Mother of All

by Jenna Glass

  “Uh-oh,” she said with a teasing lilt in her voice, although her insides clenched in dread, for she had never enjoyed any conversation that started with those words. “What have I done now?”

  He snorted softly. “I am not Lady Vondelmai. I am not here to deliver a scolding.”

  “Oh, my stepmother was far from the only person to take me to task for my improper behavior,” she said with a laugh, relaxing only slightly. In truth, she couldn’t think of anything she’d done lately that should especially warrant attention, and Tynthanal was not one to scold. However, she was certain she hadn’t misinterpreted the tone of his voice or the slightly ominous tenor of those words.

  “Let’s sit down,” he suggested, shoring up her conviction that she was not going to like this conversation.

  Kailee reluctantly took a seat on the sofa beside the fire, and he sat next to her. “What is it?” she asked, clasping her hands together nervously in her lap.

  “There’s nothing wrong,” he assured her, then sighed. “Or at least, nothing new,” he corrected, since he’d told her about the murder of King Khalvin and the role Delnamal had played.

  “Then what is it I hear in your voice?” she asked.

  Tynthanal rubbed his hands together, and she could tell from his aura that he was not looking directly at her. “War is coming,” he said. “I don’t see any chance that it can be avoided if even half the stories that are coming out of Khalpar are true. And Aaltah will be on the front line of that war.”

  The thought filled Kailee with dread, for though she had known no war during her lifetime, she had heard too much of the horrors of wars past. And yet even so, it was hardly a surprise.

  “I believe we all assumed that was the case after what happened in Khalpar,” she said, still not understanding where Tynthanal was going with this.

  “Yes, but…” He shook his head and took a deep breath, his head turning toward her. “I know you came with me to Aaltah in large part because you wanted to clear Mairahsol’s name. You have helped us to discover that she did not cause our Well to be damaged—that she in fact gave her life to protect it. That may not exactly clear her name, but you’ve done a great deal to help redeem her.”

  “Your point being?” she asked.

  “My point being that you were happy in Women’s Well, and you gave all that up to come to Aaltah with me. But now that you’ve done what you could for Mairahsol…” He shrugged. “I see no reason why you should have to stay here in Aaltah. Especially when war is looming. You will be both safer and happier in Women’s Well.”

  Kailee’s hands clenched in her lap, her lungs going tight so that she could barely catch her breath. “You’re sending me away?” she asked, tears prickling her eyes, her voice trembling no matter how hard she tried to keep it steady.

  “I’m not sending you anywhere,” he assured her, putting his hand over both of hers and giving them a warm squeeze. “I’m just pointing out that the reasons you came with me to Aaltah no longer exist, so there’s no need for you to stay. Especially when we know danger is coming.”

  Kailee closed her eyes and swallowed hard, willing herself not to cry, not to let him see how very much his kind offer hurt.

  And he was being kind, she knew that. He saw how she was shunned by the court, saw how lonely she was, despite the friendship she and Oona were forming. He knew how much she had enjoyed learning magic, which she had been free to do in Women’s Well but not here.

  In point of fact, she would go back to Women’s Well with gladness in her heart—if Tynthanal were coming with her.

  What a ninny you’re being, she thought. Tynthanal could not have made it more clear that he did not and could not love her. And if for some reason he went back to Women’s Well with her, he’d be reunited with Chanlix and his infant daughter. She had promised herself not to do this, not to let her heart want something it could not have. And yet here she was nearly crying because he offered her a return to the place where only a few short months ago she had longed to go.

  “Please don’t cry, sweetheart,” he said, giving her hands another squeeze. “I only want you to be happy.”

  She clenched her eyes more tightly shut, but felt the wetness on her lashes anyway. There was far too much sympathy—pity?—in his voice. She had told herself that although she had failed to guard her heart, she had at least kept her heartache secret. Yet another way she had lied to herself. Tynthanal was far too observant to have missed the signs.

  She sucked in a deep, shaking breath, trying for all she was worth to get ahold of her emotions. What he was offering was the clear and practical solution to everything that ailed her. She could go back to Women’s Well and bury herself in learning at the Women’s Well Academy. The pain would be sharp and fierce at first, but time and distance would ease some of the ache in her heart. It was even possible—though she could barely encompass the thought—that she might fall in love with another. She knew Tynthanal well enough to believe he would not object. He would probably even be happy for her.

  These were the things that her logical mind told her, and she willed herself to be sensible.

  Instead, she found herself saying, “Please don’t send me away. I understand why you want me to go, but—” A hiccup cut off her words, and she couldn’t force herself to finish.

  Tynthanal sighed and patted her hands, then let go. “I told you I wasn’t sending you anywhere, and I meant it. Your father has written to me and all but demanded I do it, but I’ll tell you what I told him: only you get to decide where you will live.”

  She swiped at the tears on her cheeks. “Am I a liability to you?” she asked. “I had thought once that it would cause you political discomfort if we lived separately, but clearly I am not exactly an asset as your wife.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “If anyone is a liability in our relationship, it is I. The people of Aaltah were willing to at least pretend to forgive me a great many things as long as I might be the savior of the Well. But my inability to fulfill that role is already beginning to turn public opinion against me. Which is all the more reason for you to return to Women’s Well. If public opinion swings too wildly or quickly, you could be in danger simply because you are married to me.”

