by Grace Draven
I breathed a mental sigh of relief at her resolute tone. Somewhere amidst the fighting for her right to rule, she’d given up some of the doubts that had plagued her.
Someone who knew her less well might have heard ambition in her words, or the lust for power, as Stefan assumed. I knew it for the duty she felt she owed her people. She might not be the megalomaniac her father had been, or someone like her mother, who’d acted because she believed only she could prevent a terrible possible future. No, Ursula was simply born for this. Salena had gone to impossible lengths to bring her daughter into being, blood of her blood, to hold and keep the peace. Danu’s bright blade, avatar of justice that cut through the posturing and nonsense.
This is what made her a queen, while I remained the one who stood behind her.
* * *
Ambassadors, royals of all tiers, and various other representatives of lands far and near continued to arrive through the following weeks as word of the coronation continued to travel. The sheer number of guests strained our hospitality with so little time to put the castle and environs to rights—or to replenish the supplies depleted by the siege situation Uorsin had created in his paranoia. Harlan finally convinced Ursula to delegate security to him, which let her concentrate on smoothing relationships. She didn’t love ceding control of that aspect of things, but she trusted him to do it, which helped immensely.
Each daily onslaught of new arrivals, however, failed to produce the three guests I most hoped to greet. Zynda hadn’t returned, but sent a vague message with the Tala artisans who delivered the new throne. I read it nine times, but never got more from it than I should be able to have what I wanted and they’d get to Ordnung eventually. As the goddess of the shapeshifters, of wild magic, the moon, and the ever-changing shadows of night, Moranu did not instill organization in her followers.
Conversely, the message sent from Danu’s central temple, from a high peak at the nexus of six kingdoms, near the geographical center of the continent, had come back with crisp precision within days. They knew where to find the priestess I sought, but obliquely referenced that she must be retrieved, which would take some time. They also did not promise when she would arrive.
I began to kick myself for this brilliant plan. So far I not only lacked the perfect persons to crown Ursula—I had none at all. With Glorianna’s central Temple on the grounds of Ordnung itself, I could have at least made that part easy, with so many convenient priests to choose from, most of them highly placed in the Church’s hierarchy, but no. No, I had to send away to the White Monks, all the way on the coast of the Strait of K’van.
Who hadn’t answered at all.
With a week until the coronation, I began to consider that I’d need a back-up plan. We had the throne and the crown. The rose window had been replaced with stained glass in three overlapping circles—Danu’s star ascendant on a summer-blue field, Glorianna’s sun against the pink of dawn or sunset on the lower right, and Moranu’s crescent against a midnight sky on the left. Where the colors overlapped, they blended shades, so the curve-sided triangle in the center glowed a majestic purple. It was a thing of astonishing beauty.
Pennants once again flew from the shining towers of Ordnung—now thirteen of them, Annfwn’s joining the others. Ursula’s personal banner and the one Ami had designed to represent the united kingdoms were folded away, awaiting coronation day.
Ursula’s sword had been repaired and she’d even, with surprisingly little rancor, met with Denise, the head seamstress, to discuss her coronation gown. Without me present. Which was fine, as I had more than enough to occupy me and Denise promised me that Ursula would look extraordinary. I tried not to be concerned when I heard she’d recruited the armorer for advice.
We were talking about Ursula, after all.
I’d very nearly decided to send to Danu’s temple and ask them to send someone, anyone to perform the ceremony, when I got word that the person I’d most hoped to see had just been granted permission to enter Ordnung.
Ursula had adjourned court for the day and had gone for a “light workout” before the evening’s meal. With more and more dignitaries in residence, the feasts grew longer and more elaborate with each passing day—with Ursula valiantly attempting not to count the cost of feeding so many so lavishly for so long. She deserved the outlet, so I kept my mouth shut when those supposedly light workouts produced bruises and the occasional bleeding wound.
