HAL BOLINBROKE’S FIRST few hours on Innis Lear passed in a haze of wonder, despite the dire reasons for coming. Her entire life she’d wished to visit this dangerous, wild island, and here she finally was. She intended to enjoy it as long as she could. When she met Hotspur again, and Banna Mora, any pretense of holiday would swiftly end.
They’d sailed around the south cape to arrive at Port Comlack. Cliffs cut up from the sea, glaring and sand-pale, and a biting wind flushed off the island, blasting at Hal’s already chapped cheeks, fighting the sail of her barge. The sailors lowered it and maintained course with a heavy, rhythmic rowing song. Hal couldn’t even hear the splash and dip of the oars over the spitting wind.
It tasted of rain and earth, not fish, not salt: this was no ocean wind, but a true wind of Innis Lear—the sort that talked, that beckoned and begged and denied.
At her side, the wizard closed his eyes.
Hal tossed an arm around his narrow shoulders. “We’ve arrived!” she said in Learish.
“So we have,” he replied in the same.
They’d cast off from Aremoria hours before dawn, and for the hours they’d sailed Hal had pestered the wizard to speak with her in Learish, to better practice her pronunciation. The wizard had sighed with exasperation. “Best ask some other, when we arrive, Prince Hal. My accent is a hundred years old.”
Hal nearly dove off the barge in heady glee that he admitted such, and her wild grin was matched, inasmuch as he was capable of matching such high emotion, by the deepening of the crows-feet wrinkles at the wizard’s mud-green eyes. As if he hid a smile.
It took the rest of the afternoon to unload the barge of Hal’s royal accoutrement and the gifts she’d brought on her own and her mother’s behalf for the nobility of Innis Lear. They were met by Rory Errigal, the son of the acting duke of Errigal, who was near forty, tall and broadly muscled, with those blasted red freckles Hal had recognized on the young, round face of Era Errigal those months ago in her Uncourt. Rory welcomed Hal with all the proper words, and Hal enthusiastically clasped his arm, eager to hear about Errigal and this area around Port Comlack.
Her visit had been highly negotiated and the details arranged prior, so Hal knew she’d not be sleeping under any of Queen Solas’s residences until meeting with the queen herself a few days from now in Astora City, the seat of the Taria dukes. Rory Errigal would escort her party along the Innis Road through the queen’s land, skirting the Earl Rosrua’s territory until they leaned north into Bracoch lands. At that point the Earl Bracoch would join them to lead them into Taria. Most nights Hal and her party would pitch a camp, staking some slight sovereign claim to the circle of their fires. When finally they were welcomed by Solas herself, they’d become a part of the queen’s household for the journey farther north to Dondubhan for the winter holidays.
Hal didn’t mind traveling rough; it reminded her of the weeks spent campaigning with Banna Mora and the rest of the Lady Knights. Sleeping under the stars; building fires; the hard earth at her back; the sounds of her fellows laughing and snoring; all of it filled her with a sense of ease.
Having Lady Ter Melia with her helped.
Hal hadn’t had much contact with the former Lady Knight in the past year, as Ter Melia had left Hal’s service when Hotspur had still been in Lionis, recruited by Commander Abovax to the queen’s personal guard. But Hal welcomed her on this mission anyway, with a trust born of nostalgia and hope.
The first few hours on the island, Hal studied the wizard carefully, expecting what, she wasn’t quite sure. (For him to age backward, perhaps, becoming a young man her age; for flowers to blossom in his footsteps; for the flecks of color in his eyes to change into stars; for the wind to gust and transform him into a dozen ragged black crows.) All the wizard did, however, was wander away from the party unloading at the docks, head tilted, while fingers of wind pulled at his mussed black hair rather like a friend. Hal chased after, inviting him and Ter Melia to join her along the path she’d noticed up the bluffs to the west. The three trudged up the gravelly path between long fronds of brown and golden grass that all bent the same way: toward the sea. In Hal’s experience, wind blew harshest from the ocean, battering sand and grasses in all directions.
