“Arsinoe!” her sister screams. “Where did you go? Where are you hiding?”
“She doesn’t really expect me to tell her, does she?” Arsinoe whispers, and she and the bear sink low and silent, hoping that Mirabella will not be able to find them.
GREAVESDRAKE MANOR
Natalia stares down at the letter in her hand. Now and then she sips brandy tainted with foxglove and taps her teeth against the glass. The letter is from her brother, Christophe. It arrived that morning, and in it he says that his son, Pietyr, returned home only briefly before departing for Prynn on a business errand. What that business entailed, he could not say. He had assumed it was some errand requested by her. But (and she could envision the carefree shrug of his shoulders) he sends greetings and well-wishes from his wife, Marguerite, who extends an invitation to their country estate as soon as Natalia’s affairs with the Ascension are finished.
Natalia crumples the letter in her fist. How nice it must be to live so far removed from the capital, and from the Council, able to speak of the Ascension with such flippancy. Lucky Christophe, who had married and escaped. But she had not, and his son, Pietyr, had not, and the boy had best turn up on her doorstep soon. Katharine must still be crowned. They still have work.
Genevieve knocks once and enters without waiting for permission. It seems that everyone in her family is determined to make Natalia’s head ache.
“I have been at the Highbern all morning,” Genevieve says, referring to the hotel in the city where they will hold their welcome banquet for the suitor Nicolas Martel.
“And?”
“All is well. The silver is polished, the menu selected, and the flowers ordered from the hothouses.”
“Good,” says Natalia.
They will not need to impress the boy much. Natalia remembers how he watched Katharine the night of the Disembarking and at the feast afterward. And he apparently has not been dissuaded by the unsavory rumors surrounding her return. She and Pietyr had hoped that Katharine would have her choice of suitors, but all they really need is one, for show, until Katharine is crowned and selects Billy Chatworth to be her king-consort as she ultimately must.
“What is that noise?” Genevieve asks. She turns and cocks her ear to the hall. Natalia does not hear anything, but when Genevieve wrenches the door open, the sound of clapping echoes up the stairs.
Natalia sets down her brandy, and she and Genevieve follow the applause, past the foyer and the gallery hall and into the billiard room, where a small crowd of servants has gathered.
They slip in quietly, and when they see what has them so enraptured, Genevieve gasps.
Katharine has erected a target on the far side of the tables. Her maid, Giselle, is tied to it. And as Natalia and Genevieve watch, Katharine throws five small knives. Each lands with an audible thud, mere inches from Giselle’s arms, hips, and head.
The servants applaud, and Katharine bows. She walks gaily to Giselle and kisses her cheek before ordering other servants to untie her.
“What is this?” Natalia asks, and Katharine whirls.
“Natalia,” she exclaims, and the servants hunch their shoulders, preparing to be caught in the middle of a great argument.
Natalia arches her brow at them. Since when has Katharine ever argued with Natalia, or with anyone?
“Do you like it?” Katharine asks. “I needed a diversion, kept inside for so many days, hiding from the elemental queen. And I thought the suitors might be impressed by a little sport.”
“A little sport,” Natalia says. “They will be impressed by your riding prowess and your skill with a bow. But I think you will find their mainland stomachs less at ease with a bride who excels at knife throwing.”
“Is that so?” Katharine laughs. “Are they really so frail?”
“I hope not all of them,” Genevieve says quietly.
Katharine fixes upon her with black eyes. Since she returned, Genevieve has not dared to say much to the queen. She has only watched, and reported to the Council so they might whisper. About how the queen is endangering herself. About how she takes in too much poison without a gift, and someday will take in the wrong one.
Katharine inclines her head toward the target.
“Would you care to take a turn, Genevieve? Give the servants a little thrill?”
Genevieve looks at Natalia, as if hoping she will forbid it, and smiles brightly at the queen when she does not.
“Of course.”
She steps out of the crowd and allows Giselle and another maid to secure her wrists to the target. The mood in the room cools. All are hushed. Katharine fans out her silver knives and slides them between her fingers.