At least those impressed the newer members of court, to witness for themselves the ferocity of their future High Queen—and would give them exciting tales to carry home. That she’d be in the practice yard for this reunion was serendipitous. A thrill of uncertainty went through me. Hopefully I had not overstepped.
I hurried to the inner courtyard, spotting our new visitor immediately. She’d grown older, of course, over the last dozen years. Goddesses knew we all had. But she also looked as supple and keen-edged as ever.
“Kaedrin!” I called out and her head whipped around to pick me out with unerring precision. She left her horse and strode to me, wrapping me in an enthusiastic embrace.
“Dafne.” She squeezed my shoulders, scanning my face. No doubt witnessing the lines I’d gained. “Danu could have struck me down, I was so surprised to get your missive. Uorsin dead and our little Essla ready to take his place at last, eh?”
“Not so little. Wait until you see her. She’s in the practice yard, naturally.” We exchanged grins, turning together in that direction. “Will you do it—handle Danu’s part of the ceremony? You’re still a priestess?”
“Once a priestess of Danu, always one,” she averred. “And it will be the greatest honor of my life. You know how I hated to leave her to him.”
“Yes.” Ursula had been desolate for months after Uorsin banished her mentor—along with all mentions of Danu and Moranu—from Ordnung. “But you equipped her well. Look.”
We stopped just inside the practice yard, the snow of the morning’s storm melted away from the sun-warmed stones. Ursula sparred with Harlan, while some of the other Hawks and Vervaldr watched and others ran their own exercises. Lean and lithe as the daggers she used, Ursula spun in and out of Harlan’s brutal attack, avoiding the devastating sweeps of his broadsword, wielded with all the brute strength of his large body. I winced, unable to look, knowing now where the bruises came from.
Neither of them ever held back. And she looked less strained than she had an hour before, now fierce and free, bleeding off the tension of the days. Something else he did for her.
Kaedrin waited until Ursula, laughing, danced back from a narrow miss. “You’re still dropping your left guard,” she called out.
Ursula, never taken by surprise, froze in shock. Then turned.
“Kaedrin?” She whispered it, staring as if at an apparition.
Kaedrin held out her palms and shrugged. “That or the avatar of Danu come to discuss your failures of discipline.”
Shaking her head, Ursula handed her daggers hilt-first to Harlan, then broke into a run and seized her old mentor in a fierce embrace. “I never thought I’d see you again.” Her gray eyes, not steely at all, but fogged with uncharacteristic tears, found me where I hovered on the edges still. Thank you, she mouthed. And I knew it had been the right decision.
* * *
After Kaedrin’s arrival, as if Danu’s blessing had created the path, everything else fell into place. Andi and Rayfe returned to Ordnung, bringing word that Zynda would arrive shortly with the same shaman who’d married them. He’d been on some sort of retreat somewhere in the depths of Annfwn, but had been persuaded to leave his homeland. Andi promised he and Zynda would be in time. I made a deliberate resolution to believe her. I also managed not to ask again about the Dasnarians. She’d said she’d tell me if anything changed.
Apparently we still had time.
Ami and Ash also returned with the twins in tow—both babies seeming as if they’d grown a hand’s-length each. And both, it turned out, had shapeshifted during thei
r time at Castle Avonlidgh. Stella had led the way, becoming a black jaguar kitten—something that seemed to please Andi no end—and Astar, upon witnessing the event, had crawled after her, transforming into a baby bear, swiping at her escapades.
They recounted the tale over a private dinner, a great relief after all the formal feasts and one they insisted I join, despite that I made for an uneven seventh at the table. By the time Ami told it, from the mad escape from the nursery, to the consternation of the castle guard and Ash’s eventual rescue of the spitting kitten from the height of one of the tapestries—heroics for which he bore four long scratches on his forearm that he claimed he wouldn’t part with even if he could heal himself—everyone was in tears from laughter. Ursula even took Harlan’s hand, lacing her fingers with his and exchanging a long look, as if at some private joke.
