The Queen's Rising

by Rebecca Ross

  “Don’t worry,” I rasped, to which he gave me a wry look.

  “That is like telling me not to breathe, Amadine. I will worry every moment you are away.”

  “I can . . . handle a sword now.”

  “So I hear. And I am glad you brought that up because . . .” He reached inside his doublet, brought forth a dagger in a leather sheath. “This is for you, what we Maevans call a dirk. To be worn about your thigh, beneath your dress. Wear it at all times. Do I need to tell you where the best places to stab are?” He set it in my other hand, so I now held a silver rose ornament and a dirk. Quite the contradiction, but a flame of anticipation warmed my chest.

  “I know where,” I struggled to say. I could have pointed to all the vital blood flows of the body, the ones to cut to make a person bleed out, but I was too weak.

  “Liam is going to plan a time to talk with you about the best ways to move in and out of Damhan,” Jourdain continued. “You will need to recover the stone at night, when the castle slumbers. We think it is best if you disguise yourself as a servant, and use the servant quarters to slip in and out.”

  I didn’t let him see how the mere thought of this terrified me . . . the idea of wandering alone in unfamiliar woods at night . . . the threat of being caught trying to leave and enter the castle. Surely there was another way I could accomplish this. . . .

  “I also hear your birthday was yesterday,” Jourdain said, which startled me.

  How long had I been sleeping?

  “You slept for two days,” he replied, reading my mind. “So how old are you now? Sixteen?”

  Was he teasing me? I frowned at him and said, “Eighteen.”

  “Well, I hear there is to be a party of some sorts, most likely tomorrow, after you have rested.”

  “I don’t . . . want . . . a party.”

  “Try telling that to Luc.” Jourdain stood just as Agnes returned with a bowl of broth and a jar of rosemary water. “Rest, Amadine. We can tell you the remaining plans when you have recovered.”

  Indeed, I was very surprised that he had already told me so much, that my original plans had been honored.

  After Jourdain left, Agnes helped me to a bath and clean clothes, and then stripped my linens. I sat by the window, the glass cracked open so I could breathe fresh air, my hair wondrously damp on my neck.

  I thought of everything Jourdain had just told me. I thought of the Stone of Eventide, of Damhan, of what I should say when I stood before Lannon and made my request. There were so many unknown things, so many things that could go wrong.

  I watched as the first golden leaves began to drop from the trees, one by one as gentle promises. My birthday marked summer’s end and autumn’s beginning, when warm days slowly faded and cold nights became longer and longer, when trees gave up their dreams and only the hardiest, most determined of flowers persisted to bloom from the earth.

  Summer was over. Which meant Cartier had discovered my mysterious departure by now.

  I let myself think on him, something I had not allowed my heart or mind to do since I had taken the mantle of Amadine. He would be at Magnalia, preparing to teach the next passion cycle, preparing for his next ten-year-old arden of knowledge to arrive. He would stand in the library and see half his books on the shelves, knowing I had put them there.

  I closed my eyes. What constellation had he chosen for me? What stars had he plucked from the firmament? What stars had he captured with a bolt of the finest blue fabric, to caress my back?

  I had to tell myself in that moment, that moment of in-between—in between seasons, in between missions, in between seventeen and eighteen—that I would be at peace even if I never received my cloak. That seven years at Magnalia was not in vain, because look where it had brought me.

  “There’s someone downstairs waiting to see you.”

  I opened my eyes and turned to see Luc standing in my room, that impish smile on his lips, his cinnamon hair standing up at all the wrong angles.

  For one heady moment, I thought it was Cartier waiting downstairs. That he had found me somehow. And my heart danced up my throat, so wildly that I could not speak.

  “What’s the matter?” Luc asked, that smile fading as he stepped closer to me. “Do you still feel unwell?”

  I shook my head, forced a smile to my lips as I brushed the damp hair away from my eyes. “I’m fine. I . . . I was just thinking of what will happen if I fail,” I said, glancing back to the window, to the trees and the twirling descent of the leaves. “There is so much that can go wrong.”

