This was only marginally encouraging.
It had been four slow and worrisome days since the night Elia vanished and reappeared, and nearly a week since the fateful storm. Once Kayo could move, they’d traveled from Hartfare to Errigal Keep in a small, rather funereal procession, leaving the king under guard in the meadow where he’d died. They did not announce his death, but it was an impossible secret to keep on an island so tense, so ready to believe the angry wind was personal, an ominous message rather than mere late-season weather. The news seeped out, and by the time their party had reached the Keep, the doors were thrown open to them despite the order from Regan Connley that none be allowed to enter—none but her own people in Connley colors or those under the banner of Ban the Fox.
It was good to be in a well-functioning castle like Errigal Keep in the midst of mourning, because if the inner workings hadn’t been so solid, Aefa and her mother would’ve been hard pressed to keep everything running alone. They seemed to be the only two folk in all the world not brought low by sorrow. The Fool had been Lear’s friend for twenty years, and Kay Oak wore a face like he’d lost a brother—with what was left of his face. Even Brona grieved, though for the dead Earl Errigal more than the king. Wasn’t that a surprise. The Keep was full of mourning—for the earl and Connley, too. The iron wizard had ordered all the fires in the valley banked in deference, and the Keep’s cook had organized a group of women to venture into the White Forest in order that they might bathe Errigal’s body in rootwaters.
In the great hall, Aefa hummed to herself, an old wormwork prayer for new growth, while seated at Elia’s feet with a length of dark blue cloth in her lap. She sewed a white star across the breast of the tabard, for Elia to wear when her sisters came: the colors of the house of Lear, but Elia’s own standard instead of the swan. Perhaps a crown of stars or a spray of hemlock would’ve been more appropriate, Aefa thought darkly, but her skills with a needle were more suited to this large, basic pattern.
“This is an excellent idea,” her mother Alis Thornhill, had said yesterday, when Aefa had been hunting around through old cloth in the storage room beside all the companion ladies’ quarters. They’d chased out a last Connley cousin, who’d opted to flee north, but the rest of the Keep’s women from highborn to low-had remained, making a welcoming home for their youngest princess. Alis had especially taken to Sella Ironwife, married to the Keep’s wizard.
The women gathered in the great hall most mornings—the wind pounded constantly, dragging at the moors and snuffing out all fires but those carefully contained in hearths. They brought the day’s work to their quiet, kind lady, watching Elia from the corners of their eyes as they chattered. The women certainly had a lot to say about Ban Errigal. They mused on his roots and his prowess, wondering whether he might stay on once his brother inherited the Keep—they assumed Rory would return home, innocent. Especially now that Elia was home, too. Surely Rory was soon to follow. Because Ban was gifted with iron, with all forms of magic both secretive and strong, most women refused to consider aloud that the bastard might have betrayed Rory on purpose. Though Aefa could tell by the glances shared that they suspected it was so.
Elia had taken up residence at the Keep just in time to get word from the Alsax: they were sending a barge to bear home a contrite and determined Rory of Errigal. The message suggested that the ship itself would arrive by the dark moon. Tomorrow.
Aefa slid a look up at her princess, who stared at her mending with a calm that almost seemed dull. But Aefa knew the pinch at Elia’s brow that meant she was thinking hard, in layers and spirals, rather like the intricate patterns of the stars.
“You can talk out any plan, any wish, with me,” Aefa had said, late last night, when she’d heard Elia turn over on the very fine bed the women of the keep had convinced her use in the earl’s quarters. Aefa had cocooned herself in a pile of pillows and blankets in the servant’s nook beside the massive stone hearth, near enough to hear her princess if she stopped breathing.
“I’m not ready,” Elia had answered. “But when I am, I will. I promise, Aefa.”
It required every ounce of Aefa’s training and self-respect not to climb into the grand bed and shake Elia, or kiss her and lend comfort, or maybe pinch her until the princess laid everything out and shared. And if Elia had for even a moment lost all expression, had blinked and gone cold, Aefa would have done. She feared Elia would fall back into what she’d been before, the unfeeling star, the glass saint her father had molded her into. It had been Aefa’s greatest worry, that Elia would lose all she’d gained, the strength and resilience and passion she’d recovered when she lost everything. When she’d begun to build her own stage upon which to stand. There was always the chance the princess would react to her own loss as her father had: by hiding in his grief and burying his rage, and then ruining everything around him.
Elia, though, had Aefa and Brona Hartfare and Kayo, and Aefa’s parents, too (whom Aefa wasn’t certain were in love any longer, but seemed to comfort each other and were sleeping together again, to her delight and trepidation). None of them would allow Elia to close herself off as her father had done in his refusal to listen—to his daughters, and to his island. And that Elia had been willing to chance new friendships and encourage confidences, to let herself smile and brighten this Keep’s dark halls, promised that she had no intention of becoming her father.
Some of that, Aefa bitterly admitted, had to do with Ban Errigal. She’d never thank him for it, even if hope in him was the strongest thread widening the channels in and out of Elia’s heart.
The star-cursed bastard.
Aefa jabbed her bone needle too widely, and sneered at herself. She’d better think of something else. Like the Aremore soldier La Far’s very fine thighs. Except his eyes were so sad, and Aefa was ever surrounded by sad people.
She wished Elia would declare herself queen and let the consequences come.
She wished the wind would stop its angsty blowing, or she’d have to shave off all her hair to stop it coming unbound and sprawling across her eyes.
She wished …
A servant dashed in, fell to his knees, and hurriedly told Elia the barge had been sighted, far out on the turbulent horizon, with a sail striped in the orange, purple, and white of the Alsax.
“Thank you,” Elia said, standing immediately. They would need to hurry, if they were to intercept Rory before he could hear the dreadful state of things from anyone else. It was, after all, Elia had said aloud, her responsibility.
Aefa folded her work and hoped that the wind on the ride wouldn’t tear too much of Elia’s complicated braids free.
*