The Queens of Innis Lear

His sister was dead!

And dead an entire year. He’d laughed and sung around bright fires; he’d slept curled in camp beside his cousins during the hottest hours of the day, when the sun colored the sky with sheer, rippling illusions. His heart had been satisfied, if not quite full, even though she’d been dead already, buried on this faraway rock.

Kayo stopped walking. The edge of the forest was near, making its presence known by a bluish glow: moonlight on the rocky moor beyond. Behind and around him the forest sighed, swelling with a warm, wet breeze that nudged the trees into whispered conversation.

“Who are you?” a high voice asked.

A boy stood just out of his reach, but Kayo already had his curved knife drawn, a leg thrown back to brace for attack. In the dark, shadows shifted and danced, and the boy stood near a wide oak tree, against its dark side, hidden from stray moonlight.

“Kayo of Taria Queen,” he said, sheathing his knife back in the sash where it belonged. He pulled his scarf off his head, letting it pool around his neck and shoulders. This made his gray eyes clearer, and he hoped friendly to the boy, even with his foreign clothes and skin.

“I don’t know you.” The boy said it with finality, despite being very small, no older than ten years, skinny, and with a snarl of dark hair. He was not pale, though his features were narrow like those of the islanders. Except the strong nose and gremlin-round eyes. Southern Ispanian, Kayo thought: those refugee tribes roaming and homeless, pushed out by the Second Kingdom’s wars.

Kayo nodded his head in a polite bow. “You know of me, boy. My sister was the queen, and I’ve come for the year memorial.”

“The princess is there already.”

This information was useful, though strangely offered. Lear had three princesses, after all, though the youngest must be this boy’s age. Perhaps the boy only cared about the child he knew best. Such was the way of youth. “Do you know how the queen died?” Kayo asked. He’d heard rumors of misdeeds, of suspicion, of mystery, and perhaps the child could give him the unvarnished truth to point him the way of revenge.

The boy tilted his face up to put narrowed eyes on the sky. “The stars.”

“The stars killed her?” What nonsense was this?

“She died when the stars said she would.” The boy shrugged, a jolting, angry gesture. “They control everything here.”

The prophecy. Kayo felt a worm of discomfort in his stomach. “What’s your name?”

The boy startled and glanced past Kayo as if hearing something Kayo was not attuned to. But Kayo trusted it, and turned to look behind himself.

A woman appeared out of the trees. She said in a honeyed tone, “Ban, leave me to speak with this man.”

The boy dashed off.

Kayo waited, oddly reeling, his instincts rumbling trouble.

The woman stepped silently, dressed in island clothes: a cinched tunic over a woolen shirt and layered skirts, hard boots. Her hair fell in heavy black curls around her lovely tan face: a woodwoman, a spirit of this White Forest. When she gestured for him to join her on the final part of the path, so they would come out at the edge of the woods together, Kayo found himself unable to resist.

They stopped at the opening of the trees, looking down upon the Star Field. It was a shallow valley of rugged grass, covered with towers of stones and columns of seashells stacked by human hands to waist- or knee-height. Long slabs of gray rock rested as altars, etched with the uncivilized scratches of the language of trees. Candles were stuck to the stone piles, to the slabs, some fat and well made, some skinny and poor, others in clusters and still more lonely and reaching. As Kayo watched, two priests in white clothes walked through with long torches, lighting each and every candle.

Behind the two priests came a silent procession.

“It is the king,” the woman said. “Lear and his court, his daughters, and some foreign guests, come to light a new year-candle at the fallen queen’s celestial bed.”

Kayo’s brow pinched and his jaw tightened with grief. Every candle flame was a star, wavering and flickering across the valley. Though other memorial fields dotted Innis Lear, this was the grandest. The loved ones of the dead needed only supply a candle, and the star priests would light it every night. King Lear provided gifts of candles for any who asked, Kayo had heard, so that the Star Field was always aglow, always twinkling its own heaven back to the sky. A fitting memorial for a woman like Dalat.

“Come,” the woman said.

“Who are you?” he asked, voice rough with sorrow.

“Brona Hartfare, and I was a friend to your sister the queen. I remember you, when you were more of a boy, solemn and secure at her side, far south of here at the Summer Seat.”

“Brona,” he said. It was a name that expanded to fit every nook of his mouth.

They walked carefully down into the Star Field, circling wide so as to join the rear of the congregation as it wove through the candles and standing stones to a broad slab of limestone that shone under the full moon. Brona took Kayo’s hand, holding him apart from the crowd.

