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  The Born Queen

  ( The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone - 4 )

  Greg Keyes

  Greg Keyes

  The Born Queen

  (The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone – 4)

  PROLOGUE

  FOUR BRIEF TALES

  HARRIOT

  A SHRIEK OF PAIN lifted into the pearl-colored sky and hung on the wind above Tarnshead like a seabird. Roger Harriot didn't turn; he'd heard plenty of screams this morning and would hear quite a few more before the day was done. Instead he focused his regard on the landscape, of which the west tower of Fiderech castle afforded an expansive view. The head itself was off to the west, presently on his left hand. Stacks of white stone jutted up through emerald grass, standing high enough to obscure the sea beyond, although as they slouched north toward town, the gray-green waves became visible. Along that slope, wind-gnarled trees reached their branches all in the same direction, as if to snatch some unseen prize from the air. From those twisty boughs hung strange fruit. He wondered if he would have been able to tell what they were if he did not already know.

  Probably.

  "Not everyone has the stomach for torture," a voice informed him. He recognized it as belonging to Sacritor Praecum, whose attish this was.

  "I find it dreary," Roger replied, letting his gaze drift across the village with its neat little houses, gardens, and ropewalk. Ships' masts swayed gently behind the roofs.

  "Dreary?"

  "And tedious, and unproductive," he added. "I doubt very much it accomplishes anything."

  "Many have confessed and turned back to the true path," Praecum objected.

  "I'm more than familiar with torture," Roger told him. "Under the iron, men will confess to things they have not done." He turned a wan smile toward the sacritor. "Indeed, I've found that the sins admitted by the victim are usually first in the guilty hearts of their interrogators."

  "Now, see here-" the sacritor began, but Roger waved him off.

  "I'm not accusing you of anything," he said. "It's a general observation."

  "I can't believe a knight of the Church could have such views. You seem almost to question the resacaratum itself."

  "Not at all," Roger replied. "The cancer of heresy infects every city, town, village, and household. Evil walks abroad in daylight and does not bother to wear a disguise. No, this world must be made pure again, as it was in the days of the Sacaratum."

  "Then-"

  "My comment was about torture. It doesn't work. The confessions it yields are untrustworthy, and the epiphanies it inspires are insincere."

  "Then how would you have us proceed?"

  Roger pointed toward the headland. "Most of those you question will end there, swinging by their necks."

  "The unrepentant, yes."

  "Best skip straight to the hanging. The 'repentant' are liars, and those innocents we execute will be rewarded by the saints in the cities of the dead."

  He could feel the sacritor stiffen. "Have you come to replace me? Are the patiri not pleased with our work?"

  "No," Roger said. "My opinions are my own and not popular. The patiri-like you-enjoy torture, and it will continue. My task here is of another nature."

  He turned his gaze to the southeast, where a light saffron road vanished into forested hills.

  "Out of curiosity," Roger asked, "how many have you hung?"

  "Thirty-one," Praecum replied. "And besides these behind us, twenty-six more await proving. And there will be more, I think."

  "So many heretics from such a small village."

  "The countryside is worse. Nearly every farm-and-woodwife practices shinecraft of some sort. Under your method, I should kill everyone in the attish."

  "Once an arm has gangrene," Roger said, "you cannot cure it in spots. It must be cut off."

  He turned to regard the whimpering man behind him. Roger first had seen him as a strong, stocky fellow with ruddy windburned cheeks and challenging blue eyes. Now he was something of a sack, and his gaze pleaded only for that dark boat ride at the border of the world. He was tied to a wooden pillar set in a socket in the stone of the tower, his arms chained above him. Six other pillars held as many more prisoners, stripped and waiting their turn in the spring breeze.

  "Why do you do your work up here rather than in the dungeons?" Roger wondered.

  The sacritor straightened a little and firmed his chin. "Because I believe there is a point to this. In the dungeons they contemplate their sins and yearn for sunlight until they wonder if they really remember what it looked like. Then I bring them here, where they can see the beauty of the world: the sea, the sun, the grass-"

  "And the fate that awaits them," Harriot said, glancing at the gallow trees.

