The Queens of Innis Lear

by Tessa Gratton

  “My king,” Errigal said expansively.

  “What, sir, do you come to bother me with this night of all nights?” The king rolled his head back to stare up at the sky, too bright yet for stars.

  Lear’s hair remained as wild and ragged as it had been at the Zenith Court, his face still drawn and blotched with drink or anger or tears. A stain of wine spread like a heart-wound down the left side of his tunic.

  Errigal knocked Ban forward. “Here is my son, Lear, come home from a five-year foster with the cousins Alsax in Aremoria. Ban the Fox they call him now, though he was only a bastard, or simply Ban, here.”

  Ban’s shoulders stiffened as he bowed, turning it into a jerky motion. People here had called him Errigal’s Bastard, not just any. Ban stared at the king’s woolen shoes, wondering what he could possibly say that would not get him banished or killed. Play the role, Fox, he reminded himself again. Be courteous, and remember your purpose here. He’d earned his name, exactly as he’d promised himself he would. These people would respect it.

  A groan sighed out of the king before he said, “Yes, I remember you. Ban Errigal. You were born under a dragon’s tail, bright and vibrant but ultimately ineffective.”

  “I have been effective, King,” Ban said, straightening.

  “Perhaps for the limited time you burn brightly.” Lear shrugged. “But it will be a limited time, and you will change nothing.”

  Ban worked his jaw, chewing on every response before he could spit it out.

  “His actions in Aremoria have been exemplary, by all accounts,” Errigal said.

  “Aremoria!” Lear roared, surging to his feet. “Say no more of that place or that king! Stealing my Elia, my most loved star away!”

  The Fool leaned up and sang, “Stolen with the same stealing as the clouds steal the moon!”

  Lear nodded. “Yes, yes.”

  “No, no,” responded the Fool. He was a long, lanky man, in a long, lanky coat of rainbow colors and textures. Silk, linen, velvet, strips of leather even, and lace, rough wool and soft fur, patterned in places, woven in plaid in others: a coat such as his marked him a man outside of station or hierarchy. The Fool was all men and no man at all. He wore the remains of a dress beneath the coat, and so maybe he was all women, too. And none.

  The king frowned mightily.

  Ban said, “I thought you had no daughter Elia, sir.”

  Errigal choked on a furious word, and the king whirled to Ban. “A smart tongue, have you?” Lear demanded.

  “The boy meant nothing by it,” Errigal said.

  Ban met the king’s gaze. “You are wrong, Father. I did mean much.”

  “Always defiant,” Lear said.

  Ban held his tongue.

  “Always ablaze,” Errigal said, forcing a laugh. “Like his mother, he’s got that passion of—”

  “Bah.” The king waved dismissively at the earl, turning his back on Ban.

  A moment of silence was only punctuated by the rustle of retainers listening as hard as they could. Ban felt their eyes on his spine, their focus and newfound attention. He would not bend or quail. This was the start of the work he must do to earn respect here, where they only knew stories of him, and his bastard name. Even if it meant bowing to this king’s obsessions or anticipating his moods.

  Errigal nudged him, and Ban caught the angry spark in his father’s determined look. He was expected to speak again.

  Fine.

  Ban said, “You should call Elia back.”

  The room behind him erupted in curses and gasps, cries for his removal. Ban braced himself. Errigal gripped his elbow. The Fool lifted thoughtful, bushy brows.

  But Lear collapsed back into his high seat. Sorrow, weariness, and a bitter curl of his lip painted the king in starkness. He turned a bony hand over, palm up. “Do you know, pup, what stars I was born under?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lear nodded.”And you know how my wife died?” The old king curled his fingers closed, holding his fist so tight it trembled. The knuckles whitened.

  “I do,” Ban said through gritted teeth.

  A murmured prayer floated throughout the hall, asking blessing from the stars against royal calamity. The layers of soft words were so like the language of trees Ban nearly forgot it was only fearful men muttering.

  “You do not. Only I know,” the king said hoarsely, finally opening his watery eyes. Pink tinged the edges. “I have lost so much to my stars. Brothers, retainers, my wife, and now my precious daughter.”

