Beneath the Keep

by Erika Johansen

What is happening to me?

  That sibilant, rasping sound again. Movement flickered in the corner of Elyssa’s eye, and she buried her face in the pillow, not wanting to see.

  “Elyssa,” the voice whispered . . . his voice, muffled and sibilant with the larynx rotted away, but still unmistakably his.

  “Go away,” she sobbed into the pillow. “Please, just go away.”

  But the rasping noise continued, coming closer and closer, dead feet dragging on stone. Elyssa clenched her fists in the pillow for a moment, then flung it across the room and sat up.

  Gareth was tottering across the room toward her, his hands outstretched. One leg was badly twisted, as though it had been broken, and the foot dragged behind him, rasping across the floor. His face was puffed, the flesh of his cheeks turning black with decay, his eyes wide and staring.

  “You’re not real,” Elyssa whispered.

  Gareth grinned vacantly, a mindless yet dreadful parody of the drugged expression she had last seen on his face. His blackened hands searched for her, the fingers reaching, as though testing the air. His head turned this way and that, his blind eyes scanning the room, seeking her out.

  “They’re starving,” he whispered. “Millions of people, starving to death. Neighbor feeding on neighbor, parents dining on children . . .”

  No, Elyssa thought. That can’t be happening.

  “Water,” Gareth whispered. “The end of water.” And suddenly he seemed to decay before her eyes, features melting and withering. The tip of his blackened tongue disintegrated, and a writhe of maggots boiled out, spilling to the floor. Elyssa screamed, pulling her nails down her cheeks, furrowing them, trying to rend herself, to finally wake herself up.

  “God, God, God!”

  She was vaguely aware of the Guard around her then: Barty and Carroll, Dyer and Elston. Niya as well, all of them leaning over her bed, holding her arms. But beyond them, past them, Gareth remained, featureless but hideously real.

  “Coryn!” Barty panted. “Get a shot ready!”

  They were holding her down. Elyssa tried to point, but she could not move her arms. She tried to tell them, but her mouth could do nothing but wail. One black hand snaked between Barty and Carroll, and Elyssa had time to see that three of the nails were missing before Gareth’s fingers grasped her nipple and pinched. Elyssa screamed then, long and endless screams, and she did not care whether they gave her a shot, or even whether they strangled her, just so long as she would not see him any longer.

  “Elyssa.”

  The voice was low, almost melodious. Elyssa turned her head and saw the witch, standing on the other side of the bed, just beyond the circle of guards who ringed the canopy. Her white face was regretful, almost sorrowful. She looked so tall, so regal, standing there that Elyssa’s mind dug up an immediate parallel: her mother, standing before the throne.

  They are alike! Elyssa realized, horrified. They are so alike!

  “Take it off, Elyssa,” the witch said. “Take it off, and all of this will end.”

  She’s not really there. If she was there, the Guard would see her, hear her. They would throw her out.

  Would they? her mind rejoined. Would they really?

  “Take it off, Elyssa,” Brenna coaxed, her voice almost honey-sweet. Above the ring of guards bent over the bed, Gareth’s decayed head nodded in dreadful counterpoint.

  “Give it to me.”

  Why not? Elyssa asked herself, finding relief in the simplicity of the question. Why not?

  Her abrupt calm seemed to have eased her guards’ concern; they backed off, straightening, allowing her to sit up. Gareth, too, was suddenly gone, and that seemed so much a mercy that Elyssa reached for the clasp of her sapphire necklace without thinking, her fingers fumbling for the tiny catch. It was only an heirloom, after all.

  You know better.

  Lady Glynn’s voice was sharp, the words as loud and clear as though they had been spoken in her ear, and they acted on Elyssa like a slap. Across the room, Brenna suddenly hissed in anger, the corners of her mouth rising to bare her sharp white teeth. Elyssa could almost see Lady Glynn’s face before her: the rigid jawline, the hawk’s eyes. She was dead, long dead, murdered by Queen Arla the Just . . . but it made perfect sense that she should be here now, for the room was already full of ghosts.

