Essy speared Tristan with her eyes and stroked Gráinne’s brow until it smoothed. Branwen felt Queen Eseult go rigid beside her, ready to intervene, but it wasn’t necessary.
“There’s no need to fear, dear heart,” Essy assured the girl. “Prince Tristan is no longer our enemy.” The queen relaxed at Branwen’s side. Did her cousin believe her own words?
“But he’s a Kernyvman!” Gráinne protested, her fright giving way to a scowl.
“Indeed,” the princess replied. “Here, let me help you.”
While Essy slipped the new dress over the stuffed cotton shoulders of her namesake, Branwen kept an eye on Tristan. The shame that washed over his features lashed her heart.
Would Kernyvak children fear her? Branwen wondered.
Sweeping his arm dramatically to the side, Tristan dropped to one knee and bowed before Gráinne. “The Kernyveu love your princess, too,” he said directly to the girl. Her gaze pitched between him and Essy. “She is to be our queen. Come, won’t you be my friend?”
Gráinne admired her finely attired doll. “My princess is beautiful and kind. She deserves the best prince in the world!”
“Quite so,” Essy agreed. “Every girl deserves the prince of her choosing.” She stared the queen straight in the eye and the double-edged meaning stabbed Branwen deep, as she imagined it did her aunt.
Tristan rubbed his throat. “Your princess is in need of a crown, I believe, little maid.”
Nimbly, he plucked a few stray petals from the stone floor and knotted them together.
Gráinne tittered, smile widening as Tristan crowned the doll. She pecked him on the cheek, then scurried off to present the new and improved Eseult to her band of friends. There was no girl alive whom Tristan could not charm. Except, perhaps, for Essy, who looked considerably less impressed.
Her cousin’s expression soured as soon as the children were no longer looking. She approached Branwen and her mother, selecting an elderberry tart from one of the pewter platters on the table.
“You have a way with children,” Queen Eseult told her daughter, smiling broadly. “You’ll be a wonderful mother.”
The princess released a short, caustic laugh. “I’m not even wed and already you would have me with child.”
“Essy, don’t twist my words.” Emotion stretched Queen Eseult’s voice. Surveying her daughter’s face, she said, “The ribbons in your plaits look lovely” in an obvious attempt to diffuse Essy’s temper.
The princess popped the tart in her mouth and chewed. She touched her braids. “Branwen chose them for me: green for Iveriu, black and white for Kernyv.” Essy narrowed her gaze at her cousin; Branwen’s heart thumped. “I am more symbol than woman, Lady Queen. And she is nothing but your puppet.”
Branwen staggered back as if she’d been run through with a sword. Tristan immediately moved in her direction; she shook her head. He would only make matters worse.
“Princess Eseult,” snapped the queen. “I didn’t raise you to be unkind.”
Essy squared her shoulders. “Indeed, you raised me to fix your mistake. I am nothing but a failure.”
“You’re not a failure,” she said more softly.
“No, I’m your failure, Mother. You failed to produce a boy, to give Iveriu the male heir it needed. I will spend the rest of my life paying for your shortcomings.”
Queen Eseult sucked in a breath as her eyes began to gleam.
“Fear not, Lady Queen,” Essy added. “You didn’t raise me to be unkind. If I give King Marc a girl, I’ll ensure she doesn’t live to regret being born as I have. I am not as callous as you.”
Branwen blinked, stupefied. The princess couldn’t truly mean her words.
With a satisfied smirk, Essy stalked back toward Gráinne and her other adoring subjects, leaving speechless the two women who loved her the most. Queen Eseult squeezed Branwen’s hand and excused herself without another word. Fintan followed her out.
Tristan crossed to Branwen, coming as close as he could without touching. Keane exchanged one glance with her, then looked away as if he would murder thin air.
“What happened?” Tristan whispered from the side of his mouth, still smiling at the children, and Branwen recognized that he’d also been raised at court.
She couldn’t tell him. Much as she might want to. Threatening the unborn heir to his uncle’s throne, even in the heat of anger, might endanger the alliance. Branwen dug her fingernails into the heels of her hands.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Branwen—”
“Please.” It was a rasp.
