Two Queens (Seven Heavens Book 1)

by Holden, Ryan

  “It is fortunate that guards of the Palace found him first. I fear my new affection for the foreigner would still have blinded my eyes. I pushed my urgent business of yesterday aside and waited at the court, hoping my meager influence and small means might, in a City already so noble, calm the last concerns of our Honorable Judge as to whether he should fear a recurrence of the same. For many a boy might be saved, would there but be someone there to stand up for him when his baser feelings are at full tide.”

  Orion didn't understand this last expression. In truth his understanding had lessened the more Paris talked. He seethed.

  “So there I stood in Court yesterday. Many others better qualified know the rest, how the unblinking justice of Avallonë could not fail to find out that, through knowledge unattainable by natural means, this boy had divined the secret hoard of the House of Greer. But for the ever ready vigilance of the City's servants, he would have through my fumbling fingers taken its greatest treasure.” He bowed and strode back to his seat amid thunderous applause.

  Orion felt fear grip him. He no longer wondered which of the key, chain, or sword would be his lot. He stood frozen, not able to look at the crowd or at Paris. His eyes timidly went from the Queen's gown to the Marshall's sandals, daring not to meet the eyes above them.

  “And now for the accused.” Loud booing erupted and the Marshall's next words were drowned out. A chant of “Treason! Treason!” broke out.

  Orion looked at the Queen. She sat with less expression than the woodwork behind her.

  The Marshall raised the sword in his hands. Silence fell. Orion cowered, wondering if he would be slain on the spot. The Marshall lowered the sword to its resting place.

  “If there is not order, the Court will be emptied. And now, for the accused. What does he say to the accuser, in general? Who is he and of what family, in specific? And how came he to be bearing the Ring, in specific?”

  Orion looked at the Marshall in shock. There was nothing in his eyes or demeanor that indicated he would more readily kill him than any other in the room. He looked at him as he looked at the oasis in the desert. The Marshall nodded.

  Orion cleared his throat and stared at the Marshall.

  There was snickering behind him. The Marshall restated the questions, adding, “In whatever order you wish. If what you say does not fully answer them, I will ask you again.”

  He looked at the crowd then back to Orion. “Do not fear. Your words will not here make red actions, white or white, red.”

  Twenty-four

  “My name is Orion.” He figured that was as good a place to start as any. He remembered when that name was new to him. Now he felt like the life of Brian was a land far off, dimly remembered.

  “My father's name was Devlin, and my mother's, Astra.” He felt timid, exposed, sharing secrets before the whole crowd. A low murmur rippled across it.

  “What! He claims her as his mother!” a man said.

  “Is he not clever?” Paris rejoined.

  Orion thought he saw the Queen's face twitch.

  “Silence!” the Marshall thundered. Paris and the other man sat down and the crowd settled.

  Orion looked at the Marshall who waited for him.

  “And a sister I have, too. We lived on Mount Finola, on the Eastern Mountains, near Darach. That's the village. I grew up tending kardja with my father.” He paused. What did he want to know about my family?

  “I first met Paris, the lord Paris, I mean, as he said, as a merchant. He is right that there are few like us, my mother and I. I mean in Darach. My father and the rest are fair-haired and light-skinned like the Anatolians of old.” A vision of Enda's flaming red hair passed through his mind. His face wrinkled at the small inaccuracy.

  “I first saw Paris when my mother spoke with him. I did not know what of, for we had little money save for food, and that was something he did not sell. We lost half our herd but a few weeks earlier in the spring floods.” He steeled himself for the next statement. “Soon after his arrival most of the rest died of sickness. They had been poisoned.”

  Paris stood up. “Is the prisoner making accusations? May it please the Court, none of this is backed by other witnesses.”

  “You remind the Court of what it already knows and what it has kept in mind through your own story. Remain silent or your very denials may indicate the contrary. Continue, Orion son of Devlin.” The Marshall fixed his gaze on Orion once more.

  “My father, at least,” Orion shied away from expressing his own opinion, “thought it may have been Paris. But he was no longer in town.” He waited, expecting another outburst, but none came.

  “Our herd gone, we sought other means of provision. My father and I served as guides for a party of Anatolian noblemen.” He wondered how much he should say here. He decided, as much as it burned inside him, to pass over the matter. “There was an accident and my father died. Upon my return to Darach, I found my mother dead too.”

  There was a gasp. Orion looked around, surprised to find that it had come from the throne. The Queen's face was clenched, her eyes burning into his. He wanted to tell her everything, but in front of the crowd? How could he? “I wept at this and spoke with a friend of mine who had witnessed her passing. She gave me a private message that I fear I shall never deliver.” He looked sadly at the Queen.

  “I left Darach, where this friend had met me, and went to her grave. I wished to mourn in peace but I found my home broken open, despoiled, and in disarray.

