Queens of Fennbirn

by Kendare Blake

  “Of course, High Priestess.” Mirabella offers her arm.

  Luca does not really need the arm. Not yet. Her old legs are still sturdy and show no sign that they will fail her for years to come. But it is good for the queen to feel necessary. Like a caretaker. They wander down the evergreen path, in the hills that overlook the city of Rolanth. Not too far, Luca hopes, for the way back will not be quite so easy, but luckily, they come across the funeral procession just after the third curve.

  “What’s this now?” Luca asks, and holds up her arm.

  The carriages draped in crimson slow and stop, the horses bracing against the slope of the hill as their drivers set the brake. Three carriages, of average quality, the crimson hanging in dyed wool and not something finer like silk or even muslin. They are local folk, Rolanth people. Shopkeepers or weavers. Luca does not know for sure. She only knows that one of their own committed a crime and was poisoned to death for it.

  A woman steps down from the first carriage and immediately kneels before Luca. She is cloaked all in crimson and her cheeks are tear-streaked.

  “High Priestess, will you bless us?”

  “Of course, of course,” says Luca as Mirabella looks on. “But what has happened?”

  “My oldest boy, put to death for theft,” the woman says. “The Black Council is cruel. Unfeeling. They tortured him with their vile concoctions!” The woman begins to wail, and Mirabella touches her shoulder.

  “Theft?” the queen asks. “But that is monstrous! To put someone to death for theft!”

  Monstrous indeed. Also untrue. Luca knows the boy was tried for murder, just as she knew his funeral procession was to pass by this way, for blessings upon his body at the temple before being burned atop the Blackway Cliffs. She walks to the second carriage, the hearse carriage where the boy’s body is held, and says, “Stay back, Mirabella,” knowing full well that she will follow.

  Luca opens the door. The corpse is covered in crimson cloth and perfumed against the scent of rot. But the scent is still there, after so many days traveling from Indrid Down. She raises her chin and pulls back the sheet.

  Behind her, Mirabella gasps.

  He is nothing but blisters. Broken, red blisters and deep, angry claw marks from his own fingers as he tried to dig the poison out of himself. Luca lets the queen look just a few moments longer, but covers the boy before Mirabella begins to weep. She is still young, after all. Not even twelve years old.

  Luca makes sure that her face is strained as she goes back to the grieving mother, who must truly be his mother, or at least a very talented actress. She places her hands on the woman’s shoulders and draws her to her feet.

  “Blessings upon your boy as he rejoins the fold of the Goddess.” Luca presses her thumb to the woman’s forehead. “Blessings upon you. Blessings upon your family.”

  “It is not fair,” the woman cries. “The Black Council! The poisoners!”

  “I know. It is horrible. But it will not remain so. The next queen will change it.”

  “She must,” says the woman. “This cannot stand. We cannot take it.”

  Luca turns sadly to Mirabella, whose eyes are wide and shining. The queen holds her head high, angry as well as horrified, just as Luca wants.

  “I will change it,” Mirabella says. “I promise I will change it.”

  EPILOGUE: WOLF SPRING

  Two Years Later

  Arsinoe and Jules walk through the meadow beside Dogwood Pond. There is no one watching them. They have no escort. They have not even told anyone where they are going or when they will be home. Arsinoe thought that after what happened, after Jules and Joseph stole that boat and tried to flee the island with her, they would be guarded night and day. Instead, it is the opposite, as if they are barely seen.

  Since Caragh departed for the Black Cottage, and Joseph sailed away to his banishment, so much sadness emanates through the Milone house, and all of Wolf Spring, that it is like the peoples’ hearts have slowed their beating.

  “What do you want to do?” Arsinoe asks. “Go fishing? Swimming? The water’s still warm enough. Look for berries left in Pace’s ditch?”

  “Sure,” Jules says. But she does not say which. And there is no fire in her voice, though she does turn to Arsinoe and smile. Good Jules. She has done everything she can to let Arsinoe know that she does not blame her. But Jules’s blame does not matter. Arsinoe knows that what happened to Caragh and Joseph was her fault. They were punished because they tried to save her.

