The Shadow Queen (3 page)

E
ARLY THE NEXT
morning, they headed east toward the small village of Tranke. The town was built along the road that led east over the Falkrains and into the neighboring kingdom of Eldr. With an ogre war raging across Eldr, rumor had it that Eldrian refugees with pockets full of jewels were moving through Tranke, desperate to trade for food and drink. Gabril was hoping they might have other items to trade as well—items Lorelai could use to practice her magic.

The three of them walked in silence. Clouds scudded across the gray sky, and the crisp, wet bite of an impending snowstorm chased a shiver down her spine as they climbed the same road the treasury wagon had followed the day before. Sasha flew in lazy spirals overhead, her white wings blending in against the clouds.

Want food?
Sasha sent an image of a small rodent scurrying along the underbrush.

I don’t even know what that is.

All tastes the same.

Not to me.

Eat raw. Tastes the same. Try?
Sasha dipped her wing and circled her prey.

I can’t eat raw animals.
Lorelai shuddered.
And stop sending me images of spleens and bones and other things I don’t want to put into my mouth.

Can give you some for brother.
Sasha’s amusement drifted into Lorelai’s mind like a cold breeze.

Lorelai smirked at Leo, who raised a brow and then glared up at the sky. “The two of you are conspiring against me again, aren’t you?”

“She just wants to share her lunch with you.”

Leo blanched. “Last time she shared, I got a face full of rabbit guts from above. You tell your bird to keep her victims to herself.”

He doesn’t want any.
Is the road ahead clear of soldiers?

No soldiers. Safe.
Sasha dove for the ground and something shrieked as she found her prey.

Safe. Lorelai frowned as she walked past thick oaks whose trunks had large patches of rot clinging to them. Soldiers weren’t the true danger in Ravenspire. If Irina didn’t stop draining the land with the demands of her magic, there wouldn’t be anything left of Lorelai’s kingdom when she was ready to challenge the queen for the throne.

The thought that she might have to face Irina sooner than she’d anticipated sank into her stomach like a stone. Ignoring Sasha’s thoughts about her meal and Leo’s attempts to come up with a name for their daring escapades, Lorelai mentally picked
up each piece of her plan and examined it for weakness.

Step one: Rob the treasury wagons. Six robberies already accomplished without mishap.

Step two: Find a safe contact in each village who could distribute the goods to those in need. Gabril had taken care of that to mitigate the risk that someone untrustworthy might see the resemblance between Lorelai and the late king and curry favor with the queen by reporting it.

Step three: Let the rumors of the robberies become attached to the idea of the princess returning to claim her throne so that she could build a base of loyalty. She hadn’t actually figured out how to do that yet.

She hadn’t, but Leo had. She glanced at him and sighed. She was never going to hear the end of this.

“You’re right, Leo,” she said. Gabril and Leo turned to look at her as the road dipped between a stand of pines whose needles were turning brown and a meadow of brittle grass.

“Of course I am.” He paused. “About what?”

“We need a name. Something that can give the villagers someone to be loyal to.”

Leo’s eyes lit up. “That’s what I’ve been telling you. And I overlooked Gabril’s involvement—my apologies—which opens up an entirely new list of possibilities. The Fearsome Threesome.”

“Not quite,” Lorelai said.

“The Triumphant Trio.”

“No.” Gabril turned on his heel and kept walking.

“We could always return to the Royal Rogues. No number specified.”

“No,” Gabril and Lorelai said together.

Leo huffed out a breath. “You two display such a staggering lack of imagination, it’s a wonder I survive.”

“We’ll have to put some more thought into it,” Lorelai said.

“Meanwhile, the two of you haven’t been practicing courtly conversation like I asked.” Gabril’s voice was stern. “You can’t interact with our nobility or that of Ravenspire’s allies if you forget your etiquette.”

“I never forget my etiquette.” Leo looked wounded.

“You aren’t the sibling I’m concerned about.” Gabril gave Lorelai a meaningful look, and she huffed impatiently.

“Courtly conversation is tedious. I have better things to do.”

“Better things than convincing our nobility that you can lead a kingdom, maintain its allies, secure new ones, and interact with royalty without bringing shame upon the kingdom of Ravenspire?”

