On Wings of Bone and Glass

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  This, then, was how Amhric and I came to express our sovereignty over the remaining elves of the Archipelago. Not by returning in state to show them our power and demand their allegiance and their obedience in freeing their slaves... but by killing the last blood-flag head before the humans reached her. There was a grim propriety in it, for the elves that had colonized Serala in their exile would have been hard pressed to recognize any authority not accompanied by murder. But I felt no better, acknowledging the necessity.

  At least the transfer of authority was painless. I’d expected to fence for primacy with whatever subordinates Amoret had kept hungry and suspicious of one another, but she had suffered no one with ambition to take shelter with her. The two elves who’d witnessed the brutal killing of their mistress by the new elf’s genet servant had spread the news by the time we’d finished scouring the main building for anyone with authority. We exited it to find a crowd of elves awaiting us, all of them eager to pledge allegiance to us. I found the entire scene distasteful, but fortunately I was only an accessory to this process. Where people were willing, it was for Amhric to attach them: it was what he excelled at, and I was grateful to allow him the task. It gave me time to nurse my ambivalences in silence at his side, and no doubt my grim countenance did much to assure anyone with doubts that crossing us was ill-advised.

  It was a long day, and by the end of it all I wanted was a bath and a bed. What I received instead was Kelu, sitting on the mattress when I arrived ahead of Ivy, who’d gone to bespeak a bath of elven servants who were suddenly very deferent to the prince’s pet.

  The genet began the conversation by saying, “You’re welcome. Now what do you plan to do with these people now that your brother’s gone and pardoned them all their offenses? Which I think was a stupid thing to do, but he’s done it so you’re going to have to make the best of it.”

  “And are you going to let me make the best of it?” I asked, stripping off my stole. “Or are you going to steal that decision from me as well?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You can’t honestly ask me to believe you wanted Amoret alive.”

  “Even if I did—and I’m not saying that I did—you could have left her death to me.”

  Kelu snorted. “So you could suffer pangs of debilitating guilt for the rest of your life?”

  “I did kill full half the elves Temeret and Isis brought with them to the mainland,” I said, and to my credit my voice only barely broke on the word ‘kill.’

  “Yes, and you hated every moment of it,” Kelu said. “I assure you, I enjoyed every second of Amoret’s death. I only wish it had taken me longer to kill her, but that glass shard is meaner than any sword I’ve ever seen. It felt like it wanted to kill her.”

  I did shudder then, and folded my arms. “I stand by my words.”

  “That you can execute elves when necessary?” she said. “Of course you can. But they were strangers to you, Morgan. Amoret, you knew. You would have spent your whole life wondering if you made a fair judgment, or if your hatred clouded your vision. And in the end, if I’d let you make the choice, you would have spared her because of your hatred. Because you never would have been sure if you were making the right choice, so you would have felt constrained to make the one that could be fixed if it turned out you were wrong. And then the woman who had Almond beaten would still be alive, and I would have had to kill her at some point anyway. This way, at least, we’ve been spared all the harm she would have done between now and then.” Kelu slid off the bed. “And Ivy’s about to come in with your water, so I’m off.”

  “To do what?” I asked. “Kill more elves?”

  She grinned, all teeth. “No, I think I’m done for the day. And so are you.” She headed for the door and added again, “You’re welcome.”

  I was still standing where she left me when Ivy entered with the water, and at the sight of me she shooed the elves away who’d accompanied her. She handed me a pail and said, “Our future palace should have better plumbing.”

  “Ivy—”

  “Don’t.” She shook her head. “Emily told me everything that woman said and now, I imagine, you are in some mortal terror that I am going to transform into her... which, I might add, is hardly flattering. Luckily for you years of higher education among an almost entirely male student body has desensitized me to casual insult.”

  “Ivy!” I exclaimed. “I would never—I didn’t mean—”

  “Any insult?” She cocked a brow at me, poured the water in the tub. “And yet you think I’m going to turn into a harpy just because we can’t beget our own babies?” She snorted. “Evertrue is full of orphanages, Morgan. You were one of those orphans. Do you recall?”

