The Reluctant Queen

by Sarah Beth Durst

  The queen’s eyes landed on hers.

  Naelin stopped.

  She can’t fix this, Naelin realized. She’d said what she had to say, the truth, and it was up to the people to react. They aren’t going to react well.

  Naelin staggered to the side as someone bumped hard into her. She hugged Erian and Llor tighter against her. People were shouting and beginning to shove. She saw the guards press closer around the queen, their hands on their sword hilts.

  “Mama?” Erian said. “Can we go? Please?”

  Naelin heard the fear in her daughter’s voice. “Yes,” she began to say, and then realized the crowd had pushed farther into the grove. All the exits were packed with people. Beyond them, more people. If they rioted . . .

  The queen spoke again. “We are here to honor the dead . . .”

  But a man shouted, “You killed them!”

  A woman near him began shouting in his face. He raised his fist, and she slammed hers into his chin. He rocked backward, and then the knot of people around them began pushing, shoving, punching. The crowd surged, and Naelin was swept forward.

  “Mama!” Llor cried.

  Naelin repeated the queen’s words: “We are here to honor the dead.” Honor the dead. She pushed the thought out, hard. She felt the spirits converge, streaming in from all around. Honor them!

  And it began to snow: white petals burst from the trees above and drifted down. Hundreds, thousands, millions, covering the people. On the ground, more flowers burst beneath people’s feet. Vines wrapped around ankles and then blossomed with more white flowers.

  Wind whipped through the grove—targeted wind, fast, ringing the silver bells that people held in their hands or had put in their pockets. Catching the queen’s eye, Naelin mouthed one word: “You!”

  Queen Daleina spread her arms wide and tilted her head back. Petals fell on her arms and face. It looked, to everyone else, as if she were causing this, as if she had command of the spirits. But it was Naelin who held them tightly, guiding them through the grove. Do no harm. Honor the dead.

  The air spirits began to sing in voices full of wind. They whispered in harmony as they flew through the trees, a wordless song that was full of sorrow and hope—emotions that Naelin never thought a spirit could feel, much less turn into song.

  All the people were motionless, their eyes wide, their mouths open. She saw wonder on their faces as the spirits crafted beauty around them. Water spirits flew by, leaving droplets in the air, and as the sun hit them, tiny rainbows appeared all around the grove.

  “We honor our dead,” Queen Daleina said. Her voice rang as clear as the bells across the grove. “We thank them for entering our lives and will remember them with joy.” She then retreated—serenely and regally, but still retreated—with her guards around her.

  Subdued, the crowd parted and let her pass. Taking Erian and Llor’s hands, Naelin slipped out through the crowd as well, skirting the bulk of the people to reach the palace from the side. Only when they were inside the gates did she release her grip on their hands.

  Behind her, the petals continued to fall for hours.

  Chapter 24

  Ten days!

  Candidate Esiella thought she might be sick. Yes, definitely. She’d held it in at the funeral grove, but she was safely back in the training room, a rented room north of the palace.

  Dropping to her knees, she clutched her stomach and opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She breathed deeply a few times. Still felt sick. Still couldn’t be sick.

  “Aw, come on, you can do this,” Champion Havtru said.

  Is he encouraging me to . . . throw up?

  No. He’s saying I can survive the trials.

  She shook her head, even as she felt his heavy, warm hand on her back. She gulped in air again, and the knot inside her felt as if it were loosening a little. Her champion was always so encouraging. He’d even been sympathetic the time she’d summoned an earth spirit and it had chomped on his leg.

  “I can’t do it,” she said. “I can’t be ready in ten days! Ten months, maybe. But ten days?” She raised her head to meet his gentle eyes. She knew he’d be looking at her with that mix of fondness, sympathy, pity, and belief. For some crazy reason, he believed in her, and that was extraordinary. No one had ever believed in her before. Not her mother, who used to call her worthless every time she tried to help around the house and worse than worthless if she didn’t try to help. Not her father, who had informed her on her sixth birthday that she shouldn’t have been born, before he walked out the door never to come back. Not her sisters, who stole her clothes whenever she didn’t hide them. Not her older brother, who used to hit her but only in places it wouldn’t show. Not her teacher, who’d called her a liar when she’d tried to say she felt spirits. Oh, how she’d loved the day he had been proved wrong! She’d loved the moment when it was her turn to walk out that door!

