“But the rest…” Brennan glanced around. “They are here?”
“All of them.”
“Ilsa?”
“All of them. They insisted. My girls are—” he paused delicately, “—somewhat firm in their convictions.”
Brennan eyed him. “You never were one for self-discipline, Hart. Why should I expect you to be capable of ruling your daughters when you never could rule yourself?”
“I understand discipline quite well, leijhana tu’sai,” Hart retorted. “But there are times when my girls make such things difficult.”
Brennan studied Hart a moment. “You have not changed at all, have you?”
Hart grinned unrepentantly. “No.”
“Good.” Brennan clapped him on the back. “Now, come inside.”
It was abrupt, if unintended, but dismissal nonetheless; they turned as one and strode into the palace without a word or a glance to the boy they knew as the Prince of Homana.
“Wait!” But they were gone, and a hand was on Kellin’s shoulder, pulling him back.
“Begrudge them nothing, lad.” It was Blais, smiling faintly as he moved to stand beside Kellin.
“But what about me?” Kellin was aggrieved. “Grandsire dismissed the Lion, and now they dismiss me.”
“They were twin-born, my lad, linked by far more than a simple brother-bond. And they’ve not seen one another, I am told, for nearly twenty years.”
“Twenty years!” Kellin gaped. “I could have been born twice over!”
Blais nodded. “When you are a king, ’tis not so easy to find the time—or the freedom—to go where you will. Hart and Brennan are halves of a whole, parted by title and realm for much too long a time.” He briefly touched Kellin’s shoulder. “Let them be whole again, lad. They’ll be having time for you later.”
Kellin scowled. “And weddings, too?”
“Weddings! What has this to do with weddings?” But as Blais stared after his vanished uncles, his expression changed. “Aye, it could be that. ’Tis a topic of much import in royal Houses.” He grinned. “Thank the gods I am not in line for a throne, or surely they’d be disposing of me, too!”
“And me?” Kellin demanded. “Am I to be married off with no say in the matter?”
Blais did not appear unduly concerned. “’Tis likely,” he confirmed. “You’re to be Mujhar of Homana, one day. I’ll not doubt there’ve been letters about your future bride since you were formally invested.”
“Cheysula,” Kellin said darkly, proving to his cousin he knew the Old Tongue, too, “and I’ll choose my own.”
“Will you, now?” Blais ran a hand through thick black hair, mouth quirking in wry amusement. “’Tis what Keely claimed of herself, when she chafed at her betrothal—but in the end she wed the man they promised her to.”
“Sean.” Kellin nodded. “I know all about that.” He was not interested in his great-aunt, whom he had never met. He cast a speculative glance up at his kinsman. “Then you are not promised?”
Blais laughed. “Nor likely to be. I’m content to share my time with this woman, or that one, without benefit of betrothals.”
Kellin understood. “Meijhas,” he said. “How many, Blais?”
“Many.” Blais grinned. “Would I be admitting how many? A warrior does not dishonor his meijhas by discussing them casually.”
“Many,” Kellin murmured. He grinned back at his cousin. “Then I’ll have many, too.”
Blais sighed and clapped his hand upon a slender shoulder. “No doubt you will. No prince I ever knew lacked for company. Now—shall we go in? I’m for meeting these Solindish kin of ours.”
Ten
In short order Blais and Kellin met all of the Solindish kin en masse in Aileen’s sunny solar. The chamber seemed small of a sudden. Kellin duly took note of all his assorted kinfolk: Ilsa, the Lady of Solinde, with her profusion of white-blonde hair and gloriously expressive gray eyes; the middle daughters Cluna and Jennet, twins like Hart and Brennan, who reflected their mother’s coloring and the beginnings of her beauty augmented by Cheysuli heritage; and Dulcie, the youngest—the girl whom Hart had said might become Kellin’s cheysula.
To the latter daughter Kellin paid the most attention. His knowledge of weddings and marriages was slight, but he took it more personally now that his name had been linked with hers.