  You know better, Elyssa Raleigh. If it were only an heirloom, the witch would not be going to such lengths. Don’t you dare take that sapphire off. Not until—

  Lady Glynn’s voice cut off sharply. Brenna was striding toward the bed now, her white face twisted in fury . . . just as the Queen always looked during Elyssa’s little rebellions. The similarity between the two women struck Elyssa again.

  Until what? she demanded. Lady Glynn remained silent, but even so, there came an answer, soft and diffuse, like a distant echo inside Elyssa’s mind.

  Kelsea.

  Brenna had closed the distance between them now. She reached down and grabbed Elyssa by the hair, jerking her up off the bed. Around Elyssa, the guards recoiled, and Carroll crossed himself, murmuring a prayer. They saw, yes . . . but they could not see.

  “Listen to me, my girl,” Brenna snarled. “Give me the jewel, or you will suffer the worst I have to offer. No nightmare you’ve ever had will begin to compare.”

  Elyssa believed her, for she suddenly saw many things, with a merciless clarity that cut through her mind like a blade. The witch was powerful, more powerful than anyone in the Queen’s Wing suspected. Famine was here; Elyssa saw it, as clearly as though the Almont were spread out before her like a vast chessboard. Even those who managed to find water would still die, and Elyssa saw it all: abandoned fields, starving children, corpses rotting in their hovels while the nobles feasted behind locked gates. She saw her mother, sitting on the silver throne, hoarding the kingdom’s meager food in the city while thousands died outside the walls. Her mother would not prevent this famine. Elyssa might have prevented it, had she been less a fool, but that opportunity was gone. The witch’s threat was real, and Elyssa would not be given time.

  I will never be the True Queen.

  Something deep inside her seemed to wail, but Elyssa did not listen . . . could not. She was transfixed by the image in her mind: a vast black cloud on the horizon, moving swiftly toward the Tearling, growing in power and strength. Her sapphire pulsed at her chest, but it was not painful now . . . only warning.

  Magic, Elyssa thought. Real magic, and oh, what I could have done with it, if I had known—

  But it was too late for if.

  I can’t take it off, Elyssa realized . . . and then, more firmly, clutching the sapphire in her right hand: I won’t.

  “You won’t have it,” she told the witch. “Not now, not ever.”

  Brenna screamed with rage, and this time even the guards heard it; dimly, Elyssa saw both Dyer and Carroll jump, all of them looking around, as though at a distant alarm. Then the witch bent over her, and Elyssa began to scream, for the face above hers was no longer that of a woman, or anything human at all, only a glaring whiteness from which eyes as blue and cold as death itself spiraled downward, twisting into a hell so deep that it could not be charted, and Elyssa saw the end of everything there: of Gareth, of Tear’s better world, of Elyssa’s dreams for her kingdom, of her own future. There was no future, Brenna’s eyes promised, and no past either, only the unspeakable present . . . and the present was infinite.

  Chapter 21

  PEACOCKS

  The divide between wealthy and poor in the early Tearling was nothing short of an abyss, but the gap was made even worse by the total absence of that concept the ancients called noblesse oblige: the notion that power and privilege convey responsibilities as well as rights. However misguided this principle in application during the pre-Crossing, that aristocratic sense of obligation at least allowed for the possibility of shame. But for nobles of the
Raleigh era, privilege came with no strings at all.

  —Socialism in the Greater Tear, Michael Klunder

  Twenty minutes into his first royal audience, Christian had already discovered that he did not like the nobility. He didn’t like their clothes, which were elaborate to the point of ridiculous, or their hair, which was more ridiculous still. One of the first things Carroll had done after they came to an accord was to take Christian to a barber, who shaved him and sheared his head down to a thin layer of dark brown. The tortured tresses of the horde of rich beggars in front of the throne offended him in some way he could not quite articulate, except to say to himself: These people have money, more coin in a week than a Creche child will likely ever hold. This is how they choose to spend it.

