Remy was absent when Feilan awoke in the morning. He’d rolled right into the middle of the bed, thanks to the sag of the too-soft mattress, and had a vague recollection of his husband having to crawl out from under his arm. He stretched, feeling an unaccustomed stiffness to his back, in all the opposite places as when he slept on too few furs.
He should get some furs, and sleep on the floor.
He washed with the cold water from the aquamanile, combed his hair and beard with implements he found on the ornate silver tray by the bowl, and left the room, putting his boots back on as he went. Remy’s shoes were gone, of course, and Feilan noticed none of the other doors along this single corridor had shoes by them. He tried a few latches, and found vacant chambers identical to Remy’s, and a drab backroom with two narrow cots plainly meant for servants – as expected, gilt ropes led to a row of bells here – but nothing that suggested a kitchen or a space to gather around a metaphorical or literal fire. That must be back at what Remy had called First Hill, the metaphorical as well as literal centre of Seven Hills. If servants slept here, as the cots and bells suggested, they’d already attended Remy and gone about their daytime duties.
Feilan returned to the cloud-adorned foyer, and down the short walkway to the main arcade. The air was cool, and the mist was still thick below his vantage point. He was a sailor of the skies, gazing out over a white sea in every direction, the other hilltops green islands in the monotony.
He looked both directions, and then strolled the way they’d come last night. Given the distinct morning chill, this must be a miserable place in winter. He suspected the airiness of arches and unglazed high windows in the chambers would be exchanged for smothering wool hangings and heavy blankets, thick cloaks and leg-wraps, and braziers in every corner.
It’d still be a freezing walk in the dark times. Feilan found himself wondering how often Remy faced it. How often he just stayed away in what seemed like an isolated dormitory for guests, of which there would soon be plenty, as more contenders for the regency began to arrive.
On the next hill along, he went up the walkway to look into the foyer. This ceiling was stars painted onto midnight tiles, and the foyer was in use. Furnished with low chairs, plentiful cushions and soft diaphanous drapes, restless in the light hilltop breeze, the foyer was full of women.
Adeline was bent over a pale collar, painstakingly adding a row of golden stitches. The two aunts who had ridden out to chaperone her home yesterday were there, and a third woman with enough family resemblance to probably be the last of Remy’s sisters. There were younger women and girls with the same look, most likely cousins, and then other women who were probably retainers of one sort or another. It was reminiscent of his memories of his mother and her friends at pleasant communal chores while the husbands were off raiding, except it had a somewhat more indolent air. Their children wouldn’t starve or freeze if this work wasn’t done.
But their hands, to be fair, were all busy: most were at needlecraft as they chatted, adding embellishments in silk thread to fine clothing, though some were making drawings, presumably design work. Here was the communal space he’d expected at Remy’s lodgings; he’d overlooked the empty antechamber.
Their hands fell still when they saw Feilan looking in, and so did their tongues.
In the stark silence, Adeline rose, clutching her embroidery piece. ‘Sir Feilan! Good morning.’
‘Heilsa,’ Feilan said, smiling at her.
‘Are you looking for Uncle Remy?’
‘Yes,’ Feilan said, for lack of any other purpose today. ‘Is he at—’ He pointed up the way. ‘First Hill?’
‘Oh, no, he doesn’t go there much. You need to go back past— You know, I think I’ll show you.’
‘Adeline,’ Lady Slaphappy hissed. ‘You don’t do errands. Send a servant.’
‘This is Uncle Remy’s husband, Aunt Odila,’ Adeline said. ‘He’s hardly an errand. He deserves a proper tour of his new home.’
She tossed down her embroidery and came smiling to Feilan, taking his arm and leading him away. She was dressed in fine linen skirts dyed deep red, dark hair braided, her mother’s silver clasp again at her nape. She wasn’t wearing the protective talisman yet, he noted.
Outside, less self-assured, she said, ‘Um. Would you like the tour?’
‘Not really,’ Feilan said. ‘I suppose the structure we arrived at last night is the main complex, and the sleeping quarters spread out from there?’
