An Abascar watchman sounded the Evening Verse, adding an extra strain to wish the Housefolk a slumber undisturbed by approaching rain. Ark-robin raised his voice to sing along, hoping to ward off memories Auralia had loosed. Memories of another mischievous wilderness girl. Memories of a midnight when House Abascar had been deceived. His voice failed as he recalled there had been a storm song that night too, long ago.
The king’s tower loomed, a silhouette now, the thin curve of the moon like a gleaming helm above it.
Ark-robin shivered. Memories of Queen Jaralaine seized him.
4
THE MERCHANTS’ DAUGHTER
S nagged by a riptide of memory, Captain Ark-robin recalled how that momentous night, so many years ago, changed everything in Abascar.
It had begun with someone rattling the door while he lay watching his wife, Say-ressa. Hours like these, when this weary healer could turn away from the sick and the suffering and find a spell of peace, were rare. He would have ignored the visitor just to let Say-ressa sleep. But this was not just a visitor. This—the wall shaking, the latch breaking loose from the doorframe—would have to be a royal summoner.
Reluctantly he met the summoner’s haughty gaze and learned that his presence was required in the king’s tower.
He joined Tar-brona at the end of the avenue outside Ark-robin’s living quarters. In those days, Tar-brona was captain of the guard, silver-haired and small but tough as gristle, unwavering in his obedience to Cal-marcus and strangely prescient when it came to the king’s endeavors. Thus it unsettled Ark-robin to learn that Tar-brona knew nothing about the reason for their summons.
They proceeded together quietly, with haste, arriving at precisely the moment the house watchmen sang out the haunting Midnight Verse. An additional lyric—a storm warning—only increased his feeling of dread.
Inside the palace, at the entrance to the king’s fireside library, a doubled guard let them in and then closed the doors firmly behind.
It was not Cal-marcus they found there.
A shaft of moonlight fell through the tall window at one end of the narrow chamber. A hiss of wind crept in and slithered along the floorboards.
No one stood at the map table, and no one was pacing and pondering scrolls from the voluminous library. There was only little Cal-raven in his white nightshirt sitting on the floor before a wall of shelves, talking quietly to himself. Beneath him, uncurling, was a great map of the Expanse. Cal-raven’s small hands moved stone figures across parchment as though playing a game of strategy. He glanced up once at the defender and captain, blinked. “One of the pieces is missing. Do you know where it is?”
The men shared a troubled glance, then shook their heads and shrugged. “My apologies, young prince,” said Tar-brona.
This seemed to earn them his disregard, for he solemnly sighed and said, with his father’s familiar melancholy, “I suppose it’s my mystery to solve.”
Captain Tar-brona cleared his throat. “The prince is never awake so late. And where are the attendants assigned to him while his mother is away?”
Abascar’s gates had opened for Queen Jaralaine’s departure eight days earlier, while the courtyards resounded with the pomp and parade she arranged to celebrate her every decision. Jaralaine had surprised even the king with her announcement—she wished to see another house, Bel Amica, for herself.
This was not out of character. From the time Cal-marcus first discovered Jaralaine wandering in the wilderness, her mind had been fixed upon all she did not possess. As the daughter of merchants, she had been poor, powerless. As queen, with no one in Abascar to refuse her a request, she worried herself with Abascar’s reputation elsewhere in the Expanse, concerned that her people and power might not compare to another’s.
Aggravated by reports that House Bel Amica had become a place of wonder and invention, Jaralaine locked herself in her chambers until her husband consented to this journey. Bel Amica’s decadence was famous. And it was no secret that the Bel Amicans had accomplished much by sea—Ark-robin had heard witnesses describe ships returning from Bel Amican settlements established on faraway islands. When the king surrendered to Jaralaine’s demands, she sent messengers to Bel Amica announcing her visit. Then she ran off with Abascar ambassadors, bearing gifts of precious stones, determined to measure Bel Amica’s wealth and ambition and to flaunt the best of Abascar.
King Cal-marcus had remained behind, a sleepless, nervous man.
Ark-robin had come to the palace expecting to find the king wearing out the library rugs, busying his mind with visions of Abascar’s storied past. Summonses that came this late in the night were usually harbingers of trouble. The only trouble here was the young prince’s search for a missing toy.
