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“Mother.”
One child had certainly done his best to sap her energy.
“Mother!”
“What is it, Danyel?”
“There’s a girl standing on your statue.”
“That’s nice, dear.” Arrabel blew a kiss to a strapping young man and smiled to see him blush. “Which statue?”
“The one with your hand on the head of the beggar brat. Mother, you’d better pay attention to this!”
Sighing, she turned and glanced toward the statue in question. “Don’t point, Danyel. It’s common.”
He dropped his arm with a sullen clank of vanbrace against breastplate. “Well, do you see her?”
It was hard to miss her. “Andrew, stop the coach.” As the six archers in her escort moved into new defensive positions, the queen shifted over to stare out Danyel’s window.
The girl had a head of flaming red hair and stood with one booted foot on the beggar child’s stone head and the other tucked into the queen’s bent elbow. Gesturing dramatically, she pitched her voice to carry over the ambient noise of the streets and shrieked that the queen cared nothing for her subjects.
“That would go farther if she wasn’t standing in front of the hospital you had built,” Danyel muttered.
The people loved the hospital. Arrabel loved it more. With all healers working for the crown at salaries too good to walk away from, the crown controlled who got healed and how.
“The queen has turned you into mindless drones in her glittering hive!”
People who might not have noticed the girl noticed the queen and the crowds began to quiet, half their attention on the flamboyant redhead and half on the royal coach.
“The queen has taken away your freedoms!” The last word fell into a nearly perfect silence and the girl’s eyes widened as she stared over the heads of the crowd and realized who was in her audience.
“Like their freedom to starve?” Arrabel asked. “Do go on with what you were saying,” she added, adjusting her paisley shawl more securely around her shoulders. “But I’m afraid I can’t stay to listen, I have a country to run.”
The crowd roared its approval as she gestured for her driver to go on. Had they not been well aware of her opinion on wasting food, she felt sure the girl would have been wearing a variety of produce in short order.
“It’s weird how those types keep showing up,” Danyel snorted, settling back into the velvet upholstery. “Each of them more ridiculous than the last. No one even listens to them anymore.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” She already knew it.
“Still…” He scratched under the edge of his vanbrace until he caught sight of her expression then he stopped. “This one seemed to really believe what she was saying.”
“Did she? I didn’t notice.” Mirroring her son’s position, minus the scratching, Arrabel made a mental note to have Wallace arrange a “tour of the provinces” for the young actress when she showed up at the palace to be paid. If even Danyel had noticed a certain conviction in her performance, the girl had become a liability. The last thing Arrabel wanted was for the people to start thinking.
Wallace was waiting for her in her private receiving room, the Hero’s armor and ring on the table.
“The wizards have checked it thoroughly, Your Majesty. It’s nothing more than the well-made armor it appears.”
“And the ring?”
“Also free of magical taint.” He picked it up and handed it to her with a slight bow. “It bears the eagle crest of Mecada.”
It was heavy and so pure a gold she could almost mark it with her thumbnail. “A gift to the Hero from King Giorge?”
“It seems likely, Majesty.”
“He’s really begi
It was only chance that a fortnight later the queen was inspecting new recruits in the outer courtyard near enough to the palace gate to hear a voice raised in protest.
“Oh come on, mate, what I get for this here load’s go
In the courtyard, Arrabel smiled at the twenty young men and women who had just been congratulated on having passed the stringent physical and mental tests required to wear the Queen’s Tabard, reminded them to write their mothers weekly, and then dismissed them into the care of her Captain of Recruits. He was a genius with young people. Once he got their training well under way, they’d protect her with their lives. By the time he finished, even death wouldn’t stop them.
Moving quickly, her escort falling into place around her, she arrived at the gate in time to hear a second protest.
“But I’m from all the way out in New Bella! How would I have heard that Her Majesty wants all hay delivered in tight bales?”
“Are you suggesting that my word has not reached New Bella?” she asked in turn, stepping out of the shadows. “Because if that’s the case, I can repeat it more emphatically.”
Very early on in her rule, she’d discovered that nothing spoke with quite so much emphasis as a troop of light cavalry armed primarily with torches and accelerant.
The carter paled as the pair of gate guards clanged to attention. “I’m sure I was the only one who didn’t hear, Majesty!”
“Good. Unharness your…” She raised a brow at the animal, which rolled its eyes so that the whites showed all the way around and fought the reins trying to shy away from her.
“Mule, Majesty.”
“Is it? Well, get it away from the cart, I’d hate for it to be injured.”
To his credit, the carter had the mule away from the cart in record time.
“Burn it.”
One of the gate guards dropped a lit torch into the hay, which burst into flames and ejected a medium-size nondescript man who leaped toward her, smoldering slightly. The six arrows that suddenly pounded into his torso knocked him back into the fire.
“Mercy, Majesty!” The carter dropped to his knees at her feet and laced rough, work-reddened fingers together. “He threatened my family, said he’d slit their throats in the dark if I didn’t help him.”
The queen sighed, ignoring the screaming as the wounded assassin burned. “How could he slit their throats if he was hiding in the back of your cart?”
“Majesty?”
“Once you took him away from your family, he couldn’t slit their throats and all you had to do was drive up to anyone in a Queen’s Tabard and tell them what you had hidden in the hay. Since you didn’t do that, I can only assume one of two situations apply. The first is that you were delivering him of your own free will. The second is that you are too stupid to live.” Twitching her skirts aside, she raised her hand. “Since the end result is the same for either,” she told the body as it fell, bristling with arrows. “It’s not particularly relevant which applies. Now then…” She turned to the gate guards. “… this is exactly why we don’t allow carts filled with loose hay into the city. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Majesty!”
“I’m pleased to hear that. We’ll let this incident stand as an object lesson…” The assassin had finally stopped screaming, “… but I’m disappointed in both of you-a rule is a rule and although you didn’t allow the cart through the palace gate, you did let the carter argue. That might have given the assassin time to slip inside and then how would you have felt?”
“Terrible, Majesty,” admitted the guard on the left.
“Terrible,” agreed the guard on the right, his eyes watering a little from the smoke.
“I certainly hope so. If you want to make it up to me, you can find out who let this cart into the city because I’m very disappointed in them. Wallace!”
“Majesty!” Her aide stepped over a bit of burning wheel.