Gunnar stumbled to a halt in the doorway, his blue eyes wide, asif her shock had scared the wits out of him. “What?” he cried.
“What?” she yelled back. She shook her head to try to calm herracing pulse. “Don’t what me.” She pointed to the door which had flown open sohard, it bounced off the wall. “What’s going on?”
“Come on,” he said, gesturing her forward, his face the pictureof confusion and concern. “It’s Mother.”
The queen. Thana moved with him, her pulse picking up again, andher throat tightening as if her heart had decided to lodge there. “She’s nothurt, is she?” She swallowed and tried to bully her shaky legs into keepingpace with him as they moved out of Thana’s apartment and into the hall. “I’mnot a healer.”
“I know you’re not a spirits-cursed healer,” he said. “I wouldn’tcome get you if it wasn’t about magic.”
He wanted her to do magic. The queenwanted her to do magic. She’d told Gunnar she wasn’t as good at it as herpredecessor, but he’d always said stupid things like, “You’ll do fine when thetime comes.” As if the situation would somehow improve her ability. Fear, thegreat motivator.
Then she thought of the wall, the explosion, her certainty thatthe force of her strike couldn’t have come from one of the trap pyramids. She’dbeen scared and desperate then. What if the situation did help?
Someone should have written that down by now if it was true.
“What’s happened?” She tried to force herself to sound calm, butshe feared the words sounded half-strangled, squeezed around the lump in herthroat.
“She was with her new…paramour.”
He couldn’t say lover, not where his mother was concerned. “LadyLucia, yes.”
“And some pyramid in the sitting room went, as she called it, assup.”
Thana was surprised into a snort. Queen Earnhilt always did havea colorful vernacular. “Which means?”
“It exploded.”
“Spirits above. Did you send for a healer?”
“The court physick is with her, but when I left, she was alreadywaving him off. She says it’s only a scratch, and Lucia wasn’t hurt at all.”
The suspicious part of Thana muttered something about that beingawfully convenient, but while Lady Lucia might be after money or power or justthe prestige of being lover to the queen, she’d never struck Thana as amurderer.
Even if Earnhilt’s son didn’t know what to call her.
As long as the queen didn’t call her consort, everything would bewell. No one wanted to see the queen betrothed to someone who was just after money,power, or prestige. Not unless she had the full approval of the nobles’council.
Thana rolled her eyes. The council wouldn’t care what themonarch’s betrothed was after as long as they could control her.
The door to the queen’s apartment swung open much as Thana’s doorhad earlier. Before they reached it, a tall thin man in a red belted jerkin waspushed courteously yet inarguably into the hall by a well-muscled arm.
“Yes, I have it, old man. Cold poultice for the swelling,ointment for the cut.” Queen Earnhilt stepped out behind the man. Herdisheveled hair stood out around her head like a golden cloud, and one sleeveof her purple robe was tattered and burned, dangling around the arm she wasshoving with. “Take your bag of tricks and be off with you. Have no fear forme.”
“But…Majesty…” The court physick’s bag dragged after him like awillful dog. “I can tend—”
“I can tend myself. Don’t you worry.” She turned toward Thana andGunnar, revealing a bruised right eye that had swelled shut. The other,cornflower blue just lighter than her son’s, seemed to light up. “See, here’sthe prince and my pyradisté come to help. Run along now.”
“But…but they’re not—”
Earnhilt released him, hustled Gunnar through the door, thenreached for Thana. Her hand curled nearly all the way around Thana’s bicep, andthe force of the grip almost lifted her off her feet. What a beast she must bein battle. Thana was glad they’d always be on the same side.
Earnhilt shut the door in the physick’s face and crooked herfinger for Thana and Gunnar to follow. She strode past them, going from herpublic sitting room into her private one, and Thana stopped to stare.
One of the couches had been blown over. It had a blackened spotin the middle and burned wool spilling out. Several tables lay overturned, andfrom the way the floor sparkled in the firelight, a great amount of glasswarehad been broken.
Earnhilt marched into the thick of it, and Thana noticed huntingboots under the robe, but by the way the fabric hugged her athletic body, shedidn’t have anything else on. At just over six feet tall—Gunnar’s height—she’dbe formidable in nothing at all.
She pointed to a blank spot on the floor, the epicenter of whateverhad happened. “Spirits-cursed pyramid went ass up right here,” she said loudly.She had no other volume. “Happened when Lucia and I were having a snuggle bythe fire and whoosh.”
Gunnar sighed. “She’s going to need more than ass up and whoosh, Ma.”
“But that’s what it did, my boy.” She looked at Thana as if forconfirmation.
“Um, it exploded?” she tried.
Earnhilt nodded, gesturing at her sleeve, at the room. “Lucky wehadn’t really gotten started, or it might have caught more than my sleeve andmy eye.” She barked a laugh.
“Your eye is…”
“Still there under the swelling.” She gave a bit of broken glassa nudge with one foot. “Hit by a chunk of wood. If we’d have been on the couch,we might have both snuffed it. Lucia was lucky. I was on top.”
“Ma, please,” Gunnar said with a groan.
Thana waved at them both to be quiet. “Where did this pyramidcome from?”
“Been here forever.” She dusted off a chair and sat. “One of thelast-ditch trap thingies. Here in case someone gets past the hall pyramids.”
“A trap?” Thana eased closer, looking for something that was nolonger there. She conjured the memory of this room as it had been with a long,low table