  “You did not lose her; you sent her away.”

  “She chose. She betrayed.”

  Ban threw his arms out, but before he could cry his disbelief, Errigal stepped before him.

  “You are heartsick, my king,” Errigal said, “and my boy is travel-worn, desperate. Let me take him and soothe his feathers.”

  “You cannot calm a creature such as this! More like to calm a storm,” Lear said, wiping his eyes.

  At last, a thing Ban agreed with. The king’s shifting moods troubled him: not only for Elia’s sake, but for the unpredictability they brought. It was difficult to plan someone’s downfall when their actions could veer off course at any moment.

  Lear shook his head, pressed his hands to his eyes. “Oh, oh, I must go. I must…”

  The Fool stood, bending his tall body nearly in half to lean near the king and murmur a thing in his ear.

  “Errigal,” the king said, allowing the Fool to help him to his feet.

  “My king?” Errigal moved forward to take Lear’s other arm.

  “I’ll not have your bastard in my retainers. I cannot breathe when he is near. His stars offend. Take him elsewhere.”

  A tremor of absolute fury shocked through Ban, crown to toes. He’d not have served with the king’s retainers if his life itself depended on it.

  Errigal shot Ban another warning glance but said gently to Lear, “One of my sons honoring you so is well enough acceptable for me, sir. I can use Ban at home.”

  Ban bowed sharply, breath hissing out through his teeth. Without another word he left.

  * * *

  WHAT BEASTS FATHERS were, Ban thought darkly, head down, boots skidding on the rushes as he hurried on.

  Outside, he lifted his face to the flat, still-blue sky. He’d rather get off this terrible promontory to find shade in the cool trees of the island. There was a place he knew, where the island reached up with ancient power, where surely Ban could dig his fingers into the ground and rekindle his heart’s lines.

  But Elia. He grimaced, worried for her, though he had no right. She’d recognized him at dinner last night, and had smiled wondrously, as if so very glad to see him. In that moment, Ban had forgotten Morimaros of Aremoria and all the years in his service. He’d forgotten Errigal and the shame of bastardy. All he’d been was the boy who once made her a crown of wind and flower petals. She’d smiled then, too, and kissed him.

  “Boy, stop,” Errigal growled, catching up to plant his arm across Ban’s chest and stick his nose in his son’s.

  “The king has gone mad, Father,” Ban said calmly.

  Errigal tilted his head as if he hadn’t yet decided on an opinion. “Kayo being banished was a terrible mistake, but the rest … that girl is an ungrateful whelp, and irrational for not bowing to this easy request made by king and father. Better she’s not given the crown, though he said it was his preference.”

  A furious growl hummed in Ban’s throat, making his father smirk. Errigal said, “There’s that passion I remember.”

  Ban jerked back, but Errigal clapped his hand onto Ban’s shoulder. “Ah, am I ever glad the stars chose not to make me have to worry about such things as dividing my land between children.”

  The cool relief in his father’s words made Ban stare at his father with a creeping wonder. Errigal did have two named sons, after all. And only one of them had already earned fame and respect in war. In the beginning, the entire point of his success in Aremoria had been to show that Ban was
as worthy as his brother.

  Errigal caught Ban’s frown and looked surprised. “What! Stars—my boy, you thought…”

  Nauseated, Ban turned away.

  “Son.” Errigal roughly threw an arm around him, pulling him back. “You have my name, you have a place in my ranks, and surely you know your brother will always welcome you—Rory is incorrigibly kind, and he has always liked you. He pestered me constantly this last year to bring you home.”

  Ban said nothing, understanding that he would always be subject to charity here, in this place where he was supposed to belong, where he’d been born, where his mother’s roots thrived. This place and its laws and its king did not want him. Ban had made the right choice when he gave his word to Aremoria.

