Esvar looks at her, grim and unsurprised, then sees Anza and goes white. He has given his heart whether he knows it or not. Tevin has no recognition in his eyes. Esvar has not told him. He is bleeding from a swollen lip and a slash on his arm. Traces of the boy she knew remain in his coloring, the set of his eyes, the graceful shape of his hands. Even injured, he has authority.
At a word and gesture from the king, the guards haul Esvar to the right and Tevin to the left, hold swords to their necks. Anza keeps her bow lowered.
Karolje is as alert as ever, and though he is gaunt and weak-looking, he resonates with power. The wolf’s-head pendant of office shines malevolently against his robe. He speaks. Sparrow flinches from his voice as she used to. The long-gone ache where he broke her rib comes back to life. The past is thick around her.
“It is a very festival of traitors,” he says. “Did you come like a harpy to pick on the remains of the princes, or do you too think to challenge me for my crown? I tell you, you will have to go through them first. Take one step closer, and they die.”
“Don’t listen to him, Sparrow,” Esvar says.
Sparrow says nothing. Silence is her shield and her sword. She remembers the Truth Finder putting his hand to her forehead in this room, remembers floating apart from her body. Such an escape will not serve her now.
Anza says, “A prince who breaks his contract with his people forfeits his power.”
“Take her,” Karolje says.
A soldier steps away from Esvar and comes to Anza, who does not resist. He grabs her by the elbow and jerks her arm back and up. The bow falls. Esvar stirs, and a bit of red beads on his skin at the sword point. Anza shouldn’t have come, Sparrow thinks. Esvar won’t be able to bear to see her hurt, and so Karolje will win even if every other soldier in the room turns against him too. Bringing her this far was a fatal miscalculation. Sparrow had forgotten to reckon with love.
Still looking at Karolje, Anza says, “If you kill me, I will haunt you even when you are dead.” She has the arrow in her left hand, fingers locked around the shaft.
He shrugs. “I fear no ghosts. Certainly not the ghosts of insolent children like you.”
The guard pushes Anza’s arm up higher. She closes her eyes and sucks her cheeks in. She says thickly, “Not just my ghost. My father’s ghost. If you hadn’t killed him, he would be standing here now with a sword at your neck and a hundred soldiers with him.”
He laughs.
She goes on. “You don’t know how to see what’s before your eyes. All anyone gives back to you is your own reflection, and you can’t see through it. You’re blind. You’re alone. No one wants you.”
Karolje will not hear those words. The audience might. Sparrow wishes she had had the courage to say such things twenty-five years ago. To speak them aloud, not just to the pages of her journal.
The king makes a sign. The guard jerks his hand higher, and Anza screams, cuts herself off. It is an act of physical bravery such as Sparrow has not seen for a long time. Her face is white and sweating with agony. Esvar has recovered his color but is still taut as a string wound too tight, ready to snap.
From beside Karolje, Doru steps forward and looks at the torture rack. “Is it time, my lord?” he asks.
Some of the courtiers are retreating, hoping not to be noticed. Even the ones who would like Karolje to win are nervous. Violence is ready to fall like a landslide on everyone. The man holding Anza releases her elbow and locks his arm around her neck. Her arm dangles, limp, while her fingers move reflexively, like a dying animal.
“Begin with the girl,” Karolje says. He turns his head and looks sharply at Esvar. “That will break this mewling coward of a man.”
“Karolje,” says Tevin. His voice rings over the room. Heads turn to him. “I challenge you. I demand trial by combat.”
Karolje grins. He has always been unable to resist a game, even when simple ruthlessness would suffice. He is very good at games. “I accept.” He pauses, and Sparrow knows an agonizing second before he speaks what he will say. “I name as my champion Prince Esvar.”
“No,” says Esvar.
“Then your brother can kill you, if he wants the crown so much.”
“I will give my life to make him king. I always would.”
“Not this way,” says Tevin.
