The Cerulean Queen Read online

  “She,” Tilim pointed at her nursemaid, “told me you are in peril. I’m not a child: I stabbed an intruder in Wyndton a few months ago. I intend to protect you, no matter what you’re up to.”

  “Nana!” Cerúlia reprimanded. “And did you involve my foster mother in this too! She’s no business being here—she can’t fight.”

  “No, she’s not to blame,” said Stahlia, with her hands on her hips. “I woke up when Tilim tried to tiptoe out of our suite, and I forced him to tell me where he was going. I don’t understand what’s happening, but I will not be left out!”

  “This is a dangerous morning. Perilous to all,” Cerúlia protested. “I would not have you injured. In fact, I forbid you to get involved.”

  Stahlia folded her arms in a gesture that her daughter knew too well.

  In exasperation, the princella tugged on the edge of her beret again. “There’s really no time for an argument. If you must participate, will you follow my directions without question?”

  Stahlia and Tilim nodded solemnly.

  “All right, then. I need to get inside the Throne Room. The guards have strict instructions never to admit a young woman, so I have devised an unusual route for myself. But I need all the ground-floor doors to the Throne Room unlocked for allies who will be joining us. So, your task is to force the palace guards to unlock these entrances. By dagger point if you have to.”

  “By dagger point? That’s a terrible idea,” rejoined Stahlia. “Why don’t we just ask them to unlock this room for us?”

  “Why would they do that?” Cerúlia asked, irked that Stahlia was countermanding her very first order.

  “Because the room is full of tapestries, and last week, when we first arrived, Lord Matwyck promised me I could study them,” her mother answered matter-of-factly.

  Cerúlia paused and paced a few steps, considering. “This is helpful. So—you couldn’t sleep late. You want to study the tapestries and show them to your son. Then Nana, you and Hiccuth come along after one door has been opened and set about freeing more entryways.”

  “Here, eat this.” Cerúlia passed Tilim the second half of her scone and Stahlia her cup of tisane. As Tilim crammed the whole portion into his mouth and Stahlia sipped her tea with a small frown holding back her questions, Nana handed Cerúlia two small hourglass pendants that she had borrowed from a cupboard in the lesson chamber.

  The princella hung one chain over Stahlia’s head and one over her own. “Look. These both count ten minutes. We’ll turn them over together on my signal. You must get the Throne Room unlocked by the time the sand trickles all the way through.”

  The tanager skidded onto the windowsill and ruffled its tail ostentatiously.

  One sees no red guards outside now. A big feline awaits thee.

  “Sorry, that bird is my signal; I need to leave now.” Quickly, Cerúlia kissed Nana, Tilim, and Stahlia on their brows. She could not just stroll down the Royal Stair, so she led her little group out into the corridor and down the hallway to an arched opening that faced into an inner courtyard. She then drew the wooden shutters.

  After glancing around for a suitable anchor, Hiccuth tied his rope around a torch sconce but held the bulk of the pressure across his wide back, letting the free end drop down through the hallway window. Nana stood in front of him, blocking him and the rope from the view of anyone happening to walk their direction. Stahlia and Tilim copied Nana’s action on Hiccuth’s other side. Cerúlia pulled on a pair of leather gloves that had been tucked into her belt, crawled out on the sill, and turned over her timepiece, motioning to Stahlia to do the same.

  Then she grabbed the rope with both hands and feet, hanging high in the air.

  Her heart was thudding so hard she thought it would burst out of her chest.

  She had seen sailors on the Misty Traveler rappel down the ship’s hull, inspecting it for damage. The action looked easy when they did it, but Cerúlia immediately discovered that her upper body had nothing like the sailors’ strength. After a few bad moments when she collided with the wall and wondered if her arms could hold her, she raised her legs and placed her feet to brace herself against the wall. She bounced away, slithered down several paces, kicked off with her feet again, and slithered again. She landed in an untidy thud on the ground.

  Seeing her safely down, Hiccuth retracted the rope.

  With the blue tanager leading the way, Cerúlia disappeared through an arched doorway, heading toward the rear of the palace and the catamount who lingered outside, ready to escort her to his tunnel.

