The Ill Fortune To Be Dark In The Eyes

The Ill Fortune To Be Dark In The Eyes

Copyright 2014

By Berlin Gunning (Heather M. Brooks) (1982-)

Cover Art Copyright 2014

No part of this book may be reproduced for any medium without written permission from the publisher.

Published by CreateSpace

All Rights Reserved

The Ill Fortune

To Be Dark In The Eyes

By Berlin Gunning

For all to whom racism makes no sense whatsoever.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the following people for their help and inspiration during the writing of this book.

My incredibly supportive sisters, Lily Skelton, Evy DeLano, Elaine Kresta, Priscilla Schenkel, and Sharon Kearby. Thanks for standing by your madcap kid sis, when she decided to spend the rest of her life writing novels. Ladies, I hope I do you proud.

My parents, Jim and Gerda Brooks, who, between them, taught me to speak, to write, and that different races are simply another expression of God’s boundless imagination.

Thank you, dear and wonderful caregivers, for your encouragement, your interest in this book, and your patience through all those long nights of writing.

Ashley Schanley, also known as Dali. Let’s you and me give ‘em somethin’ to talk about, girl—we two introverts!

Dear Jacquie Ramsey, who is kind enough to let me enjoy the company of her golden goon of a quarter horse, Ranger, and who rekindled my interest in horses generally.

The horses of V.K. Stables, whose presence in my life inspired the presence of three in my book. Yes, Sammy, that includes you. I love you in spite of yourself, you cranky ol’ thing! And although you’re too gruff to admit it, you like me, too!

The humans, Jenny and Gene Vankoll, who eat, breathe, live, and own V.K. Stables, and whose willingness endlessly to discuss horses was valuable beyond description in my research about equines for this book.

The entire staff of AllClassical Radio, Portland’s classical music radio station. Thanks, in particular, to Andrea Murray, for her warm, gentle voice that relaxes me just enough to let me write in the wee hours, but not enough to make me sleepy. Also, a tip of the hat to John Pitman, the station’s music director, for his frequent selections of Baroque music for the late evening. Baroque music is my favorite genre. And you, Mr. Jack Allen, station CEO. You see that I have kept my promise, yes? You know to which promise I refer.

Finally, I want to thank a woman who’s stood by me almost as long as my sisters have, my original cover designer and best friend of 20 years, Miss Kelsea Danae, who befriended the most “uncool” girl in our middle school, looking right past the glaring differences. That took some serious guts! Here’s to our next 20 years!

All my love and thanks,

BERLIN GUNNING

1

All who knew, or knew of, the Lady of Etheria, knew that the birth would be difficult. She was a small, meager woman, ill-suited to the task of delivery. Her other two children had come hard, and no one in the nation was in transports of ecstasy at the prospect of this little one’s arrival. Oh, but her physician and waiting-women would get themselves into a fine froth when they saw for themselves, or heard by gossip, what she was about, now! And they would see or hear, so it was a matter of when, not if, they learned. A woman dressed in full Etherian regalia of trailing skirts and headdress, mounted astride a colossal stallion tearing hell-for-leather toward the courtyard of the summer palace, would not be unnoticed, particularly because, very much against the advice of her doctor, she had brought her heir of five-and-a-half months gestation along for such a mad run. But what choice had she?

She clattered into the courtyard, and steed, baby, and all, galloped into the Great Hall, the oldest section of the palace. Here, she found old Iordain , the fencing master, giving a lesson in that art to several small boys.

“Iordain!” she cried. “My lord husband lies stricken in a swoon in the west pasture! Take my horse and bring him back.” Even as she spoke, the swordsman approached and lifted her bodily to the ground.

“Who attends him, my lady?” he inquired over his shoulder as he mounted in her place.

“None! It was just we two when he went down.”

A nod, a cluck of the tongue, the ring of horseshoes over stone, a snap of sparks beneath them, and the old knight was away. The Lady of Etheria leant lightly against the wall, bending a little to conceal her pregnancy from the gawking boys. One of them, probably the oldest, somehow suddenly acquired the presence of mind to bring her a dipperful of water from the pail in the corner.

“My lady is pale and short of breath,” he said, with a child’s forthrightness, and without first being spoken to.

“Hold your tongue,” she croaked, her throat dry with the dust of her ride. But she drank what he offered, and her breathing moderated. “What name did your mother bequeath to you?” she demanded of the bringer of water.

“Olifyan , so please milady.”

“Well, Olifyan, as you seem keen to remark upon my appearance, find the Lady Gatrin , please, and tell her what you just told me, and that she must come here at once.” Olifyan, about whom the Lady of Etheria knew only that he was her lord husband’s foster son, ran off to the servants’ hall.

“Oh, Ma Ievna , but you gave us a fright, riding like that in your condition, far gone as you are!” None but Ievna Gatrin, senior among her waiting gentlewomen, dared so blatantly to mention the Etherian queen’s pregnancy, and even Gatrin, though she spoke with urgency, hushed her tone.

The monarch answered as Gatrin hurried her away, an arm looped through hers to steady her. “Mon Ievn gave me a fright, collapsing in the west pasture. We were alone out there. What was I to do, carry him? Drag him? Drape him over the saddle? The man is my weight, and half as much again! And I could never walk the distance from pasture to palace as quickly as this emergency required. No, no, I’m much swifter and steadier in the saddle than afoot. Besides, I rode astride. Less apt to tumble that way. I know the limits of my endurance, and the stallion does, too. I asked him to run, and he ran.”

“Shall I fetch the doctor, lady most sovereign?”

“Gracious, no, not for me! The Dar Ievn has greater need of him than I. You’ve goodly skill as a midwife, woman; use it if needs must, should I enter into swift labor. Examine me now, and keep watch over the child and me this night, and should my travail commence, but the babe tarry, commend us unto God and the common hospital.”

“The common hospital! My liege lady--!”

“I have spoken, Gatrin.” She raised a hand to forestall further dissent.

“But, your ladyship! All those pestilential ailments of the lowborn! They would kill you!”

“I. Have. Spoken.” This with weary finality, as she reached her chambers, lay down upon her bed, and surrendered to the lady Gatrin’s scrutiny.

2

As his wife had said, the Dar Ievn of Etheria outweighed her considerably. But this was true of nearly every adult in Etheria, and even so, Ievn Ymanu was a small man, scarcely taller than she, and light for anyone to carry who had the strength. Despite the approach of his fiftieth natal day, and a touch of arthritis from old injuries and hard riding, Ledt Iordain had it, should it be needed. He dismounted in the west pasture, and knelt beside Ymanu, who had partly regained consciousness. Already, both eyes were angrily bruised, one eyelid fluttered at half-mast, and the other was swollen shut. His nose also bore bruises, and it bled. Iordain suspected that it was broken. On the knight’s heels came the court physician, whom he had paused long enough to summon.

All these hurts betokened a fall from a rapidly moving horse, and had likely been sustained before he touched the ground. The damage to his nose probably hearkened back to an impact against the animal’s neck. There were sure to be other wounds which they could not see until they examined him more closely. He lay there moaning as they did so, at the mercy of the breathless late-May heat, and of various biting and stinging insects.

“Still yourself, my prince,” Iordain soothed. The Dar Iven’s bloodied lips moved, and he bent to discern an indistinct fragment of speech.

“Heavy. So heavy.”

“Merciful God!” he prayed. “Not my prince! Not in his youth like this! It cannot be!”

He was no doctor, but in the council chambers, in the tiltyard at tournaments, and even, once, in the heat of battle, he had heard this complaint, though always before from men decidedly the Dar Ievn’s senior. The twenty-three-year-old prince consort struggled for each breath, and apart from the bruising, his face had all the color of cold ash. Iordain inquired whether the doctor had found any other broken bones, hoping that he might be wrong, that the source of the difficulty breathing was a fractured rib or ribs, which time would heal.

No such fortune. He was correct, and more was the pity. The cyanotic tinge to the lips, the general clamminess of the prince’s person, a sudden bout of nausea that swept over him even as they worked, and most pointedly, the crushing heaviness of the chest of which Ymanu complained, all indicated the occurrence of a heart attack.

3

The child neither died nor put in an early appearance alive. It clung to the wall of its little mother’s womb with tenacity reminiscent of her own, and swelled her belly still further as she entered her sixth month, and then her seventh. “I can’t shake you, can I, baby one?” she asked it one night as she lay in bed, feeling it romp and cavort and drive sleep from her. “Not that I was trying, but your Daya needed my help, and we all thought that to save him I must lose you. No, no, you’re none the worse for wear from our little jaunt on Ivanian. When you are born and older, I shall give you a proper ride on his back, and I hope I may teach you to love horses.” Loyal, gentle, dutiful Ivanian! She would not have trusted any horse but her rare white Friesian to carry her and her unborn at the gallop, and his surefootedness had not failed her.

But she would not sit any horse again until after the baby arrived. She doubted she could have, even had she so desired, for she was nothing short of ponderous these days.

So long as she remained on the ground however, she need not sit idle. Nor did she, and a mercy that proved to be, for in the midst of July, she made a terrible discovery. This finding necessitated considerable bodily exertion on her part, distended abdomen, swollen ankles, and aching back notwithstanding.

Her husband was at length up and about again, his heart attack having been as mild as it was rare in a man his age. Yet still he tired easily, and this caused his wife no little anxiety. As was customary whenever she waxed heavy with issue, the governing council suspended its assembly, not to convene again until she brought forth. Thus, she spent many hours of his convalescence with him, doing her wifely best to coax him back to full vigor. Consequently, she did not stir much abroad in the ensuing fortnight, and all that occurred beyond the threshold of Ymanu’s sickroom acquired for her a trivial and surreal air.

Even after he rose from his bed, she did not stray far from his side, and so half the month of July was fled before he prevailed upon her to attend divine services. She did as he said, worshiping amongst the common folk, as was her wont. Afterward, again as always, she continued to kneel in prayer. The rest of the congregation departed in silence, that they might not disturb her. Her devout fear of God was known to all Etherians.

“Gracious Jehovah,” her attendants heard her whisper, as her tears flowed, “the soul of Thy handmaid magnifies Thee, for Thou hast stayed the hand of the Angel of Death, and restored unto me my helpmeet, and the father of my little ones, a just earthly lord and master, and gentle to me beyond my merit. Return him, I petition Thee, to the fullness of his hardihood—“

Clank! Clank!

She stopped mid-prayer, and glanced up at the ceiling, whence the unmistakable rattle of chains proceeded. Those with her followed the direction of her gaze. At that moment one of the cathedral bells began a mighty clangor, and all those below exchanged looks of equal parts perfect understanding and utter bewilderment.

Someone was confined in the belfry.

“What abomination sullies the house of God?” demanded the Dar Ievna , her voice reverently low, but her dusky eyes a-smolder with wrath. With surprising agility, she gained her feet, and, drawing back her skirts, ran to a door at the rear of the nave, behind which six flights of stairs eventually led to the steeple.

Mindful that it still wanted six weeks before the time came for her to yield her child, she slowed, that she might not force herself into labor, flung open the door, and started up, without haste, but with firm steps.

“Ma Ievna, be careful. Remember the burden you carry. Permit me, in turn, to carry you.” This was the advice of Vondrian , senior among her half-dozen “bearing-men.” These were Etherian gentlemen of impeccable character, and, more immediately important to the Dar Ievna, prodigious bodily strength, who attended her nearly everywhere she went, to carry her whenever walking fatigued her, as it had all her life, by reason of the crippling condition that twisted and bent her lower limbs. The queen paused.

“Ordinarily, my lord Vondrian, I would,” she replied, whispering under her breath into his ear, “but my footfalls alone are lighter than yours would be if you had me in arms. If some mischief-brewer is above us, I wish not to alert him to our approach, by any sound, and thus give him time to hide.”

Vondrian nodded understanding. “Ah. Yes, my lady decides wisely.” Thereafter they all proceeded, until the lady Etrea stood in the very entrance to the belfry.

At first, despite the bright sun streaming through the open front of the tower, her shortsighted eyes could discern neither chains nor anyone attached to them. It occurred to her that there might be no prisoner; perhaps someone was having a bit of a sacrilegious joke up here. “Violator of sacred places, whomsoever you may be, reveal yourself! I command it in God’s name!”

Silence.

“Come out, I say!”

Then—

What the Etherian Lady lacked in eyesight, she possessed in hearing ten times over. To her ears now came the sound of labored breathing, and then a cough so deep and probably painful to the sufferer, that she and several of her ladies winced, and one of the bearing-men cursed in sympathy. Then her most junior bearing- man Varkish, gave a shout.

“Here, my lady! Over here!”

There he lay in the shadow of two great bells, chained to the tower wall by the neck, his feet inches from one of the bell ropes that trailed upon the floor. Clearly, a kick from him had set the bell to pealing, for its rope still swayed with the momentum.

Alidias.

Poor, mute, childlike Alidias, the dark-eyed castoff son of her Master of Horse, Zimethyr . Whether the father hated the son more for his frailty of mind or for the color of his eyes the queen did not know. Only by God’s grace first, and then that of her own father, had the lad escaped death by exposure as an infant. She had been five years old when Alidias was born, and still she remembered the tiny blue-lipped mite her father had brought home from his hunt beneath his overcoat that merciless January night. Daya had never liked Zimethyr, and his distaste for the man following the boy’s abandonment only grew. Soon after, it became apparent that Alidias was not increasing in understanding or skill as even very young children usually do, and the Master of Horse explained to the late Dar Ievn that he had rid himself and his family of this twofold disgrace. Daya held Zimethyr in still lower esteem after that, but he was a horseman of such extraordinary talent and usefulness that the old king could not spare him, and so he retained his post. Daya demanded and received full guardianship of Alidias, whom he raised alongside young Etrea, very much to the bewilderment of the boy’s father, who already wondered why his lord did not put away his little invalid daughter from polite eyes.

Put her away he had not, and now the daughter stared down in horror at him who had become her ward with her father’s passing. Alidias lay with his head and neck cruelly jammed against the wall, his chain fastened to a ring above, in that same wall.

“Lidi,” she whispered, crouching down beside him, “Oh, Lidi, my sweet, precious baby brother! Who did this, hm? Did your Daya put you here?”

To her astonishment, Alidias shook his head in negation. He took her hand, and visibly relaxed.

In moments of extreme distress, the Dar Ievna found herself hard-put to speak. She had also begun to cry again, and words now only came to her in pairs, between shuddering breaths. She who so often spoke with the voice of authority could now only plead like one of the many petitioners who asked boons of her:

“Assistance…please?”

The lady Florna, Ievna Gatrin’s niece, nodded, and ran downstairs to fetch Gindam, the captain of the guard, who, with his men, stood sentry outside, and held the master key that unlocked any fetter in the realm. Her aunt also departed, seeking the doctor.

Gindam arrived, and freed Alidias, and then they all saw his deep neck laceration. “Don’t touch,” warned the lady Ardoria, who stood closest, catching gentle but firm hold of his wrist when Alidias’ hand strayed in that direction. Though Gatrin outranked her among the Dar Ievna’s women, she was the only attendant who did, and Ardoria had a grown son of the same age as the royal ward. “You bleed, child, and it is not clean.” Like her queen, she crouched beside Alidias, and each of them held one of his hands, and would not loose him. Alidias’ great brown eyes, however, were free to traverse his makeshift prison, and they did, soft and timid as a doe’s, passing over all present.

“Goodness, he’s a shy one!” murmured Florna. She was but newly in service, and unlike the others, had never met Alidias. The rest were entirely accustomed to his retiring ways, and often forgot that his inability to speak was not alone responsible for his silence.

Alidias turned his gaze to the golden-haired young noblewoman. He liked a soft voice and a kind word, as well, his surrogate sister thought, as any nervous horse. He had heard the latter from Ardoria, and, just now, the former from Florna. Sinking to her knees beside him, Florna continued to address him in quiet tones, though tones which carried very little meaning. He grew still more at his ease, and even a little drowsy, as he listened.

He went on listening, as the doctor came, and applied a poultice of honey and poppy extract to his wound, right there where he languished, so grave did the man of medicine find his condition. Only when the poultice had been secured to begin its good work was he pronounced fit to leave the belfry, and then he had to be carried, in the arms of her bearing-man Zeliam, so weak had illness and scanty rations left him.

The Dar Ievna refused to be similarly conveyed downstairs, but, with the urgency of rescue gone, she descended even more slowly and carefully than she had gone up.

She moved, at last, like a monarch heavy with heir.

Like a ruler deep in worry for the welfare of her land.

4

“Ach, that stinks!” Two hours later, the Dar Ievn pressed a linen handkerchief to his mouth and nose, and stared down in horrified pity at his now-delirious adopted brother-in-law.

“’Tis the infection he carries in his neck, my prince,” said the doctor, and the consort nodded. He had ordered Alidias brought to his own chambers and made comfortable on a divan in the sitting room. His wife, who had sent word to him of her dreadful find in the church, he ordered to lie down and rest upon his bed. In the council chamber, and before a full assemblage of the court, she governed supreme, but at home and at hearth, he was lord and master, and her wifely submission was her honor and privilege, and their shared joy.

She moved slowly off, shut herself in the bedroom, and lay down, but did not go to sleep. He knew she was awake; she seldom did sleep during the day, and she did not spend many hours of the night in slumber. Neither did she cry very often, but now, in the hushed solitude, she surrendered to her tears even more completely than she had in the belfry.

Meanwhile, with his own hands, the High Prince of Etheria changed Alidias’ bandage, a process that, according to the doctor someone must perform every few hours. “Gone are the days of the single daily bandage change,” said the doctor, “Even I shudder to think of—of what collects under a dressing in four hours and twenty. Frequent redressing is far more sanitary and generally beneficial to the patient. See! He is yet out of his senses, but even now he has calmed somewhat.”

“How long do you suppose…?”

“A wound such as this does not open overnight. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he was confined at about the time you fell ill, gracious prince.”

“Virgin bride of Joseph! That’s nigh on two months! Two months in a neck iron, and one meant for a smaller neck than his! Two months on starvation rations by the look of him! Two months without a bath! And Alidias is such a clean person! Those around him today weren’t alone in finding it unpleasant to be near him; he stank in his own nostrils, I doubt not, poor wight, and could not lift a finger to alter that state of affairs!”

’“And who did it?” wondered the doctor. “And why?”

“Well, I’m fairly certain it wasn’t his father,” the Dar Ievn said, “and not simply because Alidias indicated it wasn’t. Zimethyr may be a bigot, but he’s a sanctimonious, unctuous old brute. He’d not misuse a church as an asylum for the frail of mind.”

“No…” reflected the doctor. “Whoever worked this evil had as much disdain for God and church as Zimethyr has regard.”

“And an intensely personal hatred for my brother-in-law. This person starved him, doctor, and managed to keep his whereabouts unknown for two months.”

“One of my lord’s nobles,” the doctor suddenly declared. “Of course! One from an old and prominent, or formerly prominent, family.”

“How can you be certain?”

“Why, from the method of punishment, itself!”

“Torture, you mean. I still fail to understand.”

“Aye, torture! Torture of the basest and most antiquated sort! No one has been steepled in Etheria since Christ’s Year 1359.”

“1359? Steepled? What?” The Dar Ievn looked entirely bewildered.

“Steepling. My lord has not heard of this practice?”

“Ugh! No! But it would seem that I should. Say on, man, say on.”

“Ah, well. Those Etherians thought, in the fourteenth century and earlier, to be possessed by evil spirits, were steepled. They were led into the belfries of churches and chained, just as Alidias has been, to the walls thereof, to prevent them from falling (or jumping) to their deaths. Doctrine of the day held that the ringing of bells would drive away demons.

“Because their places of imprisonment were also houses of worship, the steeples were originally kept clean for their occupants, scoured daily and such, that no offal might profane or befoul a sacred edifice, and the captives received simple but adequate food, and passable medical attention so that murder by starvation or neglect might not occur within church walls.

“By the mid-twelfth century however, the upkeep of such places of chastisement, and the maintenance of the chastised, had generally and horribly lapsed, though steepling itself remained very much in vogue as a means of disposing of undesirables, rather than one of attending to their supposed spiritual welfare. For the next two hundred years and more, any inconvenient citizen could be steepled, to die in squalor, and no one would give him another moment’s thought.”

“Surely there were those who took exception, yes? At least some members of the clergy must have stood completely aghast at such heinous doings. And the general population! Please tell me there was some outcry against such barbarity!”

“Oh, there was outcry, well enough. But not on the part of the masses, and certainly not for humanitarian aid for the captives. As conditions began to deteriorate, those thusly imprisoned began to die of famine or disease. They of the cloth called the reek and decay attendant upon such deaths a desecration of sacred ground. Hence, the High Council’s passage of the 1360 Act of Sanctity, which forbade steepling.”

“And apparently, until my unfortunate relative was put up a belfry two months ago, that law was strictly observed for eight centuries.”

“Afraid so,” replied the doctor. “He was well-hidden. His captor saw to it that his quarters were kept clean, that no odor might betray his whereabouts, although Alidias himself was not permitted to bathe.”

“Why Alidias?” wondered Ymanu. “Why torment a poor mute who can gather fewer of his wits than a pauper can gather tatters of clothing for warmth?”

“Because Alidias is the Tiaj, the Etherian Lady’s Favored One.”

“Simply because he carries both the ill fortune to be dark in the eyes, and the good fortune of the queen’s familial feeling?”

“Simply because.”

“But he is the Favored One. All the court saw, and all the country knows, that the Etherian Lips lay upon his brow in favor! He is inviolate! If he were in full command of his senses, he could kill Etrea herself and none would gainsay him, all because she kissed his forehead six years ago! The one who dared to lay a hand on him would find himself watching all his possessions burn before his eyes, after which he would be summarily and forever banished from the land! That is, if my wife were of a sufficiently lenient mind to let him live.”

“About that, my gracious prince, this evildoer plainly does not care. For as the Favored One must go, so must go the one who grants the favor.”

“My lady wife—Oh, my sweet queen!”

“Yes, eventually she would be dispatched. Though the carnage would not commence with her. A careful perpetrator of treason would begin with someone near the throne but not vital to Etheria’s governance.”

“Alidias.”

“Yes. And then yourself.”

“But I never extended him any favor.”

“Yes, but you stand alone between him and the one who did.”

“So, although no kin of mine can inherit, my life would also be forfeit? Are you certain?”

“I am. Your heart attack, my prince, was no mere twist of fortune.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Tyche’s Whim. Serendipitously for you, it did not still your heart.”

“What beneath the heavens is Tyche’s Whim?”

“These days, this weed is used to eradicate rats, my liege. Ah! That is right. It is indigenous to this country, but not to your homeland of Gigue. Formerly, it sealed the fates of many prisoners of war. When you first were stricken, and expelled your most recent meal, I had the dawning of suspicion. In the discharge, I found bits of plant matter, which, upon examination, I determined to be Tyche’s Whim. You’re lucky to be alive. In the few it does not kill outright, it causes severe heart ailments.”

“Hence the sobriquet ‘Tyche’s Whim?’”

“Indeed.”

“An attempt was made upon my life?” Veteran though he was, the doctor marveled at the conversational calm of this inquiry. “By whom?”

“By someone of lofty estate, Mon Ievn. By the same person, I am almost positive, who held Alidias hostage.”

5

The old knight glanced occasionally at the pallet, where the Etherian ward lay sleeping. He sat before the fire, roasting venison for his supper. He might have dined in the Great Hall, amid lively companions, but—“I’m a shy man, Ma Ievna, shy as young Alidias,” he told Etrea once after an elaborate state dinner. In any case, that afternoon, the queen had observed what, very likely, most others at court had not, Ledt Iordain’s deep fatigue. She had excused him from court at once. These three nights past, he had sat up tending Alidias, whose neck wound a surgeon had finally drawn together with needle and thread. Two weeks had passed since the rescue, and with proper nourishment and care, Alidias had healed as swiftly as only a twenty-year-old could. At that time, the surgeon could stitch in safety, and had done so, three days ago. This operation he had performed with the lad fully conscious.

Alidias’ robustness never ceased to astonish even those who knew him well. He had lain, immobile but not silent, giving the soft gurgling utterances common among very young infants, in moments of contentment. He was chewing the tip of one thumb, but even this did not seem to indicate distress. His big eyes never left the surgeon’s intent face, except when the doctor moved his neck at need, or turned him prone. Iordain had expected him to be frantic with confusion, in need of soothing words and restraining hands, but the ward was calm, and so he stood by, simply watching. Once, Alidias gave a half-smile that danced in his eyes more than it played about his lips.

“What?” wondered the doctor, his concentration nonetheless unbroken.

“He sees or hears something pleasing to him, good physician,” murmured Iordain. “What, I cannot imagine, but it is so.”

“Hm! Then he is easily gratified. Few can find aught to smile at, under the needle, if, indeed, they are conscious enough to smile. A rare one, this Alidias.”

Silence descended again, but not complete silence, what with Alidias’ cooing, the snap of kindling on the fire, the click of the needle with every suture, and the industrious ticking of the mantel clock—

The clock.

That accounted for Alidias’ perfect composure, that clock.

Perhaps because of his various impediments, Alidias’ five senses were highly developed and never at rest. Throughout the repair of his neck wound, the clock’s ticking had, Iordain now reasoned, delighted his ears, and kept him quiet. When the doctor turned him, he could also see the timepiece, and derived further joy from that, smiling at it as one smiles at a dear friend of many years’ standing. It never occurred to Iordain that to both Alidias and the Dar Ievna, the clock was, in fact such a friend; the knight only knew that it had delighted the queen almost from babyhood, that she therefore entertained an avid fondness for clocks generally, and that she had, from the time she first met him in his infancy, striven, with resounding success, to impart to Alidias this unconventional predilection. Mayhap, Iordain reflected, the boy was not as lacking for wits as most thought…

But of course he was. The queen might love clocks and be exquisitely sensitive to external stimuli, but she was undoubtedly superior to Alidias in intellect and judgment, if only by reason of the gray-blue of her eyes. She was Iordain’s superior, by virtue of that same trait, for mercy’s sake! Every Dark-Eyed One in Etheria knew that. Besides, the exposure of which Alidias had nearly died had left him simple. It must have, else why could he not speak?

Thinking of these things now, as he readied his meal, the knight grew drowsy, and, to his shame, the lady Otisa, Etrea’s midwife, arriving at his open door, chanced to find him in the midst of a yawn. The old woman laughed as he tried to conceal it.

“Poor lad!” she said. “Lie you down and shut your eyes. The Dar Ievna said you looked completely done-for weary. She sent me to see to that one for the night.” And she nodded at Alidias.

“I’m tired, well enough,” he admitted, amused to hear himself called ‘lad’, “but I also hunger,” he concluded, even more amused to consider that her years numbered fourscore, and a mere fifty-year-old would seem boyish to her. “And Alidias…”

“Shall pass the night in my care, as he did when his mother brought him forth. As you did while, and after, I coaxed you from the womb of Ledta Dajhmia. ”

“You midwived me. Of course.”

“Aye. Now, no more talking! Eat your supper and go to sleep, Dajhmiu.”

Dajhmiu. “Sweetheart,” that meant. “Lad.” “Sweetheart.” What was next? “Child?” Well, she had attended his entry into the world, besides which she was a Green-Eyed One, beyond even the quintessence of Etherian womanhood, above all blame and correction. That which she called him, he was. She had delivered him to the anguished screams of his fifteen-year-old mother, who died moments afterward from the misery of her ordeal. She had been a midwife almost sixty years, and she swore that her worst nightmares still rang with Dajhmia’s cries, burnt with her fever, and trembled with her shock. The dead girl’s own name, Dajhmia, had derived from that term of endearment, and there were many who averred that Iordain was like his mother in appearance. If it comforted a spry, diligent old woman to, in essence, call him by his mother’s name, then, so be it.

By the time he had eaten what he had prepared, he felt positively, disgracefully, decadently sleepy. He…had no business…to be…in this condition, but...oh,…it was lovely…to feel so! The thought trailed in fragments across his mind. Too exhausted even to move to his own pallet, he lay down, just as he was, before the fire.

“Aye, that’s it,” he dimly heard Otisa say. “Rest. You yourself shall sicken, if you don’t.”

For upwards of sixteen hours, he knew, and heard, nothing more of the actual world. But he dreamed, and the tortured shrieks of a dark-eyed young girl in the midst of her first birthing seemed to fill his ears. She was too small and childish in person for the task at hand, and he watched helplessly as it took her life, although she lingered just long enough to complete it, and whisper a boy-child’s name in his ear. And her agony ceased, and so did her screaming, but the wails of her baby never replaced it. The tiny specimen of boyhood did not die, however; indeed he gulped, sighed, and began to breathe with healthy regularity…but in absolute silence.

6

Deep in the night, as Iordain dreamed of one birth, another did, in fact, occur.

The babe was not anticipated until the fifth of September, and this was early on the morning of August sixth. She had had pangs all the previous afternoon, even as she had sent Iordain to his well-earned bed. She knew them for what they were.

Otisa knew too, understanding, in her own hasty dismissal from the queen’s presence her liege lady’s coded message: “I labor, but it is early yet. Leave me alone almost until the little one crowns. I will send for you then.” The Dar Ievna could not abide noise or commotion from anyone during her childbirths, until delivery was imminent, and someone absolutely had to be present to ensure the well-being of the child.

But this night, she came awake in a flash of pain, of the sort she had felt just before each of her sons had been born. She was one who could not cry out in intense pain, because she never had sufficient breath to do so when such occasions arose. She could only draw her breath through clenched teeth, and release what began as a growl and ended as a sob. “Stop, baby, stop!” she gasped. “Too early! No—no one here!”

The baby’s prematurity had worried her, of course, but a child of eight months’ growth was viable without the womb, and when her labor had begun, she had elected to let it continue. Who knew? Mayhap a smaller baby was more easily borne. What made her plead for a delay, now, was the absence of anyone else, who could assist. She had prepared herself mentally to labor through the night, and deliver in the daylight hours, as she had both times before. She was not about to call Otisa away from her brother’s sickbed; several among her waiting-women were capable midwives. She had only to call one of them, and she would—if she could first draw breath.

Her cramping belly seemed disinclined to relax enough to permit substantial respiration, however. She panted rapidly and shallowly between spasms, and flung off the bedclothes, as much to be able to see when the child emerged and allow it to breathe, itself, as because she was hot. That emergence was nigh upon her, she could tell. The child was crowning, she felt, with some relief. At least it would arrive correctly positioned! Many premature babies of whom she knew were turned wrong for birthing. If that had been her case, she could not have called loudly enough to summon help, and both she and the child might have died. Etrea crouched on the bed.

Shaking.

Whimpering a little.

