Unceremoniously, Mora lowered the thin rope with the small clay dipper at its end down and down into the well. It splashed distantly, and she raised it again. As she bent over to reach for it, someone called her name.
Mora gripped the cool clay dipper and schooled her expression; the voice belonged to Solas Lear.
It had been five generations since Queen Dalat had come to Innis Lear from the Third Kingdom, slight and black skinned as the night sky. Though others of that empire had since come to the island, some marrying into the Taria line, or Mora’s own royal Errigal line, the queens of Innis Lear themselves had lost most vestiges of their distant grandmother’s desert beauty. Solas’s skin was as gentle a milk-white as could be, sanded at the cheeks with pinkish and golden freckles. She stood slighter than her tall mother and grandmother, thanks to the Bracoch blood of her grandfather. Thanks to him, too, was her thick, sleek brown hair. Her eyes were the muddy brown of oak roots and her body soft with pretty rolls of flesh. She stood straight beneath the stone archway leading in to this rose courtyard, barefoot, as most would be for the wedding—including Mora, who chafed at the informality—and beneath the queen’s hands three long hounds clustered eagerly, ears pricked toward Mora.
Mora said, “Your Brightness.”
The worst she’d heard said of Solas of Innis Lear—on the island at least—was that the queen nursed a temper and one could read how near the surface it bubbled by how much of her lip paint she’d chewed off. If she was truly furious, the queen’s teeth took on a wolfish ferocity, as if tipped in blood. Mora had never seen it so, and Rowan insisted it was a tool his aunt wielded clearly and specifically to manipulate the atmosphere of her hall.
Solas smiled; her lip paint was intact. “My sister and I have come to attend you.”
“You look magnificent,” Ryrie said.
Glancing at Rowan’s mother, Mora paused. Ryrie was taller and slimmer than Solas, with ruddier skin and rich blond hair. Her dark eyes and red cheeks near always shone as if she ran a fever. That intensity put Mora on edge. “Thank you,” she said.
“I do miss your mother still,” Ryrie sighed, passing around Solas’s dogs and reaching out for the dipper Mora held in her hand. The pads of Ryrie’s fingers were bright pink; she’d been spinning this morning. Ryrie had a habit of adding spells to her thread, often via less tender, forgiving fibers than wool. But her stoles and belts were called priceless for the blessings or protections woven in.
“As do I,” Solas said, joining them. “Cealla was a wonder.”
“I hardly remember her,” Mora said, and drank a gulp of the rootwater. She had no interest in nostalgia of this sort. The water trickled coolly down her throat.
Solas Lear smiled peacefully. “We have enough memories without yours; you may trust what we say of her. You have her impatience.”
“And your father’s short speeches.” Ryrie laughed, eyes drifting as if to the music of a memory.
Rowan often shared that expression: peering at something Mora could neither see nor understand. On him it gave her a powerful urge to draw his attention back home; on Ryrie it chilled her. Mora offered the women the dipper. Ryrie accepted first, and sipped, her eyes distantly focused on the sky. She passed it to her sister, and Solas drank. But the queen held Mora’s gaze as she did so, even over the rim of the cup.
Solas swallowed and cradled the dipper against her belly. She wore a deep blue kirtle of wool over the moon-gray undyed cloth favored by star priests. But the queen’s was embroidered at the sleeves in long lines like the streaks of comets. Silver wire bound her dark hair away from her face, and the rest of it tumbled thickly around her shoulders, gathered into tiny knots at the ends, beaded with jet and black pearls. Heavy silver in her ears dragged at her lobes and every finger bore a ring. It was a graceful and savage look.
Mora’s bridal gown was simpler even than the queen’s: one layer of undyed linen, and an overdress of light yellow—almost the color of the March sheaf. She wore her hair loose and wildly curling, and no jewels but the Blood and the Sea. Banna Mora would go into this union with only herself, and the simplest symbols of her person and family.
Together the three women went to the well, leaning around it. First the queen spit delicately, then her sister did so with an odd half-smile. Mora followed them, staring down as if she could mark the trail until it splashed into the rootwater far below.
