Lady Hotspur

by Tessa Gratton

  “Hotspur.”

  Clearing her throat, Hotspur said, “I am keeping him. I caught him, he’s my hostage. I’ll negotiate.”

  “Celedrix will appreciate that not at all.”

  “She should have brought Mora home then!”

  The yell startled Hotspur herself more than Vindomata, who only raised dark eyebrows and waited.

  Hotspur caught her breath.

  It was a gross injustice that Mora had not been ransomed home. Celedrix flaunted the rules of war and honor by letting Innis Lear keep their cousin—the former heir!—prisoner on those grimy shores. More than a year Mora had been trapped there—and the March still flew no flag.

  Vindomata said, “Tell her.”

  “What?” Hotspur ate a dried fig, for a moment to think.

  “Tell our queen to bring Mora back, if she wants Douglass from you.”

  “That sounds like a threat more than a request.”

  Her aunt shrugged, for all the world seeming relaxed, casual as a daybird lounging in her robe on Hotspur’s pallet. “As you said, Celeda should have brought Mora home already.”

  “She needs to know we remember,” Hotspur whispered. She’d written to Celedrix three times over the past six months, asking in the most direly polite terms for the ransom.

  “She is the one who must remember.” Vindomata frowned, and the delicate lines at her eyes and lips deepened. Her eyes fluttered as if weary. She was nearly fifty years old, after all, though still strong, lean, and battle-hardened.

  “Remember Mora?”

  Vindomata accepted the wine bottle from Hotspur and drank, never taking her gaze from her niece’s. “Remember,” she said, giving the wine back, “why she rebelled against Rovassos. Injustice. A king reaching beyond his means. The opposite is just as deadly. To reach not at all.”

  Hotspur lowered her voice to barely a whisper. “You don’t trust Celeda anymore.”

  “Do you?”

  The question hung between them like a string of bile. Hotspur’s stomach rolled; she told herself it was too much wine too fast, and the pain of her shoulder, and exhaustion.

  But she saw it in her aunt’s light eyes: Vindomata had been a king-killer once. And a queen-maker. For without Mercia and the Persy strength, Celedrix would not wear the crown now. And it had cost Vindomata her two children, regardless of how they’d been killed. Either way, they were dead.

  The queen owed them.

  “I trust you, Aunt,” Hotspur said.

  “Good. The question that matters most, dear one, is whether our queen trusts us. Does she trust that we will negotiate over Douglass in good faith? Does she trust us enough to speak with us honestly about why she leaves Banna Mora on Innis Lear? I do not know the answer.”

  Hotspur cried, “She should! We are loyal to Aremoria, we are her sword!”

  “Hush, hush, Wolf.” Vindomata laughed softly.

  Drinking, Hotspur closed her eyes. Vindomata had never asked her about the prophecy; perhaps she’d never heard of it. The wine tingled at the roof of Hotspur’s mouth. She swallowed slowly. “Tell me I must not give over my prisoner.”

  “Not yet, at least. We will take him home and see. Now let me comb out your tangled hair, Niece, and scrub the last of bloody battle from your scalp.”

  Hotspur obeyed, sitting again before her aunt at the pallet until, lulled by the gentle tugs of fingers and comb, she sighed herself to sleep.

  BANNA MORA

  The Summer Seat of Innis Lear, midsummer

  THE SUMMER SEAT of Innis Lear was a feral place. Perched on a promontory surrounded by sheer cliffs, the black castle was ancient and rough, fortified by raw nature and the hungry ocean clawing below. The tower stairs were worn in the center from generations of feet, and the privies hung off the side of the cliffs, so when the wind was right it howled eerily through the openings. Most residents lived on the island side, in the town of Sunton, where they farmed and raised chickens and pigs to feed the castle’s guests.

  As someone fostered in Aremoria most of her life, the Summer Seat had initially struck Mora as primitive. But after a spring and half a summer here, Mora felt a kinship to the daring, desperate way it clung to the island. When someday her husband was king of Innis Lear and she the queen of Aremoria, they would spend summers here and winters in Lionis. Their children would know the rush of danger dashing across the land bridge, and only the fittest and smartest would survive.

