“Then we all died,” Finn whispered.
Anthea looked at him.
“The horses got sick first,” Finn said to his calloused hands.
“The Leanans got sick, too,” Miss Ravel said, taking up the narrative again. “The Coronami, as they recovered, started pushing farther and farther north, until the only remaining people, and horses, were here.” She held out her arms to indicate the Last Farm, and the wild lands beyond it. “When Kalabar built his wall, he told the Leanans it was to keep them safe from whatever illness was in the south, and he told the Coronami that it was to keep them safe from the diseases carried by the horses in the north.”
“I don’t understand,” Anthea said. “Why did they all get sick? The Leanans and the horses, I mean?”
“Dr. Hewett believes the Coronami brought the disease with them. It was probably a common sickness to them, but it devastated this land.”
“We aren’t a sickly, diseased people!” Anthea protested.
“Exactly!” Jilly said.
“So if the horses got sick, maybe they were going to get sick anyway,” she went on, encouraged by her cousin’s response.
“Wait, what are you talking about?” Jilly frowned.
Finn made a rumbling noise in his throat, but didn’t say anything.
“If the Leanans got sick,” Anthea explained, trying to work it out as she spoke, “it was probably just a coincidence, because we don’t have horrible diseases.”
“By ‘we’ do you mean the Coronami?” Jilly asked.
“Of course,” Anthea said.
“Oh, Thea, sweetie,” Jilly began.
“Jilly, allow me,” Miss Ravel said, with gentle firmness.
“Now, Anthea,” Miss Ravel said. “You’ve taken in so many new ideas since coming here, and I know it’s hard. I went through the same thing five years ago. But you’re about to learn one more: you’re Leanan. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have the Way.”
Anthea just stared at Miss Ravel. Miss Ravel, with her elegant Travertine accent, and her perfectly smooth chignon.
“I came here to try and talk my brother out of this madness,” Miss Ravel said. “He’s one of the riders.” She didn’t conceal the pride in her voice. “He has the Way, and while I do not, I cannot deny that our family has Leanan blood, and that I am just as drawn to the horses as Jeffrey.”
“The horses wouldn’t let me near them if I wasn’t Leanan, at least in part,” Jilly chimed in. “Even without the Way, they recognize Leanan blood, and you have to have it, in no small measure, to ride them.”
Anthea put her pencil down and rubbed her temples. She had a headache coming on, as though her brain were too full. She looked at Keth, who had been sitting silent this whole time.
“What do you think of all this?”
“What kind of Leanan would I be if I didn’t know all this?” He laughed.
Anthea gaped. “But you … you’re Radiji!” She pointed to his dark-skinned face, as though he were unaware of what he looked like.
“Half Radiji, half Leanan,” he said. “You’ve met my mum, Shannon Taggart.”
Anthea blinked. She had indeed met Nurse Shannon, the tall redheaded woman who was Dr. Hewett’s “right hand.” She simply hadn’t realized that she was also Keth’s mum. Now that she was looking closer, she saw that he also had freckles, they were just less prominent, and his mother’s hazel eyes.
“But … but,” she stammered. “You honestly believe the Coronami came here, made everyone sick, and then shoved you up here to die?”
Keth nodded. She looked at Finn, who looked back at her, and Anthea knew he believed it as well.
“And we … we’re all Leanan,” she said weakly.
Jilly patted her arm. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’re at least a quarter Coronami,” she said brightly.
14
TRUCE
Anthea paced her room. She had just gotten fully unpacked, but she started to pull her dresses out of the wardrobe with restless movements and throw them onto the bed in a wrinkled heap.
Every time someone spoke to her, their words destroyed every truth she had ever known. She felt like her skin didn’t fit, and the strange costume she had borrowed from Jilly hardly helped, but she still couldn’t move her arms well enough to button herself into anything proper.
The door flew open and Jilly came in. She was like a whirlwind: jewelry jangling, silk rustling, hair in a tangle. She flung herself on Anthea’s bed, narrowly missing the gowns.
