Czytaj książkę: «The Queens of Innis Lear»
Copyright
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in the UK by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Tessa Gratton 2018
Tessa Gratton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008281878
Ebook Edition © 2018 ISBN: 9780008281892
Version: 2018-03-09
Dedication
To Laura Rennert,
who believed in this book even more than I did.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part One
The Fox
Elia
Regan
Gaela
The Fox
Elia
AEFA
Gaela
Mars
Elia
Five Years Ago, Astora
Regan
Elia
The Fox
Eleven Years Ago, Innis Lear
Aefa
Elia
The Fox
Nine Years Ago, West Coast of Innis Lear
Elia
The Fox
Part Two
Five Years Ago, Eastern Border of Aremoria
Elia
Gaela
Seven Years Ago, Hartfare
The Fox
Elia
Aefa
Morimaros
Five Years Ago, Hartfare
Gaela
The Fox
Elia
Regan
The Fox
Gaela
Elia
Six Years Ago, Innis Lear
Part Three
The Fox
Twenty-One Years Ago, Hartfare
Morimaros
The Fox
Six Years Ago, Innis Lear
Elia
Gaela
Ten Years Ago, Innis Lear
Regan
Elia
Ten Years Ago, Hartfare
The Fox
Five Years Ago, Dondubhan
Part Four
Elia
The Fox
Elia
Regan
Eleven Years Ago, Dondubhan Castle
The Fox
Elia
The Fox
Regan
Elia
The Fox
Gaela
Seven Years Ago, Astora
Aefa
The Fox
Elia
Part Five
Rory
The Fox
Elia
Aefa
Morimaros
Five Years Ago, Eastern Border of Aremoria
Gaela
Elia
Eleven Years Ago, Near Dondubhan
The Fox
Morimaros
Aefa
Regan
Gaela
Twelve Years Ago, Dondubhan
Elia
The Fox
Regan
Twenty Years Ago, The Summer Seat
Elia
Acknowledgments
About the Publisher
Part
ONE
IT BEGINS WHEN a wizard cleaves an island from the mainland, because the king destroyed her temple.
The island is raw and steeped in her rage, making the people who grow there strong, and sharp, and ever quick to fight. Mountains claw upward in the north, and a black river gushes south and west, spreading fingers east into smaller streams that trip through the center of the island. The rush of water gathers up all the trees and flowers, giving them the blood to grow wild and tall, feeding the roots until they dig through the rock itself. Where roots merge with stone, new clear springs are born.
The people build stone shrines around these rootwaters, making holy wells in which to bless themselves, their life rituals, and their intentions. Soon these wells are the centers of towns and at the heart of every fortress or castle, connecting the people always to the blood of the island. Lords from each quarter of the land come together to build a cathedral in the White Forest, where their four domains kiss. That is the heart of the island.
Every generation a child from each quarter kingdom is given to the wild forest for dedication or sacrifice. One lord offers his firstborn, and that is a beginning, too: the beginning of a line of wizards so strong, the other lords rise up together and bury the ashes of the unruly family in saltwater sand.
But the magic survives.
For centuries after, the island bristles and growls, all wind and scoured moors, valleys of pasture lined with protective oak forests, and the jagged north mountains break for rubies and the western cliffs gleam with copper. There is iron in the southern marshes, too, raw mineral that whispers to those who can hear, and when it is forged with magic, it never cracks. The rootwells run strong, and the thin earth is more fertile than it should be, and so the island thrives, fed on the blessing of star prophecies and the teeming love of the roots.
IT BEGINS WHEN a lord of the island reads ambition’s reward in his stars, and rallies the strength of iron and wind to defeat his rivals, uniting all under one crown. He calls himself Lear, after the wizard who cleaved the island. In her honor, he raises a great fortress in the north, along the shores of a black lake so deep many call it the island’s navel. He crowns himself on the longest night, the holiest time for star prophecy; offers his blood and spit to the island’s roots, his breath to the birds and the wind, his seed to the iron, and his faith to the stars.
IT BEGINS FAR away from the furious island, in a place so different in name and air that the one could not recognize the other as being born both of the same earth. There, a young woman asks her grandmother for a ship with which to sail out past the edges of their empire, for she has a hunger to understand the world, to experience something not more broadly but more deeply, until that one thing becomes an entire universe. She says her curiosity is like sand in a storm, scouring bones smooth as glass. Her grandmother agrees, though suspects she’ll never see this daughter of her line again. “God will bring us back together,” the young woman says, and her grandmother replies to her with only an old desert prayer:
“Do not forget: you will be air, and you will be rain, and you will be dust, and you will be free.”
Perhaps that is an ending, too.
IT BEGINS ON the day two bright hearts are born to the island, one just past dawn as a crescent moon rises, and the other when the sun is brightest, obscuring the glow of stars. Their mothers knew they would be born together, as witches and best friends often do, and though it is the first child for one and the last for the other, such does not come between them. They sit beside each other, arms stretched to touch the other’s swollen belly as they grit their teeth and tell stories of what might become of their children.
IT BEGINS WHEN a queen sits in a pool of stars.
IT BEGINS WITH seven words with which to bind a crown, whispered in the language of trees: eat of our flower, and drink of your roots.
IT BEGINS AS the sun sets, the last time the final king of Innis Lear enters the cathedral at the heart of the island. This Lear has never been devoted to the roots, or paid much mind to well or wind. He is a man driven by the stars, by their motions and patterns, their singular purity and steadfastness, bold against the black reaches of night. To him, the cathedral is redundant; a person devoted to star prophecy has no need of rootwater or navel wells.
Two vast halls of carved limestone and blue-gray granite cross in the middle of the holy place, east-west arms aligned with the sky to trace the path of the sun at the summer solstice, so the Day Star rises precisely over the eastern spire; the other hall aims as true north as the ever-constant star Calpurlugh, the Eye of the Lion. In the center point where the halls cross, a well sinks deep into the core of the island, fresh and mossy, a dark channel from the womb of the earth. No ceiling caps the edifice, for what would the purpose be in closing away the sky?
When it rains, water scours the stone floor and soaks the wooden benches. It cleanses the quarter altars and fills tiny copper bowls, making simple music with only the natural touch of water to metal. On sunny days, shadows caress living vines and the poetry and icons etched into the walls, counting seasons and time of day. Clouds lower themselves in the spring to nest around the highest spires, curling soft and dewy and cool. Nothing separates sky from land here at the heart of Innis Lear.
Now it is night, and a heavy moon tips against that eastern spire. Another beginning, ready to burst.
The king walks on the soles of thin slippers, his embroidered robe dragging off his shoulders. He is old, though not old enough to look as ravaged as he does, his hair wild and damp, his eyes tight from grief. An undyed tunic falls to his knees, nearly the same pale gray as his lined face and those long fingers. Straight to the well goes this royal wraith, and he presses his hands to its stones, breathing deep of the moss, the metallic smell of the earth’s blood water. A shudder wrenches down his spine, and he grimaces.
“Now,” he commands, turning away.
Seven strong men come forward with a flat, round piece of granite. Carved off one of the massive standing stones that once marked this holy well, before the cathedral was erected around it, the granite glimmers bluish in the moonlight. The retainers roll and twist it awkwardly, straining against the ropes that bind it. Slowly they walk, turning it up the aisle. One of them is glad of this mission, two unmoved by the significance of their actions, three too worried to be quite as indifferent as they would prefer to be, and the last one alone wishing, with every ounce of his heart, that he’d been strong enough to stand against his king, to protest that this was wrong and unholy.
The men position the stone, and in a moment of desperate hesitation, the last retainer looks fearfully at the king’s expression, hoping for a reprieve. But the king’s brows are drawn as he glares at the well, as if the well itself is responsible for everything. The retainer lifts his eyes instead to the open sky above, consoling himself with the reminder that his king does nothing without permission from the stars. And so this must be fated. It must be.
Tears glimmer in the king’s lashes when the granite slab falls forward, the sound of stone on stone filling the sanctuary. With a final pull of ropes, the navel is eclipsed.
The smell of rootwater vanishes, as does a slight echo that the king had not even noticed, until it was silenced. He puts his hand atop the stone cover, caressing its roughness, and smiles grimly. With his fingers, he makes the shape of the tree of worms, a sorrowful, dangerous constellation.
IT BEGINS, TOO, with a star prophecy.
But there are so many prophecies read on the island of Lear that to say so is as good as saying it begins with every breath.
THE FOX
IN A QUIET, cool grove of chestnut trees, heart-leafed lindens, and straight-backed Aremore oaks, a fox knelt at the edge of a shallow spring.
Scars and fresh scratches marred the rich tan of his back and arms and thighs. He had already removed his uniform, weapons, and boots, piling them on a wide oak root. The Fox—who was also a man—poured clear water over himself, bathing and whispering a cleansing song that married well with the babble of spring water. He’d traced this source at the first light of dawn, glad for a forest heart from which to ask his questions.
A breeze came, tightening his skin with cold breath, and the canopy of leaves chattered welcome. Ban the Fox replied, That’s encouraging, in their tongue, shifting his vowels to match the cadence of this Aremore forest. The trees spoke wider and more graciously here than on the rocky island where he’d been born. On Innis Lear the trees tended toward hard and hearty, shaped by ocean winds and the challenge of growing against the bedrock; not green and radiant so much as gray and blue with the coolest brown barks, lush moss creeping around in hollows, and thin leaves and needles. They spoke softly, the spreading low mother oaks and thorned hedges, weaving their words into the wind so their king could not hear.
But in Aremoria there was room and soil, enough for loud trees more concerned with bearing fruit than surviving winter storms or heartless kings. They conversed with each other, sighing and singing to please themselves, to taunt colorful birds, to toy with the people’s dreams. It had taken Ban months to win the trust of the Aremore trees, for he’d arrived angry and corded over by bitter flavors, far too spicy at such a young age. They’d not welcomed an invading thistle, but eventually he charmed them, grew to be as familiar as if he’d been rooted here.
Slipping deeper into the spring now, Ban untied the tiny braids patched through his thick, dark hair. His toes sank into silt as water curled about his ankles; he kept up his idle banter with the nearby linden trees, who had a vibrant sense of humor. Finally, with his hair loose and falling stiffly at his ears and neck, Ban ducked himself entirely into the spring water.
All conversation dulled. Ban held his breath, waiting to hear the pulse of this forest heart. A deep well might serve better, but the spring was natural, built only of the earth. He needed the rhythm under his skin to properly connect, to find the paths of magic he could use to track the loathsome Burgun army and certify their retreat.
