The Queens of Innis Lear
She had no idea how to tell him this did not feel like grief. She hardly felt at all. This nothing inside her was like a windless, dead ocean. Where was the crashing? Where were the waves and whitecaps, the rolling anger and spitting sorrow she should be feeling?
“I …” Elia removed her hands from her stomach and spread them, elbows tight to her ribs. “I don’t know.”
Morimaros took one step: long, for his legs were long. He was so imposing Elia had to hold herself still so as not to move away. A soldier and a king, a handsome man ten years older than her. This woman is her own dowry. At least it sped her heart up from the dull, slow shock.
“Go with me, Elia Lear,” Morimaros said gently. “What might I say to reassure you? I promise to welcome your mother’s brother Kay Oak if he desires.”
“Why?” Elia leaned her hand on the windowsill, not facing Morimaros, but not giving him her back either. Was Elia Lear even her name anymore? “Why do you still want me, Your Highness? I bring nothing with me, none of the things you would have gained. No throne, no power here. And perhaps this madness runs in my family and I’ll lose myself with no warning someday.”
“I intended to gain a wife, Elia, and that is still my intention. I do not need your father’s riches, and if I wished more land I could take it. What I want is a queen, and you were a queen today.”
The compliment forced her head away; she looked outside at the rolling blue ocean where it blended into the hazy sky at the horizon. Why was he so kind? She longed to believe him, and yet found it nearly impossible. Was that her father’s legacy? “I wasn’t a queen,” she whispered.
Morimaros grunted.
She said, “Queens mediate, they solve problems and make people feel better. I did none of those things, sir.”
“I would prefer a queen who tells me what she believes to be true.”
This time Elia smiled, but not happily. It was a smile of knowing better. Until this afternoon she would have sworn that was her father’s preference, too. Did all men know themselves so poorly? “So you say until I contradict you.”
He smiled, too, and she recalled thinking before that only his eyes made him seem softer. She’d been wrong; a smile did it as well. “Perhaps you are right, Elia, and all kings prefer to be pandered to.”
She began to apologize but stopped herself. He made the distinction himself: he was not a man, but a king. What other option did she have but to go with him in the morning? She was lucky he claimed to understand and was willing to give her some time at least. To overcome this grief, as he called it. She’d been disinherited, her titles and name stripped away. She was not Lear’s youngest daughter.
Her lungs contracted.
Where else could she go besides with Aremoria? Her mother’s people? Was that where Kayo would choose? Despite growing up with stories from her mother and uncle, from Satiri and Yna, despite being surrounded by the beautifully dyed rugs and delicate oils, the clothing and scarves and books, Elia still could hardly imagine the Third Kingdom. And it was so very far away from her beloved island, her cliffs and White Forest and moorland, and from her father whom she could not just abandon. He would need her again, before the end. Before long. Elia’s heart was here, and she could not just run away from her heart.
But she had to go somewhere, and this king seemed so genuine.
Putting her hands back to her stomach, Elia folded them as if it were a casual move, not a thing designed to keep herself from cracking. “I will go, for now.”
Instead of smiling triumphantly or at least as if her answer pleased him, Morimaros slipped back into his impassive formality. He bowed to her, deeper than a king should. She bowed as well, unsure whether she was steady enough to curtsy. She said, “My girl, Aefa, will go with me.”
“As you like,” he said crisply. “It will be good, though my mother and sister would be happy to provide help or companionship for you.”
“She’s always expected to be with me, and would have no place here alone.” It occurred to Elia that Aefa might prefer to go to her mother in the White Forest. But it was spoken aloud now, and Elia did not wish to take it back: without Aefa, she’d be alone.
Morimaros nodded. “Sleep well, then, if you can, Elia. I will leave you to prepare.”
At the last moment, Elia took Morimaros’s large, rough hand. Her fingers slid over a garnet and pearl signet ring; her thumb found his palm, so chilled there against his warm skin. “Thank you,” she said, her eyes level with the tooled leather shoulder of his orange coat.
He hesitated for the space of two breaths, until Elia grew nervous and would have taken her hand away. “You are welcome,” the king of Aremoria finally said, covering her entire hand with his.
