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“Yes, sir,” the girl replied, tying off her thread as quickly as her fingers could manage.
Elia smiled and stepped farther in, inviting her father’s irritated “What now?” and the sewing girl’s obvious relief.
“Hello, Father.”
“Elia!”
The king regularly wore his age-spotted brow in furrowed gloom, melancholy drawing dark lines about his thin mouth and lengthening his already long, rectangular face. But now Lear smiled so brightly that his lost handsomeness shone through for a brief moment. He held out large white hands, entirely consuming Elia’s small brown ones, and drew her in for an extended embrace, tucking her head beneath his chin. Elia could feel his ribs through the layers he wore, and while he’d always been thin, this was excessive. She pressed her nose into his collarbone hard for a moment, squeezing away her concern. Her father was old, that was all.
He stroked her hair. “You smell like your mother.”
“It’s the same oil she used,” Elia said, pulling away enough to speak. She tilted her head back. Lear’s own hair was flung high in a mane of brown and wiry silver. A few streaks of almost-beard marred his jaw, though he’d shaved clean all her life. “Seban outside said you’re readying for a meeting? Shall I comb your hair?”
The king studied her smartly. “You are the one in need of grooming if you are to join me at this meeting. It’s with your courting kings.”
Elia winced. “They should meet me thus, Father, plain and myself.”
“If either of them thinks you plain I’ll drive them off the cliff!” Lear kissed his daughter’s forehead and released her. “Tell me of your studies, my star, while this girl …” The king eyed the room, but the girl who’d mended his cuff had vanished. “Stars and …!”
Laughing softly, Elia led the king by his hand to sit upon a chair with a simple, sturdy back. “I’m glad to attend you, Father.”
“My loyal Calpurlugh,” he said, sighing as Elia gathered a horn comb off the narrow table along the wall that was covered in odds and ends: combs and rings, a beaten copper chain, tiny crystals arrayed like constellations, ribbons and buttons and a hood missing the loops to tie it to a tunic.
Elia told her father then the story she’d perfected on the journey south: her wager with Danna her tutor, the win, the twist—that most of the retainers at Dondubhan had sided with her despite her comparative inexperience. Lear slapped his knee, pleased, and his still-bright blue eyes closed as Elia’s fingers and the comb pulled his thick hair back from his forehead and drooping ears. She wound it into a single braid and twisted it into a knot, pinning it with the same horn comb. Several of the rings on the table belonged on his fingers, especially the sapphires, and she dropped them into his palm.
“Your turn,” he said, trading places with her. “I’ve a winning idea, Calpurlugh.”
Obediently, Elia sat, hands folded in her lap.
“We shall leave you clad in this plain star priest gown, and bring you with me to this meeting with Aremoria and Burgun. Will they see their sought princess, or only a servant of heaven?”
Though her father’s smile was large and infecting, Elia was not enthusiastic. “Should we play games, Father? They might be offended.” Her thoughts drifted to those last letters she’d received, and she wondered if Ullo was capable of seeing past an unadorned dress, or if Morimaros of Aremoria had been honest when he said he wished for a star reading.
“And what should happen then?” Lear raised spiky brows. “A retreat? If either king is so easily put off of you, then now is the time to discover it. They will not attack us; they will not risk their trade with the Third Kingdom, nor the access to our rubies and gold and iron.”
It was true Innis Lear was rich in resources and minerals, and their location put them between sea trade and Aremoria, though Aremoria could always trade overland with the vast desert kingdoms to their south and east. It was also true Aremoria would risk any trade they established with the Third Kingdom if they consumed Lear, dethroning Dalat’s line, which was also the line of the empress. And Burgun couldn’t defeat Lear if they tried. Alliances mattered much more to their small country. But Elia had no intention of marrying either king, and so she supposed she could play along.
“Very well, Father,” Elia said, and Lear’s smile spread into a wicked old grin. With a groan he knelt, reaching under the low oak frame of his bed. Before she could offer aid, he made a sound of triumph and dragged out a small clay pot.
