The Vanished Queen

by Lisbeth Campbell

  Tevin walked forward as though he saw no one but Karolje. Perhaps he didn’t. Esvar followed, a guard on either side of him and one behind. The guards jerked Tevin to a halt in front of the dais, not close enough to touch it. They stopped Esvar a few feet behind him. To one side of the dais was an upright iron frame large enough for a person, shackles attached. That was where you put a man if you wanted to restrain him and still give his body room to shake and jerk with every pain inflicted.

  “Ah,” said Karolje. “Have you anything to say for yourselves before I have you killed? Either of you?”

  Tevin stared directly at him. The bonds and the guards seemed unimportant under the force of his presence. He was bleeding from a shallow cut on his left arm.

  “I’ve come to claim the throne, old man,” he said.

  MIRANTHA

  THE CITADEL GATES are open. That is probably a good thing, but it might be disaster. Not long ago they heard a bell ringing repeatedly, an alarm, which means Tevin and Esvar are within and that more soldiers are on their way. Sparrow reins in outside the gates and says roughly to Anza, “Get down,” then dismounts herself. She swats the horse and it goes trotting off to its stable.

  She looks at Anza, who is small and fierce and brave. A soldier’s daughter, like herself. “You shouldn’t come,” she says, because she cannot bear the thought of watching another woman die. “Wait here for River.”

  “I have to come,” Anza says. She takes a deep breath. “When my father let you go, did he know who you were?”

  The question she has dreaded for years. “A leader in the resistance?” she says. “Yes.”

  “Not Sparrow. Mirantha.”

  “You’re mad, girl.”

  “Esvar recognized you,” Anza says. “He told me yesterday.”

  Time stops. The earth no longer moves. The Citadel is a painted stage set and the air is glass. She has had few greater fears than that her sons would know her as they watched her die.

  “How?” Sparrow asks, her voice brittle as ice.

  “When I was a student, I found your journal in the College library. He’s read it. Something you said at the College used the same words you had written. Then he could see you in your face.”

  She should have burned the journal. It was vanity to preserve it. “When did this happen?”

  “Two nights ago. He had no idea when he met with you, I swear. He didn’t know about the journal then.”

  “Why did you decide to give it to him?”

  “Because he needed to know he had been loved. Needed to know that there was more to his life than Karolje.”

  It shakes her. Sparrow wipes her forehead. “You shouldn’t have done it. All that can happen to him now is more pain.”

  “At the time, I didn’t know there was any secret to keep besides the journal,” Anza says. She raises her head and stares up into Sparrow’s face. “I had no right to deny him that. It hurt him like hell, but it gave him courage. He told me after he fled the Citadel that Karolje offered him the crown, and he was tempted. The journal gave him a touchstone. Without it he might have failed when he was set against the king.”

  Every word is a spike driven into her. She wishes Esvar had never learned this, and she is full of gratitude that it gave him strength. When she saw him for the first time in the College, she feared she would break with pride and love and grief. His eyes had the same alert intensity they did as a child, and his face was a mask. He had learned how to hide. How to be safe.

  “Why did you tell me this?” she asks. “To try to stop me here at the gate? I’m going in.”

  Anza says, “No one has a better right or greater need to face Karolje than you. It just seems—some secrets throw shadows much longer than we can bear. You and Esvar”—she stops, swallows, tries again—“if you see each other, you need to know each other. He still loves you. You aren’t alone anymore.”

  Once she had wanted to be free, tied to no one, encumbered by nothing. She did not understand then that it also meant she would be unsupported. Year upon year, day upon day, of solitary resistance have worn upon her. Anza’s words are a gift. Sparrow’s grief is like water in a lock, deep, held back. In all these years she has never grieved for herself.

  She has to turn away. She stares down the broad avenue, which will soon know the feet of thousands of marching angry people, and wonders if she has doomed her sons. She should have killed Karolje when she had the chance, even if it meant her own life. If a mob she has raised kills Tevin and Esvar in the name of justice, she will be crushed by the weight of her failure. The unfamiliar feeling inside her is terror.

