A Crown of Lilies

by Melissa Ragland

  “Yes.”

  The men exchanged a glance. “We heard you were arrested for treason. How did you escape?”

  “With help.” My eyes flicked to Quintin, who watched me from behind his carefully composed mask.

  They were not satisfied, pressing me further as I backed away from the fire, demurring. Quintin grabbed my arm as I turned to go, leaning in.

  “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but they need to know who they’re fighting for.”

  I shook my head. “They’re fighting for Selice, not me.”

  He tilted his head at me. “These are your men. You came here for a reason.”

  “To give them some hope, not to weave my own legend,” I scoffed, pulling my arm from his grip.

  His blue eyes pressed me silently.

  “No.”

  He shrugged and took a few steps toward the men, who watched our exchange curiously. “Alright, lads, ask your questions.”

  “You can’t!” I protested, grabbing at his leather armor. “I forbid it!”

  “I don’t work for you anymore, remember?” he taunted dryly.

  They blurted a number of queries at the same time, a jumble of voices emboldened by the skin of wine they’d been passing around as I regaled them with James’ heroic ballad. Finally, Bryce shushed them and asked for a full accounting from the time of the fire onward. There was little to tell, by my reckoning. Little of interest, anyway, and Quintin hadn’t been there for most of it. Internally, I jeered at him. He couldn’t tell what he didn’t know. Stubborn ass.

  Then he began to speak, and my victory shriveled in my chest. He and Tommy had exchanged a lot more than respect over the course of my recovery.

  He knew every gods-be-damned detail. I stood, humiliated, with my back to them, hugging myself and hiding my face. During particularly unflattering parts, I paced angrily and shoved at him, imploring him to stop. He waved me off like he was swatting a fly, and I hated him for it. He told them in surprisingly eloquent terms of my solitary ride to the temple square and the confrontation therein. Neither he nor Tommy had been there, but he made do with a bit of imagination and secondhand accounts. I was surprised at how much of it the men already knew, but I supposed I’d made a bit of a scene that day, and gossip travels far.

  My arrest and imprisonment were glanced over, thankfully. I’d never told anyone the details of that particular hellhole, not even him, but his description of my sorry state when Tommy’s boys delivered me to the hideout was enough. Our escape and return to Laezon were also quickly summarized, though he lingered on my fever and my efforts to reclaim my strength. When he finally, blessedly, fell silent, I thanked the gods for it.

  “Seven hells, Eli,” Bryce breathed. I turned around to find them all staring at me. A few others had wandered over during the course of Quintin’s story, standing behind their shield brothers to listen. They were waiting for me to say something, but I’d no idea what.

  “Did you really train with the cavalry?” one man spoke up.

  I was frozen beneath the regard of so many eyes, laid bare by my companion’s words. Any confidence I’d gained in my position as the Lady of Lazerin had evaporated in the recounting of my abysmal failure and brutalization at the hands of our enemy.

  “She did,” Bryce chimed in when I didn’t respond. “Right alongside the rest of us, though we didn’t know she was a girl ‘til the end. Best mounted bow in the company.” He favored me with a sly wink. “Not bad with a knife either.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but another soldier chimed in. “My cousin says you’re out here every day on that big silver warhorse of yours.”

  “Stop, please,” I begged them meekly. They fell silent, faces cast in deep shadows in the firelight as they regarded me. Quintin turned in his seat to glance at me over his shoulder. I backed away, my words faltering, and fled into the night. Several voices called after me. Hiking my skirts in one hand, I strode briskly between the tents, weaving through soldiers and piles of gear. Once I was clear of the lights of the encampment, boot steps closed on me from behind. A callused hand grabbed my wrist, tugging me to a halt.

  “Elivya, wait.”

  I whirled on him, fury and shame left plain on my face as I ripped my arm from his grasp and shoved him hard. “You had no right!”

  He retreated a step and then held his ground. “These are your men. They should know who you are.”

