The Scarecrow Queen

by Melinda Salisbury

  “You have it? How?” I breathe.

  “I don’t think you want to know,” she says, looking down. It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. The recipe is the important thing. Assuming it truly is the recipe.

  “It’s real,” she says, as though she’s heard my thoughts. “It’s the real thing. I remember.”

  My skin prickles with excitement. This is it. We have the recipe. And Errin. And me. We have what we need to defeat Aurek. We can end this now.

  It’s more than I could ever have hoped for.

  “How long do you need to make it?” I’m trying not to get too carried away, but in my head I’m frantically calculating—I’ll need a day or two to get everyone together—to send word out to the Rising across Lormere and to reach out to those in Tregellan who have promised to support us when the time comes. But then …

  “It’s going to take a while to make it.”

  “Well, of course. How long are we talking? A week?”

  Errin’s face falls and she shakes her head. “I still have to deconstruct it, and then we need the ingredients. It’s going to be difficult, getting some of them. The herbs and plants are fairly commonplace, though mandrake is restricted. But it’s not impossible to find, and this area is known for it. The asulfer is here, in the mountains, as evidenced by the water.” I hear her splash her hand against that selfsame water. “But the only place I know to get the Sal Salis is the Conclave, and Merek thinks we’ll have to go to Tallith to get the quicksilver.”

  “Tallith?” I stare at her. “But that will take at least a moon—six weeks realistically, maybe even eight if the weather worsens.”

  “I know.” She meets my gaze, her expression apologetic.

  Two moons … “And there’s no store here? No mine?”

  “I can ask …” She doesn’t sound hopeful. “Perhaps the Sisters left some behind when they moved to the Conclave …”

  “Two moons,” I say softly.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “No,” I say, trying to hide my obvious disappointment. “You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing. This is fine—more than fine.”

  I decide I’m done then, and I stand, letting the water sluice down my back, my hair a sheet. I leave wet footprints on the tiled floor behind me as I fetch towels, binding my hair in one and wrapping the other around me.

  “Do you have to go?” Errin asks, and I turn to see her watching me, her eyes wide.

  I feel a rush of pity for her. In the warmth of the bath she looks like a flushed child. And then I remember what Kirin told me about her mother. “I don’t know if anyone else told you yet, but your mother is healed. Aurek gave her the Elixir. She’s going to be fine.”

  I don’t tell her what Lief endured after it, and the joy that fills Errin’s tired face makes it worth it, until her expression falls again. “Thank the Oak, of course,” she breathes. “But Silas …”

  “Silas would have happily done it for your mother. He would have chosen to, you know that. Now, I’d better tell Nia we’ve got another roommate, so she needs to pick her clothes up.”

  Errin’s face lights up again, and I can’t help grinning back at her.

  “She snores, too—” I pause as I hear footsteps, many of them, echoing, heading toward us. “What now?” I breathe.

  Stuan, Kirin, Ulrin, and Hobb burst through the curtain into the baths, making Errin shriek and duck down under the water.

  “What is the meaning of this?” I shout at them as they skid to a halt, looking from me in my towels, to Errin’s shocked eyes over the top of the bath, and back to me.

  “It’s—it’s her.” Ulrin points at Errin. “She’s a danger to you. His Majesty told us the Sleeping Prince can control her, make her do things—attack you, and us—”

  “I thought I told you to leave His Majesty alone?”

  Just then, Merek limps into the room. “I said it’s unlikely but possible,” he counters, as all the men drop into loose bows that prompt him to narrow his eyes. “I said he had the ability, but we suspected the threat had been nullified. I wish I’d kept my mouth shut.”

  I turn to Errin, who now looks sheepish, chewing her lip. “It’s true.”

  I sigh. “All of you out.” I point to the doorway behind them.

  “But, my lady …”

  “This is the women’s bathhouse and therefore you have no place in it. Go. I can take care of myself, as well you all know.”

  There is a moment when I think they might argue, but eventually they shuffle out. I look at Merek, who is faintly pink around the cheeks. “You too, please.”