“Come on, then, little one,” she mouthed, leaning back and bracing her feet. Her lips parted in a silent scream, and tears coursed from her wide eyes. Merciful Jehovah, I am dying, she thought. Yes, yes, I will die right here in my own bed. My ladies will come in to find me dead at daybreak. I hope to goodness Ymanu is a capable regent! Will a five-year-old, my baby Yiduar, be the youngest Etherian monarch? I must search the records to learn…

What!? Search the records after I die? How shall that be?

You idiot!

Give birth now. Die later.

Push.

Through her half-hallucination came that monosyllabic imperative, plain as the wall of a dungeon. She heard the voice speak it to her mind, as her internal word enthusiast saw those four black letters march importantly across the white paper of her consciousness.

She drew a partial breath and obeyed, counted to ten, relaxed, hung her head, resting, and followed the command when it seemed to come again, seconds later. Four times it happened thus. Four times, and on the fourth, she felt the child slip onto the sheet below her, and then, for the moment, at least, sweet relief.

Then, wonderfully, a vigorous wail.

She caught up the baby, thinking fleetingly that this infant was heavy for one born a month before its time, and joined the frenzied weeping.

“Ma Ievna? Oh, Lord Christ, have mercy! Ma Ievna!”

Gatrin, the dear, blessed woman.

The foremost of her body servants swooped across the royal bedchamber, candle in hand, and bent over the bed. Her queen lay trembling with recent exertion and emotion. In the candlelight, they both had their first view the little one.

In Etrea’s arms, smallish but lusty, and with a full head of dark hair like hers, lay a baby girl.

7

She rode.

She did not ride Ivanian. She vowed that she never would again. Ivanian had been Ymanu’s wedding gift to her, and Ymanu—well, the mere thought of him infuriated Etrea. The horse’s very name meant, “Wedding Chant for the Prince.” She had only herself to blame for this ridiculous designation, but she never would have bestowed it, she reasoned, if her infernal husband had not gifted her with the preposterous creature. A white Friesian! Honestly! Had he sought to atone, in advance for fathering a child of a sex she did not want? If that was so, she spat upon his peace offering!

Freed from the encumbrance of pregnancy, she was mounted sidesaddle, riding hard, driving the high-strung, half-gentled stud colt, Ivanian’s typically Friesian-black son, whose name translated to “Princely Ransom,” to snorting, sweat-lathered

exhaustion. For the first time in her life, she spared not the whip, and, perversely, each lash, as it brought him pain, soothed her.

“Go on!” Etrea ordered through clenched teeth. “Go!”

“Ma Ievna! Take care! This very morning were you in childbed! You tax your strength!”

“I know what I did this morning! I ache with what I did this morning! Do not presume to instruct me,” shrieked the queen to the lady Vranzess, who rode beside her, and she pulled ahead.

“Govern your tongue, girl,” cautioned the lady Ardoria. “Etheria’s High Lady knows well what she does, in all equestrian matters.”

Riding was jouncing, jarring torture for Etrea. But in her very pain she took ruthless pleasure. If she could so fail in the duties of governance as to birth a useless daughter, she deserved punishment. Had she been queen consort, with Ymanu as king, it might not have been such a calamitous thing, but she was queen in her own right; bringing forth princes was her God-ordained earthly function. Weak women bore girls. Her own mother was proof of that. She had died having Etrea. Etrea would not appear weak, particularly not before her all-male council when it reconvened in mid-October. She had gravely erred, and she would execute penance with the stalwartness of a High Prince.

She knew, having received her education outside of Etheria that the sex of her newborn was Ymanu’s doing, as far as twenty-first-century genetic science went. This was not taught in Etheria, at any educational institution, and would have met with widespread disbelief, even amongst scholars, if one were sufficiently bold to propound such an idea. It was from her womb that the child had come, thus, ran the common thought, she was blameful for the baby’s girlhood. This knowledge made her as furious with her husband as with herself, and between her helpless rage, and her grinding soreness, she began to weep.

A girl. A girl who lay inside me for a month, my doctor now says, before even I noticed.

They will say that my womb grows feeble, that it cannot yield any but girl-babes anymore, and soon it shall sleep, as an old woman’s does. And if, at some time, Almighty God should see fit to quicken me with a son, the grizzled old fishwives will shake their heads as I thrash in travail, and mutter that it is not fitting that a woman near, or perhaps past, thirty years should be brought to bed, herself, when she ought to be awaiting the birth of a grandson. They shall recount ghastly tales of women they knew who died giving birth, fondly believing that I cannot hear. Then when my son is born, if he be born alive, they will whisper that he will not long remain so, for he issued from a womb where a girl once grew, and therefore is less hardy than other boys. If he is born still, they will look solemn, wrap him discreetly in a tiny shroud, and wonder amongst themselves what I, or anyone else, expected from my aging body.

“Draw up!” she ordered the young stallion, tugging cruelly at his mouth, when she and her retinue reached the forge of the palace blacksmith. “For decency’s love, you stupid, wretched beast, draw up. Stop!” She knew both that she was crying too bitterly for her words to be intelligible, and that it was more than she deserved when the horse did, in fact, stop. She sat him for several minutes, clutching fistfuls of his mane, and sobbing. Then, because no one was about whom she trusted to approach the skittish colt, she kicked free of the sidesaddle’s lone stirrup, and slid to the ground without help. Staggering from a mixture of pain and grief, she went along her mount’s side, to his neck, in which she buried her face.

Oh, Ransom, my sweet, I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry! I won’t whip you that way again, she promised inwardly, running her fingers through the Friesian’s windblown mane.

Oh, my poor, misgoverned, primitive nation, I’m so sorry! I’ve failed you abysmally. I was my father’s only child, born a cripple and a girl. I haven’t banished ill treatment of Dark-Eyed Ones, as I promised myself I would when I came to the throne. I haven’t even managed to soften the High Council’s iron determination not to pass a law providing for their basic education! And the only failure of mine of which you will be aware apart from my deformities and my sex, my woefully benighted subjects, is my delivery of a daughter!

Oh, Ymanu, begetter of useless girls, how I hate you! You have made a byword of me among the people of high estate and low, and I alone shall suffer for your shortcoming. Well, you’ll get no more spawn on me, female or otherwise, that you won’t! I wouldn’t trust you not to give me a dozen girls, after a nasty trick such as this! I wouldn’t trust you to sit across a breakfast table from me, after such a nasty trick. The very thought of the sight of you each morning fills my mouth with the taste of curdled milk, as does the notion of ever speaking to you again.

She kept clenching and unclenching her hands in the horse’s mane, and with each closure, the great ruby of her marital ring, turned askew, ground into her left palm. She composed herself somewhat as she surveyed the impression it had made. Then she removed the ornament, entered the smithy, and, to the complete shock of the artisan, dropped it onto the coals of the forge.

“You will bring that to me, master smith, when nothing remains of it save a formless lump,” she commanded, her throat raw, and her voice so harsh that a few of the apprentices looked frightened, and she herself flinched. She knew the forge was not sufficiently hot to melt the gemstone, and she did not desire that it should. Indeed, melted gold alone would serve her purpose. She did not want the result mistaken for anything besides that which it once had been.

If her action had surprised the blacksmith, her tone did not. The Grey-Eyed One, her social equal, her distant cousin, and a blacksmith by choice, looked straight and steadily at her, and tossed his head in acknowledgement.

“So please you, good Cusn Zakharia,” she requested more humbly, and with trembling lips. She turned to walk away.

“My lady cousin,” he called after her.

She looked over her shoulder.

“Deal gently with the black colt. He’s little more than a baby, hey?”

That afternoon, he returned the destroyed ring. Etrea nodded her thanks.

Then she squared her shoulders, and betook herself, with a grand sweep of skirts, to Ymanu’s bedchamber. Unwrapping it from her handkerchief, she dropped the “formless lump” she had ordered onto his pillow, delighted that its soot-streaked ruby was nevertheless still intact.

8

Alidias saw the key, and screamed like one consigned to the fires of hell.

Even the Reverend Father Yuishan, the cathedral’s senior priest had not anticipated such an intense reaction to the sight of the key that had locked Alidias’ neck iron in the belfry. The recent prisoner began to shake and weep like a child. Gindam caught him in his arms as he tried to flee Iordain’s house, where he, his sister and brother-in-law, the knight, and the captain of the guard had gathered that Monday afternoon in October, at Father Yuishan’s request. His screams went on and horribly on. Though the royal couple had hardly spoken since their daughter’s birth, they were temporarily united in their shock and horror at their ward’s distress, and looked at one another wide-eyed. The priest had presented the key to the queen.

Set in the bow of the iron key, exquisitely wrought in silver, was an emblem every Etherian knew, a long-stemmed rose with a single thorn, from whose tip hung a ruby, representing a drop of blood. This was the famed Bloody Thorn of Saviatha crest. Renowned though the image was, the province of Saviatha itself was Etheria’s most remote, far from the province of Ardoria, and Etheria’s capitol city of the same name. Only a native of Saviatha, journeying to the capitol would have brought the key; no one ever went to Saviatha except as a government official, a convict, or the spouse of a convict, and almost all native Saviathans were the direct descendants of convicts. Neither the terrain nor the inhabitants of that region were particularly hospitable.

The crest was the emblem of the Duchy of Saviatha, which made Etrea certain that the bearer was in the pay of Saviatha’s duke. In turn, the thought that the Duke, a man as harsh and unyielding as the lands and people under his dominion, had a personal spite at poor uncomprehending Alidias, made her grimace. Ymanu had told her of his conversation with the doctor on the day she found Alidias, and that the persecutor hated the lad especially. How had Alidias managed to displease the Trer Ievn, the Governing Lord of Saviatha?

Gindam was tall and strong, but he had ado to restrain Alidias, who, though not heavy, stood above the average height, and had the strength of pure terror. At last the older man managed to lift the younger and cradle him, as he had been carried out of the belfry during his rescue. If the key reminded him of his captivity, Gindam’s hold reminded him of his liberation, and Alidias calmed a little, and his cries were not so shrill.

“Hush, Mon Ievn Alidias. There be no need to scream so! That will do. No one shall hurt your neck anymore. Aye! Aye! Shall we walk a bit, hey?” Suiting action to proposition, the veteran guard began a sentry’s rhythmic tread back and forth across the floor. Alidias’ tears did not stop, however. “Cry all you must,” said Gindam, who had a five-year-old daughter, and was no stranger to tearful demonstrations but had a horror of tantrums, of which screaming, for any reason, made him think. “That is well. But do not scream.”

Alidias buried his face in the guard’s shoulder, and sobbed, wailed, and shuddered, albeit much more quietly. His pulse continued to fly, though, and Gindam grew alarmed.

So did Iordain who stood at hand, and could watch the unrelenting throb of the carotid artery . “He’s deep in shock,” said Gindam. He had an idea. “You, sir knight! Hold the boy and walk him. I’m going for the lady Florna. He likes her well, as I have reason to know from what I have seen pass betwixt them. Between our pacing and the lady’s soft voice and gentle mien he should be soothed, and his heartbeat should slow.”

The Blue-Eyed soldier handed the boy to the Dark-Eyed, who received him in silence, and with fittingly averted eyes. Even in this extremity, those two men observed standard etiquette, so thoroughly had instruction and experience taught it to them. And even now, as Gindam went in search of the fair gentlewoman, the oddity of the circumstance that one dark in the eyes, Favored One of the queen or not, should merit the calming attentions of a Celestial-Eyed beauty like that, was not lost on Iordain.

Gindam did not have to tell Iordain not to release Alidias. He must be kept warm in his state of shock, and he must not be permitted to escape and injure himself in his fright. Iordain wrapped the ward in the thick wool of his own travelling cloak, clutched him firmly to his person, and kept walking the floor.

Alidias relaxed considerably in the new warmth. Good Heavens, Iordain had thought when he first took him from Gindam, his entire body is cold to the touch! I hope this helps, he had worried as he laid the boy on a pallet to swaddle him in the cloak. Alidias had no time to resist before he was tightly wrapped, like a baby, and on his way across the floor again in the knight’s firm but gentle custody. These turns round the room continued, even as Gindam returned, galloping on horseback, with the lady Florna,

“Alidias, Mon Ievn, my shy one, here I am! Do you remember me?” asked Florna, approaching. “Oh, goodness! Tears, tears, tears! So sad today, Dajhmiu. Please don’t cry. Tell the rainclouds to go away! You mustn’t be frightened anymore. No one is here to hurt you, I promise. I promise. I do. And so does the lord Gindam. Yes, yes. We won’t let anyone hurt you.”

She matched Iordain nearly stride for stride, after a rather unladylike, but very efficient, fashion, and she kept her first two fingers lightly on the vein, and her gaze upon the clock. “One hundred forty,” she murmured as she passed Gindam. She stroked the dark curls away from Alidias’ forehead with her free hand.

“You’re breathing too fast, sweet one. Gently, now, gently. Aye. Aye, darling, slow your breathing. (A hundred thirty-two, Gindam.) It will help if you stop crying. No reason to cry. You’re safe, see? Sir Iordain has you, now. He won’t let any harm come to you. None of us shall. None of us shall. We love you.”

Alidias started, and turned enormous eyes on Florna. The tears continued to seep. His pulse quickened briefly, but Florna said, “Ah, ah, settle yourself, Mon Ievn. What’s true is true. (One hundred thirty-five, Gindam; we’ll need the doctor if he has another—wait, that’s better. One hundred thirty.) That’s right, Alidias. Just breathe, sweetheart.”

She fell silent then, except to report the steady drop of his pulse. After thirty minutes that seemed as many years, she said with satisfaction, “Eighty beats and two to the minute.”

“He’s sweating like a spent racehorse,” said Iordain, to everyone’s surprise. The knight did not ordinarily speak in Blue-Eyed company. “Has been for some time.” Again, he laid the ward down, but this time did not restrain him when Alidias disentangled himself from the cloak, stood up, plunged the dipper into the full water pail in the corner, and simultaneously poured its contents into his mouth and, deliberately, to judge by his blissful countenance, down the front of his blouse

“Yes,” said the priest. “Drink that, and cool yourself with it, my son, with God’s blessing.”

Alidias filled the dipper again, and this time doused his hair. He tossed his head to dry it, came to stand next to Etrea, and eagerly tapped the back of her hand, which had closed round the key. When she did not understand, he took hold of her fist, turned it palm upward, and pried open her fingers.

“Lidi, be gentle,” said Ymanu.

Etrea glared at him. “Let him be! He does no harm; he’s only excited.”

Alidias pointed to the key, then to his eyes, and shook his head.

“You don’t wish to see the key?” the queen interpreted.

Alidias nodded.

“Then you needn’t.” She closed her hand again.

Alidias encircled his neck with his hands, and pantomimed turning a key.

“Ah! You don’t want to see it because it’s the key that fastened your neck iron!”

Another nod, and a brief squeal of affirmation.

She turned to the priest. “Did you find this in the belfry, Father?”

“In a crack between floorboards, my liege lady, yes,” he replied.

“Alidias? If I don’t show it to you, may I ask you a question about the key? There is something I must know,” Etrea coaxed.

He raised a dark brow.

“Who put the chain around your neck if it wasn’t your Daya? Did you know him?”

He shook his head, then suddenly hurried to Iordain’s linen cupboard, and snatched an undershirt therefrom.

“Alidias, what on the green earth that serves God as a footstool…? Replace that at once!” Now his sister was the horrified party.

Alidias spread the garment on the floor seized a lump of coal from the scuttle beside the hearth, and began to sketch.

His slim fingers were deft, even with his crude implement. Swiftly, yet with startling detail, he rendered a figure at which both Etrea and Ymanu gasped.

The other four stared in astonishment. Father Yuishan seemed to recover his power of speech most readily.

“Oh, my,” he marveled. “That’s a woman!”

9

The face taking shape beneath Alidias’ hand had about it an ostentatious beauty, though a beauty on the wane, and was as familiar to those present, when he began to add its particulars, as the Saviathan crest had been. He sketched without color, but they all knew the aggressive jut of the chin, the habitual downturn of the lips, and the defiance of the world at large that left its slow, eternal fire in the eyes. They knew that those eyes were mismatched in color, the right being blue, and the left, green. They knew that time had woven a silver thread or two among the heavy black braids, plaited close to the scalp and firmly pinned, after the accepted fashion for highborn Etherian women. They knew her unfashionable abstinence from cosmetic enhancements of any sort, and her resulting milky pallor. In short, they knew that the subject of the royal ward’s extemporaneous portrait could only be the Trer Ievna, the Governing Lady, Marnal, Duchess of Saviatha.

Early in their acquaintance, Trer Ievna Marnal’s stern husband, Dresdain , had been as ruthless with his wife as with everyone else. Unlike the rest of his subjects, though, she had learned from, rather than come to fear, him, even as he courted her. At the age of seventeen, she became his wife. A year later, she yielded unto him his first son, and had mothered nothing but boys, seven more of them, ever since. When Dresdain was away to war, Marnal ruled capably in his stead, not an easy task when one was entrusted with the governance of liberated criminals. She had to be as relentless as any man to do that, Etrea knew. Yet, at some juncture, firmness of purpose had given way to outright cruelty and even to insanity, else why should a simpleminded mute be the first victim, in seven hundred years, of a punishment so inhumane that most Etherians, superstitious and backward as they were in other matters, shuddered with twenty-first-century revulsion at its atrociousness?

Alidias had begun to cry again as he drew, but these were the gentle tears of bewildered sadness, and no one in the room worried that he would need further restraint, for his injurious fear had passed. Here was a young man who knew only that another’s unkindness had hurt him and made him sad, and it made him sad once more, his sister was certain, to recall that unkindness. Whimpering, he left the completed sketch where it lay, and rested his head, surprisingly, on Iordain’s chest. Even more astonishingly, the usually reserved and, many mistakenly thought, aloof, knight, embraced him in return, with unabashed tears standing in his own eyes.

Alidias had never displayed artistic propensities before, and now he had done so with extraordinary skill, and to decidedly communicative purpose. There could be no mistaking his meaning. He had languished hostage to Marnal of Saviatha, and he knew it and remembered both captivity and captor. But what had precipitated this impromptu exhibition of his talent? It had existed all these years, Iordain was sure.

As if to explain, the boy stepped back, caught Florna by the hand, and added the fleeting touch of his lips to the blush that stained her cheek.

10

She rejected him completely. Drove him from her board, spurned his marital advances, and would hardly speak to him in private.

“Ridiculous woman!” he fumed, soon after the birth of their daughter. “When will you converse with me again?”

“When you give me a son,” she taunted, infusing her tone with all the vitriol she could summon.

“Etrea, you little fool! You won’t let me near you!”

“Pfft! I’m your wife. I don’t have to ‘let’ you do anything. You can take what’s yours by right.”

“And ravish my queen? I’m your subject. Imagine the political scandal!”

“You’re a Green-Eyed One; you deigned to marry an ugly cripple in in her old age. You can do as you like with me. You could even clap me in irons for melting down the marriage ring, since that was destruction of your property.”

She had stooped to insult a true gentleman, and, like a true gentleman, he refused to sink so low. He bowed coldly and left her sitting-room.

He took his way to the nursery, and lifted Ievna Iulina Enera from her little bed. He had given his daughter her name. Etrea had wanted no part, even of that, and she never came to see the child. Ymanu thought that even the young princess herself must feel the lack of love, for whenever he held her, she seemed to crowd against him, desperate to cuddle.

The day after Alidias drew the Duchess of Saviatha was no different.

She doesn’t want my baby, the prince thought, as he had before, saddened beyond tears, and gazing down at the chestnut hair and general daintiness that were her inheritance from Etrea, and the green eyes that were his contribution. She doesn’t want my baby girl. Well, perhaps I wanted a girl! Did that ever occur to her? She can have her precious boys, and groom them to rule, and they can grow up to ruin the country, for aught it matters to me!

He stood, that evening, looking out of the nursery window, pitying the tiny girl nestled in his arms, and dreading the coming war.

For war was coming. The Duchess had ensured that, with the abduction and confinement of Alidias. If a commoner had forcibly held the Tiaj, the Etherian Lady’s Favored One, that person would have had to witness the burning of all his or her possessions, and then been banished.

The transgression of a noble against a Tiaj was not so easily punished. Etrea could strip the lady Marnal and the lord Dresdain of their lands and titles, but this was likely to happen only after she defeated the army the pair would undoubtedly raise to defend them. The punishment of a woman for such a crime was unheard-of and the thought of the public horror that would follow that punishment at the end of hostilities terrified Ymanu. Members of the ducal household had few enough among the masses who loved them well, but the lady Marnal was a woman, and if Etrea sought to take disciplinary action against her, they might rally to her cause, decrying its harshness, particularly if the Duke died in battle. If she could deal so severely with a noblewoman, newly bereaved, who had broken her law, they might think, what would she do to any destitute peasant widow who displeased her? Ymanu shuddered, held the baby closer—and watched the sky glow orange as the sun set…

In the east? What? No, that was all wrong! Besides, the glow was drawing closer, not receding!

Then he saw the figures running before the glow, and cried out, “Dear Lord, I’m going as blind as my wife! Fire!”

Fire it was, and the royal demesne lands were being set alight deliberately. The arsonists, though they came onward at the run, nevertheless maintained perfect battle formation, and he saw the standard of the Bloody Thorn of Saviatha fluttering on high in their midst.

In the nearly three months that had elapsed between Alidias’ rescue and his identification of his captor, the Duke and Duchess, knowing that the queen could not prosecute a war against an anonymous foe, had, in fact, mustered their standing army, and probably swelled their ranks with foreign mercenaries and native malcontents of the least savory stripes.

Whatever their origins, even the greenest recruits were doubtless well and thoroughly trained, owing to stringent Etherian military discipline, hence their rapid but orderly advance. They carried the fire with them, bearing in their hands torches, which they flung behind them as they ran.

11

Twenty years and six she had, that twenty-and –sixth day of October, a fortnight after the ducal forces invaded. This particular natal day was that which Etherians called one’s “Pinnacle Day.” Ordinarily, such a momentous birthday would have occasioned great celebration for anyone in the country, and especially for the queen, but the only pinnacle at the top of which that day found Etrea was the belfry of Halig Iulin’s Cathedral, where the Duchess of Saviatha had held Alidias. Up here, the wind dealt gently with no one. Even in the spring and summer, the nights must have been blustery, at least chilly, misery for her younger brother. Better that she should brave wintry gales than he. The wind thrust her unbound hair—a sign of submission to a foe in battle—back from her face, and drove a bit of color across her high cheekbones with the lash of its whip. She had sent word to the Duchess that she wished to parley in the church and now stood waiting for her there.

In the glow of her lantern, when she reached the steeple, Saviatha’s Governing Lady saw the flush, and knew that the flowing chestnut curls belied the monarch’s true state of mind. She was wound as tautly as any of those horses of hers, and just as sorely in need of breaking. Unchecked, she would remain as vicious as one of her stallions.

No, decided the Duchess, I shall leave the shards of her broken will at her feet. Of course, in order to break the will, one must first break the spirit. Well, there will be my task. She has any flash of spirit that that idiot she styles her brother may ever have had, a hundredfold. Look at her eyes! Marnal could not help thinking when the queen turned upon her the full scorn of the Etherian Gaze. Happily for all who meet that withering stare, she is of stunted growth and direly deformed in the nether limbs. If she were of average size and whole in body, I should not wish to meet her on a crowded street in the full daylight of high summer, for the rest of her would likely be as murderous as her look, and I certainly would not want to encounter her in twilight such as this! If I am to rule this nation, I must subdue her long before I consider exerting power over any other person or thing.

But derision was swiftly deserting Etrea’s expression, as absolute horror overtook it. Blessedly, although she stood overlooking her charred demesne out of one open side of the steeple, she had not ventured too near the edge, or she might have tumbled six stories in her shock. She had by now turned completely to face her enemy, but was no longer looking at the Duchess. Instead, after she screamed and jumped back a bit, her intense eyes could not be diverted from a point to Marnal’s right and slightly behind her.

“Saviatha,” she demanded, collecting herself just enough to speak huskily, “Who in the name of every sacred thing is that?”

On the fringe of the lantern’s glow, shoulder-length hair uncombed and also clearly unwashed, stood a child, eyes low, as befitted a Dark-Eyed One in the presence of any superior class. For the space of an indrawn breath, those eyes met Etrea’s, in disregard for standard etiquette that most Etherians would find galling, even in a little boy. Yes, it was a boy; the queen’s glimpse of his features had satisfied her on that point. It had also shown sullen resignation to prolonged mistreatment.

Bruises. How many, many bruises!

Famine. This boy had never been fed more than was essential to sustain the barest functions of his life, she was sure.

Resentment. Dull resentment that had once been strong, vivid hate, but had burnt itself out. Resentment of her, of the Duchess, of everyone light in the eyes. “Come here, sweeting,” she said softly, stretching out her hand.

He came, but would not look at her, of his own volition, again.

“Do you have a name?”

Neither the Duchess nor the boy supplied one.

“Raise your eyes to me, lad. I want to see them.”

This time, he complied.

“Do you have speech?” inquired Etrea.

If he did, he certainly was not keen to demonstrate his skills.

“Who did this to you? To your face? To—”—she looked him up and down—“the rest of you?”

He made no answer.

“How old are you?

Still he kept silent.

Etrea ran inquiring fingers gingerly over a fresh bruise on the bridge of his small nose. He whined and shrank back. But the queen followed, relentless. She found another tender spot on his right ear, and touched that. He screamed then. “So. Did my lady Saviatha hurt your nose? Your ear? Both ears? I can’t see the other. Your head? Someone did; I feel lumps there. Who did these things to you? Was it Her Grace?”

He trembled with fear and pain, but said nothing. “You! This is a horrible thing to have to do to anyone, touching you in all these places where you hurt! I would rather put my own hands straight into the flames of a smithy, but you seem utterly disinclined to speak, except by external compulsion. I must know who injured you so grievous. Name yourself to me, and also the one who did you this harm, and I give you my word, little though you may value it, that I shall cease to lay hands upon those parts of your person that ache!” Etrea’s manner and tone carried an odd mingling of entreaty and command that achieved at least part of her aim.

From the child’s battered lips, on the ghost of a murmur, came the plea of tormented souls through the ages:

“Why, milady? Why do you do this to me?”

Ever after, the lady Marnal cursed herself for a coward for what she did next, for she never broke the queen. The queen and the boy, between them, broke her instead, and for one crucial, detrimental moment, the Duchess let her own awesome temper, and prevailing social practice, have charge of her conduct. She surged forward and struck the young Dark-Eyed One across the face with all the strength she could bring to bear. The monarch herself recoiled, and the boy collapsed. “You pestilential little rodent!” the Duchess cried. “How dare you question what Etheria’s High Lady does?”

“How dare he, indeed, Marnal, when that privilege is yours alone? You may question me to the extent that you make war against me, your anointed sovereign, but forbid it Lord God that an ill-used waif should do so in his search for the rudiments of humane treatment,” quipped the Dar Ievna.

“Your hair is down, but not your hackles, Etrea,” gibed the Trer Ievna in her turn. “Is it fitting that one who purports to come in submission on the heels of defeat should behave thus?”

“I render unto you only the Etherian Body, Your Grace. Do with that as you deem right. I do not concede the war.”

“Then why the loose hair? What do you want, if not a cessation of hostilities?”

“I want a cessation of hostilities, of course, but I know that the end of the war will only bring occupation by your forces if ours surrender, and more fool me, if I think otherwise. Where would be the peace in that?”

“That does not answer my question. What do you want?”

“I put the same inquiry to you.”

Marnal’s dominant hand was her left, and her eye on that side was green, so she was shown all the deference accorded a Green-Eyed One. As queen, Etrea was, naturally, her political superior, but socially, by Etherian reckoning, the Lady of Saviatha surpassed her in beauty, in womanly accomplishment, in intelligence, in charm, and in worth, generally, all by reason of that single green eye. Only because they now met to serve political ends did the Duchess not smite her face, as well, after a reply like that. During a purely social encounter, had Etrea answered one question with another, Marnal would have stood well within her rights to do so, castigating the Dar Ievna for snideness.

“Impudent vixen!” snapped she of Saviatha, forced to content herself with insulting her enemy.

“Wonderful, Trer Ievna. You’ve likened a poor little boy to a rodent, and now, me to a female fox. Have you exhausted your store of bestial disparagements, and further, will you now answer my question?”

Joseph’s virgin bride, thought the Duchess, she is enjoying this! There she stands, calm as the lull in a storm, knowing that I’m nigh raving with fury, and that she it was that set me raving thus! She makes mock of me! Her eyes, her eyes! Though they be useless for seeing, yet they dance with ridicule of me! Never should I have answered her summons. “I want the idiot,” she demanded, and did not trust herself to elaborate upon her desires, lest she give way again to rage.

“No, you don’t.” Etrea’s mouth twitched, yet she did not fully smile. “It’s my neck you want in your slipknot, milady. My poor baby brother has no quarrel with you. Take me as your hostage. That’s what you’re after, I know. Let Lidi be.”

Marnal burst into derisive laughter. “Your brother! Heavens above, woman, you are turning as soft in the brains as he is. I thought so when you first claimed kinship to a Scum –in –the-Eyes as a little girl, but now, to hear you actually offer to take his place in captivity—really, Etrea! Do you fancy me lackwit enough to accept such an absurd proposition? If I held you and lost the war, there would be the Devil to pay afterward, and even during the war, certain Etherians might mount an attack to free you.” She snapped her fingers at the child. “At my heel!” came her terse order.

At my heel. Most in Etheria reserved this command for their dogs. Etrea’s heart bled for the little fellow. “Wait! He hasn’t answered any questions that I put to him!” she cried. “If you will not consider my offer, at least let him tell me what I asked to know!”

“And how shall I profit, if I permit him to speak?”

“If you lose the war, I shall not imprison you nor any of your house.”

“And if I insist upon his silence, and later win?”

“If you win, you will capture or kill me, so it will matter not at all if the boy speaks, except insofar as he will have someone who knows, and cares about, his sufferings.”

The Duchess ground her teeth. “You, Madam, either are, or are feigning to be, as completely stupid as you think I am. I have said, and I mean, that I will not make you my prisoner. I dare not even exile you. There are those who would rebel if I did.”

“I’m not so stupid as to think that, and I don’t pretend to be. You wouldn’t have to do anything to me by yourself. I said ‘you’ meaning the second person plural, which would include your lord husband, who would kill or capture me and mine, and to ruddy blazes with the consequences! Now, let the boy talk.”

“Mercy on us, you truly cannot see anything, can you? Look at me, Etrea. Look closely. Do I look as though Dresdain would risk my life unnecessarily just now?”

Etrea looked.

