This work put his sweat to the cold air, his breath a mist around him. He heaved earth away from the base of the monument, and every motion grounded his heart deeper into the island.
If he dug forever, perhaps he could stay forever.
But the wizard reached his goal too quickly. Undyed wool, thin and worn to strips, cradled ashes and chunks of bone, well preserved for a hundred years thanks to the kind of earth upon which the Star Field had been built.
He set the shovel down again and reverently touched a bone, cracked by old fire. “I found her,” he said.
The queen stood, holding her fur around her shoulders, and brought the bag to him. “This will settle them?”
Taking the bag, the wizard nodded. “Neither was given the release of fire and ritual, neither buried here with their ancestors. Nor were they transformed with shadows and rootwine into proper earth saints. Gaela was alone—the island claims she never wandered, never cried out from death. I’m not surprised. In life she did nothing half-assed, so of course she would die well and hard.”
“Irreverent wizard,” the queen murmured.
Together they knelt and withdrew the bones of two sisters from the bag: all unburned, uncracked, but easily distinguished because the heart of an ash tree had stained ribs and femurs in lines of gold and reddish brown, and the Tarinnish had put green and blue into the seams of the Dreamer’s skull.
A shaking sigh parted Queen Solas’s lips, and the wizard touched her wrist, concerned.
“It is only overwhelming,” the queen said. “These three sisters, my great-aunts, their bones together finally. I can feel the island shivering beneath me, and the gaze of the stars sits upon my brow.”
The wizard nodded. He placed the Dreamer’s skull against the earth and took his own shaking breath: he smelled candle wax and sharp dirt, a gentle blanket of damp decay coating everything. The wind gusted, a great gasp of relief from the island.
Here the queens, daughters of Lear, he whispered in the language of trees.
Solas said, With their sister queens, and daughter queens, and mother queens. Elia the mother of my grandmother, her daughter Gaela, the mother of my mother, her daughter Astora, my own mother, and one day me.
Part of Innis Lear forever, the wizard said.
Part of Innis Lear forever, repeated the queen.
And the wind cried, Welcome, queens!
It blew, and the clouds overhead raced, streaking across the stars; clouds were stripped away from the face of the moon, the full bright moon that bore witness, and the vast array of stars.
The queen slipped a flask out of her skirt pocket and uncorked it with her teeth. She dumped clear water—rootwater—over the bones, splashing them all. Then, putting the flask away, she snapped fire into her hand. That she cupped away from the keen wind; the wizard wrapped his hands around her hands, and together they lowered the fire into the small pit.
Pale orange flames skittered across the bones, burning the rootwater, making a mist of it all. Sparks leapt toward the stars, turning blue and silver, stars themselves.
The wizard used his hands to drag earth back into the pit, covering the bones. After a moment, the queen joined him. They dug through the heavy, dark earth, burying these queens again.
Both Solas Lear and the wizard panted into the cold night, breathing harder than the exertion necessitated: their hearts were drawn out, and the island wind tugged and pushed. The wizard’s thick hair ruffled, charms and red threads shifting like streams of blood and clicking bones. Around the queen’s face her hair curled in tired wisps.
Regan, the witch. Elia, the dreamer, said the wizard in the language of trees. “That is what should be carved there on the memorial. Beside rightful.”
Solas sat back and nodded, gazing at the bright limestone monument, at the flickering candle flames surrounding them, above, below, and everywhere.
The wizard dropped to the ground beside the queen, leaning back onto his hands. He shivered, and the queen reminded him there was wine tucked against the tall plinth against which she’d waited. Fetching it, and the wool blankets, the wizard made a nest for them, oddly comfortable, unusually eager to remain under the full moon with this queen.
They leaned against each other, and the queen offered half of her fur cape to share. It made them a shaggy, two-headed monster crouched on the earth.
“Is this your legacy, or mine?” Solas asked.
“Not mine, I have none.”
“Hardly honest—wizard.” She hesitated just enough to let him know she thought his name, but did him the respect of holding her tongue.
The wizard said, “My legacy is … absence. Loss. A gaping wound unhealed.”
“This is a healing.” She touched the back of his hand and directed her gaze to the limestone memorial.
