Tessa Gratton - The Queens of Innis Lear

They were terrifying.

It galled Aefa to be afraid of them, but she’d never shaken it.

Strong in body and tongue, Gaela had spent her earliest years with soldiers, driving herself hard enough to grow wide through her shoulders and solid flank, to hold her own against nearly any warrior. Even now, in a gown of blood red and purple, the oldest princess wore a bright silver pauldron over her shield shoulder, made of chain mail and steel plates. Her black hair was molded into a crown with streaks of white clay, and laced with dark purple ribbons. Aefa needed to talk with Gaela’s girls about the styling. Earrings shaped like knives hung from her lobes, tiny little threats.

Beside her, Regan was rather like a knife herself: pointed and sharp. Regan’s brown waves fell under a cascade of glass beads and pearls. She wore a high-waisted gown with layers and layers of cream and violet velvet that would be impossible to keep so pristine. Her slippers had tiny heels, and her girdle was woven of silk and lace. Keys and coins and an amethyst the size of her fist hung from it. Regan wore a ring on every finger, and her nails were colored crimson. She was jarringly beautiful, like jagged crystal or vengeful ghosts.

Aefa managed a moment of steady pleasure that she’d inadvertently put Elia in complimentary colors. It would anger the sisters, but be just as much a statement as Elia arriving on her father’s arm.

The sisters’ husbands waited to either side of the dais, and there was not enough space between them given the depth of their rivalry. Astore loomed to the right, grinning and loudly conversing with a handful of men out of the Glennadoer earldom, and their retainers in attendance, too. Across the other side of the dais were the Earl Errigal and a dark, quiet slip of a man in the sky blue of Errigal’s banners. With them was the Earl Rosrua. With Astore, the Earl Bracoch.

Oh, stars and worms. Aefa paused in place, realizing the man with Errigal had to be that son she’d heard so much about—the bastard. Brona had been correct in her warning of his return. Elia never spoke of him directly, but everyone in the king’s service Aefa had ever met during her time with the princess was more than happy to do so. Before she could say—she wasn’t quite sure, but something—a hand caught gently under her elbow.

“Aefa Thornhill,” said the Duke of Connley, “allow my escort to your place.”

He was six or seven years her elder, and as handsome as his wife Regan was beautiful, but in a fully Learish way: sharp white cheeks and coppery-blond hair slicked back from his face, pink lips that might’ve just been kissed, and eyes as blue-green as the ocean around Port Comlack, steady under a serious brow. Someday his face would be cragged and rough, but now it was perfect. His blood red tunic fit the sort of shoulders a girl longed to climb. Too bad he always gave Aefa a shudder; she couldn’t help but imagine him stripping her down, past clothes and even skin, to her very bones, if she ever said the wrong thing.

“Thank you,” she said, with no hint of a flirt.

“Elia hasn’t arrived with you,” he said, solicitous but quick, for it was a brief walk to the throne.

Aefa smiled like it meant nothing. “She attended the king all this morning, so presumably will come with him.”

“Presumably.” Connley smiled back at her, a charming wolf in the woods.

Yes, there it was, the shudder. Aefa disguised it with a curtsey, relieved to be already at the dais. “Lord,” she said steadily.

“We hope your lady proves as considerate of your father’s needs after this morning, and into the future,” Connley said, gently squeezing her elbow. He stepped back and nodded in a way that was not quite a bow, but managed to suggested such. “And her own.”

“I’m sure she will be,” Aefa said, mildly irritated through the general chill of his presence.

“Someone will make sure of it,” he said quietly, and she had no chance to react, for there was her father, leaning off the throne.

“My girl!” the Fool crowed. “Tell me: what is this crown in my lap made of?”

“Love,” she called back. “Love and rubies.”

“The bronze is for the love, then?”

“The bronze is the island metal, the rubies its blood. What else is love but mettle and blood?” Aefa grinned.

The Fool lifted the crown, as if to offer it to his daughter.

“The crown of Innis Lear is not made of love,” said Gaela Lear, soft and challenging. “It is made of dying stars, and lying mouths.”

Just then a great triple knock sounded throughout the hall, echoing through the wooden north wall. A signal that the king approached.

“Not for long,” Regan answered her sister. “Get up, Fool, and make way for the king.”

THIS IS WHAT they say of the last King of Innis Lear’s Zenith Court:

The day held itself bright and bold, a brisk wind rising off the sea in fragile anticipation. All had assembled by the noon hour, but the king arrived late. He shoved in through the slender private entrance with his youngest, favored daughter at his side. They swept directly to the throne, and few noticed Kayo, the Oak Earl, brother of the fallen queen, follow behind and settle himself at the rear of the dais.

Lear wore ceremonial robes crusted with deep blue and star-white embroidery, brushed and glistening. His gray-and-brown hair shocked away from his face, hanging down his back, and his scraggly beard had been shaved. Kingly gold and silver rings weighed down his gnarled fingers, and a sword with a great round pommel carved into a rampant swan hung from a jeweled belt at his hip. The youngest princess was a delicate slip of daylight as she took her place beside the throne, across from her two vibrant sisters.

The king smiled. “Welcome.”

Courtiers returned the greeting loudly, with calls and cheering. They expected great things from the next hour: a future queen, and a resettling of alliances. And hope. For far too long Innis Lear had faltered and run dry; for far too long there was no named successor; for far too long privilege and fate had danced unfettered as the king drifted further and further into the sky.

Lear called out, “Today is an auspicious day, friends. As my father obeyed the stars, and his father before him, so I bow to them now by offering this announcement: The stars have aligned to provide your king the understanding that his reign comes to a swift end. It is time for me to divest myself of cares and responsibilities, to pass them on, as time passes, to younger and stronger persons.”

Murmurs of general accord and interest skittered about the hall, but no one interrupted as Lear continued, “Therefore we must see our daughters settled before the end, which comes at Midwinter.”

Yes, here was the moment of destiny:

“Astore, our beloved son.” Lear turned to his eldest daughter’s husband, who nodded firmly.

The king then looked to the middle husband. “And you, our son Connley.” The Duke Connley murmured, “My king,” and nothing else, for all knew the lie of any love between them.

The king continued grandly, “You have long held discord between you, and we know that when we die very likely war and strife would erupt between you as you each would try to claim more of the other’s.”

“Father,” said Gaela, “there is a single sure way to stop such an outcome.”

He held up his hand. “To stop this, we will divide our lands now between your wives, according to the stars, and our youngest daughter, Elia, whose suitors have waited patiently to hear her choice.”