* * *
The queen thanked the troubadour, who bowed and retreated to his table, applauded by many claps on the back. The room broke out into excited chatter about how poignant the song was and didn’t the queen have a lovely voice and who knew a fearsome raider could play a fife and a hundred other exclamations that allowed the guests to move out of their trances and back into the evening’s reality.
Cerúlia took one step to return to her table and then halted because Thalen had set down the fife and reached out to touch her from behind. With a hand on her upper arm he turned her around to face him rather than the hall filled with friends, relatives, and guests.
“I lost you once. I could not survive losing you again,” he said. “Don’t go away.”
“I haven’t moved,” she said, her eyes searching his face.
“I lost you in Oromondo before—before I could tell you.” His words came out in a jumbled rush. “I must tell you. Right now. How much I care for you.”
Behind them the musicians struck up a livelier tune that covered up their private conversation. Dimly the two were conscious that quite a few guests had scraped back their chairs to rise and dance again.
“Who do you care for?” she asked.
“Whoever you are. You could be a changeling and I’d love that.”
“I have already played many roles, and there are others I have yet to assume.” Her eyes flicked over her green vine bracelet. “I will always be changing, growing.”
Thalen asked, “Do you care for anyone else?”
“I care for many people,” Cerúlia said tartly, “but I have never ached for another man the way I ache for you. You’ll never find again, under Saulė’s sun, someone who feels about you the way I do.”
She looked down a moment, fingering his silk shirt cuff. “I’ve always loved you, Thalen. From the first moment I saw you in Ink Creek Canyon, when the drops of water trickled down your neck.” With two fingers she traced the movement on her own neck. “And when I saw—well, you don’t really see a mind, but I felt it, I sensed it.”
“Don’t marry the Filio of Rortherrod,” he said, his hand on her arm tightening.
“No, I cannot marry him.” She shook her head and continued. “For most of my life I have had to hide my Talents. I cannot wed a man who would have me be less than I am. Not Rortherrod, nor any man who needs me to be less so he can be more.”
Thalen said, “I bring you nothing: no kingdoms, no riches, no magic. But I don’t need that; I don’t want that. All I have to offer is my love, but that love has no limits and imposes none on you.”
She searched his face and his eyes. Then she smiled at him—a small smile that grew into the full glow that Thalen had long dreamed of having directed just at him.
Thalen grabbed her with one hand on each side above her waist and lifted her high up into the air, up above his head. She bent to look down at him, her long blue hair making a curtain covering both their faces, her gown and train falling over him, as if she were water and he stood in a waterfall.
Then he slowly lowered her down inch by inch, her body pressed tight against his, her silk gown catching momentarily on his eagle pin, until her face was level with his. Their eyes locked. She entwined her arms around his neck; still holding her off the ground he moved one arm around her waist and another against her back.
Then, they leaned their faces in for the briefest touching of lips.
All conversation in the Great Ballroom had faltered when the commander lifted the queen into the air, and when they embraced the shocked musicians broke off in jarring disarray in the middle of a phrase, but Cerúlia and Thalen heard nothing but a private, sweet melody that lingered in the air around them.
The melody might have been “The Lay of Queen Ciella,” but who can say?
46
Cerúlia pulled her face away and whispered to Thalen, “You need to put me down now.”
As if setting down a piece of porcelain, Thalen put her down on her feet, though he kept his arm wrapped around her waist. Cerúlia was glad it was there, because she felt so drunk she almost swayed on her feet. She turned around to face the hundreds of shocked guests, at a total loss as to how to handle the situation.
Thank the Waters, Percia saved the day. She jumped back on the chair she’d been using to call the Fountain Reel and shouted, “That was just the greatest display of bravery any of us have ever seen! Hooray for Commander Thalen and Queen Cerúlia!”
