck and forehead. As she neared the Citadel and the Old City, the condition of the roads improved. Houses were set farther apart; trees and lampposts sprang up to line the streets; the number of wagons decreased. She saw fewer people.

  The gates had come down centuries ago, and all that remained of the old walls were ruined guard towers and fallen stones. Weeds and grass and wildflowers carpeted the broken battlements. A skinny stray dog watched her warily from a mound of overgrown earth, and a few harpies perched on top of the towers. They were ugly birds, with wr
inkled pink featherless faces that looked almost human, sharp beaks, and vicious talons. Anza had only known them to scavenge, but in legends they flocked to attack, gave advice, and whispered curses. They were bad enemies and good friends. Her tutor had told her a story once about an avenging harpy goddess.

  It was not far from the wall to Nikovili’s house; he was not wealthy enough to live farther in among the mansions within the shadow of the Citadel. The house was colossal by ordinary standards, though. Anza was admitted into a large tiled room, empty but for a fountain bubbling softly. A glass dome occupied the ceiling above the fountain. Through the glass wall on the opposite side of the room she could see a flower garden, abloom with white and yellow and a dozen shades of red, extending back to a row of large and ancient laurel trees. She could not help being impressed. Then she thought of how cold the place would be in the winter.

  The footman returned to lead her down a hallway with painted friezes on the walls. They passed several doors on each side before he opened a gleaming walnut door at the end of the hallway and let her into a large room. Three colorful Eridian rugs covered most of the floor, the flagstones showing around the edges. On the western wall, curtains, drawn over the windows now to keep out the afternoon heat, hung on rods from ceiling to floor; the opposite wall was lined with shelves in handsomely stained heartwood from a Milayan ambertree. A plump man of middle age with lips too thin for his round face sat behind an enormous desk. Wealth and vanity announced themselves in the form of a large oil portrait of the man (thinner and younger), his wife, two children, and a fluffy white dog.