“Great God,” she whispered, her voice shaking, as she looked down at the baby: Kelsea. The victory of ships. But the baby only stared up at her calmly, and Niya suddenly realized that the room around her was oddly silent, that prickles had risen on the back of her neck.
She turned, and the wet nurse was coming for them, her eyes glaring, knife raised. Without thinking, Niya leapt backward, putting the bulk of the chair between them, cradling the baby’s head against her shoulder to cushion the jerk. She opened her mouth to scream and found that she couldn’t. Something had locked her throat.
The nurse darted around the right side of the armchair, moving in a low crouch. With both hands free, Niya could have taken her, even though the nurse was armed . . . but not while holding Kelsea. And there was no question that Kelsea was the target. As the woman rounded the chair, her pale gaze remained fixed on the tiny bundle in Niya’s arms.
The True Queen! Niya’s mind shrieked, though her mouth remained sealed. Oh Great God, she’s the True Queen and I can’t save her! I can’t speak!
“Look at me.”
Niya stiffened, for she knew that voice: deceptively warm and pleasant, a voice made for discussing the weather, even while kingdoms rose and fell.
William Tear, get me through this.
“Look at me,” the wet nurse repeated, and Niya felt the pull of that voice, of a will even stronger of her own. With a tremendous effort, she turned away, cradling Kelsea in her arms. Mace was outside, he was just outside the door, but she couldn’t even scream for help.
Make noise, then. Make a lot of noise.
Niya dashed away, clutching Kelsea, keeping her eyes from the nurse. As she passed the table full of toys, Niya swiped an arm across it, flinging wooden toys across the room to crash against the wall. She tipped the vanity glass that rested near the door, slamming it toward the floor, where it broke with a shattering crash of glass. Niya felt shards drive themselves into her stockinged ankles. She leapt over the wreckage, and as they landed near the door with a thud, the baby began to wail.
A hand grabbed Niya’s shoulder, wrenching her around; Niya looked up and saw death in the woman’s eyes . . . a cold, white death, and worst of all, not death for her. The nurse raised the knife and brought it down.
Something pushed past Niya, all armor and steel, sending her flying out of the way. She crashed against the wall, doing her best to shield the baby with her body. Kelsea was howling now; Niya longed to comfort her, but her throat was still frozen. She heard loud snarling behind her, an animal sound, and then a woman’s shriek, cut off abruptly. The wet nurse crumpled to the floor, landing just before Niya in the field of shattered glass.
“Are you hurt?” Mace demanded. “Niya? Niya! Are you hurt?”
Niya shook her head, then realized that she could speak again. The vise around her throat had loosened. Looking down at Kelsea, she saw that the baby was injured, a long scratch down her forearm . . . bloody, but not deep enough to be critical. Niya wrapped it in the excess material of the girl’s nightdress, holding it tight.
“Thorne,” she murmured, beginning to weep now, understanding how near disaster had been . . . how close Brenna’s instrument had come. “It was the witch, and Thorne.”
Mace looked down at the dead woman on the ground, and with something beyond relief, Niya realized that she would not have to explain. She still didn’t know what lay between Mace and Thorne, but he had clearly known the pimp well enough to believe her now, for he moved away without comment, shutting the door that led to the antechamber. The wet nurse’s face had been obliterated; Niya turned Kelsea away, hiding the gruesome scene.
“What reason could Thorne have to attack the child?” Mace asked, his voice mercifully businesslike.
“I don’t know,” Niya admitted. “He means to move in here and rule the kingdom in all but name. Perhaps an heir threatens him?”
“Perhaps,” Mace replied, helping her to her feet. “I always heard he had noble blood, and Arliss said he did, for certain.”
“You know Arliss?” Niya asked, surprised. Then she wondered why she should be. Arliss knew everyone; that was part of his value to the Blue Horizon.
Was, her mind repeated sadly, as she carried the baby over to the armchair. Was, Niya. Was.
