The weeks that followed were full of Qasr al-Hawir. The fortress became larger every time men spoke of it. Its walls grew higher. Its garrison more numerous. Rydric and Felrian were sung as if they had ridden out of the old tales, heirs of Karlemund and Arvand, two kings beneath one Revealed Star, one fire, one iron, each incomplete without the other. They both enjoyed the songs more than wisdom should have permitted. Rydric would deny it if accused, then demand to know which verse had been sung. Aelis listened once from behind a pavilion screen while a young minstrel made Rydric take the gate alone, Felrian break the road with one lifted hand, and Baudren kill forty men instead of seventeen, before pausing for wine.
When the song ended, she said, “If your poets continue at this pace, by winter Lord Baudren will have conquered the fortress while both kings held his horse.”
Baudren, who had been seated nearby with one arm in a sling, said “At last, a plausible account.”
Rydric laughed so hard that Father Aldemar glared at him over the rim of his prayer book.
Aelis’s pavilion stood between the Esberian and Valcierran quarters. Her household kept its own rolls, its own chapel chest, its own guarded coffer of dowry vessels, and a lamp that burned late into the night. Rydric came for council, Felrian came to correct him. Aelis would listen with her chin in her hand while both kings leaned over her map table, their shoulders touching, quarrelling over roads neither had seen.
“No,” Felrian said once, tapping the map with the handle of his knife. “If you ride there, you lose the baggage train.”
“If I ride here,” Rydric answered, “I lose the chance to catch Hishan before he reaches the wadi.”
“And if you lose the baggage train, you may catch him and then eat your victory with your fingers.”
Rydric looked to Aelis. “You hear how he speaks to me.”
“I do,” she said. “He is right.”
Felrian smiled without looking up.
Rydric, wounded more in pride than judgement, reached across the table, took Aelis’s cup, and drank from it. “Then I shall be wrong with refreshment.”
“That was my wine.”
“You did not defend it.”
“I cannot defend both kingdoms and cups,” she said.
Felrian laughed then, softly, and Rydric looked at him across the lamp smoke as if the laugh itself were a thing worth winning. Aelis saw the look. She had seen many men desire victory, praise, absolution, and her hand. She had seen fewer desire another man’s laughter with such naked greed.
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The councils lasted until late. A servant might enter and find Aelis standing behind Felrian, one hand on his shoulder as she read the letter he held. Rydric might be half-seated on the map table, boots muddy, cloak thrown aside, listening to her translate some coastal merchant’s evasions from the trade-tongue into words blunt enough for him. Felrian might reach without thinking to remove a fleck of wax from Rydric’s sleeve, and Rydric would allow it with the grave patience he did not grant physicians, bishops or quartermasters.
No one said anything. There were always explanations. The campaign required unity. Princess Aelis mediated between the royal households. The kings were young and pious and bound by oath. They studied routes. They prayed. They received envoys. They spoke of the holy places and the great work before them.
Once, after a night council broke under rain, Rydric remained behind. A messenger from the coast had brought word that two supply ships had turned back and a third had been taken by a Lagoran captain who claimed unpaid fees under the Bell of Lagora. Felrian had been coldly furious. Rydric had been louder. Aelis had dismissed the clerks before either king did something.
When the last clerk withdrew, she closed the flap herself. The rain drummed on the oiled cloth. For a time the three of them said nothing. Rydric stood with one hand braced on the table, staring down at the marked coast as if he might force the sea to return his ships by anger alone. Felrian sat very still, two fingers pressed against his brow. Aelis took the empty cup from Rydric’s hand, filled it, and made him drink.
“You cannot shout grain out of the water,” she said.
“I have not yet tried properly.”
“You have tried on barons, bishops, horses, and the master of Saint Merrow’s quay. The sea remains unimpressed.”
Felrian lowered his hand. “Let him continue. I have some curiosity whether the tide will apologize.”
Rydric looked at him. The anger went out of his face so quickly that Aelis almost turned away from the intimacy of it.
Then Rydric crossed the space between them and knelt—not as a vassal knelt, but because Felrian sat and Rydric wished to be level with him. He took Felrian’s ink-stained hand, the one that had been drawing figures of ships and grain measures all evening, and pressed his mouth to the knuckles.
Felrian’s breath caught. A small betrayal.
Aelis stood beside them with the cup in both hands. The lamplight made gold of the wine and black glass of the rain beyond the pavilion opening.
“You are both fools,” she said.
Rydric did not release Felrian’s hand. “That is why you were sent to govern us.”
“I was sent to marry you,” she replied to Rydric.
“Yes,” Felrian said, looking at her at last. His voice had roughened. “And govern us.”
Aelis set down the cup. She touched Felrian’s cheek first, because he was the one who would retreat if given room. Then she touched Rydric’s hair, still damp from the rain, and he turned his face into her palm with an obedience no army had ever seen from him.
The camp outside groaned in its sleep: horses stamping, rain striking canvas, guards muttering at the brazier, some sick man coughing his way toward dawn. Inside, beneath a silk roof smelling faintly of wet wool, lamp oil, and Aelis’s rose-water, the three beneath the banner stood close enough that no court poet could have made them innocent.
In the morning, the clerks found the maps reordered, the coast marked in Aelis’s hand, and both kings in savage agreement about the grain measures.