The wind blew, saying nothing but tenderly kissing Mora’s cheeks. One of the dogs barked happily. Standing tall, Mora looked between the two older women. Solas nodded once, a bow of sorts, and Ryrie touched the corner of her own mouth with a finger, as if to tuck the strange smile away. “Mora, do you wish you had sisters?”
An answer halted on the tip of her tongue: I did have sisters, once.
The queen put her hand atop Ryrie’s, and their fingers wove together.
Mora said, “I hardly know my brother now, to wish for a sister.”
“When I was thirteen,” Solas said, “I became queen. Ryrie was two years younger, and always at my side. We ruled together. She was my consort, enough of one I needed no other. When I was eighteen, and found putting off the pressure to marry and bear a child or two or three tiresome and distracting, my sister said, Solas, let me be your earth saint. Do you know what that means?”
“It is what Morimaros of Aremoria was to Elia Lear,” Mora answered.
“Elia remained unwed, unpartnered, unparalleled beneath her throne. A star. And yet she got children by an alliance with the roots of the island. So they say.” Solas’s smile pulled rueful. “Everyone knew what root she embraced, yet none cared, because Elia was pure. I wished to be so pure, and my sister saw it.”
Ryrie said, “I share equal blood with my sister, and yet I could take a thread of the island’s blood that never had joined to the house of Lear, and make of our line and Glennadoer a new heir, without our queen betraying the first words she spoke under the crown.”
“I am as much as I shall ever be, and what I am is the queen of Innis Lear,” Mora quoted. She understood how taking a king might change such a proclamation, though it was entirely Learish in its superstition and unwavering loyalty to prophecy. In Aremoria, Solas’s declaration would have been admired, not taken as holy augur.
“I did also find Glennadoer himself charming,” Ryrie said with another laugh.
Mora smiled back, thinking their marriage as baffling as ever.
The queen squeezed her sister’s hand, then leveled her gaze on Mora again. “Do you know why Rovassos lost his war? And lost his crown and you lost yours?”
Old, chilling memories knifed at Mora’s heart—this turn did not seem appropriate for a wedding day. “We were betrayed.”
“Deeper than that,” Solas said.
Mora rubbed small spirals against her thigh, creating a soft sound of brushing linen, and she thought of her great-uncle Rovassos King. She remembered his tender hands best, for her father had had a soldier’s hands, and her mother’s hands had been soft but rarely tender. Rovassos had doted on Mora when she came to live in Lionis and began training as a knight, drawn to the stables and weapon barn, to the old stories of glorified battles and warrior-kings. Those warrior-kings were alive in her, Rovassos insisted cheerfully, tugging his short storm-gray beard. You are my grandniece, granddaughter of my favorite brother, and you are descended from Morimaros the Second himself. None of my other nieces or nephews can claim so much. Would you like to be the queen of all Aremoria?
To Solas of Innis Lear, Mora said, “There were too many options, and questions.”
“That, yes,” Solas agreed. “Rovassos was not pure in his strength. He wavered. He made choices then other choices, then found ways to make them seem good ones. I only make good choices from the beginning. So have the queens of Innis Lear since the time of Elia.”
Mora could not help the small laugh, which nudged Ryrie to laughing, too.
“My sister does not mean queens do not make mistakes,” Ryrie said cheerfu
lly. “But only that she, and our mothers and grandmothers, did not waver in what they knew to be right, in the path they set for Innis Lear at the start of their lives and reigns. We do this with the stars and roots of the earth. They are the true consorts of the queens of Innis Lear.”
“And Aremoria has no such way,” Mora said. “Not when the holy ordained king can be murdered and replaced.”
“Aremoria is ruled by strength of arms and passion—good, no doubt, but without the true collaboration of the people and land.”
“I cannot change the soul of Aremoria.”
“Not in one moment, or perhaps even one lifetime. But if you cross the sea and war on Aremoria, to take that throne, and if you want us behind you …” Solas pressed her lips together, and Mora saw, finally, how she might chew off lip paint. “If you want Lear behind you in your quest for the throne of Aremoria, you must make it everything you are. You must be the way. You must discover all that you ever will be, and make it so now.”