“I know him,” Mace returned gruffly . . . and then, after a long moment: “He saved my life.”
“Arliss is a good man.”
“He’s a poppy dealer,” Mace said. The words came out as profanity, but Niya checked her own angry reply, suddenly remembering the wasted woman lying in the infirmary, the lines of morphia etched into her face.
“If I were ever in trouble,” she replied carefully, “I would go to Arliss. He deals poppy, yes. But I thieve, and you kill.”
Mace looked at her sharply, and Niya was struck again by the strange mix of jade and innocence he represented. Did he truly think that she would not have heard?
She bent to inspect the wound on Kelsea’s arm more closely. It was ugly and would need stitches, but not many; Coryn could do it. She wrapped it tight again, rocking the girl to quiet her whimpers.
“Arliss is a good man,” she told Mace. “Once, when I was a girl starving on the streets of the Gut, he saw me and gave me an apple from his pocket.”
Mace grunted. “The whole city is starving now. What does he give them?”
The better world! Niya began to snap, and then held her tongue. There was no better world; hadn’t the Gadds Fire and Elyssa’s fall proven as much?
Wake up, Niya. Wake up.
She blinked, then looked down at the baby again, seeing the green eyes, the blue jewel, the pink, stubborn face . . . all of the colors that would one day combine to make the tall, grave woman in black. The True Queen. She was come out of her time, yes, but not too late, not if they could be brave, not if they could—
“Take care of each other,” Niya whispered. She looked up at Mace, seeing her friend of the past weeks, but even more: the man of that other life, the one who had burned in some cold darkness until he was tempered steel, a man who would never bend for his own safety, or even his own survival.
This is the man I need, Niya thought.
“Thorne doesn’t take chances,” Mace remarked. “If he wants the baby dead, there will be another attempt, and another. I’ll talk to Carroll. We should increase her guard—”
“No,” Niya told him firmly, for she had suddenly seen what to do . . . what must be done, if there was to be any hope for the future at all. “More guards won’t keep her safe. We must get her out of here.”
“Out of the Keep?” Mace asked. He, too, had clearly become a creature of the castle, for the bewilderment in his voice made plain that this solution had never occurred to him. “But where? Where could she go?”
“I don’t know. Far away, where even the witch can’t find her.” Niya frowned, thinking of how many people roamed the Queen’s Wing on a daily basis, all riddled with their own cracks, their own weaknesses . . . potential assassins, all of them.
“We must get her out of here,” she repeated. “And we can’t wait.”
Chapter 33
THE VOICE OF THE ALMONT
Humanity extols victory. Battles won, legislation passed, tragedy surmounted . . . of such moments is history made and fixed. No one wants to talk about the hidden cost of victory, the danger of overreach . . . but that cost is there, all the same. Arrogance makes fools of us all.
—Greive the Madman
There it is,” the Fetch said, pointing down the hill. “The New London Bridge.”
Aislinn had been prepared for the size of the city; she had heard tales about New London all her life, mostly from the few men from their village who had left to seek their fortune, and then returned after going bust. They had made the city out to be so extraordinary that Aislinn actually found herself a bit disappointed by the dar
k pile of stone that lay across the river canyon.
But the bridge was something else: several gigantic arches of white stone, their combined length at least one hundred meters, spanning the Caddell River. But the Caddell was hardly a river at all at this point, little more than a collection of puddles. Aislinn had not thought of the drought in the recent weeks, not since snow had begun to fall in the Almont, but now, at the sight of that vast, muddy riverbed, she felt a distant alarm. What if the next summer was as dry as the last? They would all die, the entire kingdom, from the highest noble to the lowest tenant.
No, Aislinn thought fiercely, looking up at the New London skyline. It will rain. It must. We only have to get through to the next harvest, and there is enough food hoarded in this city to do that. We only need to get hold of it.
