“He stood beside me, on the day you returned to Lionis. I knew him immediately,” Mora said, with cool superiority. “He did not look as he does in the portrait in the Princes’ Gallery, for he was a king already. Thirty, strong, with fire-blue eyes and a traditional foot soldier’s gambeson from the last century.”
“Yes!” Hal said, more excited than competitive. “He wore a steel pauldron pressed with the crown.”
“Worms,” Lady Ianta breathed.
Hotspur’s face was pink, her lips pressed together. She looked furious.
“Hotspur?” Hal nudged her, and Mora reached over to touch the wolf’s shoulder.
Hotspur burst out, “I saw a man like that with Mared Lear! When the Learish prophecy was given!”
“Prophecy!” Ianta cried, flinging wine from her cup.
“You didn’t hear?” Mora said lightly. When Ianta demurred, Mora continued, “At the queen’s tournament. Solas Lear sent her nephew to congratulate Celedrix, and with him a prophecy for her new reign.” She took a breath, then said, rather hushed:
“When the saints are singing and the restless are reclaimed, the dragon will burn, the lion will break, and the wolf will choose the end. What do you think of that?”
Ianta shook her head slowly, a certain awe in her eyes.
Hal said, “This is incredible. To have all three of us seen Morimaros! What does it mean? Is he a ghost, or an earth saint? His body—”
“Worms, Hal,” Hotspur said. “Earth saints!”
Mora shrugged. “When the saints are singing.”
“You can’t believe in all of this, Mora. Earth saints are children’s monsters, and prophecies are—they’re shadows and wind.”
“Well, good for us then that this is not Innis Lear,” Mora said. “We won’t be swayed by shadows and wind in Aremoria.”
Hal wondered skeptically if that were true. She was pure Aremore and greatly swayed toward magical thinking.
Ianta sighed. “I would be. Rovassos would’ve been. You know he used to get me and Prince Mato to do rituals with him in the caves beneath Lionis Palace, to summon earth saints back to us. When we were children.”
“Another reason he was no fit king.” Hotspur shoved a jug of wine at Hal.
“How can you dismiss it, Lady Hotspur? What do you think the prophecy means?” Ianta took the wine from Hal and poured for them both.
By now, Hal’s mind trembled with a tingle of inebriation. They’d not eaten since leaving Lionis; nor had Hal had much an appetite of late.
“A trick from the queen of Innis Lear,” Hotspur said. “They are fond of such things.”
Hal snorted. “Is she in league with the earth saints, too?”
Mora pointed at Hal. “You are the one who told me stories of King Morimaros vanishing when he died—either his body absconded with to be buried with his lover on Innis Lear, or by the very earth saints themselves. No—I’m not saying I trust this specter, the opposite, in fact. Prophecy ruins good men and women; it twists us up, inside and out, and what is the point? What would an earth saint expect to happen from such a proclamation? What would Solas Lear? There was no direction, no action to take!” Mora clenched her jaw for a moment, and Hal was stunned by the shock of fury in her eyes when she continued: “Even if it is real, it is also a trick.”
“You mean they want something else from Aremoria.” Hal rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“They who?” Hotspur demanded.
“The queen of Innis Lear? Or the earth saints themselves!”
Mora flattened her hands upon the table. “That is the way it goes in the stories.” With that last word she cast a glance at Hal, the teller of tales, the story-maker.
It was true. Hal nodded wearily. “Yes, in the stories, a prophecy is usually not exactly what anyone expects, especially if earth saints are involved—but when it happens, it’s obvious what it meant all along.”
Hotspur stood again. “So we live our lives. We honor our friendship. We act ourselves—I would never choose for Aremoria to end.”
“I might break,” Hal muttered.
Mora glanced at Hal, and Hal did not know what to do except hold her gaze.
Lady Ianta said, “Are you ready to burn, Banna Mora? A dragon, indeed.”
The former prince bared her teeth.
“And who, or what, are the restless?” Ianta continued. She swept her gaze across the three of them, drinking deep. “What a puzzle.”
The wine in Hal’s stomach soured. Still, she poured another drink.
LATE THAT NIGHT, Hal followed Ianta into the chamber in which she’d been—well, not sleeping, exactly, but throwing all her stuff.
“For what I found in the cellar,” Hal said, holding up a vial of honey liqueur and a bottle of burnt whiskey. “Tell me more about Rovassos’s rituals.”
