CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
C HAPTER T HIRTY- O NE
Yennes spent the night in a squalid back alley behind the tavern.
When she banged the knockers of three separate doors and asked for a bed, the occupants threw the doors back in her face. It may have been the sick that soiled her clothes, or the way she swayed where she stood. In any case, the reception was reminiscent of one she might have received on the Ledge.
On the fourth attempt, an older woman within raked her gaze over Yennes’ figure and then shrugged. “Worth a farthing if not a coin pouch,” she said, and threw the door wide open. But a man suddenly stumbled over the stoop and nearly bowled Yennes over. His belt buckle dangled precariously about his waist.
Yennes backed away, frowning at the matron with the overflowing bosom.
“A bed’s still a bed, miss,” she hollered to her, jutting a prominent hip to hold the door open as another man entered. “Don’t matter who shares it.”
Yennes found her way to a patch of cobblestone unmarred by mud and fell asleep against the wall of a stable instead. She listened to the strange nickers and chuffs of the creatures within until her eyelids drooped and finally closed, forgetting entirely the ring that rested in the bottom of her pocket.
When she awoke, her body took its vengeance.
The sun had risen with an insatiable kind of malice. Yennes was sweating through her clothing from the first. The only solace to be taken was the sure knowledge that waking beneath the sun’s menace was far better than the frost’s. The people on the Ledge awoke this morn in no better surroundings than they had the day before. Tomorrow, it would be just as bleak. Here in Terrsaw, her biggest qualm was the unforgiving ground, for even the exposure of night had left her unharmed. Mostly.
The steady beat pounding in her forehead was made worse by the chatter of male voices.
“Woah, there,” one said, followed by the indignant huff of a horse. “Henry, pass me that rope.”
Yennes turned cautiously, noting the flip her stomach took at even this small movement. She could not see within the stable, but the timber wall was thin enough that she could hear every sound of the occupants within.
“Another?” a second voice grumbled. “How many horses we saddlin’?”
“Captain said the whole lot.”
There was a low whistle. “Reckon them guards are on some kind of expedition?” the second – seemingly younger – voice asked.
“You ain’t heard? Queen Cressida’s on her death bed.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“Then add it up, yeh dolt. Her Majesty’s desperate. She’s sending out the battalion to find a cure. Seems she’ll do whatever it takes to save her.”
Silence. And then, “Reckon she’s lookin’ for a mage?”
“Ha!” the first voice scoffed roughly. The conversation grew distant, accompanied by the clops of hooves. “Ain’t no mages left round here, Henry. Smoked those fuckers out a long time ago.”
Not all, Yennes thought.
The boy named Henry chuckled. She heard him move about the stable, whistling and nattering to the horses.
Yennes rose. She dusted off her skirts and straightened her blouse. She tried to remember the spell Baltisse had shown her not several days before. “ Cristique, ” she muttered, holding her palm to her soiled front. She watched the stains disappear.
Yennes followed the wall of the stables, her back to the wood as she crept along, guided by the sounds of the men. At the stables’ corner she stopped. The palace rose before her, surrounded by a great stone wall.
Somehow, in last night’s haze, she’d managed to find her way to the very edge of the Terrsaw palace and slept at its feet.
Fragments of possibility collected rapidly in her mind.
“ Dangerous thoughts, ” she heard once more, Baltisse’s voice intruding.
And yet, there it was. The palace, and inside it an ailing queen. Something that those Queens needed, and something she could grant them.
Inside her skirt pocket, Baltisse’s ring seemed to grow warm. A warning. Yennes dug her fingers in until she had the ring in her grasp. She clutched it tightly.
Immediately, she felt a pull, an invisible hand on her shoulder bidding her to turn around and go right back the way she’d come.
Instead, Yennes stayed hidden in the shadows of the alley, ducking behind stacked wooden pales to avoid notice. She stayed clutching that ring until the sun rose higher, until men in polished armour spilled out of an iron gate and claimed their horses. She stayed until Henry and his superior waved them off and ambled away, their work done. She stayed until the clop of horse hooves dissipated and the road emptied.
Then, Yennes followed her dangerous thoughts out of the alley. She let the ring fall back to the bottom of her pocket, and approached that foreboding iron gate.
