Red Queen: Chapter 2  Summary & Analysis

Mare returns to her family’s small house on stilts. From the ladder, Mare can see the private boats of rich Silvers heading to the king’s summer residence in Summerton, where Gisa apprentices to a seamstress. Mare looks at the porch flag on the way inside. It has a star for each of Mare’s brothers, with room left for her and Gisa.

Inside, Mare’s mother cooks while fourteen-year-old Gisa embroiders. Her red hair contrasts Mare’s, which is brown at the root and light at the ends from stress of Stilts life. Mare keeps her hair long as a “reminder that even my hair knows life shouldn’t be this way.” Mare’s father, who sits in a wheelchair and uses a black-market contraption to breathe despite his collapsed lung, rejects Mare’s offer to buy a cake for his upcoming birthday. Mare’s mother disapproves of Mare’s subsequent offers of gifts that would surely be stolen, just like everything Mare brings home.

Mare protests that she is contributing what she can before she goes away. Her reference to the war makes everyone fall silent, until Gisa remembers a letter from Shade that she got from the post on the way back from Summerton today. After everyone touches the letter, Mare reads her brother’s words aloud because her parents cannot read. Shade describes his new encampment as “Red as the dawn,” with barely any Silver officers. He assures them that he is safe and that he has heard similar news of his brother Tramy. There is no word of Bree, but Shade says he is not worried about “the best” of his siblings. As Mare finishes reading the letter, the lights flicker because no one turned in the electricity rations Mare brought home yesterday. Everyone goes to bed, “too tired to fight.”

Lying in her cot, Mare hears a birdcall that she knows to be Kilorn. She tries to ignore the call, but it persists. Mare reluctantly climbs down the ladder out of the house. Her annoyance fades when she sees that Kilorn has been crying, which is out of character for him. He tells her that his master died and that he is no longer an apprentice. He is eighteen, there are no vacant fisherman’s apprenticeships, and there is no hope for Kilorn to find a job. Kilorn says what Mare already knows to be true: “They’re going to send me to the war.”