And then he left her.
Before the door swung closed behind him, Aefa appeared, shutting it firmly with herself inside. Tears sewed her lashes together.
“Oh, Elia,” the Fool’s daughter whispered thickly. “Your father.”
Elia held out her hands. Aefa hugged her, crying, and it was Elia who tried to offer shelter from her numb, absent heart.
THE FOX
IF ERRIGAL EXPECTED to have to drag Ban to an audience with the king, he was disappointed. During five long years in the Aremore army, Ban had learned to not put off unpleasant tasks, for they tended to only become more unpleasant with the stall. Besides, Ban had a job to do here, and meeting with the king at his father’s side was one of the first steps.
And so, though facing Lear was the last thing Ban wanted, he swallowed his rage from the Zenith Court, and tried to be grateful this meeting would take place in the retainers’ hall over a meal.
Unfortunately, Ban had forgotten how quickly his appetite deserted him under the king’s critical gaze.
The retainers’ hall of the Summer Seat was long, like the court, but lacking a roof. Built of timber rather than stone, it was more like a stable, Ban thought, with rows of benches and tables and a high seat for the king. Gulls perched on the walls, waiting to scrabble for leftovers, and the king’s collection of hounds slunk under legs and begged with open mouths. Lear’s retainers all wore the king’s midnight blue and carried fine swords, and they drank from goblets etched with the rampant swan of the king or striped in blue. A raucous, messy place of men, at least it was kept clean in between meals and celebrations by the youngest retainers and hopeful sons. Ban had spent plenty of mornings tossing pails of water and slop over the side of the cliff just outside the arched entryway, spreading fresh hay and rushes, and scrubbing the tables of spilled wine and grease. His brother, Rory, had chafed under the drudgery, but Ban appreciated any sort of work with immediate, provable results.
Tonight, the retainers’ hall was subdued, given the day’s events. It rubbed Ban poorly to enter at his father’s side and witness hushed conversations and side-eyed glances, despite plenty of flowing beer. This was not how the king of Innis Lear’s men should present, as if nervous and cowed! Not under any circumstance. The proud Aremore army would never have fallen prey to a scattering of nerves. Some smiled welcome at Errigal; others offered tight-lipped warnings. But Errigal scoffed and stormed up the side aisle to where the king himself slouched in his tall chair, the Fool lounging beside him in a tattered striped coat with his head against Lear’s knee.
“My king,” Errigal said expansively.
“What, sir, do you come to bother me with this night of all nights?” The king rolled his head back to stare up at the sky, too bright yet for stars.
Lear’s hair remained as wild and ragged as it had been at the Zenith Court, his face still drawn and blotched with drink or anger or tears. A stain of wine spread like a heart-wound down the left side of his tunic.
Errigal knocked Ban forward. “Here is my son, Lear, come home from a five-year foster with the cousins Alsax in Aremoria. Ban the Fox they call him now, though he was only a bastard, or simply Ban, here.”
Ban’s shoulders stiffened as he bowed, turning it into a jerky motion. People here had called him Errigal’s Bastard, not just any. Ban stared at the king’s woolen shoes, wondering what he could possibly say that would not get him banished or killed. Play the role, Fox, he reminded himself again. Be courteous, and remember your purpose here. He’d earned his name, exactly as he’d promised himself he would. These people would respect it.
A groan sighed out of the king before he said, “Yes, I remember you. Ban Errigal. You were born under a dragon’s tail, bright and vibrant but ultimately ineffective.”
“I have been effective, King,” Ban said, straightening.
“Perhaps for the limited time you burn brightly.” Lear shrugged. “But it will be a limited time, and you will change nothing.”
Ban worked his jaw, chewing on every response before he could spit it out.
“His actions in Aremoria have been exemplary, by all accounts,” Errigal said.
“Aremoria!” Lear roared, surging to his feet. “Say no more of that place or that king! Stealing my Elia, my most loved star away!”
The Fool leaned up and sang, “Stolen with the same stealing as the clouds steal the moon!”
Lear nodded. “Yes, yes.”
