The Queens of Innis Lear

by Tessa Gratton

“Is wrong.”

  “Let’s speak of something else.”

  “Ah.” He thought hard for a neutral thing to say, stepping closer. The ocean wind streamed around him, and he felt the humming again, from the air, from the stones, from the moon. “If you stand here, and leap from one foot to the next”—he demonstrated, widening his stance comically—“back and forth, it looks like the moon herself is leaping.”

  Seeming surprised, Elia joined him. She took his dirty hand and hopped, her eyes up on the hazy sky.

  The moon bobbed as they did. It was like six years vanished between them, and they’d never been apart. Elia gripped his hand, and he smiled at her, watching her face when he could instead of the moon.

  Slowly, slowly, he became aware of the feel of her cool hand in his, the sliding of her skin against his skin; the motion tingled and burned up along the soft side of his wrist, pooling in his elbow, tickled all the way to his heart with a thread of starlight. It was no imagined poetry that made him think it, but magic, tying them back together as he’d sought to tie himself again to Innis Lear. His blood between them, and this shared dance.

  Ban thought about kissing her.

  He stumbled, jerking at Elia’s arm, and she laughed. “I know what you were looking at, Ban Errigal.”

  She could not, he hoped, know he’d had such a thought as he’d had, to take something from her she had not offered. “I enjoy making the moon move,” he said.

  “Not very respectful,” she chided, but without much force behind it.

  “I have no respect for this place.”

  It killed their moment of pleasure, and Ban regretted that, though not what he’d said.

  Elia went still. “Maybe your disdain can cancel out his worship,” she whispered.

  “I’ll take you away from here,” he heard himself say, and knew he meant every word. He meant this more than any promise he’d ever made to Aremoria. “We could leave now. My horse is in the Sunton stables; we’ll go and be long away by dawn. From there to Aremoria and beyond, any place we like.”

  The princess stared at his mouth, as if reading his next words there: “Two nobodies, just Ban and Elia. We could do anything. Come with me,” he said, almost frantic. This was the moment, the tilting, reaching moment that would change everything. Choose me, he thought.

  But Elia turned away from him. Said, looking to the stars once more, “Everyone would blame you, say terrible things about you.”

  “And so the sun rises every morning.” The bitterness staining his words stung even his own mouth. Did she know what it had been like for him as a boy? Did she ever notice her father’s jabs? No, he told himself, more likely Elia had loved him the way children love what they have, and forgot him the moment he was gone. Why else did she never write to him?

  “I can’t, Ban. My father will regret this, I know. He must. He will see…” Her eyes closed, but her head was still tipped back to the sky. “He will see a new sign in the stars, and forgive me.”

  “What kind of forgiveness is that, if he only does it for them?” Ban flung his hands at the stars.

  Moonlight caught the tips of her short, curled lashes. “Forgiveness is its own point,” she insisted.

  He stared at her, wondering if anyone could be so good. Wondering if she believed herself. “I can’t forgive him,” he said. “For what he’s done to you. To me. I don’t want to.”

  She opened her eyes and faced him, revealing a vivid ache in her gaze. “I think … I used up my heart completely this afternoon. There is no space for any new feeling to take hold, Ban. Only for what already lived there, and rooted long ago.”

  “I was there.”

  Elia nodded. “As he has always been. And you are here now, and that is … it is such a balm to see you.”

  “Just in time for you to leave, to trade places with me in Aremoria,” he said angrily, wanting to remind her sharply that Morimaros of Aremoria was not rooted in her heart. But he said no more, shocked at his conflicted loyalty. Morimaros deserved much better from him.

  She shook her head sadly, disapproving of his anger. Then she asked, “Why did you come out here, to this place you dislike?”

  “To escape our fathers,” he muttered.

  “There are many ways to do that. Are you looking for a prophecy? It is what this place is for.”

