Summerfall: A Winterspell Novella

by Claire Legrand

  Rinka forced herself on, her eyes straight ahead. So, the people of Erstadt wanted to stare at her. Let them stare; she did not answer to them. She did not answer to the whispering courtiers, either, who watched her from behind their fans as she and Leska passed through the stone arches of the southern courtyard.

  She did not even answer to the other faery delegates, who at turns showed her disgust and concern. Though no one spoke of it openly, they seemed to understand why she had been attacked. Go home, Rinka. Go home while you can.

  How could you, Rinka? A human?

  And Garen . . . Garen said nothing. He simply ignored her.

  Something had changed, the night of Rinka’s attack. Something essential at the core of the city had altered in these past weeks, with Ottmeyer’s death, with the Drachstelles’ arrival, with the assignment of Alban’s personal guards to the faery woman from the south.

  Rinka imagined that the city was a buzzing fog of whispers.

  Why do you suppose she has been assigned guards, and not the other faeries at court?

  Countess Rinka must be much more important than the others.

  Countess Rinka must be more dangerous than the others. Do you see the pendants they wear? The bands at their wrists? Filthy faeries. Always playing tricks with their magic, always hiding in the trees like beasts.

  Or maybe Countess Rinka has pleased His Majesty, and he wants to keep her close and chained. Like a pet.

  Like a whore.

  She has charmed him. She has bewitched him, our good, kind king.

  This is what happens to faery whores.

  Once inside the corridor that led to her chambers, Rinka allowed herself to shut her eyes and breathe regularly once more.

  She wished for Alban, but was too frightened to seek him out.

  * * *

  The gown did not fit.

  Rinka stared at her reflection, half-dressed in periwinkle chiffon with coy lace sleeves. The gown should have fit; Madam Farber had her measurements, and her previous gowns had fit . . . once.

  But that had been some time ago; late spring, and now it was nearly autumn, and so many things had happened between now and then. Her gowns had become more and more ill-fitting of late, and then there was the new sleeplessness at night, and the bouts of sickness in the mornings. Only now, faced with the glaring reality in the mirror, did Rinka realize how she had been pretending not to notice these things.

  But she could not deny them—or disguise them—any longer.

  She undressed, peeling the ill-fitting gown from her lower half, folding it methodically into a tidy square. She found her dressing gown on the bed and wrapped herself back into it, but the embroidery felt cheap and rough against her skin.

  Its touch chilled her, made her realize the alien quality of her new body, and she hurried to the bathing room and was sick in the basin.

  Leska found her, sometime later, hunched and miserable on the cold tile, and when Rinka raised her head, she saw on Leska’s face the same suspicion she herself had been desperate to explain away.

  Rinka tucked her robe more firmly about her body and placed a protective hand on her belly, not sure what to say. She felt torn between more tears and hysterical laughter.

  “Oh, Countess,” Leska whispered, kneeling beside her. She touched Rinka’s forehead. Rinka closed her eyes and let the coolness of Leska’s magic seep into her skin, soothing her. “Does the king know?”

  “I’ve only just known it myself. Or accepted it, anyway.” Rinka looked to Leska, imploring. “What should I do? I don’t know if . . . The Drachstelles will . . . The child will be—”

  “The child will be . . .” Leska paused, her smile strained, “unique.”

  Unique. Laughter burst out of Rinka, building until she could hardly breathe. Unique indeed. The child would be the only of its kind—half human, half faery—and an offense to everyone in Cane. Mage, faery, human—they would consider her child an abomination, and they would never stop hunting it. Oh, how could she and Alban have been so absolutely foolish?

  And then a thought occurred to her, buzzing and terrible. She clutched the pendant at her throat and tried to focus her magic into something small, a dart to toss at the window.

  Nothing, nothing. No answering surge up from her center. For the first time in her life, she could not find her magic. It was as though it had bled from her fingers in the night, and drifted out the window like ash.

  Leska, watching, sat down heavily on the floor. “It’s true then. It’s . . . gone?”

