The Queen of the Tearling (40 page)

Allie.

The villages were so isolated that it seemed unlikely anyone would have time to mount a pursuit, but Thorne had insisted on the extra guards all the same, and Javel was forced to admit that Thorne was right. The recent rains had raised the level of the Crithe, and extra men were needed to get the cages across the Beth Ford. It didn't hurt to be overly cautious either, for the cages were vulnerable—made of simple wood, built to undertake only a few journeys, easier to attack.

“Please,” a woman whimpered from the cage beside Javel, so close that he jumped. “My sons. Please. Can't they be in here with me?”

Javel shut his eyes and then opened them. The children were the worst part of this business, the worst part of every shipment. But Thorne had explained that the Red Queen valued the children highly, perhaps more than anything else they might bring. Javel himself had seized several: two small girls from Lowell, a toddler and baby boy from Haven, and, in Haymarket, a baby girl right out of her cradle. The children's cages were fourth and fifth in line, right in the center of the shipment, and Javel thanked God that he hadn't been assigned to guard them, though he could hear them well enough. The babies, particularly those too young for weaning, had squalled almost continuously for the first two days of the journey. Now, mercifully, they had fallen silent, and so had nearly all of the prisoners, their throats too dry to beg. Thorne had barely brought enough water for the guards and mules; he said that more than a few liters apiece would slow them down.

Right now I need you
, Javel thought, staring at Thorne through the bars of the cage.
But if I ever catch you alone, just once, on a dark night in the Gut . . . I won't be fooled again.

“Please,” the woman croaked. “My little one, my baby. He's only five months old.”

Javel shut his eyes again, wishing he had put her in a different cage. She had blonde hair, just like Allie's, and when he had yanked her son from her arms, he'd been assaulted by a sudden and terrible certainty: Allie could see him. She could see everything he'd done. The certainty had faded a bit as the caravan moved along and dawn faded into morning, but it had raised a new problem, one that Javel had not considered before: how would he account to Allie for her release? She was a good woman; she would rather die than buy her freedom by the misery of others. What would she say when she found out what he had done?

When Javel was ten, his father had taken him to see the slaughterhouse where he worked, a squat building made of cheap wood. Maybe Father had intended it as a learning experience, or maybe he meant for Javel to follow in his footsteps, but either way, the outing had backfired. The line of steers, dozens of them, had waited dumbly to enter the building through its huge door. But the cows inside the building weren't dumb at all; there was a cacophony of sound, mooing and screeching, and behind that the thudding of heavy blows.

“Where do they come out?” Javel asked. But his father didn't answer, merely looked at him until Javel understood. “You kill them?”

“Where d'you think beef comes from, son? For that matter, where d'you think
money
comes from?”

When they entered the slaughterhouse, the smell had hit Javel instantly, blood and the rich reek of rotten entrails, and he'd lost his breakfast violently all over his father's shoes. He would remember that smell all his life, but it was the door of the slaughterhouse that planted the real hooks in Javel's child's mind: the wide-open door, the yawning darkness beyond. The steers went in, they screamed in the darkness, and they didn't come out again.

Six years ago, when Allie had gone to Mortmesne, Javel had ridden quietly behind the shipment for several days, not knowing what he planned to do. He could see Allie in the fourth cage, her bright blonde hair visible even from a distance, but the bars put infinite miles between them. And even if he found a way to successfully attack the shipment—a feat no one had ever managed—where would they go?

At least the steer didn't know what was coming. Allie's doom had been in her eyes that entire summer; it was one of the few things Javel remembered clearly. Mortmesne would have only one use for such a beautiful woman, just as a slaughterhouse had only one use for steers. They went in, and they didn't come out again. But now he would snatch Allie back. Javel could almost see her now, a dim shape in the darkened doorway, and he no longer heard the woman beside him, begging for her sons. Eventually she stopped.

