The Queen of the Tearling (26 page)

He glanced behind Kelsea and fell suddenly silent, eyes wide and terrified.

Kelsea turned and saw Marguerite standing behind her. Her neck hadn't healed; the welts had faded to a deep purple, visible even in torchlight. She wore a shapeless brown dress, but here was indisputable proof that clothes didn't make the woman: Marguerite was Helen of Troy, tall and imposing, her hair deep flame in the torchlight, staring at the Regent in a way that made Kelsea's skin prickle in gooseflesh.

“Marguerite?” the Regent asked. All of his previous bluster was gone; he gazed at Marguerite with a stark longing that made him look like a calf. “I've missed you.”

“I don't know how you have the balls to speak to her,” Kelsea snapped, “but you certainly won't do it again without my permission.”

The Regent's face darkened, but he held silent, his eyes pinned on Marguerite. She stared back at him for a moment longer, then darted forward, prompting both Mace and Coryn to put hands on their swords. But Marguerite ignored them entirely, walked right up to Kelsea's armchair, and sat down at Kelsea's feet.

The Regent stared at this development for a moment, his face frozen in shock. Then it contorted with hatred. “What did you give her?”

“Nothing.”

“How did you buy her?”

“For starters, I don't keep a rope around her neck.”

“Well, enjoy it. That bitch would as soon cut your throat as smile at you.” He glared at Marguerite. “Damn you, you Mort whore.”

“No one fears your curses, Tearling pig,” Marguerite replied in Mort. “You have damned yourself.”

The Regent stared at Marguerite with a bewildered expression, and Kelsea shook her head, disgusted; he didn't even speak Mort. “We have nothing further to say, Uncle. Get out, and best of luck in your trek across the countryside.”

The Regent gave Marguerite one final, agonized look, then turned and stormed away, Coryn right behind him. Elston and Kibb opened the doors just wide enough for the Regent to pass through, and Marguerite waited until they closed before she scrambled up, speaking in rapid Mort. “I must get back to the children, Majesty.”

Kelsea nodded. She had questions for Marguerite, but this wasn't the time; she watched the woman retreat down the hallway before relaxing into her armchair. “Tell me that's everything.”

“Your Treasurer, Lady.” Mace reminded her. “You promised to meet him.”

“You're quite the taskmaster, Lazarus.”

“Fetch Arliss!” Mace called. “Just for a few minutes, Majesty. It's important. Personal connections create loyalty, you know.”

“How can we trust my uncle's Treasurer?”

“Please, Lady. Your uncle never had a Treasurer, just a bunch of vault-keepers who were usually drunk on their own watch.”

“So who's this Arliss?”

“I picked him for the job.”

“Who is he?”

Mace's eyes shifted away from her. “A local businessman, very good with money.”

“What kind of businessman?”

Mace crossed his arms, a fairly prissy gesture for him. “If you must know, Lady, he's a bookmaker.”

“A bookmaker?” Kelsea was momentarily bewildered, but her confusion quickly gave way to excitement. “But you said there was no printing press. How does he make books? By hand?”

Mace stared at her for a moment and then burst out laughing. Kelsea knew now why he didn't laugh often: it was a hyena sound, the screech of an animal. Mace clapped a hand over his mouth, but the damage was done, and Kelsea felt a hot blush spreading over her cheeks.

I'm not used to being laughed at
, she realized, and rearranged her mouth into something that felt almost like a smile. “What did I say?”

“Not a book publisher, Lady. A bookmaker. A bookie.”

“A bookie?” Kelsea asked, forgetting her embarrassment. “You want me to hand the treasury keys to a professional gambler?”

“You have a better idea?”

“There must be someone else.”

“No one else as good with money, I can tell you that. In fact, I had to give Arliss the hard sell to get him in here, so you should be nice to him. He has a pre-Crossing calculator in his head, and he positively loathes your uncle. I thought that was a good place to start.”

“How can you be sure he'll be honest?”

