The world came back to Ambrose slowly. His senses felt incomplete. He could see movement, and orange-red patches of light; he could hear voices, but the words ran into one another. He could feel the weight of his body, heavy around his chest. He couldn’t feel the pain, which was odd, because he knew there had been pain. Just thinking about it made his heart beat rabbit-quick, and as it did Ambrose rose into consciousness to realise the truth - everything he felt was pain.
He was hanging from a pillar in the main hall of the palace. A loop of rope had been passed round his chest then hooked over an iron mounting, pulling it tight underneath his arms. His breath was shallow, a battle between his body’s demand for air and the ribs that had been broken. Too little, and the urgent need to breathe climbed like panic; too much, and the pain set him gasping, leaving him worse off than he was before. He could not feel his fingers.
The Queen was standing by the throne. She wasn’t looking at him, but she knew he was awake. The smile that played about her lips was the last thing he’d seen, the vicious play of her lips as they peeled back from her teeth, revealing the monster inside her. Standing before her were two men. One was the foreigner that Gray had dragged in, the man who poisoned his horses. The other he didn’t recognise, but he was neatly dressed in the sober, black-coat manner of a clerk. Put in the stables, he was sort of man who would walk on his hands to keep the shit off his shoes. Neither of them looked his way, or gave any indication that they even saw him. Maybe I’m dead, he thought. Maybe I died, and this is what comes after.
“You serve me now.” The Queen’s voice was flat, inflectionless. The two men shared a guilty glance but said nothing. She smiled again, and even though Ambrose couldn’t feel his hands, they trembled. “Do you understand?”
Both men spoke over one another, the agreement rushing out of them.
Swift as thought, the Queen’s hand shot out and back again. The poisoner crumpled to the floor, his palms doubled over against his side. The Queen turned to the other man. “You were saying?”
The clerk lowered his head deferentially. “We live to serve,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “You do.” The Queen turned and stepped up to the throne. “You thought you could use me, didn’t you? You thought we had no way of defending ourselves.”
Ambrose could see the man’s eyes flicker as he tried to think his way out of the corner she was putting him in. “I am not highly placed, my queen. I do not know the reasons why the order-”
“Be quiet.” There was no force in her words, but it stopped him all the same. He knows to fear her, Ambrose thought. He knows what she is.
“It was only a matter of time before one of us survived your summoning,” she said. “When you started picking victims with such-” she paused and lifted her hand, regarding it as if it was a piece of jewelry “-value, our success became inevitable.”
The poisoner had picked himself up, and was standing with one cautious arm covering his side. “The sacrifice needed status,” he said. “The master said that if we used just anyone the blood would be weak.”
“It is as we planned it.”
“But I don’t understand,” he said. “We control the ritual.”
“The summoning is inevitable, but my kindred are not powerless against it. By choosing the price we had to pay, we guided your order’s hand. If your sacrifice was worth little, we sent our weakest. Some of the spirits we sent you were little more than moments old, and as weak as the breeze.”
The black-coat spoke up. “And you are older, majesty?”
The Queen faced him, and there was an ugly joy in her expression. “I am older than the stones of this palace. Not oldest, not by far, but old enough that allowing me to enter this body was a risk for my kind. Had you gained the strength that runs in these veins, your order would have become very powerful indeed. Instead, you are now mine.”
Black-coat went down on one knee, and the other man looked at him in surprise. And here I was thinking you were clever, Ambrose thought. You’d do well to follow your friend if you don’t want another punch off her.
“What are your orders, majesty?”
The Queen reached for the seat of the throne, and came back with a knife. In her other hand, she held a clear glass bottle. Ambrose watched as she pushed the knife into her arm, the point sinking deep as it cut through the flesh. She pulled it out, and as the knife point drew clear of her skin, the wound was already knitting itself closed. She held the knife over the bottle’s open neck and let the blood drip into it. Once she was satisfied no more would fall, she put the knife down and stoppered the bottle. A cold feeling washed through him, and with it came an immense lethargy that pulled him down into his bonds. The edges of his vision darkened.