“Can I do anything to help?”
She tilted her gaze at him. “Just stand by my side.”
“Always.”
* * *
Branwen lay sleepless in her bed; the candle in the window burned near to the wick. Essy’s accusation tormented her.
The memory of the look on her cousin’s face riled her anew.
I am not a puppet.
Throwing a cloak over her nightdress, Branwen looped her curls into a bun at the base of her neck and exited her chamber with a furtive glance down the corridor. She didn’t lift the hood of her cloak, because while she wanted to avoid notice, it would be dangerous to be confused for an intruder. The castle was quiet as she slinked through the starlit courtyard toward the west tower, but it was a false quiet—the kind that comes in the middle of a heated exchange. Until the princess was wed, the alliance could still fall apart.
Fintan looked less surprised than Branwen had expected as she approached the door to Queen Eseult’s apartment. The guardsman observed much though he said little.
“Up late, Lady Branwen?” Shadows from the torchlight gave his pitted cheeks a mottled appearance.
“Is the queen awake?”
“She is.” He reached for the door latch and Branwen spied concern in his eyes.
“Lady Queen?” she called as she entered. She pushed her unkempt locks behind her ears, adjusted her cloak.
Her aunt looked up from where she was seated by the window. The queen’s own plaits were somewhat unkempt, her expression careworn. It was after midnight, yet she hadn’t changed from the gown she’d worn to the children’s celebration. She seemed utterly drained.
“Forgive me for disturbing you at this hour,” Branwen said, joining her by the window. Candlelight wavered between them: a thin, pulsing rhythm at their feet. The queen’s hands were clasped together. She ran one thumb over the other, back and forth, back and forth.
“Please, sit. Take off your cloak.” Branwen unfastened her mother’s brooch and Queen Eseult raised an eyebrow at the nightdress peeking out underneath. “What do you need, Branny?” she asked. Her aunt usually seemed so unshakable—not tonight. Lowering herself into the opposite seat, Branwen noticed an untouched plate of cured meats and cheeses on the side table. A goblet filled to the brim.
“I wanted to see how you were,” she said. “After—after what happened earlier.”
The queen sighed. She glanced out the window, then back at her niece, smiling with something close to chagrin.
“Alana must have ingested an ancient creature when she was pregnant with you.” She spoke with affection as she touched the silver brooch that gleamed against Branwen’s shoulder. “You’re an old soul, indeed, my niece.”
Many a bard sang about pregnant women swallowing supernatural creatures and giving birth to them. The Hound had supposedly come into the world this way. “I don’t know if that is so,” Branwen demurred.
“Ancient or not, you are wise beyond your years. I thought devising an errand to keep Lord Diarmuid away from the princess would suffice.…”
She met her aunt’s gaze. So, the queen had been responsible for the sudden need to inspect the lighthouses. And, by extension, so had Branwen.
“I have never seen Essy grow so attached,” her aunt admitted. Branwen leaned forward. “Lady Queen, I beg you to reconsider the spell. I fear for Essy without it.”
Queen E
seult chewed her lip. She rubbed the inside of her thumb almost raw, and the evidence of the queen’s vulnerability unnerved Branwen a little.
“My mother—your grandmother—warned me against using primordial magic. But”—the queen paused—“with my daughter’s heart, it seems I am not as strong.”
Blood roared in Branwen’s ears. “You’re saying—”
“Yes. I’m saying yes. The Loving Cup,” Queen Eseult said in a hush, although they were alone.
“Thank you. Thank you, Lady Queen.”
“Branny, there are always consequences,” she said.
“I will bear them.”
“Unintended consequences.”
“I am strong, Lady Queen.” Branwen had proved as much on Whitethorn Mound, and she couldn’t bear for Essy to ever again look at her the way she had today. “I have already given the Land my blood.”
Queen Eseult pursed her lips. “That was healing magic. This is something different.”
“I want my cousin to know love,” Branwen declared. “What do I need to do?”
“We must wait for the Dark Moon.”
Anticipation raised the tiny hairs on her arms. “When will that be?”
