Queen of Hearts (The Crown) (14 page)

“Control her!” the Club Card screamed. “She’s mad! She’ll tip the platform!”

Wardley yanked Dinah up. His brown eyes met hers, and Dinah saw a bewildered amazement dance across his handsome face. The man looked away from them as he lumbered toward the center of the platform, grumbling to himself about Cards and whores.

“Mad, just like Faina Baker. With any luck, they’ll kill each other, and we won’t have to put up with this constant stream of visitors.” He glowered at Wardley as he grabbed a thick metal chain that hung through the center of the platform. “Grab onto something solid.”

Dinah wrapped her fingers around the iron swirls on the platform. Wardley kept one hand wrapped firmly around her chain and the other around his sword hilt. The man released a loud grunt and yanked downward on the rusty lever, which was thicker than Dinah’s arm. The platform gave a shudder and suddenly they were hurtling up into the tower, chains rattling above them. Dinah saw flashes of light and the doorways to a dozen cells as they surged upward, the walls narrowing the higher they went. Iron wheels wailed against the metal chains as they neared the pulley. The guard used his foot to pull a lever that lay flush against the floor, and the platform ground to a violent halt. Nausea rushed up from Dinah’s stomach and she choked back bitter bile.

“Faina’s cell is number 10/6.” He eyed Dinah again. She nibbled on her knuckle and eyed him warily. “Make it quick. Once Cray releases her from the root, there’s only a short time that she’ll be able to speak before. . . .”

“Before?” Wardley took a bold leap off of the platform, dragging Dinah with him. The platform swung in the empty air.

“You’ll see. I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Cray! Faina has more visitors.”

A scrawny boy ran out of a narrow tunnel, his feet black and bare. An old Card clasp was pinned to his ancient Card tunic. The fabric was worn so thin that Dinah could see the boy’s breaths rattle his ribs. He gave them a toothless grin before bending over in front of Dinah. At first she thought he was bowing, and a rush of panic held her still, but then he began touching her boots. “Fancy boots we have here. I reckon maybe I’ll get my hands on these sooner or later, if they’re not snatched.”

She glanced down at her wool dress and brown boots. They were lower class by her standards, but now she realized with a flush of shame that the clothing she donned to appear poor was still richer than anything this boy had ever seen. He stood and stared at her face with curiosity.

“Follow me, lass. Don’t walk too close to the cells.” He gave a laugh. “Course, you’ll be seeing these cells close enough, so it probably doesn’t matter if your fellow tower mates get to know you a little better.”

Wardley gave the boy a stern look. “Take us to Faina, Cray.”

The spiral leading upward grew tighter and tighter until Dinah felt like she was simply turning in a circle. Looking down made her dizzy, but looking up was even worse. As the pointed ceiling of the tower loomed closer and closer, the shimmery black wood brushed the top of Dinah’s hood. When it seemed they could climb no farther, Cray appeared to step right into the wall. He poked his head out. “You slums coming?”

Dinah found herself led by Wardley through a slender opening in the wood. Roots twisted overhead; this part of the tower seemed to be the least solid of the structure. Every once in a while a tiny pink snowflake would find its way in through cracks in the wood.
It’s so beautiful
, thought Dinah, watching it dissolve against the black ground.
Such a small beauty in such a terrible place.
The smell wasn’t as severe up here, a feat aided by the thin slats of blinding light that snuck through the thick black wood.

Cray pulled a huge ring of keys from the wall. “She’s just up in here. I just gotta pull her off the tree.”

Unlike the lower cells, this particular cell had a thick iron door, interwoven with oily black roots. Pressing out from the other side, a handprint was etched into the iron. Someone had pressed so hard and long that the image lingered on. Dinah’s stomach gave a violent lurch and the chains binding her shook and leapt. Cray stared for a moment at her hands and then turned back to the door.

“Stand just inside the door. It takes a few seconds to free her from the root.”

Chapter Ten

It was hard to make out exactly what they were seeing in the shadowy light. Faina’s cell was dark, but once Dinah’s eyes adjusted, she could make out a stone slab for sleeping, a chamber pot, and a threadbare rug on the floor. From there, Dinah’s eyes traveled up the wall to Faina Baker’s face, all while fighting the horror rising up inside of her.

