Right, Ash thought. Your daughter Hanalea went into the borderlands, and was murdered. Your son went south, and became a murderer. And Lyss—
“Speaking of traveling, what’s Lyss doing in Chalk Cliffs?” The Chalk Cliffs he remembered was little more than a gritty port with a military barracks, bars and clicket-houses, and a stone keep. What business would his sister have in such a place?
That question must have shown on his face, because his mother said, “Alyssa has changed since you last saw her. And I’m afraid that she’s angry with me right now.”
Ash was mystified. “Angry? I can understand if she’s angry with me, but why would she—?”
“Soon after you . . . disappeared . . . I found out you were alive, and I didn’t tell her.”
“So you did know,” he said. “Lila told me that you did.”
His mother nodded. “I knew. I decided—I decided that after Hanalea’s and Han’s murders, maybe you were safer there, under an assumed name, than here at court. I didn’t tell Alyssa, though.”
She fingered the wolf ring that always hung from a chain around her neck. “We’d already had your funeral, and she was just beginning to recover from that. I thought it was too dangerous a secret to tell an eleven-year-old. Knowing your sister, she would have insisted on going to Oden’s Ford and bringing you back. If agents from Arden had found out where you were, they would have murdered you.”
“Well,” he said. “They tried.”
“As I found out, a few days ago, when the team I sent to Oden’s Ford to fetch you home returned with the news of the attack on your dormitory and your apparent death.” Tears welled up, and spilled over once again. “I blamed myself.”
“I’m the one who ran away,” Ash said. It hadn’t occurred to him that his mother would hear about the attack, because, for all intents and purposes, he was already dead. He hadn’t known that Taliesin had ratted him out.
“Why did you decide to bring me home now, after four years?”
“There was an assassination attempt on your sister.”
That punch to the gut nearly folded him in two. “Wait—what? The bastards went after Lyss? They’re targeting children now? Is she . . . what did she—”
His mother raised an eyebrow. “She’s not a child. She’s just two years younger than you, and she’s grown up fast,” she said. “That’s what happens when you go away. You think time stops at home while you grow and change.” She paused, in case he wanted to argue, but he didn’t.
“So. She overheard me talking about bringing you home from the academy. She was furious on the one hand, but so very happy that you were alive. She went to Chalk Cliffs to meet your ship when it arrived. And then, when Captain DeVilliers and the others told her you were dead after all—”
Ash sighed. “No wonder she’s angry.”
“Right. You could have been together, these past four years, but I left you there, unprotected, to be murdered. That’s how she sees it. So, when she . . . when she heard the news, she refused to come back here. She said she was afraid she would say something unforgivable. I’ve not seen her since I visited her in Delphi soon after Solstice.”
Another unexpected consequence of what he’d done. He’d never considered that it might drive a wedge between his mother and sister.
“Will she come home now, do you think?”
“I think the news that you’ve survived will bring her home,” the queen said, with a wry smile. “Especially if you send her a message and ask her to come.”
“I’d like to go to Chalk Cliffs and bring her home myself,” Ash said.
“No!” She said it with such force that he flinched back. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but you’ve just come back and I’ll not have you leaving again right away. I’ve come to feel like each time I say good-bye to my children it may be the last time I see them.”
“Right,” he said, chastened. “How do you want to handle it, then?”
“Here’s what we’ll do. The weather has been so bad that we’ve received no communication from Chalk Cliffs in weeks. I think that’s easing now. General Dunedain’s in Delphi right now, getting ready for the spring campaign. We’ll ask her to send a salvo to Chalk Cliffs to relieve Lyss, and send her back to Delphi. We’ll meet her there.”
To relieve Lyss? Relieve her of what? Ash felt like he’d walked into the third act of a play.
His mother rose, crossed to the fireplace, and brought back a framed portrait. “This was done at Solstice.” She handed it to him.
His mother was right. Lyss was no longer a child. What had seemed like scrappiness in childhood had become confidence and resolve. She was all golds and coppers—deep golden hair, coppery skin, steady brown eyes. Her chin was tilted up a bit, as if to say, Try me.
Most surprising of all, she was wearing a spattercloth uniform with an officer’s scarf.
Ash looked up at the queen. “Lyss is wearing a uniform. Does that mean she’s in the army?”
His mother nodded. “She’s a captain in the Highlanders now, and she has made quite a reputation for herself.”
“But . . . what happened to music, and drawing, and stories? She has so much talent, and—”
“I believe she’s decided that those skills are not well suited for the world she lives in. But, happily, she seems to excel at warfare, too. They call her the Gray Wolf in the field.”
Jenna’s words came back to him. I will try and think of you as a wolf called Adam. She’d seen the wolf in him, too.
Is that what war does? It turns us into wolves? Or does the wolf have to be there to begin with?
“Adrian?” His mother touched his arm and he realized he’d gone silent for too long.
“I’m sorry. I just hope that she’ll return to the arts someday.”
“I do, too. I hope the time will come when we don’t need her martial talents so much, anymore. We’ve had so many losses. Most of us have had to develop new skills. Your cousin Julianna, for instance. She’s directing the intelligence service now.”
“Julianna?” Ash shook his head. “I never would have predicted that.”
“She’s very different from Mellony. Very different,” she repeated, for emphasis. “That’s becoming clearer every day.”
That had raised another question, one that Ash was afraid to ask. “If Julianna is heading up the intelligence service, then what about Cat Tyburn? What’s she doing?”
“She’s dead. Murdered. Nearly three years ago now.”
“Cat, too?” Ash took in that news like a punch to the gut. “I can’t imagine anyone taking her by surprise.”
“None of us can. No one is safe, apparently.”
“So maybe Lyss is safer in the army than here in the city. At least there, you know you have a fight on your hands.”
“Maybe. Anyway, it’s part of her role as a wartime queen.”
Ash handed the painting of his sister back. “I can understand why soldiers are willing to follow her. She looks . . . formidable.”
“She is. It’s not easy to get her to sit for a portrait. I tried to persuade her to wear a gown suitable for her name day, but she said she’d rather look like herself. I think she wants to put any possible suitors on notice.”
“Suitors?” Ash said, feeling pummeled. “Isn’t she a little young to be thinking about that?”
His mother smiled at his expression. “Her name day is this June, and that’s when that kind of talk begins. Not by her choice. She’s about as eager to get married as I was at that age.”
“That’s just a few months away.” It wasn’t easy to get his mind around that. It was as if he was going to lose his sister all over again.
“It doesn’t mean that she’ll be getting married anytime soon. Though I wasn’t that much older than she is when I married your father.” She sighed and twisted her wedding ring. “I’m glad, now, that I married young, so that Han and I had more time together. It was twenty-five years, but it just flew by.” She stood, extending her hand. “Speaking of your father, let’s go see him.”
20
IN THE CITY OF THE DEAD