Two Dark Reigns Read online

  Jules tenses, ready to help, though she knows not how. Emilia’s composure is cracking; the tip of her knife shakes and her voice is strained.

  “Did you think it would be so easy? Did you think I would help you lick your wounds now that they have finally turned on you?”

  “Emilia,” Margaret says softly. “I came to see you first. Before anyone, because I—”

  “Because you knew if I had been the one to find you, you would not have survived the exchange!” She kicks away from the table and stands, her knife still aimed at Margaret’s chest. “You are not welcome here. And you will not speak to me. You left us for them. Now live with that.”

  She walks quickly past Margaret and leaves. Jules twitches to follow. Except that Margaret is still standing in the middle of the room.

  She stays there for a few long moments. Then she turns and walks quietly out. Mathilde waits until her footsteps have faded completely before emerging from behind the bar, cautious as a rabbit from a hole.

  “Put this on,” Mathilde says, and drapes Jules in a red-hooded cloak. “Keep your head down and return to the Vatros house. I will follow Beaulin and see where she lands. And then I will go find Emilia.”

  “You don’t think Emilia went home?”

  Mathilde shakes her head. “When Emilia is troubled, she seeks out the quiet. There are not many places she would go; don’t worry. I will find her.”

  “Why did Margaret Beaulin come here? How does she know Emilia?”

  “Before she was a part of the Black Council, Margaret was Emilia’s mother’s blade-woman. Her war wife. Her lover,” Mathilde explains when Jules’s expression stays blank. “There was a time when they were family.”

  Before Jules can ask more, Mathilde strides out on fast, long legs, leaving Jules in the empty tavern. She knows she should do as Mathilde says. But when she passes the kitchen boy, she cannot help asking,

  “Which way did Emilia go?”

  “That way,” he says, and points. “Toward the temple.”

  “The temple?”

  The boy nods knowingly, and Jules pulls her hood down low. She nods her thanks and presses a coin into his hand.

  It does not take long for Jules to reach the temple. Even with her head down and keeping to the alleys, she cannot lose it: its impressive height and black-and-white marbled stone is impossible to miss. Emilia took her there once before, not long after she first arrived in the city, yet when she steps inside, it still makes her lips part in wonder.

  The temple of Bastian City is so unlike the temple of Wolf Spring that Jules almost cannot reconcile the two as of the same purpose. Wolf Spring Temple is a small one-story circle of white stone, the interior little more than pews and an altar. Beauty is found in its simplicity and in the sprawling, wild gardens that climb across its gates and walls. By contrast, Bastian City Temple is a great hall, with ceilings too high for frescoes. The altar is set back deep as in a cave and twisted through with gold, so that when the sacred candles are lit, the entire altar appears to burn. Embers and rage, waiting to ignite.

  Jules finds Emilia before all of that, in the massive chamber that precedes the main room of worship, staring up at the statue of Queen Emmeline. Queen Emmeline, the great war queen, who stands with marble arms raised, her armor depicted atop the flowing folds of her gown. Over her head, marble spears and arrows hang suspended, ready to pierce the hearts of anyone who would enter the temple to do harm.

  “That was fast,” Emilia says. “I thought Margaret would keep you pinned inside the Bronze Whistle for a little longer. Where is Mathilde?”

  Jules walks slowly to stand beside Emilia beneath the statue. “She followed her.”

  “Ah, Mathilde.” Emilia smiles ruefully. “Always so thorough.”

  “You never told me you were acquainted with a member of the Black Council.”

  “And? There are many people you know whom you have never mentioned.” She sighs, and gestures to Queen Emmeline. “Isn’t she a marvel? A guardian. A sacker of cities. It’s strange, is it not, how good the Undead Queen is with her blades? If I did not know any better, I would say she had the war gift as well.”

  “If she did, would you let her keep her crown?”

  Emilia considers a moment. “No.”

  “Mathilde told me about your mother and Margaret.”

  “Oh?” She spins away and pulls her knives from her sides to flip them back and forth, catching them by the hilt and then by the blade. “But did she tell you everything?”

