EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, Ailsbet went to Issa’s rooms and knocked cautiously. Issa answered the door, looking as if she had not slept all night. Her face was blotched with red and her eyes had dark circles under them.
“What is it?” asked Issa.
“What happened last night?” Ailsbet said. “I saw Kellin hurrying toward your rooms. He must have spoken to you, and he will not see me this morning. He has barred even his servants from his room.”
Issa flushed.
“What did you say to him?” Ailsbet asked. “Did you hurt him? Condemn him? You knew that he could not refuse to marry me in front of my father.”
Issa lifted her chin. “He admitted at last that he loved me.”
Ailsbet shook her head. Issa had made things worse for all of them. “If I ever fall in love, I hope that I shall retain some sense.”
“If you ever fall in love, you will be betrothed, or married, to Kellin,” said Issa.
“Marriage never stopped my father from pursuing any woman he thought he loved,” said Ailsbet.
“You are not like your father in that way, I don’t think,” said Issa. “You are not like him at all, in your personality, however much you look like him.”
“I can be as ruthless as he is,” said Ailsbet.
“Not for your own selfish reasons, however. That is not why you are marrying Kellin. But perhaps once the prophecy is fulfilled, everything will be different, for all of us,” said Issa.
Did anyone truly believe that now? Ailsbet wondered. “That is your final choice, then?” she asked. “You choose not to have Kellin? To give him to me so that you can fulfill the prophecy with Edik? What if the prophecy still does not come true? How will you live with yourself then?”
Issa’s head bowed, and she said no more. Ailsbet left her rooms and went out to the courtyard to watch her father’s guard battle with swords and taweyr. She could not join in, but watching the conflict, hearing their grunts and the clash of steel on steel fed her taweyr in a way she had not allowed before.
That night, Ailsbet went to see Edik. For all her doubts about his suitability as a king, she wanted to warn him about the possibility of his own lack of taweyr, about Lady Pippa and the danger of her becoming pregnant with the king’s child.
“I’m in no mood for company,” Edik said, greeting her at the door. After a moment, though, he stepped back, letting her in.
“You seem unsettled. Why?” Ailsbet asked.
“I am afraid of Princess Marlissa,” he said simply.
Ailsbet was astonished at this. “What is there to fear in her? She never has a harsh word to say, and she treats you with perfect respect.”
“That is what I fear. She makes no mistakes, and I make so many. I know she must think badly of me, yet she never says a word. How can I believe anything she says? She will marry me, and then she will hate me, and all the while she will be smiling.” This was far more rational and endearing than anything Ailsbet had heard Edik say in weeks.
“I’m sure she will open up to you in time,” Ailsbet said. “You have only just started to become acquainted. And you are always with dozens of others in the court, never alone. There are five years until you are married, and by then you will have grown into a man closer to Issa’s equal than you are now. Then when you are wed, you will have time to spend alone with each other. You will see her as she truly is, and she will see you.”
“That terrifies me even more. What if she sees me truly and she hates me? Better to show her a false face.”
Ailsbet smiled.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“I only want what is best for you, Edik,” said Ailsbet.
“And what is that?” asked Edik. “Do you know?”
“Edik, I did not come to war with you. I wanted to make peace. To give you some advice before—” Before she either left Rurik for Aristonne or was betrothed to Kellin.
“All these years, I mocked you for having no weyr. But now I think you are well quit of it,” said Edik suddenly.
“What do you mean?” asked Ailsbet.
“You have never dreamed of going to the continent as I have? Not to Aristonne, of course. They would never let me in there. But I think I would like to travel to Caracassa or the Three Kingdoms. Or anyplace where the name of Rurik is only a legend and little more. Where the weyrs are only stories.”
“Are you serious?”
Edik laughed. “I dream about it,” he said. “Of leaving here and going someplace where I am not a prince, where I could live my life without thinking about taweyr and death and taxes.”
Ailsbet felt a surge of love for her brother. He was not so different from her, after all.
“But, of course, it is impossible. Father would never let me go,” said Edik. “Not while I am living and his only heir with taweyr.”
No, thought Ailsbet, he would not. It seemed there were advantages in being a useless princess. Her father would not pursue her.