Grave

by Michelle Sagara

  “Don’t,” Margaret said, before she could take a step.

  To Allison’s surprise, Michael nodded. When she looked at him, the question transforming the shape of her eyes and her brows, Michael said, “Emma hates it when she cries.” That was all.

  Chase slid an arm around Allison’s shoulder, and she leaned into him without thinking; the room was cold. Everything in the citadel was.

  • • •

  The landscape dissolved slowly; the crystal water around Emma’s ankles dissolved as well. It was the last thing to go. Gone was the river, the bank, the black and white form of a huddled, weeping girl. Gone, too, the footprints, the disturbances caused by the man Emma could not see.

  So, too, was the man. But the landscape did not reassert itself. She could not see the walls of the Queen’s room. She could see the odd, translucent gray that reminded her so much of the eyes of the dead. She was standing in or on it. She listened.

  It was harder now. She didn’t know what to listen for or to. She could hear, as permanent background, the whispered pain of the dead—the dead who were trapped, as the man was trapped, by the machinations of their Queen.

  She wondered, then, if the dead had ever heard the Queen cry.

  The urge to reach out, to comfort the dead, was powerful; she took three steps, staggered, circling. There were too many. Too many. And they were not the right voices.

  She felt lost, as the dead must feel lost; even knowing that she could return to herself and leave this place seemed such a distant possibility that she shuddered. She might have remained motionless except for that involuntary shuddering, but a sound caught her.

  She flinched.

  It was weeping. But the cries were different in tone and texture; grief didn’t underlie them. Fear did. And as she listened, the fear grew stronger, the voice more powerful; it formed words that she did not understand. But the meaning was plain, regardless. She began, haltingly, to stumble in the direction of the voice.

  • • •

  She did not expect to see the Queen when she at last found features of landscape. She wasn’t certain why, and in any case, she’d been wrong. The Queen was there.

  She did not look particularly Queenlike, not as she had looked the one time Emma had actually seen her. It wasn’t the absence of a grand, storybook throne, although that was absent. It wasn’t even her clothing, which was remarkable only in that it had nothing at all in common with the clothing Emma and her Emery friends wore every day.

  Her hair was drawn back in a single braid that traced the length of her back, falling between shoulder blades so tense they could have cut. The floor beneath her was solid, worn wood. Before her, beneath two flat, stretched palms, was a table that was at least as worn. It was unadorned by carvings or flourishes.

  She could not see Emma—and Emma was grateful. The intensity of fury in her face made death seem inevitable. The grief that Emma had witnessed the first time was buried so deeply beneath icy rage it might never have existed at all.

  She was not the source of the weeping, now.

  Emma walked, gingerly, to stand by her side before the table. This isn’t happening now, she told herself, squaring her shoulders. This is just another memory. She had nothing to fear.

  But there was something vaguely terrifying about a grown man on his knees on the other side of the table weeping in terror. Men stood on either side of him; another man stood in front of a closed door. The room was scantly lit—the windows were glassless and small—but not even full sunlight would have banished the darkness in this room.

  He was not, as it had first appeared, begging for his life. Not his own life. He was the only prisoner—there was no other word for it—in this room. The people he wanted to save—if they were still alive—were elsewhere. But his pleading made clear that that elsewhere was under the control of the woman—the girl—who stood before him. Emma held her breath. She knew, given her reaction to Mark’s mother, that whatever anger she felt, whatever hatred, and there was no other word for it, would crack in the face of his terror.

  The Queen did not.

  She spoke the Queen’s name, but the voice came out in a whisper—and it was not her voice that uttered it. “Reyna.”

  There was another man in the room—one Emma couldn’t see. Just as there had been a man at the stream by which the Queen of the Dead had wept. It was his voice.

  Reyna didn’t appear to hear it. She didn’t appear to hear anything; even the man before her seemed insignificant. But not so insignificant that she was unwilling to listen. And listen. And listen. She did not interrupt the flow of his broken words.

  Nor did she look up at the sound of her name. Could not, Emma realized, take the risk of doing so. She was listening. She was measuring the man’s pain against some invisible, internal pain of her own. And when he had quieted—and he did, briefly—his fate, or the fate of his loved ones entirely in her hands, she said, “We will show you the same mercy your kind have shown ours since the dawn of time.

  “You wish us to spare your children? We will spare them in exactly the same fashion as you spared ours.” She smiled, then.

  He screamed. It was a blaze of sound, a last blossom before fear gave way to despair. He would die. He knew it. And perhaps he thought that death would bring him a measure of peace. And it hadn’t. It wouldn’t. Nor would it bring that peace to the children who would predecease him.

  She spoke to the men at his side, and they slid hands under his armpits, lifting him to his feet—feet that would not carry him steadily. Emma thought one was broken.

  She was, and felt, sick with dread and horror. She wanted to retreat. She almost did. But her body would not obey the visceral commands she gave it; she stood, as much captive to the memory as the man who owned it.

  Stood, she realized, in the exact same place as he had stood. He was frozen there, by the Queen’s side—the only man to be allowed that privilege—when the Queen turned, the steady, narrowed gaze of her eyes pinning him, trapping him, the anger flaring, and flaring again.

