The Exiled Queen

by Cinda Williams Chima

  Karn’s mud-colored eyes had gained a feverish glint. The young captain would bring a certain enthusiasm to the task. Han’s drug-clouded mind scrabbled for ideas. He had no idea how to make his amulet accessible to Karn, even if he wanted to.

  It would do no good to scream or shout for help. Han had been listening hard, ever since he’d awakened. He’d heard nothing but the sound of night insects and the rattle of branches in the wind.

  Montaigne and Karn meant to keep their flirtation with magic a secret. They’d carried them out to the middle of nowhere, far from the capital city controlled by Gerard’s older brother.

  “All right,” Han said. “I’ll undo the hex. But you got to free my hands.” When Karn frowned, he added, “I’ll need my amulet, too. I need to hold it. Only the mage that places the charm of protection can take it away.”

  Karn stared into Han’s eyes for a long moment, then nodded grudgingly. “Fair enough. But try anything and your friend’s a dead man.”

  Like that was a threat. They’d both be dead within the hour if Karn had his way. And if he killed Dancer quickly, it would be a blessing of sorts.

  Han didn’t know if Dancer would see it that way.

  Karn dumped Han over onto his stomach and sliced through the ropes binding his hands with his knife, leaving Han’s feet bound.

  Han flexed his fingers, his breath hissing out in pain as the blood returned. He rolled over and sat up, stretching his shoulders, taking his time, wanting to get functional again before he made his move. Karn gripped one corner of the amulet’s leather wrapping and slid it closer to Han. Then he took a fistful of Dancer’s hair and pulled his head back, sliding his blade under his chin.

  Han gripped the flash with both hands. Power thrilled through him, driving his pain away, replacing it with a savage anger that wanted nothing more than to destroy the man before him. An anger that cared nothing for the knife at Dancer’s throat. His heart thudded in his chest. A charm bubbled to his lips, and he opened his mouth to speak it.

  The door banged open again. Han turned, extending his hand toward the intruders.

  It was Gerard Montaigne, his eyes bulging out, lips purplish in the sallow light from the lantern. And behind him, propelling him forward, was Cat Tyburn, her garrotte wrapped around the prince of Arden’s throat, her blade pressed into his rib cage.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ON THE

  ROAD AGAIN

  For a long moment, nobody moved. Then Dancer smashed his head into Karn’s chin. Karn lost hold of his knife, and it fell down between them. Instead of fishing for it, Karn launched himself at Cat and Montaigne. The three of them tumbled to the ground in a mad tangle, with Montaigne and Karn both shouting for help.

  Dancer located Karn’s knife. Gripping it between the heels of his hands, he leaned back against it, sawing away at the ropes. Power rippled unbidden from Han’s amulet, and the lantern exploded, sending shards of glass and burning oil flying. The room plunged into darkness, save the illumination from the Demon King jinxpiece. Han slid the chain over his head, tucking his amulet inside his shirt. Using a fragment of glass, he cut his ankles free. Then he slid his hands over the stone floor, searching for the other amulets.

  Cat scrambled up next to him. She’d somehow extricated herself from the confusion as Karn dragged the would-be king of Arden toward the door.

  “Come on,” she hissed. “We got to pike off. There’s soldiers in the woods, and with all this noise, they’re going to come running.”

  Dancer knelt, leaning forward, also searching for the flashpieces. “Here’s yours,” he said, reaching back to hand Han the Hunts Alone amulet, smeared with blood. Dancer must have cut his hands as he groped around on the floor.

  Cat stared at the amulet, looking perplexed.

  Outside the farmhouse, feet pounded toward them. Montaigne’s soldiers arriving.

  “Your Majesty!” someone shouted. “What is it? Is something wrong?”

  “To me!” the prince of Arden shouted. “I’m under attack by northern assassins.”

  Soldiers jostled through the doorway, bottling them in.

  Desperate, Han slid his hand inside his shirt and took hold of the serpent amulet. Once again, the power seized him. He extended his arm, spoke an unfamiliar charm. Karn slammed into his prince, knocking him out of the way as flame erupted from Han’s fingers, engulfing the Ardenine soldiers in the doorway. Han smelled burning wool and charred flesh as the soldiers tried to force themselves back out the way they’d come in. They piled up against the entryway, screaming in fear and cursing those blocking their escape.

