“Then how did this happen?” Arsinoe asks.
Pietyr’s finger hovers over the dark red cut across her throat. “Perhaps the same way it nearly happened to me.” He glances at Arsinoe as if ashamed. “Or perhaps not. I cannot pretend to have any answers or to know the truth.” With slow hands, he moves Mirabella’s arm so it lies bent, her hand atop her stomach. He moves her shattered leg beneath her gown so that it looks straight and strong again.
Without a word, Arsinoe joins him, and they reset every broken bone. They clean every bit of redness out of her hair. She wraps the wound at Mirabella’s throat with a blue silk scarf, and Pietyr drapes her in a fine embroidered blanket of black. When they are finished, Mirabella is beautiful again.
“I will not say she looks like she is sleeping,” Pietyr whispers. “I have always hated that lie.”
“Not sleeping,” Arsinoe agrees. “But better. Almost like I remember her.”
He nods and turns away to go.
“Renard.”
“Yes?”
“You know we are going to kill your queen.”
“Yes.”
“And you won’t try and save her?”
“I already tried,” he says quietly. “I failed.”
After the body has burned, Jules and Emilia stand in the dunes of brown-green winter grass and look down on the beach at the remains of Mirabella’s funeral. It had not been, perhaps, fit for a queen, but the people of the rebellion had worn what crimson they had, even if that was only a bright red scarf wetted dark. They left offerings to Mirabella in the waves: paper lanterns painted with thunderheads, braided ribbon soaked in scented oil. The elementals called the wind and moved the currents to carry them out to sea. After Arsinoe had lit the fire, Camden walked the edge of the surf, pausing now and then to call through the smoke, making the sound that mother mountain cats make when they call to their hidden cubs. Even Cait’s crow, Eva, flew out over the sea, her caws strange and high, like the cries of a seabird.
“You should go down to her,” Emilia says, and leans against Jules’s shoulder. But Jules had been there all through the burning and the releasing of gifts. She had been there, with Billy, and Cait and Ellis. Aunt Caragh and Luke. Emilia and Mathilde. Even Pietyr Renard, though he did not dare to speak to any of them.
As the crowd dwindled with the sunset and the day turned colder, Jules retreated up the beach in the hopes that Arsinoe would follow. But Arsinoe remained with the embers. The only ones with her now are Camden, seated on the sand, and Billy. Luke has lingered a few steps away, shivering and holding his rooster.
“I’m not really welcome,” Jules says. “Mirabella and I . . . we never . . .”
“That doesn’t matter now.” Emilia gives her a light shove. “Go. Help her to mourn.”
Jules drags her feet. “I’m of no use. I know how to send an arrow through an eye. I know how to fight. I don’t know how to do this. Besides, she needs time. Distance.”
“And she will have it, until the snow melts.”
The snow would melt in a few weeks’ time. And then the rebellion would march on Indrid Down. This time with Arsinoe riding beside her at the head of it.
Jules takes a breath and goes back down to the beach, her feet cold from seawater soaked through the leather, her short, brown hair whipping into her eyes. She nods to Billy and to Luke, who bow their heads and turn, shivering, back toward the city. Arsinoe does not move. She holds her diminishing torch and stares out at the darkening sea.
“Arsinoe. You should come away.”
Jules reaches out to tug on her sleeve. She expects to be shrugged off or yelled at. But Arsinoe only rocks backward with the pull, and then forward again.
“I don’t know what to say,” Jules says.
“You don’t have to say anything.” Arsinoe’s voice is thick. “I left you here with this. I left you alone with this same thing, when Joseph died.”
“That was different. Joseph was different.” Joseph was killed in an escape, by some soldier doing a duty. Looking back, she feels no hatred, almost like he died in an accident. “And besides, I left you, remember?” She nudges Arsinoe softly. “I know I’m not your real sister, but—”
“Be glad of that.” Arsinoe clenches her teeth and looks at her with dead black eyes. “I only have one left. And not for long.” She turns back to the water, and Jules looks out to sea as well. When the mist appears, hanging in the distance like a swirling, white curtain, she grabs Arsinoe by the arm. But Arsinoe smiles.