  “You’re a good son,” Errigal continued, his hesitation not born of uncertainty, but of the earl’s deepest enemy: emotional honesty. “Everything a man could want in his issue, but for your origins.” To save the moment from too much intimacy, the earl forced a hearty laugh. “I’ve often said it was the great pleasure and zeal at your getting that formed you into such a passionate, skilled warrior. I wouldn’t have it another way.”

  Ban forced his shoulders to relax into Errigal’s embrace. Play the role, Fox. “Thank you, Father. Your praise is much appreciated.”

  “Ha! Good.” Errigal shoved Ban along, finished with the moment of fatherly affection.

  Ban did not hesitate to desert the field.

  NINE YEARS AGO, WEST COAST OF INNIS LEAR

  THE SUN SANK, and the king studied his youngest daughter as she studied the sky.

  Lear lounged upon the rug he’d brought, a half-empty bottle of wine gouged into the damp earth beside him, his wool-encased elbows bent to support his weight, his bare ankles crossed. He watched his daughter as she tilted her head and spoke some phrase the wind kept from him. She clapped suddenly, in delight, as if she alone could see the precise moment the gentle pink clouds became loose violet haze. Her hair bobbed in its own rhythm, like a cloud itself: an ecstatic, curling puff of copper and brown. It strengthened the king’s aggrieved heart to see her, his favorite, intent upon the final moments of twilight, so ready to mark which star might first appear.

  But then the princess fluttered her hand at the young boy crouched a few paces from the hem of her dress, and as the boy glanced up at her his face went from scowling and concentrated to relaxed and smiling. She had that effect on many, though the king would rather it not extend to Errigal’s bastard. The boy’s legitimate brother yelled and skidded half the meadow away, a wide stick held up like a sword in a very good offensive position to fight off invisible enemies. That one, the king thought, was destined for great purpose. The stars had clearly stated it on the night of his birth. He was the king’s godson, named Errigal, too, though to distinguish him from his father the earl, everyone called him Rory. Would that Elia showed her preference to the gilded Rory, who was so beloved by the sun and saints of the earth that he bore the marks of their affection: dark red freckles all over his skin. As if his body were made an earthly mirror to the firmament itself.

  As the king stared fondly at his godson, his youngest daughter clapped again, and he saw her fall to her knees in the churned dirt where the bastard boy had turned over a heavy field stone. The flat granite stood upright for a moment, then tipped away from the children, landing with a solid thump against the meadow grass. The king’s daughter laughed, and the boy bent over the fresh filth, digging with one hand, touching the princess’s hem with his other.

  Lear’s daughter scooted nearer the bastard and dug her hand into the mud with him, dragging out a long, fat worm. “Elia,” the king said, frowning.

  His daughter glanced at him, thrusting out the worm with a smile of triumph. It was pale and slick-looking in her eleven-year-old hand. No elegance or rich gleam like the sorts of ribbons that should curl around her noble wrist. The king shuddered at the grotesquery and opened his mouth to chide her, but she giggled at something the bastard muttered, turning away from her father.

  The boy, wiry and smaller than his gilded brother, smaller than the king’s favorite daughter even, though they were of age, splayed his left hand. It was nearly as dark as the princess’s, though less smooth, less bright: she was a statue molded from fine metal, and he a creature built of mud and starshadow. The king had always thought so: the boy had been born under a dragon’s tail moon, and forged in an unsanctioned bed. What a disaster for Errigal, the king had always said, always counseled his friend the earl against such passionate dalliance. But some men refused to govern their bodies as they would their minds.

  The bastard displayed on his outstretched hand a shining emerald.

  No—merely a beetle shimmering all the colors of a deep summer day. The boy plucked the beetle from his hand and placed it upon the princess’s.

  She squealed that the tiny legs tickled her skin, but she did not toss the insect away.

  The king watched through narrowed eyes as their heads leaned together, temples brushing until her puffed curls and his black braids blended. “Elia,” the king said again, this time a low command.

  She tossed him a smile and glance, then showed him the emerald beetle clinging to her finger like a union ring, as Dalat once had presented her own hand to Lear, so long ago. “See, Father, how its shell shimmers like a pearl,” she said.