A pandemonium of cheers, clapping, foot stamping, and loud whistles shook the ballroom. As the noise started to dissipate, Percia mimed violin playing to the musicians and they commenced a loud and lively version of “The Mill Wheel Polka.” Percia grabbed Marcot and set off at a fast gallop, as if only wild dancing could capture the room’s overflowing emotions. Other couples joined in, trying to weave around the tables, laughing and shouting as more than a few chairs turned over and dishware shattered.
Cerúlia looked up at Thalen. “Can you polka?” she asked.
“Once I read a book about international dance customs,” he answered, and biting his lip in concentration, he managed to twirl with her in a circuit of the room. On the third circuit, she nodded toward a door, and they polkaed out of the room into the hallway usually referred to as the Candelabra Corridor.
Behind them the music and gaiety of the party continued unabated; if their absence had been noticed, the guests had politely decided to ignore it. Cerúlia took Thalen’s arm, and he matched his long stride to her shorter step. They were followed discreetly by two of the Queen’s Shield and more ostentatiously by the canine corps. Whaki and Cici darted in front of them and then looked back, tails wagging and faces expectant, to check that they’d anticipated the walkers’ pathway.
“Is there someplace we can talk?” Thalen asked.
“Three hundred and fifty-two rooms.” She gestured with both hands at the capacious building surrounding them. “Though seven are under construction.” She shuffled through options in her mind as they walked: her closet felt too small, her Reception Room too large, a salon too formal. Prattling like a nervous guide as they passed historic art objects and salons, Cerúlia led him to a room that spoke of her life before, and where she thought he might feel comfortable: her old lesson chamber.
The dogs invited themselves inside with the couple, while the shields stationed themselves outside. Discovering that the cold of an autumn night had penetrated the unoccupied room, Thalen immediately set about lighting the fire that lay prepared in the hearth, while Cerúlia walked about igniting the lanterns. The bloom of light revealed books, maps, tables, and stools patiently waiting for Tilim and Ryton to resume their work after the disruption of this festival.
The queen perched herself on Ryton’s stool, shivering a little, toying with a stoppered ink bottle, while Thalen leaned against the chimney stone; the dogs finished their nosing around and gathered close to the radiating warmth.
“Aren’t you cold?” Thalen asked, breaking the silence between them. “Come near the fire.”
“Out of all my hundreds of choices, I may have selected poorly,” she admitted. “This was my schoolroom; I see it still has no comfortable chairs, only stools to make inattentive pupils pay attention.”
For the first time, Thalen broke out of his thoughts to glance about and survey his surroundings, a small smile starting as his eyes took in books and maps.
“This is where I learned my letters and geography,” Cerúlia explained.
“This is where you were a little girl?”
“Yes. Willful and saucy. I’m afraid I plagued my tutor a great deal.”
Thalen’s smile broadened.
“You’re cold.” He nodded at the floor in front of the hearth. “We’ve sat on the ground before. Unless you don’t want to risk your gown.…”
To prove to him that she wasn’t fussy about her finery (though actually she now treasured this outfit above all her possessions combined), she joined him in front of the fireplace and
settled herself between Whaki and a deerhound. Thalen sat beside her and crossed his long legs; Cici took advantage of his posture to claim his lap.
“So?” she asked, watching the firelight illuminate the bones of his face, which looked more grim than she remembered.
“I’m trying to adjust to having you beside me,” he said. “And there’s so much to say, so much to ask, I hardly know where to begin. My thoughts are all tangled up.”
“Begin anywhere.”
“Tell me again how you disappeared from the moat in Femturan. A turtle? This is just too incredible to countenance.”
So Cerúlia told him about how Lautan’s creatures had rescued her, while Thalen listened without interrupting, staring into her face or into the fire with a contemplative expression, as if his worldview were being shaken to its core at this tale of a Spirit’s deliberate interference in human affairs.
Relating the story made Cerúlia reexperience the pain and fear she had undergone during this journey. Gradually she realized that Whaki had begun prodding her left arm with his black nose and uttering little whines.