It was an exhilarating walk, if freezing. Winter settled early on Innis Lear, and though it was several weeks still until the Longest Night, ice already kissed the wind and dawns were frost-heavy.
Ter Melia posed at the pinnacle of a bluff and stared out over the wavelets pouring toward the island. “Innis Lear feels as they said it would.”
“Alive? Wild?”
“Dangerous.”
Hal laughed, for she agreed. The rocks below shimmered in the mist off crashing waves and Hal leaned farther out, aware of how easy it would be to tip over. Would it be like flying, for those short breaths before her body broke upon the threshold of sea and shore? A pull from below her heart whispered Try it, and Hal shifted her weight away from the edge, not trusting herself, afraid of the reckless impulse.
Vertigo caught her in its spinning grip, and she seized Ter Melia’s wrist.
“Careful,” Ter Melia cautioned.
Hal glanced over her shoulder at the wizard. His back was to them as he stared out over the golden fields pocked by rough stones and tangles of gray-green bushes. She moved toward him and followed his gaze. Far, far in the distance, beyond a dip in the moor, smoke rose and then a hazy outline of hills tall enough that perhaps they were mountains.
“That,” the wizard said, “is the way to Scagtiernamm.”
“Thorn trees? Is that what it means?”
“Refuge. The Refuge of Thorns.”
“You know it,” Hal said, walking nearer to him.
The wizard smiled humorlessly.
Wind hissed through the grasses, curling around his ankles. The wizard touched one of the charms braided into his thick hair, dangling there at his collar.
“Is the wind talking?” Hal asked.
He nodded. “It remembers my name.”
Every part of Hal ached with the desperate wish to ask for that name, to beg if necessary. The wizard put his hand on Hal’s shoulder and patted her, like to calm an enthusiastic dog. But Hal took no offense; she was overly eager.
“Is this where you come from?” she asked with a semblance of calm. A compromise.
She didn’t truly expect the wizard to answer, but he said, “I was born on Innis Lear, though made in Aremoria.”
“You remember now?”
“Yes. Almost everything.”
“Maybe I was supposed to bring you home. Maybe it’s why they gave you to me.”
The wizard looked sharply at her.
Hal grinned. “I was at the Witch Elm for a reason, wizard. I asked the earth saints for help, for a bargain, and you’re what they sent.”
For a moment the wizard didn’t seem to react at all, staring through her. Then he said, “Lion Prince,” as if it meant everything.
“What do they want from me?”
“I only know my riddle.” He shook his head in apology.
Ter Melia called to Hal to show her the moon, delicate and white in the still-blue sky. It would be full in a few days.
In the morning, the wizard had vanished. Though Hal wished otherwise, she did not hold her party back, knowing he either would rejoin them or not. There was no danger he could find himself in that Hal could protect him from, of that she was certain.
On account of the wagons of supplies and gifts, they rode slowly: Hal, Ter Melia, and Rory Errigal with his grandmother Sin’s retainers, and Hal’s Aremore soldiers in their brilliant orange. Hal made easy conversation with Rory, asking after a girl of his family named Era. Rory grimaced and said Era was impossible to track, since she’d been granted her priesthood at too young an age.
She was his daughter. He spoke of her with the loving exasperation Hal expected from the good parents of wild children. Though riding at Rory’s side, Hal kept Era’s confidence and did not relate to her father that they’d met in a cave below the palace at Lionis.
Midafternoon, the wizard reappeared, riding a horse they hadn’t brought from Aremoria. Besides the horse he had nothing but what he wore, and a cloth bag tied to the saddle large enough to hold a child, which clacked as the horse moved as if filled with seashells. His left eyebrow was split and bruised as if he’d been punched.
Hal welcomed the wizard back expansively, hoping for an explanation that was not forthcoming.
It was a glorious day, despite the cold, and the intense colors of Innis Lear cut at Hal’s eyes: iron-black, gold, the darkest nighttime green, and drops of bloodred when they passed hawthorn trees sporting their berries. The south of the island was all dramatic moors, windy and treeless. Occasional creaks broke across the grassland like glittering seams. Hal’s giddiness had her smiling at everything, and it drove Ter Melia from her side to range ahead of the party with Rory Errigal.