“Is that oil? It must be rancid now.” Elia leaned away.
Her father started to stand, then shook his head and gave up without much effort. He handed the pot to her. “Open it.”
The orange glaze and black rim proved the pot to be from the Third Kingdom, but it was small enough to fit easily in her hands. She pried off the lid, where wax still clung from an old seal. The lingering perfume of bergamot oranges brought tears to her eyes. She was used to the smell, for her uncle the Oak Earl bought copious amounts in trades on her behalf, just as he had for Dalat over the years. But this, surely, had been a pot touched and admired by her mother. Those gentle hands had caressed this smooth glaze, cupped the base as gently as Elia did now.
Inside curled a thin chain of silver woven into a delicate net, and studded with tiny diamonds—no, merely island crystals, but in Elia’s palm they glinted like shards of fallen stars. “Father,” she whispered, just barely remembering Dalat’s hair bound tight in a thick roll that curved from ear to ear, along her nape, and dotted with the same tiny sparkling lights.
“This will be enough of a crown, my little love, my favorite.” Lear stood very slowly, but Elia was too stunned, admiring the sleek dripping silver, to notice in time that he needed aid to rise. The king moved behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “I remember how to do it, though it has been so many … long years.”
Elia closed her eyes, flattening her hands on her stomach. This would infuriate her sisters when they saw, for both would demand this artifact of their mother for themselves. Gaela because she felt she deserved all Dalat’s mementos, because they’d been the closest, because she was the eldest and would be queen; Regan because she liked to deny Elia small things, and as ever would support Gaela’s claim.
No doubt Lear had hidden it in the tiny clay jar in order to keep it to himself. And now, he set it where he willed it, upon his favorite daughter’s head. All beings shall in their proper places be set, he’d written in his letter. A sliver of worry slid coldly through Elia’s heart. But Lear’s slow, steady hands soothed her, as he twisted her hair into a long smiling roll, and her shoulders relaxed. His tugs were more tentative than Aefa’s, and the story he told as he worked was a story Elia had heard before: the first time Dalat had agreed to allow her husband to braid her hair, and the terrible time they’d both had of it, neither giving up for hours and hours, until Lear had made such an utter mess Dalat had burst into tears.
“I was devastated, of course,” Lear said, as he always did, “but not nearly so much as your mother. When Gaela was born, we learned together, though Gaela declined to sit still, and then Regan’s hair was easy. By the time you were born, I was nearly an expert, even Satiri said so.”
As always, Elia wished to ask him: if he’d been an expert, why had he never taught Aefa, or Elia, or anyone, after he sent all Dalat’s attendants away, letting Elia’s own hair go dry as gorse in the summer?
But she knew the answer, though her father would never agree: it was the depth of his grief. And she knew, too, that sometimes Lear’s version of the past was woven equally of truth and pleasant fabrication. So long as the stories harmed none, she could not bring herself to challenge them. Especially when they involved Dalat.
“There,” the king said, caressing Elia’s neck and squeezing her shoulders.
Elia lifted her hands to carefully explore the silver and crystals in her hair; Lear had set them in carefully, a web of starlight, she imagined, with a few tiny pins. Simple and elegant. A starry crown for a star-blessed princess.
AEFA (#ulink_2349e047-2f61-50bc-ab93-c8e9a2bd47ae)
SOMETIMES AEFA OF Thornhill thought she was not hard enough to survive Innis Lear, but when such doubts plagued her, she remembered what her mother would call her, and take heart.
My little mushroom.
Mushrooms weren’t generally thought to be pretty or resilient, but they appeared overnight, kissed into being by the sweet lips of earth saints who returned to the island only for secret dancing. Or so her mother had liked to whisper when Aefa climbed into bed with her, nose wrinkled and begging for a new nickname. Mushrooms are born of the damp earth, fed by starlight instead of the sun. They are both stars and roots, and they are never alone. When have you come across a single mushroom? Never! What a lovely thing to be, my little mushroom: never alone.
Aefa missed her mother.
