ELIA
ELIA LEANED INTO the corner crenellation of Morimaros’s westernmost tower, letting it dig into her stomach painfully.
Sheer clouds slipped over the sky, like dawn lifting a cowl to shutter the stars before they vanished entirely. She stared out from her isolated perch, searching into the last curve of nighttime. It was still dark to the west, over unseen, distant Innis Lear. Stars twinkled, drops of ice on smoky glass; the Salmon nosing over the horizon, the Net of Fate beside it, stretching out toward Calpurlugh, the Child Star. Her star.
Her tutor Danna would always say messages that came with the Salmon needed fast response. Then there would be variations to the prediction specific to the day of the season, measured on distance to the equinox, the exact angle at the starbreak over the horizon; all kinds of details she could not calculate without paper and charcoal, without digging into a sheaf of schedules and seasonal records. If she asked, all such would be provided. For Morimaros’s mother, Calepia, and his sister, Ianta, were determined to give her anything to make her smile. But Elia would not ask: she refused to live her life this way anymore, governed by star sign.
Yet she woke every morning and could not help searching the sky for only those most obvious of signs: star streaks or vanished stars or the rings around the moon.
There! A star shot just past the Salmon’s nose and vanished. As did the final twinkle of Calpurlugh.
A tiny cry escaped Elia, and she bent fully over the crenellation, pressing her cheek to the cold limestone. What was she to do with her days? These terrible aching storms gathered in her stomach all night long. Releasing them out into the dawn was the only way to function, to politely eat her breakfast, to join the Elder Queen and princess for hot chocolate and study in the airy Queen’s Library. The only way to face all the Aremore lords and ladies, the bakers, soldiers, maids, all of the cheerful court who believed she would marry their king, yet judged her lacking.
At her feet, Aefa shifted and murmured. Elia held her breath, not wishing to wake the girl. Nearly every morning Aefa dragged herself up to this tower, too, without much complaint, and waited in sleep or silence while Elia mourned. After the first time, Aefa brought the feather quilt from Elia’s fine, spacious bed, and—damp stones be damned—made herself a nest. The other maids and even the few guards who passed or noticed were appalled enough that Elia could see it on their otherwise well-trained faces. Things were more formal in Aremoria, with layers of etiquette and a carefully established hierarchy of service, lordship, royalty, and the delicate dance between. The courtiers overlooked Elia’s Learish manners, but with a raised brow or shared glance; Elia was a foreigner. And although they were more used to dark-skinned people from the Third Kingdom here than on Innis Lear, somehow, that made it worse.
She wanted to go home.
Pressing her cheek harder to the stone, Elia imagined being able to leech the castle rock up and into her body, fashion it into armor, into a beetle’s iridescent carapace or better: a chrysalis in which to take refuge until she was transformed. Take strength from that, not those unfeeling stars and their shattering prophecies. Make herself a shell of Aremore stone, a shield to protect her heart, still rooted beneath Innis Lear.
“Lady Elia,” said a low voice from just around the curve of the tower.
Though she startled hard enough to knock her nose to the stone, Elia managed not to whirl about. She did nudge Aefa too roughly as she rose and turned more slowly to face the king’s Soldier in Charge of Royal Security.
La Far was the saddest-seeming man she’d ever seen, and Elia had thought it before she’d even spoken with him. She suspected he was not truly sad, that it was only the way his eyebrows drooped to either side and the perpetual searching frown on his scarred, peachy face. The king’s age, La Far had risen through the military ranks beside Morimaros, and had recently taken over the palace guard. He slipped in and out of class hierarchies, coarse and warriorlike in his scoured orange leather armor, or elegant in the velvet jacket of low Gallian nobility, his rich accent capping off the trick. Aefa idolized him for this smooth facility—for that, and for his very clear blue eyes—for she wished to learn the art of being both servant and low lady. Her father, Lear’s Fool, held a position of high regard and shifting nature at home, after all. But Aefa was too stubborn and unable to hide emotions behind artifice.
The girl scrambled to her feet, swearing under her breath so softly Elia only knew it from the tone and her maid’s habits. Elia drew her shoulders tall and smiled dimly. “Good morning, La Far.”
“The king has sent for you.”
Her heart clutched briefly. “So early. Is something wrong?”
“You have a visitor.”
“Who?” Elia asked, pressing her folded hands at her sternum, refusing to cast her gaze skyward for a hint of what was to come.
“I do not know, but your presence was requested immediately.”
“She’s got to dress,” Aefa said, feather quilt bundled tight in her arms like a bulky babe.
Elia glanced down at her gown, the same she’d worn yesterday. A pale green thing, one the Elder Queen Calepia had insisted brought out some illusive flecks of green in eyes Elia had always understood to be solid, impossibly dark brown, seeming black from any distance. In Lear she’d only owned four dresses at a time, besides her priest robes, and two were for mud and rain and riding. Here Elia was expected to change from morning to evening, and keep a wardrobe of countless fine clothes provided by Calepia. She’d intended to return to her rooms to change before going out into the palace proper.
“The lady seems well dressed to me,” La Far said, his eyes lingering at Elia’s feet where her heavy boots peeked out from under the folds of skirt. “Well enough for this king.”
“Oh my,” Aefa said, disagreeing clearly with every part of her being. La Far studied Aefa with his sad eyes, and the Fool’s daughter wrinkled her nose. “Let me fix her hair, at least.”
Elia touched her hair helplessly, not knowing how she looked. “Aefa, it’s all right.”
“They’ll judge me, Elia, if you don’t look as perfect a queen as theirs, and fit for Morimaros,” Aefa said firmly.
La Far nodded, and so the girl dropped her blanket and climbed onto the crenellations to kneel there, precarious and frowning. The soldier’s eyes widened enough to briefly banish the sorrow, but he caught himself back from clutching Aefa’s elbow in support. Aefa grabbed a handful of Elia’s hair and started undoing the loose, messy braid it had been pinned into. Elia’s scalp tugged as Aefa used the same pins to make thick twists and quickly wrap them into a bun, complaining under her breath that there was no oil at hand to pinch into the ends. Elia closed her eyes and thought of her father’s blotchy anger, the cold detachment on Regan’s face, Gaela’s proudly curled lips, and the incandescent passion sharpening Ban Errigal’s mud-green eyes as he pushed with all his strength against the ancient standing stones. She was well versed in ignoring dull pains.
Elia thought of Aefa, too: wearing her heart aggressively for all to see because she thought pretense was as impractical as poetry. And she thought of Morimaros, the opposite; Elia had rarely seen emotion on his face, though it was sometimes to be heard in his voice. Three days previous, they’d walked in a garden, and when he said he’d like her to be happy in Aremoria, it had been with such a quiet, thin tone, as if he was barely able to speak. Surely I don’t make you nervous, she’d said, and the king replied, Surely not, but the self-deprecating humor had warmed Elia’s whole body.