The Vanished Queen

by Lisbeth Campbell

  “That’s easy,” he says. “The shoe doesn’t weigh much. I could show it better with something heavier.”

  “The shoe is sufficient. I see that you understand. What is a lever used to lift?”

  “Stones,” he says. “That was how the Citadel was built. A catapult is a lever. Tevin showed me how to build one.”

  “Good. I need you to understand something else, Esvar. Vetia is like the Citadel. It has been built too. I’m not talking about the cities and towns, I’m talking about laws. Ideas. It is a country because people have worked for hundreds of years to make it one.”

  He picks up the knife and lunges at the air. His form is excellent. “By keeping out the Tazekhs.”

  “No. Savages can fight each other. We make a nation by living peaceably together. That’s what laws are for. Do you remember the oath your father swore when he was crowned?”

  The words catch him. His face is puzzled. Across the garden, a tree with bright new leaves bends in a soft breeze. “To protect and defend from enemies within and without,” he says rotely, lunging again, “to uphold the law, to rule justly, and to serve the gods.”

  “To rule justly. Justice is a lever, Esvar. It is a force that gives people power to move things much bigger than themselves.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Try,” she says urgently. “Justice is how you build a country. And it’s what you use to pry away things that are ill-built. It is a king’s work to be just.” She stops, frustrated. He is too young to understand. Everywhere around him he sees force. How can she explain that justice is a form of power when he has been taught that his birthright rests on war?

  “Esvar. Your father and brother have gone to war. If they are killed, you will be the king. It is unlikely, but I need you to remember this: if you are ever a king, you must be fair and brave and wise. Those are your tools. Not swords, not dungeons.”

  Something—her tone? the mention of his brother?—gets through to him, and he sheathes the knife, turns around to face her. Whatever he is thinking is too big for his words. Slowly he comes forward. He presses his forehead against hers. There is no way to warn him against his father.

  Perhaps he does not need a warning. She kisses his cheek. “Go on, love,” she says cheerfully. “Back to your guard.”

  He grins at her, her beautiful boy, and runs off with all the vigor of childhood. She watches him go under the trellis, then turns her head back to the pools. The sun reflects blindingly on the water.

  Almost immediately after, Ashevi comes. He was probably waiting. He kneels at her feet. The priest yielding to royal power, acknowledging her Temple prayers. It is deceit, as all their interactions are bound to be.

  She bids him rise and stands herself, so that they face each other. The fountain will cover the sound of their voices. Sun falls bright on his face, emphasizing the fine shape of his mouth. It seems an eternity since she has been touched with any sort of tenderness.

  She had not intended to speak to him. But this seems to be a day for telling difficult truths. “We have to be done. Forever. This can’t go on.”

  “I still love you. In my dreams I taste you.”

  “You must go,” she says. “Leave the Citadel, leave Karegg.”

  “Is that a royal command, my lady? Because if it is, I will obey it.”

  “No,” she says, holding back tears and anger. “But don’t come to me alone again. And I will not come to you. It’s the only way.”

  He says, “What happens to you if Karolje dies in the war?”

  “I would have to battle Lord Goran for Tevin’s regency. You know that.”

  He waves an impatient hand at the water. “That’s not what I meant. What happens to you, to Mirantha? When you are free of the beast, will you open your heart? Will you rage and despair? Will you fall in love with one of his lords? What happens?” He is full of intensity.

  It is as impossible to imagine as death. She will never be free of Karolje.

  “You’re a priest,” she says. She wonders for the first time if he believes in his god. “No matter what, I can’t be with you.”

  “When I pour the oil, I see the smoothness of your thighs. When I light the incense, I smell your body. When I move my hands in prayer, I stroke your breasts. It’s you I worship, Mirantha. I can endure this parting now, but not forever. I will forsake the priesthood and you will forsake the regency and we will leave together.”