At least Alis was alive, though hidden deep in the White Forest. She’d railed against Lear three summers ago, calling him foolish and dangerous, mad in his obdurate grief and old age. Only the king’s love for his Fool had saved Alis, buying her the opportunity to flee. And only the star prophecy that the sanctity of the White Forest itself must be maintained saved it from the king’s soldiers. There was a refuge at its heart now, held by the witch Brona, and Alis was there, safe but unable to leave lest she be caught and imprisoned, or worse, exiled forever from the island.
That was how Aefa’s clandestine meetings with the witch had begun: to pass letters for her mother. It was just as well Elia had abandoned her companion to sneak into the Summer Seat alone, for it left Aefa free to go where she wished, unseen.
The town of Sunton was a collection of stone cottages arrayed about a square and surrounded by portioned fields and shared grazing meadows. It clung in a raindrop shape along the low, sloping moors. The tip pointed toward the standing stones perched at the northernmost bluff overlooking the Summer Seat promontory, then curved against the King’s Road that led all along this southern cliff coast toward Port Comlack and Errigal Keep at the far eastern edge of the island. Aefa made her way along the road openly under the sun, swinging a basket in her hand and humming one of her father’s more ridiculous songs about kings and snails. She skipped across the muddy furrows in the dirt. Villagers smiled at her from their yards, women mostly, hanging laundry and sewing in the bright daylight while children dashed here and there, chasing goats and chickens. It was exactly like the village in which Aefa had been born, down to the capped well in the town square, to which she headed directly. Her memories of Firstday blessings at the holy well of Thornhill were dim, as it had been twelve years since she’d attended, and nearly ten since the wells were capped all across Innis Lear, but she remembered the scent—the dank, stony smell of moss and rootwater, and the shiver as a star priest flicked drops onto her face. She’d sneezed once, and it made her mother scowl, but her father had laughed.
The cap on the Sunton well was an old wagon wheel covered with lime wash and set with small gray river stones in a spiral pattern. Lovely and simple, and no doubt those still devout considered it a symbol of the path down and down and down to the water, as if they could still touch it. At the south rim, where the spiral began, Aefa crouched. In the cap’s shadow, there ought to be a box tucked against the foot of the well. But only a small lizard darted away at Aefa’s seeking touch.
With a huff, she stood. She supposed she could circle around town once or twice, or return tomorrow and hope Brona had found a chance to come.
“Aefa.”
It was the witch, her deep voice fond and laughing.
“Ah!” Aefa gasped, twirling with a delighted smile. “I didn’t miss you after all.”
The two women ducked together, embracing. The witch of the White Forest handed Aefa a small stoppered vial before they parted. She was a powerfully built woman with strong hands and a lovely tan face; loose black curls bound under a hood of vibrant red that matched the paint touched to lips as plump as her thighs.
Tucking the vial into a pocket of her skirts, Aefa said, “The princess is already inside the keep. I wish I could have brought her here to see you. She never speaks of you anymore, or her own mother, or truly much of anything but the stars. I’ve not caught her whispering to any flowers or wind in two entire years, Brona.”
The witch’s dark brow bent with sorrow, and she gazed toward the Summer Seat. “Be sure to put the rootwater in her mouth.”
“I slip it into her wine, or sometimes her breakfast. Shouldn’t she notice?”
Brona shrugged one shoulder. “She likely does, she only refuses to admit so, for many, many reasons.”
“Is she afraid?”
“No doubt.”
“I want to tell her,” Aefa said ferociously.
“And if you did, what would she say?”
Aefa imagined Elia’s face, her bright, black eyes. You have to listen to the island, Elia, Aefa would say, and those careful eyes would lower, perhaps flick up to the sky, or to the horizon, and the princess would take one of the great, deep breaths she used to quash the overwhelming song in her heart. But then Elia would make a sad, pretty smile, and move to some other conversation, some other answer, as if Aefa had said nothing at all.
The witch touched Aefa’s knuckles, and said, “She’ll ask you, when she’s ready. You’ll make sure she knows you have the answers?”
