Shadow Queen

by Unknown

  Dieter glowered at her, stealing some of the starch from her spine.

  ‘Please. I’m the Duethin’s sister and she’s your wife,’ she said, though her bravado was shakier now, and her hands were clumsy and slow as she pulled on the gown. ‘Who’d risk angering you?’

  ‘Right now, Mali, I wouldn’t count on me for protection.’

  ‘It’s a good thing nobody else knows about it, then.’

  Dieter didn’t answer, but his grim stare said it all.

  Panicked, I snuck a look at Renatas. The ferret kit had crawled halfway up his chest and was nosing at his ear but he was oblivious to it, watching the scene unfold with avid curiosity.

  Amalia flung a sullen glance my way, cowed at last. ‘I don’t see why you’re not shouting at her as well.’

  The focus of attention again, I grabbed the first gown I could find and thrashed into it like a woman drowning. It was Amalia’s.

  Decently covered, I still couldn’t look either of them in the eye, so I lifted my chin and stared behind them. An all-too-familiar prickle touched my nape and brought a sting of sweat to my palms.

  Quickly I measured my options. Dieter and Amalia were between me and any exit, unless I retreated to the bed. But that wouldn’t hide me, or stop the questions. I had to keep standing, and hope I had time before the vision claimed me. To conceal the tremble in my hands, I busied them with lacing the sleeves about my wrists.

  It was then that it took me.

  Renatas faded to white, as thin and stark as bones beneath a winter sky. Dieter’s hand still rested on his shoulder, but it was a hand grown wasted and hard, and his clothes had turned to leather and armour, draped about in wisps of shroud-like cloth. Small snakes wreathed the both of them, fangs bared and biting at their tender flesh, opening wounds which dripped slow red blood. Neither flinched.

  As always, the vision vanished suddenly. I came to on my knees, one hand flung out before me as if to ward off what I’d seen. Gradually Dieter, Amalia and Renatas, normal and fully fleshed, swam back into focus.

  ‘Well, now,’ said Dieter, calculations running swift behind his pale eyes. ‘This is interesting.’

  Swallowing against my queasiness, I pressed my hands to my stomach and closed my eyes. The vision had left me pale and shaking, as they always did.

  ‘I feel sick,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Dieter. ‘I remember hearing about your … shadow sickness.’

  ‘If you were ill, I wouldn’t mock you,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘you’d gloat.’

  I bit my cheek against the urge to respond.

  ‘You’re not going to throw up on the carpets, are you?’ said Amalia.

  ‘You are a woman of strange sensibilities, Mali,’ said Dieter. ‘You’ll knife her for gaining me allies, and you’ll …’ – he cut himself short with a glance at Renatas, although coyness now seemed ridiculous – ‘… persuade her by a means which could see you both hanged. Yet a little vomit turns you squeamish.’

  ‘Mock away,’ said Amalia. ‘You won’t have to sleep in the smell of it.’

  ‘See to the boy, then, unless you’d rather tend to Matilde?’ he said, which had her snatching at Renatas’s elbow and hurrying him from the room.

  ‘What will you do with him?’ I asked, my heart in my throat.

  ‘Are you planning on standing?’ Dieter replied. ‘I hope you don’t want me to kneel. It doesn’t look comfortable.’

  ‘Don’t be cruel.’

  ‘If you were truly sick, I assure you I’d be the soul of solicitousness,’ he said and held out a hand.

  Reluctantly, I let him help me up and lead me to the couch in the sitting room.

  ‘Pretty strange fit,’ he said, pouring me a drink of ale and handing me the wooden cup with care. ‘Quite short,’ Dieter continued. ‘And lacking in the actual fit.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I wanted to stand, but he pulled a footstool in front of me and perched on it, blocking me in.

  ‘Tell me, Matte, what did you see?’

  I clutched the cup in both hands. ‘A frightened little boy. Whom you promised not to kill. Will you honour it?’

  ‘Ah, but it was you who broke the bargain, Matte.’

  The truth of it made me tremble. I had gambled, and lost. Would Renatas pay the price?