“No, no,” responded the Fool. He was a long, lanky man, in a long, lanky coat of rainbow colors and textures. Silk, linen, velvet, strips of leather even, and lace, rough wool and soft fur, patterned in places, woven in plaid in others: a coat such as his marked him a man outside of station or hierarchy. The Fool was all men and no man at all. He wore the remains of a dress beneath the coat, and so maybe he was all women, too. And none.
The king frowned mightily.
Ban said, “I thought you had no daughter Elia, sir.”
Errigal choked on a furious word, and the king whirled to Ban. “A smart tongue, have you?” Lear demanded.
“The boy meant nothing by it,” Errigal said.
Ban met the king’s gaze. “You are wrong, Father. I did mean much.”
“Always defiant,” Lear said.
Ban held his tongue.
“Always ablaze,” Errigal said, forcing a laugh. “Like his mother, he’s got that passion of—”
“Bah.” The king waved dismissively at the earl, turning his back on Ban.
A moment of silence was only punctuated by the rustle of retainers listening as hard as they could. Ban felt their eyes on his spine, their focus and newfound attention. He would not bend or quail. This was the start of the work he must do to earn respect here, where they only knew stories of him, and his bastard name. Even if it meant bowing to this king’s obsessions or anticipating his moods.
Errigal nudged him, and Ban caught the angry spark in his father’s determined look. He was expected to speak again.
Fine.
Ban said, “You should call Elia back.”
The room behind him erupted in curses and gasps, cries for his removal. Ban braced himself. Errigal gripped his elbow. The Fool lifted thoughtful, bushy brows.
But Lear collapsed back into his high seat. Sorrow, weariness, and a bitter curl of his lip painted the king in starkness. He turned a bony hand over, palm up. “Do you know, pup, what stars I was born under?”
“Yes, sir.”
Lear nodded. “And you know how my wife died?” The old king curled his fingers closed, holding his fist so tight it trembled. The knuckles whitened.
“I do,” Ban said through gritted teeth.
A murmured prayer floated throughout the hall, asking blessing from the stars against royal calamity. The layers of soft words were so like the language of trees Ban nearly forgot it was only fearful men muttering.
“You do not. Only I know,” the king said hoarsely, finally opening his watery eyes. Pink tinged the edges. “I have lost so much to my stars. Brothers, retainers, my wife, and now my precious daughter.”
“You did not lose her; you sent her away.”
“She chose. She betrayed.”
Ban threw his arms out, but before he could cry his disbelief, Errigal stepped before him.
“You are heartsick, my king,” Errigal said, “and my boy is travel-worn, desperate. Let me take him and soothe his feathers.”
“You cannot calm a creature such as this! More like to calm a storm,” Lear said, wiping his eyes.
At last, a thing Ban agreed with. The king’s shifting moods troubled him: not only for Elia’s sake, but for the unpredictability they brought. It was difficult to plan someone’s downfall when their actions could veer off course at any moment.
Lear shook his head, pressed his hands to his eyes. “Oh, oh, I must go. I must …”
The Fool stood, bending his tall body nearly in half to lean near the king and murmur a thing in his ear.
“Errigal,” the king said, allowing the Fool to help him to his feet.
“My king?” Errigal moved forward to take Lear’s other arm.
“I’ll not have your bastard in my retainers. I cannot breathe when he is near. His stars offend. Take him elsewhere.”
A tremor of absolute fury shocked through Ban, crown to toes. He’d not have served with the king’s retainers if his life itself depended on it.
Errigal shot Ban another warning glance but said gently to Lear, “One of my sons honoring you so is well enough acceptable for me, sir. I can use Ban at home.”
Ban bowed sharply, breath hissing out through his teeth. Without another word he left.
WHAT BEASTS FATHERS were, Ban thought darkly, head down, boots skidding on the rushes as he hurried on.
Outside, he lifted his face to the flat, still-blue sky. He’d rather get off this terrible promontory to find shade in the cool trees of the island. There was a place he knew, where the island reached up with ancient power, where surely Ban could dig his fingers into the ground and rekindle his heart’s lines.