  “I do,” I said, hoarse. “But—”

  “But?” She sighed. “My dearest. What you have to face is that this isn’t my fear. It’s yours. You want a child of your own—or a child by me, maybe, one of the two. You’re the one who fears what we might become without that.”

  “Sometimes we change our minds about what we want,” I said at last.

  “Sometimes we do,” she agreed. “And sometimes what we want isn’t possible.”

  “But if you—”

  “Morgan.” She gripped my arms. “It’s you that I want. It’s you that I’ve always wanted. If you want children, we’ll adopt one. Or several! If you want a child of your body, you can have one after I’m dead. If you want a child of my body, we can make arrangements, I suppose. Maybe Chester will serve.”

  I thought then that my skin would burn off with the force of my blush. “God, Ivy!”

  She laughed. “All right, maybe not. But that day in the field where you shared the magic between us?” She tilted her head. “We both love you, Morgan. It might serve. As a last resort you understand, as I love you, not your friends.”

  “I think I need to sit,” I said, grasping blindly for the edge of the bathtub. She was giggling, and I shot her a severe look. “You are awful!”

  “I love you,” she said, unrepentant, all merriment in her voice and her eyes: finer in that moment than any elf, enchanted or not. “Now into the bath with you, so that I might remind you.”

  But I could not sleep that night until well after midnight, when Amhric let himself into our room. Ivy was already slumbering, cheek on my chest and all her warm brown hair spilled over my arm; she didn’t stir when my brother sat on the edge of the bed. I looked up at him, and I thought all my heart was in my eyes, for he cupped my face with a small hand. For a long while we did not speak, and that was well, for I needed his touch as much as any speech. But at last, my brother murmured, “She would never have been content.”

  “Was that a reason to see her slain?”

  A smile curved his mouth. “You speak my words, but you are not Amhric, Morgan.”

  So I spoke mine. “I wanted her dead. For you, for Almond. For me.”

  He nodded. And after a moment, confessed, quiet, “So did I.”

  Startled, I said nothing.

  “Kelu made us both a gift,” he said. “Even though we would not have accepted it had she asked us to. But it doesn’t change that she was right about Amoret. She would never have been content. In the end, she would have had to die.”

  “To say so seems to usurp God’s privilege.”

  “To say otherwise would be to abdicate our responsibilities. He gave us free will, my brother. To fail to exercise it in the face of evil is not mercy.” He looked away. “I would have done it myself, had I been able.”

  Having never heard anything like this admission from him, I sat up a little. When he turned his gaze back to me, I saw pain in it, and anger, and dismay.

  It was impossible not to love Amhric, but I had always loved him as one loves an angel, a saint, a sunrise, a child. Helplessly, and as something perfect and apart. The sight of his struggle with resentment and pain...

  I reached for him and drew him close. It was I who kissed his temple this time, not him: and his closed eyes, and his mouth, before using my fr
ee hand to frame his face and wait until he was willing to look at me. So abashed and so uncertain and so real: here was a man I could love as a person as well as a king. I’d made a vow to him on the strand of Kesína, over clasped hands on an iron staff. Here I renewed it with something gentler, for the years that would stretch before us. They would hold challenges but not, I trusted, quite as violent.

  “Sleep,” I said, soft. “Without dreams. In the morning, we have our work.”

  “We will always have that.” He smiled, though. “Thank you. Morgan.”

  After he left, I curled Ivy back into her previous position and rested my chin on her hair. My sigh released something in me I hadn’t realized had been awaiting freedom. So much to do yet, but I trusted that it would be done.

  25

  In the morning I sent out the decree: we were leaving. I revealed that plan to my personal party while we broke our fast, over an hour after I’d sent the elven servants to distribute the news.

  “Leaving?” Emily asked. “All of us?”

