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“If you show me another jar of bodily fluids, I will smash it over your head.” Elwyn’s voice came out high and strangled, like she’d been running or crying.
The physician—a balding, gangling Annenstruker—gave Elwyn a wounded look. “Your royal highness, I merely wished to point out how much less blood there is now. This is an excellent sign, and it shows that the regime of bleeding I have instituted has restored—”
Elwyn rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “You mean you’ve taken so much out of his arms that there’s none left for him to piss out? What a marvelous improvement.”
This fellow was the very last of all the physicians, doctors, and surgeons assembled at the castle to have any hope left for her father’s recovery. Elwyn’s stepmother, the queen, had been up all night, watching over the administration of lancets and leeches. Then she had retired to bed, almost broken by exhaustion and worry. And that left Elwyn to deal with the man this morning.
“My lady, if I could try the purgatives we discussed, I am certain—”
“There will be no need.” This was a new voice, deep and steady.
Elwyn and the Annenstruker physician turned to see two people push through the curtain. One was a short woman, shorter even than Elwyn herself, with a soft, round face and thick brown hair twisted up under a gold mesh head cloth. The other, the one who had spoken, was a tall, thin man whose auburn hair was tied back with a piece of simple twine.
Elwyn had never been so relieved to see anyone. These two had been gone on a diplomatic trip for several weeks, and it was about time they were back. The woman was Lady Jorunn Unset, the man was Lord Caedmon Aldred, and they were the court sorcerers. More than that, they were hillichmagnars, angels of Earstien, granted a portion of his Holy Light to serve mankind. Gifted with supernaturally long lives, they had guarded and guided the nation for centuries. If anyone could save her father, these two could do it.
They lost no time in disabusing her of this idea, though. After Lord Aldred paid off the Annenstruker man, they took Elwyn into one of the side parlors, and they told her the results of their own examination of the king. “He has gotten much worse since we left,” said Aldred.
“I’m afraid the only hope now is prayer,” said Lady Jorunn, with a prim and pious little nod that instantly reminded Elwyn why she had never much liked the woman.
“I have given your father opium,” Aldred went on, “and used a spell to further ease his pain. Lady Jorunn and I will renew the spell periodically. However, I am afraid that your father has no more than a week to live. Perhaps no more than a day or two. You must prepare yourself and your family.”
Elwyn managed to hold back her tears long enough to assure them she would do her best. But when they were gone, she locked herself into the nearest privy and cried until her throat ached, with her head against the cold stone wall, and her long braids coming slowly loose and falling over her shoulders. Lord Aldred wasn’t the first physician to tell her that her father was doomed. He was, in fact, only the latest in a long series to do so. But he had been her best hope, and now she finally had to accept that this was really going to happen. Her father was going to die.
When, at last, her eyes were sore and dry, she put her hair back up as best as she could, straightened her dress, and climbed up the long, spiraling dark staircase to the royal apartments. Her stepmother was still asleep, and her brother and sister were having their lessons with their tutors in the nursery, so she went down the hall into her own apartment.
When she entered her parlor, a blast of cold air hit her, and snowflakes swirled past her head. Her bedroom door stood wide open, and the door to the outside balcony, too. It had snowed in the night, and Elwyn certainly hadn’t left her rooms open to the elements. The long curtains around her bed fluttered, and a dusting of frost now covered her hunting bow where it hung on the wall. Another few steps, and she saw someone standing out on the balcony. A stocky figure in a soiled gray nightshirt. The man turned, and she saw the face in profile—gaunt and pale, with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. But still terribly familiar.
“Father!” She ran onto the balcony. “Father, what in the Void are you doing?” She dragged him, unresisting, back inside and shut the door. “Father, sit down,” she said, leading him over to the weathered old rocking chair by the hearth. “Let me start a fire. Why are you out of bed?”
He did not sit, and he did not even seem to notice her until she wrapped a blanket around him. Then he turned, wisps of hair flying wild, eyes wide with terror, grabbing her arms and twisting them until she cried out.
“Elwyn, listen,” he hissed. “Elwyn, beware of him.”
“Who? Father, let go.”
“Broderick,” he said, shaking her. “Broderick, your cousin. Broderick, my brother’s bastard!” Then his face fell, and his chin trembled. “Oh, Elwyn, I looked in the book. I looked in Finster’s Book, and what it said....” Tears ran down his withered cheeks. “Oh, Elwyn, you must not trust him.”