  "That, too," Praecum admitted. "I want them to learn to love the saints again, to return to them in their hearts."

  "You filthy whoreson," the man on the pillar sobbed. "You vicious little sceat. What you did to my poor little Maola…" He shuddered off into sobs.

  "Your wife was a shinecrafter," Praecum said.

  "She was never," the man croaked. "She was never."

  "She admitted to tying Hynthia knots for sailors," he shot back.

  "Saint Hynthia," the victim sighed. His energy seemed to be ebbing as quickly as he had found it.

  "There is no Saint Hynthia," the sacritor said.

  Roger tried to bite back a laugh, then thought better of it and let it go.

  The sacritor nodded in satisfaction. "You see?" he said. "This is Roger Harriot, knight of the Church, an educated man."

  "Indeed," Roger said, his mind changed again by the sacritor's smugness. "I'm educated enough to-on occasion-consult the Tafles Nomens, one of the three books available in every attish."

  "The Tafles Nomens?"

  "The largest volume in your library. The one on the lectern in the corner with the thick coat of dust on it."

  "I fail to see-"

  "Hynthia is one of the forty-eight aspects of Saint Sefrus," Roger said. "An obscure one, I'll grant you. But I seem to recall that one ties knots to her."

  Praecum opened his mouth in protest, closed it, then opened it again.

  "Saint Sefrus is male," he finally said.

  Roger wagged a finger at him. "You're guessing that, based on the Vitellian ending. You've no idea who Saint Sefrus was, do you?"

  "I…there are a lot of saints."

  "Yes. Thousands. Which is why I should wonder that you didn't bother to check the book to see if Hynthia was a saint before you started accusing her followers as shinecrafters."

  "She gave sailors knots and told them to untie them if they needed wind," Praecum said desperately. "That reeks of shinecraft."

  Roger cleared his throat. "And Ghial," he quoted, "the Queen, said to Saint Merinero, 'Take you this linen strand and bind a knot in the name of Sephrus, and when you are becalmed, release the wind by untying it.'"

  He smiled. "That's from the Sacred Annals of Saint Merinero. Was he a heretic?"

  The sacritor pursed his lips and fidgeted. "I read the Life of Merinero," he said. "I don't remember that."

  "The Life of Merinero is a paragraph in the Sahtii Bivii," Roger said. "The Anal is a book of seven hundred pages."

  "Well, then I can hardly be expected-"

  "Tell me. I've noticed you've a chapel for Mannad, Lir, and Netuno. How many sailors make their offerings there before going out to sea?"

  "Few to none," Praecum exploded. "They prefer their sea witches. For twenty years they've spurned-" He broke off, his face red, his eyes bugging halfway from their sockets.

  "Truth?" Roger asked mildly.

  "I have done what I thought best. What the saints wished of me."

  "So you have," Roger rep
lied. "And that clearly is neither here nor there as concerns the truth."

  "Then you have come to, to…" His eyes were watery, and he was trembling.

  Roger rolled his eyes. "I don't care about you, or this poor bastard's wife, or whether every person you've hanged was innocent. The fact that you're an ignorant butcher is the reason I'm here, but not for any of the reasons you fear."

  "Then why, for pity's sake?"

  "Wait, and I promise you will see."

  A bell later, his promise was kept.

  They came from the south, as Harriot reckoned. There were around half a hundred of them, most in the dark orange tabards of the Royal Light Horse, riding boldly out of the forest and up to the gates of the castle. As they drew nearer, he saw that ten of them wore the full lord's plate of knights. There was a single unarmored fellow appareled in the Vitellian manner, complete with broad-brimmed hat. Next to him was the most singular of the riders, a slight figure in a breastplate, with short red hair. At first he thought the person a page or squire, but then, to his delight, he realized who it actually was.

  I was right, he thought, trying not to feel smug.

