The Reluctant Queen

by Sarah Beth Durst

  He began to sing, his soothing voice rolling over her,

  “Soon but soon, little dove, I’ll be here by your side,

  to drink the wine, taste your tears,

  don’t cry, little dove, I’ll be here by your side,

  when darkness comes, I will not feel,

  but when day returns, I’ll be here by your side,

  by your side, little dove, for death is not goodbye.”

  “Very pretty,” she murmured. Her limbs felt as if they were stuffed with wood. She wanted to ask, Is this normal? but she felt too tired to form the words. Tomorrow she’d cry again. Tomorrow it would feel real, and she would face whatever needed facing. But for now, her pillows were soft, and she felt her thoughts drift apart, disintegrating as she reached for them.

  “Will you think about it? Someone you trust? Who do you trust?”

  “My sister,” Daleina said, either out loud or only in her head. “I miss my sister.”

  Hamon watched Daleina drift back to sleep and tried to convince himself it was normal sleepiness. He didn’t make a habit of lying to himself, though, not about medical matters. She’d had another blackout only this morning—not a complete “false death,” but she’d lost consciousness for seven seconds. The nearby spirits hadn’t reacted, which meant she hadn’t died either in a false or true sense, but her heart rate had slowed, and she had gasped for air when she woke. It wasn’t surprising it was wearing her down.

  He knew precious little about cases of early onset. Ordinary cases were rare enough. It cropped up in families, but often skipped generations, and it tended to strike the elderly, whose bodies were already failing. His former teacher, Master Popol, had waxed on about it once—said it was a mistake in the brain, an interruption between mind and body, a failure of communication, and the fact of its existence had bothered the loquacious healer so much that he took it as a personal affront. Communication between body and mind shouldn’t fail, any more than communication between healer and patient, and then his teacher had moved on to discussing how best to cultivate trust between healer and patient. Calmness helped, and Hamon was trying his best to stay calm. Honesty was important, and he hadn’t lied to Daleina about her sickness, but equally important was knowledge. A healer, Popol was fond of saying, should be a fountain of facts, and Hamon wasn’t, at least not with regard to this illness.

  I can fix that, he thought.

  Seating himself by the window, he lit a firemoss lantern, squeezing the moss to wake its light and adjusting the shutters on the lantern so its light fell only on him, not on his sleeping queen. He then pulled a stack of blank paper from his pack and began to write. He’d say he was conducting research, in attempt to apply for admittance to the university. He’d claim he wanted to transition from healer to scientist, and his chosen topic was the False Death, but first he wanted to glean the accumulated wisdom of his illustrious future colleagues—yes, praise them, make them feel special, flatter their wisdom and knowledge. He could play the humble scholar. Seeking out more parchment, he decided he wouldn’t limit himself to the healers and scholars of Aratay. He’d reach out to those in Semo and Chell, even as far away as Belene and Elhim. Someone, somewhere, may have a scrap of information that would help Daleina. He addressed each letter just as carefully, sealed them with his own personal seal, and tied each with a ribbon of healer blue.

  As the dawn bells rung, he summoned a caretaker to the queen’s door and handed the stack of letters to him with strict instructions to send them with utmost speed. While he waited for replies, he’d delve into the hospital’s library—there could be case studies that were relevant—and talk to everyone with any scrap of knowledge . . .

  Everyone? he asked himself.

  “You’re doing it again,” Daleina said. She’d gotten out of bed and was washing her face in a basin. She met his eyes in the mirror. She looked like her usual beautiful self, albeit with a bruiselike darkness under her eyes and a crease on her cheek from the folds of her pillow.

  “Doing what?”

  “Worrying so much that you’re nearly vibrating. It won’t matter how good a liar I am if anyone can read my condition off you without even knowing you.” She sounded so calm and reasonable. He didn’t know how she did it. Except that he used to be able to do it with every patient he ever had—detach himself, see the symptoms as separate from the person, project an air of soothing calmness. He’d worked hard to develop that air. It’s harder when the patient is Daleina, he thought.