But the wizard understood. “I love it here, too,” he said in his quiet way.
“Did you know Morimaros the Great traveled Innis Lear in disguise once? As a common soldier. How I long to remove this tabard and torc, and replace it all with a humble retainer’s uniform or the cloak of a hunter. Wander Innis Lear however I like!”
The wizard nodded, eyes on the wispy clouds.
Hal said, “Do you know the story? When Morimaros the Great came here to win the crown for Elia Lear?”
“I do not think that is exactly what happened,” the wizard murmured.
“Did you know him?”
“He came here because he was betrayed, and in that betrayal, hurt Elia. He came because he owed her his support, his strength, but not to win anything for her. With her, maybe. She was already a queen.”
“Who betrayed him?” Hal asked very quietly, almost too soft to hear beneath the wind and horses.
The wizard gazed out across the moors. “I was young and angry. I … loved him. But I thought that nobody would ever choose me over everything else, and that meant I didn’t deserve to be chosen at all. They both knew you can’t choose one person over the world—especially if you’re a king or queen.”
A pang of heartache turned Hal’s face away. “Maybe a queen can choose both, though. One person and the world.”
The wizard laughed once, a sound of tragedy and affection. “Has that been your experience, Your Highness?”
She grunted her displeasure at the question.
Gently, the wizard said, “My king was a lion, too.”
Hal caught her breath, undeserving, she felt, of the comparison. The wizard had said he felt the same a hundred years ago. Undeserving. She realized she held the reins too tightly, and relaxed her fists.
“Can you tell me how it all fell apart?”
Startled, for the wizard rarely asked questions, she looked at him again. “All what?”
“What they built. Morimaros and Elia.”
“Did it, though? Look how strong Innis Lear is, and Aremoria has only become grander since then. Morimaros built the Royal Libraries and established trade through Vitilius, and the Third Kingdom.”
“Are we not here to prevent war between Lear and Aremoria?”
Hal grimaced. “Oh, that.”
“Last I visited Aremoria,” the wizard said delicately, “there were no questions of inheritance plaguing either country.”
“Um. Morimaros didn’t have children. I mean, he did, but they were here, and heirs to Innis Lear. Three of them: Gaela, Bannos, and Connley. Gaela inherited the Learish crown, Connley went to the Third Kingdom and his line has remained there, and Bannos’s son married into the Errigal line here. Gaela ruled, and her daughter Astora after her, and Astora’s daughter is the current queen, Solas of Innis Lear. So there is little question about inheritance on Innis Lear, though Solas, like Morimaros, has no children of her own. Her sister, Ryrie, bore Solas’s heir: Rowan Lear, though they say on Innis Lear a king will go mad.”
The wizard laughed softly and said, “So they will. And I had heard, long ago, that Elia’s children would all be bastards.”
“An entire line of them,” Hal agreed. “Which did not work out so well in Aremoria.”
“There was a bastard king there? I missed that.”
“Only rumors, which might have been worse.” She sighed and shifted in the saddle. “Morimaros ruled for forty-two years, abdicating when he was sixty-five in favor of his nephew Isarnos. Isarnos was married to Vatta Persy and they had only two children survive to adulthood: Segovax and Vatta the Younger. Segovax first married Senna of Or and had three children with her: another Vatta—my grandmother—Rovassos King, and Gavos. When Senna died Segovax married Estha of Taria Queen and had Corius—Mora’s father—and Matomaros who is still alive, living in the Rusrike with his wife and children, and ruling already a huge city-state. Clear?”
The wizard nodded. “Your grandmother Vatta was eldest, but did not inherit. Because she was a woman?”