But Elia. He grimaced, worried for her, though he had no right. She’d recognized him at dinner last night, and had smiled wondrously, as if so very glad to see him. In that moment, Ban had forgotten Morimaros of Aremoria and all the years in his service. He’d forgotten Errigal and the shame of bastardy. All he’d been was the boy who once made her a crown of wind and flower petals. She’d smiled then, too, and kissed him.
“Boy, stop,” Errigal growled, catching up to plant his arm across Ban’s chest and stick his nose in his son’s.
“The king has gone mad, Father,” Ban said calmly.
Errigal tilted his head as if he hadn’t yet decided on an opinion. “Kayo being banished was a terrible mistake, but the rest … that girl is an ungrateful whelp, and irrational for not bowing to this easy request made by king and father. Better she’s not given the crown, though he said it was his preference.”
A furious growl hummed in Ban’s throat, making his father smirk. Errigal said, “There’s that passion I remember.”
Ban jerked back, but Errigal clapped his hand onto Ban’s shoulder. “Ah, am I ever glad the stars chose not to make me have to worry about such things as dividing my land between children.”
The cool relief in his father’s words made Ban stare at his father with a creeping wonder. Errigal did have two named sons, after all. And only one of them had already earned fame and respect in war. In the beginning, the entire point of his success in Aremoria had been to show that Ban was as worthy as his brother.
Errigal caught Ban’s frown and looked surprised. “What! Stars—my boy, you thought …”
Nauseated, Ban turned away.
“Son.” Errigal roughly threw an arm around him, pulling him back. “You have my name, you have a place in my ranks, and surely you know your brother will always welcome you—Rory is incorrigibly kind, and he has always liked you. He pestered me constantly this last year to bring you home.”
Ban said nothing, understanding that he would always be subject to charity here, in this place where he was supposed to belong, where he’d been born, where his mother’s roots thrived. This place and its laws and its king did not want him. Ban had made the right choice when he gave his word to Aremoria.
“You’re a good son,” Errigal continued, his hesitation not born of uncertainty, but of the earl’s deepest enemy: emotional honesty. “Everything a man could want in his issue, but for your origins.” To save the moment from too much intimacy, the earl forced a hearty laugh. “I’ve often said it was the great pleasure and zeal at your getting that formed you into such a passionate, skilled warrior. I wouldn’t have it another way.”
Ban forced his shoulders to relax into Errigal’s embrace. Play the role, Fox. “Thank you, Father. Your praise is much appreciated.”
“Ha! Good.” Errigal shoved Ban along, finished with the moment of fatherly affection.
Ban did not hesitate to desert the field.
NINE YEARS AGO,
WEST COAST OF INNIS LEAR
THE SUN SANK, and the king studied his youngest daughter as she studied the sky.
Lear lounged upon the rug he’d brought, a half-empty bottle of wine gouged into the damp earth beside him, his wool-encased elbows bent to support his weight, his bare ankles crossed. He watched his daughter as she tilted her head and spoke some phrase the wind kept from him. She clapped suddenly, in delight, as if she alone could see the precise moment the gentle pink clouds became loose violet haze. Her hair bobbed in its own rhythm, like a cloud itself: an ecstatic, curling puff of copper and brown. It strengthened the king’s aggrieved heart to see her, his favorite, intent upon the final moments of twilight, so ready to mark which star might first appear.
But then the princess fluttered her hand at the young boy crouched a few paces from the hem of her dress, and as the boy glanced up at her his face went from scowling and concentrated to relaxed and smiling. She had that effect on many, though the king would rather it not extend to Errigal’s bastard. The boy’s legitimate brother yelled and skidded half the meadow away, a wide stick held up like a sword in a very good offensive position to fight off invisible enemies. That one, the king thought, was destined for great purpose. The stars had clearly stated it on the night of his birth. He was the king’s godson, named Errigal, too, though to distinguish him from his father the earl, everyone called him Rory. Would that Elia showed her preference to the gilded Rory, who was so beloved by the sun and saints of the earth that he bore the marks of their affection: dark red freckles all over his skin. As if his body were made an earthly mirror to the firmament itself.
