Midwinter

by Matthew Sturges

  "I still do not understand," said Mauritane looking down.

  The Queen smiled gently, taking his chin in her hand. "It makes no difference to Us."

  He met Raieve in the hallway outside the main dining hall. She, Satterly, and Silverdun were being feted there, the standard complement of nobility and would-be nobility hanging on their every word, laughing at their jokes and racing to fill their cups.

  "I had to get away from them all," she said. "I want nothing more to do with this place."

  "I was coming to find you," he said. "I'm about to go home."

  "I see," she said flatly.

  "I wanted to say goodbye."

  She raised an eyebrow. "You haven't yet arranged my escort back to Avalon."

  "Come to my office in the morning," Mauritane said, slowly. "I'll have someone there take care of you."

  "Oh." She turned away.

  "Raieve…"

  "What? What do you want from me?"

  "I just want you to know that I am glad to have known you."

  She looked at him, and he looked back.

  "I won't forget you," he said.

  She nodded. "I…" she began, struggling with the words. "I'm sorry about everything."

  "There's nothing to be sorry about," he whispered. He put his arms around her and clutched her to him.

  "If you're ever in Avalon…" she began, but tears began to come, and she pushed him away. "You know how I feel." She ran off down the hallway and disappeared.

  Silverdun walked with Mauritane to his home on the Boulevard Laurwelana. "I've spoken with Satterly," he said. "We're returning to Sylvan in the morning. There's much to be done there."

  "You spoke of the temple," said Mauritane. "Have you become an Arcadian then?"

  "I don't know," Silverdun said. "Let us say that I have reopened the option. For Satterly's part, I don't know if he's more excited about looking after lost changelings or the lost human woman he left there." He smiled briefly. "What will you do, Mauritane?"

  "I'm going home," Mauritane said. "I'm going to talk to my wife, try to pick up the pieces of our marriage. There may yet be some love for me in her heart."

  "Purane-Es was a liar and a fool," said Silverdun. "You mustn't take anything he said too seriously."

  "We'll find out, won't we?" said Mauritane. They were at the door of Mauritane's building. "I am glad you were with me, Silverdun. I knew I could count on you, and you never disappointed me."

  "If I recall correctly, you threatened to kill me if I did."

  Mauritane nodded. "That's true," he said.

  They embraced. "Come visit us up in Sylvan when you get the chance," he said.

  "I'll do that. Goodbye, Silverdun."

  "Goodbye."

  Silverdun watched him go in and turned away from the building. The sun overhead was warm and bright, and he felt truly blessed for the first time in memory. He looked out over the Seelie Grove, its lush vegetation buried under a carpet of snow, and watched amazed as the first tiny patches of snow there began to melt, dripping away in tiny rivulets. It was beautiful.

  Mauritane's keys had been taken from him years ago. He rang the bell, and when only a servant answered, his heart fell from his chest into his stomach. The steward made him wait in his own parlor. He sat uncomfortably in a high-backed chair. The furniture was different-he felt like a stranger here.

  After too long of a wait, Lady Anne made her entrance, dressed neck to toe in black.

  "Captain Mauritane," she said, curtseying. "Your unexpected presence is a pleasure."

  Mauritane stood and dismissed the servant.

  "Wait a moment," the Lady Anne called after the steward. "Captain Mauritane and I require an escort."

  The servant glanced between Mauritane and the Lady Anne and cowered in a corner.

  Mauritane reached for her hand. She pulled it gently from his grasp, her pleasant smile never moving.

  "What is this? An escort? And you in widow's weeds?" he said.

  The smile faltered a bit. "If you're here to pay your respects for my husband, there will be a formal ceremony in the Ash Grove tomorrow."

  Mauritane's strength left him and he fell into the chair. "I am your husband," he said. "I am."

  "Not any more," said the Lady Anne. "I am the wife of Purane-Es, and I am in mourning. So if you would please excuse me, I have much to do."

  "You can't mean this," he whispered, his voice shaking.

  "It was good of you to come, Captain. I will pass your respects along to my husband's family."

  Mauritane stared at her, unable to move.

  "Is there something else?" Her eyes and lips were as delicately positioned as her gown and her jewelry. She was a mask, impenetrable.

  He said nothing.

  "I see," she said. "Goodbye, then." She spun, her black skirts swirling around her, and hurried from the room.

  Mauritane remained in the chair, staring at nothing, until the servant regained his composure and finally asked him to leave. As he stepped out of his home for the last time, he felt a splash on his shoulder. Looking up, he saw water dripping from the icicles above the door.

  Chapter 41

  the city of mab

  Queen Mab reclined on a floating platform overlooking the construction site of her new city. The platform was covered and decorated with flowers; a hundred different varieties. She plucked a purple foxglove from its stem and chewed it thoughtfully. Behind the chaise where she lay a servant fanned her in a steady rhythm.

  The scene below pleased her. The new city of Mab would be larger than the last. Her architects had arrived at a design that was both pleasing to the eye and also more imposing, better to send forth into battle and easier to defend. Her apartments were now being installed over the superstructure. From them she could peer over the battlements, calling out orders to her troops below, the clouds near enough to touch.