  Late at night, when she lies in her bed in the room she shares with Jules, Arsinoe still thinks about that day in the capital. That look on Natalia Arron’s face when she banished Joseph and Caragh. How Arsinoe hates the Arrons, every one of them, with their cold, blond coloring and imperious eyes. She would like to ruin everything for them, like they have ruined everything for Jules and the Milones. She does not know how she will do it yet, but she has time. The queens’ Ascension does not begin for another three years.

  “I’m tired of the same old paths,” Jules says suddenly, and stops short. “Let’s go into the woods. Northeast, into the woods.”

  “All right.”

  Arsinoe does not like the northeastern woods. They are dark and too heavily shaded. Large creatures dwell there, safe from the noises and people in town, and whenever they go there, they hear many, lumbering or crashing through the brush, just out of sight. Of course she does not say so to Jules. They would be the most unnaturalist words ever uttered by a naturalist.

  Jules leads her deeper and deeper into the forest, walking so fast that she may have forgotten that Arsinoe is with her at all. In the thick trees, Arsinoe loses track of the sun in the sky, and all the light seems slanting. Now and then, Jules stops to sniff the air and listen, but all Arsinoe hears are the whisper of leaves and the low, irritating buzz of insects. Where are the birds? Why is Madrigal’s familiar, Aria, not flapping somewhere overhead, cawing in the branches?

  “Look.” Jules points.

  Without Arsinoe noticing, they have come upon a clearing. The sun beams down upon an oblong stretch of green grass and moss, and shrub bushes with shiny, waxen leaves. In the center of it is a large, flat stone, just tall enough to climb on.

  “I’ve never seen that before,” Arsinoe remarks.

  Jules does not reply. Her face is set in concentration, her blue and green eyes intent on the stone. She wipes a bit of sweat from her upper lip. Bits of her wavy brown hair have come loose from her braid, and she looks as wild as anything in the woods.

  Jules walks toward the stone. Arsinoe follows and watches as she scrambles up it to stand. Jules looks around, but it does not really make her that much taller, and certainly not tall enough to see over the trees.

  “This is a strange rock.” Arsinoe lays her hands on it, flat and sun-warm. “So squared off and flat. Do you think it used to be something? Part of something old?”

  Jules looks down at the stone.

  “I think . . . if after today, we were to come looking, we would never find it again.”

  Arsinoe swallows as a chill passes from her scalp to her tailbone. To hide it, she climbs up onto the rock beside Jules.

  “Let’s just . . . stay here awhile,” Jules says, and sits. “I don’t feel like going home.”

  With the heat of the stone against their backs, and the soft sunlight on their faces, it does not take long for Jules and Arsinoe to fall asleep. When Jules wakes, it is from a good dream that she cannot quite remember, but there was laughter in it, and warmth. She thinks that Joseph and Caragh might have been there.

  In the brush to her left, back in the shady cover of the trees, something rustles, and Jules sits up. She holds an arm out over the queen, ready to protect her or tell her to run. Jules is not much to look at, with her short legs and funny eyes, but she is brave. She will not hesitate to fight for Arsinoe. She is not afraid to be hurt.

  But after a moment, her apprehension fades. It changes to a sensation of deep calm. Peace. The bru
sh and ferns rustle again, and Jules waits, holding her breath.

  The fuzzy mountain cat cub creeps cautiously into the light. It blinks its eyes, so young that they are still a little blue, and stands on big, fluffy paws. Its coat is the spotted coat of a baby.

  Anyone but Jules would still be afraid, for where a mountain cat cub goes, a mountain cat mother is not far behind. But as Jules and the cub stare at each other, something clicks into place.

  “Camden,” Jules says, and the little cub bounds joyfully across the meadow and leaps into her arms.

  No Sight no sound

  No fault was found

  No treason to be had

  —

  Yet every one

  Would die that day

  For Elsabet, the mad

  —From “The Song of the Mad Oracle”

  PROLOGUE

  On a warm summer day, Queen Mirabella sat on the front steps of the Black Cottage at Midwife Willa’s feet, having her hair braided. Her little sisters—Queen Arsinoe, younger by mere minutes, and Queen Katharine, younger by a full half hour—played together in the yard.