As the day got hotter, the mules began to act up. They were Cadarese mules, bred for strain and scorching temperatures, but they seemed to like the cargo no more than Javel did. He'd avoided whipping them throughout the journey, but finally it couldn't be helped, and he and Arne Baedencourt stationed themselves up at the front of the third cage, whips at the ready whenever a mule began to lag. It did no good. The caravan slowed, and then slowed further, until Thorne himself rode toward the cages and yelled at Ian, the mules' handler. “We need to reach Demesne by tomorrow night! What's wrong with your mules?”

“Can't say!” Ian shouted back. “The heat, maybe! They need more water!”

Good luck with that
, Javel thought. They'd passed the end of the Crithe yesterday, and now they were more than halfway up the foothills that set the base of the Clayton Mountains. Even after the rains, there was no water this high up. Several hundred feet ahead, they would go through the Argive Pass and then run straight down the Pike Hill to Demesne. If only the damned mules could make it a few more hours, they could rest and it would be an easy trek the rest of the way.

The heat finally reached its pinnacle and held there as the sun began to sink toward the horizon. Several times Javel saw Alain, stationed on the cage ahead of him, sneaking cups of water to the prisoners. Javel thought of reprimanding him; if Thorne caught Alain wasting water that should have gone to the mules, they would all hear about it. But Javel remained silent.

Near sunset, the woman in the cage, who was apparently blessed with a throat of iron, started up again. She was more difficult to ignore this time; soon Javel knew that her sons were named Jeffrey and William, that her husband had been killed in a construction accident two months ago, that she was pregnant once more and sure it was a girl this time. This last fact bothered Javel most of all, though he couldn't say why. Allie had never gotten pregnant; Gate Guards made enough to afford good contraception, and both he and Allie deemed children too much of a risk in uncertain times. The decision had seemed so clear-cut then, but now Javel was merely sorry, and wearier than he could say. He wondered why Thorne hadn't thought of this, that they might take a woman whose pregnancy wasn't visible yet. Very soon she would have little value as a slave; she wouldn't be able to work, and no man wanted a pregnant woman for his toy.

It's Thorne's problem, it's Thorne's problem.

After the last excruciating mile uphill, they finished the rise at dusk and brought the line of cages into the Argive Pass. The sides of the ravine were steep but not sheer, dotted with boulders and outcroppings that jutted sharply from the slope. Broken stonework, the wreck of the Argive Tower, littered the floor of the valley. Greenery had long since deserted the Argive, and the constant trek of shipments had further eroded what arid vegetation was left. In the half-light of dusk, the pass was a deep brown gorge with dim purple sky at the top, stretching nearly a mile from east to west.

The mules were at the end of their strength, but Javel refrained from pointing this out to Thorne. He'd find out soon enough, when the poor beasts simply stopped moving despite all the whips in the world. They would have to stop for the night, although Javel didn't expect to get any sleep, not with those cages only yards away. He thought of Allie again. What would he tell her? Not the truth, certainly; her eyes would take on that brittle, blank look, Allie's form of disappointment.

What if she doesn't care?

But Javel refused to think of how Allie might have changed during the years in Mortmesne. Telling her was out of the question; he would have to come up with a lie.

As the sun set, clouds gathered overhead. Javel heard some grumbling; Dwyne, the leader of the four Caden, muttered loudly to his companions that it was convenient to receive shade just when the sun was gone. The Caden had made this journey many times during the Regency, and it was a comfort to have Dwyne and Avile, if not the dissipated Baedencourts. Yet even Dwyne seemed uneasy. The clouds had gathered fast, and were darkening even faster. If a storm broke overnight, it would slow the caravan's progress down the Pike Hill. But a storm would also give the prisoners some water. Perhaps when they stopped, Javel could even give the pregnant woman some time with her sons. Thorne would never allow it, but Alain had been sneaking around under Thorne's nose all day. Maybe Javel could do the same. He straightened up in his saddle, feeling better at the thought. It was a small thing, but a thing he could do.

The clouds deepened inexorably overhead, and at some point, almost without warning, darkness fell on the pass.

 

H
ow many?” Mace hissed.