  The words of the old stories, the ancient taboo, flew through Rinka’s mind, too slippery to catch.

  “But . . .” Leska shook her head, distraught. “You used your magic the night of the attack, and you—” She gestured quietly at Rinka’s body. “You are obviously much further on than that. I don’t understand.”

  “Maybe it takes some time for it to happen, for the magic to fade,” said Rinka, numb. “Maybe it’s different for each person . . . not that I can ask anyone. No one’s as complete a fool as me.” She let out a sob.

  “Don’t say that,” said Leska, but Rinka pushed her away.

  Hardly more than children’s tales, indeed. Rinka spared a thought for Alban, and felt a pang of sadness as she imagined how horrified and guilt-stricken he would be. And yet she was just as responsible, had been just as quick to dismiss the threat of some old-fashioned superstition. Why shouldn’t a faery and a human love each other, in this new world she and Alban were to build together? What could possibly come of it but goodness?

  Goodness, and sacrifice. A lack, a loss, an absence of a lifelong vitality in her veins she had always taken for granted.

  And if a human and one of the magic folk dare to love, it will not come without grave cost.

  The human, chosen by the land, will be spared.

  But not the other. The other’s veins will be drained of magic.

  For there is a power in such a union, too great for the world to bear, and someone must pay the price.

  Each of the old tales explained variations on the same idea, and yet—and yet . . . silly children’s tales, weren’t they? Rinka had thought so too.

  In a fit of grief, she tore the pendant from her throat and flung it away.

  It landed near the door to her bathing room, at Garen’s feet. He stood looking down at her coolly, in his crisp, tasseled bretzhenner coat.

  “You missed breakfast,” he told Rinka. He seemed a stranger before her; she had rarely seen him for weeks now, and knew that had been deliberate on both their parts. He hadn’t even come to see Rinka as she lay recovering from her wounds. His eyes were empty as they took in the sight of her on the floor, her hair and clothes disheveled.

  Rinka couldn’t stand that emptiness, not when she was feeling so completely on edge.

  “Garen,” she said, rising with Leska’s help. “I need to go home. You must help me go home, to Geschtohl.”

  He did seem surprised at that. “I don’t understand.”

  “Garen.” She wiped her face and grabbed Garen’s hand to place it on her belly. “Feel.”

  Garen recoiled at her touch, as if he knew instinctively the new absence within her, and its replacement. “What are you doing?”

  “Feel.” She guided his hand around her belly, and as his hand moved, she saw his eyes widen. He took a step back, shook his head, sank into the chair before her vanity.

  “Salt of the seas, Rinka,” he breathed. He stared at her with a mix of revulsion and awe. “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “I’m not. Garen.” She knelt before him, hoping some piece of her old friend remained, some piece that still cared for her, despite how far apart they’d drifted these past months. “I must leave. I must go to Geschtohl.”

  He let out a thin, incredulous laugh. “What good will that do?”

  “If the queen finds out—” She paused, swallowing past her fear. “Father will protect me. He won’t turn me away.”

  “No,” Garen agreed,
“but then what?” Garen put his head in his hands and stared at the floor. “Rinka, does the king know?”

  She flinched. “Not yet.”

  “Good. Don’t tell him.” Garen stood. “We’ll leave tonight, and they’ll find us gone in the morning, before the Drachstelles realize what you carry. Leaving unexpectedly might be explained away, but this . . . this would ruin everything. How could you have been so selfish, Rinka?”

  Rinka couldn’t answer. The thought of running away, leaving Alban to not only contend with the Drachstelles but also to never know why she had left him was an unendurable agony.

  “I must tell Alban first.” She reached blindly for Leska’s hand, hating herself for needing it, but Leska’s hand was cool and gentle, and calmed her. “I must tell him what’s happened. He’ll help us get home, help us avoid the Drachstelles’ guards, he’ll give us supplies . . .”

  She lost her voice at the expression on Garen’s face. It was as though he hadn’t even heard her. He stared at her belly, repulsed.

