Kingsbane

by Claire Legrand

  Ludivine did not respond.

  Rielle glanced over, frowning. Ludivine sat hunched and tense on her bench, her mouth clamped tightly shut.

  “Is it the scar?” Rielle asked quietly beneath the lap of the waves and Tal’s cheerful calls from the other boat.

  “It’s getting worse,” Ludivine replied. “More painful.” She glanced up with a thin smile. “I’m sorry. Please don’t worry. Concentrate on meeting the queens. I’ll feel better, I think, once I spend some time in a bed that’s not rocking back and forth.”

  Rielle felt neither convinced nor comforted. This was a new thing and had begun to take shape alarmingly fast while they were crossing the sea: Ludivine’s scar, which had remained unchanged for long weeks, was now spreading and darkening. Already, its tendrils had crept across her ribs and to the hollow of her throat. She had taken to wearing a collection of gauzy scarves around her neck, but soon the scar would spread to her face, which would be much more difficult to disguise without inviting questions.

  A shadow passed over them—Atheria, diving down to the surface of the sea. She plunged her head into the water, snatched up a fat silver fish, flipped it up into the air, and caught it once again in her teeth.

  From the shore came a chorus of amazed cries. They were close enough now that Rielle could see the royal entourage awaiting them, a glittering chain across the white sand. Sunspinners lined the path from the shore to the queens, thin lines of sunlight arching gracefully overhead in the pale April sky.

  “Atheria can take you home,” Rielle murmured to Ludivine. “In fact, I insist upon it.”

  Ludivine’s grip tightened around her hand. “Absolutely not. I’m not leaving you.”

  “Tal’s here, and my guard. I won’t be in danger.”

  Ludivine looked up at her, tears bright in her eyes. “You’re always in danger, my darling. And so I will always be at your side.”

  Rielle kissed her cheek, then held her close until their dinghies reached the shallows. Her guards jumped out and pulled the boats ashore, and Rielle had just managed to reach the dry sand when a young woman ran toward them out of the crowd.

  Evyline immediately tensed, but Ludivine murmured, “It’s all right. It’s Princess Kamayin. The queens’ daughter and heir.”

  Then, with a feeling of relieved gladness: She is overjoyed to meet you, Rielle.

  At a sharp shout from one of the queens, the princess stopped short, a few feet from Rielle, and smiled sheepishly. She was slender and tall and could not have been older than fifteen—her skin a warm, deep brown, her hair a cap of tight black curls. She wore a long white gown under a smart blue jacket, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and the hem sweeping the sand. Her brown eyes were bright, and around her wrists she wore two thick gold bands, beautifully engraved with leaves and birds. Rielle felt herself move toward them and knew at once that they were castings.

  “My mothers are always telling me I shouldn’t embrace people until I confirm that they do in fact like to be touched.” Kamayin looked hopefully at Rielle. “Can I, my lady?”

  Rielle hesitated, but Ludivine only said wearily, She is just as she appears. Warm and full of love.

  So Rielle opened her arms and smiled. “I would be honored, Your Highness.”

  Kamayin’s face split into a sun-bright grin. She wrapped her arms around Rielle and kissed each of her cheeks, then pulled back to beam at her.

  “I know you must be tired after your journey,” she said, “but we did prepare a light lunch for you, if you’d like to eat before you go to your rooms.” Then she looked past Rielle, and her eyes widened. “Sweet saints, who is that beautiful man talking to my mother?”

  Rielle turned. One of the queens had made her way down the shore and was already engaged in an animated conversation with Tal.

  Rielle laughed. “That’s Tal. He’s my teacher, of sorts, and a Grand Magister of our Church.”

  Kamayin appraised him. “Does he have a lover?”

  “Yes, and besides that, I think he’s a bit old for you.”

  “What a pity.” Then, her expression brightening, she hooked her arm through Rielle’s. “Come on, then. We’ll let them talk themselves to death and get first pick of the food.” She glanced at Ludivine. “Lady Ludivine, isn’t that right? Are you ill?”

