Greystar

by C. L. Polk

  “She’s right.” Severin touched his lips and swallowed, the memory of Aldis’s transformation plain on his face, but I wasn’t done.

  “And there’s no way Sir Christopher can appear to have won freedom from consequences. He’s losing his ability to reason if he thinks he can take over the position of Chancellor. You should march him back up the tower stairs and stop up the window so he can’t will his birds to be his messengers. You should try him for the crimes he has done, just like the Crown did to Percy Stanley, but the Amaranthines don’t like killing.”

  “I thought you’d be happy,” Severin said. “He’s your father.”

  “And he’s the reason why the Amaranthines are judging us. He’s no use to you, Severin. He probably still thinks that you should stop the prorogue.”

  Father quivered with the urge to speak. “I can guide Aeland through this crisis.”

  I went on as if Father hadn’t spoken. “You need to step into a bold direction, Severin. You need to show Aeland that you’re not your mother’s son. You need to act in favor of progress and change. And that’s why you will stop the prorogue vote this afternoon.”

  Severin blinked. He looked at me, perplexed. “What? But you just said—”

  “You’re going to abolish the law by royal order,” I said. “Today, in the Lower House. It will be your first act as King. It will mark the beginning of Aeland’s reconciliation. Do that, and you will stun the people. Extend your hand to them. It will earn you some respect.”

  “I see your argument,” Severin said. “But royal orders should be rare. We should allow the natural process of government to operate.”

  No. I had to convince Severin on this, and I had to do it now. Aeland depended on it. I had to convince him to listen to me, not Father. “You need to abolish the witchcraft act, and you need to do it right now,” I said. “We have a terrible storm headed our way. It’s worse than the previous one, and we couldn’t stop three feet of snow from falling on Kingston last week. It will bury us—unless I get more help.”

  “The First Ring stands ready to assist with this storm,” Father said. “All I need to do is give the word.”

  Now I acknowledged his presence, with a tight smile and little more than a glance, fit for an underling speaking out of turn. “Thank you, but that won’t be enough. We need more than just the First Ring and their conditional cooperation, Severin. We need the witches in hiding all over Kingston.”

  He cocked his head. “I didn’t know there were Storm-Singers outside the ranks of the Royal Knights.”

  “They didn’t want you to know,” I said. “They kept their secret well. I can get in touch with their leader, but I must have that law abolished if I’m to convince them. I need proof they won’t be taken and locked up. I need you to make them safe, Severin, so they can save us. We need them. Desperately.”

  Severin went pale. “The storm is that powerful?”

  “I’m underestimating,” I said. “The truth is I can’t really imagine how bad it will be. I will need to leave the palace to ask them in person—and I need to do that with a guarantee that they’ll be safe, that their families are coming home at last.”

  Severin looked up, and I averted my eyes as he asked for the guidance of the Makers. Father kept his mouth shut, watching me with thin-lipped anger. He knew I hadn’t been exaggerating about the cyclonic blizzard headed our way—he could still sense the winds, even if he was no longer strong enough to pit his will against it. He knew we needed all the help we could get. But he couldn’t let me win here. We both needed the first victory, to be the person Severin listened to.

  Father cleared his throat. “Properly, these alleged Storm-Singers should have been—”

  I cut him off. “In an asylum, where they certainly couldn’t help us now. It’s a blessing of the Makers that they’re here, able to turn the storm and save the city—we must show them that they are needed. Valued. You must show the people that the sun will rise on a better Aeland—one that you will defend to the last. Free them. Earn their trust.”

  “It would mark my reign as King,” Severin said. “I must act in the defense of Aeland. I will abolish the law and declare it in the Lower House.”

  “Thank you.” I had won. I was the Chancellor. I was Severin’s better advice. The tight band around my chest loosened. Severin may have wanted to marry me, but he didn’t value my expertise any less. I almost breathed a sigh of relief. “The next act of goodwill would be the release of anyone currently jailed for protest activities. Say that they were against the Queen’s government, not yours, and so they ought to go free.”

