The Bitter Kingdom

2

THE afternoon pours heat onto our backs. The four of us lie on our bellies on a small rocky ridge, peering through the twisting red branches of a manzanita bush to the village below. It’s comprised of a smattering of adobe hutas and an inn with a stable, all surrounding a cobblestone plaza with its resident well. Date palms rise between buildings, bent eastward from the constant wind. Camels are tethered at the village’s southern edge, chewing calmly on a thorn bush. But camels won’t take us where we must go. We need horses.

Like all the other villages we’ve encountered, it’s crawling with Eduardo’s soldiers. Except this time they wear typical desert garb—linen blouses and sturdy pants, utility belts and long desert cloaks—rather than the red-and-black uniform of Eduardo’s countship. Were it not for the red ribbons tied around their arms or pinned to their cloaks, no one would know they were Eduardo’s men.

“They’ve run out of uniforms,” Belén whispers. “A good sign.”

“Maybe they’re short on resources in general,” I say hopefully. “Even their weapons look shabby.” I peer closer. “Fewer than half carry swords.”

“So, what’s the plan?” says Mara.

“The horses are stabled behind the inn,” says Belén. “That’s good. The area isn’t visible from the center of the village.”

Several men pour from the inn’s entrance, laughing and clapping one another on the back. It’s an alarming contrast to the regular residents, who scurry from building to building, eyes downcast, trying to look small. “Eduardo’s soldiers are using the inn as a temporary barracks,” I observe.

“If so, the stable behind it is well guarded,” Belén says.

“These are conscripted men,” Storm says. “Not regular soldiers. But even if they were trained fighters, they’d likely be as pathetic as the rest of Joya d’Arena’s military.”

“Our pathetic military defeated yours in a single battle,” I snap, before remembering that Storm is probably goading me for personal amusement.

“No, my dear queen, you did,” he says. “You and your Godstone.”

He’s right, but I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of conceding. Ignoring him, I reach out and push a branch aside to get a better view.

“Careful, Elisa,” Belén says. “We’re within sight.”

Mindful of his warning, I absorb every detail of the inn below—its awning made of crosshatched branches that cast patterned light on the men beneath it, the small arched windows, the adobe stairway that wraps around the building and leads to a second floor with a dry palapa roof. We are just high enough on our ridge to glimpse the stable behind it. It’s very small. No more than eight stalls. There must be direct entry from inside the inn, as well as a larger egress for the horses in back.

“It could catch fire easily,” Belén says, too eagerly.

“No!” Two months ago we burned down an inn in Puerto Verde—just to create a distraction. Countless livelihoods were lost. Maybe even a few lives. I promised myself it would never happen again.

“We could take rooms for the night,” Mara says. “And sneak out before sunrise with the horses. Belén might have to . . . dispatch a guard or two, but it would be better than burning the place down.”

“They might recognize their queen,” Belén says.

“This far from the capital?”

“Miniatures with my likeness were sent all over the kingdom on the day of my coronation,” I say. “Painters copied and recopied it, and . . . wait, maybe you’re right.” I never did sit for a new portrait—there was no time. Instead, they used an old one from when I was a bored, sedentary princess of Orovalle. And just like with ancient manuscripts, scribed again and again over the years, mistakes invariably creep in until it is nearly impossible to tell which parts are original text. Any likenesses that made it this far are bound to be a confused version of an Elisa who doesn’t even exist anymore.

“By reputation, you are portly and unattractive,” Storm points out.

“Thank you for the kind reminder,” I say.

“But you are neither of those things,” he adds, and I whip my head around to stare at him. Did he just pay me a compliment?

Mara pinches off a green manzanita leaf and puts it in her mouth. As she chews, she mumbles, “I could fix your hair in two braids, one on each side like the nomads wear. Smudge your face with dirt.”

I’m not sure I need any more dirt on my face than I have already. I scratch at my hairline, where sweat has started to drip tiny mud trails down my face. It itches abominably. Everyone is silent as we consider the thing no one is saying—that Eduardo has commanded his men to kill me on sight.

“They’re looking for a group of four travelers,” Belén says finally.

“Which means someone must stay behind,” I say.

As one, we shift on our stomachs to face Storm. “Yes, yes,” he says wearily. “A party of four, one of whom is an Invierno, would mark you as clearly as your Godstone crown.”

“We’ll find a good rendezvous point for you to wait,” I tell him. “I won’t leave you behind.”

He nods. “I know.”

We belly crawl backward, then skid down the graveled hillside into the narrow arroyo below. As we weave toward our campsite, following the arroyo’s meager trickle of water, I wonder at my lack of uneasiness. I should be terrified at the prospect of walking into an enemy barracks, stealing their horses, and riding away into the night. But I feel nothing except raw determination, with a bit of anger for spice.

It’s possible I’ve been through too much, lost too much. War damages different people in different ways; Hector taught me that. King Alejandro became spineless and incapable. His father before him was rash and unpredictable, if I’m to believe court gossip. Perhaps this is my damage. Maybe I am numb to fear because I am broken.

