The Queens of Innis Lear
Gaela Astore fumed out of the shadows, stomped to Regan’s side, and fell hard to her knees. She wore leather and wool, an empty sword belt and a skirt of mail. Her hair was twisted back like the roots of an oak, pulling her forehead wide. She was a beauty, despite herself, Regan had always thought: a slice of moon, magnificent and dangerous.
“This should be filled in,” Gaela said, gesturing at the old well. “Why did you wish to meet here? After all these months.”
Regan waited, patient with Gaela as with no other.
Gaela’s eyes roamed her sister’s face and body, coming to rest on the hand still curled at Regan’s belly. “Yes,” Gaela whispered. And her mouth broadened into a toothy smile.
Regan grasped Gaela’s hand and flattened it against her belly, pressing their hands together there. “The future queen.”
“Or king,” Gaela answered, fisting her hand in the layers of Regan’s skirt, and dragged her sister toward her. They embraced. For so many years this had been a piece of their goal: Gaela on the throne of Innis Lear, with Regan’s children for her heirs. Gaela had been sixteen when she swore to her sister, fast and secretly, that no child would lock into her womb, she would make sure of it. We will be king and queen of Lear, iron-strong Gaela had promised her willow-thin fourteen-year-old sister. No matter husbands or rivals, it will be you and me, our bodies and our blood. Regan had kissed her cheek and promised.
Regan kissed her again now, and touched their cheeks together. She braced for the next step.
The lady-warrior took Regan’s shoulders in demanding hands and said, “How long?”
“I only was certain five days ago, and so it will come in the earliest weeks of spring. You are the first to know.”
“You must marry, and fast.”
“We’ll say we eloped already, and everyone will believe it.”
Gaela’s brows lifted. “Of the neat, passionless Regan Lear? I have my doubts.”
“But, sister”—Regan’s lips pressed a secretive smile—“they will believe it of me with this man. That we were forced to hide our passion from the king.”
“Who is the father?” Gaela growled.
This sparked a brilliant fire in Regan’s eyes: shards of brown and tan and a blue just like their father’s, tossed together in a tempest that seemed a gentle brown when beheld from the distance most gave between themselves and the sly middle daughter. Only a handful of people stood close enough to know Regan had slices of her father inside her eyes. “Lear will be so furious, Gaela,” she whispered, glee and cruelty warring in the thin tone. “And Astore, too. It is the worst and the best I could do.”
Understanding passed swiftly to Gaela. “Oh, Regan, my love, you did not.”
“Connley, Connley, Connley,” Regan said, differently each time. First casual, then wicked, then deep in her mouth, as if she could taste him buried there.
Gaela thrust herself to her feet. “His grandfather despised our mother! His mother sought for years to marry our father! You give Connley the hope of the crown now?”
“His children only.” Regan slid to stand as well. “And a knife in our father’s heart.”
“So, too, it will divide us, all the more because my husband and your lover are chiefest of rivals.”
“It is done.”
“You should have discussed it with me!”
“You did not ask my advice when you chose Astore!”
“Ah! But Astore was the obvious, only choice! He is fierce and, by our father’s and other men’s reckoning, worthy of the crown. The anticipated alternate, should the line of Lear fall, because of his proven strength and his blasted stars. I chose him to play the part I want him to play. He thinks already to have a crown from me. Connley will not rest with that. Does he fear you? I will not believe if you say he does.”
Regan touched her tongue to her bottom lip, uncontrolled before her sister as she was before no other. “He does not fear me, no, nor I him. But Connley feels a more possessive thing for me, one that will not drive him away as fear or pity or sorrow might drive yours.”
“Surely you do not speak of love,” Gaela scoffed. “Love is no strength.”
“Not even between us?”
Gaela scoffed. “This is not love between us, we are one. We are beyond love!”
“Are we?” Regan touched her sister’s earlobe, tugged gently. She knew Gaela had a heart of iron in her chest and cared only slightly for anything she did not feel in her very bones. Worse yet was Gaela at expressing emotions that were not the fiery sort, were not those powerful feelings allowed to great warriors and kings; she disdained all things considered womanly as she disdained her own womb. Regan could not remember if Gaela had been born so, or learned it from their father, his stars, and Dalat’s death. All Regan knew was that her sister had the stars of conquerors in her sky, and such men did not love well. Gaela thought she was beyond love’s reach, while Regan believed herself to be composed of nothing but love. Terrible, devastating, insatiable love.
