Lady Hotspur

by Tessa Gratton

  Glennadoer touched her ankle where her feet rested on a cushion, and said, “It was very nearly a complete triumph for Aremoria today.”

  She was already aggravated by the day’s loss, and Hal Bolinbroke’s manipulation of Lady Hotspur, and Glennadoer’s heavy hand was a weight she could not take. She barely managed not to shift uncomfortably. Everyone touched her more than she liked since her belly had swollen enough to show. While Mora did not mind growling at anyone, it was rare for Glennadoer to approach her alone, and she wanted to know what was his purpose. So instead of demanding he release her, Mora—feeling only a slight guilt for using Rowan this way—said, “Your own sons both lost their matches.”

  “Not my daughter. Daughters are stronger, in general. No daughter has ever betrayed Innis Lear.” Glennadoer’s eyes slid to Mora’s belly.

  Again, Mora held herself in check, for Glennadoer’s favorite daughter was a bastard, and she did not like the connection his gaze made to the child in her belly. “It may be a son.”

  “The stars say daughter.”

  Mora sighed.

  Glennadoer grinned at her, compounding the wrinkles around his eyes. He leaned back, dropping his hand from her. Still he crouched like an animal. Mora missed such flexibility.

  He said, “A girl is better. We’ve had no king since Gaelan Lear, who nearly ruined us. Perhaps Solas might make your daughter her heir, overlooking Rowan and his generation.”

  For a shocked moment, Mora wondered if Glennadoer could possibly know of the hemlock ritual—and that his son had repeatedly undergone it for years. As far as Innis Lear was concerned, Rowan had been a king since he was a child. “Rowan will be a fine king.”

  The bear earl shrugged. “Not as strong as a daughter.”

  Mora’s patience broke. “What is this, Glennadoer.”

  “Only conversation, Banna Mora,” Glennadoer said, somehow both darkly and with gentle humor. “I am content to see a child of mine wear the hemlock crown.”

  Hairs rose on Mora’s neck, and she gripped the arm of her chair lest she place a protective hand on her belly and give herself away. “It is good my child is a child of your line, so we will have no conflict between us.”

  “Good indeed,” Glennadoer replied.

  Then Rowan appeared in the arched doorway, half in shadow.

  Mora sucked in a soft breath at her husband’s beauty: his midnight-blue robes glinted like the sky an hour past dusk, studded with tiny shards of steel and copper in patterns that spiraled to her eyes, but were certainly constellations. Black lined his eyes, heightening the vivid gold-brown in them, and she thought if she went to him the dark gray flecks would shimmer like shadows. He held her gaze, serious and still.

  Stars and worms, she loved him. They would remake the world together.

  Mora squeezed Rowan’s forearm now, as they walked into the Star Field.

  Though she had attended several zenith rituals, this would be her first here at this most sacred memorial, where the bones and ashes of all the past kings and queens of Innis Lear were buried.

  Solas walked slowly ahead, alone, though her family trailed behind her like wings. The queen wore a crown of simple silver, narrow spires cutting sharply up and hooking inward. It seemed raw, grown rather than forged. Mora liked it. Besides the crown, Solas’s attire was plain: dark blue and pale gray wool swept off her shoulders, hugging her curves, and dragged behind her against the frosted grass.

  The pace allowed Mora to keep up easily. She did feel stronger this week than last, but rather than credit the moon, perhaps she merely settled in to the weight of pregnancy.

  The Star Field stretched far, a valley of small standing stones, plinths supporting moon rocks and candles, piles of black stones and stacked limestone. Unlit candles were fixed on every surface, and when the queen paused at the threshold, marked only by a short arc of gray bricks sunk into the sloped earth, Rowan touched Mora’s cheek and left her.

  Rowan, Era Star-Seer, and two others stepped onto the memorial grounds. As one, they lifted both arms, palms toward the heart of the field, and they all whispered in the language of trees:

  Fire.

  They snapped, and candles flared to life in flickering waves.

