The Queen's Necklace

by Teresa Edgerton

  “I was as surprised as you were. But what a fortunate stroke of luck for us. Thanks to Captain Blackheart, we now know more than we did about the people we are seeking. This is all most interesting.”

  Lili looked down at her hands, which were still shaking from the recent excitement. “Interesting?” she said, on a faint, interrogatory note. “I suppose you might say so. But just how many other vital details might we be missing, simply because we failed to make an ally of Wilrowan, as I suggested at the very beginning?”

  “You did suggest that,” said Sir Bastian mildly. “And perhaps I was wrong not to listen to you. Still, there was no harm done. We have this new information in spite of everything—and it is much too late to reconsider now. We Could not possibly stay behind and wait for the captain to recover.”

  The coach swayed as it rounded a corner. The old gentleman gave her a searching look under the brim of his round black hat. “Perhaps, Lilliana, you would like to tell me just how you knew your husband was dying. That was really—quite extraordinary.”

  Lili looked down at her hands again, weaving her fingers together. She had not really had time to think before, but it was extraordinary. As she realized the truth, she blushed to the roots of her hair. “Before I left Hawkesbridge—the night before—Will and I were in sympathy, I matched our heartbeats. I must have forgotten to break our communion when everything happened so quickly in the morning.”

  A suspicious note came into Sir Bastian’s voice. “Captain Blackheart was ill? He must have made a very swift recovery, since he left the city the very next day.”

  Lili blushed even more furiously than before. “Will was not—sick. I knew it was wrong, but I wanted to see—I wanted to know—” As memories of that night crowded into her thoughts, she continued to blush and to stammer. “I was curious to find out what would—”

  “You did it as an erotic experiment,” Sir Bastian finished for her. Though he spoke quietly, he sounded disappointed.

  Lili nodded, unable to meet his eyes.

  “I do not know what to say to you, Lilliana. Others have experimented in much the same way, and almost always with disastrous results. It is a very dangerous practice. I confess that I had thought better of you.”

  There was a long uncomfortable silence, punctuated by the creaking of the coach. “After all,” said Sir Bastian at last, “I should not be surprised. Miss Brakeburn did warn me that Captain Blackheart exerted a regrettable influence.”

  Lili forced herself to look up at him. “But you mustn’t blame Will. Truly, sir, you must not. He could hardly have put me up to anything like that. He had no idea I could even—” Her voice trailed off, as she saw that Sir Bastian was shaking his head.

  “Do not distress yourself. One must remember, after all, that you married Captain Blackheart when you were still very young. Your husband having so few morals himself, how could you possibly look to him for guidance?”

  Lili sat up a little straighter. It was enough that Will should be held to account for his own sins, without adding hers as well. “Wilrowan was scarcely more than a boy himself,” she said indignantly. “Why should I have looked to him for guidance on anything?”

  “Precisely.” The old gentleman reached across the coach and touched her hand reassuringly. “Let us speak no more about it. You acted in ignorance, and I am sure that a word of caution is all that is needed.” He settled back in his seat, and smiled at her benignly.

  Lili leaned her head back against the lining of the coach, with a sigh of resignation. She was much too tired to argue, and besides, the damage had already been done. Thanks to her own reckless behavior, Sir Bastian was more convinced than ever that Will was a wicked and unprincipled man, whose marriage to Lili could only be deplored, whose influence over her ought to be minimized.

  And like her Aunt Allora, Sir Bastian was going to do everything in his power to keep Lili and Wilrowan apart.

  39

  Tarnburgh, Winterscar—Five Months Earlier

  14 Frimair, 6537

  At Lindenhoff, the winter days were tediously long, made worse by the endless rituals of life at court. Ys was expected to leave her bed at eight precisely, to breakfast for an hour on spice cakes and coffee, then spend the bulk of the morning dressing. Afternoons were reserved for official visits, military reviews (conducted by torchlight in the castle courtyard), and embassy teas. She dressed for the evening at five-thirty. After that, there should have been card-parties, elegant suppers, and dancing by candlelight, but these were forbidden with the king so ill. Evenings dragged in the Silver Salon, with dull conversation, bored flirtation, and stifled yawns.

