Treacherous Witch

23. The Queen's Tomb

"Queen Shikra III, like other Maskamery queens before her, was known for her ageless beauty and corrupt soul. What truly made this queen remarkable was her obstinate refusal to accept any overtures of peace by the Empire even when such arrangements were clearly in her favour."

Clement Pyridge's History of Our Glorious Empire, Vol. II

It was impossible, of course. And yet the face was unmistakable.

Queen Shikra was reaching out to me. She's here somehow, with the silvertrees. She knew my name!

That was no mere echo. The figure had called her name. Valerie had never met Queen Shikra while she was alive, had never lain eyes on the queen, so this was knowledge the queen could only have obtained after her death.

Does that mean she's not dead?

"Anwen, can you tell me something? Were you there when the queen died?"

She was taking afternoon tea with him in the garden, a large parasol shielding them from the midday sun.

His face became sombre. "Yes, sadly. What a tragedy that was."

"What happened? I heard that she was killed at the harvest festival."

Bakra had never talked about it. All she knew was that he was the only surviving man of the royal family. His aunt, uncle, cousins, their children, and of course his sister had all perished in a day.

"Yes. I wasn't there in the temple myself when it happened, but I heard the most terrible explosion. There were thousands gathered outside to hear the queen speak—it was chaos. The entire temple collapsed. Every soul in there perished."

"Then how did the prince survive?"

"The queen saved him at the cost of her own life."

Interesting. Bakra had never mentioned that. Was it true or only a story that had taken hold after the attack? There were a lot of stories about the queen.

"What happened to the royal family after they died? I mean, where were they buried?"

Anwen blinked. "Their remains were buried in the royal cemetery, as per tradition. The Empire may be brutal, my dear, but we show respect for the dead."

The royal cemetery was not, in fact, at the palace. Because the royals were the leaders of the priesthood, their burial ground lay in the tomb of the Sacred Temple of Jairah—the same temple that the Empire had blown up. The royal tombs, being deep underground, had survived the explosion, while ironically their living relatives had not. In the two years since the purge and the destruction of the temple, it had been partially rebuilt into only a cemetery. A place for the dead, not the living. She had never visited.

"Then she's there. Queen Shikra."

"I believe so, yes." He peered at her. "Why?"

"Do you believe in spirits?"

"Spirits? The souls of those who have passed? I'm afraid that's not my purview. Lord Thorne would have much more to say on that subject."

No doubt he would but not to her. Since the encounter in the chapel, Lord Thorne had been pointedly ignoring her. Frankly, she thought this an improvement on his previous attempts to convince her that she was a heathen in dire need of holy instruction.

Meanwhile, Valerie's religious education taught her that the spirits of those who passed returned to the earth just as the body did. They did not hang around for a chat. So right now she had two working theories. Either the spirit in the wood was some mystery phantom wearing Queen Shikra's face, which begged a number of questions about its identity, how it knew her name, and why it would imitate the queen—or it really was the queen. Perhaps the true explanation was the obvious one: Shikra was still alive.