Féolan nodded thoughtfully. Ten minutes later, he was headed to the smithy to be fitted for his suit.
CHAPTER 13
SYLVAIN stretched, grimaced, puckered his mouth as though to cry, seemed to think better of it and opened his eyes instead. He was in Gabrielle’s arms, and he stared up at her with a searching gaze that pulled at her heart. She could not return a newborn’s intent stare or feel the weight and heat of his head in her hand without imagining how it would be to hold one of her own. Such longing was the bittersweet cost of midwifing babies, and she accepted it as fair price.
She smiled at Sylvain now, joggling him gently in her arms. Justine, sleeping upstairs, would soon be needed for feeding duty, but now the baby was content. Solange, still knitting in the chair beside Gabrielle, looked at him hungrily. Gabrielle laughed. “If I wanted to torture you, all I would have to do is keep holding this baby!” She walked over and gave the baby up into his grand-mother’s eager arms. Solange tucked the downy head under her chin and rocked, eyes closed.
“Justine seems to be doing well,” she said, her words a question.
“Yes, fine,” answered Gabrielle. “She’s tired, of course, but that’s to be expected. It was a good birth.” It had been too, once the baby was straightened around. Gabrielle had felt contented and peaceful ever since. A healthy birth never failed to fill her with wonder.
“Momma ... “
“Hmmm?” Solange was taken up with her rocking, not paying much attention. Maybe this wasn’t the right time. “What is it, Gabrielle?”
“It’s just ... well, you’ve never told me about my own birth. I just wondered how it went for you. Was it difficult? Did you have a good helper? You know, things like that.”
There was a long silence. Gabrielle hadn’t meant to upset her mother but for some reason she had.
“Mother, I’m sorry if ... it doesn’t matter. We don’t have to ... “
“No, Gabrielle, it’s all right,” Solange replied. “It’s time I told you. Past time, maybe.” She seemed frightened, Gabrielle realized with confusion. Solange rose from her chair and tiptoed the baby over to the little cradle on the floor. “Luckily this one has decided to sleep some more. Close the door, dear, so we won’t be interrupted.”
Mystified, Gabrielle did as she was bid.
“I hardly know how to begin this,” said Solange. “I have worried so long about whether and how to tell you. When I heard war was coming, I felt I must, but I’ve been avoiding it, I suppose.”
What under the stars was she talking about? Gabrielle knew no ordinary birth story could cause Solange such anxiety. What, then? She fought back the urge to interrupt.
“The year you were born, your father and I moved the court to Blanchette for more than a year. There had been a lot of pirate raids along the coast, and Jerome hadn’t full faith in the Regent at the time; you know Jerome, he thinks no one can handle things as well as he can. So, we moved so he could improve the coastal defenses and reassure the people.
“I became pregnant while we were there. I was more than halfway along when we were due to return to Castle DesChênes. But a couple of days before our departure ... well, I lost the baby.”
Gabrielle knew her mother was prone to miscarry: she had been old enough to understand the two miscarriages that had occurred after Tristan’s birth. How painful those losses must have been for her! Something in Solange’s face stopped Gabrielle from sharing her sympathy, though. Her mother was not interested in pity; she was inside the story.
“It was the first time, and I was devastated. I couldn’t face all those people knowing—the court, the servants, the Blanchette nobles. I just wanted to hide. So I insisted to Jerome that we say nothing, just leave as planned. He wanted me to stay on and rest, but I wouldn’t. We said I had suffered a slight illness, and a day later we left.
“But I was so sad. And our big convoy back to Chênier—there was no comfort there. Jerome was wonderful. He asked if I wouldn’t like to spend a few days with him at his grandfather’s summerhouse, just us. Time to heal before heading back to the bustle of the castle. Of course I said yes!”
The scene was vivid in Gabrielle’s mind: Solange a young, dark-eyed queen, struggling with a private sorrow and a public position. The relief with which she would welcome a brief retreat from the world. But how Gabrielle herself fit into this story was a mystery still. She did not ask. She held herself still, and listened.
