Lady Hotspur

BANNA MORA

Lionis, late spring

BANNA MORA OF the March had been the heir to the throne of Aremoria for seven years. There’d been a ceremony the day after Rovassos King, her granduncle, asked her sweetly if she wished to try on the Blood and the Sea. She’d known what he meant, of course, for she’d been a ward of his crown since her parents died, and she paid good attention.

In the throne room, with seven lords and generals as witness, Banna Mora had sworn loyalty to the Blood and the Sea, to the earth of Aremoria and its people, and to Rovassos himself. She had promised to uphold the honor, courage, and wit of the Aremore kings who’d come before her. At fifteen, she naturally held Morimaros the Great at the fore of her thoughts when she made that vow, but so had she remembered the faces of her mother and father: the former a lady of the esteemed Errigal clan on Innis Lear, of direct royal descent, the latter the earl of the March whose family had held the Aremore border against Burgun for three generations before the annexation.

Always Mora had been proud that the blood of both countries rang in her pulse, despite her affiliation to the vibrant hills and plains of Aremoria over the strange, rocky crags of Innis Lear. The March was wet borderlands on the northwestern coast of Aremoria, curving along the northern border with Burgun, rife with streams and lush meadows, with plentiful game and damp peatland. Hers. And if she no longer could hold all of the country, Mora was determined at least not to lose the March.

Her jaw clenched and she leaned out over the rampart of this sleek tower: the second highest of Lionis Palace, on the eastern side where Mora could watch the conquering army approach. It swarmed over the plain outside the city, a distant rainbow of violet, red, green, orange, like a meadow of wildflowers bending in the wind.

And Lionis itself cried welcome.

From the blue-gray peaked roofs of the city to its winding limestone roads, up and down the bluffs that overlooked the Whiteglass River, flags and banners flew. Arched across streets and dangling from bridges were strings of colored paper in purple for Bolinbroke, vivid orange for Aremoria, and pristine white for the crown.

Mora wished she could have gone with Lady Ianta to drink away her dread. The Lady Knight had been Rovassos’s best friend for longer than Mora had been alive—both of them merry and good with people, neither of them any better than the other at ruling. Even Mora could admit Rovassos had been only a mediocre king. He’d lived too much for moments of pleasure and made quick promises instead of considering long-term alliances and consequences. He hadn’t been strong. But neither had he been a plague of a king, or deserved to die.

Mora didn’t deserve to die, either.

So while she wished to be drunk right now, and had also considered awaiting the arrival of Celedrix in the throne room or the People’s Courtyard for a show of pride, Mora remained here, watching. Here she was no threat, but neither did she hide. She would be found, escorted where Celedrix willed it, and she would submit—submit and plead her case.

All with this hard ring of betrayal cutting against the skin of her chest.

When the letter had come for Hal three weeks ago today, Hal had spun in a dance at the thrill of her mother’s handwriting, her mother’s summons. But Mora had understood what it meant. Because Rovassos had been away in Ispania, due back in seven days, the timing gave away Celeda’s true intention. She’d said nothing to Hal, and nothing to Ter Melia or Imena or any of the other Lady Knights about why Hal rushed out of the city. Instead Mora went into King Rovassos’s private rooms and opened the cubby hidden beneath an iron sconce in the bedchamber. From it she removed a small beechwood box carved with the simple lines of the Aremore crown. Inside, cradled in undyed silk, was a thick silver ring set with a moon-cut garnet and pearls.

The Blood and the Sea.

Rovassos always traveled with a copy, one pearl shy of this original, and lacking the etching on the inner wall of the silver: Aremorix.

It was a secret only the king and his heir knew.

She wore it now on a simple chain beneath her gown. A hard, heavy burden of truth. Mora pressed her palm over the lump it made beneath the linen and silk, and glared out over the beautiful Lionis spring.

“I am Banna Mora of the March,” she murmured to herself, practicing. “Never have I taken up arms against you, Celedrix.” The honorific form of the name stoppered Mora’s throat. She swallowed again and again.

It had been stupid of Rovassos to leave his country, stupid of him to neglect his dukes and earls, to take titles so lightly and distribute them for nothing but favors, stupid of him to never remarry, never produce a direct heir and place instead Banna Mora, a half-Learish niece, in line for the Blood and the Sea.

Or perhaps he hadn’t been stupid; perhaps none of it mattered so long as Celeda Bolinbroke lived, free to plot with Vindomata of Mercia and Caratica Persy together to take powerful revenge.

