“Help yourself, lad. Kitchen’s through there.”
But Barty did not look at Mace as he spoke; all of his attention was riveted on the baby. He was taken with her, Mace thought, and he made a mental note to tell Carroll when he got back to the Keep. Carroll had grown attached to the girl, and it would ease his mind to know that Barty cared as well. Niya, too, would want to know—but Mace closed his eyes, putting that thought away. Early yesterday morning, he had thought he heard Niya’s voice, but the sound had vanished abruptly when the baby began to howl for her morning bottle. Mace told himself that it had only been a dream, but the idea did not rest easy in his mind.
“Bring that child in here, Barty,” Lady Glynn ordered. “Before she catches her death of cold.”
They took the baby into the living room, and Mace went on to the kitchen.
* * *
He was pulling meat and cheese from the icebox when the sapphire at his chest began to burn. Mace had forgotten all about it; if the jewel had not spoken up, he likely would have gotten all the way back to New London with the damned thing still dangling beneath his shirt.
Setting the food on top of his saddlebags, Mace pulled the necklace off and took it into the living room, a small, comfortable area in which every available surface appeared to be covered with books: books stacked neatly in piles on the floor, books lying on tables, even a few stacks balanced precariously on the arms of the sofa. Mace noted the books without judgment; such things were not for him, never would be, but perhaps they would serve someone else.
“Here,” he said, holding out the sapphire to Barty.
“The Queen’s Jewel?” Barty asked, raising his eyebrows. “I saw the other one; it’s hers by right. But where did you get that?”
“Couldn’t begin to tell you.” Mace held it out, dangling it above them, and it was Lady Glynn who finally took it.
“It’s for the baby. When she’s old enough.”
Lady Glynn nodded, tucking the jewel away in her pocket.
“Well, goodbye,” Mace said awkwardly. “Perhaps we’ll see each other again.”
“Nineteen years,” Barty replied, chortling. “When you’re sprouting grey hair, and all your muscle fallen into flab.”
“Fuck off, Barty.”
“Watch your mouth!” Lady Glynn hissed. “She will hear you! Even a baby can learn.”
Barty sobered, looking abashed, and Mace backed away, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“Goodbye, Barty,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Same to you, lad,” Barty replied, and this time Mace was sure of it: tears in the old man’s eyes as he looked down at the girl. “This is a gift beyond price.”
With a nod to the terrifying Lady Glynn, Mace retreated into the hallway, packed and fastened his saddlebags, and then donned his cloak and gloves. Half of his mind was listening to the murmured conversation from the living room, but the other half was miles away: in New London, in the Keep. We got topside, Maura had told him, and Christian had not had the heart to correct her. But where was he now? The sight of Barty’s foolish grin as he bent over the baby had brought up an old sting, one that would never heal. It was grief for Maura, as it always would be, but now Mace’s grief had broadened to include all of them . . . even himself, perhaps: the children of the Creche, children who had never been held, whose first cradles were stone floors, who slept wrapped in rags. Who would sing to them? Who would fight for them? Who would put an end to it?
Barty had begun crooning to the girl now, singing a song of the Guard, and Mace paused in the doorway for a moment, listening, watching the two people on the couch: Barty, already besotted with the child, and Lady Glynn, observing the two of them with a severe eye. Mace wondered at their relationship, the bond that could weld two such distinct people . . . but it was beyond him. They would take care of the Princess, do the best they could; the rest would be up to the girl herself. Bidding a silent farewell to the little mite, Mace grabbed his bags and slipped out the door.
Fortune was still waiting where he had looped her, beneath the eaves in the front yard. Mace tied his bags, then pulled himself up, looking around as he did so. It was a good cottage: comfortable and well fixed and private, hidden deep in the forest, far from any road. The girl might be safe here, at least for a time. As Mace reined the horse around, he saw Lady Glynn standing at the front window, watching him through the driving rain. He raised a hand in farewell, and the lady surprised him by waving back.
I will never stop being a killer, Mace thought, and knew it for simple truth. Whether by birth or raising, the delivery of death was woven into his very bones. The darkness is coming, the Queen had said, and Mace knew that she was right. Elyssa, the real Elyssa, was gone, never to return. Arlen Thorne and his witch now held the strings.
You did not make this tangle, Wigan whispered inside his head. You are obligated to nothing.