“I snap fire sometimes, out of air, to remind her.” Aefa pursed her lips. “She disapproves.”
Brona’s eyebrows lifted.
“She is afraid,” Aefa corrected herself, barely whispering.
“That’s good, little mushroom.” Brona smiled at Aefa’s darting glance. “Alis is well. She’s cultivating a long vine of sweet peas with charming purple flowers and a tendency to giggle at bluebirds.”
“Father wants to see her.”
There Brona’s expression closed off. “Then he should come see her. Nothing to stop him.”
After a pause, the women shared a knowing grimace. There was everything to stop the King’s Fool from a visit to Hartfare. The witch sighed. “But listen, Aefa, he will see her soon enough. All who were riven will soon return to their center.”
Aefa’s lips parted in wonder, for though the witch’s tone did not alter, the words held the weight of magic. “Is that a star prophecy?”
“I do not read stars,” Brona said with delicate distaste. “It is only the gossip of trees.”
But the witch turned her head east, and all her body followed, until Brona faced the rising land, staring as if she could see beyond it to the ocean channel, and past even that, to Aremoria.
“Even …?” Aefa whispered.
“Yes.”
A thrill straightened Aefa’s spine, and she danced a little in place. This would delight the princess, make the fire she was so afraid of flicker again and burn. “She’ll be so happy!”
“No,” Brona said suddenly, grabbing Aefa’s wrist. “She won’t be. But she will survive.”
GAELA (#ulink_c9559d58-f675-5239-9202-ab32821c22da)
IN INNIS LEAR it was believed that the reign of the last queen had been predicted by the stars—and had ended, too, because of them.
Lear had been middle-aged when his father and brothers died: too old to have planned for ruling, too old to easily let go of his priestly calling, his years of sanctuary in the star towers. So the first thing the new king ordered was a star-casting to point him in the direction of a bride. He needed a queen, after all, as he needed heirs of his own to ensure the survival of his line. Every star-reader on the island joined together and offered their new king a sole prophecy: the first woman to set foot on the docks of Port Comlack at the dawn of the third dark moon after the Longest Night would be his true queen. She would give him strong children and rule justly beside him, then die on the sixteenth anniversary of her first daughter’s birth.
Lear arranged to be there, ready to greet this star-promised woman, and waited all night long under the third dark moon, despite icy winds so early in the year. As the first sunlight broke through thin clouds a ship came limping to port, too many of their rowers weak from struggling against the roiling ocean. It was a trader’s ship from the Third Kingdom, an ocean and half a continent away, where an inland sea and great river met in a gulf of sand and stone. First to emerge were the dark-skinned captain and five dark soldiers; they were royal guards along to protect a granddaughter of the empress, who’d traveled north searching for adventure. Lear welcomed them, inviting the princess to come forward. She descended like a slip of night, it was said, black-skinned and robed in bright layers of wool and silk against the cold ocean. Glass beads glinted from her roped black hair like ice or tears or—like stars.
Lear married her, though she was less than half his age, and loved her deeply.
She died at dawn on her first daughter’s sixteenth birthday, twelve years ago this winter.
The pain was as fresh to Gaela as every morning’s sunrise.
Anytime she was at the Summer Seat, Gaela would make this pilgrimage, down to the caves pocking the cliffs below the keep. Dalat had brought her here at least once a year, for all of Gaela’s childhood. At first only the two of them, then when Regan was old enough they were three, and finally in the last few years even baby Elia tagged along. They’d descended to the sea farther to the southeast, where the cliffs became beaches and bluffs with more ready, safe access to the hungry waves, and with an escort of heavily armed retainers in separate boats, they rowed back up the rocky coast here to the caves. Gaela remembered especially when she’d been eleven, and Elia only three years old, wrapped up against Gaela’s chest so she could protect her baby sister while Dalat held nine-year-old Regan’s hand. Elia had danced with all her limbs, excited and gleefully singing a childish rhyme, clutching at the collar of Gaela’s tunic and at one of her braids.
