The Queens of Innis Lear

GAELA (#ulink_95c5a645-0a78-5290-b942-37717c006ab4)

THE CREAK OF the war tower was like thunder in her blood. Gaela Lear ground her teeth against too-wide a grin, feeling like a child, gleeful and alive as she played with her toys.

But these were not a child’s trinkets, they were dangerous siege weapons, marring the valley with their mechanical violence. To this eldest daughter of the king, commander of Astora’s forces, they were more than mere tools: they were her treasures.

Gaela raised her gauntleted hand in a fist, then swung it down hard. Archers clinging to the inner scaffolds of the war tower loosed arrows at the targets set atop the ruined castle wall ahead, while the men hidden at the base pushed it inexorably nearer, crushing soft green grass and stinging thistles beneath its huge wheels. Wood and taut wet wool protected the soldiers from any retaliation, or it would have, if the ruined castle were in truth alive with enemy archers and men throwing rocks and flaming spears.

When the tower landed against the ruined old wall, archers covered soldiers as they leapt out to secure it in place, so a horde of miners could then rush in and use the shelter to dig beneath the twelve-foot-thick wall, until the earth was weak enough to collapse under the weight of it.

Gaela raised her hand again, signaling the nearest block of her retainers to charge, with ladders and shields high. Their screams filled the summer air like a storm. Gaela allowed herself to smile proudly as they slammed into the ruins, climbing up and pouring over the crumbled ramparts, never flagging in their enthusiastic cries.

She gritted her teeth then, wishing this were real battle, not mere posturing and practice. At her back, a ballista was mounted to the platform of a cart, capable of swinging in any direction to aim its heavy bolts. She had six of them ready, and a half dozen more were being fitted with wheels for enhanced mobility. In addition to the fifty who charged the wall, three hundred soldiers and retainers stood in rank surrounding her, in the dark pink of the Duke Astore, their mail bright as moonlight and their bucklers polished, their swords naked and pointed at the sky like the teeth of a massive sea snake. It was an impressive force, and only a fraction of the army she’d command under the crown of Innis Lear. These men all wore her husband’s colors, but their loyalty belonged to her.

She did not turn her head toward the east, where folk from the nearest town had come to see the ruckus. That town sat across the border of Astore lands, on the Connley side, and Gaela hoped the people crouched behind rough limestone boulders and shuddering with the skinny trees of the ridge would spread tales of this afternoon. The moment Gaela was king, they should be prepared to submit to her, or face these very men and these very war machines.

She’d chosen this location not only for the nearness of Brideton and the border, but for the ruin specifically. It had been a Glennadoer castle stronghold three hundred years ago, before the island united under the Learish dynasty. The Glennadoers had promoted so much magic in their bloodline all others had joined together to defeat them. Glennadoers still lived now, but confined in the far north, and powerful in name only. Though they leaned toward Connley in loyalty, they were earls under the banner of Astora. This ruined castle symbolized the strength they’d lost, both by opposing a united island and by thinking magic could protect them.

Gaela’s smile turned scornful. Look at this beautiful valley, rough and growing lush despite the holy well capped off just to the north. It was only superstition that had sent the island folk scrambling in a panic when the king ordered all such wells closed ten years ago. When she was king, she would allow towns to open their wells again if they liked, but keep the castle wells closed except on holidays, a sign of her generosity to an easily awed populace. She did not need the rootwaters, but neither did she fear them as her father did. Neither wormwork nor star prophecy made Gaela strong: she did that all herself.

“Withdraw!” she yelled to her soldiers who’d cleared the wall, knocking down targets and hanging the Astore banner: a dark pink field with a white salmon leaping over a trio of four-point stars. “Solin, you and your men reset the tower; the rest of you form up for a melee. I want to see broken shields, and for everyone in Brideton across that hill to hear your roar!”

The soldiers cried and growled, banging their bucklers against hard leather chest pieces to cause a swell of noise. She laughed, and they jumped into action at her signal.

The broad blue sky glinted off Gaela’s chainmail hood, pulled up over the tighter linen hood that protected her twists of thick black hair from the shifting metal. Her dark brown eyes narrowed as that same sun glared off the sea of blades and bucklers turning the valley into a meadow of steel. Gaela posed for a moment at the edge of it, hands at her hips, boot heels dug into the damp earth. She was tall but not broad, though she’d spent her life encouraging muscles where few women wanted them. Her posture could have her mistaken for a man from behind, a resemblance Gaela appreciated.

Gaela had been anxious as a child about how different she looked from all the people of Innis Lear: her deep brown skin and thick black curls made her too easy to identify. Everywhere she went, she was not only the heir to the throne, the black princess, but that dreaded first daughter prophesied by the unrelenting stars to be her mother’s death. A son would not have born such a burden. But Gaela could not escape her body, her stars, or the prophecy.

