The Hidden Queen

by Alma Alexander

  In the end, of course, there was no real choice. The campaign would have to be left to his generals, to carry on as best they might. Sif crumpled the letter in his hand and flung aside the flap of his tent with a quick, furious gesture.

  “Ready the horses!” he called out into the night. “We ride for Miranei in the morning. But first, bring me a couple of good archers. There is a plan I want to try at dawn. A parting gift, for Favrin to remember me by.”

  The plan was somewhat foolhardy, and perhaps not what Sif would have chosen to do, under normal circumstances. But he was maddened by the impasse and the dispatches, and decided to blood Favrin with his own hit-and-run tactics. There were guards posted at the han, but it was built as a hostelry, not a fort, and visibility was limited.

  Favrin had done what he could, cutting down one or two large trees which the Roisinan men, who recalled their beauty, mourned and swore to avenge. Even so, Favrin’s lookouts were encumbered by the set of their posts, and were not expecting this kind of attack from the usually slow and methodical Roisinan forces. So far, Sif’s army had persisted in doing things by the very rules their attackers flouted with such impunity. As a result, in the dim hour just before dawn, the Tath sentries waited eagerly for their relief and never suspected an engagement from across the river.

  The han was sturdy, roofed with tiles in the manner of the south, not thatch. This may well have been why nobody had tried something similar before—but the building itself was wood, and the summer had been dry. By the time Favrin’s men noticed the fire arrows embedded in the han walls, the fire was already eating at the timber frame. Sif, sitting astride his horse behind the phalanx of mounted soldiers waiting on the riverbank, smiled grimly at the chaos he had wrought. In the early morning stillness sound carried, and voices drifted across the broad, placid, shallow Pellen.

  “The horses! Look to the horses!”

  “Stand still, fool, your back is on fire!”

  “Watch the shore!”

  “The beam! Watch the beam!”

  And, finally, one with more authority, “Retreat! Into the hills!”

  Sif leaned down and whispered into the ear of a squire who stood holding his horse’s reins. “Now. Bid them follow. Take back the river.”

  The squire trotted off to pass the quiet words to a young knight Sif had placed in command. No order was called out aloud. Sif’s forces moved in eerie silence, urging their mounts into the river, blades drawn. They looked, for the moment, implacable and invincible, with the first rays of the rising sun stealing over the tops of the hills to touch their armor with metallic fire. Soon the sound of voices from the han was replaced by incoherent cries—some of agony, some of exultation. Sif chose this moment to turn and ride away.

  Back in Miranei, events blew no less hot than the flames he had chosen to fan at the River Pellen. Granted, the rumors subsided when he returned to court and publicly laid remembrance wreaths at the graves of his father and the rest of the royal family. It was a foolhardy man who would dare to repeat rumors infringing Sif’s rights or his dignity to his face. Nevertheless, the seeds had been sown. There were many who genuinely mourned Anghara Kir Hama. There were others who watched Sif closely, and waited. He would eventually make a mistake. It was only a matter of being on hand to witness and proclaim it.

  The summer drew to an inconclusive close. Sif’s army had dislodged Favrin’s men from their base at Tollas Han, now a smoldering ruin, and established a Roisinan presence in the foothills above. The Tath forces had split, some remaining in the mountains to harry and annoy those parts of Roisinan closest to them, others returning over the Tolla into Tath. Still others, led, for a time by the recovered Duerin, crossed the Ronval lower down, picking their way across the vast and malodorous Vallen Fen which surrounded the Ronval estuary, emerging on the Roisinan side of the river to make a determined bid for the port of Calabra. Sif, still wary of outright war, moved to block them. It would later be recounted in soldiers’ tales that the Tath men had been easily found…by the smell they brought with them from the marshes. An endless series of jokes at the expense of the new Tath perfume did the rounds in the taverns. The defeat dealt out to Duerin was not so much a military one as a humiliation of the spirit. The men of Tath did not forget it.

  The military moves were followed in the Cascin school room as soon as they were known. On one occasion Feor called for an analysis of the key commanders.

