After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia (30 page)

“Now,” Tor said, looking down at the thief ’s face. He was younger than Tor had expected,
to be so black in villainy. He was Tor’s age, with snarled flame-red hair. “Please
hand over the queen.”

“Oh, is
this
the queen,” said the thief. “Pardon me. I had no idea she’d be so metallic. Or seven
inches high.”

“Silence,” said Tor.

“Don’t you think we should be informed about that sort of thing before the Tri—”

“I said silence!” Tor shouted.

The blasphemer’s dagger looked poisoned, so Tor kicked it over the edge of the roof.

“Hey!” he had the gall to yell. “That was expensive!”

“I’m sure you can steal another one,” Tor said through his teeth. “Or you could if
you weren’t going to be quartered in the square.”

That sent the thief into a spasm of frenzied activity. He wouldn’t have been bad with
some training, Tor thought, but keeping him pinned was fairly easy, even though the
rascal tried to bite.

Tor caught his blaspheming face between two gloved fingers and held him still.

“None of that.”

Tor realized his error almost immediately. He’d let go of the statue.

The thief immediately did so as well, and Tor watched, with time stretched slow by
horror, as the gleaming queen rolled toward the gutter.

Then the thief elbowed Tor, hard and efficient, in the eye, rolled and dived, and
stood on the edge with the statue in one hand—and one of the Nest boys who the masters
hired to wash the upper windows in another. The thief held them both out over the
street, the boy’s feet scrabbling on the edge of the gutter.

The statue would be damaged. The boy could be killed.

“Which one is it going to be?” the thief asked.

It shouldn’t even have been a question. It should be Rosamond, or any small part of
her, before the world. But Tor couldn’t take his eyes off the Nest child’s fraying
garment in the thief ’s grip. It could tear and the child could die without any decision
being made at all.

He could save both, he told himself. He was fast enough.

So he lunged for the boy, caught him small and safe against his chest, and grabbed
air where the thief should have been. He looked across a wall and saw the glint of
the gold statue and the flame of the thief’s hair, already distant.

Tor touched the pin he wore proclaiming the Order, with the comm inside it, to report
his failure to the masters.

As he did so, he let go of the child, and saw the child’s dirty, grinning face.

He didn’t look scared.

Of course he didn’t. Of course both the thief and the child were from the Nests, and
the child had never been in any danger at all.

Tor was so unutterably stupid. He had failed Rosamond again.

He could have the child quartered in the square, but he didn’t have the stomach for
it. He waved him back to his work, and he thought, next time, my queen, next time
I will be strong enough and good enough. He did not know if he was lying to himself
again.

He did not know if he was ever going to be ready for the Trials.

Yvain knew perfectly well that he’d been an idiot. The statue had not been worth the
risk. But then, the statue was Rosamond. She never was worth the risk, was she?

He walked through the sunlit square with the statue stashed safe beneath his regulation
winter jacket, humming to himself. That big Order trainee with the South-dark skin
and the eyes of a fanatic might have covered him in bruises and given him a bad moment—would
even a knight sacrifice a kid for a piece of metal?—but Yvain had won.

Take that, Rosamond.

The Trials were on the horizon sure as the sun at dawn, and it had never seemed like
a better time to spit in the queen’s eye.

Which, speaking of, Yvain thought. It was market day, the last one before the Trials,
and the queen’s ladies-in-waiting were out in force. He saw the distinctive coral-colored
gowns everywhere he looked, and he looked at them all, searching for the prettiest
face.

Said face belonged to a fetching little thing with crisp curls and demure eyes, standing
by a fruit stall.

When Yvain approached her, she said, without looking up, “Do you think Roz would like—”
Then she blinked her brown eyes and smiled. “Sorry, wrong man.”

“Ah now,” Yvain said. “You have the right man. You just don’t know it yet.”

She smiled a smile that made her even prettier. “Believe me, I do.”

“Can I not even get a small chance to convince you?” Yvain asked. “A tiny chance.
The smallest of chances.”

“Is the Nest brat bothering you, my lady?” asked a voice, and by the sound of it—not
quite a woman’s, but not quite a man’s either—Yvain knew it was one of the queen’s
guard.

Both Yvain and the lady turned. It was a guardsman, in the uniform of blue on gray.
Yvain wondered why they even needed uniforms. It wasn’t like anyone else aspired to
be a cut man.

Nest brat
, he’d said. It made Yvain think of growing up in the Nests with Persie, how people
had shouted the words after them as they ran hand in hand over the rooftops.

“We were just talking, Dareus,” said the girl, touching his arm.

“She didn’t seem bothered,” Yvain said, with the guard’s words ringing in his ears.
“Must be a nice novelty for her, talking to a real man.”

“Hmm,” said the guard. He seemed young enough, though it was hard to tell sometimes.
Smaller than a real man and with a woman’s soft curve to his face, even if training
meant he had muscles like a man.

The guard looked at Yvain with narrowed thoughtful eyes, and Yvain curled his lip
into a sneer—who would let that happen to them?—just before he bit his tongue.

Which he did because the guard hooked a foot around his ankle and yanked him down
so he fell, hitting his head on the fruit stall on the way down. Then the guard planted
a foot on his chest. Yvain grabbed at it and tried to pull his feet out from under
him, but the guard was already a little crouched, center of gravity low. Yvain grabbed
at the knife hilt in the guard’s boot and brandished—a hilt without a blade.