Our campsite lies in a copse of cottonwoods, elevated just enough to stay dry during a flash flood. We retrieve our packs from where we stashed them behind a deadfall. Mara starts putting ingredients together for a soup while Storm leaves to gather firewood. It will be a while yet before we eat; Mara will let the mix soak but won’t start a fire until the black of night hides our smoke.

I find an open space and begin the slow, dancelike warm-up exercises of my Royal Guard, exactly the way Hector taught me. It’s always difficult at first, because it brings to mind his memory, so vivid and startling that I have to swallow against tears. His callused fingers on my arm, guiding my movement. His breath in my ear as he gives clear, patient instructions. The scents of oiled leather and aloe shaving gel.

But as always, it passes. The movement takes over, the memory fades, my mind clears. When my focus is as sharp as one of Mara’s arrowheads, I review everything I observed: the layout of the village around a central plaza, the surrounding ridges and low brush, the young men at the inn who played at soldiering . . .

“Belén.” A wicked smile stretches my lips.

He pauses from his sharpening, knife and whetstone hovering in the air. His one good eye narrows. “I know that look,” he says.

“What if we used Storm as a decoy? Convince the village it’s under attack by Inviernos? The inn would empty of soldiers. We could take the horses easily. Then, when word reached the conde that our old enemy is attacking again, he’d have to send troops to protect his border. It would thin his resources even further.”

His face turns thoughtful. Wind whistles through the scrub brush, and he whisks his knife against the whetstone in sharp counterpoint. At last he says, “Storm’s hair. You made him cut it and dye it black. From a distance, they might not recognize him for an Invierno.”

“He’s tall,” I insist. “If he remained cowled and wore his Godstone amulet visibly . . .”

“They’d never believe he was attacking,” Mara says from her place at the still-cold fire pit. “Not if he can’t throw fire from his amulet.”

Mara is right. Storm is not only an enemy defector, he’s a failed sorcerer, one of the few Inviernos born with a Godstone. When he was four years old, it detached from his navel, and he began training to become an animagus. But he was never able to call the zafira, the living magic that creeps beneath the crust of the world, never learned to bring its fire. So he was exiled in disgrace to my late husband’s court as an ambassador.

Odd how being named an ambassador is considered his mark of shame, when the position carries such honor in my own court. There is so much about Invierne and its people that we do not understand.

“I’ll stand with Storm,” Mara says. “Or hide nearby and shoot arrows from the ridge. There are some piñons in the area; if we find resin, I could coat the arrowheads, light them on fire. Smoke and flames cause a lot of confusion—I know it too well.”

Belén gives her an admiring look, and she blushes. He says, “It would be a while before they figured out the fire came from your arrows rather than our fake animagus. Especially if we did it at first light, when the rising sun makes seeing tricky.”

“Mara, that’s brilliant,” I tell her, even as my heart sinks at the thought of setting anything on fire. I hate that I must cut a swath of devastation through my own country in order to save it. Weakly, I ask, “Please promise you’ll do as little damage as possible?”

“Of course,” she says gently.

“So Belén and I will take a room for the night,” I say. “On a prearranged signal—at dawn, so the village can see just enough to identify an Invierno?—Mara and Storm will attack. In the chaos, we’ll sneak into the stable and grab four horses. Then circle around for the two of you.”

Mara digs into her spice satchel and retrieves a leather pouch. She empties some gray-green flakes into her palm and scatters them into her pot. “You should free the remaining horses,” she says without looking up. “Or even kill them. Otherwise, we’ll be pursued.”

I stare at her. Mara is lovely and lithe, soft-spoken and unassuming. I often forget how capable and ruthless she can be. She lived a lifetime before becoming my lady-in-waiting, and though she doesn’t talk about it much, I know that the scars she bears—the drooping eyelid, the mangled earlobe, the burn mark on her belly—are minor compared to those wounds that no one can see.

“There are so many things that could go wrong with this plan,” Belén says.

I purse my lips, thinking hard. Chief among the possibilities, of course, is me. I haven’t handled horses since I was twelve years old. My sister, Alodia, always excelled at horsemanship, but I avoided the creatures—at first to prevent yet another unflattering comparison between us, and later because they were so large, and it had just been too long, and somehow in avoiding them I had let myself become frightened of them.

But I’m determined to do it now. For Hector. For my kingdom. Surely there’s not much to it? How hard can it be to get on and stay on until we are out of danger?

“I’ll scout around tonight,” Belén says. “Find a good rendezvous point. We need to convince Storm, then figure out a way to minimize his exposure. They’ll start shooting at him as soon as he shows himself.”

Storm chooses this moment to push through a wall of bramble and reenter the camp. His arms are full of twisted deadwood, and smears of sweat mar his perfect face. “Convince me of what?”

I take a deep breath and explain the plan.

Storm drops the firewood near Mara’s pit and sits beside it, cross-legged. The manacles on his ankles gleam in the failing light of evening.

“In my country,” he says, “it is a great crime to impersonate an animagus. Punishable by death.”

“But will you do it?” I ask gently.

He hesitates the space of a breath before saying, “Of course. I am your loyal subject.”