The Queen of the Tearling (17 page)

Unable to debate that point, Kelsea turned back to the mirror. Thinking of the cottage had reminded her of something Barty had said, one week and a lifetime ago. “Where does my food come from?”

“The food's secure, Lady. Carroll didn't trust the Keep kitchens, and he had a kitchen specially constructed out there.” Mace gestured toward the door. “One of the women we brought in is a tiny thing named Milla. She made breakfast for everyone this morning.”

“It was good,” Kelsea remarked. It
had
been good . . . griddle cakes and mixed fruit in some sort of cream, and Kelsea had eaten for at least two.

“Milla's already staked out the kitchen as her province, and she means business; I hardly dare go in there without her permission.”

“Where do we get the actual food from?”

“Don't worry. It's secure.”

“Do the women seem scared?”

Mace shook his head. “Mildly concerned about their children, perhaps. One of the babies has some sort of retching sickness; I already sent for a doctor.”

“A doctor?” Kelsea asked, surprised.

“I know of two Mort doctors operating in the city. One we've used before; he's greedy but not dishonest.”

“Why only two?”

“The city won't support more. It's rare that a Mort doctor emigrates, and the rates they charge are so exorbitant that few can afford them.”

“What about in Bolton? Or Lewiston?”

“Bolton has one doctor that I know of. I don't think Lewiston has any at all.”

“Is there a way to tempt more doctors from Mortmesne?”

“Doubtful, Lady. The Red Queen discourages defection, but some still make the attempt. But professionals have a comfortable life in Mortmesne. Only the very greedy come to the Tear.”

“Only two doctors,” Kelsea repeated, shaking her head. “There's a lot to do, isn't there? I don't even know where to start.”

“Start by getting the crown on your head.” Mace tightened a final strap on her arm and stepped back. “We're done. Let's go.”

Kelsea took a deep breath and followed him out the door. They emerged into a large room, perhaps two hundred feet from end to end, with a high ceiling like her mother's chamber. The floor and walls were blocks of the same grey stone as the exterior of the Keep. There were no windows; the only light came from torches mounted in brackets on the walls. The left wall of the chamber was interrupted by a door-filled hallway that stretched for perhaps fifty yards and ended in another door.

“Quarters, Lady,” Mace murmured beside her.

On her right, the wall opened into what was clearly a kitchen; Kelsea could hear the clang of pans being washed. Carroll's idea, Mace had said, and it was a good one; according to Barty, the Keep kitchens, some ten floors below, had over thirty staff and multiple entrances and exits. There was no way to secure them.

“Do you think Carroll is dead?”

“Yes,” Mace replied, his face crossed by a momentary shadow. “He always said that he'd die bringing you back, and I never believed him.”

“His wife and children. I made a promise in that clearing.”

“Worry later, Lady.” Mace turned and began to bark orders at the guards stationed on the walls. More guards emerged from the quarters at the end of the hall. Men surrounded Kelsea until she could see nothing but armor and shoulders. Most of her guards seemed to have bathed recently, but there was still an overwhelming man-smell, horses and musk and sweat, which made Kelsea feel as though she was in the wrong place. Barty and Carlin's cottage had always smelled like lavender, Carlin's favorite scent, and although Kelsea had hated the cloying smell, at least she had always known where she was.

Mhurn crowded behind her, boxing her in. Kelsea thought about greeting him and decided not to; Mhurn looked as though he hadn't slept in days, his face far too white and his eyes rimmed in red. To her right was Dyer, his expression hard and truculent behind his red beard. Pen was on her left, and Kelsea smiled, relieved to see him unharmed. “Hello, Pen.”

“Lady.”

“Thanks for the loan of your horse; I'll return your armor as soon as may be.”

“Keep it, Lady. It was a good thing you did yesterday.”

“It probably won't make any difference. I've doomed myself.”

“You've doomed us all with you, Lady,” Dyer remarked.

“Stuff that, Dyer!” Pen snapped.

“You stuff it, runt. The very moment that shipment doesn't arrive, the Mort army begins to mobilize. You're fucked as well.”

