by Sharon Shinn
Royven eyed me uncertainly. “You’re different this morning,” he said at last.
“Am I?” I said. “I feel very much like myself. What kind of project do you have for me today? I have so much energy I must do something with it or my head will start steaming.”
Jaxon burst out laughing. “So much for Alora putting its spell on you,” he said. “Most humans drowse away their time here, but not Princess Zara.”
I smiled prettily. “It’s a quality I get from my mother,” I said. Truer than he knew.
“Some of my friends are building a cottage,” Royven said. “Do you feel like helping out with some hard physical labor?”
“Your idea of a cottage is half a wall and one or two weight-bearing beams,” I retorted. “I wouldn’t think such a construction would be all that taxing.”
Royven came to his feet and held out his hand. “Then let’s go join them.”
I stood up without his aid, flashing my palm at him. “Gold again,” I said. He looked so startled I had to laugh. I added, “It just felt right to put the pieces back on.”
Rowena watched us all this time, smiling slightly. Whatever else looked different to me in the clarity provided by the potion, Rowena was unchanged. So beautiful that she was dangerous to look upon. If there were hazards in Alora, they were embodied in its queen. “Indeed, it is clearer every day why your mother felt safe sending you here to us,” she said. “Go. Enjoy your day with Royven.”
I did enjoy the day, though I hoped I never again had reason to try to complete a construction project with the aid of aliora laborers. What a hopelessly disorganized bunch! No wonder none of the structures in the kingdom had finished walls or tiled floors. It was a wonder any buildings were standing at all.
Royven’s friends were the ones who had marched past the day I worked on my dress with Cressida’s girls. Apparently that morning they had been gathering the materials they needed to build a house for a young couple who were expecting a baby. In addition to the logs and branches they’d collected, they’d rolled a few stones up from some gully and woven a couple long lengths of hemp and laid out half an acre of wide, flat leaves to plait into a roof. The young mother-to-be—thin as any other aliora except for her great round belly—had invested some time in procuring materials of her own: yards of fabric to serve as curtains to divide the rooms, stacks of baskets to hold household items, platters of food to serve the hungry workers.
There were, of course, no hammers, no saws, no nails.
It was clear from the beginning that whatever resulted from this effort, it would be nothing like an actual house.
Even so, everyone fell to work with a will. I was still filled with tremendous energy and, with such an untidy group, my natural tendency to order others about came to the fore. So I consulted the floor plan, divided the workers into teams, and directed the labor for the rest of the day. I don’t flatter myself that I’m any kind of carpenter but I do think this particular cottage went up with more efficiency than most houses in Alora, and it looked more likely to survive a strong wind, too.
Once we were done, the soon-to-be parents held hands and darted through the rooms, laughing in delight, ducking around curtains, and checking the view from each of the windows (which were really incomplete walls). I couldn’t understand what they said, of course, but it was easy enough to interpret. Thank you so much for helping us build our home! We will be so happy here!
They were in Alora. Of course they would be happy.
I was happy, too, but today, at least, I saw the place for what it really was. A strange, bewitched, drowsing kingdom, full of an insidious beauty. It was a little like quicksand—if you didn’t keep moving, it would draw you remorselessly in. Once you abandoned yourself completely to its pull, it would never release you.
For some folk, I thought fairly, that would be just fine. I wouldn’t blame them for wanting to merely exist, blissful and serene, suspended in a pool of unspoiled gorgeousness. Such a life had its definite attractions. But more was required of a princess of the realm. I did not want to spend the next fifty years smiling beatifically as I contemplated peace. I wanted my life to count for more than that.
“Are you going to run all the way back to my mother’s house?” Royven asked, striving to catch up with me as I strode back toward Rowena’s.
I laughed. “I might.”
“Just watching you exhausts me sometimes,” he said.
“Do you suppose you’re the first person to ever say that to me?”
He sighed. “Probably the first person in Alora.”
I bustled through dinner, took a brisk walk before bedtime, and charged up the idiosyncratic stairs. I even straightened my room before seeking my bed. Once tucked in, I pulled out another one of my mother’s vials.
The fourth one. Six more bottles before it was time for Orlain to come back.
This one, like the first two, held clove and nutmeg and distilled memories. I lay back uneasily in bed, worry a needle in my heart. Was my brother safe? Were my parents under siege? Were all the things I loved already broken and scattered, or already sheltered and secure? I wasn’t sure I could wait six more days to find out.
But those six days slipped by more indolently than I had expected. There was still work to do for someone determined to keep busy, but there seemed to be less of it, and I felt less urgency to do it. I rejoined Cressida and her young seamstresses for two of those days, but unaccountably, I didn’t quite finish my red dress. There weren’t enough bone pins to hold the bottom edge in place, so I never got around to hemming it. I wanted to add a fall of lace at the throat, but none of the pieces in Cressida’s basket pleased me, so I started to look for ribbon instead. I thought I might embroider a decorative design around the cuffs. I needed to put the buttons on the back. Someday I would finish these details. Certainly before I left Alora.