  “Did I ever tell you why I became a healer?” he asked.

  “Your father died, and you couldn’t save him,” Daleina said immediately.

  He blinked, surprised she remembered that story. He’d only told her once, and she’d never repeated it or asked any questions. It had been a highly edited version of the truth—he’d said his father had been ill, and he hadn’t been able to heal him. “Yes. And it was my mother who killed him.” That wasn’t a detail he mentioned often to anyone. Or ever.

  He saw Daleina flinch—he’d shocked her. He’d known he would. Compassion welled up in her eyes, her beautiful eyes, and he looked away and forced himself to continue: “She slipped bloodwood into his dinners—he always had a roast pork sandwich, and she cured it with salt and bloodwood. Never let me have any and only ate a little herself, though in retrospect I think she must have regurgitated it afterward to avoid any symptoms. When I asked her about it, later, she said she was merely helping nature along. He’d been complaining of pains in his legs, she said. That’s it. Just pains, the ordinary stiffness that you’d develop from a life of high-altitude tree cutting, the kind that could be eased with a soak in hot water. She had no other reason, even claimed to love him, though I doubt she has the ability to love anyone.”

  Daleina was quiet for a moment. “How old were you?”

  “Eight.”

  “And that’s when you left?”

  He heard the sympathy in her voice and wished he could wrap it around him like a cloak, but he didn’t deserve it. “No, that’s when she accelerated my lessons, teaching me about plants and herbs and poisons. I left when I was twelve, after she used me to kill our neighbor, an elderly man whose snoring kept my mother awake at night.”

  Glancing at Daleina, he expected to see sympathy mutate into revulsion in her eyes—he’d confessed to murdering a helpless old man—but instead there was only more pity, which wasn’t better. He looked away from her at the tapestries that filled her walls with rich greens, golds, and blues. “Hamon?” Her voice was gentle. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “That’s how I knew about glory vines . . . and about nightend berries,” he said. Daleina flinched at the mention of the berries that had ended her predecessor’s life. “She knew—knows—about all sorts of obscure plants and their uses, mainly because she doesn’t feel bound by any ethics when it comes to experimentation. She may—and this is very much only a dim possibility—have some shred of knowledge that could help you.”

  Suddenly, Daleina’s eyes widened, and he knew she had leaped to guess where his thoughts had taken him. “You want to ask her about the False Death.”

  “I don’t. Because if I reach out to her, she will know where I am, and she will come to see me.” For years, he’d kept himself away from her, mostly by traveling, first with Healer Popol and then with Champion Ven, staying in the outer villages and away from cities, but if he contacted her, he’d have to tell her where he was, if only so her response could find him. He knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t merely send word. She’d come here, whether or not she could—or would—help. “But if I don’t . . .”

  “You’re asking my permission to invite this . . . your mother here?” Her words were careful. She’d become more careful with her words and her tone since she’d been crowned. If he hadn’t known her, he would have thought she was measuring the decision of what to ask the cook to prepare for dinner.

  “You misunderstand me. I am not asking. I am going to invite her. If t
here’s a chance there’s knowledge she has that could help you, then I must. I am telling you as a warning: if”—when—“she comes, she is as likely to want to kill you as to heal you. You must not trust her. Ever.”

  “I have to say this sounds somewhat like a bad idea.”

  He studied her, the warmth of the morning sun filtering through her hair, making it glow like a halo around her face. Her eyes were bright, awake, healthy, and beautiful. She had a way of looking at you that made you feel as if you mattered, that she would do anything she could to keep you safe, that she was devoted to you. He knew she looked at everyone that way, that she felt personally responsible for their safety, but it still warmed him and made him want to work that much harder to keep her alive and well. “You dying is a bad idea, and I’m not going to let it happen.” If that meant reaching out to the demons of his childhood, then he would. “I’d walk through fire for you.”