  Han’s heart thudded in his chest. He’d killed before, but that had always been in street fights, blade to blade. Never with magic.

  He forced himself to let go of the jinxpiece and turned to find Cat staring at him, openmouthed.

  “It’s got to be here somewhere,” Dancer said, still crouched on the floor.

  “Leave it,” Han said, tugging at Dancer’s arm. “Won’t do you any good if you’re dead.”

  Easy for me to say, he thought. I have two amulets.

  Dancer finally stood, abandoning his search with visible reluctance, pressing his bleeding hands against his shirt.

  “Let’s go.” The doorway was blocked by a heap of smoking corpses. Han slammed both hands against the window, and the shutters exploded outward. Boosting himself to the sill, he swung his legs over and dropped to the ground. Dancer and Cat slithered out behind him.

  Someone shouted, “There they are!” Understandably, no one rushed forward.

  They ran for their lives, zigzagging across the farmyard, vaulting over chicken coops and around outbuildings until they found the welcoming shelter of the trees.

  Fright lent them a speed the prince of Arden’s soldiers couldn’t match. They passed from the forest into open farmland, leaping over furrows, crossing fields studded with cornstalks and edged with hedgerows and stone walls. Even when they could no longer hear the sound of pursuit, they ran on, following a dirt track that merged into a larger road several miles farther on.

  Finally, they crawled behind a tall hedge to recover their breath. Han sat slumped, head drooping, willing his heart to slow down. He felt shaky and weak, tingling all over, as though he’d been chewing razorleaf.

  Dancer looked worse off than Han—pale, trembling, perspiring. He propped his head in his hands as if he couldn’t hold it up on his own.

  “How’d you do that?” Cat demanded, getting in Han’s face as if she were the one who deserved answers. She seized his wrists, turning his hands palms up. “How’d you learn to throw flame like that?”

  “What are you doing here?” Han retorted. “I thought you didn’t want to come.” Then it came back to him, that feeling of being watched that had plagued him since Delphi. “You been following us, haven’t you? I thought I heard someone sneaking around camp a couple of times.”

  “Well, good thing I did,” Cat said. “Seeing as I saved your sorry —” Her voice trailed off. She stared at his chest, eyes wide, then reached her hand toward Han’s flash.

  “Don’t touch it,” he said, tucking it inside his shirt.

  “That’s what the demons was looking for,” Cat whispered. “In Ragmarket. They kept asking about a bit of bagged flash, a magical piece, shaped like a snake, with—”

  “When were you talking to demons?” Han demanded. “And why would—”

  “Blood and bones!” Cat interrupted, staring at the two of them as if they’d just grown horns. “You’re bloody jinxflingers is what you are. It an’t possible.”

  “Do you two know each other?” Dancer said, pressing the heel of his hand against his forehead as if it hurt.

  Cat dropped to a half crouch and backed away from them, eyes slitted, a blade in each hand. She seemed genuinely terrified.

  “Leave off, Cat,” Han said gently. “And put your blades away. We are wizards, true enough, but we an’t going to hurt you.”

  Cat quit backing aw
ay, but she didn’t come any closer, either. She ran her tongue over her lips and pointed a blade at Dancer. “Who is he, anyway? I never heard of no copperhead jinxflinger.”

  “It’s a long story,” Han said, not yet sure what questions he wanted to answer. “Cat Tyburn, meet Hayden Fire Dancer. Dancer’s my friend from Marisa Pines Camp. I know Cat from Ragmarket. We used to run a canting crew together.”

  Cat and Dancer eyed each other as Han’s two worlds crashed together in this foreign place.

  “He’s a copperhead,” Cat blurted. “What you doing with him?” As if Dancer’s being a copperhead overshadowed the fact that they were wizards.

  “He’s my friend,” Han said. “I’ve spent near every summer with the clans since I was little.”

  Except the three summers he’d spent with Cat, as streetlord of Ragmarket.

  “How did you find us out here?” Han asked Cat, to change the subject.