  “All of us, and every elf,” I said. “We’re heading for Nudain. As Ikaros patently did not expect us to succeed he didn’t explain what proof he’d accept of that success. Therefore, we are bringing him the most irrevocable proof I can provide.”

  “You want to traipse into Nudain—which I remind you is full of homicidal humans with grudges—with an entire train of elves who were lately killing them.” Kelu’s ears were splayed; she obviously couldn’t decide whether I was mad or stupid.

  “I do, yes,” I said. The Archipelago’s bread was unleavened and soft, and at breakfast it was served with gem-like marmalades derived from tropical fruit. “If there is to be any hope of this working, Kelu, the remaining humans have to see me as an authority over the elves, and a power against which they should probably think twice before defying. Openly, at least.”

  “I think it’s crazy.”

  “So advance me a better plan.” I poured Ivy chocolate and myself water.

  “I can’t think of one,” Kelu admitted, grumpy. “If you leave all these elves here someone new will elect himself leader and since Amoret left no one alive with the spine to stand up to her, the person who’d succeed her would be a panicked prey animal whose reaction to any threat would be to either cower or attack all out. Thinking through the options would be the last thing on his mind.”

  I didn’t interrupt. It seemed impossibly long ago that Almond had suggested that Kelu served the role of advisor-to-the-prince. Kelu had dismissed the idea, but as usual, Almond had known us better than we’d known ourselves. Kelu made a superlative advisor and she probably didn’t realize it.

  “They’d die,” Emily offered. “If we left them here. Some humans would come and kill them, without Amoret to make them vicious.”

  “Maybe,” Kelu muttered. “Probably.” She rubbed her head, disheveling her hair. “So why don’t you just take a few?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, innocent. “Why don’t I?”

  Kelu eyed me, ears flattening. I waited her out, and she said, “Because if you only took a few Ikaros wouldn’t believe you when you said you spoke for all of them.”

  I nodded. “It’s not that I like the choice I’m making. Only that I believe it to be the best of many bad choices.”

  Kelu snorted. “Fine. I’ll give you that. But I’d like to see how you prevent a bloodbath once we arrive.”

  I would like to see how I managed it myself, but it was, as I’d noted, the best of many bad choices.

  From my new southern elven nation—what remained of it—I received surprisingly few complaints. Either Amhric had won their hearts, or Amoret’s death had left them casting for any direction, but whatever their motivation they followed us. I was not glad to see it; while I abhorred what the Archipelago had made of elven culture, I knew it had once been proud and beautiful, and I knew it could be so again. This nadir had been as much humanity’s doing as the elves’, and we both had much to answer for in it. Seeing the column trudge out of Amoret’s manse, I renewed my resolve. There was no separating elf from human in all this. If we were both to find our way, it would have to be together... because it was together that we had pushed one another off the path.

  I reined in my horse and sent it racing back up the field to the front of the line where my own awaited me. It would be a long journey with so many of the elves on foot, but I felt at last that there was an ending in this: not to the story entire, but to an ugly chapter in it.

  With a sigh, Kelu said, “I guess if you’re going to gamble, this is the best gamble to take.”

  “Truly,” I said, “my predecessor would be proud.”

  She snorted and turned her horse toward Nudain, and I let her lead.

  We were halfway through our journey when Emily, shading her eyes, said, “I don’t think there are any birds that size on the islands....”

  Following her gaze, I started. “That is no bird!” And dismounted before the approaching drake could startle it into carrying me away. Ivy and Amhric joined me and together we waited for the silhouette to swell into that welcome shape, and then the drake was running off its momentum, great wings sweeping down with a sound like an enormous drum struck and vibrating. Folding its pinions, it lunged for me and I laughed, wrapping my arms around its nose. “Gently! You are not so small anymore, you will bowl me over! Great heart, good friend. You have been missed!”

  “And what about us?” Chester called from the drake’s neck. “We are poor seconds, I see!”

  “Never,” I said, grinning, reaching an arm for him.