  “I learned that Paris had been seen in the village the day before my mother's death but not after.” He chose his words carefully. “Because of my mother's looks and her skill with herbs, she is feared even by those she has tended. I know none of Darach that would have ransacked her house with her body just laid to rest.” He made his eyes remain straight ahead.

  “With the herd destroyed, my parents dead, and spurred on by my mother's dying wish I left Darach, seeking what had been stolen from my home. A ring.”

  The crowd murmured.

  “Describe this ring,” the Marshall said.

  “A gem, with many faces, almost colorless, on a band of silver.”

  “Is this the same as you had on your person yestereve?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you get it, if you did not have it when you left Darach?”

  “On my way here I was kidnapped.” Again, so many images flashed through Orion's mind: Kerry leaping, Adara's smile, his plans for a new life. “They sold me as a slave. Paris bought me for reasons I know not. He did not have me work for him, seeming rather to make sport of me. I once, as if by accident, saw him hiding something in brick chimney in one of the rooms. When he was gone that night I searched it and found the ring. I took it and left, only to be caught in the street soon after.”

  “So you took the Ring, the Ring of Artemis?”

  His face paled. “Yes, I did.”

  “Why did you want it?”

  Orion was nonplussed. Why? Because it was the last and most treasured possession of his mother. Because it was a partial revenge on Paris. Because sold he knew he could find Adara and Kerry and leave this horrid city behind. “It was all I had left, sir.”

  “And what were you going to do next, had you escaped?”

  “My lord, why the useless question? He has already admitted to taking it,” the Judge Honorable interjected. “What more is there to find out?”

  “Justice will be served. Have patience.” The Marshall looked back at Orion as if the question had not been asked.

  He stopped to think. What would he have decided? He didn't know. And how could he find out with the sword hanging by a thread over him?

  “I would have sought audience with the Queen, sir.”

  A gasp of shock surged through the crowd.

  “You took the Ring merely to have an audience with the Queen?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you know our laws, that all cases of treason, except in war, must be presided over by a member of
the royal family?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then why would you expect an audience with the Queen?”

  “My mother said to.”

  “Explain.”

  “When she died—I was not there, this my friend told me—she said to take the ring to the Queen.” He looked at the Queen.

  “Words, words, words. If all of the words of Paris be true, then the prisoner is either a thief who has happened by chance upon a royal treasure or a part of a carefully woven plot.

  “But if the words of Orion are true, he is innocent of treason and may, in the questionable matter of the legitimacy of his birth, be accorded some leniency. If indeed Paris, who has no greater right to this Ring than a foreign baseborn slave, had it in his possession without turning it over to the protection of the Crown.” The Marshall stared hard at Paris. Orion looked over, surprised to see him in the accused position.

  “All this would take much time to sift through and collect witnesses as much of this has happened far away and in private. But it may be solved right now. Orion, you must answer this question once more. What did you say your mother, called Astra, say upon her deathbed?”

  His blood ran hot in his veins and shivers of sweat burst out in his back. His wrists chafed against the cuffs and his tongue felt wooden. “'Take... Ring... Queen... Hespera.' Sir.”

  “Beside the Queen of Avallonë, by reversion, only Astra Greer-daughter or heirs by birth or succession has a right to the Ring of Artemis. If you are the son of Astra then the Queen may grant you clemency. But this Astra you speak of requests you to take the Ring to a Queen who died before she was exiled. Your cleverness overshoots itself, Orion, and makes your story false.”

  Orion's heart quailed. He had ceased to fear the crowds taunts in the Marshall's presence, but now the Marshall thought him guilty. Something wasn't right. Hespera was a Queen?

  “In the presence of the Queen of Avallonë, I shall pronounce judgment.”

  “No!” a voice screamed. Orion saw the crowd stirred up.

  “Silence!” the Marshall said.

  “Let me pass!” the voice shrieked again. The crowd parted, more in curiosity than politeness, and a girl rushed through to Orion, tripping and falling in front of him. Four spearmen accosted her.

  “What is the meaning of this outrage?” the Marshall asked.

  “My lord, if a minute's patience may be asked.” There was a new speaker, a man. He walked forward in the wake of the distraught girl. Orion thought he recognized him.

  “It is not like you to breach protocol, my lord Evandor.”

  “And it is not like you to judge hastily, Marshall of the Court. I stood in this courtroom for reasons of my own and heard, in the prisoner's testimony, things I had already heard before, things previously unknown to the rest here, save perhaps my lord Paris. The woman you see before you claims sistership of the prisoner.”

  The crowd erupted. Not one, but two of them? The soldiers struggled to keep their posts. The woman rose and turned to face Orion. The crowd hushed. Orion did not know what they saw. What he saw was the hooded girl with the pale cheek reaching up to touch Kerry's face.

  Tears came to Orion's eyes. “Adara, I'm so sorry.”

  She embraced him then stood back and wiped his tears away. “Don't cry. In the east the Sun still rises and look! It is high noon.” She laughed, then embraced him again and sobbed.

