“It will be at the heart of things. You’ll find it.”
Having failed to give Grandmother the key, failed to get her to send someone else, and failed to have her send an army to protect me I only had one place left to run. “What if she’s right?” I summoned up Kara’s arguments. “If we’re all lost anyway, what does it matter if the world burns today or tomorrow? Why shouldn’t the strongest, the cleverest, save themselves if they can save no one else? Have you considered joining her?” I let the “and saving me” go unsaid.
The slap didn’t come as much of a surprise. Not even the force of it, which sent me to the ground clutching my face.
“We’re Kendeths, Jalan!” She loomed over me. “We fight. We fight when hope is gone. We fight while there’s blood left in us.” She dragged me to my feet as if I were a child rather than a man topping six foot. “We fight.” Her eyes fixed on mine, hard as flint. “That woman killed my grandfather. She spilled his lifeblood in my house. She tried to kill me and in defending me my brother and sister were changed . . . twisted into what they are now.” She lowered her voice, the anger fading, her grip on me still iron. “That woman has lived too long and she’ll sacrifice the tomorrows of a million to live herself lifetimes more. Yes, I want to save my city, my country, my people, and yes it’s worth my life, and yours to give them another year, or month, or day. But truly? In my secret heart, Jalan? What drives me is that I will not let that bitch win. She has raised her hand against me and mine. She will die by my own hands. There’s no life everlasting for that one. No new world. This is a war, boy. My war. I am the Red Queen—and I do not lose.”
She let me go and I sagged back on to my heels. I’d known what she would say. I’d known she was right too. Or at least more right than the Lady Blue. Old habits die hard, though, and I had to at least try every escape route.
“If I see her in Osheim I’ll kill her with the sword that killed my mother.” I had my own revenge to take, my own fire, and my own measure of the Red Queen’s blood.
“See that you do.” A rare smile on Grandmother’s lips.
I sighed and tightened my cloak about me. “Lucky I set off for Osheim with the key then. Or none of this would have worked.”
Grandmother turned her head, looking past me. I turned too and followed her gaze. The Silent Sister had been standing at my back, uncomfortably close. She met my glance with her strange stare, one eye blind white and full of mysteries, the other dark as any hole. “Luck? We save luck for the endgame,” the Red Queen said. “You’re going to need every scrap of it for the Wheel. Nobody sees into that future, not a glimpse.”
“I guess . . . I’ll be going then.” Bad as Osheim sounded I really didn’t want to stand there between those two terrifying old women a moment longer. “And if . . . if it all works? What then?”
Grandmother made another of her rare smiles, as grim as the first. “The world will keep on turning. This ending will have been averted, or more likely delayed. The Gilden Guard will arrive within the month to take me to Congression and the Hundred will repeat the same arguments that have rumbled on since my grandfather’s day. Perhaps this time we really will elect a new emperor and mend this broken empire of ours.”
It took a moment to realize that the dry hissing beside me was the Silent Sister’s laughter. I took it as my cue to leave.
Snorri and Kara were waiting for me with the horses by the largest of several supply dumps. The boy was nowhere to be seen. I envied his freedom to wander away.
“We’re going?” Snorri raised his voice over the din all around us. Red March soldiers laboured in ant-like chains under the direction of roaring store-masters to break up and distribute the heaped stocks of food and equipment.
I nodded. “Meet me on the main road, up by the big church. I just need a moment.”
“What?” Snorri cupped a hand to his ear but Kara was already pushing him away, her palm against his chest.
She looked back at me over her shoulder. “Don’t run off now!”
I didn’t reply but walked away wondering, and not for the first time, whether she could read my mind.
I wandered the ruins without direction, though remaining within the defensive perimeter. I’d no desire to explain myself to a vengeful Slovian mob. Grandmother had a strong position with a large number of seasoned troops but to hold this ground until I reached the Wheel of Osheim and sealed off the Lady Blue’s last escape would require tactical genius, not to mention all kinds of luck. Her only real hope was that King Lujan would mistake her purpose and hold his strength up at Julana thinking her to be readying an assault against his capital.