Peace and cold solitude surrounded Ban. He parted his lips to allow in a mouthful of water and swallowed it, drinking in the tranquility. He slowly stood up.
Water streamed off his rising form. A small man, with not a strip of comfortable fat, Ban was all tawny muscles and sharp edges. Dark hair blackened by water hung heavy around large eyes, the brown and dark shadow green of forests. He blinked and droplets of water like tiny crystals clung to his spiky lashes. Had anyone witnessed his emergence, it would’ve been easy to think Ban a thorn of magic, grown straight from the spring.
Refreshed and blessed, he crouched at the shore to dig his hands into the mud. He spread it up his wrists like gauntlets, smoothing the gray-brown mud into a second skin over his own. With it he painted streaks across his chest, down his stomach, around his genitals, and in spirals down his thighs. He slapped handprints over his shoulders, splattering them down his back as far as he could reach.
Now, fully a creature of this specific earth, adopted child of these balmy trees, Ban the Fox picked his way back into the forest. Every footstep brought him words whispered up his legs: starwise, starwise, forward, this way, turn here, this way, starwise again, and nightwise now! The trees directed him toward the goal he’d requested, and finally Ban reached the tallest of them, at the edge of the forest, where he might best catch hold of a wind willing to report on Burgun.
A spreading, ropey old chestnut waited, roots buried several horse lengths off the line of trees. Ban glanced all around, at the churned earth of the valley, where days ago the Burgun army had camped. No grass still lived except in scattered clusters, the rest trampled and flattened and gone dry. Abandoned fire pits were scorched scars, and he could see the heaped dirt of covered privy lines.
No men or women remained, and so Ban dashed across the narrow strip of open land, using the speed to launch himself up the trunk of the chestnut. He caught the lowest branch with a grunt, swung up, and climbed high. The tree was sturdy enough that it never shivered with his weight, merely chuckled at his tickling grip.
Three small birds burst away from his intrusion, and the chestnut warned him to mind the eastern circle of limbs, where he’d already angered some brown squirrels.
Ban climbed along the ladder of boughs, up and out, toward the highest northwestern branch. There, a line of charred lightning strike allowed him a perch with a view of the valley for miles ahead of him, and of the rolling green forest canopy behind. He pushed aside long, serrated leaves and gripped a branch at his shoulder, only as wide as his wrist, to steady himself.
Ban stood, balanced carefully.
Wind caught his hair, pulling it out of his face. He asked the tree to warn him if anything approached, animal or person, then opened his mouth to taste the flavors of the air.
Smoke, old death, and the dusty musk of crows.
Ban lifted onto his toes to reach into the air. He caught a feather, black and smooth. In the inky color he saw shifting waves of men and horses; he saw a cliffside and clouds of reddish smoke, sparkling rocks, rotten flowers, and an empty white hand.
He slid the edge of the feather along his tongue, spat onto the back of his hand, and rubbed it against the chestnut bark hard enough to score the skin bloody. The language of birds was full of dreams, and impossible for men to interpret, it was said. But Ban had learned otherwise, these six years in Aremoria, at least if he could use pain, or blood, to facilitate the translation.
His hand throbbed now, and Ban closed his eyes to recall the pulse of the tranquil spring water. Slowing his breath, he brought his heart into alignment with the forest heart, through this focus of tender skin.
The crow’s many images became one: an army dressed in maroon limped far from here, a full day and night’s ride, backs to him and Aremoria, facing the north cliffs of Burgun.
Thank you, Ban said in the language of trees, and tucked the feather into the crook of leaves where it became a gift for the chestnut. He offered to trim the dead branch, but the chestnut was pleased with its storm-gifted scar. Ban rather liked his own scars, too, for how they proved his experiences and belonged to none but him, and he told the tree as much as he returned to the ground.
Ban landed in a crouch, cold suddenly in the shade. The sun sank over the far mountains bordering the edge of Burgun lands, and Ban wished his clothes were nearer. He’d return to camp, report to Morimaros, and then eat, drink, sleep the short summer night away, not once looking up at the glinting stars.
The evening forest whistled and hummed. The trees observed the usual yawning transition to twilight: they watched animals wake for the hunt, wondered if the king of deer would drive off a lone wolf trapped here, apart from her pack, by the armies, or if that most gentle rabbit would neglect to avoid the oak full of owls. Hungry himself, Ban considered joining the fray, stalking that wolf to try his own hand at her. He smelled like the mud of the forest now, and just a slight trail of his dried blood. It would keep their advantages even.
But if he did not return to camp before darkness set in full, the king would worry, though Ban had tried for years to teach him that there was no need to be concerned with the Fox’s safety in a forest.
It made his lips curl in a small, involuntary smile to think on: a man as good and bold as Morimaros of Aremoria concerned for a bastard like Ban.
So distracted was Ban, it took a scream from three young linden trees to alert him to the man who had invaded the heart spring grove.
Immediately alert, Ban crouched low to make his way around from the south, where the canopy was thickest and more shadows would hide him. Listening to the gentle prodding of trees, Ban crawled along, only his eyes gleaming.
At the edge of the grove, he lowered himself onto his stomach and slipped under a rose vine, enjoying the delicate perfume even as the hooked thorns brushed the dry mud on his shoulders.
Seated on the very root where Ban had left his belongings was none other than King Morimaros. A midsize, handsome man with short, practical dark hair and a matching beard, in the regular uniform of the army except for the long orange leather coat and the royal ring on his forefinger. Ban looked about everywhere, confirming with the trees that Morimaros was alone. Casually reading a letter.
Exasperation and a shot of fear made Ban grit his teeth and creep backward. He’d show Morimaros how stupid it was to be alone, even with the war over, even with Burgun fled.
He climbed up an oak, whispering a request that the tree hold still, and then the next, too, as he stepped across to it, so that they would not shake their leaves and reveal to the king his location. Thus, Ban walked gently from tree to tree, like an earth saint, and sank finally into the embrace of the oak under which Morimaros sat. Ban climbed down, and even when the king looked suddenly out at a cracked branch in the west, Ban was invisible to him, directly above.
In one swift motion, Ban dropped onto the king’s back, threw an arm around his neck, and pulled. But Morimaros grasped his arm and bent, flinging Ban heels over head, hard onto the muddy shore of the spring. Ban rolled onto his hands and the balls of his feet, and glared at the king, eyes and teeth bright in his muddy, wild face.
Morimaros had his sword free, knees bent, ready to defend himself again. “Ban?” he said after a slow moment.
Ban stood. “You were very vulnerable, Your Majesty.”
“Not so, it seems.” The king smiled. He sheathed his sword and picked up the fallen letter.
“Why come out alone? I was on my way to returning.” Ban crossed his arms over his bare chest, suddenly too aware he was naked but for mud-scrawled magic.
“I’m not allowed much solitude, and this evening is perfect for it,” Morimaros said. He ran a hand over his close-cropped hair, a sign of slight embarrassment. “And I would speak with you privately on a certain matter, ah, pertaining to this letter.” He brandished it, and Ban could see the deep blue wax of Lear still clinging to one edge.
All his skin went cold with dread, but Ban nodded because he had to: this was his king, his commander, no matter what else they might be to each other.
The Fox strode into the water and ducked down fully into it, allowing his entire body to be enveloped. It was not peace and cool calm he felt as the water brushed away mud, tickled his spine and the backs of his knees. No, it was a roar of suppressed memories: clenched fists and dismissive words; sheer peaks, crashing waves, and a howling, powerful wind; haunting sweet laughter and black eyes with short, curled lashes; tiny iridescent beetles.
Ban, the bastard of Errigal, scrubbed his skin clean and turned over in the spring, spinning once, twice, and a third time. Rising, he wiped his face, spat water, shook his head like a dog.
When he emerged, he desperately thought of his Aremore name, the one he’d earned, trying to will himself back to center.
The Fox. Ban the Fox.
His eyes opened to see that Morimaros offered him trousers. Ban muttered thanks and dragged them on, tied the waist up and used the plain wool shirt to wipe drips of water from his face and neck, chest and arms.
“Now,” Morimaros said, clasping his shoulder, “I have wine in the crook of that root. Read this letter.”
Ban followed the king, reminding himself he was trusted here, he was honored by the grand crown of Aremoria. Whatever Lear wanted, Ban would attack it from Morimaros’s side. Together, the men sat.
Morimaros gave over the letter and uncorked the brown glass bottle of wine with his teeth. The writing was roughly scratched into the parchment. Ban read:
To the honored King Morimaros of Aremoria,
We of Innis Lear invite you to join us at our Summer Seat for a rare celestial occasion. The Zenith Court will commence some two weeks from the writing of this note, on the full moon after the Throne rises completely to mark the ascent of the Queens of Autumn. The greatest of our island shall attend, and we look forward to introducing you to our youngest, with whom you have corresponded these last months, with hope I am certain in your heart. We are eager to set our daughters onto their star paths, and know your attendance will aid us in that desire.
With the blessings of the stars in our words,
Lear
Ban managed to remain calm, despite the implications involving Elia Lear. He read through the letter again, and Morimaros swung the bottle of wine toward him.
Trading his thirst for the burn of memory, Ban took a long drink. It was sweet and crisp, very easy to swallow. Not like the wine and ale of Innis Lear. Not like the hard yearning that tugged at him even now to go back. To touch the iron magic of Errigal again. To set things right and show his father and that king what he’d become. A confidant of this king, a renowned soldier and spy. Important. Necessary. Honored.
Wanted.
“Did you know her?” Morimaros asked, interrupting Ban’s sputtering thoughts.
“The youngest princess?” Ban lightly avoided her name.
But the king did not.
“Elia,” he said simply, and then easily continued. “She is the star priest, we hear, preferring this to her title. Though I met her as such, once, a long while ago. When her mother died, I traveled to Innis Lear for the year ceremony. Princess Elia was only nine. It was my first time in another country, acting as Aremoria. Though my father lived still, of course. He didn’t die until I was twenty.” Morimaros took back the wine and sipped at it. Ban studied the king, trying not to imagine him speaking with Elia, touching her fingers. Morimaros was gilded and handsome, a strong man, and one of the only good ones Ban had ever known. Elia deserved such a husband, and yet, he could not imagine her living here, in Aremoria, away from the twisted island trees, the harsh moors, the skies overwhelmed with stars.