  Occasionally, Ys rebelled, spent an entire evening locked in her room, or a morning walking in the snowy gardens. Yet in the end she was always restored to a sense of duty by Lord Wittlesbeck’s scolding. His growing influence surprised even Ys, who as a general rule thought little of Humans. But the truth was very simple: for all the servants, guards, and officials she had succeeded in dismissing on one pretext or another, replacing them all with her own choices—people who ought to have showered her with gratitude, but who somehow remained curiously aloof—the Master of Ceremonies was her only friend at the palace.

  Besides, she needed him to organize the Midwinter Ball. It was the only event all season long that she planned to enjoy, having determined in advance to dance just as often as she liked with Zmaj. Let people make what they would of that! He was her kinsman and it was perfectly proper, though she had an idea that tongues would wag.

  But I am entitled to a little pleasure, she told herself, midway through a particularly tiresome afternoon spent leaning on the arm of her silver chair, chin in hand, watching two elderly duchesses build card-castles and argue precedence. Yes, and I deserve a great deal more than that!

  After another hour spent brooding on her various entitlements, she suddenly rose from her seat and proclaimed a desire to visit her aunt. There was a buzz of protest.

  “If you wish to send for Madame Debrûle,” said the wife of a Parliament minister, “no doubt she will be pleased to visit you here.”

  “No,” said Ys. She wanted privacy and more than anything she wanted out: out of Lindenhoff, away from the whispers and the hostile eyes, away from the candles and the open fires.

  She rode to the old Maglore mansion in a glass carriage, under a fringed silk canopy. Wherever she was recognized, crowds assembled, waving their fists and cursing her name; without an escort, she would have been terrified. Once she entered the house, however, Ys dismissed her guards and climbed the long staircase up to the second floor alone.

  The house looked deserted. Everything was in its place, exactly the way that she remembered it, but as she walked through the echoing halls of the upper floor, as she moved from one empty chamber to the next, she encountered no one, not even a single Goblin servant.

  It was only when she reached Madame Solange’s private apartments and found Madame sitting with a pen in her hand and a sheet of closely written paper on the desk before her, that Ys found someone she might talk to.

  “Have you dismissed all the servants?

  Her sometime governess glanced up from her letter-writing. “It is no longer necessary to keep up the pretense of wealth. There are a few scullions left down in the kitchen, a groom or two down in the stables, but that is all.”

  Ys took a seat, arranging her skirts, smoothing out the fur on her new ermine muff. She hardly knew what to think—after all, what had their efforts been for, if not to make the illusion of affluence into reality?

  Remembering why she had come, she said briskly: “As you are interested in simplifying your life, I suppose this is as good a time as any to broach the subject. I want to know what you have done with the Jewels from Nordfjall, Tholia, and all the rest.”

  Madame put down her pen and covered her silver inkwell. “I thought we had settled this. They are near enough if we should ever need them. One is in the city of Tronstadt, another in Dahlmark, a third in V
allerhoven. They do no harm where they are—there is some advantage, after all, to living in a kingdom which verges on the Polar Waste. But to bring them any closer together than they are at this moment would be disastrous. To say nothing of their effect on the Winterscar Jewel.” She turned in her chair, favored her former pupil with a sardonic glance. “Or would it amuse you to find yourself sitting on top of an erupting volcano?”

  “I did not ask you to give me the Jewels. I merely want to know exactly where they are. I know you have taken Aunt Sophie into your confidence—so why not me?”

  Madame smiled that vastly superior smile. “Sophie has played and will continue to play a very large part in obtaining the Jewels, so naturally she must be familiar with the plan. When I believe there is an equally good reason for telling you—then I will do so.”

