Lady Hotspur

by Tessa Gratton

  The iron’s tingle started up in her skull, faster and more scattered than usual.

  The man’s lips parted and his gaze flickered down. “It’s Errigal steel. And … burning.”

  Frowning, Hotspur leaned away. “It’s not hot.”

  He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, put his hand toward the blade but didn’t move nearer. “I mean … it says … it burns. It is eager, the sword is eager to burn, and likes you.”

  “Oh no.” Hotspur laughed. “My sword does not speak.”

  The strange young man appeared unconvinced.

  He was a few inches taller than her, and nearly the same width. She wondered if there were muscles under that shirt or just skin and bones. The shape of his shoulders suggested some strength, but enough for her?

  Hotspur wasn’t even certain herself what that meant. She scowled.

  “I can make a fire,” he said.

  It startled a laugh from her, and she glanced at their already burning fire. “I think we’re taken care of.”

  “I only meant to tell you, so you know. I can. Just not with magic.”

  “I can’t make a fire with magic, either,” she said generously.

  The man watched her as she took large steps to that very fire and plopped down, having forgotten for a moment she was supposed to be flirting. Oh well, either he’d like her as she was enough for an affair or he wouldn’t. She patted the ground beside her, lifted her brows invitingly, and then proceeded to dump his collected acorns into the pot of water. Then she set it in the fire.

  He joined her quietly, kneeling. “Are you Lady Hotspur?”

  Blowing hair out of her face, she nodded. Her reputation frequently preceded her. His hands danced against his thighs, then he wiped the palms. She clearly made him nervous, and so Hotspur tried to think of a way to seem less intimidating.

  She put her hand on his. His skin was cool, his knuckles only a little rough. But when she turned his hand over and skimmed her fingers along the pad of his palm, the heel of his thumb, she found callouses—from hard work, farming or such.

  Beside her, the man shivered. Good. Hotspur glanced at him without lifting her head, hoping it seemed coy and flirtatious. His staring had taken a turn for peaked, though his lips remained slightly parted.

  Just kiss him, she told herself. Take what you want.

  “Don’t you want to know my name first?” he whispered.

  “Not really,” she said, watching his mouth.

  “It’s Conn.”

  Such a plain name, hard suddenly and then opening up with a round, filling sound. “Conn,” she said. It was as short as Hal’s name, but lower, as if when she said it the name came from her gut and not her spirit.

  With a smile, she lifted her eyes to his, then startled at the look in them: hungry and horrified, both. Why would he—

  “Oh, fuck,” Hotspur said.

  CONNLEY

  Northern Aremoria, autumn

  SHE SEEMED EMBARRASSED as she leaned away.

  “Connley Errigal,” she said. “Mora’s little brother.”

  Connley couldn’t keep the flash of irritation from spidering across his expression before he controlled it and nodded. “We’re the same age.”

  “What? You’re not twins.” A flush spread behind her freckles.

  “I mean, you and I.”

  Her bright pink mouth pulled into a grimace, and her teeth seemed so moon-pale.

  The grandmother oak sheltering them trembled once—with laughter, Connley thought.

  He’d been in Aremoria for two weeks, slowly moving north and east toward the Perseria border with Burgun, and carefully avoiding the March and any sense he might have had there of his Aremore family. There’d been enough to occupy him: learning the broad, slow dialect of these trees, sleepy as they were. Some he had to nudge into speaking, others snapped to attention as if they’d been dazed for decades. The magic here flowed slow and thin, and the wind barely muttered unless he coaxed it into a passion. But the forest fed him, and when he wished something sweeter or heavier, there were some coins for trading he’d brought with him from Innis Lear.

  Four nights ago he’d begun to hear her calling in his dreams: the old oak, her voice creaky and gentle, nothing like Grandmother Sin’s strong demands. Connley had veered in her direction, glad for it, for anything as familiar as a tree’s request. He was used to being alone, living off the forest, performing favors for the roots and wind when such things needed human hands and tools. The oak had welcomed him and invited him to rest, to sleep here, partake of her nuts, and showed him the path to good tubers, edible fungus, and berries.