‘Yes, well done!’ she said, and then blushed like her youngest uncle at her own audacity. ‘This is Second Hill East, where I reside, and my aunts and their families, and you and Remy are in Third Hill East. We need to go down past Fourth Hill East to find him. That’s for visitors, mostly. Second Hill West and so forth are for my uncles, and Great-Uncle Bertrand.’
‘Shouldn’t Remy be over that side, then?’
Adeline frowned, plainly confused.
‘The siblings seem to have segregated themselves by sex.’
‘Oh! Not on purpose. And Remy wants to be near his grotto.’
‘His…’ Feilan decided to wait on explanations for that one.
‘Do you know,’ she said happily, as they walked along the undulating covered walkway. ‘I’m glad you came along. You saved me so many stitches. I do get very bored with embroidery.’
She devolved into bright chatter, then, partly out of nerves, Feilan suspected, and partly a not particularly subtle attempt to impart the family tree to him. He wasn’t sure if this was tactical, necessary knowledge for the upcoming monster hunt, or if Adeline had decided he was now truly part of the family.
Did she, he wondered, think the marriage was real? He didn’t know children. For all her evident intelligence and confidence, and somewhat shaky royal self-assurance, she might not have the experience to recognise her uncle’s ploy, and it might not have occurred to Remy to tell her. He’d been very intent on completing his machinations before his family caught up with him. And then yesterday, when she and Remy had attended Freyja in the wake of the unexpected marital contract, the plotting had been all about obtaining Torben’s agreement to the mercenary contract. Both Freyja and Remy might very well have simply taken the marriage as established without wasting time niggling over its inauspicious engendering, especially in front of the child.
There were more people on the hilltop arcade now, making their way between the crests and dips, and coming up from uncovered paths worn into the grass between the arcade and a scatter of lower buildings, presumably where the real work got done. They seemed a mix of servants, retainers, and perhaps minor family, but all seemed to be fed and clean and comfortable, in the manner of a well-managed fiefdom. They greeted Adeline with genuine fondness, she returning the salutations cheerfully, and presented small bows or nods to Feilan.
‘They’re all very curious about you,’ Adeline confided. ‘Remy keeps to himself so much, everyone’s very surprised he’s come home with a husband.’
‘Right,’ Feilan said. ‘Why does he keep to himself?’
‘He prefers it that way,’ she said airily, before frowning. ‘No, that’s not true, is it? That’s me not thinking properly. It’s his witchy hair. Mother always said it was nonsense. But Father said it was safer if he didn’t draw attention to himself. Father wasn’t entirely pleased with things as they developed, but it does make people happy, you know.’
Feilan tucked yet another question away.
‘When I am queen, I shall let Uncle Remy do as he likes,’ Adeline said with that curiously innocent confidence.
‘You’re already queen,’ Feilan said. ‘Why were you doing embroidery?’
She stopped dead. He thought he’d overstepped. But she started walking again, saying, ‘Great-Uncle Bertrand is in First Hill. He’s managing all that for me, as my guardian. My acting regent.’
Feilan said nothing.
‘You’re right, I should be there,’ Adeline said. ‘But – I’m worried if I go over there, he’ll pat me on the head and tell me to be a good little girl and run along now back to my sewing, in front of all the liege-men and advisers and petitioners, and that will be an end to any hope of authority in my own right.’
After struggling with himself – he was here to help, and wasn’t entirely sure he was about to – Feilan said, ‘You have a large Vaer man with a sword at your disposal.’
Adeline seemed nonplussed. ‘Oh. I do. Perhaps, once I’ve shown you where to find Remy, you could come over there, then?’
‘Your Majesty,’ he said gently. ‘I’m not a Vaer man. I meant Torben. He’s your champion. Learn to use him. It’ll be good practice.’
‘He is rather large, isn’t he?’
It occurred to Feilan that Adeline, aside from the signing of the contract, had been avoiding Torben, the very large Vaer man with the very large sword. ‘He’s a cuddly bear, Lina,’ he said. ‘You’ll see.’
They’d passed both the cloud-ceilinged Third Hill East and Fourth Hill East, built on the same lines, and were approaching what appeared to be the arcade’s eastern terminus, a sort of cantilevered balcony jutting over the end of a promontory that promised a lovely view.
