A Queen in Hiding Read online

  How well Cressa remembered that later that afternoon, her mother had taken her outside to see that the Queen’s Flag—silver droplets falling into a silver river, on a backing of blue silk—had been hoisted onto the top of the palace and had rippled in the wind! Some Talents were publicly announced; others (especially related to Enchantment) were kept private to increase a queen’s opportunities to learn to wield them. But at least everyone knew that Nargis had graced Cressa with its favor.

  Rowatag explained that Cressa’s Talent was a variety of Enchantment. He had spoken at length about other queens in Weirandale’s past who were also Enchanters, though their specific abilities varied. One had been a memory enhancer; she could make people remember in minute detail events they had forgotten. Another was a compeller; she could force people to act against their will. Still another queen could read people’s thoughts. Often, over time, Enchanters developed several ways of affecting people’s minds and memories.

  Cressa grasped how compelling would be useful: she would just compel the Oromondians to do as she bid. Though she always needed to be touching her subject—would she have to touch all the citizens of Oromondo?

  But “making people forget” had not as yet proven particularly useful. As a child she had sometimes made Nana forget that she had already had her candied fruit and she would get another one. Thus far, she had had few real occasions to practice her Talent for something of consequence.

  Belcazar had only turned over half the pages. Cressa stood and paced around her comfortably appointed private audience chamber, her closet, with its deep blue rug and white velvet wall hangings.

  Plink.

  The water feature in this room, named the Weeping Swan, was a glass and gold bowl, above which rose an enameled swan’s neck and head. The beak dropped one drop of Nargis Water at a time; usually Cressa no longer registered the sound of the droplets.

  Her mother had been the Strategist; always looking five steps ahead, calculating what would happen before her every move. Catreena had married the widowed King Nithanil of Lortherrod because she deduced that someday an alliance with Lortherrod would be of utmost importance to Weirandale.

  Plink.

  Ironically, the only thing Catreena had not seen in advance was that she herself would die in her prime. Caprice struck with random cruelty, heedless of the harm it wreaked. Catreena’s horse had stepped in a gopher hole and thrown her. She had broken her neck and died instantaneously, a look of surprise frozen on her face. Cressa had been only twenty-three summers; she had been five moons into her pregnancy with Cerúlia. She had not felt ready to assume the throne: she had wanted some years of private life. She did not feel ready now for this challenge.

  Plink.

  Finally, Belcazar deliberately straightened all the pages, then straightened them again and moved them to the side. He drummed his fingers on the table, one at a time. The queen stifled her urge to scream at him and sat down on the opposite side of the glossy mahogany table.

  “Troubling,” he said.

  “I realize.”

  “This was … hand-delivered this … morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the servant see who brought it? Did Envoy Thum come himself?”

  “I don’t know. Why does that matter?”

  “Well,” said Belcazar thoughtfully, “perchance it doesn’t. But we have received other communiqués from Thum and this … doesn’t convey the same tone.”

  Plink.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Thum shows belligerence and…”

  “—aggression. Like all Oros.” Cressa often found it impossible not to fill in Belcazar’s pauses, though doing so never sped up his delivery.

  He nodded. “Oromondo has been a militaristic realm forever and a day. It respects discipline above all.”

  “This is not surprising,” said Cressa. “Their country is volcanic, and the populace must be taught to heed warnings of eruptions. And they rely on mining, a venture that requires strength and fearlessness.”

  Belcazar nodded slowly, looking at his fingernails as if the answers to all the world’s troubles were written in their ridges.

  Plink.

  He continued, “But in past years we have always been able to treat with Thum. Oh, he’ll evoke the great divinity of their Eight Magi and … chastise us for being nonbelievers, but that rhetoric merely covered his true goal. Since the War of the Priests we have traded amicably.”

  Belcazar took out his handkerchief, blew his nose, and deliberately put the kerchief back in his sleeve.

  Plink.

  Cressa massaged her forehead with her fingertips in impatience.

