Eileen Gunn - Questionable Practices

Nor could she escape into the outside world. There was nothing there but wilderness and ruins. Perhaps there were still people huddling fearfully in caves, as she once had. But what point was there in resuming that wretched and untenable existence?

Frederic, with his unique way of thinking, might be free, but Agnes was not. All the world was her prison.

Still, she had learned something tonight, and who could say it would not turn out to be useful? Clutching the knowledge tight to herself, Agnes tumbled back to her humble pallet at the foot of Queen Melisaundre’s luxurious bed.

Months passed, possibly years. Agnes had no way of measuring time: marks on paper, knots in her lacings, any accounting whatsoever eased away while she slept, leaving no trace.

At last there came a day when the armies did not march. The camp swarmed with activity. Elves flew into the nearest abandoned city and plundered it of building materials. Draft-giants hauled wagonloads of stone and enormous timbers. An arena arose in what had been a meadow the night before. Bleachers surrounded the oval of grass. Tall white walls soared upward and were decorated with clusters of the severed heads of ghastly inhuman creatures that Agnes had never seen alive.

Queen Melisaundre came silently out of her tent and gazed upon the arena. Then she turned to Agnes. “So,” she said. “The day has arrived at last.”

Agnes did not ask, but the queen answered her anyway: “You idiot child! The day we contend in battle and one of us kills the other, of course. Whatever happens, it will be a relief to be free at last of your constant witless questioning.”

Agnes knew she needed to control her response. Anger the queen would understand, and know instinctively her most effective response. Fear and defiance as well. But disregard? How could anybody dare ignore so dangerously mercurial a monarch? Agnes yawned and walked off, leaving Melisaundre speaking sharply to empty air.

She found Frederic in a brocade tent the color of dried blood, with jacquard dragons in its weave. Inside was a library whose stacks went on forever, dwindling into dusk. Bespectacled hobgoblins clambered up and down ladders, fetching and returning leather-bound manuscripts. Trolls stood by like bookstands, holding out dictionaries and volumes of encyclopediae.

Frederic sat at a small table, reading.

“What’s this about me killing the queen?” Agnes asked. Somehow, she did not doubt it could be done.

Frederic shut his book. “It’s time. I can read these grimoires without the queen’s scholars now. So we no longer need her.”

“You mean we could have been free of her before this and you did nothing?” Agnes was accustomed to holding back her emotions, but now she found herself quivering and white with rage.

“Yes, of course, long ago. You’d have noticed this yourself, if you hadn’t been mooning over Richard.”

Agnes slapped him as hard as she could.

One side of Frederic’s face began slowly turning red. His voice remained mild, nevertheless. “I deserved that, I suppose. However, when we are married, you must not hit me again. It’s not conducive to marital harmony.”

“ Married!? ”

“Married.” Frederic stood. He was taller than Agnes, which had never been the case before, and when he took off his glasses, as he did now, he was not entirely unhandsome. He was, Agnes realized with a shock, an adult, a man. “This has nothing to do with your personal feelings. Or mine, really. Agnes, you are the only human capable of assuming the elf-queen’s role. But you have, as yet, no idea of how to wield power, and you know it. I, on the other hand, do; so we must be wed.”

“It would be a loveless marriage.”

“That will change,” said Frederic, “if we want it to. We need each other. Our strengths are complementary; the weaknesses of one can be negated by the other.” His face was as pale and expressionless as the moon. “As a basis for marriage, need is stronger than love.”

Agnes thought back to all she had learned from the elf-queen’s advisors and political philosophers and realized that it was true: Need was a very strong bond indeed. Those same sources, however, had also taught that once needs were met, such bonds would dissolve like fairy dew.

Agnes prepared for battle. She was given, by the elven court, an armory shed at one end of the lists and two pages to dress her. They were pubescent boys, milky-skinned, beautiful, and naked. So far as she could tell, they were identical twins.

The pages were removing her clothing when Frederic rolled in. He grabbed one by the scruff of the neck and forcibly ousted him. The second followed after.

Agnes snatched up her blouse and struggled back into it. But Frederic did not so much as glance at her. He put down a cloth-wrapped package as long as a sword and started rummaging through the armor laid out for her. “She’s going to strike you three times,” he said. “First, on your upper right arm. So you’ll need a pauldron.”

The pauldron covered her entire upper arm and was padded underneath. He strapped it on her, right over her blouse.

“The second blow will strike you directly above your left knee. You’ll need a cuish.”

“I feel unbalanced,” Agnes said, to hide her embarrassment, as he reached between her thighs to tighten the cinches. “And just a little foolish, too.”

Frederic ignored her. “Neither of those blows will be lethal: They are intended to disable and unbalance you. The third and, potentially, the killing blow will come not from the elf-queen’s sword like the first two, but her spear. She’ll toss the sword aside and then flip the spear up into the air and catch it back-handed behind her, so that her arm is up and ready for the strike.” He held up his arm to demonstrate. “Then it will come down, and hard, right in the middle of your stomach.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I’ve been studying. This sort of thing is all written down.”

Frederic took from his kit a triple length of stiff brown leather. He wrapped it around and around Agnes’s abdomen so tightly she could barely breathe. Over it he placed a chain mail stomacher. Then, atop all, he strapped on an item of shaped metal he called a tace. “There,” he said at last. “She might knock the wind out of you, but she won’t kill you.”

“What weapon should I use?”

“None of these,” Frederic said, dismissing with a glance a gleaming selection of swords, spears, and morning stars. “They’re enchanted not to hurt her — you might as well try to take down a tank with a custard pie.” He unwrapped the package he had brought with him. “Use this instead.”

Agnes laughed involuntarily.

It was a baseball bat.

“Take it,” Frederic said. “Try it out.”

She swung the bat stiffly back and forth.

“Put your back into it. Swing from the shoulders.” He grabbed the bat and showed her what he meant.

Agnes took back the bat and swung again, with more strength. “I could never keep my eye on the ball. It’s so small and it comes at you so fast.”

“It won’t be a ball. It will be Queen Melisaundre’s head, and it will be the size of a small melon, plenty big enough to see. Just think of how you have served her, over the years, and she you.”

Agnes swung the bat with force.

“I think you’re getting the feel of it.”

“I wish I was a boy,” Agnes said. “I hope I don’t look as stupid as I feel.”

To her profound surprise, Frederic grabbed her and kissed her full on the lips. Then he pushed her away and stared straight into her eyes. “You look like you’re going to free us from elven tyranny forever,” he said fervently. “You look like the very first human queen of all the world. I don’t wish you were a boy at all.”