Young Mars had flinched, realizing the king’s word applied to him, too.
He’d searched out Novanos and asked if they were friends; Novanos had stopped his sword exercise mid-swing and given him a look like congealed porridge. Mars had laughed, supposing only a friend could turn such a face upon a prince.
But in the hospital tent, Mars always realized his father was right.
Mars could not pretend to be a friend of soldiers, wounded or not. He was the crown. He was why they were here. If he refused such a responsibility, or avoided it, there was no worth to his own life, no worth to those lives snuffed out in the name of Aremoria. So the king would bear it.
He made his way into the quiet, darker section of tent, where the more seriously injured lay. Novanos discreetly directed his king to the darkest corner, nodding down at a soldier who could not have been much more than a boy.
“Shall we wait for his end, or will he wake?” Mars studied the heavy bandages about the soldier’s middle, the swollen eye, the razed skin of his cheek, the splinted arm.
Novanos paused, as near uncertain as Mars had ever seen him. “Before he lost consciousness, he said the earth hid him.”
The king frowned at the strange claim. “This is who brought the intelligence?”
“And the Diotan commander’s underwear. His return made quite the stir in the men of his division. They’d thought he deserted, as he was gone for nearly four days.”
Mars knelt beside the boy. He had light tan skin, sallow from injury, and his nose and hair put Mars in mind of the refugees from southern Ispania. “He can’t be more than sixteen.”
Novanos shook his head. “If that. He’s the runt of the Alsax cousins.”
Surprise pinched the corners of the king’s eyes. “The one who was fostered from Innis Lear?”
“Of Errigal. But not the earlson; the bastard.”
Mars grunted.
They stared at the unconscious boy.
“They call him the Fox already,” Novanos said quietly. “But not for his spying. They say he’s the only soldier safe to leave in a henhouse.”
It made Mars’s smile turn to amusement, then sympathy. “He prefers men?”
“I believe he’s merely celibate.”
“Can he read?” Relieved, Mars’s mind shot directly to one of the recent treatises he’d examined on the art of channeling sexual urges toward a purer focus on the battlefield.
“My lord,” Novanos said dryly, “I will not allow you to hand this boy one of your tracts of ascetic nonsense.”
Mars laughed softly, only a quiet huff of breath. “You know me too well,” he murmured.
“What will you do with him? Some honor, I hope, or a medal.”
“At least.” Mars stared at the slight boy. If he earned the boy’s trust, and if the boy proved loyal, cunning, and stalwart, then there were any number of potential paths to take forward. Toward the promise Mars had made his dying father. “When he wakes, I…”
The boy stirred. He opened dark, muddled eyes. “My lord?” he said in Learish.
“I am Morimaros,” Mars said, in the same. Though the language they spoke on Innis Lear had been born of Aremore, in the centuries since the island was formed the two dialects had drifted very far apart.
“The king!” The boy switched to Aremore proper.
“Be at peace.” Mars crouched and put his hand on the boy’s hot forehead. “If you would speak, tell me how you survived, how you found the information about the Diotans.”
The wounded youth stared blearily at Mars for a moment. He whispered something that Mars did not understand, then nodded, to himself or to something Mars could not see.
“I am a wizard,” he said.
Surprised, Mars only waited. Perhaps the soldier was delirious, or perhaps it was a Learish thing to say. There had been wizards once in Aremoria, but they were no more.
Ban coughed, and a healer appeared with water. The boy drank, winced, and said, “I was injured, and so went to the trees for succor, my lord.”
“To the trees?”
“They listened to me, and I to them,” Ban said, eyes bright with fervor. “They spoke differently than the forests I am used to, but they offered me solace, as their Learish cousins would have.” He whispered something else, and this time Mars recognized some of the hissing; it was part of the prayers for the dead on Innis Lear, a piece of the blessings still carved onto the oldest star chapels in Lionis. The earth faith was mostly purged from Aremoria, but not the original buildings, though most now had more governmental or ornamental function. Mars had read much about magic and earth saints when he was young, still enamored with ancient romances.
