Reign Queen

by L. Darby Gibbs

  “I do regret it,” Russal said.

  “Why didn’t you take it back?” Felip demanded.

  “Because it needed to be on Kambry’s hand,” Sybil said. “You think actions don’t carry multiple repercussions. Some dangerous yet still necessary? I told the king to put the ring on her hand.”

  “What?” Kambry gaped at Sybil. “It surprised you to see it on my hand when we first met.”

  “Prince Russal had refused to follow my advice when we discussed it.”

  Russal tugged at Kambry’s hand beneath the table. “I thought it over and realized it had merit.”

  “It changed everything,” said Sybil. “For the first time, the future gained a positive note. Kambry made Kavin strong, made it come back to life.”

  This meeting wasn’t going anywhere Kambry had expected. “Fine. The ring got on my hand and brought about all sorts of new challenges. Let’s move along.”

  Russal reached into his chest pocket and set the spare Kavin ring on the table between him and Felip.

  Kambry couldn’t see Burty, but Sybil’s, Felip’s and her own gaze riveted on the ring. What was Russal doing?

  He looked at Kambry. “We talked about amending our relationship with the Neck Kingdom. You suggested an ambassador.”

  Kambry nodded, gazing from the ring back to Russal. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Felip Covey should be the ambassador to Froneck.”

  Felip looked as flabbergasted as Kambry felt, but the idea felt right. He had all the skills and was uncle to Kavin’s king. Froneck would view the gesture as a valid attempt to form a new alliance. “What about this ring?”

  “With the help of Kavin, I have altered its root purpose. It will give Felip greater access to moving about Kavin, but it can’t be used to take over our realm.”

  Felip sat blinking. “You want to make me an ambassador after I tried to undermine your kingship and take over Kavin rule?”

  “You protected its queen. You stopped the coup your mother planned and its countercoup that Sarena thought to put into action. You know Kavin as well as I do. You have met the leaders in all three of Kavin Wood’s other kingdoms. You have the skill. What I need to know now is do I have your loyalty?”

  “How could you even trust me?” Felip said, though he sat up and looked the part of ambassador already.

  Russal shook his head. “You still think me the boy you had to teach to be king. I do what is best for the realm. Even if I couldn’t stand the sight of you, if I thought you would benefit Kavin, I would accept you. I do accept you. Marshal Burtram?”

  “It is a risk, but I think it a worthy one.”

  “Sybil, what do you see?”

  “I don’t see things.”

  Kambry glared at Sybil.

  The woman sighed. “I perceive strength in Kavin’s future.”

  “Kambry, my queen. What do you say about Felip Covey being ambassador to Froneck?”

  Kambry looked at Felip. There appeared to be hope in his eyes. They pleaded for her agreement. He had saved her. She could save him in more ways than just from the gallows. “Ambassador Covey, do you accept the position and all the required loyalty, demands and dangers that come with it?”

  Russal smiled.

  Did she just sound like a queen? She smiled back.

  “Since you asked, it is impossible for me to refuse.” The mischievous glint she recognized as true Felip gleamed in his eye. He was likely to charm Froneck into a treaty rather than negotiate them into one.

  Russal tapped the ring. “Put this on your left index finger.”

  The glint in his eyes dampened. Felip reached across the table and took the ring, sliding it onto his finger with noticeable trepidation. His gaze rose to include both Russal and Kambry. After a moment, his face paled. “Kavin is a demanding taskmaster.”

