Читать книгу The Queen's Choice - Cayla Kluver - Страница 10

CHAPTER THREE

THE QUEEN’S ANLACE

Ubiqua was an emblem of righteous anger. There had been only three casualties besides Falk as a result of the previous day’s protest, a miracle considering the number of bullets that had been fired, but that was three too many. The solstice celebration was supposed to represent a new beginning, not signal the end of lives. It was supposed to be joyous, and yet even now thirteen Fae, including me, lay injured in various states of severity.

My arm had required stitches, but not much fuss beyond that. While Ubiqua paced before her throne of roots in the Court Room of the Great Redwood, I sat at a long table with my father and the members of the Queen’s Council, a group of eight who kept their ears to the walls and floors for rumors and mutterings in the Realm. They knew the people’s thoughts, feelings and plans, and made sure my aunt stayed ahead of whatever turbulence might be brewing. Unfortunately, foreknowledge of an attack like the one we’d endured yesterday, which the people had taken to calling Falk’s Pride, was hard to come by.

I sipped a mug of Sale, its primordial warmth coursing through my body with every swallow. The heat would seek out my wound and strangle the potential infection as one might wring water from a rag. The fresher the wound, the more acute the sensation—when I’d begun drinking yesterday, I’d had to breathe through the pain; now it was more of an annoyance, a tingling sensation like I’d hit my elbow. I would heal in hardly any time at all.

“The culprits?” the Queen snapped, her clasped hands white behind her back.

“Falk died during his own assault,” my father replied, shuffling some documents on the tabletop. A ceremonial fire pit crackled and hissed at his back. “One of his sons was a fatality, another has been arrested, and the third is missing.”

“A search is being conducted for the third?”

“Of course, but I have little hope of finding him. The bedlam across the city after the incident would have granted him more than enough opportunity to disappear. In my opinion, we won’t hear from him again.”

Ubiqua nodded solemnly, jaw and lips tight. She was regal in her simple brown gown, worn to honor the dead in their return to the earth, but beneath her composure roiled an anger the like of which I’d never seen in her before. It was cold and hard, the will of Nature that might at any moment quake the ground.

“Question the young man in custody,” she ordered. “Find out where the missing brother may have gone. Do not stop the hunt until he is located, arrested, or driven from our Realm. So help me, I will never see innocent blood on the streets of Chrior again.”

Respect emanated from everyone at the table. I watched Ubiqua closely for emotions and subconscious expressions, clues about how she was coping on the inside that might help me become as fit a ruler as she. Aside from granite conviction, I detected very little.

“The people look to us for guidance,” she continued. “They are gathering at the palm in accordance with my request?”

Tthias, Envoy to the Public, confirmed this. “They await the Queen, the Lord of the Law, and her Court.”

“Good. We shall meet them.”

Ubiqua descended her dais and all stood. Abandoning my Sale, I followed her and the members of the Council to the ridge, only pausing once when my father placed his hand on my shoulder. I turned to him, my gaze traveling upward to meet his blue eyes, and he pulled me aside.

“You’ve hardly spoken since you were injured.”

“There hasn’t been much need.”

He nodded, though his furrowed brow told me it was not due to agreement. “I don’t care who you talk to—me, your aunt, Davic, or Ione. But open up to someone, Anya. Talk about what happened yesterday.”

I ran my fingers over my mending injury. “Father, I’m fine. This is hardly a wound at all.”

“It’s not the physical I’m referring to, my dear. When mortality rears its head, no one emerges ‘fine.’ No one.”

He squeezed my good arm and stepped past me, and I watched him go in bewilderment. I truly did feel fine, on the inside as well as the outside, but he evidently did not expect that to continue.

The Court joined us at the palm and we sang to honor the solstice and comfort one another, reinterpreting the melodies and verses of our ancestors’ joyous holiday cants to infuse lamentations...eulogies. Some of us could not carry a tune, but the observance was not about perfection; it was about embracing the imperfections in each other and in our world, imperfections that had been shown in sharp relief the previous day.

The citizens who had gathered on the walk below bowed their heads until we were finished. Then, in accordance with tradition, the Queen removed the Royal Anlace from its sheath at her hip and moved to the trunk of the tree, where love-carvings from every occasion surrounded the entrance. She would add something now to honor this solstice and remember the dead. But she stopped before touching the blade to the wood, contemplated, and looked to me.

“Anya,” she said, extending the Anlace. “You do the love-carving. This year, I feel it should be you.”