  He nods at once, then speaks to Errin. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I’m sorry.” Then he gives me a last glance and leaves us, dropping the curtain firmly in place behind him. I pull the towel from my head and walk back to my bath, dropping the second one to the floor as I climb back into the water.

  “It’s not completely bad news,” she says. “It’s to do with simulacrums. And golems.”

  “Tell me,” I demand, reclining in the warmth.

  So she does.

  Errin’s wrists are loosely bound for the feast, and Stuan insists on sitting on her other side, directing Kirin to mine. There is a great pantomime over whether she should be allowed a knife and spoon, but a dark look from me sees her being handed them nervously. In her place I’d probably belt one of them with the spoon and blame Aurek, but Errin is apparently cleverer than me, for she meekly eats her goose, her movements slow and deliberate. I don’t like to see her wrists bound, don’t like the idea she’s escaped only to be imprisoned again. But she takes it with good humor, and I can’t be offended if she isn’t.

  After our time in the bathhouse, Errin and I had spent the remainder of the afternoon copying out the recipe for the Magnum Opus, numerous times, giving copies to Kirin, Nia, Hope, and me, and letting Errin and Merek have one, too. Other copies have been hidden around the commune, just in case.

  As predicted, Merek is surrounded by people from the moment he arrives, all trying to sit beside him. Lady Shasta—or Ymilla, as she insists we all call her now—makes a beeline for him, squashing herself in beside him and instantly laughing, though Merek can’t have had time to say anything funny. Ulrin, who she has previously been sitting with, glares at her, picking at his meal moodily. I offer him a smile and he glares at me, so instead, I turn back to Kirin, who is filling Nia in on what she missed this morning.

  When I look back at Merek, Ymilla’s hand is resting on his arm as she talks, and he’s pushing his food around his plate, nodding halfheartedly. When I’m finally able to catch his eye, he holds my gaze deliberately, before standing, taking his goblet with him, and moving to the doorway, walking stiffly on his bandaged leg. Ymilla looks from him to me, and drops her knife with a loud clang, and the rest of his band look dejected at his leaving, their end of the table immediately quieting.

  Merek gestures with his chin for me to follow him, and I nod to say I’ll follow, but then Hope asks me a question and draws me into a discussion about the Rising.

  I sense, rather than see, him moving back into the doorway, can feel him watching me as we talk. I shoot him a quick glance to let him know I know he’s there, but stay seated, answering questions. When the conversation finally changes course and I feel I can leave, I look up in time to catch him turning away, slipping out of the room. I wish the others a good night and go after him.

  Merek is seated a little way along the corridor, on a wooden bench, sipping his drink. He looks up at the sound of my footsteps and pats the bench beside him. I take a seat, my knee bumping his as I do, and turn to meet his gaze before I look him over.

  His hair is beginning to grow back; there’s half an inch of fuzz shadowing his head now, no sign of the curls that will follow if he lets it grow. There is a shadow on his jawline, too, and around his lips. There was a roundness to his cheeks before, but now his face is all angles, sharp cheekbone, stern brow. He still looks like his mother, but I can see his f
ather in his face now, too. He looks like a man. He looks like a king.

  “Quite the group you’ve assembled here,” he says.

  “Aren’t they something.”

  “I never thought I’d see the day Lady Shasta would follow your orders.”

  “I’ll have you know Ymilla has become a dear friend,” I reply.

  “Really?” He turns his head to look at me, his expression wry.

  “No. She still dislikes me, but you know her—she likes to be close to the power.”

  He chuckles, a brief, unguarded laugh, before falling silent.

  “How are you?” I ask, and immediately regret it. It’s too big a question. And too small, too, considering our history.

  As if he thinks the same, he sighs slowly. “Alive.”

  I wait for him to ask me the same question, but he doesn’t, his eyes still roving over me, finally resting on my hands clasped in my lap. “You’ve changed,” he says eventually, his voice soft.

