“I’ll go with you,” he said, and nudged her out into the rain.
To Celedrix of Aremoria and Calepia Bolinbroke—
Aremoria is mine. So it was declared by a consecrated king, and so is it again declared by the right of my name, my blood, and my allies.
You have usurped the honest line of the Aremore throne, you have attacked Innis Lear upon our own shores, and I call you out now to face me, and face the grievous faults of your past. In the March on the first day of summer we will meet at the field of Liresfane, an army at my hand and all the strength of the March, Perseria, Mercia, Burgun, and Innis Lear. If you would surrender now, send word to the Red Castle.
By the Blood and the Sea I swear you will be judged with mercy.
In trust,
Banna Mora of Aremoria and Innis Lear
HOTSPUR
The March, late spring
HOTSPUR DID NOT realize how accustomed she’d grown to the embodied magic of Innis Lear, how much a part of her it had become, until she arrived again in Aremoria and felt the emptiness of the land. She was unbalanced, and this was her home.
“Wormshit and baby-eaters,” she whispered to herself five minutes after docking at Marchtown. Of course, Connley stood beside her and so he heard.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, placing a hand at the small of her back.
“The magic is so quiet.”
“If you call to the trees, they will answer. Sleepy, and with a different dialect.”
Hotspur frowned. “Trees have dialects?”
“The magic is buried deep. I found remnants, faded threads, when I was here.” He stroked her back just firmly enough that she could feel it through her jacket. It was a little condescending.
Hotspur strode off the dock without him. She felt ungrounded—a fire hanging in the air, not planted against wood or tucked into a mouthy hearth. Her sword spat at her, and she gripped its hilt. Its whispering focused: home home jagged hungry fire fire fire and Hotspur felt the same.
When our world burns, we must learn to breathe fire.
So the dragon had told Mora, and Mora told Hotspur. She repeated the adage in her mind, wrapping it around her like armor. Hotspur was fire, she was part of Mora’s fire, the fire of every queen who had commanded her. And she was here, in this land, to—to what? Wield her own destiny? Be her own flame, direct herself? Choose the end? If Hal were here, Hotspur would tell her—
I need to tell my own story, or at least choose the meaning of it.
She wished Hal did stand beside her. Because the truth was Hotspur wouldn’t even have to say anything. Hal would simply understand.
Wind puffed along the shore from Aremoria, smelling of tilled earth and fresh water. A little bit of iron, a dash of shit, and the sweat of a thousand townsfolk.
Hotspur wondered what Aremoria would say if it had a voice like Innis Lear’s. Would it share its desires with her? Tell her what to do, what it wished for?
Hello, Aremoria, she said carefully in the language of trees. The thought of an Aremoria as willful and alive as Innis Lear filled her with gladness. Hello, she said again.
The wind blew wordlessly. She looked out over the edge of Marchtown toward trees she could not see. Hello, she said again.
Connley joined her, taking her hand.
Hello.
Hello.
The wind returned again, and again, and there, maybe, if she tilted her ear: a word.
Wizard …?
Hotspur gasped, laughingly.
This was the truth: she’d left her homeland a soldier and returned to it a wizard. She could hear the Aremore trees.
With retainers behind her and Connley at her side, Hotspur entered Marchtown and aimed for the castle. Her aunt had retaken the March with a Burgundian army alongside her, and it was from here that they would launch their campaign against Celedrix. There was much to coordinate in the next week before Banna Mora’s arrival with her Learish army.
Under her hand, her sword hissed and whispered, and Hotspur’s pace slowed. Her attention turned south, because someone was calling her name. Not the voice of the wind … Her mother’s? No.
Isarna
You’re awake
The voice was familiar, but she could not quite place it, being too far distant. Houses rose around her, wooden and leaning, and her retainers paused. Connley touched her again, but he said nothing, listening, too.
Come home
“Did you hear that?” Hotspur asked.
