Winter Queen by Amber Argyle
Nelay stared at the woman who should be her rival. What did the king’s mistress see when she looked at Nelay? Did she consider her calm and cold, uncaring? The enemy? Then Nelay caught a gleam of fear in Ziyid’s eyes and understood. Once the king was gone, his mistress would be completely at Nelay’s mercy. “Let her pass,” she said to the guards.
Ziyid took it as permission to dart to the king’s side. She grasped his hand. “Zatal? Zatal! No!”
Nelay couldn’t bear it. She didn’t belong here. She strode from the room but paused outside. The guards had blocked the children from entering, a nurse holding the younger of the two in her arms. Nelay studied the girl, who returned her gaze warily. Then Nelay told the guards, “When the king and their mother are ready, let the children go in.” Not wanting to frighten them, she didn’t mention that they would be saying goodbye to their father.
She strode toward her rooms to clean up. At a choking sound, she looked back to see tears streaming down Jezzel’s face, her shoulders ridged with emotions she was trying to hold in. Nelay knew her friend would never want the men under her command to see her lose control, so she picked up her pace and hurried them to her rooms, then hauled Jezzel in and shut the door on the other guards. Jezzel stumbled a few more steps before collapsing at the table and burying her head in her hands. Silent sobs shook her whole frame.
Maran stood uncertainly after settling her baby in a little box lined with blankets. “What happened?”
Nelay crouched by her friend. “Jezzel? Is it the king?”
She shook her head. “Meho, the others . . .”
Maran looked between them. “I don’t understand.”
Nelay collapsed beside Jezzel. “We lost many of our sisters today.” What else could she call the women she’d spent every day with since she was nine years old? She rested her hand on Jezzel’s back, surprised she wasn’t crying herself. But Nelay’s grief was distant, unreachable. “It’s my fault,” she said quietly. “I sent them there.”
Jezzel’s sobs hitched and she shook her head. “Without them, the gate would have fallen. You had to.”
“But they’re still dead.”
Maran fetched a basin of water and some clothes, then knelt before Nelay and started to unlace her boots. Nelay looked down at her, not really seeing her, and said, “The king is dying.”
Maran stilled for a moment before she slipped off the boots and washed the blood from Nelay’s feet—Nelay had forgotten about the blood soaking through the soles—and replaced her soiled boots with clean ones. Then Maran went about doing the same for Jezzel.
Nelay kept seeing Meho die over and over, hearing Ziyid calling her the king’s name, felt the king’s daughter’s accusing stare. Nelay stood, not sure where she was going. Jezzel started to follow her, but Nelay held out her hand. “No. You’re not ready yet.”
“I’m supposed to—”
“Maran, don’t let her go until she’s ready.”
The girl stood, her expression determined. Her baby had started crying, so she picked him up and settled him in Jezzel’s arms, saying, “Here, you need something to love.”
When Nelay stepped out of her rooms, her guards silently took up positions on either side of her. There was only one place to go. As she passed through the observation tower, the men went silent. She looked out over the Clansmen armies.
Nashur came to stand beside her and said, “He wants me to support you.”
She remembered what Zatal had told her. If Nashur followed her, the other commanders would fall in line. “And do you?” she asked him.
The commander was silent a moment. “For now.” Facing the men gathered around them, he declared, “The king is dying. We now answer to his queen. Now back to work. We have a city to save.”
A hard silence followed his pronouncement, and Nelay noticed some of the commanders glaring at the Clansmen armies. Others looked at the ground. Some watched her.
She turned away so they wouldn’t read the fatigue and weariness in her face. Her gaze strayed toward the desert and she suddenly realized she would be a widow soon, that her wedding prayers had been answered. If she survived this, she and Rycus could be together.
But only if the city stayed strong.
Steeling her resolve, she turned to face Nashur. She needed more information in order to hold all the players in her head. “The king said the city will fall. Do you agree?”
Nashur turned back to look at the gates, but not before Nelay saw moisture gleaming in his eyes. He cleared his throat. “Our armies are the finest in all the world.”
“Yes, but we are outnumbered more than five to one.”
“We have our walls.”
“The gates were breached in one attack.” Nelay didn’t like that she was parroting Zatal’s words, but she found she agreed with them. “If you can’t change the players, change the field,” she murmured to herself. “It’s the only way to shift the game in our favor.”
Nashur blinked at her. “My queen?”
She looked into his face and saw the battle within him. He was experienced and strong—she was an upstart queen. Would he try to unseat her? Lock her up and run this battle as he saw fit? He had men enough to do it.
Her mind whirred, as it always did, and she saw what Nashur needed to hear. “High Commander Nashur, I need your help. You have experience where I have none. But I have a knack for strategy.”
His expression softened a little. “And what would you suggest?”
She motioned toward the armies. “That we fight dirty.” She studied the city, her gaze sweeping over each section. “The brickers—have them block off the gates with mud bricks. Let’s see if our enemy can freeze that.”
“Unless they change their battle plan, they won’t try it for a few more days. Plenty of time for the mortar to set,” the high commander declared.