He looked at his hand where she’d touched it and said, “There is no single legacy, only a tangle of intentions, hopes. What are yours? Would you be the last queen of Innis Lear?”
“The last?”
“If Banna Mora has her way, she will become the queen of both Innis Lear and Aremoria, making something new. What will happen to this island? What will happen to the cliffs and moors, the Mountain of Teeth? What will the Tarinnish be if it is not the center well? Will Innis Lear even retain its name?”
The last he said breathlessly.
Solas lifted her gaze to the stars. “And so a nameless wizard worries for a nameless island.”
After a moment of silence, the queen continued, “I do not think Innis Lear will lose itself by becoming more.”
“It is hard to choose the vulnerability required to become more than what you were born.”
“Innis Lear was not born as it is, but was part of Aremoria once, and so maybe it is only natural to long for wholeness again.”
The wizard felt too much in that moment, and shied away. He sipped her wine, silent.
One of the first things he’d said to her, weeks ago in Astora City, had been, Innis Lear longs to be more than it is.
“Do you think you will die? Hemlock queen?” he asked.
“We all die,” she said in a singsong voice.
“Soon, before the Longest Night? That is when these prophecies seem to end.”
“I will be vigilant, but I refuse to chase prophecy. That is the path of self-destruction.”
“Self-destruction is my greatest temptation.”
The queen laughed lightly. “I like having you here, wizard.”
“I’ve missed it.” His voice was rough, uncertain.
She touched his jaw, slid cold fingers to the corner of his mouth. The wizard turned slightly and breathed against her skin. His warmth pooled in her palm, and she stroked his bottom lip.
The wizard took her hand in his, drawing her nearer. He put his arm around her waist and they kissed each other, equally earnest. The queen’s hands pushed into his hair, cold on his scalp. The difference of temperature—cold hands, hot mouth—crashed together in his chest and blossomed with a tension born of desire that drove to every part of his body. (His body that hardly belonged to him, but to the saints, the wicked earth saints, dancing fast in their root halls, spinning, laughing, shrieking at him, but distant, far, not here, not on Innis Lear, which was its own, so suffused with hard magic and a magic of desperation, drawing need from the stars, sharpening its teeth against the blood of wizards and queens.)
HOTSPUR
Dondubhan, early winter
IT WAS A problem, being Hal’s friend again.
When Hotspur agreed to marry Connley, she’d agreed to fight for Banna Mora, agreed to ally her family with Mora’s, in a martial wave destined to crash against Celedrix’s rule. Allowing Hal into her heart again changed nothing except how Hotspur felt.
Torn. Bloodied. Exhilarated.
Hal Bolinbroke made Hotspur long for possibilities, for stories with happy endings, for love and honor to rule the world.
Unreasonable things.
She should’ve told Hal t
o take her win and swallow it, and continued ignoring her. But she didn’t want to. She wanted—had always wanted—to be Hal’s. Too bad it forced her in between Aremoria and Innis Lear.
The first night after the princes’ public argument at the Star Field, Hotspur could not choose which to speak to, or where to sit or direct her attention. She drank too much because of it, and at the peak of her frustration she stormed to the high table and slammed her hands against the wood, glaring between the two of them. “You neither should be emulating anything any man has done!” she said.
Hal laughed, and Mora said, “He was more than a man, he was a king.”
Hotspur scoffed, though it turned out a slurry sigh, and replied, “I am going to go set something on fire.”
Connley and Sennos got her into bed, and she touched her husband’s face in a way intended to be gentle, but like her scoff, was more of a slap. “I haven’t been this drunk since our wedding night,” she reminded him.
She wasn’t the only one unsettled. Thanks to Mora’s declaration of certain war, Dondubhan became a nest of friendly folk drawing each other closer for warmth, yet never forgetting that when they emerged at the end of winter, rivalries would reform sharper than ever. If they emerged at all. Too many prophecies haunted them, touching on weather, desire, death, marriages, open mouths, open skies, and many girls being born. Some folk even called for a stop to evening readings, and a decent handful of Learish men and women grimaced when they caught themselves glancing up. Nobody wanted to see the Dragon, the Lion, the Wolf in any reading ever again.