She throws the first one. It strikes solidly beside Genevieve’s waist, and she jerks away.
“Be careful,” Katharine scolds. “Do not move. What if I throw another too quickly, and you twitch into its path?”
She throws again. This one hits so close to Genevieve’s cheek that it slices off a curl of light gold hair.
“I think that is enough, Kat,” Natalia says. “Giselle, Lucy, untie my sister if you please. I am sure we will all enjoy more of the queen’s sport at some other time.”
Giselle and Lucy quickly free Genevieve’s wrists. Genevieve is silent as she and the servants quit the room, but she gives Natalia a betrayed glare.
“You think me cruel,” Katharine says, once she and Natalia are alone.
“No,” Natalia replies. “A little reckless. I know that Genevieve has taken a firm hand with you, Kat. But it was always in your best interests.”
Katharine sighs. “I suppose I should forgive her, then.”
“I did not know you were harboring ill will. You never have before. What has changed, Kat? What really happened to you, the night of the Quickening?”
Katharine wanders through the darkened room and draws the red drape away from the windows. She squints into the daylight. Her face has lost its hollows, despite her ingestion of extra poison. Katharine looks different. She looks new.
“Only what I have told you,” she says. “I ran away and was lost. I fell and the Goddess saved me. If I am out of sorts now, it is only that I have been inside for too long.” She turns to Natalia. “Mirabella’s carriage was only a decoy, was it not?”
“It was. And it has departed. So perhaps that means one of your sisters is now dead.”
Katharine rides Half Moon high into the hills beside Greavesdrake. She rides fast, her heels to his sides, hoping to make it to the summit and see her sister’s decoy making its retreat. But when she arrives, the road is empty.
“It is all right, Half Moon,” she says, and pats the gelding’s sweaty neck. She knows what it must have looked like: a gaudy, overdone black carriage with silver fastenings and blue velvet cushions, the horses groomed to high polish, and every one of their white hairs covered with dye.
“I wish it had not been a decoy,” she says to her horse. “I wish she had blown the doors off Greavesdrake and found me huddled in my bedsheets. I would have thrown a knife into her pretty white throat, and she would have been so surprised.”
Katharine turns Half Moon and rides him back down from the summit. As they enter the cover of the trees, her senses prick, and she realizes they are being followed.
It must be Bertrand Roman, her near-constant shadow. Natalia has sent him out after her, and it has taken him this long to catch up. She pulls Half Moon to a halt. But the hoofbeats behind them are too light to come from Bertrand’s long-suffering black mare.
Katharine urges Half Moon to a canter. Behind her, the pursuing rider does the same. She glances back discreetly, peeking beneath her arm, and sees a light bay horse and a male rider with a flash of blond hair.
Pietyr? She sends Half Moon flying down the path. He will not sneak up on her, and he will not overtake her. No one on the estate is a better rider than she is, and no mount in the Arron stable can twist and cut through the trees the way Half Moon can.
She loses him easily an
d doubles back, circling to his left. She kicks Half Moon into his path, so suddenly that his mount rears up and veers off sharply, and Katharine smirks when Pietyr is thrown rolling across the ground.
She rides to where he lies groaning in the ferns. Her mouth drops open.
“You are not Pietyr!”
The boy, who does have blond hair but not the pale blond of Pietyr and Natalia, gets slowly to his feet.
“No, I am not,” he says, and shakes dead leaves from the cuff of his shirt. “Do you not remember me? I am Nicolas Martel.”
“My suitor!” Katharine blurts, and for once she does not need to use the tricks Pietyr taught her in order to blush. She does remember him now, but he looks different than he did far below the cliffs on the beach of the Disembarking, or even across the firelight of the feast. His face in the sunlight is softened angles, and there is a pleasing curve to his lower lip. Golden blond hair brushes against his shirt collar and curls over his temples.
Katharine searches for words. She drops one side of her reins and puts her hand on her hip.