Mora thought of the granite dragon that lived in the Mountain of Teeth, and she saw the disparate parts of herself, the pieces of Innis Lear and the stones and trees, the pieces of Aremoria, what she wanted and what she’d lost, who she thought she should be and what she wanted: to be whole.
“A queen is more than a woman,” Solas said softly. “But she is more than a star, too, more than a name or crown. A queen makes herself.”
Ryrie came around the well and touched her finger to Mora’s forehead, then the corner of her mouth. “That is the lesson the queens of Innis Lear pass down to their daughters.”
“Make yourself,” Solas said.
Mora took a deep breath and felt she was sucking in the whole world.
HOTSPUR
Burgun-Aremore border, midsummer
THE SUN HAD set by the time Hotspur returned to the command pavilion, and the funeral pyres were lit, burning strong enough to cast eerie orange light up against the low clouds.
She tossed aside the flap of canvas shutting up her tent and stormed in, eager to relax out of her armor and into her aches.
“Hotspur,” said her aunt, Vindomata of Mercia.
Hotspur rolled her shoulders. “Aunt,” she said tightly—at the pain, not Vindomata’s presence.
Two young women—girls really—who wished to prove themselves and train under Hotspur as soldiers, immediately began to unfasten the buckles of Hotspur’s armor.
The duke of Mercia lounged washed and clean on Hotspur’s fur-covered pallet in a wool robe the bloody color of her household but lined with expensive orange silk. Vindomata’s high, narrow cheeks were pink and she held a tall goblet that had stained the inner line of her lips dark maroon.
As her aunt watched, the girls unbuckled the chest plate and pauldrons and back plate from Hotspur, who gritted her teeth and did not curse at them: the mingled pain and relief was hardly their fault. They unlaced her mail skirt and one bent to untie her boots while the other freed Hotspur of her heavy leather belt and sword. Gauntlets next, and the shoulder belt with its two remaining knives. Finally, Hotspur lifted her arms and the girls pulled the chain mail shirt up and off.
“I can manage the rest,” Vindomata said. “Bring more wine, and some hot water.”
The girls left obediently.
Hotspur bent to get off her boots. She wiggled her toes, balancing awkwardly to take off her wool socks next. All that remained were her gambeson, shirt, and trousers. When dressed in full battle regalia, Hotspur went without chest bindings. The many layers of armor were more than enough to keep her small breasts where they belonged.
Her aunt stood and set down the goblet. She pulled Hotspur up by the shoulders and unfastened the laces at the gambeson’s throat. The sweaty quilted shirt peeled off Hotspur, and she hissed as it tore at blood that had dried to the wound high on her left shoulder, at the meat of her neck. Other than her bloody mouth thanks to the prince of Burgun, this was Hotspur’s only injury to bleed today.
“If you’d worn a gorget, it would’ve protected you,” Vindomata chided.
“If I’d been faster, I’d not have needed the protection,” Hotspur snapped.
Once she stood naked, Vindomata offered her the goblet of wine. Hotspur drank greedily. She was hungry, but this would do for now.
A girl returned with hot water. The bucket hit the rug at Hotspur’s feet with a thunk, and immediately Vindomata sent the girl away again, picking up a washing cloth herself. She squeezed hot water over Hotspur’s shoulder and scrubbed quickly at the wound.
The scouring pain blazed up Hotspur’s shoulder and into her neck, radiating hot enough to make her woozy. But she did not complain.
Vindomata washed her off efficiently, including pressing the cloth to Hotspur’s face as if she were a tiny child wiggling away with honey on her chin.
Wrapping a blanket around her waist, Hotspur sat on the pallet of fur and straw. She hunched her back and closed her eyes as Vindomata studied the red, raw edges of the shoulder wound.
“We lost the queen’s man. He headed back to Lionis already,” Vindomata said. “I’m going to stitch this.”
“Oh, wormshit.” Hotspur meant the stitches, not the departure of Briginos.
“You won’t remain still long enough for it to heal properly on its own. You’ve already reopened it several times this evening, digging and lifting the wounded and dead and stars know what else.”
“It did hurt rather a lot.”