“The language of trees still exists,” he said.
The Learish soldier nodded. “I asked the trees to hide me, my lord. They protected me, keeping me alive, feeding me water, holding me in among their roots beneath the ground as I healed, until the Diotans had made camp over me. I was already in the center, already behind their lines. And the trees then helped me keep to shadows; the wind blew to cover the sounds of my movement. That’s how I found the commander’s tent, and his maps, his orders, and that letter from his king.”
“And his underclothes,” Mars said.
Ban smiled slyly.
The king of Aremoria studied Ban, called the Fox to tease, and wondered if it was fate that had already given him his name. Mars said, “Do you think you could do it again?”
The boy stared back, lips parted, dry and cracked and needing succor. “That and more, with the help of your earth and roots,” he finally murmured.
“Good.” Mars put his hand on Ban’s uninjured forearm. “Make yourself well, then come to me.”
Mars stood to go.
“Your Highness,” Ban said, “you … believe me?”
Lifting his brow, Mars said, “Should I not?”
“I…” The boy’s eyelids fluttered; he needed rest, food, time to heal. “I am not used to being taken at my word.”
“Because of your parentage?”
“And due to the stars under which I was born,” Ban said. “They—”
“Stop. I don’t care about your birth chart. I care what you are. What you do. And what you’ve already done. And especially I care what you will do next, at my side.”
It might have been fever making the soldier’s eyes glassy, or tears. He tried to sit up, and Mars crouched again, gently pressing him back onto the cot. “I see what you are, Ban the Fox. Heal, and then come be yourself for me.”
“Myself,” the boy whispered, nodding. A low sigh escaped him, whispering like breeze through winter grass. With Novanos close behind, Mars allowed himself to finally escape the hospital tent, back out under the sun. He blew a soft whisper, like Ban the Fox had done, and wondered what it would feel like to speak to the land itself.
And he wondered if the wind and sky and roots of Aremoria would reply to the crown.
ELIA
IT WAS INSTINCT, perhaps, that woke Elia Lear every morning before dawn, then drove her from the luxury of her bed in the Lionis palace to perch on the ramparts of the westernmost tower and watch the stars fade and die.
From this pinnacle, Elia could see the entire valley of Lionis. The rising sun caught the water of the great, wide river first, gilding its slow current. The river curled through the city, golden beneath the slips and ferry boats and barges, beneath the fine slick passenger vessels and grand royal cannon ships. The capital city spread white and gray up either bank, climbing with winding cobbled streets and narrow terraces into the steep hills. Called the Pearl of Aremoria, it gleamed in the sun like mother shells and the lips of sea snails, built mainly of chalk and pale limestone, with pink coral roofs and slate shingles.
Atop sheer chalk cliffs that cut up from the inner elbow of the river was the king’s palace. Its outer wall rose high and strong, capped with brilliant white crenellations, like a massive, toothy jaw ready to swallow the interior whole. Five towers marked the edges of the main building, lif
ting high and supported by elegant curving buttresses. Glass windows winked in the pink dawn light, and shadows slid off the steep blue-slate roofs. Courtyards and gardens created a hive of privacy, along with small crescent balconies hooked against the pale walls.
Every morning Elia faced Innis Lear as the sun obliterated the stars, though every morning she wished she could bring herself to turn any other way.
Dawn breeze off the river now chilled her wrists and bare fingers, ruffling the curls of hair she’d picked loose from her sleeping braid. This tower seemed nearer to the sky than ever she’d been, though Elia had once visited the Mountain of Teeth with her father and sisters on the Longest Night. Then, surrounded by jagged stone and ice along the narrow pilgrim path, by snow and low clouds, she had felt the sky descend to meet her. Gaela had grimaced to show the mountain her own teeth, and Regan had howled at the power of it. King Lear had spoken twisting star poems, while Elia had cried in silent wonder.
She thought of it now, and at every dawn, stuck in reverie, unwilling to step outside of it. As if to unlatch herself from the memory would be to forget, to let go. To begin something new.
