Into the Windwracked Wilds by A. Deborah Baker

Author:A. Deborah Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

NINE

GUESTS OF THE QUEEN OF SWORDS

The staircase Jack used to lead them deeper into the palace was made of marble and gilded wood, and not flesh or teeth or anything like that at all. “Parts of this place come with the land, and they’ll pass one day to whoever next wears the crown of Air.”

“Won’t that be you?” asked Avery, who had the vague idea that the real difference between a King or Queen and a President was whether or not your children eventually got to do your job without anyone else getting a say.

“It might have been, but she cut out my heart and put a birdcage in its place,” said Jack, matter-of-factly, like this was a normal thing for a woman to do. They had reached the top of the stairs, and were walking along a corridor lined with portraits of people with very well-brushed white hair. Nothing else about them looked like the Queen of Swords; their skins came in all different colors, although they always had an undertone Avery wasn’t accustomed to associating with people, gray or blueish or even one bright, bruised shade of tornado-warning green. “She left me with my name, so I could serve her as a Page, which isn’t a position every Court chooses to maintain. I was never a Prince. That isn’t how we do things here in the Land of Air.”

“Oh,” said Avery. He was getting very tired of the way everything he learned only seemed designed to confuse him further, and was starting to suspect that they changed the rules whenever he wasn’t looking, twisting them around like threads on a spindle to make sure no one ever really understood.

The hall ended at another stairway, and they began another upward climb. “The Queen is my mother, which is unusual; monarchs don’t normally have children. They’re a conflict with the causes of the crown. For nine months, I made her job difficult to do. I distracted and diverted her, and her advisors had no idea how this was going to change the kingdom going forward. A Queen cannot have a throne divided. So they came to her, and they offered her three choices for the future: She could set the crown aside. She could give me to a passing wind and allow them to carry me away into another future, to be raised from the cradle by some kind soul with gentle hands and nothing else burdening their time. Or she could make a monster out of me. And because she loved me enough to have made me, she chose to keep me with her through the only means she had. I won’t ask you to forgive her for what she did. It was terrible and wrong, no matter what her motivations. Every other monster she’s made, she’s made because they came and asked her to do it.”

Avery thought of the Bumble Bear, who had spun them a story of being snatched from his hive without permission either sought or granted, and said nothing.

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