THE SUN HAD set by the time Hotspur returned to the command pavilion, and the funeral pyres were lit, burning strong enough to cast eerie orange light up against the low clouds.
She tossed aside the flap of canvas shutting up her tent and stormed in, eager to relax out of her armor and into her aches.
“Hotspur,” said her aunt, Vindomata of Mercia.
Hotspur rolled her shoulders. “Aunt,” she said tightly—at the pain, not Vindomata’s presence.
Two young women—girls really—who wished to prove themselves and train under Hotspur as soldiers, immediately began to unfasten the buckles of Hotspur’s armor.
The duke of Mercia lounged washed and clean on Hotspur’s fur-covered pallet in a wool robe the bloody color of her household but lined with expensive orange silk. Vindomata’s high, narrow cheeks were pink and she held a tall goblet that had stained the inner line of her lips dark maroon.
As her aunt watched, the girls unbuckled the chest plate and pauldrons and back plate from Hotspur, who gritted her teeth and did not curse at them: the mingled pain and relief was hardly their fault. They unlaced her mail skirt and one bent to untie her boots while the other freed Hotspur of her heavy leather belt and sword. Gauntlets next, and the shoulder belt with its two remaining knives. Finally, Hotspur lifted her arms and the girls pulled the chain mail shirt up and off.
“I can manage the rest,” Vindomata said. “Bring more wine, and some hot water.”
The girls left obediently.
Hotspur bent to get off her boots. She wiggled her toes, balancing awkwardly to take off her wool socks next. All that remained were her gambeson, shirt, and trousers. When dressed in full battle regalia, Hotspur went without chest bindings. The many layers of armor were more than enough to keep her small breasts where they belonged.
Her aunt stood and set down the goblet. She pulled Hotspur up by the shoulders and unfastened the laces at the gambeson’s throat. The sweaty quilted shirt peeled off Hotspur, and she hissed as it tore at blood that had dried to the wound high on her left shoulder, at the meat of her neck. Other than her bloody mouth thanks to the prince of Burgun, this was Hotspur’s only injury to bleed today.
“If you’d worn a gorget, it would’ve protected you,” Vindomata chided.
“If I’d been faster, I’d not have needed the protection,” Hotspur snapped.
Once she stood naked, Vindomata offered her the goblet of wine. Hotspur drank greedily. She was hungry, but this would do for now.
A girl returned with hot water. The bucket hit the rug at Hotspur’s feet with a thunk, and immediately Vindomata sent the girl away again, picking up a washing cloth herself. She squeezed hot water over Hotspur’s shoulder and scrubbed quickly at the wound.
The scouring pain blazed up Hotspur’s shoulder and into her neck, radiating hot enough to make her woozy. But she did not complain.
Vindomata washed her off efficiently, including pressing the cloth to Hotspur’s face as if she were a tiny child wiggling away with honey on her chin.
Wrapping a blanket around her waist, Hotspur sat on the pallet of fur and straw. She hunched her back and closed her eyes as Vindomata studied the red, raw edges of the shoulder wound.
“We lost the queen’s man. He headed back to Lionis already,” Vindomata said. “I’m going to stitch this.”
“Oh, wormshit.” Hotspur meant the stitches, not the departure of Briginos.
“You won’t remain still long enough for it to heal properly on its own. You’ve already reopened it several times this evening, digging and lifting the wounded and dead and stars know what else.”
“It did hurt rather a lot.”
They waited for the girl to return with wine and food. When she did, Vindomata asked for more water, a needle, and flesh thread. And a lantern. Hotspur pulled the cork on the wine and drank straight from the bottle. She did not fear stitches, but the prospect of holding still for prolonged pain always reminded her how much better she preferred the harsh, sudden pains of battle.
The girl brought Vindomata her requests, and Hotspur leaned over her knees, hugging them. She dug her nails into her shins and gritted her teeth.
“What did you say to Briginos?” Vindomata asked as she pinched skin together and sewed. The lantern aimed at Hotspur’s shoulder cast her shadow black before her.
“Nothing he didn’t deserve,” Hotspur said through her teeth. “He was— Ah, worms do I have to talk through this?”
“Yes.”
“He was disrespectful and idiotic. He deserved none of my time or my soldiers’ time.”
“How like Celeda these days to send such a person to represent her.”
Surprise stuttered Hotspur’s response. “I … well, yes, I suppose, though the queen was once … vicious … on the battlefield.”
“How well I remember,” Vindomata murmured softly. And her aunt stabbed through the flesh of Hotspur’s upper back again, quick and methodical.
Hotspur groaned and tried not to seethe. She needed to keep her breaths as even as she could, to speed her aunt’s progress along. Her upper back and neck had become one long snake of burning pain, and Hotspur needed distraction.
Unfortunately, she thought immediately of Hal. After the Battle of Strong Water, after the king was dead, Hotspur had stitched up a wound in Hal’s side. That had been the very first time they’d had a real conversation.
Hal had been shaking, eyes pressed closed, and Hotspur willing to pretend for the new prince that her tremors were from pain. But she’d known it was trauma. Is stealing a crown a thing worth dying for? Hal had whispered.
Hotspur had found Hal’s question endearing—a question for a poet, not a soldier. She had replied, musing, Prince Hal. It has a good ring to it.
If only the title hadn’t turned Hal’s heart to seashells and her blood to cheap red wine.
