The Vanished Queen

by Lisbeth Campbell

  “My lord, they say the fire was an act of war and therefore outside the contract.”

  That caught his attention. “Vetia is at peace. What are the grounds for their claim?”

  “This.” He withdrew a paper from a pocket and held it out to Esvar.

  It was a handbill, printed on cheap paper in a mixture of type sizes and artistic flourishes. A rip at the top showed where it had been pulled roughly from a nail. THE FIRES OF RESISTANCE GROW EVER HIGHER! it shouted. In smaller print it said, We will not rest until the traitor Karolje is dead. Join us, or watch Karegg burn! In the center was a drawing of a sun on the horizon. Rising or setting, it could be either. The rise of the resistance, the fall of the king.

  “It was nailed to my door,” Tashikian said.

  Things are moving, Esvar thought. These bills must have been reported by soldiers and Doru’s spies, but no one had seen fit to inform him. Was he under suspicion? Or had the bills been deemed unimportant? If he didn’t give an order to go hunt down the printer, would that be seen as incompetence or as treason?

  His brother must be beset with such questions, frozen by choices. Esvar was ashamed of his own earlier resentment. Tevin had seen battle, yes, but the cost had been spending all those years at Karolje’s side.

  He was tempted to theatrically crumple the handbill. All his training told him to send Tashikian away happy with him and furious with the resistance, or to frighten the man enough that he would slink into a corner and lick his wounds. Neither of those impulses helped fight Karolje.

  He returned the bill and said, “The Crown bears no responsibility for the acts of vandals. Be glad it’s me you’re seeing and not the king. I can’t award you any compensation. I can set the matter before a magistrate for a prompt hearing so that you don’t have to wait months. Nothing else is within my jurisdiction right now. If he rules against you, you may petition again. The chancellor, mind you, not me.”

  “Yes, my lord,” said Tashikian, sounding displeased.

  Which was absurd. He would get his money. No magistrate in his right mind would declare a war where the king had not. Esvar dictated the order and sent Tashikian away with three copies. He dismissed the clerk and guards and leaned back in the chair.

  The destruction of a few warehouses was not going to bring down the throne. But the next arson attack might be a mansion or a wharf. Enough arson and other destruction would bring the more influential merchants and their insurers and bankers clamoring to the chancellor. They could not be got rid of so easily as a group as Tashikian had been by himself. Goran would complain of the resistance to the king and the guard captains, who would crack down harder on the citizens of Karegg. What else would happen?

  Destruction was costly, both in expenses and in trust. Karolje was good at squeezing blood from a stone, but at a certain point the stone was drained. The minor nobles who were kept placated with generous gifts and lavish feasts would be the first to feel the loss. Something would have to yield to the pressure. And Esvar would damn well take advantage of it when it did.

  * * *

  That night, Esvar entered the Citadel’s chief salon to the usual minor commotion occasioned by his presence. He settled it with a genial wave and filled a glass for himself with wine. His dark clothing contrasted with the bird-bright finery of the others. Sipping, he looked around. The door to the outside terrace was open, but that had not cooled the room much.

  The salon suffocated him with opulence, the parqueted floor made of expensive wood, the furniture gilded, the walls papered with silk. The chandelier contained hundreds of crystals, which winked brightly in the light from beeswax candles. At times when he was a boy he had come into this room alone and lain on a divan, looking up at the plastered ceiling. He had tried to count the thousands of tiny roses that made a border and always lost track.

  Several young men moved in on him. Younger sons doomed to living off generous allowances and small inheritances, they glittered with loyalty and obedience while their eyes shone with poorly suppressed ambition. Like Esvar, they were too young to have fought in the Tazekh war, and he doubted any of them had ever killed anyone. These were men he had been a boy with, men whose parties he attended and requests he listened to, but they were not his friends.

  He let them talk. That was what he was here for. Every bit of loyalty he could gain mattered. They had fathers and uncles and cousins to be won. And sometimes Citadel gossip was informative.

  The women came too, their shoulders bare and smooth, their hair braided and pinned and netted with jewels, their fingers flashing with rings. The younger ones flirted and the older, married ones dropped hints about things they wanted for their husbands. He remembered the woman he had freed from Lukovian, her face bruised and her hands unornamented. At the moment she seemed infinitely more real than the women in the room.

  He offered nothing and made no promises. He talked to the nobles Tevin had told him to talk to and tried to find out their allegiances. When Goran’s wife, Tahari, came in, he chatted politely with her and mentioned oh so casually that his brother was in need of a wife. Let Goran face the possibility of moving down a step in the succession. Or perhaps she would not pass word on to her husband. She was a particularly hard woman for him to read. She had been one of his mother’s handmaids, years ago, and she had taken lessons from what happened to Mirantha. He could tell that her cheerful friendliness was an act, but he had no idea what lay beneath it.

  He had been in the salon, which was increasingly loud and stultifying, for about an hour when he saw Lord Darvik making his way determinedly toward him. A memory of Jance Mirovian staring at the gable of the abandoned house flashed through his mind. Whatever the lieutenant was hiding, Darvik might know.