  “Just tired,” Ludivine said with a wan smile, but as they walked up the shore to the city, Rielle could not shake the growing fear that there was more to Ludivine’s pain than she was allowing her to see.

  • • •

  That night, in the spacious rooms the queens had given her, Rielle lay in her bed, luxuriating in its clean white linens.

  Her skin still tingled from the pleasure she had given herself a few moments earlier. She had enjoyed one of her favorite fantasies—herself, wrapped in Audric’s arms, and Ludivine’s, too, both of them loving her with unwavering focus. But she could not find the dreamy peace that usually came afterward.

  Instead, her thoughts buzzed with worry for Ludivine, and she couldn’t stop wondering where Corien had gone. Here she was, far from home, separated from Audric, and Corien was nowhere to be found.

  Obviously he would have reasons for staying away—but she couldn’t imagine what those would be. She despised the fact of his absence even as she was grateful for it.

  She turned onto her side, frowning at the moonlit window. Long ivy plants framed it, their branches swaying gently in the breeze. She opened a feeling of love to the next room—Lu, are you awake?—but heard and felt nothing in return.

  She swung her legs out of bed, slipped on her nightgown, turned—and was met by a swift, darting shadow. It grabbed her and turned her, wrenching her arm behind her back, and placed a thin, cold blade against her throat.

  “Don’t move and don’t scream,” whispered a voice, “or I’ll cut your throat in two.”

  Rielle recognized the voice at once.

  It belonged to Princess Kamayin.

  34

  Eliana

  “My grandmother told me, and her grandmother told her, that Festival was once the merriest city in the world—a place of light and music, art and beauty. At the turn of each new season, the whole city stopped everything to celebrate, for days and days. Heart-of-the-sea trees once blanketed every hill and field and canyon. They were bred by Saint Tokazi and planted by Saint Nerida herself—one for each human killed during the Angelic Wars. They bloomed in April and shed their petals in September. Even after the Blood Queen’s death, the trees regrew. But then the Empire came and cut down every tree that bloomed. My grandmother’s grandmother said that for long weeks the air smelled like fire and that the sky went dim and cold.”

  —Collection of stories written by refugees in occupied Meridian, curated by Remy Ferracora

  After two long weeks spent creeping slowly across the grasslands of Meridian, the endless meadows and thin, spotty woodlands became a landscape of streams and lakes and larger forests in which the sprawling black trees were draped with white-and-silver moss.

  The moss reminded Eliana of home, of Orline, and she was quiet that last day, as everyone was, but she felt, in her exhaustion, that her particular quiet was more miserable than the others. It was a thought she was not proud to think, and yet think it she did, over and over, until her mind turned black and brooding.

  They waited in a ravine, beneath a roof of moss-strewn tree roots, while Simon went ahead to let the Keshavarzian family know they had arrived. They were a mother and father and three boys, and they lived on an estate called Willow. It was vast, according to Simon—a grand manor house with dozens of rooms, elaborate gardens, rice fields in the sprawling wetlands nearby, a private wood of several acres. They had long been friendly with Red Crown and had fed and housed many a rebel on their estate. But they kept their property and their coin through a careful, meticulously engineered deception.

 
; To the outside world, they were Empire loyalists. As Eliana had served Lord Arkelion in Orline, so did the Keshavarzian family serve Lord Tabris in Festival.

  Simon therefore had to approach the estate carefully, for they had not been able to send word of their arrival, and the family’s private soldiers were stationed around the perimeter.

  Crouched beside Eliana, Harkan shifted his weight from left to right. “I can’t imagine they’ll be overjoyed to suddenly have seventeen more mouths to feed.”

  “If they’re not prepared to help,” Eliana said, “they shouldn’t be a part of this. They should truly serve the Empire and leave acts of rebellion to Red Crown.”

  Harkan glanced at her. She felt his gaze inspecting her face, her body.

  But Remy, on her other side, was the one to speak. “You don’t look good, El.”

  “Neither do you, darling,” she replied with a gentle squeeze of his hand. “In fact, we all look like shit.”

  “It exhausted you, what you did for me,” he said quietly.