Faina was pressed against the wall, held tight by leather bonds that looped over her abdomen and chest. She writhed against them, her feet slipping in the black fluid that dripped down from above. Thin tendrils of black roots snaked out of the wall and into Faina Baker’s open mouth, nose, and ears. All down her body, the black roots circled and twisted, moving slowly, leaving a thin black film as they slithered inch by inch. Dinah gripped Wardley’s arm as a tendril crawled its way up Faina’s face.

Faina’s eyes were open, frozen in panic; a low moan came out of her mouth filled with black roots. Cray sauntered up to her and unhooked the leather straps from her torso, narrowly avoiding the roots that reached ever so slightly for his hand.

Wardley’s mouth twisted with anger. “What are doing to her? How can you allow this? What is . . . ?” He stepped forward, forgetting himself. Dinah could see he was unhinged, his hand on his sword hilt. Forgetting chivalry and honor was not an easy thing. Dinah yanked backwards on her chain and he remembered where he was. Cray untethered Faina and she slouched forward. The roots slithered back from her body, retreating from her nose, mouth, and ears with a revolting sucking sound. Finally, the roots released, and Faina Baker crumpled like a rag doll onto the dirty floor.

“You strap her to the tower!? That’s the torture for high treason?”

Cray gave a filthy, toothless grin. “Aye. What could be worse than being strapped to the very source of the poison that corrupts the towers? The roots take to the skin, and as you can tell, they love an opening. Eventually the poison seeps directly into the brain. It gives hallucinations and fevers, and some say the ability to see beyond the towers. The future and the past, and everything in between. The roots make you forget who you are, make you forget that you are human. What else could we do to these criminals that is worse than losing who they are?”

He laughed and Dinah imagined silencing him with the flat of her palm. There was a faint outline left on the wall where Faina had been strapped, a root twisting itself back into place. An oily mist condensed in the head area.

“Make it quick,” snapped Cray.

Dinah stepped forward. Faina Baker was a shred of a woman. Her arms were as thin as sticks, and thick gray veins ran the length of them. The roots left black dirt behind where they had been clinging to her face and torso, as if she had been burned. What once had been lovely blue eyes were now sunken into two dark holes that stared out of a gaunt face.

“My gods,” muttered Wardley to Cray. “How can you live with yourself?”

Faina Baker was a walking skeleton. Her once-honeyed yellow hair was streaked with white, her lips dark with blood and bite marks. Faina Baker looked up at Dinah from the ground, a string of drool sneaking out of her mouth and pooling on the ground. She began singing in an eerily beautiful voice—high and lovely, her tears mingling with her warbling vibrato.

“You have a few minutes, that’s all.” Cray walked to the cell door.

Wardley gave Dinah a nudge forward as Cray slammed the cell door shut behind them.
I could be stuck in here forever
, thought Dinah, with a rush of panic
. I should never have come
. She knelt before Faina in the muck. The woman lay still on the ground, her fingernails tracing broken hearts in the mud.

“Hello Faina, my name is Dinah. I don’t believe we’ve met before, but somehow I think you have information for me.”

Faina reached out and grazed her blackened fingers down Dinah’s face, leaving foul trails. Her vacant eyes looked through Dinah. “I know you,” she whispered. “The Queen, the Queen. You aren’t the Queen, not yet. Keep your head.”

“I am. I received a note, to come here, to find YOU, to talk to you. Who are you?”

Faina blinked a few times and looked directly at Dinah. A moment of clarity lit up her eyes as the black marks left by the roots faded into her skin. Her arm reached out and clutched Dinah’s fingers roughly. “She’s not who you think she is, she is a good girl, be merciful, please . . . the one you call the Duchess. . . .”

Vittiore
? Dinah’s heart skipped a beat.
This was about Vittiore?

“Are you talking about Vittiore?”

“He came in the night. With the devil steed, and many men. He was looking for something, looking for the yellow and the blue, looking for something he would never have again, something he only had once.” Her voice lifted in a song. “Blond, blond like the sun on the shore she was. . . .” Her eyes widened. “The wrong crown waits for her. The strings will tighten around her arms, and she will dance, oh she will dance for her head, strings around her wrists like roots. Curls in blood, curls in blood. . . .”

The woman was making no sense. It reminded Dinah of every conversation she had ever had with Charles. She took Faina’s hand in her own. “Please try not to speak in riddles. I need you to remember what you know.”