Ianta poured herself into a short, soft armchair beside the cold fireplace and held out her hand for the whiskey.
The prince smacked the glass butt into Ianta’s palm and slid onto the floor, sitting cross-legged with her back against the stone hearth. This was a small room, but cozy with tapestries and thick braided rugs. The bed pressed into the corner, covered with a shaggy fur and plump woolen pillows. It smelled of Ianta’s sharp pipe smoke, horses, leather, and sword oil besides. There, tucked against the door, leaned Ianta’s huge broadsword. It had no name, but needed none, either.
The former Lady Knight popped the lid off the whiskey and drank. She opened her mouth after and sighed in satisfaction. Hal put her tongue out and tipped the vial of honey liqueur for a single drop that splattered down, coating her best muscle. Ianta gave her the whiskey and Hal drank that, with the honey sweetening the burn so it lifted up through her face and skull and into her brain. The prince’s lashes fluttered, and she thought, If it were poison, how fast would I realize?
The flavor might fool her into thinking it was safe, and nothing would change, but suddenly Hal would simply stop. Fall dead, never knowing it. Would that make her final heartbeat into a ghost itself? A specter of a prince trapped outside of death because she’d never seen the moment approach?
Or Hal’s skin might flush, she might feel her throat close, she might sense the painful creeping of poison through her veins, locking her muscles with cramps until her heart burst and her bowels let go and her teeth cut into her own cheeks—a slow, brutal death.
Surely that was to be preferred.
“Why do you want to know about magic and rituals?” Ianta asked, leaning over to snatch the whiskey back. They’d not stopped drinking since the afternoon, and both moved with the purposeful care of inebriation.
Hal said, “The kings of Aremoria aren’t supposed to need magic, so what did—what did Rovassos want with it?”
Ianta groaned at Hal’s directness. “Legitimization.”
“What? He was the son of Segovax, who was the son of Isarnos, who was the nephew of Morimaros the Great. That is as legitimate as it gets.”
“But not the oldest child of Segovax—that was Vatta Gaunt, your grandmother.”
“And maybe a bastard, definitely a woman.”
“Pff, it was a coward’s lie that she was a bastard.”
Hal chewed her bottom lip. “Rovassos wanted to prove to others he was meant to be king?”
“To himself, truly.”
“He wanted a prophecy to create his legacy. The stars say I am king, and so you cannot deny me.”
“It does work for the queens of Innis Lear,” Ianta muttered.
“Because they already have power.”
“So Prince Hal cannot use magic for power, because she does not already have it. What a paradox, ha!”
Hal knocked her head back against the stone hearth. “Do you believe in earth saints, Ianta?”
“Yes.”
“No joke nor equivocation?” Hal felt her pitch rise. “Just yes.”
Ianta drank again, then smiled. “How can you not believe, after what you’ve seen and heard?”
“I’m afraid to believe, and afraid not to. And why shouldn’t I be afraid of magic here, guiding the future?” Hal blinked. She thought of her hand on her sword, its blade cutting straight forward into Hotspur’s belly. The Wolf’s mouth gaped open—and then Hal imagined her crying out for an entirely different reason: Hal’s tongue against her throat, her fingers digging into Hotspur’s well, the taste of sweat and the curve of an arched back.
Prince Hal shivered and pulled her knees up, pressed her forehead against them.
“Fearing magic is already losing,” Ianta said acerbically.
Hal laughed. Her shoulders shook. She was entirely screwed.
“We would slip down through a secret stairway cut into the limestone,” Ianta said. “There are a few doorways into those passages in the backs of star chapels, or what used to be star chapels, throughout Lionis. Or you can get in by the gaping black maw of the cave mouth, right at the riverside to the northwest of the bluff beneath the palace. There is an altar there, the sheered-flat base of a stalactite. We would hold hands, me, Vaso, and Matomaros. Me, standing alongside two princes. We called out to the earth saints to greet us, we who were related to the greatest of Aremore kings. At least Rovassos and Mato were. Vaso had found a cypher in the Queen’s Library with old words in an ancient Aremore dialect, little chants and spells for healing and elf-shot, for talking to the trees as they do on Innis Lear. So we read it and made up our own songs. Nothing happened, though we all fell a bit more in love with one another every time.”