  All was on schedule; the base of the city would be finished before the summer quakes came to topple it. She would fly again soon.

  Some of her ministers could still not understand why she preferred her flying cities. They were children; they whispered behind her back as if she could not hear every word spoken and they plotted as if their schemes were not as transparent as gossamer. But they were easy to manipulate and that was all that mattered.

  They prattled on and on about finding new lands on which they could settle and build their staid villas. They wanted metropolises that would stand for millennia, never moving, testaments to the builders. Long ago she had tried to explain to them that nothing was ever built that did not one day fall to ruin. They pointed to the Great Seelie Keep in response and she only smiled behind her hand. That too, she told them, would one day fall, and the sound of its falling would be heard across many worlds. She would see to it.

  But she was a gracious empress, was she not? She allowed them their invasion of Avalon, let them see for themselves what a trouble it was. She sent only the worst commanders, certainly, and purposefully gave them conflicting orders so that it all came to nothing. It had taken many years and many lives for them to see their folly, but that was so often what was required. It was a lesson that every generation needed to learn.

  She'd come to understand that there was no idea so foolish that each new age could not revive it.

  Soon the Chambers of Elements and Motion would come to life again. She had cast her net far and wide across her empire for the best masters and this new crop was every bit the equal of the one she'd lost to the Seelie. This time the Chambers would be better protected; she would not be beaten the same way twice. And in the Secret City, high in the clouds, so high that land could not even be seen from its decks, her Magi were turning out Hy Pezho's weapons by the scores. Building them required blood and death and innocence, but it was worth the price. That which would bring Regina Titania to her knees was worth whatever she paid for it. In the end, humbling the Stone Queen was all that truly mattered. Everything else fell away; everything else was trans
ient. Only She remained, and only Her abasement would be meaningful.

  As for Hy Pezho himself, well, he had been a piece of work. So much like his father. And he had come to the same end. This was another cycle that repeated across the centuries; the men who believed they could best her. Had any of them bothered to lift their noses from their red-inked books of thaumatics and instead perused a work of history, they would have discovered that there were reasons that Mab had ruled for as long as she had. But they never learned. It grew so very, very tiresome.

  Ah, but there was something else coming, wasn't there? For the first time in many, many years, Mab had begun to have those special dreams, the dreams of foretelling. As always with powerful things, the dreams were both insistent and vague. Someone was coming. Someone would come to her.

  And everything would change.

  But that was later; there was no use putting this in the hands of her court seers. They would only equivocate and argue and pen endless discourses that amounted to nothing. She'd once split a prophet down the middle with a wave of her finger to alleviate the boredom of him. The others had been more careful after that, but not for long enough. Never anything for long enough!

  But this city before her would last awhile, and that was good. And beyond it another, and another, and another.

  Epilogue

  One Year Later

  The road Mauritane walked along was lined with wild strawberries and raspberry bushes. He stopped from time to time and picked a few of the tart, pink strawberries and washed them down with water from the stream beyond. Up the road, a tiny village stood at the bank of a wide river, smoke from their cooking fires rising from the houses and disappearing into the blue sky.

  He shifted his pack to his left shoulder and continued walking, conscious of the absence of the military sword at his waist. He closed his eyes and smelled the honeysuckle, opened them and looked up again at the potent blue of the sky.

  After leaving Sylvan a month ago, though, it was hard to imagine any place more beautiful. Sylvan during Firstcome was a sight to behold. With the coating of dirty snow gone, the city had come once more into its own. The mists were lifted and the valley was cleansed by the rains of Firstcome that poured over the temple and the city below, washing away the grime of the cold season that had passed, washing away the ashes and the bloodstains of last year's bitter struggle. All was still not well in the west and perhaps never would be. One battle would not solve anything, and the rancor between the Arcadians and the nobility there would not be washed away as easily as the remains of the battle.

  And yet, strides had been made. Eloquet had, at Mauritane's relentless urging, consented to join the Royal Guard. He'd risen quickly in the ranks over the last year, thanks in part to his reputation from the Battle of Sylvan, and in greater measure to his skills as a leader and his love of country. He would someday make a fine replacement. An Arcadian as Captain of the Guard. That would be something.

  Looking ahead, Mauritane could see a figure kneeling in a garden outside one of the houses. He changed his course and left the road, angling toward the lone gardener.

  At the temple in Sylvan, he'd shared a bottle of wine with Satterly and Silverdun. They'd spent a few languorous hours renewing their acquaintance. They told stories from their days at Crete Sulace and talked about their lives now and how things had changed. They compared scars and relived old wounds. They remembered lost friends. It had been good.

  Mauritane crunched through a litter of leaves from the oak trees overhead. A small field of wheat was all that separated him from the village now. The woman kneeling in her garden looked up at him and froze. She stood, slowly, dusting her hands off on her long dress. Shading her eyes with her hand, she looked across the swaying stalks of grain and called out his name. She leaped out of the garden and sprinted toward him.

  The sky overhead was so blue; Mauritane thought his heart might break. Across the river, the bright sun of Avalon began to angle downward toward the mountains. Mauritane let his pack fall to the ground and ran across the field to meet her.

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