Banner of the Damned

by Sherwood Smith

  She gave them the command direct, strengthened by the word “no.” Both dressers curtseyed in apology, Nereith with tears dripping down her cheeks. Torsu looked submissive, but her lips were white with fury.

  THREE

  OF THE GREAT MAP

  L

  asva entered the queen’s rooms to find her sister alone, except for the cotton-wrapped babe on her lap. Lasva curtseyed deeply. Queen Hatahra’s mouth trembled, and the soft flesh under her chin quivered. “I did not think,” she began. “That joy could be so painful.”

  Lasva sank down onto the hassock beside her sister’s chair. “Pain?” she asked.

  “The realization that all my work will pass to these little hands. Who is she? Yesterday, I merely longed for her existence.” Hatahra bowed her head, and tears spattered on the soft robe, but the sleeping babe did not stir.

  Lasva was amazed. She thought she knew all her sister’s moods—brisk, businesslike, sarcastic, blunt.

  Not since the very first birth attempt, fourteen years ago, had her sister spoken on this subject. At that time it had all been plans for the future, and Lasva had been a child. Her sister’s consort then had not been Lord Davaud but the sophisticated, powerful Lord Mathias Altan, heir to a dukedom—already married with two children, although the marriage, once it produced an heir, had settled into a distant partnership.

  He’d laughed after the queen tried the spell and nothing happened. Not out of cruelty, only mere carelessness, unexcited at the prospect of another squalling babe (though he did like the idea that this son or daughter would inherit a kingdom) but all the while thinking his position secure. A mistake. Favorite though he was, by that night she’d unribboned him, and he was riding back to his estates, his belongings in wagons behind him. It was five years before she relented and permitted him to return to court, but by then he had been replaced by Davaud.

  That was Lasva’s first lesson in the complexities of love when you wear a crown.

  “Pain also because my courses ended two years ago. I wish I could nurse.”

  “But surely the Healer knows a way…” Lasva tried to hide her surprise, but Hatahra, always observant, smiled wryly. “Perhaps. But the fact remains that I am too old for it to be natural. And I do not have the time. I assure you, the desire did not come to me until the babe was born. It will probably pass as quickly, especially if she wakens in the night, as several have said will occur. As it is, poor Pollar must have spent weeks selecting this year’s wet nurse.” Her chin lifted, and she said in a lighter voice, “Would you like to hold your niece?”

  Lasva held out her arms, thinking, Surely this will make it easier for me to ribbon Kaidas without the necessity for treaties, now that I’m not the heir? But it was not the moment to ask. In the time it took for Hatahra to settle the tiny bundle in Lasva’s hands, Lasva consciously set aside her own joy, to more fully partake in her sister’s.

  Lasva had never held a baby before. The royal princess was unexpectedly light. She smelled sweet, though it was a sweetness not identifiable with the scents of mere flowers. Her features were small, the head large, her body felt boneless. Her mouth made faint nursing motions, and Lasva smiled, finding the sight unexpectedly endearing.

  But as Lasva watched, the little mouth puckered and then frowned. Then eyes the indefinite hue of a shallow stream opened, and they too puckered.

  “Ah!” came a thin little voice.

  “Pollar!” the queen cried.

  Pollar, who was Marnda’s sister, bustled in with quick steps, and behind her was a cheerful looking young woman unlacing her bodice.

  The babe was surrendered to the wet nurse. The servants departed, and Queen Hatahra got up from her chair—a small, square woman, her wavy, honey-colored hair still untouched by gray. (She’d finally given in and abandoned the silver hair as old-fashioned.) Hatahra’s maternal effusion seemed to depart with her baby. She moved briskly past Lasva, her light gaze acerb, a slight frown furrowing her straight brows.

  Lasva followed Hatahra to the great table in the queen’s private withdrawing room, with its twelve bowed windows looking southward over the rose garden, and beyond, the royal canal. On the table lay an enormous fine-drawn map, detailed to the exact shape of each noble’s home, in tiny but proportionate rendition. Something only a king or queen could afford.