And knew.

Knew the quickness to irritation. Knew the high color in the lips and the roses in the cheeks. Knew the glossy thickness of the hair, Knew the fullness of Marnal’s figure, generally.

For the ninth time, Ievna Marnal of Saviatha was pregnant.

Her poor baby! thought the queen. I would not be in that child’s place for a double portion of my crown jewels.

That was all the consideration she had time to give the matter, before the Duchess addressed the other child in the belfry with them. “Wretch! On your feet!” she berated him, speaking toward the floor.

Etrea also glanced down. But her expression softened, and, crouching, she took in her arms the tiny upper body of the emaciated boy.

“He can’t rise, Marnal,” she explained quietly. “He’s unconscious.”

12

His hair was alive with vermin.

The first order of business, then, was to wash it with vinegar-water. The vinegar’s acid stung the infected bites, and as old Otisa poured the mixture over his head, he complained bitterly.

“Hush, Petram . It’s well enough. You’re well enough,” the midwife soothed.

“But it hurts,” whimpered the child.

“I know. That pain means that the sores are healing.”

He looked unconvinced.

“Now to ease the burning.” From a bottle in one hand, she poured a whitish cream into the palm of the other. She rubbed this ointment all over his scalp, paying special attention to the spots behind his ears, and she also thoroughly coated the back of his neck. The lumps and bruises on his head ached beneath her touch, and by the time she had finished, he was crying freely.

“Poor little Petram!” murmured Etrea. That was the name of the boy from the belfry. She had finally learned as much from Otisa, who had stood midwife to his mother eleven years before. He cannot possibly be eleven, she thought; he is too small. But if anyone would know his age, Otisa would, and Etrea reflected that foreign visitors to her court often disbelieved assertions that she herself was in her mid-twenties, so slightly built was she, and so youthful did she appear.

“You’re mean!” Petram wailed, glaring through his tears at the Dar Ievna.

“I am mean?” she repeated, clearly taken aback.

“Petram,” warned the midwife.

“Yes! You are mean! You touch me everywhere that hurts because I won’t talk to you, and then you find someone who knows all about me and tells you what you want to know, and then, after you promise not to touch me anymore when you know what you want to know, you break your promise, and let the person who knows all about me go on hurting me, while you stand there saying ‘poor Petram.’ That’s mean!” He turned his pique upon Otisa. “You’re mean, too! Mean old lady, to hurt me!” And he cried inconsolably.

His rudeness horrified Etrea, but Otisa took it calmly. She had nursed her share of irritable patients. “Petram, sweetheart, look at me,” she directed. “Calm yourself. Stop crying. You cannot listen to what I say, and cry at the same time, hm?”

Gradually, he quieted.

“Now,” said Otisa when he was calm, “have you ever been treated in sickness by a doctor?”

He shook his head. “Father could never afford one when I lived at home. Even doctors who would look to Dark-Eyed folk such as my kin cost too dear, he said. And the Duchess said our

kind needed no doctors. Home nursing would serve well enough for such as us.”

“And what were you given by way of this home nursing?”

“Whiskey. It was all Father kept in the house. The Duchess said it would cure anything from a runny nose to watery bowels.”

“Who looked after you?”

“At home, my sister. Then, when we entered into service to Their Graces, there was none to tend me, so I took my own medicine.”

“Your sister did likewise?”

Petram nodded.

“Well, Petram, there are those who can nurse you better than the Duchess, or your father, or your sister, or yourself. Sometimes their treatments give pain for a little while, but they help in the end, and the pain will leave with time.”

“They are not meant for unkindness?”

“No. Quite the contrary. The lice on your head, for example, are making you ill. You are allergic to their bites. I know this because the sides of your neck, and the places behind your ears, are swollen. I would see you well, and to do this, I must remove the lice.”

He received this explanation with a puzzled frown, but without a retort. Otisa concluded. “The surest way to remove the lice is with vinegar. It burns you, but it kills them.”

“Oh,” he said. “Not mean, then.”

“I am not mean?” asked Otisa.

“No. But you still hurt me.”

“For that, Dajhmiu, I am heartily sorry. When I have rinsed the ointment from your hair, I will not touch your head anymore. I promise.”

“I’m thinking we ought to have the doctor examine him,” said Etrea.

“Of course, sovereign lady,” answered Otisa.

“This doctor,” hesitated Petram, “does he—does he look on—my kind? He won’t refuse to see me because—because—“

“Heavens, child! He tends Lord Alidias himself,” Otisa assured him.

“Lord Alidias! Ma Ievna’s brother!”

“The same.”

“But Lord Alidias is important. I’m only—“

“Only what?” prompted the queen, when he stopped.

“Only Petram, I’m not important,” he finished resignedly.

“Why is Lord Alidias important?”

“Because he is your brother.”

“He is dark of eye.”

“Still, your father made him your brother, though he is not blood to you. That is well-known, and that is why he is of consequence.”

“What makes you unimportant?”

“I said, I’m only Petram. I am my father’s youngest child, the one he beat when he was in strong drink. I am dungeon mite to him and her that govern Saviatha. I’m the one who feeds their prisoners, and cleans behind them, and sometimes digs their graves, and helps to carry them out of their cells when they die.”

“Not an enviable collection of duties,” remarked Otisa, and the Dar Ievna groaned aloud with distaste.

“These lowly tasks, no doubt, constitute that which convinces you that you are worth so little,” she mused. “Poor thing. But tell me, what makes the doctor important?”

“He sees to the health of Lord Alidias.”

“He does, but it is not that which makes him a person of consequence. He is important because I say that he is. He is doctor to all at court, including unto me. If I say to him ‘Doctor Alijhroc, examine this lady’s baby for colic,’ or ’Doctor Alijhroc,

do what you can to break the Duke Manashtadal’s fever,’ he will do it. If I tell him to examine a Dark-Eyed One, he will do that, also.”

“If he is court physician, and I am to see him, then I must be—“ Petram interrupted himself as realization dawned. He glanced around Otisa’s sitting room, to which he had been carried directly from the belfry. This chamber clearly served as part of the living quarters of a more exalted member of the royal staff. It was comparatively spacious, and the furnishings, though worn, were clean and well-kept . “I must be at the palace,” he concluded in wonder .

“You are,” replied Etrea.

“But important people come to the palace, not me! I’m less than no one. I’m only Petram.”

“Will you stop saying that? Each time you do, I want to cry, it makes me so sad!” exclaimed the queen, eyes brimming.

“Am I important because you say so, then?” he asked.

“I say so,” she affirmed, “but One Whose opinion matters far more than mine says the same.”

Otisa had rinsed away all the ointment, and was now drying Petram’s newly silky black hair, rubbing his scalp as gently as possible. “Who?” he inquired, blinking at her from under the towel. Otisa ceased rubbing his head, and handed him a steaming cup of tea.

The Etherian Eyes rose to the ceiling.

“God?”

“Aye.”

“Does the Bible say that?”

“It does.”

“Where?”

“In many places. Otisa or I can show you someday, if you like.”

Petram looked crestfallen. “I can’t read,” he admitted.

Ah, the old story of the Dark-Eyed. And whose fault is that, Gyrtrudta Etrea Luvisa? Why, yours, my dear old girl, yours and no one else’s. You were not firm enough in your resolve to bring the High Council to your way of thinking before the baby came. They rejected a resolution that would have guaranteed basic education for such as this child. Of course the Council will not convene in wartime, and goodness knows how long this conflict will continue, so it’s anyone’s guess when they shall meet again.

“In that case, Petram, love,” she said to the boy, watching as a sleeping drought, with which Otisa had laced his tea began to take effect, “one of us will read to you.”

“The Duchess…” he said thickly.

“Never you worry your sleepy head about her, darling. That harpy is exactly where she belongs—well and truly underground.”

13

Etrea left the midwife’s rooms, and went where she had sworn that she never would, again, even in the interest of politics—to Ymanu’s.

By the time she knocked upon the door of his sleeping-chamber, she was sobbing. He admitted her.

“’Trea, Dajhmi, my love,” was all he said. He embraced her, led her to his sitting-room, and settled her there. “What did my lady wife see to distress her to tears, and to the point of actively seeking my company, hey, now?” he inquired after a bit. “I know you didn’t suddenly begin to long for the sight of my comely person without some impetus toward that desire, not after our conversation a fortnight past.”

“Oh—shut up! Ho—horrid tease! I thought—as a fa—father, you’d understa—“ her words trailed into a moan of anguish.

“Understand what, sweet girl?”

She told him all about Petram.

“Oh, yes, Etrea, I understand. As the unwanted father of an unwanted Green-Eyed girl I understand entirely why your heart breaks for an unwanted Dark-Eyed boy you never met before tonight!”

“You—you wretched, hairy little beast! You’re jealous!”

“Jealous for our wee lady daughter, whom you love so ill, aye.”

“You love her well enough for us both, I think. You’ll provide her a dowry and marry her off to someone reasonably prosperous, like any good Daya; there’s proof that you love her. It is easy for you to dote on her. You did not nearly expire at her birthing.”

“Nor did you, who went riding an untrained colt upon the full gallop ten hours thereafter.”

“You will never understand.”

“In that, you are correct, wife. I never will understand why you so viscerally hate my X-chromosome,” answered he, who had also received higher education beyond Etheria’s borders. “That I possess one is hardly my fault. That our daughter possesses two…”

“Most certainly is! You gave that second to her!”

“No, that was my doing, not my fault. You know that.”

“But most Etherians do not. They say that, because she issued from my body, her sex was my failing. They also say that the birth of a girl means that I am growing old, and soon my womb shall sleep.”

“You know both of those beliefs for the wives’ tales they are. Why do you give them heed?”

“As if you did not know! I am monarch in my own right. All that I do is watched and discussed. If you were king, with me as your consort, and I bore you a girl, no one would care, since you would have a brace of sons. As ’tis…” She did not finish.

“Did it ever occur to you that I might want a girl?” Ymanu asked her the question he had so often asked himself during those forlorn evenings in the nursery. This time, to his deep shame, his sadness did not exceed the possibility of tears, which sprang to his eyes “Etrea,” he pleaded, through trembling lips, catching both her hands in his own. “I miss you. I miss your company at dinner, our conversations, our afternoons in the pasture with the horses, visits to the boys in the nursery. I love our daughter, but more so do I love you.”

She burst into fresh tears.

“Shut up!” she shrieked again, clapping her hands to her ears, and shaking her head violently. “Don’t say that to me; don’t ever say that to me! Don’t tease an ugly, crippled old maid everyone mocked for barren! Agghhh!” she wailed, allowing saliva to run from her mouth, in the hope that he would discontinue his protests of affection in disgust.

He took her in his arms, but angrily, clasping her to his chest, in a hold of surprising strength for one in health so frail.

“Don’t…you…ever…criticize…my wife.” Not the softness of his voice, but the slowness of his speech, lent a dangerous note to his words. “Half-a-dozen years ago, I wed the woman I loved,” he went on, speaking more normally. “I swore I would look into those riveting eyes across the mealtime table every day until old age blinded me. I would beget little ones that were her very image, small and slim, dark in the hair, light in the eyes, fair in the skin, and iron in the will to work for the good of her land. And I did. All that I vowed to have in her became mine.

“She mothered my two sons, and when they laid her daughter in my arms, I finally had the quintessential “Daya’s little princess”—a little princess, I might add, that she had borne alone, in the dead of night. There’s a woman steely in the nerves for you! She’s the woman I loved then, and love still, and you’ll not speak against her in my hearing, understand…my sovereign?”

“You are jealous!”

“God help me,” he admitted, and kissed her.

For the first time since Iulina’s birth, she allowed this—briefly. Then she drew away, and looked at him pleadingly, her face flushed and contorted, and her eyes streaming.

“If you truly love me, give me a son!” she entreated.

Suddenly, her doubt of his word, and her insistence that to father a son was the only way that he could return to her good graces exhausted his last reserve of patience. “Well enough!” he snapped. “Have your miserable little son, and may he break your heart, and leave the shards to cut your conscience.”

14

Petram woke on the morning following Etrea’s eventful birthday, to find the queen sitting beside the sofa where he lay. Her hands and lap were full of soft fabric of dark green. She sewed onto this a figure of some sort in thread of gold. Petram sat up and watched with drowsy half-interest

“Good morning, Petram,” she greeted him, her voice low and gentle, and her smile soft, as they had been when she and Otisa had spoken to him last night. “How do you find yourself?”

“Thirsty. That medicine yestereve tasted just horrible in my tea! And it sent me to sleep! I didn’t like that at all. I could not stay awake; I had no choice but to go to sleep. It was like going to sleep when you are sick, knowing that you won’t wake feeling rested. Ma Ievna, what are you doing? Oh, no, my sweet lady most gracious, do not serve me. I am quite able to fetch my own drink of water.” This, because she had risen and drawn a dipperful of water from Otisa’s pail, and now approached him with this offering outstretched.

“Yesterday, I was ‘mean.’ Today I’m ‘your sweet lady most gracious,’ and giving drink to one who thirsts should be beneath me. My, how far I have risen in your estimation from one day to the next! To what do I owe this elevation in your opinion of me? No, you are most certainly not able to fetch water for yourself! You scarce had the strength to stand, yesternight, and ultimately you fainted. What’s this? You don’t need to hide under the quilt, sweetheart. No, no! No need to feel afraid! Please come out. I am not angry; I was only in fun.”

Big eyes appeared over the edge of the eiderdown.

“I won’t punish you,” she coaxed.

The eyes filled with tears. Apparently, punishment was what he had dreaded, and he was relieved to learn that such did not await him. The lumpy white bundle of quilt that represented the rest of his person at the moment began to tremble, as he began to cry.

“Poor little fellow!” Etrea set down the dipper and went to him. “Goodness; I’ve frightened you and made you cry. I am sorry. Come here.”

I am sorry. Those three words had never been spoken to Petram, that he could remember. In his experience, it was always he who said them, most often to the Duchess after he had angered her, or to the captain of her guard, when that esteemed personage found fault with his performance of his duties in the dungeons. Beatings followed his apologies, so inevitably that he had long since ceased to beg for mercy. Yet here stood Etheria’s High Lady, distressed, contrite, and not only apologizing to him, but also asking his pardon! “Forgive me…won’t you?” she requested, putting her arms around him.

“I—owww! I’m all over bruises! Don’t touch my back! Everything hurts. Owww…” And he truly began to wail. However, he buried his face in her shoulder, and encircled her neck with his own arms, and she took this to mean that he forgave her.

Delicately, she wiped his variously injured face with a handkerchief of the same green silk as that on which she was currently embroidering. Petram luxuriated in its softness against his cheek, and stilled himself. “But,” he self-consciously protested, after a little while, “I’m ruining one of your pretties, crying on it.” He tried to return it.

“You keep that. One of my what?’

“Your pretties. All ladies have pretties, don’t they? Handkerchiefs, and jewelry, and suchlike? The Duchess does.”

“All the ladies of my acquaintance have what you call “pretties,” little one, yes. And no, you’re not ruining my handkerchief. Handkerchiefs are meant to be cried into.”

“But I’m making it all wet! Water on silk makes spots that won’t go away,” worried the boy. “My sister told me so. She was whipped for dripping water on one of Her Grace’s frocks.”

“I’m sure she was. But the Duchess lied to her. Unless it is saturated in it, silk may be rid of water stains, with persistent washing. If you stain my handkerchief with a tear or two…well, it can be washed, and if you drench it, why, there are times when watered silk is very much the fashion!”

“It is soft,” murmured Petram, rubbing his cheek against the fabric, “and it smells nice. May I have a drink of water, now?”

“Why not simply wring the handkerchief into your mouth? There’s enough water in there.”

Petram looked dazed at this idea. Then he perceived the playful sparkle of her eyes, and laughed aloud.

“You’re teasing ’gain!” he chortled.

“I am,” she acknowledged, dimpling. “You learn fast. Clever boy!” She brought him water, which he drank, and offered more, which he accepted. “Did no one ever joke with you, before this morning, just to make merry, lad?”

“No, Ma Ievna. Her Grace often poked fun at us Dark-Eyed Ones amongst the servants, but it was always cruelly meant, and a beating afterward was a near certain thing.”

“She’s horrid!” Etrea could not help exclaiming.

Petram laughed once more. “So, you don’t like her, then. I thought you didn’t, with the way the pair of you shouted back and forth. I was right!”

Apparently he had not lapsed immediately into unconsciousness when Marnal struck him down. How long had the poor little wight lain in agony before oblivion claimed him?

“You were. Good heavens, I suppose, too, that we were shouting. Most uncouth in both of us, and especially in me. Far below the dignity of a lady gently born, and absolutely unpardonable in a reigning monarch! But she does set my blood to blazing, I tell you that.”

“She said, herself, that you’ve got fire in your veins where lesser folk have blood. She doesn’t know I heard that, but I did. Mayhap that accounts for the blazing.”

“I should rather have fire snapping in my veins than ice crawling through them!” With this vehement assertion, the Dar Ievna took up her embroidery again.

“What is that?” wondered Petram, casting a look at her stitchery.

“This that I am sewing?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. This is the heraldic cloak of the Duchy of Ziannera, which my son Gavral will wear when he is created Duke of that province in February. It bears the crest of the Hawk and Hind of Ziannera, as does my handkerchief.”

Petram looked carefully at what the handkerchief depicted. A small hind leapt away in terror from the sinister talons of a swooping hawk. Sewing came hard to the Dar Ievna’s tiny, slow-moving hands and dim eyes; he could tell by the way she labored upon the cloak. The lady Marnal possessed more skill as a needlewoman. But the stitches were firm, and would not pull loose, laid down as they were with a ruler’s steadfastness and a mother’s love.

A mother’s love! This was the queen of Etheria, so ‘Gavral’ would be—

“Gavral? You mean little Prince Gavral?” Petram was awed.

“Of course.”

“But my young prince is only—“

“Three years old? Don’t worry; come the day of the ceremony, he will be a month past four. Yiduar was that age when he was named heir to Ievn Ymanu’s ducal holdings at Ajhidera.”

“And what of my young princess?”

“What of her? That is a matter of utter indifference to me, child,” she answered. “Likely, her father will marry her to the superfluous fifth son of some country squire in embarrassed circumstances. I care not. She’s his pet; I’ll have none of her.”

“I’m sorry I spoke of it, Ma Ievna. It was no affair of mine.”

“You knew not. A child’s curiosity is natural, and when one inquires about one member of a family, questions about the others will follow. There now, don’t look so anxious! I am nowise wroth with you!” She reached out and stroked back his hair from his face. “Years of cruelty have put deep fear in you, hey? Well, now I must dispel your angst. You must habituate yourself to the notion that you’ll not be abused or humiliated for every honest mistake, well enough?”

He nodded. “Well enough.”

They fell silent until Petram yawned. “I-I’m so-sorry m-milady,” he quavered, tears threatening again. “I’m just—“

Etrea patted his hand.

“Goodness! That is what I mean, Petram. You mustn’t be afraid that you will be punished for everything you do! Did the Duchess fault you for yawning, sweetheart?”

Again, he nodded. “She said I was lazy, like all my kind, and where but in the house of my father would I have learned such hideous manners, and thus and thus. I-I didn’t mean to be rude to her, Ma Ievna, honestly, I—”

More tears. What an exquisitely sensitive child this was! Etrea continued to pat.

“No harm done. You’re tired, warm, and comfortable, that’s all. This is a safe place to be drowsy. Feel as sleepy as you like. Until the doctor arrives, you may rest, if you wish.”

He curled up under the quilt, and she thought that he went to sleep again. So did Otisa, when she came to look in on him. As she turned to leave, the midwife trod upon something. Looking down, she spied a cumbersome and ornate iron key, with a distinctive rose set in its bow. She retrieved it and placed it upon the table that held the queen’s sewing basket. Etrea, realizing that it had fallen from her handkerchief, in which she had wrapped it, nodded her thanks.

They heard a gasp and a cry from Petram.

They turned to find him sitting ramrod upright, clutching the quilt to his chin. “Great horrors, lad! You’re white as hoarfrost! What’s amiss?” demanded Otisa.

“That key, that key!” moaned the boy.

“Yes, everyone who looks upon this key seems to have a mortal dread of the thing,” said Etrea. “Will you kindly explain this fear to me? Surely it could not have unclosed any fetter that might have held you during my lord brother’s captivity.”

“N-no milady.”

“Then—?”

“I held the key, Ma Ievna. The lord Alidias was in my keeping.”

“And you lost the key upon the floor of the steeple after the Duchess entrusted it to you, and she beat you, poor thing.”

“No, gracious one, it did not happen exactly in that way.” He paused. “I told Her Grace that I had lost the key, and she beat me. But I hadn’t lost the key.”

“Oh?”

“No, ma’am. I hid it.”

“In the belfry.”

“Not until Her Grace decided to leave Ievn Alidias to die. While she still came now and again to see him, I hid the key about my person. The Duchess beats me a good deal, but she finds me so dirty, smelly, and generally disgusting that she usually does it with objects that allow her to keep me at arm’s length. Last night’s slap to my face was a rarity. In any case, I kept the key with me until the Trer Ievna stopped visiting the tower, a fortnight or so before you rescued my lord. I doubted she would search me, and I reckoned aright. When she no longer cared to see to him, I knew it would be safe to put the key where the priest found it.”

“How came Alidias to survive those last two weeks?” asked Otisa. “He was on starvation rations when she came. He must have been; I saw his condition after he was freed. When she left him to die—”

“He was still on starvation rations, Ma Ievna Otisa,” said Petram.

“But how--? Where did he--? Whose--? My lady Etrea, are you well?” inquired Otisa, interrupting her already fragmentary line of questioning. For the queen had covered her face with her hands, and she wept, silently, but from the overflow of her heart.

“He was still—on starvation rations—Ma Ievna Otisa,” she faltered.

Understanding came to the midwife.

“Yours,” she stated, then asked, “but what did you eat?”

“Water can be very filling if it must, good lady,” Petram answered.

15

Etrea was obliged to step into the corridor outside the sitting room, at that point, to recover her composure. Otisa joined her, and, in a rare, vulnerable moment, Etrea let this woman, her social superior, comfort her while she gave vent to her sorrow.

“Aye, my lady, he is in a bad way. These old eyes have finally seen a sight more terrible than the death of Ledt Iordain’s poor young mother. After you left and Petram went to sleep, I summoned the doctor, in the still of the night though it was. We undressed him, and, my gracious sovereign, I do not exaggerate when I tell you that there is not an inch of that child’s body that is not bruised, scraped, cut, lashed, or even burnt. He has several small, crudely healed fractures to his ribs and his skull. Like as not, he took a number of robust kicks to those parts of him, if the shapes of those breaks tell any tales. He is eleven years old, as you know, but Doctor Alijhroc says that he is the height and weight of a child half his age.”

Etrea continued to weep quietly.

“Doctor Alijhroc will arrive soon, my liege lady, but he can do little for Petram, apart from making the boy comfortable.”

“Ma-making him comfortable? Why does he not say it plainly? He thinks Petram will die!”

“He does, my queen.”

“And you?”

“At the risk of forsaking an encouraging bedside manner, I will say that I share the doctor’s grim opinion.”

“Are you certain?”

“Ma Ievna, his poor little heart has all it can do to sustain life in that ravaged, depleted body, and it took less than kindly to his self-imposed starvation on Alidias’ behalf. If Petram lives to see his twelfth birthday in March, it will be a miracle. If not…’twill be a mercy.”

Just then, Doctor Alijhroc hurried toward them. “I gather, from my lady’s tears, that she knows?” he asked Otisa in an undertone.

“She knows. I just told her.”

“And so do I,” came Petram’s voice.

Clinging to the doorjamb, he somehow managed to stand. In what strength he had walked the distance from the sofa none of them could guess, but that strength was ebbing before their eyes. He hung his head wearily, panting, grey in the face, and sweating. Etrea had not noticed these symptoms of heart failure until now, what with her poor eyesight and her distress, but her experience with Ymanu’s condition ought to have made them obvious to her, she thought, with self-reproach.

Doctor Alijhroc made as if to lift Petram, to carry him inside once again, but the lad shook his head. “Wait,” he pleaded. “Let me stand while I may. If you prevent me now, I’ll lose what strength I have, and never stand again.” He looked up at Otisa.

“I heard you speak,” he told her. “You—and the good doctor--“ he coughed “—say that—I will die.” He gasped hoarsely, every syllable costing him dearly, by this time. “I’m--not afraid. You’re—you’re right—will—will be-- m—mercy.”

He crumpled, then, and did not resist when the doctor laid him on the sofa. In a few moments, his exertions past, he his breathing became less labored, and faint color returned to his face.

Looking at him broke Etrea’s heart, but made her furious as well. Dresdain and Marnal were not content simply to seize power. They stooped to the torture of innocent children. When she had first met Petram, Etrea had resolved to write unto Dresdain a letter, asking why they had declared war, Marnal having failed to answer that question to her satisfaction. They intended to do more than recapture Alidias, she was certain, and she had reasonable confidence that even her throne was not the prize for which they ultimately strove, although why she suspected this, she did not know. If someone would tell her where Dresdain could be found, she would send her letter to that place, by the swiftest possible courier.

Since the war began, she had wondered at his absence. She knew that no one in his occupying army would disclose his whereabouts, and ascertaining such from his wife was out of the question. But perhaps Petram might know. He was, after all, she reflected with a pang, an insignificant person, and what he knew was not likely to give cause for concern to many. Bearing this in mind, Etrea asked.

“Why, he’s at the governmental seat, milady, trying court cases, as he does every autumn.”

“Every autumn in peacetime, you mean,” she thought aloud. “That’s odd beyond odd. He never convenes court in warti—“

Then, a thought that she did not speak interrupted that to which she gave voice.

Oh, the loathsome, despicable coward! He had dared! He had sent a pregnant woman to war, taking the chance that Etrea, when she learned of Marnal’s condition, would not fight! Well, good heavens, she would not! The fast approach of winter weather would end the campaign season, and summer would nearly be upon them before the baby came. Then would come the period of recovery. Marnal was a decade Etrea’s senior; childbirth, particularly for the ninth time, might go hard with a woman of that age. No one could say at what pace she would heal thereafter. Winter could arrive again before she was fully well. In that case, an army with nothing to do would occupy her capitol for more than a year. Bored soldiers, and private citizens annoyed with their continued presence, invariably caused great mischief and inconvenience for law-abiding people. It was anyone’s guess when Dresdain would arrive. Would he keep away altogether, hoping that Etrea would tire of the occupation, and simply surrender her ward and her throne without resistance, just to be rid of them? That seemed likely. No wonder the lady Marnal was so fearsome! It was imperative that she be so, with a husband as weak as that! Dresdain might have first taught Marnal ruthlessness, but it appeared that this trait had deserted him, a desertion that Etrea found especially pathetic because he was still a youngish man, who she doubted had reached the age of forty years.

Well, she decided, if he is a coward of that degree, I shall not mollycoddle him. If he must be humiliated back into his right mind by a woman confronting him for an explanation of why he declared war, sent his pregnant wife to do battle, and nearly abused a little boy to death, I’ll not simply send a letter; I shall go to him myself. He’ll have no choice but to answer what is right before his face.

16

The Duke of Saviatha’s lip curled in disgust as he looked down from horseback at the town drunkard of Vestala. “Go away, Yira.”

“Mon Ievn, please—“

“Be off with you, I say! Your children are in my employ, not you, and given your constant state of inebriation, you never will be, this I vow unto Almighty God! We arranged that you would receive their wages, that you might maintain yourself. Nothing more! I know to what end those wages of theirs are spent, and I cannot help that, although it sickens me. You’re given enough to drink away; if you find yourself in need of more of late, that is no difficulty of mine, nor yet of your daughter’s. Do not ever again show your face hereabouts to wheedle more from either of us…or your son!”

Dresdain always carried a whip when he rode, but never applied it to the flesh of his horse. The animal had been taught that its sharp snap through the air was harmless to her, and indicated only that her master wished her to increase her speed. Now Dresdain unfurled this instrument, and slashed downward, close enough to Yira of Vestala’s face to make the ne’er-do-well flinch. Had His Grace meant to strike her father, he would have done it, Yira’s daughter Gatrin knew.

The mare calmly cantered away, and the Duke almost conversationally called back to the young laundress, “You may resume your duties, maiden.”

He did not, of course, see Gatrin glare at Yira one final time before she shut the door in his face. But he did wonder where Marnal was. She it was who usually oversaw all that pertained to the household and servants. Perchance Yira had made a nuisance of himself once too often, and she had decided to let him take the affair in hand. If it was so, then God had brought him home at exactly the moment that Yira was disrupting Gatrin at her tasks, to drive him away.

Only when he reached the barn to stable the horse did it occur to Dresdain that something was out of place. Marnal’s personal carriage was not in its accustomed location in the shed next door. Ordinarily, he would not have minded, but he had written to her that this would be his day to return from the provincial seat, and he had expected to find her in residence to welcome him, as was indeed right and salutary in a dutiful wife. Vexatious woman! Goodness knew when she would appear. Marnal had not gone visiting. That was not her habit, and in any event, it would have been less than proper for a visibly pregnant gentlewoman who was not herself a government official to venture forth from an estate. Marnal was not Duchess in her own right, but by marriage to Dresdain.

His Grace tended his own mare, both because he preferred the competency of the care he gave to that which his grooms provided, and in order to see his wife arrive, should she do so within the next ten minutes.

As he worked, he heard, not the grinding of approaching wheels, but the hoofbeats of many horses, their snorts of exertion, the squeak and jingle of their tack, and the voice of none other than Etheria’s High Lady, as she called, “Halt!” He hastened to greet the party.

“Ma Ievna! I grieve that my good wife is not here to receive your estimable ladyship. To what do I owe this plea—“

“No, Dresdain, your wife is not here. She is where all prisoners of war belong who are with child—in an underground mothering chamber in my capitol, where the sight of her swelling belly need not offend refined eyes, and where those who love me well and hate her equally may do her no harm.”

“How came Marnal to be in Ardoria?” demanded Dresdain, incensed. “Did you come here and seize her?”

“No, but in hindsight, I wish I would have, to prevent her near murder of an eleven-year-old boy.”

“Her what?”

“You heard me speak.”

“Why would a mother murder her own son?”

“There exist many eleven-year-old boys apart from the horrible little lord Silvestrian!” snapped the queen. “No, no, your pampered lapdog of a son is disgustingly well and safe. And I didn’t say anything of a murder, only of a near murder,”

“Well! I’ve only just returned, myself, from hearing cases in court. I have not even been into the house, as you can no doubt discern from the state of my clothes. I know not what transpires within, nor who, besides Her Grace, is absent or present! I presumed the boys were all with her.”

