The Vanished Queen
Page 42
That was Tevin, who would always know how to stage things. It was comforting.
The bell gonged again, the steady deep strokes that tolled a death. Esvar imagined quiet falling over the city as people knew someone with power had died. They would not assume it was the king.
When the crowd drew near, the leader—a red-haired man who was on a soldier’s horse—stopped at the sight of the open gate. He quieted the chant to the ordinary buzz of conversation and walked the horse forward. Mirantha waved at him. He waved back and dismounted. A woman in the front of the crowd sprinted forward, and Anza ran to meet her. They gripped hands, then walked forward to join Mirantha and the man. They stopped a foot or so away from the bier and looked down at the body.
“This is him?” said the man.
Most of the people in the city had never seen him in life, and his aged face looked nothing like the profile on coins. They would have to take it on trust, as they had had to take so much.
“This is him,” said Mirantha.
The woman with Anza knelt to look at Karolje’s face. Then she rose and stared across the body at Tevin. “You’re the king now,” she said, hostile.
“Yes,” he said.
“Are you going to do what he did?”
“No.” He pointed at the pendant. “I will never wear that. A king does not prey upon his people. Tell me what you think I should do.”
She took a deep breath. Esvar expected invective or angry commands. Her face crumpled, and she started crying. Wordlessly, Anza gave the woman a one-armed hug.
The man spat on Karolje’s body. The guards stirred, but Tevin waved them back. He said to the man, “He never should have been a king. Come. Tell me what you want.”
“I won’t go in there.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll come out.”
“Sparrow,” the man said, almost plaintively. “What happened?”
Mirantha said, “We won.”
* * *
Hours later, Esvar closed the door of his bedroom and put his arms around Anza. Her hair, fresh-washed, smelled faintly of rosemary. She wore one of his robes, which dragged on the floor. He was clean too, soft cloth wrapped around his burned wrists.
This was an interlude. He knew that. A balance had to be found. Even when the principle of something was agreed on, the details were overwhelming and arguable. Tevin had agreed to a ruling council, but who was to be on it? How many? How would they be chosen? There had already been contention about what to do with Karolje’s body. Esvar knew his brother would have gladly seen it thrown to the hellhounds, but that would antagonize the loyalists and priests whose support Tevin needed. A compromise had finally been reached, and the body was to be buried whole, without a public funeral or mourning, on the Citadel grounds instead of in the royal tombs. In the city, the work of dismantling the gallows had begun, but people still thronged the square, chanting. Twenty had died, including Miloscz and four soldiers, and that would need to be put right, or as right as it could be.
But now was his own time. He slipped his hand under the edge of Anza’s robe.
They lay naked on the bed in candlelight while the evening air moved through the room. He tried not to think about either the past or the future. Her body was lithe and muscular, her skin flawed with the scrapes and scratches of living, her dark hair thick and soft. Her shoulder was stiff and painful, so they did what they could and no more. She had a drug to take to sleep if she needed it.
She blew out the candle. The darkness folded around them, comfortable, safe. His breath evened.
He had thought she was asleep when she said softly, “What happens to us now?”
He would have liked not to consider such things yet, but he was not surprised she asked. It was like her to avoid uncertainty. He repeated to her something his brother had said to him: “In a thousand years we could not have imagined it would end like this.”
“With your mother killing him?”
He had spent much of his life with the constant thought that his father had killed his mother. Now it was reversed. My mother killed my father. It had been her right as no one else’s to achieve that justice, to throttle Karolje with his own kingship, but it transformed his world.
“Yes,” he said. “He always seemed immortal to me. I never really thought we’d win. And I never thought I would have a mother. Things are all askew.”
“With me as well?”
He knew it had taken courage to ask that. She might not have been able to in the light. He leaned over and kissed her forehead.
“You hold the world in place. You are an anchor.”
He felt the tremor in her body. “Vasha,” she whispered, which no one had called him in years.
Taking great care, he laid his arm over her and cupped his hand around one soft breast. He inhaled. “Anza, I want you with me always. I don’t know what that looks like.”