“That was a stupid thing to do! Sneaking up on me like that during an Ascension Year! I have poisoned knives; I could have killed you!”
She should not be so shrill. According to Pietyr, mainland boys do not like it. But Nicolas smiles.
“I did not mean to sneak,” he says. His accent is lilting; his voice is soft and low. She likes it immediately. “I’ve only just arrived. They told me to wait at the manor house, but I’m afraid I was too curious.”
“That is . . . sweet. Someone should have stopped you.”
“Once I have made up my mind, I am not easy to stop.” He cocks his head as though intrigued. “You would have killed me? I thought the queens were only lethal to one another.”
“Then you have much to learn,” Katharine says. She sighs. “Though you are right that my sisters are my favorite quarry.”
“Forgive me,” he says. “It seems that I’ve ruined our meeting. Me, facedown in the dirt was not the way I wanted to introduce myself.”
Katharine turns in the saddle.
“Let us go and find your horse. If she was from our stables, she would have been trained and would not wander far. But as it is, I do not know where she has gone to.” She holds out her hand. Nicolas accepts it along with one of her stirrups and climbs onto Half Moon behind her. He slides his arms around her waist.
“I thank you,” he says into her ear. “Perhaps this was not so bad a first meeting after all.”
WOLF SPRING
Arsinoe, Jules, and Joseph leave the Valleywood Road and cut west, following the stream that joins eventually with Dogwood Pond. They sneak onto the Milone property as the sun sinks below the trees, and manage to avoid the eyes and questions of people in town.
Cait, Madrigal, and Ellis burst through the front door before anyone can call out. Jake the spaniel jumps into Jules’s arms and the crow familiars flap soft, worried wings against their heads.
“My Goddess.” Ellis walks up and takes Arsinoe by the hand. “We’ll send for a healer.”
“No,” Arsinoe says. “I’m fine. Look.”
As if she needed to tell them. The great brown bear is hard to miss.
“He’s called Braddock,” Arsinoe says. She places her hand atop the bear’s large furred head.
Madrigal extends her arm like she might touch him, then reconsiders. “Is Mirabella dead, then?” she asks.
The door slams, and a moment later, Cait returns with a bowl of water, already hot. She sponges off Arsinoe’s face and arms, which are crusted with blood and blistering burns. Cait looks almost like she might cry, but when she speaks her voice is like it always is.
“You look like a propped-up corpse. She had better be dead.” She prods Arsinoe’s bruised ribs. “You won’t survive another fight like this.”
“She’s not dead. Braddock, he . . . I don’t think she had the stomach to face him again.”
“She will soon,” says Jules in a low, tired voice.
“Did you get to her at least?” Madrigal asks Joseph.
Joseph tightens his arm around Jules’s waist and puts his chin protectively atop her head.
“I got to her,” he says. “And I told her what you told me.”
“Come inside,” Cait says gravely. “Those burns need tending. Braddock, I’m afraid, will have to stay out here. He’s not a familiar, and even if he was, he wouldn’t fit through any of the doors.”
The next morning, Arsinoe wakes with her mask askew. She had been so exhausted that she fell asleep without taking it off. She straightens it and turns to Jules, who is rolled on her side facing the wall. But Camden is sitting up, her black tail-tip curling up and down. Jules is awake.
It is hard to believe the things that Cait and Madrigal said last night. Even though Joseph said he saw the branches break off the trees and stab into the ground. Jules, her strong Jules, is legion cursed. Touched with war. The Milones had known and hidden it all this time, with not one word of warning. They had bound the war gift with low magic, they said. But the binding is beginning to fail. And what would happen if it tore loose completely? The legion curse is an abomination, and the legion cursed go mad. Everyone knows that.
“Stop staring at me, Arsinoe,” Jules says. She turns over and blinks her two-colored eyes. Arsinoe has always thought them pretty, one blue and one green, but Cait said the oracle had wanted to drown Jules as soon as she saw them.
