Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [68]
All at once the queen stood in a swirl of green silk. “You’ve done well, Roger. Thank you. Here is a token of my appreciation.” She tugged a ring off her finger, a gold ring set with small emeralds, and gave it to me.
“Your Grace—”
“For you. Now go to bed. It’s past midnight; you were gone longer than usual. The battle may begin as early as dawn, and I want you to watch it with me.”
“Me?”
“Who knows what you will learn? You are quicker than even I knew. Perhaps you aspire to take Eammons’s place as translator.”
“No, no . . . of course not ...”
“A joke, Roger.” But she was not smiling. Her dark eyes, with their flashes of submerged silver, measured me even as I stumbled from the room, one hand clutching the ring she had given me, my jaw bloating painfully with the blow I had taken in the country of the Dead. I was vulnerable there. I was vulnerable here.
I shut the door to the privy chamber quietly behind me, and went to another sleepless night beside the ashes.
20
THE QUEEN SPOKE TRULY. The battle began just before dawn.
I stood wrapped in my cloak on the palace tower. This was the only place on the island city taller than two stories, and it was nothing more than the flat roof of the bell tower. The space was no larger than a small bedchamber, circled by a low stone parapet. A wooden trapdoor, now raised, covered the spiral stairs that led through the bell cavern and on down to the palace below. I stood jammed into the small area with Queen Caroline, a few advisors, and the queen’s personal guard of Greens.
No one spoke. A light breeze blew. The unrisen sun streaked the east with red, as if blood already flowed.
From here I could see the whole of the palace spread below, as I had never seen it before. Finally I saw that the shadowy maze of courtyards and buildings, so bewildering to walk through unguided, made symmetrical patterns. The whole was far larger than I had imagined, a vast and beautiful stone rose with too many petals to count. Every courtyard was now empty, the fountains stilled, the new green buds washed gray in the pale light. Soldiers of the Green stood atop the wall that enclosed the palace, with more soldiers on the ramparts circling the very edge of the island itself. Between lay the narrow ring of the tent city, as deserted as the courtyards. The great city gates were closed, soldiers posted at their bridges. Was Mother Chilton somewhere in one of those tents? Was Maggie in the kitchen, kneading bread for a victory feast if Lord Solek’s army defeated the old queen’s Blues?
And if the savage warriors did not win—
I could not think about that. My mind refused it. We who were closest to the queen would surely die, but I could not bear to think how. My mind could not keep its grasp on the possibilities, just as it was unable to grasp what lay beyond the stars now fading from the sky.
The last stars disappeared and the sun rose.
The Blue army stood massed on the northern plain, foot soldiers in the center and archers to either side. The officers, on horseback, were scattered behind their cadres. A drum sounded a code I did not understand but which turned my blood to water: Boom boom BOOM BOOM boom.
The savages had crossed the river from Fairfield sometime during the night. They now stood on the Thymar’s northern bank, directly below the city. Yesterday I had thought them so many, filling the throne hall with their chanting numbers and pounding their cudgels on the floor, but today they looked a pitifully small number compared to the Blues. They weren’t massed in orderly rows, either, but stood in uneven clumps, and as I squinted in the rising light, it seemed that many were laughing. Was that possible? Did men laugh at the start of battle? I had no way to know, but it seemed strange.
There was one group of Greens among the savages, Lord Robert’s troops. He had left the rest of the Greens inside the palace, where they would make a last stand to defend the queen if necessary. Lord Robert sat astride a huge black horse, a magnificent animal with green jewels on its