Ban shook his head before he could stop himself. He’d thought of her, though he’d tried to forget those years before he’d been the Fox. Thought of the smooth brown planes of her cheeks, her black as well-water eyes, the streaks of improbable copper in her cloud of dark brown spiral curls. Her warm mouth and eager young hands, her giggle, the wonder with which she dug into tree hollows with him, whispering to the heart oaks, to the roots, to the sparrows and worms and butterflies. He’d thought of her most when he was alone in enemy camps, or washing blood off his knife, or cramped and stinking for days in the hiding holes the roots made for him. She saved him, kept him quiet, kept him sane. His memories of her made him remember to stay alive.
“Did you know her?” Morimaros asked again.
“Barely, sir.” And yet more entirely than Ban had known anyone in his life. She once was the person who’d known him best, but Ban wondered what her reply would be, if asked the same question today. In five lonely, bloody years, she’d not written to him, and so Ban had never sent word to her on the wings of these Aremore birds. Why would she want to hear from a bastard now, if she hadn’t before? And now they were grown.
The king said, “I’ll leave next week. Sail around the south cape to the Summer Seat.”
Ban nodded absently, staring down at the dirt beside his toes.
“Return to Innis Lear with me, my Fox.”
His head snapped up. Yes, he thought, so viciously he surprised himself.
King Morimaros watched Ban with clear blue eyes. His mouth was relaxed, revealing nothing—a special skill of this king’s, to present a plain mask to the world, holding his true opinions and heart close.
Home.
“I … I would not be a good man at your side, Majesty.”
“Ban, here and now call me Mars. Novanos would.”
“When we discuss Lear it reminds me too keenly of my place, sir.”
Morimaros grimaced. “Your place is at my side, Ban, or wherever I put you. But I know how that old king thinks of you. Is his daughter cut of same cloth?”
“As a girl, Elia was kind,” Ban said. “But I do not know how I can serve you there.”
The king of Aremoria drank another portion of wine and then set the bottle firmly in Ban’s hand. The Fox recognized the low ambition in Morimaros’s voice when he said, “Ban Errigal, Fox of Aremoria, I have a game for you to play.”
ELIA
THE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER of Lear threw herself up the mountainside, gasping air cold enough to cut her throat. She hitched her heavy leather bag higher on her shoulder, taking the steeper path in order to reach the top on time. Her fingers scrabbled at the rough yellow grass, and her boots skidded on protruding limestone. She stumbled and ground her skirts into the earth, then dragged herself up to the wide pinnacle, finally reaching her goal.
Elia Lear lay flat, rolling onto her back, and sighed happily despite her raw throat and the dirt under her fingernails. Above, the sky tilted toward night, edged in gentle pink clouds and the indigo silhouettes of the mountains cradling these moors. She shivered and hugged her arms close to her chest. This far north on Innis Lear, even summer breathed a frosty air.
But the solitude here, as near to the sky as she could hope to reach, was Elia’s greatest bliss. Here, it was only her spirit and the stars, in a silent, magnificent conversation.
The stars never made her feel angry, guilty, or forlorn. The stars danced exactly where they should. The stars asked her for nothing.
Elia glanced up at the purple sky. From here she had a clear view of the western horizon, where at any moment the Star of First Birds would appear and hang like a diamond at the tip of the Mountain of Teeth.
All around her, the golden moor swept down and away in rolled peaks and valleys, marred by jutting boulders like fallen chunks of the moon. Wind scoured the air, hissing an upland song from the northwestern edge of the mountains, heading south toward the inner White Forest and east toward the salty channel waters. The princess could have felt quite abandoned out here, but the shadowed valleys hid roads and some tiny clusters of homes; it was where the families lived, those who cared for the sheep and goats grazing this land—some of which could be seen freckling the hills with gray and white.
If Elia looked down to the south, she would see the star tower clinging to a limestone outcrop, built centuries ago by an old lord before the island was united, for a military stronghold. The first King Lear had confiscated it for the star priests, opened up the fortified walls and left them to crumble, but with elegant wood and slate from the south he had lifted the tower itself taller, until it was the perfect vantage point for making accurate star charts and reading the signs on every point of the horizon. Elia had lived and studied there since she turned nineteen last year, and every morning she dotted white star-marks onto her forehead to prove her skills as a priest and prophet. She did not yet consider herself a master, but hoped one day she might.
This morning’s marks had smeared slightly, as they often did, for Elia spent much of her time brushing errant, wind-tossed curls away from her face. Her companion, Aefa, often made sure to wrap a veil or scarf about Elia’s hair, or insisted on using ribbons or at least braids to keep her hair in place, as befit a princess, if not a prophet. Elia could not help preferring to leave it free, tended by nothing but bergamot oil from the Third Kingdom, and perhaps a few begrudged decorations near her face. It put her in contrast to her sisters, neither of whom would leave their bedrooms without their costumes fixed and perfect.
Aefa was ever despairing that Elia made her worst choices whenever she did so with her sisters in mind. Such fussing was what a lady’s companion was for, and as her father, Lear’s truth-telling Fool, was always willing to argue, so did Aefa uphold the family tradition. It was enough to make the princess grateful for these stolen moments alone.
Sitting, the princess hauled the leather bag into her lap and unknotted the thong holding it shut. She pulled out a folded wooden frame and a roll of parchment to fix to it so she could mark the progress of star appearances onto a simple chart.
Elia’d wagered this morning with the men in the Dondubhan barracks that it would be tonight the Star of First Birds finally moved into position to sparkle exactly over the distant peak. Danna, the star priest mentoring her, had disagreed when she told him, so he watched from the roof of the star tower at this very moment, while Elia had climbed here, even higher, to see first. The dignity of winning mattered more to her than the handful of coins she had bet.
Oh, how shocked her father would be at such a wager.
For a moment, she wished he was here with her.
Her smile reappeared as she imagined refitting the tale into a shape palatable for Lear. Assuming she won, of course. If she lost, she’d never confess it to her father.
This youngest princess favored her late mother in most ways, being small and sweetly round, and warm brown all over: skin and eyes and hair that spiraled in ecstatic curls. Her father was tall and pale as limestone, with the straightest brown hair in the world. What she lacked in his looks, she made up for by sharing his vocation to the stars.
Lear would say, The Star of First Birds is brighter than other stars, and she moves unlike any other. Out of their fixed pattern, and yet with her five sisters. The Stars of Birds fly through all the rest, influencing the shapes and constellations. When you were born, my star, the First and Third Bird stars crowned your Calpurlugh.
She knew the patterns of her birth chart by heart, and the brilliant star at its center; Calpurlugh, the Child Star, symbolic of strong-heartedness and loyalty. The Star of First Birds was purity of intention and the Third flew near to the roots of the Tree of the Worm, so her Child Star attributes were affected—or distracted—by holy thoughts just as much as unseen decay. Her father said the influence of the Worm in this case meant Elia would always be changing others or the world in ways she could not see or predict. Elia wondered if holy bones or some other wormwork might have a different answer, but Lear refused to taint his royal star readings with such base matters, so she couldn’t say. To him, the stars were beyond reproach, disconnected from death, filth, animal lust, or instinct. All the magic of the world existed beneath the stars, and beneath them magic should remain.
Ban would know which tree to ask, Elia thought, then covered her lips with her fingers as if she’d spoken aloud. That name needed be banished from her heart forever, as the boy himself had been banished years ago.
Disloyalty and longing twisted together in the back of her throat. It went against her instincts to deny herself even the memory of him, yet for so long, she’d done exactly that. She breathed deeply and imagined the feelings diffuse out of her with every breath, making her cool and calm as a star. Singular. Pure. Apart. She had learned long ago that stray passions needed to be leashed.
It was difficult, for Elia was a daughter of Lear. All her family were born of the same material, and all tended toward high emotions: Gaela, the eldest, wore her anger and disdain like armor; Regan was a skillful manipulator of her own heart as well as the hearts of others; and the king caught his grief and leftover love up in layers of rigid rules, though they never quite contained him. Elia, unfortunately, had loved too easily as a child: the island, her family, and him, the wind and roots and stars. But love was messy. Only the stars were constant, and so it was better to be exactly what her father wanted: loyal, strong, pure starlight. A saint for Innis Lear, rather than a third princess.
Thus was she able to bear the weight of Gaela’s disappointed glares, and answer Regan’s sly mocking with simple courtesy. She was able to swallow her longings and her worries and any joy, too, as well as the enduring sorrow that her sisters did not care for her at all. She was able to bear up under the weight of Lear’s rages and soothe him instead of lashing out to make things worse as Gaela and Regan did. Able to expel any strong emotion by scattering it in the sunlight like fog off a lake, until everything she felt was naught but starry reflections.
“There,” Elia whispered to herself now, as between one blink and the next, she caught the sparkle of the distant Star of First Birds. It was only a shimmer of light, and Elia stopped breathing to steady her gaze, wishing she could still the tremble of her heart, too, for one perfect moment.
“Elia!”
Twisting to peer down toward the steep southern road and the call of her name, Elia at first saw nothing but a distant flock of tiny swifts, darting close to the ground. Then she spied her companion Aefa waving at her with both arms, and beyond, a rider leaning over his saddle to press onward for the star tower’s courtyard. A star-shaped breastplate gleamed in the final evening light, belted across his dark blue gambeson to mark him a soldier of the king. From the back of his saddle rose a trio of flags: one the white swan of Lear, one the maroon crown of Burgun, and one the plain orange field that belonged to the king of Aremoria.
Letters.
Elia touched a hand to the undyed collar of her dress, the space just over her heart. The last letter from her father was folded there, hidden between seam and skin. It had arrived the day before yesterday; the words he had written were not worrisome in themselves, as they were but the usual, dear ramblings he sent and had always sent. Filled with his own star chart calculations, gossip from the Summer Seat, irritation at his first daughter’s martial interests, and sneers at the temper of his second son-in-law; and yet this one was far different from any that had come before.
Dalat, my dear, he had scrawled in his swooping, casual hand.
Elia’s mother, who had been dead these twelve years.
The shape of the name remained, sharp enough to break a daughter’s heart.
Getting to her feet and stuffing the parchment back into her bag of charts, Elia reluctantly turned south, picking her way down to the road. She’d much rather have remained and done her work, but knowing a new letter waited would distract her and she’d lose count, lose the patterns threaded across the sky even as she dutifully wrote them down. Never mind the letters from those other kings, Burgun and Aremoria, courting her for their politics and war. Such things did not concern her: Elia would never wed, she’d long ago determined. Both her sisters had contentious marriages: Gaela because her husband was a beast, though one Gaela had chosen for herself, and Regan because her lord’s family was a generations-old enemy of the house of Lear, a threat Regan would gladly lose herself inside.
