In only three short weeks from this refusal to take the throne, both his brothers were dead. By accident, and by sudden illness. Lear had no choice but to take up the crown in the midst of tragedy, and never again questioned the will of the stars—if he had not, his brothers might well have lived. His devotion had been a thing Dalat admired in her husband, for her heart, too, was devoted to a singular faith.
But Kayo’s was unsure. He questioned God and also the stars, constantly, and could think of a dozen interpretations one might apply to the Twin Star and the Star of Crowns that would spool out very differently than Lear’s. As he’d learned, the way everyone on Innis Lear must learn, what stars meant and how the prophecies worked, he’d come to realize they could function as a decision-making tool. When he faced a choice, a prophecy could suggest one path, and upon hearing it, Kayo immediately knew if he agreed or not. The prophecies made clear to Kayo not truth or destiny, but his own mind.
As for God—well, God created Kayo curious and questioning, so God could handle the inquiries.
“What is the prophecy?” he asked.
“The Star of Third Birds touching against the horizon at the same place as the Root of the Oak, and the silver-smiling Moon of Songs, Kayo, crowning its course almost exactly. You and I travel this life together: me on a certain, constant path, you moving parallel to, but with me, until my crown sinks below the horizon. I can have it drawn out, if you like. The shapes are fluid, and repeating, in the way your people put in your art so much. Yes, she’d have liked it, too,” the king murmured, and his body stilled in sorrow.
Kayo shared the moment of remembrance by putting his hand on Lear’s shoulder. Dalat shouldn’t have died so young, no matter the reasons.
“I remember you had only twelve years when you came to be with her,” Lear said softly. “Just older than Elia now.”
“We should find her,” Kayo said, honestly glad of an interruption. He longed to set eyes on his youngest niece again. It had been months, for at the start of winter he’d gone with the elder two sisters to Astora, where ferocious Gaela chose to foster herself. She’d been training with Astore’s retainers, and invited Kayo there to teach what he knew of fighting, which was not too much. He was trained to protect a caravan and his own body, not attack mounted or steel-armored soldiers. Gaela had taken his tutelage, and asked a hundred questions about the queens and empresses of the Third Kingdom. Kayo tried to turn all his responses back to Innis Lear, to Dalat and how Gaela could use the history of the empresses to shore up her education and eventual rule. Regan always listened, too, and sometimes Astore, though the duke laughed at putting women in charge. He said, “Unless they make themselves like our princess Gaela, it seems a waste of women’s talents.”
Kayo was not fond of the Duke Astore. The man was proud, and a bully, and Kayo had been reluctant to leave Gaela alone there under his domineering influence. But the ever-loyal, ever-cool Regan had reminded him, “No one does a thing to Gaela that she does not permit. Besides, Astore is strong, as are his stars. He understands how the throne of Innis Lear works.”
Kayo had understood then: Gaela intended to marry Col Astore. He tried to tell Dalat’s firstborn that she should not join herself to a man already married to himself, that she needed a husband who would support her in all. Gaela frowned as if Kayo had begun to turn blue. “Astore holds the most power on Innis Lear aside from the king. I will make his power mine, and support myself.” She said it as if any fool could see.
He’d sworn on the memory of his beloved sister to protect her daughters, but it seemed to him the elder two hardly needed his help.
The valley where Kayo now stood was at the southern end of the tract of land Lear had granted him. Beautiful, though he knew that except for these three months when the flowers bloomed, it would be swathes of pale yellow and a gray, dripping green under cold blue skies and sheer clouds. He would miss the red and gilded desert.
“Be mine,” Lear had said.
He meant, Give up your allegiance to your grandmother the empress. Let go of Taria Queen. Be only Kay Oak, brother to the king, uncle to three ferocious and cool and gentle princesses. Sink your name into the rocks of my island.
Yet the king had asked, not ordered. And the king did not know the secret Dalat and the witch of the White Forest had begged him to keep. The king merely expected a man to want a title, to want the friendship of a king, and the ties of family, to prefer this mossy island to the vast deserts, fertile riverbanks, and desperately sharp mountain peaks of all the lands of the Third Kingdom, despite the milky people here, despite their confusion of force and strength. They did not even believe in God here, only in whispering winds and the navel of the earth and the cold promise of dead stars.
But Lear was right. Kayo did want a title. He did like being respected on sight and never asked who his mother and grandmother had been, as if only their names made him matter. Here he mattered for being himself.
That alone almost convinced him.
They had found Elia Lear playing alone at the Summer Seat’s navel, a well that ran straight down forever into the dark depths of the rock beneath their feet. It was a plain well, in the center of a courtyard where roses crawled up the painted walls. A single woman, pale-skinned and unadorned, sat upon a bench mending trousers. It was not one of Dalat’s attendants. And Kayo realized in that moment he’d not seen his sister’s women at all. He touched Lear’s forearm, pausing before they entered the court.
“Where is Satiri? Where is Yna?”
Lear’s stark eyebrows lifted. “I sent them home.”
“Why? They’d been here for nearly twenty years! This was their home. They were hers.”
“Yes,” the king whispered. His face bent with grief. “So I remembered any time I saw them. They had to leave.”
“But … Elia is alone.” Horror made him release the king too abruptly. Dalat had made a thriving home here, surrounded herself with friends both born of Innis Lear and brought from the Third Kingdom. It had been a braided compromise, now all undone. He looked at the king, up at the sheer sky, then to Elia, a brown little nut of a girl.
“She has me,” Lear said. “She is my daughter, and she has me. And all her people, those of Innis Lear. And we must have you.”
Kayo shook his head once. “But her mother, her sisters, they’re not here. And now her mother’s people are gone from around her, too?”
“We are enough, Kayo. We will make it so.”
Even Kayo would not be enough. It wasn’t fair; it unrooted the girl before she could understand or choose on her own. “You should let me take her to visit her mother’s people.”
The king looked dazed. “No. Maybe—someday, but no.”
Frustrated, unsure why he felt so violently upended, Kayo called out, putting all the warmth he could muster into his voice. He strode ahead of the king and opened his arms. “Elia!”
The girl smiled brightly, then quickly the smile dimmed into a softer one, as if she’d checked her own instinct. Kayo’s heart rolled. He lifted her up and hugged her, swinging her a little so that her toes knocked against his knees. A small giggle pressed against his neck; the princess was wet. Her dress stuck to him, her skin was clammy, and the kiss she put on his cheek was cold. Kayo set her down. “Were you out in all the rain?”
“Yes,” she admitted shyly. “It felt good, and I thought I could hear the roses, whispering about…”
“About what?”
“Nothing. Hello, Father,” she said, smoothing down her dress. The tilt of her chin and wide black eyes were so like Dalat’s that Kayo was struck speechless. The girl’s hair was bound back plainly under a soaking wet green scarf.
“Elia, you should find shelter when it rains, and this well … it is dangerous.” The king touched one long finger to the black rocks of the well.
“I won’t fall in, Father,” she said, hiding her laugh, but not that she found him silly.
The king maintained his frown.