The prisoners had been sorted by rank, wound, language, and likely ransom. Most cursed, prayed, or just stared. One man sat on an overturned basket in the corner of the lower hall with his hands bound in front of him and a cut across his brow that had bled into one eye. He wore the patched robe of a scholar or minor secretary, not rich enough for a courtier, too cleanly mended for a common scribe. His fingers were stained with ink. He watched the western kings with an expression of mild interest.
“He speaks Vestimarian,” Sir Odo said. “And Jaludi. And Rhomanian. One of the men says he heard him bargaining in Lagoran before the gate fell.”
Rydric looked at the prisoner. “Name?”
The man inclined his head. “Nasir al-Jamil, sayidi.”
Felrian’s brows rose at the honorific.
Rydric said, “You call me lord?”
“Sorry, Your Grace. I did not mean to insult.”
Felrian laughed.
Rydric stepped closer. “What are you?”
“A man with bad timing.”
Baudren, standing nearby with a bandage over his hand, said, “That is not an office.”
“No, my lord. It is a condition."
Rydric looked at Felrian. Felrian looked back. Nasir lowered his eyes.
“A translator?” Rydric said.
Nasir’s mouth twitched. “When kings are wise.”
“And when they are not?”
“Then I can be silent.”
Baudren grunted. “I like him.”
“You like everyone with a foul mouth,” Rydric said.
“I value craft.”
Felrian studied Nasir for a long moment. “Put him under guard. Feed him. Keep him near enough to use but not near enough to trust.”
Nasir bowed more properly this time. “A most elegant distinction, Your Grace.”
Rydric laughed again.
Qasr al-Hawir was a victory. For three days, the host believed itself beloved of heaven. On the fourth, Princess Aelis of Valcierre arrived from the coast. Her coming had been announced by six letters, three heralds, two disputes over precedence, and a quarrel between her chamberlain and Tanrek over whether a dowry coffer counted as sacred cargo or royal cargo. She had travelled by sea with a household of forty, a chapel chest, sealed marriage instruments, and enough Valcierran silk to make the Esberian knights remember their own wool with resentment. She was Felrian’s younger sister and Rydric’s long-promised bride. The promise had been made after Lady Maerisse’s death, when Alianor was still a child and Rydric still a prince. Aelis had been too young to understand the insult of being promised to a widower but old enough to remember every delay that followed. Ten years later, her arrival was meant to seal the alliance with a wedding as soon as the holy expedition permitted.
Aelis dismounted in the courtyard of Qasr al-Hawir while the captured fortress still smelled of smoke. She wore a travelling gown of dark blue wool cut for the road, and a white veil pinned under a riding hood. Dust clung to the hem. Salt had stiffened one edge of her cloak. She had dark hair and a face that painters would later fail to capture, not because it was beautiful in any simple sense but because its beauty lay in motion: the lift of an eyebrow, the quick turn of a smile that had just thought of something unkind. She had been educated by the best scholars Felrian’s court could afford, and she had learned things they had not intended to teach her.
Felrian went to meet her first. For one moment he was not the pale young king of Valcierre nor Rydric’s brother-in-arms. He was a brother whose face altered before anyone could notice.
“You are late,” he said.
Aelis kissed him on both cheeks. “You began without me.”
“We captured you a fortress.”
“So I see. It is charming. It smells of goats.”
“The goats were providential.”
“Heaven does have a rustic imagination.”
Rydric laughed. Aelis turned. She merely looked at him, and Rydric, who had ridden through gates and arrows and the adoration of men who thought him half-made of legend, felt the air change as if a banner had shifted.
“Your Grace,” she said.
“Princess Aelis.”
“My lord brother writes that you have been taking fortresses without waiting for legal witness.”
“Your lord brother complains when I breathe too loudly.”
“Breathing can create disputes over custody.”
Felrian said, “Do not encourage her. She has crossed the sea with three clerks and a dowry chest large enough to bury a bishop.”
“Only a small bishop,” Aelis said. “And only if he had offended me.”