  “And so,” Hatahra said, “today’s Midsummer Rising will be her Name Day, as is traditional.” She smiled wryly, waiting for Lasva to pick up her cue.

  But Lasva stared down at the map as though her future lay there. Of course it did, Hatahra thought. Best to get it over with.

  Lasva was observing the fact that her sister had told her nothing she did not know. Sometimes Hatahra introduced difficult topics by prefacing them with statements on which they already agreed.

  Hatahra continued in the same wry tone. “All court will look their best. Right now they must be working out the most flattering congratulations in hopes I will be granting requests or handing out posts with the same freedom with which I toss flowers at the Martande Day regatta when you all return from Sartor.”

  Lasva curtseyed, her fan spread gracefully in Expectation of Pleasure, which made her sister bark a short laugh, snapping her fan open and sweeping it over the great continent that stretched nearly two thirds across the southern hemisphere. “I do appreciate, even in my happiness, the irony that she comes in the very last year I was to try.”

  Lasva said, “I did not want to say this at New Year’s, but our mother had me when she was seventy-nine. The Birth Spell came to her then. Surely…”

  “And how long did she live past your birth? Not a year. Maybe I should tell you the truth about that day. For now, know this: I had decided I would not have a child past my next Name Day. To go beyond that, well, who can know how long one will live? I would not condemn you to the unwanted task of a regency, raising the one who would always have precedence of you. Oh, I know you would have done your duty, and with grace, but a regency is seldom a stable government, especially when you have ambitious nobles stepping on your hem. And you deserved a better life.”

  Hatahra leaned on the map table, her gaze serious. “Lasva, you are now free to choose among the world’s kings and princes, either to court, or to be courted, as you wish. That much I can grant you.”

  Lasva’s heart constricted. But she only curtseyed.

  “We will very soon be receiving royal suitors, and I need the sort of treaty only a king, or future king, can bring. Altan and Gaszin are getting stronger. And while the Sentises stay aloof from the machinations, it is only because they are fishing in royal Sartoran waters—specifically, young Sentis wants to marry Adamas Dei, giving him equal rights of government. It is said they will even combine the names.”

  “Ah-ye, it is such a romance,” Lasva exclaimed, hands open in Shared Joy.

  “A romance, yes,” her sister returned dryly. “But Sentis ought to know better: marriage has nothing to do with romance when one’s person represents government.”

  Lasva bowed. “I had forgotten.”

  Hatahra smiled. “But the world hasn’t. Which is why every prince in the east—royal or not—will be haunting Alsais soon, but you won’t be courted by any royal princesses.”

  Lasva had never before considered the meaning of what she’d grown up knowing: that dukes and royal persons did not have the freedom of those who were not regarded as living symbols of law. There could be a single queen, as had been for three generations. There could be single kings, as was Jurac Sonscarna. But no land had two kings on a single throne, or two queens, just as there was no kingdom populated exclusively by men, or by women.

  Marriage between government figures seldom had much to do with love, or with lovers. They might never sleep together; they might not even make an heir together. If marriage there must be, it comprised a treaty between a man and a woman, as representatives of those who identified themselves as male and those who identified themselves as female. Government, according to Ol
d Sartor, from whom most traditions descended, was more stable if represented with gender parity.

  Hatahra was watching her sister closely. “There is enough unbalance in the world between the sexes. Some say that the Chwahir keep the sword in the hands of men. Where does that leave women? It sounds to me like they are overdue for a run of queens to inherit and balance things out. Or there will be trouble.”

  Lasva bowed, chilled to the heart. The message was clear: a princess cannot marry for love.

