by Beth Brower
“If,” Eleanor repeated firmly. “The Marion constitution has been modified, which includes the rules of war. It does not appear to be a significant change,” she said, “but, the implications are significant.”
She picked up one of the papers before her and began to read. “The country of Marion retains the right to act, in times of war, in any manner best serving Marion’s interests.” Eleanor paused. “It used to say ‘and the interests of Marion’s allies.’ That has now been erased. There are other subtle changes, which allow Marion to move forward with no obligations to honor past allegiances.”
Eleanor looked up. “I’m certain you all remember King Staven’s younger sister, the Princess Edith, who became the third wife of Shaamil, the emperor of Imirillia. Marion has since entertained cautious treaties with the Imirillian Empire. And now, a sudden change is made to the constitution, removing all barriers of previous allegiance? I suspect Marion will not be of any help,” Eleanor said as she frowned. “In all actuality, I fear what damage King Staven may inflict.”
“The arrogant fool,” Aedon muttered with consternation, his arms crossed. “One cannot court a viper without being bit oneself.”
After a somber moment where nobody spoke, Eleanor cleared her throat and the council commenced with plans for the battle run. They were just finishing, when Crispin asked to speak. Eleanor gave him the floor, and he stood.
“I propose we enlist the help of Wil Traveler to—” Crispin said.
“He is an Imirillian soldier,” Aedon interrupted.
“Yes,” Crispin responded to Aedon, “and the best swordsman I have ever seen in my life.” Crispin paused. “With due respect to Gaulter Alden, and all our men, we are no fighting nation. We have shunned war, so we do not know the art nearly well enough to defend ourselves from this threat.”
“And how has he learned his art?” Gaulter Alden asked, raising his eyebrows, leaning forward against the table. “I have watched him sparing. He is a devil with a sword and, obviously, a young man with status and prominence. I want to know why he came into Aemogen mere days before the Imirillian Empire sent us their ultimatum. It is too much a coincidence.”
Eleanor watched the faces of the men gathered around the table, listening to the questions she had already spent the night before asking herself.
Sean, in his thick dialect of the Aemogen hills, followed Gaulter Alden’s comment with his own thoughts. “He rides the finest horse I’ve ever seen and I’d like to know where I could get such a beast. I know for a fact,” he said, “that the Imirillian Army uses only black horses. It’s widely known to any man wanting to sell or breed a horse, even in Aemogen. We sell our black horses to Marion and know they trade them with Zarbadast.”
“So he rides a white horse as a symbol of what he told us last night: that he has cast off the Imirillian army,” Crispin posited.
“So,” Aedon countered, “he rides a white horse to throw us off.”
Crispin, still standing, spoke firmly. “We can’t know his true motives in surety, but I do know that the palace guard are now better prepared for war than they were even a mere two days ago, thanks to his training. He is an asset. We should use him.” Then, Crispin turned towards Aedon. “It would be foolish,” he said, “to make this decision based on suspicion or jealousy.”
“Excuse me?” Aedon challenged.
“Please,” Eleanor said as she stood, and Crispin took his seat. “I have given this a significant amount of thought. There is much we do not know about Wil Traveler. He may indeed be only passing through. Or,” she said as she met Aedon’s eyes, “his timing, what we know of him, all may be tied in with the Imirillian invasion.”
Crispin moved to speak, but Eleanor held up her hand. “I have also seen him fight,” she said. “Crispin is right: Wil’s prowess is…astonishing. If he will stand with us, I want to utilize his skills.”
“And, if he is against us, as almost all the odds grant he is?” Gaulter Alden asked.
“If he is against us,” Eleanor spoke quickly, “I want to use his knowledge in our favor, and I want to keep him as close as possible, watching his every move. The battle run must begin soon, if we are to be ready in time to face the Imirillian army. I would like to appoint Wil Traveler as an assistant commander of the battle run. We will bring him with us and make certain he can entertain no mischief.”
“Eleanor,” Aedon said as he stood. “Isn’t it folly to let him see all our strengths and weaknesses before knowing his allegiance?”