  “Sif’s generals seem to be adopting Favrin’s tactics,” said Kieran. “They’re not an army any more; they’re individual units.”

  “It’s easier to absorb the blows if they present a smaller front to hit,” said Brynna slowly.

  Ansen could never bear Brynna’s analysis of strategy quietly. To his mind, her presence in the room became superfluous when the real war was discussed; war games were men’s work, a chit of a girl had no place here. “What would you know about it?”

  “What I see,” said Brynna, goaded, as always, into the defensive. “The last word we had spoke of three raids, all with small casualties on our side. The dispatch before that, there had been ten in the same time period, and our casualties were bigger. The difference is that our army has split up. They’re more mobile, and once they draw out Favrin’s men from the mountains, it’s easier to cut them off from their line of retreat.”

  “But Favrin is changing too,” said Kieran. “He’s raiding less, but he’s making each foray count now. He knows what they’re doing, and he’s moved to counter them.”

  “Who do you think is the better commander, Duerin or his son?” asked Feor.

  “Favrin,” said Kieran immediately. “Duerin is predictable. Were he in Favrin’s place, he would never have changed his tactics. He’s the kind to issue orders, and then follow them until death. Favrin, now…he thinks. He changes.”

  “Duerin’s cunning. He’s more at ease with poison and rumor, a word whispered in the darkness, than with a lance,” offered Brynna. Without realizing it, she was repeating things she had absorbed in court circles, laying herself open to awkward questions had any who heard thought to ask them. But there was a certain amount of distaste in her voice and for once, Ansen found himself in agreement; he looked past the interesting mystery of how someone like Brynna would have such intimate knowledge of Tath’s king and contented himself with reacting to her words.

  “He’s too driven by his greed for the Roisinan throne. He’s ruled by an idea, rather than reigning over it; he can’t distance himself from something he wants for long enough to think about how best to win it,” Ansen said, an indictment which utterly disregarded a very similar fault in himself. Brynna could not help a small smile, but wisely chose not to comment.

  “Favrin is adaptable, clever, strong,” said Feor, endorsing their comments succinctly. “When Favrin becomes king, that is when Roisinan will have the real trouble with Tath. Right now it is easy for Sif to keep the status quo. But when Favrin comes into his own, Roisinan will have to choose: war to the hilt, or some sort of treaty.”

  “Why doesn’t Sif go out there himself?” demanded Ansen. “Now, while he’s still got Duerin to deal with?”

  “A king,” said Feor cryptically, “has many wars to fight. Perhaps Sif is engaged on some other battlefield.”

  “Do you mean the rumors that Princess Anghara is still alive?” said Ansen.

  “Or those which say it was Sif himself who killed her,” added Kieran. That was treason, but in this schoolroom nothing was forbidden.

  It was Ansen who roused at this, though, his eyes snapping; he would hear no ill of Sif Kir Hama. “That’s a foul lie!”

  Brynna dropped her eyes and bit her lip.

  “Why does he not simply sweep down and clear the plains of these Tath raiders and drive them back beyond the Ronval? He has the bigger army, he could take them into Tath itself and finish it there and then. And he’s already routed Duerin once in open battle,” said Kieran.

  Ansen had no answer, while Feor had one that seemed sin
gularly unsatisfactory at the time. He started rolling up the map, which had lain between them, with a gesture of finality. “Tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll talk about that again tomorrow.”

  The war dragged on, and so did the sessions with Feor and his maps. Brynna soon realized this was no longer an ordinary classroom; these discussions had taken the place of what might have been a council, had Anghara Kir Hama sat on the Throne Under the Mountain. Feor never mentioned Sif by name if he could avoid it; he always talked about what might be the best course for Roisinan to follow. Feor was no longer a simple tutor to the sons of a small baronial keep. He was using those sons, and himself, to prepare Roisinan’s queen to take up her inheritance when her time came. It was an unspoken compact between Brynna and the priest—she knew what he was doing, and he knew that she knew, but neither allowed the merest suspicion of the truth to show. Brynna still kept mostly silent in class, allowing Ansen his hot air and braggadocio—but she was growing all the time, growing and learning, changing into something so much more than the child she appeared to be. Feor once surprised her alone by a dying winter hearth, her shadow huge on the wall behind her, and was struck by the aptness of what he saw. Brynna’s shadow was Anghara Kir Hama, Princess of Roisinan, already so much more than Brynna could ever be.