No, Elia would marry only the stars, live her life as a solitary priest, and care for her ailing father, never in danger from too much earthly love.
This latest deluded salutation from Lear was even more proof of that danger. When their mother had died, their father lost his heart, and with it everything that kept his mind at ease and actions in balance. Her sisters had turned ever more inward, away from both Lear and Elia. The island, too, seemed to have withdrawn, offering less abundant harvests and giving more weight to the cold, cutting wind. All in mourning for the lost, much-loved queen.
Dalat, my dear.
The star signs these past nights had offered Elia no comfort, no guidance, though Elia had charted every corner of the sky. Can I save my Lear? she had asked again and again.
No answer had emerged, though she wrote down and dismissed a dozen smaller prophecies: the storm is coming; a lion will not eat your heart; you will give birth to the children of saints; the rose of choice will bloom with ice and rage. They meant nothing. There was no star called the Rose of Choice, only a Rose of Decay and a Rose of Light. Lions had never lived on Innis Lear. Earth saints had long ago left the world. And there were always, always storms at the end of summer.
The only way to piece out the true answer was to ask the trees, listen to the voices in the wind, or sip of rootwater. This was the wisdom of Innis Lear.
Elia stopped, recalling the feel of her bare toes digging into the rough grass, sliding her fingers over the ground to hunt up crickets or fat iridescent beetles.
She remembered once Ban had taken her hand in his own and then placed a brilliant green beetle onto her finger like an emerald ring. She’d giggled at the tickling insect legs, but not let go, looking up into his eyes: green and brown and shining just like the beetle’s shell. A pearl of the earth for a star of the sky, he’d said in the language of trees.
In truth, she hardly remembered how to whisper words the earth could understand. It had been so long since she’d shut herself off, swearing to never speak their language again.
So long since he’d been gone.
Darkness veiled the dusty white road as Elia finally arrived: the sun was entirely vanished and no moon risen, and the star tower did not light torches that would ruin the night-sight of their priests.
Aefa stood at the shoulder of the messenger’s horse, arguing to be given the letters. But the soldier said, clearly not for the first time, “I will give these only to the priest Danna or the princess herself.”
“And so here I am,” Elia said. She need prove herself in no way other than her presence; there were no other women who looked like her and her sisters, not across all of Innis Lear. Not any longer. Not for half her life.
“Lady.” The messenger bowed. He began to unseat himself, but Elia shook her head.
“No need, sir, if you’d like to ride on. I’ll take my letters, and you’re welcome at the tower for simple food and simpler accommodations, or you have just enough light to return to Dondubhan and sleep in those barracks. Only wait there for my responses in the morning before you depart.”
“I thank you, princess,” he said, taking the letters from the saddle box.
She reached up to accept and asked his name, a habit from her youth in the castles. He told her and thanked her, and she and Aefa backed out of his way as he turned his horse and nudged it quicker on the road to the barracks.
Elia wandered toward the star tower with her letters, studying the three seals. The leather bag carrying her charts and frame, candle-mirrors and charcoal sticks, pressed heavily on her shoulder, and she finally slumped it off, settling herself down on the slope of moor beside it.
“Did you spy your star?” Aefa asked, herself gangly and pretty, like a fresh hunting hound, with plain white skin tending toward rose under heightened emotion and chestnut hair bound up in curling ribbons. Unlike Elia’s gray wool dress, the uniform of a star priest, Aefa wore bright yellow and an overdress in the dark blue of Lear’s household.
“Yes,” Elia murmured, still staring at the letters.
A long moment passed. She could not choose one to open.
“Elia! Let me have them.” She held out her hand, and Elia gave over the letters from Burgun and Aremoria.
Clearing her throat, Aefa tore through the Burgun seal, unfolded the letter, and then sneezed. “There’s—there’s perfume on it, oh stars.”
Elia rolled her eyes, as Aefa clearly wished her to, and then the Fool’s daughter held the letter to the last of the twilight and began to read.
“My dear, I hope, Princess of Lear— Elia, he is so forward! And trying not to be by acknowledging it, so you must in some way give permission or not! —I confess I have had report from an agent of mine as to your gentle, elegant beauty— What is elegant beauty, do you think? A deer, or a reaching willow tree? Really, I wonder that he does not provide some poetic comparison. Burgun has no imagination—your gentle, elegant beauty, and I cannot wait many more months to witness it myself. I have recently been defeated in battle, but thoughts of you hold my body and my honor upright though all else should weigh upon my heart— His body upright, indeed; I know what part of his body he means, and it’s very indelicate of him!”
“Aefa!” The princess laughed, smothering it with her hands.
Aefa quirked her mouth and wrinkled her nose, skimming the letter silently. “Burgun is all flattery, and then, despite telling you he’s been trumped on the battlefield, he still finds ways to suggest he is handsome and virile, and perhaps a wifely partner would complete his heart enough to … well to make him a better soldier. Affectionately, passionately yours, Ullo of Burgun. Worms of earth, I don’t like him. So on to the king of Aremoria. I wonder if Ullo knows the general who defeated him also pays court to you.”
Elia drew her knees near to her chest and tilted her head to listen better. The letter from Lear pressed between her two hands, trapped.
“Lady Elia, writes Morimaros, which I approve of much better. Simple. An elegantly beautiful salutation, if I may say so. Lady Elia, In my last letter I made it known I was nearing the end of my campaign against the claim of Burgun— This king refuses to even give Burgun the title kingdom! What a pretty slight. Certainly this king knows who his rival is—against the claim of Burgun and can report now on the eve of what I believe to be our final confrontation that I will win, and am sure this shift in political lines will too shift the direction of your thoughts. In Aremoria’s favor, I expect, but if not, let me add we have a nearly unprecedented harvest this year, in the south of barley and— Elia! My stars! There is now a list of Aremore crops! He says nothing of his hopes for you, nothing about himself! Do we even know what sort of books he enjoys or philosophies he holds? At least Burgun treats you like a woman, not a writing exercise.”
“Are you swinging toward favoring Burgun, then?” Elia asked lightly.
Turning her back to the silver light still clinging to the mountains in the west, Aefa shot her princess a narrow look and held the letter toward her. Elia could see it consisted of three perfectly lined paragraphs. Aefa pulled the paper right to her face and read, “I have petitioned to your father that I be welcomed in Innis Lear in the near future, that you might look upon me and perhaps tell me something of my stars. Oh. Oh, Elia, well there. That is his final line, and perhaps he is not so dry as everything. His signature is the same as before. Yours, Aremoria King. I dislike that so very vehemently. Not his name, even, but his grand old title. It’s like your sister refusing to call Connley anything but Connley, when everyone knows he has a name his mother gave him.”
Elia closed her eyes. “It is not a letter from a man to a woman, but from a crown to the daughter of a crown. It stirs me not at all, but it is at least honest.”
The huff of Aefa’s skirts as she plopped to the earth beside her princess spoke all the volumes necessary.
“And your father’s letter?” Aefa asked quietly.
“You might as well light a candle. I’m done star gazing tonight.” Elia danced her fingers along the edge of the letter; it was so thin, one parchment page only, when it was not unusual for her father’s letters to be five or six pages, thickly folded. From the leather bag, Aefa dug out a thin candle and a candle-cradle attached to a small, bent mirror. She whispered a word in the language of trees, snapped her fingers, and a tiny flame appeared. Elia pressed her lips in disapproval as she snapped the letter’s wax seal in two, cracking the midnight blue swan through the wings. Aefa set the candle into its cradle so that the flame lit the mirror. This device was meant to illuminate star charts while keeping brightness from the eyes of the priests who needed to stare high and higher into the darkest heavens. In Aefa’s hands, it angled all the light onto the letter and Lear’s scrawl of writing.
Elia, my star—
For a moment the youngest princess could not continue, overwhelmed with her relief. The words shook before her eyes. Elia took a fortifying breath and charged on. She murmured the contents of the letter aloud to Aefa: “Our long summer’s absence is at an end. Come home for the Zenith Court, this third noontime after the Throne rises clear. The moon is full then, and will bless my actions. I shall do for my daughters what the stars have described, finally, and all beings shall in their proper places be set. Your suitors are invited, too, for we would meet them and judge them. Your beloved father and king.”
“That’s all?” Aefa said, rather incredulous. She pressed her face to Elia’s cheek, to get a look at the letter. “When is that? The Throne is part of the Royal sequence, and they began a month ago … it’s the … second? After the Hound of Summer? So …”
“Six days,” Elia said. “The Zenith Court will be six days from now, when the moon is full.”
“Why can’t he just say, come on the Threesday of next week? And what does he mean? All beings in their proper place? Will he finally name Gaela his heir? That’ll set the island off, though it’s inevitable. She has to be crowned someday.”
Elia folded the letter. “I hope so. Then in the winter we can have a new queen. Before Father loses his faculties, before his continued hesitation breeds more intrigue and plotting.” She turned her eyes toward the west again, where the vibrant diamond of the Star of First Birds should gleam.
But the star was shrouded by a single long strip of black cloud cutting across the sky like a sword.
REGAN
IN THE EMERALD east of Innis Lear lounged the family seat of the Dukes Connley, a castle of local white limestone and blue slate imported from Aremoria. At only a hundred years old, it was the youngest of the castle seats, built around the old black keep from which Connley lords of old once ruled. No city filled the space between its walls, nor abutted the sides, though the next valley south flourished with people devoted to the duke, as did the valleys to the north and west. None could deny the Connley line was expert at inspiring loyalty.
Perhaps because the Connleys were defiantly and fixedly loyal to themselves. Perhaps because they continued to study wormwork and respect the language of trees, despite the king’s decrees. Or perhaps only because they were so beautiful, and strove to reflect such personal attributes in their castles and roads and local tax policies.
Connley Castle itself consisted of three concentric, towered walls, each higher and lovelier than the last, and in the center a new, white keep faced the old, black one, matching it stone for stone. At least externally, as the guts of the black keep had long since crumbled. Trees grew up from its center; vines and creeping flowers had taken over arrow slits and arched doorways. The cobbles had cracked, surrendered to the earth more than a generation ago. One ancient oak flourished at the very heart of the keep. It had been planted by one of the lords for the pillar of his throne room, back in the days when baser magic topped the island, and few cared for the path of stars. There, the wife of the current Duke Connley kept her shrines and working altars. And it was there she now knelt, stricken, among those winding old roots, surrounded by a bright pool of her own blood.