The worst prophecy should have been the one that whispered behind closed doors: The hemlock queen will die. That one wove a filament of thrill through the tapestry of their lives, a thread that tugged sometimes on Hotspur, quickening her pulse. And the wind, when she listened, hissed, One for Innis Lear, one for Aremoria. It was a phrase she’d heard before, when she pulled her sword from the oak tree.
But to Hotspur, the worst prophecy was The wolf will choose the end, for it put the weight of Aremoria’s future squarely on her undeserving shoulders. Every time she thought she’d already made the choice, the world revealed more complications. She hated prophecies.
Hotspur tried to dismiss anything that wasn’t relevant to her daily needs. But magic made her listen. The wind teased Hal’s hair, whispering prince; sunlight caught the bloody garnet clutching Mora’s forefinger; Hotspur’s own pulse echoed back to her through the stones of the castle.
Connley continued her lessons, and Hotspur clung to the language of trees as if it could explain to her every mystery of the world.
Snow returned to coat the world in white ice but did not trap them in the great hall again. Every few days a party rode out to supplement their stock of salted fish and pies with fresh meat. Hotspur never missed a hunt, nor did Hal, and they circled each other as they searched for their prey, drawing nearer together again.
Despite Mora’s challenge on the zenith, or perhaps because of it, Hal seemed to embrace the remaining days before the Longest Night and squeeze loose every possible drop of enjoyment. As if after this winter there would be no more enjoyment in all the world—which perhaps was true. Prince Hal’s frenetic energy drew everyone, including Hotspur. The prince argued at the high table with Glennadoer and Banna Mora over historical accounts of battle, or shoved tables and benches aside to create huge strategy boards. She used stools and wide-eyed children to stand in for armies or mountains. Hal challenged anyone to games, and Hotspur found herself again and again at the end of a long table checking Hal’s priest and star pieces, or flipping cards. Hal won or lost, uncaring, but dragged those games out as long as possible.
Often Hal and Hotspur were thrown together (along with Mora) at the high table while Rowan and Connley hunched near the center fire with the wizard, murmuring about ancient magic and practicing little things like vanishing stones into shadow or shaping the flames into salamanders and ravens. Hotspur might’ve joined them, now an apprentice in magic herself, but could not choose the men or magic, when the other option was Hal.
One afternoon, some three or four days before the Longest Night, Connley leapt to his feet with such excitement Rowan tumbled backward and the wizard laughed gently. Conn spun to the high table and called, “Isarna! I did it!” He clapped his hands and fire sparked at the tips of his fingers.
She lifted her cup of beer in salute.
That night as she ate, Conn to one side and Hal to the other, Hal leaned around Hotspur and said to Conn, “The wizard is a good teacher?”
Shyly, Conn nodded. His eyes widened and he sighed softly, composing himself, then snapped. A tiny flame popped to life against his thumb, putting a dance of vibrant orange into the depths of his black pupils.
“How did he teach you?” Hotspur asked, thinking of Connley crouched by the cold, dry wood in Aremoria, struggling to light it.
Conn’s gaze dropped, and the fire puffed into nothing, smokeless. “He told me to rethink where fire comes from.”
Hotspur frowned, but Hal leaned in, her shoulder pressing against Hotspur’s.
“And? Where does it come from?” Eagerness floated on Hal’s breath, along with the sharp scent of wine.
“Love,” Conn murmured. “I thought it must be breath, or cracking lightning, some heat of warm wind, or the change in weather. But your wizard said fire is always waiting, pressing in, wanting to burn—just like people want to be loved. And we don’t let ourselves, or other people stop us. But love …” He met Hotspur’s eyes, and they were both thinking of that moment in their bedroom when the wind spoke through him. “Love is always there, once it’s there.”
Hotspur touched his cheek. His skin was warm, her fingers cold.
“I like that,” Hal said softly, and downed the last of her wine.
For the slightest moment, Hotspur imagined they all three were friends.
EVERY MORNING HAL made a point of sparring with Catrin Glennadoer, for exercise and to teach the young woman. Catrin fought solemnly, repeating Hal’s moves, learning by rote, obsessively.