The Book. In Aid of Leornian’s Rulers was a magysk book first gifted to the Kings of Leornian, who became the Kings of Myrcia. Traditionally, only the king, queen, and heir knew the spell to open it and read its prophetic advice. She wasn’t even sure her 8-year-old brother, Edwin, knew the spell. The book was only consulted on rare occasions, and she wondered what had possessed her father to crawl from his bed and do so now.
She worked an arm free from his grip and put it around his shoulders. “What did it say, Father? What did it say?”
The strange fit left him, and he sagged against her, barely able to move. “He’ll be next, and no one is going to miss me,” he said softly.
“That’s not true,” she said, throat tightening.
“They all wanted him, and I thought I would be better at it. Because I’d been born to it, you see. I honestly thought so.”
“Father, what are you talking about?”
“I saw my father do it, and my brother do it. I didn’t want it, but I thought I’d be better than that morally empty bastard of Ethelred’s.” He shook his head. “I thought, ‘If Ethelred can do it, surely I can be a good king.’ I was so sure I was ready. But now they’ll all want him.”
Then his eyes went glassy, and he seemed not to hear anything she said. He stood there, gazing placidly at the rows of antlers on her bedroom walls and occasionally muttering, “Better than him.” Eventually she left him on her bed and fetched two guardsmen and her lady’s maid. With their help, she got him back down to his sickroom in the Gold Parlor.
As they settled him into his bed, he gave her a tearful smile and said, “When I’m better, we’ll go hunting again. If I can’t be a good king, I can at least be a good father.”
She hugged him and said, “You’re already a good father.”
His absence had been noted, of course, and Lady Jorunn, who had been mixing medicines in an adjoining parlor, apologized profusely for not keeping a closer eye on him.
When Lady Jorunn had whispered some sort of sleeping spell over him, and when the guardsmen and the lady’s maid had gone back to their duties, Elwyn took Jorunn into the side parlor and shut the door. “My father said that he read a warning in Finster’s Book.” The hair stood up on her neck as she remembered the wild look in his eyes.
“A warning?” Lady Jorunn raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, a warning....” Elwyn paused, looking back at the door. There was no telling who might be listening. “A warning about a specific person. Let’s put it that way.”
The hillichmagnar gave Elwyn that exasperating smile. “Your royal highness, for two thousand years your ancestors have studied that book. More than a few of them have thought they read great prophecies there. But these prophecies, I must tell you, rarely come true. At least not in the way your ancestors thought they would. Only Earstien knows the future.”
“But if my father thought he saw a warning against someone....”
“He may have seen anything. There is no way to know. The words can shift and change, or so I am told. I would not put too much stock in it.” Lady Jorunn moved closer and patted Elwyn on the shoulder. “I would certainly not let it prejudice you against this...certain individual. Your father, I regret to say, is not in his right mind.”
That was not much comfort, but it was sadly easy to believe her ladyship. Elwyn had never been particularly close to her cousin Broderick. But she had always liked him. Sometimes, in fact, she had thought he was her favorite member of the family, even though she knew her father had some sort of grudge against the man. Apparently there had once been people who thought Broderick should have become king instead of her father. And now, all too probably, her father was dwelling on that fact in his final delirium, and on all his perceived failures as king. As Lady Jorunn said, he might have read anything in the book and turned it, in his failing mind, into some sort of dark prophecy of doom.
Elwyn went back to the royal apartments, but the housemaids were still clearing the snow out of her bedroom and building a fire to warm the place up. So she got a camp chair and went to sit on the inner balcony, the one that overlooked the wide Palm Court. She and her father had sometimes come out here when the weather was bad and mended their hunting gear, half-shaded by the upper fronds of the big palms. Today, though, she sat and looked at the snow settling on the glass dome high above, watching as it filled in each little pane and the gray light faded and diffused.
“What if that’s the last time I speak to him?” she wondered. In all the excitement, had she even remembered to tell him that she loved him?
She did, and she always had, even though sometimes he had made it difficult for her. He had sometimes yelled at her in front of the court, even back when she was 8 or 9 years old. He had called her “selfish,” which hurt because it was true, and “spoiled,” which hurt because it was not. Hunting was the one thing they had ever had in common, and even there, he would often snap and snarl at her if he thought she was making too much noise. He was the main reason she had developed a preference for hunting alone.