  She wants him, how she wants him. It takes all the control she has to leave her hands dangling at her sides. She says, clinging to the fact that will save her, “Karolje isn’t dead. And he won’t be killed in battle. He will come back.”

  “Do you want him to live?”

  The bitter truth bursts from her. “Gods, no.”

  “Do you hate him enough to kill—”

  “Stop, stop! Don’t go there. I love you. Let that be all.”

  “He’s not your husband, Mira, beautiful Mira. He’s your jailer. He keeps you from joy, from your children, from—”

  “Stop!” she cries again, and runs from him.

  * * *

  That night in the bath, she thinks what an odd question it was. Do you hate him enough to kill him? not Do you love me enough to kill him? And how easy to ask it, now, when the king is not at hand. What if she had said yes? What would Ashevi do? Would he arrange an assassin or would he report her as a traitor?

  How little he knows her, suggesting that they leave when she still has her boys to care for.

  She says to the maid, Tahari, “Have you ever been in love?”

  The girl turns pink. “I can’t say, my lady. There are men I’ve fancied, but they haven’t returned it.”

  “Really? That surprises me, a pretty girl like you.” Both her maids have wavy dark hair and large white breasts, and she is fairly certain Karolje had them in his bed when he was here. Perhaps she should arrange marriages for them now that he is gone.

  She lets Tahari dry her and robe her as usual, but instead of going to bed, she sits in front of her mirror and brushes her damp hair, the gold now darkened with wet. Ashevi is too dangerous, she has to face that fact. If she sends for the Hierarch in the Temple and tells him Ashevi has to go, that will take care of matters.

  Coward, a voice inside her says.

  She takes the Rukovili off the shelf and opens it to the harpy poem. The scent of lavender is the scent of loss. The words—the idylls of we who pretend—hurt. She is sick of pretending. She wishes she had had the courage years ago to ask Nihalik if the harpy goddess was real.

  The answer, no matter what it was, would have been too hard to bear then.

  * * *

  Six weeks later, she sees the swelling of Tahari’s body and knows the girl is with child by Karolje.

  ALL THE WAY back to the Citadel, Esvar thought about Anza. The soldier’s daughter who had attended the College, who had sat in his workroom with her head down and waited calmly. It must have taken immense courage to come back into his presence, even in her father’s house. Especially in her father’s house, where everything would remind her of his execution. She had no particular reason to trust a prince’s word. Her movements had been quick, her small body coiled with energy, ready to flee. But she had never flinched.

  He had said far more to her than he had intended. He should have sent Mirovian with the money and left it at that. But curiosity had impelled him there, and something about her had loosened his tongue. Perhaps the plain honesty of her grief. He was not accustomed to people being honest with him. And perhaps, he admitted coldly to himself, he was still trying to find a way to use her as a lever.

  Another thought tugged at the back of his mind but vanished at the Citadel gate. A soldier waited for him, mouth set.

  “The king wants you,” the man said with no courtesy at all.

  The old, ordinary terror pricked Esvar. What had he done wrong now? He washed and dressed in clean, formal clothes. Then he went.

  Karolje made him wait. It was
no use chatting with the four guards, who kept strictly to the rules this close to the king. Esvar knew how to stand, too, which he did instead of sitting. That made the page on duty stand. The silence and stiff formality locked around them like a tower without a door, nothing to do but repeat one’s steps over and over. Esvar turned his mind to minor problems needing his authority but not much attention.

  Eventually the door opened. The chancellor and the spymaster came out, Goran looking pleased and Doru neutral. Whatever Karolje was up to, it was in Goran’s favor at the moment.

  He went in, and a guard shut the door. The king was alone save for his physician, a thin-faced, sharp-edged man who was possessed of more nerve than nearly anyone else in the Citadel. If Karolje’s illness took a sharp turn for the worse, the man might be impaled as a traitor.

  “My lord,” Esvar said, bending his head as little as he dared. When he looked up at the king’s face, he was shocked. The illness had redoubled itself. Several red sores had broken out on Karolje’s cheeks. His eyes remained as alert and vicious as ever, and he sat erectly in a chair.