“That made it easier to overlook her in Rovassos’s favor, but it was more than that. Segovax possibly believed the rumors that he was not Vatta’s true father. She was much darker than him, but that might’ve come from Senna’s family, which had off and on married into Ispania—and did again. My grandfather was Ianos Gaunt, a prince in Ispania. Vatta and Ianos had Celeda, who is both my mother and currently the queen. Our line is as proven as Rovassos’s was,” Hal insisted, “because Vatta was not a bastard.”
“You trace your lineage back to the first King Morimaros, through his grandson Isarnos, and so does Banna Mora, because her father and your grandfather were brothers.”
Hal smiled. “Right! And Hotspur can, too, because Morimaros the Great’s sister Ianta married the duke of Perseria, and Hotspur comes from her direct line.”
The wizard glanced toward the dark center of Innis Lear. “So all three of you with a claim to the Aremore crown.”
“It’s worse than that,” Hal admitted. “King Morimaros was uncle to my great-grandfather Isarnos. But he was Banna Mora’s direct great-grandfather through Elia Lear. That second son of hers, undoubtedly fathered by Morimaros? Bannos? His son married Sin Errigal, who is Banna Mora’s grandmother.”
Something akin to wonder pressed a sigh from the wizard’s thin lips.
“But my mother is the rightful queen of Aremoria, and that matters more than Mora’s claim to it. Hotspur shouldn’t have married Connley Errigal. It makes it look like she’s siding with Mora to challenge my mother. How could she take a path that will lead to my mother’s death? And mine?”
“Is your mother the rightful queen?” the wizard asked gently.
The tension in Hal’s body put her horse on edge, and the beast danced awkwardly until Hal soothed her with a firm hand. She glanced at the wizard and said, “Celedrix earned the throne, and her mother Vatta was Segovax’s eldest. It ought to have been Vatta, not Rovassos, ruling in the first place. My mother tried for years to be a good niece, to be content with her earldom and armies, supporting Rovassos. But he accused her of heinous things and banished her for ten years. Then, wizard, he took even her lands and titles from her and from me. He was not a good king.”
“Do you think he made her an enemy on purpose?”
“He claimed that she killed his brother Gavos, based on the accusation from his lover, with no evidence at all. So, if not on purpose, he seized the chance to rid himself of a rival.”
“His undoing.”
“That and also isolating Vindomata of Mercia. His favors fell to only men, and most of those supposedly his lovers. Vindomata believed he neglected Mercia and Perseria, as well as betraying her good friend Celeda Bolinbroke.”
“But Vindomata Persy and Celedrix are no longer allies, if your friend Hotspur’s marriage and her being here with Banna Mora is an indication.”
“There, I know nothing of what caused it. It is said that my mother had Vindomata’s sons murdered during the rebellion, but I cannot believe she would, just to consolidate her power and remove it from Vindomata.”
The wizard watched her coolly until Hal had to glance away. She said, “Why overthrow a despot only to become one yourself?”
“Power,” the wizard murmured.
Hal groaned softly. “What is in that rattling bag?” she asked to distract.
One of his rough hands fell to the canvas, carefully brushing against the cord that sealed the bag shut. “Restless bones.”
Shock made her laugh. “What for? Whose?”
But he would not confess to her any more that day.
MIST SHROUDED THE rolling hills of Taria the morning they were to arrive at Astora City, and Hal could do nothing with her hair. Its thickness seemed twice the usual volume, and no amount of combing or picking compensated. She’d noticed in her few days on Innis Lear that the wind tangled her hair when she wasn’t looking; soap made it rough, oil made it too heavy. The attendant who’d come along with the dresses and finery Celedrix provided her daughter threw up her hands with a scowl and blamed it on the angry island. “Mine hangs dully here,” the girl said. “But Ter Melia’s is better, maybe she can help.”
Hal stood at the fire in her brilliant orange-and-white ensemble, perfect from the neck down. She shoveled a breakfast of grainy bread and butter into her mouth, resigning herself to a thick mass of a bun, and perhaps hanging some copper chains around it instead of the delicate hairpieces made to slip into her usually compliant locks. The wizard finished rolling his small tent and fixed it to its place on the supply wagon, then joined Hal. “Your smile has vanished,” he said softly.