Perhaps Rovassos’s only stupidity had been granting mercy to his niece ten years ago, banishing her instead of taking her head.

Celeda surely would not make the same mistake.

Sudden panic closed Mora’s throat.

The most ruthless answer to her existence was immediate execution. Not only had she been the heir to Rovassos’s throne; she was descended from better Aremore royalty even than Celeda herself, through her Learish maternal line.

Mora ought to go to her rooms and put on armor and traveling boots, take this ring and the money she had at hand, and run to Innis Lear. They would keep her alive. Her mother had been a great-granddaughter of Elia the Dreamer.

But Mora’s mother had also been the great-granddaughter of Morimaros the Second, the best king Aremoria had ever known, and it was to his line, his throne, that Mora professed love and loyalty. Just like Hal—saints and stars, Mora had met Hal face-to-face for the first time all those years ago in the small portrait gallery where a painting hung of Prince Mars, before he became king. She and Hal had fought over the history of it, and whether his eyes could possibly have been so blue, or whether he smiled at all when he was a young man because he never smiled in his portraits.

A flicker of movement drew her attention to a shadow along the far curve of the tower. Standing against the stones, safe from sunlight, was a man.

No, not a man: a ghost.

Morimaros the Great.

He was young, bearded, and blue eyed, in an old-fashioned cut of orange gambeson, boots, trousers, sword, and some bits of armor. Ceremonial war-dress, not quite ready for a battlefield. His hand was on the hilt of his sword, and on the first finger gleamed the Blood and the Sea. As surely as it hung around her own neck.

Mora’s mouth fell open, and he nodded once, solemnly.

Then Mora blinked and he was gone. Only shadows gathered, and wind pushing curls across her eyes.

She’d been thinking of him, then imagined him.

Calm and certainty swept through her.

She would survive this. Her mind conjured ghosts to reassure her of what she knew deep within. She could maneuver through this and survive.

With that Mora pushed away from the pale crenellation and charged down the tower stairs. She strode through the wide palace corridors hard enough her skirts snapped, to her bedroom where she grabbed up her sword belt and the sword sheathed there. Clutching it, she continued on quickly, past the library and throne room, turning the corner to the smaller gilded doorway that opened into the Princes’ Gallery.

Tall windows at the south let in so much light the picture frames gleamed. Painted wildflowers grew up the corners of the room, all the way to the bright blue ceiling. Seven portraits graced the walls: the most recent seven princes of the Aremore royal line. Including Mora herself.

Her painting was only an arm’s length tall, and she posed with a hawk on her arm, in an elaborate burgundy dress with a quilted bodice to suggest armor. Her sun-brown curls were bound tightly back against her head, twisted into a knot beneath a pearl-dotted crown, and black makeup lined her hazel eyes. One could see the Third Kingdom in the shape of her nose and cheeks, and her skin was a shade darker brown in the portrait than the rich tan it was in life; Mora did not mind, though she wondered at the artist’s purpose in pretending he could not mix the proper tone.

Banna Mora liked being a beautiful prince, a stand-out, skilled at knowing whom she could manipulate with her looks, and how. Some found her rather exotic for her foreign coloring; others just strange, as Mora did come from Innis Lear. There were courtiers who trusted her when she made herself more plainly Aremore, and those who felt better confidence when she let her old Learish accent play through, or wore bright lapis to hint at her Third Kingdom heritage. She flirted with some and remained coolly intellectual with others, treating them to their expectations in order to get what she needed. By all the saints and worms of earth, Banna Mora was a good prince.

Anger, an emotion she vastly preferred over fear, wrapped warm fingers around the base of her spine, and Mora chose to stand before the portrait of Prince Mars instead of her own.

Hal would know to seek her here.

Mora buckled the sword belt over her gown and then settled with her hands folded in front of her, waiting patiently. The hours she’d spent teaching herself to be still, to observe, to hold her expression calm, served her now. Though she was alone, Banna Mora would play her role as prince this final time, until it was taken from her.

Over her shoulder in the massive, life-sized portrait, Prince Mars stood in his ruddy orange uniform with his hand on the shoulder of a white charger. Both he and the horse wore plate mail, and Mars’s helmet was tucked under his arm. The blue sky behind him was striped with gray from funeral fires, and the grass beneath his feet churned to mud and blood. But the prince himself was untouched by gore. Because of the old style of painting, his features were difficult to make out, but for being square and handsome and pale. His eyes, though, maintained their fierce blue.

