by Unknown
Though the rest of the dining hall rang with the clatter of crockery and the clamour of conversation, at the high table we sat dull and stupid as the meat in our trenchers.
Perhaps the meal’s festive atmosphere wouldn’t be enough after all.
‘Aunt Helena, perhaps you might formally introduce your companions?’ I said, my voice faltering at the end, fearful of Grandmother’s reaction, though she didn’t so much as glance at me.
‘Certainly,’ said Helena, taking a sip of wine first, an indication I wasn’t the only one wary of Grandmother’s temper. ‘Mother, Matilde, may I present my brothers, Flavian and Varis. And Varis’s wife, Cassia.’
I smiled mechanically in my turn, noting Helena’s omissions. She’d neglected to mention the clan of her Ilthean kin, and their clothes lacked any insignia, familiar or otherwise. Too, why bring your husband’s kin but not your husband?
After a wary glance at Grandmother, Flavian addressed me. ‘It is an honour to meet the relations of our esteemed Helena.’
‘And to sit at your table for such an occasion,’ added Varis.
Cassia said nothing, nor did she bother to shift her stare from whatever blank spot on the far wall she found so much more interesting than our conversation.
I knew precisely how she felt, though sitting silent wasn’t an option I could choose. ‘Aestival is my favourite time of year,’ I said, smiling at Varis. ‘The last of the winter freeze, the new growth everywhere. Sharing the experience is part of its charm.’
Grandmother’s gaze conveyed what she wouldn’t voice in front of others: Frippery does not become you, child. But keeping my mouth shut wouldn’t gain me the knowledge of Helena’s activities while in the south.
Helena rewarded me with a smile. ‘I’ve always loved it, too. For all its stuffiness’ – she slanted a look at Grandmother – ‘I’ve missed Aestival in the Turholm. There’s nothing like it for spirit.’
‘It’s different, in Ilthea?’ I asked.
The mention of the empire which had been pressing at our southern border for generations, back even to the years of the Raven’s reign, brought a wave of silence in its wake. I hid a wince behind a sip of ale, though Grandmother sawed at the meat in her trencher as if she’d not heard any of the conversation.
‘It’s larger,’ said Cassia, her voice full of disdain. ‘With less emphasis on cavorting around a fire and glutting ourselves. Your aunt wouldn’t know. She spent little of her time in the capital. Aestival in the remote and less civilised corners of the empire is all she’d understand.’
The ale turned to a sour stone in my throat. On second thoughts, maybe silence wasn’t such a bad idea.
‘Please forgive my sister,’ said Helena, favouring Cassia with a frosty look. ‘She is homesick, and more intemperate with it than usual. Ilthea is unforgettable.’
‘And its reach is long,’ Cassia retorted.
This time both Varis and Flavian condemned Cassia with a meaning look and she subsided with ill grace.
‘If the girl cannot comport herself civilly at table, she can feed with the thralls or not at all,’ Grandmother said.
Cassia tilted her chin a little higher, but didn’t respond.
Helena looked as if she was going to say something, then hesitated, worrying at her lower lip with small, stained teeth. In the end she decided on silence, bending her head over her meal.
No one else spoke – and I no longer wanted to play hostess.
Grandmother, however, had finished with silence.
‘Go on, Helena. Tell us of Aestival among the Ilthean. Join your sister,’ she said, the word dripping with scorn, ‘in her censure of our barbarous nature.’
Helena pushed her plate away with both hands, a gesture more dramatic than symbolic, since she’d picked it clean already. ‘It’s been years, Mother, and yet here we are. Immovable. Obviously I was wrong to think you might ever put the past behind you.’
‘You didn’t come here to heal rifts, Helena. You came because it was expedient.’
‘Try and stem the tide all you want,’ countered Helena, her voice strained now. ‘Sooner or later the emperor will turn his eyes this way – and where Jurgas Avita Angeron looks, his troops soon follow. Scorn me as you will, at least I’ve done what I could to prepare for it.’