  “Where have you been?”

  His first thought was that Doru had followed him and Anza Istvili was now in danger. He said, “I rode into the city.” No explanation, no justification.

  The king said, “I have released Lukovian from imprisonment.”

  Oh, this was dangerous. Nothing to do with Anza at all. Don’t give him anything. “Sir.”

  “He’s too good an examiner to waste.” With bent forefinger, he beckoned Esvar closer. Esvar complied. Behind Karolje an open window admitted warm air, but the king wore a thick robe. His pendant looked too heavy for his frail neck.

  “Kneel.”

  Esvar did. His heart sped up. He clasped his hands to hinder any temptation toward violence.

  The king leaned forward. His breath was cloying with the scent of medicines. He said, “The arrest was a good move you put your brother up to. But upon reconsideration I find that I am inclined to believe Lukovian after all. He but passed on what his subjects told him.” He smiled.

  Damnation. Any response would be taken as argument, even not responding. Esvar said, “Lukovian is your servant, sir.”

  “Meaning?” Karolje said.

  “It is your prerogative to take his word over mine.” No wonder Goran had been delighted.

  “You won’t argue?”

  He longed to draw his knife. He said, “I aver my innocence. If Your Majesty desires to have this proved as a matter of law, I shall of course present my case.” To prove a negative was impossible. If Karolje pushed, did Esvar have any choice but to attack?

  The king studied him. Esvar endured it, though a muscle twitched in his jaw. Karolje made few mistakes.

  “As touching on your honor, Prince, these stories are yours to dispel. Begin with Nikovili.”

  That was the twist of the knife. Not a twist, a bloody corkscrew through his heart, his soul, the bits of integrity he had managed to amass. Prove your innocence by torturing your accuser. Who is not even the true accuser.

  A good move you put your brother up to. A test. The king knew he was dying. If Esvar followed him in this, he would prove himself worthy of being a successor. Tevin’s life would be snuffed out faster than Nikovili’s. If Esvar resisted, it was only a matter of time before he was put on trial for treason. If he evaded, Nikovili would simply die, leaving the story of Esvar’s betrayal on Lukovian’s ready tongue.

  “I am sure Nikovili will deny saying any such thing if I simply ask him,” Esvar said. “He has no incentive to call me a traitor to my face, especially if I am the one threatening him. It falls back upon Lukovian.”

  “Smuggling is not so great a crime as treason. If he accuses you, that might buy him his release.”

  Esvar grabbed the king’s thin wrist. The doctor came to his feet. Esvar said, “There’s no need for games between us now. If you want to arrest me, do it.” He tightened his grip. One quick movement would break Karolje’s bones.

  The black of Karolje’s pupils swallowed the black of his irises. A light glinted in that darkness, cold and distant, merciless. Esvar would have rather stared into the eyes of a demon.

  Karolje said, implacable, “Question him. In public.”

  Had a pardon already been issued? Had Nikovili been prepared with a story that would burn like wildfire? Was the king playing games because it was the only thing he knew how to do?

  Esvar wondered if he looked as grey and bloodless as he felt. His fingers loosened. He stood and issued his own challenge. “Will you attend?” Show yourself. Make public your weakness. Your disease.

  The silence was a little too long. With an effort, Esvar kept his hands still and open. If he revealed any fear at all, he was doomed. Memory of his mother sitting with an expressionless face at a food-laden table while the king accused her of adultery intruded. She had been terrified, he knew that. He remembered drowning in terror. She forked a piece of meat, the scrape of the metal tines against the ceramic the only indication of emotion.

  “Get out!” Karolje snapped. Esvar improperly turned his back and left.

  * * *

  He went to his rooms first, where he was quietly and privately sick. Better now than later. He wrote a message to his brother, dispatched it and his other orders, and went to the Green Court to wait.