The Queen’s voice rang out, bringing him back to himself. “Stay with us, stable-master. It would be a shame if you left so soon.”
Ambrose watched as she repeated the process with a second bottle, then offered them to the two men.
“You know what these are,” she said.
“What do you want us to do?” Black-coat asked.
“I have an amusement,” she said. “You might call them enemies. One is Lord Aiden Baird, who you might not know. The other is Gray, once Commander of the army.” She looked at the poisoner. “I believe you’ve met him.”
The foreigner inclined his head slowly, keeping his eyes on the Queen. His voice was low and measured as he stifled whatever emotions surged inside him. “Yes, majesty.”
“Gray will be headed south, back to his precious army. If Baird is not with him, he will go north to treat for control of the throne. Each of you pick one, and stop them.” She fixed them both with a withering glare. “I leave it to your expertise in exploiting my kind’s power to decide how best to do that.”
Black-coat glanced at the poisoner, then knelt again. “Yes, your majesty.”
The Queen stepped close to the kneeling man, leaning forward over him. “Don’t think I’m fooled,” she said. “That bottle carries me with it. I will know if you try to lose or destroy it. I will know if you waste it. I will know if you succeed and I will know if you fail.”
Black-coat stayed still, made of stern enough stuff not to crack. His counterpart was well past that point. “And if we fail?”
She straightened up and grinned unpleasantly at him. “Then the part of me that you’ve carried with you will slit your stomach open and pull out your insides. Now go.” She waved a hand in dismissal, and black-coat stalked from the room, the poisoner stumbling in his wake. As the doors shut behind them, the Queen’s disdainful expression vanished. She was still, as though the spirit that moved her had evaporated and left behind flesh turned completely to marble. Ambrose watched her, waiting for her to move. There was nothing. He watched, and waited, and listened. She’s not even breathing, he thought, and the hope was like a spark lit inside of him. Gods, she’s not breathing!
Ambrose tried to wet his lips, but his mouth was completely dry.
“Help.” The word was weak, little more than a scrape at the back of his throat. He watched the Queen as he said it, but she did not move. He tried again. “Help!”
Again and again, he called, the word coming louder and more confident each time, his body responding to him for the first time since he had woken. His lips and tongue were moist, ready to form words for him; his chest ached, but swelled to the task. With one final, titanic effort, he found the strength to roar it out. “HELP!”
It was met with the sound of laughter. The Queen clapped her hands together, giggling like a child watching the ribbon dance weave round a village pole. Ambrose sank, defeated, into the rope that held him.
"This is fun.” The Queen came over to him, her head cocked at an angle so she could look up into his eyes. “As much as I hate your kind, you do have an enormous capacity for entertainment.”
Ambrose tried not to look at her but his eyes found their way back to her face, drawn there against his will.
“Just kill me,” he said.
“No, I don’t think I’ll be doing that yet.” She grinned up at him, with that same awful, evil, grin. “You see, the people of your Kingdom have certain differences. Nothing you’d notice yourselves, of course, but to me, it’s very important. You’ve been bred to resist me.”
“Resist?”
She kept talking as though he hadn’t spoken. “It shouldn’t matter to me, of course, but to be honest with you - it really does. That’s why I’m keeping you alive. You’re going to be the first to fall.”
Ambrose kept trying to look away, but his body had betrayed him. He stared into her eyes, and felt himself falling into darkness. There was nothing he could do to stop it.
“You-” He clamped his lips together, trying to force the words out. “You’re a mon…mon…”
She mouthed words back up at him, her lips moving soundlessly. He fought it, thrashing against the rope with what strength he had left, but it was in vain. It came out half-spoken, half-sobbed, every ounce of pain bubbling out over his lips. “Your majesty,” he said.