The Court, the Council and the citizenry were all still, waiting for my reaction to color their own, but I could muster none beyond a blank, stupid stare. No one but Fae rulers had carved the Great Redwood in the past—no one but Fae rulers had ever held the Anlace. But its ruby-studded pommel winked at me, expecting my fingers to close around it and shield it from the wind. I wanted to back away, but I couldn’t refuse the Queen’s offer, no matter how many centuries of tradition it shattered. Superstition aside, this was a distinction bestowed upon no other. Ubiqua was telling her people to follow me, to believe in me, alas before I’d been given the chance to decide if I believed in myself.

“Anya,” Davic murmured, a subtle prompt, while Ione reached out to touch my hand. Their presence gave me courage, reminding me that I would not be alone in facing my new future.

Ubiqua was compelling me with her eyes, and the Anlace still glinted in the bright winter light. Bolstered, I went forward and accepted it. In my hand, it felt diseased, as though the queasiness spreading through my body was punishment from the knife itself for seizing this power before it was due to me. Nonetheless, I went to the trunk and left my mark: half a snowflake, the top obscured by the crescent moon. The winter solstice was a long and frigid night that broke unto a fresh dawn, perhaps one with no more fear and no more needless death.

“Thank you,” Ubiqua said with that tender smile of hers.

The look she received from me in return was less than friendly. She had, without warning, put me center stage in what was sure to be a controversy. I hadn’t even adjusted to the idea of taking the throne; I didn’t need all Faefolk discussing the possibility, wondering what the Queen’s gesture meant. I held out the Anlace to her, wanting it gone, but she wrapped her hand around mine, trapping the knife in my fist.

“Keep it,” she whispered.

A painful throbbing began behind my eyes, the tension spreading its tendrils to my temples, and then, like a thorned vine, to my heart, squeezing slowly. Ubiqua gave an address, but I couldn’t make out a word. I left as soon as I could, not wanting to be in the presence of so many questioning gazes, not wanting to feel the anxiety and pressure they created. The Council especially was examining me, seeming to wonder how this daughter of a youngest child had risen to wear the Queen’s dagger on her hip, to pilfer it away from its owner and from Illumina, its rightful inheritor.

With the sun setting, I withdrew to my alcove and closed the door behind me. Though I wanted to believe I had shut out the world, even here I could not hide from the burden my aunt had handed me in the form of a gold-pommeled Anlace.

I stalked back and forth across the main living area, covering my mouth to keep near-hysterical gasps from razing my throat. Instead, they came short and fast through my nose, and dizziness threatened to overtake me. My life was no longer mine to control. By a single deed, I had become something more than I wanted to be in the people’s eyes. My aunt had known that I was, consciously or unconsciously, keeping a back door open, and without hesitation she’d closed it.

My desire to protect my voice lost out to frustration, and I screeched—one long, harrowing note that threatened to shatter mirrors and glassware, as well as my own eardrums. With a forceful but ill-conceived sweep of my arm I knocked the nearest object from the tabletop. I drew up short as it shattered, and, suddenly subdued, tiptoed around the table, glass crunching beneath my boots. Fragments in white, scarlet, and gold sparkled at me, and I slipped to my knees to survey the wreckage. The ruined decanter had been a gift from my father upon my betrothal to Davic; it had also been a much-beloved possession of my mother’s, the blown red glass matching the sinuous patterns in her wings.

“No,” I moaned, cradling a piece with golden inlay. I wanted to blame Ubiqua for inciting my temper, or my father for entrusting the piece to me in the first place, but my heart refused to accept excuses. I alone had broken this precious keepsake.

Filled with remorse, I had a sudden urge to go somewhere, anywhere that wasn’t here. Recalling Illumina’s comments about Zabriel, my self-pity transformed itself into grim determination. I could not let this change happen in my life until I had exhausted all other options. The broken decanter was an omen of the dreams that would be lost to me if I stood passively by.

I hurried to the bedroom, pulled out my leather travel satchel and shoved in the essentials—a small flask of Sale, jerky, a change of clothes, herbs, bandages, and other minimal medical supplies, an extra blanket for warmth, and my money pouch. I stripped off the brown dress I’d worn for the memorial in favor of warm leggings, a woolen tunic and my heaviest jerkin. The last thing I grabbed was a cloak. Looping the strap of the satchel across my chest, I started for the main room, but my eyes fell on the Anlace I did not want lying atop my dresser. I halted, allowing my gaze to linger. Without understanding why, I picked it up and pulled my long-knife from its sheath, replacing it with the Queen’s weapon. After adding my own blade to my pack, I stepped through the doorway.

“I knew you’d be doing this.”

Davic was sitting on the sofa, having come in while I was preoccupied with packing, tacit disapproval written on his face. I sighed and grabbed my bedroll, my mind searching for words that might appease him.

“I know you don’t understand, Davic, but I have to go.”