King Lear looked as Kayo remembered, though perhaps with more wrinkles at his pink mouth. Maybe that was the result of so many separate candles pressing together with their competing lights. His hair was brown and thick, woven into a single braid and pinned in an infinity loop. A white robe hung from his tall frame, over white trousers and a white shirt and white boots. All the royalty and many of the rest wore white, too, or unbleached wool and linen. Very little jewelry adorned them, but for simple pearls or silver chains. Moon- and candlelight turned all their eyes dark against pink and cream and sometimes sandy skins.

The king held the hand of a small girl whose curls were big around her head, some copper-brown strands flaring in the candlelight. Her focus was on her father and the monument slab they approached. Behind her came the two older sisters, arms around each other, leaning together as if a single body: one barely a woman, soft and graceful; one strong and dark as Dalat. Kayo caught his breath at her—the eldest, Gaela—whose face was so like her mother’s had been. He remembered Gaela as a whip-strong child, competing with the sons of retainers and lords in races and strength, wearing pants and her hair cut short to flare exactly like his own had done. He’d enjoyed teaching her wrestling holds and a better grip for her dagger, but the girl had taken it all seriously, no games or teasing allowed. Now her hair was longer and braided into a grand crown, and though she wore white, her clothes were a warrior’s white gambeson and pants and boots, and a long coat decorated with plates of steel too far apart to be useful. Her sister Regan dressed like a fine lady, despite being only a slender slip of womanhood. Kayo’s memories of her were so much gentler; Regan had been ten years old when he left, though already reading and writing as well as a scholar. She had the least of Dalat in her, outwardly: the palest brown of the girls, with brown hair thick and smoothly waved.

And the little one, whom Kayo had hardly known: her small round face pulled into sadness, her tiny fingers caught in Lear’s as the king knelt at the memorial slab, tears obvious on his cheeks and chin, glittering in his dark beard.

Kayo felt tears pinch his own throat, crawling up into his nose. He clenched his jaw, and Brona leaned into him, her shoulder against his chest. She smelled like fire and rich moss. What a comfort to breathe her in, her hair brushing his mouth, though how weak of him to let her feel his trembling.

A star priest with a flickering torch lifted his arms and called out a prayer. Kayo could only just hear the sounds, not comprehend the words: he was unpracticed these days. The rhythm, though, was familiar, the crying, sharp intonation the priests of the island used to speak with the stars. All the gathered company murmured and mouthed along with the priest, except for one young man several steps back from the king’s daughters. This was a prince in the burnt orange of the kingdom of Aremoria, the coat sleeves wrapped with white in deference to the mourning traditions of Innis Lear. He wore a solemn expression and a heavy, jeweled sword, a simple band of gold at his brow. No older than Gaela Lear.

As the prayer lifted, Kayo pictured Dalat, imagined her here in a dress of the finest red cloth, spiked through with orange thread and a brilliant turquoise like the surf of the inland sea. Red and black paint on her eyes and mouth, streaked into her hair. Her eyes were stars, and the hundreds of candles here glowed only to reflect her glory.

Kayo looked to see the king bow his head and clutch at his youngest daughter’s hand. The little girl’s brow furrowed in pain. Her fingers were squeezed too hard, but she said nothing, and did not pull away.

AEFA (#ulink_adce05ff-cd07-5f59-ab02-55dcf9585fee)

AEFA WAS INORDINATELY anxious as she entered the great hall of the Summer Seat the morning of the Zenith Court. She’d left Elia with her father, despite arguing hard for several long moments in the corner of the king’s chamber. But Elia insisted upon arriving with Lear, unconcerned by the visual it would create, and the statement it would make, particularly to Gaela and Regan. “My sisters have already made up their minds,” Elia insisted, which was true. “I will stay at my father’s side, because he needs me.” Which was also true, no matter how Aefa wished otherwise.

At least Elia had allowed herself to be laced into a new, bright yellow overdress, one that pulled at her hips and breasts pleasingly, because, Aefa said, “You have a much better set of both than either Gaela or Regan.” Elia had pursed her lips, embarrassed, but it was also true. And Aefa had spent over an hour with the princess’s hair, creating an elaborate braided knot at Elia’s nape, twisted with purple ribbons and the net of crystals. She’d smeared red paint on Elia’s bottom lip and dotted it at the corner of each eye, and insisted upon a silver ring for every finger and both sapphires for the thumbs. Aefa lost the shoe debate, but Elia’s reliance on her old thick-soled leather boots was at least practical. Though Aefa thought she should look into several more pairs, just as sturdily made, but perhaps dyed gray and black to better compliment a variety of gowns, or even plain priestly robes and stubbornness.

