Zara Veylinn's Arc

Chapter 11 of 12

The kneeling did not last long. The man in the red sash stood again once the herald finished speaking, and the others rose with him. They looked at Zara the way people look at a stranger who has been handed the keys to their house. She still knelt on the step beside Zex. His hand was warm now. His breathing was steady. She had a queen's title and a living witness, and she had nowhere inside the palace she could close a door behind her. Zara stood. She kept her hand on the ring. The pale hound pressed against her skirt. She told the herald she wanted a chamber prepared for her before the hour was out, and she wanted the guard in plated shoulders posted at the door. The herald bowed. He said the queen's apartments had been sealed for sixteen years and would need to be opened. Zara said she did not want the queen's apartments. She wanted a small room with one door and one window, on an upper floor, and she wanted to choose it herself. The herald led her back through the hall. Nobles parted for her along the white and gold floor. Some bowed. Some did not. She counted the ones who did not and matched the faces to names she had memorized in the shack. Her guard walked a pace behind her. The hound walked at her hip. On the third floor she found a servant's room at the end of a short corridor. One door. One narrow window that looked down on an inner court. A bed, a table, a washstand. She stepped inside and told the herald this one would do. He began to protest. She said it again and closed the door in his face. Her guard took his post outside. Zara turned the iron key in the lock and slid the bolt. She checked the window latch. She looked under the bed and behind the wardrobe. When she was sure the room held no other way in or out, she sat on the floor with her back against the door and let her shoulders drop for the first time in three days. The hound lay down across the threshold on the inside. Zara took the ring off and set it on the boards beside her. She thought about sleep and could not yet manage it. She thought about food and found she was not hungry. She pulled her knees up and rested her forehead on them. Somewhere below, Zex was being carried to a bed of his own. Somewhere below, the nobles who had not knelt were finding each other in quiet corners. A soft knock came at the door. Her guard's voice, low. A servant had arrived with a message from the man in the red sash. He wished to speak with the queen tonight, alone, on a matter he would not entrust to any other mouth. Zara lifted her head from her knees and told the guard to say she would receive him after dark.