In the tower room I found the fire blazing and a fresh-cut pen waiting beside a pot of ink. I sat down at the desk and did not rise again until dawn.
UNA AND THE BETRAYER
We come now to the end, and I find I do not want to tell it. I would finish the story here if I could: with Sir Una kneeling before her queen, sorely wounded but still breathing, the cup held high in triumph.
Yet I cannot. For evil days will come again to Dominion, and it will be the memory of Una Everlasting that lights our way. When our sons and daughters ask how she died, we will answer: bravely, for crown and country.
And when they ask what killed her, we will answer: treachery. And then we will say the name Ancel of Ulwin, Ancel the Betrayer, because Dominion does not forget.
Sir Ancel had loved his queen, once. But Yvanne had never loved him in return, or had loved him only with the generous, mothering love a queen has for her people. For Una, this love was enough: She was content to serve her queen, to stand by her side and sometimes brush her lips across the back of her fair hand. But Ancel—proud Ancel, beautiful Ancel—wanted more. His love withered and blackened on the vine, until all that remained were the bitter seeds.
When the queen fell ill, he reveled secretly in her suffering. Some said it was he who poisoned her in the first place, driven mad with longing. It was certainly he who welcomed the Hinterlanders and laid a trap with them for Sir Una.
But his trap failed. Ancel watched in an agony of jealousy as Sir Una threw open the castle doors, bloodied but not beaten, and knelt at the queen’s feet. He watched Yvanne gaze down at her champion, the knight she loved first and best, and suddenly he could bear it no longer.
He drew his sword. No one saw, not even Sir Una. The most dangerous enemy is the one we trust enough to turn our backs on.
While she looked loyally up at the queen, Sir Ancel drove his blade through her body. Who can say what he might have done next? He might have struck down the queen herself. He might have burned Cavallon to the ground and smothered the dream of Dominion in its cradle.
But Sir Una had sworn to defend her country by her life and death, and she was not dead yet.
She stood, and drew steel, and the Knight of Hearts fought the Drawn Blade of Dominion once more. The battle was just as beautiful, just as long and glorious, as it had been all those years before, when they and their country were still young and unbloodied. But this time, when Ancel’s sword flew from his hand, the queen did not cry mercy. Dominion has no mercy for traitors.
After, they threw his corpse in the midden, and the Knight of Hearts became the Knight of Worms, because in the end it was only the worms that loved him.
But the battle had drawn the very last of Sir Una’s strength. She fell at Yvanne’s feet.
The queen knelt on the floor, humble as a peasant, and took Una’s head into her lap. Gently she touched her face and wept with love for the first and best of her knights.
But Sir Una did not weep. She smiled, perfectly at peace.
And as the last of her heart’s blood stained the stones of Cavallon, two words left her lips:Erxa Dominus.
—Excerpted fromThe Death of Una Everlasting,translated by Owen Mallory
At sunrise a girl came to scrape the ashes from the hearth. I had the impression there had been others in the night, fetching candles and feeding the fire, scurrying like stagehands through the shadows, but I couldn’t be certain. Only one thing had mattered to me, and now it was done, and all I wanted was to fall asleep or disappear, to excuse myself from reality like a man escaping a long and awful dinner party.
Instead, I said, “Bring the queen,” in a voice like the wind over dead grass. The girl startled so badly she spilled ashes down her front. She looked from my face to the book in my hand; she hurried away.
I waited. My eyes hurt. My hands hurt. My back had given up hurting and stiffened into a shape like an italicizedC.My stomach was full of a vague, acidic dread.
It was the last line that bothered me most. I don’t know why.The Death of Una Everlastingwas full of lies and omissions; what was one more?
Perhaps it was just pride. Perhaps I wanted the world to know that in your final moments you had not thought of crown and country, butof the wild green woods you loved best—and of me.Wait for me, beneath the yew tree.
“Quick work, Corporal.” Vivian’s voice made me flinch. I handed her the book with an aching, trembling hand.
I expected her to whisk it away, but she didn’t. She pulled a chair up to the hearth and settled with the book in her lap. For a long time there was silence except for the hiss of coals and the rasp of pages turning.
I stared vacantly out the window, not thinking anything at all. My missing fingernails throbbed, fiercely.
When she finished, Vivian closed the book and said, softly, “It’s well done, Owen.” She gazed into the fire, stroking the spine with one thumb. The expression on her face made me want to turn away, politely, as I would turn away from a woman laying flowers on a grave. “Truly. Well done.”
I didn’t say anything.
Eventually I heard her draw a brisk, bracing sort of breath, stand, and stride toward me. She laid the book on the desk between us, and I was struck with a sudden, visceral memory of the last time we’d faced each other across those pages. My left hand spasmed.
“I think it’s just what we needed. A little overwrought in places, but people will lap it up. And Ancel, my God! I couldn’t have asked for a more thorough assassination if I’d given you a grenade. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before now—every story needs a villain.” Her voice was light now, her face polished so smooth that all the grief had slid off the surface. She stuck her hand across the desk. “Thank you, Corporal.”