Etrea’s nostrils flared, and she clamped her thin lips together, like a woman with threadbare patience.

“The four eldest are, gallantly making war against me on behalf of their beleaguered and downtrodden mother. But Ardu, Silvestrian, Mirandan, and Zimon remained behind. Her victim is called Petram. I believe he is one of the least among your servants, yes?”

“The name strikes a vague chord of familiarity with me, my liege lady, but nothing more. I concern myself scantly with the management of domestics. That is the Duchess’ domain. What injuries do you suppose her to have left upon this child?”

“I suppose nothing. I know that she has nearly killed him, because I saw him for myself, and I actually bore witness as she slapped him hard enough in the face to knock him down, and render him unconscious when his head struck the floor. A wonder ’tis, that he did not crack his skull that time. The royal physician examined him, and my midwife asserts that he has, in the past, on several occasions. Come back with me. You can see him in person.”

The Duke bowed. “I shall take you at your word, gracious sovereign.” Then, being the queen’s Blue-Eyed social equal, he breached no etiquette when he turned his back to walk away into his Great Hall.

“That was no suggestion, but an order, Dresdain of Vestala. You are, as of this moment, disentitled from that designation which my grandfather bestowed upon yours, and you will accompany me. You will also, on our journey, explain to me what you mean to accomplish by way of this war you have declared. Your wife refuses to answer me as to that.”

Dresdain stopped short. This was her second mention of war. To which war did she refer? Good heavens, thought he, I never instigated any conflict with her! She must be crazed! He risked a glance over his shoulder and into her eyes.

“You! Traitor! Drop your gaze to me.”

He hesitated.

“Go on. Cast down your eyes! Do not ever look directly at me, again, Zirakhinu!”

Zirakhinu. The word meant “Scum-in-the-Eyes,” and could also be translated as “ugly foreigner.” It was most often used in the former sense as a derisive term of direct address to a Dark-Eyed One, and in the latter as a way to denote one of any color of the eyes for whom another entertained contempt.

Crazed Etrea might be, but joking she most assuredly was not, Dresdain decided. He had spent enough time at the royal court in Ardoria to have seen the Dar Ievna in keen temper more than once. In the quick rise of her chin and the scorch of her eyes, he had seen the spirit of her tiny. red-haired mother, the late Dar Ievna Abria. He looked downward at last, resigning himself to whatever fate awaited him as the queen’s prisoner.

17

Her party had reached their destination at high noon on the thirty-first of October, so that there would have been plenty of daylight by which to begin their return journey. But three days’ hard riding were three days’ hard riding, and they, together with fitful sleep on hard ground, had left Etrea, in her own words, “done-for weary.” She decided to remain overnight at the estate of her foes, to rest. She ordered the erstwhile Duke confined to his chambers under light guard. “He does not pose sufficient threat to merit keeping in the dungeons,” she said. “Not by himself, at least.” Then, she betook herself to one of the lesser guest rooms, collapsed across the bed, fully dressed and travel-stained as she was, and let an uncharacteristically profound sleep overcome her.

Gatrin, the estate’s young laundress, happened upon her thus. The queen’s body servant who shared her name, and, indeed, all of Etrea’s waiting-women were themselves asleep, in the sitting-room next door. Whenever possible, the Dar Ievna preferred to sleep alone. The servants’ hall was abuzz with news of the royal visitor, and Gatrin resolved to have her first glimpse of her when the opportunity came. When she was reasonably certain that she would not be missed for a little while, Gatrin stole into the guest wing in which gossip told her that she would find the High Lady.

The only two shut doors were at the end of the long corridor. The queen lay behind one of those, then! Soundlessly, on her bare feet, Gatrin ran to the nearer door and tried it. It was not fast. The maid opened it only wide enough to squeeze through, and shut it quickly behind her. Then she crept toward the bed.

The form draped across the bed was not what Gatrin had expected to see. All of Etheria knew that the monarch was nearing thirty, but the dusty, tired face, with its small features and narrow jaw, seemed to belong to a much younger woman. The rumpled clothes, though not large, were slightly loose on the unusually trim figure of a mother of three. Below her skirt, her left, leather-shod foot turned inward to face her right. So, the stories were true. She was a cripple.

A cripple with well-kept skin and very pretty hair, however. The setting sun shot the brown plaits through with reddish tints, in which Gatrin could see no grey. She could see the resemblance between the current Dar Ievna, and her mother, whose portrait adorned His Grace’s best snuffbox.

Etrea stirred, turned, and nearly fell to the floor. Gatrin moved swiftly to catch her, freed her from her shoes, and shifted her, so that she lay properly upon the bed, stocking-feet and all. The Dar Ievna sighed, and though she did not wake, she murmured, several times, “Petram…Petram…Petram…”

That name was common enough in Etheria. Gatrin’s own younger brother bore it. To her certain knowledge, neither of the little princes did, so she knew that Etrea was not calling one of her sons. Her husband was Ievn Ymanu. Her faithfulness to him inspired many women to marital chastity. A sweetheart from her virgin days, perhaps? Gatrin was as fond of romance as any young woman of fifteen, and she supposed that even a queen might have a secret lost love. How tragically thrilling that would be! If he had jilted her, Gatrin decided, he was a cad, and the Dar Ievna’s broken heart was haunting her dreams. If she had scorned him, Etheria’s High Lady must be awash in regret, to pine for him in her sleep.

“Petram…” she pleaded, and a few sluggish tears trailed from beneath her closed eyelids. Her pale lips parted over her teeth, and a blurred sob escaped her.

Gatrin could endure no more. She fled the chamber—and collided directly with the ample girth and bosom of the housekeeper, Matielta of Gratya in Saviatha.

“You dawdling, prying little baggage!” Matielta hissed. “By what right does a zirakhinua such as you approach Etheria’s sovereign lady, without invitation, as she sleeps?”

“I only wanted to see what she looked like. I did no harm,” pouted Gatrin.

“No harm? Stupid girl, you’re a disgrace to the ducal household! Fine discipline we maintain here, if the riffraff among us go traipsing about whithersoever they please!” And the housekeeper soundly boxed Gatrin’s ears, so that she cried out. “Come along!” she ordered, seizing the girl’s thin arm.

“No! Let her stay,” called Etrea from behind them.

“Ma Ievna, I’m sorry we disturbed your repose. This girl…”

“I’m not sorry. Let her come!” She held out her hand, palm down, as she had to Petram at their first meeting, as she might to invite a timid new horse nearer. Gatrin sidled forward, eyes on the

blue velvet carpet, and lightly brushed the back of the Etherian Hand with her fingertips. “Look unto me, girl,” Etrea said gently.

Gatrin flung up her head, and eagerly met the intense, dusky-blue gaze. “How do you find me?” asked the queen. “Do I look as you imagined I would?”

“No,” answered Gatrin. “You’re little, and you have curly hair, to judge from the loose strands in your braids.”

The housekeeper gasped, but Etrea laughed. “I am and I have!” she agreed. “What did your mother name you?”

“Gatrin.”

“Insolent chit!” cried Matielta. “Address the queen properly when she questions you!” Etrea knew, as the housekeeper lifted a hand to slap the laundress, that she could not move quickly enough to prevent the blow, so she spoke.

“Stop that! I’ve seen enough abuse in the last week to suffice for the rest of my life! I woke to this young woman’s cry of pain. Let her alone! I was not speaking to you, but to her. I know that I am the lady Etrea. I do not need to be reminded of this at the end of every sentence! Go away, in fact. I do not like you at all. You put me too much in mind of your mistress!”

Dumbfounded, Matielta backed out of the room. “And shut the door!” came Etrea’s final order, which she hastened to fulfill.

Gatrin stared at the closed door for a moment, stunned. Then she began both to laugh and to cry at once.

“There, there! Dear girl, you’re all of a dither! She frightens you terribly, hey?”

Gatrin nodded.

“But I do not?”

“No. That is, yes. That is, you do, even as you do not.” She fell silent in confusion.

“I must not inspire you to dizzying heights of terror if you were curious enough to approach me simply to investigate my appearance.”

“No. They say you are a great horsewoman, surpassing even my lady of Saviatha, and goodness knows she can manage a horse. But you are so small, and you appear so fragile. I always heard that you were crippled, and I was curious about that, too.”

“And I am,” Etrea said simply, even as the awkwardness of what she had said dawned upon Gatrin. The girl covered her mouth, and felt her cheeks burn.

“Oh, Ma Ievna, I’m so sorry. That was a perfectly dreadful thing to say! My rattling tongue has got me into trouble again! Even my little brother is not so tactless!” And she trembled from head to foot at the thought of recrimination.

“Dajhmi, I asked your opinion of my physique, and you did not lie. I inquired why you had come to see me, and you told me. You said nothing untoward. My senior waiting-woman is called Gatrin also, and you call her to my mind, for you both speak forthrightly. How many years have you?”

“Fifteen, my sovereign.”

“Well, the lady Gatrin is your age three times over, and has spent her life learning when to bridle her tongue, and when to speak her mind. Fear not. You’ll soon begin to learn by your own experience.” Etrea lapsed into silence for a time, except to say, distractedly, ” Come sit here, on the floor.” Gatrin sat back on her heels, at the queen’s feet, and monarch and maidservant together watched the sun set, and the twilit gloom prevail over the light of day. Etrea’s mind was working, as she eventually lit the lamp beside the bed, and studied her companion in its beams.

Gatrin tore at her heart, by her every word and gesture, just as Petram did. She had a washerwoman’s chapped and shriveled skin on her hands and arms, and bleach stains on her apron. She had obviously fared somewhat better than the little “dungeon mite.” Slightly more flesh covered her bones, and, owing partly to the circumstance that she worked above ground, she had more and better color about the face. Still, it was plain that her duties took her outdoors in inclement weather, as often as not. Etrea heard her faint wheeze, the sniffs attendant upon a touch of a head cold, and the huskiness such an ailment lent to her voice when she spoke.

“Do you ever wish to go away from here, Gatrin?” she asked.

“No, Ma Ievna. If I were alone, I might, but I would go nowhere without my little brother, and he is too frail and too timid to leave the estate. If he is even still alive, that is.”

“He numbers yet among the living,” said the queen. She was gazing steadily at the laundress.

“Gracious sovereign?” questioned Gatrin.

“Yes. Yes, there it is. Those large dark eyes. Your high brow. The prominent chin. Your small, dainty nose. Apparently, poor victuals alone don’t account for your slim build. You share that with—‘she was whipped for dripping water on one of Her Grace’s frocks’—with—“

Gatrin blanched. “Only the Duchess and the servants of this household knew of my punishment!. The behavior of her inferiors does not enter into her discourse with those of her own status. Some in power complain to their equals about misbehaving servants, but my lady of Saviatha never does; it is as though we do not exist. Thus, the only way you could know of my whipping is—“

Etrea nodded encouragement.

“The servant who told you that I ruined the Duchess’ gown was—Petram? My little brother?”

“He must be. I’d swear to the family resemblance.”

“But how did he come to meet my lady Etrea?”

“I know only that we met, six days past, in the belfry of Halig Iulin’s Cathedral, where he fainted with illness and abuse. I am ignorant as to the reason for our meeting, although I believe that such was the will of Almighty God.”

“Six months!” moaned Gatrin. “Six months I’ve not seen him. I’ve known that the journey to Ardoria was one that he was really too sick to make. I suspected that he died soon after arrival, and when he was not with her at her return in July, I resigned myself to the idea and carried on washing clothes. I didn’t even allow myself to mourn, else the grief should drive me mad. Now, you tell me that you have seen him so recently, alive, if not well. I did not wish to leave the estate, in the dim hope that his body might be returned to my father for burial.”

“Virgin bride of Joseph, it very nearly was, last week!” exclaimed Etrea, “And no doubt it soon will. We’ve managed to delay the inevitable a bit, seeing to his comfort as much as we can, so that he won’t expire in abject agony and destitution at least. I put the question to you again: Do you wish to leave Saviatha, Gatrin?”

“Oh, yes, my lady, yes! If only to see Petram once more, yes!”

Etrea was jubilant. She had removed from her enemies the title and powers they had so egregiously misused. Now it only remained to liberate from the dread in which they lived all those

who served them who were dark in the eyes. What better way to bring them low than to take these subordinates out of their actual, physical custody, as she had taken Petram from Marnal? It had been no great struggle to free the boy, even from the formidable noblewoman. Likely, liberating this girl, and, for a start, any Dark-Eyed occupants of the dungeons below, before the eyes of her weakling husband, would be the work of a mere moment.

18

She had intended to leave at first light the following morning, returning to Ardoria with her captive in tow. Of course, when she laid those plans, Etrea had not yet had any communication with the maidservant Gatrin. When she resolved to free Dresdain’s prisoners before his eyes, following their discussion in the guest suite, her plans changed. Between Marnal’s stony silence, and her husband’s feigned ignorance of the war, the queen entertained little hope of learning from them the finer points of their plot. She would inquire amongst the prisoners what, if anything, any of them knew. Meanwhile, more to nettle Dresdain than because she expected any compliance with her demands, Etrea planned to question him each day concerning the particulars. To that end, she left him locked and guarded in his personal apartments, allowing him every creature comfort familiar to him.

It was only right and fair that she should inform Gatrin of this new development, and she did. She would not have blamed the girl if disappointment had left her sullen or tearful. Disappointment did show in Gatrin’s eyes, but she guarded both tongue and temper, and declared herself entirely at the queen’s disposal. Etrea had unknowingly won her loyalty, briefly though they had been acquainted. The young Saviathan’s delay of her personal gratification when she had already made do without so often in life spoke to the Dar Ievna of wisdom beyond her years. Deeply moved, Etrea determined to reward her patience.

That first evening, though, she retired, soon after arranging to bring Gatrin back with her. She roused her ladies-in-waiting only long enough to help her bathe, and for all of them to take a light supper. They all remained sleepy, and after the excitements of the day, and her own taxing duties, the younger Gatrin, too, surrendered, as she seldom dared at such an early hour, to her own drowsiness. The queen gave orders that she was not to return to the servants’ quarters and the tender mercies of the housekeeper. She was, instead, to share the sitting room with the Dar Ievna’s waiting-women.

At five o’clock the following morning, Etheria’s High Lady rose, donned another worn old dress that she had brought with her, and wrote a note:

LADIES:

AM GONE YOU-KNOW-WHERE TO LOOK AFTER THE WELFARE OF YOU-KNOW-WHOM. DO NOT WAKE YOUNG LEDTA GATRIN BEFORE DAYBREAK, SHOULD SHE SLEEP SO LONG.

She laid this on the end table, at the head of the divan where the elder Gatrin slept, and where she would surely see it on waking. Then she went out to the pasture.

The night was crisp, just as the black colt liked the weather to be. It hid him from her, too, at first, but then she discerned his solidly hulking shape, and the ephemeral plume of his breath.

“Ransom, black Ransom, Dajhmiu, come to me, lovely boy,” she chanted, and she heard his cantering hoofbeats come near. He stopped, and his soft, blunt nose pushed at her shoulder, grazed her ear, and finally rested in her hair, which he ruffled with his contented sigh. She usually said her morning prayers in his presence, in the calm of a pasture, whether at home or away.

“God of my forebears,” she whispered, “grant me prudence this day, in all that I say unto Dresdain. Still my temper, when his recalcitrance would provoke it, as I know he will seek for it to do. And when he chooses to disclose unto me his reasons for beginning this war, grant me the grace and patience to chastise him, not in anger, but judiciously.”

Etrea fell silent then, offering a prayer in her mind and heart that Petram’s imminent end would not come until his sister could bid him farewell, but that it might, after that, come swiftly, and occasion him as little suffering as possible. This led her to request divine inspiration as to what she might do for Gatrin.

As she opened her eyes, the Dar Ievna’s gently playful fingers encircled the base of the Friesian’s left ear, but she laid on no pressure. She loved horse ears, as much for their conical shape as for their softness, and never tired of exploring by touch even those of horses well-known to her. To his credit, Ransom never rebuffed these demonstrations of affection, although Etrea supposed the tiny human’s fascination with his auditory organs bewildered him more than a little. As if to get his own back, the colt had taken to mouthing Etrea’s coiled braids with his lips.

“He likes you,” came the laundress’ voice from behind them. Etrea jumped.

“Ledta Gatrin! I thought you were still asleep!”

No one had ever called her “Ledta.” But she was fifteen, three years past the age to wed with parental consent, two years past that to wed without. She was a woman in full, although she seldom thought upon it. Gatrin giggled with embarrassed pleasure, and replied, “Ach, not me, milady. I was wakeful and astir an hour since, even without Matielta’s rousing. As I say, your horse likes you. My mistress may be a great equestrian, but even her horses dislike her. They do her bidding out of fear, as do the rest of us who serve her, but yours…he is your friend, I think. He seems—I don’t know—to want to do as you tell him.”

“I do not tell him anything, maiden. I cannot. When I am not heavy with babe, I scarce weigh seven stone. He weighs ten times that, and more besides. He could kill me if it suited his fancy. I ask him to do my will, and—usually—he obliges.”

“The Trer Ievna’s horses wouldn’t dare nibble her hair as he nibbles yours, and I’ve never seen her stroke or pat either of them, nor heard her call them by endearing names. I’m not even certain they have names. She only keeps them because she knows she cuts a fine figure in a riding habit and saddle.”

“Well! She won’t be cutting a figure anywhere in the near future. She won’t have a figure to cut for some time.”

“Because of the little lordling or lady who will arrive in in the summer?” asked Gatrin.

They both burst out laughing.

“Partly,” agreed Etrea, “and also because I will not allow her to go anywhere, and one must be seen out and about in order to cut any sort of figure. I have her detained in an underground “mothering chamber”, sacred to the incarceration of pregnant prisoners of war, and those recovering from childbirth. When the little one is born, and she is healed, I shall move her to the common dungeon, and leave her there awhile, to stew in her own juices, and see how she likes it.”

“Will dungeon mites wait on her?”

“’Dungeon mites!’ What a hideous name for a group of servants! No, Ma Ledta, they will not. I have none in service to me, and I vow I never shall. That is a backward practice, to treat any child so. No, no. She shall have a proper lady-in-waiting, disentitled though she be; she shall have the High Lady in-waiting.”

“You, most gracious one?” Gatrin was delightedly horrified.

“And none other.”

“Who attends her now?”

“She has a woman keeper, who brings her meals, and sees that she has clean linen to sleep on and changes of clothes to wear. But no one waits on her. She does her own housekeeping, tidying the room and such, and can dress herself and her hair full well. I will see to her only when she becomes so heavy with child that she cannot dress or bathe with ease. “

“But, my queen! Her privy stool…” Gatrin made a face.

“I shall clean after her, as her time nears.”

“Ugh! No, Ma Ievna, let me. That is more seemly, given my—”

It appeared that Providence had already answered the last portion of her prayer. She knew what she could, and therefore would, do for Gatrin, and when she returned to the house, she would begin to act upon that inspiration.

“You!” she cried. “Why, Gatrin, I shan’t be able to spare you, soon enough. No, no, I’ll tend her.”

“What would my lady have me do, instead?” Gatrin daringly spoke out of turn. Generally a servant did not inquire what her mistress’ orders were, but awaited them in silence. But the queen’s expression of her urgent need of her presence elsewhere mystified Gatrin. What duty could Etheria’s High Lady deem more important than that of attending the aristocratic prisoner?

“Wait to see,” was Etrea’s only reply.

19

“Confound it, Etrea! I do not know of which war you speak! In what other words would you have me explain to you that I haven’t the faintest notion what the infernal, white-hot blazes you are talking about?”

Dresdain’s composure hung by the idiomatic thread. For six days, Etrea had driven and hounded him with questions concerning this war. He heard the frantic rise in his voice as plainly as did the Dar Ievna. This irked him, and had at first pleased, and then swiftly bored, her.

“Mind your epithets in the presence of a lady, sir, and the placement of your prepositions in the company of a grammarian,” she cautioned, but with laughter in her voice and eye.

“Blast you well clear of the country!” he fumed. “This amuses you! Did you subject my lady wife to an interrogation as unremitting as this?”

“There was no need. The plight of the child Petram told me much, and what the rest of his physiognomy did not reveal to my midwife and to me, his mouth did. I learned more from him in one hour than I have from you in six days.”

“Petram. Again you mention—Oh! Petram! Yes! Drunken Yira’s little boy. I know more of his sister than of him, and more of the father than of either child. Yes. Now I know whom you mean. So, by Marnal’s hand, the lad is near death?”

“Or was. The efforts of my lady Otisa and the good Doctor Alijhroc salvaged him from the brink, it seems, but he lies gravely ill, yet.”

“Take me to Ardoria and let me see him.”

“I shall take you nowhere until you reveal your plans for war. The matter is that simple, Dresdain.”

“Indeed, it is not! You incorrectly suppose that I withhold intelligence from you, intelligence that I do not possess!”

“Prove that to me.”

“I cannot. Since the title of Duke is no longer mine, I cannot ask your ladyship to accept my word of honor as one in such an exalted position. I thus ask you to accept only my solemn oath as an Etherian man.”

As swiftly as he had almost given way, Dresdain had mastered himself again. The calm earnestness of this request struck the queen’s waiting women, and her bearing-men under whose deliberately lax guard she had placed him. Apparently, it affected the Dar Ievna, too, for she hesitated. Doubt cast its shadow over the usually resolute features her personal servants knew so well.

“No,” Etrea concluded, shaking her head with finality, “No.”

“As my sovereign wishes,” answered Dresdain softly, and the defeat in his accents, together with his subdued but undeniable dignity of manner, caught, in particular, at the hearts of the ladies Gatrin and Ardoria. This was a harsh way to treat even a man known for harshness. Stern and austere in the governance of his province he certainly was, but everyone there in his private receiving room, knew him for a staunch patriot. Now the queen accused him of high treason. The eyes of the two noblewomen met. They believed in his loyalty, even if Etrea did not.

“Now,” she continued, briskly, “Let us see what an assisted prison break on a massive scale will do toward loosening your tongue, hey? Come with me. Ladies, all but the elder Gatrin are at leisure until we return. Young Gatrin, accompany us, too, if you please. Lord Valdtron, Lord Grigradt, escort the prisoner; this is one time when a single guard might not suffice. To the dungeon, then.”

The reduced party descended with Ledta Gatrin carrying a lantern. It was glacially cold down here. Etrea could see her breath as clearly as she saw Princely Ransom’s in the pasture early each autumn morning. She heard Dresdain inhale through clenched teeth when they first entered, and afterward the faint clattering of more teeth, as both Gatrins shivered unabashedly. She was glad that both she and her waiting-woman had shawls with them, did not envy the washerwoman’s lack of one, and wrapped hers as tightly as she could about her shoulders.

Dresdain had freely disclosed the location of the key to this outer door, and those belonging to each fetter. The queen took possession of them herself. She and Ledta Gatrin went first, and when she had unlocked the outer door, she thrust it open so energetically that it struck the wall and bounced back toward her. Those within cried out in surprise, as lantern light streamed through the doorway, and a number of them stumbled back, blinded. Their guards attended them by the feeble glow of rushlights set in brackets high in the walls. Their eyes were accustomed to nothing brighter.

But the eyes of those not stricken with autumn illness most quickly became accustomed to the illumination of the superior light source, and they saw the group of visitors, most notably, at its head, a woman of small stature, and even smaller girth, who moved with the awkward, hitching gait of one crippled in the legs, but still managed somehow to carry herself like one born to power. There was a confidence in the tilt of the chin that just escaped haughtiness, yet even as she came onward, a slight toss of her head betokened that she defied any to challenge that power. The small eyes were calm, but the rosy lips were pursed as if in thought, and the hectic flush of annoyance, if not outright anger, colored the prominent cheekbones. Some of the prisoners, those of noble blood, had seen her at court, others had glimpsed her from afar when she rode out, whether in the interest of politics or for pleasure, and a few others had only heard her described, but all knew that they were in the presence of the Lady of Etheria.

There were murmurs of, “Ma Ievna Etrea!” and “Lady most sovereign!” and one young Dark-Eyed inmate simply stared in amazement, and not amazement of a pleasant nature, until someone near him hissed, “Miagyil, you fool, lower your eyes! Cast them down, before she orders you flogged and exiled! Our gracious lady has no wish to look into eyes the color of fresh mud!”

“You make bold, even for a Grey-Eyed, to declare my wishes before I do, Rupin of Manashtadal,” said Etrea, addressing the young and impetuous heir to the duchy of that province. “Belike I want him to look on me in full; you know not elsewise. Come now, Mon Ledt, raise your eyes to me, hey?”

Miagyil hesitated.

“Well enough, Miagyil, it’s well enough. You can look me in the face. No flogging or exile.”

He met her gaze, then, and the hatred in his look nearly stilled her blood in its course through her person.

“My queen, this is my elder brother, Miagyil,” supplied Ledta Gatrin in an undertone, and Etrea nodded, seeing the likeness.

Miagyil walked as close to the Dar Ievna as the length of the chain that bound him to the wall would permit, and spat in her face.

“Miagyil!” gasped his sister.

Etheria’s High Lady stepped back a pace and unflappably wiped her cheek with a corner of her shawl. “I came too nigh for his liking, it would seem. Aye, Ledt Miagyil, I can move off a little, if you’d rather. I’ll warrant my kind have had that coming for some years, in your estimation.”

Heavy eyelashes rose, fell, and rose again as he watched her. His lips parted. She heard his breathing quicken, and even with her poor vision, she saw his eyes roll to look at something or someone over her shoulder. He was terrified, if Etrea could trust herself as a judge of countenance. Terrified, but concealing the fear behind aggression. “Gently, Mon Ledt. Steady, now,” she soothed.

“I am not one of your horses!” he proclaimed through clenched teeth.

“No. But take your ease, nonetheless. I use the same words and manner to calm humans and animals alike. I never shall again to you, as you take exception to it, but that is my usual way.”

Puzzled at her continued equanimity, he canted his head to one side, and studied her. “You’re little,” he said, after a moment, drawing a giggle from his sister, as he reiterated exactly what she had said to Etrea at their first meeting, but eliciting a collective gasp from everyone else present. He continued, ignoring their horror. “The Duke far exceeds you in size. Still, he’ll do you no harm. Let him go.”

“What? Why?” she demanded.

“You’re probably the last man in Saviatha, and certainly in Vestala, whom I would expect to plead for mercy for me, for any reason,” Dresdain added. “What do you hope to gain by this?”

The young man snorted. “You jest! What have I ever gained by any service of mine? I merely speak because you, my most gracious lady, have fallen to abysmal depths if you treat a man of your own race as poorly as most who are light in the eyes treat people of mine. We all know that you called him an ugly foreigner and revoked his title. Oh, yes, we know that! You can’t be too subtle within earshot of a near legion of guards. They told us. Such groups are as keen to gossip as any clutch of old women, however sternly one may frown upon such camaraderie in theory, and you weren’t at all subtle! The Duke is no turncoat.”

“Prove this, if you can,” Etrea commanded.

Miagyil tore off his leather jerkin and turned his back. From shoulders to waist, he bore the scars of many old floggings, and the welts of more recent punishments. His sister looked on his wounds with an air of mournful habituation, but the monarch, Ievna Gatrin, and Dresdain cried out. “I received every last one of these marks by either the hand or the order of the Duchess, never of the Duke. The same is true for every servant on these grounds. Ask amongst them; they will tell you, the lord Dresdain is a firm disciplinarian, but a fair one, and not cruel. Why would a man who doesn’t abuse his servants make war upon his queen?”

“Marnal did all these evils to you without Dresdain’s knowledge?”

“Aye.”

Etrea rounded on Dresdain. “How are you unaware of this?”

“As I said, my lady wife oversees the servants. I am much away, and she is largely silent on matters of domesticity.”

“Do your God-ordained duty as the man of the household, and govern your wife with at least something resembling the authority you wield over this province’s other denizens. Your obligations to her hardly end with sending her yearly to the birthing chamber.”

Dresdain flushed, and stared at the floor.

“Call the guards,” said Etrea, “and release every prisoner held here. But first, my lords, escort the—escort Dresdain outside, please. Open the door fully, and leave it so. It is already so cold in here, it cannot be worse for a November gale rushing through. Let all his captives pass before his eyes. Then let any possessions taken from them when they came be restored, each to its owner, and let each man go his way.”

The door was open, and Dresdain above ground again, but the exodus of the newly freed had not yet begun, when childish shouts of promised murder and resultant screams of torment filled the yard. By the sound of it, the pursuers, of whom there were several, caught their lone quarry, and attempted to make good on their threats. The three women rushed to investigate. Flailing about on the ground in an unruly jumble, were Ardu, Silvestrian, and Mirandan, Dresdain’s three middle sons. When the brothers separated briefly, Etrea caught a glimpse of their inert, battered victim, seemingly bathed in blood.

Petram.

20

From where he stood, Dresdain had the same terrifying view as the Dar Ievna. No deformities hampered his movements, however, and his nominal guards had not shackled or manacled him. Thus, he was at full liberty to intervene, and he did. Easily achieving a run, he swooped into the fray, pushed his own children asunder, lifted undersized Petram in his arms, and planted the boy firmly on one hip. He stood, glowering at the three combatants, who, realizing that no less august personage than their lord father had ended their malevolent sport, drew back sulkily.

“A thousand shames on each of you!” he roared.

“I-I’m sorry,” sniffed Petram, stiffening with fear.

“Not you, mom bijherer picimim. You’ve done nothing amiss. I was talking to the three miscreants who were lately on top of you. Would you boys truly fight like common urchins before Etheria’s High Lady?”

Until that moment, the troublemakers had not noticed the queen. Etrea made certain that their lapse in observation would not recur. Moving as quickly as her bent and twisted legs would allow, she came to stand beside Dresdain, head high, cheeks crimson, eyes glowing with fury.

“Cane them!” she grated. “I want all three of these boys caned, understood? Then send the younger two to bed without supper, and Ardu, since he is keen to play the big man, shall pass a night in the dungeon, just as a man grown would.”

“Also without supper,” decreed his father. He and Etrea looked at one another, and said, in unison, “Indeed.”

“What ’bout me?” Petram wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist. “Can’t I have any supper?”

“Silly boy!” Etrea scolded playfully, as they walked back toward the dungeon. “Of course you may! Dresdain just told you you’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Good. I’m hungry, ’gain. I’m always hungry.” Without thinking, he cuddled his head into Dresdain’s shoulder. Then, he remembered both who carried him, and that he bled freely, and pulled back, with a shy, “Thank you for saving me, Your Grace.”

Petram would learn soon enough, Dresdain reasoned, that that form of address was no longer applicable to him. Duke he might no longer be, but father of nine he would always be, and the wee mite in his arms called his every paternal inclination to full action. He did not reply in words, but hugged Petram closer.