After a silence, she said thickly, “You’re a prince.” He knew she was not speaking of freedom and power but of obligation and responsibility. She would not be happy living in the Citadel even if the obstacle of a state marriage could be removed. And she had risked so much to bring down a king.
He said, “What do you want? Should we go on as we are, occasional lovers, and let the future bring what it brings?”
She did not answer. An unfamiliar sensation of loss caught him. She might leave.
Finally she said, “I want you. But I don’t want to share you with a crown. I don’t know what that looks like either.” Her voice was strained. She was holding back some deeper sadness.
With his thumb he stroked her cheek. There was only one way out that he could see.
“I told you that I renounced it all. I meant that. I can make it formal, give up my place in the succession.”
“I can’t—” She stopped and drew herself up to a sit. He looked at her shape, the hair falling over her shoulders, the firmness of her arms. Small and strong. He was not romantic enough to think that if she broke his heart he would never have another lover, but he could never take another woman who looked like her into his bed. She had claimed that much of him already.
She said, “Would you do it without me?”
He remembered the sound of the metal flail striking the floor in the Green Court, Nikovili’s terror. The faces turned aside when he rode through the city. The desire when Karolje offered him the crown.
“Yes,” he said. “I shouldn’t have power I haven’t earned.”
“Your brother won’t want to let you go.”
“I don’t intend to abandon him, Anza, not as long as he needs me. It will be a while yet. There is a council to establish and ministers to appoint and laws to revoke. It will take weeks to purge the Guard of the soldiers who are unfit and longer than that to have a full accounting of the treasury. But I don’t have to be a prince to support him.”
He sat up too and placed his hand on her smooth, strong thigh. Wordlessly, she leaned into him. He gathered her hair up and let it fall, again and again. A distant owl hooted.
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes what?”
“If you do that, I will stay with you. But I want you to do it for your sake, not mine. I don’t want to share you with a crown, and I don’t want to share you with regret, either. Love is hard enough on its own.”
Softly, he exhaled. Then he put his arm around her, gently, and kissed her hair.
She clasped his hand. “May I ask you one more thing?”
“Go ahead.”
“Did you love him at all?”
The question hurt. She had known it would. He said, “I may have once, when I was small. At times after that, until I was nine or so.” I never promised you a horse, boy. “Children will love where they can. But not for years. Not today, not when he died.”
“You must have been so afraid,” she said.
Something inside him cracked. His eyes stung. It went no further, not yet. It would. From her he could receive love.
MIRANTHA
AT DAWN SHE goes to the garden, having slept only a few hours. The thick dew on the grass moistens her boots. Her footprints lie behind her, dark against the silvery moisture. She walks to the pools and kneels beside one. Mist rises off the water. Here is where she refused to hear Ashevi suggest Karolje’s death. Yards distant is where she spoke with Nihalik for the last time. Damp roses, still closed, hang over the trellises. Their scent is faint, waiting for sun to be released.
Her sons are strangers to her in many ways; they have spent so many years apart. None of them want to step into the quicksand of memory yet. Love, there is. But it will be a while before they work out if they like each other.
She trusts Tevin to keep his promises. With Karolje dead and the soldiers and most of the courtiers behind him, he does not need to; but he is anxious to be nothing like his father. She remembers the boy who came back from the war, appalled at what he had seen, what the king had done, and she thinks most of that boy is still there. When he realizes he no longer has to fight for every breath, he will be generous.
Once, it was the sum of her aspirations to see her son safely to his throne. And now? Now she will stay in Karegg long enough to know her boys. To watch Esvar learn to love, to see Tevin and the resistance at peace with each other, to no longer be needed as either a mediator or a leader. Word has not spread yet beyond the Green Court of her identity. She is not sure it will. When she sat with her sons and the resisters, she was only Sparrow.
When peace has come, however long it takes, she will go back to Timor, to the home of her childhood. She will watch oranges and lemons ripen on the trees, and she will walk in the lavender fields while light pours from the bluest of skies. She will sleep and eat and read without fear.