“I’m just glad you thought to send those Tala nurses with us,” Ami told Andi, wiping the moisture from under her eyes. “I don’t know what we would have done otherwise.”
“I’m glad, too,” Andi said, “though I didn’t really expect them to shift so soon.”
“Especially so far from Annfwn,” Rayfe put in, frowning a little.
Ash shook his head, going solemn. “I’ll tell you—what we’d heard doesn’t touch on the reality. The magic eddying around the countryside, it comes in fits and starts, sometimes crashing like surf and then leaving only tide pools behind. In some places it’s much stronger than anywhere I encountered inside Annfwn. In others, it’s almost barren.”
That sobered everyone. “And Windroven?” Ursula asked Ami.
“Rumbling,” she confirmed. “But so far no more than that. We’re watching it and we’ve made evacuation plans.”
“It will be full winter soon.”
“I know that,” Ami retorted. “I’ve been snowed in at Windroven, but Glorianna curse me if I’m going to make everyone leave during late fall harvest just for some rumbling.”
Ursula rapped her knuckles on the table, jaw tightening “Yes, but how long do we get between rumbling and exploding?”
“I don’t know!” Ami fired back. “We haven’t done volcanoes before.”
“Unless you count within the family,” Andi remarked to Rayfe in a dry tone.
Ami ignored her. “These are my people, too. My home. Let me handle it, Essla.”
Harlan refilled Ursula’s wine goblet and nudged it against her clenched fist. She flicked him a glance and uncurled her fingers in a deliberate move. “You’re right.” Then she grinned. “But if my niece and nephew shapeshift in Ordnung, you get to handle that, too. I won’t be chasing any jaguar kittens.”
Ami groaned and dropped her forehead onto the table, Ash stroking her hair in amused comfort.
I made a note to study up on volcanoes.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The White Monk arrived the following day, two days before coronation.
He arrived so inauspiciously that I wasn’t notified as I had been with Kaedrin. I’d cut through the arcade on my way back from leaving some texts in Ursula’s rooms that she’d asked for, when I encountered the white-robed and hooded man standing, arms folded into his sleeves in a small courtyard. Not the one Ursula liked to use for private workouts, but one just down from that, attached to the family wing. He seemed to be staring at the grass. Dry autumn leaves whirled in a chilly breeze, chuckling in hoarse whispers as they brushed the stone walls. The urns had been emptied of flowers following the first frost, but for some reason the patch of grass remained green.
Perhaps that’s why he stared.
I cleared my throat. He didn’t move.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“I know you’re there, Lady Mailloux,” he replied, his voice a softer scratch than the leaves, the voice of a man who seldom speaks. “So this is where they did it.”
Was it? I hadn’t known. Though it made sense, given the relative privacy of the place. I shivered, abruptly cold without my cloak. The arcade would have to be closed for the winter soon.
“Thank you for coming to Ordnung.” I stepped closer.
“It’s not a small thing,” he said, still not looking at me, “to sacrifice a king to the land. Tell me. Did all three daughters have a hand in it?”
“As I understand it. I wasn’t present.”
He glanced at me then, icy blue eyes the only color in a pale face, lined with age. “No. You wouldn’t have been. Your sacrifice is still coming, isn’t it?”
I began to understand why Ursula complained about vague prophecies. “I think you’re mistaken. I’m only a librarian—now councilor to the future High Queen. I asked you here to participate in her coronation, as a representative of Glorianna.”
He only gave me a slow nod of confirmation that I’d spoken the obvious.
“How shall I address you?” I tried.
“I am the White Monk.”
Exactly as Ash used to say. I nearly smiled at the memory of Ami stomping her foot and screeching, “That’s a title, not a name!”
As if I’d called him with the memory, Ash came striding through the arcade, then stopped in his tracks. The old man turned to him and made the circle of Glorianna. Ash bowed deeply, then approached the monk and knelt, bowing his head, and the man laid his hands upon it. All in silence.
Feeling like an intruder on something sacred that did not belong to me, I slipped away. But not before the monk caught my eye, and winked.