  Brynna turned eleven during her second winter at Cascin. Feor took all his duties seriously, and already she was adept not just at history and genealogy but also at some of the lesser disciplines of Sight. She still lacked control and stamina for a lot of the work, but Feor had pronounced her more apt a pupil than most. If she could not always tell when a vision would come in the flames or call one to order, she was able to recognize Sight when it came upon her and could report, if not yet wholly interpret, the things she saw. The other children at Cascin remained largely ignorant of her gifts, even Kieran—although Brynna’s ability to sweeten Drya’s occasional fits of temper was known by the child’s minders. Drya was more Ansen’s sister in her temperament and disposition than the twins’—but she liked Brynna and would happily spend hours with her without fussing, which meant Brynna was in demand as the child’s companion.

  For Kieran himself, the spring of the following year brought his fifteenth birthday and something quite unexpected—a visit by his sister, Keda, whom he had not seen since he had come to foster at Cascin. Keda was dark like her brother, but lacked his height; she was small-boned and fragile, and although she was the elder by some three years, Kieran at fifteen almost topped her by a head. The time he had spent fostering at Cascin and being instructed in the arts of war, history and strategy by Feor and Lord Lyme’s Master of Arms, Keda had spent in the household of a widowed Shaymir noblewoman at Aymer. She had been taught quite different skills, and now carried with her, in its soft leather case, a small Aymer harp. This was a notoriously difficult instrument, and proficiency earned instant admission everywhere from roadside bans to kings’ palaces. Keda had succeeded in mastering it and had travelled from Shaymir into Roisinan as a journeyman singer to ply her trade, stopping off to visit the little brother she had not seen for many years.

  She had sent word of her coming to Cascin, but asked that it be kept as a surprise for Kieran. All he was told was that a visiting musician would play at supper, and the children would be allowed to stay up as a special treat. Kieran subsequently surprised everyone when, upon entering the hall where Keda already sat in her dark musician’s robes, he let out an uninhibited whoop of delight and descended on the visiting “singer” with such unbridled enthusiasm she was in serious danger of being crushed by his exuberant embraces.

  “When did you get here? How long can you stay? What’s the news from Coba?”

  “Easy, sprig,” she said, fending him off, laughing together with Lyme and Chella at his spirited welcome. “There will be time enough. Lord Lyme and Lady Chella have been kind enough to invite me to stay as long as I wish, and there is a lot of catching up for us to do. But there will be time enough.” Her eyes were also blue, like Kieran’s own, but paler, less vivid, shading almost into gray. They were serious in her laughing face as she gazed on him, with an appraising eye. “How you have changed,” she said at length.

  “No. Never that. Not with you,” said Kieran, his own mood quenched a little by the memory of their years apart.

  “But you have,” Keda said earnestly. “You left Shaymir a boy. I find a man.”

  Ansen, hovering nearby to be introduced, heard the remark and it rankled. There was just under a year’s difference in their ages, but Kieran and his opinions were always taken seriously while Ansen was constantly dismissed as a mere child. Now his lips thinned for a moment as he stepped up and bent in a gallant manner over Keda’s narrow, pale hand.

  “I am Ansen of Cascin, Kieran’s foster brother,” he said, deciding to effect his own introductions. “He has spoken of you, but now I see he has never done justice to a description.”

  Keda turned her slow, languid smile upon him.

  “My oldest son,” said Lyme, the faintest of rebukes in his voice.

  “I am happy to make your acquaintance,” Keda said, with all the warmth and dignity with which, Ansen was sure, she would have greeted the Lord of Cascin himself. “You are very kind.”

  “I think,” said Chella with a smile as she watched Kieran claim the chair next to his sister’s, “we had better leave the music until after dinner, else Kieran will have to be gagged and sent from the room. He is bursting with questions of home. Come, Ansen, let us leave them a while.”