One of the men behind Sparrow, forgotten, unnoticed, steps around her. He lays his sword on the floor and pushes it, hilt forward, in Tevin’s direction. The man kneels and says, looking at Tevin, “You have my sword, my king.”
It is a symbolic gesture, futile, perhaps even worse than useless because the man is now unarmed. But in this room, symbols have power. The silence that follows the words has weight. Sparrow’s heart aches with pride and love and fear.
“Kill him,” says Karolje.
No one moves. Tevin steps back from the blade at his neck without resistance. After a moment, Esvar does the same. The four soldiers on the dais are looking uneasily at each other and at the men around the princes.
Sparrow knows what they are calculating. Probably everyone in the room does. If Karolje wants to win, he has to order his sons’ deaths now. Any hesitation, and even the most mercenary of the soldiers will flee from him to a stronger leader.
“Doru,” the king says. “Kill them. Start with the younger brat. He won’t resist.”
“As you wish.” The spymaster draws a knife, long and bright-edged. Sparrow fantasizes that he will sheathe it in Karolje’s heart, but of course he does no such thing. He steps off the dais.
Anza scrapes the arrow she has been holding sharply against the arm of the man restraining her, and he, startled, loses his grip. In a second she has picked up her bow and put the arrow to the string. Pain contorts her face. She draws and releases. She falls sideways, agonized, and the arrow goes through Doru’s neck all the way to the feathers. One of the courtiers screams.
Blood pouring from his mouth, Doru crumples. He grabs at the feathers and tugs. Horribly, he tries to speak. His chest heaves. He convulses, and his eyes roll upward. He is still.
Esvar steps away from his guards, who make no effort to restrain him, and runs the few feet to Anza’s side. He kneels beside her, his head bent, vulnerable. The man who had been holding her backs nervously away, his hands held out from his waist, palms up. Of the four soldiers on the dais, three have retreated. The fourth stares at the princes with loathing. He is Karolje’s man still.
Tevin hasn’t budged. He looks at the king. “Let us make this simple,” he says. “Yield to me and I won’t kill you.”
Oh, Tevin, she thinks. He is being so brave.
“My son,” Karolje says, “you are the one who is bound.”
One of the men beside Tevin draws his knife. Before Sparrow can even fear that Tevin will be killed, the guard slices through the fire-twine around the prince’s wrists. Tevin bends over and picks up the sword on the floor. Burns show on his skin. The guards circle him protectively. Esvar makes a small noise.
“Yield,” Tevin says again.
With a flick of his wrist, Karolje sends the soldier remaining on the dais into action. The man leaps off and approaches Tevin, sword raised.
Everything happens fast. The soldier brings his sword down, and it is deflected by two other blades as the circling guards respond. The ring is painful to Sparrow’s ears. The soldier jerks back. A guard’s sword flashes, and the soldier collapses heavily to the floor. Half his neck has been sliced through. In the crowd someone vomits.
Tevin picks up the sword and takes one step toward the dais. He raises the sword and points it in front of him at Karolje. “Yield.”
“Kill him, Tevin!” someone shouts.
She will not have her son be a parricide.
“No,” she says loudly. The single word stills him, stills the room. Everyone looks at her. She walks forward, out of the twilight she has been in for years. She glances at Esvar. She is glad after all that he knows, and she smiles at him. At Anza, who brought her
here.
The king says, “You are a wretch, woman, and your resistance will die with you.”
Tevin says sharply, “Move, Sparrow. His death is mine.”
She smiles at him too. Esvar calls, “Let her!” and Tevin turns to stare at his brother in confusion.
Sparrow takes another step. “Karolje,” she says, echoing her son. “You failed a long time ago.”
He looks at her, still without recognition. Doru’s blood has pooled on the green marble. The dead soldier stares upward into infinite darkness.
She says, “It is a mistake not to fear ghosts. You can’t escape the past.”
Then the king sees it. He cannot hide his shock and surprise. His mouth opens and shuts. “You’re dead,” he says.
“They lied to you. Everything about you is a lie, and it’s torn now like rotted silk.”
