“When Audric was a boy, I could dismiss his fondness for Armand Dardenne’s daughter as harmless. But now…I see the way he watches her when he thinks no one is looking. We must be careful, sister, to discourage them. Ludivine must be queen. Ludivine will be queen.”
—Letter written by Lord Dervin Sauvillier to his sister, Queen Genoveve Courverie
Year 994 of the Second Age
Rielle’s favorite room in Baingarde—other than Ludivine’s and Audric’s rooms—was Queen Genoveve’s private parlor.
The queen had many sitting rooms set aside for the receiving of guests, but this was her private space, meant only for her and her family.
“Must we do this?” Evyline muttered, standing board-straight at the parlor door as Rielle peeked around the hallway corners to make sure no one was coming. All was quiet, the air in the castle gone soft for the night. Light from the thin crescent moon filtered through the colored glass in the windows lining this particular corridor. The glass was a northern tradition, intended to bring cheer into a home during the long winter months. Belbrion, the seat of House Sauvillier, featured so much colored glass that it was said to glitter like a jewel-encrusted crown when the sunlight hit.
Satisfied, Rielle returned to the parlor door. “I’m to undergo yet another life-threatening trial tomorrow, Evyline.” She looked guilelessly up at the tall, gray-haired woman. “Would you really deprive me of a few moments of peace, knowing what awaits me in the morning?”
Evyline sighed. “Only a few moments, my lady.”
“You worry too much, Evyline.”
“I expect that’s true, my lady.”
Rielle held out her hand, gave Evyline a brilliant smile. “The key?”
Evyline withdrew a small brass key from her jacket pocket and dropped it in Rielle’s hand. “I could get banished for this, my lady. Or worse.”
“When I’m Sun Queen,” Rielle said, “you will be head of the Sun Guard, my close adviser, and the most revered soldier in Celdaria. That’s worth a little sneaking around, isn’t it?”
Evyline’s cheeks flushed, her eyes trained on the wall across from her. “If you insist, my lady.”
Rielle inserted the key in the lock. “I won’t be ten minutes.”
Once inside, Rielle walked to the center of the parlor, sat on a footstool, and breathed in slowly. Here, in this quiet, her true nervousness about the next day tickled her insides like birds desperate to be set loose from their cages.
She had read all the books she was supposed to read, said her prayers, studied with Grand Magister Rosier under the watchful eyes of the Archon. Ludivine had worked with the finest tailors in the city to create yet another marvelous costume for the occasion. Visitors had been trailing into the capital all week in preparation for the event.
And perhaps that was it, Rielle thought. It was the people who would be watching her that had stirred up her nerves—many hundreds more than had attended the water trial if Audric was to be believed. It was the Sun Queen banners that winked golden at her from doors and windows as she looked down from Baingarde at the city. She’d seen the banners even at the temples, decorating the libraries, the gardens, the doors outside the acolytes’ dormitories. On the fluttering fabric, a crown encircled a blazing sun.
Since the last trial, Rielle had started to understand—to really, truly feel—that something was beginning.
She tried to breathe, separate her nervous feelings from her excited ones, and lock the nervous ones away where they could no longer annoy her. She turned her head to the ceiling and gazed at her true reason for coming here.
Queen Genoveve had a soft heart for animals, particularly the godsbeasts of the angelic ages, long died out. Upon marrying King Bastien, she had ordered the ceiling of her parlor painted with an extravagant menagerie of them. There were the fur-crested ice dragons of Borsvall, the firebirds of Kirvaya, the giant white stags of Mazabat, the ferocious krakens of the northern seas, the unicorns of the old angelic lands to the east, the shape-shifting fey-beasts of Astavar.
But Rielle’s favorite of the godsbeasts had always been the chavaile—the giant winged horse that the bedtime stories from her childhood had told her lived in the mountains of Celdaria and could fly even faster than the dragons. They hunted game as mountain cats did and were sated for weeks afterward.
Rielle smiled to think of those stories. Hearing them read aloud was one of the only memories she still had of her mother. If she closed her eyes, she could hear Marise Dardenne’s voice—low and rich, a voice crafted by God for telling stories.
So her father had said, watching them from beside the fire as Rielle snuggled in her mother’s arms, a book of godsbeast tales open on their laps.
Rielle drew in a sharp breath as the memory surfaced. It was one she hadn’t remembered before, and yet there it shone in her mind, clear as daylight.
