“No!” cried Anne. But the old knight said only, “It is just.”
Outside, the birds were calling. Anne fell suddenly to her knees. She wondered if she was dying. But it was only weariness. The blood and the sorcery had not killed her, for she had all the people of that city with her, making her will a conduit for theirs, holding her up. The knight put out his arm and she struggled to her feet.
She met the unicorn’s eye.
And Anne, still dazed, put her hand on the horn, and whispered, “Thank you.”
The unicorn laid her ears back and ran. Like a deer or a mote of light she ran away into the darkness of the Lost Lands. Her hooves tapped on stone and then unseen moss. And then nothing at all.
Anne was alone with the churning crowd. “The queen is dead,” she said. “And the sun is rising. The long feast is over. Go to bed.”
They did not move. The knight said, “What is it you desire, lady?”
Anne said, “I desire that the people of Keris may live as men and not empty ghosts of the Lost Lands, which was never meant for the habitation of unwilling mortals.”
“And what else?”
“To be your queen,” said Anne quietly. “The unicorn came to mein the hunt, according to your custom.” She could almost feel her answer being passed along, out past the doors, past the wall, and down the packed and squinting streets, full of sunlight and exhausted people.
The silence held and held.
“Majesty,” said the old knight. And he knelt at her feet.
Chapter
35
Anne knew she must beginto shove the machinery of the castle and city and realm back into motion. But, she conceded, perhaps better to do it while sitting down. So clean linen was found for her, and cold water and wine. She knew naught of the city’s governance, neither its councils nor its guilds, and she suspected that many of these shocked and clamorous people might try to claim authority they had not.
Some might murmur that she was a stranger and a foreigner. She must grapple with them all, but her senses were swimming, her strength nearly at an end.
To the old knight, whose name was Matelin, she said, “Can you keep the ambitious from my door for half a day?”
His face softened. “I can,” he said. “But I think they will abide. It was—a very terrible curse, and the city is only realizing how terrible now that it is over.” He paused. “There are some who might not survive much longer, for they abetted the queen in all her whims.”
Anne sat still. “Can you keep people from making their own justice? It is not meet.”
“I can, for a time, but they will want to be heard.”
“I will hear,” said Anne. “After I rest.”
A chamber was found for her, clean and austere. She slept as she had not slept since she was a child, with the sunlight and the wind pouringoff a sky-colored sea.
When she woke, she felt creased and rumpled, but ferociously alive. She slipped out of the bedchamber to the anteroom and saw the old queen of the korriganed there, humming to herself and stitching on a cloth.
Anne and the lady looked at each other. The lady’s eyes were sad. A moment of kinship flowed between them. Like fencing-partners of long standing. Anne said, “Your granddaughter is dead. I am sorry.”
A dismissive gesture. “In her heart, she died long ago.”
“She sought love and there was no one to love her.” Anne felt a stirring of anger. Who would she have been without her father? Without Isabeau?
“There was that. Also, she is half-korrigan, and we are intemperate in our rages. Cruelty might grow from hurt, but it is still cruelty. She is in the Lost Lands now, set free to wander. Perhaps she will find her peace at last.”
Anne said, “Lady, where is my family?”
“At Guérande, in sight of the sea, as I promised.”
“And how many days have passed in the mortal realms?”