It was ridiculous how focused Aefa allowed herself to be on such matters, but better this than spinning her mind tighter and tighter around all the dreadful gossip she’d gathered last night. The rumors about the king and his temper were terrible: he frequently lost his way in conversations, or would say one thing and then directly do the opposite. Not in any way that seemed politically motivated, or even with the casual carelessness of men, but more like he’d asked for roasted bird only to rage at its presence, insisting he’d always preferred venison and to say otherwise was treason. Lear had punished two reeves last month for skimming profits, but there’d been no hearing: the stars alone had cast judgment, via a single prophecy the king himself charted. Most of the court thought the reeves guilty, but so too did most think that wasn’t exactly the point. The clerks were afraid, and admitted drunkenly to a steward, who told Jen in the kitchen, that they’d been working with Gaela and Astore on the island’s finances without the king’s permission. But what else should they do, when the king did nothing? Retainers were enjoying themselves, for the most part, secure in Lear’s goodwill. So the king had a happy army, at least, if a lazy one. Then Aefa’d heard all the crows were gone from the Summer Seat and Sunton, and honestly she couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard one. It shouldn’t have been the worst of the news, yet she couldn’t shake the eerie nature of it.

Aefa had longed to sit Elia down and unload all the anxiety that had built up in the people of the Summer Seat, and in Aefa’s own heart, but Elia’s eyes had never once welcomed honesty this morning, instead tripping again and again out the window, toward the horizon, distant and cool. So Aefa kept her mouth shut, though she did not hesitate to touch Elia’s wrist, or linger gently with her hands on the princess’s shoulders. That was how it always was between them: a silent promise, evidence that sharing comfort could be a strength, when Elia was ready to see it.

She’d also poured every drop of Brona Hartfare’s rootwater into Elia’s morning milk.

Because without Elia, Aefa was not part of the family enough to use the private doors, she let herself in to the great hall by the much heavier forward doors. Dragging one open, she was glad enough at the retainer in dark blue who held it while she slipped quietly in, that Aefa winked at him in her more usual manner.

The Fool sat in the king’s throne, far across the hall from Aefa, wearing a tattered blue dress with trousers beneath, rings in his ears and paint on his lip and eyes. He cradled a shallow bowl in his lap, in which Lear’s tall bronze and ruby crown sat like stiff porridge.

If she’d not already been walking on edge, the sight would’ve cut her feet to ribbons.

Aefa mirrored her princess by taking a deep breath, pasting on a bright but neutral smile, and so made her way down the central aisle to her father.

The courtiers and guests had arrayed themselves throughout the hall in the patterns and pieces of their island and alliances: Dukes, earls, and ladies, the alders and reeves from nearby towns, and further representatives of all the king’s retainers, too. They divided into groups of friends and cousins, to either side of the throne dais, depending on if they favored Astore or Connley. All the feasting tables were gone, and benches lined the long walls, pressing the thick tapestries back. Light blazed in, white and salty, from the tall windows along the west and south walls.

Of great interest to Aefa were the kings of Aremoria and Burgun, waiting separate here by the far end with the door, their retainers and escorts in clusters five men thick. Ullo of Burgun gleamed in ermine and leather heavy enough to add a glisten of sweat to the overall shine of his smile and bright teeth and slick long hair. He caught her eye, and before Aefa could so much as raise a brow, his glance fell to her breasts. She scowled and thought to herself that he wouldn’t recognize elegant beauty if it landed him on his ass.

Across from Ullo, firmly set among his men, Morimaros of Aremoria flicked his eyes over Aefa, too, information gathering and nothing else. As if she were a strip of land that he must face his enemy upon, and he would quickly sum up its boundaries and flaws. Just like his letters. She let her smile quirk up on one side, recalling his dry descriptions of Aremore agriculture. Unlike Ullo, he did not flaunt his crown, but matched his retainers in leather armor, just lacking their orange tabard with its lion crest. The only sign of richness were the heavy rings on his strong hands.

“Aefa!” called the Fool from the throne. She bowed elaborately at her father, and skipped a step or two, before slowing to a more respectful pace: Near the throne dais stood the eldest daughters, Gaela and Regan, shoulder to shoulder.

They were terrifying.