  Mora remained beside Ryrie Lear, and welcomed the touch of Trin’s hand. More than any other women of Innis Lear, Mora had come to appreciate Trin’s tentative friendship. Perhaps because Trin had been the first woman Mora met when she arrived last year, perhaps because both reserved affection for those worthy of it. She’d sent for the practical woman to come to Dondubhan with the Errigal party, and she’d arrived in time for today’s tournament.

  It was clear how the Star Field earned its name. Even despite the hovering gray clouds that hid the night sky, they had stars. Every tiny candle flame sparkled, and the memorial stones glowed in the diffused moonlight.

  Wind blew steadily and freezing, thinning the heavy clouds. But it was easy to know where the full moon hung: there in the low east the clouds ached with silver light.

  Though prophecy and superstition sat poorly in Mora’s mind, she greatly appreciated such stark displays of savage, Learish beauty as a night like this. She smiled slightly, listening to the hiss of wind and the murmuring congregation.

  They did not cast bones or prophesize, no, that all remained for the Longest Night. The zenith ritual was for the past, for bringing it into the present. For memories and the dead, all the changes since the past full moon, and since the full moon this time last year, that was the prayer tonight.

  Star priests brought Queen Solas a deep bowl of beer, and she dipped a cup into it, then drank. She spilled some onto the rocky ground. And then she offered the cup to Hal Bolinbroke.

  Mora had known it was coming: Hal was the ranking visitor, daughter of the sitting queen of Aremoria, no matter the treachery with which the role had been acquired.

  She had known. And yet, watching Solas offer Hal the honored second drink, Mora held her breath and pressed her tongue high in her mouth to block out emotion.

  The Blood and the Sea on Mora’s first finger felt like a ring of frozen blood.

  Hal Bolinbroke, effortlessly charming. After receiving the winner’s dagger, so many had flocked to the prince: Hotspur’s retainers were to be expected, as they were Aremore and Hal was their prince, despite Hotspur standing for Innis Lear, but Mared and Vae Lear ought to have behaved better. As should Rory Errigal and that young Taria duke.

  Even Rowan had wandered to Hal during the aftermath, in the chaos of laughter and shared celebratory beer. He’d whispered something into Hal’s ear, and Hal had paused, staring ahead as if she could see nothing. Then Rowan touched Hal’s shoulder and the prince startled. Her mouth had fallen open and she laughed, clearly amazed. Later, annoyed, Mora had demanded an explanation of her husband. Rowan shrugged and merely said the prince had won from him a display of the magic he’d used to defeat Mora at the March.

  Even now, Hal Bolinbroke took Solas’s cup with an alluring smile, a self-deprecating word, and candid eye.

  Mora knew that look so viscerally. Once, Hal had offered it to her. Once, Hal had owed her allegiance, and had given it not only freely, but with love.

  Banna Mora’s youth in Aremoria had been a worthwhile struggle. Always concerned with who thought what, with who made their assumptions about her—because of her Learish parentage, because of her tan skin and leonine curls, because of Rovassos’s devotion—and plotted with, or through, or around them. Mora never could take an offer at face value, nor plan as if those around her held her best interests close. Her relationships had been real, but always more than one single thing.

  A lover was also an ally, a friend also competition. An enemy, a tool.

  It had been invigorating to grow up in the Aremore court, and exciting, with spinning wheels of connections and the game of politics. A game that was always both playful and deadly.

  But the Lady Knights hadn’t been part of it. Ianta Oldcastle she’d trusted. And the
women who were Mora’s knights and squires had been hers. Sworn to her. Even at twenty Mora had not been naive, but she’d thought her knights adored her as she adored them. They were a unit. Sisters. Family.

  She’d have died for them.

  Instead, her rights had been torn away, and her women turned away, and Hal Bolinbroke stumbled into Mora’s place not merely with reluctance, but seeming unable to understand how holy a responsibility it was, to hold a country in your hand.

  Hal, who tripped over friends, who never appreciated the effort it took most people to earn love: Hal had betrayed them all with her weakness.

  Rowan brought Mora the cup of beer to sip.

  She was supposed to hold a prayer in her heart as she drank, and whisper it to the wind. Mora only wanted the strength to take back what was hers. The strength to hold Hal apart from herself.

  Even Hotspur leaned toward Hal again.