He was, however, briefly distracted. Blais, whom he had decided was everything a warrior should be—and his rescuer, to boot—was all of a sudden different. It was a subtle difference Kellin could not name; he knew only that Blais’ attention to his young cousin was oddly diverted, as if something else far more fascinating had caught his attention. Kellin understood none of it—Cluna and Jennet seemed silly girls to him, and not worth more time than was necessary to be polite—but Blais seemed most disposed to speak with both of them for a very long time.
Soon enough Blais offered to escort both Cluna and Jennet on a tour of Homana-Mujhar; and the adults suggested that what they had to say to one another was better said without Dulcie’s and Kellin’s presence. Kellin was instructed to do as Blais did: show his cousin every corner of the palace.
Outside in the corridor, Kellin glared mutinously at the closed door. No one has time for me. The Lion nearly ate me, but no one thinks about THAT—
Beside him, Dulcie laughed. “They set their traps for him.”
Kellin scowled. “What do you mean?” He thought uncomfortably of the bear-trap, conjured by her words.
“Traps,” she said succinctly. “They are frivolous women, both of them, only concerned with what is required to catch a handsome man.” She grimaced wryly. “I saw it; didn’t you?”
Kellin had not. “Of course I did,” he said forthrightly, denying his ignorance.
Dulcie eyed him. “He is a handsome man, as Cheysuli go; I see now we are all alike, save for some differences in color.” She grinned. “Your eyes are green; mine at least are yellow, like a proper Cheysuli’s should be.”
And proper she was, black-haired and yellow-eyed with skin the same coppery hue as Blais’ and every other Cheysuli Kellin had seen. Dulcie was young—twelve?—but clearly was Cheysuli in all respects.
Kellin felt a twinge of self-consciousness; just now, faced with Dulcie—and having met Blais—he wanted very much to be as Cheysuli as possible. “I will be Mujhar.” He thought it a good offense.
Dulcie nodded. “One of the reasons they want us to marry.” She twined a strand of black hair into fingers and began twisting it. “Do you want to?”
Kellin stared at her. How could she be so matter-of-fact about it? Importantly, he said, “That is something I will have to consider.”
Dulcie burst out laughing. “You consider? They will no more abide by what you wish—or me—than a stud horse minds his rider when a mare in season is near.”
Kellin had not thought of it that way. “But if I am to be Mujhar, they must listen to me.”
Dulcie shook her head. Her brows were straight, serious bars across a sculpted brow. She wore black hair in dozens of braids tied into a single plait and beaded at the bottom. “They will listen to no one, only to the prophecy.” Dulcie grimaced. “I have had it stuffed into my ears often enough. It is all about blood, Kellin, and the need to mix it correctly. Don’t you see?”
Kellin did not, though once again he claimed he did. “I am the one who is to sire the Firstborn,” he declared. “Everyone says so.”
Dulcie grinned. “Not without a woman!”
Color stained Kellin’s face. “Is that supposed to be you?”
She shrugged, twisting hair again. “What else do you suppose they talk about behind that door but inches in front of your face? They will have us betrothed by supper.”
Kellin glared at her. “Why to you? Why not to Cluna, or Jennet?”
“They are too old for you,” Dulcie said matter-of-factly, “and likely by now they have both set their caps for Blais. I think neither of them wants a boy for a husband.”
> It stung. “I am nearly eleven.”
“And I nearly thirteen.” Clearly, Dulcie was undismayed by his youth. “It has to do with the blood, as I said. There is only one bloodline left to get, Kellin—the one bloodline no Cheysuli desires to acknowledge. But how else do they expect to get the Firstborn? It wants Ihlini blood.”
He was startled, recalling Corwyth, and Lochiel’s designs. “Ihlini!”
“Think about it,” Dulcie said impatiently. “They need it from somewhere, from someone who favors the prophecy.”
“But not an Ihlini—”
“Kellin.” Her tone was exasperated. “That is why my father is proposing you and I wed. To get the Ihlini blood.”
“But—” It was preposterous. “You do not have—”
“Aye,” Dulcie answered, “I do. We all of us do: Blythe, Cluna, Jennet, and me. Because of our mother.”
“But she is Solindish.”