  Sometimes she wondered if fostering in Aremoria had softened her. Had she been raised on this island, would she have fought better when Rovassos was murdered and her crown stolen?

  Most likely if she’d fought then, she’d be dead now.

  As Mora and the royal ladies passed through the wide grassy common of the Summer Seat, retainers and servants nodded easily, cheering and tossing lavender fronds. Children ran up to Mora, laughing and touching her skirts for wedding luck. The dogs sprang away, barking and leaping in circles with the same children. Solas smiled brightly, and Ryrie allowed herself to be drawn off by a gangly young man into an impromptu circle dance. This was different from Aremoria, too; the people of Innis Lear distinguished little between royal and farmer, retainer and priest, bastard and honor-born. Informality marked relationships and brought the layers of hierarchy together for meals, labor, and of course celebration. Rowan himself often acted upon star prophecies he wrote with his own hand by showing up in a shepherd’s field where lambs were imminently due, to help with the bloodiest of chores, or ride half a day to a village where the stars told him sickness had come, bearing medicine from the White Forest. I am the servant of the stars and roots, he would say with an arrogant shrug belying the humility of the words. Truly, Mora did not know if she’d ever have learned to bear his peasant sensibilities if not for that shining thread of rather holy pride.

  And here appeared Rowan before her, surrounded by star priests and flower-crowned retainers. He smiled and she shook her head at his dress: he wore, as usual, a long night-blue robe hanging from his tall frame, flowing and open despite the damp ocean breeze, over gray trousers and a bare chest. His white-gold hair fell loose around his face and down his back, longer than Mora’s would grow. In the glow of the zenith sun, Rowan looked like nothing so much as a willowy saint, born of the roots and starlight, exactly as the royal line of Innis Lear was supposed to be.

  Mora wished for the briefest moment they were marrying in Lionis, in the heart of that boundlessly rich city, wearing elaborate velvet suits encrusted with jewels to display their power, their beauty, their belonging to each other. Perhaps, someday soon, they would have a second ceremony there.

  Then Rowan brushed his knuckle down her cheek. She caught his hand, nudged him closer, and kissed him—much to the delight of the crowd. They wrapped their arms around each other, grinning into the kiss; Mora could admit to herself, and perform just this once, that she was genuinely happy to marry him.

  Priests inserted themselves to dot white constellations of blessing and prophecy onto her forehead and cheeks, and there was her brother, with his ash-striped face and soft smile, to smear white paint across her bottom lip. He did the same to Rowan, and Mora thought how badly Conn was going to resent the role in her rebellion that she planned for him.

  Then Connley gave way to Owyn Glennadoer, resplendent in leather and dark green. The earl wove tiny bones into Mora’s hair and his son’s, Ryrie helping; Sin Errigal and the acting duke Rory braided in iron coins; more family brought more charms—copper and chunks of salt, wool and silk ribbons, green leaves dipped in wax to hold their shapes, butterfly wings, polished granite and limestone beads, until Mora’s hair fell heavy and she laughed at the mess Rowan’s looked. Hers had to be just as much of a knotted, colorful disaster.

  All the island seemed to crowd into the great hall behind them, pressing Mora and Rowan together toward to the far end where bright sunlight and ocean breezes welcomed themselves through tall windows. Rowan’s family surrounded bride and groom, holding undyed wool
threads like a web around them. The queen asked them a series of questions about love, loyalty, and fate. Mora was careful to keep her answers simple and loud, reminding herself that it was a performance.

  Rowan held her gaze and answered as if only meant for her. He touched her cheek, then her mouth, and Mora realized she was crying. Squeezing her eyes shut, she shook her head, then smiled for him, putting the happiness she’d felt before into her face, into the tension of her grip on his hands. It was just that for a moment she’d remembered the last vows she’d made, nearly nine years previous: in the receiving gallery at the Lionis Palace, swearing herself to the throne of Aremoria, and to the service of her king, and then one by one her personal knights had promised themselves to her. First Ladies Ianta and Brevia, Talix and Lanna Ritus, then the women not quite knights yet: Imena, Ter Melia, and even that damned Hal Bolinbroke, the most devoted and charismatic of all. Her Lady Knights, glorious together that day, and for years after, building an Aremoria for Banna Mora to rule with them at her sides, her heart’s armor, her companions.