Regan, the second daughter of Lear, had come to the shady courtyard to listen to the whispers of the island trees and to recast the quarter blessings that rooted her magic to Innis Lear. Each altar was created with a slab of rock—carried by her own hands from a corner of the island in the four great directions—settled against the crumbling stone walls with permission from the oak, tied down through three seasons of growth and decay. Their lines of magic crossed through the heart of the oak tree, and its roots dove deep enough into the bedrock of the island to hear the other powerful trees, to pass Regan’s words, and to collect for her the concerns, complaints, and hopes of all who still spoke through the wind.
These days there were many complaints, and while her altar blessings should have lasted a full year, the island’s magic had become so withdrawn she had to bless the altars at the turn of every season. She needed living rootwater, but such holy wells were forbidden and Regan had to rely upon the witch of the White Forest for a steady supply.
Recasting and blessing the altars was the work of an afternoon, and Regan had just moved on to the final altar in the east when she felt the first twinge at the small of her back.
She paused, telling herself she’d imagined it, and had remained kneeling before the eastern altar. But the language of trees would not spring to her lips easily; Regan’s attention was all for her womb, waiting, hardly able to breathe.
The delicate thread of nausea might’ve been overlooked by one unused to such things. But Regan had been through this before, and so followed the nausea as it turned over into a knot between her hips, then pulled tight.
The princess’s cool brown hands began to tremble. She knew this pain well, and how to hold rigid until it passed.
And pass it did, but not without leaving that ache behind, an echo of itself that radiated down the backs of her thighs and up her spine, hot and cold and hot again.
“No,” Regan hissed, scraping her nails too hard on the stone altar. One cracked, and that pain she welcomed. Her breath caught like a broken necklace, dragging up, up, up, and chattering her teeth. She bared them in rage and forced her breathing into long, slow rolls.
Was it her? Was this failure some greater symptom of the island cracking?
Any beast could be a mother—there were babes in nests and hovels and barnyards. It was only Regan who seemed unable to join them.
When the next cramp caught her, she cried out, shoved away from the altar, and curled tightly over her knees. She whispered to herself that she was healthy and well and most of all strong, as if she could change what happened next by ordering her body to obey her.
A pause in the pain left her panting, but Regan ground her teeth and stood up on her bare feet. Though preferring quite formal attire, even in her husband’s castle, Regan had come to the altars today in only the thinnest red wool dress and no underthings. She’d left her slippers outside the arched gate and untied the ribbons from her wavy brown hair, allowing it to spill past her waist. Hers was the longest, straightest hair of her sisters, and her skin the lightest, though still a very cool brown. There was the most of their father, Lear, in her looks: the shape of his knifelike lips, and flecks of Lear’s blue lightened his daughter’s chestnut eyes.
Regan walked carefully to the ropey old oak tree to pray, her hands on two thick roots. I am as strong as you, she said in the language of trees. I will not break. Help me now, mother, help me. I am strong.
The tree sighed, its bulk shivering so that the high, wide leaves cast dappled shadows about like rain in a storm.
Regan went to the northern altar and cut the back of her wrist with a stone dagger, bleeding into a shallow bowl of wine. Take this blood from me instead, she whispered, pouring the bloody wine over the altar, where north root was etched in the language of trees. The maroon liquid slid into the rough grooves, turning the words dark. Take this, and let me get to my room where my mothers’ milk tonic is, where my husband—
The princess’s voice cut away at the sensation of blood slipping out of her, tickling her inner thighs with dishonest tenderness.
She returned to the grand oak tree on slow legs, sat on the earth between two roots, and slumped over herself. Despair overwhelmed her every thought, as hope and strength dripped out of her on the heels of this treacherous blood.
The sun lowered itself in the sky until only the very crown of the oak was gilded. The courtyard below was a cold mess of shadows and silver twilight. Regan shivered, despite tears hot in her eyes. In these slow hours she allowed herself a grief she would deny if confronted by any but her elder sister. Grief, and shame, and a cord of longing for her mother who died when she was fourteen. Dalat had birthed three healthy girls, had done it as far away from her own land and god and people as a woman could get. And Regan was here among the roots and rocks of her home. She should have been—should have been able.
The earth whispered quiet, harsh sighs; Regan heard the rush of blood in her ears and through the veins of the tree. She saw only the darkness of her own closed eyes, and smelled only the thick, musty scent of her womb blood.
“Regan, are you near?”
It was the sharp voice of her husband. She put her hands on her head and dug her nails in, gripped her hair and tore until it hurt.
His boots crunched through the scattered grasses, over fallen twigs and chunks of stone broken off the walls.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere, wife,” he said, in a tone more irritable than he usually directed at her. “There’s a summons from your … Regan.” Connley said her name in a hush of horror.
She could not look up at him, even as she sensed him bend beside her, too close, and grasp her shoulders to lift her up off her knees. “Regan,” he said again, all tenderness and tight fear.
Her eyes opened slowly, sticky with half-dried tears, and she allowed him to straighten her. She leaned into him, and suddenly her ankles were cold where air caressed streaks of dark red and brown, left from her long immersion in blood and earth.
“Oh no,” Connley said. “No.”
The daughter of the king drew herself up, for she was empty again now, and without pain. She was cold and hungry and appreciated the temporary bliss of detachment. “I am well, Connley,” she said, using him as a prop to stand. Her toes squished in the bloody earth. Regan shuddered but spoke true:
“It is over.”
Connley stood with her, blood on the knee of his fine trousers, the letter from her father crushed against the oak tree’s root, forgotten. He was a handsome, sun-gilded man, with copper in his short blond hair. His chin was beardless, for he had nothing to hide and charm enough in his smile for a dozen wives. But now Connley had gone sallow and rigid from upset, his smile sheathed. He put his hands on Regan’s face, touched thumbs to old tears just where her skin was the most delicate purple, beneath her eyes. “Regan,” he whispered again, disappointed. Not with her, never with her, but still, that was how it sounded to her ears.
She tore free of him, storming toward the eastern altar that had not been blessed this afternoon. With one bare foot, she shoved and kicked at it, jaw clenched, hands in fists, hair wild and the tips of it tinged with blood. What was wrong with her? In the language of trees, she cried, What is wrong with all of us?
It was her father’s fault. When he’d killed Dalat, he’d killed their entire line.
“Stop, stop!” Connley ordered, grabbing her from behind. He grasped her wrists and crossed them over her chest. He held her tightly, his cheek to her hair. She felt his hard breath blowing past her ear, ragged and unchecked. His chest against her back heaved once, and twice, then his arms jerked tighter before he released his stranglehold, but did not quite let her go. They slumped together.
“I cannot see what’s wrong with me,” Regan said, her head hanging. She turned her hands to hold his. All her hair fell around her face, tangling with their clasped hands. She gazed at the altar, which she had only shifted slightly askew. “I have tried potions and begged the trees; I have done everything that every mother and grandmother of the island would tell me. Three months ago I visited Brona Hartfare and I thought—” She sobbed pure air, letting it out rough and raw. “I thought this time we would catch, we would hold on, but it will never now. My thighs are sticky with the brains of our babe, Connley, and I want to rip out my insides and bury it all here. I am nothing but bones and desperation.”
He unlatched his hands and turned her toward him, gathering her hair in one fist. “This is the only thing that makes you speak in poetry, my heart. If it were not so terrible, I would call it endearing.”
“I must find a way to see inside myself! To find the core of what curses me.”
“It might be a thing wrong with me. More than a mother is required to get a strong child.”
Regan scratched her fingers down the fine scarlet of his jacket, tearing at the wool, the velvet lining the edge. “It is me. You know the stars I was born under; you know my empty fate.” When she said it, her father’s voice echoed in her memory.
“That is your father talking, Regan.”
She reeled back and slapped him for daring to notice. The edge of his high cheek turned pink as he studied her with narrowed, blue-green eyes. Regan knew the look in them: the desire, the scrutiny. She touched his lips and met his gaze. He was a year younger than her, ambitious and lacking kindness, and Regan loved him wildly. Every sign she could read in those damnable stars, every voice in the wind and along the great web of island roots had cried yes when she asked if Connley was for her. But this was her fourth miscarriage in nearly five years of marriage. Plus the one before they’d been married at all.
Connley drew her hair over one shoulder, kissed her finger as it lingered on his bottom lip.
“I don’t know what to do,” the princess said.
“What we always do,” her lover replied. “Come inside and bathe, drink a bit of wine, and fight on. We will achieve what we desire, Regan, make no mistake. Your father’s reign will end, and we will return Innis Lear to glory. We will open the navel wells and invite the trees to sing, and we will be blessed for it. Our children will be the next kings of Innis Lear. I swear it to you, Regan.” Connley turned, his eyes scouring the darkening courtyard. Though Regan did not wish to release him, she did. She stared as he picked his way back to the oak tree and lifted up the letter. It was crumpled now, torn at one corner. He offered it to her.
Regan smoothed the paper between her hands and lifted it to the bare, hanging light of dusk.
Daughter,
Come to the Summer Seat for a Zenith Court, this third noontime after the Throne rises clear, when the moon is full. As the stars describe now, I shall set all my daughters in their places.
Your father and king,
Lear
“Would I could arrive heavy with child,” Regan murmured, touching her belly. Connley put his hand over the top of hers and moved it lower to the bloody stain. He cupped her hand gently around herself.
“We will go heavy with other things,” he said. “Power, wit, righteousness.”
“Love,” she whispered.
“Love,” he repeated, and kissed her mouth.
As Regan returned her husband’s kiss, she thought she heard a whisper from the oak tree: blood, it said, again and again. She could not tell if the tree thanked her for the grave sustenance she’d fed its roots, or offered the word as warning of things to come.
Perhaps, as was often the case with the language of trees, the word held both meanings—and more too unknowable to hear.
GAELA
THE CREAK OF the war tower was like thunder in her blood. Gaela Lear ground her teeth against too-wide a grin, feeling like a child, gleeful and alive as she played with her toys.
But these were not a child’s trinkets, they were dangerous siege weapons, marring the valley with their mechanical violence. To this eldest daughter of the king, commander of Astora’s forces, they were more than mere tools: they were her treasures.
Gaela raised her gauntleted hand in a fist, then swung it down hard. Archers clinging to the inner scaffolds of the war tower loosed arrows at the targets set atop the ruined castle wall ahead, while the men hidden at the base pushed it inexorably nearer, crushing soft green grass and stinging thistles beneath its huge wheels. Wood and taut wet wool protected the soldiers from any retaliation, or it would have, if the ruined castle were in truth alive with enemy archers and men throwing rocks and flaming spears.