You’re welcome, came Corien’s voice, kinder than Rielle had ever heard it. I thought that might comfort you.
“How did you do that?” she whispered, eyes still closed.
“And now you’re talking to yourself.”
Rielle’s eyes flew open, and she shot to her feet. Beside the windows on the far side of the room, Queen Genoveve rose from a high-backed chaise and considered Rielle with one arched eyebrow.
“My queen!” Rielle hastily curtsied. “I didn’t… I didn’t see you…” She swallowed, took a deep breath. “I apologize. I would never have intruded, had I known you were resting.”
“I wasn’t resting. I was thinking. I come here often to think.” The queen crossed the room, wrapped in a gray dressing gown hemmed in blue silk. “And you come here often as well, it seems?”
There was no point in pretending. “Only sometimes.”
“I should punish you. Or at least your guard. But you are enduring enough punishment as it is, I suppose.”
When in the presence of the queen, Rielle often felt herself reduced to the child she had once been, leading Audric and Ludivine on some wild game through Baingarde. The three of them had once burst into the queen’s sitting room, shrieking merrily, right as Genoveve was taking tea with visiting dignitaries from Mazabat—and then, not five minutes later, Rielle’s father had chased her down, brought her back to her rooms, and shut her away once more.
She had never gotten to know Genoveve as well as Audric or King Bastien. The queen was a Sauvillier from skull to toe, with none of Ludivine’s warmth.
“Please, my queen,” Rielle managed, “do not punish Evyline. I’m afraid I rather manipulated her into thinking that if she didn’t obey me, I would bring the wrath of God down upon her, once I’ve been named Sun Queen.”
Queen Genoveve let out a small, dark laugh. “Rielle, you astound me. These trials are meant to cow you, and yet you make light of them as though they’re a child’s game.”
Rielle hesitated. “If I don’t make light of them, my queen, then my fear is liable to overtake me.”
The queen inclined her head, then settled on a settee across from Rielle. “Why did you come here tonight?”
Rielle glanced up at the painted bestiary. “I like coming here. The chavaile has always been my favorite. It reminds me of my mother—and the stories she used to tell me.”
Queen Genoveve considered her for a long moment. “Are you manipulating me right now, Lady Rielle, as you’ve done to your poor guard?”
Rielle blinked in surprise. “No, my queen. I’m speaking the truth to you. Perhaps I’ve been too candid.”
“Not at all. In fact, I think this is the most I’ve ever liked you.”
“Oh.” Rielle began to laugh.
“Was that so very funny?”
“I apologize, my queen. I’m caught quite off my guard is all. I suppose I need to sleep. My nerves are a tangle.”
“It’s not that you haven’t been a good friend to my son and niece,” the queen said after a moment. “It’s that you are…” She paused, thinking. “Cunning. Willful and lovely. It’s a volatile combination. It unnerves me.”
“And now you know I’ve been keeping secrets from you during all my cunning and willful years.”
Queen Genoveve nodded. “And I wonder what others you might have yet to reveal.”
Rielle forced herself to meet the queen’s thoughtful gaze, one that so matched Audric’s that a lump formed in Rielle’s throat.
“Come sit beside me.” The queen patted the settee’s cushion. “We will pray to Saint Grimvald together, that he may bring you success tomorrow.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Rielle obeyed. For a long while, neither of them spoke. Then Queen Genoveve sighed impatiently and took Rielle’s hand in her own.
“A sword forged true with hammer and blade,” murmured the queen, in prayer, “flies sure and swift.”
“A heart forged in battle and strife,” answered Rielle, “cuts deeper than any blade.”
“Saint Grimvald the Mighty,” continued the queen, “please watch over this child tomorrow as she fights to prove her honor and loyalty in front of my husband, the king, and His Holiness, the Archon.” The queen paused. “She is much beloved by my little ones, and I pray for her safety so that they may feel joy upon finishing their day and not despair.”
Rielle stared at the queen. “My queen, I…I thank you for that.”
The queen kept her eyes closed, but squeezed Rielle’s hand gently. “I sometimes forget that, despite everything, you are still only a girl, Rielle. And no girl should have to be without her mother on such a night.”
Rielle could no longer speak, her throat tight and hot, but it was enough to sit beside the queen and shut her eyes and imagine that Genoveve’s hand was her mother’s—alive and unburnt.
• • •
They had built her a cage.
Rielle stared out the flap of her tent, her blood roaring in her ears.
