The Exiled Queen

by Cinda Williams Chima

  Mordra tilted her head toward the Bayars’ corner.

  “So.” Han rubbed the back of his neck. “What do you think?”

  “Well,” she said, nodding at Dancer, “you are a copperhead.” She turned to Han. “And you sound like a street person, even if you’re not dressed like one.” She scanned his face. “And you do look rather ruthless, with those scars and all.”

  How did he sound like a street person? Han wondered. He hadn’t even said that much.

  “Should you be talking to us, then?” he asked. “Could be chancy.”

  Mordra shrugged. “They don’t think much of me either, because I’m from the down-realms. Even though my bloodline is pure, and my father’s on the council. Dean Abelard favors me, though, because I have considerable talent.” She extended her arm, displaying the trim on her robes. “I’m the youngest proficient ever.”

  “You must be rum clever,” Han said.

  “If you’re smart, she’ll take notice of you too,” Mordra said. “Doesn’t matter who you are.” She glanced at Dancer, and shrugged. “Unless you’re a copperhead, of course.”

  This Mordra may be smart, but she’ll say anything that comes into her head, Han thought.

  “Maybe I don’t want to be noticed,” he said.

  “Oh, you want to be,” Mordra said. “Dean Abelard offers special classes for Mystwerk students with potential.”

  “What kind of classes?” Han asked.

  Again, Mordra went up on tiptoes, grabbing onto his arm to keep her balance. “Forbidden magic,” she breathed, her warm breath tickling his ear. “Powerful spells.”

  An icy voice cut into their conversation. “Shut up, Mordra.”

  Startled, Mordra jerked back, nearly falling. Han looked up to see that Fiona had somehow made it all the way across the room without his noticing.

  “You shut up,” Mordra said, recovering herself and balling up her fists.

  “You’re always spewing nonsense like a newling in his cups,” Fiona went on, rolling her eyes. “Alister is a street thug. He has no interest in your pathetic fantasy life.”

  “Actually, it was fascinating,” Han said. “Mordra was just saying that—”

  “Never mind,” Mordra interrupted. “Where are you sitting?”

  “Wherever there’s room, I guess,” Han said. Far from the Bayars and the dean, he thought to himself. And maybe Mordra, too. She might be the only one willing to talk to him, but her chatter was wearing him out.

  “You’re assigned a seat—didn’t you know? I’m at the dean’s table,” Mordra said.

  “How do you know where you’re sitting?” Han asked. It always seemed like he was missing information that everyone else knew.

  “There are little cards at the places,” Mordra said. “You should walk around and find yours. It’s almost time to sit down.”

  Han’s place turned out to be at the dean’s table, too. With both Bayars, Adam Gryphon, another proficient, and another master. So much for avoiding notice.

  Dancer was seated at a nearby table with several of the Bayars’ crew. They squirmed and leaned away as if he smelled bad. Dancer sighed and put on his trader face.

  It was as if the dean had decided to make everybody miserable on purpose.

  Han was seated between Mordra and Fiona, with Micah across from them, next to Master Gryphon.

  Fiona sat rigid, staring straight ahead, as if she could pretend Han wasn’t right next to her.

  Fortunately, servers arrived in a hurry with soup, ladling it into bowls in front of each person.

  It was a thin broth, with a bit of greens floating in it. Not much of a supper, Han thought, surprised. He’d expected a more lavish spread. Spooning some up, he blew on it to cool it off. It tasted smoky and salty, like dried mushrooms and onions.

  I hope we get seconds, he thought. Or at least some bread to go with. He took a few more bites, then noticed that nobody else was eating.

  Across the table, Micah gazed at him, fingers templed, one eyebrow raised. Mordra leaned over. “You’re supposed to wait until everyone is served and the dean has welcomed us,” she said in a whisper loud enough to be heard at nearby tables. A titter rolled around the room.

  Han put his spoon down, feeling the blood rush to his face.

  It turned out that soup wasn’t supper. It was what came before supper. Supper was roast quail and potatoes and carrots and little cakes and fruit soaked in brandy set aflame and three different wines and sweet spirits in tiny cups.