There were no people this far down, except one young man who left the balcony as they approached, very flushed and messy-looking, ducking his head shyly in response to Adeline’s unsuspecting wave.
The balcony was a pleasant space, large and round under a cupola. It was more like a stone pavilion than a simple viewing platform. It was framed with more of the Seven Hills arches showing unbroken blue sky beyond, and a picturesque arrangement of skeps, the bees still quiet in the early chill, with the precipitous sheep-grazed slope beyond vanishing into the mist below. The landscape suggested there’d be a river at the bottom of the rolling green hill, but not, if Feilan’s sense of direction was holding, the same one they’d travelled along yesterday.
There was a cushioned divan fashioned from stone in the centre, for sitting and admiring the vista, and another of those gauzy curtains hanging at the entrance arch, that could have been pulled across to shield the romantic nook from the view of the arcade – and it would have been helpful if the wrecked young man had done that as he’d left after dressing, because the low back of the divan did not much hide that Torben was sprawled out completely naked there, face down and fast asleep.
Not that Feilan did not appreciate the fine view of finer arse, all clenched hard muscle, but poor Adeline clapped her hands over her eyes.
‘I don’t think I’m meant to see this sort of thing!’ she squeaked.
‘Give me a moment,’ he said. He entered the pavilion, whipping the curtain closed behind him, for all the good the sheer fabric would do now.
He shook Torben’s shoulder, which was incautious; Torben lurched up roaring and lunging for his seax, the short almost-sword that all Vaer men carried even when leaving their real weapons at home. Luckily, it was enough out of reach that he’d woken up by the time he got his hand on the hilt.
‘Little Wolf,’ he grumbled.
‘Get dressed, the queen is here,’ Feilan said.
‘Good morning, Adeline,’ Torben bellowed, strolling about the pavilion to collect his scattered clothing with scant regard for his nudity and even less for Feilan’s peace of mind.
‘Good morning, Sir Torben,’ she warbled.
Torben, having flung on his clothes, looped his seax at his waist, and shoved his feet into his boots, scrubbed at his eyes, finger-combed his hair, adjusted the plaits in his beard, and then stepped out to offer the girl a remarkably polite, near-chivalrous bow.
‘At your service, Majesty,’ he said gravely, though not without a wink Feilan’s way.
‘We’re just going to visit Uncle Remy,’ she said, ‘and then I need you to escort me back to First Hill, please. Oh, and you’ll both need to break fast, too, won’t you?’
As she spoke, she was leading them through the northern most arch, where, now Feilan knew to look for it, he could see the marks of a worn path curving down the shoulder of the promontory. It was slippery underfoot, but Adeline managed it agilely, so the two Vaer naturally had to follow without complaint.
‘Couldn’t find a room last night, after all?’ Feilan murmured to his friend.
‘Merely a lovely place to watch the sunrise, Little Wolf,’ Torben said, and Feilan snorted.
The narrow path divided, one path towards the skeps lower on the slope, the other snaking under the overhang, petering out at a cave of sorts, though really it was a broad-mouthed recess set deep into the side of the hill.
The stone-buttressed earthen walls were lined with cupboards and shelves. There were clay pots and metal flagons and ceramic bowls and expensive glass vials and bottles and jars, plugged with cork with labels attached. One long workbench was covered with bundles of various herbs, with more hanging to dry above. Remy stood there, hair still obediently uncovered, currently occupied with quill and ink over a collection of paper, quite the luxury even for a prince, sewn together down one edge to form a raggedly-bound book.
The burst of scent emanating from the sheltered space, fresh and medicinal, was strong enough to be overwhelming, washing bright green with cheerful notes of lemon-yellow across Feilan’s vision. He blinked it away.
He’d apprised Torben of the local superstition about red hair on the ride to Seven Hills. ‘Bugger me, he is a witch,’ Torben muttered now.
Remy spun. ‘Oh. You’re here,’ he said, without inflection. He set down the quill.
