We’re wonderfully alone, just two little specks beneath the towering cliffs.
I’m sure the poor stable boy has gone and paced himself into a grave by now. He’s mostly freckles and bits of hay, steady with the horses yet skittish with me, and I talked him into my escape. He knows my mother, his Queen, doesn’t much like me adventuring out here alone—riding bareback, no less. And I might have promised her I’d keep to the short, circular trails close to the palace. I promised, yes, but today’s a day for broken promises since it’s sunny and lovely and also the anniversary of my father’s death.
I need to be out in the woods with him.
Setting down my leather bag, I sit on a wide rock and retrieve my paints and paper. The cold seeps through my pale breeches as I mix swirls of yellow and brown together on my palette, then set to work creating the scene before me. A few drops of red are for the new buds gathering in the branches above. Father never liked to paint things as they were, always adding colours where there were none, and today I’ll do the same. For him.
In my mother’s homeland, Resya, the dead are not to be mourned. It dishonours their memory and disrupts their sleep, and so tonight she’ll hold a party instead to celebrate a colonel in our air force, something to pretend today’s any other day, but how can I do the same? Father loved her with a bright, burning devotion. He loved her at first glance even though he shouldn’t have—a raven-haired noble lady visiting his court, from a kingdom across the sea. Though Resya might be ruled by a king with Northern blood, its people are perched on the edge of violent revolt, the last royal stronghold in the stormy South. She wasn’t made for these wet forests of Etania. She was born of a windswept, desert sky, in love with sun.
And yet he adored her.
And he adored me the same, bringing me into the woods, to the mountains, teaching me to believe in this small and simple kingdom that belongs to us. He said my dark eyes and sandy skin matched the colours of the swirling autumn river. He taught me to read, to paint, to listen to the birds, and I cling to those precious memories of him even as they slip from my fingers with every year that passes.
Ten years gone feels like a lifetime.
Above me, swallows flutter in branches of black pine sheltering the meadow, an aeroplane spinning between thin clouds. A lone fawn slips through the brush, and I keep silent, adding her to my scene.
She waits patiently. No fear, no hurry, nibbling at dry grass.
Father would have loved this place. He’d be here now, and I’m certain he is, made of stars and light and whatever else the soul becomes in the infinite dark.
The fawn twitches, raising her slender head. She looks right at me, and I hold my paintbrush still, waiting.
The little ears swivel.
From the tops of the pine, a dozen birds stir to flight. In the far distance, a faint yelp.
Something unwelcome leaks into our peaceful place, tension rising in Ivory, her head high and still, and I see it in the fawn, who’s now entirely uncertain, looking between the woods and me. And since I know what’s coming, I have to break our moment of trust.
I leap up, splattering paint, ruining everything, and run towards the fawn with arms flailing like a wild turkey.
It bolts from the clearing—from me—just as a crack shatters the silence.
Ivory trembles on her lead, and a dog yelps again, louder now. Voices call back and forth. I sit down on the rock, feeling miserably evil for chasing the fawn. But I saw Uncle Tanek’s hunting dog chew on a baby deer once. I never want to see it again.
On cue with my rotten luck, that same black creature bounds abruptly from the underbrush, a colourful pheasant caught between its teeth. Six men emerge behind. They each have a rifle in hand and my uncle, Tanek Lehzar, leads the pack. He removes his fine-rimmed spectacles and, wiping a gloved palm across his balding head, speaks firmly to his dog. He bends over and takes the bird from its obedient jaws. Then he spots me, expression darkening. “Aurelia, what on earth are you doing out here?”
His question goes in one ear and out the other. My stomach is too busy twisting at the sight of the tallest hunter.
Ambassador Gref Havis.
Havis trails the group of courtly men, casually reloading his rifle. He’s from Resya, tall and angled with dusky skin, dark hair pushed back from his handsome face. If he were only a passing diplomat, a friend of Mother’s from long-ago days, I wouldn’t pay him a wink of attention. But as it happens, he’s also intent on being my suitor, and my mother’s entertaining his impossible offer—a terrifying prospect.
He’s only an ambassador.
And he’s also old enough to be my uncle.
My real uncle steps in front of me and says, “We could have harmed you by accident, child. Does your mother know where you are?”
“I’m studying for the university exams,” I say, still seated on the rock. “She doesn’t mind.”
He looks at my glistening paints and frowns.
“I’d bring Renisala with me,” I add, “if you didn’t keep him so busy with political things.”
Uncle furrows his thick brow. “Political things? Such as reasoning with your mother’s council? Preparing for the Safire visit? Your brother, Aurelia, is learning to run an entire damn kingdom.”
“Yes,” I reply. “Those things.”
I say this like it means little, because I know the tone vexes Uncle, and it’s what he expects of me. He thinks I only paint and sketch and play with horses. That I’m at best useless, and at worst, slightly in the way. It’s always been like this. I’m not as interesting to him as Renisala because I’ll never sit on the throne. But just because I paint and seem useless doesn’t mean I don’t listen or have opinions. I listen all the time and know the impending visit of the Safire General from the east—a man with no royal blood, no claim to a throne—is a shock to all. No one else in the North is eager to deal with him, and yet my mother has opened our gates and promised Etania a new and impressive ally with untapped wealth to be shared, an ally who is little better than a rough-handed commoner who patched together a war-torn land with his own gun.
A bloody uniform, Reni says, is no substitute for a God-given crown.
And many in our capital feel the same, passionate enough to even march round the city square in protest.
I know all this, but I only fold my painting carefully. When I look up, Uncle is still frowning at me and Havis waits beside him in a shadow of tan pants and black coat and muddy leather boots. “You’re an artist,” Havis observes in polished Landori, our common tongue. It’s the language of politics and trade in the North, courtesy of the great empire, Landore, and I’ve been fluent since childhood.
“Do you care?” I ask.
Someone fires two sudden shots, and we all jump. The black dog yelps with renewed excitement.
“Do you shoot, Princess?” Havis asks curiously.
He likes to address me as simply “Princess,” like we’re friends of sorts, but we’re not. And unfortunately, saying “Your Highness will do, thank you very much” comes off as rather ungracious in public, so I have to bite my tongue every time.
“Of course not,” I reply. “I’d never torture an animal for sport. Nor did my father,” I add, louder. I’d like them all to hear this opinion.
The other men of court, dressed in their tweed caps and wool jackets, begin suddenly gazing at the treetops, refusing to meet my eye.
Uncle points down at my face. “You watch your tongue round our guests.”
“It’s only the truth,” I say.
He gives a tight-lipped grimace—the sort he reserves for diplomats he doesn’t like and, more often than not, me—then goes to help restrain his miserable creature, leaving me on my own with the Ambassador of Resya.
Havis gazes down at me, amusement in his eyes.