  She looked on the verge of saying at least a half-dozen things, considering, then discarding them. At last, she only said, “I’ll keep a bucket of water handy.”

  He loved her more in that moment than he ever had.

  Chapter 10

  It wasn’t that Ven disliked young children.

  On the whole, he had no strong feelings about them one way or another, except when they were dead, which was sad, wasteful, and made him want to bash things. Live children . . . he hadn’t spent much time with them since he was one. He was impressed with their ability to annoy one another.

  “Mama, he’s doing it again,” the older one—the girl, Erian—said.

  “Am not.” The younger one was . . . oh, what was his name? F-something? B? Ven watched the boy deliberately slide a stick behind him and poke his sister, lightly, in the side. She swatted at him, but he was quicker, dropping the stick and spreading his hands to show his innocence. “I’m all the way over here, Mama. I can’t even reach her. Must have been a spirit.”

  Their mother, Naelin, was sewing a fresh charm onto the boy’s jacket. She didn’t look up from her neat, even stitches. “Llor, we don’t joke about spirits.”

  Llor. He’d been that close to remembering.

  Well . . . not really.

  “You may joke about rabid squirrels,” Naelin added, “like the one behind you.”

  Both children whipped around so fast they nearly toppled off the branch. There were no squirrels behind them, rabid or otherwise. Just a blackbird, who cocked its head at them, then cawed before flying off its branch. “Mama,” Erian said, with a note of profound disapproval in her voice.

  Ven saw the corner of Naelin’s mouth twitch into an almost smile. He liked that she had a sense of humor. Boded well for her ability to survive what was to come. “Say good night to Champion Ven and Captain Alet,” she told them.

  In unison, the children said, “Good night, Champion Ven. Good night, Captain Alet.”

  Putting down her sewing, Naelin helped secure both her children into the netting that Ven had strung up between the branches. She wrapped blankets around them and kissed them both on the cheek. “Sweet dreams, my loves.”

  It was a simple act, but so full of absolute love that it made something ache inside Ven’s rib cage. He rubbed his chest as if it were indigestion.

  “I don’t want to dream,” Llor told her.

  “Why not?” Naelin asked. “Dreams can be nice. You might have one about a friendly bear who carries you for a ride through the wood. Or a dancing bear, who performs on high wires.”

  Llor giggled. “In a dance dress?”

  “With ribbons in his fur.”

  He stopped giggling. “What if I have a nightmare?”

  His sister answered, “Then I’ll hug you until you fall back asleep.”

  “What if you have a nightmare?” he asked her.

  “Then I’ll tell Mama, and she’ll tell me silly stories until it goes away,” Erian said.

  “Tell me a silly story now,” Llor demanded.

  Naelin kissed them both again, on the foreheads this time. “Now it’s time for sleep. You’ve had a very full day.” Ven flinched as she said that, though she hadn’t looked at him. He’d kept forgetting the children didn’t have long legs. They’d needed to rest frequently, drink water, and poke at each other. He hadn’t crossed half the miles he normally would have. Still, she managed to make him feel guilty with that one statement, as if it had been his idea to bring children on a training journey.

  Speaking of which . . . I have to start training her, he thought. Tonight. He’d neglected it in the interest of traveling as far from her home village as possible, to minimize the risk of her changing her mind, but now they were sufficiently far away and also not near anyone else, so he wouldn’t have to worry about endangering any innocents.

  He waited while she told the children a story—apparently they had finagled one out of their mother—about a snail who wanted to climb a tree to see the sunrise. The snail was swallowed whole by a bird, excreted over the ocean (“Poop!” Llor shouted with glee), and then washed ashore on an island known for its beautiful sunrises on the beach—but the snail never saw a single sunrise because he was so tired from his three-year adventure that he slept late every morning thereafter. Ven supposed the story had some sort of moral, possibly linked to a go to sleep right now message, but he couldn’t get past the idea of the snail surviving all that.

  “You’re staring at her again,” Alet said in a low voice as she dropped onto the branch beside him.

