replied. “There were records kept.”
“What records? I never heard of any, and Lady Glynn said—”
“Records don’t have to be written down. And as clever a woman as Carlin Glynn was, she didn’t know everything.”
Elyssa frowned. Of course Lady Glynn hadn’t known everything, she knew that . . . yet her heart disputed it.
“Was Lady Glynn one of you?” she demanded. “Blue Horizon?”
“Yes.”
Elyssa nodded. Somewhere deep inside herself, she had known. Lady Glynn’s long diatribes on the vast gap between rich and poor; her disgust with the Queen’s tolerance of the traffic in the Creche; her deep and enduring hatred of Welwyn Culp . . . but most of all, the hope in Lady Glynn’s voice, the way she had been able to make the solutions to all of the kingdom’s problems seem very near, perhaps even within reach, if they could only put aside all their meaningless conflicts, their greed, their hatred—
We take care of each other, Elyssa thought now. That was all Lady Glynn had really been saying to her, every day, and Elyssa had been comforted by the vision Lady Glynn presented, bewitched by the better world. How could she stand in judgment on the Blue Horizon, when Lady Glynn had believed as hard as they did, when they wanted the same things for the Tearling that Elyssa wanted herself?
“Why did she come here?” she asked Gareth. “Why come and work for the Crown, for my mother?”
“Because we needed you to be different. Lady Glynn had been friends with Arla since childhood; it was a unique opportunity to plant one of our own at court.”
“Have you planted others?”
Gareth smiled but said nothing.
“Is Lady Glynn dead?”
“We don’t know, and believe me, we have looked. If she’s alive, she’s not to be found.”
Elyssa drew a deep breath. Once upon a time, Lady Glynn’s eye of disapproval had been so fierce that Elyssa had been reluctant to hand in a substandard historical analysis. Now she had spent the week imagining her tutor’s reaction, wondering what Lady Glynn would think when she heard that Elyssa Anne Raleigh, noted atheist and sympathizer with the poor, had embraced the Church and denounced the Blue Horizon. Elyssa shrank from the very idea, and the child in her felt a sneaking relief at Gareth’s words, that Lady Glynn was indeed gone, that she would never have to stand before her old tutor and account for her deeds.
Gareth took a sip of the water by his bedside. Elyssa winced, but then reminded herself that Coryn himself had already tasted the water; he checked it every time the glass was refilled. Elyssa did not have a single guard in this room, not even Barty, who had made a veiled threat to tell her mother when she ordered him to stay outside. But Barty wouldn’t tell her mother. None of them would. Her Guard knew about the speech she was expected to give tonight in the Arvath, and they were furious at her mother’s tactics. Barty in particular had been almost livid on Elyssa’s behalf. Close guards could be a misery . . . but they could also be kind. Tears gathered in Elyssa’s eyes, and she could not will them away. She looked down at the coverlet, rubbing at her eyes as though to rid herself of a speck of dust.
“What is it?” Gareth asked.
“Nothing.”
“Tears of a princess? It’s not nothing.”
“I must do something terrible tonight. Something I don’t wish to do.” She swallowed, then looked squarely at him, unsure why she told him these things, except that she trusted him instinctively to understand. “My mother demands that I denounce the Blue Horizon.”
“Is that all?”
“All?” She stared at him, astonished. “That’s everything!”
Gareth shrugged. “We’ve been denounced by every ruler since Matthew Raleigh. We will surely survive.”
“That’s not the point!” Elyssa protested. “How will I look myself in the mirror tomorrow?”
“I assume the leverage over you is great.”
Elyssa nodded, wiping more tears away. “My mother, she—”
“No need to tell me. I know Queen Arla well.”
“You do?”
“Well, not personally, but as they say in the Almont, you needn’t know a pig to know it will grunt. Your mother is a ruthless creature.”
“She says she’ll take it from me,” Elyssa whispered. “Take my heirship and put Thomas on the throne. Thomas! He—”
“Oh, you don’t need to tell me about your brother either. Your mother must be desperate indeed.”
Elyssa smiled through her tears. Gareth grinned back, then he began to cough. Elyssa handed him the glass of water, and he took another