As the king stared fondly at his godson, his youngest daughter clapped again, and he saw her fall to her knees in the churned dirt where the bastard boy had turned over a heavy field stone. The flat granite stood upright for a moment, then tipped away from the children, landing with a solid thump against the meadow grass. The king’s daughter laughed, and the boy bent over the fresh filth, digging with one hand, touching the princess’s hem with his other.
Lear’s daughter scooted nearer the bastard and dug her hand into the mud with him, dragging out a long, fat worm. “Elia,” the king said, frowning.
His daughter glanced at him, thrusting out the worm with a smile of triumph. It was pale and slick-looking in her eleven-year-old hand. No elegance or rich gleam like the sorts of ribbons that should curl around her noble wrist. The king shuddered at the grotesquery and opened his mouth to chide her, but she giggled at something the bastard muttered, turning away from her father.
The boy, wiry and smaller than his gilded brother, smaller than the king’s favorite daughter even, though they were of age, splayed his left hand. It was nearly as dark as the princess’s, though less smooth, less bright: she was a statue molded from fine metal, and he a creature built of mud and starshadow. The king had always thought so: the boy had been born under a dragon’s tail moon, and forged in an unsanctioned bed. What a disaster for Errigal, the king had always said, always counseled his friend the earl against such passionate dalliance. But some men refused to govern their bodies as they would their minds.
The bastard displayed on his outstretched hand a shining emerald.
No—merely a beetle shimmering all the colors of a deep summer day. The boy plucked the beetle from his hand and placed it upon the princess’s.
She squealed that the tiny legs tickled her skin, but she did not toss the insect away.
The king watched through narrowed eyes as their heads leaned together, temples brushing until her puffed curls and his black braids blended. “Elia,” the king said again, this time a low command.
She tossed him a smile and glance, then showed him the emerald beetle clinging to her finger like a union ring, as Dalat once had presented her own hand to Lear, so long ago. “See, Father, how its shell shimmers like a pearl,” she said.
It pained the king, vividly reminded of his queen, his dearest queen who had loved Innis Lear, had seen beauty in every piece of his island, even in him. The king blinked: his queen was dead, no longer able to love him, or his island, or anything at all.
“Insects are not suitable rings for princesses,” he said, harshly.
Surprise shook Elia’s hand; the bastard gently caught the beetle as it fell.
The princess dashed over to her father. “But there were stars in its eyes,” she whispered, pushing aside hair from her father’s ear.
He murmured fondly, softening as he always did with her, and pulled her gently back to her proper place, seated beside him on the woven rug. Where her mother, too, had sat.
A cool evening wind brushed its way through the meadow. Elia leaned her head against his shoulder, both of them tilting back to watch the sky. The king told her quiet lines of poetry about the wakening stars as the bastard lowered his fingers to the earth so that the beetle could crawl off him and back into the dirt. Always the boy kept the princess in the corner of his eye. The king was aware. And displeased.
The brother, Rory, stomped over, sweating and triumphant. “Ban!” Rory threw his pretend sword to the ground, scattering grubs and beetles in one swoop. “What is that terrible thing?” He scuffed his boot near a curled white creature with several thin legs. The bastard did not answer.
The king called for Rory to come to the rug, to join him and his daughter, to look at the darkening sky. “The first star you see will be a portent of your year, children, for tonight is halfway between the longest night and the longest day. Cast your gaze wide.”
Delighted, the princess rounded her black eyes and tried to see the entire sky at once. Rory, a year younger, flopped down at the king’s feet and knocked his skull against the rug-softened ground. He peered directly up to the dome of heaven, focused on one spot.
The king watched them both affectionately. His youngest daughter and his godson, intent upon his will, intent upon the prophetic stars. As he bid them, as was right. He could abide the bastard for the evening, since his presence pleased Elia.
His daughter gasped and said, “There!” Her little hand shot up, pointing near the horizon.
The king laid his old white thumb against her burnished brown forehead. “That, my daughter, is Terestria, the Star of Secrets. Terestria was so beloved by the stars that they drew her up with them when she died, so her body was buried in the blackness of the night sky instead of swallowed by the earth. I would make for you, my Elia, my dearest, a grave of stars, if you were to die before me.”