  I raised my brows, voice cracking with rage. “A failure? A fucking whipping post for the enemy? A broken relic of a fallen House?”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “That’s not what they heard. Did you even see their faces?”

  I waved one hand toward the encampment. “I was there, Quintin! You made sure to include every miserable detail. How are they supposed to go to war at my behest now, knowing what I am?”

  It was his turn to raise his brows. “A fighter? Is that so terrible for them to know?”

  “I’m a figurehead!” I gasped in exasperation. “Selice is who they are fighting for! I’m supposed to be a faceless banner, a mascot to bind them to their purpose!”

  He took a step toward me, jabbing one finger at my chest. “You went willingly to your death for them – for every Alesian. Men don’t follow flags or figureheads, they follow leaders. That is what you are. That is what you could be to them.”

  A desperate laugh escaped my lips. I shook my head, throwing up my hands. “How can I make you understand?” I pointed at the manor behind me, leaning toward him angrily. “They need their queen to lead them, not me.”

  “Men go to war for all kinds of reasons.”

  “It’s not your story to tell!” I shouted. “It’s mine! It was mine,” I revised bitterly.

  “And would you have ever told it to anyone?” he challenged, anger rising in his own voice. “Tell me, honestly, now. Even me?” He waved one hand toward the house. “I had to hear it from Tommy! After everything we’ve been through, that smuggler knows more about you than I do!”

  “He was there!” I roared at him, regretting the words the moment they slipped past my lips. I watched his face close like a trap, jaw muscles working. Clutching at my hair, I paced on the grass to cool my temper. Biting my lip against the mounting sorrow, I turned back to face him. “You weren’t there, Quintin. You didn’t see.” Hot tears streamed down my cheeks despite my best efforts. “They bound them to a post and burned them alive.” My voice trembled, their charred and blackened faces swimming in my mind. “And I would have betrayed everything they died for.”

  His mask faltered for a moment, his guilt laid plain in the night air between us. “But you didn’t.”

  I smiled sadly, chewing the inside of my cheek. “It haunts me the same as the faces I carry, the faces of good men. I will never live down that shame.” Looking around at the vast fields of my ancestral home, I shook my head. “When I came here, I thought I could still use the Lazerin name to serve the cause. I thought I could hide my shame in the shadows, and no one would have to know what I’d done.” I swallowed, finally pinpointing the root of my anguish. “You took that from me.”

  Miserable and hurt, I turned and left him there in the darkness, returning to the manor alone.

  I stood at Selice’s side and watched the army break camp at dawn. Banners fluttered in the breeze over our heads, Adulil’s golden sunburst above Lazerin’s golden stallion. A motley assortment of flags dotted the mass of men before us, sigils in every color. Reyus and Samson raised their hands in salute as they rode alongside their men. When the columns of soldiers had passed and the supply train trailed along behind, we broke our vigil and returned to the house.

  It was already mid-morning, but I changed into my sparring gear anyway and went to the garden. I’d not seen my Tuvrian shadow since our argument in the fields. Part of me wondered if he’d marched off with Bryce and the rest, but I knew him better than that. He was there somewhere, avoiding me with determination.

  Let him sulk, I thought bitterly as I sta
rted in on my drills.

  He didn’t come to practice. He wasn’t at lunch. Selice and I ate in silence as her ladies-in-waiting chatted. My young queen eyed me across the table but said nothing. Freshly bathed and dressed in a simple gray cotton gown, I meandered through the empty halls and marveled at the sudden quiet. My wanderings led me back to the garden, and I sank down onto a bench across from my family’s Great Oak. I stared at it a long time, thinking about my parents.

  I was ruminating on my father’s war stories when he settled onto the bench a few chaste inches from me, his baldric rattling against the wood. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him as he fidgeted beside me, rubbing his hands, elbows on his knees. A tense silence stretched between us.

  “I’m sorry,” he finally said, voice hoarse from lack of use.

  “I know,” I replied quietly.