* * *
In the afternoon, she rides with Anza to the College. Master Tinas leads them across the square to the library and unlocks the door. Their shadows fall across the threadbare carpet in a bright patch of sun.
“Upstairs,” she says. They climb the beautiful old steps, the wood creaking comfortably. On the third floor they stand silently in front of the wall. The pointed tips of the arched entryways show above the bricks.
“Are you ready?” Anza asks.
“Yes,” says Mirantha. She turns to Tinas, and he hands her the chisel and the hammer.
She holds the chisel against the mortar, level with her chest. She strikes with the hammer. Once, twice, thrice. The noise makes her ears ring in the narrow space. Again. A crack spreads above a line of brick. Again. Bits of mortar and stone dust fall to the floor.
She hammers, coughing a few times from the dust, until she has freed a single brick. She steps aside and lets Anza pull it out. The air that comes with it is dry and stale. The room on the other side is dark. Workers will come to finish the job.
Tinas takes the tools from her, and Anza presents her with the brick. She holds it. She says, “Let the College keep this, in a place of honor, so no one forgets.”
They go downstairs and leave the library. A few harpies are sitting on the roof.
I was a queen, she thinks. Now she is a widow, and nothing binds her to the man she was married to. Not love, not grief, not vengeance. She has no need to replay his death in memory. She has severed herself from him completely. It is time she begins to learn who she is.
THE VETIAN SUCCESSION
CHRONOLOGY
MONTHS ARE EQUIVALENTS TO THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR
1: Vetian Calendar begins with the reign of Kazdjan
856: Karolje born
872: Mirantha born
889: Karolje and Mirantha marry [September]
890: Tevin born [November]
896: Esvar born [May]
896: Anza born [August]
900: Ashevi comes to the Citadel [December]
901: Tazekh war starts [March]
901: Mirantha and Ashevi become lovers [July]
902: Karolje crowned [June]
903: Karolje returns to war, bringing Tevin [March]
904: War ends, Karolje and Tevin return to Karegg [September]
905: Mirantha is Disappeared [April]
905–908: Second Tazekh war
912: Anza begins at the College [September]
914: Anza finds the journal [October]
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS NOVEL WOULD not let go of me no matter how often I trunked it. I am so grateful to the many people who have helped it to see the light of day.
Judith Tarr edited an early draft, simultaneously encouraging me and forcing me to face the truth about the work that was needed. My amazing agent, Bridget Smith, saw what the manuscript could be and found it a good home when it was ready. Navah Wolfe fiercely believed in this book and relentlessly asked questions that made me tear my hair out but made the novel so much better. Thanks also to Rebecca Strobel, Lauren Jackson, Valerie Shea, Davina Mock-Maniscalco, Alan Dingman, and all the other folks at Saga/Gallery who worked on the book.
J. M. McDermott’s poem (Sonnet #212 on his blog Dogslandia) serendipitously crossed my Twitter feed just when I was looking for a poem to attribute to “Mikos Rukovili.” Great thanks to him for allowing me to use it with slight modifications.
My early readers and critiquers were Jamie Lackey, Jenna McKenna, Laura Pearlman, Daniel Roy, K. B. Rylander, Luther Siler, and the late Chris Kelworth. I also thank my many writer friends and colleagues who sustained my energy, cheered me on, and listened to me babble.
I could not have done this without the support and love of my husband, Adam Hill, who has been steadfast with me for all the years this took. He has my love and gratitude.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LISBETH CAMPBELL grew up in Illinois and western Pennsylvania. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her jobs have run the gamut from house cleaner to teacher. When she is not writing, reading, or spending time with her husband and daughter, she is probably attending to one of her cats.
@fictionlisbeth
lisbethcampbell.com
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Lisbeth Campbell
Sonnet #212 © 2017 by J. M. McDermott. Used with permission.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-9821-4129-5
ISBN 978-1-9821-4131-8 (ebook)