“Good,” I said, quietly dreading the conversation that would necessarily follow.
“I’ll probably put him on boneset again, and maybe a fortifying tonic.” She looked up at me. “Has he ever been on johnwort before?”
“I don’t think so.” I wasn’t familiar with the herb. “What’s it for?”
“My folk use it to ease a person’s spirits—mental pain, emotional pain, persisting grief, anxiety, that kind of thing.”
I dropped my eyes back to his sleeping face. Already there was more color in it, though the circles under his eyes remained.
“It’s not a fix,” she continued. “It won’t just make it go away, especially not without other support. But sometimes it helps. Colm says it helps him.”
I looked back up at her. “Why would Colm need help?”
“Honestly, I’m surprised he doesn’t need it more, being stuck back here in Blackshell,” she said, inspecting a packet of yellow buds. “He’s another who could be classified as a mess—all the losses here at the lake, and now being at odds with Mona. And I have my suspicions that their mother didn’t exactly lay the greatest foundation for emotional wellbeing—but that’s a whole other jar of junebugs. Suffice to say, he’s got a lot on his shoulders. You could talk to him about johnwort—I think sometimes he takes fennel, too, that’s a more common lake treatment—but you can also ask him about his other means of coping. I think he reads and writes a lot, and he dives—the Lake-folk often prescribe deepwater dives for persisting stress or low spirits. They say it rebalances the body’s humors.” She shrugged. “My folk have always believed in a day of retreat in as high an elevation as possible, along with the johnwort, but to each culture their own, I suppose.” She rearranged a few bottles on the bedside table. “They’ve really never recommended anything for Celeno?”
“I don’t know that anyone’s brought it up in so many words.”
“Not seemly for the Seventh King to struggle in such a way?” she asked matter-of-factly. “Sort of like how the queen shouldn’t walk around showing her wine stain?”
I flushed. “I don’t appreciate your insinuation.”
“I’m not insinuating anything,” she said. “I’m flat-out saying that your folk are so wrapped up in the idea of a divine king and queen that they’ve robbed you of the right to be human. It’s a mark on your skin, Gemma. And if you don’t like it and you feel better covering it up, that’s fine. But if someone else, or something else is demanding it of you—that’s not fine. Same as how it’s not fine to let a person suffer for the sake of keeping up appearances.”
I turned my head away. “Thank you for the lecture. Not all of us have the luxury of an idyllic monarchy.”
“Are you serious?” There was real anger in her voice, and I jerked my head back to her in surprise. “That’s a crap argument and flat-out wrong. I have a council who would very much like to have had me executed a few months ago, but I can’t fire them and exile them to the bottom of the ocean, because checks and balances and all that. And I’ve hardly had the worst of it. Val grew up under the shadow of a disastrous king and a terrible father. He had to cover up a mark, too—burn scars from his father’s temper. We became childhood friends because I was the best at treating his scrapes and bruises whenever Vandalen was feeling particularly vindictive. An idyllic monarchy, Gemma? You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I vividly recalled the mess of scars on Valien’s palm. A childhood injury, he’d said—not saying anything about the source of the injury. Suddenly, the idea that he avoided his family’s portrait hall and felt like bolting during his own sitting made abrupt, painful sense.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize.”
She shook her head, her silver circlet glinting in her hair. “Here’s one thing I’ve learned, over the course of struggling against an idiot king and then marrying his son. Some people just aren’t meant to be monarchs. I might very well be one of them. It’s the stupidity of this whole political system. Just because you pop out of a certain person—or marry another—doesn’t mean you’re automatically fit for anything. I’m not saying Celeno can’t be a good king, or that needing medicines for the body or mind makes him a bad one—far from it. But he obviously hates it. He obviously doesn’t feel capable at it. And at some point, we have to look past the crown and banner and think about what’s actually right.”
Celeno shifted under his sheets, letting out a deep breath in his sleep. Ellamae and I both automatically reached for his hands—she pinched his wrist to feel his pulse. I threaded my fingers through his.