“No!” suddenly cried the boy, cowering, as he noticed the direction in which they were bound. “That’s the dungeon! I don’t want to go back there; I don’t like it!” He hid his face in his rescuer’s shoulder again, and clung to him as if to life itself.

“Petram, my lad, hear me speak!” coaxed Dresdain. “Look at me. Aye, look at me, there we are. There. Now, I will not enter the dungeon proper, but I have displeased our good queen, and she wishes me to observe the release of the prisoners confined there. To see this, I must stand nearer the door, yes? You, however, need not look, if it distresses you to do so.”

Petram nodded. From a pocket of the new blouse he had recently been given, he took the green silk handkerchief the Dar Ievna had left with him for comfort, and held it to his bleeding nose. He hid his face again.

For several hours, there was much coming and going. Prisoners were unbound, and their possessions, if they had any, returned. If they did not, they were provided with adequate food for their homeward journeys, each according to the distance he must travel, and also with sufficient clothing to keep them warm. Many of the men approached Petram with thanks for his care of them, and wishes of good luck for his future. Almost all who did came to Etrea also, and told her, in undertones, that they had never seen anyone treated so cruelly as the Duchess treated Petram, that she seemed to bear the boy a particular spite, for she had other dungeon mites toward whom she was less harsh, and that Petram was unfailingly kind and good-natured to them, if rather shy. Apparently, he never repaid Marnal anything for her savage hatred but gentle, silent submission. Unembarrassed tears glistened in the eyes of some, as they recounted the humiliation she and those at her beck and call inflicted on the boy.

The very sickest amongst the prisoners stayed at the manor house, to receive medical care. From her own purse, when she entered the house, the queen paid the fee of the only local doctor willing to tend the Dark Eyed patients. Miagyil objected vehemently to treatment. “I want nothing from you,” he told Etrea through clenched teeth. “I’d rather take gangrene and die.”

“As you wish, Mon Ledt,” she answered, and walked away.

“Fool!” whispered Gatrin. “Idiot-fool! I almost hope you do die, and spare us your arrogance and stubbornness! Our sovereign wants only to assist.”

“Hush it, Gati,” he replied. “I can plain enough see she’s got you in her thrall, but she won’t get me. That much I swear to.”

“Have you noticed that your rudeness doesn’t seem to offend her? You’ve been a perfect boor to her all afternoon, and she’s been gracious beyond gracious in return. I can plain enough see that she doesn’t care what you think of her. I won’t stand here arguing anymore. I’m hungry, and I want my supper.” She, too, turned on her heel and left him to fume.

In the meantime, Etrea’s bearing-men had traded guard duty for valets’ tasks. Quickly but gently, they cleansed and soothed the injuries the three lordlings had inflicted upon Petram. They helped him to change his clothes, and arranged his hair afresh. A bevy of ladies-in-waiting, performing similar offices, would have scolded and fussed over him, with much outcry against his persecutors, but Grigradt, Valdtron, and also the lord Vondrian contented themselves with casts of countenance not at all favorable to the young aristocrats, and Vondrian growled, “I should like to have the caning of those three whelps, of which our queen spoke. Wouldn’t I just?” The other two muttered wholehearted concurrence.

Petram joined Ledta Gatrin in the kitchen, and, amid the bustle of mealtime preparations, they ate savory stew. Miagyil limped in to join them, as the demands of his sixteen-year-old stomach temporarily bested his young-manly pride. Tonight, no one light in the eyes taunted them, they each noticed, and Gatrin remarked upon this to Miagyil, who grunted, and pointed with his thumb to the opposite wall. The girl glanced that way, and, to her mortification, straight into the snapping green eyes of Dar Ievn Ymanu. Almost at once, she looked downward. But in their brief meeting of gazes, she had time to see his nod, and the faint tug of an acknowledging smile at the corners of his mouth.

The High Prince of Etheria stood guard over them.

21

As she had done to every other room in the ducal residence—with the exceptions of Dresdain’s—Etrea had commandeered the sewing room. Here she spent each evening in the company of her female attendants. They wrought various pieces of stitchery, while she embroidered upon young Gavral’s cloak. Her progress was steady but slow, and although this was early November, and the ceremony to ennoble her son would not transpire until the middle of February, she wanted to have the garment finished by Christ’s Tide, so that if, upon examination of the finished product, she discovered errors in her pattern, she might have sufficient time to repair them.

Late on the evening of his homecoming, Petram handed her a sealed letter, explaining, “I forgot. The doctor—“ he averted his gaze, and yawned, as softly as he could manage “—said to give you this.”

“What is it?” Etrea wondered aloud.

“I don’t know, milady. Even if I could read…well…it isn’t nice to read other people’s post. He just said it was for you.” He withdrew a few steps, sat down on the floor, and rested his forehead on his knees, allowing himself the simple pleasure she had been the first to permit him, that of feeling tired. He knew she would not drive him away from the shadowy warmth of the sewing room just yet, and that her body servants did not dare to do so. Etrea laid aside her needlecraft to read her missive. It ran thus:

GRACIOUS ONE—

I WILL BROACH MY SUBJECT FORTHWITH, SAYING, BY WAY OF PREAMBLE, ONLY THAT I HOPE THAT THIS COMMUNICATION WILL DISPEL A MISUNDERSTANDING THAT I SEEM TO HAVE CAUSED UNTO YOURSELF AND UNTO MY LADY OTISA, ALSO. NO DECEPTION WAS INTENDED IN MY WORDS OR ACTIONS, AND I HUMBLY CRAVE YOUR PARDON AND HERS IF I APPEARED INCLINED TO LIE TO YOU.

I HAVE APPARENTLY INADEQUATELY LAID BEFORE YOU MY DIAGNOSIS OF THE MALADY OF THE BOY PETRAM, FROM WHICH YOU BOTH, UNDERSTANDABLY, FEAR THAT HE WILL SHORTLY DIE. THE CHILD IS CERTAINLY MALNOURISHED, WITH DAMAGE TO HIS HEART. UNTIL YOU RESCUED HIM, YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN RIGHT IN YOUR BELIEF THAT HIS END WAS AT HAND. BUT DEATH BY STARVATION WOULD HAVE BEEN A GENTLE AND SERENE WAY TO LEAVE THIS WORLD. PETRAM’S DEATH, FROM WHICH YOU SAVED HIM JUST IN TIME, WOULD HAVE BEEN AN AFFAIR OF PURE TORTURE.

YOU SEE, MY SOVEREIGN, THAT EVENING IN THE BELFRY, OF WHICH OTISA TOLD ME SOMETHING, PETRAM FELL INTO THE SAME UNHAPPY CIRCUMSTANCE AS YOUR LORD HUSBAND, AND FOR THE SAME REASON. BY THIS, I MEAN THAT HE SUFFERED A HEART ATTACK AFTER INGESTING THE POISONOUS WEED COMMONLY CALLED TYCHE’S WHIM.

Etrea read now with tears in her eyes. From between the sheet currently before her, and the one beneath it, something thin and prickly protruded. She shook the pages, and out fell a withered and faded slip of plant, whose blossom, similar in shape to that of a daffodil, had once been vibrantly purple. She inhaled through clenched teeth, as if in bodily distress.

Tyche’s Whim was its most common name, but there were others. Ratdeath. The Purple Death. The Widowing Weed. Waifweed, or Orphanweed. The Captive’s Fate. Those names paraded with heavy solemnity through Etrea’s mind, and made her cry the more.

On the floor beside the grand old wing chair in which she sat, poor little Petram yawned again. “You’re sleepy, sweetheart,” she murmured distractedly. “You’ve had a long day. Off with you to bed. You’ve earned it if anyone has.”

“Yes, Ma Ievna,” he sighed, but he did not move. Etrea continued to read, and at first did not notice:

I DISCOVERED THIS THREE DAYS PAST. AS IN THE CASE OF THE DAR IEVN, THE VICTIM DID NOT IMMEDIATELY DISPLAY THE EFFECTS OF POISONING. UNLIKE YOUR HUSBAND’S PRINCELY GRACE, HOWEVER, WHEN HE DID BEGIN TO EXHIBIT THEM, PETRAM DID NOT PRESENT THEM ALL AT ONCE. HE DID NOT BEGIN TO EGEST THE LETHAL PLANT MATTER UNTIL YOU WERE WELL AWAY, AND AT FIRST I SIMPLY SUPPOSED THAT THE REINTRODUCTION OF FOOD TO HIS UNACCUSTOMED STOMACH MADE HIM ILL. AFTER TWO DAYS OF THIS VIOLENT PURGING, HE SUDDENLY RETAINED HIS FOOD MORE READILY, AND REMARKED TO ME, WHEN I CAME TO VISIT HIM, THAT THE BREAD THAT OTISA PROVIDED FOR HIM WAS MORE TO HIS LIKING THAN THAT WHICH HE CONSUMED AT HOME, AS IT WAS NOT FLAVORED WITH SPICES THAT BURNT HIS TONGUE AND THROAT. I CANNOT EXPRESS THE HORROR WITH WHICH I RECEIVED THIS NEWS, MY LADY AND MY LIEGE, FOR A BURNING TASTE IN FOOD IS THE CHIEF COMPLAINT AMONG THE FEW WHO EAT TYCHE’S WHIM AND SURVIVE. NOR CAN I EXPRESS MY RELIEF THAT HE STOPPED EATING AT HOME ALTOGETHER, FOR IN SO DOING, HE CEASED TO PARTAKE OF ANY MORE POISON, WHICH, I DOUBT NOT, TAINTED ALL THE FOOD INTENDED FOR HIM.

EVEN THOUGH HE STOPPED EATING, STILL THE POISON MIGHT HAVE KILLED HIM, BUT FOR THE INTERVENTION OF YOUR EXCELLENT SELF AND THE GOOD MIDWIFE. IT CAUSED HIS HEART ATTACK, AS I HAVE STATED, AND, UNTREATED, THAT HEART ATTACK COULD EASILY HAVE PROVEN FATAL. AS I HAVE ALSO SAID, YOU SOUGHT MY AID JUST IN TIME. I COULD SEE, EVEN AT A GLANCE, THAT HIS HEART AILED, AND WHEN OTISA TOLD ME WHAT YOU TOLD HER OF HIS FAINTING FIT, I KNEW THAT HE HAD HAD A HEART ATTACK. CLOSER EXAMINATION ONLY VERIFIED IT. IT WAS THEN, MY GOOD QUEEN, THAT I MADE MY ERRONEOUS PRONOUNCEMENT, THAT THE DAMAGE TO HIS HEART WOULD KILL HIM IN SHORT ORDER, AND CAME FROM STARVATION.

THIS DAMAGE HAS COME TO A HALT WITH PETRAM’S ABSTINENCE FROM EATING THE WEED, AND WHAT HE HAS ALREADY SUSTAINED IS YET COMPATIBLE WITH LIFE, PRAISE BE RENDERED UNTO GOD. THUS, I REJOICE TO SEND HIM HOME TO YOU, AND TO HIS ESTIMABLE SISTER, WITH ASSURANCES THAT, ALTHOUGH HE REMAINS WEAK, AND TIRES EASILY, HE, EVEN MORE THAN MY GRACIOUS PRINCE YOUR HUSBAND, HAS YOUTH IN HIS FAVOR, AND HIS DEMISE IS NOT VERY LIKELY NIGH.

I SWEAR ANEW UNTO MY LADY, MY LIEGE, THAT I WILL KEEP THE VOW OF HIPPOCRATES, ADHERING THEREUNTO WITH THE UTMOST RIGOR OF PURPOSE I CAN CALL FORTH, AND I REMAIN EVER,

ALIJHROC OF THE CITY OF GURVA,

IN THE PROVINCE OF MARDRI,

BUT RESIDING, AND PRACTICING MEDICINE, IN THAT OF ARDORIA,

BOTH ON AND BEFORE THIS, THE FOURTH DAY OF NOVEMBER, IN CHRIST’S YEAR, 2008.

Etrea folded the letter, and out of the corner of her eye, saw Petram still on the floor. “You haven’t moved, sleepyhead.” She gave a gentle laugh.

“No, Ma’am,” he mumbled.

“I can’t carry you to bed. I can’t even carry Prince Yiduar, and you are but little larger than he.”

“I want to stay here with milady,” he pleaded. “It’s safe to feel sleepy where you are. You said so.”

“I’m not staying here all night, child. Eventually, I shall retire.”

“Can’t I just curl up in your chair when you do go? I promise not to bother anyone.”

He pillowed his head on the armrest, and looked at her with sad, drooping-lidded eyes. She tousled his hair. “I see no reason why you shouldn’t.”

“All those men you freed today,” he said, “They liked me. I didn’t know that.”

“Of course they did.”

“They came to me, and they patted me on the back, and they thanked me for taking care of them. Why did they do that, Ma Ievna? I didn’t take care of them. Not really. I couldn’t keep the dungeon as clean as it should have been, and I couldn’t tend them when they were sick, or warm them, or give them better food, or—anything.”

She took his sallow face in her hands. “Petram of Vestala, it was you who met their most vital needs. You gave them food and drink, such as it was. You gave some semblance of a decent burial to those among them that died. For mercy’s precious sake, my darling, you emptied their waste without a murmur, and endured the wrath of Saviatha in silence. All these things did not pass before blind eyes, and assuredly not before inured hearts.”

“There were other boys besides me who served as dungeon mites,” replied Petram.

“But none performed that humble office as graciously as you did. Many of the men told me so. The others complained, and not always quietly. Several of them ran away.”

“I wish I had. Those lads had guts in their bellies. I’m a coward.”

“Petram, a coward doesn’t give up his food to save the life of the queen’s brother, when he doesn’t stand to gain anything by the sacrifice. A coward doesn’t guard with, quite possibly, his life, the key to another man’s chains, in an attempt to help free that man. A knight does such things, Petram …a knight.”

And she clutched him to her, and held him for a long moment.

“Now,” she said, at last holding him at arm’s length, and standing up, “the night grows no younger, and you grow no less tired, I am certain. Into that chair, and to sleep with you. At once, I say!”

He readily obeyed, yawning prodigiously yet again, as she covered him with a large, thick piece of black velvet, and as the yawn faded into the sleep of exhausted childhood, Etrea bent, and laid upon his cheek perhaps the first kiss of his short, bleak life.

22

When she left the sewing room, and closed the door behind her, Ledta Gatrin came flying toward her, breathless and repentant.

“Oh, my soul, Ma Ievna, I am abjectly sorry! I completely forgot!” she cried, falling to her knees. “The gracious Dar Ievn craves a word, when you are at leisure to grant it.”

“Hush, maiden. Your wee brother sleeps within.” Etrea nodded at the sewing room door.

“In the sewing room?” whispered Gatrin, perplexed.

“Aye. There burns a good fire on the hearth, and even after it dies, the room should remain reasonably warm the night through, what with the heavy drapes at the windows. The wish of the poor little thing’s heart seemed to be to sleep in a warm place where he felt safe. ’Twas simple enough to grant. Good heavens, Ma Ledta, to your feet! You needn’t kneel to me.”

But Gatrin remained where she was.

“Thank you, Ma Ievna, for your kindness unto my brothers and me, particularly to Petram. This eve he told me all that you have done for him. And I am sorry that Miagyil is so horrid to you.”

“Ach, well. So many of my race have done him wrong, that he no doubt feels entitled to a little revenge, and, in one way, he is. Think no more on it, for it’s plain it worries you. My lord husband came with Petram?”

“Aye, sovereign one, as a Green-Eyed guardian. And he watched over us three at supper, so that none vext us. He took his meal right there in the kitchen, amongst all the servants, standing as if at attention. Everyone kept out of his way, and although there was great busyness of preparation, there was a hush, too. Yet it did not seem to be a frightened hush; it seemed as if…as if…I don’t know…I am talking too much. Again.”

“It seemed a respectful hush,” the queen concluded for her. “And no, you do not talk to excess. You observe keenly, young dame. My lord of Etheria is a calm and quiet man, who commands respect by his simple presence, and loves the silence well.”

“But all the same,” said Gatrin, “if there had been the usual chatter in the kitchen, somehow, I doubt he would have taken it amiss.”

“Nor would he. Those who serve in the kitchen hold my husband in high esteem, evidently; they kept quiet because they wished to adhere to his preferences. Now, I must do a wife’s duty and follow their example. I must go to him, and you, Gatrin, must go to sleep. It is after eleven. Rest well, Ma Ledta. “

Gatrin rose and curtseyed, and Etrea betook herself to the prince consort’s temporary suite.

Between them, since their encounter the night before she left Ardoria, there had been a truce, of sorts. Gatrin’s thankfulness to Ymanu, and her own praise of his virtues had reminded Etrea of those virtues, and even during those moments when she was angriest with him, Etrea had known that she could not separate herself from him forever. As much as she wanted no more of his children, fearing the birth of another daughter, she still more desperately wanted to be mother to a third son of his. Each time she was brought to bed of a son, she laughed at those who, nearly seven years ago when she wed, had laughed, sometimes almost in her face, and called her barren. Time no more stood still for her than for any other; she carried more than a quarter century, now. She wanted to laugh one last time. She wanted to prove that a girl-child’s occupancy of her womb had not weakened it. For these opportunities she had pleaded with him on the night of her birthday. She suspected, given various familiar signs, that he had succeeded in granting her wish.

She was sensitive, Otisa said, if she experienced the early symptoms of a pregnancy when she was less than a fortnight advanced in it. It was so each time she fell with child, except in the memorable case of Iulina. This was not the occasion, however, to inform Ymanu of the advent of another baby. He likely had war news that he wished to give her, and other matters for them to discuss. For her part, she wanted to ask him how Dresdain’s sons had had occasion to attack Petram, and also to inquire after the welfare of her brother.

“Enter,” called Ymanu, when she rapped at his antechamber door, and she did.

“Good e’en, wife,” he greeted her, with gentle distance.

“How fares my lord this night?” she asked, her eyes humbly downcast. She came to him in spousal submission at the moment, not as a queen to her subject.

“I am weary unto the point of extinction, but I suppose I find myself well enough otherwise.”

She sat down at his feet. “For that, my gracious prince, I am significantly at fault. Had I known you were here, I should have come to you at once, and you might have gone to bed long before this, but I only just learned of your presence.”

“No trouble. Petram’s sister had much to occupy her thoughts. Concerning Petram, Dajhmi…”

Oh, dear, now for it, thought the queen. He shall castigate me for all the time and worry I have spent upon Petram, and, loath though I am to admit it, he shall stand in the right!

“…I’m sorry I grew so jealous of him,” finished Ymanu.

Etrea’s head flew up in amazement. The Dar Ievn smiled.

“You appear shocked. Well, so was he, when I asked his pardon.”

“For being jealous?” she asked.

“For being jealous,” he affirmed. “Angry as I was with you both, I also had a curiosity to see this person who had reawakened your compassion for your fellowman. The day after you left to come here, we first met, he and I. I sought him out in Otisa’s apartments. I don’t seem to have concealed my dislike very well.”

“Ymanu! That poor child!”

“I know, I know. It must have been quite an experience for one whom none in this world loved to suddenly find himself in the maternal affections of none other than the Dar Ievna. And then to have the High Prince despise him for no reason…how bewildering that must have been.”

“Did you hit him on the head or something? Is that how you gave him to understand that you hated him?”

“Etrea! Please refrain from being entirely absurd! I’m not Marnal; help me God, I’m not! No, I wasn’t particularly civil to him, even as I began to guard him on his journey here. He was afraid of me, and kept goodly distance betwixt us at the first. It startled me to realize that he knew I bore him little fondness.”

“Of course he knew. He’s no man’s dolt.”

“I gathered that. He was ever vigilant for danger, and he served as guide to those of our party who have seldom or never been to Saviatha. He seemed hardly to sleep at all.”

“No wonder he was so tired tonight! Loyal Petram. Good for him! How did those three dreadful little boys have occasion to attack him?”

“He slipped outdoors when my back was turned, I think. Mayhap he had forgotten something in one of the wagons. Next I knew, he was screaming, and running along the side of the house toward the dungeon. I’m so sorry, Etrea. With my heart in this condition, I know I can never fight those who would harm him bodily, mere children though they might be, but my simple presence as a Green-Eyed would have assured his safety. That is why I looked over those three as they dined, and I promise never to let any of them out of my sight again when I am in their company. About the particulars of the assault, I can say nothing; none of the disgusting perpetrators will talk…yet. If I question them in concert with their father, they may yield more readily.”

Abruptly he changed the subject. “The doctor sent a letter in response to that in which you requested that he send Petram here. Did you receive it?”

“I did.”

“May I read it?”

She passed him the letter, plant sprig and all. He read in pained silence. At last he spoke a single word.

“Murderess.”

“Not quite, Ymanu. She did not succeed.”

“Of all the preposterous charges I ever heard, ‘attempted murder’ is the most ludicrously misnamed. If one sets out to end the life of another, the intent to kill still exists even if one fails. If the other person is dead already in the mind of the would-be killer, the proposed victim might as well actually lie dead upon the floor. That’s my opinion, Etrea-girl.”

“And I concur heartily, myself, but the law, as it stands—“

“Must be changed, so that there is no difference between the punishment for a murderous endeavor that succeeds, and the punishment for one that fails!”

“Good Lord, man! I have a nearly impossible task to persuade the High Council to educate Dark-Eyed children to the barest degree. It shall take years to pass such a resolution, and even after a law is enacted allowing for this improvement, I am positive its passage shall meet with violent hostility. And that would be in peacetime. What outcry the public would make if it became a crime for a Green-Eyed disentitled noblewoman to chastise her Dark-Eyed child servant, even to the point of death, I cannot begin to fancy. If such became law during peacetime, all our nobles would jointly and immediately declare war against us, and if, by some miracle, we managed to convene the High Council during this war and pass that law, we should never have peace again.”

“Once again, I know. I’m angry, that’s all. I’m angry, and I’ve never in all my life felt so powerless. First Alidias, then me, then the burning of the fields, now Petram and the plague—“

“What? Plague? Who has plague, or where is it? My children! Where are they? My brother! What of Alidias?”

“You are wise to worry, my love. This is not “The Plague” such as struck England eight centuries past. This is an infection of the sinuses that is far beyond the power of doctors to treat. The foremost symptom, Doctor Alijhroc and other physicians have told me, is copious bleeding from the nose. The lucky survive.” He raised his hands helplessly, leaving to her imagination the fate of the unlucky.

“My children!” she pled.

“I’ve sent them and their nursery-servants to the Ajhidera estate. Then I came here. I confess it, I came here as much a refugee from disease as a guard to Petram, and I brought him here as much to spare his compromised body from sickness as to reunite with his sister.”

“Alidias?” demanded Etrea.

Ymanu drew an unsteady breath. These were the tidings he most dreaded to relay.

“I’m sorry, Dajhmi. As far as I know, our kinsman lives still, but he burns with fever, gushes blood at the nose, and shakes with ague. He was one of the first stricken.”

23

She was a massive animal, even for a representative of a horse breed traditionally used to pull heavy loads, and certainly for a mare. She gazed at Petram with a frank, patient eye, and the tiny child stared back, inexplicably unafraid. Her name was Kestana, and it suited her cream-colored coat to a nicety. Petram looked in bashful inquiry over his shoulder, a little past Dresdain, that his darkness of eye might not offend His Grace.

“What do you want, lad? Speak, and make your wishes known to me. I can’t read your mind.”

Actually, Dresdain had a very good idea what Petram was after. Boys were less inclined than their female counterparts to give voice to their thoughts, of course, but this boy largely refused to say anything to anyone who was not the queen. Even the quietest man alive had to talk sometimes. Dresdain meant to teach Petram to trust, as far as it depended on him.

To that end, he had taken, in the week since the Dar Ievna had left Saviatha for Ardoria to charge his wife with attempted murder, to bringing along the boy everywhere he went on the estate. There was hard sickness in the capitol, sickness that neither Dresdain nor Ymanu had suffered, and to which, therefore, they were not immune. Etrea, too, was susceptible, but, as Etheria’s highest-ranking official, she must be present when charges of attempted homicide were brought against anyone. Not even an outbreak of plague could halt the wheels of justice in their slow grinding.

This morning, after breakfast, Dresdain had strode into the kitchen, where Petram, under the vigilant protection of the Dar Ievn, was tending the fire. Saviatha’s lord stood more than six feet tall, walked with a long stride and a heavy footfall, and spoke in a resonant, though not excessively loud, bass voice. Even most among his superiors esteemed him highly, and the Dar Ievn was no exception.

“With my liege’s gracious consent, I should like to take this boy to the barn with me whilst I inspect my horse,” Dresdain requested, laying a muscular hand on Petram’s head.

“But of course, my lord.” Ymanu nodded at Petram, “Go along with your master. He’ll let no harm come to you, any more than I. I’ve your brother and sister to see to.”

So the two of them had gone to the barn, and there Petram had at once conceived a fondness for the big mare, and a fancy to touch her. But he would not dream of doing this without permission, and so often had permission to do anything been denied him in his life, that he had no heart to ask. At Dresdain’s prompting, though, he swallowed, and whispered, “May—may I pet her, pl—please?”

Here was an excellent opportunity to teach Petram to trust people besides Etrea. That he trusted the horse was abundantly evident, but it was not enough. He needed to learn that there existed folk who were willing to grant some of a child’s reasonable requests, and that he could trust such folk to do so without mistreating him in any way. Dresdain crouched upon the floor, and grasped the boy gently by the shoulders. “Perhaps I did not explain very well, Petram. Let me try again. Don’t make a request of me. Tell me what you want.”

Petram might well have looked less horrified if Dresdain had told him to steal gold from Etrea’s privy purse. “My lord forgive me, but I cannot! That would be terrible form, to—to give Your Grace an order!”

Dresdain laughed. “Good Heavens, your tongue seems loose enough. Tell me what you want.”

Petram hid his face.

“Aye, I know,” Dresdain said, serious again. “I know you’re shy. But it is perfectly well to have wants and desires. Everyone does.” He turned to walk further down the long barn, expecting Petram to follow. Patience, he told himself. The young one will gain confidence with ti—

“I want to pet Kestana.”

Those five words came slowly and softly, but they did come, far sooner than Dresdain would have expected. Petram repeated them more firmly.

“Then do it,” said the erstwhile aristocrat. “Enter the stall and do it.”

Petram found it a simple matter to lift the latch and slip through the doorway. Kestana moved aside, as she had been taught.

And then, with the maternal nicker from time out of mind, the great workhorse planted her soft lips on the crown of Petram’s head, and stood resolutely still.

“Well! She’s taken a swift liking to you, hasn’t she?” breathed Dresdain.

“Has she really, Mon Ievn?”

“Of course she has! Can you not tell?”

“No, sir. I don’t understand anything horses do.”

“Ah. In time you’ll come to learn.”

“Sir?”

“Saints, boy! Do you think I would allow you to return to service in the dungeon? May God show me no mercy if I ever do! It’s one thing to confine a practiced criminal, or even, briefly, my own sorely misbehaving son, down there, but to use it as a place of abuse, humiliation, and overwork for an unoffending child—no, no. Not anymore.”

“What’m I to do, then?”

“Oh, a little of this, and some of that. Anything that will put color in your face and a snap in your eye. That is what the Dar Ievna wants. I’ll wager a few months’ work outdoors will do that if anything will. Oh! She also says you’re to have two hours each day to do just as you like.”

“Two hours! Two whole hours to—to—“

Play.

How strange that word felt to Petram’s mind, so strange that he could not bring it to his lips. The youngest son of Vestala’s drunken Yira did not play. Other children did, and he watched on rare occasions, but he did not do the same. Yira’s son worked, cowered in fear from every person and thing, served as a whipping-boy, ate and slept a little if he were lucky, and went hungry and sleepy if he were not. Now that he was encouraged and expected to play, what would he do? “I don’t know how,” he blurted.

“Well, if your time were your own, what would you do? What would you most like to do?”

“Mmm…” Petram considered. “I would…well, read, if I knew how. I would have someone teach me how to keep clean. I would sit by a fire, doing nothing but watching the flames. I would eat cakes and suchlike still warm from the oven. And…ah! This morning, I found fat, grey Ledta Kitty-Cat, who patrols the house for mice, lying on her side with her new kittens all in a row along her belly, nursing. I counted six little ones, Mon Ievn, and when they are of an age to leave her, I—I want one of those, for a playmate.”

“’Dame Kitty-Cat, hey? Is that what you call her?”

Petram nodded. “She gave me leave to pet them, and even pick them up.”

“She likes you passing well. But that’s no wonder; you’re so quiet and gentle, of course she would trust you with her babies.”

“That makes three people that like me. Well, two animals and one person. But what did you mean, Mon Ievn, when you said that I would learn with time to understand what horses do?”

“I meant that I want you to look after Kestana.”

“Me? But—she’s Kestana, Your Grace. I’m just a zirakhinu. I’m not fit to care for such as her.”

“Petram! A moment ago, you wanted to adopt one of the Duchess’ kittens! Now, you’re not fit to stand groom to her husband’s horse? I’m confused.”

“You told me to tell you what I wanted, milord, and I did. But what I want is different from what I’ll get. I know that. Ma Ievna would never allow me to have a kitten, and I would be the only Dark-Eyed One amongst the grooms in your stable. They already hate me.”

“Listen to me, child. Old Dame Kitty-Cat may nestle and purr in the lap of my wife, but it was I who brought her scrawny, three-week-old carcass mewing and crying home for Marnal to tend, that day after Christmas, eighteen years ago. She was abandoned and in three days, none came forward to claim her, so she legally became the property of the one who found her. All that belongs to my wife, except her body and her mind, which belong only to God and to her, belongs first to God, then to me, and then to her. This includes any gifts I may bestow upon her, of which the cat was one. Therefore, yes, you may have one of my kittens as your pet, and a whacking great lot Marnal can do about it! You may choose any kitten from the litter.

“As to Kestana, my boy, the queen herself advised me that you should care for her, if she did not frighten you. I do not generally like to have others tend her, gentle as she is, for many might take advantage of her sweetness to use her cruelly, but you…our queen is right. You will treat her well, and she will treat you as gently as she must until you are no longer so fearful as you are of most things. Kestana knows that you are shy, you see.”

Petram had stroked the smooth, silky hair of Kestana’s chest from the moment she approached him. He did not stop altogether, now, but the petting slowed decidedly as Dresdain told him this. “She does?” he inquired in wonder, glancing sidelong at his master.

“As well as I do.”

“How?”