“You don’t have to go anywhere—unless you believe there’s nothing worth staying for in Chrior. For Nature’s sake, you’re hurt, and you just got home from your last trip! Why won’t you let us help you? You ought to be here with your family, with me, for more than a few days. Or is that notion so insufferable?”

“This isn’t about you,” I snipped, wishing he wasn’t between me and the door. Deciding this wasn’t the time to argue with him, I made my voice more placating and tried again. “I’m sorry, but you don’t know what’s going on.”

“I’m not stupid, Anya.” He stood and crossed his arms over his chest, toeing the mess I’d made of my mother’s decanter. “It’s obvious Ubiqua overwhelmed you today. But is it too much to hope you might try to make sense of it around the people who love you?”

“Is it too much to hope you might trust my judgment?” My spine stiffened in irritation. I wanted his boot out of the broken glass. I knew he wasn’t doing any more harm than I’d already done, but I couldn’t reason myself out of an irrational reaction. Instead, I pointed at the shattered pieces.

“Stop it. Leave the decanter alone. I’m going to fix it. I’m going to fix it, Davic!”

He withdrew his foot and watched me with more concern than ever.

“I’m going to fix it,” I repeated more calmly, enunciating clearly. “When next I’m home. There’s just something I have to do first. I want to be with you, but there’s something else I have to do.”

Now that I sounded less crazed, he rolled his eyes. “Sneak out in the dead of night without telling me or your aunt or your father where you’re going? Stay away for Nature knows how long? Is that what you have to do?”

“No!” I dropped my pack at my feet, its thump indicative of how angry I was at the assumptions he was making. “I’m going because Queen Ubiqua is dying.”

The lines in his face fell away, and he paled. “What?”

“Yes. She’s dying. And she didn’t send Illumina on her Crossing, she sent her after Zabriel. Only Illumina doesn’t have a chance of finding him—it’s her first time in the human world, after all. She’s essentially been set up to fail. I’m going to find him instead, bring him back here if I can and remind him what it means to be the Prince. That throne is Zabriel’s, not mine. It shouldn’t be mine.”

“You’re scared of it.”

“Is that so hard to comprehend? Is that so wrong?”

“No. But you should be realistic, Anya.”

He took a step toward me, and I backed away, troubled by his words. He halted, his arms falling limply to his sides.

“What do you mean?” I demanded.

“How long might it take to find Zabriel? What are the odds he’ll even consider ascending the throne? I think you could better spend this time preparing for what’s coming. Maybe...once you understand your duty better...it won’t be so daunting.”

I took several deep breaths, trying not to show Davic my true reaction to his words, his sensible, oh-so-typical-of-Davic words. He always walked the easiest path, always let everyone around him dictate who he was and what he would become. It would be easy to succumb to the way things were, easy to surrender my hopes and dreams in the face of resistance. But fighting would show me how much power I had over my own life. Maybe, just maybe, I had enough power to alter my future. Fighting to find out now was better than never knowing.

“Give me three months. I’ll find Zabriel, and if he’s unwilling to be the heir, I’ll do as you say. I’ll accept it all.”

Davic studied me for a long time, aware of the finality in my tone, then released a humorless laugh.

“Three months. I know I can’t stop you, so if this is what you have to do, by all means go. But after three months, be ready to give up your travels. Please. Be ready to stay with me and the Fae as our Queen.”

I nodded once, then hoisted my satchel and went around him to the door. He stopped me with one last question.

“What should I tell Queen Ubiqua? Your father?”

“Tell them I needed time away. Don’t say what I’m really doing. And when you see Ione, tell her I’m sorry I had to leave again. I wish it were different.” I smiled wistfully, willing him to understand that this last message was for him as much as it was for my best friend.

I looked at the open door before me, then backtracked to touch his face, drawing him close for a kiss. This was the last we would see of each other before my fate was decided. His hands drew our bodies together, compressing us into one being.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” he whispered.

I pulled away and walked outside, about to begin the most important journey of my life.

Chrior was alight with lanterns, and the square where the massacre had occurred was decorated with gifts, elemental and otherwise. People were still assembled there, singing and seeking each other’s consolation. The Queen wove among them, taking her subjects’ hands, offering words of sympathy and encouragement, and acknowledging their respectful bows. With her silver hair flowing behind her, she was the living embodiment of a spirit of comfort. Keeping to the fringes, I bypassed the crowd, and, in my earth-toned garb, vanished into the trees.