Dulcie’s tone was freighted with condescension. “Solinde was the birthplace of Ihlini, Kellin. Remember the stories of how they broke away from the Firstborn and left Homana?”
He did. He had not thought of those stories in years. “Then—” Kellin frowned. He did not like the implication. “Then the Ihlini are not so different from the a’saii.”
Dulcie smiled. “Now you begin to understand.”
He eyed her assessively. “Can you conjure godfire?”
“Of course not. The Ihlini blood in us goes back more than two hundred years. No arts remain in our House.” Dulcie shrugged. “Electra learned a few tricks, but nothing more. Tynstar did not share the Seker’s blood with her.”
He frowned. “Then why should it matter now?”
“Because no Cheysuli warrior would ever lie down with an Ihlini woman,” Dulcie replied. “At least—not a willing one. So they will marry us off and hope for the best…if for no other reason than to keep the Ihlini from making their own through you.”
“Through me?”
Dulcie sighed. “Are you stupid? If the Ihlini caught you and made you lie with an Ihlini woman, there could be a child. It would be the child.” She laughed at his expression. “The Ihlini would use you, Kellin, like a prize Cheysuli stud.”
* * *
Within hours he was full to bursting on kinfolk—and most of them female, at that, full of gossip and laughter—and so to escape, Kellin went to his own chamber and climbed up into his huge bed. He made mountains and hillocks of his coverlet, then planned his own campaigns as Carillon and Donal must have planned them years before, when Homana was at war.
“With Solinde,” he muttered. He was not at the moment disposed to like Solinde, since she had managed to produce a twelve-year-old girl who believed he was stupid.
The knock at the door was soft, but persistent. Kellin, startled from his game, called out crossly for the person to enter.
Aileen came in, not a servant at all. Her hair, rust threaded with silver, was bound in braids around her head with pins that glittered in sunlight. Her green gown was simple but elegant. She wore around her throat a fortune in gold: the mountain cat torque that marked her Brennan’s cheysula.
Is that what Dulcie expects from me? Kellin jerked flat his coverlet and slid out of the bed to stand politely. “Aye, granddame?”
“Sit.” Aileen waved him back onto the bed, then sat down on the edge herself. “Kellin—”
Whenever he spoke with Aileen he unconsciously echoed the lilt of her accent. He blurted it out all at once before she could finish. “’Tis done, isn’t it? You’ve betrothed us.”
Aileen arched reddish brows. “The idea doesn’t please you, then?”
“No.” He fidgeted, self-conscious; he liked his granddame very much and did not want to upset her, but he felt he had to tell the truth. “I want to choose for myself.”
The faintest of creases deepened at the corner of Aileen’s eyes. “Aye, of course you do. So did I. So did Brennan. But—”
“But I can’t, can I?” he challenged forthrightly. “’Tis like Dulcie said: you’ll do whatever you want.”
The Queen of Homana sighed. “’Tis true those of royalty have little freedom in matters of marriage.”
“’Tisn’t fair,” Kellin asserted. “You tell me I will have power when I am grown, but then I am told whom I must marry. That is no power.”
“No,” she agreed quietly. “I had none, nor Corin, whom I wanted to marry in place of Brennan.”
“In place of—grandsire?” It was a completely new thought. “You wanted to marry my su’fali?”
“Aye.”
He blinked. “But you were already betrothed to grandsire.”
“Aye, so I was. It did not lessen the wanting, Kellin; it was Corin I loved.” Her green eyes were kind. “I know this may shock you, but I thought it fair to tell you. You are young, but not so young the truth should be kept from you, even those truths of men and woman.”
“But you married grandsire.”
“Aye. It was agreed upon before I was born: Niall’s oldest son would marry Liam’s daughter.” She shrugged, mouth twisted awry. “And so I was born betrothed; it was only later, when Corin came to Erinn, that I realized how binding—and how wrong—the agreement was. I fell in love with Corin and he with me, but he was the stronger person. He said the betrothal must stand, and sailed away to Atvia.”
“He married Glyn.” He had never seen her—he had seen only Hart of his scattered kin—but he knew of the mute woman Corin had wed.
“Years later, aye. But then I was wed, and a mother, and my future was utterly settled.”