I fought a surge of panic, made uneasy by the truth of Helena’s words. The Ilthean empire had extended east and north since their last concerted foray into Turasi lands, swallowing the nations which had served as a buffer and gaining control of a second pass through the mountains, making the Juthir tribelands as vulnerable to Ilthean attack as the Majkan tribelands. Even Nureya, the kingdom at the top of the world, had fallen; now only the sacred, impassable peaks of the Sentinels stood between the Naris tribelands and the Ilthean empire’s newest vassal nation.
Our natural safeguards were vanishing, the Ilthean empire’s baleful strength pressing ever closer, and Grandmother, as ever, was fully occupied with keeping the Turasi tribes from squabbling among themselves.
A hot flush crept up Grandmother’s throat. ‘My son’s throne will pass to his daughter’ – if she is worthy always completed this sentence, its omission now conspicuous to my ear – ‘no matter how large an army you camp along our southern march.’
I stared at Helena with dawning horror. Perhaps her husband waited at the southern border, in charge of the army she would use to conquer us, to bring us under the yoke of the Ilthean empire.
My parents loved you. They defended you when Grandmother criticised you, I wanted to say, but the words couldn’t fight their way past the sick lump in my throat.
‘Oh, please!’ Helena waved a dismissive hand with a flash of pale wrist. ‘There’s barely a legion of troops, and they’re stationed in Nureya – miles south of the border, not to mention the mountains in between. Have been for the past five years, I might add. They’ve as little intention of marching as I have of throwing this rib at you right now,’ she said brandishing a pork rib stripped clean of all but a few tatters of flesh, the fierce gesture contradicting her airy tone.
‘Ah yes, Nureya,’ Grandmother said. ‘Your emperor’s pledge that the Nureyan king would retain sovereignty was honoured for all of a season, if I remember correctly. Just long enough to send in his slave-born general.’
Helena drew a sharp breath, and Cassia smirked, her response hinting at politics within Helena’s adopted family.
‘My husband was required at the fort and, being so close to the Turholm, I thought to visit. There’s nothing sinister in it,’ Helena insisted.
I wanted to believe her; there was something bright and bold and hurt about her manner which spoke of sincerity. Only loyalty to Grandmother – and knowledge of her normally rational judgement – kept a seed of doubt lodged in my mind.
‘Five years,’ said Grandmother. ‘And every year the patrols encroach further north. Every year they push at our borders, testing us, shedding yet more of our blood. And now you arrive.’
Helena put her hands on the edge of the table as if to push her chair back. But she remained sitting, rigid and unmoving.
‘Visiting kin,’ she said.
Cassia kept her eyes trained on her plate.
Grandmother didn’t react.
‘They’re canny, Helena, these people you’ve chosen. Perhaps as canny as you. Don’t mistake me for a fool, however. Do you think I don’t know about the symbol you’ve chosen for your son?’
Helena went white, but Grandmother wasn’t done.
‘I know the future you hope for him, but hear me now,’ she said. ‘It will not happen.’
‘You know nothing,’ said Cassia, brazen-faced. ‘The sun is setting on your days, old woman, and it is a simple matter of time before these lands bloom under the sway of Jurgas Avita Angeron, instead of wasting under your stewardship. The world has fallen from your grasp already. You simply don’t realise it. Either of you,’ she added, shifting her stare to Helena.
‘Do your best,’ said
Grandmother, addressing Helena as if the warning had come from her. ‘It won’t be enough.’
THREE
THE FEASTING LASTED late into the night, and while those at the other tables or at their revelry in the courtyards enjoyed the passage of time, at our table it dragged, so that I found myself looking forward to the prayers which would welcome the arrival of the first dawn of the new year. When the plates were cleared and the ale finished, I stood as soon as Grandmother did.
Varis, in quiet conversation with Flavian, blocked my way forward. And behind me, Helena was shaking out her skirts, smoothing their fall with diligent care. I hovered in their midst, trapped unless I was willing to push around them.
As Grandmother turned from the table, Helena caught me before I could hurry forward. Tucking my arm through hers, my aunt drew me close.