  “Strength,” Mora murmured. “To hold my family together.”

  And she passed the cup to Hotspur.

  Rowan remained beside her, and Mora clutched his hand, curling her other beneath her belly.

  The ritual wove around them, the hopes and prayers of the living whispered to the solemn ears of the dead. Throughout, Mora’s gaze tripped again and again to Hal. A bitterness climbed up her throat, a hurt she did not wish to display, and so she held herself rigid—too rigid, for it put an ache in her back and knees, and before long she leaned heavily against her husband, cursing this weakness as her child sucked vitality from her.

  “Mora,” Rowan murmured, concerned, when the ritual broke and some folk returned directly to Dondubhan, while others wandered farther into the Star Field to visit personal memorials and the tombs of family.

  Hal laughed brightly, shoulder bumping against Mared Lear’s, and that prince laughed, too. Hotspur was beside her, and a cluster of young people, retainers and cousins of royalty.

  Mora wondered if she should kill Hal Bolinbroke right here.

  She could, even in this state, because everyone would be too surprised. Hal’s guard was down. How easy it would be to take the dagger from her low-slung belt and stab into Hal’s neck so she could never tell wild stories again.

  Nausea tightened Mora’s throat.

  She could do it. Start war immediately. None could back out then. No more negotiating, no more alliances and marriage contracts or ostentatious tournaments. Just Mora’s army sailing to Aremoria in the spring. As inevitable to everyone else as it was to her.

  But she’d lose Hotspur. And Mora needed Hotspur and the Aremore strength of arms she brought with her.

  Mora told herself that was the only reason, and released her husband, striding directly for Prince Hal. It was time to mark her opposition. Remind these smiling fools they mistook Hal’s friendship.

  “Remind us who remain, Hal Bolinbroke: Why have you come to Innis Lear?” she demanded.

  It was a question she’d asked before, privately, the first night Hal spent at Dondubhan, when Mora trapped her along with Hotspur, too. Hal had said—

  “To fix everything between us,” Hal answered, as she had then. Her brilliant brown eyes glowed with moonlight and bewilderment.

  “But why? Why not hand your crown to me? You said to me once that you did not even want the throne of Aremoria. Tonight you are stripped bare beneath the watching eyes of Innis Lear: the stars and glaring moon, the rootwaters and the queen. All these wizards and warriors and me, Banna Mora of the March, who once was your prince—and friend. Tell me why you fight me now. What changed?”

  Hal stared, lips parted, breathing as if she might taste an escape in the wind. A pink tongue flicked out as the prince stalled with a lick of her bottom lip.

  Mora clenched her jaw and waited. She did not allow herself to blink, though anger and pain scoured her insides. This full moon ritual, this land, the family and people here reminded her of what she needed: to be whole. To touch everyone and make them better.

  With fire if necessary.

  “Aremoria is mine,” Mora said, commanding it so.

  “It was yours, and you want it back for principle, for revenge, not for what is best for Aremoria.”

  Mora laughed. “You contend that you are best for Aremoria.”

  “I contend that war will do no one good. Aremoria is not like here.” Hal flung her arm out to indicate all the island. “The roots do not speak to queens of Aremoria. There is no wormwork, not like here, no witches and prophecies setting us on our courses. Aremoria is its people. How they love and hurt, how they pray and curse and—and die, and are born. That’s what I care about, because I know them. I’m one of them, and I want to take care of them.”

  “I care for them. They are my people.”

  “If you care for the people of Aremoria, stop trying to take it away from me. I am the prince, my mother the queen. That is how it is, Mora, now. What is matters more than how it came to be.”

  “If you are so concerned with averting war, give Aremoria back to me—without rebellion or upheaval. Abdicate. You want to—you want to be free.”

  Hal shook her head. “What I want doesn’t matter. You and Hotspur taught me that. What I am is all that matters, and I am the prince of Lionis. Lay down your ambition, Banna Mora. Let us be friends: Aremoria and Innis Lear sister-states, as they were a hundred years ago.”

