Queen's Hunt

by Beth Bernobich

  He flinched. “I … do not know.”

  So. No assurance that Raul lived. Others had died, however. She had a vivid recollection of Katje, run through with a sword and falling limp to the ground, the strings of life suddenly cut. Another image followed, of Raul stabbing a Károvín soldier. Her own hands felt sticky with blood, though she had cleaned them long ago. She rubbed them absentmindedly.

  Karasek was observing her closely. “You are—you were Milada.”

  Again he had surprised her. “I was,” she said with some difficulty. “And you?”

  He made a quick gesture of denial. “Nobody. No, that is a lie. I was a captain in the army. Leos Dzavek sent me to arrest you that night, when you met with the emissary from Veraene.”

  Something in his voice, the way his hand swept up and outward, recalled another moment in a different life. A laughing voice, an exaggerated politesse. It was a memory far removed from this moment and this life, but now Ilse knew when she and the jewels had met this man for the first time. “You were a commander for the emperor before. You sailed—”

  To Morennioù. Five hundred years ago. I was there, as was Raul Kosenmark.

  Raul. Her last glimpse of him had been a blur of shadow, the golden gleam of his eyes in fire and moonlight as he fought against the Károvín.

  All the tears she had refused these past weeks broke through. She wept, a silent flood of grief that she could not restrain. For Raul. For Galena, lost to her family. For Katje and the others who died on Hallau. For herself, bound to an exile that no longer served any purpose.

  I want him. I want Raul. Not Lord Kosenmark and heir to Valentain. I want the man I came to love. I want … to be Anike, and he Stefan, so we might live our lives in quiet, far away from the affairs of kings.

  But however passionately she wished it, her dreams could never come true in this life. Raul had died on that miserable island. She almost wished that Károví’s soldiers might overtake her, so that she would not have to struggle on alone.

  Later I will think what I must do. Not yet. Not yet.

  Karasek made no move to comfort her. He stood in silence, as if he understood she could not bear the least touch of sympathy. His patience was like the jewels’, waiting for deliverance in Anderswar. It was the best gift he could bestow her.

  At last her grief emptied out. Ilse released a shuddering breath and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “You are right,” she said. “I do need sleep. You, as well.”

  Her voice sounded harsh to her own ear. She could not begin to guess what Karasek made of her. They had been enemies once, in lives past. Of that she was certain. They had also been friends, but lives and centuries could change anyone. She had just witnessed that fact made flesh and act.

  If he shows any pity, I shall stab him.

  To her relief, he had the grace and intelligence to guess her needs. In a quite ordinary tone, he said, “I’ll take first watch and start a meal cooking.” He hesitated, then added, “And afterward, we will talk. All three of us.”

  * * *

  WHEN VALARA WOKE, the sun was directly overhead, a white disk against the hard gray sky. Someone—Karasek, no doubt—had erected a length of canvas to make a screen for her. Above the constant scent of magic, she smelled rain and lightning. She stretched underneath her blankets, as memory slowly collected. The Agnau. Karasek. The three jewels.

  A strange, strong emotion flooded her, a sensation akin to that of magic flooding her body.

  I have done what the jewels and the gods required. What my soul wished these past four hundred years.

  Her palm ached with the memory. She rubbed it with her thumb. The flesh felt thick and ridged where she’d gripped the jewels, and when she stretched her hand, the skin pulled tight. A scar of magic, she thought, as she examined it. In the center, a knot the color of new milk, bluish-white against her golden skin. Dark pink threads spiraled out between her fingers and around to the back of her hand. On impulse, she summoned the current to change the scars to ordinary flesh.

  Ei rûf ane gôtter. Komen mir de strôm …

  Nothing. She felt nothing, not even the least wisp of current. Frightened, she repeated the invocation, but the words stopped in her throat and even her thoughts stuttered and died away. Nothing. Worse than nothing. She saw magic’s current, felt its presence pulsing around her, a vast ocean spilling over from Mantharah, from the imperfect divide between spirit and flesh. But when she reached out to touch it, it receded.