“I won't,” croaked a hoarse voice, and around the corner came a wizened old man, his frame shrunken and hunched. His left leg must have been lame, for he moved his right side first and then dragged the left to match. But even so, he moved so fast that Kibb, behind him, had to hurry to keep up. Arliss's left arm appeared to be lame as well; despite the fact that a sheaf of papers was clamped in his armpit, he held the forearm cupped in against his rib cage like a child. What was left of his white hair sprouted up in tufted patches over his ears (and, Kelsea noticed as he got closer, from inside his ears as well). His old eyes were yellowed, the lower lids drooping to show flesh that wasn't even red anymore; age seemed to have leached it of all but the barest pink. He was the ugliest creature Kelsea had ever seen in her life.

Finally
, she thought, regretting her own unkindness even as it crossed her mind,
someone who makes me look beautiful.

The old man held out his good hand for her to shake, and Kelsea did so gently. His hand felt like paper: smooth, cool, and lifeless. He smelled terrible, a thick, acrid smell that Kelsea took for the scent of old age.

“I'm not honest,” the old man wheezed. Kelsea didn't recognize his accent, which wasn't pure Tear; it managed to be both broad and nasal at the same time. “But I can be trusted.”

“Contradictory statements,” Kelsea replied.

Arliss's eyes gleamed at her. “Still and all, here I am.”

“Arliss
can
be trusted, Lady,” Mace told her. “And I think—”

“First things first,” Arliss interrupted. “Who's your father, Queenie?”

“I don't know.”

“Crap. The Mace here won't tell me, and I'm going to clean up when that comes out.” Arliss leaned forward, staring at her chest. “Marvelous.”

Kelsea reared back indignantly, but then she realized that he was inspecting her sapphire, eyeing it with a greedy collector's eye. “I take it it's real?”

“Real enough, Majesty. Pure emerald-cut sapphire, no flaws, absolutely beautiful. The setting's not bad, either, but the jewel . . . I could fetch you a hell of a price.”

Kelsea leaned forward, her exhaustion suddenly forgotten. “Do you know anything about where it came from?”

“Just rumors, Queenie. No way to know what's true. They say William Tear made the king's necklace just after the Crossing. But Jonathan Tear wasn't content with that, and he had his people create the Heir's Jewel as well. Much good it did him; poor bastard was assassinated only a couple years later.”

“Where did they get the jewels from?”

“Cadare, most likely. No jewels that fine in the Tear or Mortmesne. Maybe that's why she wants 'em so badly.”

“Who?”

“The Red Queen, Lady. My sources say she wants your jewels just as badly as she wants you.”

“Surely she can get all the jewels she wants in tribute from Cadare.”

“Maybe.” Arliss gave her a sideways glance from beneath his bushy eyebrows. “These sapphires were rumored to be magic, a long time ago.”

“Unlikely,” Mace rumbled. “They never did anything for Queen Elyssa.”

“Where's the other one at?”

“Weren't we talking about the treasury, Arliss?”

“Ah, yes.” Arliss changed gears immediately, pulling the sheaf of papers from his left armpit. He performed a neat trick, holding the papers with his teeth, riffling through them until he found the page he wanted and jerked it from the pile. “I've inventoried your uncle's possessions, Queenie. I know good places to sell the expensive, and good fools to pawn the worthless. You can clean up at least fifty thousand on all the shit your uncle thought was art, and the whores' jewelry is worth twice that on the open market—”

“Watch your language, Arliss.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Arliss waved away the reprimand as though it didn't matter, and Kelsea found that it didn't. She liked his profanity; it suited him. “I ain't been through the vault yet; believe it or not, I'm still trying to find someone who actually has a key. But I've a pretty good idea of what I'll find there. By the way, you'll need new vault-keepers.”

“Apparently,” Kelsea replied. Her shoulder was screeching now, but she ignored it, slightly overwhelmed by the old man's enormous energy.

“After the Census chews off its piece of graft, the Tear takes in about fifty thousand in taxes. Your uncle's spent well over a million pounds since your mother died. I'm going to guess, and I ain't usually wrong about these things, that there's a hundred thousand sitting in the treasury, no more. In other words, you're broke.”

“Wonderful.”

“Now,” Arliss continued with a gleam in his eye, “I've some good ideas on how to increase revenue.”

“What ideas?”

“Depends, Majesty. Am I hired? I don't do nothing for free.”