“Getting ready for a bonfire?” Jilly plucked at the topmost item with her nose wrinkled.
“No,” Anthea said. “I’m … I don’t know what I’m doing! I can’t stay here!”
Jilly sat up, realizing that Anthea’s distress went beyond stiff muscles. She shoved the gowns aside and folded her legs under her.
“What’s wrong?”
Anthea wrestled her trunk out from under the tall bed and put it in the middle of the room. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the pages she had been writing about her first riding lesson. She tossed a scarf over it.
“Where will you go?” Jilly cocked her head to one side. “You don’t have anywhere else.”
“Thank you,” Anthea said coldly. “Thank for you reminding me of that.”
Jilly flushed. “I’m not … I didn’t want to … Are you really running away because we saw you fall off Bluebell?”
Anthea carefully folded her middy blouses. The pain in her back and buttocks made every move agony, but she kept going. She refused to look at Jilly.
“I’m sure everyone back in good ol’ Travertine will welcome you with open arms,” Jilly went on. “They were so sad when you left! And don’t worry: we won’t think any less of you because you ran away. Papa won’t mind that you turned your back on Leana even though you have the Way, just like your father did. I’m sure your father wouldn’t have wanted you to do anything strenuous, and after all, this was only his life’s work. You and Florian—”
Jillian was cut off midsentence by one of Anthea’s shoes, which struck her on the shoulder with a satisfying thwack.
“You did not just do that,” Jilly said in a low, dangerous voice.
“Yes, I did!” Anthea’s own voice was high and tight. She raised the shoe’s mate and took aim.
“How dare you!”
“How dare I?”
Anthea threw the other shoe just to get it out of her hand before she started beating her cousin with it. Her throw went wild and the shoe hit the nightstand and knocked a glass onto the floor. It shattered with a sound like a firecracker. Jilly leaped off the bed and came toward Anthea with her fingers curved like claws. Anthea took a step back but didn’t stop talking.
“How dare I? Since I came here all you have done is mock me!”
“I tried to be your friend and you rejected me,” Jilly countered, still poised as if to strike. “I let you wear my favorite clothes, and I didn’t tell anyone that it was because your rump was sore!”
With a whiplash of guilt, Anthea remembered Jilly trying to hug her that first morning, her concern when Anthea had been in Florian’s stall, and the gentle way that her cousin had helped dress her since her riding lesson.
Anthea shook off the guilt quickly, however.
“Can’t you understand that this is all too strange to me?” she half shouted, half pleaded. “All my life I’ve been taught that Coronam has existed since … the dawn of time! And that horses died because they were filled with disease, but I come here and you all tell me that’s wrong. There are kings, kings who look like regular boys! Kings I’ve never heard of, and I memorized the names of all the kings of Coronam to the tenth generation!
“I’m wrong, everything I know is wrong, and the life I wanted—to be a Rose Maiden like my dead mother, who isn’t dead—is stupid and wrong!”
“Can you understand how I feel,” Jilly countered. “When you come here from the big city to tell me everything I’ve been taught is wrong and the life I w
ant is stupid and wrong?”
Anthea was still shaking, only now her anger had subsided. She saw enormous tears hovering on her cousin’s long lashes.
“But do you see … I don’t know what to do?” Anthea whispered. “I mean, my mother isn’t dead, but where is she? How do I find her? Whom do I ask for help?”
“No one knows where your mother is,” Jilly said. “She … she does something for the Crown, something secret. But at least she has a reason for staying away, unlike mine.”
“What?” No one had ever mentioned an Aunt Anything, so Anthea had assumed that Jilly’s mother was long dead. “Your mother? She …?”
“Lives in Travertine,” Jilly said with a shrug that made a tear fall onto her lap. “She doesn’t like horses, you see. Or having a daughter who likes horses.”
“Oh, Jillian … Jilly!”
Anthea reached out for her cousin, but the other girl brushed her aside angrily.