A great sigh issued from Ianta, and the chair creaked as she stretched.
If there were a song for falling in love, Hal would—
The prince crushed her eyes into her hands, then looked up abruptly to say, “Come back to Lionis with me. I need you.”
“Hal, no. There’s no place for me there.” Ianta frowned, lines dragging at her lips and eyes, her neck sagging.
“There is, though.” Hal got to her knees, setting the honey liqueur aside, and clutched her hands together to keep from seeming to beg. “I need more allies. You know me! I’m a trickster, a charmer, a lover—not a leader. I can make people break into the throne room with me, or put honey inside Abovax’s gauntlets; maybe I can command a small company, but not an army! Not an entire kingdom. What if they see me, Ianta, really see me? What if my mother does?”
Hal clasped her hands over her mouth. She’d never say such a thing sober. Thank the saints Hotspur had not heard—or worse, Mora.
“Hal.”
“Please, Ianta. You founded the Lady Knights. You know how to make things happen in Lionis Palace.”
“There are no Lady Knights.” The bitterness and certainty in Ianta’s voice stunned Hal.
The prince said, “We are temporarily disbanded, but informally. When I— I only need to prove myself capable as a prince and I can make them again.”
“No, Hal. Don’t you see? The Lady Knights were always a lie. Rovassos …” Ianta stopped, closed her eyes.
After a moment, Hal said, “We were not a lie. We mattered—to one another. How can you discount that? Mora and me, and Ter Melia and Talix and Imena—and our squires, we made names for ourselves, proved women could be effective knights. Not just one-offs and foot soldiers, but with intention and purpose! We don’t break this easily.”
Ianta leaned forward. Her pale blue eyes shone with tears, pink rimmed, and her face was flushed blotchy and uneven. “That is what I thought, Hal. I thought we mattered. I thought I had carved a place for myself! Me! A woman, a lover of women, and all I ever wanted was to be allowed to be what I am. To serve as a knight, to lift these powerful hands in service to my king, with might and blade and vows like any man. To flirt with beautiful women and love them and still be honored. I thought my king understood that, respected me and loved me. I thought he saw me. He was my best friend, Hal, but becoming a prince will make a liar out of you, too.”
Hal shook her head, too shocked to speak. Her lips hung open.
“It’s no use.” Ianta fell back against the chair. She wiped her hands down her face and then let them lie in her lap, hugging her belly. “Give me more of that drink.”
With a shaking hand, Hal did so. She whispered, “What are you talking about, Ianta? What lie did he tell you?”
Ianta drank from the bottle again, hissed through her teeth, and said, “When word came that he was dead, I went to the library to get the signed charter for my Lady Knights. I didn’t know what would happen, and I wanted it on my person, not moldering in a trunk or desk, not where it could be taken from me. From us. But there was no charter. I bullied two clerks into searching, and there was no record at all! We were nothing but a whim, Hal. A favor, granted by a king to his friend. He didn’t believe in us—in me! He gave it to me because he loved me and wanted to make me happy. Without actually doing anything. Without protecting it, or enacting change.”
“I’m so sorry, Ianta.” Hal touched her knee, let her hand make a fist in the skirt.
The lady of knights put her hand atop Hal’s head. “Don’t let them make you a liar, Hal.”
“I—”
“Listen to me, Hal Bolinbroke.” Ianta tugged Hal’s hair until Hal tipped up her face. Then Ianta changed her grip to Hal’s chin and held it hard. “I do know you. You love stories. As do I. Stories are how we change minds, you and I. You tell them whether they’re true or not, and you exaggerate what’s real to make a better story. That can serve you as a leader. Making a better story. But it might not serve you as a person. You can’t be only a story, or you have nothing. And while people might be excited by a story, they can’t love it; they can’t be loyal to it. Don’t just tell a story that you’re a prince: be one, truly, or don’t even try.”
Hal swallowed thickly. “Come back with me to Lionis, Ianta. Come with me and help me be real. There will be a place for you, with a queen, and a prince who loves you, who knows well what space you tried to make in the old palace, with the Merry King. We will make it anew, and everything will be better. Stronger. My mother returned from exile like a brilliant fire, to burn away the rot in Aremoria, and we can help her, we can be part of her new world.”
Ianta narrowed her eyes and released Hal with enough force to push her away. “You’re doing it even now. Stories—lies.”