  And yet, and yet… She knew this could happen when she sent the journal away, when she returned to Karegg, when she went to Ivanje Stepanian. It is her own steps that have led her here, her own choices. And she would make them again. She could not sit by and let others fight the king. She could not let him reign unchallenged.

  It doesn’t matter. The past is unchangeable now, and she has a task. She can weep over her mistakes later.

  She looks back at Anza, who must love Esvar to have given him the journal. That had been courageous on her part. She had to have known it would hurt.

  It is time for other secrets to be bared.

  Sparrow says, “Your father did a service to me once, when I lived in the Citadel. It was he who brought my books and journal to the College. He told me he had a daughter, just Esvar’s age, who was clever and quick. He was proud of her. I found a tutor for her, arranged that she could go to the College if she merited it.”

  “Why?” Anza whispers.

  “For Vetia,” Sparrow says. “It is people like you who will help restore the nation when this is over. And for my sons. I am gladder than you can possibly know that Esvar found you. I think I must have known, or wished, that Havidian’s daughter would be the one to read my words.”

  Anza’s hands clench and her shoulders tighten. “I took the poetry too,” she says. “The Rukovili. It was in my father’s house when he was killed. Esvar found it. That’s what led us together. It made him curious.”

  Just a few days ago the world was a formless confusion of violence and desire and unsettled anger. As it had been for years. Now it is taking a shape. She says, “Connections matter. Did you ever wonder how your friend Irini found the resistance? Her lover’s brother knows one of us from a time they worked together. Karolje’s weakness is that he has no connections. He has chosen to be alone. Today he will need help, and he will have no one to turn to. A tyrant’s cruelty lies in his contempt for others, but that’s also his undoing.”

  They face each other. Their shadows are stubby, blue on the mottled cobbles.

  “We’re going in?” Anza asks.

  “We’re going in. But I think we should close the gates.”

  They walk through the open gateway. Sparrow’s shoulders tighten reflexively as she steps back into this dangerous place. She goes to the gatehouse and looks in. One soldier, stabbed through the heart, lies sprawled half on his side. Blood darkens the floor around him. His face is waxy. He has been dead a while. If no one has come to his aid yet, Tevin and Esvar have likely got the upper hand.

  The gates are designed to slide along the walls. They are polished steel, strong enough and high enough to keep out even determined groups. But they might not hold against a mob. There is a wheel on the side of the gatehouse, and she turns it. Above her she hears the creak of metal forced from rest. The portcullis, which has not been lowered for protection since the end of the Tazekh war, is well-maintained and descends almost too rapidly. It takes all her strength to keep the wheel from spinning out of control.

  When she comes out, Anza is staring at the portcullis. “It’s so big,” she says. “Won’t River be angry?”

  “No. If the people of the city get in, far too many innocent people will die. And soldiers can’t get out to attack them easily either. They can be heard, which will be enough. If we all fail, they can run.” If there is a panic, some people might b
e trampled. But the wide street is safer than the narrow roads in the main parts of the city. “Come.”

  They slide the other gates shut and bar them as an additional precaution, then advance across the courtyard. Sparrow feels as though she is seventeen again, a new wife, crossing this expanse of cobble to a building that will swallow her. When she came then, the formal entrance doors were opened and fifty guards stood on either side in dress uniform, and King Piyr waited on the steps to greet her and Karolje. She was full of eagerness and hope, her hand on the arm of her handsome husband with the pleasing smile.

  “This way,” she says, walking briskly toward the ordinary entrance. It is impressive too, but nothing on the scale of the ceremonial doors, which stand twenty feet high.

  The guards who should be there are missing. No signs of violence. She pushes on one door, expecting to find it barred, and it gives. It is heavy enough that she and Anza both need to use their weight at first but it swings easily on its hinges once it has started moving.

