Aefa shook her head, hoping to shed the bitter taste in her mouth. She crouched down in a pool of her own skirts, surrounded by fluffy, slithering puppies, each large enough now to argue and snap over space on the girl’s lap. Aefa smiled and teased them, rotating the little creatures as fairly as she could manage: they each got a verse of poetry along with some scratching. The mother of the litter, a beautiful chestnut dog, leaned nearby, watching with sleepy brown eyes, her feathery tail thumping slowly against the wooden floor. She was sleek and long-legged, with a wide head but a longer snout, and not nearly so rangy and shaggy as the deerhounds preferred for hunting on Innis Lear. A little page boy swept the length of the smooth wooden floor, humming along with Aefa’s hushed rhymes. The windows were grated, but open to the afternoon, and a fine cool cross-breeze blew through smelling of river and crisp city fires.
The only two things marring Aefa’s happiness were missing the island under her feet and her inability to decide how—and who to use—to best curry favor for Elia. In terms of pleasurable seduction, La Far would have been Aefa’s personal choice, though he was more than ten years her elder. The way he moved, and the vast heaviness peering out of his eyes, intrigued her to the point of distraction. Consequently, he was a poor choice, if her purpose was Elia’s benefit, not merely that of her own loins.
Then there was Ianta, the Twice-Princess and King Morimaros’s sister. The woman was fat and delightful, and she’d winked at Aefa three days ago, and she was rich and in a perfect position to influence the king. But she, too, was old, and a widow, and the way she flirted with the lord of Perseria gave Aefa pause. Her sights, perhaps, should be set lower.
One of the younger sons of the Lady Marshal, maybe, or that cousin of Lord Ariacos who worked so closely with the Third Kingdom trade commander. Or the Alsax heir, if he was as unencumbered as his Errigal cousin. Any of them could provide valuable intelligence to aid Elia’s cause first in Aremoria, and then on Innis Lear.
Aefa only needed to narrow down exactly what that cause might be. Elia herself would not say, which was usual. Though, her companion thought, it had to be one of two things: return home alone, or marry Morimaros and establish herself outside Lear. Aefa’s instincts told her Elia would never agree to marriage before settling her father, before returning home to see everything on the island put right. Though marrying the king here might be the safer choice, it would not allow Elia to pursue what had before seemed her only goal: a life of contemplation and peace, close to the stars.
Aefa could not put down the gut feeling that Elia had to go home. That her fate could not be found here, but only submerged in the rootwaters of Innis Lear.
“Aefa?”
“Elia!” Aefa said, lifting a dun-colored puppy in both hands so its round little paws flailed like it might run through the air. “Come sit with me, and tell me what the king wanted.”
The princess climbed the rest of the way onto the second floor. She nudged aside the puppies, allowed their mother a good long sniff at her skirts, and settled beside Aefa, legs curled beneath her. Elia snuggled a smooth, dusty puppy to her neck, and while it pawed at her breast and nuzzled her earlobe, Elia told Aefa about Kayo’s arrival, his news, and the letters he’d brought. She read aloud the letter from Errigal first (“Patronizing old dog!” Aefa spat), then Gaela’s (“Terrible as always, and you cannot marry Rory Errigal, for so many reasons!”) and Regan’s (“Pitiless and yet almost kind; she must be pregnant again!”), and finally they read together Aefa’s own letter from her father.
“Oh, Dada,” Aefa moaned softly.
Elia set the Fool’s letter into her lap with the others. “He means that my father truly believes I betrayed him; either that or the stars did. The stars showed him I would do one thing, and I did another, therefore one or the other of us must be false.”
“How can he think that it’s you?” Aefa asked, viciously enough the mother dog lifted her long head.
“Because the sun sets every day and rises again at the proper time. The tides sway and shift in exact patterns; the moon and the stars do not vary. So of course it must be his daughter, because daughters—and sons, and fathers, and all men—have inconstant hearts.” Elia said the last sadly.
“Not you, not Elia Lear.”
The princess offered a restrained shrug.
Aefa huffed, her entire body jerking as she clenched her fists and tried not to shove the puppies away so she could stand, offended on her mistress’s behalf. With exaggerated care she removed several puppies and got to her feet, allowing the last two to roll off the hem of her skirt. “Aren’t you angry?”
Elia glanced at her hand, fingers dug into the silky ruff of a puppy. It wiggled, and she released it, drawing her hand more gently down its short spine. “What good will anger do?” she asked quietly, eyes down.
“It’s something! Get you on your feet and fighting!”
“Fight? Fight what?” She raised her gaze to Aefa, whose cheeks were round, flushed cherries. “My frightening sisters? My father’s madness?”
“I can’t tell you what to do. A princess outranks her maid.”
“There’s no such difference between us any longer, Aefa.”
The Fool’s daughter planted her fists to keep from flinging them up or tearing at her hair. “Don’t pity yourself, Elia. I won’t tolerate that.”
Elia’s brow tightened, then she said, “It’s only the truth, which you hold so dear. I’m not a princess. My father, who was the king, said so.”
“Do you truly believe that? And would it matter? Your father could tell me that I’m not my own father’s daughter, but nobody can change my birth. He can strip my name away, perhaps in Innis Lear at least, but he can’t change me.”
“I am changed, though,” Elia murmured, hardly moving her lips.
“How?”
“I … I’ve lost something. Something that made me know myself.”
“You hardly smile anymore.” Aefa dropped suddenly to her knees, scattering the pups. She gripped one of Elia’s hands, pinching rings and knuckles together.
Elia put her other hand over Aefa’s. She pulled a simple ring of silver and amber off her thumb and slid it onto Aefa’s first finger. “Faith,” she said, not looking up to meet her friend’s eyes. “Trust? I thought my father was the truest star in the sky—strange and capricious, but true. Years ago I chose him, Aefa. I chose to be his, against my sisters, because he was so very broken by my mother’s death. I made myself into his perfect star, believing him to be true. But he isn’t! If not that, then what? What can I believe in if I can’t believe the stars will rise? How can I trust myself or you or Morimaros or my sisters or Ban Errigal or anyone?” Her voice was tight, high, and fast.
Aefa jerked on their grasped hands. “You can trust me because I tell you so. Because I have no agenda other than you and me and our families, our country.”
Finally Elia met Aefa’s green gaze. “I don’t know how. I believe you, and yet … after all these years, how do I let you in? How have I never done so, before? What if I lose you, too, Aefa, as soon as I let myself love you?”
“Then you’ll survive.” Aefa leaned in swiftly to kiss Elia’s lips. “You’ll mourn, and you’ll survive. That’s what love is. It shouldn’t break you, not like your father broke, but make you stronger.”
Elia stared. She touched her lips. “Maybe it’s me,” the princess whispered. “I’m broken somewhere inside, in a place that used to be—that I thought always had been—solid and strong. This is what he’s feeling too, my father. Even if everyone hates it, he and I were there together. I was his star, the beacon leading through the storm of his loss. Now I am gone, and he has lost his way again. He lost me.”
“He threw you away!” Aefa tugged on a free strand of Elia’s hair, fierce and hissing. “You did nothing!”
“I never do anything, it’s as you said. I’m always the buffer, the balm and comfort! A bridge, perhaps. But the bridge doesn’t soar or even move; it never even sees the end of the river. I thought the stars were enough, that choosing them for him was enough, but I’ve spent my entire life doing nothing. Studying what others do, what the stars say we should do. Reacting. Being what I’m supposed to be. I held the course, tried to be kind and listen, but did you know? Even the trees do not speak to me now. I spent myself with the silent stars and forgot the language of trees.”