“When she laid her lips on your head, you did not pull away. You crowded beneath her still further, as a foal would to seek comfort. She is standing almost completely still, guarding you. Mothering you, really. Do you feel her lips moving in your hair? That is her way of reassuring you that she is near, that you needn’t be afraid. Oh, yes. She likes you. He’ll get braver with time, Kestana, my beauty. They always do, just like shy foals. I know you have patience to spare. You’ll teach him what he must know of horses. And Petram?”

“”Yes, Your Grace?”

“Two last things. Firstly, I’m not to be called ‘Your Grace’ any more. It has pleased our good queen to remove my title.”

“Although I usually forget, Ledt Dresdain, I know it.” Ledt Dresdain. A name as strange to him as the word play had seemed. “I will not say that any longer.”

“That is well. Secondly, none of the other grooms will disturb you. The High Prince has promised them vigorous canings, by his own hand, if you tell him they have tried. And you are to tell him.”

“I will, sir. I hope they let me alone—but for the Dar Ievn’s sake, more than for mine. Mayhap I’m not in my rights to say this, but the gracious prince does not look strong enough to cane anyone. He might hurt himself more than the one he was punishing, what with his heart as ’tis.”

“He isn’t, and he knows it, and everyone else does, too. The grooms also know, however, that it is a warning, not simply a threat; he will act upon his promise if any of them bully you. No one wants a reputation as ‘the reason the High Prince of Etheria died of heart failure.’ So none will trouble you.”

“Do you hear this, Ledta Kestana? Do you hear all these things? ” Petram stepped back a little, to whisper into the animal’s attentively canted ear. “I’m let to play a bit, now, and I can have a kitten out of the fat grey cat for a friend! I’m to be your groom, which means I can pet you almost anytime I like! And no one will ever be mean to me ’gain, because the Dar Ievn won’t let them!”

Dresdain heard this last, and it wrung his heart. Oh, that it were so simple, little one, he thought. If only you knew…

And what do you know of this child’s prospects, Dresdain, son of Austain of Luria, Saviatha? he suddenly chided himself. You know little enough of the plight of his race generally, save that is dire. Until a week ago, you did not even dream that, in your own home, it may be direst of all. Perhaps the boy is at least partly right. Almost any change in his circumstances would be an improvement. Perhaps the prince consort truly does inspire enough respect that the mere idea that he is Petram’s protector will stay the hand or tongue of any tormentor, even in his absence. The full extent of the sway those green in the eyes hold over others is known only to them. You’re a fine one to call this lad naïve, if only in thought.

24

“Shiyah!”

She swept down upon the city of Ardoria riding flat-out, astride, and arrayed in a gown as black as her steed, for she was in mourning for her nation. In mourning, but also in full fury, bent upon the ruin of her foe.

For her foe had laid waste to her city, she saw at a glance. Etrea did not enter it in stunned silence to mirror its desolation, because what she saw did not shock her. She had expected to find Ardoria sacked, and the fulfillment of that expectation only enraged her. She did not slow her progress to survey the damage; there was no need. The raw wind brought ash to fill her mouth and throat, and the smells of smoke and of dead things to fill her nostrils. Still, she sounded the battle cry, until the ash choked her, and then she spat it out, and shrilled again. “Shiyah! Shiyah!”

For all the carnage, and unease about the plague, the streets were busy. There had been more virulent outbreaks in the past. The Red Scourge, as it was known, was a part of life. The lady Gatrin, who could remember such times, had told Etrea so, after Ymanu had first described the illness to her. So long as no one entered or left the city after the pestilence had arrived, Gatrin said, there was no cause for alarm.

“But we have to enter,” said Etrea, gloomily.

“I know, Ma Ievna.”

The women looked at one another, and both spoke the same thought, “Therein lies the risk.”

Now, amongst the smoldering ruins, street hawkers extolled the virtues of their respective wares, children played with their customary heedlessness, drunken men brawled, and fishwives gossiped. Even her war cry aroused no especial terror, for the country boasted a substantial standing army, and private citizens were rarely called upon to fill the ranks, so that most mothers, sisters, wives, and sweethearts need not live in dread of sending their men into battle. Through the hubbub, some half-listened to this cry that was the queen’s summons to her professional soldiers. It, too, was a part of life. Almost out of habit, they cleared a path for her.

They were not being rude. When called before her, or begging a favor, most of them displayed seemly deference. But the Dar Ievna spent more time in Ardoria than in any other city of any other province. She was seen about town, like any other resident. She constituted a third part of life. Fanfare pleased her ill. She liked to pass unostentatiously among them. Only when she wished to address them was any forewarning given of her coming. Just now, she was in no mood to address anyone save Marnal.

A farmer, in town for market day, and chasing after his wayward hog, at last ended the progress of Etheria’s High Lady through the streets, when the porker ran straight under Ransom’s belly. Three months ago, the pig’s piercing squeals and headlong rush might have put the colt to flight of his own, but now he proved a credit to both Etrea’s training and his unmixed Friesian blood. He halted, if rather quickly, and did not flinch.

“A thousand curses on you, lackwit beast!” the farmer berated the hog. “Get us both trampled, will you?” He ducked beneath Ransom’s chin, and somehow, as the pig dashed away, managed to grasp the trailing end of a stout rope whose other end was tied around its neck. With a fierce tug, he brought the animal to heel, then raised his walking staff, and beat the poor creature about the head until it screamed in agony. All the while, he abused it in the coarsest of language, so that it really did seem that he would utter a thousand imprecations against it.

“If you cannot refine your speech even slightly in the presence of our excellent queen, Ledt Soil-Tiller, be silent!” commanded Ievn Grigradt, in strident tones that many passersby heard, notwithstanding the clamor of business all about. Most of those present stopped their doings, and hushed. A few of these glared at the little monarch, unashamed, but by and large, they made obeisance to her, and she heard the usual subdued exclamations of, “Ma Ievna Etrea!” and, “My sovereign!” The farmer was the most obsequious. Etrea sighed. She must speak, to all in the city square, if only in defense of the poor little pig.

“Yes,” she commanded the farmer, “Refrain from swearing, and also from beating your unfortunate swine! In this fortnight just past, I have seen more ill-use of my fellow humans than I ever care to see again. I have no need to witness cruelty to a half-grown piglet!

“Good subjects,” she continued, “My lord husband, whom many of you love well, is come into the province of Saviatha, seeking refuge from this pestilence, which, God knows, he could not withstand were he to fall ill of it.”

“Almighty Jehovah preserve our gracious High Prince!” called out one woman.

“In his care and keeping, in the house of Dresdain, in Vestala, I have left a boy. He is called Petram, the son of Yira, the drunkard. Black as a new widow’s grief is his hair, yea, and his eyes do near match it. Though he is nearly twelve, wanting little more than a year until manhood, he is scarcely larger than the Rising Prince Yiduar, who lately has six years.”

That Petram’s eyes were dark Etrea told them, knowing that none could do the lad any hurt, as he was under Ymanu’s protection. They could protest, however, and several did, quite strenuously. These proved the exception rather than the rule. Most of the crowd roared their approval. They scented the blood of one all those who loved Ymanu hated with equal fervor, and they reveled in the very idea of her downfall, though Etrea had not yet mentioned Marnal. Ymanu was Emerald-Eyed. He could incur no fault in anything that he did. If it pleased him to give protection and esteem to the Dark-Eyed youngest son of one habitually in his cups, well…there it was, then. Besides, they also loved their prince for himself, for his firm fairness and steady, quiet way.

Although Marnal was treated as a Green Eyed, according to the color of the eye on the side of her dominant hand, she, like anyone whose eyes did not share one color, was an object of distrust to her fellow Etherians. “Change-Eyed,” was the designation for such as her. It was widely believed that members of her race were devious and fickle. In any case, Marnal’s coldness and quickness to anger had earned her the unmitigated hatred of people all over the country. Etrea despised this practice of emphasizing the importance of race before that of character, but at least Marnal’s and Ymanu’s respective character traits were acknowledged, albeit secondarily. Heartened by the general reception of her speech, Etrea decided to play along with accustomed thought, and she now described to them Petram’s nature.

“A gentle child is Petram, and passing sweet, but years of injury and torture of various kinds have left him timid,” she proclaimed, suddenly warming to the matter of her discourse as she praised the child, and wanting to go on.

“For shame!” cried voices belonging to members of both sexes.

“Does his tormentor not know that the kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as him?” demanded a young mother who stood nearby, as she cuddled her infant in her arms.

“I doubt not, my worthy dame, that the former Duchess of Saviatha knows full well those words of Our Lord Christ—“ began the queen. She had known that to reveal the identity of Petram’s abuser would stir this crowd, and she paused, allowing them to give full vent to their outrage.

“Saviatha!”

“How could she, green eye aside?”

“Harpy!”

“Jezebel!”

“Shrew!”

“Virago!”

“She-devil!”

“Oh, I’ve always said those mismatched in the eyes were born to spread mischief! Many have agreed with me, and now the Dar Ievna herself affirms it!”

These censorious words were among many heaped upon Marnal, but they were the remarks Etrea heard. She eventually raised a hand for silence, and when it was achieved, she spoke further.

“—but she cares nary a whit! Marnal no longer bears the title of Duchess. I have reclaimed it, for she has used it to ferment rebellion, of which I learned some time ago and also to wreak great evil against many folk, among them my lord brother Alidias and this young Petram, with whose attempted murder I go now to her prison cell, myself to charge her…”

She abruptly curtailed her explanation, when a stone struck her left shoulder. It wanted only a few who opposed her and supported Marnal to instigate a riot, but there were enough in this crowd to do that. Glancing to her left, she saw three lesser lords of the High Council, the lords Gidiyon, Andriu, and Helfradt, shaking their upraised fists at her as they came charging from sixty feet distant. She was certain Andriu had hurled the rock; he had a reputation as a champion javelin-thrower. Rocks and fists would do little damage compared to the swords she saw sheathed upon their hips. It was illegal for High Councilmen to carry swords. How had they acquired these? she wondered with calm irrelevance.

“For Marnal, rightful Governess of Saviatha!” exclaimed Gidiyon.

“Down with the spawn of Abria!” shouted Helfradt.

“Away with the seed of Silvim!” demanded Andriu.

Etrea wheeled Ransom to face her hecklers, hazarding a guess as to how they would proceed. The rock had struck her a warning blow, she supposed. It was intended to attract her attention to their shouts, waving fists, and forbidden swords, to their flouting of the law. When intimidation failed—which any reasonable Etherian knew it would, against the current queen—they would brandish their swords and become violent. That would begin a riot, in the midst of which unarmed private citizens would stand in mortal peril. She must not let their obduracy progress that far. She had a plan.

Etheria’s monarch was a deep thinker, not a quick one, but that profundity allowed her to plan thoroughly, and, usually, to perfect her plan. This particular plan could never be perfected, as she would only enact it in the heat of battle, and she could never predict the response of her opponent, or the actions of others in the fray. If she followed it now, a riot might ensue, but then again, she might dissuade the rebels and any who followed them.

Etrea had guards, of course, but traditionally, the rulers of Etheria defended themselves as much as possible, and guards, though they stood nearby, intervened only in extremity. Their duties ordinarily consisted of dragging away those the queen ordered imprisoned. Despite her condition, and her resultant inability to use most implements of war, the diminutive queen was not entirely helpless, and thus was no exception. At close range, she could bite, scratch, pinch, pull hair, slap a face with the back of her hand, and ram another’s head with her own as well as the next person.

And there was one weapon she could use, and that, it was widely said, better than anyone else in the nation. She felt its warmth and massive vitality beneath her at that very moment. But she bided her time, first offering to parley.

“What converse would you have with me, gentlemen?” she inquired, sweetly. “Let us reason together. My ear is yours.”

“It isn’t, if you must ask us to repeat ourselves, which we will not do. You heard us, although you did not heed us. You know what we seek,” replied Andriu.

“You wish me to free the traitor of Vestala…which I will not do,” Etrea countered. “If you are so keen on her release, effect it yourselves.” Her voice filled with mockery as she concluded.

All three men went red in the face. No true gentleman would enter the chamber of a pregnant woman who was not monarch in her own right. Etrea laughed overtly at their blushes, knowing that they would not attempt to spring Marnal from the mothering chamber, but her vigilance did not lessen.

“What manner of lewd gawkers do you think us?” snapped Andriu. “You are of her sex; you let her out!”

“I shall have no power to do that if I abdicate,” she answered.

They looked confused.

“’Down with the spawn of Abria! Away with the seed of Silvim!”’ Etrea mimicked, to remind them. Well, Marnal! You certainly haven’t Etheria’s best or brightest at your command, have you, she thought, if they have already forgotten their threats! Just how did they come to sit on the High Council? she wondered.

“No, no! Release her and then abdicate,” cried Helfradt.

“So, I am to remain queen only long enough to release Marnal, and then I must yield my throne to her? I see. I am only to exert the powers of a monarch insofar as those powers answer your needs. Neither of these things will occur, bear witness unto this, O Lord of Hosts, unless Thou wouldst recall unto Thyself this day the body and breath which Thou hast lent unto Thy handmaid!”

She raised her own small fist to the sky, and shouted this defiance down from her great warhorse at her wayward lords, and all of Ardoria heard her, and many were stirred in soul.

Unfortunately, those souls to whom her words were most directly addressed were not among the stirred.

Andriu suddenly ran past her. Ievna Gatrin rode just behind her sovereign, as she always did. Etrea heard her body servant scream, and turned in the saddle, in time to see Andriu seize her around the waist with both arms, and drag her from her mount. He forcibly conveyed Gatrin to Princely Ransom’s head, and set her down in the sight of the queen. Partly releasing her, he drew his sword, and pressed the blade to her throat.

“Give us our Governing Lady,” he rasped, “or this crone’s hoary head will roll!”

To the Dar Ievna, Gatrin was more than a servant. They had known each other since Etrea was born. Gatrin had nursed her in childhood sickness, dressed her for her coronation, arrayed her again for her wedding, seen her glow with impending motherhood and perspire in childbirth, and laid her babes in her arms. She had soothed her as best she could after her shock at bearing a daughter.

She was, in short, although neither woman would say as much, and no one else in the country dared to speak of it, Etrea’s dearest friend. Gatrin would not meet such a gory and ignominious end while she possessed life and motion! Injuries such as she could lay on at close range would avail her little just now.

“Shiyah!” Etrea screamed at the stallion, and forward he rushed. Gatrin trod hard upon Andriu’s foot, eliciting both a bellow of pain, and the release of her arms, which he had pinned behind her, and placed her bare hands against the cutting edge of the blade. With a strength and imperviousness to pain born of sheer panic, she shoved it away from her neck , which was no mean feat, because, although the sword itself was not heavy, Andriu’s sword arm was, and this man of half her age and nearly twice her size resisted vigorously her efforts at self-extrication, in a final attempt to keep his hostage.

Gatrin succeeded not a moment too soon, whirling out of the path of danger just before Princely Ransom knocked to the ground her captor, then Gidiyon, and then Helfradt. Etrea let him run a few steps more before she halted him, and turned to survey the fallen lords. With some degree of relief, she saw and heard all of them stirring and moaning. She had only intended that for a lesson. In the future, though, she would not hesitate to execute those who attempted murder, she promised herself, albeit after a more humane fashion than by trampling. She would put it to those of her High Councilors who had not defected, and force the matter if needs must. Now was not the time to speak of humanity, however, but only to promise punishment.

“Be warned, all ye who would endanger the life of any Etherian lady, such, and worse, shall be your fate,” she declared in the leaden silence that followed, a silence that surprised the Dar Ievna. She had expected, if not a full-scale riot, at least noisy confusion. This was a quiet of breathless horror, a hush that told her that the eye of every person in that charred market square was upon her. “Are you well enough, my lady Gatrin?”

“I am, my sovereign.”

“Your hands?”

Gatrin revealed twin lacerations on her palms, which trickled blood.

“Very well,” said the queen, “Mount up, and I shall have the good physician bandage them.”

She said no more, waited until Gatrin had regained her saddle, and urged Ransom to the canter. Only as she departed did onlookers seem to bestir themselves and to murmur. The murmur rose to a shout. Etrea was too distracted to judge the tenor of that shout, but it came home to Gatrin and the young lady Vranzess at the same time that the shout was a cheer, a cheer with discernible words.

“Ma Ievna Etrea! A moment! The people! Listen to the people!” Vranzess entreated.

Etrea stopped and turned the stallion. Row upon row of her soldiers stood in marching formation.

“The army is come at last,” she breathed, “Why this delay?’

“They have come, my lady, but that is not what I meant. They are not hailing the army with such joy.”

Then, on the crest of that exuberant din, Etrea understood her own name.

“Ievna Etrea, huzzah! Ievna Etrea, huzzah!”

And she knew that Marnal might recruit to her forces any Saviathan lawbreaker or discontented lord that she chose, but her relentless driving of sullen mercenaries would never shake the loyalty of more than ten thousand native-born Ardorians.

25

By mid-December, Etrea was certain of her pregnancy.

On the Day of Christ’s Tide, nausea nearly prostrated her, but she staggered to the mothering chamber to pay her morning visit to Marnal.

The disentitled noblewoman was four-months-and-a-half gone, due in late May. Pregnancy seemed only to increase her sullen beauty, Etrea thought enviously, comparing the other woman’s maternal curves, glowing complexion, and thick, shimmering hair against her own flat, childish figure, ashen face, and heavy, limp locks.

“You’re pregnant,” Marnal greeted her. These were the first words that she had addressed to the queen since she had received her charge of attempted murder seven weeks ago.

“Well, and blest Christ’s Tide unto you, also, Ledta Marnal, I’m sure,” she snapped. “And no, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Why do you say that? Because I am pale? I have always been fair in the skin, as you are, yourself.”

“Pale?” Marnal hooted with laughter. “Oh, you’re pale, well enough. Pale green!”

“I am not green!”

“I thought my High Lady fancied the color green.”

“Oh, do be quiet!” Suddenly the scents of Marnal’s partly eaten breakfast overwhelmed her, and the Dar Ievna turned greener still, and dashed into the privy closet. Marnal calmly continued to eat. Morning sickness had plagued six of her nine pregnancies, including, for the first three months, this one.

Behind the closed door, Etrea’s sickness finally ended. “Blest Christ’s Tide and Gladsome Yule, little one. Madrinissa knows you’re there,” she whispered, smiling. “You’re making me feel a bit indisposed, just now, but that’s well enough. It shall pass. I hope it means that you are a boy-child. If you are, I shall call you Rojhre. I pray I may teach you to love your God, your subjects, your country, and your horses, in that order.”

Etrea stood for a few moments, resting. Then she returned to the living quarters proper of the mothering chamber, and rinsed her mouth.

“Late July,” she said curtly.

“I supposed as much,” gloated Marnal.

Etrea sat down, and spread Gavral’s cloak, which she had brought with her, on her lap. She carefully examined her pattern for mistakes.

“Childbirth will kill you,” Marnal told her suddenly.

Etrea glanced at her, but said nothing.

“Yes,” continued the other, “You’re such a fragile, thin little thing. Ymanu shows you scant kindness, making you carry his fourth child.”

“The consideration Dresdain extends to you is just as paltry,” answered Etrea. “Putting you in that way for the ninth time—at your age, and thrice a grandmother. Tsk, tsk.”

“I hope ’tis a girl!” Marnal cried. “I grow weary of the endless travail and confinement, always, only, to bear an ugly babe! I hope my womb shall forever sleep after this child is born. I wish I were like you, and liable to die in childbed. You’ll die, no doubt, but you’ll do it yielding your lord husband a comely child, as you always do. How is it that I, in my beauty, mother such homely children, and you, plain you, are blessed with such ravishing offspring? Oh, that is unjust!” She inhaled tremulously, and as a tear beaded from the lashes of her blue right eye, to shimmer on her cheek, Etrea had to stifle a gasp of her own.

Before her now sat, not Marnal, the murderous and vindictive rebel leader, but Marnal, the woman, ubiquitously despised, and with her beauty fading. That beauty, and a fierceness that Etrea now understood that Dresdain had only enhanced, not instilled, were all that she had at her command, and as age stole her pleasing looks, it added to her fierceness an edge of tearing cruelty that often ran to madness. Then and there, Etrea also knew that official business on behalf of his province did not alone account for Dresdain’s prolonged absences from home. The ducal pair loathed one another. Few enough in Etheria marry for love, thought the queen, but I doubt many of those in our arranged marriages hate each other outright as these two do. For she abhors him; I can see that plainly. Each time he fathers a child of hers, that hatred waxes, until she now wishes herself barren and dead.

Etrea could not bring herself to pity the former Duchess. She laughed mirthlessly in her enemy’s face.

“You disgust me,” she cried. “You deserve to be miserable! Here you sit, wondrous fair in person, and exceeding fruitful in your womb, and you pity yourself. Many are the women who yearn after comeliness such as yours. Many are the women who envy us both, for the Lord God has never quickened them with child. Tell me, Marnal, is it your unhappiness, in spite of these blessings, that impels you to cruelty against the likes of Petram? Concerning Petram, in fact, why did you bring him with you to the tower?”

“Why did you take my servant from me? Why did you free the idiot? Why did you reduce my rank? Surely you knew that to lose them all, and my freedom besides, would delight me beyond all reason. I have nothing left; you’ve seen to that! Why should I be otherwise than wretched? Why should my life continue?”

“Are you suing for peace, and will you now tell me why you began this war? You alone started this conflict. I learned that much in Saviatha.”

“I meant my little dungeon mite for a lesson to you, Etrea. I meant to make an example of him, of what happens to those who allow others to free my captives.”

“They die. If you don’t beat them to death, you poison them with Tyche’s Whim, and if the poison itself doesn’t carry them off, the heart trouble it leaves behind eventually will. I’ve committed that lesson to memory.”

“Who would have thought that a little Scum-in-the-Eyes son of a drunkard would reawaken your maternal instincts, when your own Emerald-Eyed daughter could not stir them?”

“Who would have thought that a poor mute with the mind of a child could drive you to such barbarity that, for months on end, you chained him by the neck like a dog?” countered Etrea. “Why did you not simply poison him? What did my brother do to incur your wrath?”

“Your brother,” scoffed Marnal. “That is why I live on—to have the ridiculous amusement of hearing you designate that ugly, foreign halfwit as your kin!” She gave way to maniacal laughter.

“Why, Ma Ledta? Why did you confine Alidias?” repeated the queen.

Marnal stopped laughing. Rage snapped in her eyes, as she said tightly, “Ask Iordain.”

Etrea despaired. She did not dare approach the old knight. Yesterday afternoon, while attending her at court, he had appeared most unwell, and as she watched in horror, he had begun to exhibit a symptom that she had never seen firsthand, but about which Ievna Gatrin, her husband, and court gossip told her much, a sluggish but unrelenting nosebleed.

26

The dream came to him again.

Again, he watched as the hapless young woman thrashed in the agony of labor. Again, he saw her exertions kill her. Again, as she breathed her last, he felt her clasp his hand in a desperate grip, heard her whisper a masculine name, and saw himself nod in agreement. As before, her breathing ceased, even as the silent infant boy’s began.

Then, his dream changed, and he saw himself readying the dead woman for interment in her family tomb. He wept as he closed her dark brown eyes, washed and dressed her, and then carried her to the tomb, himself, and laid her in it. He hardly dared to do this, for all others in her family were Light-Eyed, whether Grey-, Celestial-, or Emerald-Eyed, and for a zirakhinu to enter the place of their last sleep was desecration. He could not legally bury her here, for she was of a race inferior to those of her kin. But he would not bury her in a foreigner’s soil grave, for she was a lady born, dark eyes aside, and shunned though she had been, even by her parents, and he meant to accord her, in death, the due esteem she had never received in life. In any case, the eyes of all who occupied the tomb were closed; they would not judge her at sight.

Though he was her husband, he could not be buried beside her. No one must ever know that she lay here. He wished, for a brief, self-serving moment, that he could dig her a grave, one in which he might rest beside her at the end of his days. The frozen ground of early January would not permit this, and he knew that a man who truly loved his wife would treat her mortal remains as those of the lady she was. He knew also that he had no right to share her grave. After what he had done to their poor baby…

Once more, the vision before him altered. He seemed to have left the tomb, and was walking directly into a snowstorm. The face of his newborn son appeared to dance before him amid the flakes, and on the wind came his cry, a cry his father had first heard a few hours after his birth, when he wailed for his first feeding. That cry had startled the dreaming man initially. He had not supposed the child could produce sound. Now it raised to the attention of the listening world proof of his misdeed against the bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. As he continued to listen, the cry began to seem to carry a single word.

“Daya! Daya! Daya!”

He screamed, himself, to mask the noise, but he could not overwhelm it. He stopped his ears with his hands, but heard it as plainly as before.

Iordain woke with a gasp and a moan.

For three days, Etrea had come to see him, having decided that the need to learn the reason for Alidias’ capture made the risk of infection to herself worthwhile. If the disease claimed the old knight, she did not want him to die without revealing the secret he apparently shared with Marnal. On the third day, during her visit, his fever broke, and he roused from his dream.

“Hello, Iordain,” she greeted him speaking almost under her breath. He would be weak. She knew that if he were strong enough to talk, it would be a miracle, and so she did not force him to waste his breath on trivialities. She put the question to him at once.

“I asked Marnal why she took Alidias hostage in the spring,” she explained. “She said that I should ask you. I would not ordinarily trouble you in your time of sickness, but Marnal has been most unforthcoming when I’ve asked her anything, and you’ve always been the opposite. I—I must know. Iordain? Ledt Iordain, what troubles you? Good Heavens, don’t look at me like that!”

Over Iordain’s ordinarily inscrutable countenance had swept an expression of unalloyed anguish. He shook his head.

“No, Ma Ievna,” he beseeched her, also in a whisper. “Not that. Not that—“ He began a wrenching cough. When it passed, he hid his face in his hands, and the queen watched his entire gaunt frame shake, and came to understand, with astonishment, that he wept.

“Very well, Iordain,” she consented. “Eventually, I must know, and you will have to tell me, for Marnal simply won’t, but I will wait until you are stronger, well enough?”

He only moaned in answer, and Etrea felt herself an utter barbarian for prolonging his sadness.

“Swift recovery, dear old friend,” she said gently, and left his cottage.

He did not hear her leave. The cries from his dream suddenly suffused his memory, to the exclusion of all other sounds, real or fancied.

“Daya! Daya! Daya!”

27

Gavral’s fourth birthday came and went in the middle of January. There could be no acknowledgement of the occasion, for Ardoria was under quarantine, as, after two months, the Red Scourge still had not departed from the city. No one dared leave to convey birthday gifts or greetings to Ziannera’s Rising Duke. Etrea hoped he did not feel the lack of observance too keenly. Four years was old enough to know the significance of the date. She would set that circumstance to rights when the danger was past. For now, she prayed for the welfare of her children, even that of Iulina, to whose presence in the world she had somewhat resigned herself in the months since she had again fallen with child.

By mid-February, the plague still held sway over Ardoria, and that fourth child was astir in, and swelling, the Etherian Womb, and the queen had begun to tend daily the more heavily pregnant Marnal. This diverted her from her sorrow that Ymanu did not yet know that their little one was coming, also because of the quarantine. It distanced from her mind Alidias’ slowness to recover from the Red Scourge.

Alidias had little more than twenty years and one. He was large and strong in his person, but the pestilence had exacted a heavy toll on him. After she had exposed herself to Iordain’s illness, Etrea did not hesitate to look in upon her ward. When the fever fled at last, it left Alidias feeble as a child, and it seemed, most harshly of all against this artist of consummate ability, to have wrought havoc upon his eyesight.

Etrea first became aware of the extent of the fever’s mischief when young Olifyan, her foster son, brought to her Alidias’ sketchbook, of which she had made a gift to him after he had drawn his first picture, the likeness of Marnal. She cringed, to think of the flippant tone in which she had requested, “See to it you don’t go stealing any more undergarments for your artistic efforts, hey, Lidi?”

How little time had passed between her presentation of the sketchbook and the onset of his illness! But in that time, he had managed to create portraits of each member of the royal family, both of Etrea’s horses, Petram, himself, and Iordain, in that order, portraits so accurate and lifelike that they half-frightened his sister. How could anyone draw at once so fast, and with such attention to detail? Etrea put it down to a species of genius.

In particular, the last three portraits caught and held her attention.

Alidias had drawn Petram kneeling. On his right shoulder rested the flat of a sword blade, held there by an obviously female hand that surely represented Etrea’s own. So Alidias remembered Petram’s kindnesses to him during his captivity in the tower! Etrea had never told anyone of her intention to confer knighthood upon the young Dark-Eyed in recognition of his selfless bravery. Alidias had had the same idea; he must have had!

“Yes, Lidi, I’ll knight him,” Etrea promised in her empty sleeping-chamber. “Of course I shall.”

She turned the page, and gasped. Here, Alidias had put a self-portrait, not a self-portrait representing his appearance before the plague struck him, but one depicting him as he looked now, gaunt and wan, and twice his age. She gave a short scream, as it occurred to her that he must have seen himself in a mirror, at least once, recently, to draw this. So, even in illness he had drawn, when his senses were with him! Hard on the heels of that realization came two more, almost simultaneously.

Alidias was intelligently aware of the changes the sickness had brought about in him. He knew them. He grasped them, just as Etrea herself would understand a new idea. He had understood fully all that Marnal had done to him, even while Etrea had denied such a possibility in her own mind. He understood and appreciated the sacrifices dear little Petram had made on his behalf, and accordingly recommended him for knighthood. Petram would be the second Dark-Eyed knighted after—after—

“Alidias’ father,” murmured the queen, as the face of old Iordain presented itself to her consciousness, and the third and final shock set in. “No issue of Zimethyr is he!”

She turned the page slowly as she considered this, and the face that was in her thoughts lay before her in the sketchbook.

“I’m a shy man, Ma Ievna, shy as young Alidias.”

Iordain’s words from that long-ago state dinner came back to her, and in particular, she could not silence the last four, which rang repeatedly in her ears.

Shy as young Alidias.

Shy as young Alidias.

Yes, you’re shy as Alidias, agreed Etrea silently. And you’re behind those dark eyes, and that tall, sturdy build, that prominent brow and chin, aren’t you, Mon Ledt? That evening was as near as you ever came to telling anyone that he’s your son. The rest of the country is not as weak in the sight as I. It is so apparent that anyone who is not I can immediately discern the resemblance. I am sure everyone else knows, though they be silent about the matter. Blast my worthless eyes well clear of the country!

Etrea gazed long at the portrait of Iordain, marveling both at its minute detail, and at the knowledge she had gained from it. It accounted for the rapport between Alidias and Iordain, for the man’s unusual tenderness toward the boy after he drew that first communicative picture, and for Iordain’s hesitancy to reveal why Marnal had imprisoned Alidias.

