WITHIN DAYS OF her arrival on Innis Lear, Hotspur learned three things: there were too many cats in Connley Castle, her husband was considered strange even by his family, and the island itself did not seem to like her much.
In hindsight, she should have expected the cats.
They married quietly at Annyck. Connley wore the cold winter blue of the Errigal dukes, and allowed rings to be placed on a few fingers. With white paint he dotted a small constellation up on his left temple; with black ash he streaked a tear-line down his right cheek. Hotspur wore polished chain mail over her best Persy-green dress and put red on her lips for her mother’s sake. She drank too much, and her husband kissed her forehead when he put them both to bed, whispering in gentle Aremore, “Maybe we will dream of each other.”
Hotspur rarely recalled her dreams.
Preparations for a winter abroad kept Hotspur busy, and she dragged her husband briefly to Red Castle for a week where she could leave instructions for her retainers and staff, and meet with her army. After much deliberation, she decided to take her first aide, Sennos, with her to Innis Lear, and twenty retainers. It was an official visit, after all, and Perseria must make much of itself to the barbarian islanders. Besides the warriors, they would have attendants and a handful of cousins.
She also set Douglass free. He grumbled about her wedding, gripping her wrist too hard, and Hotspur only sighed as though bored. If he chose to act the ass, that would be answer enough to the question of whether they could be allies. Douglass loomed over her and said, “You will break him.”
“Innis Lear breeds survivors, they say.”
The prince of Burgun sneered but released her.
Though Connley carried himself with the hardened ease of every Learish person Hotspur had ever met, he was no warrior. With his lack of weaponry but for a dagger, his long tunic and soft boots, loose curls, pretty face, and gentle attitude, he simply offended Douglass. To be spurned in favor of such a man rankled the prince. Hotspur liked the effect and considered it a bonus. One of the few gracing this marriage alliance.
“No doubt you’ll go home to countless willing bedmates,” she teased, expecting a carnal response.
Instead Douglass said, “Oh, I do not think I shall return home … yet.”
And he had not, accompanying their party west to the March, where Hotspur showed her new husband to her aunt, and held her breath for approval. She’d instructed Connley to stand tall, to focus on Vindomata instead of allowing his gaze to drift or his attention to wander into the wind. And not to talk to the wind, for to everyone watching his one-sided whispering conversation appeared as madness. Especially when he frowned a little and said the trees here were so sleepy, they’d lost the cadence of their own tongue.
Vindomata had eyed him up and down and asked, “How are you with a blade?”
“Passing, my lady,” Connley said. “But I am no warrior.”
“Your sister is great.”
“So she was trained to be; I was raised a witch.”
The Mercian duke sniffed. “Does your magic translate onto the battlefield? The soldiers of the March claimed a wizard accompanied Owyn Glennadoer here and used obfuscating magics to fool Banna Mora’s scouts as to the number and placement of his armies.”
Connley frowned. “I have never tried to hide an army, and so could not say if it were possible.”
Vindomata slid her niece a cool, disbelieving glance. It had been either a very innocent answer or very shrewd avoidance. Hotspur shook her head: the former, certainly, for the one thing she understood already about Connley Errigal was his inability to lie.
They were still in the March when orders came for Vindomata to relinquish the keep to Celedrix’s commander, in the name of Prince Calepia, the new Lord March.
“Celedrix knows it’s to be war, but will not declare it before we do,” Vindomata said, pleased. “I will withdraw myself when you sail, but most of my men will remain under this new commander.”
The fourteenth night after their wedding, Connley said to Hotspur, “You are terrifying, but I would like to ask you a favor.”
She’d paused at the edge of the bed. Hotspur had already been undressed by one of her girls and wore only a long nightshirt, though at home she was more used to sleeping nude. But she and Connley had yet to acquaint themselves with each other’s naked flesh. They slept together only because Connley had balked at taking separate chambers, claiming he did not wish to be viewed as incapable by her family and retainers, and Hotspur agreed it best they keep their awkward lack of marital bliss a secret. When she broke his body down into separate parts in her imagination, she did feel desire, as she had beneath the oak tree. Only there were so many complications, and Connley seemed similarly confused.