“Stand back,” came a gruff warning from the other side – a faceless helmed guard. “What is your business here?”
Yennes reached within herself for the tenacity that once governed her. She willed it to return now. “I…” she began, though her voice hitched. “I wish to see the Queen.”
The guard chuckled and shook his head at the sky as though consulting it. “Go on home, miss. The Queen don’t take tea with commoners.”
Yennes swallowed. Her hands came before her in a tumble of overriding nerves. But she kept her gaze levelled with the guard’s and did not back away from the gate. “And what if the commoner could cure her wife?” she said slowly, deliberately. “Would she see me then?”
Without waiting to hear the guard’s dismissal, Yennes muttered the spell that would call fire to her palm, and she watched it reflect in the guard’s muddy eyes.
It took less time than Yennes had anticipated to find herself in the palace’s throne room, though she had not expected to arrive shackled and flanked by armoured guards.
They stood on intricately tiled floor beneath a vast glass-domed ceiling. The empty wooden thrones on the dais were bathed in morning light, as though awaiting the Mother herself to adorn them. The Terrsaw palace was a world removed from the throne room she had last stood in, whose only light was gleaned from dim sconces and the magnificent reflection of the Pool of Iskra.
Hurried footsteps sounded from the corridor to the left. The guards at her shoulders tightened their grip on her arms and Yennes held her breath. The footsteps gathered momentum and out of the arched entry spilled a woman in the most elaborate dress Yennes could imagine.
Yennes had the immediate impression that she was being picked apart. The Queen, an older, austere woman, scanned her from head to toe. Yennes could not help but notice the shadows that darkened the delicate skin beneath her eyes, or the hair that had come unfastened from the clasps that held it back. Her forehead was heavily lined and gave the appearance of a perpetual frown. Even glittering with jewels and embellishments, Yennes could not help but see the Queen of Terrsaw as little more than a dishevelled woman.
“Bow your head,” one of the guards ordered Yennes and she did so hastily, diverting her eyes to the mosaic on the floor.
“Who are you?” the Queen’s voice rang out. It filled the entire room, reaching the heights of the domed ceiling. It sent an inexplicable chill down Yennes’ spine.
“She says she’s come from the other side of the river,” one guard offers.
“Not you ,” Alvira snapped. Yennes lifted her face carefully to see that the Queen’s gaze was still firmly raking her. “I am speaking to the girl bold enough to claim she can cure my wife.”
Yennes’ hands rattled in their shackles as they gripped and released. “My name is Yennes,” she said, hoping the volume of her voice hid its tremor.
The Queen’s voice was dull as she spoke, but there was no mistaking the roll in her jaw, nor the violent glint in her eyes. “I will ask you this question once, Yennes,” she said. “And if I find the answer lacking, you’ll be thrown into a cell below ground until I forget your name.” She paused and the pressure in the room seemed to swell. “Are you a mage?”
Yennes’ heart stuttered. “N-no,” she said. “I am no mage.”
The Queen eyes seemed to blacken. She turned to the guard on Yennes’ right and sneered in his direction. “Did you not claim you saw her conjure fire?”
“She did, Your Majesty!” the guard implored. “Saw it with my own eyes.”
“Take her to the keep,” the Queen said by way of reply, already turning to leave. “You have wasted enough of my time.”
The guards were already lifting Yennes off her feet. “Wait!” she shouted, thrashing against their hold. She slammed her eyes shut and reached for the iskra. “Igniss!”
The flame erupted from her palm. It captured the sleeve of one of the guards handling her and set it alight. He jumped away, aghast, stifling the wool against his chest plate with little success.
But the Queen halted her exit. She watched the guard’s sleeve with widened eyes, and it wasn’t until the singed smell of burning wool faded that she looked to Yennes’ once more.
“You lied,” she accused, though her lips turned upward. Her eyes gleamed.
“No ma’am–”
“Your Majesty.”
“No, Your Majesty,” Yennes repeated. “I am not mage-born. I came about this magic by other means.”
“What ‘ other means ’?” Alvira demanded, each syllable striking Yennes squarely.
Yennes readied to reveal herself. She sensed this was not a woman who would linger while she hesitated. Her patience seemed gossamer thin. “I took it,” Yennes said. “From the Glacians.”