It wasn’t long before I was alone in the darkened woods, with only faint echoes of music and voices reaching my ears. Much louder were the snapping of sticks and the rustling of bushes caused by animals that hunted at night, and animals that were hunted at night. Without daylight to show the sprawling landscape, the walls of the forest could have trapped and confused me like a maze. But this was the route I always took to leave Chrior, and I knew it well enough to trust my feet to follow the path, despite the unsettling thoughts that were chasing around in my head—Evangeline’s stories of the supernatural creatures known as Sepulchres, together with images of Falk’s missing son, who could be hiding in these woods, waiting to inflict vengeance for the deaths of his family members.

Snow crunched beneath my boots, and it was impossible to move quietly, which grew more vexing the closer I came to the Bloody Road. I had warned Illumina about hunters, a far more realistic danger than the ones I was envisioning. Just as humans mounted the heads of bucks on their walls like trophies, so had the wings of Fae become badges of accomplishment for some of them, and near the Bloody Road was a popular place for such brutes to stalk. I could put up my shroud, but if I were seen crossing the Road, any hunter who happened to be looking would know I was no human. Humans could not survive the Road.

My heart beat faster than normal, and it was futile to try listening to logic instead of my darkness-fueled imagination. This was the reason I tried not to travel at night. It was good Illumina had departed in the morning; hopefully, she would not have been plagued by such fears.

Fed up with the way my footsteps reverberated, I took off my cloak and shoved it in my pack. With my wings uncovered, I flew to a branch, opting to hover tree to tree in silence until I had passed the Road. I looked down on the battle site as I went, seeing how pure and undisturbed the snow was, and listening to the wind. It always whistled strangely through this part of the forest. I scanned the area ahead of me, my Fae sense of sight, like my hearing and smell, heightened in comparison to the abilities of humans. Observing no signs of danger, I dropped to the ground, relieved to be past the crossing. Now I could leave the forest and its secrets behind.

The next instant I would relive for years to come. Had I adopted my shroud and hidden my wings before falling, things might have been different. Had I been quicker, or less eager, I might have been spared.

I heard the whipping of an arrow and turned toward the sound an instant before the weapon pinned my wings, both of them in one sharp strike, to the tree I had just vacated. Gasping, I tried to tug free, succeeding only in tearing the membrane of my wings. As excruciating pain seared through me, I shrieked and braced against the tree, trying to keep the strength in my legs. If my knees buckled, I would hurt myself further. My vision was darkening, filling with spots, but then fingers gripped my chin, turning my head, and my eyes focused once more. I was staring at a human, a broad, grimy, stringy-haired man. “Got one,” he muttered.

There was movement behind him—more humans, one woman amongst four men, her feminine aspect revealed by her manner of dress and her slight silhouette in the moonlight.

The man holding my chin pushed my head against the tree. He fitted something made of leather around my wrists and snapped it tight so I couldn’t move my hands. My arms felt weak under the immobilizing pressure of the shackles. Then he nodded to one of his comrades.

I knew what they were going to do. Frenzied, I tried to draw on my elemental connection to the water, asking the snow, the ice, the sap in the trees, the water in the earth, to rise up and shield me. But unlike the waves that had rushed to the aid of the Queen’s Blade to extinguish Falk’s Pride, no response was forthcoming. Usually, a Faerie’s pain and distress alone summoned an elemental reaction, but I had nothing. Not a single bead of sweat answered my call.

I cowered, waiting for the second man to deliver fortune’s justice. I was helpless, so completely helpless in that moment. All the independence I was so proud to possess, all the dignity and potential others saw in me was gone. I was no one in the eyes of these humans, and I could not stop them from degrading me, defiling me, robbing me of what made me Fae.

A halberd the comrade carried.

A halberd he brought down on me not once, not twice, but three times in order to sever my wings from my body. Cutting through the bone near my back to make sure he didn’t miss a shred of the light and delicate but fiercely strong appendages.

I didn’t feel the pain especially. I was numb. Shocked. Agony was like an echo, loud and close, but strangely detached from its source, strangely detached from me. I fell to the ground, staring at the Road I had been so careful about navigating, aware that the hunters were leaving with their prize. Someone was wailing; no, I was wailing. The woman approached and I rolled away from her, not knowing what else she could do to harm me, but clawing at ice and snow in an effort to avoid her. She leaned down behind me and stroked my hair.

“Shhhh,” she whispered in my ear, and then she, too, departed.

I was bleeding. Nature, I was bleeding. Not only from my back, but from my chest, my arms and my bound hands. Magic was seeping out of me, black and excruciating. I could see it drifting away. The magic that would let me pass the Bloody Road to reach home again.

Leaving dark red smears in the snow, I kicked and flailed, trying to catch the intangible substance, my one unrecoverable hope. But only unconsciousness came to me, and when it did, I prayed it would hold on to me forever.