“Sovereign Christ, forgive me for doubting the full presence of my precious ward and brother’s faculties. Thanks do I give for young Olifyan, who brought these sketches unto me,” she prayed aloud.

Etrea wept with so little restraint that she drove herself to nausea, and vomited until her unborn writhed in protest. Oh, the parental agony Iordain must have endured during those two months Alidias had been held! But why did gruff, impatient Zimethyr claim paternity of one whom he hated so? wondered theDar Ievna after she rinsed her mouth. She was not about to approach the Master of Horse with this question; there was no trust between them. She would wait until Iordain was well, tell him that she had discovered Alidias’ true paternity, and ask the reason behind Zimethyr’s assertion.

“Ma Ievna!” From beyond the closed door of her bedchamber, Etrea heard the hurrying footsteps and urgent call of the lady Gatrin. Etrea let her in. Her waiting-woman was doe-eyed, white in the face, breathless—and bleeding at the nose.

28

Ievna Gatrin’s passing was swift, frighteningly so, to Etrea, although she had likely spent several days ailing, without complaint. The reason behind the haste of her entry into the monarch’s room was immediately evident. When Etrea opened the door, the older woman fell inward. Knowing that her collapse, and possibly also her death, were imminent, Gatrin had exerted the last of her strength to reach a place where she might suffer without embarrassing herself, and, if it came to that, die with a little dignity.

She burnt with fever, and as time passed, she began to rave in delirium. At first, though, she was lucid, and when the Dar Ievna began to fret over her, she raised a hand and shook her head pleadingly. Her teeth chattered until she could scarce speak, but she meant to have her say before her wits deserted her.

“Ma Ievna,” she gasped. “The lord Alidias—he—he fares not well. He is ta—taken with fits.”

“God’s mercy be with him,” devoutly whispered Etrea.

“Nearly—blind.”

“Of his failing vision I knew. Alijhroc told me.”

“This illness—not—kind to him. Poor—young man.”

An actual, bodily pain gripped Etrea’s chest. In her own wretched state, Gatrin continued to turn her thoughts first toward others.

“Nor has it shown particular gentleness to you,” Etrea answered, her voice breaking

“But—I’m old. Lived—lived my life.” Something caught in Gatrin’s throat, apparently choking her. Etrea surrendered her own handkerchief, into which the genteel aristocrat coughed a large quantity of blood, an extrusion that embarrassed her deeply, sick though she was. The paroxysm tired her, and after it passed, she lay, regaining what breath she could. She laid against Etrea’s abdomen a hand grown suddenly frail, and both women felt the unborn turn, as if in answer.

“Grow on—little one,” panted Gatrin. “Strong—deter—mined—like your Mamya. A true—born —lady. Bring—honor—to her—old age. ’Trea!”

In the twenty years and six that she had served her, Gatrin had only called the Etherian Lady by a pet name in moments of deep earnestness. Her plea was in her eyes, now, and she gripped the Etherian Hand until her knuckles turned white and Etrea’s veins in the back of that hand came into plain view. “Florna! Look after—my poor niece. You are—all she—has left. Alone in—world.”

“I know, my lady. I promised to oversee her when I took her into service, and that promise stands yet. I won’t turn her out to make her own way.” Etrea cried freely, now. She did not discourage Gatrin from speaking of dying. If the woman were about to expire, she—Etrea—had no dominion over the heavenly realm, and could not deny her entrance therein. Besides, Gatrin had existed in her body nearly forty years and six. She knew the limit of her endurance.

“Three waifs—in Saviatha. Look—also to them. Work that—brat-boy—until— he falls into—bed each night. He—must—learn respect.” Even now, she laughed breathily at her own little joke. Etrea knew that she spoke of correcting the insubordination of Miagyil of Vestala. Of Petram’s conduct she had never heard anyone complain.

“Petram. Teach Petram—to read. He—so wants—to learn.”

“I shall, Ma Ievna. I shall.”

“Poor little—Petram. So unloved—for so long. So fragile—and so sweet. Like—his queen.” Her eyes glittered with fever, and sweat soaked her, as she strove, for the last time, to remain in her senses long enough to make one entreaty more. “Gatrin. Young Gatrin—of Ves—tala. Take her—in service— re—place me. Like—ly girl. Loves you. For all—Dark-Eyeds.”

For all Dark-Eyeds. The last four coherent words her dear friend and servant ever spoke. Etrea knew to what they referred. No one brown, black, or hazel in the eyes had ever swelled the ranks of Etheria’s royal body servants. Such people were not thought fit for, or worthy of, duties of that sort. A Dark-Eyed woman like young Gatrin would, it was widely thought, sully even Etrea’s undergarments if she so much as breathed near them. Touching them, then, or, indeed, touching anything that might touch any part of the Etherian Body, was simply not something her kind dared to do. Etrea intended to change that, someday, and now she knew that her dying lady-in-waiting shared her sense of the ridiculousness of these prohibitions on the grounds of eye color. “Oh, dear precious Gatrin, I will!” she sobbed.

Her handmaid nodded, satisfied, and emitted a ragged sigh. For the next five hours, she lay on the floor, tossing her head on the pillow Etrea had placed beneath it, and with a heavy quilt from the queen’s own bed tucked about her for warmth. She coughed often and bloodily, and blood continued also to seep from her nose whenever she sneezed. Sometimes, apart from her harsh breathing, she was silent. At other junctures, she spoke to persons not present. Many of these phantom dialogues seemed to pass between her and Etrea, whom she believed to be preparing for some important event. The nature of this event changed. One minute, she thought that Etrea was soon to marry Ymanu. “Push, Ma Ievna!” she cried the next. “A fine boy… just like his father…Wear the green gown for your coronation…A rose…a single, long-stem…to carry…yes, he’s a gentleman, fit to carry Ma Ievna…a true man, fit for knighthood…dark in the eyes, but worse…there is worse…I’ve seen worse…fit for knighthood…No! Not fit to wed my lady! Zirakhinu! Foreign scum zirakhinu…Don’t cry, Ma Ievna. He won’t give you a baby? Well, I’ll find one for you that will…will…will…”

Glassy-eyed, Gatrin reached up to wipe the Dar Ievna’s tears. But Etrea pulled back in horror. Gatrin might be her most intimately trusted servant, and she might be in her final illness, but how could she bring her back there, to him? The cruelty, though, of course, unintended, reduced the queen still further to tears. A vision of her own overwhelmed her…

Dark eyes. Big, beautiful dark eyes, that she loved, but that never looked on her with anything but scorn. Before he spoke to her, always, the twist of a sneer, to match her twisted body as he mocked it. A flat and loveless kiss between them at the wedding, just to satisfy the presiding priest, but then, of course, no children. He would have none of her. She repulsed him, being a cripple; he said that outright, and the wound had never left her, not in all these years, though she could usually banish it from her mind. Oh, why must anyone remind her of him just now…

Gradually, the vision faded, even as the daylight did likewise. Etrea lit no lamp. She sat in the dark, and listened to Gatrin’s final struggle, while still she clasped her hand. At last came Death’s Angel, and this time, it did not please God to thwart him. Still, when he bent near enough to earth to take her soul to himself, and bear it away to God, he must have been gentle in the taking, for after it was over, and Etrea did light a lamp, she saw on the beloved face the age-old expression of peace, complete and eternal.

29

A pair of light eyes must always be watching.

No one ever said that; it was understood by a child. Even the High Prince of Etheria must turn his back on occasion, and then the family of three Dark-Eyed servants would be vulnerable to mistreatment. The Dar Ievn would not see them abused, and, usually, when he had to absent himself from them, one of his attendants watched over them in his stead. At night, a man, sometimes even Ymanu himself, lay on guard before the door of the sewing room where Yira’s sons had taken to sleeping, since he deemed it otherwise than safe for them to return to the servant’s quarters. It would not have been seemly to have a man keep watch by a virgin’s door, and there was no Light-Eyed woman about whom the Dar Ievn trusted with this task, so he assigned his own two large and aggressive male Alsatian Herders to Ledta Gatrin’s nocturnal protection.

By day, though, the light eyes of the Dar Ievn or his men observed everything concerning all three of the drunkard’s offspring. Their hands eagerly grasped weapons to defend, their feet were swift to approach an imminent threat, their accents were stern, and their words severe, to castigate any who would trouble Gatrin or her brothers. Never did anyone in the ducal residence tell anyone else that such measures were needful. They were simply taken, as matters of common sense.

And the eyes of the child watched, also.

In particular they followed the movements of little Petram. They were grey, and the boy from out of whose face they looked observed that Petram’s face often had to it a similar hue. They perceived the slowness of his movements, and the ease with which fatigue overcame him. Petram’s smallness was no new sight to them, but, taken together with his slowness and weariness, that smallness presented itself beyond the other boy’s sight, to his mind, as a possible symptom of disease. It gave him pause, to think that it might be so. Goodness knew he had heaped his share of abuse upon Petram heretofore, but knowing how ill the little servant truly was quelled his urge to torment, and awakened one to protect, instead.

He had a lively interest in the workings of human anatomy, and he knew, from the books he read, that overwork and malnutrition, between them, could kill one who was light in the eyes. It certainly seemed, from the look of Petram, that the same might be true for his kind. That would contradict everything that the Duchess had told him about Dark-Eyed Ones. She said that those of the various Dark-Eyed races were hardier, and less refined in their persons, than their Light-Eyed counterparts. They required less food and less sleep to keep them fit for work. Frugal provisions were all that was necessary to maintain their generally inferior intellects; they were hardly capable of thoughts of genius. “Only patrician minds need patrician sustenance at patrician costs,” she always said. He knew that the brain of a Light-Eyed could undergo grievous damage if proper nourishment were denied indefinitely. Was it the same for those like Petram? Might that be why Petram often displayed such unreasoning fearfulness of strangers and new circumstances? Might that be why he cried so easily? Could she be…wrong?

The grey eyes carried on watching. Guarding. Deterring possible assailants, as a mere glance could, from even a child of that race.

And behind them, with each passing day, repugnance for what he now perceived to be his mother’s wholly unscientific and egregious cruelty to Dark-Eyed Ones generally, and Petram especially, took firm root, and sprang up strong in the mind and heart of Mirandan, young lord of Saviatha.

30

Old Yira of Vestala died of the Red Scourge in late February. Gatrin’s slumbers were as dreamless and restful as they had never been during his lifetime. Petram could not sleep, but neither, he found, could he sorrow greatly. It was Miagyil who suffered most, much to the surprise of the entire ducal household. The night Yira died, Petram lay on one settee in the sewing room, listening to his brother stifle sobs in a pillow on the other. At last, he rose. “Miai? he whispered.

“Go back to bed,” croaked Miagyil.

“Is it about Daya?”

“Go back to bed, before I wring your neck, and the cook thinks you a plucked chicken and prepares you for tomorrow’s dinner by mistake! How will your precious Dar Ievna like me then, hey?”

“You’re turning as mean as Daya!”

“Shut up!”

“I won’t! You’ve even taken to drinking.”

“I haven’t.”

“I have a nose. I have eyes. I know the look and stench of a drunken man if anybody does. Ever since Ma Ievna freed you you’ve been half-stupid with whiskey. You’re drunk, now! Else why are you crying like a girl?”

“You’re one to talk! You, who did nothing but blubber when a nine-year-old punched you in the nose, and have to be rescued by Dresdain!”

“Mirandan is bigger than I am! Besides. I know not how to fight. Even if I could, with my heart condition…” Per Etrea’s request, Ymanu had relayed to Petram the message in the doctor’s letter.

“Then…learn.” Miagyil suddenly sat upright and hit Petram so hard in the face that the younger boy crashed to the floor with a scream, as the face of Marnal rose in his memory.

And though his brother spoke the familiar words, it seemed to Petram that his father’s thin, grating voice said, “You’re useless.”

Ymanu’s valet, who had taken guard duty, heard the uproar, and rushed in, to find Petram huddled on the floor, shielding his head from further anticipated blows. Dresdain charged in behind him, and snatched up the little lad. Over Petram’s head, they stared in horror at the perspiring face and bleeding nose of his brother. Dresdain wrapped a cloak around Petram, and carried him outdoors.

“Where are we going?” Petram asked. His dryness of eye pleased his master. Only a few months before, an attack such as Miagyil’s would have reduced him to tears.

“Where do you think?” replied Dresdain.

“To the barn?”

“But of course.” Petram cuddled nearer, and rested his head on the big aristocrat’s shoulder.

In the barn, Petram wrapped his arms about Kestana’s neck. “Kestana never tells me I’m useless,” he murmured into her mane. The big animal let him luxuriate in her warmth when Dresdain placed him astride.

“What happened betwixt you in there?” Dresdain inquired presently.

Petram told him.

“Oh, my,” the disentitled nobleman said softly.

“Sir?”

“Do you know anything, my boy, about the disease that took your father?”

“It’s called the Red Plague, for the bloody nose it gives. Daya’s nose bled when he had it.”

Dresdain nodded. “Doubtless.” He paused, deciding how best to deliver the harrowing tidings. No matter how gently he did, he concluded, they would shock Petram, and the shock might fatally overtax his fragile heart. The boy needed to know. Dresdain resolved to take full responsibility for whatever happened next. “So, now, does Miagyil’s,” he told him simply. He allowed him a moment fully to grasp the circumstance. Then he added, “That is why I have brought you out here. The house is full of contagion. The sweet air outdoors might keep you well. ’Tis worth the effort. I know not what to do else.”

“Miagyil is afraid,” said Petram. “Isn’t he? He’s afraid he shall die, and leave Gati and me all alone. That’s why he cried, and maybe even why he knocked me down.”

“That hardly excuses his conduct.”

“With all respect, I never suggested it did, Mon Ledt.” The quiet resolve with which he disagreed this first time won Dresdain’s admiration. “Don’t mistake me,” continued Petram calmly, speaking almost as one man to another. “I mislike to be battered, like an unwelcome spider thumped beneath a shoe! It’s only that knowing that my brother is afraid explains some of what he’s done.”

“You’re a better man than I, Petram, son of Yira, Vestala. I don’t know that I would forgive so readily one who humiliated me, blood kin or not.”

“Perhaps, if I could assure him that our sister and I would be provided for, he might die with an easy mind on that account…if die he does. My poor brother. His life has been a hardship. If he dies, ‘twill be God’s kindness to him, I think. If he lives…oh, Ledt Dresdain, I heard from the doctor of Ievn Alidias’ illness, before we left Ardoria. I know something of what it did to him in its course, and I can’t imagine it was good to him afterward.”

“I know that your mother also died,” said Dresdain, suddenly. “But I don’t know how or why. Tell me, please.”

And then, from each eye a tear did well, and Petram’s lip quivered. “That was my fault, sir. She never should have carried me. She was too—after Gati—“

“What happened after Gatrin was born? Hm? Tell me, little one.”

“Before Gati was born, Madrinissa took fever. She took the Red Scourge itself, in fact. Gati came early, and most people, including the doctor, couldn’t believe that they both survived. The doctor said she should have no more children. And then I came. I killed her.” Petram leant and buried his face in Kestana’s neck again, but he did not cry any more. After a moment, he looked up. “I’m not big and strong, like Miagyil, and I’m too shy to be charming, like Gatrin, and they’re both so much cleverer than I.”

As graciously as Ymanu would, he concealed a yawn against the back of his hand. “And I’m always so sleepy! Excuse me, Mon Ledt. When I’m like this, I feel useless.”

“No, Petram, you’re not useless, but you would become so without sleep. And let me hear no more that your brother and sister surpass you in intelligence. Who taught you to cover your mouth when you yawn? Who taught you how to arrange your hair? Who taught you to cover your plate with your napkin when you do not wish to have any more food at a meal, as I saw you do yesterday?”

“The Dar Ievn. Well, he didn’t exactly teach me; he never said anything. I watched what he did, and did likewise. But that was just imitation. That hardly means I’m clever.”

“Why do you do these things, Petram?”

“’Tis proper that I should, aye?”

“How do you know that? If our good prince did not say so…Did anyone else?”

“No, Mon Ledt. It…it seems that if the Emerald-Eyed prince does this or that, so should all in his company. All others who are with us always do. Oh…but they are Light- Eyed. Perhaps I’m getting above my station, to act in these ways. I’ll stop, if I give offense by it, truly I will. Acting like a Light-Eyed might coarsen refined behavior…”

“What on the good green earth? No, lad, you stand wholly in the right. Your etiquette in these matters I have mentioned is flawless. Do not stop. I command you to continue, in fact. Your answers to my questions suggest keen intelligence.”

“Sir?”

“Petram, no one told you how to behave in those instances. The conduct of others guided you. This tells me that you are acutely observant. Now, tell me, also, did, or does, the Dar Ievn threaten any of you with punishment if you do not follow his example?”

“No, sir.”

“So you don’t obey him out of fear, as a dumb beast would?”

“No.”

“Does he promise rewards in exchange for your emulation?”

“No. We do as he does both to please him and because it is…the way to avoid giving offense to anyone.”

“That is to say, you conduct yourselves thus both because you wish to, and because it is right?”

“Yes.”

“All without Ievn Ymanu saying a word?”

“Aye.”

“Well! You’re an intuitive fellow among intuitive fellows, Petram, if you can sense what the Dar Ievn wants. You have to have wits to do that. Do your brother and sister know these things?”

“No, sir. But that is only because the High Prince never taught them.”

“And he taught you. You are intelligent enough to learn, and remember, what he has, silently and in the course of a very short acquaintance, imparted to you. Now you must learn and accept another lesson, this one by direct telling instead of implication.”

The boy looked puzzled.

“Be patient with yourself. You shall feel better in time. You’re healing. Sleep is part of that.”

“It is?”

“Of course. Did no one ever tell you?”

Petram shook his head. “I only know that I sleep when I am sick, and I wake feeling guilty for sleeping when I should be working, because we Dark-Eyeds aren’t as fine-minded as you who are Light-Eyed, and I feel as if I am being greedy, taking more than my share of something you need more than I, because you must keep your brains keen, for thoughts of genius to come.”

“Ach! This conversation passes from the significantly bewildering to the consummately ridiculous! Who told you that?”

“Madrinissa,” said Mirandan, from the doorway, before Petram could reply. Petram gasped, and his already big eyes went wider still in his greyish face, as he threw himself flat atop Kestana, clinging to her. Dresdain plucked him from her back, and held him tightly in his arms.

“What do you want?” Petram wailed “I didn’t do anything wrong to you, and you came back, to pound on me ’gain!”

“I most certainly have not,” contradicted Mirandan. “I came to—“

“Yes, you did! Why won’t you leave me alone? Go away!”

“I won’t, until I deliver a message to my father. The High Prince sent me, because I told him I cannot sleep. I overheard the question he asked you, and I answered it, that’s all. Vadri , the Dar Ievn says—“

But he had to give up trying to speak at greater volume than Petram’s terrified howls, which were the loudest sounds either father or son had ever heard him produce, and which made Dresdain devoutly thankful for Kestana’s innate calm, for Petram’s cries might have frightened a more nervous horse. As it was, even the mare looked surprised. “Hush, laddie, there isn’t any cause to fear. My son only wants to talk to me,” soothed Dresdain. Petram paid him no heed.

Mirandan sighed. Apparently, it fell to him to reason with Petram before he would be able to deliver the High Prince’s urgent message. He could not be angry with the other boy; he had inspired his terror, after all. He indicated that Dresdain should crouch upon the floor, which he did.

“Petram!” he shouted over the din. “Be quiet. Listen to what I would say.”

Petram finally obeyed.

“That was wrong, what my brothers and I did to you,” continued Mirandan. “I can’t speak for the others, but I’ll take no further part in it, myself.”

Two pairs of shocked eyes were fixed on him. Dresdain had not expected this any more than Petram.

“They are wrong, those things my mother does and says to you. She’s wrong about Dark-Eyeds, and everything she’s taught my brothers and me about your kind is wrong, too. I’ve watched you since we were punished. You can think what you like of that, but I was not planning to ambush you. I was simply curious. Now I know. You bleed and bruise in the same colors as we do. You get sleepy and hungry, and when you aren’t given food or sleep, you suffer for the lack. I’ve read that in books about Light-Eyeds, and from what I’ve seen—because there’s naught written about Dark-Eyeds in the medical books—it’s true for your race, too. You’re tired, and grey about the face, as a Light-Eyed would be, who had a heart complaint. You needn’t ever speak to me again. Hate me, if that is what you want to do. I deserve it.”

Petram was staring at him in wonder, and so was Dresdain, who murmured, “He’s doing this without any prompting from me, Petram.”

Petram studied his sometime tormentor. “It’s not well enough,” he said slowly, “so I won’t say that it is. But I do accept what you say.”

“That’s a relief. Now, will you please be quiet? How a creature as small as you can make so much noise, I do not understand. I must speak with Vadri, by order of the Dar Ievn.”

“I will.”

“Vadri, the Dar Ievn sends two messages. He has received a letter from our Etherian Lady, in which she declares you free. She says that she believes what Miagyil told her about Madrinissa, and she’s reinstated your title, although not Madrinissa’s.”

“Interesting,” mused the Duke. “It’s very rare that a duke’s wife should not bear the title of Duchess, but there is a precedent, although I can’t recall the particulars. You said there were other tidings. “What are they?”

“My lady Etrea knows that the quarantine of Ardoria has not halted the spread of plague. Word has reached her that it has come here, and also to Ajhidera.”

“Where her children are!” Dresdain exclaimed.

Mirandan nodded. “She says it can do no harm, now, for her and her lord husband to meet there. They want only to be near their little ones. All three of them are hard sick. Mon Ievn leaves at daybreak.”

31

Yiduar never ceased to cry for her.

Always, Gavral’s little brow seemed to scorch her hand.

The child inside her danced an endless ballet, as she sat still between their beds, hour on hour, until she gasped in discomfort at the prodding of tiny knees and elbows.

In her arms, eight-month-old Iulina fretted and never stilled. Even when she appeared aware of her surroundings, her eyes held misery. Oh, those forest-green eyes, so like her father’s! Etrea had never before wanted to hold, or even, for very long, to look upon, her daughter. But as she had gazed down at her flushed face on the day of her arrival in Ajhidera the previous week, she experienced a sudden longing to do both of these things, and never release her or look away. Mustering all her strength, and with the greatest care, she had lifted the thirteen-pound infant, carried her into her brothers’ sickroom, sat down in the rocking chair between their beds, and, ever since, had scarcely had Iulina off her lap. At night, she occasionally dozed in the chair, Iulina and all. Only to

eat her meals would she relinquish her daughter, and then she took only enough food to sustain her unborn.

“Oh, little Petram,” she whispered in the dark, one long night. “My lord husband spoke truly. You have revived my maternal instinct, and now, just when it is rekindled, my children might be snatched away at any moment!”

Etrea was in Ajhidera alone for a fortnight before Ymanu arrived all the way from Saviatha, looking weary beyond telling, but also frantically worried. The nearly constant flow of blood from his children’s noses did nothing to dispel his fears. Both parents kept vigil in the nursery after he came.

It seemed that all Etrea’s prayers for her children’s recoveries were in vain. One of the peculiar cruelties of the disease was the slow, lingering nature of its destruction. Sometimes, the bloody ooze from a tiny nose would stop, or a fevered brow would cool, and the temporarily relieved child would rally a bit. But Doctor Alijhroc, who had accompanied the queen from Ardoria, held out little hope, especially after first Gavral, and then Iulina, began to choke upon blood.

For the sufferers, this was a veiled blessing, as it indicated that the end of their troubles was at hand. This their mother knew from watching Gatrin pass away. For Ymanu, on the contrary, the knowledge that one of the dying was his only daughter sent him into agonies of sorrow.

In the wee hours of the day after that honoring Saint Patrick, Iulina, whom Etrea had at last surrendered to her father, convulsed in his arms and died.

It was that swift and simple, merciful after her grueling time of sickness. Her parents saw the expression of utter calm that replaced her look of torment as soul and body were disjoined.

Three weeks, Etrea thought. For three weeks, her Daya’s little angel had fought for her life. Why, sovereign God, why? Why take from my good and gentle husband the child who was his comfort when I used him so ill?

For the remaining hours of darkness, they listened to Gavral’s death struggle, prevented from the numbness of grief by the necessary actions attendant upon providing what bodily comfort they could to the boy. Just at dawn, Gavral opened the blue eyes he had inherited from the queen, smiled up at her, sighed, and was reunited in eternity with his baby sister.

But even now, the Dar Ievna was not at liberty to grieve. Her consort rose, to draw the sheet over his son’s face, and, surely, to call the doctor—and collapsed in a faint upon the floor.

32

The High Prince was, after twenty years and four of life, slowly vanquishing an unholy dread of horses. With his wife once again pregnant, and thus darkly cautioned against riding, he believed he had no choice in the matter. Even if she had not been with child, Etrea would have ignored hapless Ivanian entirely. After the searing disappointment of Iulina’s birth, she had, in one of her rare comments to him, curtly ordered him to sell Ivanian because he would get more use from the money his sale would bring than she would from a horse she refused ever to ride again.

Apparently, even the monarch occasionally forgot the law regarding the ownership of gifts from a man to his wife. Queen in her own right Etrea might be, but in law, Ymanu owned the magnificent white wedding gift he had made to her seven years since, and with the stallion he was in his rights, first as a husband, and then as a Green-Eyed One, to do as he saw fit. In his loneliness, he began to perceive a sort of kinship between himself and the unwanted animal. He had, according to the doctor, suffered a second heart attack the day both little ones had died. Of course, the physician wanted him to rest and avoid exertion. Ymanu found it most restful to lean on the Ajhidera estate’s pasture fence, and watch the old stallion and his son in rough play with one another.

Neither horse entirely ignored the prince consort, but Ivanian was the one who accorded him the most attention. In the weeks immediately following his bereavement, Ymanu came to know the brush of an investigating nose over his hands and garments, the ruffle of warm breath through his hair, its sweet scent as it passed his cheek, and the soft nicker of pleasure his own daily arrival in the pasture elicited. His accident the previous spring had done nothing to decrease his fear of horses, although he knew that his first heart attack, and no loss of footing or misbehavior on the part of Ivanian, had caused his fall. He also knew that forcing himself regularly to confront his fear was the surest way to conquer it. And so, he allowed the great white warhorse to approach and touch him exactly as he pleased. As the High Council would not convene in wartime, Ymanu had perfect leisure to visit the pasture at all hours. The heartache was keenest at night.

He did not dare seek his wife for comfort, he believed; Etrea had sorrows of her own, sorrows that time seemed to deepen rather than to heal, for in early May, a little more than two months before her time, her birth pangs came to her, and she yielded a son. She named him Rojhre, but he never drew the breath of life. That which should have been his christening gown became his little shroud, and they laid him to sleep everlasting between his older brother and sister.

Ymanu was, at first, unable to cry about the deaths, but night after night, after Rojhre was at once given to, and taken from, them, he fled to the pasture. He could never go alone. Someone must always be nearby, should his heart trouble him again. His attendants could, and did, however, stand at a distance, to allow him to grieve in a bit of privacy.

Old Iordain numbered among those who had accompanied the queen to Ajhidera. Etrea had worried that to travel so soon after his dire illness would bring him harm, but for all his advanced years and greying hair, he remained a strong man. Even the journey itself did him good. He gloried to feel a horse beneath him once more, and became sharply hungry in the fresh air. The color returned to his face, and the flash to his eyes.

His recovery had also brought back to him his powers of observation. He noticed that even as he grew stronger and found himself in better spirits, Etheria’s High Prince weakened, and was clearly pining for his lost children. More than once, at night, he looked out from his quarters, which faced the pasture that held the two stallions, and saw the Dar Ievn gazing mournfully at Ivanian in particular. Then, one night, Iordain watched in horrified fascination as Ymanu stood upon the lowest rung of the pasture fence, laboriously heaved himself astride the horse’s bare back, and urged him onward. Those with him dared not question the doings of a Green-Eyed, but he saw them huddle, likely discussing what they should do. They need do nothing, Iordain decided, speedily donning breeches and jerkin. He would act.

Down four flights of stairs he ran, and let himself out a side door. In the pasture, the prince consort was riding, but at a sedate walk. He drooped forlornly, and Iordain saw him draw the back of his wrist across his eyes. He went closer to the fence than the royal attendants, and leaned upon it, simply observing.

The consort was riding blind, Iordain soon came to understand. He was crying so that his eyes were nearly shut. As Etrea had so many times, Iordain blessed Ivanian’s gentleness and surefootedness. The Dar Ievn let himself weep like a child, heartbroken wails and all. Eventually, he dismounted, and the Friesian nuzzled his wet face and disordered hair. At this point, Iordain scaled the fence and approached him. He made bold, for one dark in the eyes, to touch the prince’s shoulder. Ymanu turned, but did not shrug off the hand.

“No-no wonder she—she doesn’t—want me! I give—give her dead—babies, and weakly ch—children that sicken—and d—die. No wonder—she en—entertains no lo—love for me. Poor Etrea! I’m so sorry! Please tell her I’m sorry!” he cried.

Stunned at this outburst, Iordain spent several seconds collecting his thoughts. He had not expected compassion to be the first sentiment Ymanu expressed about his wife. Then, choosing his words carefully, he spoke.

“My good queen, your lordship, was not a young woman when you and she were wedded. She had every year of nineteen, as you know.”

The Dar Ievn nodded. Most Etherian women who were not wives and mothers by the age of eighteen years never married. One who was queen in her own right needed heirs. Marriage was not a matter of choice for a woman born to rule. Ymanu sensed a tale unfolding, and quieted to listen.

“You are her second husband,” continued the knight.

“Yes, I know,” said Ymanu. “She married for the first time when she had fifteen years. When I took her to wife, she was a recent widow.”

“So the official reports claimed. But the truth is far less flattering to the queen. You should be told, however. To know it might explain Ma Ievna’s conduct toward you. You see, my prince, no one knows what became of the lord Hanridt. He abandoned our High Lady.”

Ymanu gasped.

“And so I certainly hope that he is in his grave, for that is where he deserves to be after the way he humiliated Ma Ievna.”

“What happened?”

“In Christ’s year 1995, Dar Ievn Silvim and Etrea, together, sought to form an alliance betwixt Etheria and Gigue. In this way, they hoped to improve the social and political standings of Dark-Eyeds in Etheria.”

“That’s why she married me,” said Ymanu. “That much I knew. I had no idea, though, that it began so long past.”

“It did. The old king sent me, because I am of Gigui birth, together with a company of others, to set forth the marriage contract, and escort back Lord Hanridt. I shall never forget the disastrous day, two years later, when we presented him to his intended bride, and neither, I sadly fear, will she. Such an expression of contemptuous disgust as crossed his face when he looked on her at the first, I pray never to see again. Then, to her face, he laughed, and walked away.