  “Indeed,” Kambry and Russal said in chorus.

  ~~~~~~~

  Kambry set the gold sharpener down on her desktop and leaned in to continue her sketch. Russal’s soft steps behind her brought a smile to her face. “Don’t even think about it,” she murmured.

  A hand slid aside the fall of hair across her shoulder, and warm lips pressed her skin, adding heat where the first cool breath of the evening air had touched her exposed neck.

  She set down the wrapped lead and turned in her seat. “You just had to do it.”

  Russal dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around her hips, resting his head in her lap. He breathed deep, and she caressed the edge of his scalp behind his ear.

  “Russal, I’m working.”

  “Come back to bed.”

  She ran her fingers across his bare arm, over his shoulder and down the skin of his back. “I will if you answer a question.”

  “Ask me anything.”

  “What happened to the fox?”

  “What fox?” he said into the satin of her robe.

  “In The Garden of Fellowship. What happens to the fox? Does he destroy the fellowship or join it?” She played her fingers over the muscles of his back, and he shivered.

  “I can’t think.”

  “But you must or I won’t come back to bed.”

  He sat down on the floor, tugged his trousers loose at his knees and sat cross-legged, looking up at her. He ran a finger around her ankle, sending shivers up her leg. “What happened? A little of both. He separates them with lies, drawing them first one way then another as they chase him about the garden. Then one day he finds the doe alone in the forest. He has to choose. Does he lie and lead her deeper away from the garden, or does he guide her back home?”

  “What does he choose?”

  Russal’s fingers ran down the top of her foot. “He takes her the long way through the forest, telling her a story about a fox and two kits. She cries for the unhappy kits. The fox leads her to two paths, both heading straight but also away from each other. He tells the doe she must choose him as her companion or the black panther.”

  “What does the doe decide?”

  “She refuses to make a choice and asks the fox why she can’t have them both in her fellowship. He takes her down one path that grows very dark and frightening. But it leads back to the garden. When she steps out of the woods, he remains behind at the edge.”

  “He won’t enter the garden?”

  “The panther is there waiting, and the fox is fearful and sad.”

  “How does it end?”

  “That is how it ends. The fox at the edge of the woods, the doe waiting for him to come out and the panther looking at the doe or maybe he’s looking at the fox. It is not clear which is the case.”

  “Who wrote the book? It doesn’t show an author or a scribe’s mark.”

  “It was a gift to my mother from her sybil.”

  “But who wrote it?”

  “I don’t know. I always thought the sybil did. Our mother never said. She once said it was to teach us how hard choices are. But the panther never had to choose. His way was always clear. The rabbit never had to choose. Only the fox and the doe.”

  “But you know who the fox is, don’t you?”

  Russal stared up at her, his brow furrowed.

  “You’re the panther. Amily is the rabbit, Tomo the donkey. I’m the doe. The red fox, the liar and the cheat who had to make a choice?”

  “My mother’s sybil knew what lay ahead.” Russal stood and walked to the doors to the balcony. “That book, we read that book every night for weeks; Mother read the book to Amily and me. We nearly wore it out, touching the pictures, memorizing the words. I haven’t read it since I was twelve. It made me too sad. It made me think of our mother.” He faced Kambry. “It was us, our journey to fellowship and forgiveness.”

  “We didn’t leave him on the edge of the woods, Russal. We had two roads, and we chose the one that brought him home even though it was dark and frightening.”

  “You read the book. You wanted me to think about it.” He drew her up to stand in his arms. “Queen of my heart, you built
us a fellowship. You made the garden, the kingdom of Kavin, whole again.”

  She kissed him. “Come back to bed with me, Russal.”

  “I don’t know. Are you going to ask more questions?”

  “Maybe later.” She held out her hand, and he took it, their rings overlapping.

  Epilogue

  Kambry strode down the path, Kavin magic infusing her every muscle and bone. The trees rustled and shifted as the path formed ahead of her and closed up behind. Her course ran along the edge of the inner Kavin realm. If she wished, she could see between the trees the outer wall running round the castle high on its stone promontory.

  She swung her arms in time with her long strides, her skirt flowing like water around her limbs. Kavin magic gave life to the vision in her mind as she took her first turn around the land that had taken her to its heart. She didn’t just hear the sounds of the woods around her or smell the blooms of the trailing proilis up the limbs of the stately oaks. They bloomed inside of her, filled her lungs. She was the Kavin Woods and it her.

  Every step brought her closer to home. She had already passed through Kavinton at the start of her trek that morning. It was past noon, and she was more than halfway around. By evening she would stride up the causeway and stand in the outer bailey, Kavin without and Kavin within, reigning queen.

  Russal had taken the opposite route around the realm. They intended to meet in the market center of Kavinton. The thought lengthened her stride, but she pulled back, slowing to a sedate pace until she stood before an ancient oak, the trunk nearly lost to the layers of proilis that climbed its girth up past the first branching of its limbs.

  She pressed her hands among the vines. They entwined through her fingers, and she gazed into Kavin until she found Russal whistling a tune as off-key as his writing lacked finesse. He paused, turned and gazed as if he could see her. His lips mouthed her name, and she heard it on the breeze.

  “Hello, my king,” she answered.

  His grin widened. “I’ll race you.”

  Kambry called to Kavin and ran, the path stretching out before her, her skirt rippling out behind. Branches jerked aside, flowers curtsied as if breezes ran through them, bending their heads down like modest ladies. Merriment bubbled from her, and in the air she could hear Russal’s echoing shout of laughter and glee.

