The Hedgewitch Queen

only the guards outside the door remaining, I dropped back into the chair and looked at the table, scattered with paper and candleholders. The wine decanter looked very tempting, but I required a clear head.

I let out a long breath. My head pounded. My entire body shook as if I had been struck with palsy. My right hand crept up, touched the Aryx’s pulsing. Sunlight slanted through the windows, dust dancing in each bar of thick warm yellow. The Aryx moved, serpents straining against my fingers. One hard gemstone — a serpent’s eye — drifted under my fingertip. “Gods.” My voice shook. “What did I do to deserve this?”

There was no answer. Nothing but the Aryx thrumming, singing, almost conscious against my skin. My stomach flipped, revolving, as if I had slipped on a staircase and was now starting a long fall. “Tristan,” I whispered.

I would wait until tonight, in the house of the Blessed, to speak to di Cinfiliet and hear his proof.

And what of it? What if Tristan d’Arcenne had killed the King? I had said I cared little what he had done beforehand, and I loved him. It seemed now that I had always loved him, even at Court, and only been blind to it. It hurt my heart to think of him as a traitor, but perhaps he was not. Perhaps it was another trick, a lie, something to make me mistrust him. After all, assassins had been sent to fetch me, not to kill…if I could trust what the Pruzian said.

What if I went to the Temple as suppliant and the gods were silent? What if I found no answer in the house of the Blessed? What if the city was besieged and there were yet more deaths to lay upon my conscience, people who followed me because of the Aryx, who trusted the judgment of a lady-in-waiting, a bastard royal? And what if I gave myself over to the Duc and had to endure his limp white hands on me while plague swept Arquitaine and Damarsene armies marched through her fields and orchards? What were Damarsene troops about under the Duc’s standard?

I did not trust my wit when faced with this, and the strength I would have depended on had just been rudely struck from me. What if I could no longer trust Tristan d’Arcenne? What if he was just as guilty as the Duc who had killed my Princesse?

You have suspected, Vianne. You may never fully know. But the suspicion itself will work in your heart like the poison that was not in the King’s pettite-cakes. You have known since Tierrce d’Estrienne something was amiss with Tristan’s tale, and yet you closed your eyes to it, for you needed him.

My fingers left the Aryx. I cupped my face in my hands as the sunlight burned through the empty room.

And there, alone in the Keep among hundreds depending on my wit and strength, I wept.

Glossary

Ansinthe: A venomous green liquor distilled from wyrmrithe

Aufsbar: (Prz.) Client

Blessed, the: (Arq.) The Twelve Gods of Arquitaine, six Old (indigenous) and six New (brought by the conqueror Angouleme)

Demiange: (Arq.) Sorcerous or half-divine spirit; many of them wait upon the gods in the Westron Halls

Demieri di sorce: (Arq.) Sorcerous spirits of night and mischief

D’mselle: (Arq.) Honorific, for a young woman

Festival of Skyreturn: One of the great cross-quarter festivals

G’ji g’jai: (R’m.) Foreign (lit. “Other”), whore

Hedgewitch: (Arq.) One who practices peasant sorcery

M’chri, m’cher: (Arq.) Beloved, dear one

M’dama: (Arq.) Honorific, for an older woman

Piniel: An evergreen tree with a sharp distinctive scent, whose bristled cones bear small nuts inside.”

Rhuma: A clear, fiery liquor distilled from sucre

Sieur: (Arq.) Honorific, for a man

Valadka: A clear, very potent liquor that may cause blindness if overly indulged in

Vilhain: (Arq.) Bastard

Meet the author

Lilith Saintcrow was born in New Mexico, bounced around the world as an Air Force brat, and fell in love with writing when she was ten years old. She currently lives in Vancouver, Washington. Find her on the web at www.lilithsaintcrow.com.

An Excerpt from The Bandit King (Hedgewitch-2)

I struck to kill.

The flesh, fat-rich and fed on luxury, parted under my blade. And I rammed my sword — sworn to the service of Arquitaine’s King — through the heart of that same king.

The alarums were still ringing, but a great silence had descended on me. Running feet and shouts resounded in the corridor. Henri gasped, the death-gurgle I have heard on many another’s lips.

I had killed for him too many times to count. Did he feel surprise, that the tool he sharpened had thus turned in his hand?

My throat was dry as sand in the Navarrin wastes. My heart pounded, running like a hare before hounds. Up to this moment it had been a conspiracy, one I had played at catching out. Now, with one decisive lunge, I had committed my soul entire to the enterprise

I gave the blade one last twist, freeing it from the suction of muscle. The thrust had been true, years of daily practice on the drillfield honed and distilled into murder. Henri’s elaborately-curled hair fell in disarray, and his lips shaped a question. He fell before he could give it voice, a bubble of bright blood bursting on his lips, so recently touching a dainty teacake.

He hit the floor in a sodden, shapeless lump of velvet and silk. I crouched easily, a duelist’s move once the duel was done, to watch an enemy’s last gasping moments. The sucking sound of a breath caught in a bloody throat, echoed by so many victims, now visited the man who had made me a weapon.

“You should have let me have her,” I whispered. “You are responsible for this.”

He made no reply, merely thrashed and choked his last. And as they burst into the room, d’Orlaans’s Guard, I came up from my crouch and met the first few in a clash of steel and confusion. Everything now depended on secrecy, and speed, and how willing I was to kill.

I suffered no qualms. But they took me anyway — d’Orlaans, the king’s brother, had suspected me, and sent his dogs to yap at my heels. He had not sent them unarmed, either. Pieces of the puzzle fell into place when they unleashed the first jolt of Court sorcery, a spell meant to wound and disable an opponent.

So the King’s brother was a far better sorcerer than even I had guessed. It was hardly the first