  “Only that they were . . . blade-women? But I don’t know exactly what that means.”

  “It speaks to the bond between warriors. Margaret Beaulin was like a mother to me.”

  “Where was . . . where was your father?”

  “He was there, too.”

  “He was there, too?” Jules exclaims. Then she clears her throat. “I’m sorry. I’ve just never heard of that.”

  “I am not surprised. You naturalists are so conventional. You do not have the fire that we have.”

  “You know, you only refer to me as a naturalist when it’s convenient for you,” says Jules, and narrows her eyes.

  “Yes. And every time I insult them, it is your war gift that retaliates.” She sighs. “My father was here. Too. A blade-woman does not replace a husband, the father of your children. It is a different kind of bond.”

  “Are there blade-men?”

  “Yes. Though blade-husbands are rare. But you are missing the point, Jules. Mathilde did not tell you everything.”

  “What else is there?”

  “When Margaret left to serve the poisoners, it broke my mother’s heart. It was that heartbreak that allowed her to fall so ill. It was that heartbreak that killed her.” She spins her knives up into her hands. “And Margaret Beaulin did not even attend her burning. She did not even send a letter.”

  “I’m sorry,” says Jules, and Emilia spits upon the floor. “Is that why you hate the poisoners so much? Because they stole her from you?”

  “I don’t need that reason,” Emilia says. “And they did not ‘steal’ her. She chose to go.”

  “I know. I just meant that I know something about being left behind. I learned plenty when Madrigal left me for the mainland.”

  “We will leave soon,” Emilia says, slashing at the air. “To begin the call to arms. You cannot stay in Bastian City now that she is here. The Black Council may have ousted her, but she will still jump at the chance to change their minds, by delivering them their favorite fugitive.” She levels the tip of her knife at Jules’s chest and smiles slightly. “Besides, if I stay, I may end up gutting her in the street.”

  “Soon,” Jules whispers. “How soon?”

  “Tonight. It is time. Margaret’s arrival is another sign.”

  “Maybe a sign you should stay and work things out with her.”

  Emilia shakes her head. “The path is set. Our bards have already begun to sing your tale in towns and villages through the north.”

  “My tale?”

  “The tale of the strongest naturalist in generations, and the strongest warrior as well. The tale of the girl who bears the legion curse without madness, and who will unite the island under a new crown, and a new way of life. You already have soldiers, Jules Milone. Now they just need to see you, in the flesh.”

  Soldiers. Warriors. A prophecy. Jules takes a deep breath as her palms begin to sweat. All of her blood seems to drop into her feet.

  “Tonight just seems too fast.”

  Emilia sighs. “Too fast,” she says, and Jules’s eyes snap to hers as the spears and arrows over Queen Emmeline’s statue begin to rattle. “When the traitor queens ran away, did they take all your courage with them?”

  “I don’t lack for courage,” Jules growls. “But nor do I lack for brains. These stories you’re spinning build me up too high. Everyone we meet will be disappointed.”

  “When I saw you at the Queens’ Duel I was not disappointed.”

  “Reluctant p
eople don’t make the best figureheads.”

  “Reluctant.” Emilia advances and presses her forearm across Jules’s neck, forcing her back against the wall. “Reluctant but curious. You wonder about the truth of the prophecy. Even you want to know how far you can go, if pushed.”

  “No, I don’t.” Jules pivots and shoves Emilia to the wall, so hard that she slides up, lifted clear off her feet. “It’s a nice story. Something new. The poisoners off the throne. But it’s only a story. A dream, and I’ve dreamed those kinds of dreams before. They don’t work out.”

  Me on her council and you on her guard. She can hear Joseph’s words so clearly it is as if he is there to whisper them into her ear. She backs away from Emilia and is surprised to feel Emilia’s hand touch her cheek.

  “Come with us, Jules Milone. Let us show you what we can do. And I promise you will start to believe again.”

  THE VOLROY

  Katharine sits at the head of a long oak table as her Volroy staff present her with samples of fabric. New curtains, they say, for the king-consort’s chamber.