  What has happened? Why can’t I work magic?

  She pressed her hands against her eyes. One felt warm and soft. One burned with an unnatural fever. A mark of magic and the gods, she thought, laughing silently. It was not as she had expected. The laugh caught on a sob. She bit down hard on her tongue. No tears, no. It was not as she had expected, but she should have known better.

  It took her several long moments before she could breathe steadily, before her heartbeat slowed from its first panicked rush. Later, she would examine the situation. She would be calm and dispassionate. It was not the end after all. She was still queen of Morennioù, or she would be, once she took the throne. Even if she no longer had magic, she still had her duty. It would have to serve. So she told herself.

  Later, I will tell myself all this a second time, a third. Until I can believe it.

  She rubbed away the tears. Drew in a long breath. Ran a hand though her knotted and tangled hair. Appearance did not matter, her father had once told her. Only courage did.

  Time for courage, she told herself.

  She crawled from the half-shelter to find Karasek and Ilse Zhalina speaking together by the edge of Mantharah’s lake. They had built a fire, and she could smell the rich scent of black tea brewing. Karasek’s horse was tethered nearby. Valara caught the words patrol, search, and perimeter. She listened closer and gathered that the general confusion at Zalinenka had worked in their favor, but soon that dearly bought time would run out.

  I came for honor, he had said. An honor that ran deeper than his oath to Leos Dzavek. What else had he done in honor’s name? What had such a decision cost him?

  She stood, catching their attention immediately. Karasek broke off his conversation. Sometime during her sleep, he had washed away the dust and sweat.

  “We’ll eat, then break camp,” he said. “I’ve done what I could to delay pursuit, but unless I return within a few days, my fellow councillors will take additional measures. And I have several tasks I must accomplish before then.”

  More hints. She ought to insist on precise information, but she was strangely afraid to at this moment. Perhaps later, in private, she could question him more thoroughly.

  “What have you told them?” Ilse asked.

  “That I was tracking Leos Dzavek’s murderer.”

  “Ah.” Ilse glanced toward Valara. “So you were, in a way. What comes next?”

  “For you, evasion,” he said. “For me, I must return as quickly as possible and report my findings to Duke Markov. I planned to tell him that we were mistaken, and that Morennioù’s queen had nothing to do with King Leos’s death. She most likely returned home at once, when she escaped my patrol.”

  “Then who did kill the king?” Valara asked.

  He shrugged. “Leos was not without enemies, but most of those belonged to minor factions within the court. Outside of Károví is another matter. Immatra in particular would like to expand its territory. If our kingdom fell into confusion, they would have an opportunity to claim and hold our northern coastline.”

  It seemed too simple an explanation. Apparently Ilse thought the same because she said, “Would your councillors believe that? And what if they believed you too well? It does Károví no good to avoid war with Morennioù, only to provoke war with another kingdom.”

  An excellent question, Valara thought, and one that clearly discomfited Miro Karasek, because he glanced away uneasily. “I think … we cannot avoid war. But to answer your question, the most I can do is distract them fo
r a time. I erased your signatures before I followed you. And matters are rather confused in the palace.”

  She took in the unspoken implications. He cannot deceive them forever. Which means they will someday discover his part.

  Now it was her turn to be discomfited, but she refused to dwell on that. “What about us?” she said. “What do we do next?”

  His mouth quirked into a humorless smile, as if he guessed her thoughts. “First we prepare the ground here, in case Markov sends his trackers north. I shall lay down signs for a second camp farther south, and trails leading east to the coast. You have the simplest task. You go home.”

  She was vividly aware of two things in that moment—the sudden change in Ilse Zhalina’s expression and her own sense of balance utterly overturned. They were of the same root and branch, she thought, struggling to keep her face under control. We have both lost a great deal. She has lost her Lord Kosenmark. I have lost my magic. Is that too great a sacrifice? The gods do not think so.

