The Reluctant Queen

by Sarah Beth Durst

  Pulling back, she directed the spirit, Lower. Don’t be seen.

  The spirit dropped. They raced through the trees. She saw them in a blur: a smear of green, a flash of brown. As they flew faster and faster, the colors ran together as if the forest were melting around her. A twig hit her ankle, and it stung as it broke the skin.

  Behind her, she felt the foreign spirits cross into her range. They felt like oil poured into water. They slid through her awareness like a shiver through her body.

  “Are you ready?” Ven asked.

  Her answer surprised even her. “Yes.”

  Ahead was the grove.

  Champion Piriandra heard the Semoian spirits before she saw them. They sounded like a storm, the kind that snapped sturdy oaks in half, the kind that ripped houses out of their branches, the kind that flattened plants that had withstood a hundred rains. She attached a clip to the wire path and pushed off, sailing between the trees. “Be ready!” she shouted to the soldiers below. To the candidates, she called, “Hold them still! Our spirits are your arrows; you are the taut bow! On my mark!”

  Ahead the wire ended. Still flying through the air, Piriandra reached up and unclipped. She fell, and then landed on a platform below in a crouch. Drawing her sword, she faced the coming storm. “Keep your line! Hold steady!”

  Through the trees, she glimpsed the largest earth spirit she’d ever seen: a hulking mass of mud and rocks. On its back rode a woman with black hair and a crown of crystal spikes.

  Queen Merecot of Semo.

  She was positioned behind the foreign spirits and invading soldiers, out of reach of any arrows. Riding back and forth behind her troops, she was shouting—

  “Be ready!” Piriandra shouted to the other champions.

  And then the foreign spirits attacked.

  Earth spirits tore through the soil. She saw beasts with razorbacks and spikes and claws, and others that looked like mounds of rocks with boulders for arms. Air spirits whipped through the sky, blotting out the faint light of the dawn. In a mass, their translucent bodies blended into gray streaks. The wind hit the front lines like a punch, and the ground exploded at their feet.

  Dropping, Piriandra clung to the platform as it swayed beneath her. “Come on,” she muttered. “Pass us by.” If Queen Daleina was wrong, if the bulk of the spirits did not stream toward the city, if instead they stayed and fought, if they were more interested in slaughter than conquest . . . Queen Daleina was young, weak, sick, and inexperienced, and Heir Naelin was just an untested, barely trained woodswoman. We’re all going to die out here, Piriandra thought. They’d be ripped apart before they even got a chance to fight. The candidates were too few to fight back—But I am not weak. I will fight.

  Raising her voice, Piriandra shouted, “Now!” She jabbed her sword into the air.

  The soldiers charged forward.

  And the spirits flew above them and around them—exactly like Queen Daleina had predicted—heading for the heart of the city. Well, well, what do you know? Now Piriandra had to hope the queen’s prediction about her heir was equally accurate.

  “Shield our soldiers,” Piriandra ordered the candidates. “Don’t engage the spirits unless they attack our troops. Do you understand?” She’d given them this order before, but it bore repeating. As the foreign spirits streamed around them, she had to fight with herself not to slice at them with her sword. Their job was to stop the human army. Just that. Don’t let the soldiers take the capital. Don’t let the foreign queen set foot in their city. “Only defend our soldiers. Let the other spirits go.”

  Queen Daleina, she thought, you had better know what you’re doing.

  And then she had no more time for thinking. Leaping onto the forest floor, she landed between two soldiers, and she began hacking at an earth spirit that was trying to rip them apart.

  Headmistress Hanna had wrapped the academy in air spirits. They swirled around in a controlled tornado. She had the other teachers stationed throughout the academy. Master Chirra had instructed earth spirits to dig a trench around the roots of the academy trees, and Master Sondriane had had water spirits flood the trench to create a moat. The spirits lurked within the moat, ready to pull any enemies under.

  Master Sondriane had reported they liked that idea very much.

