Finally I asked the priestess of Moranu for advice. She visited me in private, as I really couldn’t walk or even ride out to her chapel in the woods. I felt as if the least untoward movement would make the strained skin of my belly pop open, like an overripe fruit bursting in the heat.
“I hope you don’t mind if I keep my feet up,” I said to her, by way of greeting, and gestured for her to sit. The silver-haired woman had a lovely scent about her, one that reminded me of Ash, like the forest at night.
She surveyed me with a bit of a smile where I reclined on a chaise, my feet bare and propped on a pile of pillows. “I do not mind, Your Highness. I remember well that final month of my pregnancies—it seemed they’d never end.”
“You’ve had babies?” I was intrigued. The priests of Glorianna and the priestesses of Danu usually observed celibate lives.
“Five.” She nodded. “All grown and leading their own lives with their own children.”
“Do you miss them?” It was intrusive of me to ask, but I wondered so much about my own future, how my life would be.
She didn’t seem to mind. “I lead a full life. And I see them from time to time.”
“And their father . . .”
“Fathers.” She grinned at my surprise. “The priestesses of Moranu traditionally do not marry, but take many lovers. She is the goddess of the night and the moon, after all. Sensual frolics in the dark please her greatly.”
Her words brought to mind a vivid image of the nighttime frolicking Ash and I had engaged in, under Moranu’s moon, and my face heated. She chuckled knowingly. “How can I be of service to you, Your Highness?”
“I am told you met my sister, Queen Andromeda of the Tala.” I’d discovered bluntness worked well for me. It served when fancy politics did not. It also tended to elicit similar frankness from the person I spoke to, if I’d chosen well. Apparently I had.
“Yes. And King Rayfe as well. They met with each other in my chapel.”
My head spun and I tipped it against the high back of the chaise. Though, in truth, I wasn’t that surprised. “When?”
“During the siege,” she answered easily.
“So you’re saying she somehow sneaked out of Windroven to meet with our enemy.”
“She sought to stop the war. King Rayfe would not—could not—give up the fight for her hand in marriage. She hated watching people—yours, hers, and the Tala—die in such a futile struggle.”
“My kidnapping . . . she arranged it?”
“That I don’t know, Your Highness.”
A renewed sense of betrayal swirled around inside my heart. This. This was what they all were lying about. Andi had pretended to trade herself for me, but it had all been an elaborate ruse. Because she knew Hugh would never have given up the fight for anyone but me.
Because he’d loved me more than even his sworn word.
The tears balled up in my throat, choking me. I wiped sweat from my forehead instead, my pores at least shedding water.
The priestess waited quietly, as if she perceived my struggle and knew only I could find my way through it.
“How did King Rayfe know to come to you?” I focused on the real point of this conversation.
“The Tala look to Moranu in particular. Her chapels serve as way stations for them. As places of refuge, should they need it.”
“So there are Tala nearby.” I studied her as she firmed her lips against confirming that. The evergreen scent of the truth wafted through the air. “Don’t worry—I don’t intend to hunt them out. What I want is someone to take a letter to my sister.”
“Certainly, Your Highness.”
“Just like that? They’d have to pass by Ordnung, which can’t be safe these days.”
Her lips curved in a secretive smile. “There are other paths. Though I’ll deny it, should you ever claim I said so.”
Funny that I’d made that up for Kir’s sake and it was true. Hopefully he wouldn’t accidentally blunder his way into Annfwn after all. But no—Andi’s barrier would prevent it.
Just in case, however, in my letter to her I hinted at an unexpected visitor who might be coming their way.
Ursula’s procession climbed the winding road to Windroven, an easier journey for her this time, in the bright summer sun, and with a much smaller entourage. Really it looked to be only her special squadron. My letter had taken some time to reach her and she’d sent a reply from Branli, of all places. What she and her Hawks had been doing there piqued my curiosity no end—and made me nervous, as I’d sent Kir in that direction.
