The Oak Earl looked again at Brona. “Don’t you see? I must act.”
“I do see,” she murmured, standing. She moved away, and Kayo felt the loss of it, though she only went to a box tucked to a corner shelf beside the hearth and brought it back.
Carved of dark wood, the box was etched with the hash-marks that represented the language of trees. Kayo understood some of the spoken words, but he could not read nor write it, beyond a basic fertility blessing he’d learned to use as the earl over all those dying moors. He’d never been sure the land truly respected him; he’d asked an old grandmother to teach him to tend the needs within his borders. Was the decay some fault of his own; was he too foreign in his thoughts and wanderings to care for the roots? The grandmother had ignored his anxieties in a practiced way and chided him for not knowing the simplest blessings. For a little while, his land had thrived. No more. Kayo understood in his bones that the king’s rejection of the rootwaters had forced the island to consolidate its power here in the White Forest, and yet—and yet he could not help wondering if, had Kayo himself been somehow more devoted to Innis Lear, never left to travel, rejected the ties to his homeland, the roots would thrive. The witch held her part of the island healthy and whole. Why couldn’t he?
Brona lifted the lid to reveal a stack of worn, gilded cards and a small silk bag. Without speaking, she removed the cards and shuffled them, then handed them to Kayo. He awkwardly did the same, looking at images of crowns and stars, feathers and claws and worms and roots.
Brona took them again and laid out all twenty-seven cards in four circles, spiraling out from center. Then she upended the silk bag into her palm and breathed into her hand. She whispered a blessing in the language of trees and dropped the bones across the spread of cards.
Each of the nine bones hit with a hard knock, vibrating the table in little ripples that ought to have stopped long before they did. Kayo shivered, staring.
“This is always how they fall, Kay Oak,” Brona said after a long moment. “Whenever I throw them for Innis Lear, and for Elia Lear. The Crown of Trees, Saint of Stars, and Worm of Birds aligned atop all nine cards of the suit of stars. Choice, heart, and patience in the core.” She shook her head at him. “Even now with you here it does not change.”
“What does it mean? I do not know the bones. They’ve been forbidden nearly as long as I’ve been back.”
He could not stop staring at the silver lines painted along the roots of every tree card and the perfect blue of the worms. The edges of Brona’s cards seemed soft and worn. Some paint was smeared away, and a drop or two of old brown blood stained a card with a lovely black bird sliced perfectly in half, but still flying.
“It means we must wait for Elia, if the island would thrive forever.”
Kayo made a fist against his knee. “We cannot wait! Elia despairs, and our land does, too.”
“The land will cope, and the heart of the White Forest beats so long as I am here, enough for now. So long as there are folk around the island whispering to the wind, we can be patient. And many do, Kay Oak, despite the edicts of the crown. Including Regan Lear.”
“Regan Connley,” the Oak Earl corrected.
“Regan Connley, then.”
“Which is this card?” he asked, pointing at the bird in two pieces, curious but afraid.
“Oh,” Brona breathed shakily, the first indication that her calm was hard-won. “Oh, Kayo.” She came around the table to him and perched on the edge, taking one of his brown hands in hers. “Why does it call to you?”
With her near, he felt soothed, and her fingers stroked his wrist so kindly as he spoke. “It has not fallen, though it is cut in two pieces, straight through the middle. It lives in pieces.”
“That is the sacrifice the bird makes,” the witch of the White Forest whispered. “Not to be cut in half, but to keep flying despite it.”
Her words broke open the thing inside him, and Kayo bent over, eyes squeezed closed against the tears pulling fire down his cheeks. “Brona,” he choked. “Oh no, oh no. I can’t. I never meant to—I am not—” He gripped her hips, pulling her nearer, and buried his face in her lap.
She petted his head, the three weeks’ worth of thick black curls growing against his scalp. She bent around him, kissed the knob of his skull, murmuring soft nothings as he cried.
Moments, hours, uncountable tears later, he stopped. His breath skimmed along the stripes of her skirt, and Brona lifted the corner to wipe his cheeks. “Remain here for a few days, my oak lord,” she said. “Remain here, and be in pieces. You do not have to fly when you are in my house.”
He nodded, clutching her hands. He needed it. He needed her. “Yes,” he said, voice hoarse.
GAELA
IN THE LONG history of their contentious relationship, there was but one thing the king of Innis Lear and his eldest daughter, Gaela, had repeatedly managed to perform together magnanimously: a deer hunt.
Today was a glorious occasion for it, dawning bright and cool, with slipping hints of autumn in the taste of the wind. Gaela arranged it all, including an afternoon field lunch, and lent her father a brace of hounds as his own remained at Dondubhan. She rallied her captain and best scouts to her side, as well as a handful of her newest recruits, including that mountain Dig when she learned he could understand the whispered language of trees. It was a good tool for a successful hunt. Possibly the only thing the language was good for besides getting beneath her father’s skin. The large youth shifted uncomfortably on his horse: he’d need to acquire the right seat if he was to join Gaela on the battlefield.
