“It only stopped raining early this morning, Lady. We were waiting for you to wake up, but I had to make some decisions.”
“Your decisions are usually acceptable, Lazarus.”
“I sent the caravan back. There were a couple of children left motherless, but a woman from their village said that she would look after them.”
Kelsea grabbed his arm, clutching just beneath the elbow. “Is he all right?”
Pen’s brow furrowed, but Mace gave her an irritated look; he knew exactly who she meant. She braced herself, anticipating a lecture, but Mace was a good man; he took a deep breath and let it out in a slow sigh. “He’s fine, Lady. They all left yesterday, shortly after dawn.”
Kelsea’s heart sank, but that was nothing Mace needed to know, so she stretched, eliciting several satisfying cracks in her back. As she pushed herself to her feet, she caught the two guards giving each other a hard glance.
“What?”
“There are things to deal with outside, Majesty.”
“Fine. Let’s go.”
Weather could change everything. They’d camped in Thorne’s spot, right at the base of the valley that formed the Argive. The entire pass was washed in sunlight, and Kelsea saw that the ravine that had seemed so forbidding at night was actually extraordinarily beautiful, a stark, spare beauty built of bare land and white rock. The walls of the pass gleamed like marble above Kelsea’s head.
Her guard was seated around the remains of Thorne’s campfire, but upon her approach they stood up, and to her surprise, all of them bowed, even Dyer. Kelsea’s black army uniform was streaked and stained with mud, and her hair was undoubtedly a fright, but they didn’t seem to care about that. They stood waiting, and after a moment Kelsea realized they weren’t waiting for orders from Mace. They were waiting for her.
“Where are the cages? The caravan?”
“I sent it back the way it came, Lady. The prisoners couldn’t walk all the way home and most of the mules survived, so we busted off the tops of the cages and turned them into rolling wagons so they could ride comfortably. They should be well into the Almont by now, heading home.”
Kelsea nodded, finding this a good solution. Splintered pieces of the roofs and bars still littered the bottom of the pass. At the far side of the ravine, a line of smoke curled into the air. “What’s on fire over there?”
“Tom, Lady,” Mace replied, his voice tight. “No family, and it’s what he would have wanted. No ceremony.”
Kelsea looked around at the group, marking a second man missing. “Where’s Fell?”
“I sent him back to New London, Lady, with several women who looked like they could use a shopping trip in the big city.”
“That’s tasteful, Lazarus. They could have died, and you sent them back to spread propaganda.”
“It is what it is, Lady. And Fell needed to get indoors anyway; he took some sort of lung illness from the wet.”
“Is anyone else injured?”
“Only Elston’s pride, Lady,” Kibb piped up.
Elston gave his friend a ferocious glare and then looked down at his feet. “Forgive me, Majesty. I failed to take Arlen Thorne. He got away clean.”
“You’re forgiven, Elston. Thorne’s a tough mark.”
Bitter laughter erupted from the ground. Looking through several sets of legs, Kelsea saw a man, bound at the wrists, sitting beside the campfire.
“Who’s that?”
“Stand, you!” Dyer growled, prodding the prisoner with his foot. The man rose wearily, as though he had a ton of granite between his shoulders. Kelsea’s brow quirked, something rippling in her memory. The prisoner wasn’t old, perhaps thirty or thirty-five, but his hair was already mostly grey. He looked at her with vacant apathy.
“Javel, Lady. A Gate Guard, and the only survivor who didn’t escape. He didn’t try to run.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do with him?”
“He’s a traitor, Lady,” Dyer told her. “He’s already confessed to opening the Keep Gate for the Graham heir.”
“On Thorne’s orders?”
“So he says, Lady.”
“How did you extract that information?”
“Extract? Christ, Lady, we didn’t have to do a thing. He would’ve screamed it in the town square if he could.”
Kelsea turned back to the prisoner. In spite of the sun’s warmth, a nasty shiver went down her spine. This man looked just as Carroll had looked in the clearing: all hope gone, and something inside him already dead. “How did a Gate Guard get mixed up with Thorne?”
Mace shrugged. “His wife was shipped six years ago. I’m guessing Thorne offered to get her back.”
Kelsea’s memory was tugging harder now, and she moved closer, signaling to Coryn and Dyer to back off. The prisoner was clearly no threat to anyone; indeed, he looked like he wanted to do nothing more than fall down dead where he stood.
“He’s a traitor, Lady,” Dyer repeated. “There’s only one fate for a traitor.”
Kelsea nodded, knowing this was true. But out of the blur of that night, which now seemed centuries ago, her mind suddenly dug up a vivid picture: this man, an axe in his hand, swinging wildly at the bars of the cage. She waited for a moment, listening, waiting for Carlin to speak up, to tell her what to do. But there was nothing. She hadn’t heard Carlin’s voice in a long time. She considered the prisoner for a moment longer, then turned to Dyer. “Take him back to the Keep and put him in a cell.”
