In three days’ time you did not learn she can speak for herself? Robert knew he had no right to be jealous. To envy this man who had been raised to believe he deserved to marry the crown princess. The fact that the Valshone did not recognize the termination of that tradition hardly mattered now. Not with Aurelia wanted for treason. And Valerian most likely wanted as well, after commanding his men north in opposition to Melony’s public edict that the region must defend itself.
The young general continued, “To show the rest of Tyralt there is hope.”
Why did the rest of the country need hope?
Aurelia voiced the question.
The Heir began to pace, his boots tracing prints already in the earth. “Your father was unpopular. Perhaps you did not witness this viewpoint, but—”
“I saw,” Aurelia interrupted. “I know my father was not perfect.”
“Your sister is less so,” Valerian said, still pacing. “She has tightened the laws against any form of protest. Those who oppose her decisions disappear. Your father allowed corrupt individuals into his court. Your sister is exporting them, giving them posts away from the capital. And power in all the other regions of the kingdom.”
The Oracle spoke for the first time. “What form has this power taken, General Siudek, among your people?”
“The baron posted to the Valshone Mountains announced himself magistrate and claimed five thousand acres of land—land that has always been sacred to the Valshone. I was sent to court to appeal the decision, but the false queen declined to hear the complaint. And while I was gone, eight men were hung.” Valerian ripped his sword from his scabbard and plunged the blade into the earth. “I vote to head south,” he declared.
Robert winced. He had no illusions about the perfection of Tyralt before Melony’s ascendance to the throne, but at least then the people had believed in the potential for a better leader. Still, how could anyone be certain about war?
“Barak ze Geordian,” Aurelia spoke, “which choice would you make?”
The Oracle lifted the flat of his hand. “I will vote last. You must choose for yourself, before I might choose for you.”
She locked her fingers behind her head, closing her elbows in front of her gaze. Then lowered her arms and looked at Robert.
His voice came out cold. “This force could never defeat the royal army.”
Valerian scowled. “What would you know of this force?”
Almost nothing. But neither the Valshone leader nor the Oracle had been raised in the capital. They deserved to hear what they would face. “Our recent king may not have deployed his forces, but he forestalled war by ensuring that they were superior,” said Robert. “The Tyralian military is the best equipped on the southern coast. Weapons, soldiers, training.” He began listing statistics.
Aurelia corrected his numbers.
She knew. She knew better than he did. The danger. And the ferocity of her sister’s malice.
“A royal army of thirteen thousand,” he concluded. “And that doesn’t include cavalry, navy, or the palace guard. If we ever reached the capital, we would face—”
“Twenty thousand,” Aurelia spoke. “Which way do you vote, Robert?”
He could not vote. Any decision he made would be wrong. “If we choose to go south,” he said, “we will require Lord Lester’s aid.”
Her eyes flew to him. Hope.
“Aurelia,” he said softly. He knew she was envisioning the Fortress and the two, perhaps three thousand soldiers that patrolled His Lordship’s estate. “I will support you in whatever choice you make.”
The light in her face dissipated. Her hands shifted into fists. If she chose to go south, the revolution would be in her name. And if she voted against? If she chose instead to return to exile?
The thought was unnecessary. He knew her decision before she spoke it.
“South.” Her voice was strong. “If the men will follow.”
Revolution. The knowledge pounded through Robert’s chest.
His father’s words rang in his head: Justice is an illusion. But his father was gone. His father, his mother, his cousin, the dead on the battlefield. And the tribes of the desert.
“Then I also vote south.” The Oracle stood.
Aurelia nodded. “I will speak to the men tomorrow.”
“We can gather the men now,” Valerian said, “before dusk.”
“Tomorrow.” Her voice was firm.
The Oracle left the tent. The Heir delayed, and for a moment Robert thought the Valshone general might launch into further argument. Instead Valerian turned, stepped to her, dropped to his knees, and pressed his lips fiercely to her hand. Then he stood and backed away, brushing aside canvas, letting in a glimpse of waning light. The tent flap fell closed behind him.
Robert turned to exit as well.
She stopped him, gripping his elbow. Her gaze was deep. Intense. Frightening.
He grasped at rumor in an attempt to hide from her. “I hear you are betrothed.”
“Don’t,” she said, failing to fall into the trap. Instead she stepped close. Her voice was soft, softer than he had ever heard. “Tell me what you saw, Robert, on the homestead.”
The shroud of ash that had tightened around him made the task impossible. “I can’t …”
Her fingers lifted to the side of his face. Her gaze filled with … empathy? How could she know?
“You’re carrying your father’s sword,” she whispered.
The pain flared. Ripped through his gut and rendered him helpless. No words. He could not find them. Could not tell her what he had lost. How much he had wanted to die.
Her arms enfolded him. “Oh, Robert,” she murmured, “I’m so sorry.”
• • •
A storm conquered the frontier that night, lightning sheeting the sky, thunder rocking the earth and testing Aurelia’s confidence. A reminder that her words, her actions were nothing against the backdrop of nature’s scheme. She had never seen anything as powerful as that storm. It challenged her right to believe that she, or the young man taut with grief at her side, or any of the men caught in nature’s grip, had the right to determine their own futures.