  He greeted the lord and said, “Let’s step outside, where it’s not so beastly hot.” He knew this would bring some attention to Darvik from people who wondered why the prince had withdrawn with him. It could not be helped. He needed to be able to think.

  The terrace was on the north side of the Citadel, overlooking the black waters of the lake. The surrounding mountains were a different shade of darkness against the starry sky. Esvar turned his back on this romantic vista and stood in front of the terrace wall, which rose to his waist. His eyes moved left along a row of dark windows until they came to one that was lit with the flicker of a fire in a hearth. Karolje was cold even in summer.

  There were other people on the terrace, talking, laughing, but Esvar and Darvik had room enough to be private. The stone had released the last of the day’s heat, and its coolness was a sweet breath after the crowded salon. A moth fluttered around the lamp by the doorway.

  Esvar said, “Is Jeriza here, Darvik?” He kept his voice low, even though it was unlikely they could be overhead.

  “No, my lord, she stayed home. She was unwell.” There was a hint of question in the words. Esvar could imagine the rush of fear; what did Karolje’s son want with his wife? Like her husband, Jeriza was popular with the younger nobles.

  “I hope she improves,” he said. “There’s a matter I want to speak to you about, but you had something to ask me?”

  The lord visibly took a breath. He was broad-shouldered, bearded, and thirty. He said, “It’s a passing thing. She will be lively as usual by tomorrow.” He reached into a pocket and withdrew a piece of paper. “I wondered, my lord, if you had seen this.”

  It had to be the handbill from the resistance. Esvar unfolded it enough to see that his guess was correct. “I have. How did you come by it?”

  “A man I know brought it to me. He said he had seen dozens of them.”

  Esvar refolded it and put it back in his own pocket. “If anyone else brings you one, destroy it,” he said. “Though I expect word is all around the city by now. Has your friend lost money from the fire?”

  “Not him. But I’ve heard of others. Everyone is blaming someone else. The magistrates and lawyers will be busy.”

  “The Crown’s not going to pay.”

 
“So I imagined,” said Darvik. He paused and looked lakeward. Then he faced Esvar and said, “It has me wondering if my money might be more secure in Mirsk or Traband, though. Even if only a quarter of the items stored were insured, that might be more than the banks have to pay out.” He could not be the only person having such thoughts.

  If the banks in Karegg failed, the lords would turn on the chancellor and the king. The Crown had no legal responsibility for the banks, but it would be blamed, because kings were always blamed, because the resistance had not been suppressed. The merchants would follow in discontent. Behind them, the workers who were no longer paid. Debts would be called in for collection from people who could not pay. The already high tension in the city would escalate.

  Someone in the resistance had a good understanding of both politics and economics. But had they thought through to the next inevitability, in which Karolje increased his force against the people of the city? In which trust between citizens degraded even further?

  “How much money do you have in banks in Karegg?” Esvar asked. “Including what is not in the tax records.”

  Darvik hesitated, looked around, answered. He was wealthier than Esvar had thought.

  Esvar said, “Withdrawing money from your bankers in Karegg is one of the things the resistance wants. It might be made illegal if these attacks continue. If you’re going to do it, you had better do it soon. You should make sure your friends know the situation before they make a decision on whether or not to do the same.” Anyone who got money out before the banks failed was at a great personal advantage, and that could easily be reframed as treason.

  “Some of them are anxious, merchants and nobles both. Very anxious.”

  A woman shrieked with laughter in the group of people at the corner. Their voices were loud. Esvar was torn between anger and envy at the frivolity. He hadn’t been so carefree in months. Beside him, Darvik shifted his weight.

  Esvar said, “If your friends need any reassurance about their funds, they should approach the chancellor, not me. My immediate concerns right now are military, not financial.”

  “I don’t think my friends will be expecting reassurance. They can see the landscape as well as any of us.”

  A landscape in which violence spiraled outward, growing more powerful as it went. In which the best policy was escape. Quite abruptly, Esvar could not endure any more pretense. Tevin trusted this man. He would do the same.

  He said, “I’m not going to try to persuade you that your fears are groundless. I do suggest you be very careful. My brother needs loyalty. Does he have yours?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Even over Karolje?”

  Darvik’s silence lasted longer than any yet. Esvar firmly kept his eyes on the lord’s face instead of letting his gaze go to the water, the other people, the king’s window. A loon called from somewhere out on the lake.

  “Yes,” Darvik said.

  The words hung a moment, weighty. A pact. What a strange and twisted world it was where avowing loyalty to the heir to the throne could be dangerous.

  “When Tevin’s king, he won’t forget who helped him,” Esvar said. “Nor will I. But he can’t rescue you if you jump ahead of him. Don’t do anything precipitous. He’s got me tied down too.”

  “That’s probably what my younger sister used to think of me,” said Darvik. “What was the other matter, my lord?”

  “I’m about to rely heavily on your cousin. If that’s a mistake, I need to know now, before he gets into a situation he can’t get out of. I won’t tell him anything you say.”

  “He’s bright, and when he makes a promise, he keeps it. He’s not slipshod.”

  “Is he truthful?”