  “She doesn’t care about some rabble in a yellow ribbon,” Father said. “She wants you to free those charged with sedition.”

  Severin’s expression turned sober. “Sedition is a serious crime.”

  “Against the former Queen,” I said. Drat Father! He knew what I was up to, and he wasn’t going to sit back and let me take control.

  Fathe scoffed. “They’re vandals and thugs trying to overthrow the government, and releasing them won’t change their minds. They want our traditions and way of life destroyed, and anarchy in its place.”

  “Were any of them violent? Did they destroy property?” Severin shook his head. “No. I have to look at each individual first. We’ll discuss it after the session in the House. After the danger of the storm has passed.”

  “What about Sir Christopher? You can’t let him free.” He had to go back to the tower. He couldn’t traipse about, getting his schemes everywhere.

  “Hospice. I have arranged for a room and medical care,” Severin said. “A final act of compassion for the dying,”

  No. If Father wasn’t sent back to his cell, if he wasn’t cut off from the world, Avia would become a pawn in our game. He’d use her to check my efforts or arrange for her to suffer an accident of some kind. I couldn’t risk that. But there was no time to argue it.

  “Then let him be taken to his bed. There’s been quite enough excitement for one day, and you need to get to the Lower House before the brawling over the prorogue really starts.”

  “No time for that,” Father said. “There is much to discuss—”

  His own words died on a fit of coughing.

  “Too much exertion.” I resisted the urge to cluck my tongue. It would have been petty.

  “You need to rest, Sir Christopher. Sit. I’ll tell the guards to bring a wheelchair.” Severin stuck his head out the door and spoke to a guard, who followed him inside. He returned, standing beside me as the door opened again and a guard pushed a wheelchair into Severin’s office. “I had better get to the Lower House. Will you accompany me?”

  Father seethed as a guard took him away. I shook my head. “That snow is coming down too fast already. I must get to Riverside immediately. We’ll meet again, after the storm. I have much to do, Your Majesty.”

  “Including planning my coronation.” Severin walked me to the door, then caught my hand again. “Grace. Is there any way you’d reconsider—”

  “No.” I smiled to take the pain away. “I think you know why it’s not possible. I’m better as your Chancellor, not your wife.”

  Severin nodded. “All right. We have work to do. You have my leave to go.”

  I bowed my head, but I left Severin without delay.

  Once outside, I let myself exhale. Relief unkinked my shoulders, released the stiffness in my spine. I hadn’t won it all, but Severin had listened to me. And I could neutralize Father’s next move, but I had to do it now. I moved through the hallways at a brisk walk. I had one chance. I had to get Avia out of Father’s reach. I had to get to Riverside as fast as I could, and hope that Robin would trust me with the knowledge of Riverside’s Storm-Singers.

  If I could have run without a guard stopping me, I would have run as fast as I could, down the halls and through the chill of a window viewing one of the palace gardens, where the wind rattled the windowpanes. I would have run through the enormous foyer, my footfalls ringi
ng off the intricate marble tilework. I would have run down the wood-paneled halls to the ambassador’s wing, where I stopped to greet the guards stationed there before passing through and knocking on the door to Miles and Tristan’s suite.

  I held my breath and listened to the footsteps, sighing in relief when Tristan opened the door.

  “Grace,” Tristan said. “You’re white as a sheet.”

  “Thank the—stars,” I said. “I’m glad you’re here. I need your help.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Escape

  We left the suite after Tristan had dressed himself in a formal robe, unbinding his hair and holding it back with a silver diadem. He put on the enthralling, sinister demeanor of a Blessed One in a temper and strode through the palace with a tight-lipped stare that made guards shrink back and find something else to do.

  I tagged along in his wake, my hand on his shoulder to keep the spell that hid me from view active. No one saw me carrying a bundle of Miles’s clothes as Tristan glared his way across the palace and into the long, cold stone hallway that connected it to Kingsgrave Prison. I couldn’t be connected to breaking a prisoner out of Kingsgrave, but Tristan was an Amaranthine, prone to doing as he pleased.

