The Scarecrow Queen Page 7

  “He’s selling them?”

  “Auctioning them, to be precise.”

  I understand Nia’s horror then. “What about Kata?” I ask, and Sister Hope shakes her head.

  “We don’t know. But we need to get to them soon.”

  “But they can’t all be corrupt?” I say. “Surely there must be some who would turn on him?”

  The look Hope gives me is empty. “He’s offering them Elixir, too. Once they’ve ‘proven themselves,’ whatever that means. Eternal life to those who stand by him now.”

  Absolute fury consumes me and for a moment I can’t move. How dare he offer the use of the alchemists’ bodies as payment for them to keep the townspeople in line? Pain in the palms of my hands makes me look down, and I see my hands curled into fists, the nails pressing into the soft skin there. I unclench them, and place them flat on my knees, before taking a deep breath. “What do we do?”

  “That’s up to you,” Hope says. “I can show these people you’re not a danger to them, but I can’t make them follow you. You’ll have to do that. And soon. There’s a bounty on your head, Twylla. And this winter is going to be a tough one. You need to make sure you offer them something better than what he’s offering.”

  She’s right. Of course she’s right. But how?

  * * *

  They give us some blankets, and Stuan helps Kirin fashion a kind of tent for us, a little away from where everyone else is camped, and I assume it’s because of me. The fire is extinguished, and the first guard detail takes up their positions, with Kirin volunteering to join them. I curl up behind Nia, rubbing her shoulder gently as I do. I feel her pat my hand back, but she says nothing. Hope lies behind me, and I listen to the snores and whistles from the camp. I need them to follow me, and respect me. But not like Helewys, not through fear. It’s not who I am and I don’t want to become like her, or even pretend to be. And if I want to stop them from selling me out, I need them loyal to me. I have to make them like me.

  So I try. The following day I take my time over my breakfast, watching to see how the camp works, where the power is. It reminds me a bit of being at the castle and trying to decipher the power hierarchy there. The men from yesterday, including Stuan, vanish off into the woods as soon as they’ve finished eating, and so does another party, three women and a man, armed with bows. They’re important, it seems, the hunters, and the defenders of the camp. Two men with Hagan accents chatter as they sit by the fire and sharpen an assortment of swords and knives. The remaining people, including Lady Shasta, begin to gather clothing together to clean, and I seize my chance.

  “Let me help you,” I say. “I want to be useful while I’m here.”

  They look at one another, then turn, and I do the same, to find the cook from yesterday watching me. She’s the leader. She’s the one I have to win over.

  “There’s enough on washing detail,” she says.

  “What about helping you with the food, then?” I try for firmness.

  “I don’t need help, lass.”

  “I want to do something.”

  “The chamber pots need emptying,” one of the women behind me says, but when I turn I can’t tell which one.

  I look back at their leader, who shrugs, and I see the challenge in the shift of her shoulders. She thinks I’ll say no. She wants me to.

  “Fine. Where are they?”

  She stares at me and then shrugs again. “Row of trees, back there. They need to be emptied into a hole in the woods. You’ll have to dig a new one. Not near the river, not near the camp. Then the pots need to be cleaned and put back.”

  “I’ll do that, then.”

  * * *

  Emptying one’s own bog pot is unpleasant, but emptying three communal ones used by fifty people is revolting. The smell is awful, but I do it, taking them a half-hour walk from the camp, one by one, carrying them carefully at arm’s length, my mind constantly playing me tripping, landing in one, one emptying over me. I dig the bloody hole, and I slop the contents of the pots into it, flinching as they splash. Then I fetch water from the river and rinse them, over and over, until there’s no trace of filth in them, and carry them back. By the time I’m finished, the hunters are back and the food is cooking. No one says a word to me, and I accept my bowl of soup in silence and walk to where Nia is, even though I’ve never been less hungry. If I’d been doing this on the way here, I’d never have complained about the lack of food.

