The Vanished Queen

by Lisbeth Campbell

  Anza had no response. She was no good at giving comfort, and Esvar was probably no good at receiving it. If she tried anything to ease him, they would just crash into each other. More, if he was going to oppose the king, he would need his edge.

  He drank, lowered his glass, wiped his mouth with the side of his hand. Much more calmly, he said, “Did you talk to Sparrow?”

  “She wants proof. She’ll believe you are serious if you give me something to give into her keeping that only you could own. It has to be of great value to you. If you do that, she’s willing to talk, but only through me, not face-to-face.”

  “That will do to start. It can’t hold forever. Anything else?”

  “She wants to know what kind of help you think she can give. She said to tell you that the resistance is not an army.”

  “No,” he agreed. “It’s not. As to what I want, it is little more than for the resistance to do what it intends to do. I will provide some targets. And names of people to leave alone. There will also be letters to deliver. There are more people than you know who can help, but I can’t go to them directly.”

  “Does your brother know about this plan?”

  “My brother,” he said. He circled his finger on the table a few times. “No. And I don’t intend to tell him.”

  “I thought you trusted him.”

  “Trust isn’t the word. We promised years ago that we each would try to keep the other from becoming like Karolje.” A statement, delivered neutrally, yet freighted with intimacy. More than she needed to know, more than she wanted to know. A history that went back a lifetime, lit with suffering.

  “I see,” she said.

  “Do you?” His face had gone still, no friendliness flickering in the eyes or curving the mouth now.

  “I know about promises. Why haven’t you told him, then?”

  “He has to be able to prove himself innocent if he’s questioned by a Truth Finder. This is all outside his compass.”

  It had not occurred to her that Karolje would use a Truth Finder on his own son, even if he had done it to his wife. Sons were different.

  “Sparrow wants a guarantee that your brother won’t turn around and jail her or her people when it’s over. She told me that was one of the conditions you had to meet before she would negotiate substance. But if he doesn’t know, you can’t speak for him.”

  “Yes. That’s the rather large flaw in my plan. I can’t offer amnesty. I don’t have that power and I won’t be forsworn. Tell her that. If it puts a halt to talking further, I will have to find some other way to fight the king. I can’t let Tevin risk knowing how much I am a traitor.” His lip curled. “For all I know, he is saying the same thing about me, but we don’t dare question each other. There may be thousands of people in Karegg who would rise against Karolje if they had a leader, but no one will be the first. That’s what I need the resistance for.”

  “You don’t expect them to storm the Citadel,” she said. The Citadel had been taken only twice in all its history, and those had both been by treachery from within.

  “No.”

  The server appeared with the food, seasoned chicken and fresh brown bread. They each ate a few bites in silence. The bird was strong-tasting and oily. Anza broke off a piece of bread to soak up some of the grease. When she was younger, she hadn’t noticed the poor quality of the food in the tavern. Esvar must find it ghastly.

  She said, “This is a colossal risk to you in return for little. I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t strike at Tevin’s enemies myself. But they need to be weakened or eliminated for him to succeed without a war.” He took a bite and said through the food, “Right now Karolje thinks I am obedient, if unreliable. I need him to stay confirmed in that belief. To look weak, I must to some extent be weak.”

  That can’t be true, she thought. Esvar exuded strength. She told herself she did not know what face he turned to the king, what ways he had found to protect himself. Perhaps he lurked like a deepwater fish.

  She attacked the chicken with her knife and chewed. I have your mother’s journal, she wanted to say. It would be disastrous. He could never escape the ruins of his parents’ marriage.

  She said, “Some members of the resistance want to do away with the Crown altogether.”

  He held his hand out, palm up, fingers spread. “If it were up to me, I’d listen. It’s not.”

  “You would? Can I tell them that?”

  “No. It would only make Tevin a more favored target. He isn’t going to give up power. He may not be averse to sharing. I don’t think he has considered it, but there are some things we don’t talk about. He certainly knows it’s possible. He’s read the same histories I have. If I don’t miss my guess, you have read some of them too. Even—or perhaps especially—the illegal ones.”

  The ones Nihalik had refused to let her take out of his cottage. Books that described the follies and weaknesses of Vetian kings, that compared the state unfavorably to other nations, that spoke of a prince’s duty to his people, that argued for governance by all citizens. If Esvar knew she had read such books, he must know she was evaluating everything he said in light of them. “Is that why you want me to be your messenger?”

  “No. You happen to have crossed my path at a convenient time. The captured members of the resistance who are still alive are not fit to be released. Even if they were, I’d be brought up as a traitor if I did it.”

  She said, “If we go on with this, you aren’t going to be able to hold back from being a traitor. You’re going to have to turn sometime, or Sparrow will wash her hands of you.”

  “I know. I have as slender reason to trust Sparrow as she does to trust me. I’m sorry you’re caught between the two of us. If we start shooting, get out of the way.”

  His words sat uncomfortably on Anza. She remembered Sparrow’s face that night in the Anchor, hard and ruthless. Had Anza given her allegiance to someone who could be as merciless as Karolje?

  “Who is she?” she asked.