  The idea of the gods caring struck her as absurd. She smothered a laugh, caught the startled look from both her companions, and shook her head. “I am sorry. But I cannot trust the roads through Autrevelye. I must find another passage home.”

  It was the most transparent lie she had ever offered to anyone. She held her breath, expecting Karasek to protest, Ilse to point her sword at Valara’s throat and demand the truth. But no. To her astonishment, both seemed to accept this outrageous explanation.

  They would, neither of them, last a week in Morennioù’s court.

  No, that was not fair. Ilse’s gaze had turned inward, as if other problems claimed her attention. And Karasek’s eyes narrowed in a different kind of calculation.

  “I know what to do,” he said after a moment. “You will head west and south. Once I’ve reported back to my colleagues, I can rejoin you. I can—” He paused, and in a somewhat less natural voice said, “If you agree, I can escort you to Taboresk, where my holdings are. Then to a port city, where ships can be hired for longer voyages.”

  Her heart beat faster. Home. He was offering her a passage home. Another inexplicable gift. “Are you making atonement?”

  “As you did?” he asked.

  A pointed observation. Yes, they had each done the other harm. He, by leading an invasion against her kingdom. She had betrayed her brother and her homeland—Karasek’s homeland—more than once throughout history. If she examined her life dreams honestly, she suspected she would find more instances of her perfidy.

  “We are none of us perfect,” she murmured.

  “Like children whose tongues stumble before they learn to speak,” Ilse said softly. “So we, the children of Lir and Toc, stumble and fall, from life to life, until our minds and hearts and souls learn to speak with wisdom.”

  An old, old quote from a poetess long dead, one even Valara knew from her early days in the schoolroom. She has spent too many lives evading her true love. And now, for this life, it is too late.

  Karasek could not know about Raul Kosenmark, but he seemed to have caught the essential meaning. “We were children once. We are no longer. Peace, then,” he said. “Between all our kingdoms.”

  As if his words released them, they all stood and set to work. Karasek had brought ample supplies. He and Ilse had gathered more dried peat while Valara slept, and had cooked a meal of dried fish and oats—plain but hot and filling.

  They ate with good speed, then worked together to divide Karasek’s gear into two heaps. Most went into a pack he designated for them; the rest went back into his remaining saddlebags. Under his direction, they buried their garbage and covered the campfire with loose dirt, stamped the dirt into smoothness, and scattered more dirt and gravel over that. Karasek paced around, inspecting the site. As he did so, he murmured the words in Erythandran to erase all traces of their presence from the past.

  “Will that suffice?” Ilse said.

  “If my other plans succeed, it won’t have to,” he answered. To her questioning look, he said, “I’ll fabricate a larger camp farther south, and lay down trails from there to the eastern coast to mislead any trackers, before I circle back to Rastov. You two should head southwest toward the mountains. Here is the route you must take.”

  He outlined the landmarks they should watch for: the village called Kámenmost, with six houses and a sizable goat pen, where they should turn due south; the stream, almost a ditch, that they should follow; and the stone outcropping that marked the wooded ridge where they should make camp. He makes a good general, Valara thought, as she took in these precise and ordered details. Even of such a small army.

  “The country’s wild,” he said. “You won’t meet up with any cities or towns, and very few farms, but I would caution you not to use any magic, and to keep a constant watch.”

  I have no magic, Valara thought. Again pain lanced through her. It was as though the gods had scooped out her vital organs, leaving nothing but a void. She drew a long breath to calm her nerves. It was not a subject she wished to discuss with either Karasek or Ilse Zhalina. Not today.

  She had no need to just yet, because Ilse had taken over the conversation. “When should we look for you?” she said.

  Another interval where he calculated plans and counter plans. “Ten days,” he said at last. “Whoever arrives first waits for the other—but no longer than three days. Longer than that, and you must consider me lost.”