  Nia looks pale and worried, but as I sit beside her she wrinkles her nose and shuffles away slightly. “No offense, but you reek.”

  I’m not offended. She’s right. When she moves to the other side of the tent at bedtime, I understand. But I have to keep going. I have to win them over.

  I clean the pots again the next day. And the next. And the next. Still no one speaks to me, and I feel as though I’ve been flung back in time; here I am again, supposedly important but outside of everything. Unwanted. Despised. Nothing has changed. Hope watches me but offers no suggestion. Let them get used to you.

  The following day I clean the pots so fast that when I get back to the camp, I’m told I can help prepare the food if I wash my hands thoroughly. I think this is progress, until I’m handed the bodies of three rabbits. “They need skinning, and gutting” is my only instruction.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve done it, but I remember, and I do it, their innards under my fingernails as I pull their intestines out and throw them into the fire. As soon as they’re done, they’re whisked away by Ema, the leader and the cook, who doesn’t need my help anymore. I wonder if anyone will refuse the meal when they know I’ve touched the meat, but no one does.

  I have no appetite for it, though; I head into the tent where only I am currently sleeping before the sun has even set. Tomorrow I’ll get up again and clean their bog pots. I’ll do the same the next day. And likely the day after that. And they still won’t like me for it. It’s Lormere all over again. I’m wasting time—every second Aurek presses forward puts us all in more danger—but I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how to make people like me; I never have. I’m not Errin or Nia, with their quick tempers and fiery hearts. I’m not a skilled actor like Lief. I’m not even like Sister Hope, clever at politicking and knowing exactly what to say. I’m too awkward, too quiet, too serious. I’m not likable.

  I am curled into my blankets, breathing through my mouth because of the way I smell, when I sense someone nearby. I roll over and see Hope silhouetted against the moonlight.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “Sleeping.”

  She clicks her teeth. “No, Twylla. With this martyrdom of washing chamber pots and skinning rabbits. What are you trying to achieve?”

  “I’m doing what you suggested. I’m letting them get used to me, and trying to get them to like me.”

  “I never told you to make them like you. I told you to make them follow you.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Leadership,” she says. “To lead, you have to be respected. Trusted. No one is going to take orders from someone who empties their chamber pot, and smells as bad as one.”

  “I don’t know how to make them listen to me.” I hear the whine in my voice and hate myself for it. “I thought … I thought it would be like in the Conclave. I thought they’d listen to me.”

  “Why?”

  The question takes me aback. “I … Because you all did. Errin did, in Scarron. And in the Conclave they said they would fight with me.”

  “We all knew that you were the best option for defeating him. We all knew what you are, and knew what you were capable of. They don’t. They only know you as the peasant girl raised up to poisoner, and now you’re not even that.”

  “So what do I do?” Frustration makes me petulant. “Who do I become to get their attention?”

  “You have to figure that out. Fast. As you say, we’re running out of time. And for the sake of the Gods, take a bath, if you can think of nothing el
se to do.” She tosses something toward me that lands full on my face, and when I pull it away, Hope is gone and I’m clutching a clean gown, russet colored and woolen, and a drying sheet.

  I hear a burst of laughter from the camp, and though I know it’s not to do with me, it stings somehow.

  She’s right. No one would follow me as I am. It was so easy to be brave with Errin by my side. If only she was here now.

  But she’s not, I snap at myself, full of fury. So stop this. It’s not about Errin. Or Merek. Or Maryl. It’s about you. For once in your pathetic life, stop living for other people and live for yourself.

  Filled with the need to move, to outrun my anger, I snatch up some of the rough soap and head to the stream, stripping as I near it. I all but fling myself into the icy water, and it flays the breath from my lungs and strips me clean. When I duck my head beneath the surface to wash my hair, my whole body seizes up, and it’s as though I’m on fire; but it’s a cold, clear fire, full of promise and purpose. A fire to walk through and rise from. I scrub, and scrub, until I can see the red in my hair once more. When I haul myself out of the water, no longer cold, and pull the new dress over my head, I feel reborn. And hungry.

