Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [67]
The soldiers all cried out and fell on their faces. To tell the truth, I shivered myself. Cat looked like a witch, flying away from us, even though I knew she was only a girl too simpleminded to know she was dead. Like Bat, who had flown up the cliff face because he wanted to. How much else could the Dead do? And when would these Blues discover it? One thing they could not do was kill each other again, but Cat hadn’t known that. Her body would not really have burned. But I had at least spared her more terror.
How had she died, back there among the living? Burned there, too, as a witch?
A Blue rose cautiously from the ground. “Did you get the amulet, boy?”
“No. She was too quick for me.”
“Witches are,” another said grimly. He looked at my bleeding arm, my bruised jaw. “Does the whore-queen hurt you, boy?”
“Sometimes. I—oh, she calls!” I put on the expression of a brave man suffering without noise, bit my tongue, and crossed back over, just as the uneasy sky flashed with sudden, shocking lightning.
The queen sat at the carved table, holding a goblet of wine, her green-jeweled skirts spreading inches from where I lay on the floor. Unlike all my other returns, this time she seemed hesitant to touch me. She said, “I watched, Roger, and all at once these long scratches appeared on your cheek.”
I put my hand to my Cat’s scratches. My fingers came away bloody. So that was how it worked. Never before had anyone watched me while I sustained injury in that other country.
The queen said, “Do you . . . do you want some wine?”
“Yes, please, Your Grace.”
I sat up slowly. My jaw ached where the Blue had hit me and the touch of the goblet on my mouth hurt. But I drank all of the wine.
“Now tell me.” Her uncertainty had vanished, along with any concern for me. She was again the queen. “What did the savages say to your question, ‘ven’ or ‘ka’?”
I had listened carefully at dinner. “Ven” was yes, “ka” was no. I thought I knew what answer she wanted, and I gave it to her. “They said ‘ven,’ Your Grace. Lord Solek does . . . he does seek your throne.”
Instantly she stiffened. “How did you know that’s what the words meant?”
Mistake, mistake. Muddled by the wine, by the pain in my jaw, by seeing Cat Starling again—I hadn’t meant to reveal that I knew what Queen Caroline had wanted to ask the savage Dead, any more than I would reveal that I was making up the answer. But there was no help for it now.
“Your Grace . . . at dinner with Lord Solek . . . you named the word for ‘throne’ to teach him, and he told you their word for ‘want’ when he desired more ale. . . . I’m sorry, I was standing so close. ...”
“You have a good ear,” she said disapprovingly. “I will remember that, Roger.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“And their answer to my question was ‘ven.’ You are certain.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” My lies were multiplying like ants in spring. Once, I would have been afraid to lie to the queen. But I didn’t think this lie, warning her of danger from Lord Solek, would do me harm. She must anticipate that already. To say “ka” would have been even worse. And she would not have believed me.
“And my second question? How is the fire-powder made?”
“Your Grace, how could they tell me that? I pointed to their guns—”
“They have them still, over there?” It was the first time she had ever asked me anything about the country of the Dead except information about the land of the living. But her curiosity didn’t last. It was a byway, and the queen’s ambition kept her on the main road, always.
“They have their guns, yes,” I said. “And they pointed to them and mimed for me that they do not make them, nor the fire-powder. There are special craftsmen who do that, just as we have special craftsmen to do blacksmithing or to build ships.”
“That makes sense,” she said thoughtfully, and I breathed again. My jaw throbbed; I could feel it swell. Cat’s scratches