Nelay nodded. “We’ll force them over the walls or not at all.”
“That will destroy any chance of escape.”
She faced Nashur again. “Escape? The entire city? With a surrounding army? And where would we all go? No. Block them all off.”
“We should leave one unblocked.”
“Why?”
He scratched his ear. “The entire city doesn’t need to escape. Just you and what remains of the army.”
She gaped at him aghast. “And abandon the people?”
“I know you were born alongside the Adrack Desert, so perhaps you do not understand. But I am from Mubia and a shipwright’s son. When a ship is sinking and you only have one boat, do you let it go down with the rest, or do you save those you can?”
“The gates are a liability—you don’t fix that, you lose everything.” Nelay tamped her anger down. “Block the gates.”
“I will leave one,” Nashur said stubbornly.
She gritted her teeth, knowing he wasn’t going to budge. “Fine. One stays open.”
He took a deep breath and gave the order. Nelay gaze’s landed on the temple, or more specifically the black smoke rising from it in great, bilious clouds. They were burning the bodies of the dead with a blend of luminash meant to consume any fuel until none at all remained—not even the bones of the dead. Was Meho’s body among them?
Nelay forced the thought away, burying it in the sand like Rycus had advised her. “It won’t be enough,” she mumbled as she peered through a telescope. It was the height of the ovat, and the Clansmen were not to be seen. They must have huddled under their tents for whatever scrap of shade they could find. They did not have cool stone buildings to retreat into.
As she went to withdraw her telescope, she caught sight of wavering lines. She looked closer and realized it was heat rising from the glassmaker’s quarter. “Why do the glassmakers still work?”
Nashur looked back at her from a map spread in the center of the table. “I don’t know.”
“The man who makes the glass idols is a cripple,” Jezzel spoke up from behind her. The girl’s eyes were red and swollen.
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Her mind latched onto a part of the field they could use to their advantage. “What’s the one thing we have plenty of in the desert?”
Nashur looked blankly at her. “Heat?”
“Sand,” Jezzel said.
Nelay felt the winds dying, the last of the ovat choking out. “And wind.”
Nelay rode the stallion through the city’s streets, with Hazar and Ahzem following her. Nashur was at her side, Jezzel led them, and a handful of messengers Nashur never went anywhere without trailed behind.
Nelay had her swords strapped to her cross baldric, her knives in their sheaths, and her sling at her hip. She also wore armor she’d “commissioned” from the Priestess Army, and she had to admit she felt more herself than she had since arriving in Thanjavar.
When they reached the glass shop, Jezzel held the stallion by the bridle while Nelay dismounted. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
“How am I supposed to protect you from out here?” Jezzel called after her.
Nelay motioned for Nashur to join her. “Kidin isn’t fond of priestesses at present.” Or so she had been told.
“You’re going?” Jezzel protested, but Nelay ignored her.
With Nashur beside her and Hazar and Ahzem following, Nelay strode toward the open doors of the glassmaker’s shop. The moment she stepped inside, sweltering heat blasted her, and she found it hard to breathe the heavy, smoky air. The shop was run by crippled men, all hired by Kidin, himself a cripple. And Nelay realized why the shop still operated—the army wouldn’t have wanted these men. No one but Kidin did.
Wearing only their dhotis and thick leather aprons, the workers stopped to stare as she passed. Rivulets of sweat ran down their bodies, their hair plastered to their heads.
Nelay glanced at some of the partially finished idols, which wore a priestess’s ceremonial bodice and skirt. The attire struck her as odd, but she didn’t have time to ask about it. “Where’s the glass master?” she questioned the first person she came to, a boy with a muscular body except one arm, which was shrunken and deformed.
He took a dipper out of a bucket of water and tipped his head farther into the shop. “Working on the main sculpture.”
Careful of the hot glass everywhere, Nelay eased past him. She’d only been inside a few minutes and already she was soaked through with sweat. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, her skin feeling feverish with heat. “How do they stand working here all day?” she said to Nashur.
He shrugged. “I guess you’d have to get used to it.”
After questioning two more people, Nelay finally found a man who was much younger than she remembered, with an eye-patch over one eye, a peg leg, and a hard body covered in melted-looking burn scars. “Are you the glass master?”
Kidin didn’t even glance at her as he motioned to three other cripples to help him heave a huge square into the billowing oven. They limped and shuffled, their faces red and straining. He stepped back, picked up a large stick, and used it to push the blocks in deeper. “I am.”
She squared herself. “I am Queen Nelay. And this is High Commander Nashur.” She didn’t introduce her guards.
Kidin turned a glare on her that would have melted marble, but that look quickly shifted to one of astonishment before he turned to assist his men.
“I need your help,” Nelay announced.
He ignored her as he strained to push in another block. It slid partway in, and the men picked up long sticks and pushed it in the rest of the way.
“Fascinating as this is, I need your help now,” she said.
“Unfortunately for you,” Kidin replied without looking at her, “it takes hours and unholy amounts of combustibles to heat our ovens to the right temperature. And these molds are all ready to go in now. You can wait.”