  ###

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  Excerpt from The Dragon Question

  The carriage had moved along smoothly for hours, its runners hissing over the dry snow. That was a relief to Researcher Shennon Trelor after spending two days by a blocked mountain pass, and she was weary of the journey which had lasted three days longer than the week it normally took, not that she had ever been to High Cadore before. But a government researcher was accustomed to planning agendas and expecting everything to go according to plan.

  Shennon rubbed her gloved hands together to warm them up.

  For the thousandth time, please let Father be as delayed as I am.

  This was Shennon’s first job outside the city of Pries, capital of Shlognar, and arriving three days later than expected for a difficult mediation between two disputing kingdoms had her rattled and short of patience. She forced her hands down into her blanket-covered lap. Nothing had changed since she last peeked around the quilted shade covering the window and pretending to keep the heat inside. Shennon shifted in her seat in frustration. Surely it had been more than an hour since the driver had informed her of their imminent entrance into the Dragon King’s fortress.

  From outside the carriage, she heard the deep, “Ho, now boys,” of the driver slowing the team down.

  “Finally,” she huffed and slid along the padded seat to the carriage door, her gloved hands fumbling, and unwound the tie from the metal button that kept the shade down and hardly any of the cold out. The glass window was coated with frost, the foggy center giving a distorted view that was just enough for her to confirm that they were entering the barbican of the outer wall of High Cadore. The thick stone wall left her in momentary darkness as the carriage passed through the twenty feet of masonry.

  “At last!” Shennon grabbed her satchel, straightened her woven hat, and sat primly beside the door, her shoulder pressed tightly against it, anticipating it would take effort from within as well as without to break the ice which crusted the door seam. She peered out the foggy center of the window hoping to see a servant reaching for the handle. There was so much she needed to do before the arbitrator and the rest of his assistants arrived, and she did not want to let him down. Though she was recognized as one of the most reliable of the researchers, one aspect of her employment had kept her out of being among those considered to assist the mediator: she was his daughter. It had taken months of constant negotiation with her father, Arbitrator Joss Trelor, to convince him she was the researcher that would best meet his needs at the delicate negotiations. She had met every deadline and taken on every research task, no matter how onerous or piddling to prove herself. He had relented, admitting later he’d hoped she would rise to the occasion, but he’d needed no one to believe he chose her for any other reason than her skill in research.

  She’d left Pries a week in advance of the mediation team to give her time to familiarize herself with the famous archives of High Cadore and track down the origination of the dispute. Three days behind in her work, she would have to keep long hours to make up for it if her father’s travels had been smoother. Shennon shifted her skirts until they draped evenly and would not inhibit her exit from the carriage and pressed her shoulder to the door. With any luck, her father had been held up as well by the unexpected snowstorm, made worse by the elevation of High Cadore. At home in Shlognar, the spring plantings were well advanced, but in the mountains of the Cadore Range, winter had yet to let go of its chill grip.

  The door popped open beside her with a resounding crack, and she dropped out of the carriage as the missing support left her leaning in mid-air. The churned-up snow and dirt of the outer bailey filled her view as she threw out her arms to catch herself. Her fall was arrested by a wealth of hands and arms that caught her and promptly flipped her to a standing position and deposited her on her feet before she had time to gasp. Shennon stood still and gazed about. No fewer than three guards were straightening up from their effort to save her from the embarrassment of landing
in the grime of a busy entrance while a liveried servant in navy gawked, his hand still grasping the handle of the door.

  “Sorry, Miss,” the servant said, his Adam’s apple rising and falling as he gulped in chagrin and embarrassment increased his already cold-induced ruddiness. Foggy billows escaped from his mouth.

  Similar vapor poured from her own lips as Shennon exhaled. She could almost hear her nose hairs crackle as she spoke.

  “I seem to have escaped harm,” she said, smoothing her skirts and gathering her dangling satchel. “So don’t worry yourself. My excitement at arriving was my own undoing.” Shennon pulled the strap of her satchel back over her shoulder, pleased it was the only thing displaced by the somersault she nearly took. “I would like to go within and begin at once.” She turned to the guards and prepared to introduce herself, taking in at a glance the porter who stood off to the side staring up at the two large trunks she had brought with her as if he thought they were much too heavy for him to bear. She gave the two trunks mounted at the back of the carriage a glance and raised an eyebrow at him. They were no bigger than average.

  “You’ve brought two trunks,” he said.

  “I came prepared as I will be here for a while,” Shennon said.

  “Confident chit,” said a guard under his breath. The guard beside him snorted.

  Shennon awarded the two with a stern gray eye. She knew she was young for the average researcher on a negotiation team, but being in a family of arbitrators got her started early in her professional career. “The war between Shalla and Welsel has been running for two centuries. How long did you think negotiations would take to bring their dispute to a close?”

  “Do you liken your visit to a negotiation? I suppose that’s one way to look at it,” remarked the guard who’d snorted.