The Queen's Truth Read online

  The chamberlain called through the door again, and he did not wait for me to tell him yes. He came in. The murder of the serving boy mattered less to him than the king’s son.

  “Who?” he demanded.

  I shook my head. “I can’t tell.”

  “You need something else? I could bring in more servants for you to look at.”

  “No. It’s not that. I can’t see it.”

  The chamberlain’s eyes narrowed. “You want more money,” he said.

  “I don’t. Let me say this very clearly, my magic is not working here, with this boy. There is something about him. Or about this place. I don’t know what it is. I cannot see.”

  The chamberlain absorbed this slowly. “Is it because he is only a servant?” he asked.

  “Of course not—” I began. But then I stopped. I truly did not know.

  “Well, perhaps someone discovered the truth and took justice,” said the chamberlain.

  Taking justice was a legal term for a murder that would be treated as a much smaller crime, with only a fine. It was typical for the nobility who killed servants because they had been threatened or because they had been stolen from. Sometimes they claimed that they were overcome with emotion, and that they could not control themselves.

  “One of the sons?” I asked.

  “Possible,” said the chamberlain.

  I shrugged.

  “The king will wish to see you. And to know that it is done, that there is nothing left to be gained from more time spent.”

  The chamberlain wanted me to stand at his side and bear the king’s disappointment with him.

  I could go back to my own house and drink myself into a stupor, or throw things to vent my anger. Or stare at the king and enjoy the fact that he, for once, would be refused what he wanted.

  The chamberlain led the way to the throne room.

  I had not realized that the king’s sons would all be gathered there. The six of them now stood in stair step order, the oldest to the youngest, the new hierarchy of magic.

  The second son was indeed the one I had seen in the image of the past. He had argued with his brother. And now his look was one of wariness.

  Was he guilty of bribing the young serving boy Had he killed him, as well?

  I moved close enough that I could brush against his sleeve and apologize.

  I caught an image of him kicking his horse in a fury. It was very recent, and very hot on him. I could smell the scent of hay and horse dung on him. I could see the flickering of guilt in his eyes.

  But was it guilt over his brother’s death or over his mistreatment of the horse?

  The king introduced his sons, by magic rather than by name.

  I had gotten the magics right until the fifth and sixth sons. The fifth, just grown to adult height, was the magic of pain. I shivered when I looked into his eyes. An assassin with magical powers added to it, and one who enjoyed the pain of others. A useful tool for a king, but one who had to be watched over carefully.

  The sixth son was the magic of wind and weather. The ten year old boy was new to it now, and there was no surprise in the wild weather I could see outside behind the king, shaking trees, dark clouds, and a rolling movement.

  He had not been born to this magic.

  But he was suited to it. What had been his magic before, as seventh?

  I turned to the king. He thanked me for my work and offered me a more modest sum than he ordinarily did. I could see not grief, but satisfaction in his eyes. He was pleased with the results of my investigation.

  I took the money and turned to leave. I was almost to the door when I turned back.

  The magic of forgetting.

  That was what the seventh son had.

  Of course I had forgotten it. It was the one magic that could rule my own, and it was only possible when a king had a seventh son. It was a useful tool, in combination with the others. But it was a dangerous one, as well. A king could never be sure even of himself or of those in his household.

  The king had rid himself of the magic of the seventh son. Had he suggested it? Had he encouraged it? I would never know now.

  I looked into the eyes of the king’s youngest son and I did not know if he remembered himself what he had done.

  He was glad to be rid of his old magic, though, and to take up the new one.

  I did not blame him. There were times when I wanted to give up my own magic, as well.

  I did not go directly home that night. I went back to the serving boy’s room and asked one of the others which things had belonged to him. The carved horse and the bit of fur. I took them, along with the king’s payment, and returned them to the boy’s house. Kuy.

  They did not weep while I was there, but I touched the door and caught a glimpse of the last time Kuy had come home. He had been greeted with much love. They felt their loss keenly.

  More than the king, I thought. Kuy had been an only son, though he had had no magic at all. There are some things more precious than gold. But gold was all I had to give them.

  And each month I returned to their house and gave them a bit of Kuy from the past, so long as the magic lasted. When it was gone, I pretended it was not, and came anyway.

  I did not give up the king, but made this compromise with my conscience. And waited to see if the youngest king’s son would begin to covet another son’s magic.

  LONE SURVIVOR

  Seul slowed as he reached the rise of the hill. The little village of Daristonne was on the other side. His own home, his wife, Lovi. And the other wives. The wives of the men who had died, slaughtered in the war with the Karak. Seul was the only one who had survived to return home. He did not think they would be expecting him, any of them. Nor did he fool himself into believing that his return home would be celebrated.

  The Karak had already begun to take control of the countryside. He could see from the ruts on the road, wet from spring rain, that their wagons had come by. Taxes had been collected for the second time this year, from a town where there were only widows, children, and old men remaining.