  “You should know better. I came to invite myself back to the roots of Innis Lear. To the voices of the trees and stones. Since there is no well from which to drink.” He stalked to the eastern stone, where the moon hung a handspan above it now, and the Star of First Birds sparkled just to the side. As he approached, the stone grew and grew against the darkening sky until it swallowed the moon whole. Ban put his hands flat against it and pushed. It did not budge, of course, but he ground his teeth and shoved, straining with all his strength. His boots slid roughly.

  Elia appeared beside him. “Ban?”

  Suddenly he stopped. He flopped against the cool face of the monolith, sweat seeping off his skin and into the porous granite like the stone drank up his sacrifice. “I want to tear it all down,” he whispered, panting. He would destroy Lear and ruin his father for their relentless devotion to uncaring, unflinching stars.

  She leaned beside him, flat against the rock. For a disorienting moment, he remembered lying with her on the ground like this as children, facing each other to watch the slow progress of a snail.

  They stared at each other as the night deepened and the stars lifted themselves to cast hazy light over the frazzled edges of Elia’s curls. Ban thought again of kissing her, touching her mouth, her neck, the ringlets of her hair. He tried to think of nothing else, just her. To calm himself with her image, her breath near his breath. She was Innis Lear to him, all the goodness and potential of this forsaken land, and now the king was sending her away. If he accomplished his goals here, might he follow her home to Aremoria, and find welcome and peace where she was, both of them with Morimaros?

  Then Elia said, “These stones have always been here. They can’t be destroyed.”

  “Someone made this place.”

  “The earth saints, long ago. They’re grown into the ground now. Indestructible.” Elia sounded defeated, but sure.

  “Like a father’s love?” He could not help the mockery.

  She broke in half, bending at the waist. “I don’t understand it, Ban. I don’t understand how he let this happen. What did I do?”

  Rage cut through him, turning the starlight to sparks and fire.

  “Nothing,” Ban whispered. “You did nothing wrong. I will prove it to you, somehow, how easy it is to ruin a father’s heart. To turn them against a beloved child.”

  The idea blazed in him: he would show her.

  He would use Morimaros’s game to his own advantage. If he could convince Elia, draw her over to his side, the world would be right, for the first time, no matter how terrible the truth might seem. Elia of the Stars and Ban of the Earth, bridging that terrible chasm. “You’ll see, Elia, that it’s not a flaw in you making this happen, but in Lear himself. A flaw your father embedded into the heart of this island. Fear and absolutism. When you understand he has no power over you, then you can be home. I will make you a home with this proof.”

  Elia pulled hard away from him

  “Don’t be afraid. Be bold, like you were today.” He slapped his hand on his chest. “All I have is what I was born with, no star promise, and it’s made me bold, won me what little I have. It’s what will push me further, allow me to take what is mine. That is what I want. What do you want? What is yours? What is it that makes you bold, Elia? Bold enough to look your father in the eye and be honest?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Find it.”

  “Help me.”

  “I can’t, Elia. You have to do it yourself. I went to Aremoria and found who I am. And now you could do the same. You aren’t your father or your sisters or your mother. Who are you?”

  Elia touched the back
of his hand. “Who am I?” she asked softly.

  In the language of trees, he said it again: Who are you?

  And she replied the first words he’d taught her, twelve years ago: Thank you.

  Elia Lear, the island whispered, but she stared at him as if she did not hear its voice at all.

  Ban left her at the stone and went to the edge of the cliff. Before him yawned a black, churning chasm of rocky teeth and hungry waves. Eating away at the island. Someday it would eat through enough that the earth where he stood would fall on its own, cleave apart because of that hungry sea. The stone circle would fall, destroyed and invisible to those cold stars.

  Part

  TWO

  FIVE YEARS AGO, EASTERN BORDER OF AREMORIA

  THE ONLY THING the king of Aremoria disliked about himself was this weakness he had of avoiding the hospital tents for hours or even days after battle.

