Hath No Fury

by Melanie R. Meadors

  “It’s been two years since the prince and I have spoken, sire.” And Osriel had left no doubt that my presence was as unwelcome as his own conscience.

  Papa’s craggy face hardened into a boulder. “But that woman is his physician, and you spend your days with her.”

  Perhaps I should have stood on the far side of his writing table instead of the near. A spread of oak between us was ever a comfort when our conversation took this particular turn.

  “Prince Osriel demands privacy. She’s forbidden to speak of him even to me.” Of late the slightest whisper of the prince’s name made her shudder, which was a phenomenon akin to Wulfgar’s Mountain taking an afternoon walk. “I accompany her to every patient, save the prince.”

  “Hah! Exactly so!” The triumphant exclamation and the boom of fist on oak made me jump. “That’s why the royal whelp won’t have you. You view other men’s bodies. Touch them. You observe warriors in times of weakness. Scorn them. Pity them. How could any man consider you, knowing that you would forever compare him to other men? That woman should know better.”

  “All Evanori women know how to treat battle wounds, Papa. They take pride in it!”

  “But you do the other … diseases, flux, boils, crabs … filthy business. It’s indecent. All for that woman’s spite.”

  “What else would I do here? I’ve no talent for military strategy or wielding battle axes. Horses despise me. Your hounds won’t heed my command to move out of the way. I’ve a gift for healing, both common and magical. I can stitch a wound, repair a fracture, and sooth night terrors. No Evanori can sit idle as long as Caedmon’s heirs need our swords. You taught me that.”

  “You are not Evanori, Saverian, but by the Sky Lord’s hand I’ll have you wed to one, no matter what that woman’s wishes.”

  He stomped out of the room. I kicked his chair, near breaking my foot.

  Why did I let him bait me so? Our arguments always ended the same. Because that woman was my mother, the source of my father’s greatest accomplishments in The Book of Rowe, as well as his deepest grievances.

  Seventeen years previous, King Eodward, descendant of holy Caedmon, had brought his beloved mistress and infant son to Evanore, knowing that Evanori loyalty would protect them from his enemies. Lirene de Armine-Visori was an Aurellian pureblood, descendant of invaders who had occupied Navronne for two centuries after they discovered their small magics took on immense power in Caedmon’s realm. The beautiful, fragile Lirene brought her pureblood physician with her, a high-spirited young sorceress called Nyxia. Nyxia had promptly conceived a child with the virile young warlord of Rowe. That child was me.

  By the time I knew enough to notice, my parents had long realized their hasty union was a mistake. My mother never lived at Rowe after I was born, choosing to house her healing practice close to the royal residence at Renna and her own infant alongside the little prince in the royal nursery.

  My father had added only two entries to The Book of Rowe. He had wed a divinely gifted sorceress with a personal connection to the sainted Caedmon’s house. And he had sired a daughter who shared a nursery with Caedmon’s youngest descendent. Whether due to personal incapacity or the shame of a disloyal wife, Papa was never able to record any exceptional personal accomplishment in his book, whether deeds of arms, diplomacy, or business. He remained a guard captain at Renna’s fortress, bringing a paltry four warriors to his lord’s service, all that Rowe could support.

  Clearly it mattered nothing that I had been born of his blood, had my fingers properly tied into a fist every day for my first year, and was given my first blade at three. My father would never accept me as a true Evanori. And my mother said that even if her family in Palinur found reason to take her back—a highly unlikely occurrence—they would never accept a halfblood daughter. Halfbloods were an abomination in pureblood eyes. I had no choice but to make my own place in the world. That suited me just fine.

  “CHEER UP,” I SAID TO the small boy, as I removed stitches from his quivering lip and allowed magic to flow through my fingers to discourage further sepsis. “You have a lovely scar that will terrify your every enemy, yet you’ll be able to chew your meat without it falling out of your mouth. Your friends will be hugely jealous.”

  Brightening considerably, he sniffed away his tears and touched the ragged result of an unfortunate meeting of face and tree stump. “Too bad it didn’t run crost my eye.”

  I rolled my eyes as he bolted from the cold, bright tent where my mother held her commons surgery every morning. Another idiot Evanori male in the making.