  “It’s not as bad as all that,” she said, though perhaps with her limited contact with the rest of the court, she wasn’t in the position to know.

  “Not yet, perhaps,” he said, although there was just the slightest edge in his voice that suggested things might be worse than he’d let on. “But the risk remains.”

  Leaving was clearly the sensible thing to do. By staying, she would potentially put herself in danger for the privilege of battering her own heart to pieces day after day. What kind of life was that?

  Kailee had always thought of herself as a sensible person, a smart person. The kind of person who accepted reality and just got on with it. But apparently, she’d been mistaken.

  “I’m staying,” she declared.

  Tynthanal nodded, and she had the instant impression he was unsurprised by her decision. “Let me know if you change your mind,” he said in a tone of weary resignation.

  * * *

  —

  Ellin’s stomach growled as she and Zarsha entered the royal apartments after a banquet that had stretched nearly to midnight. She put her hand on her belly as if that would stop the unladylike sounds from escaping and was glad that her husband was the only one to hear.

  Zarsha smiled at her and leaned down to press a kiss on her cheek. “I’ll have a light supper sent up, shall I?” he asked, but he was already stepping back out the door without awaiting her answer. She suspected he ate as little at these formal banquets as she did, each of them constantly being interrupted as people took the “leisure” of the banquet to approach them “informally.” Which generally meant that they had some personal grievance or pet project they knew was no
t significant enough to earn them a formal audience.

  It was tiresome in the extreme, and though Zarsha counseled her to set firmer boundaries, his inability to take his own advice proved it was harder than it sounded.

  Zarsha reentered the sitting room, followed closely by Star, who hovered in the doorway. “I’ve sent word to the kitchens to send up a tray, Your Majesty,” she said with a curtsy. “Would you prefer to undress now, or after you’ve eaten?”

  Zarsha gave her a significant look, and she sighed silently. She knew that look. He’d learned something over the course of the banquet that he needed to speak with her about. She was eager to get out of the stays and her heavy brocade gown, and as always, her scalp itched and burned from the tightly pinned hair that was required to keep her formal headdress in place. But the gown and the headdress were in some ways her armor against the stresses of affairs of state, and she didn’t feel prepared to discuss anything upsetting in her nightdress—and when Zarsha had that look in his eyes, it was always a sign of an upsetting conversation on the horizon.

  “After, I think,” she said. “Thank you, Star.”

  Star bowed her head and retreated, closing the sitting room door with a firm thunk. Ellin arched an eyebrow in Zarsha’s direction, and he gestured her toward a pair of chairs before the merrily crackling fire.

  “Uh-oh,” she murmured softly. “I always seem to get distressing news when I’m sitting in that chair.”

  Zarsha laughed. “Don’t blame the chair, love. It is but an innocent bystander.”

  Ellin sniffed, but felt oddly reassured. Zarsha was certainly prone to making jokes at inappropriate moments, but whatever news he bore couldn’t be too bad even so. She sat and took a moment to close her eyes and enjoy the warmth of the fire after having traversed the chilly hallways from the banquet hall to the royal apartments. Then, she met her husband’s gaze.

  “What has happened?” she asked, bracing herself despite her own reassurances.

  “I can’t for the life of me decide whether this is good news or bad,” he answered, “but it appears the Abbess of Nandel has fled the Abbey—and has taken Princess Elwynne with her.”

  Ellin’s mouth dropped open in shock. Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t this. She shivered again in a phantom chill, glancing toward the window at the far end of the room, where a lacing of frost caught the flickering light of the fire. If it was cold in Rhozinolm today, she couldn’t imagine what it must be like in the mountains of Nandel.

  “It’s being kept very quiet,” Zarsha continued, “for obvious reasons.”

  Ellin snorted. “Most sovereigns would not keep quiet about it if a child of theirs was kidnapped. They’d be recruiting rescuers from every corner of their kingdom.”

  “Not in Nandel, they wouldn’t,” Zarsha argued. “Even if Waldmir had no doubts about her paternity, her abduction is an insult to his pride. Especially when it was perpetrated by his first ex-wife. He will want Elwynne quietly returned.”

  Ellin shivered again as she imagined the Nandel weather. Traveling in Nandel during the winter was always a perilous proposition. “Are you sure about that?” she asked, biting her lip with worry. “Might this not be some ploy to rid himself of a child he does not want?”

  Zarsha’s immediate dismissal of the possibility was comforting. “My uncle is not a good man, but he is not a murderer of children.” His lips twisted into a bitter grin. “And if he were to decide to do something so heinous, you can be sure it would be an ‘accident,’ and not something that would cause him personal embarrassment like this.”

  The conversation was momentarily interrupted when Star delivered a tray from the kitchens, setting it on the small table between the chairs. By now, Star knew both of them too well to bother asking if they’d prefer to have the tray laid out in their private dining room.