  The Karak were not known for their mercy. It had been part of the reason that so many men had gone willingly to war. They had wanted to destroy the Karak, for the sake of the next generation. So they would be safe from another war of the same kind.

  Instead, they had left their children and wives more vulnerable than ever.

  Instead, they had died for no reason at all.

  Seul had only to blink to be reminded of Torpul, the giant of a man whom he had known since his childhood. Torpul had been a tiny baby, sickly and delicate. His mother had never thought he would grow to manhood. His father had teased and mocked him his whole life. Even after Torpul had reached his father’s height. But when he had continued to grow, and then grow again, and stood two heads taller than his father—then the teasing had stopped.

  But Torpul had always had a tender heart. He had given Seul half of his ration the night before the last battle. Seul had gotten none, because of what he had said to the general that afternoon. Too much honesty had always been his downfall. If only he had kept his mouth shut.

  No, that would have done nothing at all. It would have saved no one. And it would only have gotten Seul killed, as well as the rest. Though there were some moments when Seul thought that was what he would have preferred.

  His bones ached. He had slept in a tree the night before, and he had a terrible crick in his neck. His feet were blistered in the army boots he had been issued when they had arrived at the encampment. They had been too small, but there had been nothing to do but wear them. He could have taken boots off one of the dead, but it seemed too much.

  He had not shaved for weeks, and the beard should have been comfortable, but it bothered him. He had an old scar, from a fight in his early years. Come to think of it, that had been about the magic, too. It all came back to that, didn’t it, in the end?

  He reached the top of the hill and looked down. The sun was behind him, and it was full af
ternoon. He could feel the sting of it on his shoulders, burning through the cloth. It glinted on the stream and the water wheel by the mill. It should have been a beautiful sight.

  If he squinted, he might have been able to see his own roof, just past the mill. The garden there, tended by Lovi, who sometimes woke when it was still night, just to sit with her plants and breathe the sweet air around her herbs. She was a fine cook. He had missed her in the army. No one else complained about the wretched camp food, but Seul thought that must be because no one else was used to cooking like Lovi’s.

  He could see a dog running in the path toward him. He thought it was Taf’s dog, the mangy one he treated like a child, sometimes indulgent, sometimes cruel. Taf had never been a friend of Seul’s. And still, Seul felt the loss of him. He had been a fine hunter and his leatherwork was good enough that no one went outside the village for anything better. Seul tried to think of something better of him. He had been known for cheating at cards and eating raw meat. And for farting through the night, sleeping when no one around him could.

  The dog stopped short, called back. It looked to Seul, then turned back and trotted back inside.

  It will get no better, Seul reminded himself.

  He pressed onward, slipping once in one of the ruts and picking himself up. He was covered in mud now, after the day he had spent to clean himself up, and the coin he had wasted, never to be returned. Lovi could have used it for something else far more valuable.

  But at the time, it had seemed important to him. Not that he cared for his own sake what the villagers thought of him, returned to them against all expectations. He knew they would have their suspicions, or worse—discover the truth. It had been a gesture to the others who had died. For their sake, he had wanted to look his best. The only one to return, he would stand in for all of them, and give them the respect that they had deserved.

  He had told them they were all stupid for their trust in the magic, in the wizard Galgome. He had told the general himself.

  There. He could feel eyes watching him. He turned to look and saw a little girl. She was the spitting image of her father, Yor. The same dark eyes, the same jutting chin, the same look of disdain.

  He could not remember her name.

  He cursed himself for it silently and put out a hand.

  She slipped back between the hedge and away from his eyes.

  He continued down the road.

  Most of the villagers stared at him covertly. The miller’s wife.

  The miller Mog had had the most beautiful singing voice. The night before the battle, he had been drunk and hardly able to stand up straight. But he had sung the bawdiest song of a king’s harlot with a clear tenor so perfect that no one had laughed.

  It was Kier the butcher’s wife who came out to face him first.

  She had lost a good half terre since he had seen her last, only three weeks before. She was uglier than ever. The flesh had covered the shape of her face, and now it was square and unshapely.

  “What did you do to them?” she demanded. “What did you do to my Kier?”

  Seul stood straight and tall. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  It was perhaps the wrong thing to say, though Seul could not think of anything that would have been better.

  She ran at him, kicked him, and then muttered an incantation under her breath.

  Seul suspected it was one that was meant to leave him with boils all over his body, or perhaps to make his teeth fall out. It did neither.

  She began to weep.

  He stood up, and tried once more to think of something to say to her. It was his fault, all of it. But that did not mean he could change it.

  He walked on, thinking that if there was any way for him to retreat now, to go back up the hill and decide never to return home, he would have done it. Taf had called him a coward and a coward he was. He could have faced giant siege engines, the dogs of hell, and ogres with bone crushing stones on a battlefield. But here at home, it was something else.