  A tart, prickling fount of magic poured from my mother as she tightened the screws in a steel frame that constricted an agonized warrior’s fractured leg. “A tenday more before you put weight on it,” she said, aborting the flow of magic and tossing her screw lever onto a tray. “If your commander balks, send him to me. I’ll set his toenails rotting into the bone and see how he ‘bucks up’ and does his duty.”

  As the man’s comrades carried him out, a shaggy drover sidled into the tent. An ugly scabrous growth the size of an apple bulged from his neck.

  “Get out, Vert!” yelled my mother. “I told you, it is not a demon’s wart. Neither fire nor magic can shrink it. And I might as well slit your throat as cut it out now. Remove your filthy self from my tent, and make your peace with whatever god you favor.”

  As on every day, Vert slunk off and the tent flap fell into place.

  “Stupid clod,” she snapped. “I could have helped him, but he spent a year trying to pray it away. Then his wife tried to torch it off.”

  She rummaged in her satchel and pulled out two small wood boxes. “I’ve a goatherd with the pox next, and you can diagnose Neyla’s knee. Focus carefully on the connecting muscle, not just the joint. Perhaps later we’ll have something more interesting to study. Marone said there was a woman with the falling sickness coming from Magora Syne. I’ve spellwork which can ease the rigors.”

  I didn’t care about my studies. Not today. I’d told her of Papa’s latest pronouncement.

  “What did you see in Papa?” I blurted. “Even if he was the handsomest fellow in all of Navronne, you had to have recognized his mulish nature. He has not the slightest notion of love or intelligence or companionship.”

  “Count yourself fortunate, Saverian,” she said, as she mixed the powders for dosing pox. “You’ve no idea how restrictive pureblood society is in the rest of the kingdom. All rules and manners and contracts. You’ve no choice what to wear of a morning, much less what magic to practice or whom to marry. There I was at two-and-twenty, come to these wild mountains, watching Lirene and her kingly warrior defy the world for love, and knowing I’d never have to go back to that life. Such glorious freedom! Under my mistress’s protection, I could have any pleasure I wanted. Cynric was the first man I saw. His body was beautiful and he was very eager. And lively. I didn’t care about his mind. Not then…”

  No matter all I’d seen in healing practice, it still churned my belly thinking about her and my father … copulating. Though nearing forty, my mother was beautiful in a way I would never be, lithe and graceful with fine-drawn features, her skin like glowing bronze, her long hair heavy and black like liquid night. She wore shirt, tunic, and trousers of russet and canvas queenlier than Osriel’s delicate mother had worn silk gowns.

  “…and when the dolt commanded me take up sword and shield like a proper Evanori wife, I refused, naturally. Goddess Mother, I heal sword wounds. He asserted his privilege as my lord, threatening to flog me for insolence. So, I asserted my status as a pureblood, and told him that anywhere else in Navronne an ordinary like him would be hanged for touching me. He never touched me again, either, which is all to the good. I’ve had plenty of good fun with more charming men.”

  She wiped her hands and stuck her head out of the tent. “Next!”

  OF COURSE, MY MOTHER’S WORST offense in my father’s eye had been her telling Lirene of their argument. The king’s mistress had co
mmanded Papa to let Nyxia do as she pleased. He had never forgiven my mother for such disloyalty.

  Despite their everlasting rancor, once I left the royal nursery at seven, my mother had sent me back to Rowe. She said halfblood magic would likely not be valuable enough to keep me fed and clothed, and even Rowe was better than no inheritance at all. Papa’s failure to produce sons with other women—which she hinted was a matter of her own magical connivance—meant I was destined to be Warlord of Rowe.

  My sex, of course, had been but another blow to my father. Evanori did not dispute the gods’ choice of a female heir. According to song and story—and Evanori set great stock in song and story—most female warlords rose to the task, renowned for their wisdom and ferocity in battle. The rest recognized their duty to wed a strong, honorable warrior and then yield him the right of their house. It was considered a noble sacrifice.