Similarly, Royven and I joined another crew of young men putting up a house for a newly married couple, but the work did not go as smoothly as before. The floor plan was more ambitious, so I let someone else step forward to direct operations. I spent a good hour with one of the prospective owners, transplanting forest shrubs along what would be the front walkway, should the walkway ever be laid in place. The whole lot of us spent three days laboring to raise the walls and level the floors, but even so, we hardly made any progress at all. I felt a little bad about it, but the young bride and groom seemed pleased with the shell we had managed to construct, and they walked around the site all three days with wide smiles on their narrow faces.
Royven and I spent one day simply roaming the forest. The plan had been to bring back more raw materials for the new house, but we abandoned that notion fairly early on when it turned out that I didn’t have the strength to carry my end of a fallen tree farther than fifty yards. Instead, we started gathering herbs and flowers that grew wild throughout the woods—and what a bounty we harvested! Nariander and stiffelbane, siawort and orklewood, ingredients that my mother used every day in her concoctions. I even found a small patch of haeinwort, one of the rarest herbs of all, and I plucked half a dozen blossoms. My mother would be delighted.
Naturally, we had to clamber over deadfalls and splash through little streams many times during this expedition. I needed Royven’s help so often to keep my balance that it was just simpler to leave my bracelets in my pockets.
“What are you going to do with all these roots and flowers that you have so industriously gathered up?” Royven asked as we finally wended our way back toward his mother’s house. “Will you turn apothecary or midwife? Cure all our illnesses? Minister to our broken hearts?”
“I’ll give them to my mother,” I said. But who knew when I would see her again? And her stores of herbs might be running dangerously low if there had been much bloodshed near the castle. I added, “Maybe Orlain will take them back home with him.”
“The inestimable Orlain,” Royven said, for of course I had told him all about the guardsman. “I’m sure he will.”
In the morning, I headed straight toward the river, following the single road that wound through Alora toward the kingdom of men. I had been obliged to accept Royven’s escort, because I knew I would be unable to find the way by myself, and Jaxon had claimed to be too busy to take me, although it was hard to guess what pressing business might occupy him. I wasn’t quite sure what Orlain would think of Royven, but somehow I suspected that the two men would not like each other.
“You may feel strange as we cross the boundary,” Royven warned me.
“A tingle. I remember from when Jaxon brought me here.”
“Stranger than that,” he said. He took my hand. “Are you ready? Straight through that patch of sun, and we’ll be on the other side of the border.”
I stepped forward eagerly, already looking for Orlain. But once I passed through the translucent bars of light, I staggered and had to take a moment to regain my balance. Royven squeezed my hand hard, or I might have fallen to the ground when my knees buckled. It was as if I had dragged myself to land after a long period afloat; I felt heavy, graceless, unmanageable. My head felt as if it had ballooned up behind my eyes, which remained small and slitted. My lungs clamped down, and my open mouth could not take in sufficient air.
“The sensations will pass in a moment,” Royven assured me, still gripping my hand tightly. “You’ll actually feel better if you keep walking.”
It seemed like I would feel better if I slumped to the road and let the ground take my weight, but I nodded and forced myself to continue forward. Indeed, within a few paces, I had appreciably improved, although my bones were still leaden and heavy, and my eyes continued to burn.
“I don’t see Orlain,” I said, looking around. A rush of disappointment cleared the rest of the clutter from my head. Disappointment or fear. What could have delayed him? Orlain was the most dependable man in the country. He would not break a promise unless the situation was dire.
“He’s probably waiting for you at the cairn,” Royven said reassuringly.
“No—he told Jaxon he would come here. To the border.”
“This place is very difficult to find,” Royven said, still in a soothing voice. “He must have realized he would get lost, and he turned back. We will go to the river, and we’ll find him there.”
“Then let’s hurry,” I said, tugging on Royven’s hand to make him move faster. I knew we had too far to go to run all the way, but I could hardly restrain myself from trying.
We had not proceeded half a mile before we saw, on the path ahead of us, a tall masculine shape striding toward us through the alternating patches of sun and shade. Even when he was completely in shadows, I recognized his silhouette, and then he stepped into a circle of light, and the sun made a brief halo of his hair.
“Orlain!” I cried, dropping Royven’s hand.
“I’ll wait here,” the aliora said, but I didn’t pay much attention. I was flying down the pathway, my arms outstretched, running toward Orlain.
I don’t know what I was thinking—that he would take me in a crushing embrace, that he would catch my hands and clasp them to his heart, that he would call out my name and drop to his knees in a feudal bow. Instead he stood stock-still in the road, his arms crossed on his chest, and the first thing he said when I skidded to a halt in front of him was, “Where’s your gold?”
It took a moment for me to understand what he meant. “What?”
“Your bracelets,” he said impatiently. “Why aren’t you wearing them?”
How had he discerned that in the imperfect lighting from a distance of twenty feet? “I’ve got my necklace on—see?” I said, pulling it out from under my collar. “And my earrings—”
He jerked his head to indicate the direction from which I’d come. No doubt he could see Royven lounging on the side of the road, waiting for me. “Well, a necklace and a pair of earrings don’t seem to inhibit aliora from taking your hand,” he bit out. “Don’t you think that’s a little dangerous? We’ll ignore the part where it’s a little too familiar. We’ll just pretend that it’s perfectly acceptable for a princess of Auburn to bestow her favors on anyone, no matter his rank or station.”
