An hour before noon, the Rhannish and the Rhyllian leaders approached the Humpback Bridge. It was a midsummer day, the hazy sun already promising higher temperatures to come, the air thick with the scent of jasmine and sandalwood, masking the greenish smell of the water. On each side of the river, young men and women threw flowers into the paths of the nobles as they walked, pink moonstar blossoms on the Rhyllian side, white windflowers on the Rhannish.
Both parties paused inside the fortified towers on their respective sides of the bridge. At the top of the Rhannish tower, in the stateroom, an aide handed Harun his copy of the treaty. As Cerena fussed with Mael, Harun smoothed his moustache again, blotted a bead of sweat from his temple with a silk handkerchief, and looked down at the scene. On his side the red carpet lay exactly halfway along the bridge. And on the Rhyllian side, it was bare, glittering in the sunlight. Queen Melisia was already in place at the foot, Caspar beside her. How small she looked, Harun thought, from so high up.
A tall Rhyllian man, his hair the same shade of blond as the queen’s, dressed in shimmering robes of lilac and green, joined them. As Harun watched, the man stepped forward and raised his hands. From the road beside them vines moved, winding out over the stone, covering it, and when the man gestured earnestly to them the Rhyllian court laughed, loudly enough to reach where Harun stood. Melisia tried to look stern as she rebuked the man and he waved his hands again, commanding the carpet of vines to retreat, but her face was too full of mirth for the frown to take.
Harun, meanwhile, was burning as crimson as his own silken carpet. He looked again at the bridge, the one half carefully covered, and the other still bare and deadly. The Rhyllian queen needed no aid to climb it…
“Pull the carpet away,” Harun snapped at his advisors.
“Your Excellency?”
“Do it.”
With a worried glance Harun’s advisors rushed from the room, and Harun watched as they conferred with the guards. Then the carpet was stripped away, to the shocked murmurs of the gathered Rhannish people.
“What is it?” Cerena asked.
“If they can climb with no carpet, I can too,” Harun insisted.
“But—”
“I will not be made a fool of by that needle-eared baggage,” Harun bellowed.
He stormed from the room, tearing down the stairs and out, the trumpeters stuttering the beginning of the fanfare, so fierce was his haste to get on to the bridge.
As the clocks in both towers simultaneously began to ring the hour, both leaders stepped on to the bridge. It took three steps before Harun’s feet began to slide from under him, and he was barely able to right himself. A glance back at his wife showed her displeasure, and he dared not look up to see if Melisia already awaited him at the top. Slowly, bent at the waist to keep from tumbling, he mounted the bridge like a crab to greet his former enemy.
Queen Melisia made no indication she’d seen the carpet rolled away, nor his struggles, allowing Harun his dignity. The Peace Accords were signed, to the cheers of both crowds, and Queen Melisia and Harun clasped each other’s forearms in respect, Harun clinging to Melisia as he lost his balance yet again. When Melisia nodded to Caspar to approach, he climbed the bridge, sure-footed as a goat, and waited.
It was clear to all that Cerena would not be able to do the same.
“It’s all right,” Melisia said in accented Rhannish.
Humiliated, Harun looked at his heavily pregnant wife and made another decision.
Begging Melisia’s pardon, he slid and stumbled back down the bridge and held his arms out for Mael.
“It’s too dangerous.” Cerena was pale and shrill. When her voice carried, Harun’s olive skin flushed again and he snatched his son from his wife.
His face taut with determination, he began the climb back towards the Queen of Rhylla. Mael wriggled in his father’s arms, his sobs turning to screeches, and Harun, beyond embarrassed, decided to return Mael to his mother and get as far from the bridge as possible. Harun inched his way down, and Cerena stepped forward, reaching for the child.
Harun slipped.
Cerena lunged for the boy, but Harun twisted, hoping to break Mael’s fall with his own body. As Cerena crashed into her husband’s back, Harun let go of his son.
Mael made no sound as he tumbled into the aventurine waters of the Archior.
Guard after guard vaulted over the sides after him; the first lady had to be restrained to prevent her from doing the same. Harun turned wide, disbelieving eyes on the retreating backs of Melisia and Caspar, hurrying away from him as though his calamity was contagious.
Harun hauled himself to his feet, stood like the eye of a storm as chaos exploded around him: Rhannish and Rhyllians moving and calling and crying. He was frozen, a statue, his gaze dull and unseeing.
“Your Excellency?” The blond Rhyllian man, the same one who’d summoned the vines, was there, watching him.
Harun turned slowly, as though every inch must be paid for, felt, and borne like a great weight.
“How?” Harun’s voice was soft.
“I’m sorry?” The man spoke in lightly accented Rhannish. “I don’t think I understand you.”
“How did they cross it? One of your so-called abilities, the ability to cleave to stone? Tell me.”
The Rhyllian looked at the collapsed figure of the first lady, the wailing retinue on her side of the river. Below, in the Archior, men were drowning, begging for help that would not come.
Harun, though, was staring at him, his face slack, his hands spread wide.
“Gum,” the man said finally. “Not an ability. Just tree sap, on their shoes. It makes them sticky. Gives traction.”
Harun nodded. When he descended the bridge, he did so with no problem at all.
The first lady’s scream when she was told the body of her son had not been recovered shattered the mirrors in the Great Hall of the Summer Palace, the glass cascading to the floor and lying there, reflecting sunlight all around the room. Harun killed the messenger himself, stabbing him in the throat and then cutting out the tongue that had carried the news.
The windows of the Summer Palace were covered, and the surviving mirrors turned to the wall. Through the palace’s grief they all clung to one thought: Mael’s baby brother. All hopes rested on the new child, a new Ventaxis son.
She was born a month too soon. And she was born a girl.
Cerena went into labour the night of Mael’s disappearance, and it became obvious the baby wouldn’t come easily. She laboured a whole day and night, before the midwife finally confirmed the baby was breech and needed to be turned. She tried, and then a nurse tried, but it was no good. The baby wouldn’t turn.