So, when he asked for permission to ask for a favor, she said, “Yes?” rather too harshly.
Connley spoke no more for a long time. Hotspur swallowed the mistake and turned to face him, frowning guiltily. He was standing across the low bed, in a similar long shirt, with a pinched brow and his hands hanging at his sides. Lonely as a man could look. It was dim in their inner bedchamber, lit only by the quiet orange fire.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
It crooked his mouth into a smile, but a small one. “I did say you are terrifying.”
“What is your favor? I’ll give it to you if I can.”
“You can.”
“Well?” She flipped her hands impatiently.
“May I call you Isarna?”
“Why?”
Connley studied her for a moment, lips just barely parted, hinting at how much he wanted this. “You’re my wife, and we have not—shared anything just between the two of us.” He gestured vaguely at the bed. “I would like something intimate, for only myself.”
“My name,” Hotspur murmured, oddly disbelieving. She felt lightheaded at the thought that use of her birth name was a gift she could bestow. “All right,” she whispered, before she could be afraid of giving so much.
He licked his bottom lip and blinked those dark-moon eyes. “Isarna,” he said, testing.
Hotspur shivered. Abruptly she climbed into the bed and curled on her side, back to Connley. She dragged the heavy wool blanket to her chin and closed her eyes tightly as he got in behind her and pulled the fur over their feet. Hotspur concentrated on breathing evenly, wondering if she should turn and embrace him, or reach at least for his hand. But her eyes prickled with tears and she did nothing.
Connley remained quiet. There was no wind tonight, and the fire settled without crackling. She huddled, unbalanced though the mattress was perfect and soft, her feet warm.
Suddenly, Hotspur said, “Connley, what shall I have from you?”
“What do you mean?” he answered immediately; he’d not been dozing at all.
“You have my name, alone to call me, but I have nothing similar from you,” she whispered.
“Oh. What shall I give you?”
Hotspur turned over and found the gleam of his eyes. She tucked her hands under her chin, fists full of blanket. “I don’t know.”
“I …” Connley’s voice trailed into a sigh. He reached for her and put cold fingers on her cheek. “I’m in love with someone, since I was fourteen.”
It was quite the thing to confess to one’s new wife. Hotspur’s eyes widened in surprise but she said nothing.
“A prince,” Connley whispered. “Someone I could never have lived happily with, forever. So it affects me, but not … us.”
His large eyes held such tragedy, Hotspur thought she might cry for the both of them. She did not say, Me, too, husband.
In the near week since that night, they’d not had so intimate a conversation again.
The afternoon they sailed from the Marchtown port to Innis Lear, Hotspur had stood at the prow of the ship, arguing with Vindomata about how to broach certain martial subjects with Banna Mora. Suddenly, cries of surprise had lifted from the pier. Hotspur had leaned over the wooden rail to see her skinny husband carefully lowering himself into the ocean. Her mouth fell open. He’d removed his tunic and trousers, and piled them under his discarded boots. Every muscle of his back and arms shifted visibly as he climbed down the stone column, half submerging.
Hotspur clenched her jaw and simply watched.
Connley dipped underwater. For a long moment he was gone.
“Errigal,” called Douglass from atop the pier. He stomped a foot against the wooden slats. It had seemed as though Connley vanished underneath.
Yelling from the opposite side of the pier drew her attention, and Hotspur moved farther onto the prow of the ship to see: yes, there was Connley swimming carefully toward the retaining wall. One hand pulled him along through the surf, the other lifted something small into the air, keeping it well away from the sea. Water streamed from his heavy-hanging curls.
As Connley made his way to the wall, everyone stared. A few sailors around Hotspur murmured superstitious prayers; Douglass strode to the retaining wall, joining a small crowd at the ladder that plunged down into the ocean there. The tide was in, so the waters licked high enough to carry Connley and whatever precious thing he held nearly to the top rung. Sailors bent over to haul Connley up, and Douglass shoved his way nearer.
Suddenly, Douglass’s laughter rose bold and strong. “It’s a fucking kitten!”
Connley glanced out at the ship, dripping and naked but for a loincloth and the leather cord hung with very wet feathers. Hotspur could not read his expression.