  Nobody else brought their cider to the table.

  Though he tried to follow along with what others were doing, every so often, Han would pick up the wrong fork or eat things in the wrong order, or use the wrong sauce on the wrong thing, and Mordra would correct him in her player’s whisper, sending the room into silent convulsions of laughter.

  The only ones not laughing were Dean Abelard, Dancer, Mordra, and Fiona.

  Fiona?

  All through dinner she drank wine but ate very little, pushing the food around her plate with a scowl on her face until the servers took it away. She drummed her fingers on the table and shifted in her seat.

  Sitting next to me takes away her appetite? Han thought.

  Several times, Master Gryphon leaned across the table and tried to engage Fiona in conversation, but she seemed distracted, as if she scarcely heard him.

  Finally she leaned across Han to speak to Mordra. “Just stop it!” she hissed, as Mordra opened her mouth to speak when Han went to butter his roll, likely with the wrong knife.

  “What?” Mordra blinked at her.

  “You of all people should not be correcting anyone’s manners!” Fiona went on, her voice brittle as steel at solstice. “You are a disaster.”

  Mordra thrust her chin out. “I was just trying to—”

  “Stay away from Alister, or you’ll be more of a pariah than you already are,” Fiona warned.

  “Both of you shut it!” Han exploded, slamming his hands down on the table, rattling the china and sloshing wine out of glasses. “It’d be easier to eat in the middle of a tavern brawl than to sit between the two of you.”

  The room went dead silent.

  Fiona scraped back her chair and stood. “Dean Abelard, please excuse me. I’m not feeling well.” She swept out of the hall without a backward glance.

  Han looked across the table to where Micah sat staring at him, eyes narrowed in appraisal. Gryphon gazed after Fiona until she disappeared through the doorway, then fixed his uncanny eyes on Han, his face pale and furious. Dean Abelard propped her elbows on the table, resting her chin on her hands, a faint smile curving her lips.

  Han stopped eating then, too, unwilling to chance more lessons from Mordra. She rattled on, and he answered in short sentences.

  Finally, the endless dinner was over. Students and faculty collected into chatty groups. Han and Dancer left the hall by the back door in order to avoid contact with anyone.

  “We have to do this every month?” Han muttered, the rich meal like an anvil in his middle. “Bloody bones.”

  “Fiona Bayar and Mordra deVilliers were fighting over you?” The wind rattled branches overhead, and Dancer turned his collar up. When Han glared at him, he added, “It looked like it to me.”

  “I got no idea what that was all about,” Han said. “Fiona doesn’t want anyone to talk to us. Maybe she wants to isolate us more than we already are.”

  “Maybe she wants you for herself,” Dancer said.

  “Ha.” They walked on in silence for a moment. “I wonder who goes to Abelard’s classes,” Han mused. “I wonder what she’s up to.”

  As they rounded the side of Mystwerk Hall, light flared under the gallery, catching Han’s eye. He squinted, making out a robed silhouette amid the shadows, an angular face illuminated from below.

  Overhead, stone cracked with a boom that set Han’s ears to ringing. Without looking up, he launched himself into Dancer, sending both of them flying to a sprawling landing on the gra
ssy quad.

  Han rolled to his feet. A jumble of roof tiles and broken stone littered the ground where they’d stood moments before. Palming his knife, he charged toward the gallery, running a zigzag course so as to make a difficult target. But nobody was there.

  “What is it?” Dancer said, just behind him. “What did you see?”

  Han shook his head and put his finger to his lips. He looked back toward the walkway.

  It appeared that a large second story gallery had broken off and shattered on the cobblestones. Some of the pieces were bigger than his head. Any one of them could have killed them had they struck true.

  As they watched, a crowd of students and faculty rounded the corner and clustered around the fallen masonry. They didn’t notice Han and Dancer hidden in the gloom.

  Neither of the Bayars were there.

  Han touched Dancer’s shoulder and jerked his head toward their dormitory.

  All the way back, Han kept his knife in one hand, his amulet in the other, his senses on alert for an ambush along the way.

