The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [100]
“I’m not afraid of you,” she told the arilac.
“I never said you were.”
“Oh, I was,” she admitted. “But no longer. From now on I expect you to tell me everything I need to know. Do you understand? I don’t want to be hit from behind again.”
“Very well, Anne.”
“Call me ‘Majesty.’”
“When you are my queen, I shall. But that time is not come. And I’m not afraid of you, either.”
She watched the titanic stones of the citadel crack and felt herself like fingers wedged there, tearing at it. The doors were like burning brands, but she pulled, and everything in her seemed next to snapping. In an instant she brimmed with the most profound happiness she had ever known as everything slowed to almost stopping, and the magicked metal rang as it tore, and the power of chaos collapsed before her. She felt the slow burning fire of ten thousand lives bent against her—creatures so much of the master’s that even now, when their liberation was at hand, they still fought to remain slaves.
But now they cringed as the citadel lay open and the powers that kept her at bay disintegrated.
She had known the power before, but never like this. Gone were her reservations, gone her fears. She was pure and simple, an arrow already loosed from its string, a storm striking a port, unstoppable, not in need of stopping.
Every weakness purged.
She laughed, and they died, either quenched by her will or gutted by her warriors, her beautiful, lovely warriors. And everything they were and might have been flowed from them and came back, and she knew she finally sat the sedos throne…
“It was worse this time, wasn’t it?” Emily asked.
Anne held back from throttling the girl over the inanity of the question, but only barely. Instead she took deep breaths and more of the Sefry tea.
“Is there anything I can do, Majesty?”
Yes, jump out the window, Anne thought.
“Hush, Emily,” she said instead. “I’m not myself.”
But maybe she was exactly herself. They had wanted her to take on the responsibility? Fine, she had. Now that she was queen, she would be queen, the queen they all deserved.
Emily backed away and didn’t say anything.
A bell later Anne no longer felt as if a bed of ants had invaded her head.
“It’s getting so easy,” she told Nerenai. “I think of what I want to see, and I see it, or something to do with it. But then, the dreams. The clearer my visions come, the worse my Black Marys are. Is that the way it’s supposed to be?”
“I think it must just be the price,” the Sefry said. “You’ve separated the visions from the dreams, but they flow from the same source.”
“I have to be able to tell them apart.”
“True, for now. But when you are strong enough, you won’t have to keep them apart. It will all be one.”
Anne remembered standing before the gates as they shattered, the liberation of it, the joy.
“I hope so,” she sighed. “Send Emily back in, will you? I want to apologize to her.”
“She’s just outside,” Nerenai said. “With her brother. He’s come to see you.”
“All right,” Anne said. “I’ll see him.”
The earl stepped through a moment later, Emily tugging at his hand. He was in a new-looking deep red doublet and black hose.
“Good of you to come, Cape Chavel,” she said.
“Majesty,” he said, bowing.
“Emily, my apologies for earlier. “
“It’s nothing, Majesty,” Emily said. “It’s your dreams, I know. I’m just here to serve you.”
Anne nodded. “Cape Chavel, I don’t think I’ve thanked you for saving my life.”
“I’m glad you haven’t,” he replied. “It would only embarrass me. Especially as it was your saint gifts that got most of us out of there alive.”
“Well, you’ll have to be embarrassed. Thank you.”
He actually blushed. He was a funny fellow, a bit like Sir Neil but a bit like Cazio as well.
Cazio. She had seen him free, with z’Acatto, but Dunmrogh fallen. And Hespero—but that part had been unclear. In fact, any vision concerning the praifec was unclear.
“How are you feeling?” the earl asked.
“Better. The leic will let me walk in a day or two. Nothing too badly hurt inside, I suppose.”
“I’m relieved,” the