Then the sky opened up and poured rain. And she felt Robert shudder. Felt the sorrow rip through him as she held him within their shared tent. Until ultimately words came. Words of ash and emptiness and loss cascaded from him until at last he slept, still in her arms.
When she awoke the next morning, she found she could breathe. The odors of death and smoke had dissipated. The thunderstorm had cleaned the air. Her heart dwelt on the sleeping figure who had spent the night crying in her arms. He was safe. Torn up and scarred on the inside. But alive. She had not told him how she had felt when he had entered the council tent. How relief had stormed her heart and lungs and entire being. He had needed compassion last night, not passion.
She slipped from her pallet, shivered in the early chill despite her dry clothes, and reached for her coat. Wet. She had left it too close to the canvas. Instead she pillaged Robert’s pack, tugged out a wool shirt, and slid it on. The warm fabric engulfed her.
Again her gaze fell to him. He had given her hope yesterday. Not only through his arrival, but through honesty.
She slid on her boots and lifted the canvas flap.
Valerian blocked her exit, his neck stiff. His lips pressed into a tight line. “They’re calling him your consort,” he accused.
She had forgotten what it felt like to have everyone around her consumed with the gossip of whom she should marry. Apparently a camp full of soldiers was no less shameful than a palace full of courtiers. But the anger that would have flared in response when she was the crown princess no longer surfaced.
She folded up the excess fabric on the sleeves of her borrowed shirt. “I’m not going to be queen,” she replied. “I can’t have a consort.”
“You can’t afford to risk your reputation among the men.” Valerian widened his stance as though to shield her from view. Trying t
o defend her. She had felt that commitment from him since the moment he had arrived during the battle. His determination to fulfill a role. A destiny.
Which she understood.
But he had no place trying to determine hers.
She stepped past him. The sky had opened up. A vibrant gold stretched overhead, spanning the entire landscape. She lifted her arms and whirled, her boots etching circles in the trampled grass and fresh mud. Cheers from distant rings of men—no doubt sodden—greeted her. The same cheers that had welcomed her every appearance since she had emerged from the vulture’s tent with the news of Anthone’s surrender. Aurelia grinned. “I hardly think my position among the men is in danger.”
“Perhaps not,” Valerian replied. “But you will need more support once we cross the Gate. These commoners may choose to defend you, but those south of the Gate won’t have that right. Only their liege lords can send men into action. And the aristocracy will care about your reputation.”
Memories of wealthy lords from court flashed into her mind—titled men who dealt in self-interest and acquiring power rather than the attempt to improve the lives of the people under their authority. Lords more likely to argue minutiae and exact a toll for their verbal support than to risk a coin of their unearned income. She had no intention of crawling on her knees to plea for their support. Any toll those men were likely to demand would be too high. She spun to a halt. “I detest the aristocracy.”
A muscle in Valerian’s cheek twitched, and now she remembered that his father was a lord, though the Valshone did not inherit titles. The Heir’s father had earned his place.
“The conventional aristocracy,” she amended.
“They have a great deal of power, Aurelia. Power they can withhold if they question your innocence.”
There was a stone in her boot. She bent down and pried off the leather. Her innocence had been trampled by the hooves of an assassin’s mount, scalded by the torches of hired guards, and blasted into fragments by Anthonian soldiers. Her maidenhood remained intact, but it held no relation to innocence. “I am heading south to end the monarchy, Valerian. I doubt many from the aristocracy will support me.” No matter with whom I spend the night. She dumped out the offending rock.
“Vantauge himself said we would need Lord Lester.”
Her breath tightened. She had concerns about returning to the Fortress, but they had nothing to do with her reputation. Her mother was there. A woman who had fled the palace after her son’s death, when her daughter was only three, and who had made no attempt to communicate with her until Aurelia had stumbled upon her own threshold. A woman who had cared about her surviving child but never enough to supersede fear. And whom her daughter had left with only a scribbled note good-bye.
Aurelia jammed her foot back into her boot. “Lord Lester is different.” Not only in his apathy for court but in his willingness to defy royal policy and gather a private armed force larger than law allowed. His aid would be vital. And the toll personal. “He has no concern for convention.”
“Just because he does not attend court does not mean he disdains—”
“His Lordship is my stepfather.”
The Heir was rendered speechless.
She could not blame him. No one knew about Lord Lester’s secret marriage to her mother. No one outside the Fortress and the village beyond. And the secret army patrolling His Lordship’s estate in order to protect the former queen.
No one except Aurelia, Robert, and now Valerian, who bit his lip, bleeding it of color. Then retreated in another verbal direction. “Vantauge should not have a place on your council.”
“He didn’t vote!” she snapped, surprised at the anger that came with the memory.
“But the way it will appear, Your Majesty, with you sharing his tent—”
Aurelia straightened, arched her eyebrows, and forced a tone of command. “Valerian, I am grateful for your aid during the battle. I am even more grateful for your decision a month ago to bring your men north to defend the frontier in time of crisis. And I will take into account your viewpoint with regard to any military decisions I make. But there is no one—no one—I trust more than Robert Vantauge. If the people in this camp or this country gather that impression, they are correct.”
