The Queen and Her Brook Horse

by Amalia Dillin

  “Do you truly believe Gunnar could tell a Seithr woman from an elf witch?” he asked. “Even you did not recognize Fossegrim when he posed as a peddler for me. Not until he’d revealed himself for his own reasons. The only thing that keeps the elves from doing as they wish is their king’s sacrifice. But if it is in service to the queen, his wife, why should they hesitate in the slightest?”

  It had not occurred to Signy to worry about the Seithr women overmuch. If they had meant to betray her children, they would have done it long before now, after all, and surely she would be dead as a result. But if she had paid them so little notice, how much less attention would Gunnar spare, beyond what purpose they might serve him?

  “How could you know if a woman was an elf or not?” she asked. “There are women who are just as tall and graceful. And I suppose there is some way they might disguise their ears?”

  Isolfur sat forward, his eyes searching hers. “None so graceful as an elf, Signy. Not even you. But it is their arrogance that will give them away every time. They think we are too stupid to know them for what they are. And among the people of Gautar that may be true. Or it would be, if not for you.”

  She swallowed and pushed the tea away, her stomach too sour and twisting to even consider drinking it. “I had not thought much of it,” she said. “There is always some new Seithr woman. He all but hunts them and then holds them hostage within his court. But this one came to him. He lets her come and go as she wishes—and perhaps I should have known it was strange that he would. I cannot know for certain, of course, but now I wonder.”

  “Stay well away,” Isolfur said at once. “If you even suspect, keep yourself and the children from her. Or better yet, do not go back at all. Stay here, and let us have done with all of it.”

  “I cannot leave them behind,” she said, rolling her eyes at his request—how often had he asked it of her, and how often had she refused? They had come this far, and she meant to see it through. She was safe enough, for Gunnar would have killed her if he had wished to, after Isabel’s tenth birthday, not wait for Arianna’s when he still could not abide her “Even if I wished to give up upon the rest. But we have only four years left.”

  “We could dispose of Gunnar tomorrow, and Ragnar with him. Make Sigmund king and name you regent in their place. It would be an easy thing, and you would be free to come and go as you pleased. You would be safe, Signy.”

  She laughed bitterly. “Free but for the regency. Do you think it would take me no time at all to do the work of ruling? No. I would be left holding a bag full of snakes and praying I could cut off all their heads before they caught me with their fangs. That is hardly what I would consider safety.”

  “But I could be with you,” he said. “In your stables, and the castle yard. In the halls themselves if you wished it. There would be no reason to keep me hidden away. And you could expel all those Seithr women, too, while you were about it. You’d have no need of their magic as a brook horse’s wife.”

  “I have no need of their magic now,” she said, frowning at the thought. “Is it truly a danger? An elf witch in Gunnar’s court?”

  “I wish I knew,” he said, and then sighed. “Fossegrim will be pleased, I suppose, for now I have reason of my own to spy. Keep away from her in the meantime, even so. And give her no reason to look twice at you or the children, if you can manage it. Should she look too closely…”

  “It would never occur to Gunnar to ask about your brood,” she promised him, smoothing the furrow from his brow. “It is only Arianna he suspects.”

  And that, she hated. Poor Arianna. Gunnar had nearly whipped her once already, and it had been far too near a thing for Signy’s peace of mind. All because she had been seen riding astride behind young Rodric upon his pony. But Gunnar was forever punishing her for something, and far more harshly than she deserved. Signy had written to her father already, wondering if something might be arranged—a betrothal offer of some kind. She did not wish to send her away, not truly, but better Arianna go than remain the focus of Gunnar’s ire.

  Isolfur caught her hand and kissed her palm, drawing her back. “Have you time, today?”

  She shook her head, offering her own sigh. “I fear my husband commands my presence upon the wall, and I cannot go to him fresh from your bed, much as I might desire it.” If only. To see the realization dawn in his eyes that she had given herself to another man, and had not bothered to so much as hide it—but it would serve no one to provoke him, least of all herself. She kissed Isolfur briefly in farewell and rose. “Tonight, though, I mean to come to you. As soon as I’m able.”

  “Will you at least consider what I’ve said, Signy?” he asked, rising with her. “Sigmund is not so young any longer. And he would have Ogmund for support, as well as us. Once Gunnar was gone, there would be no reason they could not know about the mirror. Know me. And I would have you made safe, my love. Safe at least from Gunnar, now the contract he signed no longer protects you. Especially if there is trouble from the elves.”

  “I know.” She kissed him again. Stolen moments and stolen kisses, but they gave her courage. And as small as her life had become, she found she needed it more than she ever had before. “We’ll speak of it tonight. And perhaps—perhaps there is a way we might manage it that would not make things worse before they were better.”

  There was no bargain between them any longer, but in the long years since, she had found it did not hurt any less to leave him.

  Gunnar awaited her upon the wall, his gaze cold and dismissive from the moment he spotted her. She did not like the line of his back, the taut width of his shoulders, and she had lived long enough as his wife to recognize she must be cautious.

  “My lord,” she began tentatively, testing his mood. “It is cold upon the wall. Would not the solar serve us better?”