Lear lounged on his tall charger as they headed out, fully at ease despite the length of his limbs. His hair flared in wild chestnut and silver strands, flapping across his mouth when he talked to his own captains, men in the dark blue tabards of the king’s retainers. They were a stark disruption of formal Astore pink and the muted green-and-gray leather of Gaela’s scouts.
At first, riding with little intention, the party made its way over meadows laced with late-summer flowers and grass heavy and darkened by seed. Clouds played a game with the sunlight, rushing to cover the sun’s face and reveal it again, cooling the air then making it burst with warmth. The shifting light kept Gaela alert, happy, and it distracted the hounds, who liked the rush of wind and flickering sun more than the promise of the chase.
Gaela’s scouts listened to the trees when Lear had his face turned away, and took off in search of deer.
The king called for a pouch of wine that he shared around with his men, and declaimed the start of a poem from the ancient days of Innis Lear, about war bands and star prophecies and honor. It was one Gaela enjoyed, as it lacked simpering platitudes or the usual meandering narrative that too often caught itself up in repetition and meaningless action. She did not join the retainers, though, who recited the refrain along with her father, or take a turn with a verse. A small smile played on her mouth as she scanned the blue-and-emerald horizon, these edges of her island, and allowed herself to settle into the moment, into the knowledge that it was hers.
And so Gaela was the first to note the scouts had circled back to signal they’d found a deer path. She lifted her hand to interrupt Lear’s verses. But while Gaela’s own men and her captain Osli fell quiet, Lear himself shook his head and finished his lines. He raised them louder, along with the voices of his retainers, until the last couplet became a shout. It was followed with applause and great cheering until their horses stomped in displeasure.
The scouts held up their second flag, along the western edge of the tiny woods, signaling the charge had to be now or never.
Freeing her bow from over her shoulder, she nudged her horse on.
Wind blew at her face and she crouched in the saddle, urging the horse faster and faster. Behind her thundered her hunting party. Gaela no longer cared whether they caught their prey; this flight mattered more, the connection and movement of her body and her horse and the earth below, hard-hitting and wild.
/> She pulled up at the edge of the woods, where her scout Agar bowed in his saddle, and the trees clicked and whispered. Agar said, “It’s a young buck; we should pause and look elsewhere.”
Gaela frowned and barely skimmed a glance up at the layers of greenery and edging yellow leaves.
“What’s this?” called Lear from behind. “Why end the charge?’
“A young buck, Father,” Gaela said. “We will turn back.”
“But the morning stars were full of firsts, and this is our first deer sighted, so it must be our first kill.” Lear threw out his arm, pointing the way into the forest.
Agar said, “It’s too young, my lady.”
“We look elsewhere, Father,” Gaela said. “To maintain the health of the forest.”
“Bah!” Lear laughed through a scowl, as if he himself could not locate the most pressing emotion. “Bartol! Clarify the star sign for me. Was that not the Star of Sixes and the Eye of the Arrow Saint this morning, hanging on to brightness as we must now hang on to our prey?”
A pale-bearded retainer with burn scars and the white dots of a priest bowed in his saddle, just behind Lear. “Yes, my king.”
Lear glanced triumphantly at Gaela. “We go!”
“Father,” she growled, holding her horse still with one hand, placing the other with hard-fought calm upon her wool-clad thigh, “a too-young buck has not bred, and will not even have prize antlers for you, this time of year. Go for another; I will not bless this charge.”
“I bless it myself,” Lear reminded her, raising his hand to turn his men onward, waving them into the forest.
Gaela argued no further, but she lifted her chin and flattened her hand toward her own people. In all the years she’d learned the hunt at her father’s knee, he had taught her to care for the forest’s needs. To never play such an ignorant, reckless gambit with a herd, only for the pleasure of the moment. The stars, he’d said then, approved of a careful hunt, blessed the relationship between hunter and prey. The stars, the stars, the blasted stars.
“Lady?” Osli murmured, hardly moving her lips.
The prince turned dark eyes on her captain, then shook her head. “I return to Astora. Have the picnic if you like, but tend my father, and hope that young stag keeps itself alive.”
Gaela spun her horse and urged it to run back up the rocky slope of moor. Though aware of Osli commanding a set of retainers to go with their queen, Gaela ignored them. She bared her teeth and leaned over her horse’s neck. Lear’s retainers should’ve known better, especially the ones who’d been with him for years. Especially that blasted Fool, though the gangly, ridiculous man had not come a-hunting; he fit poorly on a horse with all those long limbs.
They should have defied Lear when he got like this; they should’ve known that serving him was not about giving in to his every lazy, irresponsible whim, but helping him be a strong king. If he wasn’t capable of it—which he was not!—they should serve Gaela. They should serve Innis Lear. The crown. Gaela would not want her men to ignore reason should she give a mad order. She wanted Osli to speak to her, to be honest with her opinions, to be strong. Gaela would surround herself with retainers and counselors as strong as she was. That foundation would make her rule greater! What were sycophants and cowards but a sign of rot and sickness?
