Leaning back, Hal chose to give in to her baser instincts and tease him again. “Meanwhile, you shall be an excellent king of Aremoria, for you have successfully proved your skill at being condescending in our language.”
For a moment, Charm froze, lips parted, wine halfway to his mouth. Then he set his cup down firmly and reached for her hand. “I would very much like to be king of Aremoria, Calepia Bolinbroke.”
Abruptly saddened, Hal allowed him her hand, even turning it over to touch palm to palm. “That makes one of us,” she murmured.
PRINCE HAL
Lionis, early autumn
THE RELUCTANT HEIR returned to her palace rooms with a light headache but an even heart. Last night’s escapades; her cold, sick sleep at the witch tree; plus the morning’s magical delight; travel; and then this complex new relationship with Charm worked to balance one another out so that Hal was neither cranky nor calm nor happy. Just a bit tired.
She begged a small page to take word to the queen that her daughter was in the palace, had already enjoyed an afternoon with Prince Charm, and now went to her chambers to sleep until supper, at which point she would join her mother and family to bear whatever lecture awaited. The boy’s eyes widened at that, and Hal promised he didn’t need to include her final sentiment, but if he did, Celedrix wouldn’t chide him for it.
Once in her rooms, Hal immediately began removing her belt to drop her sword on the sofa. She glanced to the balcony out of habit, thinking perhaps she’d drag a pillow out there and the hearth rug, too, and take her nap where she could hear the wind and the busy bustle of the palace all around. It was a fine enough day, and the chill of arriving sunset would wake her in time to eat with her family.
But a movement outside froze her in place. Hal took up her sheathed sword again and ever so slowly and silently drew it. Nobody should’ve been on the balcony; they’d have to get through her private chambers first, and only her attendants were allowed in here without her. Or, she supposed, her mother.
A grimace wrinkled her mouth as she shoved open the door and stepped firmly out, naked sword in hand.
It was the wizard.
He stood in the shady corner of the marscote, a half-circle balcony of white limestone, its railing carved into a thick vine of stone roses.
“Wizard,” Hal greeted him, lowering her sword in relief, and then she looked down at the People’s Courtyard below; it was the largest of the palace yards, paved with huge, slate tiles. All the palace residents could fit into it, plus hundreds of citizens of Lionis itself. In the old days, the king might address his people from this balcony. Isarnos the Protector and Vatta Persy had been married here, where huge crowds could cheer and bear witness.
Hal supposed she might be standing in the very place of her own soon-to-come nuptials. She sighed, but before she could say more, or lean disconsolately against the rail, the wizard spoke.
“This is where he died.”
Spinning, Hal stared. The wizard’s forest eyes were sad, his mouth soft with nostalgia. Both hands hung loose at his sides. “Who?” Hal asked, but she guessed.
“Morimaros.”
“Do you know what happened to his body?” The best stories involved Innis Lear, and sometimes magic, though Hal preferred the romantic notion that Morimaros had sailed back to the island in his final week, knowing his death approached and wishing to be buried at his lover’s side. In that version he left a loyal retainer to pose here in the palace until his death was announced. But if this wizard was to be believed, that was wrong. Wouldn’t Mora gloat to hear? She’d always insisted Morimaros would never have willingly died away from Aremore soil.
The wizard frowned. “I do not know,” he said slowly, “but I should.”
“Are you hungry?” Hal asked. “Thirsty? Did you fly up here like a raven?”
His expression lightened. “I am thirsty.”
Hal laughed and said, “I will feed you and water you, and beg for crumbs of your magic in turn, good wizard.”
“Am I?” he murmured. “Good?”
The prince studied him in the long shadows. “Aremoria is good, our wind and birds and trees, and Morimaros was good, and you were theirs, weren’t you? His, and Aremoria’s? It’s how you know this place.”
“Perhaps I killed him here, and spirited his body away.”
The words came so tenderly it took Hal a moment to understand, then she went cold.
“But,” the wizard said, “I’ve not come to kill you. That is not the riddle that whispers in my mind.”
Prince Hal loosened her grip on her sword again, forcing herself to be calm. “What is it that sings to you?”
