Galatea could only think slowly, in halting steps. If this, then he, then that. “What is her name?” she asked.
He lifted his head to meet her eyes. “Tessara,” he said, his lips moving over each syllable as if tasting some new delicacy. His cheeks flushed as she stared at him.
“Tessara,” said Galatea. “A good name.” She felt emptied out of all feeling.
“Yes.” He seemed relieved.
She had magic enough that she could have seen the woman through the guard’s eyes, if she asked him to give her the truth. She could have felt his love for her as he felt it. It might have made things easier. She would have felt his feelings for Tessara first and foremost, rather than her own jealousy and sense of betrayal. But she also would have lost her feelings for him, for they would have been covered up in the transfer of his own undoubtedly stronger feelings.
Galatea reminded herself that she was a queen, and not before she was a woman as he thought. She was a queen first and foremost, and this man was her guard. “I thank you for your honesty,” she said formally. She put a hand to his shoulder to indicate he should rise, and she took it away again quickly, however much she wanted to let it linger there, one last time, to feel under her fingertips the rush of blood in a man who was worthy of her.
“You are dismissed,” she said.
He hesitated.
“He is not worthy of me,” she said. “Yes, I understand.”
Feris left the door standing open behind him.
Galatea stood in her throne room, eager for someone to come in and tell her what to do next. Anything so that she did not have to be alone with herself. Anything to be a queen again. She knew how to be a queen. She did not know how to be a woman, it seemed. Or if she did, she did not want it.
She called for one of her ladies.
“I need you to help me think of a gift,” she said.
Lady Kiri clapped her hands in excitement. “Oh, I love to think of a gift. For whom?”
Galatea thought of Feris. She could give him a gift of money, to help him settle himself early. He had earned it, had he not? And it would send him away from the court. And prove to his Tessara that he had done what was right.
But she did not need help with that.
“For Prince Arak,” she said.
THE KING’S VOICE
Some of the king’s subjects thought it an honor to give up a child to his Voice. Sir Sanditon was most disturbed by those.
They were well fed, like the boy at his side now, and well-groomed, dressed in the best clothes the village had to offer. In this case, it meant that the boy wore a pair of breeches that looked to have been cut down for him out of cloth that had not been worn through or stained. He wore a blouse that was covered with flowered embroidery and looked like a wealthy woman’s,. He had perfect composure as his mother kissed her son goodbye and his father ruffled his hair and gave him a purse of pennies that would buy nothing in the capital, even if the boy had some hope of being let out of the castle long enough to use them—which he did not.
The boy had a sweet face, hardly touched with freckles, and very fair, fine skin. He had been kept indoors all his life, poor thing. So that he would have not even memories of the outside to take with him into the dark years that would follow—if he was one of the lucky ones who didn’t fall ill of some mysterious illness, or choose simply to stop eating and die, making it necessary for Sir Sanditon to be sent out to find yet another voice to take his place.
The carriage went over a bump and the boy’s body slammed into Sir Sanditon’s. He looked horrified. His pale face went gray and his hands went up immediately. “I’m sorry, Sir. Sorry, very sorry.”
Sanditon put out a hand to ease him back to his own seat, then put a finger to his lips and shook his head.
“Oh, of course. I mustn’t use up my voice when—” His mind caught up with his mouth at last.
Those who were so eager to become a voice had never learned to keep quiet. It was enough to make Sanditon wish he had gone deaf, as his father had at the same age.
Or had the old man paid for it?
A good trick it was, for it meant that Sanditon’s turn came early, when he was only seventeen years of age. Still, ten years older than this boy was now. It felt it had been a lifetime since that first journey through the kingdom. The faces he remembered from that time. The little girl with the broken teeth. The twin boys who spoke in their own language and no other, but no matter, for it was not the sense of what a voice said that made him so valuable. The drooling girl who was senseless, whose mother had been made desperately poor by her dependence, and yet still wept when she was taken away.
They were all gone now, released from the king’s prison in the only way that a voice could be. But he thought of them still, and dreamed of them. Sometimes the dreams were of him rescuing them, his heart pounding in his chest as he crept through the secret passageways, drugged the guards, and used the key on all of the solitary cages. Those dreams always ended with the first touch of sunlight on their faces, and on his, as he woke. He was never able to think what they might do with their lives afterwards, if he set them free.
The nightmare was more frequent. In those, he became the king himself, receiving the voices of others through magical means each morning before breakfast, and in the afternoons, sitting in state with his noblemen and any emissaries from other kingdoms who were sent with negotiations or treaties, or on rare occasions, threats of war.
Then he woke screaming, relieved to hear at last his own voice coming from his throat, ragged and without music as it was. To open his own mouth and hear one of those smoothly angelic, high-pitched, innocent voices come forth was more than he could bear. He did not bother with breakfast on those days, and spent the rest of the day getting drunk.
It was just as well he only had to travel for a se’nnight each month, and that he was paid well for his duties. Otherwise, he could not have borne it.