  Luc put his hand on my knee. “Amadine. None of us is going to fail. You cannot cross the channel with such shadows in your thoughts.” When he squeezed my knee, I relented to look back at him. “We all have doubts. Father does, I do, Yseult does. We all have worries, fears. But what we are about to do is going to carve our names into history. So we rise to the challenge knowing that the victory is already ours.”

  He was so optimistic. And I could not help but smile at him, rest in the assurance he gave me.

  “Now, do you want to come downstairs with me?” he inquired, holding out his hand.

  “I hope it is not a party,” I said warily, letting him draw me to my feet.

  “Who said anything about a party?” Luc scoffed, leading me down the stairs.

  It was a party.

  Or as much of a party as they could manage with our secret lives.

  Pierre had made a grand Valenian cake, three layers deep with wispy butter icing, and Yseult had hung ribbons from the dining room chandelier. Agnes had cut the last of summer’s flowers and scattered them down the table. And they were all waiting: Jourdain, Agnes, Jean David, Liam, Pierre, Hector Laurent, and Yseult.

  It was odd to see them gathered in honor of me. But it was even stranger how my heart affectionately tightened at the sight of them, this mismatched group of people who had become my family.

  Luc played a lively tune on his violin as Pierre cut the cake. Yseult gave me a beautiful shawl, spun from midnight wool with threads of silver—just like stars—and Agnes gave me a box of ribbons, one for each color of passion. That was enough, I thought. I did not want any other gifts.

  But then Jourdain came up behind me, next to my shoulder, and held out his palm. A shimmering silver chain rested there, waiting for me to claim.

  “For your pendant,” he murmured.

  I accepted it, felt the delicate silver in my fingers. It was beautiful and deceptively strong. This will not break, I thought and met Jourdain’s gaze.

  He was thinking the very same.

  Nine mornings later, I began my four-day journey in the coach to Isotta, Valenia’s northernmost harbor. Jourdain accompanied me, and he did not waste a minute of that trip. It seemed he had a mental checklist, and I listened as he moved from point to point, his dry lawyer tone emerging, which made me fight yawn after yawn.

  He went through the plans, from start to finish, yet again, for each member of our group. I patiently soaked it in, thinking back to my pawns moving on the map, so I could know each person’s location. Then he gave me the list of safe houses that Liam had made, for me to memorize before he burned it.

  There were five in Lyonesse—two bakers, a chandler, a silversmith, and a printmaker—and two yeomen on the way from the royal city to Damhan. All these people had once served beneath Jourdain’s House, and Liam swore they were still secretly loyal to their fallen lord.

  Then Jourdain launched into his opinions of Lannon, of what I should and definitely should not say when I made the appeal. But as for the subject of Allenach, my patron father remained quiet.

  “Was I right to call the two of you archenemies?” I dared to ask, weary of listening and bumping along in this coach.

  “Hmm.”

  I took that as a yes.

  But then he surprised me by saying, “Under no circumstance should you tell him that your father, your real father, serves his House, Amadine. That you are actually an Allenach. Unless you are in a dead
ly situation and it is the only hope you have of getting out alive.

  “For this mission, you are wholly Valenian. Stick to the history we gave you.”

  I nodded and finished memorizing the safe houses.

  “Now then,” Jourdain cleared his throat. “There is no telling what will happen when I cross the border. Allenach may insist on keeping you at Damhan, or he may bring you to me in Lyonesse. If he should hold you at Damhan, you need to leave with d’Aramitz on the third night after my arrival. That is when we are converging at Mistwood, to storm the throne. We will prepare for battle, but hopefully Lannon—coward that he is—will abdicate when he sees our banners rise and our people gather.”

  Mistwood. That name was like a drop of wonder to my heart. “Why Mistwood?”

  “Because it borders mine and Morgane’s lands, where most of our people still dwell, and it’s at the back gate of the royal castle,” he gruffly explained. But I saw how Jourdain glanced away from me with a sheen in his eyes.