Elia Lear was terrified of a new beginning. This dawn moment was not the start of a day, but the end of a night, or both, or neither.
Her father refused to wake before dawn; he hated to see the stars die.
She’d made the mistake at first of pretending everything could be normal; she woke in her bed and remained there, then ate her breakfast of cheese, fine cold meat, and delicate bread, allowed Aefa to dress her body and hair, and attempted to go about a lady’s day. As if Elia chose to be in Aremoria, as if she had not been cast away from Innis Lear. The result had been sudden, severe moments of pain throughout the day, brought on by unpredictable words, a glance, or merely the sight of a bird the likes of which she’d known before. Elia could barely control herself at those times, shaking with the power of this inner tempest.
To calm herself, she thought of her mother, and her childhood, before Dalat died, before her family fractured. In those days, Elia had been allowed to wake slowly, so long as she was fed and bathed by the time the queen expected her—waiting in the solar if it snowed and iced, or the garden if it did not—for several hours of reading, writing, and history lessons together. The queen had encouraged her youngest in learning, as she’d done with both elder daughters, and Elia was the one, finally, to appreciate any story, no matter how foreign or strange. Both had cherished their time alone, before a quick lunch with the king, and afterward Dalat would leave Elia to the star priests, for further lessons. The queen had spent her own afternoons supporting her husband’s rule: attending the king’s hunt, meeting with his clerks, inspecting new spices and goods from Aremoria or the Rusrike, or sometimes even the Third Kingdom. Often, Dalat’s duty had included embroidering with the other ladies of the keep, sharing the sort of gossip that greased the wheels of any government, and collecting information to use in other cases.
When Elia had been very lucky, she’d been allowed join her mother at this womanly task, so long as she worked quietly and did not repeat what she might learn. Her elder sisters joined them occasionally, hand in hand. Regan had excelled at the art of sewing with gossip, keen enough to participate despite her relative youth. Gaela had worn trousers and a soldier’s gambeson more often than not, and excitedly would explain to Dalat and the ladies what the earl Errigal or earl Glennadoer—or even the ladies’ own retainers—had taught her recently, of defense and the sword and the way of men. Possibly Gaela had not yet realized how vital her occasional dropped detail was to the women’s network.
Elia did: she could always see the patterns of their world.
In the evenings, the whole family dined in the great hall, included in a warm mess of retainers and servants, along with visiting earls and local barons, or the sons and daughters of their neighbors; whomever had come to the long gray wall of Dondubhan Castle, crossing the Star Field to pray for the spirits of their dead. And after the meal, if Elia was not too sleepy, the princess was welcome to curl beside her parents as they listened to a harpist or oliphant player, poetry in at least three different languages, or the Fool’s riddles. Elia’s head would lean upon her mother’s or father’s lap, and the youngest Lear would drift away to the sights and sounds of her family at peace.
The memories felt like a story now, a tale of earth saints and music and happiness that had lived in some other princess’s heart.
On the sleepy ramparts of Lionis Palace it hurt Elia less to think of what had never changed: Regan’s pinched smile when she sipped hot coffee, for Regan loved the bitter drink; Gaela slipping a small, sheathed knife into the hidden pocket of her gown. She thought of Aefa dotting red paint down her cheeks and making a poem from any three words Elia offered. She thought of the scrape of a quill against paper, the smell of pine boughs covering the hall at Dondubhan, the lapping waves of the Tarinnish. She tried never to think of her father.
She thought of Ban Errigal.
Be bold, he had said.
She thought of the stars—but no, no, they could not be relied upon. Not her birth chart or dawn signs, none of it. Not even Calpurlugh.
When the wind blew, she listened for the whisper of Aremore trees. They did not speak to her. Whether she’d gone deaf to the language, or they refused her on some rooted principle, she did not know. Ban had said the trees of Aremoria laughed, but she had not yet heard them.
The tempest inside her raged, and Elia bound it tight.
All she could do was breathe.
Carefully breathe, in and out, and tell herself nothing was over.