  “We suspect Oromondo has been paying the Pellish pirate fleet to raid for foodstuffs, but we have found no proof. But here”—Belcazar pointed to a passage—“and here, and here, the religious zeal rings so fervent.” He read aloud:

  Ye have offended the Magi and pure Oromondians with thy putrid heathen practices. Weakling scum of the earth, reeking with corruption, soiled with thy guilt, worshippers of water, idolaters of a line of Witch bastards, rats puffed up with trifling vanities and unclean luxuries—the Magi will tolerate thy meddling NO LONGER.

  “I skipped over those flourishes,” she said. “I think the crux of the matter lies in the rice shipments—the rice they claim was poisoned, the rice they say caused stillbirths and drove cows mad.”

  Plink.

  “The rice wasn’t poisoned,” said Belcazar.

  “Could someone, somehow have tampered with it?”

  Belcazar rubbed between his brows with a forefinger, and Cressa again became conscious of the drip of the water.

  Plink.

  “Consider, Your Majesty, how much poison it would take to taint four full holds of grain. And mix it through? Hardly probable. And to what end?” More finger drumming. “Nevertheless, before the full Circle meets, let’s inquire if any of the shipmasters rest in port. And question the grain merchant.”

  “The Circle meets after noonday so I will send the messages now.” Cressa went to the door and spoke to her servants.

  “I hardly think,” she said as she turned back to Belcazar, “that Thum, or anyone, would simply invent the notion of women losing their babes.”

  “But one does not feed rice to milk cows,” he countered.

  “They might if they had no other grain. Look you, what do we know about Oromondo? For some years it has groaned under mysterious blights and suffered a food shortage. That is why they trade for foodstuffs. Didn’t Tenny tell us that the Oros have numerous procurement contracts with the Free States?”

  “True,” replied Belcazar. A long pause while each finger struck the wood. “These blights. These illnesses, no one knows their cause.”

  “But why blame us?”

  Plink.

  Belcazar repeated drumming each finger on the table. “Why do villagers turn on their neighbors … when misfortune strikes? People need answers, and they will blame whomever they suspect wishes them ill. Someone … paranoid … wrote this letter; someone bursting, exploding with religious zeal.”

  “I don’t think it matters who dictated it. What matters is that Oromondo demands that I relinquish the throne, we return the gold and the jewels they sent, and we send eight more ships full of grain on tomorrow’s tide, or it will declare war on us.”

  “Yes,” said he. “You’ve got the meat of it.” Then he went on to recite a passage from the letter:

  Thy streets will run with blood, thy Witch will meet justice, we will take what we are owed by the force of the Magi’s glorious Power.

  “What shall we do?” Cressa’s face stiffened with anger.

  “Hmm? Do? About what?”

  “Any of it. All of it.”

  Belcazar, whom she knew to be a peaceable, imperturbable man, for once answered quickly. “We prepare for war.”

  Plink.

  * * *

  Queen Cressa steadied herself for a moment before entering the Circle C
hamber where her council awaited her. Over the last year, more and more she dreaded meetings with this group.

  Oh, she trusted Belcazar and sweet, elderly General Yurgn. But lately she guessed that her councilors didn’t always tell her the full truth, or that they met separately to strategize how to “handle” her. And all shrank away from any physical contact with her, as if they had heard a whisper about her Talent and feared her touch.

  Steward Matwyck, the councilor she had once leaned upon the most, had to be the head of the opposition. Or at the least, she could not imagine the others working against her without his tacit approval. She could be mistaken in her suspicions. She had the authority to dismiss her Circle, but such a drastic step would require that she present incontrovertible evidence of crimes to the court and the populace. And she had precious few allies.

  The underlying problem, she knew, lay in how little time she had spent in Cascada and how little time in court: she had not won her subjects’ personal loyalty. They held little true regard for her, either as a woman or as their queen. When Catreena died, Cressa had abruptly succeeded a ruler who was known and respected for her sagacity. Cressa herself had never earned their acceptance, much less their esteem or love, other than by virtue of her birth and station.

