Elyssa felt sure that her mother was considering all of these factors. Her brow was furrowed, and she tapped her nails on the arm of the throne, a sign of impatience. The Keep Priest, Father Timpany, standing just beside the throne, was not so restrained; he glared openly at Elyssa, who glared back. Six months before, God’s Church had excommunicated all members of the Blue Horizon, and the movement had responded promptly by robbing a caravan carrying an entire quarter’s tithe and hanging the escorting priest from a lamppost in the New London Circus. Atheism was the Blue Horizon’s most striking feature, distinguishing it from all the tiny rebellions that had come before. Blue Horizon speakers routinely counseled their audiences not to fear Hell, for Hell was here. It was a movement designed to draw in the poor and the downtrodden, but for Queen Arla, the Blue Horizon presented a political problem, and the Queen was nothing if not a creature of politics. She could not afford to alienate the Church or the nobility by being soft on the revolutionaries, but even less could she afford to anger the poor . . . not now, not with a popular terrorist movement abroad, one that would take all recruits. Father Timpany could glare all he liked.
Power politics, Elyssa thought, staring up at the Queen. You wanted me to learn, Mother, and I am learning.
“Our daughter’s tender heart is well known,” the Queen announced. Her knuckles were white points against the gleaming silver arms of the Tear throne. “We have heard her plea for clemency and been moved. Our own medics will tend to this young man’s wounds, and he will be released as soon as he is well. Culp, take him to the Queen’s Wing, and see that no further harm befalls him.”
Elyssa finally dared a glance behind her. Welwyn Culp nodded, his face expressionless, and signaled for two members of the army to help him support Gareth. As they took him up the aisle, Gareth’s feet dragged; he had fainted. Elyssa thought she might faint herself; the moment her mother broke eye contact, she stood and moved quickly back to her corner of the dais. Her legs were trembling. Standing up to her mother in private was one thing; doing it in public was another matter entirely. Father Timpany had begun to mutter in the Queen’s ear, but the Queen waved him to silence. The crowd murmured uncertainly, and Elyssa wondered if they could feel it as well, the odd power around these Blue Horizon people. William Tear was long dead, and yet—
“Majesty,” Gullys, the chamberlain, announced. “Lord March.”
“March,” the Queen greeted him warmly; in a world of courtiers and panderers, Lord March was a rare genuine friend. The Queen’s voice was so casual and pleased that only Elyssa knew what lay beneath.
I am in trouble, she thought. Quite a bit of it.
And what of that? a caustic voice spoke up in her mind. This kingdom is in trouble, Elyssa. Grow up.
“What can we do for you, Lord March?”
“Majesty, I come on behalf of the Almont Coalition.”
The Queen’s pleased smile melted away. Elyssa bit back a smile of her own. The Almont Coalition was a loose union of some three hundred nobles whose acres covered the Almont Plain. Lord March was a friend, yes, but first and foremost, he was a noble. This would be about the drought, for certain.
“And what would the Coalition have of us?” the Queen asked, her voice cold.
“The drought, Majesty. The situation in the Almont has become critical.”
That was an understatement, Elyssa thought. She read the Crown harvest reports, probably more carefully than her mother did. After two straight dry years, there had been almost no snow over the past winter, not even in the mountains, and it had not rained once since February. The vast farming plain of the Almont was utterly dependent on the two rivers, Caddell and Crithe, but at last report, both rivers had been down several feet, and the tributaries were almost dry. The Tear’s natural irrigation systems were crippled. If it didn’t rain soon, there would be no harvest to speak of.
“There is no water, Majesty,” Lord March continued. “The top of the Crithe is already drying up. There are barely any early crops.”
“Surely you have hoarded water?” the Queen asked. “My intelligence says you have a cistern on your acreage.”
“Your Majesty is well informed,” Lord March replied, and Elyssa could hear the displeasure in his voice. “But the cistern is barely enough to carry me and mine through the winter. If the rivers run dry, we will need all of our stored water to drink.”
“Well? Do you think I can compel the rain?”
“Perhaps, Majesty,” Lord March replied, executing a polite bow. Chuckles echoed through the hall. “But our concern is food. What little crop has sprouted so far is wilted. I will not have enough to feed my household, let alone my tenants. I have given them license to hunt game on my lands, to ward off starvation through the harvest. But that will not last once winter comes. I have twelve hundred tenants on my acreage, Majesty. Even with a tight belt, my hoarded stores won’t be enough to feed a tenth of them through the winter. Every landowner in the Almont faces the same problem.”
“And again I ask, March: what do you want me to do about it?”
“The Crown storehouses, Majesty. We seek an assurance that if the drought continues and worse comes to worst, Your Majesty will open her stores to us, for distribution to our tenants.”
“The weather will turn, March.”
“Yes, Majesty, but if it doesn’t—”
“It will,” the Queen replied, in a tone that cut off all discussion. “This is the only assurance I give you.”
Lord March clearly longed to argue, but after another moment he bowed again and said, “I have apprised you of our concerns. Thank you, Majesty.”
“Dismissed.”
Lord March retreated into the crowd. Elyssa stared after him, biting her lip. She rarely ventured out into the city; security concerns were too great. But she read her mother’s intelligence reports. The city had already begun to feel the bite of the failing harvest; even now, in May, prices for produce were rocketing upward. If the drought went on, things would only grow worse. Water was not a concern in the city, at least not to drink; unlike the Almont, which was dependent on the two rivers, New London got its drinking water from a deep-buried aquifer that ran down from the Clayton Mountains to join the Caddell south of the city. But the aquifer would not provide food for the city, and nothing would help the million tenants in the Almont. Men could live for some time without food, but no one could survive for more than a few days without water.
“Majesty,” someone said below her, interrupting Elyssa’s thoughts. Lord Tennant stood at the base of the throne, a heavily cloaked figure on his arm.
“What can we do for you, Tennant?” the Queen asked. She had begun to drink her tea again, giving the impression that she had dismissed Lord March’s dire warnings entirely from her mind, but Elyssa didn’t know whether she truly had; her mother was an enigma when she chose to be.