by CS Hale
I heard myself laugh. Good. My protocol specialist was taking over. “Yours? Do you know who I am?”
“The Moon Princess is my wife, Raislos,” Valemar said. He raised his hand, the bandage on his finger like a wedding band.
“And even if that weren’t true,” I continued. “I am no man’s possession.”
An amused smile lit up Raislos’s face, and he glanced over his shoulder. I followed his eyes. Oh, fuck! This time I did better hiding my surprise, but my stomach fell until it was somewhere around my shoes. The man he exchanged a look with was a Hormani black market trader. The Hormani’s eyes met mine. His eyebrows raised, daring me to say something.
Raislos turned his attention back to Valemar. “Fine. Have her. But hand over her ship.”
I laughed again. “My ship. My possession.” I paused just long enough for Raislos to open his mouth. “My wedding present to my husband.”
Valemar chuckled lightly beside me. “Seems you’ve traveled a long way for nothing, Raislos. I’d offer you hospitality, but I’m sure you are in a hurry to return to Rock Dorach.”
Raislos’s eyes filled with loathing. “You may believe your ridiculous prophecy, Valemar, but don’t pin your hopes on it.”
My eyes narrowed. Prophecy?
“There are things in play here of which you have no understanding.” Raislos flashed Valemar a dangerously smug smile. “The Alfari may have kept my people trapped in the mountains for hundreds of years, but that will change.”
The crowd gasped but Valemar didn’t even flinch. “You can try.” The ice in his voice would have made me abandon any plans I’d had, but Raislos simply turned and walked out the door.
The Hormani trader’s mouth curled up in amusement. His eyes lingered on me for a moment, a challenge of his own, before he followed the others out.
“Talk. Now,” I hissed at Valemar under my breath while maintaining my regal façade.
“Heymond,” Valemar called. “Make sure they find their way back to their land. Undisturbed … if possible.”
Heymond gave a curt nod and melted away after them, while his men peeled off the walls and followed. Valemar rose and extended his hand to me. We adjourned through the same side door to the council chambers in which we’d had our first “talk.” I paced the floor.
“The armor they are wearing …” I gripped my hands so they didn’t flutter and watched my feet and my swirling skirts as I moved. “It’s not of this world.”
Valemar hummed, a deep musical sound like a bassoon. A frown turned down the corners of his mouth. His hands came to rest on the back of a chair. “The stranger.”
“Yes.” I stopped my pacing and thought about how to word the next information. One thing had become clear with the audience. My position here was tenuous. I’d have to tread carefully. “Trading … here, on this planet, is forbidden.” Valemar’s scowl deepened. “They’re not supposed to be here.” I’m not supposed to be here, I added silently.
“And there are those who would stop it?”
“If they knew.” My heart thudded. You don’t want them here.
Valemar absorbed this new information. “Can you tell them?” His stare pinned me to my spot. I swallowed deeply.
“I have no way to contact them.”
Valemar leaned against the chair, silently appraising me. It was a risk, having told him I was cut off from my people.
“Do you know what they are trading for?” I asked.
“The Cordair are miners. Gold, silver, iron, copper, gems. If it comes out of the ground and has value, they trade it.”
I couldn’t see the Hormani risking the wrath of the Shororato for mere gemstones. Then the image of a brassy-green ore sitting on a conference table came to mind. One of the most valuable contracts I’d ever helped negotiate, worth the entire GDP of Earth. Chalcopyrite. Used to fuel plasma thrusters. If they were trading that, nearly anything was worth the risk.
“There’s a mineral, greenish yellow in color. Takes an almost crystalline form. Do the Cordair mine that?”
The door opened behind me and I was unpleasantly unsurprised when the red-haired woman slipped in the same door she had last time. This place had to be a warren of rooms and passageways, people passing unseen.
Valemar’s eyes flicked from her back to me. “I do not know. I take it that it is valuable.”