  He’d not expected Lady Hotspur to crash into his little grove, nor that she would be so graceless and compelling.

  It had only taken a second to guess her name, for why else would the grandmother oak have drawn him here: all the wind of the world seemed to know Connley’s destiny. That and the wild red hair, the clenched jaw, the warlike leather and weaponry—and the Errigal sword. Only the nobility of Aremore, or the very rich, owned such swords, and only the star-blessed were beloved of those swords.

  Then she flirted with him, and Connley forced his name on her, and now here they were, awkwardly sharing a scavenged meal. Hotspur had supplemented it with hard meat from her saddlebags. For the first time in his life, Connley wished for wine, or something stronger like the cold burn of Taria liquor.

  The sun lowered, putting bruised violet light against the golden oak leaves, and in the glow Hotspur’s hair seemed less like fire, more like slipping tendrils of molten iron.

  They nibbled in mostly silence, and then Hotspur made up her bedroll and sprawled onto it. Rolling to her side, she propped her head with her arm and said, “So. You are in Aremoria, though I know your sister has had no reply from me—accepting or otherwise her proposition for our future.”

  Connley drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. He wished to remove his boots and dig his toes into the warm earth beside this crackling fire. The smoke billowed swiftly up, caught in eddies that drew it through the fine network of oak branches. “You were more interested in me before you knew my name.”

  “What?” She made a sour face. “I’m very interested in you. I just asked you a question, didn’t I? Why you’re already here?”

  “I meant,” he said, struggling to keep looking at her instead of staring into the fire, “that you were close to me, touching me, and now you are all the way over there.”

  She glared, her lips turning white at the edges. “I was thinking of something casual, a—a fling. But things can never be casual between us.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re to be married—we must find a way to be allies, or better, friends, I hope!”

  Connley’s stomach turned over and he struggled to remain calm. “To be any of those things, we’ll need to communicate better,” he said. And when she said nothing, he continued, “Why were you thinking of a casual affair with a stranger you met in the forest, especially when you’re promised elsewhere? Is that … what you do?”

  Hotspur sat swiftly. She did not look at him. “No,” she said firmly.

  “I don’t, either,” he said, then instinctively offered some little surrender by confessing even more. “I’ve never been with a woman.”

  She groaned. For a moment, it curdled Connley’s blood, and he thought he should get up and go home—all the way to the White Forest. Dig himself a hole beside the navel well, and remain with Lady Ashling forever.

  But then Hotspur said, so softly he almost missed it, “I’ve only been with women. One woman.”

  The relief cooled him slowly. “Oh.”

  They sat in silence for a long while, the entire time the sun finished setting, and long, dark shadows stretched away from their fire. The grandmother oak creaked as she settled in to the night. Connley closed his eyes and listened to the humming of crickets and frogs, the waking owl nearby—he wanted to reach out to it, whisper images to it. Beneath his shirt
his feathers tickled his belly. The wind murmured of a family of foxes hunting a new burrow, for their last had been felled in a recent storm, and the wind whispered of deer hunkered down and sleeping rabbits, the pack of wolves several miles away still sated by yesterday’s kill. Nesting squirrels and songbirds tucked into forked branches and ferrets in hollow boles. The wind called this oak grove a nest, his nest.

  “So you’re going to marry me?” Connley asked through the darkness.

  “Yes,” she answered right away.

  He stared up, desperate for stars, but the oak leaves shifted gray and black overhead, layers and layers of scales entirely hiding the luscious night sky.

  “Are you going to marry me?” Hotspur asked.

  “Yes,” Connley whispered, because there was no other choice to make: not for himself, his island, his wind, or his heart. He thought of Banna Mora’s stubborn face as she insisted he would like Hotspur; he thought of Rowan’s haunted eyes, suddenly focused with passion; he thought of Ashling’s longing voice, My son, my son. And he thought of the harsh roots of Innis Lear, the precious rootwaters that tasted like freedom and tears both, washing him clean of any trespass, any regret.