At that I burst into tears.
“Why is it every time I see you, you’re crying?” Orlain demanded.
“Maybe it’s because you’re so mean!” I wailed. I turned my back on him, desperately wiping at my cheeks, wishing with a bitterness I could actually taste that it had been anyone but Orlain sent to bring me news. How could I have been so eagerly looking forward to his visit?
“I don’t intend to be mean,” he said stiffly. “But you are very well aware of the attractive dangers that surround you in Alora, and you are equally aware of the measures that have been taken to shield you from them. And the first time I see you, it is obvious that you have cast off your talismans while blithely embracing—literally embracing—your foe.”
“The aliora are not my enemies,” I sobbed. “They have offered me shelter—and friendship—and—and they have not tried to hurt my feelings—”
“I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings,” Orlain said, and he did actually sound a little contrite. “But you are so thoughtless—and you are so much at risk—”
I made a great effort and forced myself to stop crying. I was a princess of the realm. I would not let an unsympathetic guardsman turn me into a whining child. Without turning around to face him, I said, “The least you could do is tell me the news you have brought me, without making me ask for it.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“The news, please?” I interrupted in a haughty voice.
After a short pause, during which I guessed he was contemplating and then deciding against an apology, he said, “Everyone you love is well. A courier from Cotteswold arrived the morning I was leaving, saying your brother is safe with your great-grandmother, and that no strangers have been seen in the village looking for him. Your parents are also unharmed.”
“What of Dirkson and his armies?”
“They have camped some distance from the castle but they have not attempted to lay siege. Your father’s forces are distinctly stronger—more soldiers answered his call than he anticipated. We speculate that Dirkson might be waiting for reinforcements from Chillain, or perhaps he is hoping to spur the countryside into an uprising. Our spies report that Brandon is very much in evidence, riding a roan horse up and down the army sidelines, showing off his red hair and his father’s countenance.”
“And people are coming to see him?”
“In significant numbers,” Orlain admitted. “But they might be merely curious. We have not noticed that Dirkson’s ranks of fighters have swelled appreciably since Brandon has paraded before the masses.”
“So what happens now?” I asked. I was still speaking to the trees, since I still had my back to Orlain. My tears had dried, but I didn’t want him to see the vulnerability that might remain on my face.
“Your father hopes to try diplomacy. He and Dirkson have sent envoys back and forth, negotiating for a time and place to meet. It is a delicate business, for neither one wants to put himself in danger. And yet if they do not talk, this stalemate could continue another week. Or even two.”
“A stalemate is better than a war,” I said.
“It is indeed,” he agreed. “Many fewer bodies.”
“But what could they negotiate for? Dirkson wants Brandon on the throne and my father will not relinquish it. There doesn’t appear to be a middle ground.”
“Your father has an exquisite bargaining chip,” Orlain said, his voice neutral. “You.”
For a moment I savored being called exquisite, and then I frowned at the forest. “What do you mean?”
“He could offer to merge your claims by marrying you to Brandon. It’s what I would do if I were him.”
I spun on one heel and punched Orlain hard in the stomach. I know I hurt him because he made a surprised grunting sound and his face went loose with shock. “Stop trying to marry
me off in the name of politics,” I said fiercely. “I understand that you consider me nothing more than an—an asset in my father’s treasury. I understand that you have no feelings of your own. But it is cruel of you to assume that my father cares so little about my happiness. He loves me for myself, even though you find it hard to believe that anybody would.”
Orlain said nothing, just stared down at me, his eyes dark with anger or some other powerful emotion. I thought it very likely that he wanted to pick me up and shake me till my head fell off, so I decided to give him the incentive. I hauled back my right arm to hit him again.
He grabbed my wrist before I could land another blow—and then caught my left hand when I brought it up swinging. I struggled in his hold, briefly considered kicking him, and settled with merely panting, “Let me go, you wretched man.”
“Princess—stop—Zara, I apologize, all right?” he said, squeezing my hands and forcing my arms down so that the pressure brought me two steps closer. “Your father would never compel you to wed a bastard son of questionable parentage. Not even to keep peace in the realm.”
“No,” I said, “you’re the only one who seems determined to marry me off to whoever is the first one to show up at the castle gates, looking for an alliance. Are you that eager to see me ride away from Auburn? Do I make you that miserable just by my existence?”
I didn’t expect him to answer—what possible reply was there to such an accusation?—but his mouth tightened and he suddenly looked defeated. “No,” he said quietly. “Not at all eager for you to go. Just bracing myself for the inevitable day when it comes. Finding ways to remind myself that it will come all too soon.”
I stopped struggling in his hold and simply gaped at him.
The strangest expression crossed his face—almost a smile, almost an admission of guilt. “And there,” he said. “That’s enough ammunition for you to use against me for the rest of your life.”
“You don’t care if I marry anyone else,” I said stupidly. “You don’t even like me.”