Nashur growled low in his throat. “The safety of Thanjavar is more important than the idols.”
Kidin ignored that. Nelay waited, her patience growing thinner and thinner by the moment. Finally, Kidin used the stick to shut the door, then locked it in place with a lever. He pushed past Nelay’s guards and went directly to a bucket of water, where he dunked himself in to his shoulders. He came up blowing and dipped a cup into the bucket he’d just vacated and drank.
Without even looking at Nelay, he strode past her, weaving through men painting wax onto what looked like a black sculpture. “What are you doing?” she called as she hurried to catch up to him.
“Glass casting. It involves sand and heat, plaster and molds, and a lot of general good sense. Something you priestesses lack by the bucketful.”
Nelay tried to take a deep breath to calm herself, but only ended up coughing as the heat scorched her lungs.
“Don’t you care that our city is about to fall?” Nashur asked incredulously.
Kidin spun, water and sweat spraying from his hair and splattering across Nelay’s face. “My father and I spent years making the statues in the temple. Years! They were his crowning achievement. And your high priestess has a fit and breaks every last one.” Tears shone in the man’s one good eye. “And then said high priestess demands more sculptures. Now.”
He wiped his nose on his arm. It was hard to tell with all the water and sweat running down his cheeks, but Nelay was fairly certain he was crying. “So no, I don’t care if this blasted city falls. Good riddance!”
He turned and stomped away, or at least as best he could stomp with his peg leg. Wiping her face with her sleeve, Nelay started after him. She passed a wall that protruded halfway into the shop and froze as a life-sized cast of a woman came into view. She wore ceremonial robes. The sides of her scalp were shaved, her hair braided. And her face—it was Nelay’s. That explained Kidin’s astonished expression. “She’s a priestess!” Nelay gasped. “You’re . . . she’s me!”
“The high priestess was very specific,” he replied dryly. “I suppose you should be flattered to be the model.”
Nelay was definitely not flattered. Rather, she was angry that her willingness to become the Goddess of Summer was a foregone conclusion.
Kidin plopped down before a door that opened to the outside, letting in a cool breeze. He poured himself something to drink and slumped in the chair. “What do you want? Why are you here?”
She tore her gaze away from the statue. “Sand. Very hot sand.” By the time she finished telling him the beginnings of her plan, work all around them had ceased.
Kidin watched her, the corners of his mouth seeming weighted down. “By the goddess, you’re heartless.”
His words wounded her, but she refused to let that show. “If you want to win a street fight, you have to fight dirty.”
He slipped his hand under his eye patch and rubbed at whatever was beneath. “I thought the Immortals had a code of honor.”
“Not anymore,” Nelay said, her voice hard. Nashur shifted uncomfortably beside her.
Kidin grunted. “All right, but I’m going to need hundreds of men and every cart you can round up.”
She turned questioningly to Nashur. He tugged at his beard. “I can’t pull soldiers from the wall.”
“We can ask for volunteers,” Nelay suggested.
“We have already drafted every able-bodied man within the city.”
She began pacing. “What about the women?”
“You’re a priestess, so you don’t understand,” Nashur said carefully. “The women who aren’t already fighting have little ones to take care of, or old ones. They’re all that’s left to keep the city running.”
Kidin finished his drink and poured himself another. “What he is trying to say is most of them cannot be spared.”
Nelay scowled at him. “Where do you suggest I find hundreds of men sitting around with nothing . . .” She froze and slowly faced Nashur, w
“My queen—” he began, but she was already rushing away. She ran through the shop and then outside.
“How’d it go?” Jezzel asked sarcastically, but one look at Nelay’s expression and she turned off her attitude and jumped into the saddle.
Nelay mounted her horse, Nashur only a few paces behind her. “Queen Nelay?”
“I have another player to add to the field.”
“What does that mean?” When she didn’t answer, he turned his questioning gaze to Jezzel.
Not waiting for either of them, she took off toward the leatherworking section of town, where she’d met Rycus the first time. Only the poorest and meanest citizens lived on the southeast side, due to the reek of urine and feces used to treat the raw leather. She had to slow down as the streets grew cluttered and decrepit.
“Queen Nelay, this is a very unsafe area,” Nashur said.
Jezzel grumbled, “Unsafe to our sense of smell.”
“I know.” The smell of the tanneries made Nelay’s eyes water. She held her sleeved arm over her face.
Nashur took shallow breaths, his face contorted with disgust. “I must insist—” He broke off suddenly as they turned a corner and rusted gates came into view. Confusion vanished from his face, replaced by apprehension. “This is a bad idea.”
Nelay looked up at a gray-clad jailer watching them from atop the battered walls. He called out to someone on the other side. “The only ideas we have left are bad ones,” she countered as the gates opened to admit them.
More jailers met her, their heads bowed in respect. “I will speak with the man in charge,” she said.
“I have already summoned him, my queen.”
For once, Nelay was glad for the palace guards, whose presence announced her identity without the need for time-consuming introductions. She dismounted. “Take me to him.”