  I follow his gaze and look down. My hands are rough, reddened, calloused from training with the sword and the bow, from washing my clothes in icy well water, from climbing stone walls. I pull my sleeves down and he leans across, pushing the fabric back. He looks at my hands, turning them over in his own, and I watch him. He traces a healing pink scar—I forget what caused it—along the back of one, before twining his fingers between mine, watching me as he does.

  “I mean you,” he says. “Not the way you look. Or the way you speak. You’ve picked up some Tregellian inflections, though, you know.”

  “A lot has happened,” I say, well aware of how bland I sound. How quickly it seems I’ve forgotten everything that has happened since I left Lormere. Everything I’ve seen and done is lost in the face of his being here. My prince. My king. My once-future.

  He raises his brows. “I know. The castle was rife with rumors of your escapades. How you destroyed a golem singlehandedly. How you slipped past the guards to climb the city walls at Chargate and daubed them with ‘The Rising Dawn,’ How you loosed live rats in the sheriff’s home in Lortune. How you broke into the castle and filled Aurek’s bed with vials, all labeled ‘poison,’ just to show him that you could get to him anytime.”

  I smile. “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear. You know full well I didn’t go to Lormere castle. You were there.”

  Then he smiles, and my heart catches. His eyes glitter, and lines that make him look so much older fan out from the corners, his face crinkling. They’re new. “And the others?”

  I wait a heartbeat. “All true. Though I didn’t personally put the rats in his house, and I never climbed the wall at Chargate. But I was the one who painted the south wall. It was our first attack.”

  “What was it like?”

  “I shook so hard I’m surprised the rattling of my teeth didn’t give us away. But I had to do it. I had to show the people I was trying to lead, that I meant what I’d said.”

  “I’d say it worked. How many of you are there?”

  “There were four of us, in the beginning. Me, Hope, Kirin, and Nia. We found the others in the West Woods, and persuaded them to follow me, and picked up some stragglers on our way here; more escaped and joined us when they could. We number around one hundred now, here, with more on their various watches across Lormere, some in Tregellan trying to find us aid there, and also stationed hiding in pairs to help us carry messages faster. There’s more in the towns, so perhaps five hundred of us in total.”

  “Five hundred?” he says, and I hear his disappointment.

  “Merek, this was never going to be a war won on a battlefield. He can make soldiers from clay, who need no food, no shelter, just his instruction.”

  “Actually, the golems aren’t infallible,” he begins, but I stop him.

  “I know. Errin told me. But we’re still outnumbered and have too few resources to engage him right now. So our goal is to sow havoc across the land, and force him to dilute his army until it’s thin enough for us to get through, directly to him, and end the fight then. I don’t believe he has any true allies, certainly none who’d defend him if they saw he was losing.” Except one, I think. Except Lief. Who stayed even after Aurek beat him senseless.

  From the way Merek is looking at me, I know he’s thinking of Lief, too. “He helped us escape, you know,” he says finally.

  “Then it must have served him somehow.”

  “He gave us the recipe.”

  I’m shocked, but I try not to show it. “It makes no difference. It changes nothing.”

  “Errin said you’d say that.”

  “Then she was right.” We lapse into silence, he sipping at whatever is in his goblet—wine, I assume.

  “Errin also says you think it’ll be two moons before we’re ready to attack.”

  I nod. “It seems like a long time to wait, but it won’t be, not with all we have to do. We have the list of ingredients we need for the Opus Magnum. It’s a blessing you escaped, in every way. What we have to decide now is who is going to fetch the ingredients we need—who we can afford, and trust, to send. There’s no point all of us going after them on some kind of mad quest; it’ll take too long, and it’s vital both Errin and I stay safe until we have the poison made. You, too.”

  Merek nods. “It’s a good amount of time to prepare properly. And the children he’s holding? Do you have a plan for them, too?”

  “They’ll be liberated as part of our opening gambit. Coordinated uprisings across Lormere, and the children at the camps freed and taken to safety. When he sends out reinforcements to fight in the towns, we’ll strike at the heart of his stronghold.”

  “What if he doesn’t send out reinforcements? What if he goes to ground?”

