The Queen Underneath Read online

  Aboard the ship, Wince made his excuses. “I’ll leave you to it,” he said, standing firmly outside the door to Isbit’s cabin. “I’ll just stand watch.”

  Tollan smirked. “Very brave of you, Master Quintella.”

  Wince shrugged. “You want me to fight brigands or bastards, I can do that, but your mother …” He trailed off. “That is a set of skills I lack.”

  Tollan entered the room alone. His mother was seated at a small table. She was pouring wine from a skin into wooden cups. He sat down in the chair opposite her and took a sip. “I expected golden goblets and the finest Balkland vintage,” he said.

  “You’ve come from Above, Tollan. The tales of pirate riches are, I’m afraid, sorely exaggerated. Our funds are most often procured by selling necessities we’ve stolen to the Shadow Guild, which supplies them to the Under. My greatest spoils are medicines, grain and cured meats.”

  He grunted. “So you’re a humanitarian, then?”

  She laughed, clear and honest. “Not exactly. We sail because there is no place else we want to be, and we make a living by stealing from those who can afford to lose some. I know who is willing to pay for what I’ve taken, and I know when to move on to safer waters. But I don’t do anything for free, and I’ve almost never done anything without the assurance of payment.”

  “Almost?” he said, taking another sip of wine.

  Isbit sighed, lounging back in her chair. “Almost.” Then she leaned toward him, her eyes flinty. “Tell me—where do you stand in this conflict, son? Are you still king? Do you support the Under? Where do your allegiances lie?”

  Tollan swallowed hard. “I … I am not really the king. The mage women marked me, but it was a corrupt mark. It would have killed me if Wince and Gemma hadn’t destroyed it.” He couldn’t look at her face. “I … I don’t think I ever even wanted to be king.”

  She chuckled, hard and bitter. “I cannot say I blame you. It always seemed like a shitty job for someone like you.”

  “Why?” he asked, afraid of her answer. Afraid of her.

  “I only wondered if you would be willing to help me gather my bounty. On the night Gemma Antos proclaimed herself Queen of Under, Riquin Hawkbeard fled Guildhall with the intent of a mutiny. As soon as he heard that the King of Above had died and Melnora was on her deathbed, he decided to use the unrest to his advantage. He sent out a hundred birds, calling in every available ship with promises of glory and the favor of the future King of Under.”

  Tollan’s eyes grew wide.

  “I have no love for the system in Yigris,” she said. “It leaves good people without basic resources, and it keeps the pompous elite blissfully ignorant in their glittering manors. It made me a prisoner in my own home, a pawn whose only purpose was to breed, like one of Abram’s prize mares. The women of Above are treated like …” She trailed off. They both knew what the lives of the women in Above were like.

  “I’m not going to lie. I’ve become an ambitious, brutal woman. I saw in this the possibility that I might be able to take back what should have been mine. I was risking my ship, my crew and myself on a chance—but I thought it was a chance worth taking.”

  Tollan watched her. Her glittering gaze stayed firmly fixed on his face. “Do you plan to overthrow Gemma, then? Help Riquin, or take her seat for yourself?” he asked.

  She shook her head, a wicked smile on her lips. “No, son,” she said calmly. “I have no interest in Under. I intend to remake my place as the Queen of Above.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THIEVES’ ROW

  Dreams returned slowly to Gemma, as if she had swum up for air from the depths of the Hadriak for days before catching the first glimpse of the sun’s rays.

  They were laughing. Elam had just told a funny story, and she was doubled over with laughter. He slipped out of his shirt and hung it over the back of a chair in their room. He had his own room down the hall, but he never slept in it. They’d taken to keeping their weapons there, spread out on the bed like it was a shop in Merchant Row.

  She undressed and pulled on a shift, not bothering to turn away from him. She had never trusted anyone like that.

  Then Devery pressed himself against her, and she felt his desire through the thin shift … but wait, that was wrong. She wouldn’t make love with Devery for several more years, long after the night when Elam had been asked to slap his patron’s ass with a dead fish.