He said something, and the crowd parted, except Douglass, who put his chest in Conn’s face, speaking. After a moment, Douglass, too, moved from Connley’s path, and with a bright grin called out to Hotspur, “The little thing crept out there, he says, when the tide was low, and trapped itself in the underbelly of the pier. None of us heard anything, but the wind told your husband, Lady Hotspur.”
She grimaced as Connley handed the creature to a woman beside one of the fish carts.
Vindomata joined Hotspur at the rail and said, rather amused, “You’ll need to bed that sort of airy behavior out of him.”
Hotspur made a sound even she could not define: frustration, embarrassment, incredulity.
Her aunt knew how to interpret it. “You haven’t slept with him. Hotspur, stars of heaven, he’s your husband three weeks.”
“We married fast to solidify this alliance. Everything else we can do at our own pace.” Hotspur spoke through her teeth to keep quiet.
“Loving a girl when you were young does not necessitate giving up men.”
Hotspur turned sharply. “I am attracted to him,” she hissed.
“Then why wait?”
“Because I …” Hotspur closed her eyes and drew a deep breath before she yelled. Her hand found the hilt of her whispering sword.
“Get it over with, Hotspur, purge this hesitation and all will follow.” Vindomata sounded both tender and impatient.
“It would’ve been easier with Douglass,” Hotspur complained viciously, eyes tracking again to Connley Errigal. He’d returned to his clothing on the pier and was currently tying the laces of his trousers. His hipbones were sharp, poking out of the band; she imagined putting a hand there, in the hollow.
“I did not think you liked the prince of Burgun at all.”
“I don’t, but … he at least would not have cared about my hesitations, once we were married.”
Vindomata laughed. It startled Hotspur into looking, for such an easy sound was rare from her aunt. Mirth painted itself across Vindomata’s face. “You mean to tell me you are complaining that your husband respects your desires?”
Now Hotspur knew her cheeks were aflame. “Hurry up, Connley,” she yelled down at the pier.
His head snapped up. No smile, just that same calm, blithe expression. He glistened with water droplets. She saw him say, Isarna.
Later that night she told him cats drowned all the time.
THE WIND OF Innis Lear gusted without cessation and enveloped Connley the moment they were ashore. He smiled sweetly and spoke in the hissing tree tongue. Fallen leaves shivered about his ankles, rising in a brief whirlwind of gold and faded green-brown. He turned and held out his hand to her.
Hotspur took it, knowing his whispering now was introduction: her to the island air.
Little blue butterflies that should have died in this cold end of autumn drifted down like tiny shards of the sky and flounced lazily around his head. Three landed on his shoulder, casually batting their wings.
“Worms,” Hotspur said, unsettled.
Sennos stiffened at her side, and two young women who’d come as Hotspur’s attendants clutched each other’s hands.
“Welcome to all of you,” Connley had said, his smile bright.
Connley.
Hotspur thought for a moment she heard his name spoken by the wind, joyously, eagerly—but then they were surrounded by Learish folk, Errigals and queen’s retainers, messengers and servants and townsfolk at home in Port Comlack. It had surely been one of them, calling out.
The trip to Connley Castle would take three days, directly north, and they spent the first night at Queen’s Keep. Hotspur slept not a wink, for every time she drifted off, something hissed in her ear, shocking her awake again like the sting of a wasp. Connley could not hear it, though he remained awake with her to listen.
She rode exhausted, and could not find her favorite white gloves. In Aremoria it still had been fully bright autumn, but here winter bit harder and faster. Though the sky was clear and the constant wind not too freezing, the sunlight itself was crystal cold.
Connley thrived. He rode beside her when he could stand it, otherwise looping off the trail and finding them again in an hour. Hotspur went with him sometimes, asking about the land. He told her the names of trees and scrub as they climbed along the eastern edge of the White Forest, up into karst plains. But when he was not answering her questions, Connley talked openly with the wind in the whispering tree tongue. He smiled, winced, spoke fast as if arguing, and even once laughed. The Errigals ignored it; Hotspur’s party openly avoided Connley. Hotspur herself could hear the words tucked into the wind’s replies, though she did not understand.
A bird pooped on her shoulder the second day. As they lunched beneath the shelter of some oaks, an acorn pelted her on the head. It hurt for such a tiny thing, and there was no squirrel nor gust of wind to explain it.