All fell still and silent. Even their breaths seemed to falter under the resonance of her confession. It was the Queen who spoke first, of course, but only after she had traded side-long glances with her guards. Only after she had masked her expression with a dry, indiscernible veneer. Only two words were pushed past her lips: “Prove it.”
Yennes looked down at her own body, as though she might suddenly find some means to avail herself. “I am Ledge-born,” she said, her eyes darting from person to person. “I was taken over the Chasm by the Glacians… thrown into their pool. But I survived it and journeyed here.”
But the Queen was already laughing, already swallowing the ends of Yennes’ story. “A woeful tale to hide your true heritage, mage,” she said. “Though I can understand it. The prejudice some still wage against your kind is regrettable.”
“I am not–”
“There are still some who would seek to strap you to a pyre. Certainly something to avoid.”
Yennes could not be sure – the Queen’s expression was still a mask of careful dispassion – but she thought the words might have been a threat.
“I, too, would wish for privacy, should I possess unnatural abilities.”
“I–”
“Useful, perhaps,” Alvira continued. “But dangerous in the wrong hands. Some believe such things ought to be eradicated all togeth–”
The Queen’s words fell short as Yennes raised her palms. The guards rushed to protect their Queen, drawing their short swords and moving to surround her.
But there was no lightning bolt that lashed from Yennes’ hands. They simply glowed brightly, a lattice work of ice and frost coating her skin from fingertip to wrist.
Yennes called the iskra to her palms but did not coax it further than that. Whatever threat the Queen perceived her to be, she did not encourage the idea now.
Alvira had clutched her hand to her chest, falling back into the folds of her guards’ protection, but now, she straightened. Her piercing gaze fixed to Yennes’ hands, mouth agape. “Mother almighty,” she intoned. “Iskra.”
Yennes held the magic in her palms and nodded cautiously.
Alvira pressed her hands to her gown, wiping them against the fabric. “Leave us,” she said suddenly, and it did not seem that she was addressing Yennes.
The guard nearest the Queen faltered. His mouth opened and closed before he uttered, “Your Majesty?”
“ Get out! ” she commanded. “Now.”
The guards did not question her. They eyed Yennes with trepidation as they melted down their various corridors, disappearing into the walls of the palace until it was just the Queen and Yennes, alone.
Alvira did not come closer. If she had thoughts, Yennes could not speculate their nature. Everything, from the Queen’s stance to the exact degree of her smile seemed precisely controlled. Yennes could not tell if she was about to be killed or welcomed.
But Yennes had seen the weapons toted by the guards. She could guess at the sheer number of men she had at her disposal. And hadn’t she just now demonstrated their obedience to her? The power with which she commanded them?
The thought bolstered Yennes, for if there was someone in this kingdom who might bear the means to fight Glacians, surely it was the woman before her.
“Iskra witch,” the Queen said.
Yennes balked at the name.
“How very… interesting it is to meet you. Why have you come?” her gaze darted back to Yennes’ palms.
“I heard your wife had taken ill,” she said cautiously. “I came here to offer my magic to heal her.”
“Her Majesty,” the Queen corrected.
“Her Majesty.” Yennes blinked.
Queen Alvira considered her for a moment. The silence stretched. “Well,” she ushered impatiently. “And what of the rest?”
“The rest?” Yennes frowned.
“Yes, child. The rest. Surely you did not come to my palace gate out of sheer benevolence. You would be the very first in history if that were the case. Now, what is it that you came here for, in exchange for curing my ailing wife.”
“So she is ailing?” Yennes asked, a remnant of her former self escaping.
Alvira’s careful smile dropped slightly, “I am afraid so.”
Yennes nodded. Whatever else this woman was, she was quite obviously heart-sore, dread-stricken. “I will not keep you from her bedside,” Yennes offered. “As I’ve said, I come from the Ledge–”
“Ah,” Alvira breathed. “And you wish to be its liberator?”
Yennes considered the question. It was not exactly what she wished. Each day since leaving the Chasm, her mind had waged a war against her memories – it clawed at her with remembrances of Glacia and the Ledge that made her shudder. It tore her in half with other wretched invasions – longing, sorrow… regret. People she’d left behind. Faces she would never see again.
Sometimes, she was thrown back into that ocean and she hoped to simply drown this time.