  But his contempt went unnoticed, for the nobles who approached the throne ignored the Guard entirely, as though Christian and the rest of them were merely pieces of furniture. They would treat their servants the same way, Christian thought, and the woman who knelt before the throne was no exception. She wore a cloak of material so fabulously mottled and spotted with bright color that Christian could barely credit it as real. Only when he heard Elston and Kibb muttering to each other did he realize that the material was peacock feathers: hundreds of them, sewn together in layers. Peacocks, Christian knew, came from the distant land of Cadare; in the Tear, they were an imported luxury. The cloak told its own story, but as the woman rose from her knees and pulled back her veil, revealing her face, Christian read more; in her cool eyes and ungenerous mouth he saw pure indifference, a lack of charity so great that it became cruelty by default.

  “Lady Andrews,” the Queen greeted the noblewoman. “What can we do for you?”

  “Majesty, I come to ask for Crown assistance. A tenant uprising has overtaken my acres.”

  The room stirred, nobles muttering to each other in low tones. Christian watched them, ostensibly looking for trouble, but always his attention returned to the same man, who stood slightly below and to his left: short and round, dressed in an outfit of tan silk. He had a greasy smile and dark hair that had been combed straight back from his widow’s peak. As he covered his mouth with one hand to whisper to the woman beside him, the tattoo of a clown flickered in and out of sight beneath the edge of his sleeve. He could have been Maura’s client, but Christian didn’t think so. Over time in the Creche, one got to recognize the look of degeneracy, its textures and gradations. Something about the sunken eyes and overly mobile mouth told Christian that Maura would be too innocuous a vice for this particular noble, and if he needed confirmation, there it stood beside the tattooed man, in the tall and angular figure of Arlen Thorne.

  Carroll nudged Christian gently in the back, and Christian realized that he had been caught wandering. He was supposed to be guarding the Princess Elyssa, who stood on the Queen’s left side, turned out in a dress of lustrous green material, her blonde hair pinned neatly on her head. Carroll had said that the Princess was both intelligent and engaged, but her expression was blank, almost bored. There had been an uproar in her bedchamber several nights ago, though Christian had only heard about it secondhand; he would not be allowed on chamber duty until his swordcraft improved. But the Princess had had some sort of fit, and there had been whispers among the Guard that the witch was involved . . . the witch, who now stood just to the right of the Queen’s throne. From time to time Christian sensed Brenna’s eyes upon him, but he was determined not to meet her gaze. He glanced down at the audience again, where Thorne and the nonce stood together in the front row. Thorne was staring at the witch, blinking continuously, like a lizard; after a moment, Christian realized that it must be some sort of code. But it was too fast for him to break.

  Pretty children, he thought uneasily. What do you need with pretty children, Thorne?

  On the far side of the Princess stood the Prince, Thomas, his thin face glowering at everything and everyone. Every few minutes he would reach up, almost unconsciously, to scrub his palm against his forehead, where the word rapist still stood out clearly, the blue letters only slightly faded. Whatever dye the Blue Horizon had used, it was intractable; the Queen’s medics had been trying every trick they knew to get rid of the ink, but the process was slow and painful. The skin of the Prince’s forehead was a blistered red patch. Christian often found himself puzzled by the undercurrents in the Queen’s court, but there was no mystery surrounding Thomas. No one liked the Prince, not even his own mother, who had expressly forbidden her son from wearing any sort of covering on his head. Dyer and Fell were taking bets on how long the dye would hold, and all of the guards made a point of asking Thomas whether there was any word on the girl, Mary, who had so far vanished without trace. The public story, the one Christian had heard, said that the girl had been taken while she and the Prince were out shopping in the city. But this story did not explain the word on the Prince’s forehead.

  “What sort of uprising?” the Queen asked calmly, taking a sip of her tea. Carroll had explained to Christian that the Queen was allowed to eat and drink as she pleased during audiences—was, in fact, expected to—while the rest of the world might go hungry and thirsty for hours, waiting on her pleasure.

  “Two months ago, some twenty tenants in Grace Bend missed their quotas on the harvest,” Lady Andrews replied. “I added the aggregate to their debt.”