  Disbanded, broken, pulled into pieces.

  Mora’s body flushed with anger, and she recalled the words of the dragon: When your world burns, you must learn to breathe fire.

  Ignoring the marriage ritual, blood roaring in her ears, Banna Mora kissed Rowan Lear. He was her husband already, her partner in power.

  Distantly aware of laughter, of approving cheers, Mora kept her mouth against Rowan’s. He kissed her back, nibbling her bottom lip, and then slid his cheek along hers. “Mine,” he murmured against her ear.

  She lifted their bound hands and ripped at the wool knot with her teeth. It was not made to hold them, and so the binding tore away in her mouth. Mora spit it out and glared triumphantly at the people with a wide smile. Rowan put his arms around her, laughing, and he called, “So my wife declares, so it shall be.”

  Queen Solas gave her agreement, and flowers filled the air, tossed toward the stone ceiling, and children leapt high to catch them again.

  There next came feasting, benches and tables lined tight together and spilling out into the yard. Mora ate gladly, feeding Rowan meat and candied apples, teasing him that she intended to keep him in bed for days and days so he ought to prepare his body now. They drank, and the queen told her that Glennadoer—Owyn, she called him, which Mora might never accustom herself to—had been so eager for his wife she was already pregnant at their wedding.

  “So might I be,” Mora said to Glennadoer, who laughed outrageously and raised his wine to his son’s potency. Mora lifted hers, too, and enthusiastically drank the rest of the wine down. She floated and laughed, held her husband’s hand, and slapped her palms on the table eagerly when Ryrie called for the center of the hall to be cleared for the dancers.

  They were thirty young men and women in white, with flowers in their hair and ribbons that trailed loosely behind them as they spun in patterns. No music but for stomping feet, staccato yips, and brisk, bright whistles. Their spirals and outbursts, their straight-backed turning, turning, turning, dazed Mora and she leaned into her chair at the high table, head lolling as her vision blurred: they became the starry sky.

  Her fingers twined with Rowan’s, and she realized her dizzy guess was correct: when the dance came to a sudden halt, star priests immediately joined the dancers. The priests moved their human stars into two arcing patterns, and then the queen’s favored priest, a tall woman with sun-yellow hair named Aeli, called out that each arc was a birth chart: Mora’s and Rowan’s. She said, “Here the lady’s Dragon Eye,” and two star priests gave brilliant orange wildflowers into the hands of a cluster of dancers. Then Aeli said, “And the lord’s Saint Terestria,” and other priests gave those dancers sky-blue flowers. On and on the priests marked all the dancers with either Mora’s or Rowan’s birth stars, until the dancers were all a piece of prophecy.

  “And now,” Aeli said, “the charts slip together, fates entwining as their hearts and futures entwine.”

  With a clap, a dancer hopped into motion, and they all shifted, coiling together as if the two star charts slid against each other, overlapping into a single chart.

  Mora laughed and glanced at Rowan. He caught her eye, smiling, and lifted her hand to kiss her knuckles.

  Their future was read to eager listeners, though Mora herself sighed happily and drank more wine. The queen leaned forward, as did her sister, and Glennadoer, Sin Errigal with Connley attentive at her side—strange their little Errigal prodigy was not here.

  Solas asked a clarifying question, and together the royal family argued about the marriage prophecy. Mora listened with half an ear, hoping for once there would be none of that beastly trio that dogged the edges of all prophecies this year.

  Until Aeli said, “Your Brightness, with the moon as it was yesterday, as the clouds painted arrows toward the east at dawn, this is a queen today and already born—not only a prince’s wife.”

  Solas fell still, glanced to her nephew, then asked, “Already born?”

  Rowan said, “Under a different moon, yes, and the island welcomes her.”

  From the tall ocean windows, wind blew.

  Banna Mora! the island cried joyously. A queen of rootwaters and stars!

  Mora laughed again, and said, Hello, slightly giddy.

  But Rowan stood to face the queen, and in the tree tongue he said, Bright Solas, we are yours, blessed to the island, as you are blessed.