‘Morning, Uncle Remy,’ Adeline trilled. She skipped over and threw her arms around him, and then vanished into further recesses, where the space narrowed and darkened into true cave-like proportions, a telltale trickling sound and wash of cooler air suggesting a small spring back there, too.
‘That should make you feel better,’ Torben said, nudging Feilan. ‘You got tricked by a witch, not a normal person. You don’t have to feel so stupid now.’
‘I didn’t, but thanks.’
‘I’m not actually a witch,’ Remy reminded them crossly. ‘I just happen to have red hair.’
‘And be born a seventh son,’ Feilan said.
‘Seventh child.’
Torben took a turn. ‘And live in a cave.’
‘Work in the c— It’s not even a cave. It’s a grotto.’
‘Making potions,’ Feilan said.
‘Herbal remedies!’
‘From a spellbook.’ Torben eyed the inkpot with illiterate suspicion.
Feilan, meanwhile, examined the pages Remy was filling with crabbed notation. He hadn’t seen many books, despite his many years of travel.
Remy slapped it shut. ‘A ledger—’ He stared between the two of them. ‘You’re just making fun of me now.’
Feilan patted him fondly. ‘We were making fun of you the entire time, Rufran.’
‘Witches are only ever women,’ Torben assured him. ‘Unless…’ He rubbed his own beard as he gestured towards Remy’s beardless face. ‘You sure he’s got a cock down there?’
‘I’m sure,’ Feilan said dryly. ‘No need to offer to check.’
Torben theatrically shut his mouth, smirking. He then ruined it by talking. ‘Still not sharing, then.’
‘Very much mine and only mine,’ Feilan said, putting a casual arm around Remy’s waist and drawing him in close. He felt Remy first stiffen under the touch, and then melt into it.
‘His loss,’ Torben said. He grinned. ‘Yours, too.’
Adeline emerged from the dim shadows carrying a basket in one hand and a put-upon cat under the other arm. ‘I knew you’d forget to eat!’ she told her uncle.
‘Give me back my cat,’ he said sternly, and it squirmed from her hold to make a frantic leap to his shoulder. It was smaller than the hefty, thick-furred Vaer cats, and balanced there with neat grace.
There was no help for it, then, but to indulge the little girl, and perch on the edge of the so-called grotto, where the view was almost as good as from the promontory over their heads, and enjoy the copious contents of the basket the servants must’ve habitually provided to Remy in the mornings – fresh-baked fine white bread, hard-boiled eggs that they rolled on the rocks to crack open, drying slices of cheese and small, sweet apples.
The cat settled on Remy’s lap, purring. He absently stroked it until its eyes slit half-closed in pleasure, the same abstracted fondness he’d shown his little horse. Feilan told himself he was not jealous of a scrawny orange cat.
He hadn’t pet an animal since he’d tamed the half-wild kitten; despite Feilan’s deep resentment, drowning the poor creature had indeed stamped out any nascent desire for giving care to anything that could be lost too easily. He carefully held out his hand, and let Remy’s cat sniff at his fingers. It put its ears back, tail twitching dangerously. As hostile as its master, it seemed.
Feilan drew back his hand, then held it up pointedly to Remy, displaying his bracelet-adorned wrist. Remy sighed but evicted the cat from his lap so he could fossick about and return with the talisman Feilan had left in his care last night.
This he handed without ceremony to his niece, though he did stoop to say, ‘A gift from Feilan. He’d appreciate it greatly if you wore it.’
Adeline was delighted, even more so when she saw that her favourite uncle and her new uncle were wearing the same tokens. She made Remy tie it about her wrist immediately, and they both received hugs.
‘Thank you, Uncle Faro,’ she said.
Feilan opened his mouth to protest the inappropriate butchering of his byname into nonsense, before checking himself. The nickname carried a meaning in the Riverlands just as much as a byname did in the heartland. It meant affection. He wasn’t so much of a mouthy jolterhead as to throw affection back in the face of an earnest young girl.
He slapped Torben across the arm and gave him a firm shake of the head when it looked like his friend wasn’t going to show the same restraint, then caught Remy looking moderately stricken.
