The Queens of Innis Lear

by Tessa Gratton

  Her sister crept slowly into the room, even younger and slighter. Regan was not afraid of Gaela, but afraid of whatever in the world had caused this uproar. The fur and blankets had been torn from the bed and crumpled across the floor. Ashes from the fire and chunks of black coal were strewn over the hearth. The small weapons rack lay crashed on the ground, spears and elegant knives scattered hard. A tapestry in the bold patterns of the Third Kingdom had been torn off the wall; threads and rags of it were pinned high still, tatters drifting in the ocean breeze that slipped salty and cool through the narrow window.

  Gaela had ripped off her little leather vest, too, a gift from their father that was very like a soldier’s leather chest piece. She’d scoured it with her nails, then grabbed one of the spearheads and slashed at the leather, cutting it in ugly stripes.

  “Gaela?” whispered Regan, kneeling beside her sister. She smoothed her pretty skirt and held her hands folded in her lap, waiting for Gaela’s signal.

  A great sniffle and then a following sob were enough; Regan wrapped her thin body around Gaela’s back, hugging with all her might. She hummed and murmured, pressing her cheek to Gaela’s shoulder.

  For a long time, Gaela cried, in silent, painful gasps and sobs, her tears stuck in her throat. She fisted her hands against her knees, then slammed them into the now ragged rug, again and again, until Regan caught them and held tight. Gaela shoved her away and then scrambled after, grabbing Regan into an embrace. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she hissed, horrified at hurting her sister.

  They leaned together, Gaela’s bloody knuckles smeared against Regan’s soft palms, foreheads touching, eyes closed.

  “Did you know about the prophecy?” Gaela asked, in a bare breath of a whisper.

  “There are so many.”

  “About Mother’s death.”

  Regan stiffened, wary.

  Gaela struggled to breathe without trembling. “The stars say she will die on the sixteenth anniversary of her first daughter’s birth.”

  “No.” Regan pulled back to stare at her sister’s face. Studied the stain of tears and pink, swollen eyes.

  “I heard Satiri say it, and she doesn’t believe it, but they were talking about the baby. That it doesn’t matter if it’s a boy or a girl, because what matters already happened. She already has a first daughter.”

  “Satiri doesn’t like prophecy, maybe she misheard.”

  Gaela shook her head. She rubbed her eyes with the backs of her wrists. “Satiri doesn’t mishear, and she doesn’t gossip. I turn sixteen in eight years.”

  It was twice as long as she’d already lived.

  “I should die instead,” Gaela said. She released Regan and reached for the spearhead again: a spade of iron, the tip jagged and sharp. She put it to her neck and pressed, but Regan took hold of her wrist and dragged it away.

  “No, you can’t. You can’t do that.”

  “Better me than our mother.”

  “It won’t stop it, if that’s the prophecy. Say again what Satiri heard.”

  “The queen will die on the sixteenth anniversary of her first daughter’s birth.”

  Regan pressed her lips into a line, thinking, her eyes flicking between her sister’s. “You have to live, Gaela. With me. I need you—I don’t have my own stars, you promised to share with me yours. And—and that prophecy is about the day of your birth. You already were born, Gaela,” Regan said with gentle, cold certainty, disturbing in a girl of only six years. “It’s too late.”

  Too late.

  Gaela stared at her little sister, breathing hard and fast. She’d already killed her mother, before she even knew she could.

  This occurred to her like a tiny seed: if she’d already done the worst, it didn’t matter what terrible things she had yet to do. So the eldest daughter of Lear gripped her sister’s hand, and promised never to let go.

  It was too late for anything else.

  ELIA

  NO ONE STOPPED her as she wandered back toward Errigal Keep, dazed, bloody, with nothing but an ornamental knife in her drooping fingers. As Elia entered the front court, she was not recognized quickly, because of the slump of her shoulders, and her tangled, half-braided hair. Her skirt trailed behind her in tatters, the front hem muddy and tripping her, but she did nothing to lift it up.

  “The queen,” someone murmured. But she could not be. Not now, not yet. Elia angled toward the side of the Keep; she needed to get to her room, wash up. No, she needed to find Gaela—no, Aefa … or … Her thoughts scattered. Her pulse pounded, and every thread of wind beat with the same rhythm, as if Elia herself were the core. My sisters!