It had been eight months since Hotspur left Lionis, and all she’d heard of Hal was that the prince had fallen into the wastes of the city and into the arms of other women who did not try to be worthy of anything. Once, Hal had wanted to be a prince for the people, uniting Aremoria with stories and revelry and charm, but apparently her plan now was nothing more than irresponsibility and decay. Or Hotspur had never known her at all.
Hotspur had stopped trying to understand. She woke at night, sometimes, wondering if Hal would be better if Hotspur had stayed, if they still called her the Lion Prince, and if Hal could even still play to that stage. But Hotspur told herself again and again that if Hal couldn’t do this alone, she shouldn’t be doing it at all.
Better everyone see their prince for what she was now than when it was too late.
“There,” Vindomata said, using one of Hotspur’s knives to slice the needle free of the stitched wound. Her aunt jabbed the needle into a pillow to keep from losing it, then slathered on a tingling salve that smelled of yarrow and honey.
Gently stretching, Hotspur went to the small trunk at the head of her pallet to pull out a clean shift. She put it on, wincing as the newly sewn wound pulled, but glad she had this much range of motion. The linen fell to her knees, and Hotspur tied the front closed. She sat again in a low chair and reached for the tray of food. A handful of olives and nuts filled her mouth, so she could not answer when Vindomata said, “Now tell me your plans for Douglass, and why you would not give him to Briginos.”
Flames from nearby soldiers’ fires flickered outside, and the dull orange light diffused shadows throughout the tent. Hotspur closed her eyes and swallowed. “I told you I did not like Briginos. He was an imbecile and demanding, and moreover didn’t understand anything about the process of war. He didn’t even know negotiating for burial of the Burgun soldiers was part of his purpose!”
“Be calm, Hotspur.” Vindomata shifted, lying down on the pallet again. She reached for a chunk of cheese. “I trust your judgment. I only wish to know the depth of your thinking.”
Hotspur licked olive oil from her lip and took another drink of wine. The bottle was nearly half empty; she’d had too much, but the warmth dragging at her mind and popping in her cheeks was more pleasant than the echoing pain in her shoulder. She needed to remember to put salve on her temple and side and hip where bruises had formed, and at the raw spot at the front of her right shoulder where the chest plate had rubbed.
“Hotspur.”
Clearing her throat, Hotspur said, “I am keeping him. I caught him, he’s my hostage. I’ll negotiate.”
“Celedrix will appreciate that not at all.”
“She should have brought Mora home then!”
The yell startled Hotspur herself more than Vindomata, who only raised dark eyebrows and waited.
Hotspur caught her breath.
It was a gross injustice that Mora had not been ransomed home. Celedrix flaunted the rules of war and honor by letting Innis Lear keep their cousin—the former heir!—prisoner on those grimy shores. More than a year Mora had been trapped there—and the March still flew no flag.
Vindomata said, “Tell her.”
“What?” Hotspur ate a dried fig, for a moment to think.
“Tell our queen to bring Mora back, if she wants Douglass from you.”
“That sounds like a threat more than a request.”
Her aunt shrugged, for all the world seeming relaxed, casual as a daybird lounging in her robe on Hotspur’s pallet. “As you said, Celeda should have brought Mora home already.”
“She needs to know we remember,” Hotspur whispered. She’d written to Celedrix three times over the past six months, asking in the most direly polite terms for the ransom.
“She is the one who must remember.” Vindomata frowned, and the delicate lines at her eyes and lips deepened. Her eyes fluttered as if weary. She was nearly fifty years old, after all, though still strong, lean, and battle-hardened.
“Remember Mora?”
Vindomata accepted the wine bottle from Hotspur and drank, never taking her gaze from her niece’s. “Remember,” she said, giving the wine back, “why she rebelled against Rovassos. Injustice. A king reaching beyond his means. The opposite is just as deadly. To reach not at all.”
Hotspur lowered her voice to barely a whisper. “You don’t trust Celeda anymore.”
“Do you?”
The question hung between them like a string of bile. Hotspur’s stomach rolled; she told herself it was too much wine too fast, and the pain of her shoulder, and exhaustion.
But she saw it in her aunt’s light eyes: Vindomata had been a king-killer once. And a queen-maker. For without Mercia and the Persy strength, Celedrix would not wear the crown now. And it had cost Vindomata her two children, regardless of how they’d been killed. Either way, they were dead.
The queen owed them.
“I trust you, Aunt,” Hotspur said.
“Good. The question that matters most, dear one, is whether our queen trusts us. Does she trust that we will negotiate over Douglass in good faith? Does she trust us enough to speak with us honestly about why she leaves Banna Mora on Innis Lear? I do not know the answer.”
Hotspur cried, “She should! We are loyal to Aremoria, we are her sword!”
“Hush, hush, Wolf.” Vindomata laughed softly.
Drinking, Hotspur closed her eyes. Vindomata had never asked her about the prophecy; perhaps she’d never heard of it. The wine tingled at the roof of Hotspur’s mouth. She swallowed slowly. “Tell me I must not give over my prisoner.”
“Not yet, at least. We will take him home and see. Now let me comb out your tangled hair, Niece, and scrub the last of bloody battle from your scalp.”
Hotspur obeyed, sitting again before her aunt at the pallet until, lulled by the gentle tugs of fingers and comb, she sighed herself to sleep.