She was thinking that perhaps she might go take a ride outside the city, to visit some of the places she’d gone hunting with him, when a small, quavering voice called out her name from behind her. She turned and saw the slim form of her brother, Edwin, peering around the corner.
“Elwyn?” he repeated. “Elwyn, I’m...I’m sorry to bother you.”
He shuffled his feet nervously, and she realized, with a sudden jolt of self-reproach, that he was scared of her. Perhaps she should make an effort to show him a little warmth. Especially now. “It’s no problem,” she said. “Come on out.”
With a look of palpable relief, he glanced back around the corner and whispered, “It’s alright.” Then he came over, followed closely by their 5-year-old sister, Alice, and Jennifer, the daughter of the Earl of Stansted, who was Alice’s best friend. Alice had a worried look and was sucking on a finger. Jennifer ran over to the big marble railing and stood on her tiptoes to spit over the side. Elwyn would never have admitted it out loud, but she always preferred visiting the nursery on days when Jennifer came over to play. The girl had a streak of bloody-minded, tomboyish independence that reminded Elwyn of herself. She seemed a good deal closer in spirit than either of Elwyn’s half-siblings.
Unfortunately, the children hadn’t come out here to play. It seemed they had heard the king’s voice from Elwyn’s apartment, and they wanted to know why he had come up to visit without walking over to see them.
“Is Father feeling better?” Alice asked, still with a fingertip in the corner of her mouth.
“Can we go down and see him?” asked Edwin.
“Let’s go,” said Jennifer. “You can come, too, Elwyn.”
They looked so hopeful. They were all so certain that good things would happen because they wanted them to.
For a few moments, Elwyn couldn’t find her voice. She wiped her eyes preemptively and pulled Alice onto her lap. “Oh, I don’t think it’s such a good idea. Father is very sick, you know.”
Alice tugged at Elwyn’s braid. “But he’s getting better, right?”
Elwyn considered her answer carefully. If Lord Aldred and Lady Jorunn and all the physicians were right, then the children were going to know the truth very soon, one way or another. Their smiles faded as she fought for words.
“Father isn’t getting better,” she finally said.
“Is he going to die?” Edwin asked.
“The physicians think he will,” Elwyn confirmed. “Lord Aldred thinks so, too.” They all started to cry, so she pulled them into a hug, including Jennifer. “It’s alright,” she said. “He’s going to Earstien’s Light, but Mother and I aren’t going anywhere. And you know we both....” Her voice failed, and all she could do was stroke Alice’s head as the little girl curled into a ball, sobbing.
Footsteps approached, and Elwyn, blinking away her tears, looked over the children’s heads to see Queen Rohesia glaring down at them. Huddled behind her were two of her ladies and Mrs. Ripley, the chief nursemaid.
“That’s quite enough, now,” said the queen. “Children, go with Mrs. Ripley.”
Alice, still sniffling, climbed obediently down from Elwyn’s lap, and the ladies gently led the children away. Elwyn stayed where she was, wiping her eyes and avoiding Rohesia’s gaze.
When they heard the door of the nursery shut, the queen spoke again. “What were you thinking, telling the children that?” she demanded. “What purpose could that possibly serve?”
“They need to know,” Elwyn said stubbornly, looking out over the Palm Court. “It’s only right to be honest. Edwin may be king in a few days, Mother.”
“There will be time to worry about that later. That Annenstruker physician is very optimistic about your father’s prospects.”
“Lord Aldred disagrees.”
“Lord Aldred may be an angel,” said the queen, “but last I checked, he hasn’t become Earstien himself. Your father must follow the physician’s regime, and we must pray. And in the meantime, we must stick together. You and I must carry on as if nothing is amiss.”
Elwyn turned and looked at her. “Are you joking?”
“Certainly not. Now, as you know, or rather, as you should know—I doubt you’ve been paying any attention to the palace bulletins—the entire privy council is here today. We must entertain them. Be sure to wear that emerald necklace the Duchess of Keneburg bought you for your 20th birthday. Now go select one of your best gowns. No, wait. Have Phoebe choose one for you. I don’t want you coming to a formal luncheon in a riding dress again.”
“Yes, Mother,” Elwyn sighed, and then she stomped off to her apartment.
Only Rohesia would think she could hold back the inevitable with court dresses and etiquette.