  Toren the wheelwright’s father came out. He hobbled on a cane, one eye missing from the old war. The one a generation before had fought and died on, though not as badly. The Karak had not been as strong in magic then.

  And he had not been on the battlefield.

  “Tell me of his last moments,” said Toren’s father. “That’s all I want to know.”

  “He died well,” said Seul. “He died with courage and honor.” Was that not what every father wished to know?

  The old man nodded. “Did he say any last words?” he asked.

  “He said that he loved you. And his wife and son. He said that it was you he fought for, and he would gladly give his life for.”

  In fact, Toren had said nothing of the sort. He had had no chance to speak. The magic had caught him, and the whole of the army, had frozen them as it coursed through their bodies. In the end, it had been nothing but a battle of magic. They had worn their battle armor and their swords and had practiced fighting with their hands as well. All useless.

  The general must have known. He had ordered them to practice anyway. Good for morale, no doubt he would say. If he were still alive.

  Two doors down two wives came at him together. They tore at his clothes and his face. Their sharp fingernails made him bleed. They tore at the pocket he wore outside his shirt, which held the charm his wife had given him before he left. It was made of herbs and sticks and leaves, and she had spoken magic over it, to protect him. All of the men had had similar charms, though they would have been made in different ways. The magic spoken over it was the only thing that would have been the same.

  Would Lovi be disappointed that it had not worked on him? Or would she think it had? That she was the only one who had succeeded in using the magic?

  The women spat at him, and walked away.

  He did not think they would ever look at him or speak to him again.

  A group of children came out into the street and began to chase Taf’s dog. It danced around Seul, nipping at his bare spots, as the children sang out nasty songs to it.

  At last Lovi came to him in the midst of it and pulled him out. She pulled him home, away from the shouts and cries for him.

  He had not wanted her rescue. But to fight her would only cause her more grief. Better to get out of the open as soon as possible, and leave as little an impression of a connection between himself and Lovi as he could.

  How she smelled. Lavender and thyme and mint. And the scent of soap in her hair.

  Her nose had been broken when she was a child. Her father struck her for speaking back to him. Lovi did that. Seul remembered that when he married her, her father had told him that it was his turn to beat her for disobedience now, and had given him for his wedding gift a strop. He and Lovi had put it up on the wall and laughed over it for a long time, until one of the village children had died from a beating with the same thing.

  Then Lovi took it down.

  He and she had hoped for children for many years, but had never been blessed with them. He had told her that they would take care of the other children in the village, and she had taken the challenge seriously.

  “Eat,” said Lovi. “You must be starving.” She pushed him into a chair by the hearth and filled his hands with a bowl of porridge with honey. The first bite of it was too much for him, and he began to vomit.

  He had eaten little the last several days, so there was little to stain her floor. She put a hand on his back until he was finished and offered him a glass of water and a bit of cloth to wipe his mouth on.

  He only took a swallow of the water to clean out his mouth.

  He stared at her and there was something in the fact that she looked back at him, when no one else had. Not for weeks now. Not once since the battle was over. It was as if he had disappeared and Lovi’s look made him real again, flesh and blood.

  He could not bear to look away from her. He was afraid that he might disappear again.

  How horrible it was to be a ghost, he thought. H
e had never believed in them before. They were part of the magic that he had thought impossible, the delusions of those who had no power.

  Now he knew better.

  But it was too late.

  Far worse to be a ghost than to simply pass from this life into the next. Or if there was no next life, into death itself. Into emptiness.

  He sighed and pulled out the charm. He held it out to Lovi.

  She did not take it.

  “You are alive,” she said.

  “You were always the brightest woman I knew,” said Seul.

  “Will you tell me what happened?”

  “Do you truly want to know? It is a terrible tale, not fit for hearing.”

  “Do you need to tell it?” asked Lovi.

  He sighed. “I think I do.”

  She sat at his feet, rubbing his legs, making him feel more and more alive. He might once have said that she had magic in her hands, to bring such tingling sensation up and down his legs, penetrating as deep as his bones.

  “The Karak had their own wizard,” said Seul. It was not the beginning, nor the end, but it was what came to him and he had always been able to say what came to him with Lovi.

  “They had a wizard before,” said Lovi. When they had defeated the Karak two years before, she meant.

  “Yes. But this one was stronger. And there were so many of them, all linked together by his magic. He made them stronger and faster and louder.” Seul only had to close his eyes to think of the sound of their howling on that morning, like wolves at a moon, but there was a full sun in the sky. He had never seen a single face. They were too far from him. He had only seen the shifting movements of their bodies, like wheat in the wind, dancing in unison. And like wheat, their brass decorations caught the light and blinded those who looked too long at them.

  “And our wizard?” asked Lovi.

  “He was powerful,” said Seul.

  “He was? I thought—”

  Seul began to weep. “I did not believe,” he got out in shuddering gasps. “I, of all of them. Not at the moment, not when it mattered.”