Not that he bore it particularly well. His father, at least, had married and had a son before his wife ran away, unable to live with such a wretched mess of a man who saw nothing good in anyone, at any time, least of all in her. Sanditon would have felt more sympathy for her if she had taken her son with her. But she had not even tried.
She’d kissed him on the cheek and told him there would be a treat for him when she came back, as she often had when she went to shop in the market square. He had waited and waited, patient and unmoving on the floor of their small chambers, until his father had returned that night, drunk and raving.
It was not until the morning that he began to understand that his mother was never returning, that his father’s life would be his.
Oh, at nineteen, there had been a woman. He had allowed himself to have fantasies of her accepting him for a time. But it was no more than that. She laughed at him when he suggested a marriage.
“You’ve no money for me, even if you had no curse on you.”
“It’s not a curse,” said Sanditon stubbornly. It mattered to him, somehow, that she admit this, even when he knew that he would never kiss her lips or even feel the brush of her hair against his fingertips. “There’s no magic in it.”
“But if I had a child of yours, they would face your fate.”
“If we had no child, there would be another found somewhere.”
“And give the curse to another? That’s worse than bearing it yourself,” she said.
But, he noticed, this had not made her more willing to ease his pain in bearing it for the rest of the kingdom.
Why should she?
He hated her for it when he saw her now, and thought her sensible and wise at once. She had a daughter now, with a thin voice like her mother’s, and Sanditon thought them both lucky. Of her husband, who had taken three mistresses in the last six years, he was not so certain.
Sanditon looked up and saw that the boy was bleeding from his mouth. He handed him a handkerchief, but the boy stared at it, unsure what to do.
Sandito
n mimed wiping at his mouth.
The boy did it, but he continued to bleed.
The boy continued to bleed. It dripped down his lips and onto his idiotic blouse.
Sanditon moved to his seat. Was the boy ill? It hardly mattered, for the king would not let him go even if he was, and a physician was sent to see to all of the voices equally once they had arrived at the castle. Good money was not thrown after bad, however. Rather, the king would use up all of one child’s voice in one moment, if he were close to death anyway, and let the others rest.
“Open your mouth,” said Sanditon.
The boy opened his mouth and Sanditon held his ear tightly.
“Don’t say a word.” He peered inside and saw that the boy had cut his tongue in an attempt to remain quiet, as Sanditon had commanded him.
His fault.
The boy’s eyes were wide. He was gurgling in the back of his throat, wordlessly. Then, suddenly, his body went limp and he began to jerk about in a convulsion.
Sanditon did not know what to do. He had never seen such a thing before. He let the boy slide to the floor, and blood sprayed everywhere.
In a moment, the boy had stopped moving and gone completely still.
Sanditon bent over him to see the boy’s tongue, half cut off, lying on his blouse amidst a bright new pattern of blood.
It was too much for him. He panicked and tried slapping the boy’s face to rouse him, shouting at him, nudging at him with his foot. He felt that he was in prison himself in the small confines of the carriage. He pounded on the door, and then, when he heard no answer soon enough, on the top of the carriage. “Stop!” he called. “We must stop!”
The carriage came to a stop and he lurched out once the driver had opened the door. He made it to the side of the road before he was sick, but only just. His face when he stood up once more was covered in sweat, and he felt as though he were walking through a mist.
“Not dead,” said the driver, peering in at the boy. “He still breathes.”
Sanditon had not even thought to check that far.
He stumbled forward and stopped still at the sight of the mangled tongue, hanging half out of the boy’s mouth. He gagged again, though there was nothing left but bile in his stomach.
The driver spoke from behind him. “I suppose the physician might sew it back on, if he were here.”
“The physician is a hundred miles from here, and even with magic, he could not arrive soon enough.” But worse was that Sanditon knew the physician would do nothing, even if he knew. One boy, among the dozens that were taken to the king each year. It was not worth the price of the magic.
“Shall we turn back and take him home, then? I don’t know that the king will want him now.”
See his mother’s face again, after she had so rejoiced in giving him up? No. Sanditon could not bear the thought. Return her boy ruined for the only thing that mattered to either of them, and only a few hours hence? If there was anything worse than the thought of taking him to the castle and seeing him imprisoned, it was that.
“No,” said Sanditon.
“Throw him out, then? Seems an unfair fate to one who did nothing wrong. Or did he attack you, sir? I’m sorry if he did.” The driver moved to the door, crossing Sanditon’s path, his arms reaching for the boy’s feet.
“No!” Sanditon’s voice was so weak, it was no more than a gasp. No wonder the king sometimes needed more than that.
“I don’t see what you think we’ll do with him, then. He’s in no fit state to take back to the king.”
“We’ll go on,” said Sanditon. “To the next village.” He grasped tightly to this idea. There had to be something to do, another step to take. Moving forward was the only thing he did. From this place to that, and then back to the castle. Always a circle, until he could drink himself senseless.
“You’ll be wanting to get back in with him, then?” asked the driver dubiously.