“Don’t be afraid. It won’t hurt us.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she’s a part of it now,” Arsinoe whispers. “And she’s only here to say goodbye.”
THE QUEENS’ WAR
INDRID DOWN TEMPLE
Bree and Elizabeth make their way up the many stairs that lead to Luca’s rooms atop Indrid Down Temple. Elizabeth goes first, carrying bowls and a pitcher of hot soup. Bree follows with a loaf of bread and nearly drops it when Elizabeth stumbles.
“Take care; the stairs are steep.” She grimaces as Elizabeth sets down the pitcher and shakes spilled soup off her scalded hand. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” The priestess sucks on her reddened thumb. “The heat feels good, really.”
Bree smiles. “Our Elizabeth. Able to find a bright spot in anything, even a burned finger.”
“Almost anything,” Elizabeth says softly.
They reach the door to Luca’s rooms, and Bree directs the guards to let them in. The guards have not been too much trouble. At least some in the queen’s service still revere the temple, and the High Priestess, regardless of the charge.
“You girls have to stop coming here,” Luca says when they are inside. She embraces them both and squeezes Bree so hard that she nearly crushes the bread.
“You say that every time.” Elizabeth takes the bread from Bree and busily sets the table, wiping the surface with the sleeve of her robe and pulling the High Priestess’s chair out.
“I know,” says Luca, sitting. “But I do not expect you to listen. When have you girls ever done anything that I have asked?”
“Here.” Elizabeth pours a bowl of soup and tears off a chunk of bread. “It’s chicken and carrot, with a little cream. I made it this morning.”
“I made the bread,” says Bree, sitting down and tearing off her own piece.
Luca snorts. “You did not.”
Bree smiles at her.
“Of course she didn’t,” Elizabeth says. “Bree is no use in a kitchen.”
“I am of no use anywhere,” she says. “Except as a queen’s companion. It is what I was raised for. And now . . .”
Luca dips her spoon into the soup.
“Blow on it first,” Elizabeth cautions. “We have to keep it near to boiling for it to stay warm up in these rooms. I don’t know why you prefer them. So high and drafty.”
“I liked them because I could see,” Luca says. “But I could not see enough.”
Bree watches the High Priestess quietly. Bree had been so angry when Luca crowned Katharine. When she pronounced Mirabella’s execution. But those feelings seem far away. She and Luca and Elizabeth, they are all who remain, the only ones who can truly remember Mirabella from that time before the Ascension.
Bree dips her bread into her bowl and takes a warm bite. Spring has come to the capital. The passes through the mountains are opening. New shoots of grass have begun to sprout. It is just taking longer for the air up here to realize it.
“What word is there from the Black Council?” Luca asks, and Bree clucks her tongue.
“You know I cannot tell you. The guards outside your door might be kind, but they are still always listening.”
Luca chuckles. She seems much the same, but if Bree looks closely, she can see that the edges of her pristine white robes are marred by dust. Her silver hair is clean and combed, but it has thinned, and the pink of her scalp has started to show. Once, Bree and Mirabella had sworn that Luca h
ad been born old and therefore would never grow older.
“She will keep me here until I am dead,” Luca says, and Bree gives a start, worried that her face was too readable. “Or they will execute me. Those are my outcomes, and the only thing to be determined is the method of my downfall. Shamed publicly in the square? Or killed quietly and my body burned among the priestesses of Indrid Down Temple?”
“Those are not the only ways,” says Elizabeth, but her bright voice is unconvincing. She reaches into her hood for Pepper, like she always does when she is afraid or uncomfortable. But Pepper is not there. He is somewhere between the capital and Sunpool, on a pointless errand for a fallen queen. Perhaps he beat Billy’s horse and delivered the letter before Arsinoe knew Mirabella was dead. Bree hopes so. Delivering it now seems too unkind.
“Maybe the rebellion will win,” says Bree. “Maybe the Legion Queen will rule and let you go.”
“Katharine will send someone here to kill me if it looks like things are going badly. I can assure you of that.” Luca grabs Bree’s hand and lowers her voice to a whisper. “And do not speak so unless you want to find yourself in the Volroy cells!”
