The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath The Queen's Window

Tryce came yet closer to me so that I could see the triple scars where the gems that had once sealed her heirship had been carved out of her cheeks. They left angry, red triangles. Tryce’s breath was hot; her eyes like oil, shining.

“Even without my automatons, I have enough resources to overwhelm the palace,” Tryce continued, “except for one thing.”

I waited.

“I need you to tell me how to unlock the protections you laid on the palace grounds and my mother’s chambers.”

“We return to the beginning. Why should I help you?”

Tryce closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. There was shyness in her posture now. She would not direct her gaze at mine.

She said, “I was young when you died, still young enough to think that our strength was unassailable. The battles after your death shattered my illusions. We barely won, and we lost many lives. I realized that we needed more power, and I thought that I could give us that power by becoming a sorceress to replace you.” She paused. “During my studies, I researched your acts of magic, great and small. Inevitably, I came to the spell you cast before you died, when you sent the raiders’ positions into the summoning pool.”

It was then that I knew what she would say next. I wish I could say that my heartfelt as immobile as a mountain, that I had always known to suspect the love of a Queen. But my heart drummed, and my mouth went dry, and I felt as if I were falling.

“Some of mother’s advisers convinced her that you were plotting against her. They had little evidence to support their accusations, but once the idea rooted into mother’s mind, she became obsessed. She violated the sanctity of woman’s magic by teaching Kyan how to summon a roc feather enchanted to pierce your heart. She ordered him to wait until you had sent her the vision of the battleground, and then to kill you and punish your treachery by binding your soul so that you would always wander and wake.”

I wanted to deny it, but what point would there be? Now that Tryce forced me to examine my death with a watcher’s eye, I saw the coincidences that proved her truth. How else could I have been shot by an arrow not just shaped by woman’s magic, but made from one of the Queen’s roc feathers? Why else would a worm like Kyan have happened to have in his possession a piece of leucite more powerful than any I’d seen?

I clenched Okilanu’s fists. “I never plotted against Rayneh.”

“Of course not. She realized it herself, in time, and executed the women who had whispered against you. But she had your magic, and your restless spirit bound to her, and she believed that was all she needed.”

For long moments, my grief battled my anger. When it was done, my resolve was hardened like a spear tempered by fire.

I lifted my palms in the gesture of truth telling. “To remove the protections on the palace grounds, you must lay yourself flat against the soil with your cheek against the dirt, so that it knows you. To it, you must say, ‘The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window loves the Queen from instant to eternity, from desire to regret.’ And then you must kiss the soil as if it is the hem of your lover’s robe. Wait until you feel the earth move beneath you and then the protections will be gone.”

Tryce inclined her head. “I will do this.”

I continued, “When you are done, you must flay off a strip of your skin and grind it into a fine powder. Bury it in an envelope of wind-silk beneath the Queen’s window. Bury it quickly. If a single grain escapes, the protections on her chamber will hold.”

“I will do this, too,” said Tryce. She began to speak more, but I raised one of my ringed, blue fingers to silence her.

“There’s another set of protections you don’t know about. One cast on your mother. It can only be broken by the fresh life-blood of something you love. Throw the blood onto the Queen while saying, ‘The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath Your Window has betrayed you.”

“Life-blood? You mean, I need to kill—”

“Perhaps the automaton.”

Tryce’s expression clouded with distress. “Gudrin is the last one! Maybe the baby. I could conceive again—”

“If you can suggest the baby, you don’t love it enough. It must be Gudrin.”

Tryce closed her mouth. “Then it will be Gudrin,” she agreed, but her eyes would not meet mine.

I folded my arms across Okilanu’s flat bosom. “I’ve given you what you wanted. Now grant me a favor, Imprudent Child Who Would Be Queen. When you kill Rayneh, I want to be there.”

Tryce lifted her head like the Queen she wanted to be. “I will summon you when it’s time, Respected Aunt.” She turned toward Gudrin in the shadows. “Disassemble the binding shapes,” she ordered.

For the first time, I beheld Gudrin in his entirety. The creature was tree-tall and stick-slender, and yet he moved with astonishing grace. “Thank you on behalf of the Creator of Me and My Kind,” he trilled in his beautiful voice, and I considered how unfortunate it was that the next time I saw him, he would be dead.