  “I was not—”

  “I get it. She’s a mama bear. Even I admire that. I never had that. It was just my sister and me growing up—our mother left shortly after I was born, and our father worked all the time, until he got too sick to take care of himself, much less anyone else. We’d have loved someone to kiss our boo-boos and tell us bedtime stories. I’m guessing you had a less-than-ideal childhood as well? Not that I want to discuss it, because I don’t.”

  Watching Naelin did not make him think about his childhood. In fact, it woke very different thoughts, but that was not a matter he even wanted to consider. He had a job to do. “We aren’t discussing anything; we’re training a candidate. Starting now.” He unwrapped the charms from the hilt of his knife and then buried the blade in the flesh of the tree. Wriggling it back and forth and twisting it, he felt the blade cut into the soft pulp and watched Naelin. She’d left Erian and Llor in their hammocks and returned to the fireside, resuming her needlework with the new charm.

  After a second, her head shot up. “There’s a spirit nearby.”

  “You’re the one with the power,” Ven said, watching her as he deliberately bored the knife deeper into the wood. “Send it away.”

  “You’re the one with the knife; you send it away,” she countered, and then stopped. “What are you doing?”

  “Starting your training.” He plucked the knife from the tree and used it to point at a branch behind Naelin. “Be alert.”

  She flung herself to the side, stretching her arms wide, to block the branch between the spirit and her children. She then grabbed the charm she’d been working on, ripped it from her son’s jacket, and held it ready to throw. Reaching over, Ven plucked it out of her hand and tossed it off the branch. It fluttered down, hitting branches as it fell, until it was out of sight. “What are you doing?” she whispered—he noticed that even scared she kept her voice low so as not to wake and alarm her children.

  “Use your power.”

  “It will draw more.”

  “Then you’ll use more power. You will use it until you understand it.” He twirled his knife in the air. “I know many ways to anger spirits, and I will keep doing it until—”

  She didn’t wait for him to finish his pronouncement. Instead, she scooped Llor into her arms and shook Erian awake. “Come on, loves, let’s climb a little, all right? Just a little climb, down to the forest floor.”

  Erian rubbed her eyes. “Mama, what’s wrong?”

  Llor wrapped his arms around her neck and burrowe
d his face into her hair. His legs clung around her waist like a baby monkey. Ven was pleased to see Naelin was strong—she appeared to be planning to climb while carrying the child. Physical strength wasn’t essential for an heir, but it helped.

  But what exactly was she doing? She wasn’t leaving, was she?

  Yes, she was.

  “Champion Ven is not making good choices,” Naelin told her daughter, “so we are going to give him a little time by himself to think about what he’s done.”

  “Oooh,” Erian said to him, “you’re in trouble. Once Mama locked Father out of the house for a whole night, even though it was raining. He got very wet before she threw him a tent.”

  “Champion Ven can handle his own messes,” Naelin said crisply, “as can your father. It’s important to understand that actions have consequences.” She was already climbing down, positioning her body to block Erian from the spirits, while carrying Llor—she’d clearly done this before, climbed defensively. Mama bear, he thought.

  Behind him, Alet murmured, “You’re just going to let them go?”

  He tried, and failed, to keep the amusement—and admiration—out of his voice. “I believe I’m supposed to stay here and think about what I’ve done.” Above, he spotted a rustle of leaves, and an angular face poked through—its features were twisted bark, its eyes were embers, and its hands were covered in thorns. It hissed at him, displaying rows of teeth. Instantly, he felt less amused. Naelin was supposed to use her power to protect all of them. Instead, she was rapidly fleeing the area, and the spirits had correctly decided he was the one who’d damaged their beloved tree. Behind him, Alet sighed. He heard her draw her sword.

  Naelin heard the fighting overhead, and it was quieter than she’d have imagined: the scuffling of feet on bark, the hollow ring of steel as it hit flesh, a grunt, a hiss. She climbed faster. Erian and Llor stuck to her as if glued and didn’t speak.