“‘I’ll not have that for the mother of any children I beget, and thank you kindly! They would all come out crooked as moneylenders and blind as luck,’ he told me later, not knowing that she overheard. But I knew. One glimpse of her face, and I knew that she knew that he had proceeded to bewail her lack of a womanly figure and to mock her stooped posture. He broke her, will, heart, and spirit. But she had to marry him, poor thing, for the good of the nation. She was taken with him, in spite of everything, and if another man may be any judge of such matters, I daresay he was a handsome devil. I suppose she hoped that he would grow fond of her with time. There were, of course, no children.

“Life continued in this way for more than two years. He rarely came to court; he shrank even from being seen with her. In all those twenty months and seven, I never saw her smile. My lady, to whom mirth came readily as breath! Her eyes were often bloodshot of a morning, but Ievna Gatrin, who never spoke to lie, God grant her rest forever, told me it came from no intoxicating drink.”

“That’s to Etrea’s credit,” Ymanu said, “and it means that either she slept not a wink, or cried all night.”

“Both, I should say. One morning, her left eye was also bruised.”

“ Nay! He lifted unto her his hand!” Ymanu shook with fury.

“I’m afraid he did, and more than once, though she was able, usually, to conceal the marks beneath her clothing, and denied any pain. That last night, when he blackened her eye, he knew that he had exceeded forgivable bounds, for that injury she could not hide, and there would be an uproar, and so he fled none knows whither.”

“The craven! If I had s sword in my hand and him before me, I should cleave him asunder from his head to his heels, and skewer him upon a spit like the swine he is!”

“You would not have entertained that desire by yourself, my gracious liege. Many did, and still do.”

“Poor Etrea,” the Dar Ievn moaned again. “She heard him say outright that she was ugly, and she believed him, and continues to believe him.” He let himself cry a bit more. “And he hit her! No man should strike any woman, especially if that woman is Etrea! That isn’t at all fair! She’s—she’s little! Aye, little and frail, and—and pretty. I wed her partly in the interests of our two countries, of course, but I had reasons of my own, too, Iordain, reasons of the heart. Mayhap reasons of the heart haven’t any place in an arranged union such as ours, but I had mine. I married her partly because I’ve always thought her lovely. That anyone could convince her otherwise makes me sad enough to cry, I don’t mind admitting. Is she not a beauty?”

“She is a striking woman to behold, gracious prince, dark in the hair and light in the eyes and skin as she is. Shapely hands has she, also. Doubtless, you have heard visitors to court remark upon them.”

“Aye, and also upon how well she looks on horseback.”

“I think her smallness gives her so pleasing an appearance in the saddle,” smiled the knight. “I’ve known her from a baby, when I was younger than she is now. I found her comely then, and I still find her so.”

“But she dismisses these praises, and curses herself for an ugly old cripple. I tried to extol her appearance the night of the wedding, but she wouldn’t have it. ‘Don’t flatter an ugly old cripple, my lord. My looks are not relevant to my performance in a council chamber or a birthing suite. When I succeed in lowering taxes for the poor, or am brought to bed of a hardy son, then can you compliment me with good reason.’ That took me aback, but now I understand why she said it.”

“Yes,” replied Iordain, with his characteristic brevity, and Ymanu realized that he had never heard so many words fall from the other’s tongue as he had in the telling of this story. “My poor, lovely lady.”

“On one point, you’re wrong, Mon Ledt,” disagreed the consort after a moment’s reflection.

“My lord?”

“Her heart he broke, assuredly. Her will he may have broken, for a time, this clod. But her spirit? Oh, no, that he never broke, and no one ever will. A woman with a broken spirit does not, after a failed marriage, join for the second time, and again for the good of her nation, in matrimony with an utter stranger she has no reason to trust."

33

Marnal laid him in her arms that sixth of May, ten weeks before he should have come, as still as only death could keep him. Marnal, with a swollen belly of her own, due to birth, herself, a fortnight hence. She of Saviatha would have no dealings with “that snaggle-toothed old fishwife,” as she called Otisa. Nor would Otisa consent to attend her, although she agreed to do so for the child as soon as it was born. For the only time in six decades of midwifery, Otisa allowed her outrage to taint her medical impartiality.

“After the villainies of that petticoated issue of hell against first your sweet lord brother, and then our gentle little Petram, my queen—no. No. Do not expect me to render aid of any kind to one who tortured, and nearly killed, among victims innumerable, two of the most vulnerable people in this kingdom! Anything else you ask of me, I shall do, but that—I—I—no,” the old woman had said. Green in the eyes as she was, Otisa had full rights to refuse to stand midwife to anyone she chose. Therefore, great with child and released from her prison by the queen’s special order, Marnal had journeyed the day-and-a-half to Ajhidera, and it would fall to Doctor Alijhroc to bring her baby. Etrea’s waiting-woman, Ardoria, had also died of the plague, and her surviving maids Vranzess, Miltridt, Vyrgella , and even dear Florna, were so young that she did not trust them to know what to do.

Marnal, and not a servant, answered Etrea’s desperate ringing of the sitting room bell early that morning. “Don’t you dismiss me like a dairymaid!” she ordered, with an imperious toss of her head, when Etrea waved her away, pointing to her belly, and shaking her own head. “I’m quite aware of my extreme pregnancy, thank you very much. The condition is thirty weeks and eight advanced. I could yield this child in perfect safety, if it came to that. If the sight of this birth sets me, in turn, to paining, I’ll have something for which to be beholden to you, for the first time in our acquaintance, for I am utterly sick of being so large and awkward. Aye, sick of it, and too old for it. You, on the contrary, are…how many weeks are wanting until your time? Nine? Ten!” she exclaimed, when Etrea held up all of her fingers.

“Doctor…” begged the queen.

“No doctor. He is with Yiduar, who himself is unwell, goodness knows, and every woman in Etheria knows how scantly it pleases you to have any man, even one of medicine, near your bed of groaning . Now, do be quiet. You and I have a royal baby to deliver.”

This was the most terrifying of Etrea’s labors. She wondered semi-deliriously whether Marnal intended to kill the child at the moment of birth, and she asked her as much.

That was the first of only two moments of pity Marnal ever experienced for her foe. “You’re mad with pain,” she said, hardly recognizing as her own the soft voice and tender tone behind the words. “Of course not. My quarrel is with the mother, not the child.”

At about three o’clock in the afternoon, tiny Rojhre was born, feet first and straight into Heaven. As she looked at the spindly, ashen prince, Marnal felt the second inclination to pity Etrea. “My lady is delivered of a son,” she said, with that same unwonted gentleness. She wrapped the infant tightly in a blanket, a corner of which she drew across his face. She handed him to the bereaved, and stole quickly from the room.

“Oh, Ymanu,” Etrea whispered, “I treated you so badly in order to conceive this baby, and now…” Grief and shame, instead of making her cry, left her face hot and her eyes dry and burning, so that tears would have brought cooling relief. She uncovered the child’s still face, and studied him. At full term, he might have been a goodly babe. He already resembled his father about the nose, mouth, and jawline.

Ymanu—is—handsome! came the slow thought for the first time in seven years’ union. I wed a classically handsome man, who has told me more than once that I’m beautiful. And how did I answer him…on our wedding night, no less? I discounted his admiration like a spoiled little girl who has collected more compliments than she’s due, and I criticized his taste in women! Good Heavens, it really is as Hanridt said all those years ago; I am blind as luck! Does it not stand to reason that a man as pleasing to the eye as my lord husband would have a firm understanding of that which constitutes womanly beauty? I’ve hurt and humiliated him as a husband and a man, besides which I’ve had the complete gall to question the word and the deeds of an Emerald-Eyed, for seven years. As Marnal once chided me, ‘Really, Etrea!’

She lay for nearly an hour, cuddling her son. Eventually, the doctor did come. With infinite delicacy and tact, he examined the living, and, when he left, carried away with him the dead. Only when she was alone, and had knelt beside her bed, did Etrea begin to weep, as she prayed.

“Giver and Taker of Life,” she whispered, “Thou hast dispensed justice, rather than mercy, unto me, according to my deserving. Be it so. But I plead with Thee to display the full measure of Thy lovingkindness to him whom Thou gavest me in matrimony. Comfort him amid a father’s sorrows, and if he should desire that we no longer live as man and wife, look not askance upon him, for the fault would lie with me alone, did his pleasure in my company lessen. Finally, I ask Thee, O, Jehovah exceeding gracious, to grant me strength to request of him what I have no right to ask, but what Thy Word commandeth me to seek—his forgiveness.”

For several minutes, she was overcome after that, and could not speak. The thought of any form of rejection on his part filled her with trepidation, and even as she had whispered the first part of her prayer, she shouted the last.

“Father in Heaven, I’m frightened!” she screamed in the direction of the ceiling. “I haven’t been so…scared since the night before our wedding. Help me, help me, help me.”

Etrea never heard the soft, quick knock upon her sleeping-chamber door. She never heard the latch click as the door opened, or the rustle of bare feet on velvet carpet. She thought herself alone until the very moment when a pair of young arms embraced her, and a familiar voice, grown dear to her after only brief acquaintance, said, “It is well, Ma Ievna, it is well. I am here. I’ll help you. Simply tell me how I may.”

Etrea pulled back, startled, and exchanged all her cries of woe for a single gasp of joy, as she looked into the anxious, compassionate face of Ledta Gatrin, once a laundress to the ducal family of Saviatha.

34

Miagyil struck Gatrin, struck her hard, after she told him that to stand body servant to the queen would, in her estimation, exceed all other earthly honors. Dresdain had received a letter from Etrea, requesting that he accompany her to Ajhidera so that she might at once begin her new duties.

“You abase yourself, and disgrace everyone dark in the eyes,” Miagyil railed against her. “How shall it advance the status of our race if you consent daily to place shoes on her feet, brush her hair, lace her corsets, for the love of Heaven! No doubt she would think she showed you wondrous favor, condescending to let you perform these tasks, zirakhinua as you are.”

“Twould be no condescension!” his sister flashed. “I would feel favored!”

“You’ll not go.”

“Oh, shan’t I? And who’s to stop me, with Her Grace away, and Daya in his grave?”

“I am. I’m guardian to you now that the old man’s dead, and you’re gaining no wages, and I will be, until you wed. Know your place, woman.”

“I know my place, well enough, and God be thanked, it’s not beneath your heel! I’m no wife to you, Miagyil, son of Yira, and I pity any woman who ever is!”

It was then that he struck her, and by the time she and the reinstated Duke reached Ajhidera a week thereafter, the resulting bruise about her left eye was less an angry black than a sullen yellowish-brown. After their first embrace on the day of young Prince Rojhre’s untimely entrance into the world, the queen sat back to look at the girl, and immediately noticed her injury. Etrea suspected that someone had dealt Gatrin a blow. Although horrified to learn that she was correct, the Dar Ievna was nonetheless proud of her immediate admission as to how she came to carry that discoloration. Many women, finding themselves thusly treated would have hesitated to reveal its cause, if they did not altogether lie about it.

“Is that the fashion after which your father persuaded members of our sex to carry out his wishes?” quipped Etrea, and Gatrin nodded through her tears, for Miagyil had hurt her feelings as much as her eye. She had begun to cry for the queen’s loss of her baby, and when the conversation turned to what her brother had done, she had continued to do so, allowing herself to feel sad on her own account.

“Oh, how charming. I’m half sorry for Miagyil; no one ever showed the lad either that a man and woman can reason together as a pair of adults, or that a man may put a politely phrased request to a woman, in the full expectation that she will do as he asks, not as he demands as if she were a slave in Moses’ Egypt.”

“He said—said I was de—dead to him, milady,” Gatrin wailed. “He said Peti can talk to me again when he turns his thirteenth year and not before.”

“He said all of those things, and still you came to me? Why?”

“You asked His Grace to bring me.”

“I know, but—“

“And besides, Ma Ievna, I wanted to!” Gatrin interrupted. “I’ve never had anyone, except Peti, treat me kindly, and I’ve surely never been accorded dignity just—just because I’m Gatrin. Nobody has ever called me ‘Dajhmi’, or ‘Ledta,’ or cared that I might feel sleepy or unwell. No one’s ever stopped someone else from hurting me—“

“And you wanted more of that,” said Etrea, as heavy weeping overcame Gatrin. “When someone is decent to another for the first time in one’s life, there is nothing more difficult than for the recipient of the decency to have the kindness taken away, even if the cruelty is not resumed. Jhadta, jhadta, Dajhmi.” Etrea laid a slim little hand on the Dark-Eyed woman’s shoulder. “Yes. We may comfort each other in our respective grieves, may we not?”

Gatrin stared at her, mortified, “Oh, my lady, forgive me. I came into this room to offer my condolences, and here, with the poor little prince dead the same day that he was born, I’ve done nothing but cry for myself and my own troubles!”

“And shown nothing but gratitude for simple civility. And prevented me from sinking into despair, by your very presence. And reminded me what a blessing I have, in a husband who will never raise a hand against me. You have given me hope, leaving me to consider that there exist in this world sufferings far graver than mine, and that encourages me vastly.”

The queen put her arms around the maid, and let her bury her face in her shoulder, “Gatrin, I sorrow at the losses of Rojhre and my other little ones. Of course I do. Deeply. But they are with God. Their troubles are over, forever. Yours…Heaven only knows when they’ll end, or how. Cry as much as you have need or desire, my dear. Jhadta, jhadta. Hey, now, hey, now…”

35

She was terrified.

Ymanu had come to greet, and at the same time to bid farewell, to Rojhre the day Marnal had attended his birth but no converse about anything but the baby had at that time passed between them.

She knew that, someday, she must ask his pardon, but the notion that he might grant none disheartened her. Part of her wished that she could remain in childbed indefinitely, and that he would come to her, so that she could make private amends. But that was a coward’s desire, she knew. He was deep in mourning for three of his children, more than she was, she realized upon consideration. He was also the party wronged. In any case, Etrea never lay long abed after she gave birth. She neither liked to, nor, as a governing official, had she the leisure, even with High Council meetings suspended because of the war. Marnal waxed heavier by the day with her baby, and Etrea could assist at that delivery without risk, now.

Yiduar alone survived of her children, and the six-year-old’s deep sadness at this only slowed his healing. No one told him that they were dead. With the special intuition that sometimes comes to the very young, he understood this for himself, and the sights of his convalescence and his grief, taken together, wrung the hearts of both his parents.

“They’re in Heaven, aren’t they, Mamya?” were his first words after his fever broke.

“Yes, my son,” the Dar Ievna answered, knowing of whom he spoke.

“And the baby? The baby inside of you? Is he in Heaven, too?”

Etrea gasped, and burst into tears before she could check herself.

Yiduar had never seen an adult cry. He followed suit, flung his arms around her, and mother and son wept together. “I meant not to make you sad!” the child sobbed at last.

“Nor did you,” Etrea assured him. “I was sad, already. You’re right, Yiduar. Your baby brother who was inside me is with God, now, as are Gavral and Iulina.”

“Was he sick, too?”

Doctor Alijhroc had been unable to determine a cause for the stillbirth, so Etrea could honestly reply, “We don’t know.”

“Will it hurt you to have another baby? Will you die?”

“It will hurt me, yes. Having a baby always causes pain. But it won’t make me sick, if that’s what worries you, and it shall not kill me. Your Mamya is little and old, but strong.”

Yiduar shook his head. “That isn’t what Daya says. He says that you are not so hardy as other women, and that I should be gentle with you. He says you are not strong enough to lift me.”

Etrea only answered after careful consideration. “Well, your father is right. I am not strong enough to lift you. But all three of us know that if you climb upon my lap and sit, I can hold you very well. I must possess some strength to do that, yes?”

Yiduar nodded.

“And to ride the horses. To keep those mighty brutes from running amok and wreaking havoc with me in the saddle, I cannot be entirely weak. And good Heavens! To keep myself in the saddle, I can’t be wholly feeble. Still, your Daya is right. You should be gentle with me. Any man should, with any lady.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s both proper manners, and the Christian way to treat her.”

“The whole court does say that you have strong hands,” continued the little boy. “’A horsewoman’s hands,’ everyone calls them. Everyone but Daya. He says they are ruler’s hands, and the hands of the woman he loves.”

“Yiduar!” his mother cried, blushing like a maiden.

“That’s what he told me,” stoutly declared the little prince.

“Well, I’m sure he never intended that you should repeat it!” The queen kept a stern countenance, but Yiduar was no simpleton; he saw the twinkle in her eye.

Etrea excused herself, and managed to reach the comparative solitude of the corridor before succumbing to gales of laughter, such as she had not enjoyed in—mercy!—a year. Yes, the last time she had laughed like that had been before Ymanu’s first heart attack! “I love you, Yiduar!” she exclaimed, reentering, sweeping him into a hug, and kissing the top of his head.

She had never said that before, and the declaration startled them both. It also seemed to set the Rising Prince at his ease, for he went to sleep soon thereafter, but not before receiving a promise from her that, as it appeared that it would not bring her any harm, she would do what she could to give him another brother or sister. He did not care which, he said; he had lost both, and he missed Gavral and Iulina equally.

Repose eluded his mother that night, but this was nothing new. The ideas she entertained during those sleepless hours, however, were nearly so. She had always dismissed, as the zenith of silliness, the notion that her husband might find her attractive; if he found her fertile, that would more than answer her purposes. The one man whose opinion of her appearance had ever meant anything to her had rejected her entirely. There’s no need, she had often thought, for a Green-Eyed who married me out of pity to mock me, telling me I’m beautiful when we both know I’m not.

She had wished never again to be hurt as Hanridt had hurt her, and so she had rebuffed Ymanu’s praises with sarcastic barbs of disbelief, disbelief that was usually genuine. At times, though, she longed to give credence to his assertion. Whenever she tried, she would hear again Hanridt’s taunts about her future children: Crooked as moneylenders and blind as luck.

Then would come memories of the beatings, the further ridicule. It isn’t as if I’d be ruining a pretty face if I blacked your eyes or bloodied your nose, he always said. But, until that last night, he had never dared to strike her face. She was grateful, although she sorely wanted and needed an heir, that she conceived none of his children. Such abuse as that to which he subjected her would surely have caused a miscarriage.

How different was Ymanu! Any touch of his upon her was gentle without being gingerly, and he freely admitted that all of her children were also his. He readily appeared with her at court. He engaged with her in the sort of civil, reasoning conversation that anyone would expect to hear between politicians belonging to the same party, and grew impassioned, but not unduly heated, when they did disagree. His wit was keen, but his jokes with her were never hurtful; he had, in fact, taught her how to laugh again. He was not perfect, but she had spent so many months of the past year brooding over his shortcomings that it was pleasant to want to dwell for a time on his virtues. And he was handsome, the very personification of masculine beauty! He would make any fairytale princess proud, with his deep-green eyes, silky, dark-brown hair, soft, almost musical voice, graceful bearing, and, despite his small stature, his calmly commanding demeanor. Oh, but God had blessed her richly, in this second husband of hers! Her exchange with Yiduar, and her hour with poor little Rojhre, between them, had made that known to her. She only prayed that she had not too late become aware of these blessings.

She slipped out of bed, and stole to the window, which overlooked three tiny, fresh graves.

There, in the dewy grass, knelt Ymanu. If she knew her husband, he was praying. If any man living deserved to have his prayers answered, it was he. If any woman living did not, it was she.

Shame made a coward of her. She could not look upon his sorrow. She dared not ask his pardon. Dressing with what haste she could, Etrea turned and fled to the pasture, on the opposite side of the grounds. There, she did what she had not in a year.

“Vanni, my sweet one, Vanni, my precious, Vanni, my love,” the Dar Ievna called, almost crooning.

As if she had only come to visit him five minutes since, the magnificent white stallion trotted to the fence and nuzzled at her hair. Etrea opened the gate, slipped inside, and hid herself beneath his neck, behind the veil of his mane. For minutes on end, he ceased neither his nibbling of her hair, nor his throaty nickering, while she cried herself empty against his deep shoulder. “I’m sorry, Ivanian, I’m so, so sorry!” she repeated again and yet again. At last, she stepped back.

“He’ll despise me for the coward I am,” she declared, “but I must face my just deserts. If he’s come to hate me, I’ll at least know you haven’t.”

Etrea drew herself up as tall and straight as she could, gave Ivanian a final pat, and left the pasture.

He heard the rustle of long skirts through grass, and the unmistakable drag of a twisted foot along the ground. He knew who made those sounds. But the accompanying familiar voice

spoke an unwonted word that startled, and after a fashion, almost frightened him.

“Dajhmiu.”

Sweetheart? She never addressed him thus! At the best of times, and with distant politeness, she called him “Mon Ievn Dosbran .” When she was angry, she spoke to him not at all. Hesitantly, he turned to acknowledge her—and had to catch his breath.

Perhaps it was a trick of the light from the lantern she carried, or the imaginings of pressing fatigue, or it might even have been the kindness of the years to her, but as she approached, he saw, not a seven-year matron and mother of four, but his nineteen-year-old bride, clad in a green gown, of the same shade her wedding dress and coronation gowns had both been, as slim-waisted, delicately beautiful, and anxious-appearing as the day they had sworn the nuptial vows. Standoffish, many had called her. Shy, he now knew from what old Iordain had told him, painfully shy, and living in mortal dread that he would ridicule, batter, and abandon her. She looked perfectly wretched at the moment, poor little creature, as sleep-starved as he was, and desperate for companionship and approval. Even her single word of greeting, “Dajhmiu,” rang with a plea.

And then, she gathered her skirts in her free hand and covered the distance between them at a run so awkward it might have struck him as humorous to see, under any other circumstances, and collapsed against him, pleading for forgiveness.

Quickly, that nothing should be set alight, he took the lantern from her, and placed it on the grass. “What have you done, wife? For what are you sorry?” he queried, roundly mystified.

“Everything!” she mourned.

“Well! That explains a great deal!” He suppressed a chuckle with difficulty.

She straightened, and glared at him. “You’re laughing at me!”

“I’m not laughing, yet, you silly little gooseberry, but I will if you do not tell me precisely what you have done that I must forgive,” he said.

“Why, I’ve been very mean to you.”

“Have you?”

“Yes! I’ve criticized your taste in women, and I’ve questioned the reasons for everything you’ve done! I abandoned you in all but law, to provide for our daughter by yourself; I didn’t even care what her name was! I goaded you to have your way with me, when I know you’re a better man than to ever take me by force. I abandoned my favorite of your wedding gifts to me, which means that I was unkind to yet another living thing, and ignored for a year one of my very best friends in the world, after he had been nothing but wonderful! And all because I was angry, I ruined the pretty marrying ring that you gave me.”

“Oh,” said Ymanu. “That.”

“Yes! All of that was very, very mean for me to do!”

“Not especially.”

The Dar Ievn had cradled her as she talked, and now she stiffened and stared up at him in wonder.

“Not as mean as what Hanridt did to you,” he elaborated. “Oh, yes, my beauty, my woman, and my wife, I know all about your first consort. Iordain told me. The old soldier bears him exceeding ill will, and for my part, I wish him nothing but misery for the rest of his days, and a painful and lingering end.”

Etrea looked with uneasy admiration at her usually even-tempered second consort. “May I never anger you!” she promised, only partly in jest.

Still seething at the mere thought of the degradation of his beloved at Hanridt’s hands, Ymanu distrusted himself to speak any further about him. Instead he tilted Etrea’s chin until their eyes met, just as she sometimes would, to look directly at a subject of one of those races many Etherians deemed inferior. Swiftly and suddenly, he kissed her, and for the first time, both in their marriage and in her life, she allowed herself to believe that a man could love her as a woman, crippling condition and all.

“Celestial eyes,” he murmured, pulling back and joining hands with her. “That’s what they say your kind has.”

“And what do you say?”

“I say, you’re a striking woman to look at, dark in the hair as you are, and light in the eyes and the skin. You have shapely hands that are the talk of the court. They’re ruler’s hands, the hands of the woman I loved seven years ago, the woman I love still.”

He released her right hand, and onto the second finger of her left, she felt him slide something small, light, and cool.

Looking down, she saw, flashing in the lantern’s beams, her marital ring with its prominent ruby, flawlessly reforged.

36

Etrea and her husband slept at last, that night, on either end of the settee in Yiduar’s nursery. Five hours’ heavy slumber did the queen much good, and she readily woke at half-past seven on the twentieth morning of May, when the lady Vyrgella touched her on the shoulder, bringing tidings that Marnal’s time was come. “Her travail is advancing, my sovereign. She enters her twelfth hour,” the young gentlewoman said.

“As she should. She was expected to deliver upon this very date. Does the child live and move inside her?”

“I think so.”

“Is the life of the mother in peril?”

“If ’tis, milady, I can’t tell. Ledta Marnal is not a small woman, and if one may judge from the fact that she’s borne eight others, it seems unlikely.”

“Is she attended?”

“By the handmaid she brought with her.”

“Very well. In that case, I shall first eat my breakfast. I need my strength if I’m to bring that baby.”

“With no cruel humor intended, my lady, you have strength, if you can break your fast before you attend Marnal of Saviatha in childbirth…strength of stomach.” Vyrgella laughed.

“Hold your tongue, chit,” admonished Etrea, trying, and failing, to speak severely. “Go you, and lay me out a fresh dress in my bedchamber. I care not which you choose for me. I’ll be along, anon, to change.” Once alone, she laughed, too, but not so softly that she avoided waking Ymanu.

“Morning already?” he muttered. “Dajhmi, I’m still so…”

“You go back to sleep. It isn’t morning for you, yet. But it is morning for me. There comes a babe to the ducal line of Saviatha.”

This news roused him a little. “Ah. And you must hie you to the birth chamber.”

“I must.”

“That poor baby.”

“I know. Don’t think about it.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Neither can I.”

Their kiss was quick and gentle, and then, as nearly as she could manage, the High Lady of Etheria danced down the corridor to change to clothing more appropriate to the task before her.

She had just completely changed when Vyrgella came running to inform her that she must forgo her morning meal indefinitely after all, for the child was crowning, and Marnal trusted neither virgin handmaid to draw the child from her womb.

The scene in the groaning chamber gave little cause for dancing. It was a mercy that, as Vyrgella said, Marnal was ‘not a small woman.’ This description referred not to her girth, but to her height of six feet less an inch. Her tallness helped to make her children’s entrances into the world a simpler matter.

Saviatha’s onetime Governing Lady was up and pacing, sometimes even in the midst of her pains. Etrea could plainly see her discomfort—but could hear very little from her.

“You’re quiet, Marnal,” she remarked.

“You were,” grunted the older woman through bared teeth, hanging her head.

So, even in the throes of childbirth, she’s determined that I should not outdo her, thought Etrea. Never mind that I was silent because I could not breathe to give any utterance. It matters only that I was silent. I crouched on my bed to bring forth. Look at her! She stands.

Marnal continued to stand, and forty minutes and five after the Dar Ievna entered the room, she bore, into Etrea’s hands, squalling, measuring twenty inches and one in length, and weighing every ounce of ten pounds, as they all learned soon afterward—a young Duchess.

“A daughter! You have given unto your lord husband a baby girl!” cried the queen, quickly handing the child to Marnal, that she herself might not drop the heavy infant.

Tears filled the highborn woman’s odd eyes. She sank to the bed and reclined against one of the pillows, holding the child at arm’s length.

“Thank God, Who, for the first time in my life has given ear to a prayer of mine. There will be no more children, for mine is an old woman’s womb. Now it shall sleep.” She laid the baby beside her, but then turned to face the wall.

“What are you doing?” Etrea demanded.

“I want no ninth child, and certainly no daughter, nor does Dresdain. We’ve nothing to lay by for a dowry.”

“Good Heavens, improvident woman! Did you consider that before you conceived?”

“You idiot!” shouted Marnal, glaring over her shoulder at the monarch. “That was uppermost in my mind! I planned to surrender her if she did not serve her purpose, and she hasn’t.”

“Surrender her to whom? And what mercenary purpose did you want your daughter to serve?”

“Blast you, to a Scum-Eyed scullery maid I would have given her, for as much as I cared! Her presence within my body was to assure your leniency if you defeated me in war. I intended to fight, pregnancy notwithstanding, but you would not.”

“Petram?”

“Don’t pretend to be dense, Etrea. I’ve already told you what I wanted with him. When I saw that you would not fight a pregnant adversary, I swore to myself that I would win what I was after by spoken coercion. I wanted to rattle you with the notion of the fates of my enemies. More fool me! I angered you instead, and drove you to act!”

“And Alidias? Why did you…?”

Marnal laughed, stood up, and walked away from the bed, quite as if she were not newly out of childbirth. “Ask Iordain,” she answered, as she had at Christ’s Tide.

She turned, and walked into her dressing-room, and they all heard when she changed her attire for clean garments. She retraced her steps through the bedroom as she left, not even glancing at the bundle on the bed, and latched the door in her wake. They listened as she took her way downstairs, abandoning the baby to the queen.

To a Scum-Eyed scullery maid I would have given her, she of Saviatha had said.

“Come with me, Ievna Vyrgella, to the nursery,” she commanded. “If you please, bring the child, also.”

“It shall be, my lady.”

When they reached the nursery, Etrea went silently to the settee, and patted the cushion beside the drowsily stirring High Prince.

The girl carefully laid the baby there, just as Ymanu opened his eyes.

CONTINUED IN A PAIR OF LIGHT EYES MUST ALWAYS BE WATCHING

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hinchcliffe, Archie. Children With Cerebral Palsy: A Manual For Therapists, Parents, And Community Workers. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA; SAGE Publications, 2007.

Lansky, Bruce. Very Best Baby Name Book: 60,000+ Names. Minnetonka, MN; Meadowbrook Press, 2012.

Lynghaug, Fran. The Official Horse Breeds Standards Guide: The Complete Guide To The Standards Of All North American Equine Breed Associations. Minneapolis, MN;Voyageur Press, 2009.

New Oxford American Dictionary. 3rd ed. 2010.

Oldstone, Michael B. A. Viruses, Plagues, And History: Past, Present, And Future. New York, Oxford University Press, 2010.

Shell, Marc. Polio And Its Aftermath: The Paralysis Of Culture. Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press, 2005.

BERLIN GUNNING

was born in Seattle in 1982, the youngest of seven sisters. She is the first of them to earn a Master’s degree, having studied writing at Oregon’s Portland State University, where she first received a Bachelor’s degree in English, and then specialized in editing. She lives, writes, indulges her twin passions for classical music and horses, and is happily single in Portland, Oregon. The Ill Fortune To Be Dark In The Eyes is both the first volume of The Dar Ievna Series and her debut novel.