  She did not dismiss the man at the door as she had dismissed the other jailers. She did not intend her words—or her response—to be private.

  Breath held, Emma faced her. Breath held, Emma waited for the commands that she was queasily, sickly certain would follow.

  “You know who he was,” the Queen said, her voice burning ice, her eyes a darkness that made brown seem a shade of death. “You know what he did. You know what he would do if he were to survive.”

  “I do not counsel his survival,” the man began.

  She lifted a hand; it was shaking.

  So, too, was the man’s. Emma couldn’t see his hand—he was no more visible here than he had been by the riverbank—but she could feel it. She could feel both of them; they were clasped behind his back. “The children have done you no harm. It hurts nothing to leave them; they’re unlikely to survive on their own.”

  “Then consider it a kindness—a faster death than starvation.”

  “Reyna, whatever their father is, they are not him.”

  “It is the only thing,” Reyna said, “that will hurt him. It is the only way to make him understand.”

  “The dead understand very little.”

  Reyna’s laugh was wild, almost unhinged. “Is that what you truly believe?”

  He flinched. Emma flinched.

  “I want them dead,” she said. “I want them dead before he is. He will watch. He will watch just as I watched.” She turned away as the floor began to tilt beneath Emma’s feet; she grabbed the tabletop to steady herself. “You will see to it.”

  Silence.

  “Fire,” Reyna said.

  He tried only once more. “Your family was not killed by fire.”

  “Not mine, no. But some of yours was. And they will pay. They have to pay.” She turned to the door, and then
back. “Never try to interrupt me again. I am not a monster. I am justice—I cannot afford to be weak, to be seen as weak. You know what that cost me in the past.” She closed her eyes. “Go. Do not start until I arrive.”

  • • •

  It wasn’t over. That was the worst of it. It wasn’t over. This room, this darkness, the Queen’s anger, was only the start of it. The door opened as Emma approached it; she felt it beneath the palm of her hand. Felt, as well, the look she was given by the remaining guard, the sole witness. The Queen ordered him out as well and remained standing by the table, in judgment.

  Emma wanted to look back. She even tried. But the man she appeared to be inhabiting had not looked back, and this was his memory; he was captive to it. There was no freedom of movement, no way to effect any change. This had happened.

  This was happening now.

  She whimpered, moving. The sunlight was harsh, the sky cloudless; the whole of the horizon seemed to be one immoveable witness, and it watched. There were tents in the distance, a horse or two; she heard chickens—or birds, she couldn’t see them. She saw, instead, the prisoner, and she saw the men to either side of him; she saw the beginnings of what might become a campfire—a bonfire—a thing by which she had sat or talked or listened to simple music, a place which typified the edge of adolescent parties.

  But that wasn’t what it would become. She knew.

  She knew because she could hear the voice of a young child, shouting for her father. And she could see the father struggle now with his captors, with his injury, with the ultimate certainty of failure.

  And she kept walking.

  And as she walked, she summoned up reserves of bitter hatred, the dregs of a fear that would never quite leave, as if fear were a contagion, a plague, a thing that passed itself on, sinking itself into every corner of the mind and soul, thickening into something that was so dense, so loud, so much a part of you, it could never be escaped.

  She called up images of laughing men. She called up memories of deaths—most often beating and bludgeoning, but once fire, much like this one. She remembered the audience, the ragtag gathering of men and women and their children, as if the event were some sort of celebration or fair. And, oh, she remembered the screams. The laughter couldn’t kill them, couldn’t mask them—and nothing could mask the stench of burning flesh.

  And she remembered lurking in the crowd, pretending, dredging up some hideous reserve of will to voice something that might have sounded like laughter to the distracted. She remembered that she had abandoned friends in a desperate attempt not to join them on that pyre.

  And those memories were so strong, they were enough to carry her to the piles of dry wood and the child belted to one standing log; the other waited beneath the heavy hands of guards, of men so much like those other men, a hundred miles or more away. She was silent, that child, dazed and uncomprehending, as if what must follow was so inconceivable it was simply impossible.

  Emma approached the bier and paused there, the child’s screams overlapping with the father’s, adding a new color, a new layer, to memories of death. They were not her experiences; she understood this dimly, at a great remove. The understanding didn’t save her. She was this man, now. She could not detach herself from him. She couldn’t fight him—and, in truth, like the numb little girl whose life was going to end here, and horribly, some part of her felt it must be a nightmare. It must be. She would wake from it. She would wake and be safe and the world would be sane.

  But she couldn’t leave, couldn’t wake; she was enmeshed in the memories of this nameless, faceless man.

  He turned to Reyna, for even at this distance, he was aware of her; she cast a long slender shadow, more pillarlike than human. The sun was setting; it lengthened that shadow, until it touched the edge of the pile of wood. The child’s sobbing had ceased some time past; she had given way to exhaustion and stood only because she was bound so tightly.

  It was silent, for just a moment—one long stretched moment in which the man stood on the precipice of hell, teetering, uncertain. He reached, again, for the armor of bitter, bitter experience. He reached for that first moment in which he had realized, with utter finality, that justice was a lap-story, a lie told to children. Their prisoner, and men like him, had been the genesis of that. What right had they to end the lives of his kin?