Some people turned out to witness her arrival and offer gifts of summer fruit and fresh cheese. They received the High King’s heir with reserved welcome. Though some factions had felt the High King and King Erich should be present for my lying-in—mainly for the cachet of it all—most everyone else seemed just as glad not to deal with a major state visit.
They reached the top and Ursula’s clear gray gaze found mine—then dropped to my burgeoning belly.
“Danu damn me—are you going to pop?” She gave me a cheeky grin with it and I rolled my eyes. The relief that she wasn’t angry felt like a cork pulled, my fermented regret draining away.
“I certainly feel that way, so don’t poke me or you might be sorry.”
She looked less thin, but still harried, still tired, her cheekbones too sharp and her narrow lips colorless in her tanned face. But her smile for me was genuine and her love smelled as warm and comforting as baked bread. I breathed her in and mourned a little that I would lose this gift of knowing. It would have helped before this to know Ursula loved me, despite her hard-shelled ways.
“I’m so glad you came,” I told her and took her hands in mine. Her fingers always seemed to be cold. “It means everything to me.”
She squeezed my fingers in return. “I’m grateful you asked. Otherwise I would have had to barge in and boss you around again.”
I laughed and linked my arm through hers, leading her inside and letting Dafne and Gilly settle the others. “And, tell me, how angry is our father that I told him not to come?”
“I don’t know—we haven’t spoken.” She said it neutrally, but with a note of finality that meant she wouldn’t discuss it further. “I could ask the same of King Erich.”
“I don’t know—we haven’t spoken.” I wrinkled my nose at her.
“If the kings show up on Windroven’s threshold, will you really turn them away?”
“Truthfully, I have no idea. I thought I’d cross that bridge if and when it happened.”
“They believe you will, which is enough.”
“Do you think so?” We settled into chairs before the large windows that overlooked the ocean in my favorite private sitting room. Books lined the shelves, some that Dafne had salvaged from our visit to Ordnung, others that we’d been collecting here and there. Glorianna’s chapels had yielded up some interesting finds.
“They must or they’d be here already,” she observed. “You’ve been working the politics quite well—I’m impressed.”
I laughed and poured some chilled white wine for us both. “I’d be offended at your surprise if I wasn’t so flattered to have your approval.”
“You never needed anyone’s approval, Ami—or rather, everyone always loved you, so you knew you already had it.”
“Oh, you have no idea.” I shook my head a little for the needy girl I’d been even a short time ago. Who still drove me, but not so insistently. “So why were you in Branli?”
She raised her auburn eyebrows and sipped her wine. “Should I ask how you knew that?”
“Your messenger brought the letter personally. I asked after the weather at Ordnung and she said she didn’t know but fall had come early to Branli.”
“Indiscreet of her. And Branli is quite a bit farther to the north. Winter comes early there.”
“I imagine she thought you would not keep secrets from your own sister.”
Ursula smiled blandly. “She’d be wrong.”
“Branli is also in the west and borders the Northern Wastes, as I recall.”
“You always did have a good memory.”
“Looking for another way into Annfwn, are you?”
She blinked innocent eyes at me. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Disgruntled, I sat back in my chair, smelling nothing but wine and ocean air. Then dug out the pillow behind me and tossed it to the floor. “I invited Andi to be here, too.”
That surprised her in truth. She set her mug down and leaned forward, elbows on her leather-clad bony knees. “And how did you get a message to her?”
I smiled prettily and batted my eyes. “Secret.”
“Ha!” She barked out the laugh. “But I’m still not spilling mine.”
“Your prerogative.” Unhappy with my position, I reached for the pillow again and groaned a little at the stretch.
Ursula snagged it easily with her long arm and handed it to me, watching me with something like horror, though it didn’t smell that way.
“I’m glad you’re providing the heirs,” she remarked, “because I am not ever doing that.”
“It just looks bad right now. When you fall in love someday, you’ll want to have his baby, I’m sure.” I kind of trailed off then, remembering the jokes about Ursula and her sword, or that she must be a lover of other women. “Or hers,” I added.