In the narrow pass between Mount Crimelle and Mount Peridore, earthshakers had carved out a clean, square pit in the stone-riddled ground, five hundred feet deep. And the metalmasters of the Forge…They had built her a cage inside it.
It was a cube, black and unfriendly, with spiked, groaning insides that churned like clockwork and shifted every few seconds. At any given moment, half the cube’s innards were in swift motion. Metal slammed against metal. The hot oiled smell of grinding gears and the sharp tang of the metalmasters’ magic—scents that reminded Rielle of her father—drifted up from the pit like invisible curls of smoke.
Somehow, Rielle would have to get from one end of this caged maze to the other without getting crushed or impaled. And all while thousands of spectators watched from the stadium the magisters had erected around the pit’s rim.
She swallowed hard, closed her eyes.
“I thought Tal would lose his mind,” came a flat voice from behind Rielle, “once he saw what we’d designed for you.”
Rielle turned to see Miren Ballastier, Grand Magister of the Forge, and Tal’s lover—when they weren’t in the middle of one of their legendary fights. In the torchlit glow of the tent, beneath her wild cap of red hair, Miren’s pale, freckled skin looked ghostly.
“It’s a maze,” said Rielle faintly, still not quite believing it.
“It is. And Lady Rielle…” Miren paused, a troubled expression on her face. “I want you to know that I protested against it. It’s unfair and cruel. I wouldn’t be surprised if the king takes him to task for it, once he finds out—”
“Who? What’s cruel?” Rielle barely resisted pleading. She and Miren had never been the best of friends, and now that Tal’s long deception had been revealed, Rielle couldn’t imagine that would change. “Miren, tell me.”
A horn sounded, its lonely wail echoing off the mountain walls. The gathered crowd began to cheer.
“You’ll see soon enough,” said Miren, before pressing a dry kiss to her forehead. “From Tal,” she said simply and then left her alone.
You don’t have to do this, Corien reminded her. You can leave. Right now.
And do what, then, and go where? Rielle asked irritably. You’re always telling me I don’t have to do these things, yet you offer no alternative.
There was a pause. Then: You could come to me. And we could begin.
The shiver that swept up Rielle’s body nibbled like tiny, hungry teeth.
We’re going to have a discussion, you and I, when this is finished, she thought to him. I’ve put it off for too long.
I quite agree, came his smooth voice.
Unsettled, on edge, Rielle stepped through the flap as the horn sounded for a second time, raised her chin against the glare of sunlight peeking through the mountain pass, and let her cloak fall to the ground.
The crowd’s roar rattled Rielle’s bones—and she smiled to hear it.
Her outfit, constructed from a dozen charcoal and shining silver fabrics, evoked the armor of Saint Grimvald. Long black gloves stretched past her elbows. A snug jerkin and matching trousers boasted embroidered designs that flattered her curves, and the long tails of her square-shouldered jacket touched the ground. On the jacket’s back shone the sigil of the Forge—two black swords crossed on a fiery orange plane. Silver paint streaked her cheeks and eyes; Ludivine had painted her lips a flaming coral to evoke the fires of the Forge.
Eight solemn-faced metalmasters lined the narrow platform stretching toward the pit. She raised her arms to acknowledge the crowd and made her way to the pit’s edge—where the Archon stood with a tiny, satisfied smile.
As the door to the cage creaked open, the Archon extended his arm toward it. “You can choose to save them. Or not. What really matters is saving your own skin.” He turned to her, blinked twice. “Isn’t it?”
Save them. Rielle peered into the cage, and when she saw to whom the Archon was referring, the sudden rise of dread made her stagger.
Three tiny cages rose slowly from the maze’s teeming cogs. Inside each stood a child, wailing in fear.
As the crowd began to notice them, shouts of anger and horror arose from the stands.
“Are you mad?” Rielle cried.
“They are orphans from the Low Streets,” the Archon explained. “No one will miss them when they’re gone. Except, well…” He glanced up at the furious crowd. “They might, I suppose.”
Understanding sank into Rielle like a slowly twisting blade. The maze was deadly enough as it was. She would have to fight hard to survive it—and to save three children on top of that seemed impossible.
But if she didn’t…
She glanced up at the bellowing crowd.
The Archon’s smile grew. “Your move, Lady Rielle,” he said.
Rielle did not hesitate. She turned, flung off her stiff coat, raced to the waiting door of the cage, and jumped inside.