  Christian blinked. He had paid only the barest attention to news of the drought in the Almont, for it did not concern him. But now, as he watched many of the nobles around the room nod in approval, he realized that this was considered an acceptable solution: to burden poor tenants—and they were poor, as poor as any inhabitant of the Creche; Christian had at least picked up that much—with additional debt, debt they could never possibly hope to repay.

  “What happened then?” the Queen asked.

  “The tenants broke open one of my storehouses. My bailiffs tried to stop them, but they were overrun. The tenants hanged the bailiffs, stole the stores, and then marched on my manse.”

  This news stirred the crowd even more; low mutterings came from all corners of the audience chamber. Christian had to restrain a chuckle, for these nobles were fools. He suddenly remembered a moment from his own childhood: crouched in a corner, gnawing a scrap of bone that some noble had tossed away. Christian was a fighter, so Wigan had fed him better than most . . . certainly more food than the girls in the Alley got. But there had been long periods, particularly when he was taking on his adolescent growth, when Christian was always hungry, when he would lie on his mattress at night dreaming not of Maura, or even of topside, but of feasts, banquets, an end to the gnawing in his stomach. He had stolen his share of food over the years, and never regretted it. Next to unceasing, relentless hunger, it had not even felt like theft.

  “Marched on your manse, you say?” the Queen asked. There was no hint of emotion on her face, but Christian sensed her enjoying herself; unless he missed his guess, the Queen liked Lady Andrews no more than he did. “But your manse is well fortified, Lady Andrews, and made of good stone. What danger could a bunch of tenants pose?”

  Lady Andrews’s face colored as Arla spoke; she knew she was being played with.

  “My servants proved . . . less than trustworthy, Majesty. When they saw the sheer number of tenants, they threw open the doors and joined the mob.”

  “Terrible,” Queen Arla remarked. “Terrible. Who could have foreseen that treating servants as abominably as you do would result in such an outcome?”

  “I manage my own household as I see fit,” Lady Andrews snarled. “Incidentally, the tenants also burned down my acreage church and hanged the priest. I have lodged a complaint with the Arvath as well.”

  This news did disturb the Queen; Christian saw her frown. “Well, that’s neither here nor there, Katherine. I ask again: if the tenants succeeded in gaining entry to your manse, what are you doing here?”

  “I . . . fled.”

  Christ
ian bit back a smile, and he was not alone. The entire throne room suddenly seemed full of snickers and whispering. Lady Andrews heard it too, for her color deepened, but she pulled herself up and spoke loudly, overriding the chatter.

  “I have been living at my New London residence, hoping to deal with the problem myself. My retainers have made several attempts to retake the acreage, but failed. Last night a note was delivered to my footman. I have it here.”

  Lady Andrews opened the note and read, her voice triumphant.

  “‘We are tenants no longer. We are free farmers, and we claim our acres by right.’”

  This statement caused an uproar, so immediate and furious that no individual voice could be heard. The tattooed lord was shouting something, his gaping mouth almost comical against the background of sound. The crowd was a hotbed of activity now, and all of the guards were suddenly on edge; most of them were balanced on their toes, and Galen had nearly drawn his sword. Christian, too, readied himself, but he saw no real threat here, only a bunch of peacocks. Only one person in the room was contemplating violence, and she was not in the crowd at all, but standing right beside Elyssa, watching the heaving audience without reaction. She was a pretty woman, Niya, with red hair that was much admired among the Guard, but rumor said that she was cold, not to be approached. Niya’s face remained impassive, as a good servant’s was supposed to be, but her eyes were as open to Christian as her face was closed, and he saw clearly that she would like to tear Lady Andrews limb from limb. Did the rest of the Guard see it? No, the Guard knew violence, but not murder. Christian was only one who recognized that cold speculation in the maid’s eyes.

  “Settle yourselves!” Gullys, the chamberlain, called. “Please, ladies and gentlemen, calm yourselves! Let the Queen speak!”

  “This is all quite disturbing,” the Queen announced, when the crowd had settled. But her voice was supremely undisturbed. “What can the Crown do for you, Lady Andrews?”