The first thing that hit me as we rode up to the great gates of Castle Ordnung was the absence of the pennants that had always, always flown from the towers, since the first and tallest had been raised.
I hadn’t expected to feel the lack, to have any sense of nostalgia for the missing banners. But even before he’d finished razing Castle Columba and building Ordnung on its bones, Uorsin’s flag had hung over the camp where we’d all lived after Columba fell and the Great War ended. I didn’t remember everything about those days, but some memories persisted with an almost fever-dream intensity to them. The armies, tearing down the ruins of my family home, using ropes and teams of men to pull down the few walls that remained, while others beat on stone with hammers and other tools. The air had been gray with dust and stank of burning bodies.
Then the first shining white tower had grown like a stem sprouting from the soil, shooting up, then blossoming with Uorsin’s bear running against the sky, alive and ravenous. For a while, I’d dreamed of that bear every night. Crimson as fresh blood, it chased and caught me, no matter where I ran. Through forests, through the tent camp, through battlefields littered with the dead, through the halls of Columba, though I knew they no longer existed.
Once I’d awakened to Queen Salena’s hand on my brow. A blue light spun in her palm making her eyes glow with silver. She hadn’t spoken, only smiled and stroked my forehead. I’d fallen asleep with a sense of cool sweetness that calmed and sated me. Always after, when she spoke of the loveliness of Annfwn, I’d imagined that feeling came from there. That had been one reason I’d determined to convince Ursula to let me go there, much as she tried to prevent me, to keep me safe. A piece of my younger self had demanded to know, a far stronger pull than safe practicality. Rare for me.
Once Ordnung had been finished, banners for all the Twelve joined their conqueror’s, flying from the many towers, the bear topping them all. To my bemusement, they had gone from being a sign of defeat to a symbol of continuity, that my life had not shattered again.
The emptiness of the towers hit me with that old dizzying sense of loss, and I groped through it to find words to ask Harlan about it. “You took down all the pennants?”
Harlan frowned, following my gaze. “Illyria must have. They weren’t flying when we took the castle.” He seemed to search his memory. “I’m sure they weren’t. And you’re the first to mention the lack.”
“I imagine it didn’t feel like the highest priority, but as with the coronation, these things must be addressed. The key to an even transfer of regimes is making it seem as if nothing has really changed.”
“Except for the tyrannical abuse of power.”
Well, yes. “For external presentation, to prevent anyone from thinking to take advantage, there can be no apparent cracks. It must seem as if Ursula is simply continuing what Uorsin started.”
“You can explain that to Her Majesty. I look forward to it, in fact.”
I glared at him and he grinned down at Astar, riding wide-eyed in his carry, strapped to Harlan’s broad chest. “Lady Mailloux has a fierce mien,” he said to the baby prince, “but never fear. She is a softie inside. Just don’t get fingerprints on her books or not even your mother will be able to protect you.”
As if on cue, Amelia, looking more like a girl dressed to dance at a Feast of Glorianna than a queen, squeezed impatiently through the opening gates. Her red-gold curls shimmered and the intense violet blue of her eyes shone through her tears. “Oh, thank Glorianna!” she cried in her musical voice as she ran up to Harlan’s stirrup, jumping up and down with her arms outstretched for Astar. “Give me my baby. Where is Stella?”
“Let the man get off his horse, brat.” Ash followed behind her, his scarred mouth twisted by a wide, pleased smile. “And if you took a moment to look, you’d see your cousin Zynda has Stella. How you could miss the head of hair on that child I don’t know.”
“Or the shrieking,” I added.
As soon as Stella, whose black curls indeed sprang wildly round her head, heard her mother’s voice, she’d started fussing and now ramped up to a full-throated wail that demanded instant satisfaction.
“Sounds just like her mother,” Ash commented in his raspy, damaged voice, as Zynda, with her liquid Tala grace, uncoiled from the saddle, leapt down, and handed him the indignant princess. Harlan had already lowered a much-calmer Astar to his mother’s impatient arms, so Ash held out Stella close enough for Ami to rain kisses and coos on her also. Already the twins had grown enough to make it unwieldy to hold both at once. Ash surveyed me with his bright green gaze, so clear and cool in his craggy face. “Good to see you again, Lady Mailloux. We’ve need of your level head and extensive learning.”
“So I’ve been told.” I flicked a glance at Harlan, who’d dismounted and held up a hand to help me down, his expression studiously bland.
Neither did Ash take the bait. “Any trouble?” he asked Harlan.
“More on the way there. A few skirmishes on the way back.” Harlan took note of my surprise. “Our advance teams handled them. I didn’t mention to you as I didn’t want you to worry.”
“I’m perfectly fine with not worrying,” I assured him. Another reason I could never trade places with Ursula—or Andi or Ami, even—as I didn’t have a bold or heroic bone in my body. Give me a quiet room full of books over adventure every time. Maybe seeing the pennants gone and remembering those early days of Uorsin’s triumph, the old memories of Salena and the nightmares, had left a chill over me, but I wanted nothing more at that moment than to find a safe cubby and curl up in it.
Not unlike my six-year-old self, first hiding, then trapped for days in the darkness of that hole while my family, all my people, burned and died. Harlan and his interest in airing old traumas had done nothing more than dig up things best left lying quiet.
He and Ash were discussing the various groups that had attacked—or needed to be chased off—and I made myself focus on that instead.
“The organized group of ‘merchants’ headed for Annfwn sounds like the greatest concern,” Ash mused.
“Yes,” Harlan replied, gesturing us through the gates. “Though that particular set won’t be bothering anyone again, we can certainly expect more of the same. Honestly, that strange monster my patrol put down concerns me most.”
“You’re not accustomed to the Wild Lands yet,” Ash argued. “And your men are not schooled in the creatures there. It could have been something ordinary with—”
“With four legs, a pair of wings, and claws as big as a man’s head?” Harlan interrupted, then shrugged with an easy grin. “And we may as well table this discussion until we all sit down together, as the High Queen and King Rayfe will simply make us go over it all in detail again.”
“She’s not the High Queen,” I said, feeling I needed to. Might as well practice before facing the dragon herself. They all stared at me with varying expressions of consternation and shock.
Anger, on Ami’s part. “Who else would you have?” she demanded.
“Nobody else, Queen Amelia.” I kept my tone mild. “The point is that she isn’t High Queen until she’s crowned. Nor is she Her Majesty. By calling her that, you’re all letting her get away with ducking what she needs to do. There are reasons for these protocols, not the least of which are legal ones. With no one officially sitting on the High Throne, there is no Twelve Kingdoms—only thirteen kingdoms ready to go their own ways again. I’m astounded none of the kings and queens have cited this as grounds to secede. There’s historical precedent for this. We’d have to go to war, conquer them all over again to get them back. I, of all people, am no lover of Uorsin’s methods, but he did create peace. It’s irresponsible of Ursula to risk setting us back this way.”
Ash shook his head, laughing in his rough, voiceless way. “Do you promise to repeat that speech to Ursula where I can listen?”
“I prefer to be out of striking distance, myself,” Harlan said, implacable, but his eyes gleamed with amusement.
Ami sighed. “Dafne is right, but . . . there’s a lot you don’t know. Go a little easy on her,” she said to all of us.
Ash rubbed a hand up her back. “We all have our roles. You support her and Dafne can lay down the law. That’s why we need her here. Ursula will listen to her.”
I only hoped he was correct about that.