  ‘And it appears the boy’s location wasn’t your only secret. No, you also had the secret behind your rumoured shadow sickness. I must confess, I’d always wondered why your grandmother let you live if you were prone to such a weakness as fits. I thought her soft-hearted for it.’

  He paused, eyeing my rising flush of anger, as if to give me time to speak. I gritted my teeth, refusing to give him the satisfaction.

  He shrugged. ‘When I met you, I revised my opinion. Obviously you weren’t entirely without strength. After all, you, alone of all your kin, had crawled out of the carnage. And then you’d had the gall to march up to my men and pretend we were allied, the blood of your court still on your clothes and in your hair! It was impressive, Matte. Bold.’

  I wished a real fit would seize me and paralyse my mind, leaving me frothing and insensate.

  ‘I had no other choice,’ I hissed.

  ‘Well, you could have fought back in the sanctuary. Although you would have died, of course.’ He leant closer, his eyes alight. ‘And you couldn’t die, could you, Matte? Because you’d already seen that you didn’t.’

  I leant back into the couch, shaking my head.

  ‘It wasn’t simply canniness saved you, was it?’

  ‘Leave me alone,’ I whispered.

  ‘You saw the invasion. You saw how to survive,’ he persisted.

  ‘I saw my shroud!’ I cried.

  Silence followed as I stared at him, trembling.

  He smiled, a slow bloom of triumph. ‘So you did foresee the attack.’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘The results of it. Fire, death all around. And me, walking dead among the dead.’ The impossibility of that outcome still left me cold with fear, and acutely conscious of the brand I bore.

  ‘Good,’ said Dieter.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘I liked our first meeting,’ he said with unabashed cheer. ‘I liked you, bold and brazen. I’m glad it wasn’t the false courage of foreknowledge.’

  A tiny spark of pride lit the hollows of my heart, making me despair at what I’d become. What sort of sick and twisted creature was I, to be jealous of the good opinion of a man I … I wanted to say I hated, but how could I claim that, even to myself, when I wanted him to think well of me?

  Dieter leant closer still. ‘So, Matte, tell me, what did you see?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I insisted, my hands fluttering up between us as if to ward off his persistence.

  He caught them in his own, stilling them. ‘The boy, Matilde, you saw something for the boy.’

  I shook my head.

  He gripped my hands tighter, pressing me into the back of the couch and moving so close that he filled my vision and I couldn’t look away.

  ‘Tell me what you saw for the boy.’

  ‘Bones,’ I intoned, the intensity of his gaze drawing the words out of me in a whisper.

  I felt like I had on our binding night, when I’d knelt down before him, frightened and alone, and he’d daubed my head, marking and claiming me more intimately than any mere binding.

  ‘He was bones beneath the winter sky. You were draped in snakes, as was he. Tiny little snakes with red fangs.’

  He digested this in silence, staring through me with an abstracted look. I shifted, trying to ease the pressure of his hold.

  ‘And the meaning – does the lad die? Do others die because of him?’

  I frowned, shook my head, shrugged. ‘Neither, for certain.’

  He cocked his head to one side. ‘Is it possible you’ve never learnt to interpret your visions?’

  ‘You’re the one who dabbles in the arcana, not me,’ I retorted. />
  He drew back. ‘Your mother obviously had something of the wild knowledge in her blood, to pass it on to you. And your father’s mother let another woman pour memories into her head. And yet still you sneer? You Svanatens truly are a priggish lot.’

  Again his stare turned distant. ‘Snakes, you say? How many? How large?’

  ‘Hundreds. And tiny.’

  He gave me a calculating smile. ‘What a valuable wife I have.’

  NINETEEN

  THERE WAS NO more time. Curl as deeply into the couch as I might, the truth was inescapable. As a political trophy, I’d served out much of my usefulness in the binding. My connection to the Skythes meant little now that Dieter had secured their alliance.

  The vision had changed things – I’d proven myself his personal soothsayer. He would never let me go. Worse, with the power of my foretelling at his service, he could prove invincible. Unless I lied – convincingly. But then he seemed to know intuitively when I was dissembling.