In the fireplace light, the king’s high-backed chair cast a trembling shadow across the room. An open bottle of hajka rested on the floor. Ark-robin winced. Hajka was a threat to the king’s health against which no soldier could defend. He knew Tar-brona would come to the same conclusion—that a foul temper had seized the weary king.
The queen, Ark-robin thought. Has something befallen Jaralaine in Bel Amica?
And then came the second surprise of the evening. It was not King Cal-marcus who rose from the chair, but Queen Jaralaine.
She gave the men an exquisite fright. There they stood, burdened with layers of skins, leather, and metal—duty’s costume, not the armor of war—while Jaralaine wore a silken nightgown. Barefoot, she approached them as she always did—gingerly, the way someone wary of snakes tiptoes through tall grass. Cascades of golden curls, wild as willowstrands, fell about her shoulders. This was not formal attire, nor was it fitting for her to appear thus before any man but her husband. Ark-robin feared he would not be able to tear his gaze away from Jaralaine, that he would not be able to hide his enchantment or control his thoughts.
Were the king to suddenly appear, conversation would be awkward indeed.
Tar-brona knelt in flustered obeisance, expressing astonishment to find her here, already returned from Bel Amica, and wondering aloud why there had been no announcement or reception.
Jaralaine reassured them warmly. Word had reached her by messenger hawk that Cal-marcus was sick and she should return home. The king had retired to bed, assisted by a nurse.
Her words were rehearsed, tainted with that somewhat sour accent of forest folk. And she moved so swiftly from one subject to the next, they did not think to wonder who might have sent out a messenger hawk to recall her without their knowledge or consent.
But he thought of it now, in retrospect, and viewing her from this distance, he could see her far more clearly.
Rumors of Jaralaine’s origins ranged between outrageous and impossible. In the king’s version of the tale, he had found her while traveling. As a young prince, he preferred riding horseback fast over open ground to taking vawns through dense, dark woods. Vawns were for laborers and soldiers; horses were for adventurers and men of fortune. On one solitary venture, he had followed his curiosity northward. His discovery enchanted him, and for hours he had concealed himself to watch her washing a basket of apples in the River Throanscall, until she slipped into the water to bathe, singing songs that broke his heart.
When he approached her, she told him she was the daughter of waresellers unsworn to any house. She had been wandering for days, struggling to stay alive, moving slowly southward toward Abascar. Her thoughts were unfocused, meandering between the truth, which was bloody and awful, and a delusion, in which she was certain her family had merely gone on a journey and forgotten about her. Surely they would return, she told Cal-marcus, but she would welcome someone to watch over her while she waited there in the wilderness.
She welcomed his close attention to her account, his haste in helping her find food, and his knowledge of healing herbs. He won her trust.
When night arrived and her family had not returned, Cal-marcus brought Jaralaine to stay among the orphans who had been assigned to the Gatherers’ care. No one came to claim her, b
ut she seemed so delighted by the prince’s frequent visits that she never fell into grieving. He visited her often, foolishly assuming he could do so unobserved.
One day Cal-marcus had taken her riding on his father’s finest horse to revisit the site of their first conversation. When she saw the place again, she leaned into his embrace and wept. The memories she had shut away broke down the door. And so he learned the truth.
She had been gathering fruit high in some apple trees and had later returned to find the wagon stolen, the bodies of her family scattered in pieces beside the river. Alone at the desolate scene, she had tried to drown herself but failed, awakening on the Throanscall’s shores, far south of the bloody ground. Her father, mother, brother, even the older sisters who had tormented her in childhood, and all the meager resources they had stashed in their skin-covered wagon—all of it was gone.
Filled with adolescent zeal, Cal-marcus vowed to drag the killers in to be tortured to death in Abascar’s dungeons, vows that brought a hungry fire to Jaralaine’s eyes. In those years, beastmen had not yet darkened lands north of Abascar. The blood of these merchants had been spilled by human hands. The waresellers’ greatest concerns in the north, beyond the threat of disease or the trouble of weather, had been wild animals, river wyrms…and one other danger. Cal-marcus aimed his revenge toward the raiders from the clans of woodland thieves.