She sighed and released his wrist. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get philosophical on you. But I have strong opinions on bad kings and decisions that are made because of them. I lost five years of my life to one, and I still struggle to see what it’s gotten me besides bitterness. I suppose it proved he couldn’t drive Val and me apart—that’s something. He knew if we managed to stick together, he wouldn’t be able to stop us. Victory, I guess.” She grimaced and pushed back her chair. “I’m going to find some food. Why don’t you try to rest—he’ll probably wake up soon.”
She left the hall, leaving me silenced and staring in her wake.
If we managed.
To stick.
Together.
He wouldn’t be able to stop us.
Without warning, Shaula’s voice in the Retreat rushed back to me, a comment so unexceptional I hadn’t even paused on it.
I thought you and he would be unstoppable.
My breath hitched in my chest. I looked down at Celeno, his brow twitching slightly in his sleep. How often I’d lain listening to his breathing in the dark, the trace of poppy syrup still lingering in the air.
But not always.
Before he started the poppy, those cold, dark hours of the night were our sanctuary, when we curled together in bed with none of the usual storm of the court and council to preoccupy us. Sometimes he had nightmares. Sometimes I did—closing walls, airless spaces, doors that wouldn’t yield. After one of us would calm the other down, we’d lie a breath apart, trading murmurs about the things that used to energize us—the University of Samna, the latest scholarly speculation, the opportunities to grow our academic foundation in Alcoro. Those quiet moments had been snuffed out from the night he started taking an evening tincture to counteract his daily ones. And it had only snowballed from there—our easy breakfast discussions giving way to him, groggy and sticky-eyed, trying to burn away the remnants of the poppy with coffee and cacao pills. And then, the illness had crept in, consuming our precious free time, racking him with stomach pains and fevers and sweats the very moment we seemed to be making progress on something.
I thought you and he would be unstoppable.
I’d assumed my aunt’s words had been to shame me for losing the king’s trust and partnership. But no—that’s not what she’d been saying. It had been an explanation, a rationale.
A reason.
Can’t plan for revolution when one of you can barely get out of bed.
Can’t overturn a regime when only one of you can act—and it’s not even the right one.
All my earlier suspicions about Shaula’s actions, and then my doubts of my suspicions, came rushing back to me. It had been easy, almost relieving, to dismiss the thought of her slipping cyanide into Celeno’s tincture, because what on earth was the point? Why purposefully make him sick? Why would she, obsessed as she was with the very notion of the Seventh King, want to weaken him?
Could it honestly have been to drive the two of us apart?
I shoved my chair back and stood, staring down silently at Celeno, suddenly overwhelmed by the impossibility of our lives. Our marriage, our reign. It had all started so strong, so full of promise and potential. Could it really have been forcibly pried apart, manipulated into the smoking ruin it was now?
Some people aren’t meant to be monarchs.
That could easily be said of both of us.
He hated
it.
I hated what it had done—to both of us.
I thought you and he would be unstoppable.
The door to the hall opened with a creak. I looked up as Colm stepped through. My stomach made a little swoop, and that wasn’t fair—that really wasn’t fair that I should have such a reaction at such a time. My guilt and confusion doubled. His hand on my shoulder played in my memory, as if his fingers were against my skin again. I shivered, trying to shake the sensation. Not here, not right now, not when things were the worst they’d ever been.
Not at all.
Not. At. All.
He came to Celeno’s bedside, a few books under his arm. He had his chin tucked forward again, as if looking up rather than down from his height.
“How are you?” he asked.
“All right,” I said.
“Have you eaten?”
“Yes.”
“Have you slept?”
I glanced at the next bed over, the coverlet slightly rumpled. “A little.”
He took the books out from under his arm. “Why don’t you go rest for a while? I can sit with him. I’ll let you know if he wakes up.”
I hesitated, looking down at Celeno’s closed eyes. My gaze traveled to the books Colm was setting down on the bedside table.