  Hatahra snapped her fan open. “From the hypothetical to the specific. My dukes and duchesses want all the privileges of power, but one by one wish to discard the inconvenient responsibilities. Ah-ye! I can use that to break their alliance. Carola Definian has made overtures to me; she wants, who knows why, the Lassiter heir, and I favor that because I’d rather avoid a marriage alliance between Alarcansa and either the Altans or the Gaszins. They’re courting her. I know it. Either of them joined with Alarcansa’s wealth and land would effectively control a third of Colend, which would press me hard to resist their demands.”

  Lasva said, “You have never discussed these things with me before.”

  “I dealt with the politics so that you could preside with grace and the ease of detachment from political machinations. You would have begun learning had you been declared heir. But now Alian is here to take that responsibility, so your responsibility is to bring me a strong alliance with another kingdom—one that permits me to get a harness on Gaszin and Altan at last.” Hatahra lifted her gaze to her sister’s stricken eyes. “Lasva, I speak only of treaties. I’m a tough negotiator. As I said, you shall have the choosing of your royal prince or king, I promise you that.”

  Hatahra’s eyelids narrowed as she studied her beautiful sister in exasperation and tenderness. “You are not pleased?”

  Lasva’s fan swept in the pretty arc of Harmonious Assent. “It is so soon to think of having to leave Alsais.” She despised the lie—she despised herself for lying—but she could not bring herself to believe that all her careful plans, talked through so lovingly the night before, might be smashed.

  Hatahra touched her sister’s wrist. “I know you love life in Alsais. Of course you do. Our city is the fairest in the world. The pleasures of our court the finest, even surpassing Sartor, I do believe, though the Sartorans might say differently.”

  Lasva said, with a little of her sister’s irony, “But?”

  “But think. If you were to stay—if we did not need a good, strong treaty—the years would pass in an eyeblink, until one day you would come downstairs at the beginning of the season to find a sixteen-year-old Royal Princess there to take precedence of you, and thereafter you’d dwindle into an aunt, sought more and more by those who wish you to serve as conduit to either me or my daughter. I would give you a better life than that.”

  Hatahra stopped there. She had her own secret thought. She had looked down into the little face born that day, and in spite of a mother’s enchantment with her infant, she had seen vestiges of her own plain features with perhaps her consort’s big ears and hawk nose.

  Lasva had been beautiful from the moment of birth and would remain so until she died, and what kind of problems might arise from the future heir being overshadowed by her aunt? Humans, Hatahra thought, of whatever degree, however refined their education, have a tendency to behave like humans. And jealousy is a distinctly human trait. Time to give Lasva—whose looks were the fault of their shared ancestors—some alternatives.

  Lasva seemed startled at the idea, her sky-colored eyes round. Then she made a wry face, dimples winking in her cheeks. “The only two unwed kings I know of I would not court.”

  “I know. We will certainly leave out the cursed Chwahir, though I think they would do better for a queen. Even if that braying Jurac comes riding through Lily Gate to offer you a crown, I will not have you any Lammog.”

  Lasva winced, remembering the story of the Chwahir Queen Lammog who had been murdered by her brother the century before, some said for being too popular.

  “Ah-ye,” Lasva whispered, thinking of awkward Jurac, who’d been so grateful to be taught to dance. She’d felt sorry for him, but pity was no reason to marry.

  The carillon rang in the distance, signaling Hour of the Leaf.

  “I had better dress,” Hatahra said.

  Lasva began her curtsey, then paused. “My birth.” Her fan opened at a pretty angle, indicating Discreet Inquiry, but the unhappiness of her lifted gaze was revealing. “I always thought it was caprice that caused our mother to try the Spell. Marnda has said more than once it was her age, and a wish to see the sweetness of youth before she died.”

  Hatahra’s brow was severe. “That’s because Marnda doesn’t know the truth. None of them do. Our mother was even more private than I am, and our battle of wills, harsh as it was, stayed between us. Very well, then, here is the truth, but do not imagine the telling any kind of allusion: I preface it by pointing out that all our lives I have avoided forcing you into choices.”

  Lasva curtseyed. Her sister’s low tone warranted no less.

