Uprooted(81)
Author: Naomi Novik

Marek reached out and took the queen’s hand, leading her in a circle on display. The nobles hadn’t seen the archbishop’s trial, Jadwiga’s veil. They stared avidly at the queen in her white gown, her very blood vessels a faint tracework of shining lines inside her, everything glowing; her eyes were lamps and her parted lips breathing a glowing haze: no shadow, no smudge of darkness. The court was murmuring even before the light slowly faded out of her.

The glass shattered apart and fell in a chiming shower, dissolving back into blue wisps of smoke as it reached the ground. “Let her be examined further,” Marek shouted over the rising noise of conversation, almost aglow himself with righteousness. “Call any witness: let the Willow come forth, and the archbishop—”

The room was plainly Marek’s for the moment; even I could see a thousand rumors of murder beginning here if the king refused, if he ordered the queen taken away, and put her to death later. The king saw it, too. He looked around at all his courtiers and then gave a short, hard jerk of his chin to his chest; he sat back in the throne. So Marek had managed to force his father’s hand this far, even without sorcery: whether the king had wanted to call a trial or not, the trial was effectively begun.

But I had seen the king three times, now. I would have called him—not pleasant, exactly; there were too many lines drawn deep in his face, frowning, to imagine him gentle or kind. But if I’d been asked to describe him in a word, I would have said worried. Now I would have said angry, cold as a winter storm, and he was still the one who had to pass judgment in the end.

I wanted to run out and break up the trial, to tell Marek to take it back, but it was too late. The Willow had already stepped forward to testify, pillar-straight in a silver gown. “I have found no corruption, but I will not swear there is none,” she said coolly, speaking directly up to the king and ignoring Marek’s clenched jaw and the scrape of his gauntleted hand upon his sword-hilt. “The queen is not herself. She has spoken not a word, and she shows no signs of recognition. Her flesh is wholly changed. There is nothing left of her mortal sinew or bone. And while flesh may be turned to stone or to metal without carrying corruption, this change has certainly been carried out by a corrupt agency.”

“And yet if her altered flesh carried corruption,” the Falcon broke in, “would you not have expected to observe it beneath my spell?”

The Willow didn’t even turn her head to acknowledge him; he had evidently spoken out of turn. She only inclined her head to the king, who nodded once and moved his fingers in a slight gesture to dismiss her.

The archbishop was just as equivocal. He would only say that he had tried the queen on all the holy relics of the cathedral, not that she wasn’t corrupt. They neither of them cared to be proven wrong afterwards, I imagine.

Only a few other witnesses came forward to speak in the queen’s favor, physicians whom Marek had brought to see her. None of them spoke about Kasia at all. She wasn’t even an afterthought to them, but she would live or die on their words. And the queen stood silent and inert next to her. The glow had faded out now and left her blank-faced, empty, for all the court to see.

I looked at Alosha, standing next to me, and Ballo on her other side. I knew when it was their turn, they would stand up and tell the king about that hideous bestiary, sitting back there in the Charovnikov in a thick circle of salt and iron with all the protective spells they could layer over it and the guards posted to watch it close. Alosha would say that the chance shouldn’t be taken; she would tell the king that there was too much risk to the kingdom. And then, if he wanted to, the king could rise and say the laws against corruption were absolute; he could put on a regretful face, and send the queen to death, and Kasia along with her. And looking at him, I thought that he would. He would do it.

He’d sunk back deeply into his great carved chair as if he needed the support for the weight of his body, and his hand covered his unsmiling mouth. Decision was settling over him like snowfall, the first thin dusting that would build and build. The rest of the witnesses would speak, but he wouldn’t hear them. He’d already decided. I saw Kasia’s death in his heavy, grim face, and I looked desperately across the room to catch the Falcon’s eye. Next to him, Marek stood as tense as his fist clenched around his sword.

Solya looked back at me and only spread his hands, subtly, as much as to say I’ve done what I can. He leaned in and murmured something to Marek, and when the last physician had stepped down, the prince said, “Let Agnieszka of Dvernik be called to witness how the queen was freed.”

That’s what I had wanted, after all; this was the reason I’d come and fought to have myself put on the list. Everyone was looking at me, even the king with his lowered brows. But I still didn’t know what to say. What would it matter to the king, to any of these courtiers, for me to say the queen wasn’t corrupt? They certainly wouldn’t care what I said of Kasia.

Maybe Solya would try and cast the Summoning with me, if I asked him to. I thought of doing that, imagined that white light showing the whole court the truth. But—the queen had already been tested beneath Jadwiga’s veil. The court had seen her beneath the Falcon’s sight. The king could see she wasn’t corrupted. This wasn’t about truth at all. The court didn’t want truth, the king didn’t want truth. Any truth I could give them, they could ignore as easily as the rest. It wouldn’t change their minds.

But I could give them something else entirely. I could give them what they really wanted. And then I realized I knew what that was, after all. They wanted to know. They wanted to see what it had been like. They wanted to feel themselves a part of it, of the queen’s rescue; they wanted to be living in a song. That wasn’t truth, anything like it, but it might convince them to spare Kasia’s life.

I closed my eyes and remembered the illusion spell: Easier than real armies, Sarkan had said, and as I began to whisper the spell, I knew that he was right. It was no harder than making a single flower to raise up the whole of that monstrous heart-tree, and it climbed up out of the marble floor with terrible ease. Kasia dragged in a breath; a woman screamed; there was a clatter of a chair falling over somewhere in the room. I shut the noise out. I let the incantation keep rolling singsong off my tongue while I poured out magic and the sick, tight dread that had never left the back of my stomach. The heart-tree kept growing, spreading its great silver branches through the hall, the ceiling fading away into silver rustling leaves and the terrible stench of fruit. My stomach turned over once, and then Janos’s head came rolling by across the grass in front of my feet, and struck against the sprawling roots.