“They might have lied, but I killed them.”
There is a sharp clink as the tip of Tevin’s sword touches the floor. His face is a boy’s, panic-stricken. She wishes there had been some way to warn him. A whisper is passing through the audience.
She turns her head and says to the courtiers, “He has killed his soldiers. He has killed his chancellor. He intends to kill his sons. Will you stand there and let him do it? Do you think he will want witnesses? The air itself is bloody.”
“They’re cowards,” says Karolje contemptuously.
“I’m not.”
“You always have been.”
Her breath almost fails her with rage. The only thing that keeps her silent is the knowledge that her voice will be shrill and trembling. She is not weak, but she cannot look weak either.
“No words?” he mocks.
Silent, she continues to stare at him. He cannot be moved by shame or pity or regret. But he has no power over her anymore, and that he is unaccustomed to. The few defiances he has ever seen have always been shadowed by fear.
And indeed, the silence disturbs him. He gropes again for something to hurt her with.
“Your lover, Ashevi—he gained me my throne. He killed Piyr for me, and I paid him with you.”
Years ago, Ashevi snapped at her, I’m a priest, not an assassin. They had been quarreling. He wasn’t brave enough to have killed Piyr. Even if he had been, even if it is true that she had been his reward, it will not stop her now. She has hewn and shaved and polished herself down to the core. Old passion is a castoff. She takes another step forward.
“Have you forgotten how your fear of me aroused him?”
Once it would have hurt. Perhaps it will hurt later. But not at this moment. She decides it is time to speak.
“You used to want to keep me quiet,” she says. “It worked for a time. I was your wife. But it taught me something too. I have learned how to wait. How to endure. And how to hunt. I know what a wounded animal looks like when I see it. You’re out of time, Karolje.”
His expression changes. “Mirantha,” he says, his voice a lover’s voice, caressing. “You are so lovely.”
It sickens her so much she can’t think. She recoils. Both her sons are paralyzed with horror.
Anza says, her voice thin and distant, “Sparrow. Mirantha. You have the strength. Use it.”
She advances on the king.
“Bitch,” he says.
She grabs the pendant and twists the chain viciously around his neck. He gropes at it with sticklike fingers. She clutches harder. His face turns red and his feet kick at the base of the chair. His breath whistles.
She feels his death in the slackening of his flesh. It is done. Karolje is dead on his chair, and she is still alive.
TEVIN LEAPED ONTO the dais beside the chair. Crouched beside Anza, Esvar was faint and unsteady. He looked down at her face and saw tears on her cheeks. His wrists burned where his skin rubbed against the fire-twine.
“Karolje is dead,” Tevin said, not loudly but loud enough in the shocked silence of the room.
Sparrow—Mirantha—stepped away from the body and looked at Tevin, at the chair between them. Esvar bit his lip and hoped neither of them lost composure. Behind him he heard movement, and he looked to see the courtiers going to their knees. The guards had all taken refuge in expressionless formality, weapons lowered. They were not going to challenge.
“Mother,” said Tevin, very gently.
She reached across the dead king for Tevin’s hand. His face twisted. He got it under control, and then she said, “You have my love. Always. And my loyalty.”
Esvar looked down at Anza. “Go,” she whispered. She put her weight on her uninjured arm and tried to push herself up.
A soldier approached and cut Esvar’s bonds. Esvar stood awkwardly. His own shoulders ached from having had his hands behind his back so long. He and the soldier both helped Anza to her feet. He wiped one tear from her face, then walked to his brother’s side. Tevin was pale. The burns on his wrist were more severe than Esvar’s; he must have struggled. Esvar knelt formally on the dais. He had imagined this for years. It felt familiar, right, and also unutterably strange. The king was dead. His brother was the king.
Tevin gripped his hand hard and raised him. They embraced.
“King Tevin!” someone shouted, and the others took it up. Tevin tried to wave them to silence, but it took a while. They stood, cheering. How easily they are led, Esvar thought. How ephemeral this moment.
He faced his mother.