  She blinked, confused, the memories all jumbled together …

  She was a little girl. Her mother lay huddled on her cot, wheezing. They didn’t have money for medicine. Her mother’s skin was the color of mud after the rain. One side of her face drooped.

  She shook her head as tears sprang to her eyes. That wasn’t her mother—it was Melnora. A trail of spittle leaked down from the queen’s mouth, and Gemma wiped it away.

  But it wasn’t saliva … it was blood on Fin’s chin as he coughed blood and tried to speak. Devery leaned over him, eyes wide and black, slitting Fin open.

  Gemma screamed, and Devery looked at her. He was crying, but when he held his hands out to her, they were covered in blood.

  She fell back, away from him, but there was nothing but air to hold on to. She tumbled and fell toward the earth, which rushed to meet her as she screamed.

  And then it wasn’t her screaming, it was a baby. She placed it on her breast, put her nipple in its mouth, and the child fell silent. Then a garrote crossed her body from breast to womb … and the baby was Katya, with a white streak of hair. Gemma dropped her, but the girl turned into Devery, and she pulled him back to her. He held the wire in his hands. He put it around Gemma’s neck and drank from her breast until he was sated. The wire pulled tighter and tighter until Gemma was all but gone.

  She awoke screaming in a darkened room that she did not recognize. A flame flared nearby. Devery stood over her holding a candle, his pale face haggard. Tears welled in his eyes as he whispered, “Thank the goddess.”

  She tried to get away from him, but she couldn’t move and there was nowhere to go. She was tangled in bedsheets, damp with sweat, trembling. Pain forced the air from her lungs. She doubled over and screamed again.

  “Gemma,” Devery said, his hand hovering above her but not touching her. “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” He was crying, tears streaming down his face.

  By the time she’d caught her breath, he was lighting the lantern by her bedside. His face crumpled as his gaze fell on the bed. She looked down at the white coverlet. It was twisted and tangled and soaked in blood.

  Her heart shattered. Too many fractures in such a short span of time had made it weak. She hadn’t been certain that she was with child, but she had hoped. She didn’t have the strength to stop herself from whispering, “Our baby …”

  His hands were balled into fists as his face crumpled with grief. “I’m going to gut my mother for this, so help me goddess.”

  It had been years since she’d seen that sort of rage sweep over him. Not since Elam had been taken by that bastard Ragram had Devery been so angry. A sob of fear and heartbreak escaped her lips, and he wrapped her in his arms and cradled her against his chest.

  Devery was staring at the blood-soaked sheets. He echoed the words that Gemma had said. “Our baby? Our baby? Oh, Aegos,” he moaned, pressing his lips against her forehead. “Gemma, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to make this better. I can’t make this better. This is all my fault.”

  “What happened?” Gemma groaned, as another pain raked through her. Her arms pressed against her belly.

  The air stuttered in and out of Devery. “My mother … poisoned you,” he said. “It was not enough to kill, but enough to make you sleep for a long while, and also, apparently, enough to …” He trailed off and swallowed hard. “We’ve come to violence over it.” He held up his hand, which she now noticed was heavily bandaged.

  He chuckled. “I gave her as good as I got. She can toss burning mage marks at me, but so far as I know, there’s no mark that wil
l grow back an ear.”

  Gemma bit her lip and turned away from him. She could feel another pain building within her, but it was less than the pain of grief that threatened to swallow her whole. It was all too much.

  “Where are we?” she croaked, when the wave of pain had passed.

  Devery held a cup of water out to her. She eyed it for an instant, then drank. He noticed her hesitation. His voice trembled as he said, “Our old apartment on Thieves’ Row. It wasn’t my idea. I wanted to get you closer to Shadowtown, but—”

  A soft knock on the door interrupted him. “Come in,” Devery said hoarsely. The door creaked open to reveal Elam dressed in rough woolen breeches and a loose-fitting linen shirt. It had been years since Gemma had seen him in such simple garb. It made him look younger.