  They had killed women and children without cause and without mercy. He could still hear, echoing down the years, the ugly sound of their laughter. Why should they be spared what he himself had not been spared? Why? Because of his squeamishness? Because of his hesitation?

  The thoughts were loud; the anger was real. It was real and it was just. And perhaps, perhaps if they saw this through, boys like he had once been, girls like Reyna had once been, would never be broken by the savagery of armed, human fear again.

  It was worth the cost. He told himself it was worth the cost. He let anger burn, in the absence of fire—the fire would join it, soon enough.

  Reyna’s face, in the slow fall of night, was a mask so pale it might have been exquisitely carved ice.

  But he knew her well enough to see what lay beneath it. She was afraid. She had lost family: mother, uncles, and a sister only slightly older than the girl on the unlit pyre. She intended to build a world in which she need never suffer that loss again. In which none of her people would suffer it a first time.

  She would see this through.

  And she would see it through by his side. She was committed; she demanded a like commitment from him. He could hear the cries of the dead that surrounded her; the cries of the living were brief and easily extinguished in comparison. He took the torch that was handed him; his hands were steady, his expression, as he turned to the bier, as remote as Reyna’s.

  He did not flinch when he set the fire to the logs; the man did that. And soon enough, the child joined him, her screams nearer and far, far harder to bear. He stepped back as the dry wood caught fire—it was not instant. Had it been in his power, it would have been; the wood would have taken the flames in an instant, and the blaze would have been so hot, so undeniable, death would come just as instantly.

  It did not happen.

  He did not step back. He did not flinch. He did not meet the screaming child’s eyes. He simply waited. And waited. And waited.

  And some time during that long, horrible wait, Reyna joined him, standing to his left, her toes even with his, fire reflected so strongly in her eyes that they were red and orange. He understood, then, why she had chosen the time of day she had chosen; he could see the tracks of her tears.

  THE QUEEN OF THE DEAD IS RADIANT.

  Her title is both absolute and somehow wrong. As she walks down the street, her Eric finally by her side, the street fills. It fills with her subjects. They are not the newly dead; they can change their appearance, including their clothing. They are different genders of many races, many ages. They appear to see each other—at least enough that they are standing in the same space they might were they alive: they don’t overlap. They don’t sink through stone.

  They look like . . . a crowd. A crowd from a period movie, yes—but a genuine crowd. They’re the extras, but their presence isn’t insignificant. They watch their Queen. How much fear rests beneath the surface of their composed faces?

  And is Nathan’s expression nearly as composed as theirs? He is less worried about that than perhaps he should be; the Queen is unlikely to turn her back and look at her attendants. Either of them.

  Helmi walks behind Eric at Nathan’s side. She prompts him when the long train of the Queen’s dress needs adjusting; she can’t—obviously—adjust it herself. But her expression is neutral, in the way stone is neutral. She glances at the dead without truly seeing them. Eric sees them.

  Nathan sees them. But Nathan, seeing them, can understand Helmi’s reaction. It is painful to know that they are nothing more than accoutrements, that they a
re accessories that will be put aside—or worse—without a second thought. He’s not certain if that’s because it’s also the truth of his new existence, and they remind him of what he now is—but it doesn’t matter why. It’s uncomfortable.

  Helmi has been dead for much, much longer than Nathan.

  But then again, so has Eric.

  Maybe it’s because Eric has lived in the real world. He’s met real people. He’s lived as if he were still alive.

  Nathan is watching both of their backs. The Queen turns to look—at Eric. Eric’s gaze is elsewhere, moving and pausing. He doesn’t notice the Queen’s expression. He doesn’t appear to notice the tightening of her hand.

  But when she speaks, he hears her.

  When she speaks, although her voice is so low it’s barely more than a whisper, all of the dead hear her. The dead who are looking out the open windows. The dead who are in the streets. Nathan thinks—although he hopes and prays it is his imagination—the street itself hears her; it is rumbling slightly beneath the soles of his incredibly uncomfortable shoes.

  Eric, do you not love me?

  And Eric turns to meet her open, desperate gaze.

  “SOMETHING’S WRONG,” Allison said. Emma’s shoulders had curved toward the ground, her neck retracting; her arms trembled as she held them, stiff, at her sides. Her eyes were closed, but the tears hadn’t stopped.

  Allison made her way to the circle’s edge; Amy’s voice stopped her. Allison wasn’t one of the Emery mafia. She wasn’t one of Amy’s inner circle. She was too stout and too unaware of fashion and style, which she’d assumed meant the same thing until Emma had disentangled the words for her.

  But no one in Emery—at least no one in the same grade—ignored Amy Snitman when her voice took on that edge. And odd though it was, Allison trusted her. Here, at least. She turned back.

  “She’s in there for a reason,” Amy said. To Allison’s muted surprise, she appeared to be attempting to shift the tone of her words, to deprive them of—of whatever it was that made them so particularly Amy. “None of us know what she’s doing. We know why.”