Sparrows fluttered overhead, and Morimaros explained that he would come here as a boy to read his father’s treatises and lessons, and had begun feeding the birds. His sister named this balcony Mars’s Cote because of it. Elia watched how his mouth relaxed in the telling, as he spoke of his family with such obvious affection. This king was charming, but she felt a sadness reminiscent of envy. She wished she could relax into sharing a meal with him, to think merely of enjoying his company as if she too belonged here, another sparrow come home to roost and be comforted. But Elia could not forsake Innis Lear.
“The news from my sisters is not good,” she said, setting down a thin layer of unleavened bread she’d spread with apricot preserves.
He frowned, his glance flickering west, toward her island.
“My father has not changed his mind, or given any sign he means to. I fear—I fear my exile is not temporary.”
“From where does his madness spring, do you know?”
Elia took a small, hasty sip of wine. She set it down and folded both hands around the stem. “You have heard the story of my mother’s death?”
“That it was predicted by the stars.”
“That day, after she died, I have never felt such inconsolable despair, and I was so young. It was all my father, his feelings, and then my sisters both, spilling out onto me, all around me. My father gave what he could to me, and the island, but mostly to me.”
Morimaros took a breath, as if to speak, but remained silent.
“I was all he had, and the stars took so much from him. My mother, his brothers to make him king, his vocation. Can you imagine what that leaves a man, who then must try to be the king he is destined to be? The stars have been his only, only constant. Of course he can’t unlock himself from their prophecies, for fear of losing everything again.”
“Still,” the king said darkly, “he chose them over you, and set his kingdom on a path toward upset.”
“Better to push me away than have me torn from him because he does not do as the stars decree.” Elia forced her eyes up from the goblet. “Do you intend to invade Innis Lear?”
“If I must.”
The answer hardened her heart, squeezing out the prick of disappointment she felt, too. “What would make you think you must?”
His mouth pulled down. “Do you know what I saw, those waiting days in your father’s court?”
She met his eyes, nodding permission for him to continue, though she did not think she wanted to hear.
“A thin, rigid power, cracking in all the wrong places. Your father is a terrible king.”
Elia gasped in shock. “You know so much better?” she said angrily.
“I had a better example. My father was a good king. Perhaps your father was once, but no longer.”
She gripped her own arms. He spoke so matter-of-factly! Loyalty and love warred inside her against the need to understand, the need for change. She said, “My sisters are strong.”
“Dual queens will not hold, not when they do not act in complete accord.”
“They will, on the matter of keeping Innis Lear independent from you.”
Morimaros shook his head. “I had letters today, too. From Gaela and her husband Astore, as well as Connley. None of them agreed on their approach to me or even what they want from Aremoria.”
“What did they say?” she asked, too tentatively.
“Gaela warned me to keep my distance, saying that any action from me, including marrying you, would be seen as hostile. Astore asked me to back them against Connley, and offered me assurances of alliance if I do, when Astore is king. He suggested we might work this out as men, which I took to mean he does not trust his own wife, though perhaps I misread it. And Connley declared that he holds the loyalty of the Errigal earldom, and if I want iron from them, I must back him. As his wife does, though her sister might protest. This period before Midwinter is already hanging over disaster.”
Elia shook her head, disbelieving. “And so you must invade? To save Innis Lear?”
“Innis Lear once was part of Aremoria.”
“Eight hundred years ago!”
“I would see our lands reunited.”
“Innis Lear will not choose you if you invade. Not the people, and not the roots. Not even if you think you’re saving us.”
“Aremoria needs the minerals buried in your mountains, needs the trade advantages. Aremoria needs her western flank secure, and Innis Lear is a volatile neighbor. But”—Morimaros inclined his head nearer hers—“none of that makes my words any less true. Innis Lear will destroy itself if left on this path. A ruler must recognize this and make a choice, where land cannot choose or act.”
Elia stood up and returned to the edge of the balcony, but faced Morimaros. She studied him, his hard handsomeness, the certainty in his eyes. Nothing about him suggested he did not believe everything he said. Her sisters were right. Gaela and Regan both—the king of Aremoria saw weakness in Lear, and he would blow through, expecting little resistance, unless Elia proved otherwise. And so far all she’d shown Morimaros was her own grief; none of Innis Lear’s strength, none of what she knew to be true about stars and roots, or even what her father had ever done well, what would make Innis Lear thrive. She thought of Lear’s expectant face, the strain with which he coaxed her to answer his terrible instruction at the Zenith Court. Star prophecy was woven into the bedrock of her island, but it had led them before to ruin.
“You don’t understand Innis Lear.”
“Perhaps.” Morimaros came to her. “But I understand rulership, and I understand balance.”
“You do not respect prophecy or the songs of the Aremore trees. There is no rootwater in your city wells, no voice for the wind or roots of this land. Ours may cry out for help now, but unless you embrace what those of Innis Lear require, you could never be our true king. Not unless you submerge yourself in the rootwater at the dark well of Tarinnish, when the stars are brilliant and ready on the Longest Night, and prove the island accepts you. Your blood and the blood of the island, one blood bringing life.” Elia felt breathless, imagining it from the handful of stories she knew about how Innis Lear made its kings.
He would never. He couldn’t.
Slowly, Morimaros reached out, giving her ample time to avoid his touch, and took both her elbows in his hands.
“Innis Lear is a mess, with no strong head, no direction. It is not because your father closed the holy wells, or because he gave all to the stars. That is only how he did it. By offering the people nothing else to believe in when he forbade access and censured their faith. He gave Innis Lear no common enemy, nor any common hero, nothing to unite his people and keep them bound to their crown. He rejected them, preferring the distance of cold stars to the warmth of his close blood. And your sisters? They may be individually capable of ruling, but what of giving your island a hero or myth or anything to heal the wounds inflicted? And what of their husbands? They are all too selfish to understand the weight of a healthy crown. And if your sisters could somehow come to deny their own desires, cast off such quarrelsome husbands and devote more to the island than their own wounds, would the people of Lear agree to follow them, women who have been nothing but angry and cold? You see, I know much of the history of strife over the crown of Lear, Lady.”
Elia stared in shock. How dare he say such things about her country, her family? She clenched her jaw, then said firmly, “My sisters are determined, Morimaros. They will fight, and the people will accept them, because they are daughters of the island. Gaela is immensely powerful, like a saint already in her reputation, and Regan is known to commune with the roots. There is more than belief on Innis Lear. It is magic, real magic in our blood and in the song of the trees. My sisters are the new story of Innis Lear. And—and if nothing else could bring Connley and Astore together, it is the prospect of Aremore invasion.”
“I would use all of this to your advantage.” Morimaros drew her closer to him by her elbows, as near into an embrace as he ever had. “Make you the new faith. I would make your sisters and their husbands understand the only thing to stop my invasion is their sister Elia on the throne of Lear.”
Elia shook her head, denying the thought of it, even as her skin warmed. “Me? That is impossible. I was never built for it, Morimaros. I am a priest, no more, and hardly that, any longer.”
“I cannot believe that.”