The bridge was the easiest way into New London. They could go around the city, heading for the relatively undefended west side, but that would take an extra day. They had provisioned themselves from Lord Marshall’s castle, but the provisions had run out several days before. Many of the men, particularly the ones with big feet, had been unable to find adequate shoe leather, and they had hiked all the way from the central Almont in cloth shoes. Now most of them continued barefoot, ignoring the frostbite that had begun to blacken their toes. These men could not afford an extra day’s march, nor could Aislinn. More than seven thousand people waited on the hillside behind her, and they had come all this way on buoyancy. If they stopped or even slowed down, she feared that they would sink to the ground.
“Are there guards?” she asked the Fetch. “On the bridge?”
“Yes, for toll. The Crown charges one pound per head to enter the city.”
“That’s robbery,” Aislinn muttered. “Visitors bring money into the city. What do they need with toll?”
“The Raleighs are not people to be content with less when they can demand more,” the Fetch replied. “It’s always been this way.”
“Well, we don’t have seven thousand pounds for toll. But we have seven thousand people.”
Turning to the mass of humanity behind her on the slope—all of them silent, waiting for her judgment; they respected the Fetch, but did not trust him—Aislinn cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Our labor has fed this city! Its food is ours by right! We go!”
They roared fiercely behind her, and Aislinn started down the hillside, Liam at her side. She knew he was there, without looking, just as she knew her right hand would always be beside her. Liam still carried the axe he had liberated from Lady Andrews’s armory, and it was not a vanity weapon; Aislinn had seen him swing the axe enough times now, and he had even left several heads behind. In another life, he might have been a soldier, or a guard. Liam, Aislinn, all of them might have been so many things, had they not been born to the fields. The crop.
The bridge was fronted by a set of tables: a toll gate, and behind it stood several men in black cloaks. The army, Aislinn decided. The Fetch had no great opinion of the Tear army, but its soldiers carried steel, and presumably they knew how to use it.
“I’ll go down and talk to them,” she told the Fetch and Liam. “Just me.”
“And me,” Liam replied, in a tone Aislinn knew well by now; better try to shed an embedded tick than Liam in this moment.
“Come, then,” she said, and headed down the hill toward the toll gate. She expected the Fetch to follow them as well, but he did not. Aislinn wondered at this, then realized it was for the best. She didn’t need to use the Fetch as a crutch.
“Who approaches?” one of the soldiers cried from the table. “State your name and purpose!”
For a moment Aislinn thought of giving them her true name, then abandoned the idea, for what could a name matter? She was not important; not a single one of them was important. What mattered was the mass of them, their anger . . . anger powerful enough to overcome starvation and robbery, rape and murder. Powerful enough to bring them all here.
“I am the voice of the Almont,” Aislinn replied. “I come to speak with the Princess Regent.”
“Elyssa ain’t about to let a filthy horde into her castle,” one of the soldiers sneered.
“Not a horde. Just me.”
Another soldier drew a knife, but Liam was immediately there, raising his axe. And Aislinn suddenly realized that every moment she spent at parley with these fools weakened her, gave them time to dispatch a messenger to the Keep, to call for reinforcements, to count her numbers. To put up obstacles.
But Aislinn would brook no obstacles. Leaving Liam to keep an eye on the soldiers, she turned and spread her arms wide, making a beckoning gesture toward the people behind her.
“Come on!” she shouted. “We’re going in!”
For a long moment, she feared they would not follow. They were at the brink now, farther than any of them had ever journeyed, and Aislinn was suddenly certain that some of them would turn and run, infecting the rest with panic until they all fled over the hillside, back where they had come from. She had gone so far as to prepare herself for it when they began to move, an endless sea of torches walking, then running, down the hillside. One of the women from Haven, who had the best voice of any of them and had kept them marching on the long road through the western Almont, began to sing “It’s Time to Cut the Corn.”
Time indeed, Aislinn thought, turning back to the bridge . . . but they were alone. The soldiers had fled.