“My hair is a disaster.”
“The salt wind, and energy dancing between the rootwaters.”
“Magic made my hair impossible?” Hal was incredulous.
The wizard laughed low in his throat. It was good to hear. “On Innis Lear, magic can make as much impossible as it can make possible. But I am a wizard. Sit.”
She obeyed and gritted her teeth at the little bursts of pain as he separated tangled pieces of her hair out and worked. Hal did her best not to think of braiding her and Hotspur’s hair together, idle and naked on her bed.
With charms pulled from pockets or worms-knew-where, with little threads of wool, the wizard put dozens of small braids into her hair, twisting and looping them around one another. He left the rest unbound and tumbling down her back.
The attendant came to watch after a few minutes, and the wizard used her hands to hold pieces apart. “This is more elaborate than I can do on my own,” he said.
“Oh, it is like yours, wizard!” The girl nodded eagerly.
Hal skewed him a glance: his thick black hair was twisted and braided rather wildly back from his face. Tiny bone-and-shell charms dangled at his shoulders, giving him the impression of untamed magic. Hal smiled. She did not mind having a wizard’s hair.
“It’s easier to maintain if it’s shorter,” he said. “Most on Innis Lear use elaborate braids to counter the salt wind, or are born with softer hair that likes this rough treatment.”
“And the magic,” Hal insisted.
“I thought, when you mentioned your grandfather was Ispanian, that this might suit you.”
He said it casually, but Hal read the truth in his admission: he had Ispanian blood, too.
“Will you tell me your name, wizard?” she asked again, for the third or thirtieth time.
Wind blew between them, flaring the fire and drawing blurry lines in the mist.
The wizard said, “It is not my right to speak it. Especially on Innis Lear.”
ASTORA CITY DRAPED itself across an entire deep valley in the west of Innis Lear, surrounded by massive hills. From the southern approach, Hal and her company saw the whole of the city as the low clouds lifted away with the afternoon sun. Built of stone both cream in color and dark gray-blue, Astora reminded Hal of home. Two castles nestled beside one another in the city’s heart—one, only finished a generation ago, rose toward the sky in pale sandstone towers and crenellations. Glass glinted in the high, arching windows. The second was older, built of hardwood and granite, impregnable and windowless.
They paraded through the city, escorted by men belonging to the Earl Bracoch and the duke of Taria’s retainers. At the broad gates of Astora Castle—the new one—the duke of Taria himself waited for Hal. He was young, thirty or so, and tall as a maple but just as skinny. Dark brown hair was braided back from his face and his narrow cheeks were wind-chapped pink. Hal remained seated upon her horse as he greeted her elegantly, welcoming her to his city. Hal smiled and called his name; he invited her inside to meet Queen Solas.
Hal accepted his hand and dismounted. Her usual military outfit had been replaced by a heavy, deep orange overdress belted with black leather over layers of cloud-white linen skirt and winged sleeves that would make eating a problem if they weren’t tucked in. She wore black boots and black gloves, as well as the Heir’s Score. Its hilt was black-wrapped and the short iron crosspiece was set with a single white pearl like an eye.
The wizard was a forest shadow at her back.
The castle’s great hall lifted three stories at least, with grand arches between the stone columns carved with vines and hung with dark pink banners. Benches sprawled off long tables that soon would be filled with courtiers and retainers, but for now the hall was clear for Hal, her wizard, Ter Melia, and five soldiers, the duke of Taria to approach. At the far end waited Queen Solas and her sister, Ryrie, on two high-backed chairs, with three rangy dogs at the queen’s feet. A young woman embroidered, perched upon a stool nearby. Behind her, some queen’s retainers stood guard.
The queen sat straight, her hands resting on the arms of the chair, and a smooth, plain blue tabard fell from her shoulders over plump breasts, belted at her short waist before blossoming over equally fat hips. Silver rings graced every finger and silver chains dripped across her forehead from round silver pins holding dark brown hair off her temples. White dots curved under her eyes and her bottom lip was bloodred with paint. She was at least as old as the wizard and exuded confidence.
