Queen of Fire

Al Bera gave a stiff nod. She had noted before his discomfort in her presence, a wariness presumably born of the low station from which he had been raised. “The smuggling gangs were greater in number in my youth, Highness,” he replied. “I was a captain in the Realm Guard before King Janus ordered me to take charge of his excisemen, a slovenly lot, given to graft and drunkenness. Forging them into an effective arm of the Crown took time, and more than a little blood.”

“And yet you did it, breaking the strangle-hold the smugglers had on the southern shore and doubling the port revenue in the process.”

Al Bera gave a cautious smile. “With a little help from the Sixth Order.”

“Nevertheless, the sword my father gave you was well earned.” She reached for the small wooden chest on the desk. “Sadly, I do not have another to give you. As you might expect, the Volarians stole the entire royal collection. But I did find an old trinket of mine in the ruin of what was once my own rooms.” She extracted the item from the box. The chain was new, fashioned from finely crafted silver but attached to an ancient amulet, a plain disc of bronze inlaid with a single bluestone.

“It’s said this was worn by the mother of King Nahris,” she continued. “The first to claim overlordship of all four fiefs of the Realm. Sadly, he was prone to bouts of madness and so the business of ruling his dominion fell to his formidable mother, Bellaris, the first to be named Chamberlain and Regent of the Unified Realm. A title I myself held briefly towards the end of the Alpiran war, and this”—she placed the amulet on the desk and slid it towards him—“was my badge of office.”

The right choice, she decided, seeing the way he eyed the amulet, like a child regarding a snake for the first time.

“I . . .” he began, face reddening a little. “I am to be left behind, Highness?”

“You are to serve this Realm as ordered by your queen.”

“If it is a question of my fitness for battle . . .”

“It is a question as to whom I can safely entrust governance of these lands in my absence. Nothing more. Lord Chamberlain Al Bera, please put on your badge of office.”

He fingered the silver chain for a moment, jaws clenched and striving to conceal a faint tremble in his hand. “Did King Janus ever tell you why I was so good at catching smugglers, Highness?”

She smiled blandly and shook her head.

“Because my father was a smuggler. A man of great kindness at home but vicious temperament in business, a business that would have been mine had I not fled to join the Realm Guard at thirteen. By then I had come to understand what manner of man he was, how he was steeped in deceit and murder, and I wanted no part of it.” He removed his hand from the chain. “And I want no part of this.”

She maintained her smile, taking the chain and amulet from the desk and standing to move behind him. She felt him sag as she lifted the chain over his head and laid it on his shoulders, although it weighed no more than a few ounces. “Exactly, my lord.” She leaned down and planted a soft kiss on his cheek, choosing to ignore his flinch as she moved back and he rose unsteadily to his feet.

“I will leave you twenty thousand Realm Guard,” she told him. “They are to crush every remaining vestige of criminality within Asraelin borders, all miscreants to be executed without exception under the Queen’s Word. I feel we have been too lenient of late. You will, however, steer clear of Cumbraelin lands unless in dire emergency or called upon by Lady Veliss. I will provide a list of other priorities, Aspect Dendrish’s legal reforms and the reconstruction of this city being the most pressing.”

She angled her head, studying the way the amulet hung around his neck, finding that his stoop had worsened a trifle. “It suits you very well, my lord.”

He gave the most shallow of bows, his reply tense and clipped to remove all expression. “Thank you, Highness.”

• • •

Orena liked to dance in the afternoons, moving among the barren palace gardens with a joyful grace, sometimes catching hold of Murel’s hands and pulling her into a whirl, laughing her girlish laugh. Today she wore winter-blooms in her hair, pale petals shining like stars in the dark mass as she spun and spun.

“Sit with me,” Lyrna said as her dance finally came to a halt, Orena’s skirts blossoming as she whirled to the ground with an exhausted but happy giggle. “I have cakes.”