She was no saviour. No liberator. She was the outer layer that remained of a once stronger woman. She was a shade of someone far more familiar than the failing consciousness that inhabited her now. Whoever this person was, she was no heroine.
“I cannot return there,” she told the Queen, shaking her head. “I’m… I cannot go back.” It was the truth. And to think of those children, those babies, those men and women that remained was to bring tears falling to her cheeks. “But I must do what little I am still capable of,” she continued. “I must offer my help. And in return, I ask you for yours.”
Alvira tugged on the folds of her dress, hesitating. “And what would you have me do?”
“Take your soldiers to the mountain,” Yennes said. “And fight.”
The Queen shook her head slowly. “If only it were so simple a remedy.”
“There are children up there,” Yennes said. Surely it would be enough to persuade anyone.
“And there are children here, too. Children who would be orphaned should their parents die in a pointless battle against superior creatures.”
Yennes sighed, frustration brewing hot and fast. How easily this queen disregarded the plight of her own people – a forgone conclusion. “There are those in this valley who told me about your deal with the Glacian King. It was you who condemned my people. My parents. Was it not?”
Alvira tilted her head to the side. “Most people in this valley are hapless, mouth-breathing fools. It is why they do not sit where I sit.”
Yennes tasted acid. “I had found it difficult to believe that one could be so callous toward her own people. I thought I might find you repentant.”
“Oh, I have regrets,” Alvira said evenly. “In fact, I have found to be a queen is to be perpetually sorry for miracles I could not weave and to constantly defend those I did.”
Yennes’ chest rose and fell with barely tempered ire. “So, I am to take it that those people on the Ledge are counted among your miracles? That they should remain there so that you may remain?”
“Ah, so we understand each other,” Alvira said. “And now we must discuss whether you may remain.” Her eyes swept over Yennes once more, pausing on her palms before shifting over the rest of her.
Yennes balked. “Whether I may remain?”
“Indeed,” the Queen said. “I’m afraid you pose rather a large threat. Glacian magic? Well, if the people of Terrsaw thought such a thing existed, they would be moved to stamp it out. Fear runs errant when those beasts are merely mentioned.”
Yennes swallowed. “I am no threat. I came here to help.”
“And what a help you could be to me,” the Queen agreed. “I have been looking in every crevice of this kingdom for the very brand of help you might offer, in fact. And so, you see, there is a way I can repay you for your services to the palace.” The Queen smiled kindly at her, as though she were offering something charitable. “I can allow you to live peacefully here, in this valley, where you need never think of the mountain again. Where you needn’t return. No one need know of your… abilities , or hunt you down in our forests. In return, you can rid my wife of that which slowly takes her from me.” At the mention of the Queen Consort, Alvira’s jaw twitched, her eyes turned distant. When she spoke next, the words did not bear the same barbed edges. Her voice was softer, less controlled. “If you were to save her… I would be forever in your debt.”
Yennes thought of the life she was suggesting, one forced into silence, into hiding. One where she could languish in sunshine while the mountain loomed behind her, a constant reminder of that which she had failed to help.
Surely, she had not survived this much, journeyed so far, for it to amount to nothing.
“No,” she spat, and the word imbued her, fortified her. This was right. She felt it at her core. “I won’t accept such a wanting deal.”
“Wanting?” Alvira asked coldly.
“If I cure the Queen, you must act to free the Ledge,” Yennes declared.
“And if I make no such promise?” the Queen questioned, her eyebrow rising.
Yennes lifted her chin. “Then you must hope your men return with that mage you sent them to look for, though I hear they are difficult to find.”
Alvira’s eyebrow rose. “I’m impressed,” she said. “You have quite a bit more spine than I’d guessed.”
Yennes smiled, despite herself. Perhaps her old impetuousness was returning.
Alvira turned her head. “Guards!”
Yennes’ heart stuttered. She heard the clatter of armour returning down the halls and looked pleadingly to the Queen. But there was no change in Alvira’s expression, nothing to warn Yennes of any threat.
The contingent of guards returned to the room and Alvira smiled at them. “We have a new guest to the palace,” she said to no one in particular. “Ensure she feels our welcome.”
Something collided with the back of Yennes’ head. She heard the crack as it connected, felt the instant, splitting pain. Then the room tilted sideways.
And she saw nothing more.