GAELA
IN OVER A decade Gaela had never been so glad to be back in Astora. Rain had plagued her for the entire ride north from the Summer Seat, and a three-day journey had stretched to a week, thanks to her father’s old bones and the hundred retainers lengthening the party. Lear’s men were not nearly as efficient as Gaela’s own, and by the fourth day, she’d left camp before they’d finished clearing their tents.
As she rode into the city, all Gaela wished for was a hot fire, a hotter bath, and an entire bottle of that dark wine Astore always kept cellared. She supposed she’d have to dine with him, the husband who’d left the Summer Seat a day before Gaela, and no doubt had been home and settled and working since the Sixday of last week.
Water dripped down her scalp, for Gaela had lowered her hood as her horse took her beneath the heavy city gate. Behind her came her captain Crai and her personal retinue, then the hundred Learish retainers in dark blue tabards, and several wagons with all their goods and belongings. Gaela would already be slipping into her private bath by the time the last stragglers made it to the outer garrison where they’d be housed.
Astora City filled this small mountain valley in patches of cream and gray. Most buildings and houses were whitewashed and roofed with slate tiles, though some bright yellow glowed where thatched roofs leaned short and happy against their more elegant neighbors. There was no order to the roads and blocks of homes, though taverns appeared at regular intervals. One could find clusters of blacksmiths sharing wide stone yards, and then a row of tanners’ alleys had tucked themselves by the south plateau, where wind rarely blew their stench throughout the rest of the city. The old castle keep and the newer castle stood tall and proud at the northeast corner of the valley, where a mountain pass led out of the Jawbone Mountains, and a strong arm of the Duv River poured in with fresh water, churning several mills. Only three water wheels had been kept turning lately, for the villages that brought their grain here had so much less such to bring. So it was across the island, Gaela had discovered when working with her father’s stewards, collecting numbers for her return to Astore territory. The island of Innis Lear was in for a lean winter, again.
The old castle keep was a square of thick walls and arrow slits, poorly ventilated, but Gaela’s husband loved it passionately, knew every history of its stones. His grandfather had begun building the more refined new
castle with technology from Aremoria; it would perhaps be finished with construction by the time this Astore was a sixty-year-old graybeard. But it was more than livable already, with taller ceilings and fewer drafts, a magnificent hall and bright solar he used for his office. Yet unless Astore died in battle, he’d sworn he’d die in the black keep, as all his ancestors had managed to do. Perhaps he would, but not until Gaela was crowned. She needed him still, as she’d needed him after Dalat died, when she dragged herself and her sister Regan here to command the duke to put her among his retainers and teach her to be a warrior king. As she’d needed him when she was twenty-one and finally forced to admit her father would never officially name her his heir so long as she was unwed.
Now she was officially an heir, but Regan remained childless at Connley’s side, and so Gaela needed Astore still to prove the relevance of her stars. But not for long. Soon she’d not need any of these men who saw her stars over her self. Once the Longest Night arrived, Gaela would kneel in the black waters of the Tarinnish. The island would bless her body and heart, and she would seem to give herself to it. Then, only then, could she kill Lear.
The uncomfortable old keep was where she’d put her father and his top men, too, though she herself had rooms in the new castle.
Gaela lifted her gauntleted hand as she entered the wide yard between the two seats. She nodded to Crai, who knew what needed to be done now for her father’s welcome. They’d sent runners ahead this morning, so all should be well prepared. And Gaela gave her horse over to a groom, grabbed her saddlebag and helmet, and headed straight into her own castle.
At her rooms, Osli waited. “Welcome home, lady. We’ve heard so much about what happened. Is it true, Lady Elia’s gone to Aremoria?”
“Bath first,” Gaela said, and pushed into the front room.
“Yes, it’s ready. The girls started it as soon as we knew you’d entered the city gate.” Osli took her sword belt, and two house maids stripped Gaela down as Osli carried the weaponry to its rack. Gaela went naked to the tub and climbed in, already grasping the rough soap. She flattened her lips and leaned back into the steaming water, but only gave herself one long moment before making a lather to wash herself swiftly and thoroughly.
The Queens of Innis Lear Page 17