When she was six years old, she’d destroyed a stack of thin songbooks imported from Aremoria. All the beautiful ladies in the songs were pale as the moon or soft as cream or sunlight on sand. Dalat and the Fool had been learning them together, a favored pastime while the king himself focused on the alliances necessary to open the docks at Port Comlack to wider trade. Gaela had told the Fool that if he did not compose a song about the queen’s dark beauty, she would gut him with his flute. So the queen and the Fool had taken Gaela and her younger sister Regan on a long walk, cataloguing all the pieces of the natural world he might put in his poem for Dalat.

The Fool was an imbecile, bringing pink flowers and bright yellow butterfly wings to little Regan, teasing her and trying to tease Gaela, too. She remembered it still, always with a scowl. Are there green undertones in your mother, do you think? Let’s compare … Dalat smiled and tilted her head to allow the young man to brush a leaf to her cheek until Regan declared a babyish yay or nay. Gaela had been more determined, more precise. She had gathered walnut bark and a deep purple flower, smooth black river rocks, gleaming acorns, a shining crow feather, and a feather mottled rich brown from an eagle’s wing. The last her mother had accepted like riches, and woven the quill into the tight knot of braids at the base of her neck. Like my grandmother’s imperial crest, Dalat smilingly declared. It stood out like a horn, or a slender, delicate wing all its own. It’s still not right, Gaela had said angrily. The Fool sang, Poetry is about perception, little princess, not accuracy. It is about what it means to compare the Queen’s dark and curving mouth to a powerful eagle’s wing. Then her mother took Gaela’s hand, spread it out against her own, and said, This is the only match that matters.

But Dalat was dead, the Fool attached like a wart to the king, and Gaela had no use for poems. Poems did not create power, and Gaela intended to be king when her terrible father died, or sooner. Nothing would stop her.

The urgency of the soldiers now thrummed in Gaela’s bones, lending satisfaction to her resolve. She wished she could march with her army to the Summer Seat, drag her father to his knees, and take the crown. How her satisfaction would grow at the sight of him bowed before her, trembling and afraid. Did my mother die on her knees? Gaela would ask. Did you touch poison to her lips with a kiss, or put it in her nightly mug of warm honeyed milk? Did you ever trust me as she trusted you? Of course, he never trusted anyone or anything except the vicious stars. And so Gaela would thrust her sword into his neck, and watch as he gasped and gargled, as he sank into an undignified pool of blood at her feet.

But no matter how she longed to take the crown in such a way, it was not the most direct, most efficient, or even most secure path. No, the people of Lear took their king-making seriously, claiming them fast and hewing hard to the anointment and the secret, specific traditions of the island’s roots. Gaela would have to bide her time, wait for the king to name her his heir, and then give the island her blood and spit on the longest night of the year. As was right.

To do it by any other method would invite Connley to challenge her—curse him, his ancestors, and his perfect stars, and curse Regan for marrying into that line and giving the dog a stronger claim. Though Gaela wanted war, wanted a chance to release all the fury and aggression inside her heart more than most anything, she did not want a war with her sister on the opposite side.

So here Gaela Lear stood, amidst her personal army, performing for the folk on Connley’s border, sending a brutal message without quite making a firm challenge.

The soldiers had formed up for the melee. With a ferocious smile, Gaela abandoned her perch and ran to join them. Her movement served as signal, and the two sides slammed together, all yelling and chaos, with some few laughing as Gaela laughed. She drew her sword and aimed for the nearest soldier; he had plenty of time to block with his buckler and sword, but the force of her charge shoved him back. She bared her teeth and twisted, shoving at him with all her might. He spun, and Gaela dove farther into the battle.

A flash of light to her left had Gaela turning hard, lifting her own buckler as she dodged under the attack and slammed the edge into her attacker’s face. It caught his helmet with a clang, and he stumbled back, falling hard. Gaela swung around, just in time to see the next attack.

She lost herself in the frenzy of danger, in the cuts and blocks, in the fight to prove herself. She kept on as the battle raged, her teeth clenched, alert, pounding again and again toward the center of the horde. Pain jolted through Gaela’s body with most blocks; she cried out; she screamed. She reveled. This was the nearest she’d come to war, to the desperation and danger: some men would die in this game, and some would be injured too badly to fight again for a long while. Their swords should be blunted, or wrapped. This should be less deadly, but Gaela did not care. She would survive, and she would win, today and tomorrow. It was not reckless. It was vital. Her husband could never understand how this brought her to life as nothing else did, how she needed the immediacy of this danger. This—this—brought her to the edge of her strength, made her feel the mettle she possessed in the very core of her bones. When she fought, Gaela knew she did not need any root blessing or star prophecy.

She was born to be king.

Suddenly, Gaela found herself in a break of soldiers, facing one man. This soldier was huge, blond-bearded with pocked scars on his young pink cheeks, and clearly he had built his uniform from castoffs that did not quite fit. His sword and buckler were borrowed from the Astore armory, and they were stamped as such. But he did not take his eyes from hers, even when she lifted her chin so the sun caught the red blood at the corner of her mouth. She smiled, and it smeared her teeth.