This old, dead prince had been confessor to so many: Mora remembered coming here to explain to his painting how she intended to make her name as great as his one day, and that her parents were dead, and that Rovassos had chosen her; she remembered, too, finding ten-year-old Hal Bolinbroke huddled beside a window, bent over her drawing pad. Hal had been the king’s ward since her mother’s banishment, and certainly was not supposed to be in the Princes’ Gallery. But Mora had only been the king’s ward then, too, not yet a prince.

We aren’t supposed to be here, she’d said, haughty instead of companionable.

The drawing pad had slapped hard to the marble floor when Hal dropped it. She gaped, then clenched her jaw and pretended to be unconcerned. I can get in through the windows, then back out again whenever I like—the tutoring room they stick me in is right above. And Mars likes my stories, and isn’t as stupid as my tutors. The math one drones on and the history one can’t tell me why King Isarnos didn’t use the river in his tactical plan against the Rusrike invasion.

It was winter, Mora answered. The river was too frozen for barges, but not frozen enough to sled across.

Hal’s dark brown eyes had widened in excitement. Oh! Why didn’t he just say that?

Can I see your art?

Biting her lip, Hal had fallen quiet, but picked up the pad of paper. Mora joined the younger girl on the ground, hiking up her dress to sit cross-legged. Together they paged through the drawing pad. Mora made the appropriate coos of appreciation at the portraits, but especially complimented Hal’s sketches of weaponry and mail. She could identify Diotan-style hilts, Burgundian buckles, and the darkening smears Hal had put on the blades to suggest Errigal iron.

Then Mora had turned a page to reveal a rough drawing of a woman’s face, her jaw and lips well marked, but the details of her eyes unformed.

My mother, Hal whispered. I might forget her face if I don’t keep drawing her.

You’ll see her again. Mora did not want to say she already had a hard time clearly recalling her parents’ features. But if you do forget the way her lashes curl, remember this: the first time I met your mother, I was only eight years old, but she knelt to put herself at my level to speak with me. I asked her about the hilt of her dagger because it had a star-shaped pink stone, and she told me a story right then, of acquiring it. Though others wanted her attention, Celeda Bolinbroke knelt there, telling an eight-year-old girl from Innis Lear everything I wanted to know about that dagger. I will never forget that, the way she made me feel, even if I don’t know what she looks like anymore, or what color are her eyes.

Hal had gripped the edges of her drawing pad so tightly she bent the thin wooden binding. Do you know other stories about her? Will you tell them all to me?

Mora allowed herself a smile now, remembering. She’d loved Hal for ten full years, and been loved in turn. She believed that. Hal would not let Celedrix kill her.

Only a year ago, Hal had knelt before Mora and sworn her life and death to Mora’s name. Lady Hal of Aremoria, she’d been dubbed, only because she could not be Bolinbroke then.

Two of Mora’s other Lady Knights, Lady Ter Melia and Lady Imena, had not joined the rebels, remaining here with the palace guard instead. Mora’s guard. Lady Talix had gone at Hal’s side, though, and of course the squire Nova Irris, too, for her infatuation with Hal. Mora did not know where the rest were—or if any would remain now, or be allowed to remain under Celedrix’s rule. Nor did she know of those who had fought, who had fallen. Rovassos was dead, but who else?

The things Mora did not know could fill a hole the size of the sea.

Horns and trumpets blared outside at the arrival of the new queen in the People’s Courtyard; she heard footsteps in the hallway, voices on the other side of the small panel door that led into the throne room itself.

If only Vindus Persy, the next duke of Mercia, had remained with her—and against the rebellion. A knightly retainer in Rovassos’s service, Vin had been assigned to the palace during the king’s absence, because Mora had asked for him. But Vin had left two months ago, called to his mother’s side in Mercia, along with his brother Devrus, still a squire in the palace. He’d known since then, Mora suspected, what was coming. Vindomata of Mercia had wanted her sons fighting beside her. But Mora would have preferred Vin to remain at her side. He should have chosen her. He’d been such a brutal comfort to her, charming and violent in equal strokes, whichever she needed most. And she did not have to manipulate him, thanks to his rough reluctance to dissemble. Even when he tried, the truth was there in his touch. Fingers curled around the hilt of his sword, pressing hard to the small of her back, the tremble of tense muscles at his jaw. And when he was amused, he always laughed. She’d been nearly ready to make him her husband and the future king of Aremoria. Would he return the favor now? Keep their association and make her instead the future lady of Mercia? Perhaps if Hal could not fight for Mora’s life, Vindus would.

But he’d left. And then Hal, too.