“He’s a traitor, Majesty! Make an example of him, and the next bastard Thorne asks will think twice!”
“No,” Kelsea replied firmly. Her sapphires gave a light throb, the first thing she’d felt from them since waking. “Take him back, and go easy on him. He won’t try to flee.”
Dyer’s jaw clenched for a moment, but then he nodded. “Lady.”
Kelsea had expected Mace to disagree, but he remained oddly silent. “Can we go now?”
“A moment more, Lady.” Mace held out an arm, watching while Dyer led Javel away, behind a boulder. “We’ve business to settle here. Business of the Guard.”
Elston and Kibb leaped across the grass and laid hold of Mhurn, who’d already begun to bolt at Mace’s words. Elston lifted him bodily off the ground, letting him struggle against the air, while Kibb began to bind his legs.
“What—”
“Our traitor, Lady.”
Kelsea’s mouth dropped open. “Are you certain?”
“Quite certain, Lady.” Mace picked up a saddlebag from the ground and dug through its contents until he produced a leather pouch, carefully rolled and sealed, the way one would pack diamonds or other valuables. Unrolling the pouch, he rifled through it and held one hand out for her inspection. “See here.”
Kelsea moved closer, peering at the substance in his palm. It was a fine white powder, almost like flour. “Opium?”
“Not just opium, Lady,” Coryn remarked from the campfire. “High-grade morphiate. Someone took a lot of care to cook this stuff. We found needles as well.”
Kelsea whirled around, horrified. “Heroin?”
“Not quite, Majesty. Not even the Cadarese have been able to synthesize heroin. But they will one day, I have no doubt.”
Kelsea closed her eyes, rubbing her temples. When William Tear had sailed from America to create his kingdom on a hill, he’d managed to eradicate narcotics for a brief time. But the drug trade had clawed its way back; humanity would never stop wanting to ride that particular carousel. Heroin . . . it was the worst development Kelsea could imagine.
“How did you find out?”
“Arliss. He and Thorne compete in several markets. Not an ounce of narcotic moves through New London without going through Thorne’s backyard, Lady. It’s the easiest thing in the world, to suborn an addict by cutting off his supply.”
“You had no idea of his addiction?”
“If I had, Lady, he would have been gone.”
Kelsea turned and approached Mhurn, who still dangled within Elston’s massive arms while Kibb bound his wrists.
“Well, Mhurn, anything to say?”
“Nothing, Majesty.” He refused to meet her gaze. “Nothing to excuse.”
Kelsea stared at him, this man who’d smuggled an assassin into the Queen’s Wing, who’d stuck a knife in her back, and found herself remembering that night by the campfire, the tears in his eyes during the ugly scene with Lady Andrews. Carlin had no sympathy for addicts; an addict, she’d told Kelsea, was innately and strategically weak, since his addiction could always be used to break him. Carlin’s voice might have fallen silent in Kelsea’s mind, but she still knew what Carlin would say: Mhurn was a traitor, and he deserved execution.
Barty had been more lenient about such failings. Once, he’d explained to Kelsea that addiction was like having a crack in your life. “It’s a deep crack, and deadly, Kel, but you can build guards around it. You can put up a fence.”
Staring at Mhurn now, Kelsea felt no anger, only pity. It would be nearly impossible to conceal such an addiction, since Mace saw everything. Mhurn must have been in constant withdrawal almost every day of his life.
“Do you confess to treachery, Mhurn?”
“Yes.”
Kelsea looked around and saw that the rest of the Guard had closed in around them, their gazes cold. She turned back to Mhurn, anxious to forestall them, to prolong his life. “When did you become addicted?”
“What does it matter, at this late date?”
“It matters.”
“Two years ago.”
“What the hell were you thinking?” Mace roared, unable to contain himself. “A Queen’s Guard with a drug habit? Where did you suppose that would end?”
“Here.”
“You’re a dead man.”
“I’ve been dead since the invasion, sir. It’s only the past few years I’ve begun to rot.”
“What a load of shit.”
“You’ve no idea what I’ve lost.”
“We’ve all lost something, you self-pitying ass.” Cold fury laced Mace’s voice. “But we’re Queen’s Guards. We don’t sell our honor. We don’t abandon our vows.”
He turned to Kelsea. “This is best handled out here, Lady, among ourselves. Give us permission to finish him.”
“Not yet. Elston, are you getting tired?”
“Are you kidding, Lady? I could hold this faithless bastard all day.” Elston flexed his arms, causing Mhurn to groan and struggle. There was an audible snap as one of his ribs broke.
“Enough.”