The Court of Mortals (Stariel Book 3)

by AJ Lancaster

  Do not console me; I helped Stariel kill him, Wyn nearly said, but he managed to swallow down the words. It had been an instinctive decision made in the heat of the moment, not a calculated murder attempt, and he couldn’t regret it, since it was probably the only reason he and Hetta had gotten out of the Spires alive. But what did that make him? I am not my father. Even if ThousandSpire had tried to choose him to take his father’s place.

  “I don’t like being made to feel foolish,” Penharrow said, and Wyn knew he was referring to the fact that he’d let him believe Wyn a simple servant. Such a trivial thing to focus on, under the circumstances.

  “Come into the sitting room,” he told the man instead. “You can tell me what I wish to know, and in return I shall answer some of your questions. Some,” he cautioned. “I might speak of alliances and political expedience, but your actions caused harm to Stariel, and I cannot forget that.”

  Penharrow weighed the offer. He didn’t like Wyn, but he liked ignorance even less. “Very well,” he said eventually. He bared his teeth and said mockingly: “Lead the way, Your Highness.”

  8

  Land Management

  After a brisk luncheon, Hetta headed off to the Home Farm for the appointment she was now late for, although both the words ‘appointment’ and ‘late’ didn’t really apply to farmers, she’d learnt. They kept time very accurately in a yearly sense, and very inaccurately in any units smaller than an hour. Wyn and Angus still hadn’t emerged from whatever they were discussing, but she was determined not to eavesdrop.

  All winter, she, Wyn, and Jack had between them been canvassing Stariel’s tenant farmers, which had resulted in an extremely long and emphatic list of needs and wants that they had to somehow decide how to prioritise. The bank’s initial loan instalment to them had been conservative and so far entirely earmarked for lineswork, but—assuming they did actually manage to fix the roof this week—there would be more instalments in future. Which meant Hetta needed to understand a great deal more about farming.

  But it was rather hard to keep her mind on the task at hand when her thoughts kept bouncing between Angus’s unwelcome news and this morning’s arrow of foreign magic from the Spires. Focus, she told herself firmly, greeting Mr Brown across the freshly churned field. Jack was already with him, muddied and with rolled-up shirtsleeves, an unsurprising result of the fact that he’d clearly been helping the farmer plough. Hetta couldn’t help feeling very surplus to requirements as she walked over to them, the mud sticking to her sturdy boots.

  “Good afternoon!” she called. The plough horse gave a huff in her direction as they drew to a halt at the end of a row.

  Mr Brown, a weathered man with thinning hair, nodded politely at her. “My lord.”

  “Hetta,” Jack said stiffly, clearly still displeased from this morning.

  They talked about soil, and crops, and Mr Brown’s opinion on some of the ideas of modern farming practises she’d read about in the latest periodicals. Mr Brown’s view on these last items was that new-fangled ideas were all very well in theory, but did they work in practice or was it just ignorant toffs with fancy words and no idea how things really worked? Not that he put it in so many words, but she was unhappily conscious of both her class and inexperience—and of the fact that she was using up the man’s valuable time before the rain came tonight.

  She left him with Jack, her head swimming with talk of clover and drainage. No one expects you to know everything immediately, she told herself sternly, as a guilty kind of melancholy threatened. And it’s not like we have the money to fix everything immediately anyway, even if you did know exactly what needed to be done! But she couldn’t help remembering how much more natural than her Jack had looked in the muddy field.

  Angus’s kineticar rumbled its way back down the driveway as she emerged from the Home Wood. Good riddance, she thought half-heartedly, watching the dust trail rising from the gravel. Why did Angus have to be so complicated? Couldn’t he have just continued to stay unapologetically away so she could continue to loathe him without a second thought?

  She wanted to go and pin Wyn down on why, exactly, he’d wanted to talk to Angus alone, but Wyn was still occupied, now ensconced with the Head Ranger in his office. She knew this without really trying to know it, and Stariel metaphorically perked up its ears. She sighed and redirected its attention. she told it firmly.