“I was kind of hoping vanquishing Irina would take care of all that.”

Leo grinned. “I could be your mouthpiece. Think of it! You’d be the mysterious
mardushka
who never speaks, and I’d be the voice of Ravenspire issuing orders, correcting fashion disasters—Did you
see
what Lord Horst was wearing last time we were in his village? Ghastly.—and assuring one and all that my sister can smite them where they stand if they don’t obey.”

Gabril raised a brow at Lorelai.

“Okay, fine. I’ll practice courtly conversation.”

She turned toward Leo, who gave her a cheeky grin. “You are looking most fetching this morning. Though I only have Gabril for comparison, so take that as you will.”

Lorelai snorted. “Fetching? What kind of stupid compliment is that?”

“I’m pretty sure snorting is beneath royalty.” Leo sounded smug.

“Fine. You also look most
fetching
. So fetching, in fact, that I might allow Sasha to share her meal with you after all.” Lorelai laughed as Leo glanced uneasily at the sky.

“When I said courtly conversation, I meant it.” Gabril swept a rotted branch from the road, sending it skittering into the ditch. “Enough foolishness.”

“Pretend I’m a visiting ambassador from Akram,” Leo suggested.

“Why do
you
get to be the visiting ambassador?”

“Because I thought of it first.”

Lorelai glared. “Next time I get to be the visiting ambassador, and you have to come up with stupid conversation to pass the time.”

“I had no idea Ravenspire princesses were so uncouth,” he said in a near-perfect imitation of an Akram accent—long vowels, choppy consonants, and a mesmerizing singsong cadence that Lorelai found impossible to mimic.

Her answering smile bared all her teeth. “I hope your journey wasn’t too arduous, my lord, and that you are in good health. When you have refreshed yourself with sleep, I would love to give you my undivided attention so that we may discuss various issues of interest to both our kingdoms.”

“Better,” Gabril said. “Now practice how to negotiate with brokers from Balavata. After that, we’ll deal with the customs of Llorenyae.”

Hours later, after practicing how to speak with the royalty, merchants, and nobility of all Ravenspire’s allies, even Leo was tired of talking. They’d trekked past pastures full of yellow, dying grass and flocks of sheep too thin to face a winter, past forests full of crumbling tree trunks and soil that was losing its color, and past cottages that appeared to be abandoned. It seemed the only part of Ravenspire that wasn’t dying as a result of Irina’s magic were the rivers. They were coming up on another cottage without smoke curling from its chimney when Gabril suggested they stop for lunch.

Leo pulled out the last of their oat bread. Lorelai took a canteen from her pack and began moving toward the cottage, searching for its well. She was walking past a line of brittle rosebushes that edged the south side of the cottage when a thin, high-pitched scream pierced the air, raising the hair on the back of Lorelai’s neck and sending a jolt of magic burning down her veins. The scream was coming from the backyard.

Lorelai dropped the canteen and ran, her palms stinging with magic. Skidding around the corner, she saw three small children, bellies distended with hunger, lying motionless on the frigid ground behind the cottage. A woman with sunken cheeks and desperate eyes was standing over a fourth child, holding a bloodstained knife in her hand.

Lorelai’s heartbeat thundered in her ears as icy fingers of panic closed around her chest.

“Stop!” Lorelai shouted, but it was too late. The woman, her arms trembling, her face white with strain, plunged the knife into the fourth child’s chest. The little girl slumped to the ground
while the woman stood holding the knife with shaking fingers.

Lorelai raced over the grass and threw herself to her knees beside the child. The girl’s blue eyes seemed to beg Lorelai for something, and her mouth moved as if she was trying to speak.

“It’s all right.” Lorelai’s voice trembled as she pressed her gloved hands to the wound that was pouring blood out of the girl’s chest with alarming speed. Her words were a lie—already the girl’s heartbeat faltered, and her body shuddered with the effort it took to stay alive.

Leo raced past her to the other children who lay silent and still, blood soaking into the ground beneath them.

“They’re dead.” Leo’s voice was a whiplash of anger as he looked up at the woman.