  Blevins looked up as they passed through the common room. “Dinner over already?” he said.

  “Has anyone else come back from dinner?” Han asked.

  Blevins shook his head. “You’re the first.”

  They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. Han closed the door at the top of the stairs and rechecked his magical barriers. Soft-footing it down the hallway to his room, he eased the door open. No one there.

  Crossing to the window, he looked out. Excited voices still floated from the crowd around the rubble near Mystwerk Hall.

  Han turned around, to find Dancer in the doorway.

  “Somebody was standing under the gallery on the far side of the quad,” Han said. “He cast a charm right before the gallery came down on us.”

  “Are you sure?” Dancer asked. “The wind might have loosened one of the cornices. It’s been howling all day.”

  “Whoever did it wanted it to look like it was the wind,” Han said.

  “You didn’t see who it was?”

  Han shook his head. “Somebody tall, in wizard robes.”

  The light from the amulet had momentarily illuminated their attacker’s face, but it had extinguished so quickly he couldn’t be sure who it was.

  He had a guess, though. Fiona would have had plenty of time to get into position. Or Micah could have hurried out the front door in time to be waiting for them when they came around the building.

  They’d been lucky this time—but who knew how long their luck would hold?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  FRIENDS

  AND ENEMIES

  Amon did review the roster of students in Wien House and Isenwerk, newling cadets and secondaries, but there were no Alisters listed. Cuffs could have been enrolled under an assumed name, but if he’d just arrived at Wien House, surely Raisa or Amon would have spotted him again in the dining halls or libraries. When that didn’t happen, Raisa grudgingly conceded that she’d been mistaken.

  “Just remember: stay off Bridge Street,” Amon said.

  As weeks went by, Raisa began to relax in her identity as newling cadet. She’d never fool anyone who knew her well, but to anyone else, a cadet’s tunic and chopped-off hair seemed to be a remarkably good disguise for a princess. She encountered a few of her countrymen in the dining hall and on the quad, but no one recognized her.

  Taim Askell was as good as his word. The curriculum he and Amon had cooked up for Raisa kept her running from early morning until she fell into bed exhausted on the top floor of Grindell Hall. Not even Hallie’s snoring could keep her awake.

  She couldn’t complain. She’d asked for it—no—demanded it. And now she was paying the price. There were no daydreamy sessions of stitchery or chamber music or painting landscapes in the garden. There were no lazy afternoons gossiping over tea on the terrace.

  There was no terrace.

  The lack of a dorm master at Grindell Hall might have encouraged rule-breaking, but they were all too exhausted for that. As fourth-year commander, Amon strictly enforced curfew on his fellow cadets, though he was rarely on the premises himself. Raisa was always half asleep by curfew anyway, trying to read a few more pages before she doused her candle. Some nights she did fall asleep, draped across her desk, her face mashed into the pages of her history book. Maybe some of it would soak in through her skin.

  She stayed off Bridge Street, even though she was sorely tempted when Talia and Hallie invited her to go out with them. She told herself she didn’t have time to go to taverns anyway. At least that way she could avoid Talia’s relentless matchmaking.

  She quickly grew to dread her recitation in the History of Warfare. Lectures by the masters and deans were scheduled three times a week, with recitations every day. The recitations were moderated by proficients, who led discussions and administered oral and written examinations. So they had a lot of power, especially over newlings.

  Her history recitation was led by an Ardenine proficient named Henri Tourant.

  A younger son of a thane, Tourant had apparently decided that an academic post provided opportunities he wouldn’t have at home—opportunities to bully and humiliate students during the day and pursue other pleasures at night.

  Tourant was a tyrant, and he had a typical Ardenine attitude toward women—arrogant and condescending. He made his opinion clear early on—women should be enrolled elsewhere, not wasting the time of the faculty in Wien House and the other, more manly academies. A thousand years since the Breaking, and Arden still couldn’t seem to get over the fact that they had once been ruled by a woman.

  Tourant was a small man—in stature and in every other way. He had thin, cruel lips and curling brown hair that he wore long. It was already thinning on top, though he was only a few years older than Raisa. His face was rather reptilian, with a receding chin and a pointed nose.