  Well, it will not do to dally in the hallway any longer in front of my watching ladies-in-waiting.

  Cressa raised her chin and told Duchette Aubrie to announce her.

  “Your Majesty,” the six councilors murmured as they bowed and curtsied. They stood around the council table in the high-ceilinged, round turret room, the winter morning chill chased away by fireplaces at both sides.

  Queen Cressa crossed to her high-backed chair, cushioned in blue velvet, at the honey-colored oak table shaped like a hollowed-out circle. By some earlier monarch’s design, she had her back to the light coming in the mullioned transoms, so that it shone full on her councilors’ faces. Water flowed constantly in a circular pool in the middle of the table, creating a light background murmur. She seated herself, and General Yurgn pushed her chair closer.

  “You may be seated,” she said. “I take it you have investigated this situation?”

  Lord Steward Matwyck, placed on her right, ran these meetings because he held the highest rank on the council. In Weirandale the country’s landowners elected a steward every ten years. Matwyck was a handsome man of medium height and graceful build, with soulful dark gray eyes and short mid-brown hair boasting only a few threads of amber. He habitually wore well-tailored but modest attire, usually of muted color.

  “Your Majesty,” Matwyck said, as he took the floor with an incline of his head. “I hope you are not distressed. How wise of you to turn this matter over to us.”

  For many years Matwyck’s compliments and concern for her well-being had soothed away any disquiet Cressa harbored. Today, however, she found herself more immune to his charm.

  “What have you discovered?” she asked, just a tad abruptly.

  “We have interrogated the grain merchant and the seamaster of one of the trade ships. The merchant and her family have been eating rice from the same shipment for moons with no sign of illness. No other customer has complained about the rice being tainted. She has supplied many shops, even the palace, with this fall’s harvest. In point of fact, we have all eaten from her granaries.

  “Moreover. We found one of the shipmasters of the transport in port. He swears that no one went down in the hold from the time the rice was loaded until the ship reached harbor. And the ships made no unscheduled stops.

  “So we have looked into this matter thoroughly and found nothing amiss. I conclude the charges are specious.”

  “I cannot fault your logic,” Cressa said. “But then why has Oromondo sent such a challenge?”

  “Your Majesty, forgive me,” Matwyck continued, “but we know the Oros better than you do. This bluff is in decidedly poor taste, but not a cause for anguish.”

  Belcazar broke in. “I have already said my piece, Matwyck. You know I … disagree. I believe that the army must be mustered now and … all defensive measures put in place. We can’t take the Oros lightly. And this letter contains … outright … threats.”

  “But Belcazar, Your Majesty,” said Duchess Latlie, vigorously shaking her double chins, her uncovered hair coiffed in an elaborate ringlet style too young for her advancing years. Her hair shone the gold/orange/tan color commonly described as amber. (On many noble heads the amber strands interwove with brown, but if Latlie grew any brown hairs she had her maid pluck them out.) “I do believe that they have sent threats of this ilk in past years, under dear Catreena’s rule. She could not be taunted into overreaction, and I do trust that you will follow her wisdom.”

  “What do you mean by ‘overreaction,’ Duchess?” asked Cressa, miffed by Latlie’s air of superiority. Latlie always grated on Cressa because she had served as her mother’s lady-in-waiting for a year and habitually presumed on this slight connection.

  “Just that we would hate for you to muster the army or cause all sorts of uproar over this scrap of—of rubbish. And any military move would mean that you would have to raise tithes, dear Majesty. And that would be so unfortunate, even unwise. We would hate for you to have to do that again so soon after the ambitious road project you advocated last year.”