  She heard the note of guilt in his voice and turned to him at once, cupping his face. “And yet I would do it again, ten times over, if it meant keeping you with me.”

  “A hundred times over?” he whispered, grinning a little, his eyes shining up at her.

  She kissed his filthy forehead. “A thousand times over.”

  It began to rain, a light shower that pattered like quiet finger taps on the leaves above. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the tree roots. She opened her mouth and let the fresh water trickle into her mouth, down her neck, into her hair.

  Then Harkan tensed beside her. From a few paces away, Patrik whistled softly, alerting the others to attention.

  Eliana straightened, tightening her arms around Remy—but it was only Simon, approaching through the trees. Four soldiers flanked him, their weapons drawn.

  “Rise slowly,” came Simon’s voice. “It’s all right. They just want to see that everyone is as I described.”

  Eliana obeyed, though she hated having to leave the safety of the trees and expose herself and Remy to the hooded gazes of these people she could not clearly see through the rain-soaked shadows.

  There was a pause as the soldiers inspected them. The rain began to fall harder; Remy shivered against Eliana’s side, and she nearly swore at them, pushed to the edge of her patience.

  Then one of the soldiers came forward, lowering their weapon—a woman, of average weight and height, with pale skin and a head of thick black hair streaked with silver. There was a pleasing symmetry to her features and a sharp light of authority in her dark eyes that made Eliana feel instantly more at ease.

  “Come on, then,” the woman said briskly, gesturing at them to move. “You’re fine, you’re all fine. Poor things, you’re filthy. We’ll go in through the back terrace, otherwise my husband, Arzen, will have a fit. I’m Danizet Keshavarzian. I realize that’s rather a mouthful. You can call me Dani.”

  They followed her wordlessly through the woods, Eliana watching with half-awake interest as Dani flitted about the group, taking note of their wounds, their supplies, the state of their clothes and boots.

  When Dani reached Eliana and Remy, she clucked her tongue at the sight of them.

  “Poor darlings. I didn’t realize you would be quite so young.” She stripped off her coat, which was sopping wet, and settled it around Remy’s shoulders. “I know, it’s soaked through, but I can’t sit here and look at you shivering and do nothing. Don’t worry, there’s a fire inside, and Evon’s made a stew. We’ll warm you up right quick.”

  Then Dani looked at Eliana, her eyes bright and shrewd. “You’re the special one, aren’t you? The girl who’s destined to save us all.”

  At those words, spoken so plainly, something raw and brittle snapped inside Eliana’s ribs. Tears rose and spilled over before she could do anything to stop them. She realized, blearily, that they had reached the manor house. There was a broad stone terrace, slick with rain and bordered with bright-green ferns. Someone was ushering her inside, where there was warmth, light, the distant smell of cooking food.

  Someone had taken Remy from her. She reached blindly after him, but then strong, firm hands were guiding her into a quiet room—also warm, but softer, dimmer. She noticed Jessamyn in the room as well, and Catilla and Oraia, all being helped out of their wet clothes by a kind-faced, round-bellied woman with wild red curls.

  “That’s Ester,” said Dani, gesturing at the redheaded woman. “She’s been my friend for so long I call her my sister. She has a daughter, off helping refugees in the Vespers, and another one on the way, God help her.”

  “Ever the cheerful one, you are,” came Ester’s wry voice.

  “There, now.” Dani’s voice gentled, perhaps noticing how Eliana had begun to shake. “It’s all right, love. Your brother’s with that beautiful young man, what’s his name?”

  “Harkan?” Eliana suggested, wiping the rain and tears from her face. Her hands were black with mud.

  “Yes, that’s the one. They’re fine and safe. You’re all safe now, at least for a while.”

  Eliana nodded, following Dani’s instructions: “Step out of your boots, there’s a girl. Leave your clothes on the floor. It’s fine, someone will take care of them later. Wrap yourself in this blanket, there we are. You’ll have to bathe one at a time, I’m afraid. We’ve such a full house at the moment. Who wants to go first?”

  “I’ll bathe last,” Eliana whispered, clutching the scratchy wool blanket around her body. If she managed to hold it in place, then perhaps she could hold herself together as well, and stifle her still-rising tears. “In the meantime, is there a place I might wait in private?”

