The Singed Crown

The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished. That was how they came to find her so soon. The shepherdess had been incomprehensible, reverting to the old tongue in her distress, but there are languages beyond words, and Captain Silbourn had seen the fear in her eyes and followed her himself, delegating command of the main search to Tribian, and taking the Guard’s three best men with him. Now they stood on the bank of the little river, the shepherdess praying, he supposed, and the four men stood in metal plated uncertainty, swords hanging impotently along their thighs.

Silbourn fingered the hilt of his blade. His instinct was to draw, but against what? The banks were clean, no sign of skids or slips spoiling the green of the close cropped grass, but between, where the river should flow towards the sea, the water turned on itself, eddying in a gibbering tumult, climbing back over its own tail as if recoiling from the woman who blocked its path. Women, he should say, but no one could be in doubt which of them had turned the water.

The Queen spanned the river, her shoes pressed into the mud on the far bank, their tops still red and supple and bright. By Silbourn’s feet her brow was wedged against the dirt, her neck twisted at an unnatural angle, the heaped braids of her yellow hair flecked with droplets of dew. She was smaller, dead, he thought, and he fought the urge to smudge her forehead with the muddied toe of his shoe. Still, Queen that she was, she was saved from lying in the water by a mattress of three other women, piled as if to damn the river, though the river appeared to turn back of its own accord.

A passing glance was all that was needed to identify that these were three of the elven women who had attended Queen Karshak. Silbourn had long wondered whether these women would one day turn on their Queen, if perhaps they meant her a harm that could only be executed with gentle patience. It was a point of pride that no elf would serve a human, and everyone had been suspicious when four of their kind had offered themselves in service at her coronation. Some said they meant to keep an eye on the Queen, or for the good of all the four kingdoms, guide her away from the fits of cruelty for which she was known. Others were less generous in their suppositions. Silbourn, for his part, had never trusted them, but nor had he wanted to stand in their way. His only fear was that they might act before he could forestall the ramifications. Well, at least he need no longer worry about that.

Mynas had spent the small hours in the cells. Silbourn had come personally to her chamber as soon as he had verified that the Queen had vanished. He had not allowed her to wash or to dress, instead escorting her briskly down the carpeted stairs and on down the wooden steps and finally the stone. He was not rough or unkind, but there was a firmness in the hand that encircled her arm that brooked no resistance, and she had not pulled away or protested. Mynas had known Silbourn for enough years to have confidence that she would be treated with fairness, and she saw no need, asking only if she might have a cloak or blanket. She had waited there, missing the prayers of the sunrise in the perpetual torchlight of the bowels of the castle, and she had thought of the wooded valleys of her home, and of the oak that had grown from an acorn her father had planted before she was born, and of the way leaves fall as the darkness takes hold, so that the tree survives until the sun returns.

When Silbourn approached her cell, he had enough wisdom to observe his own irritation and temper his words.

“My Lady Mynas, I bring difficult news, though you may be expecting it none the less. The emergency court has found you to be guilty of the murder of Queen Karshak and the elves Trewen, Sivorn and Litia. The sentence for this crime is death, and the penalty is to be carried out immediately. I am sorry.”

If Mynas was shocked she did not show it, but rose willingly to her feet, her willowy frame straight and her head lifted, chin jutted forward. Silbourn looked at her. There were many reasons to kills a queen and Queen Karshak, with her stolen power and stolen castle, her stolen lovers and stolen loyalty and fetid stolen land, had given many a desire to see her dead, not least the woman closest to her. She was surely guilty? The court had been unanimous in deciding her culpability, and her fate, and it was not for him to question that.

At the gallow, a crowd had formed, word spreading like the coughing sickness earlier that year. Silbourn watched, feeling his uniform scratch against his neck as Mynas placed hers into the noose of the rope. It seemed obvious that she killed the Queen. A princess in her own land, her service to Karshak cannot have been without purpose. And yet, she made no attempt to fight the sentence, and her purpose cannot have been her own death, or the death of her kin. Even at the last, as the doors opened beneath her feet, she did not struggle or cry out. Silbourn watched her narrow elven neck distort in the grip of the rope, her dangling body, twitching, resisting death, and wondered if they had been right. There were protocols, things that must be done. Things that must be seen to be done. But there were more motives for murder, he knew, than power, or jealousy, or fear.

*************

Beneath the gallows, transfixed by the golden slippers that jerked and swung before him, Mican rubbed his eyes. It had been a long night, and he longed to find a warm corner to curl into and sleep, but he knew that luxury was not to be his. His own bed held no allure for him at night, when he roamed the streets, seeking the nooks and crannies from which he could watch, seldom noted, that hustle of the city. He feared falling asleep at his school desk and earning the cane again, but that was better than his mother’s wrath if he were to tell her where he had been. Then there was the troubling matter of the Queen. Karshak had not been popular amongst the sprites, and they could not mention an elvish name without spitting on the ground, but it pained him to see an innocent women hanged.