  The students were clustered in the training circle. Hanna wished they could be tucked in bed, sealed inside their rooms, but she remembered how good Merecot had been with tree spirits—she could easily crush the students with their own walls, if she were so inclined. Master Klii, who specialized in fire spirits, had the students within a ring of fire. Triple layers of protection. The headmistress couldn’t do any better than that. No one had ever protected an academy so thoroughly.

  She hoped it was enough.

  In her office at the top of the tree, she watched the foreign spirits pour across the city border. She heard the crack and crash of trees as they fell beneath the onslaught. And she both saw and felt Queen Daleina send Aratay’s spirits out to crash against the incoming storm.

  She was ready when a few spirits broke away from the battle and flew toward the academy. Tightening her control, she prepared the air spirits. She’d meet them in midair—

  The earth spirits came from below.

  They tunneled through the roots. Master Klii directed the fire spirits at them, but their rock bodies didn’t burn. Master Sondriane sent the water, pouring down, washing the earth back. But the rock creatures crawled out of the mud and muck.

  The children were screaming.

  And the window by Hanna’s desk shattered as the air spirits slammed into it. She turned and ran out the office door and to the stairs—and then she leaped. She called air spirits to her as she fell, and three flew to her, breaking her fall. She flew down toward the children. As the foreign spirits pressed closer, the headmistress and the teachers drew a shell around them: wood, earth, fire, water, wind, and ice. They layered it and clung to one another within, as the enemy burned, rained, froze, and tore, trying to reach them.

  She’s too strong, the headmistress thought. Her former student had only grown in power. Heir Naelin wouldn’t be enough. Only a queen could hope to defeat a queen. Fight her, Daleina. Fight with everything you have.

  Chapter 32

  Alone except for a wolf, Queen Daleina stood atop the Queen’s Tower and watched as the spirits of Semo rolled over the border of the city. She wished she’d had a chance to say goodbye to her sister. Keep her safe, Hamon, she thought. “Are you ready?” she asked the wolf.

  In answer, he lifted his head and howled.

  She spread her arms as she released her mind. Fight!

  The order flew through the air. She felt it release her spirits, and she felt them rise to meet the invaders. She felt their swirling fury, their defiance, and their sheer joy. It flooded her body and filled her throat until all she could see, all she could feel, all she could breathe were the spirits. Their howl was her howl. Their rage was her rage. She felt herself with them, as they plunged into the gray mass of air spirits and plowed into the phalanx of earth spirits.

  Air spirits sliced through water spirits, breaking them into thousands of droplets. Water spirits embraced fire spirits, and around them wood and rock exploded as they crashed, fighting, on the forest floor. Her earth spirits were trampled beneath the feet of the giant mountain earth spirits, and so she sent ice spirits to stiffen the enemy’s joints and water spirits to weaken the ground beneath them.

  She fought the way she thought: cleverly. She couldn’t outpower Merecot, but she could outwit her. She sent her spirits behind the invaders, striking from directions they wouldn’t expect. She slipped ice spirits into the ranks of Merecot’s soldiers, forcing her to use fire spirits to protect them. As soon as the fire spirits were close enough, Daleina caught them with earth spirits, burying them in soil, or trapped them with branches that her water spirits doused with water.

  The forest burned.

  But the city did not.


  I can do this, she thought. You will not take Aratay. You cannot win.

  But she couldn’t win either. She was stalling them, keeping them within Naelin’s range, keeping them from killing more of her people, but she wasn’t winning. Merecot was fueling her spirits with her strength—and she was very, very strong.

  Reaching out, Daleina directed several spirits to the academy. They peeled the enemy spirits away from the walls, plucked them out of the practice ring, buried them in the earth, flooded them. She had her spirits sweep through the streets—her people were hiding, and her spirits kept them safe, harrying away any spirits that attempted to pry off doors and break through windows. She sent others to the palace, defending the refugees.

  She tried to pull the spirits out the second she felt the blackness rising. She tried to send them out of the city, away from her people, toward the grove. She pushed them as far as she could and hoped she’d given Naelin enough time.

  “Now, Bayn,” she told the wolf. “Find him.”

