There was something else, though. Hal tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword. “Brother to Estelle, then?”
Estelle DeLacroix was mistress to King Gerard, and her family had prospered when she became his favorite. Hal usually didn’t follow court gossip, but he knew all this courtesy of his mother’s and sister’s newsy letters while he was in exile in Delphi.
The letters had stopped, of course, when Delphi fell and the Matelon women were taken hostage, so he was no longer up to date.
Rolande flushed scarlet. “Estelle was my sister, yes, until swiving King Gerard executed her for treason. Like she would try to kill him by putting an adder in her own bed. How stupid would that be?” Rolande clapped his mouth shut then, as if realizing how much he was revealing to this scruffy stranger and a dozen onlooking farmers.
“I’m sorry to hear about your sister,” Hal said, and meant it. “So, what are you doing here? Has your family allied with White Oaks?”
“White Oaks has allied with us,” Rolande said loftily. “I’ve been charged with organizing local forces to protect the keeps in the area while my father and his allies march on the capital.”
Your father’s with them, then? Hal wanted to say. That would be a first. Has anyone explained which end of the sword to stick them with?
Instead, he said, “Have you heard any news about Lady Matelon and the other hostages?”
Rolande shook his head. “If you want my opinion, they’re all dead,” he said. “How foolish was that, to gather in the capital like that, with their families? They were sitting ducks. As soon as things went sour with Estelle, we withdrew to our holdings in the east to await developments.”
Rolande focused in on Hal’s face, and it seemed he saw something dangerous there, because he paled and pulled back on his horse’s reins, retreating a few steps.
“So,” he went on. “Now that I’ve been so frank with you, you can see that we’ve naught to feed nameless travelers.”
“What about one with a name, then?” Hal said. “They call me Halston Matelon, son of Arschel and Lady Marjorie Scoville, and brother to Robert and Harper.”
“Matelon!” Rolande stared at him, his mouth dropping open. Once alerted, even Rolande couldn’t fail to see the resemblance between Hal and his father. “But . . . you’re the dead one.”
“Not yet,” Hal said. “Hopefully not for a while.”
17
TWO PIRATES WALK INTO A BAR
The icelands would be a better name for this country than the wetlands, Evan thought, especially in this cold season. He and his crew had traveled south to Spiritgate, hoping to avoid the snow-stuffed high passes by taking a more southerly road west, into the interior. Their chosen route led through the borderlands, skirting the southern flank of a massive peak that was hidden in cloud most of the time. The southerners called it the Harlot; the northerners, Mount Alyssa.
Alyssa. The name of a queen.
His Stormborn were all capable riders, at least. Carthis was a land of horselords and pirates, where people routinely climbed off a horse and stepped directly onto a ship. They’d bought cold-weather clothes and ponies in the markets on the coast before setting out for the capital city, Fellsmarch.
Still, the northern winds seemed to drive right through wool and leather. Snow and sleet stung their exposed skin like a sandstorm at home. Evan considered using his magic to improve the weather, but decided against it. It was one thing to stir up a favorable wind at sea. He did not understand this weather—or this terrain—and he worried that tampering with it might have unexpected consequences, like the dangerous snow slides they called “avalanches.” But, with every frustrating delay, Evan worried that the empress was launching her invasion of the wetland realms.
The seas had once seemed boundless, a place where a gifted pilot with a good ship could lose himself. Now all of his horizons seemed to be shrinking. Eventually, he’d be cornered.
Celestine’s words came back to him, from the day they’d first met, when she and Captain Strangward were arguing about the magemarked.
They’re mine. They are a part of the Nazari line. They were created for a purpose, and it’s time they served.
That was the most honesty he’d ever had from her. Usually, her words were as sweet as prickly pear jelly. The empress always looked at Evan with a mixture of greed, lust, envy, and desire. The only thing missing was love.
The sea had always offered him the illusion of freedom, but now it was dissipating like a wetland mist.
Some nights, despite his exhaustion, he played the game of Where is she now? Other nights, it was memories of Destin that kept him awake.
Evan had left Destin behind in Ardenscourt. The soldier had claimed that he could be of more use to Evan in the capital than at his side. How was he faring in that nest of vipers to the south? Had he made any headway in persuading the boy king that the empress in the east was a greater danger than the queen in the north?
I don’t want you to be of use to me, Evan thought, for the hundredth time. I want you to forget about me. I want you to kill that monster of a father, leave Arden, and find another house by the sea. I want you to be happy.
Yet he couldn’t help wishing they were facing these challenges together. It would be worth it, even for a short while.
It seemed that the fates had decreed that he go through life alone.
The heavily fortified border town of Delphi seethed with activity. Word had come that the northern passes had finally opened, and the traders, brokers, and travelers who had been bottled up there all winter prepared to journey on. The coal mines and foundries of the queendom had been producing all winter, and now wagon after wagon took the road north. Evan and his party joined a band of travelers on horseback with a weatherbeaten upland trader to serve as guide.
It was a good military road, when it wasn’t chin deep in snow, with stone and steel bridges where it crossed and recrossed the rivers and streams roaring with snowmelt. Every night, travelers packed into bare-bones lodges situated a day’s ride apart. First arrivals claimed the bunks that lined the walls. The less fortunate slept shoulder to shoulder on the floor. One night, a blinding snowstorm gave notice that winter wasn’t quite finished in these mountains. The next day, teams of ponies dragged huge blades over the road, scraping the deep snow away. The tracks of wolves were everywhere, and their howling sometimes woke Evan in the night. Even with so much company on the road, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he and his crew were being watched, every step of the way, by malevolent eyes.
As their journey neared its end, they encountered small bands of uplanders, men and women, hair done up in braids, and armed to the teeth. This, apparently, was how the north welcomed newcomers. After a long conversation with their guide, and a hostile look-over, they were allowed to move on.