“It isn’t the wind.” Her husband’s soft voice ought to have comforted her, but jagged hungry fire, whispered the sword, and Hotspur’s pulse paused, restarted, just as jagged and hungry. She was also hungry, and bared her teeth in a great smile. A wolf could be a wizard, too, not only a soldier.
She turned off the street they’d been following to the castle gate, her instinct leading her down a narrow alley. Suddenly she was running.
Come home
Hotspur did not think, but gripped her sheathed sword and followed this ragged call through the town, choosing streets abruptly and eagerly, never a wrong turn, until she reached the old town wall and waved frantically at the soldier standing guard as she dove through and burst out.
One for Innis Lear
One for Aremoria
The Wolf is coming home
Beyond the wall was more town, though only a trickle of it along the slope toward grazing fields now dotted not with sheep but with canvas tents and carts, men and horses and mules. The edge of Vindomata’s army. The road cut through the camp and rolled over the hill, vanishing. Wind played, teasing at her, whispering—she could discern the words now—of rain for an hour at sunset, then clear days beyond.
The Wolf!
Then Hotspur saw them: three figures standing at the crest of the distant pasture hill, too tall and still to be soldiers, and little more than silhouettes against the blue sky studded with small white clouds. Though they were so far away, she knew they stared back at her. She’d seen them before.
Come home
As she blinked, a tree appeared beside the earth saints, huge and spreading golden branches that dug up into the sky like roots.
I am home, she said as loudly as it was possible to say in the language of trees.
One figure lifted a hand to her.
Wolf of Aremoria, the wind said.
Hotspur was awake.
No other word could describe the feeling of having their eyes on hers, scouring boundary lines against her flesh. And she could see them, too. As if she’d been dreaming all her life, unable to open her eyes fully. She shuddered—not afraid, not furious, but lusting.
Then the golden tree was gone. And the three earth saints, too.
Hotspur panted, gasped. She slowly lowered herself to her knees in the road.
Daughter—
There are memories in my dreams of late, memories of your birth and those strange circumstances of which I have told you little.
You were born at the foot of our yew tree, in the conduit court. But you were conceived there, too. With a spirit I have strived to forget. A ghost, an earth saint, a creature of roots and seashell eyes, of inhuman beauty. Haunting. I have rarely believed it to be more than a dream, and dream it may be. Your father is your father, I swear it. And yet … I dream of this other creature again. He says your name. He says you are awake, and when he does, so do I wake up.
Some nights he tells me a story: that you will be lost to me in this battle, if this battle is fought. You will return to him. It is your destiny to return to him.
This is all a dream. It cannot be real. But these memories unsettle me, and in this unsettled state I must bring to you a decision you will not like.
Perseria will not be marching to Liresfane. I have received an offer of pardon from Celedrix, and signed by the newly married Calepia, Prince Hal. Perseria will accept. I urge you to join me at the side of our queen, of your prince.
Vindomata is lost in vengeance, Isarna. I would wake myself fr
om it, and you.
I do not expect you to understand, not now, but perhaps someday. When you are a mother. I hope that by choosing thus I make it possible for you to live to be one.
I beg you: hold what you have, and think what you have to lose if you march south against Celedrix. Even with Innis Lear, the armies are matched, and she holds Lionis. The best outcome of this battle, unless you kill your queen or your prince, is an Aremoria divided.
There are no others for Perseria if you die, Isarna. There will be nothing.
Sue for peace, I beg you, as your lord and your mother.
Forgive me.
Caratica Persy
THE DROWSY TREES of Aremoria barely listen to the wind. But beneath their creaking, ready roots, creatures claw up, tilting their heads to hear:
(and to whisper:)
One for Aremoria
one for Innis Lear
The voice is strong and bold, invading the peaceful strands of Aremore wind, prodding and waking dull ravens, rolling stones back from caves so the hungry shadows can remember.
Remember what?
Remember that once they were—
THERE IS AN old oak tree in the north that pulses with heartbeat and remembers the days of magic. It remembers, too, a young woman’s vow, made with a passionate desperation: That is all I want to be!
