by S E Wendel
“No, Ennis, she’s helped me. She can help you too if you’d only—”
Ennis cried out when she felt Essa’s letter wrenched from her hand.
“This is the problem,” Renata said, holding up the letter. “You cling to the past, to the Highlands. You must be set free.”
And in one fluid movement, Renata ripped the letter in half and cast it into the fire.
“No!”
“The Mother is your salvation, Ennis Courtnay, not some ghost from the past and certainly not some warlord.”
Ennis could barely hear her words, only the triumphant tone, as she clutched at her chest, an inhuman wail ripping from her lips. She would’ve fallen to the floor if hands hadn’t caught her and pulled her up.
“How could you?” she cried as Lora bore her away. “How could you let her?”
She felt Lora leading her up the hallway towards the stairs, but she broke free, flying to the door and throwing herself outside. Her breaths came in irregular gasps as the cold air stung her hot, wet face. For a moment, she thought to return to Manek at the wall but knew she couldn’t face him, couldn’t bear to let him see her broken.
Instead she stumbled into the woods. She didn’t make it far before collapsing to the grassy forest floor. Filling her fists with grass and dirt, earth boring beneath her nails, Ennis wept until she was sure Tamea herself heard.
Twenty-Six
Time forgot Anona. The years stretched past her, and soon her frozen heart ached. So she sent her icy winds south until all of Mithria was covered in snows and frost. All looked the north, where Anona sat, and she was glad. But the mortals, their skin bare and their fires weak, cried from the cold. Ceralia dipped her hand into the ocean and cloaked herself in a wave, then went to visit her daughter. “Do you not hear their cries?” Ceralia said. Anona laughed. “You care so much for them, but what of me? Father sent me here, but here I am forgotten.” “You are not forgotten, my daughter. You are of my flesh. I love you as I love them. Please, remind them once a year, but spare them the rest.” Anona’s face was frozen, but her heart was moved by Ceralia’s plea. “Very well,” she said, and thus her ice winds only visit the mortals in winter, reminding them of her mercy and her thawed heart.
—When the Ice Winds Come
The women left Adena when they finished combing out her long hair. Larn disliked it when she became dirty—now that he could find no pleasure in her body, he could at the very least adorn it with finery, keep it clean and shiny for all to gaze upon. Silent women with apathetic hands came almost every day now, washed her with rose water, combed out her hair, dressed her in fine silken dresses. Then one would lead her out of her prison to the great hall, where she sat behind Larn as he held court.
Adena thought that if he could find a way to permanently affix her upon the great hall’s mantle, he would.
The women came frequently but never spoke. Adena began to wonder if she was imagining them. It wouldn’t be the first time she conjured a companion.
The floor creaked.
From the bowels of the fortress came her Moon Boy. Sometimes she wondered if she’d conjured him, too.
He stopped when he saw her, brushing the soot off his tunic at the sight of her silken garments. It was dark, but she thought his ears were turning red.
Something, a nagging feeling beating hard in her chest, had her asking, “Drinking again?”
He nodded stiffly, keeping half of his face angled away from her. He did that when he sported a new bruise. Sometimes Larn’s men liked to hit; sometimes Gaetien wasn’t fast enough.
She’d asked him once why he never fought back. It was an ironic question, a foolish one even, but anger had burned bright in her breast when she found out he never returned a hit. Even when his attacker was another kitchen boy, he never raised his fists to them. Some would find it admirable. Adena supposed she would have too, a year ago. Now, all she could think about was how she wanted to fight, wanted to and couldn’t.
“I’d hurt my hand,” had been his excuse. “Or someone else would.”
And Gaetien couldn’t have that. Not when his hands were so precious to him.
He liked to show Adena his work on little scraps of paper. Some were little more than a handful of words describing a ray of sunshine. When he managed to find a fuller piece of parchment, it was littered with verses, not all of them connected. Sometimes he numbered them; sometimes they stood eclectically together and Adena would spend days puzzling out how they fit.
He wrote about everything, from the spiced stew Cook made, to the rows of stones that made up the great hall, to the stained glass that cast the hall in pools of color. The stained glass was his favorite—it was Larn’s, too.
It seemed that, now that the Midland army was back, all they were good for was drinking. With a heavy snow from the southern mountains blanketing the fields, even the farmers sat idly in their houses, whittling away until spring. The doors of Larn’s great hall were thrown open for anyone and everyone, all through the night, through the winter. It was always overwarm there and smelled of charred meat and spilt ale and stale piss. Adena hated it.
From Gaetien’s face, she knew it had been another rowdy celebration.
“How many were there tonight?” she found herself asking.
He shrugged, laying out her tray of food, one of two so graciously provided throughout the day. “Many.”
“Was the garrison commander there again?”
“Yes.”
“Dorran, too?”
“Dorran never misses free ale.”
“Mm.”
She sipped at the watered wine, wetting her throat and keeping the cough bubbling up at bay. She needed to appear healthy enough. Gaetien knew of her bloody lung, was one of the few kitchen staff still willing to come into the room rather than shove her meals through the cracked trapdoor and hurry away.