  “I like this brocade,” she says, and taps one with an abundance of gold thread. In truth, they have shown her so many that she can scarcely tell them apart. And she does not really care enough to choose. But nearly every room in the West Tower must be refurnished and freshened after being so long vacant, and redecorating seems to ease the servants’ minds.

  She cranes her neck to look past them out the eastward-facing windows. It is a small opening, a mere stone cutout, but she can see the sky, and a bit of the sea in the distance. The vast, empty sea. Since the strange deaths of the sailors sent out to search for her sisters’ bodies, few have dared the waters. Only the bravest venture out from the port now and only on the clearest days. There are great profits being made by those few, but their sea-catch and cargo holds are not sufficient to meet the demands of the entire capital. Goods in transit have begun to clog the roads. And the price of fish is so high that Katharine has ordered that the Volroy purchase none of it. Let what comes ashore go to her people instead.

  Unfortunately, the gesture did nothing to stem the nervous whispers that wind through the marketplaces daily: that the bodies the mist brought were a warning or that they were a macabre gift for the Undead Queen. Either way, the people are afraid it was a sign of more deaths to come, now that Katharine is on the throne.

  “Queen Katharine. Your portrait has been completed. The master painter would like to present it to you.”

  “Show him in.” She stands as the servants whisk away the fabric.

  “This is a nice surprise,” says Pietyr. All day he has been sitting in the corner, poring over correspondence from the mainland. More payments to be made to Nicolas’s family, no doubt. “We did not expect a completed portrait for at least another week.”

  They wait quietly as the painter and his apprentice enter and bow and set the covered portrait and easel in the center of the room.

  “Master Bethal.” Katharine steps forward to greet the painter and take his hands. “How lovely to see you.”

  Bethal drops to one knee.

  “The honor is mine. It was a great pleasure to paint a queen of such beauty.” He rises and motions to his apprentice to remove the cloth.

  Katharine stares at the painting, silent for so long that the smile on Master Bethal’s face begins to crack.

  “Is something wrong?” He looks from the portrait and back to her.

  Pietyr turns toward her.

  “Kat?”

  The portrait is perfect. The queen in the painting has her same pale, slightly hollow cheek, her same regal neck. Somehow it has managed to portray her smallness and the delicacy of her bones. Even the little coral snake, which when she posed was only a coil of rope, has been transformed into the very likeness of Sweetheart.

  “My queen? If you are displeased—”

  “No,” she says finally, and Bethal exhales with relief. “You have captured me utterly. It is so lifelike that I am tempted to ask if my snake also modeled for you in secret.” She steps closer, eye to eye with her image. The eyes are the only things he got wrong. The queen in the portrait’s eyes are serene. Pensive. Perhaps a little playful. There is nothing looking out from behind them.

  “It will be hung in the throne room immediately.” Pietyr shakes the painter’s hand. In the throne room it will go, until her reign is over. Then they will pull it down and take it to be hung in the Hall of Queens.

  The last in a long line, she thinks, and unconsciously touches her stomach. Her poison stomach and her poison womb, filled with poisoned blood that killed her first king-consort and may kill every king-consort who comes after.

  “What is that?” She points into the painting’s background at a table piled high with a poisoned feast: glossy belladonna berries and sugar-crystallized scorpions, a roasted fowl glazed a sinister purple.

  But poisoned food is not the only thing on the table. Mixed in with the feast are bones. Long thigh bones and rib cages, tainted with blood and shadow. And on the end, in plain view, is a human skull.

  “It is for you,” Bethal stammers. “Our Undead Queen.”

  Katharine frowns, but before she can object, Pietyr caresses her cheek.

  “Embrace it. It is what sets you apart. It is your legacy.”

  “A prosperous, peaceful reign is the only legacy I need.” But no one will listen. Queen Katharine, of the poisoner dynasty, the portrait’s plaque will read. And beneath that, Katharine the Undead.

  On the way to the council chamber, Bree Westwood falls into step beside her.

