At Midnight, I Become the Queen Who Executed Me

The woman who had sentenced Ilyra Fen to hang kept sugared plums beside her bed. That was the first thing Ilyra saw when the prison vanished. A silver bowl, a little spoon, purple syrup shining beneath a lamp. Her last meal had been cold barley. She had left half of it because the spoon smelled of the turnkey's hands. Now she was standing in a room larger than her mother's house, and her left wrist had stopped hurting. The palace clock finished striking midnight. Ilyra looked down. No iron cuff. No split thumbnail. A black-gold crown circled a wrist she had seen resting on the arm of a throne while her appeal was denied. She knocked the bowl off the table. It struck the carpet without breaking. Plums rolled under the bed. The ordinary, ridiculous mess steadied her enough to reach for the mirror. Queen Maelin looked back. Ilyra touched her own cheek. The queen touched hers. She opened her mouth and saw teeth that had never been broken by a soldier using the back of his hand. Her hair fell black across the white robe. It was heavy. Everything about this body seemed to have been given more than it needed. The door opened. Captain Corven Ash came in with his sword unbelted and a folded message in his hand. He stopped when he saw the overturned bowl. "You promised you'd sleep." There was something in his voice Ilyra had never heard in the prison. Irritation softened by long acquaintance. He shut the door and came toward her. She backed into the dressing table. He stopped. "Maelin?" Ilyra's borrowed heart beat so hard she felt sick. Corven had stood beneath the judge's dais two evenings before, confirming that the map bore her seal. He had asked for more time to test the ink. Then, when Maelin refused him, he had taken Ilyra back to her cell. She grabbed the silver fruit knife from the table. Corven looked at it, then at her grip. "Put that down." "Stay where you are." The voice was Maelin's. The fear wasn't. He heard the difference. She saw him hear it. The mirror showed them both. A barefoot queen with a fruit knife, a captain holding a message he no longer remembered to deliver. In court, Ilyra had rehearsed a speech about the altered river contours. She had planned every sentence. Now she had a royal mouth and could scarcely make it say anything. Corven glanced toward the window latch. It was closed from inside. He looked at the bed, at the rumpled sheet and the second pillow lying untouched beside it. Ilyra suddenly knew too much about where he might have expected to spend the night, and not enough about how to survive his disappointment. She shifted the knife to her other hand. Maelin's rings scraped the handle. Corven noticed that too. Whatever else he was, he paid attention, and she was tired of being condemned by people who didn't. "Who are you?" "Someone who won't improve her evening by answering that." He moved toward the bell pull. Ilyra raised the knife higher, hating how obviously her hand shook. "You have a scar across your left palm," she said. "Glass from Sable Ridge. You kept asking the surgeon whether your hand would still hold a sword." Corven went still. "The surgeon said it wouldn't matter if he couldn't stop the bleeding. A woman tore up her field notes to pack the wound. You complained they were dirty." "I didn't complain." "You were very polite. It was still a complaint." He stared at the queen's face. "Fen?" Ilyra lowered the knife an inch. Relief arrived with such force that it nearly put her on the floor. "I was in my cell. The clock rang. Now I'm here." Corven looked toward the window. Across the square, workmen were hanging a black cloth over the scaffold steps. Ilyra knew the steps would show in the queen's view when she ate breakfast. She wondered whether Maelin usually watched. "Where is she?" he asked. "I hope she's cold." He looked back sharply. Ilyra did not apologize. Someone knocked. A guard called through the door that General Orias needed an answer. Corven read the message in his hand again, as though it might have become less urgent while the world rearranged itself. "The army is retreating from Vael," he said. "The general wants the Sable crossing opened." "There isn't one." "The campaign map shows a ford." "The campaign map killed three regiments. If you send the survivors there, they'll follow the dead ones." He looked at the black glass covering the northern wall. Silver lines marked the western passes. The false ford gleamed like a promise. Ilyra crossed the room so quickly she stumbled over the robe. She put a finger against the glass. Beneath it, the royal mark on her wrist burned. The line at Sable brightened. For a breath she thought it would move where she wanted it. She pushed harder. Pain shot up her arm, but the line remained. She had Maelin's skin. She had acquired none of the training that made the Crown Map answer its ruler, and none of the secrets Maelin used to live beside it. "They're going to die," Ilyra said. Corven opened the door. "Hold the advance. Bring the civilian river survey." The guard hesitated. "Her Majesty ordered the crossing at evening council." Ilyra appeared behind Corven. "Her Majesty has changed her mind." The man bowed at once. It was so easy that she nearly laughed. Yesterday she had shouted the same fact until her throat bled. Today she wore a better face. "Bring every version," she added. When the door shut, Corven was looking at her with an expression she couldn't place. "You enjoyed that." "Yes." He didn't rebuke her. That made it harder to keep enjoying it. On the desk lay her death warrant, waiting for the final royal seal. Ilyra picked it up. Her name looked small beneath the weight of the charges. Treason. Deliberate falsification. Three regiments dead. The apprentice who could have explained the field book had died of fever before the trial. Aderic Sol, her teacher, had told the court that grief made her unreliable. She tore the paper in half. Corven drew a breath. "There are copies." "Let me have this one." She tore it again. And again. Small white pieces drifted onto the carpet beside the sugared plums. Then the scraps moved. They slid together across the pile, joining without seams. Ink ran between them like insects. Where her name had been, the words Queen Maelin formed, then blurred into Ilyra Fen, then neither. The crowned life shall answer at noon. Ilyra dropped the paper. Corven bent to take it, but the crown mark on her wrist flared white. Somewhere below the room, too deep for any ordinary sound to reach, a woman screamed. The voice was Ilyra's. She was already moving when Corven caught up with her at the door. "The prison," she said. "I know." "If she's in my body, she doesn't get to damage it because she dislikes the accommodation." The captain took a lantern from the guard outside. At the stair, he handed Ilyra a pair of Maelin's riding boots. They were by the door, polished and ready. The queen had expected to go somewhere before dawn. Ilyra pulled them on without sitting. They fitted her borrowed feet perfectly. At the first stair, the guard bowed so low that she could see the pale part in his hair. Ilyra went past him. The boots made no sound on the carpet. Below, where the carpet ended, she could already hear someone begging a guard to listen.