He planted his feet in a very strong defensive pose.

Gaela dropped her buckler and attacked.

Her two-handed grip gave her strength and leverage, which mattered as his size negated any reach advantage she’d have gained by fighting with her shield.

Blood roared in her ears, and she shouldered in past his block, nearly bashing his cheek with her pommel before he twisted and shoved her back hard enough she stumbled. With a spin from the inertia, she drove hard again, hacking at his sword, each clang of metal filling her heart with joy. He was good, using his weight, but still slower than she was. Soon they were the only fighters, all others watching the show.

It was brief but glorious, and Gaela risked a low cut up under his reach, so enthralled she was with the rhythm of their game. He blocked it, chopping with his buckler so the reinforced edge caught her upper arm, numbing the entire limb. She cried out, shocked, and dropped her sword from that hand. It swung off-balance in her other and the man pressed his advantage as she valiantly blocked again, again, and then with his boot he stomped on her thigh.

Gaela went down.

The soldier dropped everything to catch her arm, lifting her to her feet again in a smooth gesture.

He did not hold on when she was steady, and the entire movement appeared so natural, so easy, the gathered soldiers cheered.

Gaela liked a soldier who would win and still save her face. The fingers of her shield arm tingled as blood rushed back into them. Gaela sheathed her sword and rubbed her hands together, smiling for her opponent and all the soldiers. “Well fought, man. Give me your name, that I might invoke it when I speak with my husband.”

“Dig,” the large young man replied.

She lifted her thin eyebrows. “No other?”

“None, lady.”

“Then, Dig of Astora, welcome to my army.”

Just then, a horn sounded from the ridge to the west. Gaela clasped Dig’s wrist, then released him and strode heavily toward the camp. Her body ached with weariness, but she was glad of it.

Osli jogged up, chainmail ringing with the movement. The captain pushed her hair out of her face, dragging it through sweat, and said, “Lady, should I order the end of the games today, or do you want them to run the tower drill again?”

“Drill once more, then have the beer shared out here on the field before everyone returns to camp.” The princess smiled at her young captain, a girl of only nineteen with nearly as much ambition as Gaela herself. “Then you should join me for whatever news comes with this horn, and we’ll share wine while we plan tomorrow’s games. Bring that Dig soldier, and choose two more exemplary men to reward.”

Osli nodded sharply and darted off as Gaela climbed the steeper section of the hill, reaching the long flat plain on the crest where her army had set up camp. Most tents were simple single-pole shelters or lean-tos, ringed wide about fire pits. The supply wagons made a crescent at the south end, and smoke rose there as folk cooked a hearty meal. Fifty men and women and ten wagons to keep her three hundred soldiers tended and fed for this weeklong campaign. She’d ordered them to act as though the supply from Astora City had been cut off, as it might be in real war.

Her eye caught the trio of horses stamping near her tent, a much larger canvas shelter with seven poles and crowned by the Astore banner. One of the horses was her own, its head lowered and rear hoof up in relaxation, but the other two were still dressed and saddled, eagerly drinking from the trough set before them. They were Astore’s horse and one of his stewards’.

Gaela looked all around, and spied him there, a good distance from her, atop a promontory where he’d have a good view of the valley below. Likely he’d witnessed only the final moments of the melee, and now was eying her towers and bastilla.

She made for her tent to divest herself of mail and gauntlets with one of the apprentices, denying her husband the pleasure. A boy in a pink tabard waited at the entrance, and she dragged him in so he could undo the buckles under her left arm that held her small chest plate over the mail.

It was not quick work, and Astore slapped open the tent just as the heavy mail shirt finally slipped off her head and into the waiting arms of the apprentice boy.

“Get out,” Astore said fondly, filling the front of the tent. Fifteen years older than his wife, he was blond and wore it long, in a plain, straight tail. Though he was certainly not ugly, Gaela found it difficult to judge his attractiveness, as she found such things difficult with all people. He was fit and strong, a good war leader, which had brought him to her notice in the first place. He wore a trim blond beard, his light brown eyes were edged in wrinkles, and his skin was as white as hers was black. Save the pink patches from staying too long on the sunny castle ramparts with his retainers.

Gaela stripped the linen hood off her hair as he stared at her. She then went to pour them wine from the low table beside her bed. He always was struck by Gaela when she was disheveled from battle, wearing men’s trousers and a soldier’s quilted gambeson, with only a smear of dark paint around her eyes. It amused her that he strove to hide the visibility of his sexual interest as best he was able, lest it cause her to turn cold. Gaela could always see it. She knew the signs, and she pushed at them when she was feeling mean. Their marriage bed was a contentious one.

“Wife,” he said, accepting the clay cup of wine. She saw a letter with the swan of Lear waiting unopened in his other hand, and she sipped her wine in silence. Her heart still thrummed with the energy and joy of battle.