The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen

her own apartments. The walls were paneled in Tear oak, and everywhere the wood was embossed with dragons, the pattern dyed red. The Queen’s bed was enormous, draped in scarlet silk, seamless and comfortable. But now the pillow beneath her head was soaked with sweat. It was the dream, the same dream that had woken her for two weeks now: the girl, the fire, the man in pale grey with the face she could never quite see, and finally the last flight to the borders of her land.
    The Queen rose and moved to the bank of windows that overlooked the city. The borders of the panes were opaque with frost, but her apartments were quite warm. The glassmakers in Cadare created such a marvel of insulation that many claimed they used magic, but the Queen knew this to be false. There was no magic in the surrounding kingdoms but that which she permitted, and she had given the Cadarese no license to enchant their glass or anything else. But the insulation was an impressive achievement. Each year, Mortmesne took a significant portion of Cadare’s tribute in glass.
    Below the Queen lay the Crown city of Demesne, silent and mostly dark. A glance at the sky told her it was just before the fourth hour; only the bakers would be awake. The castle beneath her was dead silent, for all of them knew that the Queen never rose before the sun.
    Until now.
    The girl, the girl. She was the hidden child, Elyssa’s child, she could be no one else. In the Queen’s dreams she was sturdy and dark-haired, with a strong, determined face and her mother’s green Raleigh eyes. But unlike Elyssa, she was a plain thing, and somehow that seemed the worst detail of all, the one that conveyed the most reality. The rest of the dream was a blur of pursuit, thoughts of nothing but escape while the Queen attempted to outrun the man in grey and what appeared to be a conflagration behind him. But when she woke, it was the girl’s face that remained: round and unremarkable, just as her own had once been.
    The Queen would have had one of her seers interpret the dream, but they were all merely frauds who enjoyed dressing in veils. Liriane had been the only one with any true gift, and now Liriane was dead. There was no need of the sight anyway. In broad stroke if not in detail, the meaning of the dream was plain enough: disaster.
    A thick, guttural sound came from behind her, and the Queen whirled around. But it was only the slave in her bed. She had forgotten about him. He’d performed well, and she’d kept him for the night; a good fuck chased the dreams right away. But she loathed snoring. She watched him with narrowed eyes for a moment, waiting to see if he would do it again. But he only grunted softly and rolled over, and after a moment the Queen turned to stare out the window again, her thoughts already distant.
    The girl. If not dead already, she would be soon. But it rankled, to have been unable to find the jewels all these years. Even Liriane had seen nothing of the girl’s whereabouts, and Liriane had known Elyssa well, better than the Queen herself. It was maddening . . . a girl child of known age, with a singular marking on her arm? Even if the child kept the jewels hidden, it should have been an easy search. The Tearling wasn’t a large kingdom.
    Where did you hide her, you bitch?
    Possibly outside the Tearling, but that would have shown considerable imagination for Elyssa. Besides, any hiding place outside the Tearling would have brought the child under greater dominion of Mortmesne. Elyssa had assumed until the very end that the greatest threat to her child would come from outside the Tearling, and that was another error of judgment. No, the girl was still in the Tearling somewhere; she had to be.
    Another snorting rumble came from the bed.
    The Queen shut her eyes and rubbed her temples. She hated snoring. She looked longingly at her fire, considered lighting it. The dark thing might give her answers, if she was brave enough