When the tower landed against the ruined old wall, archers covered soldiers as they leapt out to secure it in place, so a horde of miners could then rush in and use the shelter to dig beneath the twelve-foot-thick wall, until the earth was weak enough to collapse under the weight of it.
Gaela raised her hand again, signaling the nearest block of her retainers to charge, with ladders and shields high. Their screams filled the summer air like a storm. Gaela allowed herself to smile proudly as they slammed into the ruins, climbing up and pouring over the crumbled ramparts, never flagging in their enthusiastic cries.
She gritted her teeth then, wishing this were real battle, not mere posturing and practice. At her back, a ballista was mounted to the platform of a cart, capable of swinging in any direction to aim its heavy bolts. She had six of them ready, and a half dozen more were being fitted with wheels for enhanced mobility. In addition to the fifty who charged the wall, three hundred soldiers and retainers stood in rank surrounding her, in the dark pink of the Duke Astore, their mail bright as moonlight and their bucklers polished, their swords naked and pointed at the sky like the teeth of a massive sea snake. It was an impressive force, and only a fraction of the army she’d command under the crown of Innis Lear. These men all wore her husband’s colors, but their loyalty belonged to her.
She did not turn her head toward the east, where folk from the nearest town had come to see the ruckus. That town sat across the border of Astore lands, on the Connley side, and Gaela hoped the people crouched behind rough limestone boulders and shuddering with the skinny trees of the ridge would spread tales of this afternoon. The moment Gaela was king, they should be prepared to submit to her, or face these very men and these very war machines.
She’d chosen this location not only for the nearness of Brideton and the border, but for the ruin specifically. It had been a Glennadoer castle stronghold three hundred years ago, before the island united under the Learish dynasty. The Glennadoers had promoted so much magic in their bloodline all others had joined together to defeat them. Glennadoers still lived now, but confined in the far north, and powerful in name only. Though they leaned toward Connley in loyalty, they were earls under the banner of Astora. This ruined castle symbolized the strength they’d lost, both by opposing a united island and by thinking magic could protect them.
Gaela’s smile turned scornful. Look at this beautiful valley, rough and growing lush despite the holy well capped off just to the north. It was only superstition that had sent the island folk scrambling in a panic when the king ordered all such wells closed ten years ago. When she was king, she would allow towns to open their wells again if they liked, but keep the castle wells closed except on holidays, a sign of her generosity to an easily awed populace. She did not need the rootwaters, but neither did she fear them as her father did. Neither wormwork nor star prophecy made Gaela strong: she did that all herself.
“Withdraw!” she yelled to her soldiers who’d cleared the wall, knocking down targets and hanging the Astore banner: a dark pink field with a white salmon leaping over a trio of four-point stars. “Solin, you and your men reset the tower; the rest of you form up for a melee. I want to see broken shields, and for everyone in Brideton across that hill to hear your roar!”
The soldiers cried and growled, banging their bucklers against hard leather chest pieces to cause a swell of noise. She laughed, and they jumped into action at her signal.
The broad blue sky glinted off Gaela’s chainmail hood, pulled up over the tighter linen hood that protected her twists of thick black hair from the shifting metal. Her dark brown eyes narrowed as that same sun glared off the sea of blades and bucklers turning the valley into a meadow of steel. Gaela posed for a moment at the edge of it, hands at her hips, boot heels dug into the damp earth. She was tall but not broad, though she’d spent her life encouraging muscles where few women wanted them. Her posture could have her mistaken for a man from behind, a resemblance Gaela appreciated.
Gaela had been anxious as a child about how different she looked from all the people of Innis Lear: her deep brown skin and thick black curls made her too easy to identify. Everywhere she went, she was not only the heir to the throne, the black princess, but that dreaded first daughter prophesied by the unrelenting stars to be her mother’s death. A son would not have born such a burden. But Gaela could not escape her body, her stars, or the prophecy.
When she was six years old, she’d destroyed a stack of thin songbooks imported from Aremoria. All the beautiful ladies in the songs were pale as the moon or soft as cream or sunlight on sand. Dalat and the Fool had been learning them together, a favored pastime while the king himself focused on the alliances necessary to open the docks at Port Comlack to wider trade. Gaela had told the Fool that if he did not compose a song about the queen’s dark beauty, she would gut him with his flute. So the queen and the Fool had taken Gaela and her younger sister Regan on a long walk, cataloguing all the pieces of the natural world he might put in his poem for Dalat.
The Fool was an imbecile, bringing pink flowers and bright yellow butterfly wings to little Regan, teasing her and trying to tease Gaela, too. She remembered it still, always with a scowl. Are there green undertones in your mother, do you think? Let’s compare … Dalat smiled and tilted her head to allow the young man to brush a leaf to her cheek until Regan declared a babyish yay or nay. Gaela had been more determined, more precise. She had gathered walnut bark and a deep purple flower, smooth black river rocks, gleaming acorns, a shining crow feather, and a feather mottled rich brown from an eagle’s wing. The last her mother had accepted like riches, and woven the quill into the tight knot of braids at the base of her neck. Like my grandmother’s imperial crest, Dalat smilingly declared. It stood out like a horn, or a slender, delicate wing all its own. It’s still not right, Gaela had said angrily. The Fool sang, Poetry is about perception, little princess, not accuracy. It is about what it means to compare the Queen’s dark and curving mouth to a powerful eagle’s wing. Then her mother took Gaela’s hand, spread it out against her own, and said, This is the only match that matters.
But Dalat was dead, the Fool attached like a wart to the king, and Gaela had no use for poems. Poems did not create power, and Gaela intended to be king when her terrible father died, or sooner. Nothing would stop her.
The urgency of the soldiers now thrummed in Gaela’s bones, lending satisfaction to her resolve. She wished she could march with her army to the Summer Seat, drag her father to his knees, and take the crown. How her satisfaction would grow at the sight of him bowed before her, trembling and afraid. Did my mother die on her knees? Gaela would ask. Did you touch poison to her lips with a kiss, or put it in her nightly mug of warm honeyed milk? Did you ever trust me as she trusted you? Of course, he never trusted anyone or anything except the vicious stars. And so Gaela would thrust her sword into his neck, and watch as he gasped and gargled, as he sank into an undignified pool of blood at her feet.
But no matter how she longed to take the crown in such a way, it was not the most direct, most efficient, or even most secure path. No, the people of Lear took their king-making seriously, claiming them fast and hewing hard to the anointment and the secret, specific traditions of the island’s roots. Gaela would have to bide her time, wait for the king to name her his heir, and then give the island her blood and spit on the longest night of the year. As was right.
To do it by any other method would invite Connley to challenge her—curse him, his ancestors, and his perfect stars, and curse Regan for marrying into that line and giving the dog a stronger claim. Though Gaela wanted war, wanted a chance to release all the fury and aggression inside her heart more than most anything, she did not want a war with her sister on the opposite side.
So here Gaela Lear stood, amidst her personal army, performing for the folk on Connley’s border, sending a brutal message without quite making a firm challenge.
The soldiers had formed up for the melee. With a ferocious smile, Gaela abandoned her perch and ran to join them. Her movement served as signal, and the two sides slammed together, all yelling and chaos, with some few laughing as Gaela laughed. She drew her sword and aimed for the nearest soldier; he had plenty of time to block with his buckler and sword, but the force of her charge shoved him back. She bared her teeth and twisted, shoving at him with all her might. He spun, and Gaela dove farther into the battle.
A flash of light to her left had Gaela turning hard, lifting her own buckler as she dodged under the attack and slammed the edge into her attacker’s face. It caught his helmet with a clang, and he stumbled back, falling hard. Gaela swung around, just in time to see the next attack.
She lost herself in the frenzy of danger, in the cuts and blocks, in the fight to prove herself. She kept on as the battle raged, her teeth clenched, alert, pounding again and again toward the center of the horde. Pain jolted through Gaela’s body with most blocks; she cried out; she screamed. She reveled. This was the nearest she’d come to war, to the desperation and danger: some men would die in this game, and some would be injured too badly to fight again for a long while. Their swords should be blunted, or wrapped. This should be less deadly, but Gaela did not care. She would survive, and she would win, today and tomorrow. It was not reckless. It was vital. Her husband could never understand how this brought her to life as nothing else did, how she needed the immediacy of this danger. This—this—brought her to the edge of her strength, made her feel the mettle she possessed in the very core of her bones. When she fought, Gaela knew she did not need any root blessing or star prophecy.
She was born to be king.
Suddenly, Gaela found herself in a break of soldiers, facing one man. This soldier was huge, blond-bearded with pocked scars on his young pink cheeks, and clearly he had built his uniform from castoffs that did not quite fit. His sword and buckler were borrowed from the Astore armory, and they were stamped as such. But he did not take his eyes from hers, even when she lifted her chin so the sun caught the red blood at the corner of her mouth. She smiled, and it smeared her teeth.
He planted his feet in a very strong defensive pose.
Gaela dropped her buckler and attacked.
Her two-handed grip gave her strength and leverage, which mattered as his size negated any reach advantage she’d have gained by fighting with her shield.
Blood roared in her ears, and she shouldered in past his block, nearly bashing his cheek with her pommel before he twisted and shoved her back hard enough she stumbled. With a spin from the inertia, she drove hard again, hacking at his sword, each clang of metal filling her heart with joy. He was good, using his weight, but still slower than she was. Soon they were the only fighters, all others watching the show.
It was brief but glorious, and Gaela risked a low cut up under his reach, so enthralled she was with the rhythm of their game. He blocked it, chopping with his buckler so the reinforced edge caught her upper arm, numbing the entire limb. She cried out, shocked, and dropped her sword from that hand. It swung off-balance in her other and the man pressed his advantage as she valiantly blocked again, again, and then with his boot he stomped on her thigh.
Gaela went down.
The soldier dropped everything to catch her arm, lifting her to her feet again in a smooth gesture.
He did not hold on when she was steady, and the entire movement appeared so natural, so easy, the gathered soldiers cheered.
Gaela liked a soldier who would win and still save her face. The fingers of her shield arm tingled as blood rushed back into them. Gaela sheathed her sword and rubbed her hands together, smiling for her opponent and all the soldiers. “Well fought, man. Give me your name, that I might invoke it when I speak with my husband.”
“Dig,” the large young man replied.
She lifted her thin eyebrows. “No other?”