  “Everyone carries their own ghosts. I know you struggle with yours, but what you see as failure and weakness, others see as courage and resilience.” There was a rustle as he turned toward me. “I hope someday you will be able to see it too.”

  I did face him then. “I’m sorry for what I said. It was wrong of me to lay that at your feet.”

  He dropped his gaze to his hands. “I wasn’t here when you needed me most. I have to live with that the rest of my life.” Blue eyes met mine. “I swear to you, I’ll never leave you again.”

  There was an earnestness in him in that moment, his face open to me like it rarely was. His guarded demeanor had gradually softened to something resembling comfort over the months since I’d been delivered from the dungeons of Litheria. This was not that. This was something altogether different. It frightened me, though I couldn’t quite place why.

  In an instant, the moment vanished, the book closed before my eyes. He stood, offering one hand to me. I clasped his forearm and he pulled me to my feet.

  “No more stories?” I asked, glancing up at him in warning.

  “You have my word.” We exchanged a solemn nod. “And you?” he pressed. “Will you at least try to go a bit easier on yourself?”

  After a brief hesitation, I agreed. He had a point. My guilt and my ghosts were drowning me. I knew I would never be free of them. The shadows in my father’s eyes nearly twenty years after the War of Crowns had stood testament to that, but I could at least try to learn to live with them and carry them with grace. I had to move forward, to be of any use to anyone. I could still redeem myself, and the deaths of my loved ones, by putting Selice on the throne.

  I vowed to make it so.

  Chapter 21

  The day after the army departed, it began to rain. It continued nonstop for two weeks. Reports came every few days from our troops, quickly bogged down in the mire. Supply carts, horses, and men floundered in the mud, knee-deep in some places. After the fourth day, Reyus had called a halt and the army hunkered down to wait out the storms. Once the rain finally abated, it took another week for the ground to dry and the damaged wagons to be repaired. We’d lost the better part of a month.

  Selice paced angrily in the salon, Elliot, Maria, myself, and her captain standing silent vigil and waiting out our own kind of storm. Reports had come in from the western border as well, detailing pitched battles between the Hydraxian army and the readily-fortified strongholds of our allies. Alone in our nearly-empty house, the mounting pressure and feelings of helplessness were palpable.

  “Colin, send to Frii again,” she demanded. “Tell them in no uncertain terms that their queen commands them to identify and reinforce those western fortifications most in need of aid.” He pressed one fist to his chest in salute and disappeared from the room. Selice continued to pace. The rest of us waited. “The solstice is tomorrow and we are no closer to the city than we were a month ago,” she fumed.

  “They’ll be on the move now, and even with their slow progress, they’ll reach the city in a few weeks’ time.” My attempts to reassure her felt feeble. “Tommy knows they’re coming. His men will be ready.”

  “In the meantime, Majesty,” Elliot chimed in. “What should we do about the refugees?”

  His distraction worked well, and our young queen set aside her anger. “How many are there now?”

  “Three dozen or so. More arrive every day.”

  She looked to me. “This is your province, Lady Lazerin. I’ll leave it to you.”

  So it happened that I spent much of my free time riding out to the fields outside the manor. Where until just recently our army had been encamped, a smaller and more motley encampment was growing by the day. We did what we could for them, providing food and supplies to those in need. Word of that spread, too, and soon we had a small village camped outside the walls. Shabby tents and colorful wagons sat in clusters on the grass, each keeping with their own. It saddened me, but I understood. In desperate times, people cling to what they know for safety.

  We spoke with them, Quintin and I, attempting to gather as much news as possible regarding the Persican forces and positions. They told us what they could. For the last few months, refugees had begun to filter into the provinces west of the Septim River from the east. Alesians and gezgin alike flooded towns and set up temporary camps in the open fields. The Divine Origin was pushing out into the countryside. Word had spread of their poisoning of the wells, so the enemy had been resorting to more brutal tactics to subjugate the populace. Still leaning heavily on their claims of divine purpose, they carried their cleansing dogma into village after village. With Persican soldiers at their backs, the people had little choice but to submit or flee.