  It was not that he was bothered by injury, violence, or gore; no, he met with plenty such on the battlefield itself. His aversion was, he believed, a weakness of heart, and one he would need to conquer before he could truly lead Aremoria. Mars did not like to see the damage he’d caused to his own men. The permanently scarred or disabled; the dying; the sleepless moans; the cries of specific, prying pain. Their hurt overwhelmed him now as it had not when he was merely a prince and a soldier by their sides, not bearing responsibility for the damage done in the crown’s name. Mars saw the pinched eyes, the twisted mouths, the clenched fingers, the shallow breathing, and the soft pleading for mothers, wives, and children, and he could not keep from imagining those very people—mothers, wives, children, and fathers, too, cousins, friends, grand-folk, who would be immeasurably violated by the loss of a single soldier. Because of him.

  Consequences lurked in the hospital tent, hungry and violent.

  When Mars lay on his mat to sleep and his mind raged with possibilities, with shifting roads ahead, with history and borders and numbers and supply trains, with political operations and flag signals, all the complex trappings of running a campaign, the king of Aremoria knew how to hold it all in hand. It would build from a collection of pieces, as if each were a star scattered in its shifting—but accurate—place in the sky, and the work of a leader was to draw connections and patterns. The sky was a maze, and he must find, for his people, the way through. Consequences were only myriad pinpricks of light, distant and maneuverable.

  And as Mars charged into battle, every soldier, every horse and spear, every shield and boot and arrow, the muddy, churning ground, the rain or blinding sun, the pain and sudden gutting surprises, the glint of swords, the splash of blood, the battle rage singing in his ears—that was what mattered most. He was a sword himself, a spear of light driving at the fore of his army to slice apart the enemy. Battle was a fork in the branches of the tree of war, and the options Mars saw meant only one thing or the other. Success or retreat, life or death—for himself, for the soldiers, for Aremoria. Consequences were immediate, dreadful, echoing, triumphant.

  Then, home in his capital, Lionis, everything was words and plans, elaborate banquets and scheming with friends against enemies, marriages and lines of succession and blood knotting into ropes of generational manipulation. It was family and keeping them safe. Consequences linked together and spread out in spokes through cities, towns, farms, like a living system of royal roads. Mars could see the turns and breaks, the bridges that needed repair or would need it soon. His mission then became balance: strength and nurturing, losses and gains.

  In most every aspect of his life, consequences were a map that Mars could manipulate. He could change things, make choices to improve the outcome, reach for the good, better, best results. There was always hope: Aremoria will be better for this step I take, for this word I pronounce, for this path I lead us down.

  But in the hospital tent, Mars could affect nothing.

  Change nothing.

  Here the consequences begged, wept, died in simple rows, inside a blood-spattered tent, and it was too late for any king to make a difference.

  And so Mars had allowed himself to avoid it, pretended his importance overshadowed his cowardice: Morimaros of Aremoria was needed in a great many other places, and because he could not help the dying, he shouldn’t prioritize them.

  They’d been at war with the neighboring kingdom of Diota since his father had died three years ago, and Diota pressed its advantage against the possibility of internal Aremore divisiveness. But Mars had brought his country to heel quickly and hoped soon to earn the Diotan king’s surrender. This most recent battle had cost Aremoria, though, and Mars was uncertain how to attack next.

  The morning had dawned clear, despite the great billowing clouds of smoke rising still off the stony valley where the dead of both sides smoldered after the midnight burn. Now, Mars stood several paces back from the flap of the hospital tent, wishing the sun shone brighter. Knees locked, arms at his sides. He was a man of nearly twenty-five years, a successful soldier, and a king. This should not have been a struggle. He was stronger, better than this. No coward. But the tent’s entrance was a black maw, a triangle of shadows that promised only angst in the shape of soft moans and clipped voices, the stench of rotting men and the tang of blood. It would’ve been worse last night, worse with desperation and bone saws. Screams, running healers, everyone giving orders or obeying them, staunching blood, stuffing poultices into gaping wounds, setting bones. Prayer.

  He’d had his own injuries tended to inside his tent while he took reports from staggering, tired captains.