“None, lady.”
“Then, Dig of Astora, welcome to my army.”
Just then, a horn sounded from the ridge to the west. Gaela clasped Dig’s wrist, then released him and strode heavily toward the camp. Her body ached with weariness, but she was glad of it.
Osli jogged up, chainmail ringing with the movement. The captain pushed her hair out of her face, dragging it through sweat, and said, “Lady, should I order the end of the games today, or do you want them to run the tower drill again?”
“Drill once more, then have the beer shared out here on the field before everyone returns to camp.” The princess smiled at her young captain, a girl of only nineteen with nearly as much ambition as Gaela herself. “Then you should join me for whatever news comes with this horn, and we’ll share wine while we plan tomorrow’s games. Bring that Dig soldier, and choose two more exemplary men to reward.”
Osli nodded sharply and darted off as Gaela climbed the steeper section of the hill, reaching the long flat plain on the crest where her army had set up camp. Most tents were simple single-pole shelters or lean-tos, ringed wide about fire pits. The supply wagons made a crescent at the south end, and smoke rose there as folk cooked a hearty meal. Fifty men and women and ten wagons to keep her three hundred soldiers tended and fed for this weeklong campaign. She’d ordered them to act as though the supply from Astora City had been cut off, as it might be in real war.
Her eye caught the trio of horses stamping near her tent, a much larger canvas shelter with seven poles and crowned by the Astore banner. One of the horses was her own, its head lowered and rear hoof up in relaxation, but the other two were still dressed and saddled, eagerly drinking from the trough set before them. They were Astore’s horse and one of his stewards’.
Gaela looked all around, and spied him there, a good distance from her, atop a promontory where he’d have a good view of the valley below. Likely he’d witnessed only the final moments of the melee, and now was eying her towers and bastilla.
She made for her tent to divest herself of mail and gauntlets with one of the apprentices, denying her husband the pleasure. A boy in a pink tabard waited at the entrance, and she dragged him in so he could undo the buckles under her left arm that held her small chest plate over the mail.
It was not quick work, and Astore slapped open the tent just as the heavy mail shirt finally slipped off her head and into the waiting arms of the apprentice boy.
“Get out,” Astore said fondly, filling the front of the tent. Fifteen years older than his wife, he was blond and wore it long, in a plain, straight tail. Though he was certainly not ugly, Gaela found it difficult to judge his attractiveness, as she found such things difficult with all people. He was fit and strong, a good war leader, which had brought him to her notice in the first place. He wore a trim blond beard, his light brown eyes were edged in wrinkles, and his skin was as white as hers was black. Save the pink patches from staying too long on the sunny castle ramparts with his retainers.
Gaela stripped the linen hood off her hair as he stared at her. She then went to pour them wine from the low table beside her bed. He always was struck by Gaela when she was disheveled from battle, wearing men’s trousers and a soldier’s quilted gambeson, with only a smear of dark paint around her eyes. It amused her that he strove to hide the visibility of his sexual interest as best he was able, lest it cause her to turn cold. Gaela could always see it. She knew the signs, and she pushed at them when she was feeling mean. Their marriage bed was a contentious one.
“Wife,” he said, accepting the clay cup of wine. She saw a letter with the swan of Lear waiting unopened in his other hand, and she sipped her wine in silence. Her heart still thrummed with the energy and joy of battle.
Astore moved around her to sit in the only chair, a heavy armchair rather like a throne that Gaela brought with her always. He watched her carefully as he drank nearly all his wine. She did not move, waiting. Finally, Astore said, “You’re reckless, setting your men against each other with sharp blades.”
“Those who are harmed in such games are hardly worthy of riding at my side, nor would I be worthy of the crown, to die so easily.”
His grim smile twisted. “I need you alive.”
Gaela sniffed, imagining the release she’d feel if she punched him until that smile broke. But she still needed him, too. The Star of the Consort dominated her birth chart, and to those men of Innis Lear she needed on her council and in her pocket, that meant coming to the throne with a husband. Though Gaela longed for war, she was enough of a strategist to know it was better that the island fight outward, not among themselves. For now, she used Astore, though her sister Regan would always be her true consort. “What does Lear want?”
“He wrote to both of us; to me he still refuses to allow reconstruction on the coastal road.”
“It isn’t in the stars?” she guessed, restraining the roll of her eyes.
“But it is—I commissioned a chart by my own priests. He twists his reasoning around and dismisses what seems to be obvious necessity. Possibly Connley has been whispering in his ear.”
“He hates Connley more than you, usually.” She sank onto the thick arm of the chair and leaned across Astore’s chest for the unopened letter.
Placing his arm just below her elbow in case she needed steadying, but not quite touching her, Astore did not disagree. “I might write to your little sister and ask her for a prophecy regarding the coastal road. Lear has never yet argued with one of hers.”
Gaela drank the rest of her wine and set the cup on the rug before cracking the dark blue wax of Lear’s seal.
Eldest,
Come to the Summer Seat for a Zenith Court, this third noontime after the Throne rises clear, when the moon is full. As the stars describe now, I shall set all my daughters in their places.
Your father and king,
Lear
Grimacing, Gaela dropped the message into Astore’s lap. She touched the tip of her tongue to her front teeth, running it hard against their edges. Then she bit down, stoking the anger that always accompanied her father’s name. Now it partnered with a thrill that hummed under her skin. She knew her place already: beneath the crown of Lear. But did this mean he would finally agree? Finally begin the process of her ascension?
“Is he ready to take off the crown? And will he see finally fit to hand it to you, as is right?” Astore’s hand found her knee, and Gaela stared down at it, hard and unflinching, but her husband only tightened his grip. The three silver rings on his first three fingers flashed: yellow topaz and pink sapphires set bold and bare. They matched Gaela’s thumb ring.
She methodically pried his hand off her knee and met his intense gaze. “I will be the next queen of Innis Lear, husband. Never mistake that.”
“I never have,” he replied. He lifted his hand to grasp her jaw, and Gaela fell still as glass. His fingers pressed hard, daring her to pull away. Instead she pushed nearer, daring him in return to try for a kiss.
Tension strained between them. Astore’s breath flew harsher; he wanted her, violently, and for a moment she saw in his eyes the depth of his fury, a rage usually concealed by a benevolent veneer, that his wife constantly and consistently denied his desire. Gaela did not care that he hated her as often as he loved her, but she did care that his priorities always aligned with her own.
Gaela put her hand on Astore’s throat and squeezed until he released her. She kissed him hard, then, sliding her knee onto his lap until it forced his thighs apart. Scraping her teeth on his bottom lip, she pulled back, not bothering to hide that the only desire she felt now was to wash off the taint of his longing.
“My queen,” the duke of Astore said.
Gaela Lear smiled at his surrender.
THE FOX
BAN THE FOX arrived at the Summer Seat of Innis Lear for the first time in six years just as he’d left it. Alone.
The sea crashed far below at the base of the cliffs, rough and growling with a hunger Ban had always understood. From this vantage, facing the castle from the sloping village road, he couldn’t see the white-capped waves, just the distant stretch of sky-kissed green water toward the western horizon. The Summer Seat perched on a promontory nearly cut off from the rest of Innis Lear, its own island of black stone and clinging weeds connected only by a narrow bridge of land, one that seemed too delicate to take a man safely across. Ban recalled racing over it as a boy, unconcerned with the nauseating death drop to either side, trusting his own steps and the precariously hammered wooden rail. Here, at the landside, a post stone had been dug into the field and in the language of trees it read: The stars watch your steps.
Ban’s mouth curled into a bitter smile. He placed his first step firmly on the bridge, boots crushing some early seeds and late summer flower petals blown here by the vibrant wind. He crossed, his gloved hand sliding along the oiled-smooth rail.
The wind’s whisperings were rough and harsh, difficult for Ban to tease into words. He needed more practice with the dialect, a turn of the moon to bury himself in the moors and remind himself how the trees spoke here, but he’d only arrived back on Innis Lear two days ago. Ban had made his way to Errigal Keep to find his father gone, summoned here to the Summer Seat, and his brother, Rory, away, settled with the king’s retainers at Dondubhan. After food and a bath, he’d had a horse saddled from his father’s stable. To arrive in time for the Zenith Court, Ban hadn’t had the luxury to ride slowly and reacquaint himself with the stones and roots of Innis Lear, nor they with his blood. The horse was now stabled behind him in Sunton, for horses were not allowed to make the passage on this ancient bridge to the Summer Seat.
At the far end, two soldiers waited with unsharpened halberds. They could use the long axes to nudge any newcomer off the bridge if they chose. When Ban was within five paces, one of them pushed his helmet up off his forehead enough to reveal dark eyes and a straight nose. “Your name, stranger?”
Ban gripped the rail and resisted the urge to settle his right fist on the pommel of the sword sheathed at his belt. “Ban Errigal,” he returned, hating that his access would be determined by his family name, not his deeds.
The soldiers waved him through, stepping back from the brick landing that spread welcomingly off the bridge.
A blast of wind shoved Ban forward, and he nearly stumbled. Using the motion to turn, he asked the guard, “Do you know where I might find the Earl Errigal?”
“In the guest tower.”
Ban nodded his thanks, glancing at the scathing sun. He did not relish this meeting with his father. Errigal traveled to Aremoria every late spring to visit the Alsax cousins and to be Lear’s ambassador. He’d always lavished praise on Ban in front of others, awkwardly labeling his son a bastard at the same time.
Perhaps Ban could eschew the proper order of greeting, and ask instead where the ladies Lear would be this time of day. Six years ago he’d have found Elia with the goats. But it was impossible to imagine she hadn’t shifted her routine since childhood. He had changed; so must she have. Grown tall and bright as a daffodil, or worn and weathered like standing stones.
Ban squashed the thought of her hair and eyes, of her hands covered in green beetles. He suspected most of his memories were sweetened by time and brightened with longing, not accurate to what their relationship had truly been. She, the daughter of the king, and he, the bastard son of an earl, could not have been so close as he remembered. Probably the struggle and weariness of being fostered to a foreign army, the homesickness, the dread, the years of uncertainty, had built her into a shining memory no real girl could live up to. Especially one raised by a man like Lear. In his earliest years at war, Ban had thought of Elia to get himself through fear, but it had been a weakness, like the straw doll a baby clings to against nightmares.
Surely she would disdain him now because of the stars at his birth, just as the king had. If she remembered him at all. One more thing to lay at the feet of Lear.
Ban settled his hand on the pommel of his sword. He’d earned himself his own singular epithet. He was here at the Summer Seat not as a cast-off bastard, but as a man in his own right.