Remy had just worked out that his beloved niece had somehow failed to glean that the marriage was a sham. Well. That was certainly his problem to deal with. Feilan beamed at Adeline, and over her head at his husband.
Torben looked sour as he chewed through a slice of bread topped with dollops of a boiled quince and honey mix, though Feilan supposed that was more to do with missing out on Freyja Anjasdottir’s protective blessing than Adeline’s touchingly sincere gratitude.
Afterwards, they helped Adeline pack up the remnant food, the cat winding between their legs, and then Torben took up the basket as solemnly as any holy relic ripe for plunder. He accompanied the queen away, waving dismissively to Feilan’s call of ‘Be restrained at First Hill!’
‘He…didn’t find a room last night,’ Remy said, as soon as the pair were out of earshot up the path back to the hilltop.
Remy might have even gone past the pavilion early enough for a close-up view of the active portion of Torben’s second-favourite pastime. That was probably going to become a regular hazard, if Torben became attached to his sunrises.
‘No,’ was all Feilan said for now. No need to horrify his husband again so soon.
Tersely, Remy said, ‘I’ve had him assigned to a room by ours. Tell him to use it.’
Feilan eyed him, the strain in his face, the tension in his shoulders, and wondered what the request for special treatment had cost him. Probably the very last of his defiance, at least for the next little while.
Abruptly, he hoped Torben wasn’t too restrained, when he gained entry for young Queen Adeline to the royal happenings in First Hill.
Movement below caught his eye. Meandering around the hill slopes, from several directions, were more of the worn paths that he’d noticed intersecting the formal hilltop arcade of the interconnected palace. These ones, however, when he followed them with his gaze, led right to the cave. And there were more than a few people on them, labouring upwards.
Remy scrambled up. Feilan gained his feet beside him. ‘I don’t have my sword.’
He didn’t even carry a seax, or an eating knife. His father muttered in his head for a brief, ugly moment. If there was any more proof needed—
‘Oh, no, it’s not like that,’ Remy said. ‘Just…keep out of the way, if you must hang about.’
‘If I must hang about?’ Feilan repeated with deep amusement. ‘What am I doing, if not at your service, husband?’
Remy flashed him a sharp look, simultaneously annoyed and guilty, but by that time, the first of the visitors had arrived, the cat fleeing into the darkest part of the cave in tandem.
She was a woman of around Feilan’s mother’s age, very spry, dressed in the bright kirtle and shawl that was usual in the Riverlands, hair covered with a plain cap. She eyed off Feilan with some concern. Remy said something, in what Feilan was fairly sure was the same dialectical or archaic language he’d used for the marriage rite, that made her chuckle throatily. She squeezed Feilan’s arm and moved over to the ledger with Remy, where they fell into a discussion while the next arrivals formed a queue, sitting in a row along the ridge where they’d sat with the break-fast basket.
They were, Feilan realised, customers.
Except Remy didn’t seem like he charged coin. Some of the visitors left jars of honey, or the cooked fruit and honey mix like Torben had had on his bread, or more herbs, or collections of seeds, and some left fresh rye loaves, or butter, or little savoury grainy cakes. Some left woven cloth or spun and dyed yarn, a particularly clever payment because it’d cut their share of the town’s tithe too. Some left nothing, and Remy didn’t treat them any differently.
That was what he was doing, treating them, Feilan gradually deciphered from observing the interactions. He was not exactly sympathetic, but he wore a neutral manner which seemed to reassure them. None went away empty-handed, though some, those Remy spoke to longest, looking very frowny and serious, were evidently promised further, custom-made, remedies upon return in one or two days.
Most were women, though some had to be there on behalf of others, presumably including fathers and brothers and sons. Some of the men who did come for themselves turned around when they saw Feilan, now sitting in the sunshine at the head of the row on the ledge. Some were desperate enough, in their specific ailment, to go ahead with the consultation, which usually involved dropping their pants. None of the visitors was ancient; Feilan suspected the hill would have defeated the very old and the very ill, and assumed some younger visitors were fetching medicines. Not all – some of the girls, scared, alone or with their mothers, were there for that oldest, most useful of remedies.