Rydric smiled. “Have many bishops offended you?”
“I am young. There is time.”
The answer pleased him too much.
Alianor watched from the stair. She had washed Galeran’s blood from her hands badly. A dark line remained under one thumbnail. Mercy hung at her side. The misericorde lay against her hip, hidden by her surcoat, heavier than its size deserved. Beside her, Sivelle held a folded cloth and said nothing.
“That is Aelis,” Alianor said.
“Yes.”
“She looks pleased.”
“She has arrived to find her brother alive, her betrothed victorious, and a fortress taken. That might please a woman.”
“She looks as if she has found something she meant to own.”
Sivelle followed Alianor’s gaze to the three figures in the courtyard. Aelis stood between the two kings now, listening while Felrian spoke and Rydric laughed. Her head turned from one to the other with unsettling ease, as if she had entered not a conversation but a place kept empty for her.
“Perhaps she has,” Sivelle said.
Alianor looked at her sharply.
Sivelle did not soften the answer. “You’re the one who asked.”
Their first meeting took place an hour later in Aelis’s temporary pavilion, which had been raised in the least ruined corner of the outer court because her chamberlain refused to house a Valcierran princess in a room where arrows still protruded from the shutters. Alianor, summoned to pay her respects to her father’s betrothed, stood in the doorway in dusty riding clothes, hair bound back, the new stiffness of knighthood sitting badly over the fresh wound of grief. The misericorde was at her belt, and said nothing for a full minute while Aelis waited with her ladies, silk hangings, a travelling coffer, and a carefully arranged expression of welcome.
“I am to call you mother, I am told,” Alianor said finally.
“That is the custom.”
“My mother died when I was six. I have not called anyone mother since. I will call you Princess Aelis, or Lady Valcierre, or Queen. Whichever offends you least.”
Aelis smiled. “I am told you were knighted on the field. I did not realize knighthood exempted you from courtesy.”
“Courtesy is for people who have not spent the past six months burying the men they rode with.”
“Grief is not a sword, Princess Alianor. However tightly you grip it.”
“No. My sword is Mercy. My grief does not hurt anyone but myself.”
The silence in the pavilion was absolute. Aelis’s ladies froze like painted figures in a manuscript. One of them, a young woman with red hair, put her hand to her throat.
Aelis studied Alianor for a long moment. Then she nodded, as if confirming something already suspected.
“You hate me,” she said. “That is convenient. I have spent my life being loved by people who wanted something from me. Hatred is honest. We shall get along, I think, once you realize I am not your enemy.”
“You are marrying my father.”
“Yes. That does not make me your enemy. It makes me the woman who will be queen of Esberia. If you cannot tell the difference, you are not as clever as your reputation suggests.”
Alianor left the pavilion without asking permission.
Aelis watched her go with an expression no one in the tent could read. Later, when Felrian asked how the meeting had gone, she said only, “She is exactly what he deserves. I do not yet know whether that is praise.”
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
Sivelle of Tarsen was waiting outside the pavilion. She had not been permitted within, which meant she had heard nearly everything through silk and canvas. She stood beside the guy-ropes with Alianor’s spare gloves tucked through her belt and a waterskin in one hand, her face arranged into blank dutifulness.
Alianor came out as if from a fight. Her jaw was set. Her hands were steady. The misericorde at her belt knocked against her thigh, hard enough that Sivelle heard the metal through the leather sheath.
“Well?” Sivelle asked.
Alianor kept walking.
“Princess?”
“If you call me again before supper, I will put you in the horse-lines.”
“You have no authority over the horse-lines.”
“I have authority over you.”
“Queen Aurélise disagrees in several sealed letters.”
Alianor stopped so abruptly that a passing squire nearly walked into her and then chose survival by swerving into a stack of spear shafts. They clattered down. Somewhere behind, Sir Odo, who had been trying to maintain camp order since dawn, cursed loudly.
Alianor did not look at the fallen spears. She looked at Sivelle.