The wizard studied her a moment, then gazed beyond her at the southwestern sky. He stepped forward so that light caught in his eyes, and the shimmer of silvery will-o’-the-wisp appeared again.
“When the star roads blaze, bring the lion’s heart home.”
Hal’s lips parted. The lion. It was a new prophecy, then? Or an additional one. For her? How could she be certain? Had she asked the earth saints and the Witch Elm for aid and their answer had come in the shape of this wizard? She clamped down on her sparking emotions and said, “That is … obscure.”
He smiled at her, genuine amusement in the breadth of his lips. Wrinkles showed at his eyes, and he seemed realer again, more embodied. A small, coiled man with the demeanor of an army scout, not a wizard or earth saint or half raven. “It is that,” he said.
“Does it mean this lion will die?”
The wizard tilted his head. “Perhaps.”
“What if … I’m the lion?”
He stepped nearer to her, and Hal’s pulse popped. She stared back at his ghostly eyes.
The wizard asked, “Do you know where your home is?”
Hal thought of Hotspur before she could stop herself. “Lionis, of course,” she said, dropping her mouth into a half-cocked grin. “I’m already home.” She spun a jaunty dance and fled inside.
What was happening in Aremoria, and why were the priests, prophecies, and long-dead wizards of Innis Lear gathering here?
The dragon, the wolf, the lion. The lion, the lion.
As the prince set her sword down and carefully went to the shelf where she kept her honey liquor, she imagined them together again: Hal, Hotspur, and Banna Mora.
What she only recognized later that night, as she closed her eyes to sleep, heavy with wine and flushed from arguing with her mother, was that the place she’d conjured for them to meet again was like no place she’d been in her life: a massive gray-blue fortress lined with moonlit snow, and beyond it a black, black lake, too black to reflect the sweep of stars above. The three women had faced one another on the shore, while the water lapped hungrily at their feet and a frigid wind chewed at their words.
HOTSPUR
Lionis, autumnal equinox
THE LAST TIME these five women stood together it had been to kill a king.
Today Hotspur felt similarly dire, as she waited beside her mother and Vindomata. They faced Lady Mata Blunt, Earl Ithios, and Her Majesty Celedrix.
Two and a half years ago, Hal Bolinbroke had counted among their party, bringing the number of regicides to six.
Now the queen posed before her throne, regal and tall in a deep red robe of state and black mantle. A thin silver coronet wound in her heavy hair, cool and overwhelmed by the bold fire of her authority. At her side Lady Mata wore a fine dress, no armor. The orange drapes behind the throne dais haloed them the glory of Aremoria.
Hotspur tugged at her sword belt, readjusting it to pull less awkwardly against skirt. Hers was a strange outfit in honor of the holiday, half dress and half riding armor; a deep brown leather vest laced tight and punctuated with steel diamonds and delicate-looking but functional pauldrons capping her shoulders. Her hands were bare but for three bright rings: one gold stamped with her personal crest, marking her lord of the Red Castle; one an emerald passed down from her grandmother; the final one a gift from this very Celedrix
. Her midnight green skirt was split for riding and flapped against her black boots as she strode ahead of her mother and aunt, uninterested in holding back, fearless in the face of deep unease. It was she who had been summoned by the queen, she who had received an offer from the queen’s rival, she who had refused to submit to either. Her sword had been polished and sharpened, then hung in this open scabbard to display the Errigal-iron blade. Her hair was caught up in several braids, and bound against the nape of her neck with green netting and pearls.
Impractical, all of it, for the vest held her too tight for flexibility but wasn’t heavy enough to block a real attack. The best of neither world, then, and Hotspur ought to have simply worn one of her court gowns. But it was Halfsies Day, and Vindomata had insisted upon these martial additions to remind Celedrix with every glance that the Persys had put her on her throne.
Hotspur itched to demand of the queen why she’d been ordered here, but Vindomata gave her no chance. The duke spoke first, calling from halfway down the chamber: “Why, Celedrix, do you bring us here to this cradle of your authority and not welcome us as the friends and intimates we were and thought ourselves still to be?”
The queen stood tall, her slender shoulders made expansive by the black mantle. “Because I am Celedrix, as you are Mercia, regardless of whatever we once were.”
