Chapter Twenty-Five

 

 

Av found Danya in the gardens, sitting on a bench all by herself. The woman hardly seemed bothered by the fact that she was alone and had no way to return to the healer hall safely.

“Pity is for the ill, and for fools,” she said as he approached.

He tried to focus on something else.

Sitting on the bench beside her, with an appropriate amount of space between the two of them, Av struggled to come up with something to say. Jer wanted him to ask if Danya knew anything about Aren's emotions, but Aren didn't seem to want anyone prying into that fact.

“Did you know that there is a magic here like the link from my village?” Danya asked. “The lines were quite dim at first, but they grow stronger now. I wonder if that wasn’t the curse, but the magic Rewel linked Aren to, the one like the throne.”

“Aren is quite strong, so that is probably why the lines are growing stronger,” Av said.

“Compared to queens of the past few centuries, she is,” Danya murmured. “I believe her greatest skill, however, is how easily she links to other queens, and they to her. This is a thing queens can do, did you know that?”

“My father may have mentioned something of that sort,” Av said.

Or had it been Nae? Or perhaps both had told him a version of the same thing.

Av had been told so much over the past year that he was having a difficult time keeping everything straight. What had happened to his nice, routine life? The one where he knew his own mind and knew where he stood with everyone on palace grounds?

“Let me try another way...” Danya thought in silence for a moment. “The healers are much commenting of Aren's impending mating but her lack of queens for handmaids to help unburden her when she decides it is time to carry a child.”

“You mean to say that those queens are linked together?” Av asked.

“Yes, not in the same way Aren is linked to those around her.” Danya frowned and turned to Av. “The magic comes to Aren and comes to a full stop. She has no ability to access the excess and the other queens have no ability to tap into her magic. Because it is all simply magic that would otherwise have no direction, none of them are affected by their links. No queen is linked to any other queen in the group, at least not yet, which means that their magic all goes to Aren.”

“Ranks don't link that easily.”

“She does. She was linked to four others when she came to me. Anue, Telm, and Mar I've since figured out. Is there a fourth queen at court? Or was there one shortly before she left?”

“There was, but she didn't link to ... her...” The announcement hadn't been made. None of the commoners knew that Van was a queen, though they would suspect that one of the mates of the barons had exploded in the rooms.

“That would make four,” Danya murmured. “And now I swear there are three others linked to her. Are there three more at court?”

“Olea and Iln are both queens and here, but neither of them has linked to Aren.”

“Do you know what Aren has been doing in her own time?” Danya asked. “The three new links are stronger than the one extra one, but not as strong as that of Anue or that of Mar.”

“And now you can tell the strength of her connections as well,” Av muttered.

“I can, and, young man, I do not appreciate your tone.”

Av stared at Danya, looked her up and down and made an annoyed sound. “You appear to be a year older than Aren, so I do not need to hear that tone from you. Even if you are technically older than me.”

“It would seem that very few at court are what they appear to be,” she said.

“Something that is starting to irritate me,” Av grumbled.

“It is my understanding that after Aren is mated, the barons and high lords will go home, court will resume as per usual,” was the casual response. “I was also made to believe that many of the lords and ladies would be returning home in order to make it more difficult for the steward to collect on debts. They each have or know, supposedly, a queen in a village somewhere and this queen in this village would happily run their lights and their water without complaint.”

“I don't even think that's possible.”

“The healers have said as much, they've also said that if Aren is a smart woman, and I will tell her this the next time I see her, but if she is a smart woman, she would take the time after mating to tour the lands. After her winter away it has become obvious to everyone that Aren is not a queen that must be limited only to palace grounds. She might come and go as she pleases.

“It would seem that when one like her tours the lands, others come forward to meet her and pass judgement. It's almost like how the lords and ladies call consent during court. Upon returning to the palace, Aren would have a good grasp of who was a danger to whom. She would know which queens might disobey her and give magic to the lords who are shunned and may even know which lords would abuse their title and attempt to force or manipulate a queen.

“There are not many queens, despite there always being one available in the past. Some hundred on palace lands. So the healer's say.”

“You hear an awful lot,” he said.

“The healers are attempting to catch me up on information they believe I should know. Such as the real reason you called that healer to court. There's nothing they can teach her and they are confounded on finding things they might throw at her to keep her busy while you take your sweet time.”

“She's been here a day,” he protested.

“And in that day she has been found to be just as capable as the most trained at the palace and they are starting to suspect she is stronger than they are and can knit bone back together completely.”