Compendium of Lumeni Astronomy
Dubhlac’s Night Phenomena
The Goose’s Pearls and Other Star Stories
My eyes prickled, and suddenly I realized why I hadn’t wanted to leave before. If Celeno had woken to an unfamiliar healer, he might be confused. If he’d woken to Ellamae, she’d be brisk and blunt in her usual way. I didn’t dare think what it would be like to wake up to Mona.
But Colm . . . Colm would be all right.
I dashed at my eyes. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
We still needed to talk, he and I. But I didn’t want to do it across Celeno’s sickbed. Silently I left the room, my dismal spirits tangled with the buoying feeling of leaving a heavy weight behind.
The halls of Blackshell were quiet as I went back to my guest room. It had been tidied in my absence, with the bedcovers turned down and my borrowed clothes hung up in the wardrobe. My gaze fell on the bedside table, where the Ballad of the Diving Menagerie lay on the corner. I picked it up and thumbed through it again, the intricate knotwork and entwining animals as convoluted and tortuous as my own thoughts. I closed my eyes briefly, drawing in a slow breath, and then went to the wardrobe. I rummaged for the skirt I had worn the first day, pulling out the packet of papers I had brought with me from Alcoro. I sat down on the bed and rifled through them, little lifelines, sparks of hope I’d mismanaged and misjudged. My mother’s map. The letter from Samna. Pages and pages of cramped, even writing.
Clutching them all to my chest, I lay back on my pillow, and without really meaning to, I fell almost instantly into sleep.
“Lady Queen.”
I woke with a start, disoriented. It was dark, and someone stood in front of me with a candle. It took me a long moment to remember I was not at Stairs-to-the-Stars or the Retreat, or even the cave under the mountains. I sat up, and the Blackshell attendant stepped back.
“The king is awake,” she said.
“Oh . . . oh.” I rubbed my eye. “What time is it?”
“Just after dawn, Lady Queen.”
Moon and stars, I’d slept the whole night—I’d left Colm the whole night. I stumbled out of bed. The letters I’d gone to sleep holding were rumpled and scattered; hurriedly I swept them into a pile and stuffed them into my pocket. I started for the door, checked on the threshold, and hurried back for a cloak.
I followed the attendant back across Blackshell to the healing wing. I was surprised to find that the palace was not in a silent pre-morning stupor. We passed several attendants hurrying up and down a grand flight of stairs that I assumed must lead to Mona’s chambers. The entrance hall echoed with the clattering of hooves on cobblestones in the courtyard outside. I scurried to keep up and stay out of the way of the folk rushing to and fro.
It was just starting to lighten, with darkness still clinging to the corners and rafters. But Celeno’s bed was lit with a steadily burning lamp, illuminating the two figures sitting upright in its glow.
Colm didn’t look as if he’d passed an uncomfortable night in the hardback chair. He was leaning forward over his knees, peering at a book open on the coverlet. Celeno was sitting up, bolstered by several pillows to accommodate the length of the cuff attaching his ankle to the bedframe. He flipped several pages in the book.
“That one, there,” he said. “We call it Blue Eye.”
“To us it’s Garm-Sue,” Colm said. “A corruption, I think, from archaic Northern. You say it has rings?”
“Sort of—an annular disk. It looks like rings in the scope because of the variations in density, but they’re all part of the same band. I’d only just started to document it in the spring . . .”
He looked up as my footsteps registered, and his voice died. I stopped a few paces away.
“Gemma,” he said.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
He closed the book on Lumeni astronomy. He looked at the blank back cover. Opened his mouth. Closed it again.
“I don’t know,” he said.
I looked at Colm. “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine,” he said. “He woke up about an hour ago. We got to talking, and I forgot to send someone to get you.” He tapped the book cover. “Our understanding of the near cosmos is all wrong.”
“Just out of date,” Celeno said. “That’s all.”
I moved forward. Colm hurriedly gathered up his books and began to rise from his chair.