  “It is a good thing that black does not show grass marks,” Willa commented when Katharine tripped over her own feet and tumbled, dark skirt flying.

  “Ha ha,” Arsinoe taunted. Katharine’s large eyes began to shine and wobble. Mirabella cleared her throat, and Arsinoe glanced at her guiltily. Then Arsinoe sighed and went to help their youngest sister up.

  “Why do you not ever tell them to be nice?” Mirabella asked.

  “I tell them to be polite.” Willa separated the little queen’s hair with gentle fingers. “It is so long now. So long and so shiny. When you are queen, you must wear it down often and never cover it with a veil.”

  Mirabella fought the urge to jerk her head. Even at five years old, she knew that nice and polite were not the same things, though she could not explain exactly why.

  Down in the grass, Arsinoe and Katharine had resumed chasing each other. They laughed breathlessly, and when they ran out of laughter, Katharine began to sing a song that Willa had taught them that morning.

  “No Sight, no sound, no fault was found, no treason to be had!”

  “Yet every one would die that day for Elsabet the mad!” Arsinoe finished the rhyme and raised a stick she had been carrying as a sword. Katharine squealed and ran.

  “Why did you teach us that song?” Mirabella asked. It was a queen’s song, the tale of the last oracle queen, but Mirabella did not like it.

  “Everyone on the island knows the story of the mad oracle. A queen certainly should.”

  “It is only a song.”

  “Songs preserve history. So people remember.” Willa lowered her voice, and Mirabella knew that what would follow was only for her ears. “They say that Queen Elsabet’s gift of sight turned on her. That it drove her mad, until in a fit of paranoia she ordered the execution of three whole houses of people.”

  “What is ‘paranoia’?”

  “Being afraid of or convinced of something that is not there.”

  “Were they sure she was wrong?”

  “They were sure. And for her crime, Queen Elsabet spent the last twenty years of her reign locked in the West Tower of the Volroy. And now we will have no more sight-gifted queens.”

  Mirabella swallowed. She knew why that was. Because every triplet born with the sight gift was drowned. “All because of her?”

  Willa peered around and chuckled at the stark look on Mirabella’s face. “Do not be so troubled! It was a long time ago.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Long, long ago. Before even the mist came to protect us. Queen Elsabet ruled when Fennbirn was part of the world still. Back then, the ports were crowded with ships from countries like noble Centra, rich Valostra, and warlike Salkades.”

  Centra, Valostra, Salkades. Names Mirabella had heard before in Willa’s teachings. But not often. Those names had been lost to the mist. They were all the mainland now. They barely existed.

  “Twenty years is a long time to be locked away,” Mirabella murmured, and Willa kissed the top of her head. She felt a tug on the ends of her hair, and a finished braid appeared, tossed over her shoulder.

  “Never mind that. Go on now and play.”

  Mirabella stood and did as she was told. But for the rest of that day, and many days afterward, she thought about Queen Elsabet and the song of the mad oracle. And she wondered how much of it was true.

  THE QUEEN’S COURT

  500 Years Ago

  By midmorning, the Queen’s Court was already a flurry of activity. Foreign ambassadors and representatives from the best families in the capital had begun to gather since the moment the doors had been thrown open. They gathered and chatted, in their best mantles and hats, exchanging news and gossip as they waited for the queen. But the queen was nowhere to be found.

  “How long do you think it will be today?” Sonia Beaulin asked as she sat at the long table with the rest of the Black Council, flipping a dagger in one hand and then using her war gift to drive it into the wood.

  “Not nearly as long as it will take someone to craft a new table.” The elemental, Catherine Howe, raised her eyebrow at the gouges. “Be patient. You have seen how she governs; she is decisive. She doesn’t need the time that other queens do. And she is still young. Still settling.”

  “She’s had three years. And we are a young Black Council. Have we not settled?”