Dalat had dragged the boat as high onto the beach as she could, then smiled like a young girl and dashed with her daughters to the largest cave. She laughed at the spray of salt water that splattered her cheeks, and then when they were far inside the cave, knelt upon the wet stone, disregarding the algae and saltwater staining her skirt. “Here, Gaela,” she said, patting the earth beside her, “and here, Regan. Give me my littlest in my lap.” When all were situated, Dalat taught them a soft prayer in the language of the Third Kingdom. It was a layered, complex language filled with triple meanings depending on forms of address, and to Gaela it always sounded like a song. She fought hard, scowling, to remember the prayer after only one recitation. Regan repeated the final word of every phrase, planting the rhythm on her tongue. Elia mouthed along with their mother, saying nothing with any meaning, but seeming the most natural speaker of them all.
Today the tide was out, and Gaela was strong enough she didn’t need to row up from a beach or bring retainers to assist.
The emerald grass capping the cliffs bent in the sea wind, and she unerringly located the slip of rock that cut down at an angle, crossing the sheer face of the cliff at a manageable slant. She’d left off any armor and all fancy attire, put on dull brown trousers and a soldier’s linen shirt, wrapped her twists up in a knot, and tied on soft leather shoes. Carefully, Gaela made her way along the first section, forward looking but leaned back with one hand skimming the steep rocks for balance.
As Gaela climbed down, she muttered her mother’s prayer to herself. She didn’t believe in Dalat’s god, but it was the only piece of the language she remembered fluently, having stopped speaking it three days after the queen died.
Sun glared off the water, flashing in her eyes. Gaela turned her back to the sea, placing toes where they would not slip, and gripped the ridge in her strong hands. Wind flattened her to the cliff, tugging at her shirt. She glanced down at the steep gray-and-black precipice, toward the clear green water and rolling whitecaps. Her stomach dropped, and she smiled. The rock was rough under the pads of her fingers, scraping her palms; her knees pressed hard, she climbed down, and down, until she could hop the final few feet to land in a crouch on the slick, sandy shore.
Her shoulders rose as she took a huge breath, filling her lungs with salty air. She blew it out like a saint of the ocean, summoning a storm.
Walking along the beach, Gaela eyed the mouth of the cave: a slanted oval, wider at the base and twice taller than her. At high tide the ocean swallowed this whole beach, and only tiny boats could row in, though there was danger of becoming trapped. This cave that Gaela had climbed to was directly below the Summer Seat, but unfortunately too wet for storing castle goods, and there were times smugglers would need to be cleared out. Gaela glanced up the cliff toward the black walls of the castle, high above and leaning over in places. She thought perhaps to install stairs, or some system of ladders, and wondered, too, if the cave could be transformed into cold storage, if they could put in high shelving to keep the water off. But it seemed too complicated to be practical.
She reached the mouth of the cave and paused, one hand on the rough edge of the mouth, her lips curled in a frown. For five years now she’d only come alone, since Regan had married. Elia hadn’t been welcome in the caves, not since she chose Lear over her sisters, damn her. Today, Gaela would’ve preferred to have Regan with her again, but her sister had kept herself away in Connley unexpectedly, even since their summons.
On her own these two days, Gaela had been assessing the state of her kingdom behind her father’s back, first meeting with the strongest earls, Glennadoer and Rosrua and Errigal, and discussing a tax for the repair of that blasted coastal road, if her father did refuse funds from the treasury. It was necessary, especially that the worst erosion be bolstered before the fierce winter storms. She and Astore had been appalled at the state of Lear’s accounting records in the past three years, demanding Lear’s stewards find a path through the mess. The earls had promised records from their own holdings that would make up for some of the confusion. When Gaela took the throne, she’d be ready to put resources exactly where she wanted them: trade and a stronger standing army. Her grandmother was an empress, and Gaela would transform Innis Lear into a jewel worthy of such a relationship. By the time she died, no longer would this land be a blight clinging to the sea, its inner woods a mystery of ghosts and hidden villages, the people known for superstition and old magic. Kay Oak had told Gaela that Lear’s star prophecies were considered an artful, childlike folly in the Third Kingdom, where the study of stars was a science. Even in Aremoria the king was building great schools, and his father had turned his people away from magic. Innis Lear was a backward holdout.