That was true as well, so true that Mace’s hands jerked on the reins, drawing Fortune to an abrupt halt in the pouring rain. He had rescued the children in the Devil’s Club, delivered the Princess to safety; his debt to Carroll was paid. He could still abandon this, shed his grey cloak and fade away into the vast anonymity of the Tearling. He was a big man, not afraid of hard work, and such men could always begin a new life.
But Mace couldn’t, because he still had an obligation. No debt, this, nor even an oath, but rather a compact. Do not waste it, Arliss had said, and he would not. The Creche would always be inside his head, but suffering was not exclusive to the Creche; the shadow of indifference lay over the entire kingdom, protecting cruelty, seeding sorrow. Mace closed his eyes and saw Maura, holding out a crudely woven bracelet in her child’s fist: the sun rising over blue water, a pretty picture from the tunnel walls. Neither of them had had the faintest idea of what that sunrise represented, but now he did, and he suddenly felt himself one with all of them: Lady Glynn, Niya, Arliss, even the nameless multitude who had burned in the Gadds Fire or dangled from the gallows.
“But you are with us, Mace. Didn’t you know?”
Niya’s voice was so close, so real, that Mace jerked in surprise, glancing around. But there was no one, only the driving rain around him, the endless shadow of branches against the lightening sky above his head. For a moment, something seemed to brush his cheek. Mace saw no one, but he didn’t believe that no one was there.
After a few minutes, he spurred Fortune and headed southeast, toward the Keep. Toward home. Niya said nothing else, but she did not need to, for Mace had already realized that she was right: he was with them. He was with all of them. He was Blue Horizon, and as the knowledge crystallized inside him, Mace suddenly understood, as though for the first time, the magnitude of what he had left behind in that cottage, the weight of the future. And he knew that come hell and death, nineteen years from now he would return along this same path, still seeking the future, the better world . . . still seeking Kelsea.
He didn’t know what he would find, but he knew that he would remember the way.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
At least half of the credit for this book must go to my editor, Maya Ziv. It took several false starts and months of hard work and arguing to get the book moving in the right direction, and I never once heard a reproach. This book was a collaborative effort; I wrote it, but Maya midwifed it, and it belongs to her as much as it does to me. A lovely lady, Maya Ziv.
The very luckiest authors get a literary agent who is also family. Thank you, Dorian Karchmar; you know why. Thanks also to Alex Kane and Laura Bonner at William Morris Endeavor, Hannah Feeney and Alice Dalrymple at Penguin Random House, and Simon Taylor and Imogen Nelson at TransWorld. Last but not least, a big thanks to Miranda Ottewell, whose attention to detail holds the Tearling together.
To Shane and George, I owe something beyond thanks. Our little family keeps me going, and writing, through the worst days and the hardest ti
mes. I literally don’t know what I would do without you both, and I love you dearly. To Jayne Meadows, as well, I owe a deep debt of gratitude; I could not have finished this book without her help. Deb, Christian, and Katie: you are far away, but never far from my thoughts when I think about the world as I wish it could be.
Every time I write about the Tearling, I am compelled to thank my father, Curt Johansen. Long before I understood much about politics, my upbringing had already shaped my conception of the world, and it was my dad who raised me to always think of the little guy, to never let the small cruelties be forgotten in service of the big picture. The little guy is under siege now—in the Tearling and everywhere else—and every year I understand a bit more how lucky I am to have a parent who knew it, and who made sure I did too.
On a related note: as I thank my readers most of all, I want to say a word about resistance. We have now reached yet another crisis point in our history. The many labor and suffer to support the luxury of the few; open bigotry has become quotidian; desperate people seeking safety are brutalized; erosion of the separation of church and state is costing more and more lives. Fascism is rising, and even in a nominal democracy, fascism has a particularly pernicious ability to discourage resistance. I resist in fiction—it’s the only thing I know how to do—but that’s nothing; there are people who resist in the real world, though it takes bravery I don’t possess and can barely conceive of. I like to talk the talk, but there are plenty of people out there walking the walk, and this book owes a debt to all of them. When we finally get back to Kelsea (not too long now, faithful reader, I promise), I will have many more shining examples to work with. There’s a better world out there; I still believe it, even now, and nothing is irretrievable. So let’s turn this shit around, shall we?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Erika Johansen grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She went to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania before attending the celebrated Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she earned a master of fine arts degree. She eventually became an attorney, but she never stopped writing. She currently lives in England.
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.
Beneath the Keep Page 39