He would mount a campaign, with the blessing of his father, to comb the woods north of Abascar and eliminate those marauding clans. Then he would ask Jaralaine to marry him. When she became his Promised, she would be ensured a new life of honor and respect. She would want for nothing. He sealed this promise with a ring, one sculpted by his good friend Scharr ben Fray, an aging mage with unmatched stonecrafting talents. The ring would make it clear to all that she was to be treated with favor.
Two years later, despite the displeasure of King Har-brona, Cal-marcus wed Jaralaine.
Cal-marcus was welcomed as a hero sure to transform the house when he inherited the crown. The romance of his story endeared Jaralaine to the people. New songs were written for strings, and a new epic tale joined Abascar’s legends. At least for a while.
While Jaralaine was hard, reclusive, and hollowed out with grief, the people seemed to share Cal-marcus’s zeal to bring her a new start. Some Housefolk saw in her a reflection of the losses they had suffered during the wars with the Cent Regus savages. In devoting themselves to her delight, they could restore their own scarred spirits.
But House Abascar’s love for the queen would not last. The people had seen what they hoped to see, not the vengeful spirit sulking through the days and tiptoeing suspiciously through the palace corridors by night.
Waresellers were known for their sharp-edged tongues, and Jaralaine’s words left scars. Traveling merchants of the sort that had raised her bound themselves to no house. Their lives beyond the walls hardened them, changed them, and they fought bitterly for every scrap of profit, rarely earning respect. For merchants, the art of deceptive eloquence was a matter of survival, and they could, for a fee, establish complicated contracts and cultivate trade between houses. Jaralaine, it was clear, had learned how to bargain, how to make a robbery seem reasonable. Inside the house, a crown in her curls, she had seized the power her prince offered and, with a poetry of persuasion, taken more besides.
When Cal-marcus took the throne, Jaralaine ensured that he dismissed all his father’s advisors who had looked at her with ill favor. She insisted that her husband needed no counsel but her own. He came to agree, and some guessed she had bewitched him with potions from a garden she cultivated in the castle’s private courtyard.
Growing roots like a weed, she stole the resources that once fed everything around her, and yet she remained ravenous.
On the night of Jaralaine’s return from such a short visit to House Bel Amica, it struck Ark-robin as unlikely that she had rushed home merely to monitor the king’s nurses. The queen did not seem worried about Cal-marcus at all. She was as spirited as ever, dazzling them speechless.
Behind her, the murmuring flickers of what had been a grand blaze retreated into the blackened wood to glower and spit, irritable and weakening. Like the king, Ark-robin thought.
“How may we ease our lord’s suffering?” There was a note of trepidation in Captain Tar-brona’s tone, assuring Ark-robin he was not the only one suspecting trouble.
“You may ease his suffering by trusting his queen to convey his wishes.” Jaralaine stepped to the oak table, a section from the trunk of a tree two thousand years strong before it had been toppled by lightning. “The road has made me weary—haste, worry, beastmen. And I am distraught by all I have seen. So I will not keep you long.”
When she spoke again, her voice was lower, and she exhorted them to swear secrecy. “I assure you,” she whispered, “these words are for those who can see past the burden of a heavy task to the harvest it will yield.”
“We have never flinched at the king’s ambition,” Tar-brona assured her. “If it’s a harvest he wants, put our shoulders to the plow.”
She surprised him with a slow, secretive smile.
The events that followed would soon blur in the currents of time and rumor. But that smile and what Jaralaine had done to set those events in motion remained indelible in Ark-robin’s mind.
“Abascar,” she began, “is not as it should be. That’s what I learned in my visit to Bel Amica. Cal-marcus’s illness came in the nick of time, for I was desperate to be free of their condescension.”
She lamented that the Bel Amicans held Abascar in contempt, that they questioned why such a small and pitiable house should command control of so much harvestland and such deep, rewarding mines. She gestured to a map spread across the table and explained how Bel Amica meant to grow and encompass islands in the western sea, and how they also meant to go north, troubling the dangers there, and south toward House Jenta. Of course, Bel Amicans would never speak of plans to advance eastward. But who would dare deny that this could become a tangible threat? Eastward expansion would give Bel Amica control of many trade routes and encroach on Abascar’s borders.
