“The likes of which none of us have ever seen,” Andry admitted, feeling the pull of their hands again. The creatures of Taristan’s army shrieked in his head, their voices like scraping metal and cracking bone. “I know it sounds impossible.”
“I have never known you to be a liar, Andry Trelland. Not even when we were children, fibbing to the cooks for extra desserts.” She drew a breath and dipped her head. “I am sorry for what you have lost.”
Though her junior by two years, Andry was much taller than the Queen. But somehow she was able to look up at him without seeming small.
“They were your own knights, not mine,” he said.
“That’s not what I meant,” the Queen murmured softly, looking him over again. Andry saw the same young girl in her eyes, set apart from the rest of the children. Eager to smile and laugh and play, but isolated too. Forever marked as a princess, without the freedoms of a page boy or a maiden or even a servant child.
The young girl vanished with the tightening of her jaw. “You will speak of this to no one, Squire,” she added, turning back to her throne.
Without thinking, Andry followed quickly on her heels, his gut churning. We were caught off guard. That cannot happen again. “People must be warned—”
Erida did not falter, her voice stern and unyielding. She knew how to make herself heard.
“The Spindles are myth to most, legends and fairy stories, as vanished as Elders or unicorns or any other great magic born of other realms. To speak of one returned, torn open, and a man who would wield it like a spear into our hearts? A man who cannot be harmed at the head of a corpse army?” She glanced at Andry over her shoulder, her gaze like two sapphires. “I am ruler of Galland, but I am a queen, not a king. I must be careful in what I say, and what weapons I give my enemies. I will not give anyone cause to call me weak-minded or mad,” she snapped, clearly upset. “I cannot move without proof. Even then, it would cause panic in my capital. And panic in a city of half a million souls will kill more than any army that walks the Ward. I must be careful indeed.”
Ascal was a bloated metropolis, sprawling across the many islands in the delta of the Great Lion. The streets were crowded, the markets overrun, the canals dirty, and the bridges prone to collapse. There had been riots after King Konrad died: opposition to a girl assuming his throne. Fires in the slums, floods at the ports. Disease. Bad harvests. Religious upheaval between the dedicant orders. A criminal underbelly thick as smoke. Nothing compared to what comes, Andry knew. Nothing compared to what Taristan can do.
He gritted his teeth. “I don’t understand” was all he could muster, running up against the wall of the Queen’s resolve.
It was not to be climbed.
“It isn’t for you to understand, Andry,” she said, knocking on the door to her apartments. It swung open to show her Lionguard knights waiting in the passage beyond, rigid in their armored rows. “You need only obey.”
There was no argument to be had with the Queen of Galland.
Andry bowed at the waist, biting back every retort rising in his throat. “Very well, Your Majesty,” he said.
She paused, the knights shifting into formation as she took one last look at the squire. “Thank you for coming home.” Her face was bittersweet. “At least your mother won’t have another knight to bury.”
I’m not a knight. And I never will be.
His heart tightened in his chest. “A small mercy.”
“May the gods protect us from whatever comes of this,” Erida murmured, turning away.
The door slammed shut, and Andry all but ran from the throne room, eager to tear off his clothes and scrub away the last few weeks. Anger overtook his sorrow long enough to propel him through the passages of the New Palace, his feet guiding him down familiar halls.
The gods had their chance.
Asleep, Lady Valeri Trelland did not look ill. She was tucked in comfortably, a fine silk sleeping cap pulled over her hair. She wore no cares upon her face, the skin around her mouth and eyes relaxed. She seemed younger by decades, still a beauty despite the sickness burrowing in her body. They had similar faces, Andry and his mother. Her skin was darker, a polished ebony, but they shared the same high cheekbones and full lips, and their hair, thick, black, and curly. It was an odd thing for the squire to look into a mirror and see his mother. Odder still to see what she’d been before the sickness came, reaching with wet hands for the candle burning so brightly inside her.
She rattled a breath, and he winced, feeling the raw edge of her pain in his own throat.
Sleep, Mother, he willed, counting the seconds as her chest rose and fell. He braced for a coughing attack, but it never came.
Her bedchamber was hot, the air close, with the firewood piled high in the hearth. Andry sweated in his fresh clothes but did not move from his spot on the wall, wedged between a tapestry and a narrow window.
Even with the fire, he felt the cold, the icy finger of dread running down his spine.
It must be hidden.
The whispers spoke with a voice like winter, brittle and cracking. They were a woman, a man, a child, a crone. Impossible to pin down. He shivered as they returned, rising to a howl inside his head.
It is hidden! he wanted to shout, his jaw clenched tight. The cold played along his ribs.
It must not be spoken of.
His teeth gnashed. I said nothing of it. Not to anyone. Not even the Queen, he answered. It felt like madness. It could be madness, born of slaughter and sorrow.
The voices had first come on the road home, with the Elder stallion beneath him and the Spindleblade lashed to his saddle. He nearly fell from the horse but pushed on, trying to outrun what was already in his head. No matter how far or how fast he rode, they never left him behind.
There was laughter and sadness in the whispers, both in equal measure. This you are bidden, they hissed, letting the words carry over him. Keep it hidden.
Andry wanted to brush the voices away but remained pressed against the wall. He would not break his silent vigil, keeping watch over his ailing mother.
And the Spindleblade concealed beneath her bed, a secret to all but Andry Trelland.
3
BETWEEN THE DRAGON
AND THE UNICORN
Corayne
After two glasses of wine, Corayne’s head felt light. Her mind spun, already dreaming of lands beyond Lemarta. The palisade cities of the Jyd, raider country. Nkona and the Bay of Marvels. Almasad, the grand port of Ibal, home to the largest fleet in the realm. She shook her head and nudged her cup away, sliding it over a familiar, greasy table in the corner of the Sea Queen. The seden bar was named long before the time of Captain an-Amarat, but everyone liked to pretend it was named for her.
Meliz looked the part, sprawled in the corner with her back to the wall and her smile to the room. The candlelight gleamed in her hair, crowning her with rubies. Kastio sat by the door to the street, surrounded by sailors and townspeople alike. With the captain returned, he had no cause to nanny Corayne. He swayed, his lightning-blue eyes lidded, a half-empty glass in hand. The crew were well into their cups of wine and flagons of ale. Their voices filled the common room, their bronzed and sunburned bodies crammed into the narrow space. Most needed a wash. Corayne didn’t mind. Stinking sailors were better than another lonely evening.
She studied them. The Tempestborn picked up two new recruits on the voyage. White-faced twins from the Jyd, barely older than she, but tall and broad, of raider blood.