  “My lovely queen, golden as the sun.” He stepped forward, taking her face in his hands. She did not dare to flinch. Nor to so much as blink. When he touched her, it was always to prove his power, his right. “And your eyes, so brilliant blue, clear as the sky above.”

  His fingers fell away, and he guided her toward the edge of the wall, a hand at the small of her back. Signy did not resist, but nor did she trust his compliments. Her skin prickled, her stomach knotting. It was not right. None of it was right.

  “A shame you were not even so constant as the moon in all its phases.”

  “My lord?” she asked, affecting innocent confusion. She’d barely left her rooms, the bower itself in days. Certainly she could think of nothing that she had done to inspire his rage—but then, it did not need to be something she had done, either, only something he might have imagined.

  The king’s fingers closed around the back of her neck, digging into the muscle beneath and leaving no doubt in her mind. This was to be a punishment. A threat.

  “One of your daughters is not mine, Signy. And were that your only offense, perhaps I might overlook it, but there is the matter of the mirror to consider. And the letters.”

  Letters? She did not let him see the flicker of her confusion, but her mind raced. Not the letters she had sent to her father, inquiring about an arrangement for Arianna, surely? Or had he intercepted something else? One of the coded letters they exchanged sometimes, through Frida.

  “You cannot truly question my loyalties, Gunnar. After all I have done, all my family has done to support you.”

  “Did you think I would never learn the truth of it? That the Seithr women wouldn’t know with one glance? And not just the girl, but the taint of your blood. I should have known there was some trick to it all, beautiful as you are. Did you think you could blind me forever? Persuade me?”

  He shoved her forward until she leaned out over the edge of the wall, the wind beyond the crenellation tearing at her gown, tugging against his grip. The height was dizzying, and her whole body tensed in response. Only her slippered toes kept purchas
e on the stone, and she flailed for balance, reaching for the stone, for some hold upon his arm. Any support at all.

  “Tell me who.”

  He could not truly intend to throw her from the wall. He could not—even he would not dare do such a thing. It was impossible to fathom that he might, that he had waited so long if he’d meant to. It was through her that he had gained access to Hunaland’s port. Through her that the peace between their countries was maintained. He could not believe her father would fail to discover the truth of what had happened, and if she was murdered by his own hand, there would certainly be reprisals. “Gunnar, please!”

  “His name, Signy!” He demanded. “There is little I can do about your family, as yet, but your cuckoo is another matter. You’re fortunate that she’s beautiful. She’ll make one of my nobles a very fine bride, and I need not care what he’ll do to her. I need not even care if he remains loyal. Treason would be a fitting end to her, do you not think?”

  Arianna. It was Arianna he was speaking of. His only true daughter. The only child of his own blood. And he meant to throw her away.

  “You are a fool of a king!” She twisted, but he forced her farther out. Her toes began to slip and she made a strangled noise, her eyes closing against the spiraling earth below. Forgive me, my love. I ought never have borne you.

  “I am certain Alviss has need of two beautiful women to bait his traps in the mountains.” He was so blithe, so pleasant. As if he did not threaten her life in one breath, and her daughter’s in the next. As if they spoke of nothing more important than the weather. “His name, and I will spare you both such a fate.”

  Signy laughed, bitter and broken, and knowing—knowing bone deep that he lied. It would not matter what she said. A denial would enrage him and a confirmation would certainly be her death. And he would never believe her, even if she told him the truth. She would only die knowing she had betrayed Isolfur, that she had brought about his doom, as well.

  “I’d just as soon spread my legs for an orc,” she said, cool and calm and certain now. If she gave him opportunity, he would have it from her. He would cut her apart, bit by bit, until she begged to die, Isolfur’s name upon her lips. Better by far if she fell now. “It would be no worse than lying with you.”

  He sneered, his fingers digging deeper into her neck, nails breaking her skin. Her blood. She could not give him Isolfur’s name and her blood. “I should have known you were a whore, the way you came to my bed.”

  She was going to die. Before she endangered the rest of her children, too. Before she took Isolfur with her into the next life. There was no reason anymore to lie.

  “Only a whore would ever come to you of her own will, Gunnar, king or not.”

  He cursed and threw her from him, and she forced herself not to fight, not to reach for his hand, for the heights. Instead, she opened her arms wide, embracing the sky, the wind, the light.

  Live, my loves. Do more than survive. Destroy him as I could not.

  Isolfur, she knew, would see it was done, even if their children could not. And he would be safe. She had kept him safe, if nothing else. He would protect them. He would protect her blood. Love them in her place.

  Then she was falling.

  And then she was gone.

  She did not come to him that night, nor the next day. Nor the next. She did not come to him for a sevenday, and then a fortnight had passed. She did not come, and he had not concerned himself overmuch, truly, for it had happened in the past that she could not slip away, or chose instead to wait, to heal from some punishment Gunnar had delivered. But never, since he had gifted her the mirror, had she stayed away so long, and the more he thought of it, the more he worried.

  It was through Isabel that he discovered what had happened, at last, when he stretched his senses outward to check upon her and the boys, to look for Signy, too, through their eyes. Grief flooded his blood, mixed with pain and stubborn determination, for of course Isabel was her mother’s daughter, still. And through her, he saw Arianna, just as bereft, weeping upon her bed.

