planting. But this was the third straight dry year. Few of the nobles had realized profit from last year’s harvest, and most had taken an outright loss. They would be hoarding their stores for themselves. Her mother could order the nobles to open their warehouses and cisterns, but if shortages of food and water got bad enough, they might refuse. Her mother only ever saw the nobility smiling and openhanded, but Elyssa knew what they really were.
“No, then,” Gareth replied softly, answering his own question. “I thought not.”
Someone knocked on the door, making Elyssa jump.
“Come!” Barty called.
Elston leaned his head in. “A message from the Queen. She demands that the Princess attend her.”
“Where?”
“Private court.”
Elyssa and Barty turned to each other, and she saw an expression of consternation in his eyes to match her own. The time of reckoning was here.
“I must go,” she told Gareth, rising from the bed. “I’ll come back tomorrow, if you permit it.”
“I permit it. I enjoy trying to convert you.”
“You will not convert me,” she replied tartly, turning to face him. “Your movement’s ideology is a bit too flexible for my taste.”
“Is it?” Gareth smiled, tipping his head. “We’ll see.”
Elyssa wanted to smile back, but instead she turned and went out the door, into the waiting circle of her Guard. Niya, too, had appeared from nowhere, walking beside Elyssa as she swept up the hall.
“That criminal is too impertinent with you, Highness,” Barty remarked. “You should not encourage him.”
“I didn’t encourage him!”
Barty snorted.
“We were only talking!”
“‘Talking,’” Barty repeated. “Yes, I know that sort of talk.”
Elyssa frowned, wanting to say something cutting, but she could think of no remark that served her purpose. Several of her guards—Carroll, Dyer, Mhurn—were grinning broadly, and Elyssa had a moment to reflect that Queen’s Guards were truly a mixed blessing. They defended her life, certainly, but they also crawled around inside it. Niya, Elyssa was pleased to see, was looking straight ahead, her expression disinterested.
“Were you never young, Barty?” she demanded. “Were you never tempted by someone you couldn’t have?”
This was a shot in the dim, but not entirely in the dark. For years, Elyssa had suspected that Barty was in love, or at least in admiration, with Lady Glynn. The two of them fought like cats and dogs, and Lady Glynn invariably saved the roughest side of her tongue for Barty, particularly when she caught him drinking in the Queen’s Wing. But when the old tutor disappeared, Barty too had vanished for more than a week, reappearing drunk as a plowman’s bitch. Givens had nearly kicked him off the Guard, but even after he was allowed to remain, Barty had been in a bad mood for months.
“We’re not speaking of me,” Barty replied stiffly. “I am not the heir to a crown.”
“My mother has spent the past twenty years bedding half the kingdom,” Elyssa shot back. “I can’t see that it’s done her any harm.”
“Bedding is one thing, Highness. The fate of a throne is another. Your mother had already produced a legitimate heir and spare before she went her merry way.”
“And she’s had no children since . . . or at least, none legitimate,” Elyssa amended, for there had always been talk about her mother. Elyssa’s father had died when she was still in nappies, and her mother was hardly one to practice celibacy; rumor said that Queen Arla had borne at least one child on the wrong side of the sheets. “My mother is very careful; don’t you think I might be at least as clever as she is when I drop my knickers?”
That, at least, silenced Barty; he turned red and remained mercifully mute until they reached the set of broad green doors that opened onto her mother’s private throne room. At the sight of them, Elyssa began to tremble.
I am the Crown Princess of the Tearling, she told herself firmly. I am not afraid.
But she was afraid, and all the brave pronouncements in the world would not convince her muscles otherwise. The ornate scrollwork on the green doors before her seemed to ripple and writhe, like some sinister animal. Elyssa had challenged her mother, challenged her in open court, and Queen Arla believed in punishment.
A gentle hand clasped her shoulder. Elyssa looked up and found Barty looking down at her, his gaze sympathetic.
“It will be all right, child,” he murmured. “Don’t let her frighten you.”
The other guards nodded. Carroll offered Elyssa his flask of water, and she took a grateful drink, then wiped her mouth.