  “Hey,” he said, slipping through the door. He purposefully overlooked the blood on the blankets and focused instead on her face. “How are you feeling?”

  She drew in a shuddering breath, and when she exhaled, it came out as a broken sob.

  “Oh, doll. Come here.” He sat down beside her and ran fingers through her hair. “You’re a mess,” he said, chuckling softly. For an instant, his gaze fluttered to Devery, who watched her with raw emotion.

  “Dev, you haven’t slept in days. Bring me a tub of hot water, and I’ll help Gemma get cleaned up while you rest for a while.”

  Devery started to shake his head in protest, but Gemma stopped him. “Please,” she breathed. “I can’t think with you here.”

  A few minutes later, Devery came back with a tub of steaming water, a sponge and a stained towel. “Best I could find,” he said, setting the tub down beside the bed. He reached out to Gemma, fingers hovering above her hand before clenching his fist and turning to the door. “Will you be all right?” He looked back.

  A sudden wave of emotion ran through her. She nodded because words wouldn’t form. It wasn’t true, of course. Nothing would ever be all right again.

  “I’m so sorry, Gemma,” Devery said. He ran a hand over his face and took a deep breath.

  “I know,” she choked. “I … I love you.” She wondered if she was the only one who could hear what was unspoken. The slump of his shoulders as he turned to leave told her that she was not.

  When he was gone, Elam bent close to her. “That was a kindness you did for him.”

  Hot tears stung her eyes. “Being a kindness doesn’t necessarily make it a lie,” she said, as she swung one leg over the edge of the bed.

  “No,” Elam said, as he began to untie the robe she still wore, “but it doesn’t necessarily make it the truth, either.”

  “I’m beginning to think that there are only versions of the truth and degrees to a lie,” she said, as he pressed the wet sponge to her forehead. Rivulets of water streamed down her face. He started to gently scrub her hair.

  “You know, I usually get paid twenty gold to give a bath, Regency.”

  She laughed, in spite of everything. “I seem to have left my purse at home. Can I get a line of credit?”

  He chortled. “Whoring on credit is very, very bad business.” He grinned and lathered her up with soap. “Tip back,” he said, as he poured a cup of steaming water over her head and down her back. “I’m not sure that I can give the lady credit,” he went on, scrubbing sweat and grime from her arms, breasts and belly, “but I know a sad-eyed gentleman who would pay anything to see you smile.”

  She sighed. “What am I going to do?”

  “That’s not my place to say, but I believe that Devery is telling you as much of the truth as you’ll ever hope to see. That man loves you, and he’s made himself sick with worry. He’s been making plans while you slept—he’s trying to undo as much as he can.” He moved around to her back, scrubbing away the residue of the past few days.

  The soap he was using smelled like lavender. Gemma breathed it in. Some things could never be undone. “How long did I sleep?” she asked, turning away from the question of Devery, as Elam began to work his way lower, sponging away the remains of her too-brief pregnancy.

  “Six days,” he said, as he rinsed out the bloody sponge and continued to gently bathe her. He had the touch of a caregiver—efficient, but gentle. “We moved you on the night of the third.”

  She shook her head, confused. “Brinna just let us go?”

  He laughed low in his throat. “Not exactly. When Devery realized I was watching the safe house, he put a plan into action. He left me a message on your window asking me to cause a distraction and then meet him in the tunnels. Apparently, when he commissioned his mother’s manor, he created a quick escape route that he never bothered to tell her about, but in the chaos we caused, he wasn’t able to get his daughter out. He had to leave her there. He’s confused and angry and worried and desperate.”

  “He’s not the only one.”

  Elam rinsed the sponge, again. “I know,” he said. “And for what it’s worth, so does he.”

  Gemma didn’t want to hear what Devery knew. “We should just leave, Elam. The Guild is destroyed. Melnora and Fin are gone. They burned everything.”