Her coffee as they rose the third morning was shockingly cold. She took a second sip and poured it out in a fury. Steam drifted visibly from Sennos’s cup. Her captain eyed it, and offered his to her, but she screwed up her face in refusal.
Hotspur complained to nobody, especially not Connley, nor the acting duke of Errigal who’d greeted them at Port Comlack and escorted them to his ducal seat. He was a broad man with an easy smile and a booming voice, a craggy unhandsome face that he compensated for with kindness. Connley’s uncle, he called Hotspur his niece and said he looked forward to sparring against her talkative sword.
Could everyone on Innis Lear hear the blade growl?
“No,” Connley said, when she asked. “Only wizards and witches and maybe a few with iron magic in their blood, like Errigals.”
That was a relief, she supposed.
Connley Castle spread broad limestone arms in concentric walls around a low grassy mound and a black ruin that had once been a fortress keep. Built only two hundred years before, the modern castle was an elegant, sprawling citadel in Aremore style, with slate roofs, glassed windows, and more concern for accommodation and grandeur than defense. Oddly, no village spilled from the base of the castle walls. The nearest town was in a valley to the south, Sker, and quite large. Errigal told her it nearly rivaled Astora City in Taria dukedom, the largest city on the island, and perhaps in another generation Sker would overtake the other.
Here Hotspur was treated like royalty returning home. The entire castle had been garlanded with golden wheat and pinecone wreaths, while thorn twigs bright with vermillion haws decorated the doors. In the great hall fresh rushes covered the floor and the hearth burned sweet-smelling juniper. Hotspur was bedecked with hard berries strung into necklaces, as was Connley, and three young women asked to weave charms into her hair. Bemused, Hotspur allowed it. This place reminded her of Annyck at the midwinter holidays, except for the cats blinking from every corner and twining between her ankles as she walked. Her smile was unforced, even after her annoying, sleepless days of travel. She took Connley’s hand, to the obvious pleasure of his uncles, aunts, and cousins.
Sin Errigal presided, insisting Hotspur and Connley drink spiced honey wine with her and sit in fur-covered chairs at the fire. The hall was narrow for a castle this size and ribbed with pale stone pillars, but the crush was alleviated by the reaching height of the ceiling, some three stories overhead. Hotspur began to sweat right away, and laughingly divested herself of her traveling leather and mail right there with everyone.
“No airs, this one,” the acting duke of Errigal said to the entire hall, adding his booming laugh.
Connley’s eyes gleamed quickly from the alcohol, and he took up Hotspur’s hand again once she was stripped down to her wool shirt and trousers. Quietly he said, “You look very Learish,” and it was difficult for Hotspur to tell if it pleased him or was merely a statement of fact.
Hotspur held on to him with one hand and her mead with the other, concentrating as she was introduced to a stream of Errigals. Sin Errigal had five children, all of whom had lived long enough at least to produce seventeen grandchildren for her, most of whom had children of their own, and in one case, grandchildren. There were a total of three men named Errigal who occasionally went by Rory: the acting duke, his eldest son, and Rory the Youngest, who along with Era Star-Seer were the twice-great-grandchildren of Sin. Hotspur thought to herself that at least such a prolific family did the world the favor of giving them all the same name: if one forgot, guessing Errigal or a feminine version thereof would offer close to a two in three chance of being correct.
One of her new cousins, the youthful, freckled Era, promised Hotspur a prophecy for her marriage, since that was a tradition she and Connley had neglected in Aremoria. Connley, who was mostly ignored by the sprawl of family—the way a worn and familiar pet is ignored (the way most of the cats were ignored)—accepted on his wife’s behalf. They were interrupted, however, by the late arrival of a young prince of Innis Lear, who charged into the great hall with a helmet under his gauntleted arm.
Hotspur knew him. He was Mared Lear, the prince who’d disturbed the tournament to deliver that cursed prophecy.
Mared grinned wildly as he pushed through children and gathered cousins. His pale face was long and sharp, his lips pink and thin, and his dark eyes merry. He’d been out with retainers, and his light brown hair was flattened and mussed from helmet and sweat. “Lady Hotspur!” he cried. “It is more than an honor—sorry, Grandmother,” he added quickly to Sin Errigal, dropping to his knee to kiss her cheek, then popped back up with the restless ease of youth.