“So.” Gaela sighed gruffly and put her hands on Regan’s hips. “This is the child of two royal lines, then.”
“Three, sister. Lear and Connley and the Third Kingdom.”
“Connley’s grandfather said it was a taint in the blood of the island, that Dalat was here.”
“My Connley is proud of it,” Regan said.
“Connley. Connley.” Gaela narrowed dark eyes. “You have laid yourself with him, you bear his child, and yet do not call him the name his mother gave him?”
Regan forced herself not to lower her lashes, angry at how difficult it was to hold her sister’s gaze in this moment. The union with Connley would be a wedge between them; Gaela was unfairly correct. But she still protested, “Connley is himself, and so too is he his land, his title, his own ferocious crown, sister. Connley is all the crags and peaks, the rushing waters and moors of the eastern coast.” Regan’s voice lowered again, memories of skin and cries and a bed of earth quieting her. “Connley is so many things more than his person.”
Gaela sucked in a shocked breath. “You spoke of love, but it is your love. You love him.”
Regan shuddered, skin tightening around the dangerous expansion of her heart as something quickened, much lower.
“Regan.”
“Gaela.” Regan sighed. “Don’t you see how this is our best result? Who better to father your heirs than our father’s least favored duke, one sure never to align on his side? Lear will have to swallow it, he must, because here, listen: Connley’s stars predict it! I’ve seen his birth chart, and the trees are adamant. The rest of the island will rejoice at the wisdom of it. Better than marrying me to Morimaros of Aremoria! Even you see the folly in allowing talks of such nature. Connley is already ours; he is entrenched in Innis Lear, sprung from our storm-wracked waves and rooted in iron. And, Gaela, his land is wild and his keep strong; his wells are far better than this one beside us. Deep and rich and flowing. They did not give up on the rootwaters as Father ordered. Do you see? Together you and I bring the two greatest dukedoms under the line of Lear. Through your rightful crown, and my growing child. We will make this island ours, the opposite of our father’s foolish skyward devotions and heartless intentions!”
“Maybe,” Gaela said, unusually thoughtful. Gaela, who had always favored more direct responses. At seventeen she’d bargained with Astore directly, demanding military training for herself. At nineteen she’d plotted to poison their father, and only Regan had convinced her sister of the folly of losing the king before he—or the island—blessed Gaela’s inheritance. Love him, or pretend to; let his throne be a rock of strength and a known position, while we shore up the rest of the island for ourselves, until we are ready and our methods are impenetrable.
“I promised you years ago,” Regan soothed. “I promised you that we—that I—would be his downfall. Do you remember the star under which I was born?”
“None.”
Regan swallowed the bitter word. “None. I was born under an empty sky, a sliver of blackness our father cannot bring himself to love. You were born under the Star of the Consort, with the Throne on the rise. Double stars, which Father claimed negated each other for how they were webbed that night by the sheer, high clouds. But you and I know my star was already with you. The Throne and the Consort, you and me. Father could never understand, but we do. We understand, Gaela.” She clutched at her belly, the tiny star she couldn’t yet feel, but already burned in her heart. Regan would destroy the world for this singular star of hers, this helpless, sparking thing. When she told Connley she was pregnant, if he hesitated for even a moment, the man—no matter how passionate, how glorious—would be sliced from her life. Regan stared at her sister, willing Gaela to agree, to accept Regan’s word.
She did. Of course she did. Gaela twisted around to dip her whole hand into the well. She splashed the holy water against Regan’s neck.
With the sky as witness overhead, and the sleeping city of Astora below, the sisters made new promises to each other, against their father, and toward the future of Innis Lear.
REGAN
REGAN KNEW THAT when in residence at the Summer Seat, her sister Gaela did not share chambers with the Duke Astore, but chose instead to occupy the rooms that had been hers as a child, when this castle was Gaela’s favorite for its nearness to the rocky cliffs and caves their mother had loved.
