Wings Unseen

by Rebecca Gomez Farrell

  Lord Xantas stood, buried in the brown, black, and yellow skins that augmented his considerable girth. “Pardon me, King Albrecht”—he raised his elbows and nearly toppled his wine goblet with his stomach—“but you don’t mean to scare the young man away from the throne, do you? The kingdom’s business is a rather dry topic for someone Janto’s age—well, for someone of any age!” He winked at Janto, an ever-present smile on his lips.

  “I suppose you would have me fill his head with nonsense of a king’s life?” The king drummed his fingers on the table. “Perhaps tell him his duties will be mingling with beautiful women all day, of whom he will have his pick when he rules?”

  “He can have my woman—anything to get her off my hands!” Lord Xantas bellowed, and the group laughed. Lady Gella was no one’s idea of the perfect woman, though Janto knew Lord Xantas would be inconsolable to lose her, no matter his protests.

  Captain Wolxas, the army commander, raised his glass. “No one would dream of taking your”—he coughed—“beautiful”—he coughed again—“wife from you, Lord Cino. Not even if you paid us in bear skins!”

  “Especially not if you paid us in bear skins.” Quiet Lord Sydley of Wasyla shocked the group with the ending joke, and the laughter rang louder. He was older than the rest of the men, and a cane of burnished almond wood leaned against his chair.

  “Fair enough.” Xantas wiped tears of mirth from his eyes. “I shall be forced to keep her for now. But if she wants to throw a festival of the grouse next year, I cannot be held responsible for my actions.”

  Janto laughed with the others but stopped when his father directed him to take the seat on his left. Then the king opened the council by placing a dark wooden box on the table, its narrow, pinkish-red streaks exposing it as rosewood. He opened its lid to reveal a mass of white-gray ashes. “Lord Agler Gavenstone is dead. This is all that remains of him.”

  The air in the room thickened with tension as though a giant squeezed its walls together. Janto found himself fascinated by the sigil carved into the box’s lid: a snake, hood flared and teeth bared.

  His father continued, “I would like him to be buried at the Mount.”

  A few of the councilors gasped at the announcement, as did Janto. He had not thought his father would grant Agler such consideration. In truth, he did not think he should.

  Ser Allyn dropped his quill. “Pardon, my king, but you have entrusted me to advise you on all matters as I see fit. It is my place to disagree.” The spice from his hot licorice tea tickled Janto’s nose hairs from two seats down. “Lord Agler was a traitor to the throne. A traitor to you.”

  Ser Allyn frowned, dark eyebrows making a “V” on his forehead. Janto could remember him laughing only once, when his daughter, Porcia, had convinced him to let her dance before the queen. She had been five then, dressed in a turquoise frock and holding a ribbon studded with gray feathers high above her head as she twirled. Janto had watched the haphazard lines it formed in the air until the ribbon fell straight down—following a dizzy Porcia who collapsed on her rear end, legs straight up in the air. Ser Allyn had chuckled along with the rest of the court, but his cheeks reddened. It happened nearly a decade ago, and Janto had never seen Porcia at the castle again.

  “He cannot be buried with honor.” Ser Allyn took a sip. “To do so would set a dangerous precedent for others who might seek their fortunes against you. They should expect nothing but retribution for such an act, not a burial among kings and nobles. The people will not accept it.”

  Captain Wolxas nodded, and Lord Xantas raised his goblet in agreement.

  “Listen well to me, councilors and friends.” King Albrecht’s voice was firm. “Lord Gavenstone was a traitor once but no longer. He renounced his acts and made penance with the Order once he realized the gravity of his betrayal and the limits of his ego. He joined the Ravensmen to protect Lansera, the opposite desire of his former acts.”

  King Albrecht turned to the Ravens’ head, seated a few places down. “Is that not true, Tirlon?”

  “It is, my king.” Ser Tirlon Swalus wore a black tunic nearly the same color as the swarthy brown hair gracing his shoulders. A cape lined with black feathers rested over his chair’s back. The Ravens watched Medua from the Perch, their headquarters in the Ertion Mountains. The two realms had maintained an uneasy truce for most of Janto’s life except for a few “scuffles” every year. Scuffles that now brought wooden boxes filled with human ashes rather than addled minds.