  I had no more aspiration to be a proper warlord than my mother had to be a proper wife. I’d told my father that I would gladly yield Rowe when the time came. But first I would ensure a decent future by finding a warrior of compatible spirit to make my husband and lord. My parents had rushed into a marriage without respect. I didn’t want to make the same mistake.

  Alas, my father’s greatest hope for a third accomplishment to enter in his book rested in my marriage to Eodward’s bastard son—a bond to the blood of holy Caedmon. That dream was taking a long time to die, which was most annoying, as he would not consider introducing me to other men. Thus, on the day following our conversation, when Papa bade me forego my day’s work with that woman so that we might sign the betrothal settlement with my future husband, I near choked on my morning apple.

  “Papa, you can’t mean this. Fillol? Your man-at-arms?”

  He gazed out of Rowe’s finest feature—a window that was not an arrow loop. The small rectangle contained a thick pane of wavy glass that reduced the majestic, ice-streaked cliffs of Dashon Ra to a blue-white blur. “He’s a good man. The best fighter I have. Modest and honorable. Loyal.”

  “I’m sure he is.” The words squeezed between my teeth. Outrage constricted my breast so fiercely I could scarce breathe, for I knew Daegle Fillol. “But you would wed your only daughter to a man who brags that he cannot read and will never do so. One who has never walked so far as Caedmon’s Bridge to look on the rest of Navronne, and never wishes to. Who refuses to join in tale-telling at your fireside because stories, even those of Evanore’s greatest glories, are tedious. You expect me to yield him the lord’s right, making a person of such…limitations…heir to Rowe? Is this the best warlord you can offer Prince Osriel, the sovereign duc of Evanore?”

  I’d never seen my father so cold. “My heir needs to consider her responsibilities before her diversions. The longer we wait, the harder, the more intractable, you’ll become. Like that woman. Few enough men want a connection to a halfblood Aurellian. You’ll end up lone and my line will end. I won’t have it. Daegal Fillol is the best of my warriors. He sired healthy children with his first wife. What’s more, he’s willing.”

  “I’m not.” No man would get a child on me without me wanting it so.

  I might have been a gnat in Papa’s ear. “The fool would speak with you alone before we sign the settlement. He waits in the wellyard. Be warned: If he turns less willing after this meeting, I will chain your feet to this house, mute your tongue, and set you such drudgery that you forget the ways of human life. I’m finished with your preening, Saverian. You may be only half a sorceress, but your insufferable conceit would outmatch any pureblood in Navronne save that woman. Three days from this I will watch you take Daegle to your bed and spread your legs.”

  I wanted to scream. To smash the ugly glass. To pull his war banners, shields, and spears from the wall and shove them through the ridiculous window along with his history of mediocrity. But horror at his plan, and the fear that this time he meant exactly what he said, bade me behave. For the moment.

  I dipped my knee. “As you say, Lord Cynric.”

  Cheeks afire, I marched down the hall stair and through a buttery and guardroom. Papa’s houndsman stared as I shoved through the doors into the heavy stillness of the morning. We’d see a storm by nightfall.

  Wit said I should leave Rowe until I could clear my head and make a plan, but fury insisted I make things clear with one man at least.

  My prospective husband waited in the cramped inner yard, where an ancient well provided Rowe’s salvation in time of siege. A black-bearded, stumpy man of something twice my age, Daegle Fillol carried himself most warrior-like. Strong, confident, but not overbearing.

  “Warrior Fillol, with respect, there is no inducement sufficient—”

  “Pardon my interruption, mistress, but I must speak first, making two things clear. Though this elevation is none of my aspiration, intent, or conspiring, I will not betray my lord by refusing it. If this union comes to pass, I will consort with thee in his presence to breed an heir to Rowe.” He raised his hand for pause as my skull threatened to burst. “But I do swear on Caedmon’s shield that I’ll neither tease nor cozen nor so much as raise my eye ta thee in wishing without thy saying. Before that event, and ever after, I’ll sleep only where you allow and keep entirely to my duties, intruding on none of thine.”

  If there had been a bench nearby, I would have sunk to it, mouth agape. Was the man mad or did he believe me so? I’d grown up around men like him.