  “I saw those soldiers drag you out of the inn, and figured you was in trouble,” Cat said, still glaring at Dancer. “So I followed you.” She snorted. “I couldn’t believe it. The great Cuffs Alister falling for turtle’d cider.”

  A revelation struck Han. “You were the Malthusian sister who drank like a teamster,” he said, recalling the veiled dedicate in the common room. In the last several common rooms, now that he thought about it.

  “Least I didn’t go sliding under the table like a ’prentice in his cups,” Cat said, smirking.

  “Well, thank you for rescuing us,” Han said. “You probably saved our lives.”

  “No probably about it,” Dancer said, smiling at Cat. “Thank you. That was quick thinking. You’re very good with a strangle-cord.”

  “So,” Cat said, still looking at Han and ignoring Dancer, “I think you need looking out for. I think you need better help.” She curled her lip at Dancer, then shook back her mass of curls. “You planning to set up a new crew in Ardenscourt or what?” Scrunching her hair together, she tied it with a length of cloth. Her Ragger scarf. “Looked like there’d be lots of fat purses and not much competition. Trust me, nobody’d bloody-up against a jinxflinger for territory.”

  She never believed we were going to Oden’s Ford, Han thought. She assumed I was going back to the Life and cutting her out.

  “Look,” he said. “Dancer an’t my crew. Like I said, we’re going to Oden’s Ford, and it an’t to dive pockets. We’re going there to school.”

  “Why don’t you come with us?” Dancer said, all out of the blue, even though he didn’t know about Jemson’s offer to Cat. “All kinds of people go to school there, and there’s all kinds of subjects. There’s got to be something you’re interested in.”

  Han and Cat both stared at him.

  “I don’t need your pity, copperhead,” Cat snarled. “You think just because you’re tight with Cuffs Alister you can—”

  “Shut it,” Han said. “You can come with, but you got to get along with Dancer, and you got to go to school if you do. Don’t think we an’t grateful you saved our lives, but that’s the deal. Take or leave.”

  “You’d choose him over me?” Cat said, her eyes wide and amazed.

  “He an’t the one asking me to make a choice.”

  Cat shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. The declining moon’s angled light only partially illuminated her face, glittering on the tears running down her cheeks.

  Cat Tyburn? Crying?

  “Hey, now,” Han said. “It can’t be bad as all that.”

  “I’ll come,” she said, swiping at her eyes with her sleeves and sniffling. “I’ll go to the Temple School. I got nowhere else to go. Everybody’s gone. I can’t stay in Ragmarket, nor anywhere in the city.”

  Han stared at her, speechless, once again crushed by guilt. In a way, he was responsible for her. He’d been the cause of all her losses.

  Still, his instincts pricked him. Why would Cat want anything to do with him, when she had him to blame for the loss of everything she had—the Raggers, her territory, Velvet. She should hate the sight of him. And Cat wasn’t the forgiving sort.

  Unless, like she said, she didn’t have a choice.

  “All right,” he said. “Good that’s settled. Now we got to go. Soon as they give up hunting us out here, they may be looking for us to go back to the inn. We want to get there before they do, collect our horses, and be on our way.” He wasn’t leaving his pony behind, not after he’d waited a lifetime to own one.

  Dancer had been quiet all through this, but now he shook his head. “You two go ahead. I’m going back. I can’t just leave it there.”

  “Leave — oh. Your amulet.” Han put his hand on Dancer’s shoulder, and Dancer twitched irritably, as if he already knew what Han would say. “You can’t go back,” Han said. “They’ll kill you.”

  “I can be in and out of their camp before they know I’m there,” Dancer persisted. “I’ll meet you back at the inn. If I don’t come, you two go on without me.”

  “Don’t you think they’ve locked it up again?” Han said. “Don’t you think they’d expect you to come back after it? We got no idea how many soldiers are with them. Do you want to end up fighting in the Ardenine war?”

  “What am I supposed to do at Oden’s Ford without an amulet?” Dancer raised his hands, palms up. “Carry water and build fires? Clean the latrine?”

