The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [130]
“So the keep will fall.”
“If we can hold out for two days, reinforcements will arrive.”
“Two days. Can we do it?”
“I don’t think so.”
It seemed to Anne there was a bit of a reproof in his tone.
I was trying to find my friends, she wanted to protest. But she knew what his answer to that would be, whether he had the nerve to say it out loud or not.
“I can’t see everything in advance, you know,” she told him. “There is so much to keep my eye on.”
But her negligence was all around her now, and she knew that if Hansa won, she would never live to claim the sedos throne. She could never set things right, free Crotheny from terror, avenge Austra, extinguish the Hansan threat for all time.
Her hubris had doomed her.
No.
“Step away from me,” she said. “Get below, all of you but Nerenai.”
When they were all gone but the Sefry, Anne closed her eyes.
“You can do it, Majesty,” Nerenai said.
“If I don’t, we’ll all die.”
“That’s not how to think, Majesty. Fear and worry will only hinder you. You must be confident. You must be strong for strength’s sake, not to achieve an end.”
“I’ll try,” Anne replied, swallowing. Her mouth was bone dry.
She felt at the moment very much the girl. Why was this her burden? Why had the saints laid this on her when all she wanted was to ride her horse, drink wine, gossip with Austra, maybe fall in love? Why was she denied all of that?
I miss you, Austra. I’m so sorry.
Thinking that brought the anger she needed, and Anne slipped into otherwhere.
Arilac.
At first no answer came, but then a shadow lifted from the green and wavered like smoke before her, grudgingly forming into the pale image of a woman.
“I need your help,” Anne said.
“I’m nearly consumed,” the arilac replied in dissipated tones. “I may not be of much help.”
“What’s consuming you?”
“You are,” the arilac replied. “This is how it is.”
“Who are you?” Anne demanded.
“You’ve asked that before.”
“Yes, and you’ve never answered. Who are you?”
“What was. What will be. I was never merely a living person. I was born here, created here.”
“Who created you?”
The arilac smiled wanly. “You did.”
And with those two words, Anne suddenly understood, and everything fell into place, and she was ready.
“Good-bye,” she said.
And the arilac was gone, and her limbs pulsed with power, and the power remembered itself in her.
She stepped halfway so that otherwhere shimmered around her, but so did Newland and Andemuer, the keep and the host of Hansa.
She looked over the teeming thousands bent on her destruction, the enemies who had ripped her out of the life she wanted and made her this, and felt a cold, determined hatred rise up in her that she never had known before.
She liked it, and the power in her had felt that hatred before many times, and it knew what to do.
Artwair was still pale bells later when he came to see her.
“You’re not going to vomit again, are you?” she asked.
“No, Majesty,” he replied. “I’ve nothing left in my stomach.”
“I’m surprised at you,” she replied. “With all you’ve seen.”
He closed his eyes and nodded. She saw the apple in his throat bob a few times.
“There were a few survivors,” he said. “What will Your Majesty have done with them?”
She thought about it for a moment. “How many?”
“About a thousand.”
“So many,” she said.
“There were fifty thousand this morning, Majesty.”
“Well, kill them, I suppose. I want Hansa to understand that if they attack us, they can expect no quarter.”
“May I remind you that your mother is their hostage?”
“Yes, and Marcomir has given the order for her execution. What more can I do but show him the price he pays for affronting us? How else can I save her?”
“May I make a suggestion, Majesty?”
“Of course.”
“Show mercy. Let them return to Hansa and tell what they saw here. What army will attack us when they know what could happen to them?”
There was something in his tone that it took her a moment to understand.
“You feel sorry for them,” she accused.
“Saints, yes,” Artwair said.
“They would have killed all of us,” she pointed out.
“Auy.