“Is there anything?” she asks. “Anything that might help? Bring me luck? Make her attacks miss?”
“What a spell that would be. There is something, though, but we will need to work fast.” Madrigal raises her brow and looks at Arsinoe’s knife, and Arsinoe discreetly tucks the nightshade up into her sleeve. Madrigal will have brought her own knife anyway.
“What are we doing?” Arsinoe asks.
“Calling your bear,” Madrigal replies. “The same bear that we enchanted with low magic onto the stage at the Quickening. He is the only one you can hope for, and that’s only if the spell we cast was strong enough to still bind you together.”
“Even if it was, he will never get here in time.”
“Perhaps not,” Madrigal says. “But it is worth it to try.”
“Very well, then. Let’s have your knife.”
“What’s wrong with the one in your hand?”
“I’m saving that one for my sister,” she says, and Madrigal tosses hers over.
Arsinoe walks to the bent-over tree, ready to reopen the cuts in her palm, to paint the bear’s rune in blood and press it to the bark.
“He might only cause more problems. He certainly did before.”
“He did just what he should have.”
“Tell that to Jules. She still holds on to that, you know. Those people he killed. Even though I was the one who got her into it. Even though she didn’t do it on purpose.”
“Who says she didn’t do it on purpose?” Madrigal asks. “I saw the way that bear went straight for Queen Mirabella. You shouldn’t underestimate the depth of my Jules’s temper. It grows worse and worse. But when this Ascension is over, she will calm again, and we can all relax. So I’m doing this for her, and all of us, as much as for you.”
Arsinoe touches the knife to her skin and then pulls back.
“Maybe I shouldn’t. The low magic could go wrong again.”
Madrigal rolls her eyes.
“It’s our fault, you know,” Arsinoe says. “What happened to Jules and Joseph. It was the spell that we did, that I ruined. That’s what pushed him and Mirabella together.”
“You don’t know that.”
But she does. She feels it, deep down.
“Joseph is a man,” Madrigal says, “and men are changeable. Put off their wits, they cannot resist a pretty girl on a storm-struck beach. There did not need to be low magic to cause what happened. And besides, he and Jules are back together now, and all is well. So what does it matter?” She stomps her foot, and her long, chestnut hair ripples in a sudden gust of wind. “Now make the cuts.”
“Madrigal,” Arsinoe asks, “how did you find this place?”
“It was a long time ago. I had to be about . . . fourteen. I was with Connor Howard. We’d gotten turned around in the woods and ended up under this tree. When I lay with him here, something inside me woke up. And I’ve been coming back ever since.”
“Connor Howard? Mr. Howard? The baker? But he’s so old.”
Madrigal laughs.
“He wasn’t back then. Well, not that old, anyway.” She cocks her head. “If you do not want to make the cuts, it does not always have to be blood. Sometimes you can use spit.”
“Spit?” Arsinoe grimaces. “Yuck. That’s worse.”
“As you like.”
Madrigal smiles, and Arsinoe slices into her palm. The moment her blood touches the ancient bark she feels her link to the bear pull taut and knows that he will come running.
THE STONEGALL HILLS
The road through the Stonegall Hills is quiet. The queen’s party has not passed anyone in half a day. Scouts were sent ahead; they have been sent more and more often now that Wolf Spring is so near. The quiet makes Mirabella nervous as she sits with Bree and Elizabeth, resting against an oak tree. The only bird sound is from Pepper, Elizabeth’s black-and-white tufted woodpecker, happily drilling into the wood.
“It is too quiet,” Mirabella says. “As if the birds are silenced. Will they do that, Elizabeth, when a naturalist queen is nearby?”
“I don’t think so. They certainly don’t do it for me.” Elizabeth tilts her head to look up fondly at her familiar. “She could ask them for quiet. But they wouldn’t do it on their own.”
“A flock of birds with bowed heads,” Bree muses. “That would be some sad processional.” She sits behind Mirabella, separating the queen’s long, black hair into sections for a braid. “I wonder what fanfare she does have. I wonder what it is like when other queens leave their cities.”
“All swords clashing and shields for a war queen in Bastian,” Elizabeth offers. “And maybe some arrows shot into the sky or hurled with their minds.”
Mirabella chuckles.
“They cannot do that anymore, Elizabeth. The gift has weakened.”
“I don’t know. Sometimes it seems that the plates hover in the air when Rho slams her fists onto the table at mealtimes.” Elizabeth wrinkles her nose and giggles. Mirabella grins as she bites into one of Bree’s forbidden pears.
Not long ago, she was the Chosen Queen and thought that she would leave Rolanth beneath banners flying. Instead, it was in the dead of night, and no one in the towns they passed has stepped out into the road to wish her well. She is in hiding, in secret, and even if she was not, Arsinoe and Katharine had such strong showings at the Quickening. There is no Chosen Queen anymore.
“I cannot wait for this to be over,” Bree mutters, eyeing the sweet yellow pear. “When we can eat what we want and go where we want again. I am looking forward to the suitors’ arrival, when perhaps Queen Katharine will be too busy entertaining to send many poisons.”
Bree stops short and Elizabeth looks at her sharply.
“It is all right,” Mirabella says. It is not as if she does not know that none of the suitors requested first court.
“It does not matter anyway,” Bree says, her chin high. “We know who you really want. That handsome naturalist boy. Perhaps you can keep him as a lover after you are married.”
Mirabella smiles. But she cannot imagine Joseph as a lover. He would demand all of her. He would deserve all of her, and that can never be.
“That naturalist boy will never speak to me again,” she says softly, “after I have killed Arsinoe.”
“The scout returns.” Elizabeth nods up the road and gets to her feet. They are not far now from Wolf Spring and the meadows and streams where the spies say Arsinoe is often alone. “It’s a wonder they let her out by herself so often during an Ascension Year.”
“Naturalists are not accustomed to raising a queen with a true chance,” Bree says. “They do not know how to take proper care.”
“Perhaps they do not need to,” Mirabella says, rising. “With a great brown bear as their queen’s familiar.”
The scout slows his mount and gives his report to the head of her guard, who nods. They are safe to advance again.
“This close to Wolf Spring I hoped for actual news,” Mirabella says, patting Crackle on the neck and mounting. “A sighting. There have been no firm reports of the bear, and that makes me nervous.”