Long May She Reign(46)

I wanted to reach out for him, as though doing so could fix even a tiny part of this. But the priest from my coronation stood between us, talking on and on, flanked by huge glowing metal torches.

“We can take comfort in this tragedy,” he said, “that our beloved king and queen, all those we loved here, have now begun their journey to join the Forgotten. Their travails in this realm have helped to move them closer to their true place in this world, and they await us in the bliss to come.”

Dawn was coming, reds and golds spreading across the sky. The priest bowed his head at me, and I stepped forward, a huge wooden torch clutched in my hand. My dress floated around me.

I held the torch above the fire. The flames leaped across, and I flinched at the sudden heat.

All along the riverbank, other people, relatives of victims or important well-wishers, raised their own lit torches. Naomi was somewhere in the mass, I thought, as I glanced over all the flames. I hoped she was all right.

I stepped toward the bodies of the king and queen. They had been doused in pitch, and the smell partly disguised the slight stench of decay that even the best preservation attempts could not stop after a week of death. They both looked peaceful, eyes closed, faces relaxed. Someone must have arranged them, I thought dully, to cover up the horrors of their deaths. The queen looked younger without her hair piled a foot in the air, kinder. The king looked as stately as ever.

I knew they were dead—of course I knew—but my stomach jumped when I thought of setting them alight. They looked so real, like maybe we could wake them, if we just shouted loud enough. If I burned them, they’d never get that chance.

“Your Majesty?” the priest murmured. Everyone was waiting for me. I stretched out my arm, the torch shaking slightly, and touched the flame to the king’s feet. The fire caught with a rush, sweeping over the two bodies.

I stepped back, and Fitzroy moved forward, his father’s sword in his hand. He cut the boat free with one quick stroke. The current swept it up at once, carrying it downstream as the flames grew and grew, black smoke billowing. Once the boat reached the middle of the river, people all along the banks lit the other boats, too, cutting them free so they followed the king.

“May they find peace,” the priest intoned. “And may we meet again.”

“May we meet again,” the crowd repeated, but the solemnity of the words was belied by their enthusiasm. As the king’s ship passed, they waved their flags and tossed their lucky coins into its wake. Some cheered when the coins landed on the ship itself, as though the feat had won them extra luck for themselves for years to come. As though it was lucky to throw in your lot with someone who had died at his own birthday celebration.

Already, jewels were falling from the ship, sparkling in the water as they fell to the riverbed. How long would it be before someone dove in after them?

The first of the other boats pulled level with me. I stared at those fires, too, at the faces being swallowed by the flames.

Fitzroy still stood beside me, inches away now, staring at the water, seeming to see nothing at all. I wanted to comfort him. To do something. But I barely knew him, and even taking his hand felt like an intrusion. So I stared at the water, and so did he, as the boats passed.

Coins splashed into the water. The wood crackled and buckled. And the crowd cheered, and wept, and waved the old court away.

My carriage rattled through the streets after the funeral. The horses plodded so slowly that I could have walked faster myself. I sat alone in an open-topped carriage as crowds of people pressed around me. I had assumed—naively, it seemed—that most people would be by the boats, giving me a quiet journey home. But either people had chosen to wait here, or they had left the funerals before me, because the streets were packed now.

I forced myself to take a deep breath. Fitzroy had been wrong here, too. The nobles might have been too consumed by grief to watch me, but many people weren’t. The crowds stretched on forever, tens of thousands of them, each with their own voice, their own thoughts, their own reasons to reject me.

People were shouting different things at me, but all the voices mixed together, the words indistinguishable beyond vague cries of “Your Majesty!”

Then something wet splatted against my face. I flinched away, my hand flying up to rub my cheek. Sticky red liquid clung to my fingers and dripped onto the blue silk of my dress, as another tomato splattered against my shoulder. I looked up, my heart firing into overdrive.

“Long live the queen!” a woman said, as she hurled a rotten turnip at the carriage. It struck the door and exploded on impact. The rest of the crowd shifted away from the group as my guards advanced, grabbing the protestors by the arms.

“Long live the queen!” they all shouted again, voices ringing together as they were dragged away. I wiped my cheek with shaking hands. What had I done to earn that? Rotten fruit was a huge step down from an attempted poisoning, but those people must still despise me, to risk themselves in that display.

My carriage plodded on, and I leaned forward slightly, straining to hear the shouts of the crowd. They all still blurred together, but I could make out a few words, being said over and over by different people. Money was one. Curfew.

I spun around to look at the people I’d just passed. A woman must have realized that the crowd had my attention, because she leaped forward, grasping for my hand. “Your Majesty!” she said. “Your Majesty, please. We couldn’t pay the funeral fee, and my husband has been arrested, please, let him go. We can’t afford it, truly we can’t, but no one will listen—”