“For some,” I said. “And they’d be willing to do anything to get it.”
“You see now why she came, my king,” the woman said.
Valemar stepped away. “But she can do nothing.”
“She may not know what she can do.” The woman looked at me. Her eyebrows rose. “In more ways than one.” The woman returned her attention to Valemar. “But now you know. Now you can plan. They’re not supposed to be here.”
“Can I ask who you are?” I said, unable to hold back a sigh of exasperation. I wanted a name to go with this red ghost who moved at the edge of things.
“Shale,” Valemar said. “Our Mödatal.”
“I think you would call me a seer,” Shale said. I shivered as ripples of awareness ran down my spine.
I’ve been many places, seen many things. Unbelievable things. Things that could only be described as magic. And yet, every fiber of my body wanted to scream out at this woman. And she knew it, and it made her smile.
“Do I want to know the prophecy about me?” I asked them. “I assume there is one.”
Valemar walked over to the small table that held glasses and a carafe of wine. “As the darkness gathers,” the Mödatal intoned, “she will fall from the moon. The daughter of kings will drive back the outsiders and —”
“And she will save us all,” Valemar said, his voice cutting across hers. They stared at each other for several heartbeats. Shale gave him a piercing look which Valemar returned, unblinking. She shrugged and dropped her gaze. “You may go,” Valemar said to her.
“As you wish, my king.” Shale glanced one more time at me before leaving. I got the feeling from their exchange that there was something Valemar didn’t want me to know.
And I realized I couldn’t tell him the truth. I couldn’t tell him that I was not this Moon Princess he believed me to be. If he thought I had no value, especially since I’d let him know how precarious things were, I would become a mere bargaining chip. One he might be willing to hand over for the right price. One the Hormani would be all too willing to take and, no doubt, suggest to the Cordair that I indeed should be sacrificed to their god, thereby eliminating the potential problem of my exposing them for what they really were.
My best chance of survival was to be right where I was … as long as I could keep Valemar happy.
“So you think I can save you?”
Valemar poured a glass of wine. “That is the prophecy.” He picked it up and faced me.
“I don’t believe in prophecies.” Since there would be so much else I would withhold, I felt I owed him this small truth.
“Many of my people would agree with you.”
Religion and politics. The two minefields one found everywhere. Business was much more straightforward. “And you believe or you would not have thought me worth the risk,” I said. Valemar sipped the wine. Seeds of doubt flickered his eyes. “A risk you now regret?”
He threw back the glass and drained it, took his time placing it on the table. I stood still, watching him. Valemar came over to me and stroked my cheek with the back of his fingers while his eyes searched my face. “How bad is it?” he asked.
I swallowed. The Hormani could do a lot of damage before the Shororato became aware. A Cordair army clad in the impenetrable armor could probably do what Raislos had promised. There was no one around to stop them but me, and what could I do? “Potentially very bad,” I said. No sense sugar-coating it.
Valemar’s hand fell away. “Then you’re our only hope.”
Lord help us all.
VALEMAR HAD HIS seneschal Orin give me a tour of the castle since Heymond was away escorting t
he Cordair. Well over six feet tall, as most of the Alfari seemed to be, I could have been a child, trailing in his wake. “How do you learn your way around this place?” I asked as we headed down yet another small, twisty staircase and through another narrow corridor. “It’s a rabbit warren.”
Orin turned toward me, his brows crinkled together in puzzlement. “Rabbit?”
I sighed. “Surely you have something similar here. Small animals that tunnel into the earth. Goes in one way, pops out another.”
“Ah, kinnin.” He chuckled. “Yes, very much like a rabbit warren. Trial and error, my queen. Go the wrong way often enough and you learn the right. Makes it harder for potential invaders to get far should they breach the gates.”
That made sense. “And when was the last time you had trouble with invaders?”