  "It appears Queen Anne herself has come to pay you a visit," he told the sacritor.

  "Heresy," the sacritor muttered. "There is no Queen Anne."

  "The Comven crowned her," Harriot pointed out.

  "The Church does not recognize her authority," Praecum countered.

  "I'll enjoy hearing you tell her that," Harriot replied. "You and your fifteen men."

  "Up there," a clear feminine voice shouted. "Is one of you the sacritor of this attish?"

  "I am," Praecum replied.

  From his vantage, Harriot couldn't make out much about her features, but even so he felt a wintry chill, and her eyes seemed somehow dark.

  "M-Majesty," the sacritor said. "If you wait but a moment, I can offer you the humble hospitality of my poor attish."

  "No," the woman replied. "Wait where you are. Send someone down to show us the way up."

  Praecum nodded nervously at one of his men, then began rubbing his hands nervously.

  "That was a quick change of mind," Harriot observed.

  "As you said, we're outnumbered."

  "Not if the saints are on our side," Harriot replied.

  "Do you mock me?"

  "Not at all."

  The sacritor shook his head. "What can she want here?"

  "You haven't heard about Plinse, Nurthwys, and Saeham?"

  "Towns in Newland. What about them?"

  "You've really no better ear for news than that?"

  "I have been quite occupied here, sir."

  "So it appears."

  "What do you mean?"

  Harriot heard clattering on the stairs.

  "I think you'll find out in a moment," he remarked. "Here they come."

  Harriot had never met Anne Dare, but he knew quite a bit about her. She was seventeen, the youngest daughter of the late William II. Reports by Praefec Hespero and others described her as selfish and willful, intelligent but uninterested in using her intelligence, least of all for politics, for which she had no inclination whatsoever. She had vanished from sight around a year earlier, only to turn up at the Coven Saint Dare, where she was being trained in the arts of the Dark Lady.

  Now it seemed she took a great deal of interest in politics. Perhaps it was the slaughter of her sisters and father that had spurred it, or the numerous attempts on her own life. Perhaps it was something the sisters of Saint Cer had done to her.

  Whatever the case, this was not the girl he had read about.

  He hadn't expected freckles, although he knew she was fair-skinned and red-haired, and those things usually went together. Her nose was large and arched enough that if it were a bit bigger, one might call it a beak, but somehow it fit pleasantly below her sea-green eyes, and though she wasn't classically beautiful like her mother, there was an appeal about her.

  She focused her gaze on Praecum. She didn't say anything, but the young man at her side placed his hand on the hilt of his rapier.

  "Her Majesty, Anne I of Crotheny," he said.

  Praecum hesitated, then went down on his knee, followed by his men. Harriot followed suit.

  "Rise," Anne said. Her gaze wandered over the tortured souls on the rooftop.

  "Release these people," she said. "See that they are treated for their sufferings."

  Several of her men broke away from her group and began to do that.

  "Majesty-"

  "Sacritor," Anne said. "These people are my subjects. Mine. My subjects are not detained, tortured, or murdered without my consent. I do not remember you asking my consent."

  "Majesty, my instructions come from z'Irbina and the Fratrex Prismo, as you must know."

  "Z'Irbina is in Vitellio," she replied. "This is Hornladh, in the Empire of Crotheny, and I am its empress."

  "Surely, Majesty, the holy Church is above temporal rulers."

  "Not in Crotheny," she said. "Not according to my father, not according to me."

  The sacritor lowered his head. "I am a servant of the Church, Majesty."

  "That's immaterial to me. You are accused of torture, murder, and treason. We will try you tomorrow."

  "As you tried the sacritors of Plinse, Nurthwys, and Saeham?"

  Her gaze switched to him, and he felt another, deeper chill. There was still something of a girl in there, but there was something else, too, something very dangerous.

  "Who are you?" she demanded.

  "Sir Roger Harriot," he replied. "Knight of the Church, in service to His Grace Supernnirus Abullo."