  “So far as I know, yes,” said Darvik. “But he’s my cousin, not my brother. I haven’t lived with him.”

  “What was he like when he was at the College? Did he do well?”

  “He did well in his studies. Early on he had a tendency to break the rules and got in a few scrapes, but he settled. He always had friends.”

  “He’s hiding something from me. Do you have any idea what it might be?”

  Darvik looked surprised. “Not at all, my lord. It likely seems much more important to him than it actually is. He wouldn’t be doing anything disloyal.”

  But with whom do his loyalties lie? Esvar thought. It was no use asking Darvik that, so he said only, “Thank you.”

  Darvik nodded. Esvar dismissed him with a gesture. He looked at the lake and then, with deliberation, back at the Citadel. If Karolje died tonight, he would be the heir, one knife stroke away from the throne. He still could not see how things would play out. Would Goran let Doru move first, then claim the crown himself when the princes were eliminated? Would Doru try to remove Goran before going after Tevin? Were there resistance spies in the Citadel who would do something utterly unexpected?

  He stood for a few moments longer, readying himself for the crowded room, then went back into the salon. It was as noisy and bright as it had been earlier, and he went to get another glass of wine. While he was waiting for the servant to pour, he looked around and saw Doru. The spymaster was watching him.

  Esvar had no intention of provoking Doru. But he could not let the man get away with witholding information from him either. He took the wine from the servant, had a deep enough swallow that he was unlikely to spill anything while walking, and made his way through the crowd to Doru.

  When Esvar was close enough, the spymaster said, “My lord.” His voice was just on the acceptable edge of mockery. The people standing nearby quieted. They smelled blood.

  Esvar switched the wineglass to his other hand and removed the handbill from his pocket. He slapped it against Doru’s chest and let go of it.

  “Next time, tell me,” he said, and walked away.

  He did not look back. Doru was much too disciplined to follow. His response would come later, in some more subtle form. In the meantime, enough people had now seen the handbill that it could not be kept a secret. The resistance’s growing strength was no longer invisible.

  * * *

  He returned to his workroom and, late though it was, sent for Jance Mirovian. The time had come to confront the man about his secret. While he waited, he read the routine reports that his clerk had left for him at the end of the day. He paused over the list of arrests by the watch, read it carefully instead of shuffling it aside as usual.

  With the sense of bringing doom upon himself, he circled three of the names and wrote beside them RELEASE. A woman who had no charges laid against her, a man who had lingered suspiciously near the docks, a man who had been staggering drunkenly and railing against the king. For all Esvar knew, the three were vile criminals and deserved to be arrested. But not based on what the report said. Justice was not justice if it was applied only to the people one approved of or liked.

  He wrote an order laying out the same names, confirming their release, and requiring the other arrests to be set before a magistrate within three days. He put his seal below his name and set the documents aside for the clerk to copy in the morning.

  Then he closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He did not think the act made ripples big enough to come to anyone else’s notice. He felt small and terrified anyway.

  When the lieutenant arrived, Esvar gestured for him to take a seat. Mirovian obeyed with the attentively blank face of a soldier awaiting orders. He was good at it.

  “You were hell on your minders as a child, weren’t you?” Esvar said.

  “Sir?”

  “You broke rules and played pranks and got away with it. How did you end up in the Guard?”

  “I didn’t want to take orders from my father about bales of cloth and bills of lading.”

  “Understandable. You did well last night.” He tipped back slightly in his chair and folded his arms. “The resistance is getting stronger, and that means the raids are going to get more complicated. I can’t let you lead them on your own if you’re keeping secrets. I have
to be able to trust you. You aren’t telling me something you thought of when we went to the house where my raid failed. Out with it, even if it’s speculation.”

  “There’s nothing, sir. There was a lot to think about.”

  Mirovian’s voice was steady, his gaze direct, but his body had tightened. He was lying. He was protecting someone.

  The only person to protect was the resister who had got away. Esvar wanted to let her go. But he couldn’t let Mirovian lie to him. And if Mirovian knew her identity, was he tied to the resistance? This had to be untangled.

  “You’re lying,” Esvar said softly. “Who was she? I’m not going to send the hellhounds after her.”

  “Not a resister, sir.” He swallowed. “We talked about Captain Havidian, sir. I knew his daughter.”

  Esvar had expected anything but that. Havidian had not been married. Bastard children were not uncommon, but the captain had never played the rake. It was an incongruity in Havidian. Incongruities weren’t supposed to happen. When they did, if you pulled at them you often learned interesting things.

  “Tell me about her.”

  The man’s lips formed but did not say Why? “He brought her here to study at the College. That’s where we met. I think the captain must have had hopes that she would be able to marry up. Her family was too poor for her to meet wealthy men any other honorable way.”

  “Too poor to marry up but not too poor to attend the College? Never mind.” That explained why Havidian had lived with much less luxury and entertainment than other men of his rank and pay. “Did it work?”

  “I don’t think it’s what she wanted, sir. She wasn’t married the last time I saw her.”

  “What does she do?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I haven’t seen her since we left the College.”

  That was an evasion, and not a very good one. “And you thought of her when we were at the house because we were talking about her father? No other reason?”