Sanditon nodded.
“You want me to shove him over to the side so he’s not in the way of your feet?”
“I’ll take care of it myself.” Sanditon climbed back in, putting his arms around the boy’s chest and lifting him up. It was surprising such a small boy could take so much of his energy. He had had to rip children from parents before, and he had had to chase after others as they ran from him, but this was the most difficult thing he had ever done.
He sat back in the seat and held the boy’s body curled against him. Sanditon thought of his father, and of how little the man had ever touched him. A cuff across the face, a pinch to his kidneys, a reminder of who was in charge—that was his father’s embrace.
The boy woke, startled, and tried to push at Sanditon. Then suddenly, he cried out and put a hand to his bloody, ruined mouth.
Sanditon could no longer tell if he meant to keep himself quiet, or if the pain had at last driven his loyalty to the king away.
“All will be well,” said Sanditon. “Just be calm, and I promise you, all will be well.”
The boy wept, tears streaming down his cheeks to mingle with the blood on his face. Sanditon gently placed him to the side, so that their legs touched.
“Do you know what happens to those who become voices to the king?” Sanditon asked.
The boy nodded, and winced, and then made a muffled sound.
“They are shackled to the wall of a stone prison, hardly large enough for a grown man to lie flat in. They are beaten if they speak to one another, across the way, if they share stories or sing, or even laugh. But never senseless. Because that would mean the king could not collect their voice the next day, and the king never misses a day to collect a voice. There are no sick days. No Holidays. No days of summer to escape to the river. Do you understand?”
The boy coughed, and tried to nod.
It infuriated Sanditon. He caught the boy’s chin. “No, you do not. How can you! You are giving away what you will never know. And to a man who is—who is a monster.” The words came out of Sanditon before he knew that he would say them.
He had considered himself a king’s man. He had hated what the king had to do, but he had defended him in his heart. What else could he do? The man was only a mortal without the power of the Voice magically given to him. But other kings had not used the voices of children. The king’s father had used only grown men, volunteers out of his own army, and others who would come. He paid for the privilege, as well. The kingdom of Westedge had been smaller then, not the world power it was today. But the king had been content with that.
And in generations before that, well, some of the kings had not used magic at all to reign. They had refused it as black art or had sworn that a man who could not rule his subjects without magic was not fit to rule them with it.
The boy moaned.
Sanditon had never wished for magic more than at that moment, if only to give the boy some ease from his pain.
Instead he had to use his own, wretched voice. “I will keep you safe. Trust me. Do you trust me, boy?”
He did not even know the boy’s name!
Sanditon tried not to learn them. He did not ask and did not listen. It was a survival technique, for knowing a child’s name made it only harder to forget their pain, to forget to think of them as human.
The carriage came to a crossing, then slowed, and Sanditon could hear the sound of voices outside the window. The boy, too, sat up, wincing in pain. But he was not bleeding as much now.
“Stay here,” said Sanditon. “I will be back soon.”
The boy nodded and huddled into himself.
Sanditon took off his own cloak and gave it to the boy. He was too hot in any case, and he did not need more authority than the boy spilled all over him to proclaim himself a king’s man.
The villagers were already gathering before he stepped forward to ring the bell that was in the center square, by the king’s command.
“Bring your children older than age 6. I will examine them in the king’s place and honor those who are worthy with th
e king’s own promise of thanks.” The words choked his throat, but he got them out.
The villagers here were wary. How many had they lost already this year?
A mother and father might lose every child, and the king would not give them so much as a bit of gold for it. He claimed that it was cruel to offer a parent a piece of gold for a child, as if the child were a slave. No voice was a slave. It was an honor to serve the king, and so no coin would sully the transaction.
A woman dragged a girl forward. They did not look much alike. Her mother?
The girl struggled and kicked and bit.
The woman slapped her face and threw her before Sanditon. “Take her.”
“Your daughter?”
“Not mine,” said the woman.
“Whose, then?” Sanditon felt every heart beat, as if he had found at last his own song.
“My sister’s,” said the woman.
“And where is she?”
The woman pointed.
There a woman was wrapped in the arms of her husband, sobbing.
“And you brought her to me because you are loyal to the king?” asked Sanditon, though he knew it was a lie.
“Of course. Why else?”
For the sake of jealousy, of course. The woman had a beautiful daughter with a gift. Her sister could not bear to be outshone.
“Yara!” called her mother.
Sanditon cringed. He had not wanted to hear that name. He had been so closed for so long, and now he had opened himself. It was a terrible burden.
“Go.” Sanditon waved at the woman.
The crowd called out after her, but she disappeared.
A despicable creature, but Sanditon could hardly judge her in his position.
He turned back to the girl. “Speak to me. Let me hear your voice.”
The girl shook her head.
“You refuse the king?”
The girl looked him straight in the eye. Then she spat at him.
There was a bit of laughter, but as soon as Sanditon looked around sternly, it was silenced.
“I will make you speak,” he told the girl.
She put hands on hips, daring him.
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