The Queens of Innis Lear

“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.”