“Come on!” she shouted again, nearly delirious with triumph. As she led them across the bridge, the roar of their singing made the stone shake beneath Aislinn’s feet, but she did not sing with them this time, for her eyes were fixed on the city ahead, the enormous black monolith that loomed before them, blocking the starlit curtain above.
The Keep.
Chapter 34
THE CHILD IS HIDDEN
We stood at a precipice. That we did not realize we stood there made no difference, for the earth is no respecter of ignorance, or even knowledge. Whatever we know, whatever we think, the ground may still crumble beneath our feet.
—Anonymous words, generally ascribed to William Tear
They were just wrapping up the baby when the knock came at the door.
For a long moment, Christian, Carroll, and Niya could only stare at each other. Technically, Christian and Carroll were on guard in the Princess’s chamber; ever since the assassination attempt five days before, there had been two guards in the Princess’s rooms at all times. To the outward eye, they had done nothing wrong. But they were already guilty, and in Carroll’s eyes, Christian saw panic to mirror his own.
“Cover the baby,” Carroll told Niya, then went to the door and opened it a tiny fraction.
“What is it?”
“The rebels, sir,” someone replied; it sounded like Cae. “They’re here, and they’re filling up the lawn. General Cleary is asking for you.”
“The general?” Carroll asked, bewildered. “What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know, sir. Thorne’s orders. Cleary’s man said he’s up on the battlements.”
Carroll frowned. He looked to Christian, and they shared a grim, silent realization: nothing was going to go to plan.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Carroll told Cae. He closed the door gently enough, but when he turned back to them, his face was pale.
“There’s no time,” he said. “I can’t take her. Lazarus, it has to be you.”
“What?”
“The general is asking for me. If I’m missed, then the game is up. Everything must look normal until morning. It has to be you.”
For a long moment, the words meant nothing to Christian. The plan had been very simple; Carroll was to take Niya down, through the Keep tunnels and underneath the moat. Niya’s knowledge of the city was extensive, but she did not know the tunnels well enough, and she certainly could not go alone, not with the baby in one arm. Once f
ree of the Creche, she would depart the city and ride. Niya was a good rider, and they had chosen her a sturdy horse, now hidden downstairs, at the entrance to the tunnels. All of the supplies were in the saddlebags, including the map Niya was to follow; none of them had looked at it yet, in case one of them was taken before the fact. With Christian and Carroll on guard outside Kelsea’s door, no one would know the baby was gone until the morning. Christian and Carroll might pay for their supposed negligence—perhaps even with their lives—but by morning it wouldn’t matter, because Niya and the baby would be clear of the city, well on their way. Even to Christian’s pessimistic mind, the plan had seemed workable, but now it had fallen to pieces before even begun.
“We could wait—” he began, but Carroll was already shaking his head, and with a sinking feeling, Christian knew he was right. They had chosen this night specifically because of the rebel approach; Elyssa had put Thorne in charge of dealing with the rebels, and it was the one time that he and his witch were guaranteed to be elsewhere. Christian didn’t know what difference distance might make with a creature like Brenna, but even he had found himself comforted by the knowledge that she would not be in the Queen’s Wing when they tried to smuggle the girl out. If they waited, giving Thorne and his witch the chance to get involved, then it seemed a good bet that they would all end up dead . . . or worse, like Elyssa. The Guard did their best not to discuss it, but Christian had seen the look in Galen’s eyes—in Dyer’s, in Kibb’s, in Coryn’s—when the Princess came into the room. All of them were hanging on as best they could, but they also seemed to share an unspoken understanding, a bitter acceptance of how precious little there was to hold on to. Elyssa was only a shell, and the Queen slept on and on. For men who had spent their lives steeped in the honorable traditions of the Guard, it was a miserable state of affairs.
Carroll had knelt on the bed again, helping Niya to wrap the baby in furs. It was late March, but the Almont was still frozen; warm clothing would be required, and Niya had already explained to Christian that a baby must be kept warmer still. Niya tucked the Heir’s Jewel carefully inside the furs before binding the final layer.
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