She could not change the past, but she had the power to make the two of them more comfortable tonight in the lesson chamber. Abruptly, she interrupted herself, rose, and crossed to the doorway.
“Ah, Shield Gatana. Please send a footman. We desire mulled wine; and have him fetch one of my winter cloaks.”
“Right away, Your Majesty,” said the shield.
When she closed the door she saw that Thalen had also risen to his feet.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I see now that that was selfish. I needed to know; I needed to understand how it is that you lived. I’ve tortured myself endlessly.”
Cerúlia stretched her back a little; it had begun to stiffen at the memory of the pain she had endured.
Noticing, Thalen asked, “Why didn’t you ask them for a cushioned chair? You are the queen. A footman could fetch you one—if you tell me where to search, I’ll fetch you one.” He looked ready to spring the length of the palace for her comfort.
She made a circuit of the room, further loosening the cramps in her muscles; then she came back to stand in front of the flames next to Thalen.
“I’d rather sit around the fire next to you, as we did before in Oromondo.”
He threw another log on the fire, then stood leaning against the mantel, his head dipped between his outstretched, bracing arms.
“Is there anything else that you’ve been torturing yourself about?” she asked him, reading his mind from the stiffness of his arms.
“Skylark—no, Cerúlia—I need to know how you came to be captured that night. Why didn’t you retreat to the rally point? Why weren’t you ahead of us, as I thought you’d be?”
She almost laughed. “Do you actually mean, Commander, why did I disobey your direct order and let the Oros take me like a lackwit?”
When he didn’t respond, an insight struck her. “You’ve been angry at me all this time.”
“Furious,” he said to the fire shadows flickering on the floor beneath him. “It’s eaten at me. And now that I know just how badly you were injured—how much you suffered—I’m even angrier.” He kept his voice soft and polite, but he couldn’t look at her. “This is what has churned over and over in my head: ‘She was not supposed to engage in the battle. Skylark, of all the Raiders, should have escaped to the rally point. Why did she put herself in peril?’”
Another silence fell between them, the only noise a log shifting as it burned. Vaki whimpered in his sleep, while Cici vigorously scratched her neck.
Cerúlia had pondered several responses during this moment; the one that escaped her lips was not the most charitable. “I suppose,” she said, “the underlying cause lies in the fact that I am a Nargis Queen, and on occasion, for good or ill, I allow my own judgment to dictate my actions, rather than blindly following orders, even from you.”
Thalen’s shoulders shrank from her blow. The room had grown tolerably warm in the hour or so they had been conversing; she moved to increase the distance between them, choosing to lean her hips against the map table, taking the weight off her back and shoulder with a slanted posture.
When Cerúlia spoke again her voice was softer. “Perchance in your place I would be furious too. Funny, all these months I’ve missed you, I’ve grieved for you, but I’ve never been angry at you. But then I knew what you did not—that what happened did so as much by chance as by anyone’s choices.
“But since you need to know, I’ll recount the night as best I can.”
Cerúlia plunged herself into reliving the Battle of Iron Valley. Midway through her tale, the footman knocked and Thalen answered the door, pouring goblets of wine and draping her cloak over her shoulders. Cerúlia barely registered these changes; she had traveled back to the confused night when Pemphis, revealing himself as a traitor, had tried to kill her; when Cinders had proven too slow; when she had dropped behind to try to stop the wolves from tracking the Raiders; when the woros had torn Nollo’s throat and killed the wolfhound Maki; and when she’d lifted her head to discover that Cinders had fled, leaving her with Eldo as Oro soldiers closed in around her.
Trying to dispel the vision of the Oro soldiers climbing the rise, Cerúlia took up the goblet on the map table and drank deep of the warm, spicy wine.
Thalen now sat on the pupil’s stool, his long legs stretched out before him. He looked her in the eyes. “You sacrificed yourself to save the Raiders.”