Wind scathes across the land, poking with eager fingers, exploring valleys and caves, swirling about rough old ruins, lifting to castle towers. It is a wind from Innis Lear, drawn across the water in the breaths of several: a wolf made of fire who gave her name to Innis Lear; a witch who has embraced that fire; a wizard of roots; a lion crowned.
On Innis Lear they used to sacrifice young people to the island: drown them in wells, set them alone into the White Forest, smear hemlock oil onto their lips, offering life to the roots. (This was how the Glennadoers lost their magic, this was how the greatest wizard of Lear was born and how he will die, as well.) The wind murmurs its memory of such things and the Aremore trees shudder, dreaming.
THE EARTH SAINTS reach for the surface; they unleash their shadows to giggle and sharpen claws, to kiss ice to the surface of still-water springs and scream in pitches only wolves can hear. They are ready.
SHE THINKS TO herself, distracted from dinner conversation and the plans of her aunt: What do I do now that I am awake? How do I choose? What do I choose?
For all her life the wind tugged and slid, it battered at her in a storm or brought sweet smells of bread and spring meadows, it gasped back from a battlefield’s stench. It was wind. Warm currents and deadly with ice, wind between branches, gusting rain, snakes of cold seeking out the cracks beneath doors and corners of great halls to nest. Sometimes—sometimes—the wind tilted her ear until she suspected what weather it would bring.
Nothing more!
Then a wolf went to Innis Lear, married a witch, banished a ghost, and planted her name deep in those rocks.
Except it began before that, didn’t it? With a new-made prince on a battlefield, with a long-dead king, with a prophecy. With a baby in the roots of a yew, with a sword in the heart of an oak.
How long has Hotspur been awakening?
THE WIZARD IS listening, too, in a vast white palace where the sunlight gleams off plate mail and swords, where everyone who matters gathers in a vaulted chamber (the wizard remembers the stars on the ceiling, but avoids the jeweled gaze of painted earth saints). Wind hisses into his ear tales of what’s to come: his time is ending.
He would stay if he could. Stay with the lion cub and make better choices than those he made before.
Around the broad oval table stands a queen with her warriors, her councillors, daughters, allies, pitched together to study a massive map. They point, they argue, three secretaries scrawl fast notes and another sketchesprofiles and the patterns of family crests—wait, that is the prince with her sketchbook, smearing a line with the pad of a middle finger to make shadows under her mother’s eyes. The prince listens; the prince throws in a comment when she has one to give. She slumps in her chair, chin down, hair askew, occasionally sipping from a heavy clay cup that sloshes watery coffee. Her drawing is frenetic.
The wizard crouches beside her in new, bright mail and royal orange gambeson. His hair has been trimmed, washed, and braided by a palace attendant with incredible patience. Though his beard is always patchy, it’s shaved away now, and his muddy green eyes are clear. If one did not know better, one might think him any middle-aged soldier here to advise the prince.
(Everyone knows better, but chooses to pretend otherwise.)
When the star roads blaze, bring the lion’s heart home.
The riddle grows louder in his mind, as if from beneath the roots his masters tug threads to raise its volume, to press it more firmly to the fore of his thoughts.
“Gah!” complains one of the councilwomen. “I cannot abide calling it the first day of summer—it still is spring. Summer begins at the Zenith Day.”
Another holds out a calming hand. “On Innis Lear the seasons are different. What is that old song? Winter is a long sleep, spring and autumn feelings: summer is the only season?”
“The season of war,” says Ianta Oldcastle.
At a soft sigh from the prince, the wizard murmurs, “You’ll win.”
He’s rewarded with her wan smile. “Is that a prophecy?”
He rolls his eyes.
“Then how do you know?” Something pleads in her gaze, though her voice is casual, her demeanor loose.
The wizard tilts his head as if listening, though no wind penetrates the throne room now; there is only arguing and the click of boots on polished marble. He says, “Aremoria knows.”