  He laughed. “But ladies first!” He let go of Serendipity, who’d been buckled into the saddle in front of him—a true saddle now, and made to the drake’s measure if my eye was any judge—and the genet scrabbled down its side onto the ground. Once she reached it she bounded for me and squealed. “Master! Master, I can do magic!”

  “What’s this now?” I asked, holding her. “Say again!”

  “Magic!” She leaned back, her lambent eyes bright. “I can do it!”

  “It’s true,” Chester said, joining her. He looked wintry pale beneath a tropical sun, but happy. “We thought it a fluke, but a little experimentation has made it clear she has a talent.”

  “I find things!” Serendipity said, grinning. “At the right time!”

  “You always have,” I said gravely.

  “I know! But now I know that I do and I can make it happen.” She nodded. “I was the one who found you! Just now! Chester said we might not be able to, that the drake would end up flying for months trying to figure out where you were. But I said, ‘no, I can do it!’ and he said, ‘all right, let’s try,’ and it worked!”

  “The first genet mage,” Chester said. “Can you imagine it?”

  “I can,” I said, and laughed, hugged him. “It is good to see you. And not behind bars!”

  Chester snorted. “For what I did to Roland and Powlett? Not a chance. They were apparently killed in the confusion of the undead attack, if you will. Ivy, so good to see you.” He kissed her hands, inclined his head to Kelu and paused at the sight of Amhric. Amhric ignored that hesitation and hugged him, as I had, and he accepted this with humility. Once he’d stood apart, he continued, “I was far more like to be entrapped by the political mess. Locke, that professor of yours... you have no idea!”

  “No,” I said, grinning. “I haven’t. What did he do?”

  “You can imagine the First Minister wasn’t pleased with the prospect of an entire new race appearing out of the past to use up our northern border,” Chester said. “That was until Eyre pointed out that all the countries bordering us now are capable of magic, just as we are... but only we had access to people who could train us to use that magic effectively. At which time, as you imagine, it became absolutely imperative that the elves prefer to ally with Troth than with Candor or Help-on-High. Save that, naturally, the ambassadors of those nations became embroiled in the matter and are now making their own overtures....”


  “God!” I exclaimed. “Poor Kemses!”

  “He’ll live,” Chester said, amused. “I am more worried about Du Roi and Douglas, who never expected to be dragged into the councils of the wise and powerful. Du Roi’s uncle is in transports; he never expected his nephew to follow his footsteps, and here Guy is hobnobbing with the First Minister himself?” Chester shook his head, chuckling. “We haven’t been able to pry him free with a lever since. Poor fellow is about ready to climb the walls for want of a willing woman and a drink.”

  “And Radburn?” Ivy asked.

  “Wants a willing woman or a willing man, he’s desperate enough for either. Of the handful of us, he has the most military background and there’s not a person who doesn’t want his personal opinion on how the battle against the dead was accomplished. The Vessel’s men among them.” He grimaced. “That has been a bad business, I’m afraid. You know the Church made it habit for us to burn our dead—”

  “Yes,” I began, and then halted. “Oh, how clever!”

  “It would have been, yes, had they disinterred the dead of previous centuries and burned their remains as well,” Chester said. “Unfortunately, all over the country the burial rites have been a mélange of customs and habits, and there were enough left over to have made terrible work. In the small towns in particular; outside of Troth it was even worse, where the Church has not spread so densely. The Vessel has been a busy woman, and not in a fashion she enjoys.”

  I winced. “I imagine not.”

  “And you?” He glanced past my shoulder and fell silent. Looking over it, I did as well, for our elves, rather than continuing to trudge past us, had stopped and were now staring.

  As if sensing their regard, the drake arched its neck and spread those wings, and if they were not as vast as the dragons of old, still they cast long shadows, not just on the grass, but into memory. Had not the dragons whispered to me in hallucination? The elves had hunted and destroyed them. Had apparently trammeled their bones into at least one such creation.