  Bodies lie on the floor of the large room ahead of them. Two gaslights burn, not enough to displace shadows. Sparrow shuts the door again and pulls at the huge bar that slides across the crack between the doors. Anza helps. The bar is heavy but well oiled, and they get it into place, swing down the clamps at each end. Between the bodies, arrows make dark lines on the white marble.

  “What happened?” Anza asks.

  “The princes had a battle here,” Sparrow answers. “I think they were let in, though. Tevin’s men must have gotten themselves assigned the duty. It won’t be this easy the rest of the way. Get your bow ready.” She draws her sword.

  The blood on the floor is getting sticky. At the top of the stairs they find more bodies. The air stinks. One man is still alive, unconscious, an arrow in the muscle of his neck and his elbow laid open by a sword stroke. Anza looks away. Sparrow kneels beside the soldier—he is in Tevin’s uniform—and looks at the wounds. He isn’t going to make it. His pulse is uneven. When she raises an eyelid, nothing happens.

  She stands. He will die without regaining consciousness. She doesn’t have to apply a mercy stroke. Anza’s face is pale.

  “If you’re going to faint or be sick, do it now,” Sparrow says. “Sometimes it helps. We might see worse.”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. If I’m going to vomit, I’ll do it on the king.”

  Sparrow is amused despite herself. Such is the quality of youth. She looks upward a moment, wondering where to go next.

  Once she has put the question, the answer is obvious. If Karolje has captured his sons, he will have taken them to the Green Court. If they have triumphed, she will run across their men first and can ask.

  So they walk. They have not gone far from the landing when they encounter two guards, bound and gagged, some yards away from the foot of another set of steps. The men’s eyes widen when they see the women. Sparrow bends over and loosens one man’s gag.

  “Who did this?” she asks.

  “Prince Tevin. He came back. Who the hell are you?”

  Sparrow grins. “His ally,” she says, and pulls the gag up.

  They ascend the stairs. At the top Sparrow turns right and edges along the wall of a corridor. The gas has been turned off. They walk through dim halls, turning a few times, until they reach a place where daylight falls softly on the floor of a room ahead of them. She knows where they are. It is strange how even after a dozen years her feet fall into old patterns. She is a ghost, a figure from the past who has been summoned to old haunts. The thought disturbs her. She is alive now. It is Mirantha the queen, young and timid, who used to tread these halls lightly, fearing to disturb anything.

  She looks at Anza and lifts a hand, halting the other woman. She goes forward and looks around the corner into an atrium. There are at least twenty men dead. Many of them have slit throats, and the floor is covered with blood. The uniforms are a mix.

  There should be more activity here, soldiers cleaning up or servants in the hallways, lords’ and ladies’ voices a murmur in a nearby room. She goes to the window. The courtyard below is empty of people.

  Returning to Anza, she says, “There was combat. Quite a number of men died. I can’t tell who won.”

  “Is Esvar—”

  “No. Neither of them. But the blood’s fresh. It wasn’t long ago. Probably when we heard the bell.”

  “Do you know where they are?”

  “No. But I have a guess. We should have seen more people, so I think Karolje’s gathered everyone. And I know where he would do that.” It is a relief after all not to have to pretend she has never been here.

  They enter the atrium. Anza looks at the bodies, stiffens. “Wait,” she says, and goes to look at one of them. She stands for a few long silent seconds, then squats down and closes the dead man’s eyes.

  “You know him?” Sparrow asks.

  “He was Esvar’s captain. I think that means they lost.”

  Sparrow’s diaphragm tightens. She says, “Let’s go.”

  They walk. Corridors are wide and ceilings high, windows and paintings on the walls, floors tiled in marble. The doorframes are carved and painted. Marble busts and enameled vases occupy niches in the walls. Anza slows, gawks. Sparrow lets her.

  Then they pass through a doorway with a curved arch and enter the older part of the Citadel. Ceilings are lower. The stones are unplastered and dark, stained with centuries of soot. Gas pipes along the walls are mounted on iron brackets, some of them spotted with rust. The air is chilly. The masonry is smooth, the lines clean; these are no underground passages, cramped and rough-hewn. But clearly this part of the Citadel was built as a fortress, not a palace.