  Ser Swalus’s voice was gravelly but even. “Agler joined our clan willingly. If anything, he was too determined to make up for his crimes. In hindsight, I should not have let him leave the nest so soon.”

  The group balked at that assumption, and Wolxas made to disagree. King Albrecht’s fist slammed on the table. “Silence! This is not a discussion. Agler will be buried at the Mount three days hence and will receive the funeral procession that is his due as a liege of Lansera. Ser Allyn, you will see the announcement is made throughout the realm and messengers are sent to Gavenstone immediately to ask Lady Marji to return.”

  “Yes, my king.” He kept his eyes downcast.

  “Good.” The king gave his attention to the Raven. “Ser Swalus, please send word to Ser Werbose right away, by whatever means are your fastest. The funeral will be held as soon as the rest of Adler’s effects are returned from the Perch.”

  “Certainly.” He exited the room.

  “I expect the rest of you to attend the funeral, all who do not have pressing duties at home.” The king’s tone softened minutely. “As king of Lansera, it is my duty to ensure any man who has paid for his crimes is forgiven and his rights restored. What sort of message would it send to our people to do anything less? Or to have their future queen be remembered as the sister of a traitor?” He placed a hand on Janto’s shoulder, the focus of his words reminding Janto of what was most important in all this. Not justice, not revenge, but Serra. It would always be Serra to him.

  “The Lanserim forgive their debtors,” his father finished. “It is the Meduans who punish them.”

  The council room was quiet but for Xantas’s nails clicking against his goblet. King Albrecht reached for the box, but the candlelight caught on something within it, and Janto remembered the ring mentioned in the letter.

  “May I?”

  His father assented. “It is Serra’s now.”

  Grapevines formed a crest around the ring’s large peridot stone. Janto wiped the powdery, greasy residue from it with his napkin.

  King Albrecht leaned back against his seat. “Now gentlemen and gentlewoman, let me hear your news. Xantas, please begin.”

  Lord Xantas grumbled but refilled his goblet and recounted the numbers of furs, crates of salted bear meat, and other goods produced in Ertion in the last year. Ser Allyn wrote furiously, struggling to keep pace with the figures as he dipped his quill in the thrushberry ink again and again. Lord Sydley went next, relating the record crop brought in from Wasyla’s fruit trees. Janto found his thoughts drifting from persimmon yields to Serra faster than Lord Xantas could reach for another glass.

  He did not have the first idea how to help her cope with Agler’s death. She was devastated, her manner changed. The Serra he knew was always composed, and today she had seemed … rash. After her parents died, she had been the perfect lady, greeting each mourner with lifted elbows and a “May Madel’s hand guide you.” She had been only eight then, but even now, when they were alone together, Serra maintained a semblance of propriety. “My prince,” she would tease, “you wouldn’t disgrace your princess, would you?” Then she’d peck his cheek and firmly hold his hands in hers, keeping them from straying. He had stolen a kiss or two or many in the garden and safe from servants’ eyes, but she would never let him get carried away. If only he could carry her away from her sorrow.

  Lady Farami, a slender woman nearly as dark of skin as his mother from many hours spent in the fields, went next. She insisted on visiting every farm or herd in Neville a
t least once a year and helping with the work, an extraordinary undertaking that her people appreciated for the kinship it fostered. She reported that a few farms near the Rasselerian border had lost their vegetable crops due to mold and yellowing from the heavy rains. Janto wondered how the Gavenstone grapevines had weathered the season. He hoped Lady Marji did not have to deal with a bad crop in addition to informing her people of Agler’s death. Janto did not envy her position. Most Meditlans had remained loyal to the throne during Agler’s rebellion and did not bear his living relatives great love afterward, though Serra, Marji, and her husband, Jehos, had been cleared of all wrongdoing. The Gavenstone ruling line was not as secure as it used to be, something Janto knew the king hoped would be strengthened by his marriage to Serra. King Dever Albrecht believed nobility were held in their places by Madel’s hand. Only She should remove them, not the doubts of Her people.

