Eileen Gunn - Questionable Practices

Then the heralds blew their clarions and the doors of the shed flung themselves wide.

“Go,” Frederic said. “Set us free.”

Agnes did not so much stride out into the lists as stumble. Yet the throngs of elves (with here and there a human bobbing in the air; only she, it seemed, knew no magic) roared at the sight of her, as if she were an Amazon champion.

Directly across the arena, Queen Melisaundre stepped down from her throne, looking every inch the warrior-queen. Her slim, powerful figure was clad in dazzling gold plate. A scarlet cape flew out behind her, lifted by a wind that did not exist for Agnes. Her helmet was adorned with wings, as if she were a Valkyrie, and so cut that her hair flowed out becomingly behind her.

In her hand was a sword of moon-silver, harder than steel and lighter than a feather. At her back was a long spear.

Agnes hoisted her baseball bat, feeling like a clumsy human yokel. She closed her eyes in silent prayer: Make this quick, she thought. Whether I win or whether I lose, make it quick.

Somebody threw a cloth-of-gold scarf into the air. It fluttered lazily downward, drawing all eyes after it.

When it touched the ground, Queen Melisaundre screamed like an eagle and ran straight toward Agnes. Her long legs carried her quickly and effortlessly across the green lawn. She was beautiful to watch.

Agnes suddenly realized that she should be running too and began to lumber forward.

They met.

It all went as Frederic had said it would. Queen Melisaundre delivered a stinging blow to Agnes’s armored and padded shoulder, and a second to her leg that would have crippled her had it not been for the cuish. Then she tossed the sword aside as if it were a plaything she had tired of. One hand deftly undid the strap holding the spear to her back. The other reached behind her and flipped the spear up into the air.

Queen Melisaundre caught the spear and froze for an instant, a goddess incarnate. Then, with her hair lashing and the battle-light blazing about her face, she drove the spear downward with every ounce of her strength.

The spearhead pierced Agnes’s tace with a shriek of ripping metal. But the chain mail underneath held, and the wrapped layers of leather softened the blow.

Somewhat.

It felt like getting kicked in the stomach by a horse. All the breath flew out of Agnes and she was driven back a good three feet. But though for an instant all the world went black and there was nothing in it but pain, she did not fall down.

Then she could see again, and she was running forward, all in a rage, the baseball bat cocked and ready to swing. Take this, bitch, she thought. You with your perfect face and perfect legs and perfect everything else. With your courtiers and sycophants and lovers by the score. With your cruelty and power and the admiration of all the world and Richard too.

A fierce blood-lust filled her. Take this for being everything I am not.

It was that last thought that pulled Agnes out of her madness, for she recognized in it — as who would not? — the envy, jealousy, and spite that the elf-queen had so long been nurturing in her. And so recognizing it, she rejected it. She refused to let it be a part of her.

It was not a rational decision, for on purely logical grounds she understood that she had to kill the queen. It was simple revulsion that caused her to pull back before her blow reached its target. The bat swung past the elf-queen, missing her by a whisker.

Queen Melisaundre’s head shattered anyway.

Frederic led Agnes away from Melisaundre’s lifeless corpse toward the throne, whispering urgently in her ear. “You are the queen now. It’s important that you act the part. Speak slowly and clearly. Say that your rule will be benign but absolute. A new empire shall arise from the ashes of the old — a human empire. All magical talismans, potions, et cetera, are to be presented to the royal court that they may be made subject to your power. In this way all magicks will support the State and we need never fear rebellion. Finally, if it please you, your majesty, let us be married immediately. Announce that I am to be your consort and in no sense king. I will act in a purely advisory manner, subordinate to the throne. Do you understand?”

Agnes nodded once, regally, and withdrew her arm from his. With the slightest flutter of the fingers of one hand she gestured him back into the crowd.

Frederic backed away, struggling not to grin.

She ascended to the throne.

Everyone cheered, elves as well as the humans. Looking out over them, Agnes was surprised to see that the other children were all grown now. Some of them had children of their own.

Human history has begun again, she thought. And this will be known forever as the Day of Two Queens.

Agnes raised a hand for silence. “I am your new queen and my power is absolute. Does anyone here dispute that?”

Nobody spoke.

“Well, then. My reign shall consist entirely of three edicts. The first is that Frederic shall search through the grimoires and books of spells to either discover a way to return the elves to their own world or, failing that, otherwise rid our world of their presence. That shall be his sole employment until his task is done, however many years it may take.”

Frederic looked stricken.

“The second is that until that happy day when they are gone, the elves shall be set to work restoring our world to what it was before they came. We will settle here and scour the wilderness for human survivors. When such are found, those who will may join us. Those who will not shall be left in peace.

“The third and last edict is that henceforth we shall have no queens or absolute rulers of any kind. Form committees, hold elections, do whatever you like — but I will not tell you how to live your lives.” Mouths fell open. Eyes widened in shock. Frederic put his head in his hands.

Agnes stepped down from the throne, a queen no more.

After her abdication, she went to see Richard.

Agnes dressed as carefully for this meeting as ever she had in her life. Her clothing was deliberately modest. Yet it did nothing to disguise her newly adult shape. Her jewelry drew no attention to itself. She wore makeup, though she doubted that Richard, used as he was to Queen Melisaundre’s theatrical extravagance, would notice.

The elf-queen’s tent smelled as always of incense, spices, and perfume. Yet the air felt strangely clean, for the cat-in-heat stench of the queen herself was gone. Beside her bed (sheeted in green and blue satins with foams of lace so that it was almost as vast and billowy as the sea itself) was a small obsidian box. In it rested Richard’s gemstone.

When Agnes had laid out shirt and trews on the bed, she took the rock crystal gem and warmed it between her hands. It had been clear and ordinary once, but Richard’s soul had deepened its color into a golden-red topaz with hints of flame at its heart. Speaking a word she had often heard from the lips of Queen Melisaundre, she summoned Richard from its depths.

He appeared, smiling sleepily, in the middle of the bed.

When Richard saw that he and Agnes were alone, he sat up and donned the russet-colored clothing — first the trousers and then the sark. They fit him well and seeing him thus clad Agnes felt a sudden flush of desire that, paradoxically, she had not felt on beholding him naked.

It was true, she thought. She genuinely had come of age, if Richard’s mere presence could disorder her thinking so.

“Where is Melisaundre?” he asked.

Agnes’s mouth felt dry. She could not form words with it at first. But at last she managed to croak, “There have been… I have made some changes.”

Then she told him.

When Agnes emerged from the tent at last, her face was grim and a golden-red stone hung from a silver chain about her neck.