“So we sent everyone on to Chênier, even little Dominic and his nurse, and kept only a couple of bodyguards and a maidservant with us. Oh, Jerome’s master-at-arms was not happy about it! But he argued in vain, and we set off alone.
“The house was just down the coast, toward the Pickerel River, less than a morning’s easy ride. Soon after we left, the road veered away from the ocean and ran through a forested area. I remember thinking how lovely the shade felt, how quiet it was. So soothing. And then we came upon the most terrible scene. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing at first—dead people, Gabrielle, five or six of them, murdered and left lying where they fell. It was ... I can’t tell you how awful.
“I turned away off the path, sickened, while the men debated what to do. And that’s when I heard, just faintly, a baby’s cry. I thought, That’s it, I’ve gone completely crazy. But my maid heard it too, and we followed the sound to a huge hollow log lying just off the road.”
Solange looked up from her hands, directly at Gabrielle. “It was you, Gabrielle. You were tucked into the log. I remember feeling I was in a dream as I reached in to take you out. You were so tiny. I had never felt anything so soft as the shawl you were wrapped in. And then I was holding you, and your eyes stared up at me and they were like pools of deep water dancing with light, and I think I just fell in love with you right then and there.”
Gabrielle stared. She reached for something, anything, to say.
“But what had happened?”
“We never found out for sure. The people had been ambushed by marauders, most likely. The pirates had become very bold that year and did sometimes venture inland. I imagined your mother just having time to hide you away, praying that you would be overlooked ...
“Anyway, we took you to the house. The maid and I stayed while the men went back to see the bodies decently buried. And they—and this is the oddest part—they asked in all the nearby villages and farms, but nobody knew who the people were. Nobody was missing or expected. They were complete strangers.
“I don’t know exactly when I became determined to have you for my own. Maybe that first time I looked at you, or maybe it grew in me day by day. I didn’t want you raised as an orphaned kitchen girl. I wanted you to be mine. And somehow, I persuaded your father. We returned to Chênier a few weeks later with a baby. After eighteen months away, nobody thought it strange. Dominic had known a baby was coming, so your appearance made perfect sense to him. And we didn’t visit the coast again for two years.
“To this day I don’t know how it worked out. The first time someone asked me your birthday, and I made it up, my heart pounded so hard that I thought I would faint. But no one ever questioned my word. Hardly anyone knew, you see, how we had found you.”
“Who was the maid?” asked Gabrielle. But she knew.
“Your nurse, Ella,” confirmed Solange. And then her lip trembled, and she was crying. “Oh, Gabrielle, if I did wrong not to tell you, I’m sorry. When you were little, there seemed no way to explain so you would understand. And then, when you were older, it seemed too late. And, if I am honest, I was afraid to tell you. I just wanted to be your real mother.”
“You are my real mother!” Gabrielle spoke hotly as if defending her mother against unknown accusers. “You saved my life. You loved me. You raised me as a daughter of House DesChênes. I don’t care if I was born on the moon, you are my mother!”
It was the only thing she was sure of. The rest was in turmoil. Solange was weeping now with relief, and as Gabrielle went over to hold her, she didn’t know
if her mother’s story changed everything, or nothing. She would have to go over it in her heart many times before she understood.
CHAPTER 14
FÉOLAN sat outside his barracks, polishing his armor. He loathed it. It made him feel trapped, not protected, and the thought of doing battle in such a lumbering getup filled him with panic. Every strength and skill he relied on when fighting—speed, agility, precision, his keen eyesight and hearing—was hampered by the awkward weight of the metal casing.
Well. He wouldn’t be enduring it much longer.
Féolan reviewed in his mind all he had learned. He was relieved that the information he had gathered from the Stonewater Elves who had fought the Gref Orisé in the last war and passed on to the Verdeau Council was accurate. As far as he could tell, there were still no archers among the Gref Orisé. Their armor seemed little changed from the descriptions he had heard, and from his work at the smithy he guessed that, as before, it could be pierced by arrows but only from a heavy bow at close range. And the armor plates were still, for the most part, attached by leather, which could, potentially, be broken with a skilled or lucky thrust.