Beside the queen, skinny Ryrie Lear smiled prettily beneath flushed cheeks, though her dark eyes did not quite focus on Hal’s face.
“Welcome, Calepia Bolinbroke,” Solas said, “to Innis Lear. You are known in your home as Prince Hal, I believe.”
“I am, and thank you, it is with deepest excitement I arrive. I’ve always wished to visit your island.” Hal put her best sparkle into her smile.
Ryrie laughed, as light as tinkling bells. “Well, Hal—Prince Hal—there were many reasons you might have come before.”
“None so splendid as the marriages of two of my most favorite women in all the world.”
“Banna Mora did not speak so of you.” This from Solas again, calm and exceedingly plain.
“I’ll not deny there’s been tension between Mora and myself these past years, but I will deny to my very death that we were not close once, and the best of friends. I’d have died for her.”
“Before her inheritance was stolen.”
“Before my mother’s star rose,” Hal countered.
At that both royal women smiled; Ryrie delightedly, Solas with consideration.
“And now Banna Mora’s stars and Hotspur’s have come into alignment,” the queen said. “What of yours?”
Hal shook her head. “You mistake, Your Brightness. Hotspur has no stars: she is all fire, enough to blaze against the sky herself.”
Solas lifted a dark eyebrow and glanced at her sister. Ryrie shrugged. “We will be careful of where we set this fire, then,” Solas said. She gestured at the young woman who’d been embroidering during all the banter. “Here is Vae Lear. Vae, say hello to your fellow princess.”
Hal smiled her best dazzling smile to cover her surprise: she’d thought Ryrie Lear had only sons.
The young woman smiled shyly. She was maybe eighteen, and though her eyes were clearly her mother’s same brown, her square face had to be Glennadoer.
“A pleasure, princess,” Hal said, feeling strange in her belly: a strangeness of discovery, for now she thought on it, she was absolutely certain Ryrie’s youngest child had been a son. Whatever magic this was, Hal liked it. She bowed and summoned forth her gifts: silk and woven tapestries for the queen’s residence; a box inlaid with mother-of-pearl and silver containing very fine, small daggers; whalebone combs and amber beads from the Rusrike; lapis bangles from the Third Kingdom. She showed off, too, the gifts for Banna Mora and Rowan Lear (a priceless ruby necklace said to have belonged to one of the first Aremore queens and a complicated astrolabe Hal had practiced working for days) and passed on Queen Celeda’s blessings for their marriage and forthcoming heir.
When the final gift had been displayed, Solas said, “Come forward, wizard,” though until that moment none had acknowledged his presence.
The wizard obeyed. Solas stood, and the impeccably behaved hounds at her feet lifted their heads.
The queen eyed him. For the first time this afternoon, an air of curiosity lent youth to her features. “Have we met, stranger? You are more than passing familiar to me.”
“It is unlikely, Queen,” he said, his voice a brush of autumn wheat and wind.
“But you are a wizard.”
“I am. The magic of Innis Lear is strong.” He said it as if offering her a compliment, and Hal supposed it was such. The wizard continued, “But I hear a discordance in the voice of the wind.”
“There is always something discordant here,” the queen said. Then she spoke briefly in the whispering language of trees, and the wizard replied. A dainty smile hid in the corner of his mouth.
Hal stared. What was happening?
The wizard whispered again, and the dogs whined to each other. Solas touched one on its scruffy dun head, then snapped an order in Learish that they behave. The queen’s gaze lowered to the wizard’s feet.
Hal realized only then that the wizard had brought his bag of bones with him and stood with it slumped against his boot, as if to protect it.
“It is some old magic I need to take care of while I’m here,” the wizard said. “The wind knows.”
Ryrie Lear began to laugh.
Hal felt an energy in her blood that was half excitement, half trepidation, and she knew somehow her wizard brought the end of someone else’s treacherous destiny to Innis Lear.