“Mared,” Connley said, for Hotspur’s benefit.
“I remember,” she said. Though she knew him to be older than her, his spirit seemed nearer that of a newborn colt.
“We’ve met?” Mared’s expression broadened into horror. “I could not possibly have forgotten so—”
Hotspur took pity. “I was at Queen Celeda’s tournament.”
“Oh!” His enthusiasm sparkled. “In that case, I’m delighted to formally meet you, and please, you must tell me about Twin Oaks, in your own words. I will perish if you don’t.”
Hotspur said, suddenly wondering if this was the prince Connley loved, “I’d rather not be the cause of death of any islanders my first week here.”
The prince laughed. “Good, then, you’ll tell all of us about the battle strategy, and we’ll make poems about it.”
“We will eat first, young man,” Sin declared in her creaky, loud voice.
They did—it was easy to see that whatever Sin demanded occurred in Connley Castle. Mared and Rory the Youngest, Era Star-Seer—who had to be the youngest star priest Hotspur had ever encountered—entertained her and Connley, though mostly her, while the benches and tables were arranged and trenchers brought out. A massive pig had been roasted and was presented with a short prayer to the stars and roots of Innis Lear.
It was perfect. Hotspur ate, drank, told her best tales of battle—triumphant, frightening, and intense—and in turn convinced Sin and the duke to tell her a few stories about Connley. Mared Lear gossiped enthusiastically, not only about her husband, but his cousin Banna Mora, and their childhood he’d shared, for Mared had been fostered here with the Errigals. Though Mora had left for Aremoria when Mared was seven, he’d grown up with Connley, about whom he knew all the strange tales.
None of the stories bothered Conn at all. Hotspur was glad of it, for she preferred a husband unashamed of himself and his past, but the stories were as weird and Learish as stories could get, lacking only earth saints. Apparently, her husband had learned lullabies from the wind itself, charmed ravens into the castle to eat from his hand, and once he’d been found inside the deep navel well in the inner yard of the castle. It was several adult-lengths deep and filled with water enough to drown a grown man, yet Connley had fallen in as a four-year-old child and been missing for hours. When finally someone thought to ask the wind, the frantic adults were directed to the navel well. His laughter could be heard echoing up the black stone channel. As his mother called for rope and his father prepared to climb down, the waters themselves rose. Cradled, safe and wet, by the rootwaters of Innis Lear, Connley was delivered up into his mother’s arms. Hotspur turned a disbelieving eye to her husband, who listened with an unfocused gaze, either remembering or seeing through the great hall into, perhaps, the dark center of Innis Lear that once he had looked upon as a child.
Hotspur experienced a sudden urge to ask if he’d touched the beating heart of this wild, living island.
Instead, she only smiled very slightly at him and shook her head in wonder.
She went to bed that night secure in knowing this family, outrageous as they might be, was willing to include her. It was almost enough to replace the great love she’d lost.
When she woke in the morning, rolling to stretch, a painful jerk tore at her scalp: her hair was caught on something. Groaning softly, she kept her eyes closed and reached up to feel.
Her hair was a disastrous tangle.
Instinctually, she tried to sit, to better perceive what had happened: the pain of pulling hair put tears in her eyes and she gasped. “Connley!”
“Isarna?” Her name was muffled; then came the sound of him pushing open the bedroom door from the outer room. “Oh, stars!”
Morning shone clear through the glass windows of this wedge-shaped tower room. Connley was fully dressed and fell into a crouch at her side, hands in the air as though he wished to touch her, but could not bring himself to.
“What is wrong with my hair?” Hotspur asked carefully, forcing her breathing slower. Her heartbeat skittered with something close to panic.
“Spirit-knots,” Connley said. “I am so sorry.”
She frowned. Spirit-knots were from children’s tales and legend: little ghosts or goblins, or the shape-shifting pets of earth saints, worked tangles and ladder loops into the hair of a person who’d offended them or their masters. Hotspur raised her hands again and walked her fingers along her curls. She felt frayed tangles and splitting knots, hunks of terrible fuss around a few of the charms woven in by the Errigal girls last night. And a few spots of something sticky forcing her hair into twisted ropes.