  Lost. Almost the same words she had used to Ilse Zhalina the day before. Valara suppressed a shudder, not needing further explanation. They had left several other important subjects untouched. No questions about Markov’s spies, nor what Valara and Ilse might do if the other councillors doubted Karasek’s story.

  “So we have another parting,” she said.

  Karasek gave a brief smile. “We’ve had several.”

  He mounted and offered Valara a salute. Valara returned the gesture. A soldier and a leader. What might have happened if he had come to Morennioù in peace?

  With a pang, she dismissed that thought. She could not alter the past, only the future.

  “Farewell,” she said.

  “Until ten days,” Karasek replied, then wheeled his horse around and set off toward the coast. Ilse hoisted their pack over her shoulder, but Valara lingered, still watching Karasek.

  “Will he make it?” Ilse asked.

  “He will.”

  She spoke more in hope than certainty.

  Ilse offered no reply. She turned to go, but Valara continued to watch, one hand shading her eyes, as Karasek’s figure dwindled in size. He had not looked back since his departure, but in her mind’s eye, she saw him as he had appeared in Autrevelye, one hand raised in farewell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE JOURNEY HOME from the Jelyndak Islands took all the latter weeks in spring and well into summer.

  They could not sail directly into Tiralien’s harbor, of course. The ship was too well known among the port officials, and after Gerek’s escape, Markus Khandarr or his agents would keep a vigilant watch in all the coastal cities.

  So they returned in twos and threes, each group taking a different route.

  That same day, Gervas sailed with the launch’s pilot back to the mainland, taking with him the casks with Detlef ’s and Katje’s ashes. Gervas also had a letter for Theo, addressed via Baron Eckard, to bring him home from the Kranjě Islands. The rest spent another day removing their belongings to the ship and erasing all signs of the battle and their presence on Hallau. Gerek worked alongside the others, sweating in silence under the glaring sun of late spring. He disliked the empty city. He found the island itself unsettling, with its rocky ground swept clear by magic of grass and trees. When at last he boarded the launch to return to the ship, he stared east and over the ocean, rather than take one last glimpse of that miserable dark place.

  They waited only on the next tide before the ship’s crew raised anchor. Then, with evening shadows falling over the horizon, they set sail for the open seas
, taking a great arcing path to the south outside the coastal patrols. For weeks their horizon was of water alone, the great rolling swells and the shimmering sky above. Osterling appeared as a cluster of lights to the north. Gerek knew only because one of the ship’s crew told him.

  Around the point and northwest. Two guards and Alesso Valturri landed in a remote section of coast on the far side of the peninsula. Three more in Pommersien, where they would hire on with a caravan heading northeast. Gerek Hessler thought the ship might continue onward to Valentain, but after a few days to take in water and new provisions, the ship circled around to the east once more.

  Someday, Gerek thought, as he leaned over the railing and watched the waves curling away from the ship’s sides. I shall return on my own. I shall leave my office and my books, and walk through these kingdoms I’ve only read about.

  Lord Kosenmark had not spoken with Gerek since that first night. He locked himself in his cabin and relayed his orders through Ada Geiss, now the senior guard for the expedition. Late at night he walked the decks, but alone and silent. On those few encounters when his path did cross Gerek’s, he was unfailingly polite. But his manner was distracted and remote, the air of a man eternally preoccupied with faraway matters.

  She was there, Ada had told him. Nothing of a break between them. It was all lies, I think, what came before. Politics or whatever they call it. Zhalina had disappeared in the middle of battle, in a magical cloud, according to Ada, and had chased the Morennioùen queen into the nothing. Neither woman had returned, nor the Károvín officer who had pursued them. If Gerek had not arrived with the ship, Kosenmark would be on that island still, waiting for her.

  From his single conversation with Kosenmark, Gerek knew better than to believe the last remark, but he listened in attentive silence as Ada spoke about the battle and the days following. How the Károvín had sent their own healer to tend all the wounded. They had worked alongside the Veraenen to bury or immolate the dead.