  Back at the camp, most people have gone to bed, so I help myself to the dregs in the pot and wolf it down by the smoldering wood. I look up at the sky and see the redness of the sunset above me. Tomorrow will be clear again. Red sky at night, Daunen’s delight, as the saying goes.

  Daunen, who sang to wake her father so he’d take back the skies from Næht.

  And it hits me like a bolt of lightning, what I have to do. What I should have done in the beginning. Of course nothing has changed. I have to make it change. That’s been my only problem all along. If I want them to see me as their leader, I need to lead them.

  * * *

  The following morning, before dawn, I wake Nia, Hope, and Kirin, shaking their shoulders until they grumble at me. Then I wake the whole camp, bashing the cauldron with a wooden spoon as hard as I can. Within minutes the clearing is full of very angry Lormerians.

  “Follow me,” I say in my most imperious, most Twylla way. “All of you. Now.”

  I turn and begin walking as though I expect them to follow. And though it takes a moment, it sounds like most of them do. I hear multiple treads behind me, feet shuffling the leaves, cloaks gliding over fallen branches.

  I walk swiftly in the direction that Stuan said the coast was, ever mindful of the lightening of the sky overhead. For the best part of an hour I walk on without looking back, without knowing how many are behind me. At last I break the tree line and look down on the river Aurmere, vast and gray and rushing toward the Tallithi Sea.

  I hear my followers shuffle out behind me, muttering darkly, and I look to the right, to where I can see the tips of the East Mountains over the treetops. And as the sun breaks over them, turning the land and the water gold, I start to sing.

  My voice is out of practice, and raw, but it’s still my voice and I sing into the dawn. I sing “Fair and Far” and “Carac and Cedany” and “The Blue Hind.” I sing every song I ever sang at court and I sing the songs I learned growing up at home with my mother. I sing until it feels as though my throat is in ribbons, and the sun rises as dawn breaks over Lormere.

  And when there are no more songs, I turn to find every single person from the camp is watching me. Some watchful, some slack-jawed, some with tears on their cheeks. There are hands on hearts, people clutching their loved ones close. Lady Shasta is openly weeping. Ema is nodding her head as though to a silent drumbeat. Whether they’re there from belief or curiosity, I don’t care. Now they see me. Now they know me. This is my only chance.

  “Once, I was death to you,” I say. “And much has changed since then. For all of us. We’ve exchanged tyrant for tyrant. Helewys was a bitch,” I spit. “And I hated her as much as you all did. But Aurek—this Sleeping Prince—I hate more. His bloodlust makes Helewys look like an angel. And he will not stop. He doesn’t have to; he has monsters and abilities Helewys could only dream of. Unless we stop him, he will take everything, destroy everything, enslave everything. I can stop him.” I pause and look at them all, every single one, in the eye, leaving Stuan for last. “I told you I wasn’t poisonous, and that is true. But to the Sleeping Prince, I am every inch the executioner you all knew me as. In every fairy tale, there is a kernel of truth, and that is the truth of this one. For him, I am poison. I am his death. And I will deliver.”

  At the rear of the crowd, Sister Hope beams at me. Without smiling. Without any kind of expression, she is radiating pride, and it fills me up.

  “If you wish to live in the woods like pigs, then stay. Languish here until I’ve saved your kingdom and put it back to rights. But those who aren’t cowards, pack up the camp,” I say. “I won’t hide in the woods anymore. We’re making for the East Mountains and we’re leaving before dark. There’s a refuge there that will hold us all. I want us there within the week, and ready to begin fighting back. It’s time the Sleeping Prince learned that the dawn will rise. The dawn will always rise.”

  I wait for no comment, sweeping through them and back to the camp.

  I know they follow me now.

  It takes us less than a day to dismantle the camp and pack our scant belongings. By nightfall, we’re three miles deeper into the woods, eating rations Ema the cook spent the day preparing. Night sees us sardined together under a sea of canvas, drowsing until dawn, when we rise and continue.