  “She first turned up about five years ago. She seems to have no family but all the money she wants. I suspect she began as a thief.”

  “A prosperous thief.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Why didn’t you arrest her?”

  “You don’t get rid of a wasp’s burrow by killing a single wasp. You poison or plug the whole thing.”

  “You can kill the queen,” she said.

  “The queens don’t come out.” He said it as though he were presenting an ordinary fact, but the hand that had been reaching for the mug stilled momentarily. Anza thought of Mirantha, locked away. The analogy did not hold. The words had power nonetheless.

  “If your brother was made king tomorrow, what would he do?”

  “You mean with no obstacles or wars?”

  “Yes.”

  His eyes flicked back and forth. He had said living in the Citadel was like treading constantly around broken glass. She thought she was starting to understand what that meant.

  He said, “Repeal those of Karolje’s decrees that don’t involve money. The decrees about property and taxes have to be done more carefully. What Tevin needs to do is get married. The best thing would be for him to marry one of the chancellor’s daughters, but they’re much too young—the oldest is ten—and he can’t wait so long.”

  “Why the chancellor’s daughter?”

  “Because the chancellor is Karolje’s cousin and next in the succession after me. He would like to be king himself, which is why Tevin and I are not safe from him. But if he could make his daughter queen, that would satisfy him for now. He might even join Tevin in unseating Karolje if he thought he had that chance. It’s moot, though, since they’re still children. Tevin will need an heir of his own body sooner than seven or eight years from now.”

  His fears of civil war were much more grounded than she had thought. “The resistance wants to target Goran. And the spymaster.”

  “As they should. They’re both dangerous.”


  “I know Doru Kanakili’s wife from the College. Jance knows her too.”

  “You do? How well?”

  “We were lovers for a few months. I’ve only seen her once since, but we talked. She’s scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “The king. Her husband.”

  Esvar said, “Is there any chance she might poke around and find out things about you better left hidden?” Including me, his tone implied. “She could buy herself safety, even power, if she did.”

  “I don’t think so. She has no reason to think I’m involved in anything. She more or less warned me not to be.”

  “This could be a problem. If she finds out that you and I have been meeting, tell the truth about your father. Who else do you know who might know me?”

  “Possibly some of Rumil’s friends. But I’ve hardly seen most of them for months. And I didn’t tell anyone about my father.”

  “Rumil was your lover?”

  “Yes. The last time I saw him was before you gave me back the book.”

  “All right. Be careful, though. Old lovers can be malicious.” Esvar picked up his glass and drank. She wondered if he spoke from experience. “And talking of malice, I’m going to give you an escort home from here. I don’t want you to be easy prey for anyone.”

  “I know the area,” she said. “As long as I leave before sunset, I won’t be in any danger. It’s not as if this is Beggar Island.”

  “I’m giving you an escort anyway,” he said.

  She wanted to tell him it would only make her more noticeable, but something in his voice stopped her. He was trying to protect her because he had not been able to protect his mother. He might not know that was the reason, but she had to honor it this time.

  “Thank you,” she said. She reached across the table and touched his hand.

  He gripped her fingers tightly. It was not a lover’s clasp; it was the grip of a man who is falling. The noise of the tavern faded out as they stared at each other. Her heart turned over and resettled itself.

  He raised her hand to his lips and let it go. Sound filled in around her again. She knew this was a moment that sharply divided her life into a before and an after.

  “We will win,” he said. “We must.”

  MIRANTHA

  A FEW WEEKS AFTER Ashevi’s execution, she sends for the soldier who took her to the Green Court. He is a lieutenant named Alcu Havidian. “I need you to do something for me,” she says. “It might be dangerous. The only reason it is not forbidden is because it has not occurred to the king to forbid it. You will have to do it quietly and tell no one.”

  She waits. This is the moment when she knows whether she can trust her instincts at all or if the soldier’s fear of Karolje is too great. Havidian can obtain advancement and favor if he goes to his captain upon leaving this room. She will deny her orders to him if asked, but the king won’t believe her.

  “I serve you, my lady,” he says, passionate, convinced of her rightness. Her heart nearly breaks.

  Her journal and her books are in two bags. She hopes that one day the journal will come to her sons, though it will hurt them to read it. Of the books, most have no special meaning to her, but they are illegal outside the Citadel. She wants to preserve their knowledge. Their sense of history and beauty and of a world greater than the one Karolje is making.

  One is the Rukovili. It is a wrench to let go of this book, because Nihalik gifted it to her and because the poems have been her refuge. But Karolje will destroy it.

  “Take these bags to Master Tinas at the College,” she says. Nihalik had trusted Tinas. “Don’t look in them. Give them only to him. There is no other message.”

  “Yes, my lady,” he says. He picks up the bags, one in each hand. He is shorter than her but his hands are larger, and the bags aren’t as eye-catchingly huge when he is holding them. The muscles on his arms barely stand out with the weight. He is strong, capable. She wishes she could have him guard Esvar. To request it would bring him to Karolje’s notice.

  “Do you have children?” she asks.