They waited for the girl to return with wine and food. When she did, Vindomata asked for more water, a needle, and flesh thread. And a lantern. Hotspur pulled the cork on the wine and drank straight from the bottle. She did not fear stitches, but the prospect of holding still for prolonged pain always reminded her how much better she preferred the harsh, sudden pains of battle.
The girl brought Vindomata her requests, and Hotspur leaned over her knees, hugging them. She dug her nails into her shins and gritted her teeth.
“What did you say to Briginos?” Vindomata asked as she pinched skin together and sewed. The lantern aimed at Hotspur’s shoulder cast her shadow black before her.
“Nothing he didn’t deserve,” Hotspur said through her teeth. “He was— Ah, worms do I have to talk through this?”
“Yes.”
“He was disrespectful and idiotic. He deserved none of my time or my soldiers’ time.”
“How like Celeda these days to send such a person to represent her.”
Surprise stuttered Hotspur’s response. “I … well, yes, I suppose, though the queen was once … vicious … on the battlefield.”
“How well I remember,” Vindomata murmured softly. And her aunt stabbed through the flesh of Hotspur’s upper back again, quick and methodical.
Hotspur groaned and tried not to seethe. She needed to keep her breaths as even as she could, to speed her aunt’s progress along. Her upper back and neck had become one long snake of burning pain, and Hotspur needed distraction.
Unfortunately, she thought immediately of Hal. After the Battle of Strong Water, after the king was dead, Hotspur had stitched up a wound in Hal’s side. That had been the very first time they’d had a real conversation.
Hal had been shaking, eyes pressed closed, and Hotspur willing to pretend for the new prince that her tremors were from pain. But she’d known it was trauma. Is stealing a crown a thing worth dying for? Hal had whispered.
Hotspur had found Hal’s question endearing—a question for a poet, not a soldier. She had replied, musing, Prince Hal. It has a good ring to it.
If only the title hadn’t turned Hal’s heart to seashells and her blood to cheap red wine.
It had been eight months since Hotspur left Lionis, and all she’d heard of Hal was that the prince had fallen into the wastes of the city and into the arms of other women who did not try to be worthy of anything. Once, Hal had wanted to be a prince for the people, uniting Aremoria with stories and revelry and charm, but apparently her plan now was nothing more than irresponsibility an
d decay. Or Hotspur had never known her at all.
Hotspur had stopped trying to understand. She woke at night, sometimes, wondering if Hal would be better if Hotspur had stayed, if they still called her the Lion Prince, and if Hal could even still play to that stage. But Hotspur told herself again and again that if Hal couldn’t do this alone, she shouldn’t be doing it at all.
Better everyone see their prince for what she was now than when it was too late.
“There,” Vindomata said, using one of Hotspur’s knives to slice the needle free of the stitched wound. Her aunt jabbed the needle into a pillow to keep from losing it, then slathered on a tingling salve that smelled of yarrow and honey.
Gently stretching, Hotspur went to the small trunk at the head of her pallet to pull out a clean shift. She put it on, wincing as the newly sewn wound pulled, but glad she had this much range of motion. The linen fell to her knees, and Hotspur tied the front closed. She sat again in a low chair and reached for the tray of food. A handful of olives and nuts filled her mouth, so she could not answer when Vindomata said, “Now tell me your plans for Douglass, and why you would not give him to Briginos.”
Flames from nearby soldiers’ fires flickered outside, and the dull orange light diffused shadows throughout the tent. Hotspur closed her eyes and swallowed. “I told you I did not like Briginos. He was an imbecile and demanding, and moreover didn’t understand anything about the process of war. He didn’t even know negotiating for burial of the Burgun soldiers was part of his purpose!”
“Be calm, Hotspur.” Vindomata shifted, lying down on the pallet again. She reached for a chunk of cheese. “I trust your judgment. I only wish to know the depth of your thinking.”
Hotspur licked olive oil from her lip and took another drink of wine. The bottle was nearly half empty; she’d had too much, but the warmth dragging at her mind and popping in her cheeks was more pleasant than the echoing pain in her shoulder. She needed to remember to put salve on her temple and side and hip where bruises had formed, and at the raw spot at the front of her right shoulder where the chest plate had rubbed.
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