Immediately upon arriving at the keep, Regan left Connley to find his supper and knocked gently at Gaela’s chamber door. “It’s me, sister.”
The door was thrown open and there Gaela stood, regal and tall in a dark red robe fastened with a sash, thick twists of black hair loose around her shoulders. Regan slipped inside and nudged the door shut again before putting her arms around Gaela’s neck and touching their cheeks together.
Gaela kissed Regan’s temple and cupped her sister’s face. “Your eyes are pink.”
Regan, who had only just divested herself of her cloak and muddy travel boots, pushed away and wiped her hands down the front of her bodice, as if her palms were filthy. They were not. Her hands paused for a breath just over her belly, and her face lowered.
“No!” cried Gaela, whipping around to swipe a clay jar of wine off the near table with her fist. It broke against the floor. The wine splashed, staining the wooden slats.
Starting at the streams and tiny reddish puddles, at the shards of clay, Regan saw flashes of hardened brown flesh, pieces of herself sprawled broken there. She clenched her fingers into fists, bruising her palms with her nails. The hurt relieved her.
“Why?” Gaela asked in a low, dangerous tone. She leaned back against the table, gripping its edge.
“I don’t know, Gaela,” Regan snarled.
“Is it Connley?”
“No.”
The eldest sister stared unblinking, waiting with the gathered fury of an army.
Regan refused to be cowed, returning the gaze, cool and still.
Silence stretched between them.
The very moment sorrow slipped in to replace anger in Gaela’s eyes, Regan spoke again. “I consulted with Brona Hartfare at the start of the summer, and have done all I know to do, but there is …”
Her sister stepped forward and embraced Regan again, tighter and with a shaking intensity.
She wept, with a weariness that dragged her toward the floor. But her sister, as always, held her upright. A tower, the strongest oak, the true root of Regan’s heart.
“I won’t give up,” Regan said, leaning her cheek against Gaela’s shoulder. She drew a deep breath, awash in the familiar scent of iron, clay, and rich evergreen that clouded Gaela. A fire crackled in the small round hearth that split the wall between the rooms they’d shared as girls: the one full of weapons and cast-off leather armor, bits of steel and pots of the soft, scented clay Gaela used to shape her hair at court; the other near empty, as Regan chose to sleep with her husband now. Though there still was a trunk left behind, filled with girlish dresses and flower dolls and Regan’s first recipe of herbal secrets she’d saved for her own daughters. Uselessly, it seemed.
“Sit at the fire,” Gaela ordered, with her Regan-reserved tenderness.
Regan removed her slippers and lifted a wool blanket from the hearth, gathering it about her shoulders as she sank into a low chair. “I will find a way to look inside myself, Sister. To find the cause of my … difficulties. There must be some magic raw and strong enough to speak with my body, to demand conversation with my womb.”
Gaela dropped herself into the chair opposite Regan. “If not, we must consider Elia,” she said bitterly. “Those kings courting her would not work, for they would want her issue for their own people, but perhaps … perhaps she could marry that bold boy, Errigal.”
“Rory,” Regan said. “It would be a strong match, her blood and his iron magic, though the boy himself has little power, or never developed it much, thanks to his milky mother.”
“I cannot confide in Elia,” Gaela said suddenly, vehemently, protesting her own suggestion. “Our baby sister is too like Lear. Takes his side, always. Would she want the crown herself, instead of making her children my heirs? Or fill their heads with starry nonsense? Would her ways weaken the children? She gave up your wormwork, too, after all. Is there any of Dalat in her? Any fire of adventure or conquest?”
“And what of my Connley, should Elia’s children inherit your crown? What of him, and us?”
Gaela snorted. “I care not for Connley’s prospects.”
Regan bit the inside of her lips to hold her expression cool and unconcerned. This was an old ritual, and she no longer argued on Connley’s behalf to her sister. Connley’s future was up to Regan alone. She said, “Elia can never threaten us for the crown. She has kept herself too hidden in the star towers, as our father’s starry shadow and acolyte. Some will love her for it, but not enough to follow her against us. Connley would swallow her up if she tried, even with Errigal her husband.”