“No, she's not that strong.”

Otherwise, why hadn’t Nae fixed Anue’s bone during the winter, rather than have it heal naturally?

“You sniffed out a healer in another village who lives within the influence of the throne, and just so happened to be in need of a companion before she turned the village against herself,” Danya said sternly. “Lord Av, you may be daft in the way of many things, but you cannot tell me that you do not understand how the throne works.”

“It's never drawn a strong healer before. Sure, it used to in myth and legend. Aren is not myth and legend.”

“It used to before the short-lived queens. Aren is not a short-lived queen. The throne is slowly spreading its influence across the lands, a little stronger and a little farther than it had before. Every queen that links to Aren makes it stronger. When those women return home, they will help spread it even farther because whatever their magic touches, the throne can influence.”

“The barons’ mates are linked to Aren, you said?”

“I doubt the throne will brainwash anyone. It can cause small things that far out. Make a person trip, and find a babe abandoned to die—that sort of thing. Not change the collective mind of an entire land. If it could do that, it would have done it in the first place to stop the era of the short-lived queens, don't you think?”

Av relaxed, but only slowly. “I suppose you would be correct in that assumption.” He decided now was a good time to broach the subject. “Speaking of magic, you no doubt felt what happened today?”

“Did Aren's parents attempt contact?” Danya asked.

“No, someone else became very angry at the mentioning of Aren not feeling like one should. I'd never heard her giggle, a real giggle, until a few days ago. A laugh, sure, but it always felt hollow.”

“She goes through the motions that society expects of her and does so quite well. Well enough that even she does not realize how little she understands.”

“You've seen this yourself?”

“She visited me only for a few moments before whoever began to spark,” Danya said and sighed. “I saw it then. I did not see as I do now, when she and I last met. I believe she is capable of emotion, I saw it even then. I thought it was because we spoke of things that she did not wish to speak of.”

“Our way of fixing anything that isn't bodily is to tell them to take a nap,” Av grumbled.

“And to find the closest appealing body and throw them at the one napping,” Danya said pointedly. “You seem to neglect your duties and instincts, Lord Av.”

“I do no such thing.”

Danya shifted towards him. She attempted to meet his eyes but came about shoulder level instead. The effect was still what she wished it to be, however. Av felt a tingling cold moving through his body.

“If she were any other woman, if she had any other title, what would you be doing right now?”

“She's a lady, so I wouldn't be able to do anything.”

“And the papers you signed, which are still in effect by the way?”

“B-b-but...” was all he managed to get out.

“Stuttering like a child isn't going to help you any. You took control of that woman's life You do not get to casually walk away because things get complicated. Her life above yours. That was what you said. Now you know she's a queen and, what, you're bored with her?”

“I'm not bored with her!” Av shouted, then realized the whole garden had gone silent. People were listening in on his conversation with Danya. Taking in a breath to calm himself, he said steadily, “I am not bored with Lady Aren. She denies access to any male unless she is mated.”

“Or she has a witness present, was what Url said.”

“Then I need to grab someone?” Av demanded.

“She has a handmaid with her at all times. The woman is quite good at melting into the background, but she's still there, always watching.”

Wena—Danya was talking about Wena. Av had seen Aren a handful of times, but he only ever saw Wena during training. He had stopped each time and spoken with Aren, but had never questioned where the handmaid went when training was done.

“Oh, lovely, I can go have tea with her,” Av growled.

“Not tea, you fool,” Danya said. “The court wants a romance, so give them one.”

“Yes, but—” Was he even the one she was going to mate? “Everyone says it's her mating ceremony.”

Danya reached out and swiped at the air, meaning to cuff him upside the head. Av shifted away, putting more distance between the two of them. He had to wonder if she could see shapes and forms, as she seemed to say, and was missing on purpose.

“If you think that woman is going to mate anyone else at court, you should be fighting tooth and nail for her attention. And if you think you are going to be mating her, and that because of that your work is done, then I had best meet with this Telm woman and begin looking for someone else.”

“She's mine!” he protested.

“You keep saying that, but hardly act like it,” Danya snapped back. “The easiest way to solve all your troubles is to make her feel. Not anger, because she's had that, not rage, not frustration—make her feel the better things. You can do that, you can make her feel, but you can't do it if you've got your head so far—”

“In the clouds, I know, people have to stop saying that.”

“—up your own ass.”

“Now that’s just downright mean.”