  “Was this the place . . . ?” My words died when he looked back at me.

  “Yes, it is the place where we failed and were slaughtered twenty-five years ago. Where my wife died.”

  We didn’t speak much after that, reaching the city of Isotta at dawn on the last day of September. I could smell the brine of the sea, the cold layers in the wind, the bittersweet smoke trickling from tall chimneys, and the damp patches of moss that grew between the cobblestones. I breathed it in, savored it, even if they did make me shiver, these final fragrances of Valenia.

  My good-byes to Luc and Yseult had been built on hope, bound with embraces and poorly cracked jokes, crowned with smiles and thundering hearts. Because the next time we reunited, we would be storming the castle.

  But my good-bye to Jourdain was a completely different experience. He refused to go all the way to the harbor with me, for fear of being recognized by some of the Maevan sailors who were unloading casks of ale and bundles of wool. So Jean David halted the coach in one of the quieter side streets, in view of the ship I was to leave on.

  “Here is your boarding pass, and here are your Valenian papers,” Jourdain said briskly, handing me a carefully folded wad of forged papers that he had made. “Here is your cloak.” He handed me a dark red woolen cloak. “Here is the food Pierre insisted you take. And Jean David will carry your trunk to the docks.”

  I nodded, quickly knotting my new cloak about my collar, pinning my travel papers beneath my elbow as I took the small knapsack of food.

  We were standing on the road, shadowed by tall town houses, the echoes of Isotta’s fish market carrying on the sea gusts.

  This was it, the moment when I finally crossed the channel, the moment I—at last—saw the land of my father. How many times had I imagined it, watching those green Maevan shores come into view through the channel’s notorious fog? And somehow, this felt like the summer solstice all over again . . . that sensation of time quickening, moving so quickly that I could scarcely catch my breath and absorb what was about to befall me.

  I self-consciously felt for Cartier’s pendant beneath the high neck of my traveling gown, strung on Jourdain’s chain. I would think of Cartier, my master as he was my friend, the one who had taught me so much. The one who had granted me passion. And I would think of my patron father, who had accepted me for who I was, who loved me in his own gruff way, who was letting me go despite his better judgment. The one who was granting me courage.

  My heart pounded; I drew in a shallow breath, the sort of breath one might take right before battle, and looked up at him.

  “You have your dirk on you?” Jourdain asked.

  I pressed my hand to my right thigh, feeling the dirk through the fabric of my skirts. “Yes.”

  “You promise me that you will not hesitate to use it. That if a man so much as looks at you the wrong way, you won’t be afraid to show your steel.”

  I nodded.

  “I say this to you, Amadine, because some Maevan men look upon Valenian women as . . . coquettes. You must show such brutes otherwise.”

  Again I nodded, but a horrible feeling had crept up my throat, nestled on my voice box. Was that what happened to my mother? Had she come to visit Maevana and been looked at as a coy, flirtatious woman who was eager to slip into a Maevan man’s bed? Had she been abused?

  Suddenly, I realized why my grandfather might have hated my father so much. For I had always believed I had been conceived in love, even if it was forbidden. But perhaps it had been completely different. Perhaps she had been forced against her will.

  My feet turned to lead.

  “I’ll be awaiting your letter,” Jourdain murmured, taking a step back.

  The letter I was supposed to write when Lannon gave him admittance. The letter that would bring him and Luc over the waters to a dangerous homecoming.

  “Yes, Father.” I turned to go, Jean David patiently waiting with the typical stern expression on his face, holding my trunk.

  I made it four steps before Jourdain called me.

  “Amadine.”

  I paused, looked back at him. He was in the ribs of shadows, gazing at me with his mouth pressed in a tight line, the scar on his jaw stark against the paleness of his face.

  “Please be careful,” he rasped.

  I think he wanted to say something else, but I suppose fathers often struggle in saying what they truly want when it comes to farewells.

  “You too, Father. I will see you soon.”