“About a hundred and fifty years ago.” There was a weight to Orin’s voice that hadn’t been there before. “They managed to cart off the throne before their convoy was overtaken, besieged, and the throne returned. They didn’t last long in the castle. As you’ve noted, if you don’t know where you’re going, it’s hard to get there. It can take years to learn your way around. A lifetime to learn its secrets.”
“If you’re allowed access to them.”
Orin glanced over his shoulder. “A wise observation,” he said with a smile.
“I’m not a beginner to intrigue,” I said dryly, and tried to mark my surroundings.
“Then you should do well here.”
My tour concluded at the stables. They were really more like elk than horses. Elk with manes and tails. Common riding animals had their horns cut off, as farmers had done with cattle in Earth’s past until they’d developed the polled breeds. Why risk being gored?
The war horses, however, were different. The prongs on each antler had been drilled so they could be tipped with slicing blades in times of battle, able to cut great swaths through foot armies, Orin told me. I was beginning to see why the Cordair would want Awrakian armor. Few weapons could pierce the lightweight protection, let alone primitive knives. Even ones affixed to the horns of rampaging deer.
But nothing prepared me for the sight of Valemar’s war horse. Large as a Clydesdale but much more nimble, its antlers were broad like a moose’s but with pointed prongs around the edges. I had no trouble imagining it when Orin told me the beast was capable of scooping up and tossing full-grown men.
“His name is Muirbrook.”
“Muirbrook?” I asked when the chip didn’t translate.
“The large wave that comes after an earthquake.”
“Tsunami,” I said as the chip belatedly offered the translation.
“Tsunami? Tsunami,” Orin said, trying the word on his tongue.
“That’s what we call the wave. Able to wash away entire cities,” I said, calling to mind the devastating one that had hit the eastern Pacific in the late twenty-second century.
“Ah, you have oceans, too, then? Our star gazers can’t see through your red clouds.”
I just smiled and didn’t answer. Muirbrook hung his head over the stall door and snuffled me. “Hello there,” I said and offered him the back of my hand. His breath was warm and wet. The short hairs around his nose tickled. Looking for a treat and finding nothing in my hand, he batted it with a snort and stomped his feet. They were larger than dinner plates, and the ground rumbled beneath us. “If I’d known I was meeting you, I would have brought something.”
Muirbrook tossed his head and fixed me with a glare. I glanced at Orin whose eyebrows had lifted. “What?”
“He’s not a pet,” Orin said.
Muirbrook swung his massive head toward Orin. “I can tell that,” I said. “He is, however, a noble creature deserving of respect.” I smiled as Muirbrook snorted at Orin and turned back my way. “He expects to be waited on and assumed I would do so. Next time, my honored gentleman.”
Muirbrook shook his mane. Having suitably impressed us, he began to munch on the hay in his stall.
“Do women ride to war on the moon?” Orin asked.
“Some,” I answered. “But I haven’t. I’m a sit at the table and help with negotiations type. What do your women do here?” I asked.
Orin gestured toward the doors at the end of the stables. “What women do — sew, sing, cook, raise the children.”
I gave him a non-committal, “Hmm.”
“And yours ride to war?”
“They do everything a man does.” Orin’s face twitched with amusement. I let the insult pass. “Or everything a woman does. Their choice. Just as a man gets to choose what he wants to do. Even raise the children.” Orin’s eyebrows shot up. “Have you children of your own?”
“I’m a child of the moon,” Orin replied.
“Which is?”
Orin gave me a surprised look. When he saw I was in earnest, it fell from his face. “Does the moon not affect you? When it is full, we here on Crenfor are overcome with the urge to mate.” A warning bell went off in my head, but I silenced it. “Children of such unions are given into service when they are born, if their parents are not married. Sons to defense, unless they are red of hair. Daughters as servants or as acolytes of the Cair.”
“So, you have no children of your own?”
“If I do, they have entered service.”
This was a caste society without the stigma, the bastards not being full members but viewed with respect. Daria, too, had to be a child of the moon. As were Heymond and every other soldier I encountered.