Ark-robin felt a surge of ardor at the idea that war might be brewing. Would the day come at last for Abascar warriors to ride again in force? Would his men test their training against something other than beastmen? Would the promise of Captain Tar-brona’s talents as a strategist finally be fulfilled?
Tar-brona objected. “Bel Amica bears us no malice. They owe us gratitude still for all we have done, for the way Cal-marcus cleansed the wild lands of the raiders.”
“Captain, how do you know they’re not training a host of soldiers on those islands? Why are Bel Amica’s forges burning while a few inexperienced soldiers decorate their walls? I tell you, the day is coming when we will no longer know our neighbors to the west or what they are plotting. But there is more I must report.”
She placed her hand on the map of the vast Cragavar forest between Abascar and the western shores. “Another threat. And this one is not about swords or spears. It’s about seduction and treachery. As you know, we’ve had soldiers go missing from signal towers in the forest. And Gatherers have been deserting their posts, never to return. I heard familiar names in Bel Amica’s streets. I saw strangely familiar faces. Some of them laughed when my back was turned. Abascar deserters are running into Bel Amica’s gloating embrace, drawn by rumors of a glorious life at the edge of the sea.”
“You know this?” Tar-brona’s eyes narrowed.
“I was the daughter of waresellers,” Jaralaine hissed. “I recognized their tone: disdain, disregard, derision. Queen Thesere’s gluttonous tribe believes itself vastly superior. And how could I argue, with all that I saw? We are humiliated, Captain. Instead of feeling safe, our Housefolk have come to feel cheated and deprived. If Abascar’s people begin to dream of House Bel Amica, they will come to resent us. If Bel Amica flourishes, surely their shameless exhibitions for invisible moon-spirits must be more than a charade!
That’s what our people will decide. Abascar has not been free of foolish superstitions for long, and the tide could easily turn. Tell me, do you want the ceremonies, the bizarre costumes, the sacrifices, the flesh-painting rituals that come with such madness?”
She strode past her son to snatch scrolls from the shelves with both hands. “I’ve read Abascar’s histories. It’s always been small, the stuff of jokes in Bel Amica and Jenta. But the proudest days of House Abascar were those when the people united to overcome a threat. What is it my husband boasts about? The days of discipline, when the people labored to follow a king’s instruction in order to survive the Cent Regus threat. That is how Abascar resisted the spread of the beastman perversion. But since the Cent Regus decline, Abascar’s people have become lazy. Nothing threatens them, so their unity and focus is weakening. They’re tempted to wander.”
The queen tossed the scrolls onto the floor. “They take the safety of these walls for granted. But new threats are rising, and it is time for Abascar to unite and grow strong again. We must give our people a dream. We’ll make all things in Abascar new.”
The young prince, distracted from his play, looked up at the shelves thoughtfully while the wind teased the ribbons that bound the scrolls.
Any plan to revolutionize a house would require difficult sacrifices. Jaralaine emphasized this point. But to neglect Abascar’s weakness—that would cost much more.
She came and stood between them, hands alighting like gentle birds on their shoulders. The Housefolk, she explained, would need leaders who inspired them, a palace radiating glory, and motivation to stoke Abascar’s fire.
Tar-brona began to suggest that the rumors of deserters were unfounded and that beastmen were still known to drag victims away. But Jaralaine’s stare snapped his mouth shut.
Face reddening, she walked back around the table. “I want to hear about Bel Amicans deserting that bloated Queen Thesere to seek the splendor of House Abascar. I want House Jenta’s philosophers to speak of Abascar’s future in reverent whispers and bring us gifts to win favor. If the four houses all split from one great source, as our histories tell us, Abascar has every right to claim itself equal to the rest. We could be the jewel of the Expanse. The wars against the Cent Regus are over. Bel Amica has yet to advance. And Jenta is preoccupied with its quiet meditation. House Abascar will seize this chance to flourish. We’ll transform what we have to become the envy of the land.”