“It sounds like they’re all there,” she said quietly.
He looked up at her, his freckled face wrinkling. “Adena, I…you know I can’t.”
“When could we ask for a better time? Everyone’s drunk—the city’s asleep.”
“Someone will see. Your gown—”
“I’ll rub dirt in it.”
“Someone will notice you’re gone. They’ll tell Larn.”
“I’ll be well hidden by then.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere. I don’t know.” Her chest ached with frustration. Usually Adena didn’t like to argue; she’d much rather leave such things to Ennis while she herself found a sunny patch of balcony to recline on and finish her needlepoint.
But that had been her old life. Now, she woke every morning to a body that grew weaker, to blood soaking her pillow from coughing fits in the night. Now, she could feel the very life seeping out of her. All the Courtnays had known of her sickness before Highcrest was taken, but somehow, it hadn’t seemed real. It was just a hard cough, just night sweats.
Her time was precious—wasted here behind the cold stone walls of Scallya. And she’d be damned if she died here, to be burned as the southern barbarians were wont to do with their dead. She’d be damned if her ashes were spread on Midland soils, to help grow Midland crops.
No. If she was to die, she would do it in her sister’s arms. Larn thought her a little pet bird, sitting behind him in the great hall. To passerby she seemed to perch on his shoulder, the little Courtnay starling whose wings had been clipped. But the little bird had ears, and she listened to what was said in that hall. She searched her memory, made herself remember that horrible night that smelled of charred flesh, and she could recall names.
Ennis and Irina were with a warlord called Manek, in the Lowlands.
So it was to the Lowlands she would go. Whether or not Gaetien chose to come with her.
“Gaetien.” Her voice was soft now, and she held herself carefully, accentuating her prominent collarbones and trembling lips. “You know I must get away.”
He looked from her clasped hands to
her mouth. Slowly, he shook his head. “I don’t think there’s a way, Adena. None at all. He’d just find you again and…”
“It’s worth the risk. Don’t you think it’s worth the risk?”
He squirmed as she stepped towards him. There were times when Adena thought Gaetien wanted her, but there were others, like now, when she thought she frightened him more than anything else. He held himself rigid, awkward, unsure where his hands or gaze should go.
“Adena…”
“Gaetien, I want to escape. With you.”
His swallow was audible. “And go where?”
“South. The Lowlands.”
“There’s nothing for either of us there.”
“That’s not true. My sisters are somewhere in the south. And somewhere there is a cottage waiting for you to fill it with your words. It will be quiet, shaded, with a forest on one side, a stream on the other. You will have peace for your writing, all the quiet and solace you need.”
Her words spun a web around him, and for a moment she had him. The dream spread out before them, bright and possible. Then he blinked, the wonderment ebbing from his eyes.
“We’d never make it.”
“You don’t know that. Don’t you think it’s worth—?”
“No! Adena, please, you must not ask this of me. You know I have my sister Lyda—what of her? I must make my way here.” He closed the distance between them and reached for her hands. They were clammy as he gathered hers to his chest. “I will always, always be a friend to you, Adena. But there are some things I just can’t do.”
She jerked her hands away, stumbling back a step. Breath rushed in and out of her but didn’t seem to be filling her lungs. Some things I just can’t do. It was a choice for him, not survival. Oh, no. It wasn’t his body that was violated and paraded about and betraying itself in a slow, wasting death. It wasn’t his cold, solitary death looming ever closer with no promise of anyone to say the proper rites.
All her viable plans included Gaetien. Between Larn’s wrath and her own precarious health, he was the only person who talked to her, sought her out. She’d known from the first that the women who tended her would do nothing. Their hands, while gentle, were always cold. There was no comforting touch, no sympathetic glance in the looking glass.
She needed Gaetien, and he was denying her. She turned away.
“Leave me.”
There was a hush, making her think for a moment that she hadn’t said it aloud. Then Gaetien sucked in a breath.
“Adena, I wish I could give you what you want. I wish it more than anything. If there was a way—if there really was a cottage waiting for us, like you said, I’d take the chance. But sometimes all we have are wishes.”
His words ate at her ears and made scorching tears run searing down her face. She shook her head, as if she could fling the words away. She didn’t want to hear this—she couldn’t hear this.
“Let’s make good on the time we do have. Please, Adena, I want to help you. I do. I…I love you.”
“What?”
“I love you, Adena, I want to—”
“Love me?” she screeched, her anger bubbling from her lips in a hiss. “Love me? You don’t love me!”
“I do, Adena, I—”
“You care nothing for me. You keep me here, just like him! You’re happy to have your little friend hidden away, always there when you cry tears over your cuts and bruises, always there to look at your verses because she’s nothing else to do in her sad little cage.”
He tried to shake his head, tried to protest, but she slashed a hand through the air. “Leave me, coward!”
He scrambled away like she was a viper about to strike, and in truth, she felt like a viper, hissing at him, her anger coiling tight around her heart. He flung himself down into the hole and slammed the trapdoor shut.
It echoed for a time, and then everything was silent.