Ursula snorted. But then, she’d been hearing those rumors longer than I had. “Sure you should be so glib promising that? I’ve heard that you’ve had all sorts of offers and haven’t bit on a one.”
“Hugh hasn’t even been dead a year,” I snapped at her. “I’m hardly going to dally with a new lover at this time. Besides the fact that I look like a three-days-dead bloated cow.” I tucked away the thought that I’d already done more than dally with Ash, but nobody needed to know about that. In my mind, it still somehow didn’t quite count as real.
“You look as radiant and perfect as Glorianna Herself,” Ursula returned in a mild tone, “as I’m sure you know, since you’ve never had a shortage of mirrors.”
“You’re just annoyed that I suggested your true love might be female.”
She laughed without humor. “If I got annoyed by that kind of hinting, I would be walking around pissed off nonstop. No way to live.”
I felt a pang of sympathy at the desolate sound in her voice, the hollow scent of a long-buried misery. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She was back to brusque. “So no hunting for true love again for you yet?”
The pillow was poking into my spine, so I pulled it out again with a heartfelt sigh. “I don’t think you get it more than once.”
“What do you mean?” She wrinkled her forehead and I had to stop myself from telling her not to.
“True love. That’s the ‘true’ part—you get one chance and that’s it. Mine has come and gone. Maybe you have to be young and innocent for it to work. I’m okay with that.”
“Truly.” She even smelled astonished. “I’m amazed you think you won’t find love again.”
“This coming from the woman who has never so much as tripped over a guy—or gal,” I had to insert, to needle her—“in her entire life?”
“We’re not all built the same way, don’t want the same things.”
“Did you know the priestesses of Moranu don’t marry, but instead take many lovers throughout their lives?”
“Interesting. I’d heard rumors of it. I think they keep it pretty quiet. Why—are you considering that?”
“Why not?”
“Because High King Uorsin would go into such a rage that he’d lock you in a tower for the rest of your life?”
“I’m a grown woman.”
“And he’s still your liege.”
“Then he’d have to lock up all of Avonlidgh, too.”
“Don’t think he wouldn’t, Ami.” Ursula frowned at me in deadly earnest. “Tread carefully with him. Avonlidgh is one of the jewels in his crown. He’d lose Duranor first.”
“I wasn’t being serious,” I replied irritably, shifting again in my chair.
“Do you ever sit still?”
“My back hurts. Don’t criticize until you’ve been in my shoes, which are much larger, by the way, my feet are so damn swollen.”
She looked alert. “Your back hurts? Isn’t that a sign of labor?”
“How would you know? Besides, my back hurts all the time lately.”
“I pay attention. Women talk—even women soldiers.” She sent a maid for Marin and I grumbled about it. “Indulge me.” She patted my hand. “I’m trying to be a good aunt.”
“Auntie Essla. I can’t wait to hear that.”
Ursula gave me a funny look. “You haven’t called me Essla since you were little.”
I shrugged one shoulder but smiled to see that I’d touched her. I owed her that and more. “I might have figured out how to say your name right, but I’ll never forget my big sister. Thank you for putting up with me.”
She reached over and tugged a lock of my hair. “Always, Baby Girl.”
28
To my satisfaction, Ursula was wrong. Marin said the birth wouldn’t be long off, however. The days passed while all of us waited—them for me to go into labor and me for word from Andi.
Though it didn’t come. Ursula knew I fretted over it and offered to send some of her scouts to look. I refused. Where would they go? Andi knew the way well enough. If she was coming—which she clearly wasn’t—she would have been here already.
The day I went into labor was the day a squall from off the ocean hit Windroven with snarling fury, dashing itself against the stone walls. Marin set me up in my bedchamber—in the bed Hugh and I had shared, where we’d made this babe, when I thought that was how our whole lives would be—and I winced as the wind hit the shutters.
“Is this a bad omen?” I asked Marin.