Her mimicry put Hotspur off, though Hal did not seem to mind.
But then Sennos joined them, and he was a patient teacher, then Rowan, and Mared, and the six of them soon built up a rhythm of pairing off, with a witness to correct stances and call illegal moves. They were well matched, though Hotspur and Rowan were the most frequent winners. (Hal rarely seemed to be trying to win, and Mared was easily distractible. When the two of them faced one another, the bout might last an hour, with neither of them getting much real practice for all the teasing and flirtation, and their shared belief that a barbed insult was as good a weapon as a blade.) A few times Banna Mora joined them, though not to fight: she stretched and groaned and lifted armor like weights, and Hotspur suspected Mora of remaining on her feet more to aggravate her husband than for any other reason. That was Mora’s business, though, and Hotspur hoped, whatever competition flared between them, Mora won.
The wizard challenged Hotspur to wrestling once; she could never deny a challenge. And it was brilliant! The wizard’s corded strength and uncanny ability to free himself of holds made the match exhausting and impossible. Hotspur sweated and cursed, struggling her best, and still she only bested him for seconds before he twisted free or crushed her.
After dinner that night, as most of those in the great hall clustered into intimate groups for mulled wine and gentler conversation, Hotspur slid beside Hal, where she hunched alone, having been abandoned by Mared and Vae Lear, who attended their mother. Ryrie had summoned them to hold the ends of the long knitted charm she’d been weaving with red wool. A blessing for the hemlock queen to wrap herself in on the Longest Night.
Hal glanced at Hotspur, a smile lighting her rich brown eyes but not touching her mouth.
“Tell me about that handsome brown man who was with you at the Quick Sunrise,” Hotspur said, waiting for Hal to blanch.
The prince did, but then she laughed. “You did that on purpose,
” she said.
Hotspur shrugged. She knew how to tease after all.
“Charm,” Hal said. “His name is Echarmet of Kurake Queen, and, if Mora doesn’t murder me, he’ll be my husband.”
“I’m sorry,” Hotspur said, touching Hal’s wrist. She’d thought as much. But bringing it up seemed like the thing a friend should do.
“Ah, he’s all right. Likes me, and I like him well enough.”
“But you’ll have to …”
Hal nodded. “I trust he’s incredibly good looking, attractive … but.”
“If you married him immediately, do you think Mora would hesitate to go against an Aremoria united with the Third Kingdom?”
The prince narrowed her eyes, and Hotspur looked sharply away; Hal always saw through her, and Hotspur begged the saints and worms Hal wouldn’t say, Does that mean you don’t want war between us any longer?
Hal said, “Would Vindomata?”
And that cut straight to the heart of everything. Hotspur had chosen this path with more at her side than only Mora and Connley. Even if—even if—she mistrusted Mora’s intentions, she’d never convince Vindomata.
Hotspur swallowed, and said, “I liked it.”
“Liked what?”
Hotspur scraped her bottom lip between her teeth and nodded her chin toward Connley, where he leaned beside Era Star-Seer, his cousin, pointing at the arc of a star chart chalked onto the table. “Being with my husband. It’s … not very different.”
“Oh, fuck, Hotspur.” Hal grimaced. “It’s incredibly different. For me.”
“Have you tried?”
“I don’t have to.”
Hotspur nodded. Then she tapped her shoulder against Hal’s. Hal tapped back.
Something cool as relief spread throughout Hotspur’s body. It felt too tentative, like it would snap if Hotspur pushed too hard.
It was true: she did not want war between them.
She stood up, knocking the table with her hip. Flustered, she left without another word.
The next evening, one before the Longest Night, children brought iron stakes into the great hall for Queen Solas to bless. These would be hammered into the hard-packed earth at every threshold to keep out the hungry earth saints ranging across the island on the Longest Night. A little girl brought one, blessed and tied with a red ribbon, to Hotspur and Connley for their chamber, and when Hotspur said there was no earth in which to bury it high in their tower room, the little girl smiled with her teeth and said, “Put it under your mattress then, or the hungry spirits will take you.”
Lady Hotspur Page 55