“The queen is right, young man,” Gaulter Alden said, motioning for Aedon to sit. “She realizes what, perhaps, you do not see. In war, you must balance what will be of greater service, even if that means apparent compromise.”
“Clearly we are much smaller than the Imirillian army,” Eleanor continued. “So, their knowledge of our numbers is a price worth paying if it means we can increase our ability to fight. Six months’ time is not much, but it is enough to improve our chances,” she said. “We won’t know until after the battle run, but, if we decide to fight, his training may prove to be our only recourse for survival as an independent nation.”
Crispin nodded and thumped the table with his hands.
“I ask for a vote of confidence in my decision,” Eleanor said as she sat down.
“Aye,” Gaulter Alden said.
“Aye,” Crispin echoed.
“Aye,” Sean and Doughlas said at once. But Aedon sat stubbornly, then he looked directly at Eleanor. She raised an eyebrow, waiting for his answer.
“I will support you until the end, Eleanor,” he said. “But, I do not cast my confidence behind this decision.”
She studied Aedon’s expression.
“I trust that, although you don’t agree, you will back my decision?”
“If it is what you decide,” he replied. “Yes.”
“Well,” Eleanor said, looking at the men around the table. “I can’t understand a way through this. Yet, I feel it can’t be impossible, despite our fears. We’ll prepare for the battle run and, if Wil Traveler accepts, initiate him into our councils and gain whatever we can from his experience. If he will not offer his assistance,” she added, “we will ask him to leave Aemogen, or we will finally make use of the dungeon. It has not seen a political prisoner in all the years I can remember.”
Briant, the arms expert, was the only person who seemed pleased with this notion.
Then the council broke, the voices of the men engaged in immediate conversation as they rose from the table. Eleanor watched them as she deliberately kept her own thoughts from her face. Crispin approached.
“You’ve made the right decision, Eleanor,” he said.
“I’ve seen him fight, Crispin,” Eleanor said sharply. “And so, I want to know where he is at all times while in Aemogen. You will see that he is watched.”
Crispin nodded. “He will be,” he promised. “Should I ask if he will join us?”
Eleanor pursed her lips. “I will extend the invitation myself,” she said.
“Certainly,” Crispin replied, turning to leave.
“Crispin?”
“Yes?”
“We need to be ready for anything—” Eleanor began.
Crispin waited for Eleanor to finish her thought. It took almost a full minute, for Eleanor was unaccustomed to these words in her mouth.
“That means,” she said, “you need to be ready to eliminate him if things go badly.”
Chapter Five
“What is the battle run?” Wil asked, not looking at Eleanor, who stood outside the stall where he worked. He had spent the last hour in the stable, brushing Hegleh’s coat and seeing to her care. Waiting at a distance, by the door, were his guards.
“The tradition of our people is for the reigning monarch and the war council to ride out to all the fens. A call to arms is made, a count of soldiers is taken, and training begins. It is an old tradition,” Eleanor said and paused. “After the battle run, when we know our numbers and skill,
we convene for a war council here, in Ainsley, with the fen lords, to decide if we surrender or prepare for battle.”
Wil did not respond immediately, but he knelt down, moving his fingers gently along Hegleh’s swollen fetlock. When he did answer her, he spoke from the ground, where Eleanor could not see his face. “It’s lucky that you’ve such advance warning. You wouldn’t have been ready for an immediate attack of any kind.” Wil then pretended to be busier than he was, waiting for the queen to speak.
“We value deliberation here in Aemogen,” she replied. “War is certainly nothing to rush into, but, when necessary, we have ways to organize more quickly.”
Wil rubbed some of the grit from the stable floor between his fingers, sighed, and stood, facing Eleanor as he leaned forward against the stable gate.
She wore a beautiful riding dress of pale gold, the color of wheat in the fall. Her lips, pink against the cold spring wind, offset her fair skin, and her copper hair looked like fire, pulled away from her face in a dance of loose braids. He lingered a moment on the lines of her face before speaking.
“And you offer me, an Imirillian soldier, a post on your war council?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head but bit off the edge of a laugh. “May I ask why?”