“I think that’s sap,” Connley murmured, leaning close enough that his shadow fell over her face.
“Get back!”
Hotspur pushed at him, suddenly frantic. She couldn’t pull away because of the endless aching pressure on her scalp. Her hair was ruined. Tears gummed her eyelashes and she gasped back a sob. “Who did this to me?” she demanded. “I thought your family welcomed me, Connley! Why would they do this? What for? It is—it is cowardly and a terrible prank. I did not think your family would be so cruel.”
“No, Isarna, please, it was not my family, they would never.”
“Then it was you?” She said it so furiously the accusation was like fire, and he startled away.
Connley said, “I swear to you it was not me or any of my family who did it. I will—I will show you, but first let me get someone to help … free you.”
“No.” She covered her face with her hands, surprised at the strength of her sadness. How glad she’d been last night, how relaxed and learning to like her fast marriage, thankful for the family she’d gained.
All had come undone. As if by knotting her hair, whatever thing had done this simultaneously unknotted her heart.
“Isarna, tell me what I can do.”
She lowered her hands and said to her lap, “Don’t—don’t go. Free me yourself, Connley Errigal. Husband.”
“I’ll be right back,” he murmured, and vanished out of the bedroom.
Hotspur took deep breaths, trailing her hands out along the hunk of hair that pulled and hurt: it was knotted to both of her boots where they sat paired beside the bed frame. Tiny braids twisted and wove around the buckles. Tears slipped down her cheeks as she lifted the boots onto the bed, alleviating the pressure on her scalp. Red, orange, and dark blond hairs frayed around the metal. She tried unwinding them, but it was too intricate, as if done by little spirit hands indeed.
Wind hissed down the chimney, puffing out over the cold hearth like a laugh and scattering black ashes.
Connley reentered, holding a thin razor and a bone pick. “I’ve asked for warm wine and some breakfast. Let them think we …”
“Fine,” she grunted. Hotspur brought her legs crossed and cradled the boots in her lap, hunched miserably around it all.
Her husband began the arduous process of freeing her. Though surely he was gentle as possible, it hurt more than it did not, especially as he removed the charms. Hotspur roused herself to demand the razor and sliced herself free of the boots. She said nothing and ignored new tears.
When one of their attendants brought breakfast, Connley rushed into the outer room and took it before anyone could find her. He poured wine from a warm pitcher and pressed it into her hand. Hotspur drank. As she settled into this horror, her skin puckered with cold; the fire remained unlit and she sat in only a shirt, wool blankets crumpled around them like a nest.
Finally, Hotspur said, “Just cut it all off, Conn.”
She felt his hesitation.
“Do it.”
“It will be uneven, and short.”
“Instead of uneven, broken, and long?”
The sigh Connley expressed sounded bitter. “I am sorry.”
“You didn’t do it.”
“I did not, but it is my fault nevertheless.”
Hotspur closed her eyes and said, “Cut, then tell me.”
And so Connley cut nearly an arm’s length of hair off Hotspur’s head, leaving her with messy, layered curls just longer than her ears in most places.
He gathered the ruined spirit-knots and Hotspur touched her lighter hair. It did not feel real. Always it had been long enough to wind in braids around her head, or stream loose down her back in bed, ends tickling her hips, and Hal had—
Hotspur stopped remembering.
They each drank another cup of wine, tepid now, in silence and staring at each other. Hotspur tried not to imagine how terrible she looked, instead studying Connley as he mirrored her cross-legged position at the foot of the bed. Never before in their brief relationship had he been the one of them more dressed.
Connley watched her expressionlessly. She supposed his hair was longer than hers now, though barely. Angry, Hotspur reached out and touched the ends of his dark curls: they were lank at the moment, and frizzing apart slightly into messy waves and random spirals. Connley did not move; he hardly seemed to breathe.
Then with a sigh of frustration, Hotspur ran her hands through her hair, pushing it all back, combing it with her fingers, getting caught in more usual tangles. It wasn’t so bad.
“Get dressed,” Conn said. “I need to show you something.”