Song of Unmaking

by Caitlin Brennan

  Maybe she was not such a shallow idiot, after all. She certainly was stronger than Valeria had given her credit for. She had fought this fight as well as anyone Valeria had seen.

  “This is your son,” Caia said to Wellin. “Look. His name is Titus.”

  “That’s a very good name,” Wellin said, lowering himself to the stool Valeria had been perching on.

  He leaned forward and kissed his wife, then peered into the nest of blankets. Valeria could tell when he found the tiny red face. His own big red one went all soft.

  She pulled Kerrec with her out of the room, down the stairs and into the dining room. Her pot was bubbling gently, wafting out fragrant steam. She filled bowls and broke a loaf of bread and sat down with him.

  She was ravenous. So, she saw, was he. He ate two bowls and mopped the second clean with the last of the loaf.

  “I should cook for you more often,” she said. “I’ve never seen you eat that much at a sitting.”

  He smiled. “That’s part of a woman’s dowry in these parts, isn’t it?”

  “A box of spices, a barrel of ale, and her mother’s arts in the kitchen,” Valeria said. “A woman isn’t ready for marriage until she can do the whole festival dinner, from eggs to apples, in sixteen courses.”

  “Now there’s an art to conjure with,” he said.

  She kissed him, savoring the spices. “Someday I’ll make it for you.”

  “All sixteen courses?”

  “Every one.”

  He held up his empty bowl. “Is this part of it?”

  “For you it can be.”

  They grinned at one another. They were still grinning when Morag brought cup and bowl with her from the kitchen and sat across the table to eat.

  “All’s well?” Kerrec asked her.

  She nodded. “If you’re done here, you can go back to the farm. Titus will want to know he has a namesake.”

  “Are you sure you won’t need us?” Valeria said.

  “I’m sure,” said Morag. “Wellin’s boy went to fetch the maid. She’s a midwife’s daughter, that’s why I talked Caia into hiring her. Once she gets here, I’ll come home myself.”

  “I’ll tell Father,” Valeria said.

  “Go on,” Morag said. “You’ve just enough time to get there before dark.”

  It was still daylight and still snowing, but the wind had died down. The air was bitter cold.

  The snow was knee-deep but light, and not unbearably difficult to wade through. They went arm in arm, which kept them from slipping.

  Valeria’s heart was as light as the snow. Rodry was still dead and there was terrible uncertainty in front of her—maybe even expulsion from the school—but there was great power in the birth of a baby.

  The light was fading when they came into the farmyard. There were lamps lit on either side of the door, and yellow light shone out of the windows onto the snow.

  Her father and brothers and sisters were at dinner. She could hear them from outside, the familiar uproar of a large and boisterous family. When she walked through the door, warmth and light and noise struck her like a welcome blow.

  They were all yelling at once, even her father. She held up her hands until they quieted down. “It’s a boy,” she said, “and his name is Titus. Mother will be home by morning.”

  Titus let his breath out in a long sigh of relief. The children were clamoring for the whole story.

  Tonight it was her turn to tell it while Kerrec listened and nodded. She could not make it real—not yet—but none of them cared. The words were enough.

  For once sleep was welcome when it came. The battle Valeria dreamed of was the battle to birth a child. In her dream, it was her in Kerrec’s lap, fighting the pain, but it was still her mother on the midwife’s stool. The baby was a girl. She opened eyes the color of rain, so full of magic it dripped from her like water, and smiled.

  Morag came walking through the farmyard just as Valeria came out of the privy. The snow had stopped in the night. The early-morning sky was clear and so cold it looked as brittle as ice.

  Valeria was feeling a little green still. She hoped her mother would not see, but Morag’s eye was too sharp for that.

  She herded Valeria into the silent house. Titus and the boys were long gone about the morning chores. Kerrec was in the barn, seeing to the horses. The girls were still asleep, having stayed up well past their bedtime.

  Valeria would have excused herself and gone to lend someone a hand, but Morag sat her down firmly and brewed up a tea that made Valeria’s nose wrinkle. “Red raspberry tea? What are you feeding me that for?”

  “What for indeed?” said Morag. “How long have you been sick in the mornings?”

  “How long have I—” Valeria stopped short. “No. Oh, no. That’s not possible.”

  “Don’t lie to your mother,” said Morag. “I’ll wager he knows. It wasn’t only Caia he was seeing yesterday.”

  “He didn’t say a word,” Valeria said.

  “He doesn’t usually, does he? Not about matters of the heart. He’s as bad about that as you are.”

  “But I can’t be,” Valeria said rather desperately.

  “Why not? You’re healthy, young, and mad in love with a healthy young man. There isn’t a ward or an herb or a protection in the world that will stop nature from taking its course, if it’s determined and the gods are paying attention.”

  Valeria drank her tea numbly, because the cup was in her hand and her mother was expecting it. She liked red raspberry tea—that was not the trouble. It was what it meant that made her go all strange.

  She shrank from looking inside herself as she had looked inside Caia, but she had to be sure. She had to know. She opened her eyes in that particular way.

  It was very small yet, but there was no doubt that it was there. It had been there, she judged, not quite two months—since that first night on the road from Oxos to Aurelia.