Bree’s eyes burn. She focuses hard to keep her gift from affecting the torches and scorching the walls.
“I believed her when she spoke of the truce. I had even come to like her.”
“So had Mirabella,” Luca says. “So had we all.”
“She murdered my best friend!”
“Bree.” Elizabeth eyes the closed door.
“I do not care.” Bree waves her hand; she sets every candle in the room alight, every lamp. She wants Katharine to appear before her so she can burn her alive. Except even as angry as she is, she would not have the nerve. No one has the nerve to stand against the Queen Crowned. No matter what kind of mess she has gotten them into.
“Soon enough, the rebellion will come. They will march their army through the mountains and down through the valleys and fields of Prynn.” Luca looks out the window, at the Volroy’s enormous towers. “They will come with the support of Rolanth and the temple.”
“And they will still lose! You know what Katharine is. You know there is something . . . about her, some power she wields.”
“Arsinoe will know it, too. She will receive Mirabella’s letter.”
Bree looks down. “How has it come to this?” she asks. “That we should welcome the rebellion and the end of queens?”
“I do not know,” says Luca, and wipes her mouth with a cloth. “But you girls had best not tarry.” She gets up, and Elizabeth reluctantly gathers the bowls and pitcher. Before she can leave, Luca takes Bree by the arm.
“We have come far, you and I,” Luca says. “A great distance and many years from Rolanth. Back when you loved me. Whatever happens at the end of my life, I am glad that I will leave it with you loving me again.”
Bree frowns. Her feelings for the High Priestess are not so simple as love and hate. But it is true that she has never really stopped caring for her.
“Did Mira love you again, at the end?”
“I think so,” Luca replies. “But I did not deserve it.”
“She wasn’t right, was she, Bree?” Elizabeth asks as they return to the Volroy. “When she said she would die there or they would kill her? There has to be some way that Luca can survive.”
“She usually manages to find one,” Bree says. “But this time I am not so sure.”
SUNPOOL
There is not enough room around the table in Jules’s chamber for everyone to sit. Mathilde, Billy, and Gilbert Lermont stand in a semicircle starting behind Arsinoe’s left shoulder, an imaginary extension of this “new council.” For this is how it will be, if the rebellion succeeds and topples the crown. Jules and Emilia seated at the heads of the table with Caragh in between. Pietyr Renard somehow managing to sit across from them.
“Don’t worry,” Emilia says as they jostle. “The Black Council chamber will be much larger.”
A few in the party chuckle. But not Arsinoe. “Aren’t you getting ahead of yourselves?”
“Even we must have a council,” says Mathilde.
“But will this be who sits upon it? What about someone from Rolanth? Or the temple? Maybe even Renata Hargrove, to unite the old with the new. Or do you intend to roll the army over the top of everyone in Indrid Down?”
The new council members glance amongst themselves.
“Maybe Queen Arsinoe is right,” says Jules. “Maybe we’ll even take the High Priestess if she survives. She’s certainly earned it.”
“Does anybody want to tell me what he’s doing here?” Billy asks, and juts his chin toward Pietyr.
“Perhaps we should better ask why you are here,” Emilia replies. “This is not your fight, mainlander.”
“His father was killed by Rho Murtra,” says Arsinoe. “And he was taken captive and tortured.”
“He’s been in this since the moment he jumped between Arsinoe and a bear,” Jules agrees. “This has cost him as much as anyone.”
Emilia sighs. “Pietyr Renard is here because he knows the capital and the ways of the Undead Queen better than any other.”
“So you give him a seat at the table?” Billy asks. “Isn’t he a prisoner? Couldn’t he provide that information just as easily from the confines of a cell?”
“I was never in a cell,” Pietyr says. “I was in a spacious, comfortable room at the Lermont house.”
Billy clenches his jaw, and Arsinoe puts an arm out before he can launch himself across the table. “I don’t trust him either, but he is the reason we know what Katharine is.”
“That she’s full of dead queens,” Billy says. “That was the secret that Mirabella was after.”