  “I wanted to marry,” Hatahra said, speaking with care. “It doesn’t matter who. The fellow came from a family known for being dashing and attractive, both men and women. In short, I was in love with him, and I can see now—as our mother did then—that he was in love with the idea of acting the part of a king. A dashing king, of course.” She grinned. “I will say he had little desire for power, only for the fun of presiding artistically—making ‘dashing’ the royal mode, you might say.”

  Lasva closed her fan, hiding her hands in the soft folds of her skirt.

  “But being dashing is not the purpose of a king—not of a kingdom the size of Colend, with its unending demands. Besotted, I did not see this, or pretended I didn’t see it. I insisted on marriage, not mere ribbons, or the private agreement of a consort: a ring-marriage with promises of fidelity, which I claimed were for love but, actually, I thought to bind him. Hum-bumbler that I was! You do not bind others, they bind themselves. My mother said that if I married him, I would not inherit the crown. Instead, she would try the Birth Spell. I did not believe she would—that she could have any success—but that very night she spoke the words, and there you were. I had to make my choice at that moment, or she would have declared you the heir the next day.”

  Lasva’s chill spread to her limbs. “How—did your favorite—?”

  “Oh, he didn’t dust off the moment he realized he would never rule Colend. He had far too much style for that. But each day I could feel his attention wandering farther afield, and by summer I knew that he was courting someone else. He professed eternal love for me, but by then I had faced the truth: he was in love with what I could give. He did not ever know me. Within five more years, my own eternal love had dwindled to indifference, and I thought I was in love forever with Mathias Altan. Which in turn didn’t last.”

  She touched Lasva’s wrist again. “It’s the way of human nature, despite all the songs.”

  FOUR

  OF ROSES IN BLOOM

  “S

  o our Rose has been supplanted?” asked Isari of Ananda. Ananda Gaszin glanced at the fine pearls Isari had threaded through her bright red hair and looked away again. Pearls! In the morning! The Icicle Duchess’s fashion. Court had become both expensive and… strange, since Carola Definian began hosting such expensive parties that few dared compete.

  Ananda flicked her fan up in a graceful whirl, languidly fanning her face without disturbing a single corn-silk curl. Pearls… but Isari did not have a lover’s ribbon in her morning hair dress any more than the Icicle Duchess Carola did.

  They were joined by tall, thin Sharith, recently betrothed. Sharith’s mouth twitched. “Let us enjoy the fragrances, shall we?” And her fan opened slowly

  Time to talk over the astonishing news: the queen had an heir at last. What did it mean—besides Princess Lasva being changed from conjectural heir to marriageable princess? They stepped along the
mosaic pathway leading to the conservatory, their draperies fluttering in the slow, aromatic breezes that flowed off the canals and over the palace gardens.

  Low couches shrouded by planters made inviting circles throughout the space. There was no obvious center and certainly no dais or throne. The focus of the room was inevitably toward the fern-shaded, grassy area near the waterfall, where the queen sat. Those who wanted her attention made it their business to place themselves as close to that miniature dell as their rank permitted—or as need required.

  The three ladies were joined, at languid pace, by a fourth: Fiolas, whose lateness and tired eyes were noted by the others. Her abundant brown hair was done up in a charming disarray, scarcely curled, as though she had risen in haste—The Fresh Arising. Behind her back, Carola’s eyes semaphored to anyone watching about the vulgarity of a style at least three years out of fashion. Not that Carola cared anymore, with her heart’s desire so close to her grasp, but she did not have him yet, and it would not do to reveal anything until she did.

  So she commented on life’s ironies in the language of the fan, as though nothing else were on her mind, as Sharith flicked her skirts with one hand, her ribbon-tied wrist arched. Ananda held out her arm and Fiolas took it, her touch lighter than a butterfly’s wing. Isari smiled. The four young ladies known as Lasva’s Roses, once secure in their ascendance, would stand together.