  The gods had wasted no time. They were laughing, she was sure. What she felt…

  She did not know yet. The tea settled her stomach. It would make her womb strong, too, and ease the birth.

  “My dream last night,” she said. “It was true. Kerrec was with me. It was a daughter. And…you were there.”

  “Of course I was,” Morag said. “You think I’d let anyone else birth my grandchild?”

  “This doesn’t change anything,” Valeria said. “I still have to go back to the Mountain.”

  “Then I’ll go to the Mountain.”

  Valeria almost choked on the last of her tea. Master Nikos and Morag together in the same citadel—the earth would shake.

  The earth was going to shake badly enough once the riders discovered what Valeria had been doing while they pretended not to notice. She could hide it, she was sure, at least until after Midwinter. Then—

  “Valeria,” her mother said in the tone she resorted to when her daughter’s mind had wandered off the edge of the world, “I’m going to tell your father. But not until after you leave.”

  “Thank you,” Valeria said, “I think.”

  “You are welcome,” her mother said. “Now go let your man know you’re not as hopeless an idiot as he might be thinking.”

  “Kerrec knows I’m an idiot,” Valeria said. “We’re both idiots. That’s why we match so well.”

  Morag burst out laughing—so suddenly and so completely unexpectedly that Valeria sat gaping. She could not remember ever having heard her mother laugh like that. It was the most joyful sound she could imagine.

  “Go on,” Morag said through it. “Go tell him.”

  “But if he already knows—”

  “Out! Go!”

  That was more like the mother she knew. She half ran out into the cold, clutching her cloak around her.

  Sixty-Two

  Kerrec was tending one of the plow horses, the grey who was the tallest horse in six villages. Kerrec had the platter-sized hoof in his lap, trimming it, while the horse bent his head down to watch. As Valeria pa
used, Kerrec stroked the big arched nose and murmured something that made the beast sigh blissfully.

  Valeria had hoped one or more of the children would be there, adoring him as utterly as old Nimbus did. But she was not going to get that excuse to keep from telling him. He was alone.

  He looked up and smiled. She could not see any difference in him, at least not since his father’s magic broke down the worst of his walls.

  Had he known that long?

  Oh, no. That would be unbearable.

  She planted herself in front of him. “This is your fault, you know,” she said.

  “I’m told it takes two,” he said.

  “I don’t care. I’m blaming it on you.”

  “I suppose that’s fair enough,” he said. He set Nimbus’s hoof down and slapped the rump that rose well above his head.

  “Are you angry?” she asked him.

  “Do I look angry?”

  “You always look angry,” she said.

  “Even when I’m smiling?”

  She lunged at him, bearing him backward into the straw. Nimbus stood perfectly still when Kerrec fetched up against his forelegs.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” she said. “They’ll never let me back if they know. Once I’m in, when there’s no longer any hiding it—”

  “Stop,” he said. “Just stop.”

  She stared at him.

  “Do you really hate me for this?” he asked. “Because if you do, there are ways to make it go away. No one has to know.”

  “Except us,” she said, “and Mother. And the innkeeper in Bari. And who knows who else?”

  “Even so,” he said steadily.

  “You would let me do that?”

  “It’s not a matter of letting. It’s your life this will change.”

  “And not yours? You don’t even care?”

  “Of course I care!”

  She had never heard him raise his voice before. It rocked her back on her haunches.

  “Of course I care,” he said in his usual tone. “But if you truly can’t go through with this, and if you truly foresee that it will destroy any hope you had of being a rider, I can’t stop you. I may not forgive you—but I won’t stop loving you. I can’t ever do that.”

  His face was as transparent as it could be. That was not very, but Valeria was learning to read it. He meant what he said.

  “What if I go through with it?” she said. “Can you live with what’s going to happen? I doubt there’s been a scandal like it since—”

  “Since a woman was Called to the Mountain?” He shifted smoothly. She slid off him. He stood and held out his hand.

  She got up without his help. “Don’t take it so lightly,” she said. “It’s going to be bad.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  “I would like to be,” she said without much hope.

  “You have more friends than you know,” he said, “beginning with the gods and the Ladies. Don’t you think they had something to do with this? We both had wards up. They shouldn’t have failed. I’d have said they couldn’t, if it wasn’t so obvious that they have.”

  “The gods are going to get a piece of my mind,” Valeria said with a baleful glance toward the stallions.

  Neither of them appeared to be listening. Sabata was nibbling hay. Petra was asleep.

  She turned back to Kerrec. He should have looked tired—he had been working harder than he ever worked on the Mountain, on somewhat less sleep—but he had never looked better.

  He set his hands on her shoulders, searching her face. “Are you really unhappy about this?”

  “No!” she said sharply. “No. I should be. This is more trouble than I ever thought I could get into. I’m terrified. But when I look inside and see—you know how they say in stories, ‘Her heart leaped’? I never knew it could. But that’s exactly what it does.”

  “You want it?” he said. “You want this baby?”

  “Do you?”

  He nodded as if words had failed him. His heart was full, brimming over in his eyes.