To all, Remy repeated the same phrase he’d said about Feilan to the first woman. Feilan eventually asked for a translation. ‘I’m saying, Don’t mind him, he’s just my husband,’ Remy told him.
With that first phrase, and getting his ear in on the typical questions Remy asked of his visitors – he was surprisingly patient as he teased out more information from their stammering reports of symptoms, usually accompanied with unhelpfully vague gestures – Feilan began to find a way into the new language, which was, after all, closely related to Riverlander. He was good with languages, a talent he never would have discovered if his life hadn’t been changed by exile.
By mid-morning, he was able to greet the next visitor with, ‘Don’t mind me, I’m just the husband,’ making her chortle and Remy try not to smile.
But when she’d gone, Remy said, ‘You shouldn’t be speaking that. It’s women’s dialect.’
Feilan raised his brows. ‘You’re speaking it.’
‘I have to. To help them.’
Feilan thought of Adeline blithely saying, Father wasn’t entirely pleased about things as they developed, but it does make people happy, you know. A knowledgeable and tame witch – of course the people were happy. Real doctors were expensive, and often ineffectual as well. Remy appeared to be neither.
‘Is it taboo for me to speak the women’s language?’ he asked.
‘It’s unmanly to speak a woman’s language.’
Feilan laughed. ‘You do understand what it means to be Cursed, yes?’
‘Not…as such,’ Remy said slowly. ‘No.’
Another client was peeking into the cave. ‘Tell you later,’ Feilan said, taking himself out of the way again.
By the time the next pause in the patchy stream of visitors came, he’d had time to truly take in the situation. Remy hadn’t left his hair uncovered in his cave out of obedience to his boorish husband, but as an unspoken herald of his abilities. The witchy youngest son of one king and youngest brother of the next had established what amounted to a free physick clinic and lowered himself to speak a local feminine dialect, just so he could help, and in a way that confirmed local superstition about him, no less.
‘You said,’ Feilan accused him, ‘you weren’t good with people.’
Remy, surrounded by the gifts of all the people who appeared to both respect and trust him, looked blank. Then he said, ‘I said I wasn’t much around people. And I’m not.’
Feilan silently pointed down the hill, where the next customer could be seen walking up from the town below, on a path worn through the sheep-nibbled grass by the sheer number of people trekking the same way every day. There was an even more distant figure behind the first.
‘Oh. Those people. They merely find me necessary. There’s not normally so many, but I’ve been away for three days. But my people. My family. I— The red hair, you see.’
‘I think I’ve made it clear I don’t see, Remy.’
‘My father said I shouldn’t be seen about First Hill, lest our enemies accuse us of witchcraft and our friends turn from alliances. And I was…lonely. After my mother— After she was gone. I used to wander about the hills and I met… Well. I suppose she might have been considered a witch, old enough that her hair had faded to silver and she could just be a wise-woman instead. Her name was Achima. She taught me this.’ He held out his hands to encompass the contents of his cave, all those witchy brews and potions. ‘When she passed, the townsfolk and villagers needed someone else to go to.’
Feilan, from a village, an entire homeland, where the problem was that one was never alone, felt something of a pang, a queer combination of both envy and sympathy, for a little boy so entirely and pleasingly left to himself, but so roundly and familiarly rejected by his closest people. At least Feilan had always had his mother, and the other Cursed. It sounded like Remy had lost first his own mother and then his fellow witch and mentor far too young.
‘And then my brother, King Geroald…’ Remy picked at a splinter on the workbench he was leaning on. ‘His wife, the queen, the former queen. Margalita. She was always very kind to me. She didn’t like me’ – a brief smile, achingly fond, flickered over his face as he spoke – ‘moping about in my grotto all day, and made me come to meals with the family. And made them stop acting like my mere existence would bring down disaster on their heads. She…protected me.’
He turned away from Feilan for a long moment. When he turned back, he was very matter-of-fact. ‘Margalita died, last year. Childbirth. Her newborn son died too. Geroald was furious. He said if I was going to hang about serving peasants witchcraft all day, I should have been able to save the queen and the heir, too. I’ve not been much welcome at First Hill since.’