  “With all due deference for a family reunion this is a court and seat of judgment,” the Judge Honorable said.

  “Let us proceed.” the Marshall said. Several minutes passed of questions put to her and words pulled out. Finally the Marshall concluded. “The testimony of the girl matches that of Orion's in every respect. However, she was not herself an eyewitness to anything of import. Adara, it seems you believe Orion entirely. This is most right and proper, so long as he is telling the truth, and especially if he is indeed your older brother. Why do you believe him to be your brother?”

  “I have a dream,” she said.

  “A dream? A dream? The witness cites a dream!” the Judge Honorable said.

  Orion cringed for her. Adara pursed her lips. “I remember it in dreams but did not know it for memory. Until my brother.”

  “How did this happen? Did you have the same dream?”

  “No. For him it is waking memory. I am the younger, sir. In it my mother sings to me as I sleep.”

  “Dreams and songs! This is a court of law!” the Judge Honorable interposed.

  “Hold your peace. Interruption is even less fit for this Court. How do you know he did not trick you or just agree to your dream?”

  “He couldn't have.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I didn't know the words to the tune until he sang them to me.”

  “Our clever boy is also musical, eh Paris? Perhaps it is a well-known song or he spoke with such art that it fit your dream?”

  “Maybe,” Adara said, “but I don't think so.”

  “Let the court decide. Sing it for me.”

  Adara shook, surprised. Orion wondered how he thought she could sing here?

  “Why do you wait? Sing.”

  “I'll try.” Quietly she began to sing.

  “Of East come enemies, East come friends,

  East come those who will not make amends.

  But never fear, my child dear,

  In the east the Sun also rises.”

  Her voice grew in confidence as she found the rhythm.

  “Werewolves and wizards and witches to boot,

  Mages and magics and mistletoe flu,

  Mustering armies of darkness approach,

  Blustering winds of lightning and smoke,

  My child dear, not a tear,

  In the east the Sun also rises.

  Sorrow and sickness and famine and plague,

  Storms and foul weather spill out of the crags,

  Loping across to poison green grass,

  Forming a juggernaut no one may pass,

  Not a tear, though so drear,

  In the east the Sun also rises.

  “I'm sorry, I forget the next part,” she said, sadly.

  “It is not any song I have heard before,” the Marshall said. “Perhaps it is common in other places, places both Orion and Adara and countless others have lived. Does any other know the song?”

  The crowd, murmuring during the singing, fell silent. Orion looked around. The faces that had called for his blood were now blank.

  “I do.” The Queen rose and sang.

  “In the dreary world we watch,

  Through our tears we see,

  Children, dear, though so perplexed

  Need not fear nor be vexed.

  Coming near they set a latch,

  Through which we peer, never free,

  Troubles mere they do not seem,

  Rather queer, a foggy sunbeam.”

  The crowd faded away. Orion and Adara stood there, speechless. Adara put her hand in his. Somehow, someway, Orion knew everything was going to turn out all right.

  “But if our courage lights the match

  A new dawn may come to be

  And over despair hope we cast

  Others may ride in our calm lee

  For though of east came enemies, east came a Friend,

  East came the one who both Makes and Mends,

  So never fear,

  my dear,

  not a tear,

  though so drear,

  In the east the Sun also rises.”

  When she finished the silence continued on. The Judge had no comment, Paris no fuming, the Marshall no next question.

  “Even a Queen enjoys singing sometimes, and not just listening to her minstrels.” She smiled at the siblings. “It is long since I sang that song with Astra. Did she tell you, Orion, who made it?”

  Orion, still speechless, shook his head.

  “She did, when we were girls. I would tell you more of this later. Marshall, I ask you, upon the Quee
n's testimony, do you have any further doubt of his innocence?”

  “I would doubt my own understanding before I doubt yours or your honor, my Queen. May I ask, then, why the Lady Astra send her son to a Queen long dead?”

  “That is another issue. May I take up the questioning?”

  He bowed.

  “How did your mother die, Orion?”

  He wondered why the Queen would ask this, of all questions. “I don't know. Enda didn't either.”

  “Enda?”

  Oh, the beauty of that voice! Not the silken accusations of Paris, nor merely the earnest search of the Marshall, but the voice of one who would be his friend!

  “The friend I spoke of, your Majesty.” He gulped at forgetting her title earlier. He trusted her questions would lead him to safety.

  “So there was no wound, no sickness?”

  “No, your Majesty.”

  “When did she die?”

  “Three days before I arrived in Darach.”

  “And your father, when did he die?”

  He started to cry. It had been so long since an adult had listened to him, taken an interest in his life. “When I left the hunt. Three days prior.” He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.

  “So they died at the same time?”

  “The same day, yes. Perhaps the same hour.”

  The Queen started crying, too. The Marshall stepped closer, bowing low, and whispered some words to her. She waved him off. “You mentioned that she often tended to others' ailments?”