Pain flashes across her face, lightning there and gone. Her smile remains, unaltered. “You’re certain when Aremoria claims its prince, it is me and not Banna Mora whose name trembles through the breeze?”
“Aremoria wants for a lion.”
As the wizard says it, a natural break in conversation falls, and so his words spill into a quiet moment for everyone to hear.
LIKE MOST AREMORE nobility, Vindomata of Mercia does not believe in destiny—not as they do on the island, not in a way where destiny is set and known by the stars. But she does believe some things are meant to be. She is meant to be the duke of Mercia, and Mercia is meant to reign over Aremoria as its strongest subject.
Vindomata understands that a country is its subjects, and if a subject has enough power, there is no crown could stop them.
“Did you know, Burgun,” the duke begins casually, holding the pewter goblet up to study the pink ripple of wine, “that once Banna Mora was engaged to my son Vindus? He would have been her king.”
“I did not know,” Douglass answers. He joins Vindomata at the hearth of this small library in March Castle. Sweet-smelling oil shines in his beard, and his thick brown mane is slicked off his forehead. A green velvet tunic trimmed with cream and ocher stretches across his shoulders, belted with an amber-and-copper linked belt. Beside him, the duke’s son Vindus leans against the wall in a bloodstained gambeson, watching his mother expectantly.
She knows it is not him, it cannot be: her son is dead. And yet, here she sees him, beautiful, strong.
The Burgun prince pours himself wine and takes a hearty drink. He stands very near to Vindomata; amused, she allows it.
“Now Banna Mora’s king will be the king of Innis Lear,” Douglass says.
“And you will be your own king. That is our bargain,” Vindomata confirms. His army and aid, in return for Burgun’s independence for the first time in sixty years. An easy promise, and once this battle is won, Douglass of Burgun will be Banna Mora’s problem. Hotspur defeated him once; she can do so again.
“A bargain I remain satisfied with,” Douglass assures her, saluting with his wine.
He is so near, Vindomata smells his breath, tart and warm. She puts a hand against his chest, thumb and finger at the loose tie weaving the collar of the tunic closed. “If you wo
uld have more, Burgun, I know what else you can do to earn it.”
“More of you?” he asks gruffly.
“More of everything. Me, land, power.” She taps her forefinger against him with each word. The gold of her signet ring flashes.
“Power,” the prince repeats, leaning toward her with his hips.
Vindomata glances over her shoulder at the wall where Vindus watches, arms crossed; his smile is sharp with amusement. She pins Douglass again with her eyes. “You are barely older than my son would have been today, had he lived.”
“Your way of flirting is odd, Mercia,” Douglass says, laughing. Before he backs away, Vindomata slides her hand down to his hip.
“I like to know the mettle of a man’s mind before I strip him down to it.”
This time his laugh is shocked, but she hears the shortening of his breath. Vindomata has suspected this since Hotspur first complained of Douglass’s advances: here is a man who loves powerful women. Loves them to tell him what he needs, loves them to present themselves as if they are prizes he won. Powerful women in his bed make Douglass of Burgun feel powerful. Vindomata does not think she will go to his bed, but perhaps have him right here. Stretch herself across the table between two of the bowls of floating roses and let him lift her gown as if he’d made the choice himself.
Vindomata’s answering smile is broad and real. She loves men. Foolish, powerful men. The duke, her husband, had been one such, and they’d gotten on so well before grief buried him. Her sons would’ve been the same.
“Burgun,” she says, backing up to the table. She sits against the edge, lifting her slippered foot to shove the bench farther beneath it out of the way. “I want you to do something, to swear you will.”
He follows her slowly, eyes on her mouth, her neck, her eyes. “Tell me.”
Bending closer, showing her sharp collar and slight swell of breast, Vindomata grins, letting it be all of her wolfish nature, her hungry, warlike smile, the one she shares with her niece. Only, to Vindomata it is as much weapon as warning, and Hotspur has never yet learned that. Hotspur’s appears naturally, Vindomata’s by decree. “Come here.”
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