HOTSPUR DID NOT realize how accustomed she’d grown to the embodied magic of Innis Lear, how much a part of her it had become, until she arrived again in Aremoria and felt the emptiness of the land. She was unbalanced, and this was her home.
“Wormshit and baby-eaters,” she whispered to herself five minutes after docking at Marchtown. Of course, Connley stood beside her and so he heard.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, placing a hand at the small of her back.
“The magic is so quiet.”
“If you call to the trees, they will answer. Sleepy, and with a different dialect.”
Hotspur frowned. “Trees have dialects?”
“The magic is buried deep. I found remnants, faded threads, when I was here.” He stroked her back just firmly enough that she could feel it through her jacket. It was a little condescending.
Hotspur strode off the dock without him. She felt ungrounded—a fire hanging in the air, not planted against wood or tucked into a mouthy hearth. Her sword spat at her, and she gripped its hilt. Its whispering focused: home home jagged hungry fire fire fire and Hotspur felt the same.
When our world burns, we must learn to breathe fire.
So the dragon had told Mora, and Mora told Hotspur. She repeated the adage in her mind, wrapping it around her like armor. Hotspur was fire, she was part of Mora’s fire, the fire of every queen who had commanded her. And she was here, in this land, to—to what? Wield her own destiny? Be her own flame, direct herself? Choose the end? If Hal were here, Hotspur would tell her—
I need to tell my own story, or at least choose the meaning of it.
She wished Hal did stand beside her. Because the truth was Hotspur wouldn’t even have to say anything. Hal would simply understand.
Wind puffed along the shore from Aremoria, smelling of tilled earth and fresh water. A little bit of iron, a dash of shit, and the sweat of a thousand townsfolk.
Hotspur wondered what Aremoria would say if it had a voice like Innis Lear’s. Would it share its desires with her? Tell her what to do, what it wished for?
Hello, Aremoria, she said carefully in the language of trees. The thought of an Aremoria as willful and alive as Innis Lear filled her with gladness. Hello, she said again.
The wind blew wordlessly. She looked out over the edge of Marchtown toward trees she could not see. Hello, she said again.
Connley joined her, taking her hand.
Hello.
Hello.
The wind returned again, and again, and there, maybe, if she tilted her ear: a word.
Wizard …?
Hotspur gasped, laughingly.
This was the truth: she’d left her homeland a soldier and returned to it a wizard. She could hear the Aremore trees.
With retainers behind her and Connley at her side, Hotspur entered Marchtown and aimed for the castle. Her aunt had retaken the March with a Burgundian army alongside her, and it was from here that they would launch their campaign against Celedrix. There was much to coordinate in the next week before Banna Mora’s arrival with her Learish army.
Under her hand, her sword hissed and whispered, and Hotspur’s pace slowed. Her attention turned south, because someone was calling her name. Not the voice of the wind … Her mother’s? No.
Isarna
You’re awake
The voice was familiar, but she could not quite place it, being too far distant. Houses rose around her, wooden and leaning, and her retainers paused. Connley touched her again, but he said nothing, listening, too.
Come home
“Did you hear that?” Hotspur asked.
“It isn’t the wind.” Her husband’s soft voice ought to have comforted her, but jagged hungry fire, whispered the sword, and Hotspur’s pulse paused, restarted, just as jagged and hungry. She was also hungry, and bared her teeth in a great smile. A wolf could be a wizard, too, not only a soldier.
She turned off the street they’d been following to the castle gate, her instinct leading her down a narrow alley. Suddenly she was running.
Come home
Hotspur did not think, but gripped her sheathed sword and followed this ragged call through the town, choosing streets abruptly and eagerly, never a wrong turn, until she reached the old town wall and waved frantically at the soldier standing guard as she dove through and burst out.
One for Innis Lear
One for Aremoria
The Wolf is coming home
Beyond the wall was more town, though only a trickle of it along the slope toward grazing fields now dotted not with sheep but with canvas tents and carts, men and horses and mules. The edge of Vindomata’s army. The road cut through the camp and rolled over the hill, vanishing. Wind played, teasing at her, whispering—she could discern the words now—of rain for an hour at sunset, then clear days beyond.
The Wolf!
Then Hotspur saw them: three figures standing at the crest of the distant pasture hill, too tall and still to be soldiers, and little more than silhouettes against the blue sky studded with small white clouds. Though they were so far away, she knew they stared back at her. She’d seen them before.
Come home
As she blinked, a tree appeared beside the earth saints, huge and spreading golden branches that dug up into the sky like roots.
I am home, she said as loudly as it was possible to say in the language of trees.
One figure lifted a hand to her.
Wolf of Aremoria, the wind said.
Hotspur was awake.
No other word could describe the feeling of having their eyes on hers, scouring boundary lines against her flesh. And she could see them, too. As if she’d been dreaming all her life, unable to open her eyes fully. She shuddered—not afraid, not furious, but lusting.
Then the golden tree was gone. And the three earth saints, too.
Hotspur panted, gasped. She slowly lowered herself to her knees in the road.