Grandmother’s look told me to behave, but she let me go. Contrary old woman.
Arm in arm, Helena and I followed Grandmother outside in silence.
My apprehension gave the upper courtyard a sombre cast as we traversed the covered terrace linking the dining hall to the sanctuary. Orange and yellow sparks flew up from the crackling bonfire about a hundred yards away, the distance blocked by a steady crush of bodies, though the heat of the flames was strong enough to make my cheeks glow. The faces of the crowd looked strangely demonic in the firelight – cheekbones and chins and brows aglow, teeth glinting from dark mouths and the whites of eyes from dark sockets, hair and arms and laughter whipping through the chill night air.
I longed to leap from the terrace walkway and plunge into the riot, which seemed a truer celebration of Aestival than our own dry prayers inside sombre walls would be. With the tension brewing between Helena and Grandmother, even the stone lintel of the sanctuary’s doorway, carved with ravens and roses, seemed welcoming.
Helena drew a breath, eyes shining, as we stepped inside and the cavernous hall of the sanctuary opened around us. Lamplight bounced and refracted from the room’s polished parquetry and gilt-work, the crowd’s clothing and jewellery.
‘Oh, I’ve missed this!’ she laughed, her free hand plucking at her skirts, red as the flashes of carp in the Turholm’s ponds. ‘It’s like being young again. There’s absolutely nothing rational about it,’ she added with a happy sigh.
Unwise or not, I warmed to her again. I liked the sound of her laugh. Perhaps she wasn’t the most judicious of women, but at least her crimes were born of her passions, not some innate cruelty. Still, I couldn’t rationalise away the army at the southern border.
Helena’s laughter faded as she noted my expression, and Grandmother’s voice sounded in the back of my mind: Must you display your every thought on your face, Matilde?
‘Tille,’ Helena said. ‘Your grandmother is wrong about me. I’m not planning an invasion. Nor do I want to subvert the succession: the throne will be yours.’
Words mean little, especially at night, came Grandmother’s voice in my head, and the best I could do was hold silent.
‘In fact I’m eager for you to take the throne,’ Helena continued. ‘The Turasi have been ruled by an old woman far too long. It’s time for the fire of fresh blood. Well past time, actually,’ she added, a light in her eyes I didn’t trust. ‘Isn’t it?’
I shifted uncomfortably. ‘The circumstances surrounding my father’s death haven’t left House Svanaten in the best position. Elevating me to his throne is a delicate matter.’
I bit back a sour urge to laugh. I’d spent years swallowing with ill grace those words of Grandmother’s as she delayed my coronation yet one more time, and here I was offering them up in her defence.
Helena gave a careless flick of her wrist and turned her gaze back over the crowd entering the sanctuary. Court officials and merchants, thanes and landholders, all eddied towards the far end of the hall and the circular doors – made of apple wood, orange as the rising sun and grained like the swirl of water in a creek’s elbow – which led from the hall into the smaller temple behind. The doors were large, but their rounded design allowed only one through comfortably, two if they pressed shoulder to shoulder and ducked. Even the most powerful thanes must shift and fidget and push forward and back as they waited their turn to enter.
We, of course, would be last. House Svanaten stood apart, always.
Conscious of Helena’s serene demeanour – she would never crane or bob like an over-eager chick – I strove for stillness.
The hall cleared but even then we waited for everyone to settle, that Grandmother might sail into the temple like a swan upon the lake, us lame ducks trailing behind.
At last she started towards the temple doors. The babble and clatter of people beyond was like smoke in my blood, heady and confusing and urgent.
I put out a hand to steady myself, my fingers brushing the surface of the doors – and the vision took me.
The parquetry floor washed to black. The orange grain of the doors flared brighter and brighter, as did the jewellery of the men and women and children, and the lamplight gilding the windows and tapestries. As if sparked by the hard glare, a fire burst and raged through the temple, the flames hot enough to crisp bones and raise the smell of marrow burning to cinders. And me in the middle, wrapped in the black shroud of the dead and yet still quick with life.