  Champion Havtru had saved her.

  And now she was going to let him down.

  She drew a deep breath. “I’ll try again.”

  He clapped her shoulder, and she lurched forward before catching herself. Standing, she smiled shakily at him. “Tell me what to do.”

  “You saw the petals fall at the funeral? How about asking the spirits to create a few of those flowers? Seems a thing that a queen is likely to have to do.” He smiled encouragingly, and she thought it was a shame his wife had died before they’d had children. He would have been such a wonderful father.

  “Okay.” She could do this. Flowers. Closing her eyes, she reached out to touch the closest tree spirits. There were three nearby, two larger and one smaller. She selected the smaller one and focused on it. Come.

  She felt it skittering over the branches, and then she heard it—tiny steps on a branch. She also heard Champion Havtru draw his knife, the familiar soft rattle of metal against the leather scabbard. He always held a weapon when spirits were near. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her, he’d told Esiella. It was that he didn’t trust them.

  Grow. Bloom. She pictured the vine she wanted and then the flowers. She repeated this image, pushing it toward the little spirit. Come on, you can do it.

  “Good,” Champion Havtru murmured. “Very good.”

  She opened her eyes. Petals were falling inside the training room. Only a few, but still. She’d done it! If she were queen, she’d know how to commemorate the dead . . . Her stomach lurched forward, and she couldn’t stop it. Dropping down, she was sick on the floor, missing the bucket entirely.

  Petals fell into the mess, and the spirit skittered away.

  On her hands and knees, Esiella panted. Her stomach felt empty. Her head felt light. And her sides hurt. Tears heated her eyes.

  Champion Havtru patted her back, lightly this time. “It’s all right. Happens to the best of us. I’ll fetch you some towels to clean up. Don’t worry about it. You did well!”

  She heard him leave the room, his footsteps retreating then the door. Rocking back, she sat on her heels. She felt stickiness in the corners of her mouth but had nothing to wipe it with. She squeezed her eyes and let the tears fall.

  If she tried to be queen, many would die. She’d be making petals fall daily over more and more fresh graves. She wasn’t ready, and she couldn’t be ready in time. Distantly, she heard voices: Havtru and another voice, a muffled voice that she didn’t recognize. She didn’t try to listen to their words. She was sure Champion Havtru was hiding her sickness, talking up how well she was doing, praising her more than she deserved—to build up her confidence, he said.

  All it did was remind her of her failures.

  Maybe her family and teacher had been right about her. Maybe she didn’t deserve this. Champion Havtru should be spending his time with someone who didn’t fall apart like she did.

  Esiella heard the door creak, a tiny sound but she heard it—Champion Havtru.

  He was checking on her.

  She didn’t turn around. She wasn’t ready to face him.

 
I should tell him that he’s wasting his time. I’ll never be good enough. She knew what he’d say, though. He’d tell her what he always did: that he believed in her, and if she didn’t believe in herself . . . well, then he’d believe enough for both of them. She had talent, he’d say. She only had to trust it. Listen to him, she told herself. Not to your past.

  “I’ll try harder,” she said. “I won’t let you down.”

  Esiella turned around.

  It wasn’t Champion Havtru.

  She felt the knife slide into her body.

  And her last thought was of the petals that would fall for her.

  Naelin didn’t know what it said about her life lately that she was unsurprised when the Queen of Aratay swept into her training room. She dropped into an immediate curtsy, and the fire spirit that was dancing in the hearth hissed. Sparks jumped out onto the flagstones.

  “You may rise,” the queen said. She gestured to her guards, and they bowed and retreated to the door. The wolf Bayn padded inside behind the queen, and then the guards closed the door, leaving Naelin alone with Her Majesty and Bayn.

  Unsure what to say, Naelin knelt to greet Bayn. He trotted up to her, tail wagging, and she scratched behind his ears. “The children have missed you,” she told the wolf.