  “So do I,” she said, “in spite of everything.”

  By the second morning after the storm, the cold had begun to loosen its grip. The sun was warm on Valeria’s face as she brought Sabata out into the farmyard.

  Morag and Titus were standing with the children in the drifted snow. The young ones were silent for once.

  Gwynith had cried herself out when Valeria tried to explain why she had to go away. She had only stopped the flood by promising to come back as soon as she could.

  The others had better control over their tears, but they were also more difficult to soothe with promises. “You’ll only come back if someone else dies,” Niall had said with the bitterness of the young.

  He was still refusing to look at Valeria, though he could not take his eyes off the stallions. They were, for reasons best known to themselves, letting these mortals see a little more of the truth than anyone usually saw outside of the Dance. Even Valeria was dazzled.

  Morag’s eyes were narrowed against the brightness, but her mind was as practical as it always was. “Are you sure you won’t stay for the baby’s naming ceremony? It’s only two more days.”

  “I wish we could,” Valeria said, “but there’s another storm coming. If we wait, we’ll be caught in the mountains.”

  Morag nodded. She had enough weather witchery to see it, too. “I’ll see you on the Mountain in the spring.”

  “If we’re not there,” Kerrec said from Petra’s back, “we’ll be in Aurelia. Look for us in the palace. If we’re not there, either, they’ll know where we’ve gone.”

  Morag barely blinked at that. “You’ll be on the Mountain,” she said with conviction. She clasped Kerrec’s hand, looking him in the face as a free woman of Eriu could do even to a high king. “Look after her until I get there. Keep her out of trouble.”

  “I’ll try,” Kerrec said.

  She patted his knee. “Good. I’ll hold you to it.”

  Valeria turned from her father’s long, rib-creaking embrace toward Sabata. Morag was standing between. Her embrace was shorter but just as strong.

  Morag pushed Valeria away with a visible effort and straightened her face—though not before Valeria saw a glint of moisture in her eye. “Go on now. That storm’s not going to wait for us to finish dragging out our goodbyes.”

  Valeria hugged her one last time, quickly. “Until spring,” she said.

  Morag nodded, pushing her toward her stallion. “Until spring,” she agreed.

  Valeria looked back once as she rode away. They were all standing together, huddled close against the cold. For a moment she could see what they must see, two dark figures on white horses, dwindling down the snowy road.

  Her heart contracted. She wanted to go back to the Mountain—more than anything in the world. And yet she wanted them, too, in all their maddening familiarity.

  These days had been a gift. They had given back a part of herself that she had not even known she was missing. It hurt to leave them, but her heart knew she could come back. Or they could come to her.

  A wall had broken down. Rodry had died to make it happen—she would mourn him for the rest of her life. But she would thank him, too, and honor his spirit.

  Icy wind whipped the tears from her cheeks. She turned resolutely and focused on the road ahead of her. The Mountain was at the other end of it, and a reckoning.

  She was not afraid. Whatever price she had to pay, she knew she could pay it. She was going home.

  Sixty-Three

  Euan Rohe came back to Dun Eidyn at the gates of winter—a year, near enough, since the last time he had crawled home in defeat.

  This time he had the royal clan at his back. They had fared better than any of the other clans, having lost only a dozen men and gained almost a dozen times that in new allies and clan-less men. The high king’s funeral rites were behind them, with a clan gathering made bitter by grief and loss.

  In the spring there would be a
new high king. Euan meant to cast his axe into the circle and lay claim to the title.

  That was months away. This raw and rain-sodden evening, he found the hall clean and swept and the fire burning. A fat ox turned on the spit, and a feast was waiting.

  Euan had the luck, people said, seeing how strong the Calletani still were. They did not know whose fault it was that the battle was lost—or what Euan had failed to do that would have kept the tide from turning. That was not a secret he intended to share.

  Tonight he let himself be glad he was home. Dun Eidyn greeted the winter with its storehouses full. With so many new mouths to feed, they would be tightening their belts before spring, but with some more of Euan’s fabled luck, they would not starve.

  He was not in the mood for an all-night roister. Simple people could celebrate a homecoming and forget what had brought them to it. He kept remembering a battle won and then suddenly, devastatingly lost.

  As soon as he sensibly could, he slipped away. He meant to sleep, but he was too restless. He climbed the tower instead.

  The stars kept their places tonight. The air was still and bitter cold. He circled the tower, treading carefully on the crumbling floor.

  Near the yawning darkness that was the ladder to the lower hall, he nearly stumbled over a lump of shadow. It unfolded, raising a small, pale face and eyes that glinted in the starlight. “Good evening, Da,” said his son.

  “What are you doing here?” Euan asked—softening his voice at the last instant. He did not want to send the child screaming back down the ladder.

  Conor did not even blink. “I like to come up here,” he said. “It’s quiet.”

  “So do I,” Euan said, squatting beside him. “It’s a cold night to be up on the roof.”

  “I like cold,” Conor said.

  “Still,” said Euan, “come down where it’s warm. I hear your amma made some honey sweets.”

  “I know that,” Conor said. “I had six.” But he let Euan lift him and carry him out of the cold.