He did not attempt a rebuttal.
Good.
She had no time for foolishness.
Her gaze turned south. Beyond the water-logged tents, soggy campfire rings, and men beginning to stir with real purpose. Beyond the horses now grazing in a spectrum of varying breeds. Beyond the hills glistening a hundred shades of golden green. All beneath that sky—a passionate arc of breath-giving light seeming to stretch forever.
Until it crashed into the not-too-distant mountains of the Quartian Shelf, impenetrable except for the Gate. The high narrow path on one side of a gorge—two steep, opposing cliffs carved by the rapids of the Fallchutes. She could not see the Gate from here, but it had been burned into her mind as ferociously as her sister’s animosity. Aurelia had to ask seventeen hundred men if they would climb that trail.
And follow her into revolution.
• • •
Robert sensed the pressure heighten as he circled Horizon around the back of the men gathering for Aurelia’s announcement. He had woken to a vague chill, hunger, and the premonition of riding toward a precipice. Appropriate. The canyon now dropped away on his left, the stallion’s hooves tracing the edge of the break.
The Oracle rode up at his right. The man sat his regal palomino mare with ease, his back straight and head lifted, the reins loose on his open palm. “You knew,” he said. “You knew her decision yesterday.”
Why was the spiritual leader here instead of directing his men?
Robert turned toward the crowd and found the answer. The tribesmen were all mounted, the desert horses lining the far edge of the gathering men in a wide crescent. Facing the break. He was caught at the front, rather than the back.
“Yet you chose not to vote,” the desert leader stated. “Do you not believe in her?”
Robert’s hand jerked on the reins. His stallion protested, hooves pounding the loose earth at the canyon’s edge.
“Or perhaps you believe in her,” the Oracle continued. “But not in her mission.”
Robert urged his horse toward safer ground. “Not everyone on the council wanted my vote.”
“So you traded your voice for peace?”
No, that would have been noble.
In truth, Robert believed in a free Tyralt. But revolution? How much blood would that require? “I believe in her,” he said.
“Then you believe that every person in this country has the right to speak?”
Careful. The question, laced with treason, went against everything Robert had been taught in his childhood at the palace. But he had also spent four years on the frontier, where one’s own choices were all that lay between life and death. His gaze sought out the frontiersmen in front of the straight, even rows of the Valshone and the perfect semicircle of desert warriors. The men of the frontier were worn. Half-starved. A leaderless jumble.
He had learned that their captain had died during his reckless assault on the Anthonian army. Yet these men had followed. These untrained, unorganized frontiersmen had looked death in the eye and chosen to face it. “Yes,” Robert answered. “Everyone has the right to a voice.”
“Then why discard the chance to use yours?”
Because I don’t deserve it. He covered his eyes with a hand.
But lack of vision did nothing to block out the shouts and cheers that began to fill the air. He knew before he lifted his gaze what he would see.
Aurelia rode at a full gallop around the back of the crowd. Her body low, melded with Falcon. The mare’s strides stretched out in a bronze blur. Racing. Now curving around the crescent’s point. The young woman on that blur was the bravest person he had ever known. She had returned to Tyralt in the face of death. Had ridden into a losing battle. Had sent Edward of Anthone flee
ing for his own country. How could any human being fail to follow her?
She pulled up a dozen feet in front of Robert, her position halfway between the ends of the crowd. Then lifted a hand.
And the men quieted.
Spectacular. Far more spectacular than the cheers.
Her voice reached out, penetrating the silence. “My fellow Tyralians, I come to you now not as queen or crown princess, but as one of you. We all have a choice to make. Many of you have already given so much and yet none of us know if we are safe—if the victory over Anthone can be enough. We live in a great country, but it is a land where many voices go unheard. Where leadership is passed down, not by worth but by tradition. And that tradition may well endanger us again unless we speak. Unless we step forward and say that it is time for the people of Tyralt to choose their own leaders.”
The crowd had gone still.
“This quest will not be easy,” Aurelia continued. “We will face opposition from those in power and those who fear to fight it. I know many of you have families waiting.”
And fields to tend, Robert thought, losing track of her words. He watched the frontiersmen. The key around her neck would mean nothing to them. Nor her former role as crown princess. Or any claim to the throne. No crown could bind those men or win their regard.
Yet they listened. He knew the silence was a tribute to her actions against Anthone: her ride through the battlefield, her confrontation with the invading king, her receipt of his surrender. She had earned this respect.
Her words again captured him. “You who live on the frontier came for your own reasons,” she said. “We all have come for our own reasons. Because we wish for the right to make decisions for our own lives.”
Fists pumped in agreement.
Then halted at her next statement. “In truth none of us is yet free. The assault on northern Tyralt is proof that no monarch should decide which regions of our country deserve defense. Anthone now retreats across his border, but nothing will hold him there unless change comes to our own capital. I ask you to fight for true freedom. To come south with me and make that promise reality.”
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