  We came to the long stone passageway connecting the palace to Kingsgrave. The wind howled around us, whistling through the gaps in the masonry. A guard stationed at the door stepped in our way, and Tristan stopped long enough to growl, “Move.”

  The guard plastered himself against the wall, and Tristan stalked off. I squeezed his shoulder once, our signal for left, and Tristan turned into a stairwell, down into the lower cells.

  “Which way?”

  “That station.”

  Tristan strode for the end of the hall as if he knew exactly where he was going, and Solace help anyone who got in his way. When I asked him how he planned to get past the guards, he pointed out that the story of Aldis’s punishment had been deliberately spread to the Queensguards who had stared pop-eyed at a horse being led out of the Amaranthine wing to the stables. There had been a shift relief not long after. Nobody wanted to cross a Deathless One today.

  And so we came unmolested to the cell block where Avia had been incarcerated. Tristan planted his fists on his hips and said, “We wish to see the accused herald. Open this door,” to the guard stationed in front of it.

  That guard, scared as he was, shook his head. “She’s due to be transferred.”

  “I don’t care about that,” Tristan replied. “I will see her.”

  “No one is permitted—”

  “Do you think you’d make a good hound?” Tristan asked. He put his hand on the guard’s wrist, and I sucked down a gasp as the guard’s hand grew glossy black hair, shrinking into a fist, then a paw—

  “Please!” the guard cried. “No, please! I have the key!”

  “Use it,” Tristan said.

  The guard cradled his hand, flexing his fingers to assure himself that they were all there, working as fingers should.

  “Now.”

  The guard knocked over the high stool in his haste to fumble a key into the lock, holding it open for Tristan, who swept inside in a shimmer of silk and embroidery, his hair a shiny cape falling half down his back.

  “I do not wish to be disturbed,” Tristan said. “Let no one inside until I am done.”

  The guard thumped his chest with one fist and closed the cell door.

  I let go of Tristan’s shoulder. “Here.”

  I handed him a pasty pie, and he tore into it. I moved past him and to the only occupied cell, where Avia stood with the hem of my fur coat puddled around her bare feet, gripping the copper-plated bars, her eyes alight.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “We’re rescuing you,” I said. “I told you I’d break you out if I had to, didn’t I?”

  Avia eyed the pile of clothes in my arms. “Did you bribe the guard?”

  “Tristan threatened him. He was going to turn him into a dog—”

  “Just an illusion,” Tristan said. “I don’t have that kind of talent. Scared him silly, though.”

  “Then how are we getting out of here?”

  “The easy way,” Tristan said. “One moment.”

  He licked his fingers and pinched a set of lockpicks from his sleeve, kneeling on the rough stone floor in his fine robe. He set his fingertips on the lock plate and jerked them away, gagging.

  “Copper. Faugh! That’s horrible.” He shook his hand as if the sensation would fling itself away like water droplets. He set the picks back in the lock, careful not to touch the lock plate, and worked.

  Avia clung to the cell door, tense with the need to shove it open, to get free. Tristan gently worked the lock open and turned the barrel, wresting his picks free.

  Avia burst out of the cell and into my arms. I dropped the bundle of clothes to hold her, and I didn’t care about her stringy hair or the musk on her skin. I squeezed her tight and fought the tears welling in my eyes.

  Avia chuckled and tilted her head back to smile up at me. “How are you going to explain this, Chancellor?”

  “I’ll think of something later.” I thrust the bundle of clothes at Avia. “Put these on. Sorry about the fit.”

  “Do hurry,” Tristan said. “There’s a pair of double-quilted socks, and hopefully they’ll help you fit into Miles’s shoes. Let’s save the reunion for the escape, shall we?”

  “Tell me what happened,” Avia said. “Dorothy said we had a good case. We even planned a series to release with the Star, explaining her motions for the court, what they meant, how they worked in a just system—”

  “Queen Constantina abdicated,” I said.

