A Kiss for Queens

by Morgan Rice

“There are things I haven’t forgotten either.”

  ***

  Kate made her way out into Ashton from the palace, walking down through streets that were almost as crowded as they might have been on a market day. It seemed that people were coming out into the streets to see what was happening. They stared at Kate as she passed, but Kate couldn’t sense any hatred there, or anger, or desire to defend the regime that had pushed them down for so long. They were simply waiting to see what Kate and her sister would do. What they stood for.

  Well, Kate would show them that.

  She made her way down toward the temple of the Masked Goddess, taking a breath before she stepped inside, as if the very air within might be against her. Inside, she wasn’t surprised to find it thronging, a masked priestess standing at the pulpit, delivering a sermon to an assembled group that mostly seemed to consist of other priestesses and nuns at the center, with nobles and ordinary people spread out around them in a broad ring. Kate could make out a cluster of watchmen in one corner, a group of the temple’s hunters in another. There were even a couple of men whose thoughts showed that they were slavers, standing there openly as if they didn’t care how things had changed in the city.

  “And what has happened to our city today?” the priestess demanded, mid-sermon. “I’ll tell you what has happened: it has been taken by the very forces that our goddess seeks to contain. By those who have yielded to the evils of magic. By witches and those who support them!”

  Kate heard a murmur of support rumble around the room.

  “We have given our city over to those who would return our country to the days when magic ran wild, and there was no order in the world,” the priestess continued. “To people who would free the Indentured with no thought for what they still owe! Who would undermine our good work, and upset the delicate peace that has held since the end of the Civil Wars!”

  Another noise of approval went around the room. Kate stalked forward.

  “Maybe some things need upsetting,” she said, raising her voice. People looked around at her then. Perhaps some even recognized who she was, but she wanted to make sure. “My name is Kate Danse. My sister is now the queen.”

  She moved all the way to the front of the temple, the eyes of everyone there upon her.

  “All my life,” she said, “people like you have told me that I was evil, just for existing. People like you have told me that I should be grateful for being given a home where I was beaten and neglected, then due to be indentured to pay for the privilege. People like you joined in on the night men came to murder my family, or you stood by while many other families were murdered. You’re worried that my sister is here to change things? You should be.”

  “Witch!” the priestess said, pointing at her.

  Kate pointed back. “How many people have you condemned with that word? How many people have burned for it, or hanged, or been sold? How much blood do you have on your hands?”

  “I am clean in the sight of the goddess,” the priestess insisted. She gestured to the others there. “Friends! We have an opportunity. If we take this wretch, people will see that they can fight back. They will rise up with us. They will overthrow the invader who threatens us all. Grab her!”

  The watchmen and the hunters started forward, moving toward Kate as one.

  Kate laughed at that. “You didn’t think I came here alone, did you?”

  She clapped her hands, and soldiers stepped out of the shadows they’d crept into while she’d been talking, holding crossbows and pistols. They surrounded the people there, and a part of Kate wanted to give them the order to fire, just to make the world a slightly better place. But that wasn’t the kingdom they were building, and she knew that Sophia wouldn’t want it.

  “Take them into custody,” Kate said. She looked over to the priestess. “While we’re talking here, men are going around to every watch house where they dragged back the Indentured, every slaver’s mansion, every house that holds orphans to sell them. Everyone who has had a part in it, every single one, will know what it’s like to be the one in chains for a change, and you had better pray to your goddess that my sister doesn’t remember everything that you did to her as well as I do.”

  Kate turned, ignoring their protests, and stalked from the church. She still had one more stop to make—a happier one.

  ***

  Kate walked through Ashton almost in the opposite direction from the one she’d come in with the invasion, going from the center to the edges, past the squads of men clearing bodies from the streets, past the city walls with fresh musket scars to add to their old ones. She knew the route she was walking by heart. After all, she was heading for the one place in the city that she’d ever had a chance to call a real home.

  The forge was not lit when she arrived, no smoke coming from the chimney there, and that made Kate pause, hoping that everything was all right, fearing that it might not be and that some act of violence might have kept Thomas from it in spite of the care with which Ishjemme’s troops had moved through the outskirts. Then she saw the horse with the colors of Lord Cranston’s men on it outside and she smiled, hurrying forward to pound on the door.

  Thomas opened it, as large and as hearty as Kate remembered. He didn’t hesitate, but drew Kate into a hug that all but crushed her.

  “I knew you would come back eventually,” he said, and Kate could hear the happiness in his voice. “Though I guess it’s not to apprentice with me again?”

  Kate shook her head with a smile. “I have another job now.”

  “Commanding an army no less,” Thomas said. “Come in, Kate. Winifred is making roast duck.”

  Both Thomas’s wife and Will were within, the smell of cooking food delightful. To Kate’s surprise, Winifred came over and hugged her just as her husband had. Will’s mother had always been the one most cautious about her presence in the forge.

  “It’s good to see you safe,” she said. “When you left and didn’t come back, I feared that something would happen to you. Come, sit down. Tell us everything that has happened with you.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to start,” Kate said.