  “You were settled to begin with,” Catherine said, and tossed her pretty brown curls.

  Beside them, seated at the center of the table between war-gifted Sonia and sight-gifted Gilbert Lermont—the queen’s own foster brother—the poisoner Francesca Arron listened. Arrons were, as a rule, very good at listening. And waiting. And Francesca had waited for three years, since her appointment to the Black Council, to be named as its head.

  “The queen arrives! Make way!”

  Francesca stood with the others as Queen Elsabet and her party entered the room, their flushed cheeks and boisterous voices brightening it at once, even though the open, pillared walls of the summer court were already bathed in sunlight.

  “My apologies for keeping you waiting,” Queen Elsabet announced. She was dressed in hunting clothes, her black skirt loose for riding and edged in dirt. She tugged her hands free of her riding gloves and passed them to her maid with a whisper, and the girl ran, no doubt to return with sweets and savories and good wine. Clever queen, to ply them with treats. Soon her lateness would be forgotten.

  She walked through the crowd quickly, her legs long enough that most of her party had to jog to keep pace. All of them except her Commander of Queensguard, of course. War-gifted Rosamund Antere, of the Antere family of warriors, stood a head above even the queen.

  “You have been hunting,” Francesca said as Queen Elsabet sat down.

  “I have.” Her face still glowed from exertion, and her black eyes glittered. It was almost enough to make her appear beautiful. But not quite.

  Sonia Beaulin cleared her throat. “Your attendants said you rode out before dawn.”

  “Do you know a better time to hunt for grouse?” Elsabet smiled. “Now, if my council is finished interrogating me about my sport . . .” She turned away toward her subjects, and one by one the Black Council sank to their seats, Francesca the last.

  Gilbert Lermont stood and read from his ledger the names of those who had arrived first, and they stepped forward. The queen listened with rapt attention as they gave her their news: reporting achievements of trade or crops or the birth of a new high-ranking daughter. It was true what Catherine Howe said: the queen was decisive of manner. Her comments were few but earnest. She was clever but spared little time for flattery, of herself or for those she spoke to.

  It was a fine enough way to rule, Francesca noted, but it would not endear her to the people at large. And for someone so decisive, she was taking plenty of time to appoint Francesca to her deserved head of council seat.


  She watched the queen laugh her throaty laugh, a deep laugh for a queen so young, still a girl, really, at barely twenty. Some said she was handsome, but they were only being kind. Queen Elsabet had an angled nose and a large mouth; she was no beauty. Not that beauty was required in queens, but a beautiful queen was easier to love.

  When Elsabet’s laugh turned into a cough and she excused herself from court, Francesca masked a smile. She could wait for her head of council seat. But she would not wait forever.

  THE QUEEN’S GARDEN

  Later that day, Queen Elsabet, the Oracle Queen, sat in her green rectangular garden on the southwest side of the Volroy castle. She was reclined in a soft chair at a gray stone table, playing cards with her closest companions, shaded from the sun by a black cloth canopy.

  “Gilbert, are you going to discard? Or wait until I simply forget what game it is we are playing?”

  Gilbert’s thin lips drew together, thinning them still further, as he considered his hand. He lay a card, and she grinned and snatched it up.

  “Just what I needed.”

  “Blast.” He frowned and tousled his dark gold hair. “I’m out of practice. Few of these fools will take a card game with someone sight-gifted. As if that is how it works.”

  “Indeed. One does not need the sight to beat play as bad as yours.” With a light laugh, Elsabet set her winning hand before him on the table.

  “Blast.”

  She smiled as he gathered up the cards and began to shuffle. Gilbert Lermont was her foster brother; they had grown up together in the white city of Sunpool, and she could count on one hand the number of times he had beaten her at cards. But let him blame it on lack of practice. She knew how he felt, alone in a new city with few other oracles.

  “I have been thinking often of home,” she said.

  Gilbert glanced at her from beneath his dark eyebrows. So did Bess, her favorite maid and constant companion, and Rosamund Antere, always nearby as her Commander of Queensguard.