  She stared at the increasingly overcast sky. The rain tonight would wash away any signs of magic. Coming to a decision, she began to pick her way up to the Standing Stones. The rising wind blew her hair into disarray beneath her hat, and she hugged her arms tightly around her coat.

  She passed one of the shepherds as she crossed the fields behind the house. He doffed his cap in grudging respect, dog shivering with nervous energy beside him.

  “Storm’s coming, milord,” he muttered, surprising her, as the shepherds tended to be monosyllabic at best.

  “I know,” she said. “But it won’t break till after dark.”

  He accepted this without question, nodded, and carried on his way, evidently having exhausted his supply of words. But maybe this was progress—the shepherds at least trusted her land-sense, though the gods knew what they thought of this new world of fae and female lords. She had a sudden urge to yell after him that they were getting new sheep breeding stock, to see if that got a reaction.

  The grey skies drained the colours from the landscape, the spring tones taking on a more wintry edge. There was still snow on the foothills, where the highest shepherds’ huts were found. Come summer, it would melt from all but the highest caps of the Indigoes, but summer felt years away as Hetta topped the small rise on which the Standing Stones stood.

  The grass was yellowed in a direct line between where Wyn had been standing and the two stones where he’d made the portal. She examined the grass, walking slowly closer along its path to the stones. They too were discoloured at the base, a reddish tint on the grey weatherworn material, and there was a bite of ozone in the air. That could be just the aftereffect of Wyn’s own lightning magic though. Or it could mean one of his family had created this morning’s portal—all his family had an underlayer of storms to their magic. Or had the faeland taken matters into its own hands? Was a faeland capable of taking that sort of action by itself? Goodness knows Stariel seems to decide quite a lot of things without my telling it to do so.

  Stariel brushed against her as she stopped in front of the stones that had formed the portal. Its communications were complicated things, big and not limited by words, but she knew it didn’t like this at all.

  she told it.

  It grew more alarmed as she crouched down in front of one of the stones to examine the discolouration more clearly. The smell of ozone was stronger here, underlaid with something metallic. Copper? Aroset had a copper signature to her magic. If only I had a fae nose. She reached out to press a fingertip against the stone, and Stariel roared up at her in warning.

  The world spun into black. She was so tightly connected to Stariel that she knew exactly what the faeland was attempting even as it happened. I desperately need to find a manual on faelands, she thought.

  9

  Unconventional Methods Of Transportation

  Wyn was sitting at his desk when he sensed the translocation. Father, he thought instinctively, fear splintering through him. He leapt to his feet, his magic rising in a wave until the room hummed with potential. Then he remembered it couldn’t be his father. King Aeros was dead. Was it DuskRose, somehow? Had the wards failed? Had something happened to Hetta?

  It was rather anticlimactic when Hetta emerged, alone and unhurt, with no scent of fae magic following her, and stumbled into his arms.

  “That was rather a dramatic entrance,
wasn’t it?” She shook her head, amused rather than alarmed. “I think Stariel interpreted my instructions a bit too liberally.”

  His heart pounded as he stared down at her. She was safe. No one was invading. He let out a long, slow breath and carefully unwound his magic, letting it seep back into his bones.

  She grinned impishly up at him and wriggled. “Thank you for welcoming me with open arms.”

  Ah. Right. He probably didn’t need to hold her quite so tightly. He forced his muscles to relax. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Surprised, but fine. And a little annoyed at Stariel’s over-protectiveness.” She frowned at him. “Are you all right? You seem jumpy.” She gave a wry laugh. “Which I suppose is fair, since I just magically appeared in your office out of thin air.”

  “I was…worried. Translocation has rarely heralded anything good, in my experience. I thought—” that you had been taken again. That Faerie had come to hurt Stariel. He didn’t want to voice his fears aloud, to give them oxygen, but he thought from the way her eyes softened that she’d guessed them anyway. “I’m glad you’re well,” he said instead. “What happened?” He’d known she’d want to try his father’s trick of translocating within her own faeland sooner or later, but she’d have mentioned it if she’d suddenly decided to experiment with that.