  “How about you start with the part where you went off to war and didn’t come back?” Thomas suggested. “And sit down while you do it. You must be famished.”

  Kate did it, and she had to admit that there was something simple about telling the story of how she’d fought alongside Lord Cranston’s men, then had to abandon them. How she’d fought to be free of Siobhan, and how she’d traveled to find the truth about herself.

  “And now you’ve come back here,” Thomas said. “Home.”

  “Home,” Kate agreed, because the forge was the one place that had felt like it outside of Ishjemme. “I wanted to come back and thank you for all you did for me.”

  “There’s no need for thanks,” Thomas said. “You’re our family, if there’s still room for us alongside the royalty of your real one.”

  “Always,” Kate promised, taking out a pouch from within her tunic. “And I have a gift, too. It’s not much, we still haven’t gotten the royal treasury open, but I wanted to bring something.”

  She thought of the time she and Will had come back with their pay from Lord Cranston’s company. There was far more gold this time, but she wanted that memory again.

  “And, since I’m now to be in charge of my sister’s army, it occurs to me that I’ll need someone who knows about weapons overseeing their supply,” Kate said. “It would be a big job, but once we get the treasury open… there will be enough work to make sure that you’re never poor again.”

  Thomas stared at her, the generosity of the offer seeming to hit him.

  “Will you do it, Thomas?” Kate said.

  “Of course I will,” Thomas assured her. He smiled. “I’ll probably need to take on an apprentice.”

  “Enough talk about war,” Winifred said. “Let’s focus on happier things for a while. Will says that you’ve found yourself a brother you didn’t know you had.”<
br />
  “That’s Lucas,” Kate said. “And it’s hard not to mention fighting if we’re talking about him, since I first met him in the middle of a battlefield.”

  Winifred smiled at that. “Well, I suppose that’s an exception.”

  “Things will get better though,” Kate promised. “Sophia will see to that now that she’s queen.”

  “And so will you, I’m sure,” Winifred said.

  Kate hoped so.

  “Now, are you going to be staying here the night? I’ll make up a bed in the forge for you.”

  Kate shook her head. “I wish I could, but I can’t abandon Sophia like that so soon after everything. I have to head back to the palace.”

  “And I should go with you,” Will said. “That is, I’d like to… if you want? I mean, I have something to ask you.”

  Kate smiled at his clumsiness. “I’d love to.”

  She thought of all the things that they might do on the way, all the corners she might find in which to hide and kiss him, and her smile widened even more.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Will thought he’d been frightened before the battle. Now, though, as he and Kate walked back through Ashton, he felt more nervous than he ever had. The worst that could have happened in the battle was dying. The worst that might happen here… and the best…

  “Your hands are shaking,” Kate said, as she took his in hers.

  “Everyone shakes after a battle,” Will said with a smile. He didn’t feel ready to tell her the real reason for his nerves. He wanted the moment to be perfect.

  “I guess so,” Kate said, although it sounded as though she didn’t entirely believe him. Another worrying thought came to Will then: what if Kate read what he was planning in his thoughts? That would ruin the moment completely.

  “It’s strange,” Will said, thinking quickly. “Ashton still looks the same.”

  “What should it look like?” Kate asked.

  “I don’t know,” Will admitted. “A ruin, maybe? No, that’s not right. I knew we were never going to raze it.”

  “Sophia would never do that,” Kate said, in a tone that suggested maybe she might have liked to. “But I know what you mean. After all this, it feels like everything should be different.”

  “But the city looks the same,” Will said, with a nod. Kate always seemed to understand what he meant. It was just one of the reasons he loved her.

  “We’ll make things different, though,” Kate said. “We’ll make it so that people like us aren’t pushed down all the time. We’ll make it so that people don’t have to be scared.”

  “Do you think we can?” Will asked.

  Kate nodded. “I think… Siobhan, the woman of the fountain, used to talk about possibilities, and seeing what might happen. She made it sound like some game where she was moving the pieces.”

  “It sounds scary,” Will said. He didn’t exactly like the idea of someone pulling the strings of his life like a puppeteer.

  “It is, but there’s a good side to it as well,” Kate said. “It means that what we do, the things we choose, matter to one another if nothing else.”

  “What you do will always matter to me,” Will assured her.

  Kate smiled at that. “Even if I’m likely to run right into the middle of a battle?”

  “Especially then,” Will assured her. He moved in carefully, kissing her almost tentatively. There was no battle going on to distract them now, no prospect of Lord Cranston appearing to tell them not to. Even so, he wanted to be careful, because he didn’t want to risk pushing Kate away.

  Afterward, Kate stood there smiling at him, and for that moment the world just seemed to contain the two of them. It seemed impossible to Will that they could be here like this, after everything that had happened around them. It hadn’t been so long ago that he’d been a young recruit, going off to join Lord Cranston’s regiment, then coming home to find that a strange girl had shown up to be his father’s apprentice.

  “What are you thinking about?” Kate asked.