“We're all fucked,” Elston rumbled behind her. His voice came thickly through his broken teeth, but he didn't seem so hard to understand now. “Don't listen to Dyer, Lady. We've watched this kingdom sink into the mud for years. You might've come too late to save it, but it's a good thing, all the same, to try to stop the slide.”

“Aye,” someone joined in behind her. Kelsea blushed, but was spared from replying by Mace, who shoved his way through the group of guards to station himself on her right.

“Tighten it up, men,” he growled. “If I could get through, so could anyone else.”

The journey to the Great Hall was an ordeal of low grey hallways cut by torchlight. Kelsea suspected that Mace was taking a roundabout route, but still she was daunted by the endless corridors and staircases and tunnels. She hoped there was a map of the Keep somewhere, or she would never dare to venture outside her own wing.

They passed many men and women dressed in white, with hoods drawn low over their foreheads. From Carlin's descriptions, Kelsea knew that these must be Keep servants. The Keep had its housekeepers and plumbers, but it was also stuffed to bursting with unnecessary services: bartenders, hairdressers, masseuses, all of them on the Crown's payroll. Keep servants were supposed to remain inconspicuous when they weren't needed, and they drew out of Kelsea's way to hug the wall as she passed. After passing perhaps the twentieth servant, Kelsea felt her temper beginning to unravel, and no amount of gnawing on the inside of her cheek could bring it back into line. This was where her treasury had been going for the past two decades: into luxury and cages.

At last they crossed a small antechamber toward massive double doors made of some sort of oak. It didn't look like Tearling oak, though. The grain was too even, and the doors were covered in elaborate carvings of what appeared to be zodiacal signs. Tearling oak didn't carve well; Kelsea had tried to whittle it with her knife as a child, only to find the wood chipping away in chunks and splinters. She tried to get a better look at the doors, but had no time; at her approach, they opened as if by magic, and the tide of guards pushed her through.

To her left, a herald shouted, “The Princess Apparent!” Kelsea grimaced, but quickly found other things to focus on. She was in a room of greater size than she had ever imagined, with ceilings at least a good two hundred feet high and the far wall so distant that she couldn't clearly see the faces of those who stood there. The floor had been assembled from enormous tiles of dark red stone, each some thirty feet square, and the room was interspersed with massive white pillars that could only be Cadarese marble. Several skylights had been carved into the ceiling, allowing random shafts of bright sunlight to arrow down to the floor. It was eerie, the enormous torch-lit room broken by those random scatterings of white-hot light. As Kelsea and her guards passed through one beam, she felt momentary heat on her arm, then it was gone.

But for the shuffling and clinking as they moved forward down the aisle, the great room was silent. Kelsea's guard had loosened up a bit, allowing her to peek at the crowd, ranks of men and women whom Kelsea thought must be nobles. Velvet garb predominated, rich velvet in scarlet and black and royal blue. Velvet was a Callaen specialty, and there was no way to get it without going through Mort trading controls. Were all of these people doing business with Mortmesne?

Everywhere Kelsea looked were faces, both male and female, enhanced with cosmetics: dark-smudged eyes, lined and rouged lips, even one lord who appeared to have powdered his skin. Many of them displayed elaborate hairstyles that must have taken hours to create. One woman had bound her hair into a large spiral, something like the arc of a leaping fish, which ascended from one side of her head and landed on the other. Around the entire construction rested a silver tiara interspersed with amethysts, a really beautiful piece of metalwork even to Kelsea's untrained eye. Yet the woman's face had a pinched look that suggested she was prepared to be displeased with anything and everything that might occur, including her own hairstyle.

Laughter threatened to bubble up in Kelsea's throat, laughter that came from a dark well of anger. The noblewoman's hairstyle wasn't even the most ridiculous thing in the crowd. Hats seemed to be everywhere: huge and ostentatious hats with wide brims and pointed crowns in every color of the rainbow. Most were decorated with jewels or gold and elaborated with feathers. On a few hats, Kelsea even saw peacock feathers from Cadare, another luxury surely confined to the black market. Some of the hats were so wide that they took up more space than their occupants; Kelsea spotted a husband and wife with matching designs on their blue cloaks whose hats forced them to stand more than two feet apart. Noticing her stare, the couple gave a shallow curtsy, both smiling. Kelsea ignored them and turned away.