“I’d give anything to be you,” Jilly said. “No mother sending you preachy letters saying that you can come ‘home’ if you agree to act like a lady. No one but yourself to please. And the Way …” Her voice cracked with longing.
Anthea crossed to the window and whipped aside the curtain. “And I’d like to be you,” she said with a heat that surprised her. “No rules, you can do as you like. You can dress like a boy, eat chocolates all day, stay up all night reading novels. Spend your days with horses without fear.” She sucked in a heaving breath. “You don’t have to read your mother’s letters, but at least she sends you letters!”
“Why does that make you so angry?”
“Because I’m jealous,” Anthea blurted out, surprising both of them this time. There was a heartbeat’s pause, and then Anthea added, “And scared.”
“Of the horses?”
“Of making my own decisions,” Anthea told her. “What if I’m wrong? What if I decide it’s all right to use the Way, but then I find out …”
“Find out what?” Jilly’s voice shook. “That you don’t have the Way after all? You know that’s not true. But now you have to learn to use it.”
“But what if … what if I … ruin everything?” Anthea’s heart pounded. The corner of stationery still visible on her desk seemed to taunt her.
“Don’t be vain,” her cousin scoffed. “I doubt you could ruin everything.”
“But it’s so hard!” Anthea’s voice ended in a wail.
Jilly sighed. “I do understand. I’ve always wanted to have the Way, you’ve always wanted to be a Rose Maiden. If I had the Way and it was taken from me, I’d be inconsolable.”
The cousins stood, contemplating each other, for a long time.
“It would be nice to have my cousin back,” Jilly said finally. “The one who used to like me.”
“I do like you,” Anthea said.
“Truce?” Jilly held out her hand to shake, but Anthea startled them both by hugging her, though the action made her whimper.
“Help me clean up?” Anthea begged. “I can’t move!”
“Only if I can turn that brown dress into dusting cloths. I mean, what were you thinking? And the pink sashes! You’re not five years old!”
Anthea surprised them both again by laughing.
FLORIAN
Beloved Anthea was still not permitted to ride him, but Florian contented himself with her constant attention. Beloved Anthea was with him every day, caring for him, feeding him, and letting him run in the paddock alongside her as she learned to ride the gray mare. For now that was good enough, because his Beloved was so happy. The mare had even condescended to tell Florian that her name was Bluebell, and she had confessed a growing fondness for Beloved Anthea, which pleased Florian greatly.
Florian knew that one day his Beloved Anthea would ride him. Perhaps when the Soon King took the reins of the herd stallion. But as long as no one tried to take his Beloved away from him again, he was content.
15
HIDING WITH FLORIAN … AGAIN
Now that she no longer hid from her riding lessons, Anthea spent much more time with Jilly as well as with Finn and Keth, and she found that she liked them.
Anthea had never met a group of young people so free and easy in their ways. They never worried about their reputations, had no sense of decorum, and didn’t care that Anthea seemed to find every mud puddle with her boots or that her hair tended to slip and coil out of its ribbon and stick to her face. They attended their morning lessons and studied together over lunch, laughing and chatting. Every afternoon they went out to the paddocks to ride, and sometimes they fell off.
Except for Finn. Finn never fell off his horse, a sort of steel-gray speckled beast—what the others called a blue roan—named Marius.
Anthea had never spent so much time in the company of boys her own age before. She was often startled when they spoke to her, calling her by her first name, or bumped into her in the aisles of the stable or in the classroom. Finn especially made her feel sort of fluttery, a sensation that was both pleasant and unnerving.
It didn’t help that they took special lessons from Caillin MacRennie, just the two of them.
Sometimes they rode to the far edges of the farm, where the horses in the paddocks looked no bigger than dots, and Caillin asked them how many horses were in each paddock, which were mares and which stallions. He would have them turn their backs, spin three times, and point directly to Constantine when they stopped. Anthea felt deeply foolish doing most of these things. Especially because Finn was never wrong. She also couldn’t see the point in his watching her dry heave the first time she tried to feel what Florian was doing and gagged on the taste of the grass he was eating.