“We would benefit greatly from your expertise,” was Eleanor’s response. “I’m certain, after the few days you have spent sparing in the yard, you understand that for yourself.”
Wil looked down at his boots and kicked the gate softly. “What I don’t understand,” his eyes returned to Eleanor, “is why you would trust a complete stranger, part of the empire that is invading you, into your inner confidences.”
“I’m not a fool, Wil Traveler.” Eleanor’s words were barbed. “I know my country is underprepared. Crispin says your guidance would be advantageous. I agree with him. It’s true; for all I really know, you could be a spy. Even so, whatever you could gain from us is far less than what we would gain from you. It is a risk I am willing to take.”
She took some leather riding gloves in her hand and slid them over her fingers. “We would pay you well, and obviously offer permanent hospitality, if you should choose to accept it.”
“I don’t need payment from you,” Wil countered the queen with a laugh. She looked annoyed, as if she had sensed what he was thinking: that all her wealth was a fraction, compared to his own.
“Why do you laugh?”
“You wear gloves to ride a horse but not to dig in the dirt,” he deflected. “I find it a bit odd.”
“Add it to your list, Traveler.” Eleanor said, tossing the words over her shoulder as she walked down towards the far end of the stable, exhibiting a different persona from the one she’d shown in his midnight interview a dozen hours earlier. Thrift had been saddled and was waiting with a groom. Wil followed her out, not speaking until after the groom had helped her mount.
“When do you need an answer?” Wil asked, leaning against the post as he looked up at the queen.
“The spring festival is in three days,” Eleanor replied, her eyes on the western gates rather than him. “The morning after, I would expect you at a logistics meeting. The battle run begins in a month’s time.”
“Why so late?”
Her eyes came back to his own. “We are an agrarian society, Wil. What fools would we be to not get our crops in the ground.” Thrift shifted anxiously beneath her, and she gave a light touch on the reins. “And, to be clear, I never suggested taking you into my inner confidences.”
She urged Thrift forward, riding from the yard through the west gate, into the fields beyond.
***
Wil watched from western battlement, near the travelers’ house, as Thrift tried to run at the pace of a wild spring day across the downs of Ainsley. Eleanor, at length, gave the horse free rein, and they flew through the tumble of cloud and color. She rode proficiently, if not naturally, but the true grace was Thrift’s, whose faultless form and sense of movement was far more spirited than Eleanor’s methodical steadiness.
Wil wondered if Eleanor ever imagined all her thoughts and worries being pulled from her mind, getting caught in the waiting trees, blowing in all directions, until nothing remained to trouble her, just the beat of her heart, pounding in rhythm with Thrift’s hooves. That was how he often felt, when he rode his own horses through the unsteady, wind-cursed sands of the northern deserts.
Conscious of the guards at his back, Wil turned away from watching Eleanor and sat against the battlement. The stone was cold against his back. Pulling his cloak close around his shoulders, Wil looked up, following trails of cloud in the gray sky. The warm sands of Imirillia were so distant now, far from this hard-set place. And she had asked for his help.
Wil thought about the men he had seen in the Ainsley streets—farmers and day laborers. The miners that worked along the western mountains were sure to be strong, but a mine was no battlefield.
And Aemogen was no warring nation.
Wil ran his fingers through his hair and then pulled a knee up, resting his forearm against it. There, on his right wrist, was the thin and knotted Safeeraah given him by Dantib, his stable master and mentor. Wil scowled, pulling at the imperfect woven band, so light that he had almost forgotten it was there. But the promise it symbolized weighed heavy in his heart. Before realizing what he was doing, Wil spoke the words out loud. “Though I wander, I am the deep well; I seek transcendence by honor, as the seven stars.”
“I am the deep well,” Wil repeated, letting his chin fall against his chest. He knew that if Aemogen chose to fight the Imirillian Empire, there would be an entire generation of men slaughtered, leaving the women and children in the hands of a foreign power. And, Queen Eleanor, the young soul, would be killed for her refusal to surrender. The images were haunting as they invaded his mind; he brushed them violently away.