Mace's eyes were fixed on the narrow gallery that ran the length of the left wall above their heads. Following his gaze, Kelsea saw that this gallery was also crammed with people, but they weren't nobles; their clothing was plain and dark, with only a random glitter of gold here and there. Merchants, Kelsea guessed, important enough to gain entrance to the Keep but not wealthy enough to be allowed down on the floor. There were no poor in this throng, none of the gaunt people she'd seen in the fields of the Almont or out on the Keep Lawn.

Hundreds of eyes were upon her. Kelsea could feel their weight, but thousands of miles seemed to exist between her and the crowd. Had Queen Elyssa felt equally alone in this enormous room? But Kelsea turned away from that idea, furious that any part of her mind would try to relate to her mother.

At the end of the hall was a great raised dais, in the very center of which sat a throne, brilliant even in torchlight. It had been forged from pure silver, formed and shaped into a great flowing seat whose various parts simply melted one into the next, arms to back to base. The high, arched back of the throne was at least ten feet tall and carved in an aquatic relief depicting various scenes from the Crossing. It was an extraordinary piece of art, but as with so many relics of the Tear dynasty, no one knew who'd done the work, and now the throne was only a mute reminder of a time long gone.

By all rights, no one should have sat on this throne since the day her mother had died, but Kelsea wasn't surprised to see a man seated there. Her uncle was a short man with dark hair and a curling beard, a fashion that Kelsea had observed many times on her journey through the city and one to which she'd taken an instant dislike. The Regent fidgeted with the beard as Kelsea approached, wrapping it in tight coils around his index finger. He wore a tight-fitting purple jumpsuit that hid nothing. His face was pale and bloated, with deep-set eyes, and Kelsea read signs of dissipation in the broken veins of his large nose and sagging cheeks. Alcoholism, if not something more exotic; Kelsea suddenly knew, the knowledge coming from nowhere, that if there was an expensive vice out there, her uncle had tried it. He watched her with an indifferent stare, one hand hooked into his beard, the fingers of the other tapping idly on the arm of the throne. He was cunning, Kelsea could see, but not brave. Here was a man who'd been trying to kill her for years, yet she didn't fear him.

At the Regent's feet sat a red-haired woman, perched motionless on the top step of the dais, staring at nothing, extraordinarily beautiful despite her vacant stare. Her face was a perfect oval, utterly symmetrical, with a fine upturned nose and wide, sensual mouth. She was dressed in soft blue gauze, a garment of so few layers that it was nearly transparent, revealing a figure that was both willowy and voluptuous. The gauze did nothing to hide her nipples, deep pink points that poked out against the fabric. Kelsea wondered what sort of man paid for his women to dress like whores, but then the redhead looked up and Kelsea's breath hissed through her teeth. A yoke had been tied around the woman's throat, and not loosely either; puffy, welted flesh showed where the rope had abraded her skin. The other end of the rope snaked upward, over the steps of the dais, to rest in the Regent's hand.

At Mace's word, Kelsea's guard halted in front of the dais. Her uncle was surrounded by his own guard, but one glance could chart the difference between a true guard and a bunch of mercenaries. Her uncle's men wore voluminous, impractical uniforms of midnight blue, and their posture was as insolent and lazy as his. When her uncle met her gaze, Kelsea saw with some surprise that he had the same deep green, almond-shaped eyes as her own. A true blood relation, and the only one she had left . . . the thought made Kelsea pause. It seemed like blood should matter. But then her eyes returned to the roped woman huddled on the floor, and an insistent beat began in Kelsea's temples. This man wasn't a relation, her mind insisted, not if she didn't want him to be. She unclenched her fists and gentled her voice to disciplined reason. “Greetings, Uncle. I come to be crowned today.”

“Welcome to the Princess Apparent,” her uncle replied in a pinched, nasal voice. “We require the proof, of course.”

Kelsea reached up to take off the necklace. On the Keep Lawn the day before, she had noticed that it came off rather unhappily, with a prickly feeling that seemed to tug at her skin. Today was worse; she seemed to feel the silver chain pulling at her flesh, a sensation like ants crawling beneath the surface. She held the necklace high for her uncle's inspection, and once he nodded, she turned and displayed it to the enormous company gathered in the hall.