Hal’s breath came a bit harder than she liked. She didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t prove Ianta’s point. “Can’t a story also be true? If I take a true thing, and dance pretty words around it, the prettiness doesn’t ruin the truth. A good story isn’t a lie.”
“Hmm.”
Pressing her advantage, Hal lifted the vial of honey liqueur. “If I put this on my tongue, then drink whiskey, it doesn’t make the whiskey any less whiskey. But it goes down smoother.”
Ianta laughed out of nowhere. “Saints, I am drunk. And you have always been like this. I do miss you, Prince of Riot.”
“Then come back with me!” Hal grinned. She was drunk, too, so she pushed away the uncertainty, the questions of selfhood, rulership, prophecy, and future, and just smiled. It was a lie.
“Promise me something first.”
“Anything!” Hal meant it entirely, but Ianta glared as though her vision were doubling, until Hal lifted her hands in giggling apology. “Anything, if I can.”
“Better.” Ianta took a deep breath. “If you are going to be a prince, find something that is exceptionally true—exceptionally pure and right—and hold that in your center. So that you do not lose yourself inside the story you build about yourself.”
Hal intended to nod very seriously, to put on the appearance that she would search hard for such a thing. But she did not need to: she knew exactly what single thing in her life was exceptionally true and right, exceptionally bright. Simply exceptional.
Standing, the prince of Aremoria swayed. The floor tilted, and Hal grabbed the arm of Ianta’s chair. “Oops,” she said. “I have to find Hotspur!”
“Tomorrow,” Ianta said, and shoved Hal away.
The prince stumbled, grunting as her stomach knotted, and fell upon the bed. She rolled, fully dressed, until she lay sideways in the center, hugged a pillow to her stomach, and passed out.
HOTSPUR
Tenne-Tiras, midsummer
HOTSPUR WAS FINE.
That was not a lie, nor a story, but simply the truth. Though she’d have preferred a posting with more direct action, Hotspur recognized the importance of helping Hal Bolinbroke, even if that aid came in the form of what amounted to taking a holiday at Tenne-Tiras.
Though to most, the schedule Hotspur set would not have suited leisure.
Hotspur and Banna Mora led the retainers and knights in daily battle drills, they foraged in the woods and hunted, they rarely spent time off their feet—but to Hotspur, that was relaxing. She could not simply drink and read all day, or wander with Lady Ianta in idle philosophical argument the way Hal could. Mora said, when she heard Hotspur’s frustration, “Perhaps that is what makes her suitable to be the prince of Lionis.”
“She’s the lion, regardless of the rest,” Hotspur said in complete seriousness. The two glanced across the courtyard at Hal, who was stretched in the sun with a smile that showed off her teeth.
“Prickly and proud,” Mora said. “But mostly a glutton. Yes, she is certainly the lion.”
Hotspur wondered what made Mora a dragon, and if she was wrong to make such assumptions—or to be thinking of this at all!
Within a few days of settling into the prince’s company, Hotspur had earned her reputation for ferocity. Even beyond the distant legends they’d heard of the Wolf of Aremoria. Isarna Persy was more intense in person; while everyone there had skills for war, Hotspur never seemed to spare thought to her personal safety. She’d dive for an opening even if it risked a bone-bruising hit, used her body for leverage to push past the defenses of men larger than herself, leapt from her horse before it went down, or chose the most precarious position for ambush if it also provided the best concealment. Lady Ianta reminded her again and again from the sidelines that an injury would leave her unable to do her duty, but Hotspur snapped back that injury was better than drunkenness.
She liked best sparring with Hal—not because of the prince’s sly smile, nor the whip of Hal’s thick black hair, nor Hal’s breathless gasps when she was nearly skewered. It was not even for the entertainment factor, as Hal told stories when she sparred, painting the details of an epic as she and her opponent circled.
The sky is bare and black and the sun obscured, as from either side of the field two champions walk! A whisper of their names courses along with the shaky wind; the hopes of one nation versus the despair of the other. If only the champion Persy were not favored so by the wolves of earth, perhaps she might be felled by a mere mortal of county Bolinbroke!