“Wait,” I said. “Stay. We need to tell him.”
He hesitated, his gaze locked on mine, and I knew this was going to be as painful for him as it would be for me. Slowly, he sank back down into his seat.
“Where do we start?” he asked.
“From the beginning,” I said.
Celeno looked between us. Colm nodded. I took a breath, reached into my pocket, and drew out the bundle of parchment.
I didn’t get a chance to begin. Just as I worked up my courage, the double doors to the healing hall swung open. We all looked to the threshold, where Mona stood, if possible, more rigid than I’d ever seen her. She seemed to be carved out of stone, a twin to the statue of the queen out on the terrace, her face thrown into sharp relief by the lamps. Flanking her was a squadron of guards in full armor, the light glinting on their weaponry.
Ellamae must have been somewhere behind the group—I saw her trying to push a guard out of the way.
“Mona,” she said loudly. “Mona.”
Mona’s fiery gaze settled—not on me, not on Celeno.
On Colm.
“Guards,” she said, and her voice was stone as well. “Arrest Colm Alastaire for treason to the crown.”
Chapter 14
“What?” The word rushed out of me, breathless.
“Mona,” Ellamae shouted, trying to drive her elbow into the ribs of the guard blocking her way. “Hold on a minute . . .”
“For betraying Lumeni secrets and aiding a foreign enemy,” Mona continued, like a character in a play with lines that had to be read, “with full knowledge of the cost to our allies, I sentence you to immediate imprisonment and a trial by council.”
Oh, blessed Light—she’d found out. I jumped to my feet as the guards streamed into the room. The papers in my hands scattered over Celeno’s bedcovers. Behind Mona, Ellamae finally got through the dispersing knot of guards and snatched Mona’s arm. Arlen stood to one side, his face paper-white and stunned.
“I don’t understand,” Celeno said.
Colm’s face was weary and lined. Keeping his movements slow and steady, he rose from his chair, gazing at his sister with nothing but regret. She, in turn, looked back with anguish etched across her face, her mask rather startlingly gone.
/> “A letter was intercepted in Winder and brought to me an hour ago,” she said. “From you to Queen Gemma, detailing the movement of Lumeni troops and betraying allied strategy.” Her lips were white. “Do you deny it?”
“No,” he said, his voice gravelly. He held out his wrists to the closest guard, who fumbled for a set of irons. He didn’t take his eyes from Mona.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her.
Footsteps pounded up the hallway, and around the corner whirled Rou, his nightshirt loose over a pair of hastily drawn-on trousers. Valien followed, hair mussed.
Rou looked between Mona and Colm, his eyes wide. “Valien said . . . What’s going on?”
“What’s going on?” echoed Celeno. The chain on his ankle cuff clinked.
“Mona,” I said, jumping forward several steps, as if I might put myself between her and Colm. “Wait, please—there’s been a mistake . . .”
“My mistake was trusting you,” she said, “and not following my instincts on what was happening around me. It will take me a while longer to determine the correct sentence for a ward of state.” She let out a short, uncharacteristic laugh. “One crisis at a time.” She waved at her guards. “Take him away, please.”
Ellamae shook her elbow, practically hollering in her ear. “Mona!”
Mona jerked her arm out of Ellamae’s grasp. “Don’t think you’re not next! You knew, as well! And you?” She rounded on Valien. “Did you know?” Without waiting for an answer, she whirled to Rou. “Did you?”
He flattened himself against the wall, his eyes wide as the guards and Colm moved past him. “Know what?”
“He didn’t, Mona,” Colm said softly as he passed her, his wrists fixed behind his back. “And Mae and Valien didn’t know—not really.” He nodded slowly as he approached Arlen. “I’m sorry, Arlen.”
Arlen looked positively bloodless. “S’okay,” he said automatically, his voice high.
With a last glance over his shoulder at me, Colm followed the nudge from his own guards and disappeared around the corner.
Creatures of Light, Book 3 Page 27
