Uprooted(90)
Author: Naomi Novik

“I’ve been sleeping,” I said tartly, before I remembered he’d lost his father yesterday, and felt a little sorry. But he didn’t look much like he’d been mourning. I suppose being king and prince had made them something other than father and son to one another, and he’d never forgiven his father letting the queen fall into the Wood. But I still would have expected to find him a little red-eyed—from confusion if not from love.

“Yes, well, what else is there to do but sleep?” he said sourly, and glared at the mirror again. “Where the hell are all of them?”

“On the field by now,” Solya said absently without drawing his eyes away.

“Where I should be, if Sigmund wasn’t a lickspittle politician,” Marek said.

“You mean if Sigmund were a perfect idiot, which he’s not,” Solya said. “He couldn’t possibly hand you a triumph right now unless he wanted to hand you the crown along with it. I assure you he knows we’ve got fifty votes in the Magnati already.”

“And what of it? If he can’t hold the nobles, he doesn’t deserve it,” Marek snapped, folding his arms across his chest. “If I were only there—”

He looked longingly at the unhelpful mirror again while I stared at them both in rising indignation. So it wasn’t just Sigmund worrying the Magnati would give Marek the throne; Marek was trying to take it. Suddenly I understood the crown princess, why she’d looked sidelong at me—I was Marek’s ally, as far as she knew. But I swallowed the first ten remarks that came to my tongue and said shortly to Solya, “I need your help.”

That won me a look from one of those pit-black eyes, at least, with an arched eyebrow to go over it. “I’m equally delighted to help you, my dear, and to hear you say so.”

“I want you to cast a spell with me,” I said. “We need to put the Summoning on the queen.”

He paused, much less delighted; Marek turned and threw me a hard look. “Now what’s gotten into your head?”

“Something’s wrong!” I said to him. “You can’t pretend not to have seen: since we came back there’s been one disaster after another. The king, Father Ballo, the war against Rosya—this has all been the Wood’s design. The Summoning will show us—”

“What?” Marek snapped, standing up. “What do you think it will show us?”

He loomed over me; I stood my ground and flung my head back. “The truth!” I said. “It’s not three days since we let her out of the tower, and the king is dead, there are monsters in the palace, and Polnya’s at war. We’ve missed something.” I turned to Solya. “Will you help me?”

Solya glanced between Marek and me, calculations ticking in his eyes. Then he said mildly, “The queen is pardoned, Agnieszka; we can’t simply go enchanting her with no cause, only because you’re alarmed.”

“You must see something’s wrong!” I said to him, furiously.

“There was something wrong,” Solya said, condescending and complacent; I could have shaken him with pleasure. Too late, I had to be sorry I hadn’t made a friend of him. I couldn’t tempt him: he knew perfectly well by now that I didn’t mean to make any regular occasion of sharing magic with him, even if I’d suffer through it for something important. “Very wrong: that corrupted book you found, now destroyed. There’s no need to imagine dark causes when we have one already known.”

“And the last thing Polnya needs now is more black gossip flying around,” Marek said, more calmly; his shoulders were relaxing as he listened to Solya, swallowing down that poisonously convenient explanation. He dropped back into his chair and put his boots up on the table again. “About my mother or about you, for that matter. The Magnati have all been summoned for the funeral, and I’ll be announcing our betrothal once they’re gathered.”

“What?” I said. He might have been giving me some piece of mildly interesting news which concerned me only a little.

“You’ve earned it, slaying that monster, and it’s the sort of thing commoners love. Don’t make a fuss,” he added, without even looking at me. “Polnya is in danger, and I need you at my side.”

I only stood there, too angry to even find my voice, but they had stopped paying attention to me anyway. In the mirror, someone was ducking into the tent. An old man in a much-decorated uniform sank heavily into the chair on the other side, his face pulled down on all sides by age: jowls sagging, mustaches sagging, pouches beneath his eyes and the corners of his mouth; there were lines of sweat running through the dust caked on his face. “Savienha!” Marek said, leaning in, fiercely intent. “What’s happening? Did the Rosyans have time to fortify their positions?”

“No,” the old general said, wiping a tired hand across his forehead. “They didn’t fortify the crossings: they laid an ambush on the Long Bridge instead.”

“Stupid of them,” Marek said, intently. “Without fortifications, they can’t possibly hold the crossings for more than a couple of days. Another two thousand levies came in overnight, if I ride out with them at once—”

“We overran them at dawn,” Savienha said. “They are all dead: six thousand.”

Marek paused, evidently taken aback: he hadn’t expected that. He exchanged a look with Solya, scowling a little, as though he didn’t like hearing it. “How many did you lose?” he demanded.

“Four thousand, too many horses. We overran them,” Savienha repeated, his voice breaking, sagging where he sat. Not all the tracks on his face were sweat. “Marek, forgive me. Marek—your brother is dead. They killed him in the first ambush, when he went to survey the river.”

I backed away from the table as if I could escape from the words. The little boy upstairs holding out his sword, I won’t be any trouble, his round face upturned. The memory jabbed me, knife-sharp.

Marek had gone silent. His face was bewildered more than anything. Solya went on speaking with the general a little longer. I could scarcely bear to hear them go on talking. Finally Solya reached up and drew a heavy cloth down over the mirror. He turned to look at Marek.

The bewilderment was fading. “By God,” Marek said after a moment, “I would rather not have it, than have it so.” Solya only inclined his head, watching him with a gleam in his eye. “But that’s not the choice, after all.”