  4

  Stahlia could almost solve the puzzle behind all these bewildering events, but whenever she started to understand, her mind skittered away and her thoughts refused to cohere.

  Besides, she had no time to ponder; to reach the Throne Room from the fancy chamber where Chamberlain Vilkit had lodged her foster daughter, one merely walked down the corridor and then down a very grand staircase.

  The Throne Room of the palace was an enormous chamber ringed by entrances on three sides. The East Entrance, with high double doors of elaborately carved walnut, constituted the formal entryway, while the north and south walls formed the long legs of the rectangle, punctuated by a series of single doors that opened into different annexes and stairways to galleries. To the west, the Throne Room backed onto the palace grounds.

  As they approached this historic hall, Stahlia noticed the guards on patrol. Trying to appear nonchalant, she walked up to the East Entrance, Tilim hanging back behind her. The guards watched her approach with neutral expressions.

  “Good morn to you, men! I am Lordling Marcot’s mother-in-marriage, Stahlia of Wyndton. Lord Matwyck told me that I might study the grand tapestries in this room. I am a weaver, as you may have heard.”

  “Yes, missus,” said one of the guards, “we heard that. But to let anyone into the Throne Room, we’d need Lord Matwyck’s permission.”

  “I just told you, Lord Matwyck gave me permission”—Stahlia wrinkled her eyebrows in great puzzlement—“when we walked by the other day. Weren’t you on duty then?”

  “Not us,” said one of the men. “Might have been a pair of our fellows. I’ll ask around the corners.”

  “That would be so kind,” said Stahlia.

  One guard left his post, leaving the other, who had keys hanging at his waist on a ring, standing impassively in front of them. Tilim, feigning reluctance in front of this audience, started complaining under his breath, “Mama, I don’t want to see these tapestries; all my life I’ve seen scores of ’em; why are you dragging me around to see more?”

  The first man came back shaking his head. “No luck on that side; let me just try the other for you, missus.” He disappeared around the southern corner. Although Stahlia actually rued each tick, she tried to appear relaxed. She took advantage of the situation to smooth Tilim’s hair and pull his sleeves straighter; though she knew he would hate such fussing, at the moment he couldn’t complain.

  The helpful guard came back with an older man who boasted an impressive mustache.

  “I am Athelbern, the sergeant on duty. How can I be of assistance, missus?”

  Stahlia repeated her story.

  “Oh, aye. I was here on the East Entrance when Lord Matwyck walked by with you, and I overheard him. It would be best, however, if the Lord Regent was here with you now to give permission.”

  “Really?” Stahlia asked with polite disbelief. “I believe the lord and all his visitors are sleeping in after the late-night festivities. Us country folk, you know, we rise with the roosters no matter what. No lie-a-bed for us, as I’m sure there’s no such luxuries for hard-working guards like you.” She spoke faster and put a bit of pleading in her tone. “I feel kind of low, what with my daughter leaving me, and I thought, ‘This would be a perfect time to look at the tapestries.’ Do you mean I have to wait for Lord Matwyck—or even, by requesting to see him, wake him up?”

  “I don’t know, missus. I only know my standing orders,” said S
ergeant Athelbern.

  Stahlia stole a glance at the sand seeping through the timepiece.

  Nana had been loitering nearby, sitting on a bench with one shoe off, rubbing her bunion, pretending not to watch the interaction out of the corner of her eye. Now, she popped on her shoe and strode over.

  “Milady,” she said, addressing Stahlia with a term of higher respect than the guards had used. “Can I assist you? Is there a misunderstanding?”

  Sergeant Athelbern apprised Nana of the situation.

  “Oh, Athelbern, don’t be such a lackwit. Since he has already given this lady permission, Lord Matwyck will be mighty wroth with you if you bar her entry. ’Tis not only the proper but the polite thing to do with such a distinguished visitor.”

  “Nana, will you bear his wrath?” asked Sergeant Athelbern.

  “Aye, but get moving now. She’d be in and out before anyone even rises if you’d just step lively.”

  Ponderously working his big key, the sergeant unlocked the East Entrance.

  And with that, Stahlia and Tilim made their way inside.