  A man ran toward her; she stopped to wait on his urgency. What could matter? Her sisters both were dead. She was the only remaining daughter of Dalat and Lear. Elia blinked. Her eyes were dry, her entire body dry as a mountain peak. Had Ban—

  Morimaros of Aremoria reached her, gently panting. Behind him careened Aefa, running full tilt. Blood marred the king’s face, making his eyes sharp as blue fire. He’d shed his plate armor, down to crusty gambeson and trousers. Blood stained the collar of his shirt, and she wondered miserably it if had ever been any color but red.

  He grasped her shoulders, said something of his relief.

  Aefa flung herself into Elia, knocking her from Morimaros. “Gaela is dead! We did not know if Regan…”

  Elia nodded, allowing the hug, arms limp and stolen dagger cold. “Regan, too.”

  Aefa yelled for water, spared her friend a warm kiss, and dashed off to find Kay Oak and tell him the queen had been found.

  The king of Aremoria said her name again. He touched his fingers to her cheek, extremely careful around the blossoming bruise. “You’re otherwise uninjured?” he asked softly.

  Elia could hardly catalogue the extent of her wounds, so myriad, so small, and internal they were, slashes to her heart.

  After a bruised silence and several steps, Morimaros spoke again. “You said Regan is also dead?”

  “Gone, at least,” Elia whispered. She did not know if death had come to her furious, mad sister, or peace, or only soft darkness.

  Morimaros studied her, then cupped her elbow. “Ban is going to die.”

  She gripped the little knife tighter. “You mean he’s not dead yet.”

  “Soon.” Morimaros took Elia’s other hand. “The day is yours, lady,” he said, and what began as a hesitant, sad voice grew in strength and volume. “This island is yours, too, Queen Elia of Lear.”

  It shook her.

  Around them soldiers and retainers knelt. Elia’s heart trembled as she tried to speak, or offer a mask of stately grief at least. But the knife was in her hand, and she burned to use it. As men said, Hail queen, and Elia of Lear, and Long under the stars may she reign, Elia stared at Morimaros’s weary blue eyes. “Take me to Ban, before he dies.” She strode forward without an answer from him, but made herself glance and nod to the lines of soldiers, turn her empty palm out to them in thanks and acceptance, in blessing.

  Morimaros led her into the Keep, but suddenly Rory Errigal was there, crying her name. She did not give him anything. Rory smoothed his fingers over the aching side of her face where Regan had hit her, but she fisted a hand against his mail and shoved at his chest. “Not yet,” she said. “Take me to Ban.”

  The earlson hesitated, concern streaked over his freckled features, but gave in with a reluctant nod.

  No one stopped her after that.

  Ban the Fox lay dying in his bed. Rory called softly for Brona to come out. She did. Her apron was streaked with blood, most of it dry, and she smelled of the iron stuff, and of sharp herbs, too. “Elia,” she murmured, glad and surprised.

  “Let me through,” Elia said.

  Instead, Brona put her arms around Elia, hugging her tight. Elia did not move to pull away or to return the embrace. She stood and accepted Brona, and the woman touched their cheeks together, nudging Elia’s mass of hair aside so she could whisper, “He is not so dire and dying
as I’ve led them all to believe, Elia. It is very bad, and he’s broken, but I have some little hope. If they know he might live, they’ll put him in shackles. That weight will kill him surely.”

  Cold understanding stiffened Elia’s limbs: Brona believed her to be an ally in wishing for the Fox’s survival.

  She nearly laughed. But Elia had room for only one feeling in her heart, and sympathy, humor, love were none of it.

  She went inside.

  The fire was low, and only listless sunlight filtered through the dark, shuttered windows. Elia firmly shut the door behind her.

  His breath was a crawling, shallow rattle.

  Elia slowly approached, her steps silent across the thin rug. Unlit candles were set upon a low table, a pile of discarded weapons hugged one corner, and holy bones and their cards were spread in a half circle beside the smoky hearth.

