do not think to find a warm welcome there.”
“The city folk are starving. Surely they will welcome us.”
“Likely they will. Can your people live on welcome?”
Aislinn scowled. No matter what argument she made, the devil always had an answer. She thought again of the castle around her, the people who had followed her from the deep Almont. Together, they had walked nearly a hundred miles and taken three castles. They had lost only sixty-seven people, and gained thousands more. How could they possibly stop?
“Sir.”
The Fetch looked up, Aislinn over her shoulder. It was one of his companions, the wide one called Morgan.
“What is it?”
“Word from New London. A massacre beneath one of the Crown storehouses. More than forty people are dead, and some two hundred have lost—”
Morgan stopped and swallowed.
“What?”
“Hands, sir. The Princess Regent’s orders, for thievery. She cut off their hands.”
The Fetch turned back to Aislinn.
“You are determined in this?” he asked her, his voice weary. “You are utterly certain?”
Aislinn shot a glance at Liam, who sat silent to her left. He rarely offered his opinion, and never in the company of others, but if there was ever a time for him to gainsay her, it was now. But Liam said nothing, and Aislinn turned back to the Fetch.
“We will have the food, the land. We have earned it.”
“Then we must help you, for we are the Blue Horizon.” The Fetch smiled, but his eyes were sorrowful. “We take care of each other. We will gather our people and meet you before the New London Bridge.”
Aislinn stood as well, and shook his hand. She did not like him, nor the fool’s talk of his movement. But she had just added the entire Blue Horizon to the force she would bring before the Keep. They now had the numbers, if not the steel, to challenge the Tear army itself, and what was more, they had right on their side.
We can’t lose, she thought.
Chapter 29
PROPHECY
Where did the Creche children come from? Some were unwanted, some runaways, some bastards sold outright. A few Creche nests even maintained breeding programs—for newborns themselves fetched a good price from childless nobility desperate for heirs—and the remaindered children were often sold back into the maelstrom. One way or another, the tunnels got the fodder they needed, and so the Creche continued from generation to generation, the Tear’s great unexpiated sin.
—Valor and Vice: The Troubled Reign of Amanda Raleigh, Emma Meadows
Thorne strode swiftly down the corridor, his feet rapping on the stone. His face was as immobile as ever, hiding his fury as a high hedge might conceal a house, but beneath his stoic’s expression, a tempest raged. It was not enough that the rebels had defeated and humiliated two battalions of the Tear army. It was not even enough that they had now taken three castles and burned two more. The note in Thorne’s hand had been delivered by a disheveled army major, beaten and starved, who claimed that the rebels had released him with orders to deliver it. Thorne had ordered the man thrown into the dungeons, but that had not assuaged his anger. The note was written in straggling, imperfect letters; only two sentences, but its meaning was plain.
We are coming to New London. We want the food.
The note was signed with an indecipherable scrawl, but the first letter was a large and decisive A. Thorne knew that signature by now—this was not the first such note he’d received—but this time, there had been a gift as well: Lord Marshall’s severed head, stuffed without ceremony into a picnic hamper. Deep in his mind, Thorne showered Aislinn Martin with every curse he knew.
He rapped on the Queen’s door, and Galen answered, giving him a long, cool look.
“The Queen is sleeping, Thorne.”
“I only want to speak to Brenna,” Thorne pleaded, swallowing his rage and making his voice as meek as possible. “I will be as quiet as a mouse.”
Galen let him in, wrinkling his nose as Thorne went past. They hated him, the Guard, and they thought that such small gestures allowed them to keep their dignity. They thought that Thorne would care about being outcast . . . as though he had ever been anything else.
Still, he counted himself thankful that it was not Lazarus on the Queen’s door today. The two of them seemed to have made a tacit arrangement not to speak of each other’s origins, and that was just fine with Thorne, but it was not enough to allay his anxiety.