  She heard him run from the tower as she collapsed.

  Arin bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. She could do this. All she had to do was focus and keep her hand steady. So far, they’d tried twelve possible antidotes, and all had failed when they encountered a drop of the poison dissolved in a drop of Arin’s blood. She was on their thirteenth try.

  Behind her, Hamon and his mother were arguing. Again.

  The poison was a chameleon, changing whenever it was close to human blood, cleaving to the cells. It hides in the blood, Garnah had said. Disguises itself. She admired the poison, Arin could tell. “Such a clever beauty,” Garnah would murmur, which would lead to Hamon yelling. Luckily, Arin didn’t need either of them to do this part.

  Squatting so that she was even with the jar, Arin squeezed one drop of distilled water. It plopped into the drops of her blood—they’d started with samples of Daleina’s blood but had switched to Arin’s when it ran out. There wasn’t time to go bleed her sister, and anyway, she was busy, Hamon had said.

  “What could be more important than discovery?” Garnah asked.

  Arin felt the same way. Daleina should be here. This was her life they were trying to save. She’s probably off somewhere being noble. Of course, she was certain that Master Garnah was interested in results for entirely different reasons—she loved the poisons themselves, not the people.

  Adjusting the microscope, Arin positioned a slide under it and peered in. She watched the cells constrict and then expand as they were invaded by the poison.

  Behind her, Hamon was saying, “Yes, I do. I love her! Is that what you wanted to hear? Are you going to murder her now, to see how I react? Or to make me need you? Because it won’t work. You’ll only drive me further away.”

  “My boy, I’m trying to save her!” Garnah captured the tone of wounded innocence perfectly. Arin assumed that Hamon could see right through it. He had much more experience with his mother than she did.

  “Master Garnah,” Arin interrupted, “what would happen if we added feather-moss extract?” She knew why you never baked with feather-moss extract—if it hit sugar, it reacted badly.

  “Ooh, interesting, but no. Not unless you want to make your queen vomit for a week.”

  “So long as she lives,” Hamon said.

  “Sadly, that would not be a side effect,” Garnah said. “But what if you add red lichen—” Coming to Arin’s side, Garnah picked up one of her vials and twirled it. “Perhaps we’re coming at this wrong. Perhaps instead of attacking the poison, we could redirect it. Give it a new target.”

  The palace shuddered, and the workbench rocked to the side. Arin hugged the microscope so it wouldn’t fall as the tubes and jars rattled together. Outside, she heard screaming. Hamon rushed to the window.

  “That is not good,” he said grimly.

  “That is not our problem,” Garnah said. “You really must learn to focus. That was always what prevented you from excelling. Instead of focusing on the problem at hand, you get distracted by irrelevancies.”

  “Other people’s lives are not irrelevancies.”

  Arin wanted to tell him to stop trying to change her. In a way, Garnah was right: he was focusing on the wrong problem—his mother—instead of the right one: the poison. Yes, people outside were screaming, probably dying. Like Josei had died. But that only made their task more important, not less. For those who hadn’t yet lost the loves of their lives. “Tell me what to do,” Arin said to Garnah.

  “Bleed more,” Garnah said. Before Arin could react, she pressed a blade to Arin’s arm and then caught the drops of blood on a slide. “All right, begin a new batch. Start with the red lichen. . . .”

  Muttering to himself, Hamon applied a bandage to Arin’s cut while she mixed the ingredients and ignored the sting of her arm. He kept glancing at the window.

  “Hamon, if you’re not going to focus, you might as well go to her,” Garnah said.

  “I’ll go when I have the antidote to give her,” Hamon said.

  The palace shook again, but this time Arin was braced for it. The chandelier swung side to side, and a fiery log rolled out of the fireplace. Flames leapt onto the carpet. Hamon stomped the flames out and shoved the log into the fire. He tossed a bucket of sand over the fire. It died. Quickly, he sealed the fireplace. He then checked the locks on the windows and pulled the curtains.

  From the corridor outside the room, Arin heard screaming.