“Tut, Princess,” she answered with a brisk shake of her head. “Just the sisters having some fun, blowing off some steam.”
Ursula had dragged in her favorite chair from my sitting room, reclining in it and propping her feet on the bed. Keeping me company. I’d asked my other ladies to wait elsewhere, so, while Marin went to assemble her supplies, it was just she and I.
“I’m sorry Andi didn’t make it in time,” she offered.
“I knew she wouldn’t. She said she couldn’t leave Annfwn. I just . . .” Hoped.
Ursula had gone as still as a cat with her eye on a helpless bird. “Oh?” Her tone was easy, friendly. Too neutral. “When exactly did she say that?”
I waved an irritable hand at her. “You told me that—when you talked to her. At the border.”
“Uh-uh, Baby Sister.” Her gray eyes glittered. “I know she didn’t. Don’t play your games with me. When did you talk to her?”
“Glorianna teach me to keep my mouth shut,” I groaned, dropping my head on the pillows.
“If Glorianna had that much power, she’d have done it long before. I’ve certainly prayed hard enough for it.”
“Very funny.”
“Stop ducking the question and tell me.”
“Tell me what you were doing in Branli,” I retorted.
“This isn’t a game of let’s trade secrets. If you somehow managed to talk to Andi, then I . . .” Her mouth fell open and her feet hit the floor. “Good Danu—you went to Annfwn after all.”
I folded my arms and glared at her.
She pointed a bony finger at me. “You did! You went straight from Ordnung, I’ll bet. Who helped you? Had to be Erich. What is his plan, Ami? Does he hope to use you to invade Annfwn and use her as a lever against the High King?”
A contraction ran through me then and I concentrated on it, breathing into the pain as Marin had taught me. Ursula took my hand and held it, offering encouragement. And returned to badgering me as soon as it was over.
“I’m amazed at you. After you were so self-righteous about Andi being a traitor, and you openly defy
the High King’s command? What in the Twelve Kingdoms were you thinking?”
“I didn’t openly defy him,” I muttered.
“Danu take me,” Ursula breathed. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Well, it was really tough,” I snapped at her. “I didn’t get to change my gown five times a day, and you know how I live for that.”
She only raised an eyebrow and looked amused.
“I had to find out for myself, okay? I had to look Andi in the eye and hear for myself what happened.” As I said it, I realized that had truly been my reason to go. All the others had been convenient excuses to do that one thing. Though I’d needed to prove something to myself, too—that was clear in retrospect—and I’d done that, as well, hadn’t I?
“And did you?” She seemed curiously tense. A different kind. The sharp scent of guilt wafted off of her. And the slippery smell of lies.
“She told me the same story you did,” I replied evenly, watching her relax. Glorianna take them both. “Which means you’re both lying to me.”
Her tension tightened into wariness. “Why do you think that?”
I made an unladylike noise at her. “I can smell it on you. I don’t understand why you two think I can’t handle the truth.”
“It’s not that,” she replied in a frank tone, her gray gaze serious. A sense of relief dulled the painful edges of my dread over what the truth might really be. At least she wasn’t pretending anymore. It helped, too, in a personal and foolish way, that they weren’t only protecting their delicate baby sister. “The full story doesn’t change the reality of how Hugh died—or the tragedy of it. But it might change how you choose to act upon it. You, the Queen of Avonlidgh.”
Another contraction took me, harder, more wrenching, and she held my hand. It struck me as funny, for no good reason, that though there were only two sisters here, the room was crowded with our public faces and the interests of everyone who wanted a stake in us and our lives.
“Tell me, then,” I told her, when I could breathe, “while I’m just Ami and you’re not Uorsin’s heir. Pretend you’re just my sister.”
She gripped my hand with ferocity, nearly crushing the bones. “Don’t you see, Ami? We are never only that. We’re always our responsibilities. Otherwise Andi would be here. Otherwise you would have known the truth from the start. This is what we were born into—each one of us—and this is how we’ll die.”
The Tears of the Rose Page 28