“In a month’s time. The night of the Farewell Feast.” The queen paused. There was only the sound of a flickering candle. “Maybe it is fated, after all.”
Branwen thought of Tristan, and how he said he believed in fate not luck. Fate had brought them back together.
“I think it is, Lady Queen. I think it is.”
TRAITOR’S FINGER
THE MOON WAS HIGH AND bright as Branwen crept out of the castle, slipping under the noses of the Royal Guardsmen. Everyone in Iveriu was breathing a little easier now that the alliance with Kernyv had been agreed. And Branwen intended to keep it that way.
Tonight she would fetch the final ingredient for the Loving Cup.
Grass and pebbles crunched under her feet as she followed the path that led to her cave—Tristan’s cave. Their cave. Only that wasn’t her destination. She turned a sharp right and began climbing up a steep hill, scrambling over roots and fallen leaves.
The silver glaze cast by the moon was enough to light the way to where Branwen was headed. A secret place. A forbidden place. Only Queen Eseult knew the precise location, and now so did she.
The traitor’s grave. Uncle Morholt’s grave. Fintan had moved the body in a wheelbarrow, but her aunt had blindfolded him so he wouldn’t be burdened with the knowledge. The queen had buried her brother’s body by herself with no ceremony but the binding spell to ensure his ignominy.
Ironically, to ensure fidelity, the key ingredient of the Loving Cup was a traitor’s bone. When the queen had told her that, Branwen had understood that this spell was the deepest magic. As difficult as turning the tide. For, indeed, the heart was vaster than the Dark Waters.
Uncle Morholt had been stripped of his Champion’s ring before being interred. That was the finger she was after. The one that symbolized fealty between a knight and his lord, a man and his betrothed.
Branwen lifted her skirt, bunching it between her hands as she ascended the rocky slope. The hem was soggy from trailing over ground still wet from earlier showers. Now the skies were clear and the air fresh. If the ship didn’t set out for Kernyv soon, the seas would become too treacherous and they would be forced to wait until winter had passed.
Queen Eseult was determined that the alliance should be settled as quickly as possible, before the New Year festival of Samonios; which was why they would set sail in ten days under the Dark Moon, even though it was thought to be inauspicious. Branwen remembered the fishermen at Castle Bodwa refusing to take their boats out during the Dark Moon because they said they’d only catch Otherworld creatures and it wasn’t worth angering the Old Ones. Killing an Otherworld creature brought down their wrath.
Only since meeting her fox had Branwen come to share their beliefs. What would have happened if Tristan hadn’t rescued him from Keane’s trap?
The yowl of a night predator tore through the air, causing Branwen to shudder. She reached for the moon-catcher her aunt had given her. The curved blade seemed an unimposing weapon compared with the fanged jowls of the wolves that stalked these woods.
Branwen scratched the gooseflesh erupting on her arms and carried on. She thought of Essy, and of Tristan, and she resolved to keep going. She wanted peace and she wanted her cousin to be happy. She also never wanted Tristan to be forced to choose between his honor and his duty to his king.
Selfishly, Branwen didn’t want Tristan to have to choose between her and his kingdom, either. As long as Iveriu and Kernyv were friends, Branwen was free to love Tristan—and he her. She would do this for all of them.
The ethereal light illuminating the forest grew stronger as Branwen reached the top of the hill. She stopped to catch her breath, glancing around her. The silhouettes of naked trees against the sky resembled fearsome raiders. Another tingle zipped down her spine. But they weren’t flesh; they were just bark.
No one had followed her.
What Branwen was about to do was expressly proscribed by the ancient laws of kingship. But sometimes it was necessary to break the law in order to keep the peace.
A screech of air rushed in her ears. Unnaturally yellow eyes met hers. The blackbird was back. It cawed so shrilly that Branwen thought her ears might bleed. The creature clipped her with its shimmering wing and flew off.
Queen Eseult had warned her she would be tested. Branwen had never felt as close to her aunt as she did that night in her chamber. She was so honored that the queen had listened to her; she was treating Branwen as a woman, an equal.