“I count twenty-nine,” Wellmer whispered back. “Several more I can't see behind the cages. Wait—”

Kelsea waited, uncomfortably aware of the group of shadows who surrounded her. Mace and Pen were beside her, yes, but anyone could pull a knife in the dark. She was undeniably vulnerable here. She waited, her anxiety increasing, until Wellmer crawled back behind the boulder where half the troop crouched concealed. “Caden down there, sir. Dwyne and another I don't recognize.”

“Damn, and they never work in twos. There'll be more of them.”

After several seconds of hunting for a pocket, Wellmer tucked his spyglass away in the neck of his army uniform. They had left the horses far behind, at the mouth of the Pass, and everyone seemed to have simultaneously discovered that their uniforms had no pockets. Kelsea pulled at the neck of her own uniform; it was sewn of cheap material that made her skin itch. The army garb seemed to sit strangely on all of the Guard; she'd caught many of them twisting and adjusting themselves all day, even Pen, who seemed to be able to blend like a chameleon into whatever surrounded him.

But the black of the uniforms was good for concealment, since the sky still held the barest hint of a cold amber moon. The other half of Kelsea's guard was about fifteen feet away, tucked behind a second boulder, and Kelsea couldn't even pick them out; they were simply a dark mass against the side of the ravine. She was more worried about concealing her sapphire. The moment they'd entered the Argive Pass, the horrible heat inside her chest had cooled down to a low pulse that was almost pleasant by comparison. The jewel's light had dimmed as well, but Kelsea didn't trust the thin fabric of the uniform to block it entirely.

Metal rasped on leather behind her, the sound of a knife being drawn, and Kelsea drew into herself, trying to compress her body into the tiniest ball possible. Her pulse was thudding now, so loudly that it seemed they would all be able to hear it, and her forehead was chilled with sweat. The wound on her shoulder tightened in remembered agony. Which of the men around her had done it?

“We're outnumbered, Lady,” Mace told her. “Not badly, but we can't simply make a frontal attack. Not with the Caden down there.”

“Wellmer, can't you pick them off?”

“I can shoot, Lady, but only two or three before they take cover and douse the light.”

Mace tapped Venner on the shoulder, whispered to him, and sent him to the other boulder. “We've got Wellmer and three more decent archers. We'll send two across the pass, so the rest can't take cover behind the cages. If we take the Caden first, that'll even things up a bit.”

“They might put out the fires at any point,” Pen warned softly. “We should act soon, before we lose the advantage of the light.”

Kelsea grabbed Mace's wrist. “The people in the cages are the priority. Make very sure they understand.”

Venner crept back, three dark forms behind him. They huddled with Mace, conversing in whispers, and Kelsea wiped her sweating forehead, determined not to give in to the paranoia that had come over her in the dark. “Wellmer, give me your spyglass.”

The eight cages had been doubled up in a horseshoe so that their gates faced inward. Kelsea was relieved to see that the cages had no iron. They looked to be hastily assembled affairs of mere wood, and the bars, rather than interlocking links, were thick, vertical wooden planks. Even if the wood was Tearling oak, the bars should be vulnerable to a concerted attack with axes.

Wellmer had spotted outliers stationed around the caravan, but the bulk of Thorne's men were concentrated within the horseshoe. Kelsea squinted through the spyglass, focusing on the men around the campfire. She knew very few of them. There was a well-dressed, heavyset man, clearly a noble, whom she remembered from her first audience, though she couldn't recall his name. Several men whom she thought might be with the Census. A good chunk of her own army, so careless that they hadn't even bothered to wear civilian clothing. And there was the man himself, Arlen Thorne, right in the middle of the circle. Her sapphire gave a small tremor against her chest. Nothing better could be expected from Thorne, but all the same Kelsea felt betrayed, betrayed by the just world she'd understood from her childhood. All of her plans, all of the good she wanted to accomplish . . . could it really be subverted by one man?

“Elston.” She passed him the spyglass. “Right at noon around the fire.”

“Motherfucker,” Elston muttered, peering through the glass. Mace sighed, but he'd given up trying to clean up the guards' speech on this journey. Kelsea had heard many new words in the past few days. From overheard conversations, she knew that Elston hated Arlen Thorne; it was something to do with a woman, but no one would give Kelsea the whole story.