He knew more now. He knew there would be relatively few horsemen due to the difficulties of traversing the mountain passes. Nor would the Gref Orisé travel in armor, unless they anticipated attack. (And now he knew why!) When they came over the mountains, the conscripts would be carrying the heavy armor, saving the regular soldiers’ strength for fighting.
The business of the conscripts was new too, and Féolan wondered what use could be made of this information. The defending army, ideally, should concentrate its efforts on the trained soldiers who came in the second wave. But how could the front ranks safely be ignored or avoided? He felt pity for these men, who had been pouring into the camp over the last week and were kept in a guarded compound. Their fate was to be a Human shield, killed brutally for a cause that availed them nothing.
And he had learned, finally, what he had come here to discover. He’d been working at the forge when Commander Col himself strode past. One of his officers was having a breastplate made, and seeing him there Col stopped. “Oh, Ryvent. Be at my tent at four bells, strategy meeting. The last troops are arriving next week.”
“The other passes will still keep sentry forces as we discussed, though, Sir?” asked the unfortunate Ryvent.
He was rewarded with a fierce glare. “We discuss these matters in my tent because they are not for general broadcast, Ryvent. Control your mouth.”
Féolan had already guessed by the sheer size of the garrison that there would be a single, focused thrust through the mountains. Now he was certain.
It was time to go. He hadn’t learned anything of great import, but if he could get across the mountains in time he could, perhaps, tell the Humans where to gather their armies. And he had something to tell his own people too. If the Gref Orisé conquered the Basin, Elvish life would be forever changed. They might hide in the forest for a long time, but they would never again roam free and unhindered.
GABRIELLE LOOKED OUT over the battlements, shivering in her cloak. It was a still clear night, piercingly cold. Moonlight flooded silver over the snow. Another full moon. It was nearly two months since Sylvain’s birth. Despite the cold, winter’s grip on Verdeau was weakening. The days were longer and milder now, and on sunny days the icicles dripped, and the roads became treacherous with slush and mud. Soon snowmelt would begin in earnest, and the Verdeau armies would be on the move.
She thought back to that afternoon’s War Council. The troops, she had been told, would start to muster in a fortnight and begin the trek to the Krylian foothills by month’s end. They would take up their position before the mountains were passable.
“But where?” she had asked.
“That’s the question which has occupied us through this long winter,” said General Fortin. “We do not know where the Greffaires will cross over: at one of the three passes, or perhaps all. We must be prepared at each pass, yet dividing our forces increases the chance that they will break through and advance into Verdeau.
“The western pass, on our side at least, is narrow and treacherous. It would be most difficult to move a sizeable army through it. The Maronnais are posting a small sentry force there, with a standing request to Barilles to send reinforcements. The middle and eastern passes both seem possible. We will guard the Skyway Pass, the Maronnais the Eastern Gateway—again with a request to Gamier for additional troops. We also need to leave a sizeable force within Verdeau, in case we fail to stop them in the foothills.”
“What if they don’t come, after all this?” It was Poutin. “What if all this fuss and expense is for nothing?”
“Then we will have erred on the side of caution, and we will hope the people will forgive us,” said Jerome impatiently. “They will not forgive us, on the other hand, if we allow them to be slaughtered through carelessness.”
“They will come.” Gabrielle surprised herself by voicing what she had only meant to think.
“What makes you so sure?” snapped Poutin.
How she wished she had said nothing. “I have dreamed it,” she confessed, bracing herself for Poutin’s scorn. But the memory of the dream that had stalked her sleep through the long winter must have been reflected in her face because Poutin on the verge of ridicule, fell silent.
In her dream, Gabrielle struggled to join together a rising tide of dismembered bodies. They were everywhere, awash with blood—legs, arms, trunks and the worst, the heads, crying out and imploring her—and the more she tried to match them up and piece them together, the more they piled up around her. In the backdrop of her dream, the battle raged, unseen but terrifying, unquestionably real. She was sure now. The Greffaires were coming.