Feilan swallowed his initial reaction, which would have involved profaning the name of a dead man. He said, ‘Must be hard.’
‘I should have been able to save her,’ Remy said, face terribly drawn and bleak.
Feilan hesitated, and then said, ‘You loved her.’
Remy blinked. ‘I— Oh, no. Not like that. She was my brother’s wife.’
‘It’s not stopped better men than you,’ Feilan said, deliberately brusque. ‘Is Adeline yours? Is that why you’re so fond of her? Why you want the regency, to be her father in role if not in name?’
‘No!’ Remy cried, agape, but at least shocked out of that uncomfortable grief. ‘Aside from anything else, I’d never… I do not know why you find it so hard to believe that night with you was truly my first time. I didn’t lie. I don’t lie.’
‘Remy,’ Feilan said patiently. ‘Do you think every one of the young ladies who visited you today truly have sick grandmothers?’
‘Of course they do.’
‘What about that man who wanted you to take him into the back to look at that supposed problem with his cock?’
‘He wanted privacy!’
‘I bet he did,’ Feilan said, grinning. ‘I don’t care what your family has told you. Actually, there’s plenty of people who both respect and admire witches.’
‘Not a witch,’ Remy mumbled, cheeks satisfyingly pink. ‘I said I don’t prefer men, as a rule. I…also don’t prefer women, as a rule.’
Feilan drew a blank; he didn’t know any other options, aside from— ‘Eunuchs, then?’ He frowned. ‘Sheep? Not the cat, surely.’
Horrified, Remy cried, ‘What! No! Oh, you—’
Feilan was fairly sure Remy had bitten back a nasty word just then. And he was being a bit of an arse, if only towards Gytha, who, having been born with a cock and the expectation of warriorhood, had departed her village having managed to avoid becoming Cursed, and who Feilan did not recall ever seeing with a man or another woman since arriving in Siftar. He did recall spending perfectly chaste nights cuddling with her in the depths of winter, snug by the meeting hall firepit. She was simply not inclined to sex, and found him safe, since he wasn’t inclined to sex with her or any woman, nor any unwilling man willing to be honest about it.
He supposed Remy somewhat the same, now, and not deserving of the low Vaer sense of humour in return, even if it had taken his mind completely from dwelling too much on the loss of his brother’s wife and the depths of grief he’d probably had to mostly hide, to avoid the exact accusation Feilan had inflicted on him.
A cheerful hail came from behind them, then, the visitor Feilan had pointed out in the distance. She was the sort of lean some women got in their old age, with a face worn gaunt and long grey hair in a thin plait, loose down her straight spine instead of elaborately coiled about her head.
She said, ‘Isengrim.’
It was a word he’d been hearing all morning. She howled with laughter when he trotted out his women’s dialect just-the-husband trick.
He waited outside on the ledge, using a folded cloth as a makeshift plate piled high with some of the baked goods tithed to the witch of Seven Hills. As she was leaving, tucking a small bottle into her kirtle, Remy already greeting the second woman coming up behind her, he asked her, ‘What does isengrim mean?’
‘Grey hat,’ she said, reaching down to cheekily pat him on the head; women who made it to her age really did not have much to lose. ‘Those iron helmets you wear when you raid.’
Ah. The local version of jolterhead, then, that useful Midlands pejorative the Vaer had adopted, made their own, and spread back into the common tongue.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘About that. Why are none of you women scared of me, when the royal family is?’
‘Oh, you haven’t raided this region since I was a child,’ she said. ‘The Nivardus, though. You did them some damage. The king’s mother, you know. Queen Adeline’s grandmother.’
‘I do not know.’
She tilted her head. ‘Ask your pretty husband, then, young man.’
Feilan made a face, which achieved the hoped-for cackle. He said, ‘What about this monster that killed the king?’
Sobering, she said, ‘We have tales about her, stretching back two hundred years or more. She hunted here long before the Vaer did.’
‘Right,’ Feilan said, smiling and waving to his makeshift platter of graincakes, ‘how about you sit for a spell and tell me about her, good?’