But the most thrilling and yet terrifying exercise was the one that involved Caillin MacRennie taking the bridle off Bluebell and telling Anthea to guide her using only the Way. He would tell her, where Bluebell couldn’t hear, that he wanted her to make the mare walk forward, turn left, turn right, trot, and then stop, or some such combination. The memory of her first riding lesson, of feeling herself completely lose control of Bluebell, made Anthea feel green with fear. More than once Bluebell just sat there as though she had no idea that Anthea was even trying to talk to her. More than twice Finn and Marius had to catch them up, and Finn had to take control of Bluebell to make her stop.
“Can’t I do this with Keth instead?” Anthea whispered to Caillin MacRennie one day.
“Keth’s done as much as he can with the Way,” Caillin MacRennie said. “Like most of us, he can feel horses nearby, and he can make them do what he asks, if he asks nicely. But you and Finn, now … that’s something else.”
“Is it?” Anthea’s voice raised in surprise.
She had thought that you either had the Way or didn’t. She had assumed that Keth and Caillin MacRennie and Miss Ravel’s brother Jeffrey all felt Constantine’s pride and rage, that their stomachs all growled when the foals went to their breakfasts. But that was not the case.
“There’s not been anyone as sensitive as you two in a long time,” Caillin MacRennie told her.
“None of my family have dared to ride a herd stallion, to really take control of the herd, in generations,” Finn said softly. “But I … I can feel Constantine’s moods all the time.”
Anthea finally asked something that had been bothering her.
“I thought my father rode Constantine? Jilly once said that she and I rode him, too, as children.”
“Aye, before Justinian died our Con wasnae quite the arrogant b-beast,” Caillin MacRennie said, catching himself with a grin and a wink. “Just another stallion in the herd, back then.”
“And Justinian was Florian’s father?” Anthea asked.
Finn and Caillin MacRennie both nodded.
“Con and Florian are half brothers,” Finn added.
“And Justinian was the old herd stallion? I thought he was my father’s horse?”
Herd politics made her brain hurt, but she was determined to learn. Her father hadn’t been a k
ing, or claimed to be a king … had he? Yet everyone said that only Finn would be able to ride Constantine, though he hadn’t yet dared to try. Anthea didn’t understand what people thought would happen when Finn finally did ride Constantine, but that was the one thing she knew she would never dare to ask.
“Justinian was of a more easygoing nature than Con,” Caillin MacRennie said.
“And he paid for it,” Finn said under his breath.
“What? What do you mean?”
Anthea had been riding Bluebell in a tight circle around Marius in one of the far paddocks. She was trying to control the mare with just her knees, giving her brain and the Way a rest, but now she grabbed the reins and pulled up to look at Finn.
He looked at Caillin MacRennie, who gave him an encouraging nod.
“You become the herd stallion by defeating the herd stallion,” he told her.
“In a race, you mean?”
All the riders loved to race. Sometimes they also leaped their horses over low walls or bales of hay, and the winner didn’t have to muck stalls for a week.
“No,” Finn said with obvious reluctance. “In a fight. Con challenged Justinian when he was full grown and Justinian was starting to get old. They fought and Con won.”
“They … fought?”
Bluebell stamped and kicked out with one of her hind legs, feeling Anthea’s disquiet.
“How badly was Justinian hurt?”
She knew what Finn was going to say, but she wanted to hear him say it.
“He died.”
Bluebell lurched forward. Anthea grabbed the reins but let her go. She could sense Marius and Finn just behind her, and Caillin MacRennie on Gaius Julius, but they didn’t try to stop her.
She raced Bluebell across the far pasture, telling the mare to pull up only when they reached the fence where Florian waited patiently. Anthea called him over with a thought and petted his head ferociously, like she would a dog, while she caught her breath.