The vision passed as rapidly as it had arrived, my awareness returning to the feel of Helena’s gentle hand on my shoulder. Still I could not rid myself of the queasy touch of fear in my belly that always accompanied my visions. I buried my shaking hands in my skirts. The intensity of the vision, and the temple’s appearance in it, told me the future it presaged was near.
‘Tille?’ Helena slipped her hand under my elbow to take some of my weight and glanced around the room to assess who was watching. ‘Are you ill?’
My rickety smile did nothing to dispel Helena’s concern. I could tell what she was thinking: the shadow sickness. No one wanted a Duethin who might fall frothing to the floor.
‘I’m fine,’ I assured her when I felt strong enough to speak, though the shiver in my hands was creeping through the rest of me, leaving the cold of the dead in its wake. It had been years since a vision had taken me as strongly as this one. As a child, before Grandmother taught me how to resist their lure and quash their power, the foretellings had plagued me day and night. In recent years, they overcame me only when I was too weary to guard against them – or when danger stalked me.
‘We can talk about it later, if you like,’ Helena murmured.
I shook my head, insisting I was well, but she held too tight a grip on my arm for me to pull free. Swept along by her, we followed Grandmother, who was already bearing down the central aisle towards our seats at the front. The lantern light caught at the edges of my eyes, dazzling me. The sooner I could sit and shut my eyes, the less chance I’d be sick.
Slipping into my seat, I fixed my gaze on the wall in front of me, where an intricate carved and inlaid wood panel stretched the length and height of the wall. Its familiar contours soothed me, even if it didn’t settle my stomach. I had traced the story in it every Aestival since I was old enough to sit through the prayers.
Depicted on the far left of the panel, Gunde the Raven sat the throne, her skill with the shadows making her inviolate and unassailable. It had taken faith, in the form of the prester Tamor, to drive her out, and to bind and shackle the children of Irmao, the ninth daughter of Turas. His success was thorough: the silent tribe were known now only as the mara, those cloistered presters who used their skill with shadows in aid of the church. It was a story which always drew me, and always made me shiver. If it weren’t for Grandmother, I too would be cloistered and shackled, no longer the scion of House Svanaten but instead a simple prester, bound to a life of roaming the shadow world.
As always, my eyes slid onward to the centre of the panel. It depicted Turas, the first man, surrounded by his nine daughters, with Irmao kneeling and silent at his feet and the ancestor of my own tribe, the shieldmaiden Suebe,
standing at his right hand. As ever her gimlet stare sent a tingle of awe down my spine.
Helena didn’t step around me to take a seat on my other side. Instead she paused in front of me, an abstracted expression on her face as if she were studying the panelling after a long absence. Surprised, I slid along the pew until I was at its far end, only the cold aisle between me and the wall of dressed stone. Helena slipped into the space I’d opened.
The whispers started before she’d even sat down, a tide of speculation prickling at my neck as it lapped around the room. The disowned daughter was not only returned, but taking precedence over the uncrowned Duethin. Was there a change in Beata’s plans? Would she reinstate Helena as heir?
I resisted the impulse to turn and silence the gossip with a glare. Instead I leant forward to peek around Helena, wanting to warn Grandmother of my vision. Unfortunately she wasn’t looking my way.
A latch rattled in the alcove tucked into the corner nearest me. The door, its dark wood banded in black iron but otherwise unadorned, opened to admit a prester, barefoot and clad in black linen. The voluminous sleeves of his robe reminded me of a raven’s wings as he lifted his arms above the gleaming brass cauldron atop the altar.
There was no more time. I must risk Helena discovering the truth of my visions if I was to warn Grandmother.
‘Something dreadful is about to happen,’ I whispered, my nausea returning in force.
‘Hush,’ whispered Helena, patting my knee, her gaze fixed on the prester.
I had spoken too softly; Grandmother didn’t hear, and a moment later my chance to speak was lost. The prester dipped a ladle into the carved cauldron, fetching up an amber fluid which he poured into a small wooden bowl.