  Ansen, who had meant to press his advantage, followed his parents with ill grace and watched the vivid conversation between the reunited pair from the other side of the room. In truth, his compliment had begun as courtly gallantry; Keda was slim to the point of thinness, her figure almost boyish with narrow hips and small breasts. Ansen, with all the precocious arrogance that went hand in hand with being heir to a great and lordly house and estate, had already tasted the promise of a kitchen maid or two. He had thought his tastes ran more to the fairer, more buxom type. But with the joy and animation of this reunion coloring her pale cheeks with a faint flush of excitement, and her eyes sparkling with love for her brother, Keda was very far from plain. Later, when she took the floor with her harp and filled the hall with complex, mysterious Shaymir airs sung in a smoky, low alto, Ansen found himself revising his initial estimates. By the end of the evening, he would have described Keda’s mysteriously slanting pale eyes, her masses of dark hair, the delicate tapered fingers of her long musician’s hands and her wide, generous mouth as his ideal of womanhood, and seen nothing peculiar about his sudden change of opinion.

  7

  Keda had meant to be on her way within a relatively short time, but the days of her stay lengthened imperceptibly into weeks, and soon summer was upon her. She had planned to be in a city for the festival of Cerdiad—Calabra, or even Sif’s own Miranei—where celebrations of the Harvest Festival revolved more around revelry, music and dancing than the harvest itself. She had hoped to find work there and establish the beginnings of a reputation. But she found it hard to leave; the years of separation lying between herself and Kieran could not be compressed into a period of weeks. Something always cropped up to keep her at Cascin, and Lyme eventually invited her to stay and grace Cascin’s own festivities. With a short excursion to the common room of Halas Han, just to test her skills (as Keda put it) on strangers whose judgment would not be colored by the fact that they were family or friends, she agreed.

  Returning early from her visit to Halas Han on the eve of the festival, in order to be back in time for Cascin’s own celebrations, Keda found the great doors of the manor open wide. The smooth expanse of lawn stretching before the house was aboil with scurrying masses of children, dogs and servants carrying plates or cloths or candles, hurrying in and out of the house. Others tended the great Cerdiad bonfire being kindled on the paved stone circle in the midst of the lawn. Keda, having changed from her singer’s finery into more relaxed garb, had
meant to come out for a quiet stroll. She hesitated at the door, taken aback at the sudden crowds on the usually quiet lawn. She stood for a moment, then slipped past a manservant staggering under what looked like the legs of half a dozen trestle tables, and along the shrubbery by the side of the house into a more tranquil and secluded area. A door standing ajar at the side of the house should have alerted her to another presence, but Keda’s thoughts were far away in distant times and places; she almost blundered straight into the motionless figure of Brynna, who stood alone in the darkness staring intently at the sky. Almost involuntarily Keda’s eyes snapped up as well, but all she could see was a clear sky full of summer stars.

  “What is up there that interests you so?” she asked with mild curiosity, after a moment of companionable silence.

  She could not be sure in the dim light, but it seemed as though Brynna blushed deeply as she looked down. “Oh, it’s nothing,” the younger girl said dismissively, hugging her elbows close to her body with her hands. “It’s just…Catlin told me that if I stared very hard at this one star on Cerdiad Eve, and then closed my eyes very quickly, I might see…”

  Keda could not help smiling. “Oh. I see. Please forgive me for disturbing you, then. But where I come from there are much simpler ways of finding out the identity of one’s best-beloved.”

  Now there could be no doubt as to Brynna’s embarrassment at being so blatantly caught out at one of Cerdiad’s myriad love charms, but nevertheless she looked up with interest. “Like what?”

  “Well, you could sleep with a bloom of the desert sage under your pillow,” said Keda, teasing lightly, “but those are relatively rare even in Shaymir, outside of the true desert. A favorite flower would do, I suppose. Just ask it to show you a true dream of your love, and, on Cerdiad Eve, it must obey. Or peel an apple so that its skin stays in an unbroken ribbon, and throw it over your shoulder under moonlight with your eyes closed; it’s meant to come down in the shape of the initial which begins the name of your future husband. Do you want to try it?”