“On that Astore will agree.”
“Let us eat, then, Gaela, and have this mess cleared.”
After marching to the door, Gaela flung it open, half calling already for a servant, but there stood Elia instead.
Their youngest sister froze, startled, a hand poised to knock. She wore the drab robes of a star priest, but her hair was rolled up and decorated with a net of crystals.
Gaela’s fury at the sight of Dalat’s jewelry flashed in the sudden tightening of her mouth, and Elia put her hands protectively up to her hair. She said, “Father put it in this afternoon, before I went to meet the kings.”
Silence stuck between them, the muscles of Gaela’s jaw shifting as she controlled her anger and instincts. Regan knew that set of her sister’s shoulders, and she joined Gaela in standing. Regan did not hate Elia as Gaela did, but pitied her. She touched a hand to the back of Gaela’s neck. “Did you choose one king or the other?” she asked Elia coolly, as if she cared not at all.
Elia shook her head. “I came to see if you had eaten.”
“We’re about to,” Gaela said, and stepped closer to Elia, blocking her entrance.
Though occasionally Regan thought of their mother and how Dalat would prefer her three daughters united, she remembered keenly enough that Elia forever refused to believe Lear had taken part in their mother’s death. She had betrayed Dalat, and her sisters. And yet she dared arrive wearing Dalat’s starry accessory. Besides, Regan’s womb ached, her joints throbbed, and she could not fathom allowing the cherished, naïve Elia to see such weakness. So Regan did not protest Gaela’s obvious denial of their youngest sister’s overture.
For her part, Elia only frowned gently; surely she’d expected this response, if even she’d hoped for better. “I’ll … see you in the morning, then. I wish …” Elia lifted her black eyes and made a determined expression she could not possibly know was reminiscent of Dalat. “When you’re queen, Gaela, you must let me take care of him.”
Gaela breathed sharply. “If he needs to be taken care of.”
Elia nodded, glanced at Regan with a tiny sliver of unforgiveable sympathy, and left.
After a moment, Gaela called in a girl to clean up the broken pot and bring them more wine, and supper. They waited in silence, until every spilled puddle was mopped up, and each sister held a fresh clay cup full of wine.
Regan sighed. “Was she right, Gaela? Will our father name you heir tomorrow? Is that what your summons said?”
Drinking deep, Gaela glanced into the fire. Her pink tongue caught a drip of wine in the corner of her mouth. “That is what we will make happen, no matter what Lear says. I shall set all my daughters in their places.”
“Whatever game he plays, we will stand together and win.”
Together, they raised their glasses.
ELIA
ELIA WAS LATE to dinner.
The great hall of the Summer Seat had been built into the keep’s rear wall so that nothing but sky and cliffs and sea appeared through the tall, slim windows behind the throne. The low ceiling was hung with dark blue banners embroidered with silver stars shaped like the Swan constellation, Lear’s crest. Rushes and rugs covered the entire beaten earth floor, adding warmth and comfort as winds howled for most of the year, even in the height of summer. Long tables spread in two rows off the king’s table at the west end, and benches were full of earls and their retainers, the companions of the visiting kings, and all the resident families. A small side door to the north of the throne, hidden behind a wool tapestry of a rowan tree, led through a narrow corridor to the guardhouse and beyond to the royal tower so that the king and his family did not ever need travel outside from their rooms to the court. Everyone else was expected to enter through the heavy double doors far across from the throne. It was through the small door that Elia arrived, alone.
It was no way for a princess to make an entrance. She lacked companion or escort, had been been denied her sisters’ company, and Lear himself refused to leave his chambers, trapped in a sudden fit of starry obsession he would not share with her. There’d been a time Lear loved entertaining, loved the swell of noise that signaled a well-shared feast, Elia was certain of it, though the memories were dull with age. She’d been so small, delighted at every chance to sit on her father’s knee and listen to the songs and poetry, to eat strips of meat from Lear’s hand. He’d liked to dot cream and fruit syrup onto her face like constellations, sometimes daring to do the same to Dalat.
Elia paused in the arch of the doorway, carefully reeling in the far-flung line of her heart. She breathed slowly, banishing memories in favor of the cool responsibility of representing her family.