They were in the remnants of her former hidden garden, Lyrna arranging cakes alongside a porcelain tea-set on the bench next to her. Orena was very fond of cakes but continually lacking in manners, cramming one into her mouth the moment she sat down, fingers sticky with icing and cream. “Yum,” she said, one of the few words she consented to speak these days, although it transpired this new Orena had little need of speech. Lyrna’s head momentarily flooded with the sensation of enjoyment, the texture of the cake on her tongue, the softness of the cream. She had to concentrate to clear the images, a skill learned from Aspect Caenis, who advised repeating a numerical sequence as the best means of blocking Orena’s wayward thoughts.

“Brother Innis tells me you have not been attentive at lessons recently,” Lyrna told her.

Orena’s thoughts took on a bored weariness, swallowing the last of the cake and rolling her eyes.

“Learning is important,” Lyrna persisted. “Don’t you want to read again?”

Orena shrugged and her thoughts shifted: joy and sunshine, the whirl of the dance.

“You can’t dance forever, my lady.” Lyrna reached out to take her hand. “I have to tell you something.”

A sudden wariness at the gravity in her voice, a swelling fear.

“I have to go away for a time.”

The fear surged and Orena’s gaze went to Murel, standing nearby, hands clasped tight and forcing a comforting smile. She found being in Orena’s company a painful trial, the weight of her unconstrained gift hard to bear, especially when it chose to share memories dreadfully reminiscent of those Murel fought to suppress.

“Yes,” Lyrna said. “Murel too. And Iltis and Benten.”

More fear, bordering on terror, a jarring sense of abandonment. Orena’s hands clutched at Lyrna’s, a desperate plea filling her gaze.

“No.” Lyrna forced a note of command into her tone. “No, you cannot come with us.”

Anger mingled with churlish reproach as Orena snatched her hands away, averting her gaze, her face a mirror of her thoughts.

“It is my hope,” Lyrna said, voice soft as she traced her fingers through Orena’s dark curls, “to return with a man who I think can heal you. I was selfish to let him go, but when he looked at me, looked at this face, I knew he saw that his gift had failed. I am beyond healing, but I think you are not, for your soul is so bright.”

Orena’s features softened, her face suddenly losing all vestige of the woman-sized child she appeared to be. She met Lyrna’s gaze, brow furrowing . . . and the memories flooded forth.

Lyrna tried to summon a calculation to suppress the inrush of image and sensation, but the torrent was too great, overwhelming the trickle of numbers with an ease that told her Orena had been exercising much more control over her gift than they knew. The smell came first, brine, sweat and excrement. Then the sounds, the clink of chains, the muffled sobs of despairing souls. Vision and pain arrived together, the shackles chafing wrist and ankle, the dim outline of huddled captives. She was back in the hold, a slave once more. Her panic flared then receded as she saw the view differed from her own memory, the steps leading to the upper deck now seen from a less acute angle, and chained next to them a young woman in a blue dress, her face shadowed but the play of light on her hairless scalp revealing dreadful burns. Nevertheless, she knew this profile, she had seen it outlined against a campfire on a distant mountainside a few months before. Exhilaration mixed with malicious satisfaction in her breast . . . along with heady anticipation of the Ally’s reward.

The memory blurred, fracturing and re-forming into a scene of terror, the hull splintered by the shark’s ramming, screaming desperation on all sides. She saw the burnt woman standing next to the steps, key dangling from her grasp. The moment of hesitation was brief, barely noticeable but these eyes had centuries of practice in discerning weakness and she knew in a rush of grim understanding that this newly risen queen was about to abandon her subjects to their fate.

It had been a long time since she felt anything close to wonder, but the sensation that gripped her as she watched the burnt woman return to free first the brutish brother, then the outlaw, and then, incredibly, herself, was the closest she had come for many lifetimes. The babble of thanks she offered the burnt woman as she struggled towards the steps surprised her further, for it was completely genuine.

The images blurred into another memory, Harvin’s scarred face poised above hers, breath mingling as their lips touched. “I’ll never hurt you,” he whispered. “And nor will anyone else.”

“You can’t promise that,” she whispered back. “No one can.”

His fingers played over the bruises on her neck, faded but still dark enough to spoil the pleasing smoothness of this shell’s skin. “I promise I’ll visit bloody murder on every Volarian shit we find, just on the off-chance he was the one who did this.”