  “I’d have thought you’d know,” Will said.

  Kate shook her head. “Your thoughts are yours,” she said, then grinned. “Besides, I might find you thinking about some other girl, and then I’d have to challenge her to a duel or something.”

  Will laughed at that, although he could imagine Kate doing it all too easily, and almost certainly winning. She’d come a long way from the day on the training ground when she hadn’t been able to fend off even new recruits.

  “I’m just thinking about how far we’ve come from where we started,” Will said. “You, particularly. When I first met you, you were this wild runaway who wanted to fight. Then you were the fountain witch’s apprentice. Then you turned out to be the daughter of royalty, and now you’re commander of the royal armies.”

  “It’s not that impressive,” Kate said as they both continued their way along the cobbled streets. “It isn’t as though the kingdom has had much of a standing army since the civil wars.”

  “Don’t put yourself down,” Will said. “Besides, I guess that will change now that you’re in charge. You’ll walk into the Assembly of Nobles and demand that they give you enough soldiers to fight with, and—”

  “Do you want to spend the whole walk back to the palace discussing all those withered up old lords?” Kate asked. “Or do you want to kiss me again?”

  “The second one,” Will said.

  Kate took his hand. “Good choice.”

  This kiss was hungrier than the first one had been, wilder, probably because Kate was the one who made the first move. It was strange sometimes to think that she was a princess, given how little she fit what everyone expected of one, yet they were on their way back to Ashton’s palace, and her sister was the kingdom’s new queen…

  “This way,” Kate said, pulling Will off the main street, into a corner hidden by a stack of crates.

  “Kate, what are you doing?” Will asked.

  “I figure that when I get back to the palace, Sophia will want me to get on with all kinds of work, and we can’t very well go back to your parents’ house and start kissing in front of them, so here’s what we have, Will.”

  Kate pulled him to her, and Will found himself responding automatically, kissing her back. It just felt so right to be here like this with Kate. She was a creature of the outdoors, and the city, who…

  …except she wasn’t, was she? Will had thought it only a minute ago. Kate might not act much like a princess, but she was one. She was the sister of the kingdom’s new ruler, from a family so noble that they would probably never even have met someone like him unless he was there to fight for them or deliver his father’s weaponry.

  Will wasn’t sure what being a princess meant, but he suspected it didn’t mean being with the likes of him. He pushed away from Kate, ignoring her brief protest.

  “Will, what are you doing?” she demanded.

  “We shouldn’t do this,” he said. “We can’t do this.”

  “There’s no one around to see us,” Kate said, putting a hand over Will’s now thrumming heart. “Trust me, I’d know if there were.”

  “I know that,” Will said. “But that’s not the point.”

  Kate frowned. “Well, we could wait until we’re back at the palace if you like, and I bet they have really comfy beds, but—”

  “That’s not what I mean, Kate,” Will said. “What I mean is that someone like you and someone like me… it will never work. We shouldn’t be together.”

  He stood there, half expecting Kate to hit him.

  “But I thought… I thought you liked me.”

  “I love you,” Will said, and that was why he had to do this. “But look at me, Kate, and look at you.”

  That didn’t clarify things as much as Will had hoped.

  “I am looking at you,” Kate said. “And I know that I want you. Or is it just that you’ve realized a former indentured girl isn’t what you want?”

  “You think that you’re not good
enough for me?” Will said with a note of surprise. How could Kate ever think that? She was the most amazing person he’d ever met. There was no one in the world good enough for her. Certainly not the likes of him. “I’m the one who’s not good enough for you.”

  “And who told you that?” Kate demanded, in a tone that suggested that, whoever it was, they were probably in for a fight.

  “No one told me that,” Will said. “It just… it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  Kate did punch him then, hard, on the arm.

  “What was that for?” Will demanded.

  “For being an idiot, and for making me think that you didn’t care about me,” Kate retorted.

  “Of course I care about you,” Will said. “But it’s not about that for princesses, is it? They can’t go around being seen with commoners, can they?”

  “This one can,” Kate insisted.

  “You say that now,” Will said, “but what about when nobles start telling you what to do?”

  “I’m getting really tempted to punch you again,” Kate said.

  “They’ll probably make you marry some far off prince to secure an alliance or something,” Will said. “Not… well, not me.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Will,” Kate said. “Sophia would never try to get me to marry anyone I didn’t want to, and the idea that someone could make me is…” She paused, apparently replaying something in her head. “Wait, you said you had something to ask me before. Were you going to ask me to marry you?”

  Will froze, realizing what he’d just said. He looked at his feet. “Well… um, I thought that maybe now you’d taken Ashton, and all the stuff with the witch was done…”

  “Were you going to ask me to marry you, Will?” Kate demanded.

  “Um… yes,” Will admitted. “I thought it might be romantic, walking together like this, and I was going to get down on my knee and… I’m messing this up completely, aren’t I?”

  “Just a bit,” Kate said, with only a hint of a smile this time. Will couldn’t blame her. He’d gone too far. He turned back toward home.