PROLOGUE
On a warm summer day, Queen Mirabella sat on the front steps of the Black Cottage at Midwife Willa’s feet, having her hair braided. Her little sisters—Queen Arsinoe, younger by mere minutes, and Queen Katharine, younger by a full half hour—played together in the yard.
“It is a good thing that black does not show grass marks,” Willa commented when Katharine tripped over her own feet and tumbled, dark skirt flying.
“Ha ha,” Arsinoe taunted. Katharine’s large eyes began to shine and wobble. Mirabella cleared her throat, and Arsinoe glanced at her guiltily. Then Arsinoe sighed and went to help their youngest sister up.
“Why do you not ever tell them to be nice?” Mirabella asked.
“I tell them to be polite.” Willa separated the little queen’s hair with gentle fingers. “It is so long now. So long and so shiny. When you are queen, you must wear it down often and never cover it with a veil.”
Mirabella fought the urge to jerk her head. Even at five years old, she knew that nice and polite were not the same things, though she could not explain exactly why.
Down in the grass, Arsinoe and Katharine had resumed chasing each other. They laughed breathlessly, and when they ran out of laughter, Katharine began to sing a song that Willa had taught them that morning.
“No Sight, no sound, no fault was found, no treason to be had!”
“Yet every one would die that day for Elsabet the mad!” Arsinoe finished the rhyme and raised a stick she had been carrying as a sword. Katharine squealed and ran.
“Why did you teach us that song?” Mirabella asked. It was a queen’s song, the tale of the last oracle queen, but Mirabella did not like it.
“Everyone on the island knows the story of the mad oracle. A queen certainly should.”
“It is only a song.”
“Songs preserve history. So people remember.” Willa lowered her voice, and Mirabella knew that what would follow was only for her ears. “They say that Queen Elsabet’s gift of sight turned on her. That it drove her mad, until in a fit of paranoia she ordered the execution of three whole houses of people.”
“What is ‘paranoia’?”
“Being afraid of or convinced of something that is not there.”
“Were they sure she was wrong?”
“They were sure. And for her crime, Queen Elsabet spent the last twenty years of her reign locked in the West Tower of the Volroy. And now we will have no more sight-gifted queens.”
Mirabella swallowed. She knew why that was. Because every triplet born with the sight gift was drowned. “All because of her?”
Willa peered around and chuckled at the stark look on Mirabella’s face. “Do not be so troubled! It was a long time ago.”
“How long ago?”
“Long, long ago. Before even the mist came to protect us. Queen Elsabet ruled when Fennbirn was part of the world still. Back then, the ports were crowded with ships from countries like noble Centra, rich Valostra, and warlike Salkades.”
Centra, Valostra, Salkades. Names Mirabella had heard before in Willa’s teachings. But not often. Those names had been lost to the mist. They were all the mainland now. They barely existed.
“Twenty years is a long time to be locked away,” Mirabella murmured, and Willa kissed the top of her head. She felt a tug on the ends of her hair, and a finished braid appeared, tossed over her shoulder.
“Never mind that. Go on now and play.”
Mirabella stood and did as she was told. But for the rest of that day, and many days afterward, she thought about Queen Elsabet and the song of the mad oracle. And she wondered how much of it was true.
500 YEARS AGO
THE QUEEN’S COURT
By midmorning, the Queen’s Court was already a flurry of activity. Foreign ambassadors and representatives from the best families in the capital had begun to gather since the moment the doors had been thrown open. They gathered and chatted, in their best mantles and hats, exchanging news and gossip as they waited for the queen. But the queen was nowhere to be found.
“How long do you think it will be today?” Sonia Beaulin asked as she sat at the long table with the rest of the Black Council, flipping a dagger in one hand and then using her war gift to drive it into the wood.
“Not nearly as long as it will take someone to craft a new table.” The elemental, Catherine Howe, raised her eyebrow at the gouges. “Be patient. You have seen how she governs; she is decisive. She doesn’t need the time that other queens do. And she is still young. Still settling.”
“She’s had three years. And we are a young Black Council. Have we not settled?”
“You were settled to begin with,” Catherine said, and tossed her pretty brown curls.
Beside them, seated at the center of the table between war-gifted Sonia and sight-gifted Gilbert Lermont—the queen’s own foster brother—the poisoner Francesca Arron listened. Arrons were, as a rule, very good at listening. And waiting. And Francesca had waited for three years, since her appointment to the Black Council, to be named as its head.
“The queen arrives! Make way!”
Francesca stood with the others as Queen Elsabet and her party entered the room, their flushed cheeks and boisterous voices brightening it at once, even though the open, pillared walls of the summer court were already bathed in sunlight.
“My apologies for keeping you waiting,” Queen Elsabet announced. She was dressed in hunting clothes, her black skirt loose for riding and edged in dirt. She tugged her hands free of her riding gloves and passed them to her maid with a whisper, and the girl ran, no doubt to return with sweets and savories and good wine. Clever queen, to ply them with treats. Soon her lateness would be forgotten.
She walked through the crowd quickly, her legs long enough that most of her party had to jog to keep pace. All of them except her Commander of Queensguard, of course. War-gifted Rosamund Antere, of the Antere family of warriors, stood a head above even the queen.
“You have been hunting,” Francesca said as Queen Elsabet sat down.
“I have.” Her face still glowed from exertion, and her black eyes glittered. It was almost enough to make her appear beautiful. But not quite.
Sonia Beaulin cleared her throat. “Your attendants said you rode out before dawn.”
“Do you know a better time to hunt for grouse?” Elsabet smiled. “Now, if my council is finished interrogating me about my sport . . .” She turned away toward her subjects, and one by one the Black Council sank to their seats, Francesca the last.
Gilbert Lermont stood and read from his ledger the names of those who had arrived first, and they stepped forward. The queen listened with rapt attention as they gave her their news: reporting achievements of trade or crops or the birth of a new high-ranking daughter. It was true what Catherine Howe said: the queen was decisive of manner. Her comments were few but earnest. She was clever but spared little time for flattery, of herself or for those she spoke to.
It was a fine enough way to rule, Francesca noted, but it would not endear her to the people at large. And for someone so decisive, she was taking plenty of time to appoint Francesca to her deserved head of council seat.
She watched the queen laugh her throaty laugh, a deep laugh for a queen so young, still a girl, really, at barely twenty. Some said she was handsome, but they were only being kind. Queen Elsabet had an angled nose and a large mouth; she was no beauty. Not that beauty was required in queens, but a beautiful queen was easier to love.