  Elliot and Maria joined us more often than not, seeing to the majority of the supply distribution. Many of the provisions we had reserved for the army were breached and used to feed those in need. We stretched as much as we could, but I watched our stores dwindle and worried.

  Despite the encampment, I kept to my daily exercises, sparring with Quintin at dawn and then riding in the makeshift training field to practice with my bow. It drew an audience. I ignored them as best I could, until one day, a cluster of bold Alesian men and women wandered over as we took a break in the late morning sun.

  I sat on a boulder and gulped from my waterskin as they approached. Valor nipped at the grass nearby. Quintin positioned himself in front of me cautiously, but none of them appeared to be armed. They halted a few feet from us, the collective group nudging one young man to the fore. I watched him gather his courage, chin raising and shoulders squaring as he took a step forward.

  “You are the one who has been helping us?” he asked me.

  There were hundreds of them now, an impossible number of faces to keep straight. I didn’t remember the man before me, but I couldn’t be sure. “One of them, yes,” I replied carefully.

  He nodded with certainty, then jutted his chin at the manor. “You are the noble of this House, the Lady of Lazerin.” It wasn’t quite a question.

  “I am.”

  One eyebrow raised doubtfully as he gestured to Valor. “And you train as a soldier?”

  I held his gaze unflinching. “I believe one should know how to defend themselves.”

  The corner of his mouth curled in a wry smile. He jerked his head at the small group at his back. “Could you teach us?”

  It caught me off-guard, his request, but I did my best to keep my surprise well-concealed. Instead, I watched him – read him – and his cluster of companions. They ranged in age, though none older than thirty. Each of them looked tired and lost, with a hint of desperation here and there. Above all, a hunger lingered over all of them that had nothing to do with food. I knew that need all too well. It hovered, ever present, at the back of my thoughts.

  Pushing off the boulder, I approached them. “All of you?”

  They murmured their collective affirmation.

  I nodded. “Alright. Meet here this time tomorrow. If you’ve a bow, bring it.”

  One young man spoke up. “What about him? Could he teach us the sword?”

  I turned to face Quintin, his own a
careful mask. Your choice, I told him with a shrug.

  He considered them. “Do any of you even own a sword?” he asked dryly. A few of the men confirmed they did, others shuffled in place. My Tuvrian sighed. “Alright. Tomorrow.”

  Thus began our makeshift lessons. They scrounged up what weapons they could between their own families and their neighbors. For the rest, I emptied the house armory. Quintin started them with sticks, which none of them were too keen about, but I saw the sense to it as they struggled through the most basic one-handed cycles. After about a week, he let them begin drilling with steel. I moved my widely-spaced archery targets into a neat row to train those with bows. Most of the arrows landed far afield and my students spent a good amount of time searching the grass for them, but they never complained. After the second day, one young woman had the idea to paint some carmine on the shafts to make them easier to find. When I asked her how she’d come up with the idea, she smirked and muttered something about her former profession.

  Life takes all kinds.

  Whether from the enthusiasm of our students or the fact that we practiced well within sight of the encampment, our numbers grew by the day. By the end of the first week, I had to send to the garrison for more weapons. For the most part, the women kept to the bow and the men to the sword, though there were a few who crossed the unspoken line. Several men of fathering age preferred to learn a skill that could feed their families. I didn’t blame them. The younger students were eager for revenge and a sense of purpose. The elder were simply trying to survive and keep their children from going hungry. A few bold young women switched to the sword after Quintin used me to demonstrate the first set of their sparring drills.

  Not everyone was as thrilled about our endeavors. The gezgin scowled from their caravans, shaking their heads at the Alesian women who took to wearing borrowed breeches and tunics to practice in mimic of my own garb. One afternoon, as we walked the camp distributing supplies, I noticed a group of men eyeing me and muttering together in their language. Ignoring them, I met with the women of the family unit and inquired after their needs. We used a combination of broken language and universal gesture to communicate. Quintin kept a careful distance.