  She fanned her fingers out on his coat. “I told Stariel to do whatever it thought best if things went sour again at the Stones. Apparently that meant magically whisking me away and dumping me in your office at the first hint of trouble.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure whether there actually was trouble or if Stariel was just worried the Spires might reach through and eat me.”

  He froze. “You went up to the Stones?”

  Her brows rose. “Shouldn’t I have?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know how the portal re-opened earlier either. My list of ignorances is growing quite irksome.”

  Hetta made a thoughtful noise, and her eyes took on a shine of sudden speculation. “Can I learn to control the translocation, do you think? It would save me a lot of walking.”

  Laughter rose up in his throat, fond and marvelling all at once. Of course Hetta would take a magic that she’d personally suffered from at the hands of her enemies and not only find joy in the discovery but also put it to practical use.

  “I love you,” he told her, helplessly, and kissed her. The magic in him thrummed, petrichor and cardamom, curling in the spaces where their bodies touched. Stariel, of course, interrupted before they could get very far, and Hetta slid out of his grasp with a sigh and perched herself on the edge of his desk, a more battered version of the one in her own study. He dropped back into the chair behind it with his own matching sigh.

  “All right, tell me about Angus,” she said.

  Wyn reluctantly recalled his conversation with the neighbouring lord. It was difficult to focus over the roar of sheer want rioting through him, but at least Penharrow’s name was extremely cooling. “I wanted to know what was being said about me—about us—outside the estate.”

  She began to unpin her hat. “And you thought he wouldn’t tell me the worst of what they said.” It wasn’t a question, and she grumbled, half to herself: “Of course he wouldn’t. Men. Did he tell you?”

  “Some. He wanted to prick my conscience, I think. There were some very uncouth words used,” he said lightly.

  Hetta’s eyebrows rose. “And was your conscience pricked?”

  “Somewhat,” he admitted reluctantly. After a decade in the Mortal Realm, he was familiar enough with the bits of Prydinian culture that governed conduct between men and women. He didn’t agree with mortal ideas of respectability, but he couldn’t ignore how they affected Hetta. Penharrow had reminded him forcefully of the wider implications.

  He told her what they’d discussed, and his attempts to influence Penharrow for the better. From the hallway came the sound of footsteps approaching and then receding as people—the staff, mostly—walked down the passageway. His office was in a busier part of the house than Hetta’s study.

  Hetta glared down at the open accounts book when he’d finished. “I know it’s wiser not to have him as an enemy, but I’ll own I can’t bear the thought of cultivating Angus’s good opinion after what he did!” She sighed. “So thank you for mustering up some efforts at diplomacy on my behalf.”

  He shrugged. “It’s traditional for…inner members of a court to ‘muster’ on their lord’s behalf.” A consort, he’d almost said, the word cutting too close to the bone. Marriage wasn’t necessary for such a position, in Faerie, but Wyn knew things worked differently in Mortal. So far neither of them had broached the subject, and the longer it lurked, silently unacknowledged in the background, the more he fretted. He understood his own reasons for not raising it, curse the ties that bound him, but it was unlike Hetta not to state bluntly what she wanted once she’d made up her mind. Which suggested that perhaps she hadn’t truly made up her mind.

  A smile tugged at her lips. “Angus is giving me sheep.” She took a letter from her coat pocket and brandished it at him. “Can you believe it? The effrontery of the man!”

  He gave a huff of laughter, though he agreed with her general sentiment. “Well, I understand that they are a time-honoured peace offering in the North when one has caused offence. They’re not the slateshire sheep?”

  “They are indeed. You didn’t think I’d accept inferior sheep, did you? At least this will help rejuvenate our breeding stock. All that reading of periodicals has done me some good.”