  His eyes were closed, his skin yellowed and sunken beneath stark red scratches and a flowery bruise. He’d been washed, his hair slicked back, and his shoulders were bare; torso, too, until the thin blanket pulled nearly to his navel. A great, bloody bandage wrapped his chest and right shoulder. Ban Errigal was a garden of bruises and cuts shiny with salve.

  The entire place smelled of sweat, blood, and clear, sharp medicine.

  Seeing him infuriated her.

  Her hands shook; she swallowed bile and sniffed great tears away. Her jaw clenched. This was what she’d been driven to, this moment in this dark room, just the two of them, him dying, her … she did not know. No longer sister, no longer daughter. A wizard and a queen.

  A queen of all this: Her father—dead! Her sisters—dead! And for what? For this rageful creature. Pitiful, and still alive.

  Elia hitched her skirts up and climbed over his body. His lips curled, and he hissed painfully through teeth, wincing, and his eyelids fluttered. Mama? he seemed to mouth.

  She straddled his waist and leaned down to put the edge of the knife under his chin.

  The touch of cold steel snapped his eyes open.

  “Look what you’ve done to me,” she whispered.

  “Elia.”

  Her name thick as a prayer on his tongue.

  She choked, eyes burning with tears. “Regan is dead. And Gaela is dead. And my father! You murdered him! But you’re not sorry. You would not change a thing!”

  Ban did not blink or look away. He did not deny he’d killed King Lear. When he swallowed, his throat leaned into the dagger. “My choices brought me here, and yours you. I am what I am, what I have always been.”

  Her mouth contorted; the edges of her sight rippled. “I loved you more than anyone,” Elia whispered. “Yet you are the one who taught me to hate! Not even my sisters could do that! It was you.”

  The blade pressed harder. His chin lifted, but there was no place for the Fox to hide. He did not move his arms, or tense; he did nothing to escape.

  “You loved me,” Ban whispered, closing his eyes.

  Elia trembled. She readied herself to take revenge, to slice this blade across his neck, to kill him as her father had been killed. Swiftly, some beast to be put out of its misery.

  And he did look miserable. His eyes opened again, and he met her gaze with something calm, relieved in them. “I am glad,” he said, thickly. “I am glad to die at your hand and no other’s, Elia. Queen of Innis Lear.”

  Tears plopped onto his chin.

  Her tears.

  She threw the knife across the room and collapsed against him, ignoring his small cry of pain. Elia curled her fingers in the blanket, tore at it, though it would not rip. She had to do it, or she might hit him, scratch at his bandages and see his wound gape anew, bite his bruises, beat him and make him hurt the way she hurt. She squeezed her eyes closed, ground her teeth against the shaking sobs.

  Ban did nothing but breathe and then he lifted his less-injured arm to put his hand on her cheek.

  It calmed her in a gut-wrenching flash.

  Elia kissed Ban, like it was the last thing she would ever do: hard and angry, smearing tears with lips, fast and desperate.

  Then she got up, and she left.

  He said nothing to stop her, though his right hand shifted, fingers curling like he could catch her invisible traces and pull her back.

  But Elia was gone; it was only a long-awaited queen who emerged from that dark embrace, who pushed out into the brightly lit corridor, where all her people waited. The light dazzled her earth-black eyes. She paused, touched a hand over her heart, and called for the hemlock crown.

  IT BEGINS WHEN the new queen of Innis Lear admires the glint of ice crystals upon the standing stones; how each point bursts into silver strands, reaching for the next, connecting the frozen stars with interlocking lines of frost. Her breath appears as it passes her lips, given body by the chill of winter, and as she did when she was a little girl, she plays with it. She puffs air out in rhythm with her heart, then blows a long, thin stream, mouth tugging into a smile.

  Moonlight silvers the flat hill upon which the trio of stones rise out of the moorland like ancient priests—or, she thinks, like three brave sisters. She walks to the smallest of them, fur slippers crunching gently over icy winter grass. Her glove is a white mark against the deep gray stone, and slowly, slowly, heat from her body spreads to the frost, melting it in an aura.