  Mora shook her head. “I do not fight for my own ambition. I fight for justice. I fight for what is right, what will heal Aremoria: bringing her together with Innis Lear, under one crown. My crown. That has been true for more than your hundred years. Don’t you remember Morimaros himself wrote of it, that idol we shared when we were children? He wrote that the greatest king would reunite Innis Lear and Aremoria?”

  “You think Morimaros would start a civil war, a rebellion, just to do that? If he’d wanted to, he could have done it! He was perfectly positioned to make Innis Lear part of Aremoria again, but he chose people and love over that, Mora! His legacy teaches us what to prioritize.”

  “I think you would fashion yourself after a Morimaros that never existed, after a story.”

  The two women stood, surrounded by friends, lovers, family—the very stars and ancient tombs. Everything listened, everything watched.

  Prince Hal’s jaw clenched. Her eyes glared into Mora’s, and Mora could only glare back, her body stiff with aching. Hal said, “I think he would want to be remembered the way I remember him. As a man who loved. Love was his priority.”

  “And I think he more would rather Aremoria to last forever, as a bastion of wisdom and justice. That is his legacy.”

  “You’re wrong, Banna Mora,” Hal said, disbelief and sorrow in her voice.

  Mora fell silent, cupping her heavy belly; it was a struggle to keep her hands relaxed around her baby. “We will see, Hal,” she murmured. She could not believe this woman had once been among her favorite people in the world. Now they were separated by destiny, an ocean of history, and the legacy of the very king who’d brought them together. “A month after this child is born, I will come to Aremoria, and I will take what is mine. You are welcome to try to stop me with arms, but the time for convincing is past. No more words to me, Hal Bolinbroke. From now on, your only way forward is action.”

  Hal, wisely, did not answer.

  THE QUEEN OF Innis Lear sat among the thousand candles flickering across the Star Field, wrapped in a cape of white fur and blankets drawn around her like drifts of snow. A full moon hung at the apex of the sky, its light diffused by thin clouds rippling across its face and diminishing the span of stars. Her strange silver crown rested in her lap; one hand played across the tips of the twisted spires.

  After the zenith ritual, after Banna Mora’s outburst, the queen had sent all her people away; back to Dondubhan for fire and beer and sleep. Only a handful of her most trusted retainers lingered nearby, down the slope where they could hear a cry for help, but not see her.

  The wizard walked silently to her, slipping around tors built of smal
l moon-white rocks and standing stones as high as his waist. In one hand he held a plain bag of bones, in the other a shovel.

  Solas tilted her head to look at the wizard. He leaned the shovel against the limestone memorial before them: a rough-cut set of three massive liths, two standing tall, the other laid across them to form a doorway. Candles perched across the top, dripping white and yellowish wax. Down the length of the north stone a line of hash-marks boldly declared,

  Gaela Lear, a rightful queen.

  The wizard set his bag carefully beside Solas and accepted a flagon of wine from her. He drank, studying her pale face, the golden freckles scattered across the high planes of her cheeks, the gentle wrinkles at her eyes—solid mud-brown and vivid with wit. Her dark brown hair was wrapped into a simple braid that hung over her shoulder, unadorned but for the gray wool tying it off.

  “What do you stare at, wizard?” she asked softly, a note of amusement in her tone.

  “The queens of Innis Lear have never learned to embrace any aspect of royal decoration.” His dark gaze dropped to the silver circlet in her lap.

  Solas laughed. “What is silver when I am crowned by the moon itself?”

  The wizard smiled with her.

  Cold wind snapped at them to end their flirtation and work. Shivering, the wizard took up the shovel and paused a moment to flatten his hand against the memorial. His thumb brushed the thin gouge in the stone that began the word rightful. It meant too many things to him, and nothing.

  There’d never been anything right about him, not in all his long life. But that wrongness had made him, too, and opened the path for the earth saints to grasp his spirit and bind him.

  The wizard put the blade of the shovel against the hard ground and began to dig.

  He worked steadily, welcoming the burn in his lower back and shoulders; he’d competed in today’s tournament, defeated the rightful heir to the throne with a simple shadow trick. He missed the struggle of wrestling and swordwork, wished he might’ve been invited to fight for Prince Hal as a soldier instead.