  “It will also please Jack,” he added. Jack had spent a considerable amount of time waxing lyrical about Lord Penharrow’s sheep breeding programme and scheming as to how to convince him to part with some.

  “Well, that’ll be a nice change, since he only ever seems to scowl at me lately.” She put the letter down on his desk beside her hat. “Tell Jack he can sort out the details of transferring them, if they’re so close to his heart. I refuse to have any part in the matter.”

  He considered the square of stiff paper against the dark wood. “He still thinks he has a chance with you, you know. Lord Penharrow.”

  “Are you jealous?” He looked up. The grey of her eyes was very clear and penetrating. The hat had cast its shape on her auburn hair, and he had a sudden urge to reach out and tousle it into disarray.

  “I have no reason to be,” he said, picking his words carefully. He would not have a lack of trust between them. “And you are not an object for us to compete over in any case. Your choices are what matters in this, not whatever Penharrow might or might not think.” Her cheeks had gone very pink, and he stood and put his hands flat on the desk to either side of her, boxing her in. “Do you want me to be jealous, Hetta?”

  “Well, no,” she admitted, “But…” She made a helpless gesture, averting her eyes. “I don’t know, there’s something strangely thrilling about the idea of attractive men fighting over you, even if the reality would actually be very irritating. But Angus—no. Definitely not,” she said with a firmness that he liked. She shook her head. “Even if he hadn’t betrayed me and Stariel, you know how I feel about you.” She reached out, oddly shy, and smoothed his hair away from his face, and his heart melted into something soft as dawnlight.

  He wanted their relationship to be so firmly set in the world’s eyes that no one would think they could wedge them apart. And yet—was that fair, given the potential consequences? Part of him still wondered if maybe the right thing to do was leave and take those consequences with him. It fought with the other part of his nature, which growled a savage and not entirely rational song. He remembered Penharrow’s unease with his fae shape, the relief when he’d slid his wings away.

  He wasn’t jealous of Penharrow in any way except one: Penharrow was mortal.

  Veering sharply away from that thought, he confessed, “Noble sentiments aside, I would, however, very much like the persistent Lord Penharrow to see no point in persisting.” With slo
w deliberation, he undid the buttons at the wrist of her long-sleeved blouse and drew a small circle with his thumb over the exposed skin there. Her pulse fluttered bird-fast, and she swallowed, her pupils dilating.

  Stariel, of course, chose that moment to make itself known again. It bumped against him in fond affection, knocking him off balance with the force of its enthusiasm, and he cursed as he collapsed back into his seat. “High King’s horns!”

  Hetta giggled, but her expression was pained as she re-buttoned her cuff. “What if Stariel never stops interfering?” She frowned out the window, where the light was becoming greyer as the storm clouds moved in. “I’m not prepared to live a celibate existence forever.”

  “I think that sooner or later you’ll either learn to control it or Stariel will settle down by itself.” He added, voice husky: “And there exists accommodation outside of Stariel, if nothing else changes.”

  That made her laugh. “We could go to Alverness, stay overnight,” she said. “Surely there’s something we could talk about with the bank manager that could justify the visit? Or does that offend your fae morals?”

  He shook his head. “The fae have very few compunctions on the subject. From a Prydinian perspective, too few.” He still didn’t quite understand the mortal obsession with chastity, particularly in its women, and particularly as it related to marriage. Marriage in Faerie was rare and had nothing to do with either sex or inheritance.

  “Never mind what Faerie thinks—what about you?” she asked. She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “The act holds significance for you.”

  “For both of us, I would hope,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

  “You’re embarrassed.”

  She was getting too good at reading him. Or perhaps he was getting poorer at hiding his emotions. He didn’t mind, except— “It’s just that—” He broke off and groused, “I’m only a virgin in a very technical sense, Hetta. I’m not ignorant.” He was being ridiculous, given their much greater concerns as of this morning, but he did have his pride, stormwinds take it.