Kelsea looked a mute appeal at Mace, but he merely raised his eyebrows in an expressive gesture that dared her to say no. “You're not honest, but you can be trusted?”

“That's right.”

“I think you're more than a bookmaker.”

Arliss grinned, his pointy hair sticking straight up over his head as though he'd taken a bolt of lightning. “I might be.”

“Why do you
want
to work for me? I assume that whatever we might pay you, it's not what you make at night.”

Arliss chuckled, a tiny wheeze like a deflated accordion. “Matter of fact, Queenie, I'm probably richer than you are.”

“So why do you want this job?”

The little man's face sobered, and he gave Kelsea an evaluating look. “They're singing about you in the streets, you know that? Absolutely petrified of invasion, the entire city, but still they're making songs about you. Calling you the True Queen.”

Kelsea gave Mace a questioning glance, and he nodded.

“I don't know whether it's true, but I hedge my bets,” Arliss continued. “Always good to be on the winning side.”

“What if I'm not what they say?”

“Then I've got enough money to buy myself out of trouble.”

“What do you want to be paid?”

“The Mace and I already dealt with the details. You can afford me, Queenie. You just have to say yes.”

“Would you expect me to turn a blind eye to your other dealings?”

“We can deal with that as it comes up.”

Slippery
, Kelsea thought. She appealed to Mace again. “Lazarus?”

“You won't find a better money man in the Tear, Lady, and that's not the least of his skills. It's going to take a lot of work to repair your uncle's damage. This is the man I'd choose for the job. Although,” he growled, bending a hard gaze toward Arliss, “he'll have to learn to speak to you with some respect.”

Arliss grinned, showing a mouthful of crooked yellow teeth.

Kelsea sighed, feeling a mantle of inevitability settle over her, understanding that this would be the first of many compromises. It was an uneasy feeling, like getting into a boat on a wild river with no possibility of portage. “Fine, you're hired. Prepare me some sort of accounting, if you would.

The old man bowed and began to walk-drag himself backward from the armchair. “We'll talk again, Queenie, at your leisure. Meanwhile, do I have your permission to inspect the vault?”

Kelsea smiled, feeling a sickly film of sweat on her forehead. “I doubt you need my permission, Arliss. But yes, you have it.”

She leaned back against the armchair, but her shoulder rebelled, making her jerk forward again. “Lazarus, I need to rest now.”

Mace nodded and gestured for Arliss to go. The Treasurer did his odd crab-walk back toward the hallway, and Mace and Andalie each got an arm beneath Kelsea and physically hauled her from the armchair, then lifted and dragged her back into her chamber.

“Will Arliss live here with us?” Kelsea asked.

“I don't know,” Mace replied. “He's been in the Keep for a couple of days now, but that's only to inspect all of your uncle's things. He has bolt-holes all over the city. I'm guessing he'll come and go as he pleases.”

“What exactly is his business?”

“Black marketeering.”

“Be more specific, Lazarus.”

“Let's just say procurement of exotic items, Lady, and leave it at that.”

“People?”

“Absolutely not, Lady. I knew you wouldn't accept that.” Mace turned away so that Andalie could help Kelsea undress, and walked around the room extinguishing torches. “What did you think of Venner and Fell?”

Who?
Kelsea thought, and then she remembered the two arms masters. “They'll train me to fight, or I'll make them regret it.”

“They're good men. Be patient with them. Your mother didn't even like the sight of weapons.”

Kelsea grimaced, thinking again of Carlin, of that day with the dresses. “My mother was a vain fool.”

“And yet her legacy lies all around you here,” Andalie murmured unexpectedly, pulling pins from Kelsea's hair. Once Andalie had finally completed the messy business of getting the dress off without aggravating Kelsea's wound, Kelsea climbed into bed, so tired that she barely registered the cool softness of clean sheets.

How did they change my sheets so fast?
she wondered sleepily. Somehow, this seemed more magical than anything else so far. She turned her head to say good night to Mace and Andalie and found that they'd already disappeared and shut the door.

Kelsea couldn't lie on her back; she shifted slowly in the bed, trying to find a comfortable position. Finally she relaxed on her side, facing the empty bookshelves, exhausted. There was so much to be done.