Gaela would change it all. She would not be remembered only as the prophesied daughter who killed a beloved mother, but as the king who dragged Innis Lear away from venal superstition and filthy wormwork.
She entered the cave. The floor was sand; her boots sank into watery puddles and the meager warmth of the sun vanished. Layers of rock, slick with algae and striped gray with pale green stratification, cut away, curving deeper. Salty, wet stone-smell filled her nose, and she even tasted the delicate flavor of dark earth on her tongue. The air seeped with it. A drip like a pretty chime echoed farther back, where she could not see.
It was like standing in a frozen moment of rain, surrounded by a refreshing, cool breeze and droplets of water that never quite touched her. Gaela’s mother had said there was nothing like this in the desert. And that standing here, breathing, was as near to sharing God’s breath as Dalat had found since leaving her old home.
Gaela often wished she could visit the Third Kingdom, but Innis Lear was her birthright. In Dalat’s home, Gaela might be allowed to govern a city, or work her way up in the ranks of the armies to general. But here she would rule over all. If she had a god, it was this island. She would make her name, and the name of Innis Lear, so strong and great that the words and spirit of them would travel to the desert in her place.
“I am so close, Mother.”
Her voice remained low, but Gaela had no need to be heard. It was the memory of her mother to whom she spoke, no ghost. She had not brought a candle to light; a thousand candles burned for Dalat every night in the north. Nor did Gaela bring mementos: eagle feathers pinched her heart, but what good were they buried in this sand or tossed into the ocean? Gaela was unsentimental, and her mother was gone. Taken from her by Lear, by the reign of his stars. Nothing could bring Dalat back, no rootwater nor blood, no star prophecy nor faith in even the great god of her mother’s people.
When Gaela spoke to her mother’s memory, she really was talking to herself and the island.
“There are things I’ve done you would not approve of,” Gaela said, crouching. Her bottom leaned on the craggy wall for balance, and she rested her wrists on her knees. “My barren body, my loveless marriage. You were so happy when I was young, because you loved him, and you had us, and I remember you found so much joy in so many mundane things I still don’t understand. But I did what I had to do, and I’m not sorry, Dalat. I will rule Innis Lear, and Regan’s children will be my heirs.”
Gaela pictured her mother’s face, though Dalat looked rather more like Gaela herself than she truly had; it was the best a daughter could do so many years later. Kayo had brought a small bust of Dalat-as-a-girl from the desert, and her orange clay face at fifteen was so much like Elia’s instead: round and sweet and smiling. Gaela had rejected it.
“Mother,” Gaela said, “I miss you. You wanted me, despite everything, but he never did. You gave me the ambitions to rule this island. You taught me I could, encouraged me to find my own way to strength, because our ancestors are queens and empresses. He pretended I was nothing, tolerating me despite the prophecy, because he loved you. When Elia was born, and her … her stars were perfect, he’d have named her heir if she’d been a boy. If I wasn’t married to Astore and hadn’t made myself into a dangerous prince, he’d try it now. Fortunately for all of us she has no ambition of her own, or I’d have to kill her. He and his stars would necessitate it.” Gaela closed her eyes. The ocean outside matched the roar of her blood. Sometimes she thought that men had created star prophecies solely to benefit themselves.
“I don’t understand how you loved him, Mother. He used you, and me, to prove the truth of the stars, and I will never let that happen again. My kingdom will not be defined as yours was, and I will not let him, or any of them, trap me as you were trapped. I love you, but I will not be like you.”
She spat on the ground, leaving that piece of herself there, her body and water, for the sand and tide and Innis Lear.
MARS (#ulink_f9e8d59f-b198-5374-9a90-7508367ef5b9)