“I’m the captain of the queen’s guard,” said the cut man—
Dareus
, the lady-in-waiting had called him. His gray eyes were still thoughtful, almost
bored. “I don’t carry my weapons where Nest brats can see and steal them. Watch your
tongue and your talk of real men.”

“Why don’t you watch your tongue and your talk of Nest brats?” Yvain snapped.

He jackknifed in the dirt and out from under the guard’s heel, only to find himself
rolled again, this time with the guard kneeling beside him, a hand fastened at his
throat.

Dareus’s eyes were still bored, but he was smiling slightly. “I might,” he said. “If
you could make me.”

He released Yvain and got up, brushing his hands off, then made a slight bow to the
lady.

“Forgive me for intruding,” he said. “I’ll leave you to your conversation.”

Yvain had somewhat expected him to walk off with the lady on his arm. That was the
usual outcome when you bested someone in a fight over a woman—but then, what would
a cut man want with a woman?

Yvain had a natural advantage here.

He used another of his natural advantages, his smile, as he used the fruit stall to
help him stand.

“Now, about convincing you,” he began.

The lady-in-waiting’s warm brown eyes were, he noticed a little late, absolutely furious.

“He’s ten times the man you are,” she informed him, and turned sharply to hurry away
after the guard.

“Am I missing something here?” Yvain asked the empty air.

“Only the same thing you’ve been missing all your life,” said the stall owner, a kind-faced
woman who had given him and Persie apples when they were young. “Which is that you’re
a bit of an idiot.”

She looked like she’d rather enjoyed the entertainment of Yvain being beaten up by
yet another of Rosamond’s people.

“I thought girls liked this sort of thing,” Yvain added, making a small gesture to
his trousers.

“Many of us find them completely irrelevant.”

“Even mine?” Yvain asked, making a face of mock horror.

The woman laughed. “Especially yours, lad.”

Yvain laughed too. He was getting the last laugh, after all, no matter how battered
he was by the queen’s men. He had the gold statue at the small of his back, and he
could melt that down too. It would fetch enough to buy every man in the Nests a drink,
the night before the Trials.

And if the money wasn’t quite worth the trouble, it still pleased Yvain to spite the
queen, even in some small way.

He played with the idea of winning the Trials for a moment, and telling Rosamond the
truth she’d probably never heard in all her spoiled lifetimes. That the only worth
she would have to him was the gold.

You would see a lot of gold, though, being Rosamond’s king. Why anyone tried to pretend
the girl herself was the thing to fight for, Yvain couldn’t say.

“I hear you were being terribly brave and impressive in the marketplace today,” Roz
whispered as Dareus escorted her through the marble halls of her palace to the stateroom,
where the First Minister sat waiting. “Miri was so impressed.”

“It wasn’t impressive,” Dareus said. “I was up against a boy who had no training,
and I let myself get angry. It would have been much more impressive if I’d kept my
temper.”

“But where,” said Roz, “is the fun in that? Miri said you were great.”

“The lady Miri always assumes the best of people,” Dareus said. “Which does credit
to her but little to them.”

Roz slowed her step before they reached the doors of the stateroom.

“If you like her,” she began.

“My queen,” Dareus said, “just because the lady Miri is allowed to go out on market
days does not mean she has experienced life. Both of you have grown up with the palace
walls as the border to your world. Neither of you has walked the city, neither of
you has ever had the chance to talk to men. Once you are married, you and the lady
Miri can mix freely with the Court. You are going to marry a champion. She should
at least find a whole man.”

“She should get to choose who she wants,” Roz murmured. “
Someone
should.”

Roz didn’t suggest that she herself should. But it was close enough to speaking blasphemy
that Dareus gave her a reproachful look as he leaned forward and opened the door.

“Her Majesty the new Queen Rosamond, flower of the world,” he said, and gave her a
tiny shove the First Minister would not see.

“Deeply honored, Your Majesty,” said the First Minister, without glancing up or rising.

Rosamond went and found herself a chair. The First Minister, she saw, was looking
at lists, at rows and rows of men’s names.

Men who would be forced to participate in the Trials.

“You must be very excited, Your Majesty,” said the First Minister. “Not long now until
your wedding day.”

Just a few more days of funerals until your wedding day.

Roz had read the records of past Rosamonds, the Rosamond who would not eat, the Rosamond
who cut lines down her perfect arms, the Rosamond who kept to her bed for three years,
as well as the Rosamonds who seemed absolutely fine, to all appearances. It wouldn’t
matter what one Rosamond felt, there would always be another.

The First Minister looked surprised at Rosamond’s lack of enthusiasm.

“It is men for you, isn’t it?” the First Minister inquired. “We’ve had a Rosamond
who wanted a female champion once or twice, but I am afraid it is unlikely to happen.
Women have to volunteer, and very few do.”

“I think it’s men,” Rosamond whispered.

It was hard to know. She really had not met many people, and it was not as if anyone
would have responded to her desire if she had felt it. She was not meant to want anyone.
Even the idea of desiring someone seemed like murdering them.

What she wanted was to run to the Hall of Mirrors and do the forbidden, do what no
other Rosamond had done before—fight.