Queen Song (Red Queen Novella) Read Free Page A

attempt to look a bit more presentable, if not in fashion. Coriane told herself she didn’t mind the whispers of court, the sneers from the other young ladies who watched her like she was a bug, or worse, a Red. They were all cruel girls, silly girls, waiting with bated breath for any news of Queenstrial. But of course that wasn’t true. Sara was one of them, wasn’t she? A daughter of Lord Skonos, training to be a healer, showing great promise in her abilities. Enough to service the royal family if she kept to the path.
    I desire no such thing, Sara said once, confiding in Coriane months before, during a visit. It will be a waste if I spend my life healing paper cuts and crow’s-feet. My skills would be of better use in trenches of the Choke or the hospitals of Corvium. Soldiers die there every day, you know. Reds and Silversboth, killed by Lakelander bombs and bullets, bleeding to death because people like me stay here.
    She would never say so to anyone else, least of all her lord father. Such words were better suited to midnight, when two girls could whisper their dreams without fear of consequence.
    “I want to build things,” Coriane told her best friend on such an occasion.
    “Build what, Coriane?”
    “Airjets, airships, transports, video screens—ovens! I don’t know, Sara, I don’t know. I just want to—to make something.”
    Sara smiled then, her teeth glinting in a slim beam of moonlight. “Make something of yourself, you mean. Don’t you, Cori?”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “You didn’t have to.”
    “I can see why Julian likes you so much.”
    That quieted Sara right away, and she was asleep soon after. But Coriane kept her eyes open, watching shadows on the walls, wondering.
    Now, on the bridge, in the middle of brightly colored chaos, she did the same. Nobles, citizens, merchants seemed to float before her, their skin cold, pace slow, eyes hard and dark no matter their color. They drank in the morning with greed, a quenched man still gulping at water while others died of thirst. The others were the Reds, of course, wearing the bands that marked them. The servants among them wore uniforms, some striped with the colors of the High House they served. Their movements were determined, their eyes forward, hurrying along on their errands and orders. They have purpose at least, Coriane thought. Not like me.
    She suddenly felt the urge to grab on to the nearby lamppost, towrap her arms around it lest she be carried away like a leaf on the wind, or a stone dropping through water. Flying or drowning or both. Going where some other force willed. Beyond her own control.
    Julian’s hand closed around her wrist, forcing her to take his arm. He’ll do, she thought, and a cord of tension relaxed in her. Julian will keep me here.
    Later on, she recorded little of the official funeral in her diary, long spattered with ink splotches and cross outs. Her spelling was improving though, as was her penmanship. She wrote nothing of Uncle Jared’s body, his skin whiter than the moon, drained of blood by the embalming process. She did not record how her father’s lip quivered, betraying the pain he truly felt for his brother’s death. Her writings were not of the way the rain stopped, just long enough for the ceremony, or the crowd of lords who came to pay their respects. She did not even bother to mention the king’s presence, or that of his son, Tiberias, who brooded with dark brows and an even darker expression.
    Uncle is gone, she wrote instead of all this. And somehow, in some way, I envy him.
    As always, she tucked the diary away when she was finished, hiding it beneath the mattress of her bedchamber with the rest of her treasures. Namely, a little pallet of tools. Jealously guarded, taken from the abandoned gardener’s shed back home. Two screwdrivers, a delicate hammer, one set of needle-nose pliers, and a wrench rusted almost beyond use. Almost. There was a coil of spindly wire as well, carefully drawn