  He drooped his tongue out of his mouth and managed, somehow, to look sorry.

  “Don’t worry. They’ll forgive you if you visit soon,” Naelin said. “They have the emotional memory spans of hummingbirds.”

  He crossed to the fireplace and growled at the spirit. The spirit darted up the chimney, and the wolf curled up on the hearth. Naelin rose and faced the queen. Inside, where shadows crisscrossed the room, the queen looked more tired than Naelin had thought. Gray-purple bruiselike shadows lined her eyes, and her cheeks were pale. Her hands were trembling slightly. Naelin wanted to guide her to a cushion-covered couch and wrap her in warm blankets, but she guessed that wouldn’t be appropriate. She ventured a question. “Are you well, Your Majesty?”

  Queen Daleina let out a bark that was a half laugh, half cry. “Aside from the fact that I am dying? Oh yes, I am quite well.” She glided across the floor and then sat in a chair near Bayn. She perched on the edge of it, as if she didn’t intend to stay. “I came to say thank you, but now that I’m here, I don’t know where to begin. You saved many lives today.”

  “I assume Champion Ven has told you I reconsidered?” Naelin felt her face heat up. “I mean, about being heir. Trying to be heir. Training. Training to be heir, not . . . I wouldn’t presume, that is, Your Majesty.” Oh, good grief. She hadn’t been this tongue-tied since she was a kid. She gave herself a mental slap. Quit it.

  The queen gestured at the ornate couch near her. “Please, sit.”

  Naelin sank onto the cushions. It was low, too low, and the cushion sagged under her. She had to bend her legs to the side, but she managed it. It was amazing how a simple circle worn on a person’s head could make one feel so awkward.

  Queen Daleina glanced around the room, and Naelin was overly aware of the mess she’d made. The walls were scorched in spots, dirt was ground into the carpet, the mattress on the former queen’s bed was gone—it had been drenched by a water spirit that Naelin had failed to control. “Queen Fara liked opulence,” Queen Daleina said. “I see you have redecorated.”

  Naelin winced. She should have tried to clean. A hard scrub would have gotten out many of the stains . . . She surveyed the room, cataloguing all the things she could have fixed or cleaned. “I’ve been practicing here.”

  “I can see that.” The queen studied Naelin. Even when she’s not on the throne, she seems like a queen, Naelin thought. She wondered if it was an act or her natural personality, or a consequence of wearing the crown. Tapping the armrests, the queen continued to regard Naelin so intently that Naelin began to feel like an insect who had been noticed by a kitten. “You can speak freely, you know. I’m not going to have my guards chop your head off if you offend me. Besides, Captain Alet speaks highly of you.”

  Naelin hadn’t seen Alet in days. It was nice to know that the guardswoman approved of her. She’d thought so, but she appreciated the confirmation. “You did the right thing, telling people the truth. Now they can be prepared.”

  “I can’t predict it, so how can people prepare?” The queen stood abruptly and walked toward the balcony. She halted in the archway and looked out.

  Naelin stood as well, smoothing her skirt and patting her hair. She’d changed from the brocade gown that the caretakers had provided for the funerals. She was wearing instead heavy-duty laundress clothes that would stand up to water, fire, and dirt. “Well, now that I know, I can be prepared. The next time—”

  “I’ll train you.”

  “Your Majesty?”

  The queen spun to face her, and her sun-colored skirts flared around her. “I have precious little time, with the schedule my seneschal has set for me. There are many who want an audience after my announcement today. People need to be reassured. Champions need to be soothed. Not everyone feels that my announcement was the right decision . . . But that’s not your problem. Your problem is that you have too much power. You’ve never learned to work small.”

  “I’m honored—”

  “Oh, for spirits’ sake, stop treating me like a queen. Come here.” Queen Daleina beckoned. When Naelin joined her on the balcony, she pointed toward a tree spirit who was gnawing on an acorn several yards away. It was perched on a spire, with its hind legs planted in the bark. The tree spirit was no larger than Naelin’s fist and so gnarled that it looked like an oversized walnut. Its face was a mash of wrinkles, and its spindly wood legs were pockmarked with deep, rotted-looking knots. “Tell me: what does it want?” the queen asked.