  "I see. Sent by z'Irbina to aid in this butchery?"

  "No, Majesty," he replied. "That's not my business here."

  "What is your business, then?"

  "I and forty-nine other knights of the Church were called to aid His Majesty Robert in keeping the peace."

  "Yes," Anne said. "I remember now. We were wondering what happened to you."

  "We got word that things had changed in Eslen."

  "And so they did," Anne replied. "The usurper is fled, and I have taken the throne my father meant me to have." She smiled thinly. "Did you think you would be unwelcome?"

  "That occurred to my liege," Harriot admitted.

  "Have your companions returned to z'Irbina, then?"

  "No, Majesty. We have been waiting."

  "For what?"

  "For you."

  Her eyebrows lifted, but she didn't say anything.

  "You're an unusual queen," Harriot went on. "You personally led the invasion of Eslen castle. Since taking the crown, you have managed a number of these visits to interfere with the resacaratum. We thought that given your pattern, our friend Praecum here would eventually prove irresistible."

  "Well, you were right about that," Anne said. "So this was all a trap, then."

  "Yes, Majesty. And now you are surrounded. I urge you to surrender to my custody, and I promise you will not be harmed."

  "Not until I've been convicted of shinecraft, you mean?"

  "That I cannot speak to."

  Praecum had regained a little color. "You were serious, Sir Harriot! The saints are with us. Forty-nine knights-"

  "Each with a guard of ten, all mounted," Harriot finished.

  "That makes…" Praecum's lips moved silently. "Five hundred."

  "Yes," Harriot replied.

  Anne smiled. "How convenient that I brought two thousand, then."

  Harriot felt his heart all but stop in his chest.

  "Majesty?"

  "This was indeed a trap, Sir Harriot," she said. Something tightened around her eyes, and then she reached forward so that the heel of her hand came against his forehead.

  He felt the bones in his skin go suddenly heavy and febrile. He fell to his knees, but she did not release the contact. His skin everywhere stung, his lungs seemed full of flies. And in his head…

  He saw St. Abulo's host in their camp, waiting for the morning,
some sleeping, some on watch. He seemed to be one of the watchmen, suddenly crushed by this same black torpor, and he watched, uncaring, as nimble shadows slipped into the camp, slitting the throats of the sleeping and waking alike. Some woke and managed to fight, but it wasn't long before all five hundred were dead. The eyes he watched through dimmed, and he felt himself dragged along as if by a swift river, and screamed…

  He came back to the sunlight gasping, watching the distant corpses swinging from their branches. His breeches were wet.

  He looked up at the queen, and her smile broadened into a terrible thing.

  "Now about your surrender," she said.

  Harriot summoned a dogged reserve of will. "Do you understand what you've done?" He gasped. "The full wrath of the Church will fall on you now. There will be holy war."

  "Let z'Irbina come," she replied. "I have seen enough of their work. Let them come and receive the justice they deserve."

  Harriot steadied his breath and felt his fever fade. "That's bold talk," he said. "How is the Hansan fleet?"

  "Encamped along our coast, as you must know," Anne replied.

  "And you truly believe you can fight Hansa and the holy Church?"

  Her gaze intensified, and he flinched. It took all he had in him not to cower.

  "What do you think?" she asked softly.

  I think you are mad, he silently opined, but he could not say it.

  She nodded, as if she had heard him, anyway. "I've a mind to let you return to z'Irbina," she said. "So you can tell them what was done and said here. And let me add this: From this moment, all servants of the Church in z'Irbina shall either renounce their allegiance to that corrupt institution or leave our borders within the nineday. Beyond that time, any churchman, regardless of rank, will be arrested, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the empire. Is this clear enough for you to repeat, Sir Roger?"

  "Very clear, Majesty," he husked.

  "Very well. Go. As you've pointed out, I've other things to attend to now."

  They let him keep his horse and arms. He went to the camp and found the bodies where they had fallen, most still in their blankets. The field was thick with ravens, and the clouds threatened rain.