  He was also something of a dandy, and often removed his scholar’s robes to display his finery.

  Tourant strutted back and forth at the front of the classroom, doing most of the talking during what was supposed to be a discussion. He rarely stayed on topic and seemed to have only a nodding acquaintance with the facts. A real discussion would have been helpful, but Tourant’s recitation was a waste of time.

  Raisa mostly sat in the back row and did homework. But today the topic was magic in warfare, and she had trouble keeping her mind occupied elsewhere and her mouth shut when Tourant rattled on, spewing misinformation like a broken waste pipe.

  I’m learning self-restraint, Raisa thought, keeping her clenched fists hidden in her lap. A valuable skill.

  It got worse. A rather wild-eyed temple dedicate from Arden proclaimed that the Demonai warriors went into battle naked. “Though they are fabulously rich, the northern savages wear all of their wealth as jewelry,” the dedicate went on. “They fight in the nude save for massive gold collars and bracelets that proclaim their status. And quivers for their arrows.”

  “Now that is something I would like to see,” Tourant said, grinning. His gaze slid over Raisa, cold and nasty as a demon’s kiss. “You’re a half-blood, Morley, right? Ever go into battle naked? Is the idea—to distract the enemy?”

  Raisa pushed away an image of Reid Nightwalker galloping through the trees in the buff. “If you think about it, sir, you’ll realize that can’t be true,” she said, choosing each word before she spit it out. “Anyone who goes naked in the mountains would be cold and uncomfortable even in summer. In a northern winter, he would freeze to death.”

  “They are accustomed to the cold,” the dedicate said. “They don’t even feel it.”

  “We are accustomed to the cold,” Raisa said. “Much more than flatlanders. But there are limits. The clans are famous for their metalsmithing, so they do wear jewelry. But they also wear leather and fur and woven fabrics, too,” she said, recalling the great looms in constant use in the lodges.

  “Some say the savages grow heavy fur in the winter, like wolves,”
Tourant said, as if it were a matter of real debate among scholars. “That’s why they call them the wolf queens.” This was met by a scattering of laughter, but many of the students shifted uncomfortably in their seats. “Is that true, Newling Morley?”

  “That’s not true!” A statuesque girl with coppery skin and a Tamric accent spoke up without being called upon. She wore Isenwerk robes and elaborate jewelry. “My family deals with clan traders all the time. The one who calls on us is well educated and fully clothed; certainly not a savage—though he does drive a hard bargain.”

  “Well, now, Newling Haddam,” Tourant said, winking at her. “Sounds like you’re sweet on him. When you say he drives a hard bargain, what exactly does that mean?”

  Haddam flushed angrily and opened her mouth to speak, but Tourant pointed at another student, who was eagerly waving his hand. “Gutmark. What do you think?”

  “The queens of the Fells are witches,” a solemn boy from Bruinswallow said. “They charm the men into letting them rule.”

  “The queens of the Fells rule for the same reason that the kings of Tamron and Bruinswallow rule,” Raisa said. “Bloodlines, history, education, and ability.”

  “There’s demon magic in the northern mountains,” a Southern Islander said. “That’s where the Demon King come from, and that’s where he died, and his bones, they infect the land to this day. The soil blisters your feet, and plants just wither in the ground.”

  “Plants grow there,” Raisa said. “Just not the same plants that grow here. Where do you think all your medicines and scents come from?”

  “Sorcery,” the Ardenine dedicate said, with a pious shudder. “I wouldn’t wear those wicked perfumes. They cloud the mind and lead to sins of the flesh. After I graduate I am going to be a missionary. I’m going to go and live with the mountain savages and help civilize them and bring them the true faith,” she said.

  Raisa tried to imagine this naïve girl facing off with her father, Averill Lightfoot, Lord Demonai, and attempting to civilize him. Her grandmother, the Matriarch Elena Cennestre, would devour her alive.

  “Well, good luck to you,” Raisa said, rolling her eyes. Then flinched as a voice boomed from the back of the room.