  It startles him, but he answers readily enough. “A daughter, my lady. But I haven’t seen her in two years, not since I was sent north.”

  “You could bring her and her mother here.”

  “They are happier in their village.” He does not need to say safer. “Her mother and I are not married.”

  “How old is she?”

  He smiles, amused by some memory, no doubt. “Eight. Clever enough for older.”

  “Make sure she is taught, then,” Mirantha says. “There will be a time when Vetia has need of learning, and a time when learning is the coin that buys a woman power.”

  He stills, an almost intimate response she had not expected. She wonders if she has made a mistake, if he believes that women should be men’s servants and playthings. His eyes have darkened with thought.

  “Do I alarm you?” she asks, testing.

  “No, my lady.”

  “What, then?” She realizes. Money. He is probably still in debt for the cost of his commission. She can’t offer to pay; it would shame him. Worse, it would draw attention to the girl. Perhaps there is someone she can have help the girl discreetly. “Where does she live?”

  He tells her. The world falls into a different pattern.

  She says, “I know a man near there who will teach her for nothing, as a service to me. If she does well, he can see that she is admitted to the College on the same terms.”

  His face colors. “Thank you, my lady. But I have done nothing to deserve such a boon.”

  She has noticed this before, that the common people want far fewer favors than the nobles. They want to prove their own sufficiency. She says, “This is not a boon for you. I do it for Vetia. For my sons.”

  With care, he lowers the bags to the floor. He kneels, which soldiers do not do. She gives him her hand to kiss and in the same motion raises him. It is the first touch she has had from anyone besides her sons and her maids since Ashevi was killed. There is nothing sensual about it. It is almost unbearably painful, ripping the scar she has built over her loneliness.

  But pain is something she knows. She says, “Do this errand when you safely can. If it fails, do not report to me. You were here because I needed to know the truth of a rumor about one of Prince Esvar’s guards, a rumor that you have assured me is false.”

  “My lady,” he says, and salutes and takes the bags.

  When he is gone, she weeps a little, for herself, for her children. Then she dries her eyes and writes the letter to Nihalik. She sews her rings into the hem of a shirt.

  * * *

  One night she wakes to the sound of a scream cut off, and she hears boots in the maids’ room. She slams the bolt to her door shut and turns the key in the lock. They pound on the door.

  Part of her has always known this night was going to come, and she is ready. In seconds she is dressed in riding trousers and the jewelry-hemmed shirt. She opens the window. It is a twenty-foot drop to the ground. She had meant to have a rope. She would rather die falling than be killed.

  The door hinges screech as they are forced out of the frame. She extends one leg over the sill, then the other, but before she can prepare herself for the drop, the soldiers’ hands are on her, pulling her back into the room. They strike her on the head, and she blacks out.

  * * *

  When she regains consciousness, she is in a small arched room. Four men wait. She recognizes one of them. He has guarded her door many times. She stares at him, and he looks aside. The walls are stacked with bottles; this is someone’s wine cellar. She thinks rapidly about which lords Karolje might want to frame for treachery.

  Out the cellar door, and up steps, and into a kitchen. Mice scuttle away. Her mind wants to slip its moorings as it did at Ashevi’s trial.

  The men take her outside. The moon shines. Blossoms froth on the trees in the yard, two long rows of them against the surrounding wall. The house is one of the large ones near the
Citadel on a silent street. If she screams, no one will come.

  She stops walking. The soldiers draw their swords. Sorrow for her sons almost overwhelms her. She says, “What are you going to do?”

  “Cut off your head and take it back to the king,” one says with malicious glee.

  “You know what he’ll do next, don’t you? He won’t leave you alive to speak of this. You’re signing your own death warrants as well. Does he know you have me?”

  “Of course,” says the man she recognized. She hears a note of false bravery in his voice.

  She pushes. “He has some other story ready. Traitors or Tazekhs. He will have you executed for failure to keep me safe. If you go back to him, you are fools.”

  “Shut your bloody mouth,” says one of the other men. He is afraid too. He is very young.

  She almost has them. They know what Karolje is like. “Listen,” she says.

  The man she knows brings his sword point to her neck. “On your knees.”

  “He probably let you loot my room. He’ll say you’re thieves.”

  “Kill her,” says the first man.

  “Flee,” she says.

  The man who hasn’t spoken yet says, “If we desert, that’s our heads too, and for certain.”

  “Not as certain as if you return to the Citadel. He had you kill my guards. Do you think he wants you back in the Citadel with that story on your tongues?”

  They stare at her. She pushes the sword away from her neck. The soldier does not resist.

  “What the hell are you doing?” says the first man to the other.

  The man she knows says, “She’s right. He won’t want any witnesses to this.”

  “She’s a whore and you’re a fucking traitor,” the first man says, and she hears pleasure in his voice. He has been looking forward to killing her. He lunges at the other guard.

  The blades ring, the moonlight cold on them. The remaining two guards are watching, dumbfounded. They are paying no attention to her. Their hands are lowered, fingers slack on their sword hilts. Bad discipline, she thinks. The moon is on their faces, shadows behind them. She should run. But she wants to finally fight.