  PRINCE HAL

  Lionis, autumn

  SOLDIERS CAME TO the Uncourt, wearing the colors of the queen.

  “Prince Calepia, your mother requests your presence,” the captain said, his command echoing off milky stalactites.

  Hal sat up from her recline on the makeshift throne, slamming her feet to the ground. This sanctuary was supposed to be safe from her mother, from responsibilities: here she was the Prince of Riot, her people were people of the gutter, low and merry folk who cared more about feeding their families than politics.

  She tried not to think about how feeding their families was politics; knowing that truth was a curse of her education and the shackles of a title she did not want.

  Plastering on a grin, Hal swept to her feet and spread her arms, calling, “Good folk of riot—even the queen herself occasionally needs a slice of mayhem, and luckily, she birthed such a one. Nova, do take the throne.”

  Her lover bowed, slinking into the wide chair to take up a pose like a stooping hawk. “My word is your word tonight,” she purred.

  “As is right in the Uncourt—the unnatural becomes nature’s course.”

  Nova narrowed her eyes, parsing the flavor of insult, but snapped her teeth at Hal.

  Lady Ianta was not yet awake, and thus yet unaware the Uncourt had even gathered.

  The prince went with her mother’s soldiers.

  TO HAL’S SURPRISE, she was led to her mother’s private suite. The soldiers kept at her heels, and she appreciated they did not put her at the center of their formation like a prisoner. But she did imagine the swift cut of a knife in her back, and how she’d arch and stumble, then fall silently to her knees, clutching her breast as she died. Despite the vision, Hal smiled brightly at those they passed in the yard and corridors, though that smile faded as the magnitude of the situation layered itself upon her shoulders.

  Her mother played a heavy hand by sending soldiers to Hal’s Uncourt, and Hal truly knew not what to expect. It had been just less than four weeks since the equinox, and Celeda had been quiet with regards to her eldest daughter. Relieved, Hal thought, that friendship blossomed between herself and Charm, though Hal continued to refuse any meetings that might address official marriage rituals.

  The chamber doors were gilded and guarded by additional soldiers in orange tabards, carrying tall spears. A standard bearer—a young page—bore proof the queen was inside.

  Hal entered to a burning hearth, but otherwise this reception room was unattended. She glanced longingly at the sideboard with its array of decanted wines and liquors.

  “Come in, Calepia,” her mother’s disembodied voice drifted out from the study beyond. The arched door gaped open. Never a coward—so she told herself—Hal strode through to find her mother seated at the long, dark desk, her back to the windows.

  Hal stood straight, waiting. This room was darkly paneled and draped with purple tapestries. Proof of the queen’s comfort was in the relaxed single braid drawn over her shoulder and the simple day robe she wore, free of jewels and lip paint. Only the Blood and the Sea circled her forefinger as Celeda tapped a final line of signature onto what Hal assumed was a letter. Then the queen blotted the ink and leaned back in her chair.

  Her mother regarded Hal for some time, while Hal herself struggled not to shift. Sunset carved the queen in black lines of silhouette, melting the panes of glass behind her in red and violet strokes.

  “Mother,” Hal said finally, frustrated. Then she closed her lips until Celeda would speak—even if that meant the end of their lives waiting.

  Celeda tilted her head and said, “I have been thinking of late, wondering truly, why it is that my own blood is the cause of so much of my grief. If I believed in fate, Hal, I might believe that some star had taken an interest in punishing me for my misdeeds, and discovered the directest way to pierce my heart is through my first daughter.”

  To that, Hal did not know what to say.

  “After midnight if I cannot sleep, or in a slip of temper,” the queen continued, “I wonder how it is possible all this degradation and waste you have fallen to can possibly exist in the same blood as gave life to great kings. Before I returned you were spoken of with admiration and respect—known to be bold, and for youthful transgressions only, not your current shame. Your sisters are not so ruined as you. I myself have never been enticed toward riot. Your father was the most even-tempered man I have ever had the privilege to know. Where did this come from? It must be a furious star.”