  “—twenty new recruits from the marshlands, my liege.” Captain Wolxas’s voice interrupted Janto’s thoughts. Twenty from Rasseleria? That was a lot. The marshfolk had always been loyal to the throne, but they kept to themselves in their villages, groupings of huts on dry patches in the wetlands of Lake Ashra. They made their livings growing rice or sifting through the mucky water for antiquities, mostly pieces of colored glass rumored to be relics from the Battle of the Gods, if one believed that sort of thing. Janto had never had reason to.

  Someone knocked on the door, surprising them all—the yearly council was never to be disturbed. Janto could not imagine what would warrant an interruption. The councilors fell silent as his father opened the door. Marta, one of the throne room stewards, lifted her skirts as she stepped over the doorframe. She had a head of sleek coal hair.

  “Pardon, my lords.” She clasped her hands and raised her elbows.

  The king did not hide his irritation. “What is the news, Marta? Is the castle on fire? Have Meduans crossed the mountains?”

  “No, of course not.” Her cheeks colored. “I did not wish to disturb you, but the queen said you would want to know right away that a Brother had arrived.”

  “To see you off, no doubt, Janto.” Lord Sydley’s broad smile revealed his dimples. “Perhaps you’ll catch a glimpse of the stag! The blessing of the Brothers would be a great sign of fortune for your Murat.” It would, Janto knew, but the Brother could not have come here for that. They were the highest ranked members of the Order, above the ryn and rynnas who led activities at each town’s temple. The Brothers were Madel’s hand made flesh—one coming to advise the king had to be important. No, the Brother could not be here for him.

  The king addressed Marta with gentleness. “Forgive my tone. I did not expect such a guest. Let him know I will meet with him as soon I have finished here. It will not be much longer.”

  Marta nodded. A hum of speculation arose as she closed the door.

  “Do you think he could be here for me, truly?” Janto whispered to his father when he sat down.

  The king did not answer but raised a hand for silence. “My lords and lady, it seems we must cut this council short. Any other news or concerns can be shared with me in private over the next few days.”

  Ser Allyn had already reached for an extra sheet of parchment. “Let me know if you need the king’s time, and I will arrange a meeting.”

  “This council is dismissed.” King Albrecht gestured to Janto, and they left the room together, leaving those inside to their thoughts about the Brother … and Agler’s funeral.

  Janto spoke after a few paces. “Father?”

  “Yes, son?” The king did not stop walking.

  Burying Agler at the Mount may not have been the best decision, but Janto thought he knew why his father had made it. “Thank you. Thank you for doing that for Serra.”

  The king did stop then. “I did not do it for Serra.” He met Janto’s gaze. “I did it for Lansera. If you don’t see that, then I fear you have much left to learn.”

  The king continued down the hall alone. Janto watched him go, dumbstruck, until his father’s gray head disappeared through a northerly entrance to the courtyard.

  CHAPTER 5

  VESPERI

  Bring me my tornian!” Uzziel threw the toy mace against the wall with more force than Vesperi knew he possessed. For once, he had the strength of his eleven years. “I don’t know which one the tornian is.” She said it through gritted teeth, watching her brother kick the wooden sides of his encased bed. They’d built walls for it when his seizures had started at one year of age. The family’s useless, hoary old adver had tried to bleed him to remove the infirmity with no success. Vesperi had known it wouldn’t work. Uzziel was sick from deficiencies of spirit, not any physical illness that could be cured. No one could cure a cretin. Yet her father insisted on naming Uzziel his heir.

  She hated tending him. Lord Sellwyn had cared enough to smirk, at least, when inflicting the duty on her again after her return from the convent. Feigning interest in her suitors was loathsome, but that had the potential for amusement and flight if she found anyone worth her while. But there had been no one new since Ser Agler … disappeared. And little excuse to leave Uzziel’s bedside.