  “What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?” She knew, of course, but some part of her, full of self-loathing, wanted to hear him say it.

  “What’s wrong?” He laughed bitterly. “What’s wrong? I can’t—I want to help you, Rinka, despite everything, but—a two-blood, Rinka?” And with that, his mouth curled, and a darkness fell over his face. “You’ll be hunted by everyone. They’ll cut it from you, and they’ll make sure you’re alive while they do it.”

  “Count Garen,” Leska spat, “control yourself.”

  “Did it happen, then? Are the old stories true?” When Rinka did not answer, he pressed on, his expression cruel. “How does it feel, to have at last achieved what you’ve always wanted? You’re more one of them now than one of us, you know. Was it worth it?” His eyes crawled over her body, landing on her belly. “To have lost your power and have it replaced by a king’s bastard?”

  Rinka let her shock overwhelm her for an instant, and then surged forward and slapped him. Her power—what did he know of it? What did he know of how it had felt to lie in Alban’s arms? There was a power in that, even greater than the one she had lost. There was a power in the choice she had made to love her king, and in what they had hoped to accomplish together—as rash and futile as that now seemed.

  Rinka looked upon Garen’s bruising cheek and felt nothing but hollow satisfaction.

  “It would seem I still have some of my strength,” she said haughtily, and then breathed, “Get out. Leave me. I don’t need your help. I would rather stay here and risk everything than spend another moment with you. Get out.”

  He watched her for a long moment, and then left. Not until Rinka heard the door slam shut behind him did she allow herself to sink into Leska’s embrace and weep.

  12

  IT TOOK RINKA several agonizing days to find her courage, during which she saw very little of Garen. He appeared not to have told the other faery delegates the news; they treated her with the same distant politeness they had shown since the attack in her chambers.

  Never had she felt so far removed from her own kind. The presence of their magic left her feeling pinched, itchy. Lonely.

  But she had chosen this. Some part of her, no matter how completely she had denied it while caught up in Alban’s kisses, had known this could happen.

  She woke to a morning pink and warm, to Leska bringing her unbuttered bread—the only thing she could eat in the mornings without her body protesting. And she knew, as she sat nibbling at her breakfast and gazing absently out at the lightening sky, that this would be the day.

  She dressed in the most loose-fitting gown she could find, a heavy plum velvet with sheer, off-the-shoulder sleeves, provided by Leska, and a light cloak over that, though the layers were stifling. She greeted her guards, who stood waiting for her at the door to her chambers, and she went to find the king.

  Every slight noise made her jump. Garen would burst out of some corridor and try to stop her. A bored courtier would see her clothing and make an astute guess. She thought she saw, in the shadows, a flicker of movement, a whisper of fabric, and reached automatically for her pendant. The feel of the dull, lifeless metal sent a twinge through her, but after days of grieving it was no longer enough to leave her sick on the floor.

  Empty. She was empty now, and yet not. She put a hand to her belly.

  “Countess?” inquired one of her guards.

  “Nothing.” The hallway was empty, sunlit from a row of open windows. She could not allow fear to cripple her, and yet Rinka found herself so caught up in it that she almost missed the sounds of conversation from somewhere up ahead.

  She paused. There—a door, slightly ajar. The door to one of the studies lining the central courtyard.

  Two voices—one male, one female. Hushed.

  Something about their whispers tugged at Rinka. She gestured for her guards to stay put and crept up on the door, pressed as close to the wall as she dared, and listened.

  One of the voices was Steffen Drachstelle’s. The other belonged to his wife.

  “I told him the truth,” Steffen said evenly. “That the citizens are restless, the mages even more so.”

  “And?” That was Rastia, impatient. “What else?”

  Steffen sighed. “Precisely what we agreed upon. That our lands border the faery country, that our people live in terror of the forests to the south. The faery villages crawl across the country, I told him, never in the same place from season to season. Why? The faeries hide their magic, and they do not let us see it. Why? Why would they do that if they had nothing to hide?”