  Anxiety had chased away her appetite, but a waft of fragrant steam from the tray soon coaxed it from hiding. She glanced up at Star and smiled, realizing that the food had arrived far faster than expected for a hot meal.

  Star returned the smile with a twinkle in her eyes. “You are always hungry after a formal banquet,” she said simply. “Everything was already set aside and needed only warming to be ready.”

  “You are a national treasure,” Ellin said.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Zarsha added.

  Star gave him a haughty sniff, and Ellin stifled a laugh. Star’s opinion of Zarsha careened wildly from near adoration to disdain, depending on how she felt he was treating Ellin at the moment. Her sniff suggested she was annoyed with Zarsha for keeping her obviously tired lady from going to bed immediately.

  Star retreated, and Ellin’s stomach gave another grumble, her appetite now fully restored by the enticing aromas.

  “Eat first,” Zarsha advised as he plucked a savory stuffed pastry puff from the basket that produced the most mouthwatering aromas. The pastry glistened with spiced oil that left an inelegant sheen on Zarsha’s fingertips.

  Ellin sighed with feigned exasperation. “Nandelites and their table manners,” she lamented with a click of her tongue, spearing her own pastry with a fork and spreading a napkin on her lap to catch any errant crumbs.

  “Barbarians,” Zarsha agreed with his mouth full. Then he waggled his brows at her and licked the oil from his fingers. The gesture would have been seductive were it not for the worry in his eyes.

  Ellin downed the pastry to still the complaints of her stomach as she tried to understand what the Abbess of Nandel had meant by abducting Princess Elwynne. Ellin knew nothing about the woman. She wouldn’t even have known Mother Leethan had been Waldmir’s first wife if Zarsha hadn’t reminded her.

  “Do you have any idea what the abbess is up to?” she asked. “Has she…made any demands?”

  Zarsha waved that concern off. “I can’t say I know Mother Leethan well—I was a child and living away from court when Waldmir divorced her—but I cannot imagine she means Elwynne harm.”

  “Do you suppose Leethan knows the child is not Waldmir’s?” Ellin asked. Then, “May not be Waldmir’s,” she amended before Zarsha could correct her. He loved and protected little Elwynne as if he were certain she was his daughter, but Waldmir had never had a paternity test performed, both because it would require the use of women’s magic—which was forbidden in Nandel—and because he considered the child tainted no matter who her father might be.

  “She may have guessed it, or suspect it. Perhaps she saw danger for Elwynne when Waldmir sent her to ‘visit’ the Abbey and decided to spirit her away.”

  Ellin frowned skeptically. “So she decided to abscond with the child when the snows have already started? Seems an odd sort of protection.”

  Zarsha drummed his fingers against his leg, his face looking even paler than usual. No doubt he knew better than she the dangers of traveling through the mountains of Nandel at this time of year.

  “Where could she have gone?” Ellin mused. “Where could she reasonably get to that she might hope to be safe?”

  “Nowhere in Nandel,” Zarsha answered immediately. “She apparently left the Abbey with Elwynne, Elwynne’s governess, and another senior abigail. They took two ponies, and left in the middle of the night. Three old women and a girl child traveling without male escort would be conspicuous anywhere in Nandel. Even if they had friends or family who were willing to help them—and that is not the case—they would be far too noticeable entering any settlement.”

  “But it would be an impossibly long way from the Abbey to the Nandel border at this time of year,” Ellin protested. “Would any of these women be accustomed to traveling through the mountains unaccompanied?”

  She already knew the answer to her own question. The women of Nandel were the property of the men in their lives, and thus were hardly taught to be self-sufficient.

  “It seems impossible and re
ckless in the extreme,” Zarsha agreed. “How could three women over the age of sixty and one five-year-old girl hope to traverse the mountains—while being hunted, no less?” He ran a hand through his hair, his blue eyes pinched with worry and perplexity. “And why would they do it? Why now?”

  Ellin shook her head. She could only imagine one or more of those women had felt they were under imminent threat such that the journey seemed the lesser of two evils.

  “Do you hold out any hope that they’ll make it?” she asked as gently as she could. It was clear from his expression that any hopes he might have were fragile.

  Zarsha swallowed hard, then sucked in a deep breath. “I have to believe there’s hope.” He met her eyes. “And I cannot imagine they would have any destination in mind but Rhozinolm. I presume Mother Leethan still has family living in Grunir, which is where she was born, but they almost certainly would have disowned her when she was divorced, and it is a very long way to go.”

  Ellin agreed. “I would have to think the most likely scenario is that they have some reason to believe you might be Elwynne’s father—and that the child is for some reason in danger. Perhaps someone in the Abbey has figured it out and threatened to tell?”

  “I don’t know,” Zarsha said. “But what I do know is that Waldmir will assume they are coming here.”

  Ellin groaned as she easily followed that thought to its unpleasant conclusion. “And that you—or we—had something to do with her abduction.”

  He nodded. “It isn’t as if we haven’t spoken wistfully before about spiriting her away. When he gives up on keeping the whole thing secret, you can bet he will be contacting us demanding we extradite the women he will call traitors.”