“You’ll be all right, Jules. You’ve been all right so far.”
“Of course I’ll be all right.” Jules turns and stares up at the ceiling, dark wood beams and one pretty spiderweb left in the east corner. “Now we both have secrets.” She looks at Arsinoe again. “Why didn’t you tell me that you’d called the bear?”
“I did it after I’d left. I never thought he’d make it in time. He must’ve been looking for me already.” She sits up in bed and peers out the window. Braddock spent the night in the yard, probably trying to figure a way into the chicken coop. Arsinoe grins.
“I can’t wait for Billy to come back so I can show him.”
Jules smiles softly. She stares down at her hands and squeezes them into fists.
“Will you let Madrigal do the unbinding?” Arsinoe asks.
“Do you think I should?”
“I don’t know.”
“Joseph doesn’t think so. He says it’s too dangerous. That the binding might be the only thing holding back the curse. But I keep on thinking of something that Luke said . . . that there must be a reason why the Goddess put me near you. Like I could be strong. Like I could help you win.”
“You don’t need the war gift to make you strong,” Arsinoe says. “You already are. Is there anything else that Cait and Madrigal aren’t telling us? Anything else that the oracle said, something that might help?”
“No. She said I was legion cursed with war, and they paid her to keep the secret. I think it was fairly simple.”
They smile at each other, a bit uncomfortably. Arsinoe does not know what Jules will decide. But she does wish that it was someone other than Madrigal who held the key to the binding.
Ellis knocks and pokes his head in with Jake, who gives a bright bark.
“Up and dressed,” he says. “We have suitors to prepare for.”
“Suitors,” Jules says, and grins.
Arsinoe pulls her light summer quilt up over her head. She had been so focused on Mirabella that she completely forgot about Tommy Stratford and Michael Percy.
“Wake me when it’s over,” she says with a moan.
“Well, if that won’t get you up, how about the fact that on the way back from the southern field I ran into Madge and she said that Billy’s mainland boat put in this morning?”
Billy arrives at the Milone house just after noon, as Arsinoe is walking her bear in the far west part of the yard.
“Well, well,” says Billy. “Joseph told me it was true. I almost didn’t believe him.”
Arsin
oe grins. He is such a welcome sight. She had not realized how much she had been waiting for him, how much she missed him while he was away.
“His name is Braddock,” she says.
“Braddock the bear. Seems fitting enough. Is he safe?”
Arsinoe strokes Braddock’s large forehead. She has been with him since the morning, getting him used to the smells and sounds of people. The Milones are naturalists, and their gift puts the bear at ease. But giftless folk will see him at the feast as well, and clueless mainland suitors besides. No matter how docile the bear seems she must take extra care. With his sweet face shoved into her hip, it is easy to forget that theirs is a bond of low magic, not of familiars.
“He is safe for now,” she says. “He’s stuffed full of ripened apples and striped bass. Plus one of the children who came round to spy on him.”
Billy cautiously slides his fingers into the bear’s brown fur.
“He’s . . . ,” Billy says, and swallows. “Softer than I thought. And he doesn’t smell like the last one.”
“The last one was old. Diseased. It was a mistake. Or maybe it was the price for this one.”
“Low magic, right? You never know the price until you’ve paid it.”
Arsinoe shoves him playfully, and Braddock raises his head.
“What would you know about it, mainlander?”
“Less than nothing,” Billy says. Then his eyes lose focus on the ground. “I have some news.”
“News. I’m beginning to hate that word. It is never anything good anymore.”
Billy does not smile or tell her to stop being so glum. But it cannot be so bad when he has just returned.
“I’m afraid I’ve been sold to the Westwoods,” he says.
“What?”
“I’ve been appointed Queen Mirabella’s royal taster. My father’s punishment for refusing to take part in the courting. I’m leaving for Rolanth tonight on pain of disinheritance.” He smiles ruefully. “Always on pain of disinheritance. But he let me come back here to tell you. He gave me that, at least.”