  Desperation threatened to engulf me. If I fled, what use would I be, free of Dieter’s watchful eye but outside the sphere of power? An outcast gathered no armies to support her. The risks of lying were higher still. Dieter had a vial of my blood, and his promise to finish what he’d started at Aestival filled me with panic.

  Be calm. One thing at a time, and all will fall into place, said Grandmother, her voice catching me before the panic could overwhelm me. Breath by breath I fought it back, calming my mind, gradually dulling the fears, and eventually regaining my ability to think clearly.

  First, I had to find Roshi. Uncertain as her loyalty might be, it was all I had to depend on. She had relative freedom, and opportunities I lacked. I needed her to help work out a way for us to escape.

  I rose and dressed properly, in a clean gown that covered me from throat to wrist to ankle, as if linen and wool were a kind of armour. Then I ventured into the corridor. Outside, Mathis and Gunther jumped to attention. They pressed so tightly about me as I walked that I couldn’t hear my steps over theirs. Clearly, Dieter had left strict instructions.

  After stalking through the corridors, steadfastly ignoring anyone we passed, I found Roshi in the upper courtyard, dicing with a handful of soldiers and thralls from the stables and fields. As I hesitated on the portico, uncertain how to proceed, Roshi glanced up from the game. For an agonising moment she stayed where she sat, cross-legged and propped up on one arm on the bare stones. She seemed relaxed among these people, while my company made her stern and ill-at-ease.

  Dropping the dice onto the stones with a flick of her wrist, she stood. Then, dusting the seat of her narrow leather dress, she approached with her customary blank expression.

  ‘I need your help,’ I started, but my escorts were still too close, still able to overhear the softest word. I took her arm and drew her to a seat nearby.

  Distracted by the game, and reassured by the still-slight distance between us, my guards didn’t follow.

  ‘What do you know about cooking?’ I said brightly.

  ‘Less than you, I fear,’ she said. Then, in a lower tone, she added, ‘What is it you want?’

  ‘Freedom. I must escape the Turholm.’

  We interspersed talk about cooking with the real topic of our conversation. ‘Leave?’ she whispered. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve dallied too long. There’s a boy, my cousin. Dieter has him captive. I must get him, and myself, out of the Turholm.’

  ‘But a very few days –’

  ‘Will it take so long?’ I interrupted. ‘I’d be gone sooner, if you can arrange it. Roshi, the plan doesn’t need to be elaborate. The boy and I, you and your kinsmen. We can seek support and succour from … one of the drightens.’

  I bit back on telling her precisely which drightens might support me, in case she played me false and reported to Dieter.

  ‘What has happened, that you cannot withstand a handful of days longer?’ she said, fixing me with a searching look.

  I hesitated. I couldn’t tell her – not after denying any skills with the shadows. And then the opportunity to speak passed as Mathis, drawn by our whispers, stepped sharply nearer.

  Roshi leant close, as if to share a last confidence, but she caught the soldier’s eye and spoke in a mocking drawl deliberately loud enough for him to catch. ‘There’s an uncommon large number of crows around the stronghold for this time of year, don’t you think? Carrion eaters,’ she added with false sorrow. ‘Even after they’ve feasted they’ll linger, scavenging for more deaths.’

  I laughed, surprised and cheered by her gall.

  Mathis curled one hand into a fist, glaring at Roshi; she met his gaze without fear, as if the prospect of his retribution gave her no concern. Perhaps it didn’t. He wouldn’t kill her, not if it risked my displeasure and, through me, Dieter’s – but men of the sword had other ways of disciplining impertinent thralls. From the amount of time she spent among the soldiers, she must be aware of the danger she courted, and yet her eyes gleamed as she waited.

  Even as I was summoning an answer that would defuse his temper, his eyes flicked over my shoulder and he stilled. A light step behind me solved the mystery of what had quelled him.

  ‘And some who should be dead continue to linger in life,’ said Amalia. ‘And constantly seek to escape their assigned companions.’

  I didn’t turn. ‘Sitting in a courtyard in full view of dozens of soldiers hardly constitutes escape.’