  Two more turns. When they come to a third, Sparrow stops and looks around a corner. Four armored men stand outside the door to the Green Court. Two are armed with pikes and two with drawn swords.

  She pulls her head back and whispers into Anza’s ear, “The entrance is down that hall. There are four guards, which I assume means Tevin didn’t win his way through. It’s within your range. Can you take them?”

  “Let me look.”

  “Careful.”

  Anza peeks. “I can hit them,” she whispers back, “but I can’t kill all four before they raise the alarm.”

  Sparrow thinks. Her goal is to be taken before Karolje. She would like to do this in triumph, as a threat, but a fight might get them killed or hauled away to the dungeon. The soldiers are highly trained and have reinforcements.

  “I will surrender,” she says. “You can still escape. Go back out and wait for River. If I fail, let them in.”

  “No,” says Anza. “I do this with you.”

  Sparrow is not going to try harder to convince Anza to save herself. The woman has earned the right to make her own choices, to own her own voice. She says, “Thank you.”

  They round the corner. The guards see them and tense.

  Sparrow removes her sword and lays it on the floor. “Put down the bow,” she says. Anza’s lips tighten, but she obeys. They walk forward and stop a few feet away from the guards. The carvings on the closed doors shift and bend like living things, and though the lights have not dimmed, the corridor seems to close in and darken.

  “I’ve come to see the king,” Sparrow says.

  Two of them laugh. A third man looks nervously at the door. The fourth says, “Who are you?”

  “Thousands of people are marching to the Citadel right now. The prisoners who were to be executed have been freed, and soldiers are deserting to join the people. Karolje’s reign is over.”

  “And do you intend to be the queen?” asks one of the men who laughed. He steps forward.

  “No,” says the fourth guard. “Stand aside. We will let them in.”

  “What?”

  In a smooth, skilled blow the fourth man hits the other in the jaw. The man falls, his pike clattering loudly when it strikes the floor. The other two soldiers stare.

&nb
sp; “This has gone on long enough,” says the fourth guard.

  “Filthy traitor,” says the other swordsman.

  The fourth swings his sword around and levels the tip at the man’s throat. “The king doesn’t deserve our service.” The second pikeman places his weapon against the wall.

  The swordsman says contemptuously, “You too?”

  The pikeman doesn’t bother to answer, just hits the man in the mouth. His head jerks back, away from the sword point, and with a second punch the pikeman drops him. He bends over and picks up the man’s sword. “Get your weapons,” he says to the women. When they have them, he opens the door.

  The two soldiers wait for Sparrow and Anza to enter, then follow, swords drawn. Sparrow cannot avoid the thought that she should not trust these men, that she will be run through with a sword from behind, but she dismisses it and walks into the Green Court. A dozen years are swept away like cobwebs, the room exactly as she remembers it.

  Her sons, their wrists bound, surrounded by guards, stand before the dais, blocking her view of Karolje. She pauses a moment, heartsick. Even wounded and bloody, they are beautiful. She is proud, so proud of them standing together against their father, and terrified that she will watch them die. That would be the worst thing of all.

  Somehow she lifts her foot. She and Anza walk forward, the courtiers watching, whispering. Sparrow recognizes people. There is Tahari, dressed in brown, her hair tightly coiled on her head. She is thinner, her face drawn and angry. She does not recognize Sparrow. None of them do. Sparrow’s sword is out, blood dulling it in places, and Anza holds her bow.

  They approach the king. She counts. Ten soldiers, against the four of them and the two unarmed, bound princes. Winning by force seems unlikely. She never really thought it possible.

  “Should I shoot?” Anza whispers. She holds an arrow loosely against the string.

  “No,” says Sparrow. Her throat hurts. She would not trust even River and his near-perfect aim to kill or wound all the guards before someone slashed a blade across Tevin’s or Esvar’s throat. If they are going to die, they should die fighting, not captive. She thought she could sacrifice them, but not like this, not in a victory for Karolje.