  “The deuce!” Avia hopped into Miles’s trousers, landing on tiptoe. The legs were too long, and I knelt to roll them up. “When?”

  “At about twenty past nine.” I handed her a shirt. The fur coat fell to the floor, and she turned around to remove the hemp shift, showing me the contours of her back.

  “So Severin’s the King. Weren’t we all saying how much easier it would be if Severin—”

  “He asked me to marry him.”

  Avia froze, one arm half in its sleeve. “But you’re breaking me out of jail. He’d just let me out if you asked him to. If you’re marrying him, couldn’t you just—”

  She turned around, sliding her arm the rest of the way into her sleeve. Her eyes were wide as she stared at me, her mouth open.

  “You’re not marrying him,” she said. “You said no.”

  “I said no.”

  “You said no. Because—because of me?” She seized my hand, clasping it to her breastbone. “You could have been the Queen. Are you sure you want this?”

  “Am I sure I want you?” I lifted a hand and drifted my fingers down her cheek. She tilted her face into my touch, and it sent furry-soft shivers over my skin, to see her eyes slip half-closed. It felt like the hair-raising, aetheric charge in the air before lightning flashed hot and blue-white across the sky. It felt like the warm rain of summer, breaking the spell of long, hot weather.

  “I want to know everything about you,” I said. “I want to make you laugh. I want to learn about your photographs, your art, exactly what to get you for a New Year gift and your birthday. I want to dance with you again. I want—”

  “I want to kiss you,” Avia said.

  A storm whirled up inside my head—a swift, unbearable pressure that wasn’t the cyclone outside. It was Avia’s eyes, the soft parting of her mouth, her hands on the back of my neck, pulling me down to meet her kiss.

  I touched her lips with mine, and my heart thundered as she brushed a kiss across my lower lip, holding me captive in her gentle grip. Soft, like the first kiss of rain on parched ground, until she opened her mouth and took more.

  Her mouth on mine. I was lighter than air—only her touch kept me earthbound, the sensation in my head fizzy like double-yeasted wine.

  She drew back and touched my face. “You want this.”

  “Y
es.”

  She swept my hair out of my eyes. “My birthday is the thirty-eighth of Applebranch.”

  “Sixteenth Firstgreen.”

  “I’ll get you something nice,” Avia promised. “Just as soon as I’m not a fugitive.”

  Tristan coughed. I glanced his way, and he stood with his back turned, facing the door. “I don’t mean to ruin the moment. But the sooner we’re gone, the better.”

  Avia buttoned her shirt askew and didn’t bother to fix it. She bent down and picked up a lamb’s wool sweater and finished dressing, pulling the belt tight around her waist to keep Miles’s trousers from slipping down her hips. She settled the Service coat on her shoulders and picked up the fur. “Sorry. It smells.”

  I slipped it on. It was still warm from her body. “It’s fine. We’re ready.”

  “Here are the rules,” Tristan said. “Don’t step off the path I choose. Don’t dawdle. Stay close to me. I’ll answer what questions I can, but the point is to get you out of here.”

  “How are you going to get me out of here?” Avia asked.

  “The easy way, as I said.” Tristan smiled and lifted his hand. “We’re taking the way through the Solace.”

  “The Solace!” Avia exclaimed. “But don’t you need to do that at a Waystone? The stories say—”

  “Tristan can open a Way anywhere,” I said.

  “Indeed I can. Observe.”

  Tristan described a spiral with his hand, and reality shimmered, opening on a hot, dry breeze and the peculiar green sky I had only seen once in my life—the sky that heralded a tornado poised to tear its way across the fields.

  Tristan lifted one hand to his mouth. “Oh, no.”

  I peered at the sky, looking for the funnel cloud that would rip its way over the land. “What is it?”

  “Shifting storm,” Tristan said. “This is a disaster.”

  The golden plains heaved themselves upward, becoming an endless land of nothing but sand, billowing into the sky on the fingertips of a howling wind. The sand turned to snow, cold and fading into a wall of white streaking across the sky. The portal closed as Tristan pulled it shut.