  That was close. Much too close.

  The enemy spirits couldn’t have reached the palace tree already. She’d been told they were held at the city border. They shouldn’t have reached the palace at all. She worried about Daleina. “Hamon . . .” Arin began.

  “Something’s wrong,” Hamon said. “I’m going to her.”

  He crossed to the door and pulled it open.

  A spirit flew at him, claws out, teeth aimed at his neck. Arin screamed. Garnah lunged forward, grabbing one of the vials. Arin caught her arm. “No, you’ll hurt Hamon!”

  Hamon kicked at the spirit, but it bore down on him. And then a massive gray shape launched itself through the door and slammed into the spirit. It knocked the spirit against the wall, and Arin saw it was a wolf—Bayn!

  The spirit fled.

  Baring his bloody teeth, the wolf turned to look at Hamon and then he grabbed the healer’s robe in his teeth and tugged. “Daleina?” Hamon said.

  “Go,” Arin told him.

  “Go to her,” Garnah said, a sigh in her voice.

  He ran out of the room with the wolf at his side.

  Garnah barred the door behind him. “Perhaps we can get some work done now.” She crossed toward Arin, and the window shattered open. An air spirit howled as it flew inside, and before Arin could even scream, Garnah threw the vial she was holding into its face.

  It screamed and clawed at its face, then it fled.

  “And now we can get some work done.”

  “What was that?” She’d never seen a spirit flee like that—a charm could repel them, but the spirit had acted like—

  Garnah rapped on the table. “Focus, my apprentice. We have a task to do.”

  Side by side, they bent over the workbench. Arin measured and mixed. Garnah peered through the microscope. They tested. They failed.

  And then . . . And then . . . they did not fail.

  Garnah looked up from the microscope. “Arin? Use your young eyes and tell me if you see what I see.”

  She looked, and her breath caught in her throat. “I see what you see.” Her heart was pounding fast. She wiped her hands on her skirt and tried to keep herself calm. “Will this work?”

  “We won’t know until we try it,” Garnah said.

  “But if she—”

  “We don’t need to try it on the queen.” Garnah nodded toward the locked door. “But there are others in the palace, much closer by.”

  Arin wanted to believe that Garnah wasn’t suggesting what she thought she was. “There’s no one out there except Dalein
a who has this illness.”

  “Well, no one yet, but . . .” She gestured at the door that led to the hallway. “We should be able to find a spare guard or a caretaker or someone.”

  Arin shook her head so hard that it made her dizzy. “No.”

  “It needs to be tested. Working under a microscope is not the same as working in a human body. You must know that. You taste your cakes, right? You don’t simply hope your flavor combinations will taste right simply because you’ve followed the recipe right. All we do is infect a guard and then heal him—he’ll never know the difference.”

  “Absolutely not. Daleina wouldn’t want this.”

  “Your sister wants to live,” Garnah said. “Also, she doesn’t need to know.”

  Outside the window, she heard a mighty crash. She ran to the window and peeled the curtain back. Jumping back, she clapped her hands over her mouth to stop a scream. Spirits! Everywhere! And people . . . Trees were falling. Massive trees, tilted against one another, and the gardens below had been ripped apart. Arin began to shake. She’d seen this before . . . when the old queen had died, when Josei had died, when everything was nearly destroyed, but now, here, in the palace . . .

  “Pull yourself together, girl,” Garnah said.

  “She’s lost control,” Arin said. “That’s why Bayn came for Hamon. She’s dead. False death. Not real death.” She couldn’t be really dead. Not Daleina. Not now, when they were so close! Arin ran for the antidote. “We have to do it.”

  “Her body is weak, and the potion is potent. If it’s not right, it will most likely kill her permanently. You will only get one shot at this.”

  “Then test it on me.” Pivoting toward the workbench, Arin grabbed the poison. Distantly, she noticed that Garnah wasn’t stopping her. In fact, Hamon’s mother was watching eagerly, her hands clasped as if she were about to receive the best present ever.

  Arin tipped the test tube and poured the poison onto her tongue.