“Dominic stays with the reserve army, at the crossroads north of Chênier,” continued Jerome. “He is charged with the defense of Verdeau proper and the royal seat. Tristan and I will travel to La Maronne to meet the enemy. Gabrielle, it is time to call in the bonemenders who will serve our forces and decide who stays with the home force and who travels to the central pass.”
Gabrielle had nodded agreement. She had not revealed her intention to undertake the journey herself.
She would go, though. The only question was how.
NOW GABRIELLE LEANED over the north wall of the tower and found the silvery gleam of the Avine River. Pulling her cloak tight around her shoulders, she stared at the northern horizon, just a guessed-at shape of denser black against the night sky. Would Elf eyes see the contours of the land clearly, she wondered, even in the dark? Danaïs and Féolan had once pointed out a goshawk that was no more than a black speck in the sky. Gabrielle had thought they were pretending, teasing her, until they had proved their skill. Standing against the far wall of her clinic, each had read aloud from a heavy, leather-bound herbal that she held open against her chest. At that distance, all she could see was a meaningless blur on the page.
Gabrielle imagined the journey upriver, through the farthest reaches of La Maronne to the edge of the Krylians. She thought of the Greffaires, preparing for war, unseen behind the curtain of the mountains. And she thought of Féolan and his people, hidden away in the forests and valleys of the Maronnais highlands. Did they too prepare for war?
IN THE WARMTH of her chamber, Gabrielle lit a fire in the tiny stove, wrapped a blanket over her nightgown and sat herself on the thick patterned rug before the fire. There was no point in trying to sleep yet, not with her mind so full of questions.
A sudden wail from Sylvain drifted down the hall, followed by the muffled voices of his parents. Having Dominic’s family here had saved her, she thought. Justine and her baby, the two children, had provided the best possible distraction from her own disquiet. Madeleine and Matthieu blew through the castle like a couple of charming whirlwinds, full of life and laughter and endless demands. And Justine had always been a good friend.
But oh, she missed Tristan. He alone of her family, unimpressed by her grave de
meanor and strange power, brought out her playfulness and sense of humor. She missed his teasing as much as she missed his warm heart. He had stayed to dinner tonight, shoveling in an astonishing amount of food. “Don’t they feed you at the barracks?” she had demanded.
“They feed us lots, but they don’t feed us well. Not like this,” he had explained. “I need to dig deep while I can.”
“Careful you don’t throw up like I did,” cautioned Matthieu.
“Never you fear, my lad. I can hold my grub with the best of them,” boasted Tristan, grinning through a mouthful of pheasant. He reached past his older brother and tickled Matthieu in the ribs, then had to tickle Madeleine under the table just to be fair. The two children squirmed and giggled. It would be a long time, perhaps, before they would share such a light-hearted family meal again.
And she missed Féolan, still. His memory was sharp as a shard of glass. Gabrielle went to the carved box and pulled out the tiny necklace her mother had given her. “You were wearing it when I found you,” Solange had explained. “I tried to save the shawl too, but the mice got into the trunk where it was stored.”
The necklace was silver, the finest work she had ever seen. Tiny oval links led to a polished green stone, small as a droplet, embedded in a delicate silver setting. Gabrielle held it now in the palm of her hand. It made her feel strange to feel it on her skin, to think it had once circled her own neck. Sometimes when she held it she imagined things—snatches of song, voices, a woman’s eyes—and would then put it away hurriedly, ashamed of the weakness that made her draw memories out of her own wishful thinking.
CHAPTER 15
THE garrison was more heavily guarded now that the invasion was imminent, for conscripts were not the only ones who might lose their nerve and desert. Féolan, reasoning the best way to slip past a sentry was to be the sentry, had volunteered for duty but been denied because of his stutter. A bitter jest, he thought, that a charade meant to protect him should cost so dear.
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