“She smiled,” she said.
“Aelis?”
“As if she had already won.”
“Had she?”
“I do not think so.”
“Then perhaps she smiles in advance. Valcierrans are economical.”
Alianor’s mouth twitched despite herself, then hardened again.
“She will be queen.”
“Not today.”
“My father will marry her.”
“Not today.”
“She will sit in my mother’s chair.”
“Your mother died before your father wore the crown. No woman can steal what death denied her.”
“Sivelle.”
“Yes?”
“Do not be gentle to me.”
Sivelle looked at her for a moment. Dust moved between them, carrying the smells of horses, sweat, blood, roasting barley, and the sea. Beyond the tents, men shouted over a broken cart axle. Morain was explaining to a knight twice his size that horses did not become fed because a man shouted at them. Lord Tanrek of Montelvair stood near the supply wagons with a slate in hand, arguing tides with two shipmasters and looking as if he would gladly drown them. In the lower hall, Nasir al-Jamil was telling Sir Odo that “temporary interpreter” was an unstable category unless accompanied by tasty food.
“I will not be gentle,” Sivelle said.
Alianor breathed out.
“Good.”
“Your hair is coming loose.”
“I know.”
“And there is dust on your face.”
“I know that too.”
“You cannot go to supper looking as if you mean to challenge your father’s betrothed before the soup.”
“I do mean to challenge her.”
“Then you should look cleaner. It would unsettle her more.”
That, at last, drew a laugh from Alianor. Sivelle took the victory without comment. She guided Alianor back toward the Esberian tents, not touching her elbow because Alianor disliked being steered when wounded, but walking close enough that no one else could approach without her accord.
Sir Aubrey of Valrens crossed their path with a practice sword under one arm and a bruise purpling along his cheek.
“Princess,” he said, bowing. “Will you come to the yard later? I owe you a rematch.”
“You owe me three,” Alianor replied.
“Two and a disputed fall.”
“You landed on your back.”
“That was after choosing to preserve the dignity of your footing.”
Sivelle said, “His dignity limped away before his footing did.”
Sir Aubrey bowed to her with extravagant solemnity. “Mistress Sivelle, your cruelty remains the only reliable institution in this camp.”
“Honour it by losing quickly. The princess has had a tiring morning.”
Alianor shot her a look. Sir Aubrey, wiser than he appeared, saw the look and softened the jest.
“Another day, then.”
“No,” Alianor said. “Today.”
Sivelle closed her eyes briefly, as one might in praying.
Sir Aubrey looked delighted and doomed.
They found the practice yard crowded. Sir Odo had claimed one side for the camp guard, drilling men-at-arms who had grown too accustomed to victory songs and not accustomed enough to formations. Geren, not yet hardened into anything except eagerness, ran messages between the weapon racks and the captains, tripping only once.
Morain stood near a barrel of blunted lances with a tally stick and a face like bad weather.
“If another knight breaks a practice shaft,” he announced to everyone, “I will feed him to the mules.”
Sir Odo said, “You cannot speak so to a knight.”
“I speak so to mules too.”
Lord Baudren, sitting on an upturned crate while a squire tightened the straps of his greaves, barked a laugh. He had already begun to watch Alianor with the affection of a man who knew grief. He saw Galeran’s blade at her belt, saw the way her hand never quite left it, and said nothing.
Sivelle helped her out of the outer cloak, retied her hair, checked the lacings of her padded jack, and handed her the practice sword.
“You are too angry,” Sivelle murmured. “You will try to put Sir Aubrey through the ground.”
“Exactly.”
“Do not. He is useful at feasts. His uncle has ships.”
Alianor looked at her.
“What?” Sivelle said. “You said not to be kind.”
Sir Aubrey took his place opposite her. The watching squires leaned forward. Baudren folded his arms and watched.
The bout lasted less than two minutes.