  “They didn’t.” He wiped away a tear that was running down her cheek. “Devery and I had a long, not entirely cordial conversation, while you slept, and he told me everything.” Elam met her gaze, then continued. “It’s all an illusion. Apparently, Devery’s daughter is the most talented mage woman, well, mage girl, in a millennium. She and Devery worked together—against Brinna and Elsha and without their knowledge—to save the Guild. Elsha’s marks were meant to trap us. Nearly everyone in Above was tucked into their homes for the night, so the sleeping mage marks that Elsha made held all of Brighthold, Merchant Row and Whitebeach at bay. But those of us down the hill—Shadowtown and Dockside—never truly sleep. The brambles were supposed to keep the Under trapped.”

  He continued, as he scrubbed her arms and legs, “Katya realized that her aunt could easily slaughter the whole Guild, if she decided she wanted to. And Katya didn’t trust her not to want to, so she created the flames to drive us out of the Guild buildings before the brambles trapped us. Her mage marks created the fire, but the flames consumed nothing. They were meant to help Under, not destroy it. She gave you as much of an army as she could, even though they had both still hoped you wouldn’t need it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Devery had a deal with his mother. After they destroyed House Daghan, she would flee back to Vaga with the captive mage women. Elsha would take the throne of Yigris and their revenge would be complete. But you aren’t a Daghan and as a final payment for his help, you were not to be touched. You and Dev would be allowed to rebuild Under, remaking the pact in a new image.” Elam met her gaze, his eyes full of grief. “He really did mean to leave the Guild intact—entirely intact—save Melnora. Fin’s death was an accident. Fin caught Katya drawing the mark at Canticle Center. When he realized what she was doing, he deduced in error that she had killed Melnora. Fin was going to kill his daughter, Gemma. You know Devery couldn’t just …” His voice trailed off and she let it. Of course he couldn’t let that happen, but it didn’t make the truth hurt any less.

  She waited several long minutes as Elam continued to scrub her clean. “Then what happened? Why did his plan go so wrong?”

  “You were too clever,” he said, and squeezed the water from his cloth back into the tub. “You helped Tollan escape Elsha’s grasp at the palace, and then you figured out the mage mark on his back before it could kill him.”

  “Shit. What happened to Tollan?”

  Elam blushed inexplicably as he handed her a towel. He brought her a pair of clean breeches and a shirt and helped her wad rags into her smallclothes to absorb the bleeding. “He’s at Dockside,” Elam finally said. “There have been some developments.”

  When Elam finished fussing over Gemma, he went to go fix her something to eat.

  It had been more than half an hour since the last pain had ravaged her, and she could tell that the bleeding had slo
wed. It was strange how something so monumental could pass by so quickly. Gemma settled herself into the bed and vowed that she wasn’t going to let grief pull her under. She had wanted a child to solidify an heir before it was ever an issue. She knew of the trials Melnora had gone through to find her own replacement, and Gemma didn’t want that added burden. She wanted Devery’s child because she wanted to share a piece of herself with him that no one else could ever have, but perhaps everything about their affair had been unrealistic.

  She watched as Elam pulled the door closed behind him, then she counted to one hundred. She slipped out from beneath the covers, padded across the floor and opened the door slowly. Glancing down the hall, she saw she was in the room that had once been Elam’s. She tiptoed down the hall and slipped past the entrance to the kitchen. She peered into Devery’s room. Four people she didn’t recognize were stretched out on the bed. She remembered what Elam had said and realized that these were probably the rightful inhabitants of the apartment, sound asleep because of the mage marks.

  She continued until she reached the door of her old room. She turned the handle and slipped silently inside.

  Devery lay atop the covers fully dressed. His eyes were open. He was staring at the rafters, his hands behind his head.

  She didn’t wait for an invitation. She lay down beside him. Without speaking, he wound his arm around her and pulled her close. She felt as if there should be some unease but there wasn’t. She listened to the familiar sound of his heart beating—and his stomach growling.

  “When was the last time you ate?” she asked. Strange how her first instinct continued to be his well-being, even when she knew she couldn’t trust him.