  How she wished she’d been born with the pasty, misshapen lump Uzziel called a cock between her own legs. If she had been, a trail of bodies would already be left in her wake. The count would rival the number of bones tied into the Guj’s robe, chief priest of their advers and thus the one with the most conquests to display. Forget Sellwyn Manor; Vesperi might have risen in Meduan society as high as she liked on fear of her talent alone, her father’s holdings no more significant to her than a single stitch on a tapestry. But as a woman … as a woman she’d be dead faster than she could raise her hand toward Esye’s essence when they realized she couldn’t control it. What good was an arrow to the hunter if the bow was frayed? If she could learn to command respect with a flick of her finger, maybe then the magic would be enough to free her from this bedside. Maybe then she would be enough for Father.

  “I want my tornian!” The whelp yelled again, his grating voice begging to be silenced. The raucous ogling of advers at the convent had been a more soothing sound. At least Vesperi had felt like someone there, the other girls too stupid to realize they’d been banished from their manors. They honestly thought being the whores of priests was a boon. She would have waved her finger and blighted them all from existence if she could do it safely. With her luck, she’d hit a levere shield and reflect the power right back at herself.

  “I cannot bring it to you until you tell me what it is, dear brother.” She glared at Uzziel openly—they were alone. Only a mounted replica of the family sigil kept them company, a welded, six-foot-long viper so old the blackened metal was visible beneath the green paint. Its garnet eyes gleamed with more life than there’d ever been in her brother’s muddied ones.

  Uzziel pointed at a peculiar object lying against the southern wall, a white club with a thin, metal circle projecting from its top. Light from the window glinted off its rim.

  She handed it over to him.

  “It’s sharp, you know.” He waved it, and Vesperi jumped to avoid the slim fillet of metal. “It’s not a toy at all. Father let me have it.” Another swing. “It’s for beheading people. First you club them.” He demonstrated the motion with vigor. “Then you slide the loop over their head and pull. Lorne told me all the lords’ sons have one at court.”

  Doubtless, he had. Lorne was the eldest son of one of her suitors, Lord Cavallen Granich. Lord Granich had left the sixteen-year-old at Sellwyn to give credence to his offer for her hand. “A daughter for a son,” he’d said, as though it were no more important than trading an old feather pillow for a new one. Yet the arrangement had made her feel valued until he’d spoken again. “Surely, you cannot say I would get the better deal now.” Lord Granich had left Lorne as a ward and returned to Qiltyn to await Lord Sellwyn’s decision. Vesperi had thought Lord Granich a simpleton, but his son was cleverer than she liked. With his constant preening
at Uzziel’s side, she doubted she was the prize Lord Granich sought. Lorne’s pluck, attempting to take Sellwyn Manor right from under her father’s nose, was admirable.

  Uzziel waved the club so lustily that he drooled. He paid no mind to the spit; he never did. Why should he, when Vesperi spent her days hiding such weaknesses for him? She pulled the rag off her belt and wiped his face more roughly than probably was wise.

  With no warning, the blade of the tornian bit into her skin like a jocal fly, burning. She clutched her sliced forearm where it had grazed her, leaving an audaciously red, itching scratch. She cursed and pressed the rag against it.

  Uzziel laughed. She spat at him. The ingrate looked like he’d pissed himself in shock, but then he took a deep breath and screamed. “Guards!”

  Her hand lifted toward the window before she could think, the desire to retaliate strong. Her anger pushed her to channel Esye’s power, but it would be madness to attack Uzziel. Her father would never forgive her, probably have her beheaded or worse—sent to Thokketh. She had to stop herself from using it and fast.

  She forced her back to the window and faced the wall. Deep breaths tempered her rage as footfalls raced down the hall. By the time a pair of her father’s newer guards shuffled into the room, clad in the dark green tunics of their House, the fury had ceased coursing through her blood. Perfunctorily, she shrank against the wall, made herself appear more diminutive than she was. It was best to be docile with new men until she determined how best to handle—or play—with them. She had avoided beatings since her return home, and she planned to keep it that way.

  But the giddiness she felt at having stopped the flow of her talent into her body made it difficult. Esye’s pull had always been too much to resist once she had reached for it. But now—now she might be able to if needed. She hid a smile against the wall, watching the room with one eye.

  “Is there a problem here, my lord?” The guard on the left ignored her. His hair was graying blond, and his shoulders hunched. Too old to make bedding him fun but not man enough to beat her badly.