“Perchance.” She shrugged. “But don’t make me out too noble. Maybe everything transpired this way just because Cinders was too slow. Or maybe it was partly my pride—that with all my Talent, those drought damn woros defied me.
“Most things a person does,” she said to the dark liquid of the goblet, “they do for several complicated reasons. I’m rarely certain that my motives are pure.”
“Yes,” said Thalen. “I’ve learned that too.” He took a long drink from the goblet on the table beside him and then straightened up to turn around to face her. “How many times in one day do I need to apologize? I try to think before I act. How many times in one day can I play the muckwit?”
Cerúlia just shook her head, not needing an apology.
“I’ve often wondered,” she asked, changing the subject, “did you care for Eli-anna?”
“No … Though later I discovered she ached for me, and that was a pity.”
“Unrequited love.” Cerúlia spoke as if the words themselves conjured an immensity of power and pain.
“Why did you take up with Adair?” Thalen asked.
“Adair,” Cerúlia repeated his name in a lingering tone, twisting her vine bracelet.
Thalen restlessly jumped up, grabbed a poker, and jabbed at a log in the fireplace.
“Commander, you can’t be jealous of the dead.”
“I can be jealous of anyone I please,” he muttered.
“Besides,” she said, “you’re smart enough to know the answer. You wouldn’t pay any attention to me; Adair was charming, and I was so very young and so very lonely. Adair kept saying that we could die any day.”
“Did you ever make love to him?”
“No.” But she forced herself to answer honestly, “Yet if he had lived, I might have. I know myself now—I am … seducible.”
The turn of the conversation, or maybe the warm wine, altered the atmosphere in the room.
“That’s good to know,” said Thalen, grinning at the fire.
Cerúlia straightened herself from her leaning position. “I’m exhausted. Tonight is not the time to tell all the stories. Tonight we should grab what life has to offer. I cannot talk anymore.”
She paused, gathering her courage. “Let’s go to my bedroom,” she said, twisting the green vine bracelet she still wore on her wrist. “That is, if you will.”
Thalen looked up from his task with the fire poker. “Are you certain this is what you want?”
She smiled at him.
Thalen
banked the fire while she blew out all but one lantern, which she carried with her as she crossed the room and opened the door.
Cerúlia led Thalen to her suite, discovering Kiltti dozing on a chair in the Reception Room, waiting to attend her. The queen had last seen Kiltti dancing the Fountain Reel; she noticed that her hair ribbons had come undone and her upper lip boasted a line of sugar. Around her shoulders lay a lovely, antique silk scarf.
Shaking her shoulder, the queen roused her. “Kiltti, I’m sorry to have kept you so late. You are dismissed for the night; go to bed.
“Shields—and you, canines—thank you for your service today. That will be all. We wish not to be disturbed.”
When the door to the Queen’s Bedchamber was closed and locked safely behind them, Cerúlia looked around, all at once anxious about its furnishings. Unlike the lesson chamber, this room was warm and softly glowing, but she saw anew the velvet draperies, the silk bedding, the gold gilding around the looking glass, the water feature—would these trappings of wealth and royalty discomfort a potter’s son?
Thalen had remained at the doorway, his arms folded over his chest. His glance did not appear to take in the room or its decor; his eyes followed her movements.
Desiring to shed herself of her rich accoutrements, Cerúlia slid off the winter cloak with its fur trim and undid the chain that held her blue train about her, tenderly shaking the ash dust from it and lying it on her dressing table’s chair. Then she removed the rings on her fingers and the vine bracelet, placing them on her dressing table. Finally, she took off the silver circlet holding back her hair.
All the while Thalen just studied her intently.
Feeling embarrassed at his scrutiny, she moved to sit on the couch, kicked off her shoes, and stretched her toes.
“Thalen, what are you doing way over there?”
“I’m trying to sort out all the day’s events; I’m shutting out the entirety of the rest of Ennea Món; I’m on guard to make sure you don’t vanish into smoke.”
The Cerulean Queen Page 32