  “Excellent,” said Rastia. “Why wouldn’t we take the simple protective precautions of separating ourselves from unpredictable creatures? Did you say that to him, as I instructed?”

  “Of course.”

  “And what was his reply?” Rastia let out a small laugh. “Surely he had no protests. How could he, after that?”

  “He agreed, after some convincing, that building a wall is only practical.”

  “And the Restoration? Did he agree to finance them as part of the royal army? The beasts could be building their own army for all we know. I hope you told him that.” Rastia’s voice was icy. “You didn’t lose your courage, did you?”

  “I did not, and how dare you believe otherwise,” said Steffen mildly. “He granted me the authority to oversee the Restoration’s integration into the royal army, and the finances to support them. He conceded that . . . cleansing . . . of certain faery lands near the border may be required, and soon. Everything will be kept secret, of course, for now. The naïve man.” Steffen sounded almost sympathetic. “The faeries here have clouded his mind, made him forget his responsibilities. He was foolish to summon them.”

  “We cannot blame him,” said Rastia gently. “Their magic is insidious, elusive. We couldn’t have expected him to defend himself on his own, especially not against her.”

  Her. Her.

  Rinka recoiled. They thought she was charming the king, forcing him to act under her influence. She put a hand to her belly. If only they knew.

  “You’ve a gentle heart, my darling,” murmured Steffen. He kissed her. There was silence in the room for a beat, then two.

  Then Rastia: “Did you suggest to him the idea of forcing a binding with the faeries? That would send a message no one could ignore—that no one, not even a faery, is more powerful than the crown.”

  “I didn’t present that idea yet. I didn’t want to push him too far, not all at once.”

  “He’ll have to act quickly. Once they learn of the wall, they’ll either fight or flee south.”

  “And we will catch them. The filthy drekks will keep no secrets from us. Not any longer.”

  “When will construction begin?” asked Rastia, equally soft.

  “Next month.”

  Rastia laughed. “I can hardly believe you convinced him. My clever husband.” Another kiss, longer. “You have saved us.”

  “We have saved eve
ryone,” Steffen corrected. “Let us hope Alban’s convictions do not waver. He is too easy to convince.”

  Rinka could listen no longer, and fled down the corridor. She flew down the stairs, her befuddled guards just behind her. Her vision was a haze of angry tears she couldn’t quite hold back.

  Drekks. An old, nasty mage curse that left Rinka feeling as dirty and worthless as the word implied. She stumbled at the bottom of the stairs, and brushed off the aid of her guards.

  Her fears, first felt weeks ago, had been realized. A wall at the border of the faery lands. A wall to keep the faeries out. The rise of the Restoration. And what after that? An invasion?

  Faeries, forced into servitude—not yet, but if the Drachstelles were to be believed, then it might not be far off. Perhaps Rinka would be one of the first. She imagined undergoing the ritual against her will, Alban standing before her, making the incisions with a cold smile.

  She gripped the wall, hard, and straightened. She was Rinka, daughter of Kaspar of the faery Council.

  She would not allow her people to be treated like this—no matter whom she might be so unlucky to love.

  * * *

  Rinka burst into the throne room after fifteen minutes of searching—not the Great Room. Not his private study.

  Here. In the throne room. Staring pensively out at the city with his hands behind his back and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his high collar undone. Looking so much like himself that Rinka’s throat ached. She let out an unsteady breath she hadn’t meant to allow.

  He turned, surprised. Relieved—there, in that relaxation of his shoulders. It had been too many days without her, and Rinka saw it clearly on his face. He needed rest; his eyes were tired.

  “Leave us,” she ordered her guards. “Now.”

  “Rinka—” began the king, holding out his hands to her.

  “Now!” Even without the magic thrumming at her fingertips, her guards paused at the terrible quality of her voice, stepped back.

  Alban nodded, his eyes not leaving Rinka’s face. “She is safe with me.”

  “My king,” one of the guards protested, unsure.