Hotspur stopped, flushing with anger at both the queen and her aunt. She said, “And I am the Wolf of Aremoria, and have done nothing to deserve the censure of my queen.”
“Yet censure is what you assume.” Celeda lifted one thin, dark eyebrow and glanced at Mata of Ithios, who was her cousin. The queen’s royal mother, Vatta Gaunt, had been the eldest daughter of Segovax, and his fourth son, Matomaros, had fathered Mata.
Mata said, “Hotspur is ablaze with her recent victories, and looks for enemies even in the most friendly heart.”
“And my excuse?” Vindomata asked in a voice as cold as Rusrike winter.
“Habits you cannot throw off,” the queen said. “Even in peace.”
“Peace? I have no peace, Celeda. My sons are dead.”
Silence stretched as the queen watched the duke of Mercia. Motes of dust clung to the rays of sunlight shining through rippled panes of window glass.
Hotspur gritted her teeth, and strove for calm as she looked away. The prince should be here. Their sixth. Hal should be here. Hotspur caught only her own reflection in the tall, gilded mirrors.
Caratica stepped forward to the first shallow stair of the throne dais, her cane making no more sound than her soft boots against the marble floor. “It is good to see you, Celeda,” Hotspur’s mother said, a soft smile pursing her lips.
The queen paused, then returned the smile. A weighty rope of years, murder, loss, and delicate loyalty connected their mouths, making their expressions mirrors to the other: one silvered and bloodred, the queen; the other green and hobbled by old injury, but certain of her footing.
Caratica said, “My daughter does not withhold prisoners from our queen.”
Hotspur burst out, “I denied that ridiculous man, not you, Celedrix! For all he represented the queen’s command, he was a poor popinjay and—and had you been there, my queen, you would have done as I did. He approached me on the field, as I tended my wounded and gave final farewell to my teacher and friend, Sir Corio de Or.”
The queen frowned, knowing the dead man well herself, and again met her cousin Mata Blunt’s look of sympathy.
Hotspur took this as leave to press on. “I was weary, tired, and in a rage of grief at Sir Corio’s death, and when your man came he demanded I give him Douglass then and there—and he did not even know his duties. He knew nothing of Burgun burial practices, and he must, to negotiate in your name!”
“It sounds,” Mata Blunt said evenly, “as if you censure the queen herself for her man.”
“If she nominated him personally, she deserves the censure,” Vindomata said, shocking every woman and guard in the room with her boldness.
Caratica murmured her sister’s name, but Hotspur was fully on her aunt’s side in this, and she declared, “He told me if not for all the blood, he might have been a soldier himself!”
Mata Blunt, who was short and stout and impossible to move when she chose to stay, snorted a laugh. “I do know Briginos of Dun, and believe this of him. Perhaps we ought to take Hotspur, and her accounting, over his. She was with us, and has been with us—he was not and has not.”
The reminder of their rebellion alliances hung like garlands around all their necks. Hotspur began to smile, thinking maybe, maybe she’d not have to accept Mora’s proposal, that they could salvage this—if only Hal were here for the exact right joke or teasing comment to move Celeda and Vindomata nearer to each other’s hearts again.
“Yet.” Celedrix brought her hands together with the appearance of casualness. “Yet Hotspur continues to deny us her hostage.”
Hotspur clenched her jaw. She held herself back as the queen stared at her, evenly and hard. Her mother had said of the queen, having known her from long decades of friendship, that Celeda only appeared casual when she was anything but. Her temper, in truth, aligned more with Hotspur’s, but the queen had learned to hide it. Hotspur began to speak, and the queen held up her hand. The garnet in the Blood and the Sea caught the afternoon sun pouring in; it flared, a tiny drop of blood.
One of the pages stationed behind the throne, on a stool against the rear wall, leapt up and dashed to his queen with a limp piece of paper. Celedrix took it and smoothed it open. Without glancing down at its content, she said, clearly reciting what had been read often enough to require no further reading: “… and I beg of you, my queen, to send to Innis Lear for our dearest Banna Mora of the March. Not only for the urgency with which we must now defend our border against Burgun, but for the sake of friendship and history! She is our friend, and yours, and Aremore in her heart and soul, as I am, as your daughter is, reluctant though she may be to claim so. Bring Banna Mora home, on my life, my loyalty …”
The queen’s voice trailed away.