  Ys threw down her muff, sprang up from her chair, and began to pace the floor. “I think you need to remember to whom the Jewels really belong. And I am not a schoolgirl anymore, to do your bidding, not some meek little nobody. I am the Queen of Winterscar, after all.”

  Madame continued to regard her with delicate contempt. “How arrogant you have become. And to think that Sophie used to fear I might break your spirit.”

  Ys turned on her defiantly. “Break my spirit? No. You have bruised it, battered it, ground it under your heel, but you could never break it. When I think of the years that I endured your abuse—”

  Now it was Madame’s turn to shoot up from her chair, to speak in a voice of suppressed passion. “I kept you alive. Do you think that was easy, with our own kind hunting you? I protected you, nurtured you, taught you—not satisfied with that, I placed you in the exalted position you occupy now.” The words hissed between her teeth with her rapid breathing. “I suppose it would be too much to expect a little gratitude.”

  “Gratitude?” Ys gave an angry laugh. “Why should I feel gratitude for anything you’ve done? You were the royal governess. It was nothing more than your simple duty.”

  “My duty, yes.” The word seemed to calm Madame, rather than enrage her. She stood with her eyes closed for a moment, apparently gathering some inner strength. When she opened them again, when she spoke to Ys, her voice barely shook. “Some might say I had discharged that duty by rearing Sophie. Some might say I would have been wiser to put her where you are now. She would have made—a conformable empress. But I had to go looking for Chimena’s brat and begin the whole process again. It has all been duty for me and never a moment’s pleasure. Have I been ruthless in sacrificing others? Yes. But always more ruthless in sacrificing myself. I am a woman with strong feelings, but I have never indulged them. And I never will.”

  She smiled, completely in control again. “So don’t think you can provoke me into saying more than I mean to, or that you can wheedle the information out of me. You will never succeed.”

  But by now, Ys was growing reckless. “I have not come here to beg or to tease you. I have come to demand what is rightfully mine.” Part of her was horrified by what she had already said; part of her was thrilled by her own daring. “I am not helpless. If you have access to poisons, then so have I. If you have followers willing to do whatever you tell them without asking questions, then I have also.”

  Much to Ys’s surprise, Madame only resumed her seat with a laugh and a shake of her head. “One or two, perhaps. Zmaj and possibly Jmel, while they remain under the spell of Chimena’s necklace and your sexual favors. But the rest are accustomed to obeying me; you will find it difficult to shift their allegiance.”

  She turned her back on Ys, took up a silver sand-caster and sprinkled her letter to set the ink. “Take that fool Vif for a deplorable example of what the Maglore have become. He agonizes for weeks over anything as trivial as a new waistcoat. To consider switching his allegiance from me to you—that could take him years.”

  Ys bent down and retrieved her muff. Every nerve in her body cried out for revenge on this woman who had dominated her so completely for so many years. Yet angry as she was, she could see that Madame was quite immovable. “So you refuse to do what I ask?”

  Madame dusted off her letter, and folded the paper in half. “To refuse you out of hand would be—impulsive. And I am never impulsive, no matter how sorely I am tempted. I will think the matter over and tell you my answer, but in my own good time.”

  Preparations for the Midwinter Ball threw the palace into a ferment. The queen, it was said, had determined the event should surpass all others for beauty and splendor. The major-domos and the Master of Ceremonies bustled about looking important, exchanging lists of wines and orders of march. In a vast chamber set aside for the purpose, an army of seamstresses was hard at work on the queen’s new ballgown.

  In all this activity, one person was largely forgotten. The king remained all day in his bedchamber, growing weaker and weaker as the days and weeks passed.

  He was sitting propped up in bed one morning, when Francis Purcell dropped in for a visit. Though the room was but dimly lit, with only the smallest of fires burning on the hearth, the old man was forcibly struck by Jarred’s pasty complexion and his lank dark hair.

  “If I may say so, sir, I think you should consult yet another physician. One that may finally discover the cause of your condition.”