“Can you marry?” I asked.
“Soldiers cannot but others can.”
No one to leave behind, I thought. “But you can still find … comfort when the moon is full?”
“As long as it’s not a night of guard duty. Then we take a draught that counteracts the pull.”
I nodded. “Makes sense. Don’t want enemies taking advantage of you being … otherwise engaged.”
Orin laughed. “You definitely do think like a man.”
If I was going to find a way around the problem of the Hormani, I would need to.
Orin’s tour had given me a glimpse of the political climate, but there was one big piece missing. I swallowed my distaste and asked Daria to arrange for the Mödatal to meet me for some afternoon refreshments.
The red-haired seer surprised me by knocking before she came through the door, but it didn’t stop my hackles from rising at the sight of her. “My queen,” she said and inclined her head.
“You may go,” I told Daria. I gestured for the seer to take a seat. “Wine or tea?” I asked as Daria slipped away.
Shale adjusted her shawl. “Wine,” she said, watching me.
I poured her a glass of the golden liquid and handed it to her. She took it from me without a word. I poured myself a cup of the tea. A faint jasmine-like scent rose from the amber brew. I curled my hands around the cup and sat back, withholding the urge to blow on it in case it was an insult. “Valemar told me the prophecy doesn’t have … universal acceptance.”
Shale gave me an enigmatic smile and sipped her wine. “That is true.”
“And why is that?”
“Time dilutes most things.”
“Then there is opposition to my being here? Other than the Cordair?” I clarified.
She waited until I began to squirm. “Yes,” she answered simply.
“And what will they think now that I have arrived?”
The Mödatal stared into the depths of her wineglass. “Does it matter? You have arrived.”
A disbelieving laugh rumbled through my throat. “Any opposition is worth noting. It has a way of breeding rebellion.”
Shale ran her finger along the rim of the glass. “What they want does not matter. You —” She looked up and fixed me with eyes of dark blue. “— are the only thing that matters.”
“But the risk they pose to me does matter.”
Shale’s finger fell away. “They will try to undermine your influence for you are not what they expected.
They will not believe that you are the Moon Princess or that you can save them. They will believe that you serve the Cordair in secret and will only bring trouble to the region.”
I sipped the tea, now wishing I’d chosen the wine. The price on my head kept mounting. “Will they actively seek my removal?”
One side of the Mödatal’s mouth curled up in a smile. “Assassination of the queen would go against their self-preservation interests. No one would be willing to let them live.” I blew out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “You have time, my queen. The path you walk is uneven. There will be times you stumble and fall, but this is the path you were meant to be on. You have power that you recognize not. It will be revealed to you. In time.” She held my eyes and drank from her glass. Solid. Unmovable.
“How widely known is the prophecy?”
“Most people in the street could tell you the gist of it.” She smiled. “You were last looked for when Aedenfal was overrun a hundred and fifty years ago. Dönal Carbrev and his brothers rode with the Red Army and drove the Cordair back. They took Fairfada, the steppe upon which you were found. Valemar’s father gave it back, with some conditions, hoping to placate the Cordair.” She gave a laugh full of irony. “A generation earlier and you would have had no need to rush to marriage. How the gods do laugh at us.”
She drained her glass. “Any other questions for me?”
I played with my tea cup. “Valemar finished the prophecy for you. I had the feeling he added his own ending.”
“The daughter of kings will save us all,” Shale said.
“But that’s not what I asked.”
She sat impassive, as if I hadn’t said a word, which was answer in itself. She would not be the one to tell me. “Anything else, my queen?” I shook my head. She put her glass back on the table and rose. “You have time. What you need to do will reveal itself.” The Mödatal inclined her head and withdrew from the room in her ghost-like fashion.
I reached for the carafe and poured myself a glass of wine. The Cordair wanted me. The Hormani wanted me dead. The Alfari feared me.