  “As I recall, Duchess, this council unanimously and enthusiastically approved the repair of the royal roadways. Are you saying now that you begrudge the monies?” Cressa recognized that behind the polite words lay a threat: if you raise levies on the gentry, you will alienate them. “By the way,” she continued, hoping to sound like Queen Catreena, but fearing she mimicked Cerúlia on a petulant day, “didn’t I ask to see the account books on that project some time ago?”

  “You may have,” admitted Councilor Prigent, who served as the royal treasurer, a narrow-shouldered, somewhat dull young man whose prematurely thinning hair (the dead brown of a frozen dirt path) was too lank to hold the curled style popular among courtiers and fell lifeless into his pudding face. “If so, please accept my most abject apologies, Your Majesty. An accident with a wineglass spoiled some pages. I will get the ledgers to you as soon as—”

  “Prigent! Tsk! Tsk!” Matwyck interrupted in a mock-scolding tone. “Send for the ledgers this instant! That is, if in the present serious circumstances, Your Highness would still like to satisfy your curiosity.…”

  How much have they padded those expenses? Dare I push this issue today?

  Cressa assumed what she intended as an icy stare. “Let us return to the issue at hand, which is not roads, nor taxes, nor monies, nor account books, but the Oromondo grievances and threats. Is there aught we can or should do to reason with or placate them? What response do we offer?”

  General Yurgn coughed into his age-spotted hand. “We might consider sending them a shipment of rice. Gratis. That would be a gesture toward peaceful relations. If you calculate the price, any mobilization or hostilities would end up costing all of us much more than a shipload of rice.”

  Matwyck steepled his hands, a characteristic gesture that connoted his thoughtfulness. He had long and shapely fingers. He kept his hands spotlessly clean and reportedly asked his valet to sand his nails nightly. The other councilors, who coveted his approval, looked to him for his reaction.

  But Belcazar broke in. “No amount of rice will make up for lost babes … or what they see as deliberate … insults toward their sacred Magi.”

  Cressa agreed with Belcazar, but she had no chance to say so, for Matwyck was already speaking. “Oh, Belcazar, do you want us to return the two emeralds and the sapphire too?” Matwyck gave a wry chuckle. “My friends, we need not placate. We just ignore this screed. The Oros will see our silence as a sign of strength. They may bully other countries, but we cannot be baited or intimidated. In my considered opinion they will go back to mining their metals and bowing down to their Magi and leave us alone until their need for grain forces them to recommence trading—in which case w
e may be able to make more favorable terms. Oromondo lies hundreds of leagues away. It doesn’t have a navy. Unless, my esteemed friend, you fear the Magi’s ‘magic powers’?”

  Cressa suspected that the Magi’s powers should not be sneered at, but she felt boxed in by Matwyck’s dismissal because to say so now might make her sound weak or frightened.

  “The army’s force is always at your disposal, Your Majesty,” General Yurgn quietly interjected into the awkward silence.

  The queen looked at the two councilors who had not yet spoken, Lady Tenny, her councilor for diplomacy, a sharp-nosed, well-traveled woman whose hair was pulled back in a severe style showing the rusty amber at the temples and the chocolate brown of her widow’s peak, and Lord Retzel, bushy-browed and hard of hearing, but the largest landowner in the realm.

  Lord Retzel spoke first. “I agree with Matwyck, eh? He’s investigated. He’s added everything together; he’s so clever. I agree completely. Your Majesty.” Lord Retzel spoke, as always, too loudly and too forcefully, as if bluster would compensate for lack of brains.

  Of course you do. You serve as his lapdog, or if occasion warrants it, his bulldog. I hate the way you thunder at me.

  Lady Tenny made a snort, conveying that the whole meeting had been a waste of time. “Your Majesty, we have gone round and round on these issues. May I make a suggestion? Before you decide what action to take”—she held up her hands to ward off interruption—“if any, we might demand an audience with Envoy Thum and see what he has to say? Questioning him might offer us more information. We might at least”—here she inclined her head in Belcazar’s direction—“be able to determine if he himself wrote the ultimatum or if he just acts as a messenger from the Magi.”