  It pained the king, vividly reminded of his queen, his dearest queen who had loved Innis Lear, had seen beauty in every piece of his island, even in him. The king blinked: his queen was dead, no longer able to love him, or his island, or anything at all.

  “Insects are not suitable rings for princesses,” he said, harshly.

  Surprise shook Elia’s hand; the bastard gently caught the beetle as it fell.

  The princess dashed over to her father. “But there were stars in its eyes,” she whispered, pushing aside hair from her father’s ear.

  He murmured fondly, softening as he always did with her, and pulled her gently back to her proper place, seated beside him on the woven rug. Where her mother, too, had sat.

  A cool evening wind brushed its way through the meadow. Elia leaned her head against his shoulder, both of them tilting back to watch the sky. The king told her quiet lines of poetry about the wakening stars as the bastard lowered his fingers to the earth so that the beetle could crawl off him and back into the dirt. Always the boy kept the princess in the corner of his eye. The king was aware. And displeased.

  The brother, Rory, stomped over, sweating and triumphant. “Ban!” Rory threw his pretend sword to the ground, scattering grubs and beetles in one swoop. “What is that terrible thing?” He scuffed his boot near a curled white creature with several thin legs. The bastard did not answer.

  The king called for Rory to come to the rug, to join him and his daughter, to look at the darkening sky. “The first star you see will be a portent of your year, children, for tonight is halfway between the longest night and the longest day. Cast your gaze wide.”

  Delighted, the princess rounded her black eyes and tried to see the entire sky at once. Rory, a year younger, flopped down at the king’s feet and knocked his skull against the rug-softened ground. He peered directly up to the dome of heaven, focused on one spot.

  The king watched them both affectionately. His youngest daughter and his godson, intent upon his will, intent upon the prophetic stars. As he bid them, as was right. He could abide the bastard for the evening, since his presence pleased Elia.

  His daughter gasped and said, “There!” Her little hand shot up, pointing near the horizon.

  The king laid his old white thumb against her burnished brown forehead. “That, my daughter, is Terestria, the Star of Secrets. Terestria was so beloved by the stars that they drew her up with them when she died, so her body was buried in the blackness of the night sky instead of swallowed by the earth. I would make for you, my Elia, my dearest, a grave of stars, if you were to die before me.”

  His daughter smiled in acceptance while
Rory squinted his face more tightly to find another star above. The bastard gripped his brother’s discarded sword-stick and jammed it into the ground.

  “You won’t find stars in the mud, boy,” the king admonished.

  Elia frowned but Rory laughed, while the bastard dropped the stick and stood still as a tree, staring at the king with eerie light eyes. “I’m not looking for stars,” he said.

  “Then go from here, for we are about the stars tonight, and your petulance will mar their shine.”

  The bastard’s jaw squared stubbornly, then he dropped his gaze to the princess, who clutched her dress, caught between the king and the boy. His eyes lowered, and the boy turned away without a word. Good riddance.

  “I found one!” crowed Rory, leaping to his feet. “Ban, look!”

  The king angled his head up to see.

  “That, godson,” the king said, “is the Star of the Hunt, also called the Hound’s Eye.” He declined to elaborate, but Rory didn’t care, elated to have captured the sight of such a glorious-sounding first star. He ran after his half-brother, crying Ban’s name and inventing fulsome meanings for the Star of the Hunt.

  Easily, the king put both Errigal sons from his mind, curling around his favorite daughter, his Elia. She needed him, she trusted him.

  The king held his youngest in the shelter of his love as he described the portents revealed by how the stars appeared tonight, through the vivid purple and pale blue evening. He would raise her in their clear light, he promised, to be the starry jewel in the crown of Lear, a radiant heir to the skies and proof that wisdom and purity would forever outshine base emotions and the filth of mortality.

  ELIA

  THE LAST MEAL Elia took at the Summer Seat was only wine, a dark red that had been her mother’s favorite, borne in a cool carafe by her sisters. Elia could not read their faces, and was too tired to guess their intentions. She wanted them with her so badly she ignored her suspicions and let them enter.