Wil had to convince the queen to surrender.
***
The bound collection of stories that kept Wil sprawled out on his bed reading, secured his interest enough to ignore the noises echoing through the travelers’ house. Every room was filling or full. Wil did not relish the idea of occupying the building with much of anyone. He was accustomed to his own space. So, he had closed the door and disappeared into the collection of tales, or, as Edythe had called them, Faeries.
In the middle of one tale, about a princess cursed to sleep for one hundred years, his door burst open. Someone his own age came through, carrying several bags and satchels. The young man, with light brown hair and eyes, smiled at Wil and disappeared, leaving his things strewn all about the floor. Almost annoyed, Wil had just turned back to his story when the door flew open again, and the same young man, with even more bags, came tumbling into the room. He stood, brushed himself off, and closed the door to the noisy hall.
“Hello,” he beamed as he sat on the other empty bed nearby. “I’m Blaike, of Common Field fen.” He extended his hand so exuberantly that Wil put down the tales and sat up, facing his fellow lodger and shaking hands.
“Wil is my name.”
“Pleased to meet you, indeed. You must be the traveler that everyone’s been speaking of.” Blaike stood again and began placing his several bags and satchels against the wall. He bumped Wil’s scabbard and sword, which were resting in the corner, knocking them to the floor, and scrambled to apologize while setting them right. Wil waved it off.
“What have they been saying?” he asked Blaike casually.
“Handsome as the devil and double that with a sword,” Blaike answered, still placing his things in order and, unintentionally, setting Wil’s effects in disarray. “Edythe wrote me all about it.”
“Are you Edythe’s man?” Wil hid his smile beneath a hand.
“Yes,” the young man said proudly before his face fell. “And no. To make it official, engaged and all that, I have to speak with the queen.”
“And?”
“She terrifies me.”
Wil laughed, loud and har
d, until he lay on his bed, wiping tears from his eyes. Looking up at the ceiling, he responded. “She terrifies me too, Blaike, although, I have no idea why.” Wil lifted himself up on one elbow. “How long have you and Edythe been a pair?”
“Three years, more or less.”
The young man was obviously in love. He began to speak of Edythe’s wit and humor and sweetness; how her blue eyes sparkled when she danced; and how, when she was upset, Blaike felt as if the world had ended. His affection was young and sincere, untouched by personal motives. Wil found himself grinning as he listened, enjoying Blaike’s exultations. It was not often someone could disarm him so. Wil decided he didn’t mind sharing quarters with the young man, however smitten.
“But, you will ask for her hand while in Ainsley?” Wil goaded his new friend.
Blaike turned solemn. “So I told myself the entire journey here, but I don’t think I can find the courage to ask the queen.”
“How long are you here?” Wil asked, surprised he hoped Blaike’s stay would be longer.
“Tomorrow and the following day, the seed bringers will spend all day registering their seeds and receiving any needed stock from the palace, and all that. The Spring Festival is the day after. I am the second seed bringer from Common Field, so I’ll be busy helping, but Brannan, the first seed bringer, has given me permission to stay a few days longer.” He smiled then added shyly, “They are all rooting for me back home, you know.”
“Why don’t we come to an arrangement?” Wil lay down on his back, arms folded beneath his head. “You answer any questions I may have about Aemogen, the royal family, and so forth, and I will set up a meeting between yourself and Eleanor.”
Blaike’s face turned ashen, and he pulled at his collar. “I’ll have to think about that.”
Wil began to laugh, giving Blaike an encouraging smile. “She’ll say yes, you know.”
***
The next morning, Wil stood in line with his fellow petitioners, waiting for the doors of the throne room to open. He hoped Eleanor would be present, knowing she was involved personally in whatever work these seed bringers did. Blaike had left at dawn and had been occupied ever since. Wil waited behind a few men and a surly boy of twelve, who seemed displeased to be there. The boy started to speak and was cuffed soundly on the ear by one of his companions. Yelping, he stepped back and threw dangerous glances at all who passed. Only Wil remained exempt: the boy offered him curious admiration.