  Dani led her into a small sitting room of wood-paneled walls. A soft, red rug carpeted the floor, and a fire snapped in a tiny hearth. How marvelous that there was such warmth in this house. So many fires, and none of them were of her own making, or of the enemy.

  “Now you sit yourself right here on this chair, love,” said Dani. “Rest your eyes, and I’ll come fetch you when it’s your turn in the tub.”

  But when Dani tried to step away, Eliana clung to her hand, her cheeks burning with shame and her heart aching to be mothered.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, but that was a terrible mistake, for Rozen’s face floated there, contorted with pain. Finish it.

  “Please don’t leave,” she croaked, and then, when Dani crooned soft words of pity and sat down beside her, Eliana’s tightly held control shattered. Hoping the rain would muffle the sound of her grief, she turned into the woman’s open arms and wept.

  • • •

  Eliana bathed and allowed Dani to help comb the knots out of her hair before braiding it into a single, neat plait. Scrubbed clean, she hardy recognized herself. Dani led her downstairs, where she sat at one end of a long table half-full of people. Too tired to learn their names, Eliana ate in silence. Miraculously, no one bothered her. She devoured two heaping bowls of beef-and-vegetable stew and sopped up the remains with a hunk of warm, crusty bread.

  By the time she finished, the room had emptied somewhat. Dani and a young man, whom Eliana assumed to be her son, sat talking quietly at one end of the table. And then, the food in her belly granting her some clarity at last, she realized that Simon sat near her, reclining in his chair, feet propped up on a bench. He held a sheaf of papers in his hands and was reading over them with an impressive frown on his face. As she watched him, another young man who looked very like Dani approached her chair, looking ready to ask her a question—but one cutting glare from Simon sent him scurrying away.

  She now understood why no one had bothered her as she ate.

  Smiling to herself, she moved closer to Simon. She was glad for his nearness, his silent watchfulness. She was glad for the fact that he had bathed, yes, but that his hair and unshaven cheeks still looked
scruffy and unkempt. The urge to touch his face overwhelmed her.

  She pressed her hands flat against her thighs. “What are you reading?”

  He straightened the stack of papers and placed them on the table before her.

  She spent a few minutes reading over them, and with each page, her heart sank a little farther in her chest.

  “Astavar is now occupied by the Empire,” she said. It felt necessary to force herself to say the words aloud. “Kings Eri and Tavik are dead, and the Lady Ama as well. No word of Malik or Navi or Hob. An estimated three thousand Astavari dead in the invasion.”

  She returned Simon’s papers to him. “I regret that second bowl of stew.”

  “Astavar would have fallen eventually, regardless of whether you were there or not.” He folded the papers into a leather packet and tied the packet shut. “Don’t agonize over it, Eliana. There’s enough to agonize over without adding to the list.” Then he looked up at her, and she did not think she imagined the slight softness on his face. “Are you tired?”

  She laughed. “Aren’t you?”

  “Me? Never.” He rose, extending a hand to her. “Has Dani shown you to your room?”

  She took his hand gingerly, a sudden swarm of nerves fluttering in her throat. “Not yet. I have my own room?”

  “Don’t tell Jessamyn. She has to share with Catilla—who apparently is an awful snorer.”

  They began walking upstairs, by way of a side staircase not nearly as grand as the sweeping one at the front of the house. It was narrow and tall, dimly lit by tiny gas lamps in brass sconces, and Eliana felt that she and Simon, together, did not quite fit in this small a space. She breathed shallowly, so aware of his body beside her own that she felt a lightning storm might spontaneously generate between them.

  She closed her fists, directing what frayed energy she could gather at her castings: Stay silent, little monsters.

  They reached the third floor, and Simon led her down a quiet hallway carpeted with a thick, tasseled rug. Oil paintings hanging along the walls depicted imperial scenes—various black-eyed generals in dress uniform; the Emperor’s crest floating in a field of stars; what Eliana assumed must be the siege of Festival, when Meridian had fallen and its rulers had been executed.