When Mirantha had been masked at the College, he had not seen how the years had marked her face. She was only a few inches shorter than him, straight and slim, firm-jawed. Her eyes were the dark blue he remembered. How hard had it been for her, these weeks?
“Esvar,” she said.
He could not frame a question. He felt desolate. He was furious with Karolje for having cheated him of the last twelve years. “I’m sorry,” he said. It made no sense but contained everything.
“Before we came in, Anza told me you knew.”
“I guessed. You said you would do terrible things. I didn’t expect what happened.”
She looked at both of them. “None of the things I said as Sparrow were false. The people of Karegg—of Vetia—need a voice. I didn’t fight Karolje for revenge.”
Tevin’s throat moved as he swallowed. He said, voice low, “He hurt you more than anyone. I will listen to you.”
“I want you to listen to your people, not to me.”
“I will. I will need your help.” He looked at Esvar. “And yours, and Anza’s.”
Mirantha said, “Tevin, the people of Karegg are marching on the Citadel. They have to see he’s dead. It’s not enough to Disappear him. We have to meet them with his body.”
Tevin nodded. “You and Anza,” he said to her. “Go out first. Esvar and I will bring him.”
Anza. Esvar turned. Beyond the dais, she looked bereft. He jumped down, only vaguely aware of the soldiers around him, and went to her side. She moved tentatively into his arms and pressed her cheek against his chest.
“Anza, Anya, my love, you were so brave.”
Tears spilled over her lashes. “I’m glad they’re dead, so glad, they deserved it. Both of them. But I hope I never hate anyone like that again.”
He kissed her and tightened his hold. She jerked with pain and swore. He stepped back and felt gently. Her shoulder was swollen and bruised.
“Can you move it at all?” he asked.
“Not now. When I used the bow, something tore.”
“We’d better wait for the surgeon to put it back in place. Are you in much pain?”
“I can manage for a while. Oh gods, Esvar. Is it really over?”
“This part is,” he said. They both looked at the dais, at the body in the chair. Karolje seemed years older. The pendant still hung around his neck.
The courtiers were drifting out of the room. Mirantha stood to the side, alone. Tevin was giving orders. Doru’s body had been covered.
Her voice shaking, she said, “Esvar, I’m sorry about Marek.”
It muted him
unexpectedly, a grief he had forgotten for the moment. He ran his hand through her hair. She caught it and held it with trembling fingers against her cheek. He was reminded of a bird or a mouse, frightened heart beating in soft body. He loved her. He could, now, without the presence of his father falling between them.
Mirantha approached them. “Anza, we need to go to the gate.”
“Go,” said Esvar, releasing her. “Tevin’s right. You aren’t royal, they will believe you.”
Guards followed the women out. Did the servants know yet that Karolje was dead? Had word spread to everyone in the Citadel? Were there men still loyal to the king who might attack? It would be a while before he felt safe in this building.
Tevin joined him. His color was high. Soldiers had entered with a bier, a kingly one, nothing like the kind of battlefield stretcher most bodies would get. Esvar would have liked to drag Karolje out by his feet. He and Tevin watched in silence as the body was put onto the expensive leather mat and secured. The sides were black wood, each end capped in engraved silver. The soldiers knelt to lift it.
“Not on your shoulders,” Tevin said. That brought a few surprised glances, but they obeyed, carrying it at waist height instead.
Tevin led them. In the atrium and the entrance hall, the bodies had been covered and the floor patchily cleaned. The doors were open, sunlight visible outside. It seemed a dreamworld. They went through the entranceway and down the steps to the courtyard, where not so long ago they had come in. As the sun struck him, Esvar was aware of how cold he had been. Mirantha and Anza stood by the gate, which was open.
The people coming were not visible, but Esvar could hear a chant, the words unclear. Tevin directed the guards to lay Karolje’s body a few yards inside the gate.
“Stay back,” he said to Esvar, putting a hand on his arm. “Let him lie between us and the crowd.”
The Vanished Queen Page 41
