“What?” demanded Jolene, half rising from her throne. “Why does—”

Then she settled back down, the frown turning into a snarl. “You need not answer that. Even in my land, women are of no account, and men may beat them if they will.”

Anna decided to go further still. “Y’all reckoned t’ set me up with him. But thet ain’t th’ way he sees it. He tol’ me to m’face that he might marry me iffen I played my cards right. But once he finds out about Pappy’s debt, he ain’t a-gonna.” Quickly she explained to Jolene what her aunt had explained to her, about the debt to the Company, and how she would be expected to pay it, as the green eyes darkened with anger. “ . . . so you bet, oncet he finds out ’bout thet, he’ll buy it up, an’ he’ll hev me all legal without ever havin’ t’ marry me. I jest bet thet’s how he got them other two wimmin. He’s got their debt, an’ iffen they run off, he c’n set th’ sheriff on ’em.”

She had no idea how she had managed to put together such a convincing argument, much less where she had gotten the courage to say it all to Jolene’s face. But it was clear that the arguments had all hit home.

Jolene was simmering with rage; Anna had never seen her like this before, and if that rage had been pointed in her direction, she’d very probably have fainted in terror. Power coruscated around the Queen of Copper Mountain, and the look in her eyes promised much, much worse than mere death. And just at that point, McDaran’s voice rang through the caverns again. “Jolene!” he shouted . . . and the inflection was not that of a man who was entreating someone. “Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene . . . .” the echoes came, only reinforcing that.

C’n I git her t’ the boil?

“No matter what y’all wanted fer me,” she said, steadily, “no matter what y’all thunk or planned, it’d niver be ’bout what y’all want. It’ll on’y iver be ’bout what he wants. He don’ reckon y’all’s a Queen. But he sure do reckon he’s a King, an’ he reckons y’all’s a-servin’ him.”

The eyes not only flashed . . . so did her power, in a soundless, but contained, explosion of golden light. Anna shaded her eyes with her hand, and when her sight cleared and she looked back at the throne, Jolene was standing.

She looked terrifying. Something in her cold, anger-darkened eyes, something about her expressionless face, both these things were more frightening than the halo of pure power around her that radiated actual golden light. “Get behind my throne,” she said in a flat tone of voice. “And may your God protect you if you have been lying to me.”

Anna skittered behind Jolene’s throne and crouched there, to find herself surrounded by a mound of copper and green lizards that were so quiet with fear that they could have been metal statues. Instinctively she gathered some of them into her arms to comfort them; when she did that, they all swarmed over her, tucking themselves as close to her body as they could.