  “Stars do not control us in Aremoria,” Hal managed. Worms, she wished for a drink.

  The queen stood. “You have lost your seat at my council, Hal. I’ve given it to Vatta.”

  Hal exhaled in distaste. Vatta only took officially a role she’d played already for months.

  Celeda walked to her daughter and finally Hal saw her mother’s face clearly: tight lines shaped her eyes and her brow pinched with tension. Something weighed on this exchange, not merely another lecture and dressing-down of a recalcitrant heir.

  Hal nearly asked, but Celeda continued, “The March is yours, though you neglected that ceremony, too. You will take a modest army and relieve Vindomata of Mercia of its command. I expect no real resistance, but prepare yourself for Mercia to be stubborn and play the transfer of power to their best advantage. You will spend the winter there, and in the spring return to Lionis for your wedding—and it will be a magnificent celebration of Aremore beauty and renewal. You may only remove the March from your name upon the birth of your first child. I am not concerned with your input, or what you would prefer. You will hold the March, Hal, and you will marry Charm.”

  “Mother—”

  “If you do not agree to all of this, right now, I will remove you from your title completely, and give that to Vatta, too. You will not be allowed to remain in Lionis, but be banished. I will do it, Hal, do not doubt me. There is no room for weakness in queen or prince. I’ve allowed your obstinacy too long.” Her mother walked sharply away, flicking her braid over her shoulder to dangle down her back like a hangman’s rope. It was as if Celeda could not bear to even look at Hal.

  The young Prince of Riot parted her lips but said nothing. This had been her plan, to sink so low there was no level else to which she could sink. Here was the bottom, if her mother believed it so wholly she would give the crown over to Vatta. For the space of a heartbeat, Hal considered throwing something at Celeda, making this fall permanent. Banished, she could run to Hotspur.

  Banished, Hal could be anything she wished to be.

  Except a lion. Except redeemable or worthy of Morimaros’s legacy. Except a servant of Aremoria. How could she abandon her country? Never look into the knowing eyes of Prince Mars’s portrait ever again—or those of her long-missed mother? And worse—Hotspur would not want a fallen Hal. She�
��d said as much. Even Hal did not want such a creature.

  Hal took a shaky breath. She said, “I thought I was pleasing you, befriending Charm.”

  “It is not enough that you play his friend, and drag him into your malfeasance. He is better than that.”

  “Better than me, you mean,” Hal said.

  Celeda sighed sharply and returned to her desk, lifting a letter. She thrust the letter at Hal, and, startled, Hal took it. The writing was formal and elaborate, a scribe probably: date and angle of the sun, and royal address.

  “Read it aloud, Calepia,” her mother commanded.

  “Ah, it is to you, and … oh.” Hal’s stomach trembled and began the slick process of dissolving. “Isarna Perseria, earl of Red Castle, declares her marriage to—to Connley Errigal of Innis Lear, and requests the certification and blessing of the Aremore Crown, our most bright sun. Included here are the customary marriage tithes for our queen, as well as a more personal gift for thanks. In the spring …” Hal could not bring herself to go on. She stared at Isarna Perseria, earl of Red Castle, declares her marriage. Her eyesight blurred, and she panted softly. Could one die of such a quiet moment as reading a letter?

  “They will attend us at Lionis in the spring,” Celeda said, expressionless. “And this winter visit Innis Lear and Errigal.”

  Hotspur, married.

  Hal knew her lover well enough to be certain a married Hotspur was so far beyond Hal’s grasp as to be wind and rain. All had been over between them, and yet here was further certainty, and Hal felt as though Hotspur had sent this letter specifically to her, to cut her again. The letter fluttered to the rug as Hal’s fingers loosed their grip.

  As the letter fell, her mind raced past her own heartbreak. Political implications, like arrows, thudded hard into her chest.

  This was a death sentence.

  To her mother—Celedrix and her line.

  This Hal had never expected! Hotspur siding against her. Hotspur might rant and criticize, but become traitor to her queen? To Hal? It was impossible.