* * *
The morning of the coronation found me in Ursula’s rooms as the ladies dressed her for the ceremony. Zynda would arrive with the priest of Moranu at any moment, Andi had assured me. Goddesses make it so. Ursula didn’t need my help, but I had taken over her desk, fielding last-minute emergencies, mostly via notes and pages running frantically about. I occasionally needed her to weigh in on a decision. It was easier, I justified to myself, to remain with her.
Mostly, I wouldn’t have missed seeing the assembly of this gown for anything.
The ladies I’d assigned to her bustled about happily, enjoying their rare opportunity to primp their future High Queen for what might be the only coronation they’d see in their lifetimes, Goddesses willing. For her part, Ursula showed more patience than I’d expected for the extensive preparation it took to make her concept work. Of course, she’d confided, a month of ceaseless politics, ruffled feather-smoothing and negotiating made her grateful for any respite.
I agreed with her, nursing a secret plan to slip out of the celebration ball early, crawl under the covers of my bed and sleep for days. It wouldn’t happen, but the fantasy kept me going.
“One point of troubling news,” I told her, “is that Prince Cavan of Erie and his bride, Princess Nix, late of the Remus Isles have arrived.”
Ursula raised an eyebrow. “Did Uorsin know about that alliance?”
“I believe King Wyn kept that information quiet. Old Queen Isyn, Nix’s mother, yet lives—but once she passes it appears that both Erie and Remus will fall under Cavan’s rule.”
Harlan, observing the proceedings from a chair by the fire, frowned. The weather had grown decidedly chill, though the sun shone brightly enough to satisfy those who worried over omens. It surprised me a bit, that he elected to stay for the primping, but something about the way he kept an eye on Ursula made me think he had good reason. Whatever significance the gown held for her, he understood and was careful of it. “Remus is not one of the Twelve, correct?”
Ursula flicked him a glance in the full-length mirror Ami had sent over from her rooms. “No. It’s a chain of islands, very insular people. Rumors of magic even wilder than we’ve seen.”
“Apparently quite a bit magical has happened there as well in the last month or so,” I told her. “And we’ll have to discuss how that alliance will affect things.”
“Put meeting with them on the schedule for tomorrow then.”
As if said schedule wasn’t already overloaded, but I made a note.
The ladies had so far fastened her into
a corset over a light shift, which Ursula accepted with reasonable grace as they insisted it would be necessary to support the gown. Denise had tackled the challenge of creating the unusual gown with enthusiastic determination—along with the extensive and unprecedented collaboration with the armorer—using steel boning inside the stiff fabric of the corset.
“Being able to breathe would be helpful,” Ursula commented wryly as they tightened the laces.
“Believe me, Your Highness,” Denise replied, surveying her work and nodding at Ursula in the mirror, “you’ll be grateful for the back support before this day is done. This is not an inconsiderable amount of weight to carry. Think of it as a kind of armor.”
“A bulwark against protocol?” Ursula huffed out a pained laugh.
To my gut-clenching relief, an out-of-breath page arrived with a note from the gates that said Zynda had arrived. Minutes later, the Tala woman knocked and was admitted. She came in, dusty from the roads, but also radiant and tanned from Annfwn’s sun, bringing the scent of wintery air and tropical flowers with her. Halting, she scanned the elaborate skeleton of the supports for Ursula’s gown, whistling in amazement.
“So not how the Tala do it,” she remarked.
Ursula frowned at her in the mirror. “Blame Dafne. She insisted on all this pomp and ceremony.”
“You picked the gown,” I reminded her. It hardly seemed possible all would be done by day’s end. “Did you...” I started to ask Zynda, then broke off in panic at what I’d do if she gave me the wrong answer.
She grinned easily. “Moranu’s shaman is here. He’s consulting with the White Monk and the Priestess of Danu in the small family courtyard. Kaedrin asks you meet them there, when you’re available, to discuss details.”