  “Then we free the towns and amass an army of people large enough to go and lay siege to him. Either way, we have a plan.”

  We both fall silent, both lost in our thoughts. And mine turn to Lormere. To Lief. To him helping them.

  “Did … Lief really give you the recipe?”

  Merek nods. “He did.” He stops and frowns, then looks at me, reaching for my hands. “This is hard for me to say. I wish … I wish I weren’t the kind of man who had to say it. But … I think he regrets what he’s done. I think he’d help us, join us even, if we could get a message to him.”

  “No,” I say.

  “He said something to me. He said, ‘Perhaps you missed the theatrics.’ It made me think of the trial, you remember? Theatrics. It’s not even that he said it, but the way …”

  The hairs on my arms stand up, but I ignore them. “I remember. But I can’t believe he meant anything by it.”

  Merek takes a breath. “Because of what he did to you?”

  I look at him. “Because he can’t be trusted. Because time and time again, he’s betrayed the people he’s claimed to love. Me. His sister. His mother. You weren’t there in the bone temple. He didn’t care what he’d done to Errin. He regrets nothing. He might feel sorry for himself right now, but he’ll already be planning a way out. He’ll land on his feet. That’s what he does. And believe me, Merek, these aren’t just the words of a bitter ex-lover. These are the words of someone who has thrice had run-ins with him, and only come out of them well by luck or his whims. I trust Hope. I trust Kirin. I trust Nia. And Stuan, Ulrin, Ema, Breena. I trust you and Errin most of all. But I do not and will not trust him. I can’t afford to. He’s made his bed, he can lie in it. Alone.”

  Merek nods.

  “So you’re right,” I say. “I have changed. I’m not a fool anymore.”

  “I never thought you were.” Merek releases my hands gently. “And that’s still not what I meant by it.” He stops, and I wait for him to continue, but when he speaks it’s to say, “I think I’ll get some sleep. It’s been in short supply recently.”

  I feel strangely as though I’ve been dismissed, as if I’ve disappointed him somehow. “Good night.”

  He unfolds his long body and pushes himself to his feet, then reaches do
wn to me. I take his hand, allowing him to pull me up. We stand, a handspan between our chests, and I look at him.

  “I’m very glad you’re alive,” he says. Then he takes a breath before biting his lip and frowning again, this time at something over my shoulder.

  I turn to see Errin and Kirin in the doorway, others behind them. The feast is over. I look back at Merek to find his expression is closed.

  “Good night,” he says, walking away from me, and I watch him go, his limp more exaggerated now. He must be tired, I think.

  Errin comes to me, followed by Kirin. “Everything all right?”

  “All well. We were just catching each other up on a few things.”

  “My lady.” Stuan appears behind us. “I’ve spoken to some of the boys, and we’d be happy to stand guard outside your chamber tonight. Or inside.”

  “I bet you would,” Errin says under her breath, and I have to twist my mouth to stop myself from laughing.

  “That’s kind, but I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

  I don’t wait for his reply but loop my arm through Errin’s, mostly to upset Stuan, and guide her to our room.

  Nia has moved her things from the floor but, instead of putting them away, has left them in a pile on her bed. Someone has brought a pallet in and placed it in the middle of the room, leaving soft ropes woven from chamois on top. I brush them aside and help Errin down onto it.

  I am about to tuck her in when she stops me.

  “You have to tie my feet. And tighten the bonds on my hands. I promised them you would.” Her mouth, the only part of her face I can see, is a grim, determined line.

  Silently, I bind her feet with the chamois rope, then tighten the knots at her hands—firmly, knowing if I don’t she’ll complain. When I’m done, she lies back and looks up at me.

  “I killed someone,” she says.

  I blink, momentarily stunned. “Oh.”

  “A guard,” she continues, as though we were in the midst of talking about it. “One of Aurek’s men. While we were escaping. I didn’t mean to, but I did. I strangled him.”

  I exhale slowly before I reply. “Well, it sounds like if you hadn’t killed him, he’d have either killed you or taken you back to Aurek. You had no choice.”