Gaela nearly reared her horse with the vehemence of her sudden stop. Were there tears on her face, so much colder than the sweat of her fury? She blinked hard, commanding them to fall and be gone.
Chuffing and shaking its head, the horse beneath her danced in place. Gaela hissed soothing words, patting its neck, hunching over it. What madness were these raw, impulsive emotions? Today was but a single act of disrespect in the long story of her father’s bad deeds; why should it enrage and upset her so? He’d disrespected her before. He’d taught his retainers to be just like him. She already knew all of this. She ought to have been over the hurt by now.
In a few short months, Gaela would be king of all Innis Lear, she and Regan both, anointed and blessed at Midwinter, and their father could never do such things as this again. The stars would cease to carry any weight at all under the crown.
Gaela rolled her shoulders and sat, her face hard as iron.
Four soldiers, including Dig, had caught up to her frantic ride and arrayed themselves behind her. She met each pair of eyes; all responded with naught but well-displayed control, and perhaps slight concern for her. Gaela nodded her head slowly, and the soldiers returned the gesture.
She turned her horse and started on again, now at a smooth jog, neither urgent nor at ease. As the horse’s hooves pounded evenly over the earth, she breathed and refreshed her own irritation, but at a calmer pace. Gaela did not allow stray thoughts, but concentrated on the path ahead, the return to Astora.
The city finally appeared as they rode over the crest of a foothill, filling the valley with color and noise, thin streams of smoke slipping up and up like silver ribbons. Gaela sat high and tall as she led her soldiers down to the city wall and beneath the crenelated gate. Through the city, then, nodding when she thought to at the few citizens who waved or called out; Gaela was a welcome and usual sight here.
Gaela said nothing to Dig or the rest as they reached the keep, only thrusting herself off her horse and tossing the reins to a groom. Without comment or command, she stormed through the narrow front door of the new castle and up the high stone stairs, her pace speeding into nearly a run through the claustrophobic hallway, lit only by fired sconces and thin arrow slits. Finally she slammed through the door of her private chambers.
Heaving a breath, she shoved the wooden door shut and fumbled at the hard ties of her hunting jacket, eager to be free of the confining leather.
“Gaela.”
It was her husband’s voice, loud and surprised.
Her head flew up; Astore was in the process of coming around her desk, dropping some letters.
“What do you do in my room?” she snarled, striding toward him.
Astore caught her shoulders and shook her once. “Gaela. What is wrong?”
“Are you reading my correspondence?” she demanded.
Her husband shocked her into silence with his kiss.
For a moment Gaela did not respond, too surprised at his bold theft, and Astore clearly took it as acquiescence; he softened his mouth and moved his hands to her face, cupping her jaw tenderly.
Gaela pulled away. “What are you about, Col?”
The Duke Astore’s lips were crushed, so quickly drawn in pink. “You seem distressed, wife,” he said, using the title pointedly, as if admonishing her to remember she’d entered into this relationship willingly.
She knew very well the choices she’d made. Gaela lifted one hand to carefully wipe her bottom lip with her thumb, then said, “My father insisted upon hunting a deer the scouts called too young, too new. He has no concern for the health of the forest.”
Astore’s hands slid down to settle at her hips, as they were wont to do. “I too worry on his mind.”
“You rather understate the issue, Col. He is mad. And his behavior makes everyone around him so, too. He should be released of obligations to retainers. I should send them all away. A break would do them good.”
“And better to win them to us.”
“So long as they listen to my father, they will not join me. So we stand.” Gaela shrugged free of her husband’s grip. “Tell me now, husband, what you did at my desk, here in my own rooms without me.”
The duke met her gaze. “I was writing you a note. I leave immediately for Dondubhan.”
“What has happened?”
“Connley sent his men already into Brideton and Lowbinn, so I will establish our name in Dondubhan immediately, not wait for closer to Midwinter.”
“Good, good.” Gaela grinned. “Keep Connley in his place. I would go with you, but better, I think, for us to be both there and here. You can be Astore there, and I will be the almost-queen on my own, here, not to be seen stepping too so
on.”
Astore took Gaela’s wrist. “That was my thought exactly. We do still make a good match. Despite your faith in your sister.”
“Let go,” she said softly.
“You’ve avoided my bed since you returned from the Summer Seat.”
Gaela denied it with a sneer.
“Soon you will be the ultimate regent, before even your sister Regan, for this halved-crown will not last. We won’t allow it. You will have what you have sought, and I would have it with you. This would not be possible without me to balance your womanly stars.”
“I know,” she said, truthfully: she never would have married at all if there had been another way.
He kissed her again, lowering his hands to her waist, then curled them around to hold her firmly. His mouth was urgent; he pressed their hips together. She did not resist, but gave nothing either. How her life might’ve been easier if she wanted this. Wanted him. Or anyone.
“Gaela,” he said, half into her mouth, then leaned away. His brow knit, darkening his pale eyes with shadow. “What is wrong with you? I know you have no lovers, not even that girl Osli whom you cherish so close to your person. You do not seek pleasure or companionship elsewhere.”
“I have no need of it,” she said, dismissively.
“Everyone does.”