  Stahlia looked around, gasping at the room’s grandeur, clearly visible even without lanterns because of the morning light streaming through the stained glass upper stories.

  They had entered the Throne Room on a mezzanine level. This low walkway stretched the whole circuit of the room, providing an opportunity for visitors to inspect the magnificent tapestries that hung on the wall. Five broad steps led down to the polished marble on the ground level. A dais, two-thirds of the way down the length of the room, rose above the floor. A small-sized empty throne, shimmering silver arms and legs with blue upholstery, stately in its simplicity, sat beside a large, unhewn pillar of rock. Water arced down the front of the rock, hitting a golden basin with a continual splash, and the basin overflowed to a pool on the dais in a solid, shining curtain of water.

  Without warning, three tan-and-white mountain lions, each about the weight of a deer, raced toward their tiny group. They came so close that Stahlia could see the black rims all around their blue eyes and the brown markings on their foreheads. Although they made no noise or threat, Stahlia shrank away.

  “Don’t be frightened,” said Athelbern. “They never come up here on the gangway. Just ignore them.” And indeed, the cats stopped underneath them, looking up at the intruders, and just twitched their noses and whiskers.

  “Now here,” the sergeant said, proudly indicating a tapestry to the left of the doorway, “is one of the real masterworks. ‘Queen Chitta Instructing the Glaziers,’ this one is called.”

  Stahlia pulled her gaze away from the beasts to look at the tapestry. Though her mind churned with the day’s mysteries, the weaver in her came to the fore. “Oh! So marvelous! Look at the sense of depth! Look at her hair. Who was the artist?”

  As Athelbern started to answer, Tilim tugged on the back of her pendant chain to remind her of the time, then, with his hand on his scabbard, quietly moved directly behind the officer, who had started to discourse about the tapestry.

  Suddenly, the catamounts raced away, coursing as fast as water through a broken dam in the direction of the opposite end of the room.

  A fourth catamount crawled through a swinging portal in the floor, deep in the recesses of the hall. The beast was followed by the figure of a woman in trousers and a beret, who rose to her feet, brushing off dirt. Stahlia sighed with relief that she had fulfilled her commission in time.

  Then all four mountain lions leapt at Wren. Stahlia’s satisfaction transmuted to terror for fear that the beasts intended to injure her. She couldn’t stop a small shriek escaping from her throat.

  “Hey! Hey you! What the—!” Athelbern called out.

  To Stahlia’s astonishment, Tilim pulled his sword and pressed it into the sergeant’s back, just at the level of his kidney. “Stand still and shut up,” he ordered.

  Stahlia stared, paralyzed with dread, but the catamounts did not harm her foster daughter. One rested its oversized, fluffy paws on Wren’s chest; she had to brace herself with her back leg to withstand its weight. Wren scratched the lion behind its ears and caressed its white chin and throat, and the overgrown house cat closed its eyes and butted her hand with its head. It smelled her mouth and licked her chin with a long pink tongue.

  The other three beasts surrounded her; they began rubbing their heads against her legs; one side of their face, then the other, or they sniffed her boots. Their black-tipped tails rose almost to her shoulders; these coyly wrapped and twitched around her. Their rumbling purrs were so loud that Stahlia could hear them wafting across the empty hall. Wren reached down to pet each of the adoring animals in turn. As she kept her head bent, the black beret she wore fell to the floor.

  A river of shimmering hair tumbled out of the hat. Hair the likes of which Stahlia had never seen before—hair she had often imagined and tried to capture in her tapestries. Hair of shades of blue-green. Hair the color of a blue tanager’s feathers.

  The catamounts pushed their faces through her hair—they drank in its color. As she continued to stroke them, one batted at her hair with a paw. When she straightened up and tried to move forward, the mountain lions impeded her progress; one lay down right in front of her and rolled over showing its belly, while another elaborately stretched out its front shoulders and a third wrapped its two front legs around her side. Stahlia heard her laughing at the animals’ antics.

  At that moment, the bells started to chime. First the bell in the palace church where Percia was married yesterday, then a bell farther away, then all the bells around the city, joining in joyous chimes.

