“I swear by everything Nameless,” I say, stopping in front of him and pointing in his face, “that if you call me Highness or my lady one more spetzing time, I’m going to punch you right in your excellently bearded face.” I pause, collecting myself. “And I mean that…in a…not violent way? Yeah, I’ll work on it.”
Glenquartz’s grin compresses into an uneasy grimace. “At least you got them to agree to release Hat from the prison.”
Her name crawls into my chest and burns. Everything in my body—the tremulous ache of my heart, the twitching of my legs—wants me to run to her. “They better. I meant what I said in there. This crown on my arm might as well be a noose around my neck. At some point, I may die because of it, but I will not let Hat die. Let me be blunt: if she becomes a martyr, I become a soldier. And I don’t think the Royal Council wants a soldier as queen, do you?” I back off, realizing I’ve essentially just threatened him.
He blinks a couple of times, spinning a button on the cuff of his long red sleeve. “I understand. You can be scary when you want to be. You can be strong. That’s good. You’ll have to be strong if you’re going to survive Eldritch’s infamous etiquette class.” He tries to give a good-natured laugh. Then, more seriously, he adds, “You will have to get along with the general if you’re going to win over the council.”
“You didn’t see what I saw when Belrosa touched my hand,” I say. “What she was thinking about the Nameless and about me! Murder by the hundreds. It was awful. She’s awful. And she knew what she was doing. She showed that to me.”
“Her family—the Demures—held the crown as recently as three generations ago,” he says. “It stands to reason that she’d be unhappy that you have it now. She’d want to undermine you in front of the council. To all appearances, though, she was on your side. Even after what you did to her. It didn’t look too bad, though. I’m sure Med Ward will patch her up.”
“What am I supposed to do for nearly six weeks? Tell me straight. Is Hat alive? Or were you just conning me into attending that meeting?”
“What I said is true,” Glenquartz says. “She’s in the prison, and she’s alive. I wasn’t lying to you.”
I take a shaky breath and lean against the wall. I point down the hall toward the assembly room. “That was terrifying.” I trace a pattern on the wallpaper with an idle hand, trying to calm my heart.
Glenquartz looks at me, puzzled. “You didn’t seem scared when you were talking to them.”
“That’s part of the grift,” I say. “How you make people see you isn’t necessarily how you really are.” I shake my hands, loosening the tension in my body, almost laughing. Glenquartz’s aura is in pieces like a puzzle—part curious, part confused, part amused. No anger or annoyance. Of all the people on the council, if I have to trust one person, it’s Glenquartz.
“You’re terrified, but you’re laughing?” he asks.
I shrug as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.
“You’ll make a great queen,” he says. “Now, I know you told the council you don’t know how you got the tattoo….Is that true?” He starts down the corridor, and I follow at a dragging pace.
“I understand this as little as anyone else,” I say. “Because, believe me, if I knew why I was here, I wouldn’t be here. If I’d had any say in this, I would’ve said no. But I wasn’t given a vote. I was given a magical crown tattoo that gives me weird illusion and mind-reading abilities! And in the course of discovering that, I ended up in a palace dungeon, and I lost my…” I stop. My what? My friend? My best and only friend? My responsibility. My failure.
I don’t know how to put what she is to me into words that make sense.
“Hat,” Glenquartz says. “You mean your friend?”
I sigh sharply. “ ‘Friend’ isn’t the right word. I don’t even know what to call her. What do you call the most important person in your life? The person you promised to protect but refused to take responsibility for. And what do you call it when that person is dragged away from you in handcuffs after nearly being executed in front of you? When that person is on the edge of disappearing, and you can’t do a single thing to save them?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “That sounds…difficult. Impossible, even. One of those terrible things we have to live with, where living isn’t quite the same as surviving. It’s heartbreaking, and painful, and…I guess there isn’t quite a name for it.” His aura prickles as he shakes off his own painful memories.
I scoff. “How poetic. Everything about us is Nameless, even our tragedies.”
* * *
I consider it a dazzling success that I haven’t been killed yet. As Glenquartz leads me through the palace, we’re quiet. Exhaustion sets in, my feet dragging and head clouding with fog. He opens a set of burnished red doors, revealing an extravagant room. All the drapes are orange and gold, making the room seem bright even though the only light comes from the oil lamps in the hall.
“These are the guest sleeping quarters,” Glenquartz explains, “where we house foreign dignitaries, queens, kings, and ambassadors when they visit. It should suit you.”
Six ample beds are separated by individual wardrobes and bedside tables with oil lanterns. There is a trunk at the foot of each bed, presumably for storing travel items and clothes, but they definitely look big enough to hold a body. The beds all have comforters with gold-thread embroidered designs. I choose the bed that has a design of constellations and rests beneath a skylight.
Glenquartz is still standing in the doorway as if he isn’t allowed to enter, and he points up at the skylight. “If it gets too hot, you can open it.”
I wave my hand dismissively as though I’m not concerned about the heat, when I know full well that he has just pointed me to my best avenue of escape.
Framed drawings of Seriden cover the walls. Hanging in the middle is a document. I can’t read it, but the page is filled with small blocky letters surrounded by a series of handwritten squiggles.
“What’s this?” I ask, picking my way between the beds to get a closer look.
“That is a copy of the City-State Peace Treaties,” Glenquartz says proudly. “It outlines the trade agreements and alliances between Seriden and the other cities. The border holds the signatures of the original fourteen sovereigns.”
I’m impressed. “Of course they’d hang it here in the guest quarters to remind foreign officials of their pacts. Clever. I appreciate a well-framed manipulation.” I hold my hands up in a frame shape, studying how the diagrams of the city surround and support the treaty.