  “Hush now,” Isabel said, fighting back her own sorrow. “Hush. If Father hears you, he will beat you for your tears. And mother would not want it. She would never wish for you to suffer on her behalf.”

  But Arianna was inconsolable and only buried her face deeper into the bedding. “She walked those walls a thousand times,” she gasped between sobs. “She would never slip. Never have fallen.”

  And now there was alarm, too, in Isabel’s thoughts. “Arianna, you mustn’t say such things. Not to me. Not to anyone. The queen fell to her death. It is awful and tragic, and only the Ancestors know why she was taken from us, but it was clearly an accident. Father said as much himself. He tried to pull her back, but the wind pushed her away before he could reach her.”

  Isolfur recoiled, Isabel’s words slicing through his mind. His heart.

  Signy.

  The queen.

  Signy could not be dead.

  To her death.

  He pressed a hand to the door, unsure how he had reached it. The door she had used to come and go as she pleased. The door through which she would leave him.

  “Signy.”

  If Gunnar was with her, the king would never have tried to save her, that much, Isolfur knew for a fact. And Signy had told him. She had told him she must go to her husband. That he wished to meet her upon the wall. She had told him, and he had watched her go, thinking nothing of it.

  Thinking that she would return to him that night, and he would make love to her in his bed. That afterward they would plot together a means by which to kill the king. To set her free.

  He threw open the door, blood thundering in his ears, and sped his way through the water to Gautar. To the stream. Their stream.

  It was foolish, he knew, but he searched the banks. First from the water, then upon the grass. And then—

  The scent. His nostrils flared and he followed it on the wind, paying no attention to how close he came to the walls. Until he reared up against the blood-spattered stone and everything inside him went hollow and cold.

  It was her blood. Her blood mixed with the soil, splashed upon the rock and mortar of the wall. And he remembered with sudden clarity the moment when she had first called him. The careful bandage upon her arm. The small vial of blood she had kept.

  Signy would never have left her blood behind.

  And it was true, too, that Signy would never have fallen.

  “Is that a horse?” a guard said, above him.

  Isolfur flicked an ear in annoyance, dropping his nose to lip at the grass, to nuzzle against the earth. Signy’s last bed. All that he had left. He fell to his knees, then his side, and rolled in it.

  “Did we lose one today?” another man asked. “Ho there!” he called a moment later, in the other direction. “Tell the stablemaster he’s lost a beast outside the wall!”

  “I don’t think we’ve ever had a horse that looked like that,” the first guard said. “Don’t you see the way he glows? That’s—you don’t suppose it could be a brook horse?”

  Isolfur wished he could growl, would have, as a man. But as a horse, it came out an affronted whicker instead. Could he not just have this moment? Could he not have a moment’s peace to grieve?

  “Don’t be daft,” the second guard said. “Everyone knows there’s no such thing. And even if there was, t’wouldn’t risk itself loitering about beneath the wall.”

  “But isn’t that where the queen died?” he asked. “And you know what’s whispered. About the cuckoo in the king’s nest.”

  “Shut your yap about that,” the second guard said frostily. “It’s none of your concern, one way or the other. Go open that gate for the stablemaster, then.”

  The first guard grumbled away, and Isolfur blew out a breath, then inhaled again. As deeply as he was able. Taking in every last trace of her
scent. Nibbling at the grass.

  Until the gate creaked and groaned to his left.

  Then, at last, he fled.

  “Ah,” Fossegrim said, when he saw him at the river’s edge. Isolfur swayed, then dropped slowly into the mud. The old elf sighed, and lowered himself down beside him, a hand on his shoulder, fingers twisted in his mane. “I am so sorry, my friend, that it ended in such a way.”

  Isolfur stretched out his neck, resting his head against the cool, damp earth.

  “I have found my only consolation was the children,” Fossegrim said. “It is not the same, of course. And they cannot replace Bestla. Cannot take away the years I wasted, the time together that I threw away, thinking I must do my duty. That there was no other way. But it gives me peace to know them. To know that through them, she lives on. When you’re ready—and I do not say it will be soon—perhaps you may find some peace in your children, too.”

  He exhaled heavily, catching the faintest whiff of Signy’s blood again as he did so. Signy, who he would never see or hear or smell again. Who would never climb upon his back, never ride with him through the water or the trees.

  But one day, he promised himself, Isabel would. Her mother’s daughter, through and through. He would tell her everything, someday. Sigmund and Ogmund, too.

  If he could not have Signy, he would have them.

  And he would see Gunnar dead.

  Only then would he find any peace again.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  HUMANS

  Arianna — Princess of Gautar, Daughter of Signy and Gunnar

  Isabel — Princess of Gautar, sister of Arianna, Ogmund, and Sigmund; daughter of Signy and Isolfur

  Ogmund — Prince of Gautar, brother of Arianna, Isabel, and Sigmund; son of Signy and Isolfur

  Sigmund — King of Gautar, brother of Arianna, Isabel, and Ogmund; son of Signy and Isolfur