  Stahlia’s hands flew to her cheeks, but instead of being shocked into silence, words poured out of her.

  “Birdie is the Nargis heir! Birdie is the princella. Oh, Waters! I made the princella clean our chicken coop!” she cried to Tilim and the sergeant.

  Stahlia absorbed the scene: the tan cats fawning over the newly revealed princella, the beams of light refracted through the stained glass ceiling winking on the floor, and the tumbled blue hair lying against the white shirt. The cascading water on the dais, flowing first in a waterfall and then in a solid curtain. In the midst of her astonishment, she tried to memorize every last detail.

  “Oh, Nargis! What a tapestry this scene would make! ‘Cerúlia and the Catamounts.’ This will be my greatest creation.”

  5

  A close-by church bell broke the early morning silence with a single chime. Ding. Then again. Dong.

  “Go!” shouted Gunnit, as bells throughout the city picked up the reverberation, so that the first bell spread from one church to another, throughout all of Cascada. DING, DONG; ding, dong; ding, dong; DING, DONG.

  Captain Yanath and Shield Pontole rammed their shoulders into the small wooden door, breaking the latch in their first attempt. The corps dashed through the small entry, Gunnit bringing up the rear. They sprinted across the large ballroom, where the leftover disarray from yesterday’s party flashed at them from the mirrored walls, heading for the nearby Throne Room. Ahead, the boy heard shouts and the clash of swords.

  A furious combat between palace guards and the New Queen’s Shield commenced both around the exterior of the Throne Room and inside the hall. Gunnit saw Pontole struggling to overmaster a burly soldier, their swords crossed in a stalemate between their chests. Pontole broke the standoff by butting his enemy in the forehead. A mariner swung a mace that shattered the sword arm of another guard. Branwise already had a bloody nose, but he hacked the legs out from under a foe. In moments the Throne Room guards all lay dead, injured, or on their knees with their hands in the air, taken by surprise by the fierce attack. Nonetheless, reinforcements—many in various states of dress—poured in by the score, brandishing their weapons as they came.

  Nana had told Gunnit that the palace boasted more than two hundred guards; the troop he had just ushered in hadn’t a prayer of defeating them by force. They needed reinforcements.

  Gunnit slipped into the
Throne Room through an open side doorway. Around the room, blue capes crossed swords with white or red sashes; he was surrounded by the clash of metal on metal, grunts of effort, and shouts. A sword that had been knocked loose from someone’s hand flew through the air, and Gunnit ducked. He ran after it, picked it up, and, steeling himself, cut the ankle tendon of a nearby palace soldier from behind.

  In the midst of all this mayhem, Gunnit spied Water Bearer. She held a kitchen knife at the throat of a soldier who stood very still in her grasp. And Nana was not the only person using an improvised weapon: Gunnit saw footmen brandishing pokers and maids swinging brooms. The palace workers had joined the fray. Were they the needed reinforcements? The fight was so chaotic, he could not tell which side a given servant favored.

  Called by the bells, scores of people of all stations continued to scurry into the Throne Room, including administrators and gentry. The gentry appeared mostly in their nightshifts, thronging above on the first and second balconies. A few soldiers appeared on the balconies too, including archers who took advantage of their strategic height to skewer the New Queen’s Shield whenever the surging combat gave them a clean shot.

  Heedless of all the chaos around her, Cerúlia walked to the central dais, flanked by four mountain lions. She climbed up the six steps.

  At that moment, Lord Matwyck, half-dressed, burst through a door onto the second balcony. “Shoot her! Shoot her!” he shouted. “A fortune to the man who shoots her!” An archer near Matwyck aimed at Cerúlia, but his arrow flew wide. The lady seamaster with the New Queen’s Shield raised her own bow, and an arrow blossomed from the enemy archer’s stomach.

  Gunnit saw Lord Matwyck wrestle the bow from the dying man.

  “Shields!” Gunnit yelled, pointing at the danger.

  The instant Matwyck turned back to face the floor, Pontole let fly; his arrow caught the lord in the meat of his thigh. The Lord Regent bellowed and staggered from the blow, but held himself upright by grabbing on to the gallery’s banister.