Branwen wished her mother had lived to share such secrets with her. An ache welled in her chest at the notion of it—of what had been stolen from her, and what she didn’t want to be stolen from any other girl in Iveriu or Kernyv.
Jamming her lips together, Branwen took thirteen paces to the northeast. Even in the darkness, she could see that the ground was shriveled around the spot. Nothing would ever grow here again.
There were no tales of denouncing a King’s Champion. Branwen hadn’t thought it possible, yet Queen Eseult had repudiated her own brother to a traitor’s grave to preserve the peace. The only fate worse, perhaps, was being claimed by Dhusnos. The Dark One. He who birthed the Ivernic people but slighted the Goddess Ériu. For his offence, she drowned him, condemned Dhusnos to rule the Sea of the Dead. Those claimed by the Dark One spent eternity under his yoke.
Branwen sank to her knees on the barren dirt, raised the moon-catcher, and began to dig.
While Queen Eseult never said as much, Branwen knew it grieved her aunt to condemn Lord Morholt. She had seen both her brother and sister laid to rest. She must wonder why she had survived when they had not. Branwen had wondered the same thing about her parents—until the day she met Tristan. That was the day everything began to make sense, slip into place, like the stained glass in the feasting hall.
Earth, chilly and coarse, slid between Branwen’s fingers and lodged beneath the nails. Her arms grew sore, her breathing shallow.
The Loving Cup must be prepared in total secrecy, the queen had instructed her. Its true purpose must never be revealed. Not to Essy, and certainly not to King Marc. Using magic on a foreign king would be considered an act of war.
At last, the feel of burlap spread between her hands. The freedom of the spirit, the chance to return to one’s kinsmen in a different form—to try to right the mistakes of the previous life—was one of the most dearly held beliefs in Iveriu. It was a gift given by the Land to her people.
And the Land could take it away.
Queen Eseult represented the Goddess Ériu to her people, sacred magic flowed in her veins, and she had used her power to bind her brother’s spirit to his body so that he could never be reborn. That was a traitor’s fate. With her denouncement, he lost the gift of rebirth. Iveriu didn’t want traitors returning from the grave.
The queen explaine
d she couldn’t ever touch the vessel that contained her brother’s spirit or the binding spell would be undone. But they needed something from him. Branwen had to be the one to take it.
To preserve the honor of Iveriu, Branwen had to do something dishonorable. Beneath her closed lips, her teeth chattered. She probed along the rough sack for the seam. In order to trap a man’s soul in his body, it was necessary to enclose him—seal him off forever—before laying him in the ground.
Branwen hoped Tristan wouldn’t think less of her for what she was prepared to do. But then, he would never know. He could never know.
A bone-cold hand slid beneath her grasp. Her heart raced erratically. She clenched her jaw to stop the chattering and her eyes darted around her. The sliver of moonlight crossing her forehead suddenly felt sharp.
She pulled her uncle’s decomposing hand through the slit she’d made in the sack.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Queen Eseult had assured Branwen that if she worked hastily and accurately, Morholt’s spirit wouldn’t be able to escape. For a moment, and only a moment, Branwen contemplated releasing it.
Then she shook her head and peeled Morholt’s ring finger from the flaking flesh surrounding it. As the finger caught the light, it glowed in a most terrifying way. His skeleton poked out from beneath his skin.
Branwen covered her mouth, squashing a surge of nausea.
She lifted the moon-catcher and it lived up to its name. The blade burned a blinding white. Branwen lowered her eyes, and she took a swing.
Whoosh. Crack. Plop.
Morholt’s severed finger fell into her palm. It was frigid, slimy as a slug. Revulsion curdled in Branwen’s stomach and she swallowed down a rush of red-hot bitterness.
Forgive me.
Tucking the broken finger into the pocket of her tunic, she retrieved a needle and thread. Her own fingers quivering, she threaded the needle and began to repair the traitor’s vessel as skillfully as she could. Tiny sparks scorched Branwen from within. She winced. Her uncle’s spirit was fighting her, wanting to fly away.
Sweet Black Waves Page 20