  Death, she thought. It wanted their blood soaking into the moss, their last breath exhaled into the wind, their bodies sunk into the earth. “To kill all humans. To be free of our commands. To tear down all we’ve built. To rip the throats from our children and destroy our future.”

  “More simply. What does it want right now?”

  Naelin studied the spirit. Bits of acorn flew from its teeth. “Lunch?”

  “Exactly. So if you want to use the least amount of power possible to make that spirit grow a tree, choose a tree that it will want to grow. And then don’t command. You don’t want to bully the spirit—that requires more power. You want to nudge it. Encourage it. Trick it into doing what you want by making it think it’s doing what it wants.”

  “Like getting children to help with the dishes by turning it into a game.” Naelin thought of Erian and Llor. She’d turned housework into a contest—who could straighten their sheets fastest, who could wash their plates the best, who could remember to hang up their towels for the most days in a row. Here, caretakers did it all. “Mine will be so spoiled when we—” She stopped before she said “go home.” She pictured home: her cozy kitchen with herbs drying upside down from the rafters, the beds piled high with down quilts she’d made, the wood floor worn from years of footsteps, and then she ruthlessly pushed the image away. Home is gone. Or at least so far out of reach that it might as well be. “All right, I’ll try.”

  “Good.”

  Taking a deep breath, Naelin steadied herself. She cleared her mind and then sent a single thought spiraling toward the spirit: More?

  It perked up, rising onto its hind legs and pricking its ears forward.

  She pictured a nut tree. Painted an image of a belen nut, its pink shell, its chewy inside. She pushed the image toward the spirit. Grow more, eat more.

  “Gently,” Queen Daleina said. “Only suggest.”

  Naelin drew back her thoughts. The spirit looked around—down, up, right, left—its movements quick and jerky.

  “Focus on what it wants. Encourage that.”

  You’re so hungry. So very hungry. You want more food. She pictured the tree again, with its twisted limbs and wrinkled bark. She filled its branches with clusters of nuts. The spirit chittered li
ke a squirrel, and Naelin tasted the bitter-buttery nut taste on her own tongue.

  “Good,” the queen said softly. “Now guide it to one of the barren patches. There’s one just to the east, half a mile. Just suggest it. Don’t order.”

  “How?”

  “Picture it.”

  “But I’ve never seen it.”

  “The spirits have. Reach east, and look through their eyes.”

  “We can do that?”

  The queen placed her hands on Naelin’s shoulders and positioned her to face east. “Quiet your own thoughts, and look. Think of their eyes as your eyes.”

  Naelin reached out, expanding her awareness as Ven had taught her. She brushed past the spirits around the palace. So many spirits. Burrowing, flying, sleeping, crawling . . .

  “They aren’t Other,” the queen said. “They’re you. Parts of you. See with them, through them.”

  She felt . . . Shaking her head, Naelin yanked away. She’d felt their hunger, their hate, and even worse, their indifference. She’d felt their oddness, their slippery, slimy . . .

  “You can’t hate them,” Queen Daleina said, and Naelin thought she sounded sad. “That was the hardest thing, when they crowned me. They’d killed . . . Regardless, you can’t hate your foot even if it hurts you. You can’t hate your eyes even if they sting. In order to command them with precision, rather than bludgeon them with raw power, you need to accept them as a part of you.”

  Lovely sentiment, but not practical. “I hate them, and I’ll always hate them.”

  “You can’t,” Queen Daleina said. “You and I . . . We don’t have the luxury of hate anymore.”

  “I don’t forgive easily.” She thought of Renet. Thinking of him felt like a fist in her stomach. They were supposed to spend their future together, grow old and crotchety together, bounce grandchildren on their knees, feed each other soup when they grew too weak to chew . . . He’d taken that away from her. She could easily hate him. But not forgive. “It may be that I have personality flaws.”

  The queen rolled her eyes—a very unqueenly expression. “Do you believe I am flawless?”