  Han felt guilty having two amulets when Dancer had none. The Lone Hunter amulet was made for me, he thought. I should give Dancer the Waterlow piece.

  But he didn’t want to. The Waterlow amulet seethed with power—he’d been packing it full for weeks. The Lone Hunter flashpiece seemed dark and empty in comparison—like an unconsecrated temple.

  But since he hadn’t connected with it, perhaps it would bond with Dancer instead.

  Besides, whenever anyone else tried to touch the serpent flash, they got burnt.

  Han lifted the Hunter amulet from around his neck and dangled it in front of Dancer. “Try this. I’ve not used it. Most wizards aren’t matched with custom amulets. They’re lucky to get one at all.”

  Dancer stared at the spinning amulet, scowling like a trader confronted with a paste diamond in a setting of gilded tin. He extended a cautious finger and touched it. It flared up in greeting as power rippled between them.

  Dancer sighed, shaking his head. “I’ll have to start over,” he said. But he took the Hunter amulet from Han, dropped the chain over his head, and tucked the jinxpiece under his shirt. Immediately, his aura dimmed as the amulet began taking in power.

  Would Karn be able to make use of the Fire Dancer flash? I hope they burn themselves up, Han thought.

  He climbed a tree to get a better view. The lights of Ardenscourt faded against the rising sun to the east. He guessed they were a few miles west of the city.

  He climbed back down. “It’ll take them a while to sort things out back there. We can be back to the inn by breakfast time,” he said. “Once we’re in the city, they won’t dare come after us in daylight. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ODEN’S

  FORD

  It took more than a week for the Gray Wolves to reach the border of the Kingdom of Tamron. The spiderwebbing waterways of the Fens eventually coalesced into the broad and lazy Tamron River. It meandered south, wrapping around islands and sandbars as if it didn’t really care where it was going.

  Waterwalkers poled rafts and flatboats up and down the river at will, there being little current to fight. The Wolves traveled mostly at night, staying well away from the riverbanks, and making wide circles around Waterwalker villages. After their experience at Rivertown, they did not know how they would be received.

  They slipped across the border one night, waiting until after sunset. They needn’t have troubled themselves. The keep that frowned over the river road on the Tamron side was abandoned—occupied only by feral cats and armies of mice, living amicably together. The stable yard was overgrown with brambles and grasses. Some of the stonework had
been cannibalized by scavengers.

  “Tamron must’ve sent their armies south and east, to reinforce the border with Arden,” Amon said, kicking at a rusted bucket lying in the weeds. “Seems they’re not worried about the Waterwalkers down here.”

  They slept that night in the shelter of the ruined castle. Amon directed Raisa to a corner of what must have been the officers’ mess, and planted himself and his bedroll next to the door. The other Wolves found sleeping space in the courtyard.

  Raisa could see stars above where portions of the wooden roof had rotted away. It was good to have sturdy walls around her, after their experiences in the Fens, yet she tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Once again, she second-guessed her decision to leave the Fells. Homesickness lay like a cold stone under her breastbone.

  The mountains called to her, all the dead queens in their tombs of stone. Raisa, they whispered. Raisa ana’Marianna ana’Rissa and all the other ana’s back to Hanalea. Come back home.

  I refuse to cooperate in the re-enslavement of the Gray Wolf line, she thought.

  Finally, she rose and walked to the doorway and stood over Amon Byrne, where he lay cocooned in his blanket. He rolled onto his back and opened his eyes.

  “What’s the matter?” he whispered. “Why are you up?”

  “Why can’t I ever sneak up on you?” she demanded.

  Amon sat up and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Why don’t you try it in the daylight?”

  Raisa snorted. “If I can’t do it when you’re fast asleep, how could I expect to do it when you’re awake?”

  “I’m just saying it would be more convenient in the daylight.” He yawned.

  Oh. Right. Raisa stuffed her hands in her pockets. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. It’s just I can’t sleep.” She stared down at her feet in the heavy wool socks that were scarcely needed in this strange southern climate.

  “Hmmm.” He raked his hand through his tousled hair. “Here. Sit,” he said, patting a stone bench next to the door. Raisa sat. He slid out of his blankets, wearing only his breeches, and sat next to her.