  The room was large, a domed ceiling in the center and two rows of green marble pillars marching its length. Gas jets on the walls and pillars were dark with age and carved into sinister shapes of monsters and demons and other fantastical creatures. Shadows crosshatched each other on the tiled floor. At the end opposite the door was a low dais, the chair of judgment in the fore and several seats across the back for witnesses if necessary. There were two side doors, one opening onto an antechamber, one onto a corridor. In front of the dais, iron loops for attaching shackles had been set into the floor.

  It was not a court of justice. It never had been. The original throne room of the Citadel, built when might mattered more than pomp, it had for nine centuries been the place where punishments were meted out. The captives who were to be questioned by king or lord or commander were brought here. Blood had seeped into the floor, and fear into the walls. The current throne room, the receiving hall, they were for the bright display of power. Power in the Green Court was as old and dark and savage as wilderness. No one doubted it.

  There was no other place in the Citadel where he could more convincingly clear his name.

  Nikovili was brought in first, unsurprisingly. He reeked of the dungeons. His clothing concealed most of the marks of torture, but his hands were wrapped in bloody bandages. The guards shackled him to the loops in the floor. One soldier, bowing to Esvar, handed him the weapon he had requested: a triple whip, three metal wires running from the same handle, studded at irregular intervals with small barbs. Most people passed out after only a few strokes. Nikovili, seeing it, turned pale.

  Esvar seated himself in the chair of judgment, the flail laid across his lap. The witnesses trickled in as ordered. Marek was one of the first, and Esvar gave him a few whispered instructions. Karolje’s chief commander, who would report to the king. The chancellor. A soldier to witness for Tevin. Two lords. Doru. Lukovian the last, clean-shaven, dressed in his most formal uniform. Esvar directed him to stand a few feet away from Nikovili.

  He signaled to Marek, who acknowledged it and left the room. Esvar rose.

  “You may be seated,” he said to the witnesses who had stood with him. When they had settled back into place, he descended the step from the dais to the floor of the room, the flail in his hand. He snapped the whip against the floor, metal on stone ringing through the air. The room went quiet as death. Nikovili was motionless in his chains.

  Esvar faced him and said, “You are guilty of smuggling.”

  Nikovili gulped. “Yes, my lord,” he said, voice high and reedy.

  “You have defrauded the Crown of its revenues.”

  “Yes.”

/>   “You engaged in unsanctioned dealings with men outside Vetia.”

  A quick glance at the flail. “Yes, my lord.”

  Esvar took a step to the side so that the lords and Karolje’s commander would be sure to see Nikovili’s face. He said, “You claim that I profited from these dealings.”

  Naked shock and confusion as the merchant went white. He collapsed to his knees. “No—I never—no, my lord—it’s not—my lord, no.”

  It was a convincing denial. Arguably, a man who had not expected to be found out would look much the same. But a man who had already made the claim under torture would not expect not to be found out. He would know the story was out there. No one who had endured what Nikovili had in the past few days would be blindsided by such an accusation unless he was innocent of it.

  Esvar said, “You have accused me of collaborating with foreigners.”

  “No. Please.” He was about to break down into sobs.

  He looked at Lukovian. “Examiner, you extracted his confession.”

  “I did, my lord.” The man was wary.

  “Did he make these accusations against me?”

  “Yes, my lord.” A pause. “He might not remember.”

  That was sharp. Esvar’s mouth tightened involuntarily. Lukovian had to see the direction this was going and would not set his word against a prisoner’s. Much better to evade the problem by setting the prisoner against himself.

  “Do you find merit in them?”

  “Certainly not, sir.”

  Whoever had set this up was not prepared to drive it home, then. Lukovian would have produced forged evidence if this accusation was meant to bring Esvar down. It was a taunt, a test of who was willing to go how far for what.

  “Then how did such rumors come to be spread?”

  “I was not aware of such rumors, my lord. My people are instructed never to speak of what is said during an examination.”

  “You just spent two days under arrest yourself for repeating this slander.”