Kellin digested all of it. “You are telling me that I should marry Dulcie.”
Aileen smiled. “No.”
It stilled him a moment. “No?”
“I told them to give you time, both of you time; to let you grow to adulthood. You’ve been kept close most of your life, Kellin, and we owe you some measure of freedom.” An odd expression crossed her face. “The kind of freedom I had once, before coming to Homana.”
Relief overflowed. “Leijhana tu’sai, granddame!”
Aileen laughed. “One day marriage will not be such a chore, my lad. That I promise.”
“Was it a chore for you?”
The question stopped her. Aileen’s eyes filled with memories he could not know, and were not shared with him. “For a very long time, it was,” she answered finally. “But not any longer.”
“Why?”
“Because when I allowed myself to stop resenting my marriage; when I stopped resenting the Cheysuli tahlmorra that dictated I sleep with Brennan instead of with Corin, I fell in love with your grandsire.” Her smile was poignant. “And so now I have a new regret: that I wasted so much time in not loving him.”
Kellin could only stare at his grandmother. There were no words for what he felt; he knew only that he was young, too young after all, to begin to understand the complexities of adulthood.
Something new came into his head. “Did my jehana love my jehan?”
Aileen’s mouth softened. “Very much, Kellin. ’Twas a match few people experience.”
He nodded dutifully, uncomprehending. “But she died when I was born.” He looked searchingly at Aileen. “Is that why he hates me? Is that why he gave me up and went away—because I killed his cheysula?”
Aileen’s face drained. “Oh, Kellin, no! Oh, gods, is that what you’ve been thinking all these years?” She murmured something more in Erinnish, then caught him into her arms and pulled him close. “I’ll swear on anything you like that your birth did not kill her, nor did it drive your father away. He gave you up because it was his tahlmorra to do so.”
“But you believe he was wrong.”
She withdrew a little to look into his face. “Have you a touch of the kivarna, lad? Have you been hiding the truth from us?”
“No,” he blurted, intrigued. “What is it?”
“D’ye know what people feel?” She touched her breast. “D’ye know what is in their hearts?”
Perplexed, he frowned. “No. I just saw it in your face.”
Aileen relaxed, laughing a little. “Aye, well—’tis a gift and a curse, my lad. Aidan had it in full measure, and Shona—’twould come as no surprise if it manifested in you.”
Kellin was bewildered. “’Twas in your face, granddame—and your voice.” And what I heard you say to grandsire once before. But that he would not admit.
Aileen hugged him again briefly, then surrendered him to the bed as she rose and shook out her skirts. “I think he was wrong,” she said firmly. “I always have. But I’m a woman, Kellin—and though I’ll not swear a man loves his child less, he’s not borne that babe in his body. Aidan did as he believed he had to, to please the gods and his tahlmorra. And one day, I promise, you will ask him to his face how he could do such a thing.”
He heard the underlying hostility in her tone. “But not yet.”
Aileen’s lips compressed. “Not yet.”
After a moment Kellin nodded. It was a familiar refrain. “Well,” he said easily, “once I have killed the Lion, he will have to let me see him.”
“Oh, Kellin—”
“I will,” he declared. “I will kill it. And then I shall go to the Crystal Isle and show jehan the head.”
Aileen’s mouth, he saw, was filled with all manner of protest. But she made none of them. With tears in her eyes, the Erinnish Queen of Homana left her grandson quite alone.
Eleven
Blais’ door was ajar. Candlelight crept from the room into the corridor, slotted between door and jamb; Kellin peeked in carefully, not wanting to discover that Blais was not alone at all, but accompanied by Cluna, or Jennet, or Cluna and Jennet. They had taken up entirely too much of Blais’ time, Kellin felt. It was his turn for his cousin’s attention.
He paused there in the slot. He saw no female cousins. Only Blais himself, sprawled across the great tester bed with his lir, lovely Tanni, who lay upon her back with legs spread and underparts exposed in elaborate pleasure as Blais stroked belly fur. In that moment she was dog, not wolf; Kellin felt a pang of hope that perhaps he, too, would gain a wolf.
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