  Mine, the queen of Innis Lear said, and then, “My nephew, son of my throne and heart, and my daughter, Banna Mora.”

  “My queen!” Mora said merrily. But a cord of tension connected her husband and his aunt Solas. She saw it, and understood it had been born of their wedding prophecy, but she could not see how. Mora thrust to her feet and held out both hands. “Folk of Innis Lear, I ask that you welcome me,” hello, “a lost daughter who found her heart on your neighboring shore. Aremoria was all our homes once, when this island was no island, but a piece of a whole. I would be whole again! This queen—our great queen Solas—is whole, and pure. But I am not. I love this prince at my side, and you, but I cannot be what you need until I have reclaimed what was taken from me.”

  Holding up her fist with the Blood and the Sea glinting there, Mora said, “I am pieces, and the Dragon of the North told me …” Gasps from the crowd gave her pause, but she pushed on. “The dragon told me I am a dragon, and I would be your dragon before I would be your queen.”

  To Solas, Mora said, “I would be your dragon, Rowan’s dragon, I would be …” She swallowed, and finally the tension fled from the older queen’s dark eyes.

  Solas smiled. “You are entirely drunk, Banna Mora. I think my nephew should take you to bed.”

  Rowan’s arm went around her waist, tugging at her, and he grinned for the entire congregation, winked, and waved. Mora elbowed him, but in a friendly way, then impulsively kissed Solas’s soft cheek.

  The queen’s smile was sharp and knowing, but Mora could not think what there was to know! She laughed again, more a giggle truly, turned to grab her husband’s robe in both fists, then dragged him away, out through the family exit that led directly to a tunnel through the thick walls and into the royal tower.

  She stopped for nothing, not even to close the door to Rowan’s rooms—their rooms now—before pushing her husband onto the bed and having her rather sloppy way with him. Rowan, less drunk than she, gave in to her every whim, seeming to enjoy himself in the rather lazy way of a cat. “You said you love me,” he reminded her, very smug.

  It was summer and therefore the salty breeze was warm, and there was another hour or more until sunset, and Mora suffered not at all to sprawl naked on the wide, low bed. Rowan flattened his hand on her thigh and promised to drag himself up to get a fresh pitcher of water, wine, and some cloths. Mora pounced, her blood alive, her spirit laughing, and licked up his salty chest. She wrinkled her nose and stuck her tongue in his ear; he squirmed, laughing, too, and Mora told him to take her gift of spit and t
ransform it with his island magic.

  And oh, how he responded.

  Rowan wrestled her onto her back and filled her up, moaning her name and pressing her thighs apart. He fucked her torturously until she was breathless and ranting, hitting his shoulders for him to finish. Rowan said, “I’ll never finish with you, Banna Mora,” and it was so saccharine, so endearing, she wilted and pulled his face to her breast, winding her hands in his white-gold hair and promising herself to never let go.

  They slept through sunset and woke for water, then Mora demanded Rowan begin the arduous process of untangling all the charms from her sweaty curls. He pulled her, still naked, into his lap and obeyed, singing softly to her an evening lullaby with ridiculous verses about counting beetles, butterflies, and crickets.

  As Mora returned to herself, she recalled that odd thread of tension uniting her husband and his aunt. Curling her fingers around the collection of charms Rowan was freeing from her hair and placing in her hand, Mora said, “Rowan, why did the prophecy upset Solas?”

  He hummed and reached around her to drop an iron coin into the collection. She turned her head to meet his eye. “Rowan?”

  “Prophecies have been strange lately. Everyone is on edge.”

  “No, it was more than that. Specific.”

  Rowan hesitated for a moment, then with a little reluctant flip of his hand said, “The prophecy, and the island, recognize you already as a queen.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, you are already a queen of the island. A queen already born.”

  That had been the phrase the priest Aeli had used. Mora pulled away from Rowan and faced him. Streaks of white paint were smeared on his chest, the remnants of prophecy, and his hair remained knotted and woven with colorful charms. He drew up a leg and set his elbow casually against his knee. “I should tell you,” he said, and Mora had the distinct impression he was convincing himself.