Long May She Reign(52)
“Tell us who you worked with,” Norling said, “or I will be forced to punish you for treason.”
The woman stared at the floor, her face ghost white, but she did not flinch. “I worked alone.”
But Norling was asking the wrong question, I thought. We could find out who she worked with ourselves, with the right information. If we wanted to understand the attacks, she was the only one who could help us. I leaned forward, steeling myself to speak before the crowd. “Why did you attack me?”
Norling stared at me. “Your Majesty?”
I continued to address the woman. “You must have had a reason for trying to kill me. You knew you’d end up here, whether or not you succeeded. You must have had a reason.”
The girl remained silent. I stared at her, willing her to speak. If she would just tell us, if she would just explain . . .
“Mistress Cornwell,” Norling said. “Her Majesty asked you a question.”
“Because of this!” she burst out. “All of this! The court with all its gold, while people outside it starve. You spend more on sweets than most people have to live on their whole lives. The Forgotten want to return, the deaths were a sign of that, but until we burn out this corruption, they never will!”
“Do all the Gustavites believe that?”
The woman’s expression closed off again. She stared at me again, her face red.
“His book—it doesn’t mention murder,” I said, trying to keep my voice as friendly as possible. I couldn’t let it shake. “I read it, to try and understand what you were fighting for. But it was a pretty peaceful book. Do you really think he wants you to do this?”
“Your Majesty—” Norling said, in a warning voice, but the woman seemed angrier now.
“We must burn out this corruption,” she said, meeting my gaze. Words from the book. But incomplete ones.
“We must burn out this corruption in ourselves,” I corrected. “Change must come from within. He never thought the Forgotten wanted us to become murderers. Has your group read his book, or just heard about it?”
“Most of them are fools,” she snapped, so angry now she didn’t seem to notice her mistake. “They think we can do this peacefully, and they’re wrong. He didn’t know what we would be up against. But the rest of us—we know. And so if I’m going to die—” Her voice caught on the word. “If I’m going to die, I want to do it stopping all of you.”
“You’re not going to die. We don’t execute people in Epria.”
The silence that followed was too sharp, too loud. “Your Majesty,” Norling said, rather carefully. “Epria has not executed a criminal in many decades, it is true, but that does not mean we should not respond to treason. One attack against you would be enough for that. And this woman may have been involved in murdering your predecessor, in slaughtering this entire court.”
“I was not!” The woman’s whole body shook. “That wasn’t me!”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“It was an opportunity,” she said, “but I wasn’t involved in the murders. You must believe me!”
“I believe you,” I said. Her surprise and panic seemed clear enough. “And there is no execution in this kingdom.”
“Your Majesty,” Holt said. “Regardless of anything else, regardless of her beliefs, this woman attempted to kill you. If not for your quick thinking—your divinely bestowed suspicion—you and several others may have died. We cannot let this go unpunished.”
“It won’t go unpunished. Where do attempted murderers usually go? Is it Rickstone Castle?” An isolated stone fortress on the moors, a good hundred miles from the capital, and perhaps fifty from the nearest town. It had been built by a rather eccentric noble, desperate for quiet and increasingly convinced that someone might attack him to take that solitude away. He had no relatives, no friends, and so the crown had taken the castle when he died and turned it into a prison. It was, I’d heard, nicer than the dungeons of the Fort. It had never been intended for such grim purposes. “Mistress Cornwell will be sent there, as she has confessed,” I said. “No one will be executed.”
“Your Majesty!” Norling said, as furious whispers whipped through the crowd. “I am your minister of justice, and it’s my responsibility—”
“And I’m queen,” I said. “We’re not executing anybody.”
“No executions?” Sten stood. It was the loudest I’d ever heard him speak. His eyes were black and hard, and all his usual steadiness was gone. Fury radiated from him, his hands clenched into fists. “This woman helped kill most of the court. She killed her king, and the queen, and hundreds of others. And you’re going to show her mercy?”
“She didn’t kill them!” I said. “She denied it, at least, and she happily admitted to attacking me. We can’t execute her for that.”
“Torsten,” Holt said, his voice soothing. “You are still grieving for your friends, as we all are. But Queen Freya has chosen mercy, until we have indisputable proof of guilt. It would not do for us to lash out in grief and destroy a hundred years of peace.”
“The peace was broken when filth like this attacked the king.” Sten’s fists twitched. He shoved his way to the aisle and strode out of the room. The crowd whispered in his wake.