Alianor did not fight cleanly. Not that day. She fought with much force and little patience, her grief running ahead of her skill. Sir Aubrey gave ground, caught one blow, turned another, and then made the mistake of glancing toward Baudren, as if seeking approval. Alianor drove under his guard, struck him in the ribs with the blunted blade, hooked his ankle, and sent him flat onto the packed earth.
This time he did not claim to preserve footing.
“Yield,” she said.
Sir Aubrey stared up at the sky. “I am considering whether the earth has accepted me as its vassal.”
“Yield.”
“I yield.”
She stepped back.
The yard was silent for one breath. Then Baudren said, “Better.”
Alianor turned. Baudren rose and came toward her.
“Better?” she repeated.
“You waited until he looked away. Yesterday you would have struck before he made the mistake. Today you let him give it to you. That makes an assured victory.”
“I was just angry.”
“Yes. And you used it instead of serving it. There is hope for you yet.”
Alianor’s face shifted, just for an instant. The praise found the place Galeran’s death had left unguarded. Father Aldemar arrived at the edge of the yard, star-beads in hand, displeased by sweat, swords, and perhaps the general condition of the century.
“Princess Alianor,” he said, “your father asks you to attend supper in the Valcierran pavilion.”
Alianor’s expression closed. Sivelle took the practice sword from her before she could break it so Morain would feed her to the mules.
“The pavilion again?” Alianor asked.
“The kings dine together tonight,” Aldemar said. “Princess Aelis will be present. Lord Felrian’s chaplain. Lord Tanrek. Lord Baudren. Sir Odo. Several Valcierran councillors. It is a gesture of unity.”
“Supper,” Baudren said, “is indeed proof of unity. The knives are apparent, but no one is allowed to stab other than the meat that’s on their plates.”
Aldemar gave him a pained look but preferred not to comment.
Alianor looked toward the Valcierran banners visible beyond the tents. Blue and gold moved in the wind beside the Revealed Star.
Supper that night was held in the captured fortress hall, beneath soot-blackened beams and banners hung quickly to cover arrow scars. Rydric sat with Felrian at his right and Aelis at his left, the seating arranged as courtesy and understood at once as a claim. Rydric wore scarlet and gold, his beard still bright, his laughter filling the pavilion as if every man inside it had been invited into victory. Felrian wore blue so dark it looked black in lamplight, one sleeve stiff where blood had dried under the cloth, his pale head inclined whenever Rydric spoke. Aelis wore road-dark wool because her better gowns had not yet been unpacked, and still every eye found her.
They were dazzling.
Alianor hated them.
She had expected something cruder. A Valcierran princess reaching for a dead woman’s place, Felrian watching with his soft court smile and hard eyes, her father playing host because kings must. But this was worse because it was beautiful. Rydric looked younger when Aelis answered him. Felrian looked less cold when she mocked him. Aelis seemed not an ornament but a clasp discovered after the cloak had already begun to fall open.
When Rydric reached for wine, Aelis passed it before the servant moved. When Felrian began to answer a question from Tanrek about coast roads, Rydric interrupted with the name of a ford Felrian had forgotten, and Felrian accepted the correction with a glance so quick and intimate that it might have been annoyance or pleasure. Aelis saw the glance and smiled into her cup. It was not the courtly play Alianor had seen in Esberia, where men praised women as if reciting from borrowed books. Lord Tanrek noticed too.
“If your Graces can cease completing one another’s thoughts,” he said dryly, “the matter of southern supply remains unsolved. The sea keeps its own counsel, and the roads appear to have learned from it.”
Rydric laughed. “Tanrek believes tide tables are a sacrament.”
“It answers more consistently than bishops.”
Felrian lifted his cup. “A rare compliment to bishops.”
Aelis said, “No, brother. He means tide books do not ask to be paid twice.”
Even Morain, summoned to speak for the supply wagons and seated far below the salt, smiled grimly at that.
The supper might have passed almost peacefully if no one had remembered Alianor.
“Princess,” Aelis called, her voice carrying just enough to turn heads without effort. “Your bout in the yard caused admiration. Sir Aubrey limps most prettily.”