Adena slumped into the bed she hated with all her soul and curled up in its rumpled blankets. There was still blood on the pillow from the morning, and no matter how often the women gave her new linens, the bed always smelled faintly of Larn.
In the quiet Gaetien left, Adena thought she could hear the blood coursing through her, pooling in her lungs, waiting to climb her throat. Her blood was killing her, slowly drowning her, and there would be no escape.
She pressed her face into her hands, wondering how much longer it would take.
She closed her eyes and wished with all her heart to see Tamea beside her bed when she opened them. She would take Tamea’s hand and go with her like an old friend. Anything to leave, to escape.
She opened her eyes. She was alone.
Though her strength quickly seeped from her limbs, she began forming words, her cold tongue feeling too large for her mouth. “Deceiver see me. Deceiver hear me. Curse this man; curse Larn’s house, his fields, his blood. May he know what I have known. I give myself to you as payment, and I will greet you with a smile. Deceiver see me. Deceiver hear me…” And as she chanted Ean’s curse to herself, Adena felt a presence with her there in the dark, and she smiled.
Twenty-Seven
It’s her, Father, I know it is. Ennis Courtnay will be the next Highland queen.
—note from Colm Dunstan to his father, Adren
The Midland riders came on a cold afternoon, bringing commands that double the Lowland men were to come to Scallya with haste.
Manek had woken that morning with a sense of dread sitting bitter in his mouth. The day was gray, cold. A day to don a cloak and shove fingers into gloves. Even with the lingering winter cold, his volunteers came to work on the wall despite their numb fingers and lips. As they hoisted another pole into place, a boy came running.
“Lord Manek, they’re here! Midland riders!”
He bound onto Oren and kicked the horse’s sides. He had to get to them before they came to the eastern path into town. From there they could spy the wall, and Manek knew such news would inevitably reach Larn.
He could just see Lord Midland’s face when hearing of this wall. It would pucker with displeasure, the scar pulled tight across his ruddy cheek. “What an odd invitation, Manek,” he’d say, “I didn’t know you wanted me south.”
“How long until you’ll be ready to march?” Dorran said, resting an elbow on the engraved horn of his saddle.
Manek scowled, determined to look at the Midland captain’s forehead rather than meet his eye. He couldn’t promise not to hit him if he did. “We’ll need a few days.”
“You have two.”
He ground his teeth. “Fine.”
Dorran peered over Manek’s shoulder with a glint in his eye. “This is a nice town. Where do you recommend staying?”
“Outside of it,” Manek snapped, pointing at the northern meadow. “I think you’ll find it quite comfortable.”
Larn’s seneschal made a face. “Always so rude! And here I was going to offer to come north with you.”
“Much as we’d both like that, you can head back to Scallya now if you wish. You’ve done your duty.”
“True,” he said, picking his thumbnail, “but if I return without you, the Midland army will be heading south rather than north.” His gaze flicked up to meet Manek’s. “We wouldn’t want that.”
Manek nodded at the meadow. “I’ll have supplies sent.”
Dorran wore a particularly pleased grin despite not being allowed into Rising yet again. “Ceralia smile upon you.”
With that the Midlanders headed for their designated campsite while Manek turned back to Rising. A crowd had already formed on the border of town, eager, anxious eyes watching him as Oren slowly approached.
“Gather in the square. I’d like to speak with everyone,” he said.
With solemn nods, they went to their homes to tell their families and neighbors.
Manek guided Oren back to the wall where he called out to the men working. When those in the forest had come as well, he said, “We’re leaving in two days. Everyone’
s meeting in the square. After, go to your families.”
“What about this?” One of the woodcutters nodded at the wall.
“We tried,” was all he could say.
The men began trudging up the hill. Manek and Taryn shared a look before he too headed back into town.
As he watched them go, he spotted a figure walking down the slope of the hill towards him. He was all at once relieved and sad to see Ennis, his chest aching to see the now familiar sway of her hips and braid as she walked. Dismounting, he waited for her at the end of the wall.
She had a forlorn look about her, like she’d already had a lifetime of watching men march off to war.
Wordlessly he handed her Larn’s official summons. He knew what it said but having her break the seal and read it gave him time to think of something to say to her.
“You and double your men are commanded to Scallya. No less than double. It will take that many to take Dannawey. You are to leave within a few days upon receiving this. That’s all it says.” She looked up from the letter at him. “You’re going, then.”
It was a fact, not a question, and all he could do was nod.
“And what of the wall?”
“Hope that it lasts the summer, I suppose.”
“You expect it to fall down?”
“I expect Rick to attack while I’m away. They’ll no doubt burn it.”
“Oh.”
“Still,” he tried to grin but knew it just looked painful, “I appreciate all you did.”
She nodded, though her eyes were distant. Walking past him, she ran her hands over the undulating surface of the wall.
Manek found himself following her, a deep pain lodged between his ribs. He’d miss their banter, earning her smile, seeing her light up at the prospect of work. He’d come to admire her, not just for her education, but for her wisdom, her stubbornness, even her haughtiness. He liked the way she sauntered more than walked. He liked watching her sharp gray eyes dance with amusement, liked guessing what she was thinking when her mouth said one thing but her gaze another.