Hotspur lifted her chin in frustration and pride, careful to keep her hand off the hilt of her sword. “I mean every word, still.”
Her mother sighed softly, and Vindomata smirked.
Celedrix said, “I know your game, Hotspur Persy. You would hold Douglass and his Burgun men from me unless I send for your friend Banna Mora.”
“I do not presume to hold my queen hostage as is held my friend! The two are related only in similar circumstance, firstly that I have hostages—none I hold away from you—and second in that Mora is a hostage. That is all!”
“You are counseled by your aunt, then, to play a dangerous game.” Celeda stepped off the dais to put herself directly in Hotspur’s face. “You are sharp, Hotspur.”
“Only to cut your enemies, Celedrix. Banna Mora is not such a person!”
“She proves herself to be so, and on that barren island let her starve.”
“No!”
“Rowan Lear attacked our shores, unprovoked, taking her hostage.” Celeda spread her hands. “Yet Banna Mora married him. Chose Innis Lear. Shall our coffers be emptied to redeem a traitor home?”
“Yes!” Hotspur stomped her boot in emphasis of her passion. “No! I mean—she is no traitor, even if she beds a foreign prince. And if she is wed, then maybe not a hostage at all, so could return home without any need of ransom. Invite her home!”
“And if she has plotted with Innis Lear? If Banna Mora let them into the March? If even now she—”
“My queen—” began Caratica, while Mata Blunt reached out to grasp the queen’s shoulder.
Celedrix continued with false calm, “Do you plot with her now, Lady Hotspur? Is that why you are so keen to deny me your prisoners? You are not subtle.”
Even Vindomata slid Hotspur a warning, but Hotspur cried, “This is madness! I have no need for subtlety. Mora was loyal to you, and to Aremoria! When did she so much as hint at betraying thoughts? When did she
attack you or your heir? Never! She held the March loyally, with strength, and she deserved a loyal, strong response!”
Celeda’s hand snaked out and gripped Hotspur’s jaw, forcing the younger woman’s chin up. The press of her fingers pinked Hotspur’s skin instantly. “Send me your prisoners with the speediest means, Isarna Persy, or you will hear in kind from me.”
The queen thrust Hotspur away. “Caratica, you have my leave to depart with your furious daughter and your sister. Send us your prisoners, and speak no more of Banna Mora where I may hear.”
Caratica took Hotspur’s arm as Hotspur sputtered and said, “If saints of the earth rose up to demand it, I would not send my hostages to you now!”
Celedrix glared silently, refusing to respond to such childish words, and Caratica hissed at Hotspur, dragging her daughter away with an ease that belied her injuries and the desperate tremor of her hand on her cane. Vindomata followed swiftly but with much more dignity.
Hotspur flung free of her mother and stormed to the doors, shoving them open with all her strength. She dashed into the hall, growling at a lady with elaborate yellow braids; the woman murmured in fear and hurried past on delicate slippers.
“I will speak of Banna Mora as I like,” Hotspur said.
“You will behave.”
“Aunt.” Hotspur leapt at Vindomata for succor, but the duke retained her cool expression.
“It is interesting to see Celeda settle in to being at odds with us. She is no more subtle than she accuses you of being, Hotspur.”
An understatement for all time! Rage spun through Hotspur—how dare the queen refuse to consider bringing Mora home, making this instead about Hotspur’s loyalty! And how dare she be at odds with Mercia and Perseria! After everything Vindomata had lost. Hotspur clawed at her head, tearing loose the net of pearls. The pins jerked at her hair, burning her scalp, but she threw the pearls to the floor. She’d gotten herself ridiculously dressed for this, ready and even willing to discuss that cursed Briginos and Douglass and the border battles of the summer, the March and how it held secure. She’d been ready to deny Mora’s letter and marriage proposal, spend the equinox festival with the queen, here at court, being the bright weapon sheathed at the queen’s side as she ought. But this would not stand! It was as if everything had been designed to provoke her!
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