Faina blinked. “Have you seen my baby? She was here, once, inside of me. Now there is nothing but the black, the roots; they show me things. I know things. She will find her death under the heart, trampled under the devil steed, just like me. The palace from his story will break her.”

“She’s mad!” hissed Wardley.

Faina raised her head to look at Wardley and licked her lips. “You must have been mad,” she said, “or you would not have come here.”

Dinah pulled Faina to her feet and rested her on the stone platform that served as her bed. “What do you know? I need you to tell me. THINK. How did you get here?”

Faina’s lower lip trembled and black tears that looked like ink began rolling down her face. “We did nothing but serve Wonderland, all our lives. Catching clams and oysters for the King’s pleasure and table. I have seen the beauty of a fiery sunset over the Western Sea, of shells in my baby’s hand. And then it was all gone, in the flash of a silver blade. All because of
you
. The Queen’s cold bed was for naught, but she will, oh yes, she will rise like the sun, my own little sun . . . she will possess all that you desire.”

She leaned against Dinah, who held her breath against the wave of nausea that passed through her. Faina smelled like nothing she could ever describe—the smell of the tower itself, an ancient evil, filth and death.

“Please, Your Grace! Please don’t let them tie me to the tree. The root shows me things, horrible things, beautiful things. . . .” She started babbling incoherently.

“That’s Yurkei,” hissed Wardley. “She’s speaking Yurkei!”

Dinah listened closely but all her language lessons were useless. The Yurkei that Faina was speaking was a strange blend of sounds and random words. Faina’s body gave a jerk, and then another. Dinah held Faina’s head gently with her hands as she thrashed in the darkness.

“I know,” she murmured. “I know it hurts. I know it feels horrible to not have control.”

She flashed to Charles, how his mind was a wild, unknowable thing, always seeing but never sharing, straining but always failing to make a human connection. With a loud scream, Faina’s seizing ended and she laid her head on Dinah’s lap. Her bright-blue eyes shone with a new clarity, her voice unwavering. The madness had retreated. “You have to go,” she whispered. “Straddle the devil. And when the time comes, do not open the marked door. Please!” She grabbed Dinah’s arm, long nails ripping into her pale skin. “Please! Do not heed the blood of secrets.”

“What do you mean?” Dinah heard the faint sound of marching from down below. The Clubs were changing their watch.

“It’s time to leave, right now, we have to go!” insisted Wardley. “We will not be so lucky with the night Clubs coming in.”

Dinah leapt up. “We can’t leave her here like this—they’ll bind her to the tower again!”

“What did you think went on in the towers? Tea and tarts? That isn’t our choice to make! She is a prisoner here, and you are the Princess. We need to leave. You won’t get any more information from her!”

He was right. Faina was clawing her way toward the back of the cell. Wardley reached into his baldric and pulled out a thin dagger, barely the width of a finger. He placed it on the ground and kicked it across the floor toward Faina’s blackened hand.

“What are you doing?” demanded Dinah.

“A kindness,” snapped Wardley. He yanked Dinah to her feet. She tore away from him and knelt beside Faina, covering her with her cloak.

“I’ll come back for you, I will,” she insisted.

Faina closed her eyes. “Not this time. There will be a bloody end for Faina, no baby at her breast.” She looked up at Dinah, a peaceful contentment passing over her features. “Oh, my poor Queen. Your heart will sway your hand.”

“CRAY!” Wardley shouted, banging his sword against the lock. “Open this cell at once.”

Cray trotted out of the darkness and unlocked it with a smile. “Did you have your way with her? She was a pretty one when she came in, not so much now that the tree has taken her for itself. . . .”

Wardley slapped him across the face with an open hand. “A true man never needs to take by force.”

Cray stared at Wardley with awe as he pushed past. “I’ll strap her back up now. C’mon Faina.”

“Can’t you just leave her alone?” snapped Dinah.

“Nope. We are on orders from the King himself to have her strapped in from sunrise to sunset.” He easily propped Faina against the wall and pulled the leather strap across her chest. Roots began to stir and pulse away from the wall.

“Even I think it’s cruel. The most I’ve ever seen a prisoner strapped in to the tower is an hour a day. And that was for the Gray Turncoat.”