GAELA
GAELA CLIMBED OUT of her bed and flung a thin robe around her shoulders. Her face ached where her husband had hit her, keeping her from rest. The sky was dark, and Gaela’s rooms even darker, lacking stars or candlelight. Her bare feet were cold as she stepped off the rug onto stone, slipping her arms into the sleeves and tying the robe securely at her waist. She lifted her hands to check the scarf tied over her hair remained firmly in place.
The Astore ruby ring gleamed on her finger, and Gaela cradled it as she went to the narrow window. Once an arrow slit, the sill was wide where she leaned, but narrowed to a bare hand-span. A long pane of smooth glass had been set into it, and Gaela beheld the small, dark courtyard from here, but it was impossible to see in from below.
She tilted her head to gaze at the velvet sky. She could make out no stars, and so the sky was a solid shade of purple-black. Did Regan stand under this same sky whispering angrily to the trees? Desperate to find her fertility? Or did she lie with her husband, enjoying the sweaty torment and cursing herself for taking pleasure in what refused to serve her?
There had been a wildness in Regan’s eyes at the Summer Seat, though Gaela doubted any other noticed but perhaps—perhaps—Connley himself. It worried Gaela greatly. She’d seen that fanaticism in another face: their father’s. Though they had always intended a joint rule, with Gaela the king and Regan mother to the next, Gaela now suspected that the sooner she consolidated her power and convinced Regan to give over the crown, the better for all. Curse Connley for agitating Regan, and Lear for declaring both his elder daughters equal heirs in his rash fury.
In the black courtyard below, a pale figure moved.
Behind him, two Astore servants trailed, recognizable by the color of their tunics.
It was her father, drifting like a ghost.
A thing tightened in her gut: irritation, fear? Gaela preferred the former, but the chill of the latter was undeniable.
Drowning it in a flare of ready anger, Gaela shoved her feet into fur-lined boots and pulled on a long linen tunic before replacing her robe around her. She picked up a knife and walked unflinchingly through the dark to the door of her chamber, swinging it open to the surprise of the dozing page awaiting any sudden orders in the night. The girl sprang to her feet and stammered a question at Gaela, who shushed her and ordered her to remain.
The prince swept past, an elegant, strong storm of vivid shadows and flashing pink wool.
A narrow stair led down to this small private courtyard, shaped like a long triangle with one corner bitten out. Some benches were stacked at the short end, and near the point an ancient well dropped through the foundation and rock, toward water far, far below. Once it had been a spring for intense root magic, and always had Regan collected bottles of it when she visited. Now it was capped off.
Gaela found Lear standing still beside that well, his head craned up to stare at the sky.
She joined him, ignoring his trailing servants. Clouds spread, obscuring the stars.
“You should be in bed,” Gaela said, refusing to glance at her father’s face. In this pit of a starless courtyard, he was the only pale moon.
“I cannot find Dalat!” Lear whispered.
Gaela jerked away. Her hand tightened around the knife. If he whirled too fast toward her, she could say he’d attacked. She could gut him, and say his mind was truly gone.
“Her stars aren’t there anymore. What does this mean?” Lear sounded curious only, not panicked.
“Dalat is dead,” Gaela said in a voice just as lifeless.
Lear turned his head. “She isn’t supposed to die until your sixteenth birthday.”
“That was twelve years ago, Lear.”
“No, no, no,” he whispered.
He seemed sane, despite the dark glint of this starless night in his eyes, despite the gnarled spray of his gray-and-brown mane. His gaze as he looked at his daughter was not wild, nor unfocused.
That was worse, Gaela thought, than if he’d been clearly lost to madness. But sounding rational, sounding calm—how deep did that mean his mind had fallen? If she killed him, if the servants hadn’t been here, she could pry open the well and dump his body in. How would that be for a royal sacrifice to the rootwaters! She suspected even Regan would not argue.
“I haven’t done it yet; the stars aren’t right,” he said. “So she can’t have died.”
“Done what?” Gaela cried, gripping him by the shoulder and thrusting the knife under his chin. “What did you do?” She’d known, suspected so long! And her father had never denied it, never defended himself.
Lear cringed away. Gaela held on, keeping him upright, as the servants rushed closer, one gasping, another rigid with censure. Let them be displeased or afraid. A king would not be judged. She slowly lowered the knife, dragging the cold blade against his neck.
“You look like her sometimes, firstborn,” Lear said, frowning, in a voice of darker curiosity now. As if unaware of the knife, the danger to his person. “Except my Dalat was full of love; you’ve none.”
“I loved my mother, and you destroyed that. If I have no love left, that is your doing.”
“Yes, probably, mine, and our stars’. And these stars’…” Lear pulled free of her, and Gaela allowed it.
The old king sighed hard enough it shrugged his bony shoulders. He turned from his daughter, shuffling away on bare white feet. The servants dashed after, one—the younger—glancing back at Gaela with mingled shock and sorrow.
Gaela was left alone in the black courtyard. She sank onto the rim of the well. The rough black stone glinted with dampness, though the wooden lid was locked in place and it had not rained.
Silence blanketed her, and darkness, and Gaela wondered if it had been a dream.
ELIA
THE QUEEN’S LIBRARY in Lionis took up the bottom three stories of the easternmost tower, a cheerful round room with more books, scrolls, and curiosities than should have been available in all the world. Three half-moon balconies jutted out of the shelves at the second-story level, complete with small tables and cushioned stools for taking coffee. Elegant ladders lent access to all the shelves, even those spreading up past the second story, though of course it would be inappropriate for a high-born lady in a gown to climb such a thing. Aefa, though, and the queen’s and princess’s ladies, were often sent scurrying up like squirrels to fetch certain items when necessary.
Though many plush and low chairs were set about the main floor for reading, and several lounging sofas presented near the fire, all polished of light wood and pillowed with velvet, the Elder Queen Calepia and her daughter the Twice-Princess Ianta most often sat around the wooden table in the very center, casually discussing news and court dramas; sometimes with visitors or guests but most often alone, content in their familiar space. Sometimes they invited Elia to join them, but she preferred most mornings to perch instead with Aefa on one of the balconies, visible but not quite available.
Elia cupped her coffee and breathed in the rich, bitter smell. Two days into her Aremore exile, she’d received a gift of it from a Third Kingdom trader who wished her to remember his name. To give you a taste of home, he’d written, not realizing it would hurt her to her core, because Innis Lear was her home, not the floodplains and deserts of the Third Kingdom.
That was the seed of her disagreement now with Aefa: they argued with pointed whispers over how Elia should handle the constant deluge of notes and letters from Aremore people approaching her. Aefa could not see any reason to refuse a visit with the coalition of foreign traders taking place tomorrow at their meeting hall near the harbor. Elia did not see the point. She wanted to go home and couldn’t bring herself to care about anything else as much as everyone around her seemed to.