Sir Aubrey, seated below Baudren, lifted his cup. “Princess Aelis wounds more cleanly with language than Princess Alianor does with a sword. I am honoured to suffer under both houses.”
Alianor inclined her head. “Sir Aubrey lost because he looked away.”
“A flaw in all men,” Aelis said. “They look away from what is right before them and then complain that consequences struck them from nowhere.”
The table stilled by degrees. Rydric’s laughter faded. Felrian looked at his sister, and it was unclear whether it was a warning or an encouragement.
Alianor set down her cup. “Some consequences are invited to supper and seated too high.”
Sivelle, standing behind Alianor’s chair among the attendants, closed one hand around the folded napkin she held. Aelis’s smile did not move.
“High places are dangerous, Princess. One sees farther and one falls harder.”
“Then you should take care.”
“I always do.”
“No,” Alianor said. “You take aim.”
Rydric said her name, low enough that it did not carry beyond the high table. Aelis turned back to Rydric with perfect grace.
“My lord, your daughter has the family courage.”
“And none of the family tact,” Rydric said.
Felrian’s mouth curved. “Then she is wholly Aldren and none Aurenne.”
Alianor looked at him. Felrian’s eyes were pale, amused, unreadable. He had not yet learned to hate her, but he had begun to place her among the obstacles of the world, and Felrian was not a man who forgot the shape of obstacles.
Sivelle leaned close enough to refill Alianor’s cup and murmur, “Do not answer.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Yes, you were.”
Alianor drank instead. The wine was too sweet. Across the table, Aelis’s hand brushed Rydric’s sleeve beneath the cover of a servant’s movement. Rydric’s fingers turned and caught hers for one heartbeat. Felrian saw it. His expression changed by no more than breath, but Aelis saw that too, and when she reached for her cup, her knuckles passed lightly over Felrian’s wrist.
That night, in the Esberian women’s tent, Sivelle unlaced Alianor’s sleeves while Alianor stood rigid as a practice post.
“You saw,” Alianor said.
“I see many things.”
“Do not do that.”
“Be precise, then.”
Alianor turned. “They love one another.”
Sivelle paused.
Outside, the camp was settling: horses stamping, men laughing too loudly near the cook fires, Father Aldemar’s voice murmuring evening prayers over a wounded squire, Morain threatening to cut rations for anyone who complained. From the Valcierran quarter came music, softer than the Esberian songs, strings and a hand drum, something courtly.
“Yes,” Sivelle said.
Alianor swallowed.
“My father loved my mother.”
“I believe he did. I was not there to see it.”
“Then what is this?”
Sivelle folded the sleeve carefully before answering. “People are not cups, Highness. Love does not remain in the first vessel poured.”
Alianor looked away.
“She will take him from me.”
Sivelle’s face softened. “No one takes a father from a daughter.”
“I hate her,” Alianor said.
“I noticed.”
Alianor laughed once, bitter. “Of course you did.”
Sivelle finished unlacing the sleeve and drew it free. “And I noticed that Princess Aelis watched you every time your father spoke your name.”
Alianor looked back.
“She is jealous of me?”
“I think so.”
“That is absurd.”
Alianor sat on the narrow camp bed. She touched the misericorde at her belt, thumb moving over the worn grip where Galeran’s hand had held it. Sivelle knelt before her and began unbuckling her boots. Alianor watched the crown of Sivelle’s head, the neat parting of her hair, the quick competent hands.
“Would you leave me?” Alianor asked.
Sivelle’s hand stilled.
“No.”
“If I became cruel?”
“You are already capable of cruelty.”
“That was not my question.”
Sivelle looked up. “If you became cruel enough to enjoy it, I would try to stop you. If you refused me, I would stay long enough to trouble you.”
Despite herself, Alianor smiled. Her hand moved, almost reaching for Sivelle’s hair, unable to withdraw. Sivelle saw and lowered her eyes, giving Alianor the mercy of pretending she had not.