She could hardly believe Lear had abandoned her tonight, when the kings he himself had invited were waiting, expecting to be fed and flattered. It spoke to the changes in him, his most capricious stars winning whatever battle raged in his mind.
Food had already been served, for which Elia was grateful; there was no need to make an announcement now, or put herself at the center of attention. She stared out at the chaos of people, the laughing and low conversations, the men and women of the kitchens moving skillfully about with full jugs of wine and trenchers of stewed meat. There were the kings of Aremoria and Burgun, seated at the high table with Connley and Astore at either end. Aremoria spoke evenly in response to Astore’s boisterous laughter, while Burgun and Connley seemed to grit their teeth behind smiles. Elia could not be sure if Connley’s dislike of Burgun aligned her with him for the first time.
She should go direct to the high table, she knew, and reminded herself firmly. She should be gracious and calm, perhaps tell the story of her wager with Danna, or ask after the kings’ own families. Though that would invite questions in return about her sisters and father. No, she could not lead them so easily into uncertain territory. Just as she took a step, a beloved voice called, “Starling!”
Spinning, Elia held out her arms in preparation for her mother’s half-brother to pick her up in an eager hug. The Oak Earl had always been a brightness in her life, rather a rarity after Dalat died. But Kayo could not help making a bold impression, with his stories from the Third Kingdom, from trading caravans and merchant fleets, deserts and inland seas the likes of which few in Innis Lear could truly imagine. He ventured westward every two or three years, carrying trade agreements for Lear while growing his own riches, but for the most part, he lived here on the island, where his favorite sister had been so happy. He had never taken a wife, instead latching on to Lear’s family like a cousin. Kayo was perhaps the only person in the world all three Lear girls admired: Gaela for his adventures, Regan for his penetrating insight, and Elia because he came home.
“Uncle,” she said now, carefully, as she was always careful when performing emotions in public.
“Elia.” The Oak Earl leaned away, gray eyes full of gladness. He lowered his voice, bending to knock their foreheads together affectionately. “How are you?”
“Nervous, I admit,” she said, breathing in the sea-blasted smell of him.
“So would I be. Do you have a favorite between your suitors?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Aremoria, then,” Kayo said.
“Burgun has been more interested in me,” she murmured. “Courted and flirted and given me gifts.”
“Is that the sort of husband you want? The sort who buys you?”
She angled her head to meet his gaze. “I don’t know Aremoria at all.”
“He has the more certain reputation.”
“But certain of what?” she asked, almost to herself.
Kayo smiled grimly and offered his arm. She took it, and together they went to the high table. Elia introduced Kayo to Aremoria and Burgun, and her uncle effortlessly launched into a tale of the last time he’d passed through the south of Aremoria, on his way home from the Third Kingdom.
Able to relax somewhat, Elia picked at the meat and baked fruit in the shared platter before her, sipping pale, tart wine. She listened to the conversation of the surrounding men, smiling and occasionally adding a word. But her gaze tripped away, to the people arrayed before her, who seemed boisterous and happy.
The Earls Errigal, Glennadoer, and Bracoch sat together, the latter two both with their wives, and Bracoch’s young son gulping his drink. A familiar head leaned out of her line of sight behind Errigal, just before she could identify him.
It might’ve been the drink, but Elia felt overwhelmingly as though this bubble of friendliness would burst soon, bleeding all over her island.
Or it might have been that she herself would burst, from striving to contain her worries and loneliness, from longing for inner tranquility in the face of roiling, wild emotions. How did her sisters do it, maintain their granite poise and elegant strength? Was it because they had each other, always?
Elia had never known her sisters not to present a united front. Gaela had been deathly ill for three whole weeks just before she married, and Regan had nursed her alone through the worst of it. When Regan had lost her only child as a tiny month-old baby, Gaela had broken horses to get to her, and let no one blame Regan, let no one say a word against her sister. Elia remembered being pushed from the room, not out of anger or cruelty, but because Gaela and Regan forgot her so completely in their grief and intimacy. There was simply no place for her. Though, like tonight, they did sometimes push her out on purpose.