“I had to.” The woman’s lips were cracked and pale against her haggard face, and her bones stood out in sharp relief. Tears slipped down her cheeks, and she gripped the knife tightly. “My babies . . . my poor babies.”

Beneath Lorelai’s hands, the little girl’s chest went still, and her blue eyes became dull and lifeless. Lorelai whispered, “She’s gone.”

Her throat closed over the words, and she had to swallow past the sudden ache of tears. She climbed to her feet, her gloves still covered in the child’s blood. “How could you do this?” Her voice trembled with horror as magic gathered in her palms like lightning. She wanted to rip off her bloodstained gloves and speak an incantor that would punish the woman. That would hurt her the way she’d hurt her children. It would be justice.

No one else will give you what you want, Lorelai. You have to take it for yourself. You have the power. Use it.

Shuddering at the memory of Irina’s words, Lorelai tugged her gloves toward her wrists.

The woman shook as she looked down at her children lying silently in the brittle grass. Her voice was hollow as she said, “I had nothing left to feed them. My husband died weeks ago—starved to death so that our food would last a little longer.” She sank slowly to her knees. “It was an awful way to die. Slow and lingering.”

She reached a hand out to smooth the tangled blond curls out of her baby’s face. Sobs tore at her, and she curled over the baby’s body. “I had to. I couldn’t watch you suffer. I had to.”

She repeated the words over and over while Leo stumbled away from her, his face pale and stricken. Gabril wrapped his arms around the prince, but his gaze was on the woman.

“How can we help you?” he asked, but the woman didn’t hear him. She was crawling from child to child, repeating her chant, smoothing their hair and kissing their faces.

When she reached the oldest girl, Lorelai crouched beside her. Keeping her bloodstained gloves behind her back, she said softly, “I’m sorry. Will you let us help you?”

The woman looked at Lorelai as if suddenly remembering that she wasn’t alone with her children and said, “There is no help left in Ravenspire. Not for the likes of us.”

Lorelai opened her mouth to reply, but if words existed that would ease the mother’s pain and offer hope, Lorelai couldn’t find them.

How many of their people were facing the terrible choice between watching their children starve to death or killing them quickly as an act of mercy? The twelve bags of food she’d taken
from the treasury wagon yesterday weren’t enough for a need this big. They were a bandage on a wound that needed a tourniquet.

The woman made an awful, keening noise and then turned the weapon toward her own chest. Sun glinted sharply against the blade as it plunged toward the woman’s heart. Lorelai lunged for her, but she was too late. With a soft groan, the woman slumped over the body of her daughter. Lorelai snatched her shoulders and pulled at the weapon as if she could someone save her, but the woman had buried the knife deep beneath her sternum, and blood was a river that poured into the parched soil beneath her. It wasn’t long until the desperate pain on the woman’s face eased into stillness.

Lorelai’s eyes stung, and her throat closed on the rusty-sweet smell of blood in the air. Wiping her gloves clean on a tuft of grass, she gently closed the woman’s eyes and prayed that in death, she’d found the peace she couldn’t find in Ravenspire.

Leo and Gabril joined her as she closed the children’s eyes, tears streaming down her face. When she reached the baby, she sank to her knees and pressed her gloved hands to the dying ground. Leo knelt beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders while Gabril stood behind them, a hand on each of their shoulders.

“We have to do more.” Lorelai’s voice broke, and she looked at Leo. “We have to help them. We can’t wait another eighteen months like I’d planned, or there will be no one left to rule even if I do take the throne. We have to do something
now
.”

His eyes burned with determination as he nodded.

“They need food. They need
hope
. We have to do something that makes a statement—something that will grow beyond
rumors and into the kind of story that becomes a legend. Something that will give people like this mother a reason to turn away from . . .”

“From this,” Leo finished for her. “I’m with you.”

Gabril’s hands tightened on her shoulder. “As am I.”

“What’s the plan?” Leo asked quietly.

The knowledge that she would have to face Irina earlier than she’d anticipated was a stone in Lorelai’s stomach as she lifted her gaze from the baby’s silent body, over the field of dying grass, past the dusty cobblestoned road, and looked east toward the carpet of evergreens that covered the mountain and the treasure they hid from her view.

“We’re going to rob the queen’s garrison.”