  Novanos’s boots crunched the gravel as Mars’s second approached the tent. For a fleeting moment, Mars was relieved, carried off by a shameful hope that the other man had some urgent business to distract the king from this unpleasant duty. But Novanos stopped at Mars’s shoulder and only took a deep, gentle breath, held it for three counts, and let it slowly free.

  Mars allowed the ghost of a smile to appear and drew in a similar breath, forcing his shoulders to relax under the heavy mail and leather coat he wore. He tapped the side of his fist against Novanos’s. The man was exactly his age, and related through a series of cousins, though had no official claim to royal lineage because of complicated marriage contracts. Watery blond hair kept long enough to tie back, now dark and slick from bathing, and Novanos’s orange uniform was clean. This was not the one he’d worn to battle yesterday, as Mars’s was: still tarnished and muddy and smeared with browning blood.

  “Over here,” Novanos said quietly, leading Mars down the side aisle. The tent stretched long, built of strong wooden poles and canvas roof layers that lifted away in patches, and could be angled for more or less light, and to let out smoke, or keep away rain. They passed sleeping soldiers on pallets by the door, those least injured but still requiring hospital rest. Partitions separated the surgery from the resting area, and from the leftmost aisle, which was reserved for the most dire and immediate wounds. Men and women, as well as some older children, moved throughout with water and bandages, hot food and blankets. The healers, in their bleached tunics, were intent on their patients, but aides and nurses all stopped as Mars passed, bowing or saluting if a hand was free. They knew him by the simple crown etched into the bright silver of the pauldron on his left shoulder. Otherwise he did not stand out, being rather unremarkable, he thought, with his typically Aremore brown hair shorn to the skull, matching beard, blue eyes, and suntanned skin. Mars pasted a calm, confident expression across his face, aiming to project sympathy instead of the swelling grief he truly felt.

  Many of those at the fore of the tent would live and be well, barring crisis. Some slept fitfully; others tried to salute from their pallets. He murmured to them to be still, and gave each his thanks for winning the day.

  None showed him a hint of anger or mistrust. How it humbled Mars to know that even as these men and few women lay in torment and fear, they were glad to see him, he who was the cause of it.

  He knelt at the side of an older soldier with a gray
speckled beard shorn from half his face. A raw, but stitched, wound crawled like a centipede up his chin and cheek, and his head and jaw were wrapped with a bandage to keep him from speaking. Mars gripped his hand and nodded encouragement. Beside him Novanos waited patiently.

  Standing, Mars leaned in toward his friend as they continued. “I did this to him,” he confessed.

  Novanos’s drooping eyebrows lowered further. “That is rather melodramatic, sir.”

  “No one has ever accused me of that before.”

  “The Elder Queen has no doubt considered it.” Novanos spoke softly, but left no room to disagree.

  Mars paused with every soldier he passed. The king touched hands and hair, nodded, smiled grimly, commented on the patient’s obvious prowess, or admitted to being impressed by the promised scars. His head ached from holding himself calm, from clenching his jaw beneath his encouraging smiles. He thought of his father moving through throngs of people, doing the same. Mars wanted to sit at every bedside and ask for names and families, share stories and intimacy in return. He’d been able to do that, in the past. When he’d only been one of the captains, not known by any but Novanos to be Prince Morimaros. Since his father died, and Mars was forced to shed his anonymity, the soldiers held a distance between themselves and him that Mars could not help hating.

  His father had thrived in the same light, his stern countenance steadfast, remote yet never cruel or untender. A king is a symbol, he would say. The crown is your burden because it makes you the representative of all the causes and consequences of a lifetime, and longer. Good and bad. A man cannot be friends with why, Morimaros.

  You have friends among your people, Mars had said.

  I love many people, and am loved, both as a man and as a king. But there is no person in the entirety of Aremoria whom I truly call friend. There cannot be friendship without the balance of power. And in that we are not equal to any in this land, because our word is the law, and our word can send any man or woman or child to their death.