  We keep going like this, slowly, carefully, collecting stragglers and other refugees when we find them, slowly inching our way toward Lormere. On my journey to Scarron it took a whole day for me to travel the woods, but that was on horseback, on the main path. We have to skulk and sneak, sending scouts—Kirin, Stuan, and some others—to check ahead and report back. I have to stay patient, remind myself that we need to be this careful, that this is only the beginning of our journey.

  We’re around two miles from the edge of the woods when we hear the children. At first I’m not sure if what I’m hearing is real. The acoustics in the woods can be strange; it’s not for nothing that Lormerians think the place is haunted. I turn as I think I hear voices, and I see some of the others frowning, too. It’s only when a sharp, high cry cuts away almost as soon as it sounds, and I hold up my hand to stop everyone in their tracks, that I can place the noise. There are grumbles from the back, but I turn sharply, shaking my head to hush them, and they die away. Hope and Kirin move to my side.

  “What is it?” Hope asks in an undertone.

  “I’m not sure. It sounded like a baby, or a small child. Lost, maybe? Separated from its parents.” Hope gives me a worried look and I know my face reflects it.

  “I’ll go and see,” Kirin says.

  “What about your leg?”

  “It’s fine. I’m fine. I’ll go easy.”

  He vanishes into the skeletal trees, and I turn to the others. I murmur in Nia’s ear that we have to check something, and tell her to pass it on, and to tell everyone to stay close and quiet. As the message spreads through the ranks, people begin to put their bags and belongings down, sitting on stumps and rotting logs, and pulling food and water from their packs, some moving into the trees to relieve themselves.

  Fifteen minutes becomes half an hour, then an hour, according to the movements of the sun overhead, and people begin getting restless. We’re close to the edge of the woods, and should, according to Hope’s calculations, come out three miles north of Chargate. From there, we need to stay low, and alert, skirting around Monkham and Lake Baha before following the river to the coast, then the coast to the mountains. It’s going to be a long and dangerous walk, and the delay now isn’t helping settle anyone’s nerves.

  I’m about to ask Hope to lead everyone onward while I wait for Kirin, when he comes stumbling through the trees, his expression both terrified and furious.

  “There are soldiers in the woods,” he hisses, not bothering to wait until he’s close to t
ell me.

  Everyone explodes into gasps and cries, clutching one another and reaching for weapons.

  “Quiet,” I hiss at them. “If I could hear them from here, don’t you think they might hear us, too?” They fall immediately silent. “Tell us what you saw,” I say to Kirin, trying to keep my voice level, and firm.

  Kirin reaches for Nia’s water skin and she releases it to him without protest. He drinks deeply before rinsing his mouth and spitting on the ground. Only then does he meet my gaze. “They’re camped about three miles west of here. There’s a clearing in the trees, and what look like Tregellian army tents set up, five of them. They’re there. Men. And two golems.”

  “It’s a camp?” I say. “They’ve set up a camp in the woods. Some kind of base? Outreach post for their march on Tregellan?” I’m thinking aloud.

  Kirin shakes his head. “It’s not an ordinary camp. You were right—you did hear a child.” He swallows. “It’s a prison camp, for children.”

  The group erupts into startled talk, and I’m so taken aback I let the noise go on for longer than I ought before I snap at them. “Silence! Do you want us to be caught?”

  I receive a few dark looks, but they go quiet, and I nod at Kirin to continue.

  His face is grim as he does. “I saw them, all ages, boys and girls. They brought them out of the tents in groups of ten and sent them into another tent, on the outskirts of the camp. Latrines, I think—they were only in there for a few minutes, then they were taken back to the tents they came from, and the next lot were brought out. They’ve separated the boys from the girls and they’re all guarded by more than a dozen men and the two golems. No other adults. There’s a fence around the camp, too, sharpened branches in the ground like pikes.”