Page 54 of Magick and Lead
“Now give us at least a chunk of bread! In the name of the queen.”
At this, the man looked up again from the water.
“In the name of the queen?” he repeated flatly, then he pointed to the fire. “We burned her.”
Rohree followed the man’s gesture. Suddenly, the burned dragon wing and the shock of half-burned hair made sense. They’d burned someone in effigy. They’d burned the queen. And not Synaeda, either. Essa.
“But… why?” she asked, bewildered.
“The queen cares nothing for the likes of us,” a voice said, and she turned to find one of the sleeping women had woken and sat up. Others were stirring, too.
“The queen is the whore of the nobility, nothing more.” The mud-covered man said. “She and her Skrathan care more for dragons than for her own people.”
“They take our boys off to fight in their war and die on Dorhane,” one of the awakening villagers said.
“They tax our crops to feed their lavish court,” someone else put in.
“No, we serve no queen. We are peasants. We are nothing. We are of the void, and we serve the void,” the scrying old man said.
“We serve the void,” several voices echoed in unison. More villagers were waking and getting to their feet, one by one.
“Our mistake,” Clua said, tugging on Rohree’s arm. “We’ll be leaving.”
But Rohree simply couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Nor would she stand there and listen to her beloved Essaphine be slandered without coming to her defense.
“Princess—I meanQueenEssaphine—cares more for you than that selfish, black-hearted Prelate Kortoi or the bloated, gold-hungry nobility ever will! She’s risked her life on dragon-back to keep you safe from the enemies across the sea. When the nobility pushed for higher taxes, it was her mother—may her soul fly—who kept them at bay. Her family took my parents inwhen they were nothing but poor refugees from Koratain with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The Skrathan may be hard people. They’ve had to be. But they’re kind. And good. You all have been deceived, that’s what’s happened. The void has corrupted your minds. Essaphine is the strongest, bravest, most wonderful person I know!”
The mud man’s eyebrows went up.
“You…knowthe queen?” he said, slowly rising to his feet.
Rohree glanced over to find Clua with a hand slapped over her face.
Because one-by-one, the villagers were rising from their slumber and moving toward them like a pack of drifting phantoms. And they didn’t look pleased.
Clua brought up her mace. “Rohree,” she said through bared teeth. “We’re leaving now.”
Just at that moment, the nearest villager lurched forward to grab them. Clua’s mace whisked through the air and hit the side of his head with a sickening crack. He dropped, and Clua and Rohree were running again.
25
ESSA
I’d been to plenty of royal balls. I’d visited lavish palaces, danced under fae lights, and sipped sparkling wine with royals and dignitaries. I’d danced the oval at village harvest festivals. I’d even ridden on dragon back during the spring mating ritual, soaring two leagues above the earth as the sun rose over the Yrdam Mountains. But nothing could have prepared me for the Cat’s Meow.
The dance hall sat atop a building of reddish brick at least a dozen stories tall. From the street below, the sound of music trilled and trumpeted above, along with exuberant shouts and brays of laughter. Two shafts of light knifed up into the sky, shifting back and forth against the gray nighttime clouds—more necromancer tricks. I’d seen searchlights like these over Dorhane. Othura and I had avoided them while dodging gunfire. Here, their purpose was different—not to deter enemies, but to summon revelers. Still, the feeling of nervous energy it stirred in me was the same.
Fancily dressed people lined up along the sidewalk. At the club’s entrance, glass double doors stood open and a pair of burly men in tuxedos loomed on either end of a velvet rope, speaking a few words to each group of supplicants whoapproached them, then pulling back the rope to let them pass or, in some cases, sending them away. Charlie took my hand and led me past the line and directly up to one of the men, a dark-skinned giant of a man with a shaved head.
“Char-lie Inman!” the man said, drawing out the first name as if it were an exclamation—or a curse. “Been a long time. You snag any dragons lately?”
Charlie gave a brittle smile, cutting a glance toward me. “Just one,” he said.
The guard grinned and clapped him on the back. “Ah, you’ll get the rest pretty soon, Charlie.” He looked at me. “You know this guy is the best, right? A real ace.”
“I know,” I said, trying not to sound too prickly.
“Listen,” Charlie said. “Have you seen Kitty or Suzie?”