  Jarred passed a frail white hand over his eyes. “My dear Francis, I have seen so very many doctors already. I feel as though I have been physicked nearly to death.”

  “And do none of their remedies provide relief?”

  The king heaved a weary sigh. “The better ones do me no harm. The worst—well, I have been purged and bled until I feel like an empty shell.” He groaned and slipped further down on the pillows. “I believe my ailment goes deeper than anyone guesses. I believe there is something inherently wrong in the way I am made, some hidden defect, some hereditary taint. Something—something like the disease that killed Zelene.”

  Purcell bent forward, the better to study his face. “I know of no such defect in your family line. It is true that neither of your parents lived very long, but fevers and hunting accidents are scarcely hereditary.”

  He hesitated before he went on. “Your Majesty—might it not be possible that it is only your own state of mind that is making you ill?”

  Jarred looked up at him with haunted eyes. “My state of mind? Do you mean, Francis, that I am—finally going mad?”

  “Nothing of the sort, sir, nothing of the sort.” The philosopher was appalled that he had spoken so carelessly. “I was speaking of—of a melancholy conviction, which you seem to hold, that you will never be well again. I am not a physician, of course, but it seems to me that you may be suffering from nothing more serious than nervous excitation, a wasting anxiety. One I hope you will soon overcome, and rally sufficiently—”

  “To do what?” said Jarred, as Purcell’s voice died off.

  The old man hesitated again. He was reluctant to say anything that might worry the king. Yet perhaps the truth might have a tonic effect, might force him to bestir himself.

  “I believe, sir, that it is very important for you to be seen in public. The people are distressed by what they hear of your condition. Then too, they remain unreconciled to your recent marriage. Many are convinced that the queen exerts a malign influence. They call her—” Purcell decided against telling Jarred the worst of it. “But if they saw you again, if they were reminded how much you love them, how deeply their welfare has always—”

  He was interrupted by the opening of a door and the unexpected entrance of the queen herself. At the sight of her, Purcell closed his lips, folded his arms, and determined not to say anything more while she was present.

  Yet there was nothing in her appearance to inspire distrust, as she tripped lightly across the room, made a dutiful curtsy beside the bed, and dropped a wifely kiss on Jarred’s pale forehead. “Are you bored, sir? Would you like me to sit with you and read for a while?”

  The king made a listless movement. “No, I thank you, though it’s k
ind of you to ask. The truth is, my head aches, and I want nothing so much as quiet.”

  “Of course,” she said sweetly. “We will leave you in peace.” And she gave Purcell a significant look across the bedclothes.

  Taking the hint, he bowed to the king. With a last uneasy glance over his shoulder, the philosopher followed the queen out of the room, through the antechamber, and into the corridor outside.

  “It is good that we met,” said Ys, as Purcell closed the door softly behind him. “There is something I particularly wanted to say to you. We can be private, I take it, up in your laboratory?”

  “Indeed,” said the old man, leading the way. They climbed a short flight of stairs, traversed a long gallery, passed through a number of rooms and doors, and at last arrived in the philosopher’s clock-tower workshop.

  Ys came immediately to the point. “When I found you with the king, you were speaking of the rumors abroad in the town?”

  Purcell nodded reluctantly.

  “And because the people are restless and disaffected you are inclined to blame me?”

  “Not at all,” said the old man. “I was telling the king that the public blames you. Perhaps with some cause, considering the changes you have made here. The entire Perys family dismissed, beginning with Jarred’s coachman. Thrown out into the streets, when they were born right here in the palace! The older ones, too, after a lifetime of service. Do you wonder they retaliate by blackening your name? Yet what have the people to complain of, really? There is neither famine, disease, nor any other thing abroad in the land to disturb their peace, and they are hardly touched by the changes here.”

  Ys gave him a calculating look. “You don’t think that your own presence here at the palace contributes something to the public apprehension?”

  Purcell was bewildered, this was so unexpected. “My presence? How should my presence ‘contribute to the public apprehension’? I am the most innocuous of men. No one has ever—”