Turning a slow circle, Ban made himself change his eyes, to observe the Seat as the Fox.
Men, women, soldiers, and ladies swarmed in what he guessed was an unusual amount of activity. The castle itself was a fortress of rough black stones quarried centuries ago, when the bridge was less crumbled, less tenuous. It rose in a barbican here, spreading into the first wall, then an inner second wall taller than this first, with three central towers, one built against the inner keep. The king’s family and his retainers could fit inside for weeks, as well as his servants and the animals necessary to live: goats, pigs, poultry. Barracks, laundry, cliff-hanging privies, the yard, the armory, and the towers: Ban remembered it all from childhood. But it was ugly, old and black and asymmetrical. Built over generations instead of with a singular purpose in mind.
The Fox was impressed with how naturally fortified the promontory was, how difficult it would be to attack. But as he studied his environs, the Fox knew it would be easy to starve out. Surround it landside with an enemy camp, and seaside with boats, and it could be held under siege indefinitely with no more than, say, fifty men.
If one could locate the ancient channel through which spring water flowed onto the promontory, the siege would be mercifully brief. Were he the king of this castle, he’d order a fort built landside, to protect the approach, and use the promontory as a final stand only once all other hope had been lost.
Unless, perhaps, there were caves or unseen ways from the cliffs below where food could be brought in—and there must be. But an enemy could poison the water in the channel, instead of stopping it up. The besieged could not drink seawater. Was there a well inside? Not that Ban could recall from his youth, and it was surely less likely now. This place was a siege death trap, though winning such a battle would be symbolic only: if the Seat were under siege, the rest of the kingdom should already have fallen, and so what would the Seat be against all that?
Ban felt a twisted thrill at the idea of the king of Innis Lear having to make such choices. Better yet if his course here led directly to it.
He went along the main path through the open iron gates and into the inner yard where soldiers clustered and the squawking of chickens warred with hearty conversation, with the cries of gulls hunting for dropped food, the crackle of the yard-hearth where a slew of bakers and maids prepared a feast for the evening. Ban’s stomach reacted to the rich smell, but he didn’t stop. He strode quickly toward the inner keep, one hand on the pommel of his sword to balance it against his hip. Ban wondered if he could greet his father (he was fairly certain he remembered which was the guest tower) and then find a place to wash, in order to present himself in a fitter state than this: hair tangled from wind, horse-smelling jacket, worn britches, and muddy boots. He’d dumped his mail and armor in Errigal to make a faster showing astride the horse.
A familiar orange flag caught his attention: the royal insignia of Aremoria.
There was a good king. The sort of soldier who took his turn watching for signal lights all night long, digging his own privy pits and rotting his toes off. Who had suffered alongside his men and took his turn in the slops and at the dangerous front. Morimaros of Aremoria did not make choices based on nothing but prophecy.
Across the yard a maroon pennant flapped: the flag of the kingdom of Burgun. Ullo the Pretty. Also come to court Elia Lear, despite, or maybe because of, being trounced in battle.
Ban wondered what she thought of the two kings.
Beyond the second wall, the smell of people, sweat, and animals was crushing. The lower walls had no slits or windows, nothing to move air, and Ban longed to climb onto the parapets, or into the upper rooms built with cross-breezes in mind, because this was where court spent the months warm enough for it. From the parapets he’d be able to see the island’s trees, at least, if not hear them: the moss and skinny vines growing on this rock had not the will for speaking. Ban made for a stairway cut along the outside of the first, only to freeze at the base when his father appeared in the dark archway above.
Ban waited to be noticed.
Errigal had long mottled blond and brown hair, a rough dark beard, and the face of a handsome bull he used to his full advantage. His thick braids were wound with dark ribbons, and a fresh-looking blue tunic pulled across wide shoulders that his older son had not inherited. The earl’s boots were polished, his trousers new, his belt buckle dangling with carved bone and amber beads. Errigal stomped down the steps, a smile pulling at his teeth as he spoke to his companion, an almost-familiar man, also wearing the beaten copper chain of a Learish earl.
The other man was speaking, soft but clear, as they drew near. “He has always loved Astore rather more than Connley.” A worn, knowing fatigue had settled in the lines about the man’s clear-shaven mouth, though he was not old, yet. His black hair curled tight and short-cut, and his eyes were gray as river rocks against dark brown skin. That recalled his name to Ban: Kayo, the Oak Earl, whose family had been related to the late queen.
“So it always seemed, and rightly so in Connley’s father’s time,” Errigal agreed, coming to ground level with Ban. “But his growing unpredictability this last year has made it rather impossible to tell which he’ll prefer in dividing out his land when he finally names his heir. There is much to favor Connley and Regan now. Including my iron.”
Though the matter of their talk intrigued Ban, he kept his face neutral with the ease of years’ practice hiding thoughts.
Errigal clapped a heavy hand on Ban’s shoulder. “Son,” he said warmly, and Ban was relieved.
His companion lifted thin eyebrows. “This lad cannot be your son, too? He’s nothing like his brother.”
“Indeed!” Errigal said, shrugging and offering a conspiratorial smile. “This one was got in such a way I blushed to admit it in the past, but I’ve grown used to it by now. You know my legitimate son, Rory, just younger, born truly of my house and stars. But this one, Ban, has no less iron Errigal blood in his veins. Have you heard the name of the Oak Earl, Ban?”
“Yes, my lord,” Ban said quietly, familiar with his father’s abrupt conversational shifts.
“Well then, look on him as a friend.” Errigal grinned, turning his body and clasping his other hand upon Kayo, forming himself into a bridge between them.
“I shall, Father,” Ban murmured, turning his own eyes back to the Oak Earl. They had met before, a long time ago. In the White Forest, high to the north, before Ban’s mother had shooed him away.
“I’m glad to see you again, Ban,” Kayo said, offering his arm. Ban stripped off his glove quickly and took Kayo’s bare hand. Kayo continued, “I’d like to hear more about the exploits of the Fox of Aremoria.”
“That I can do, my lord,” Ban said, letting a smile of pride creep over his face. The Oak Earl had heard of him. Not as the bastard, but as the Fox.
“The Fox of Lear,” Errigal protested.
In their youth, Ban had once bested Rory and all the other boys their age at a racing contest, because Ban dared to leap across a neck-breaking gully instead of scrambling down and up again. The king of Innis Lear had tossed the prize of woven flowers at him as Errigal had said, “So much more willing to risk his life for the win than the others,” as if he approved. It was heard by Lear, who scoffed and said Ban’s life was worth less than the other boys’, so he should of course be more willing to risk it.
Ban opened his eyes and jerked off his other glove. His father was weak for never standing up to Lear on his own son’s behalf, but the king was the true enemy.
Unwilling to retreat, and thinking of how best to play the fox in this squalid henhouse, Ban slid his gaze toward the inner keep again. “Why are the kings of Aremoria and Burgun here?”
“Vying for Elia’s dowry,” Kayo said, leaning his shoulder against the black stone wall. “Though not so much for herself, it seems to me.”
Errigal barked a laugh. “So it should be, for a third daughter.”
Ban had heard as much from Morimaros weeks ago, but standing here now, so near her, the thought of her being wed made his tongue go dry. He had no right to care on her behalf.
“It will all be done tomorrow,” Kayo told him. “At the Zenith Court. Lear will choose between Aremoria and Burgun.”
“Tomorrow,” Ban said, too hushed to sound uncaring. His father didn’t notice, instead studying a party of soldiers and ladies in bright wool hurrying around behind them toward the third tower. But Kayo heard Ban’s echo, and peered at him.
“Six years it’s been since you saw her?” Kayo prodded gently.
Ban nodded.
“Come on,” Errigal said, clapping both their shoulders again. “I want a word with Bracoch, to see the lay of alliance and whether he’ll stand with Connley.”
The Oak Earl nodded, but because Ban had been looking, he saw dislike move swiftly through Kayo’s eyes. Interesting.
“You clean yourself up and join us, my boy,” his father ordered Ban. “We’ve rooms up there, can’t miss the Errigal banner. Be at dinner in the hall, too, if you want to see the princess before she’s a wife. This one,” he said to Kayo, “used to trail behind Elia, all devotion and round eyes. Now I remember it, the king even called him her dog—a tamer sort of fox he used to be, I guess!” Errigal laughed at his own joke.
“Not tame anymore, Father,” Ban said.
“Ha! So like your mother! Stars, I miss her.”
It was on his tongue to remind his father that his mother was easily found, but curse him if Ban would aim Errigal back in her direction.
“Farewell for now, Ban the Fox,” Kayo said gently, as if he knew the storm brewing inside Ban’s chest.
Clenching his fist, Ban closed his eyes and withdrew. It was appalling how easily his father set his teeth on edge, made him want to scrub his face and strip the black from his hair, be as gold-speckled as Rory. But it wouldn’t have mattered: the king, and therefore Errigal, cared only for birth stars and the orders of privilege that came with title and marriage. Ban could have been more handsome and sandy and gilded than Rory, and they would still have scorned him. One truth Ban had always understood about his father: Errigal swung to the winning side, or the loudest side, or the most passionate side, but he was rarely static. As a child Ban had struggled to follow him, to stand next to him, and win some approval. It took years in Aremoria to realize he and his father stood opposite each other across a dark and vicious chasm called legitimacy, and nothing would bridge the gap.
A figure half the yard away caught his attention.
It was her.
Elia Lear, slipping quietly along the inside of the curtain wall, toward the royal tower. She wore the dull regalia of a star priest, gray skirts snapping around her ankles, and worn boots caked with mud. She kept her chin tucked down and her hood held low, as if avoiding attention, but a warm band tightened around his chest. It was her.
She was small, though she had to be twenty, as Ban was. As he stared, her hood slipped back in a gust of wind and her hair fell free in spiral curls, dark brown and copper, shining as if spun from the very metal itself. She gathered it in her hand and tugged the hood back up. Even from this distance her eyes were wide, bright, and black as polished horn beads.
He knew he stood like a dullard, or like useless statuary, and when she did glance his way, her eyes passed over him on their way to the tower. No more than he expected, for though she had grown only more lovely, Ban knew he was harder and sharper than the mischievous slip of a child he’d been. She’d never seen him with a sword before, or with his hair so short and greased, spiked with a few tiny braids. Why would she remember Errigal’s bastard at all, or if she did, give him a second glance?
This sulking was not why he was here.
Ban gritted his teeth and turned away.
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