“She would never have discovered it. Katharine hides them well.” Even after she nearly killed him, Pietyr’s voice is full of pride. He is an Arron, after all, and they are a twisted, morbid lot. Arsinoe removes her arm from Billy’s path. Let him launch across the table. Let him tackle Pietyr to the floor and wipe that Arron smirk off his face. Truthfully, she would not mind watching them roll around for a while.
“But what does that mean?” Gilbert Lermont leans forward, his long-fingered hands folded atop one another. “‘She is full of dead queens.’ What is it, really, that we face?”
“More than you think,” Jules says darkly. “After what we saw in Bastian City.”
“You said she sent the dead queens into you,” Mathilde says to Pietyr. “Can she do that often? Is that all she can do?”
“I think she is constantly learning new ways to use them.” His blue eyes drop to his lap. “Or that they can use her.”
Jules pushes away from the table and gets up to pace.
“Jules,” Emilia says. “Do not worry. We have numbers to match hers.”
“Numbers to match. But that is not enough.”
“Every war-gifted fighter is worth five regular soldiers. Strongly gifted ones, like you and I, are worth twenty.”
“And what of the war-gifted who fought to defend Bastian? What of Margaret Beaulin? She was strongly gifted, too, and she was—” Jules stops. She and Emilia have not told many of the carnage they found in an effort not to frighten the soldiers. But even Emilia is afraid. Arsinoe saw it when Jules said Margaret’s name.
“Whatever she sent,” Jules says quietly, “no army could best it.”
“Then what do we do?” Emilia whispers through her teeth, eyes shining. “Do we let her get away with it?”
“No, we don’t let her get away with it,” Arsinoe growls, and stands. The thought of Katharine continuing to rule, continuing to exist while Mirabella is ashes upon the sea makes Arsinoe’s heart twist inward on itself. “The Undead Queen can’t be allowed to remain. She has her dead queens—” Arsinoe clenches her fist. She feels every scab and every scar from the low magic stretch and sting. “And we’ll have ours.”
Billy’s mouth falls open.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m sa
ying we use Daphne. I know where to find her.” Through the window, the peak of Mount Horn juts into the clouds. “And you could say that, after everything, she owes me a favor.”
“Arsinoe, it’s too dangerous.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“I didn’t say you were.” She expects him to tell her she is being reckless. Or to try and change her mind. Instead, he says no more.
“But even with a dead queen,” Caragh says, “what difference does that make? If they are that much more powerful, like you say, then what is one against dozens?” She looks to Jules, who looks to Emilia and Mathilde. They look to Pietyr, but he has no more answers than they do.
“Daphne is stronger,” Arsinoe says. “She’s not like them.”
“What do you mean?” Jules asks. “She was a queen like they were. She is dead like they are.”
“Not like they were. She ruled. She wasn’t killed. She didn’t lose.”
Her words ripple around the room. It is their best chance. Their only gambit. Arsinoe feels their eyes come to rest on her with cautious hope.
“If you think she’ll fight with us,” Jules says, “then go get her.”
“When the army marches, I’ll separate and head to the mountain. I can catch up with you afterward.”
“Then let us march.”
They quickly depart, talking in hushed tones, Emilia once again at the helm to mobilize the rebels. Before Billy leaves, Arsinoe takes him by the arm.
“I know you don’t want me to do this. But I have to.”
“I know. Just like you know that I have to fight.” He touches her face. “Mirabella would be proud of you. I’m proud of you. And I hope you know what we’re riding into.”
When Pepper arrives, Arsinoe is alone in her room, watching rebels prepare in the city below. From her window, she has a clear view of the archery practice in the hills, where targets used by the war-gifted stand filled with arrows split by other arrows down the center. Others have arrows sunk into them from every possible angle, like pincushions, or shot into them to form elaborate patterns. She looks down to the square, where wagons are loaded with weapons and naturalist-ripened grain. The entirety of the rebellion has redoubled its efforts in the wake of Mirabella’s death. As if they knew she would be the reason, finally, for their marching.
Five Dark Fates Page 24