Here Hal might put on a face of stark fear, backing slowly from Hotspur, while the circle of retainers and knights leaned in for the next word: A star streaks suddenly across the sky, from the north to the east where Bolinbroke was born! A sign from the heavens—maybe this time, maybe now, the champion of fire will fall! And we, who love her and fear her, shall—
Hotspur rarely allowed Hal the time to finish her wild tales, jumping impatiently in with a surprise attack. It didn’t matter: Hal beat Hotspur back at least as often as the prince ended up on her ass with the blade of Hotspur’s practice sword at her neck.
And that was why Hotspur preferred to be partnered with Hal: because working together pushed them both to grow. With everyone else, Hotspur was either the superior fighter, or overly concerned with teaching. Unless she fought Mora, in which case Hotspur concentrated too hard on not dying, for Mora held within her a deep, rigid fury that, when it blazed up during combat, promised to devastate the world. (This, Hotspur thought, would be what made her the dragon.)
But with Hal, she was so well matched, so in tune, they could almost be dancing, and each got a little bit faster, a little bit stronger.
The first time Hal kissed her, the two were hiding from rain in the keep armory, treating leather in companionable silence. Hal lowered the leather greave into which she’d been rubbing oil and touched Hotspur’s cheek, and when Hotspur looked over, Hal put their lips together.
It was warm, soft, and dry. Hotspur liked it.
She said as much, then told Hal to do it again. Hal smiled, and the smile turned mischievous. “I will,” the prince promised, and directed her attention back to the greave. She did not kiss Hotspur again at that moment, a fact that twisted Hotspur’s stomach up in knots.
For an entire day she worried she’d done something wrong, been a bad kisser, and then kicked herself for even caring. She was the Wolf of Aremoria, and refused to be drawn into the games of a consummate flirt.
That evening Hotspur made the retainers under her command go out in full armor for a march. They exhausted themselves climbing hills, pitching tents, clearing the road of a tree that had fallen in the light storm. If one could do it in armor, Hotspur promised, how much easier would it be in mere gambeson and uniform?
When the company returned, late into the night, only Ianta remained awake. The old knight leaned against the wide door to the hall, a bottle of wine in one hand. She laughed at Hotspur, a gentle rumble of humor that put Hotspur’s back up. Stomping past, Hotspur was glad her rattling steel plates could wake up the entire keep. But then Ianta offered her the wine, and Hotspur took it. She jerked the cork free and drank. The cool white wine was a surprise, sugary and tart. Hotspur blinked and gave it back.
“Wolf,” Ianta said affectionately.
Hotspur opened her mouth, but did not yet know if she counted Ianta Oldcastle enemy or ally. For Hotspur, there was little in between.
Ianta said, “You should decide if her attention is going to make you angry, or make you happy. Both together will drive her mad, and we cannot afford a mad prince.”
“I have to decide? She is the one who …” Hotspur stopped at the look in Ianta’s eyes. The old knight had been fishing for information, and Hotspur had just provided it. She bared her teeth. “You watch out, Ianta Oldcastle.”
“For Hal, always.”
Hotspur did not sleep soundly. She tossed in her narrow bed, ground her fists into her eyes, and wished she had something to punch. When she did doze, her dreams were rampant with war—but not sex, thank the saints.
At dawn she launched out of her room and had been stretched and working with her horse for an hour before anyone else appeared.
When Hal had arrived, Hotspur glanced hopefully at her, then away, hiding her face until the prince wandered on. Hotspur ought to march over and demand another kiss—no, an explanation. She didn’t need pity kisses.
Burying her face against the strong muscles of her horse’s neck, Hotspur felt a prick of fear.
“Hotspur,” Banna Mora called. “Come show me the underarm twist you used to disarm Belavias two days ago.”
Hotspur gathered herself and said, “It will be harder for you, because you’re taller.”
Mora said nothing else, only tossed Hotspur a practice sword.
“Did you work on this with Vindus?” Mora asked when they paused to dip water from the well. “He used some similar footwork, seeming to retreat before a strong blow as if he were unconcerned with appearance, only winning, and I admired it. Or perhaps all Persys have this way in your blood.”
Hotspur said, “Yes, we learned the basics together, and I suppose it’s a bit of both.”
The lady of the March nodded, glancing up at the sky: it was streaked with white-gray clouds but would not rain. A cool breeze fell against their cheeks.
Though Mora would never admit so aloud, she very clearly missed Vin.
“You were lovers?” Hotspur asked. She’d suspected but not known.