  To the north the horizon blisters with bright firelight from the fortress of Dondubhan, where the Midwinter celebration lifts the Longest Night into glory and hope, where all her people still sing, drink, and dance. Where the king of Aremoria waits, summer gold and patient, for the queen to return, and the half-blind Oak Earl smiles at his new wife, and Rory Errigal wears a new duke’s chain, shirt stained from excess wine. Their queen should be there, she knows, and she will be. But this last atonement must to be served, this final moment to bury the remains of war and suffering and broken hearts.

  It’s her lady Aefa and the weary retainer La Far who cover her absence at the festivities, both of whom can understand her need for privacy, though only Aefa knows the true cause of it. This is a secret shared only by three women in all the world: Aefa, Brona the witch, and the queen of Innis Lear.

  The queen scrapes her hand down the smallest standing stone. She tilts her head back to peer at the moon and its skirt of brilliant stars as it hovers over the rugged top edge of the stone. In her cream-and-gray gown, she might be a saint herself, a reflection of the Star of Sorrow, for the queen wears mourning clothes: no colors or dye, only the natural shades of wool. Even her coat is white fur and soft tan leather, rustic and unfashionable, but it hardly matters to her. She’s tied up her own hair with plain string, and for jewels only agreed to the silver circlet crown and a necklace set with diamonds the Aremore king gifted to her.

  “Elia,” says a quiet voice behind her.

  She breathes her misty breath against the ice of the stone, and turns.

  The man is only a shade, a lean figure in a black coat, hood raised, sword at hip. A traveler’s pack slides off his shoulder and slumps against the ground. He steps nearer.

  The queen says, “I heard Ban the Fox finally died in Hartfare, despite his mother’s best care.”

  “He did,” comes the low reply. “And in Hartfare we heard the queen will not marry Aremoria after all.”

  A smile glazed with bittersweet humor pulls at her lips. “This morning the star priests presented a new royal prophecy: This queen will never marry, and the father of her heirs will be a saint of the earth.”

  “Mars is good enough to be an earth saint,” the man says.

  The ache in her heart is nothing but a shadow of passion, lacking all rage. She can carry it, though it feels like swallowing ice. “When she came for her own wedding, Brona brought me a long box of bones and ashes. I will bury them in the deepest part of Innis Lear, so her son will always be part of my island’s heart. But you, I—” Her courage breaks, and she quickly turns her face away.

  He appears there, holding her jaw in cold, bare hands. He lif
ts her chin, and she feels her strength return as she looks into his ghostly, familiar eyes. His face is thinner, sharper, wild and biting.

  She takes a breath and says, “You I will not see again.”

  “Not on this earth, not in this life,” the shadow whispers, as if it is all the voice left to him.

  The queen brings her hands up between them to tug the gloves from her fingers. She lets them fall to the frozen ground. Drawing nearer, she touches his face, thumbs gentle at the corners of his mouth. “Go,” she breathes. “And be something new.”

  “Promise me something,” he says, tilting his head against her left palm.

  Her brows rise, willing to hear him but not to swear unknowingly.

  “When you bury the Fox, do it on a night with no stars.”

  She brushes her thumbs over his mouth, nods, and releases him.

  The shadow-man leaves, pausing only to scoop up his bag before walking far off, to vanish in the sparkling blackness of this Longest Night.

  The queen kneels, her back to the smallest standing stone. Its chill, and the ice of the earth below, seep into her body. She leans her head back so the silver crown taps the rock, and she closes her eyes to the fine moonlight.

  Stars shine, and the moon too, turning the frosted grass and low hills of Innis Lear into a quiet, cold mirror, until heaven is below her, around her, and everywhere.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to my AP English teacher, Pat Donnelly, at St. Teresa’s Academy in 1998, for first helping me explore my hatred for King Lear.

  As always with writing, this book would not exist without the support of friends and peers, especially: Julie Murphy, Bethany Hagen, Justina Ireland, Laura Ruby, Anne Ursu, Kelly Jensen, Leila Roy, Sarah McCarry, Kelly Fineman, Dot Hutchinson, Robin Murphy, Lydia Ash, Chris McKitterick, Brenna Yovanoff, Dhonielle Clayton, Zoraida Córdova, Ellen Kushner, Racheline Maltese, Joel Derfner, Delia Sherman, Karen Lord, Stephanie Burgis, Tara Hudson, Rebecca Coffindaffer, Sarah Henning, Robin McKinley.