Rowena Daniells - The King's bastard

'A Fealty Ceremony?' Cobalt muttered. He strode around to where Lence now stood. 'I insist mine is the honour to be first to formally join Lence Kingsheir's guard!'

Sinking gracefully to one knee, he lifted his good arm to place his injured hand on his heart. The other castle youths, young lords like Cobalt and elder sons, jostled to be next. Lence accepted their fealty with obvious satisfaction.

Younger sons and merchant sons hurried to Byren's side of the fire. With a sinking heart, he realised the castle's defenders were choosing sides in a battle he did not want to fight. But he accepted the fealty oaths with good grace, for he could do no less. The feasting continued and, while the others drank and laughed, Byren thought on what he'd learnt from Cobalt.

Much later, as they bedded down in the Council Hall, the village women presented him with their prettiest maiden. She beamed, pleased with the honour of sharing his bed. Her eyes had been painted to make them look huge and glass beads had been threaded through her waist-length hair. They tinkled as she bowed and the men — those who weren't already snoring — made appreciative noises, joking about his prowess.

Byren knew she would have been chosen because she could not conceive tonight so he need not fear creating another bastard. Many a time he and Lence had enjoyed a village's gratitude for chasing off spar warriors or Affinity beasts, but tonight he realised he could not bed this girl, not when he could still feel Elina weeping in his arms, heartbroken over Orrade's blindness.

Fool! He should have sent word that Garzik was safe with them when they returned to the castle, and that Orrade's sight had returned. He should have put Elina's mind at rest but they'd left to hunt the leogryf in such a rush…

'What's wrong, Byren? Have you forgotten how to do it?' Lence teased.

He glanced up, startled. The women of the council had left and the girl waited expectantly, a smile lighting her eyes.

No. He could not bed her, not here in the hall where the dark was their only privacy, not ever, not when it was Elina he wanted.

He lifted his hands, wondering how to do this without hurting her feelings. She blinked in dismay, the smile slipping from her face as she read his expression.

Byren caught her hand, bowing over it, using his best court manners to ease the rejection. 'I'm sorry. But my heart is already taken.'

'What about your prong?' some wit shouted.

Heat stole up Byren's face as he released the girl's hand.

Her face crumpled and she fled. Silence fell as the door slammed shut behind her.

'You've disgraced her,' Lence hissed, taking a step closer. 'What's wrong with you, Byren?'

'Enough, Lence,' Cobalt intervened. He cast Byren a curious glance, then led Lence away.

Byren hesitated. He wanted to call his twin back and explain but he couldn't. He was not formally betrothed to Elina and with the way things were between him and her father, he might never be.

So he turned away, grabbed his bed roll and retreated to the far fireplace where he lay down with his back to the others and stared at the flames. After a moment he heard Orrade and Garzik loyally join him and the others bedding down. The last lamps were doused, then the hall became quiet except for snores and sleepy mumbles.

Tension crawled across Piro's shoulders, as she wished herself invisible. Here she was, trapped between her parents and Sylion's mystics mistress whose tapping cane grew ever closer as she approached. The abbess kept pace with the old mystic so they would arrive together to formally greet her parents. Piro had tried to avoid this meeting, claiming she needed to feed her foenix, but her mother had insisted that it was time to put away her childhood things.

I must not give myself away. I must not…

She halted the litany running over and over in her mind for fear it might attract the attention of the mystics mistress. Neither of the castle's Affinity warders had noticed the change in her since autumn cusp. But, although the mystics mistress was blind, she was said to be even more powerful than Halcyon's mystics master. Piro feared her many years of experience.

Think of something else.

Fyn! Yesterday Fyn arrived with the abbot and the monks but she hadn't had a chance to speak with her brother yet so he didn't know about the sudden blossoming of her Affinity with the gods.

There she was, thinking of it again.

If the mystics mistress wasn't specifically looking for it, could she sense the change in Piro from a distance? Piro didn't know.

There was so much she didn't know about having Affinity.

'And have you been doing any more paintings, Piro Kingsdaughter?' the abbess asked kindly, once the formal greetings finished. She always treated Piro as if she was seven, not almost a woman at thirteen. The abbess was plump and pink-cheeked with sharp, brilliant eyes, and looked as if she should be a successful shrewd sweets merchant, not the spiritual leader of an abbey that served the cruel, hard god of snow and ice.

'Such skill with a brush in one so young is a gift from the gods.'

Piro flushed. She must not look at the mystics mistress. But she felt as if her deception was branded across her forehead.

'Pirola,' her mother admonished. The queen always used her full name when she was annoyed.

Piro opened her mouth to speak but her father stepped in.

'We discovered a renegade Power-worker in Rolenton just a few days ago.'

'We heard,' the abbess said. 'A terrible business. My sympathy, Queen Myrella, it must have been — '

'Lence dealt with her,' King Rolen said. 'Our Affinity warders made sure her body was disposed of safely.'

Piro hid a smile. There had been a fierce argument between Springdawn and Autumnwind over who would lay the old woman's spirit to rest, with Springdawn winning because she held supremacy over all things to do with winter and women. Piro had been crossing the courtyard between Sylion's oratory and Halcyon's chantry when she overheard them going at it like cats and dogs.

'Tell me, mystics mistress.' The queen lifted one hand. 'Are the predictions of seers always hard to understand?'

This had been worrying Piro too. She'd even considered asking Springdawn when the nun returned from the hunt but had discarded the idea because she did not want to be lectured for hours on end. The nun was a terrible bore and Piro had been delighted when her tutoring finished the day she turned twelve.

The mystics mistress shook her head. 'There are very few seers and they are generally avoided, as they will speak only the truth.'

Piro glanced to her mother who had gone pale.

'I don't think she was a true seer,' Piro said quickly.

'Why's that, child?' the mystics mistress asked, turning her blind but oddly penetrating eyes on Piro.

Because I have Affinity and she said I was like my mother.

Piro swallowed. 'Because she claimed mother's loved ones would die since we did not make war on Merofynia and take the throne when King Sefon died. But I don't see how refusing to make war could lead to — '

King Rolen laughed. 'There will be no war with Merofynia. The seer was mistaken.'

'That is quite possible,' the mystics mistress agreed. 'The greatest scholars of both Sylion and Halcyon Abbeys have been studying past prophecies and have come to the conclusion that the future is a many-branched tree, while the past is a single trunk. So you see the seers' visions often go down paths that may not happen.'

Her father chuckled. 'Then what good are seers?'

'They warn us of what might be, if we are not vigilant,' the mystics mistress explained patiently.

'A wise king knows he must be ever vigilant.' Rolen patted the queen's arm. 'As Myrella and I are. Plans have been made to ensure — '