Long Live the Queen (Book 5 of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Four: Here Comes a Candle

"It wasn't her own," Jack retorted. "There were people who loved her."

The lady tilted her head. "Next you'll be telling me her body was not her own, and she had no right to decide who touched it."

Jack winced at this, but she didn't stop to savour her victory.

"She was in a lot of pain. If there were, as you say, people who loved her, surely they would be glad her pain had ended?"

Jack shook his head. He was trying to keep track of her tentacles without looking at them, trying to memorize their positions without letting her suspect he was doing it. He thought he could feel the presence of the axe behind him, but it wasn't much to stake your life on.

"But it didn't have to be pain," he said feebly, "not all the time. She wasn't in her right mind."

"That is the nature of pain," said the lady. "Should the decision have been left to someone else? Someone who could view her situation dispassionately, and decide whether she lived or died? You can see where that leads. Her life – her pain – her decision. That is the way it should be."

He was starting to struggle for words now. The eroding effect of this place was getting to him. He shook his head, feeling the roar of the water – unless it was air – in his ears.

"But – but it's potential," he stammered. "If you die, that's the end of it. It can't get better and it can't get worse. But, if you live, there's a chance-"

"Is there?"

"Yes! The world's so random, and everything passes. If you've ever felt differently before, that means you can feel differently again."

"Should she have lived for those infrequent moments when the world is tolerable?"

"It might have been more than tolerable!"

"But it might not. Your chance is the same kind of chance the poor invoke when they spend their last farthing on a lottery ticket. Or the kind of chance a man invokes when he wants a woman who is not his to give herself to him. 'Nobody knows what's going to happen, my dear. Perhaps you won't fall pregnant. Perhaps your parents won't cast you out. Perhaps I'll marry you. Just because things have ended badly for every other woman in your situation, that doesn't mean it will be the same for you'."

Jack flinched again. She couldn't have dealt a more devastating blow if she'd been wielding the axe. He'd never really known what it was to be convinced by someone before – to feel your own convictions draining away. Perhaps this was what that poor teacher in Northaven had felt before she'd lost her voice.

He opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He couldn't remember what he'd been about to say, or even what he was doing here. She was smiling as though she'd won – and, for all he knew, she had.

What teacher? What had they been talking about?

He raised his hands to try and stop her talking. He had a vague notion that, the more she talked, the more he unravelled. And then he noticed the ink on his skin. It was smudged and sore. The letters ran into each other, like somebody babbling without pausing for breath, but he could just make it out. He'd forgotten his mission, and even his name, but he still knew how to read.

Here comes a candle to light you to bed.

The answering line wasn't written down, but it rolled unstoppably on the heels of the other, just at the moment when he caught a flash of silver among the drifting tentacles.

Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.

Words and silver fired across his mind in unison and took control of his hands. He snatched the axe, and it lit up with a brilliance that made the lady cringe back. Then, without thinking, without knowing he was looking for it, he searched for the answering brilliance – a little spark of gold amid the grey. It was threaded onto the grey, of course, but that didn't stop him. He seized a tentacle in one hand, and swung the axe with the other.