  “Good day,” says Bree as she tries and fails to execute a proper curtsy while walking.

  “Good morning, Bree.” Katharine’s eyes move over the other girl’s burnished brown waves, her pale blue dress embroidered with lilies. “You are always so effortlessly lovely. I wonder, did you learn those tricks from my sister?”

  Bree’s eyes widen but only for a moment.

  “Or perhaps, my queen, she learned them from me.”

  Katharine smiles. The girl has cheek.

  Ahead of them, the doors of the Black Council chamber are swung wide. She can see Pietyr inside, his eyebrows raised in wonder at the sight of them walking together. And she hears the fractured murmurings of two sides at odds. It is suddenly too exhausting to bear.

  “Will you walk with me a moment, Bree?”

  “Of course.”

  They take a sharp turn. Inside the chamber, Genevieve rises in alarm, and Katharine halts her with a finger. She knows they are eager to discuss the findings of the autopsies performed on the bodies of the mist victims even though nothing was found. Nothing. No answers. No solutions.

  “Some air by the window, perhaps,” says Bree.

  The window has been modernized, as some on the lower levels of the Volroy have been, and contains glass, but the panes have been opened to allow in the late-summer breeze. How Katharine misses Greavesdrake. The manor house is much more comfortable. More luxurious in so many ways. But it is nowhere near as grand. It is not the monument that the Volroy is.

  Katharine and Bree look out the window together, as companionable as if they are old friends. In the courtyard, beneath the trees, that little priestess of Mirabella’s crouches near the hedge, feeding an enormous flock of birds.

  “She spends quite a lot of time with birds,” Katharine says. “I am always seeing this bird or that flying past her. Black ones with smart little tufts on their heads.” Bree stiffens. “She must have had a strong naturalist gift before she took the bracelets for it to linger so.”

  Bree turns, suddenly steely for a girl of so little substance.

  “I am trying to figure out why you wanted to walk with me.”

  “Perhaps I am tired of council strife.”

  “Already? You have only just begun. Should we start to hope that your triplets come even sooner than Queen Camille’s?”

  The dead queens jerk inside her. Snap her neck.

 
Katharine stiffens until they quiet. “Perhaps I am afraid.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Of course. You must think me truly oblivious if you do not think I fear what this mist means. That it has killed my people. We are all, afraid.”

  “We are.” Bree looks back out toward the priestess, Elizabeth. “I have been listening in the square. Word of this spreads across the island like a cry of alarm. It burns like a torch. But underneath that . . .”

  “What?”

  “They hope that it is nothing. That it will go away. They want to leave it to you and ignore it.”

  Katharine laughs softly. “Well. You must not hate them for that. It is my job.” She leans against the sill. “It occurs to me, now that you are here, and . . . Elizabeth is here, that I have never had a friend like the friends my sisters had. I had Pietyr. I have Pietyr. But I do not think he counts in the same way.”

  “That . . . ,” Bree says, and looks down. “Surely that cannot be true, Queen Katharine. There are so many Arrons . . . so many poisoners here in the capital.”

  Katharine cocks her head. “No. I had Pietyr. I had Natalia.” Inside her veins, the dead queens tremble; they reach out as though to warm her blood with cold, dead fingers. And yes, she thinks, I have you.

  “Queen Katharine!”

  She and Bree turn. Three of her queensguard struggle with a man in a brown shirt at the end of the hall.

  “What is this now?” Katharine sighs. She approaches and motions for the queensguard to ease before they cuff him on the back of head and render him unconscious. “What is happening?”

  “He says he comes from Wolf Spring, my queen. He says he must speak with you.”

  He looks up at her, breathing hard. Blood leaks down his chin and neck from his lower lip, likely split during the scuffle.

  “You did not need to be so rough with him,” Bree snaps from just behind her. “He is only one man. And unarmed.”

  “We take no chances with the safety of the Queen Crowned.”

  Katharine steps closer. She leans down and cannot resist wiping the blood from his face with her fingers. The dead queens like it as they like nothing else. Blood from living veins. Pain from living bodies.