  Sucking air through my teeth, I said, “I appreciate your plain speaking, sirrah, and will honor you with the same. You know this match is not well considered…that we are such opposite spirits we could never in the world make a decent life together…that I despise the very thought of it. Yet you’d do it anyway, and once we…breed… an heir, you would live celibate forever?”

  “Aye. Certain of all that.” His black curls quivered with pride. “I’ve a daughter a few seasons older than you, mistress. Never would I do to her what my lord proposes, but I am a loyal son of Evanore. My lord’s word commands me.”

  I turned tail and ran for the stables.

  “KATJE, COULD YOU ANNOUNCE ME to Master de Vallé, the Navron historian? I bring a message. From my father.”

  My fingers clenched and twisted as the innkeeper’s daughter vanished upstairs. I’d never done anything so rash. I was the daughter of a warlord and a pureblood sorceress, and I was the only person in all of Evanore who had ever claimed to be the reclusive Prince Osriel’s friend. No one in Evanore would dare assist me, but neither would they interfere. And I felt I already knew more of this stranger than of Osriel or either of my parents. Far more than I knew of the man I was to marry. I was but sixteen and my friends were books. That’s how I’d come to meet Merton de Vallé-Cuiron.

  A TENDAY SINCE, I’D GONE to fetch new books from Prince Osriel’s library. A young man as comely and sleek as a mountain cat had been cooling his heels in the foyer, awaiting audience with the prince. He had journeyed all the way from the city of Montesard, he’d told me, intent on collecting tales of Evanore’s history. Carrying impeccable credentials from the university, he’d never imagined it would be so difficult to get Prince Osriel’s permission to travel his realm. “I’ve heard the prince is a scholarly youth.”

  “He is,” I said, hefting my rucksack filled with three small codices and a rolled map, “but of late—”

  Just then the servant brought the expected rejection—his fifth. As we exited Osriel’s residence, de Vallé asked politely if I might tell him how to reach a good vantage where he could view the whole of Renna, as the day was so fine and he could not yet pursue his investigations.

  Well-versed in my mother’s disdain of Navron ordinaries—especially scholarly ones—I was surprised at his winsome nature. So instead of just telling him of the view from Howl’s Hill, I climbed it with him.

  He made notes and sketches in his journal as I pointed out features on the climb. When we rested at the top, he asked what I carried. We sat on the weather-smoothed stones of a ruined wal
l and I showed him the map of western Ardra—the central province of the kingdom—and the little codex that told of a wild western tribe called the Aponavi. That led to a discussion of history and its strange windings. When I pulled out the beautifully illuminated little bestiary, we talked of birds and their magical migrations, and whether it was possible that gryphons and dragons might actually exist. Once he recovered from his amazement that I was daughter of a pureblood and an Evanori warlord, a halfblood sorceress who had shared a nursery with the king’s bastard son, we spoke of magic.

  My mother had warned me never to speak of magic with ordinaries, but Merton was respectful and a historian, knowledgeable about every aspect of the world. No one had ever bothered to ask me what it felt like when I raised power or whether I ever succumbed to awe when I willed magic to flow through my fingertips and alter the truth of nature.

  “I must add you to my list of interviews,” he’d said, as he sketched the view of the ancient fortress called Renna Major, the separate royal residence called Renna Syne, and the scattered village between them. “To explore the rare intersection of two such strong, isolated cultures is a historian’s fairest dream.”

  When I blurted that he did not need Prince Osriel’s permission to interview me at any time, we’d both flushed at my boldness and then burst out laughing. He expressed impatience for our next meeting. Every moment since, I’d felt the same. I’d never imagined a man so fair, so intelligent, so well spoken.

  “MISTRESS SAVERIAN!” MERTON HURRIED DOWN the inn’s rickety stair, still buttoning his doublet of gold-threaded brocade. He was surely a wealthy man; only Osriel’s mother had worn fabrics so fine. Though truly his deep-hued skin and graceful form would have looked well in slops. Unlike Evanori men, his well-sculpted jaw was clean-shaven, which made him look younger than my estimate of five- or six-and-twenty. “Such a marvelous surprise on this chill morning! And a message from the lord of Rowe, as well…”