  I walked to my ship, handed my papers to the Maevan sailors. They frowned at me but let me board, as I had paid quite a sum of money for passage on this ship and the borders were legally open.

  Jean David set my trunk down in my cabin and then left without a word, although I did see the farewell in his eyes before he disembarked.

  I stood at the bow of the ship, out of the way from the wine being loaded into the hold, and waited. The fog sat thick over the waters; my hands moved along the smooth oak of the rails as I began to prepare myself to see the king.

  Somewhere, in the shadows of a side road, Jourdain stood and watched as my ship left the harbor, just as the sun burned away the fog.

  I did not look back.

  TWENTY

  TO STAND BEFORE A KING

  Lord Burke’s Territory, Royal City of Lyonesse, Maevana

  October 1566

  The legends claim that the fog was spun from Maevan magic, from the Kavanagh queens. That it was a protective cloak for Maevana, and only the foolish, bravest of men sailed through it. These legends still rang true; magic was dormant, but as soon as the Valenian mist blissfully burned away, the Maevan fog fell upon us as a pack of white wolves, growling as we sailed closer to the royal port at Lyonesse.

  I spent most of the short voyage staring into it, this infuriating white void, feeling it gather on my face and bead in my hair. I didn’t sleep much in my cabin that night as we crossed the channel; the rocking of the ship made it feel as if I were being held in a stranger’s arms. I longed for land and sun and clear winds.

  Finally, at dawn, I caught the first glimpse of Maevana through a hole in the fog, as if the misty clouds knew I was a daughter of the north.

  The city of Lyonesse was built on a proud hill, the castle resting at the top like a sleeping dragon, scaled in gray stones, the turrets like the horns along a reptile’s formidable spine, draped in the green-and-yellow banners of Lannon.

  I stared at those banners—green as envy, yellow as spite, emblazoned with a roaring lynx—and let my gaze trickle down through the streets that ran as little streams around stone houses with dark shingled roofs, around great big oaks that sprouted throughout the city, bright as rubies and topaz in their autumn splendor.

  A sharp wind descended upon us, and I felt my eyes water and my cheeks redden as we eased into the harbor.

  I paid one of the sailors to carry my trunk, and I disembarked with the sun on my shoulders, vengeance in my heart as my papers were cleared for admittance. The first place
I went was the bank, to have my ducats exchanged for coppers. And then I went to the nearest inn and paid a servant girl to help me dress in one of my finest Valenian gowns.

  I chose a gown the color of cornflowers—a blue that smoldered, a blue for knowledge—with intricate silver stitching along the hem and bodice. The kirtle was white, trimmed with tiny blue stones that glistened in the light. And beneath that, I wore petticoats and a corset, to hold me together, to blatantly define me as a Valenian woman.

  I drew a star mole on my right cheek with a stick of kohl, the mark of a Valenian noblewoman, and closed my eyes as the servant girl carefully gathered half of my hair up with a blue ribbon, her fingers carefully pulling through my tangles. She hardly spoke a word to me, and I wondered what was flickering through her mind.

  I paid her more than necessary and then began my ascent up the hill in a hired coach, my luggage in tow. We clattered beneath the oaks, through markets, passing men with thick beards and braided hair, women in armor, and children hardly clothed in tattered garments as they rushed to and fro with bare feet.

  It seemed that everyone all wore some mark of their House, whether it was by the colors of their garments or the emblem stitched into their jerkins and cloaks. To proclaim which lord and lady they served, which House they were faithful to. There were many who wore Lannon’s colors, Lannon’s lynx. But then there were some who wore the orange and red of Burke, the maroon and silver of Allenach.

  I closed my eyes again, breathing the earthen scent of horses, the smoke of forges, the aroma of warm bread. I listened to the children chanting a song, to women laughing, to a hammer striking an anvil. All the while, the coach trembled beneath me, higher, higher, up the hill to where the castle lay waiting.

  I opened my eyes only when the coach stopped, when the man opened the door for me.

  “Lady?”