  There was a sudden clatter of noise near the gates, but Amalia stepped in front of me, blocking my view. ‘I should have known you’d seek the open to sulk,’ she said. ‘Turasi aren’t comfortable with acres of sky – except you, with your Skythe blood. The barbarian Duethin. The puppet Duethin.’

  My hand lifted to my brow, touching the brand through the veil.

  Her triumph complete, Amalia turned away. ‘Come. I don’t want to sit outside,’ she said, as if she were the Duethin and I the companion.

  More noise from the gates spared me the need to retort – or worse, to obey. I stood and craned for a better view.

  ‘Visitors?’ asked Roshi

  ‘One or more of the drightens.’ My voice was calm, though my heart was hammering. If the first of the drightens had arrived, the rest wouldn’t be far behind. The gadderen was beginning, and would see Dieter ratified in my place, with me powerless to stop it.

  ‘You’ll want to fetch your brother to greet them,’ I said to Amalia.

  She dithered, furious at being ordered around, hesitant to disobey. Eventually, political acumen won out over personal spite, and she turned away. The victory was trivial. I had, I judged, as long as it took her to find a thrall, deliver the message and return.

  Crowds of people were streaming through the gates now, some on horseback, more on foot. I leaned close to Roshi. ‘Tonight,’ I whispered. ‘If you can. Tomorrow at the latest.’

  ‘When –?’

  ‘Make an opportunity,’ I hissed. ‘There’s no time left!’

  Amalia returned with a hurried step, the flush of exertion colouring her cheeks. She didn’t waste her time on jibes, however, not now.

  ‘You need to come down and welcome them properly,’ she said. ‘Don’t you dare make him look too weak to control his own wife.’ Her gaze held the promise of that knife of hers.

  ‘You may find this difficult, Amalia, but I don’t actually take orders from you. In fact, I think you’ll find it’s the other way around.’

  ‘That’s not what you said last night.’

  The flush of my cheeks was enough to put a speculative frown on Roshi’s face and earn a guffaw from Gunther. Amalia was unperturbed.

  ‘Last night you drank yourself into your usual stupor and spent the night dribbling on the couch,’ I rejoined, silencing her.

  I turned back to the visitors, who were close enough now to recognise. The drightens of the three Houses Somner. Black beard bristling over his armoured chest, Rudiger rode in the fore, with the beady-eyed Evard on his left and their cous
in Helma on his right. Grandmother had always warned me about them, Helma in particular, who had a reputation for being as coldly beautiful as winter’s touch. The three must have met at the Aedhold, Evard’s stronghold, before travelling down together.

  Relations between my House and the three Somner Houses had never been cordial, but shortly after my father’s marriage they had descended into outright enmity when the Somners eradicated House Wilan, scattering the tribe’s few survivors and swallowing up their lands.

  The approach of the Somner drightens now started Grandmother muttering again: Watch the eyes, child. See how bold her gaze is? A killer’s confidence. And the hands – smooth and clean. That’s a woman who has her underlings do her killing.

  TWENTY

  DIETER ARRIVED IN time to greet his guests, sparing me the effort of speaking. All I had to do was stand beside him and keep my face blank. He’d obviously known of their arrival, for he had a small portion of traveller’s rest to offer each of them. But then, he controlled the flow of information inside the Turholm now: he had pigeons and scouts and messengers at his command. All I had was a ferret.

  The Somner drightens scrutinised me, cataloguing the significance of every aspect of my appearance, from the finery I wore to the exact distance separating Dieter and me. Between them, the three ruled a great swathe of land to the west and north of the Turholm. So long as they remained united – and the Houses Somner always had – they represented the greatest single power bloc among the drightens.

  By the air of satisfaction radiating from them, they all three approved of me standing silent by Dieter’s side. The barbarian granddaughter of the despised Beata: humbled at last, their eyes said.

  Dieter was all graciousness, inviting them inside, promising an evening of feasting and entertainment. I took this to mean he did not consider them completely won to his side, which was wise of him. Any who trusted the Somners without reserve, as House Wilan had, only invited downfall.

  As we turned for the main house, Roshi plucked at my elbow. ‘Let us go to the kitchen and you can show me that recipe you spoke of.’