Ban would rather be looking for Elia. Knowing she’d returned, but not contacted him or Regan, made him burn with eager desperation.
The pub spent most of its time as a middle-sized forge, but once the sun set on certain days, the smith had the front walls taken off their basic hinges and opened it all up. The fires kept everything warm, even tamped down for the night, and the two families who competed for the best brew in the Steps would bring barrels. Everyone was supposed to fetch their own cup to this sometimes-pub, but Ban was instead lent one by Med, the captain of Errigal’s retainers, a rugged, black-bearded fellow who’d spent all day dogging Ban’s heels, critiquing the Aremore method of spearing. It had been good work, and Ban found that when the storm clouds had gathered in the north, darkening the noon sun, he’d wanted to build on the relationship. So though it was only early afternoon, Ban had called halt to the games for the day, and asked the ironsmith to make an exception to his sunset rule. The man agreed—anything for their Fox, he said—and so here some of the haphazard army stood, enjoying an afternoon off at the pub.
The retainers did not treat Ban like a foot soldier, but like a leader. Whether they respected him for himself and his knowledge, or only did so in Rory’s absence, Ban didn’t know. But he wasn’t ready to walk away from it.
It had been a rough few days in Errigal: Regan was inconsolable, her husband curt toward all, and Ban’s father had gone rather quiet, stress apparent in his every movement. Ban had never seen Errigal so tense, so lacking his usual gregarious, sweeping gestures and obnoxious likability. It had to be anxiety over the king, and Rory’s betrayal, but Errigal refused to confide in Ban. Errigal barely brought himself to enjoy the war games, and when he did, he and Connley used Ban as a buffer between them.
This beer was thick as soup, colored like mud, and tasted like home in a way Ban hadn’t realized he’d needed. He remembered sharing its like with Rory some ten years ago, laughing hard enough to choke—but quietly, for they’d invaded the kitchen, poured as many cups as they could carry between them, and snuck sloshing into their father’s study to consume it. Ban also remembered vomiting in the fireplace.
Ban pushed aside the thought of his brother, the memory of bile too familiar. Another letter from Gaela had come, late last evening when only Ban, Connley, and Regan remained at the hearth. Though he’d tried to let them alone with it, the duke had told Ban to stay.
Regan had read her letter quickly, fingers pinching the paper with sudden emotion. “She asks if Kayo has come to us, and speaks of Elia as if she’s heard from the girl!” she said. “What is this? That Elia would write to Gaela and not me? And I the one who…” She whirled to her husband, letter thrust out.
Connley had taken it then and read, lips pursing, one brow lifting. “Your younger sister wishes for Lear in Aremoria? Made a blatant threat of Aremore invasion? Does Gaela write this to drive suspicion between you and Elia?”
“Maybe.” Regan paced away, tapping her long fingers against her skirts as she went. “But Gaela would not toy with mention of an Aremore invasion. Of all things, we are united in that. But yet … no letter for me from Elia. Perhaps it is Elia who would break my bond with Gaela in her favor, or that of her gallant King Morimaros.”
Connley smiled. “I would not have thought the girl had such duplicity in her. If so, perhaps we were too quick to discount her power.”
A sudden thought had spurred Ban to open his mouth to speak, but he hesitated just as Regan glanced at him. He looked down fast to the edge of the rug upon which the lady stood. Her sleek pale gown had dragged some rushes off the stones and onto the braided wool.
“Speak, sir,” Regan said.
He had Elia’s letter for her, still. He could’ve handed it over. He should have. But if he did, how might’ve he explained his lateness in delivering it? Said he’d withheld it at first because Regan had so set him in awe he’d forgotten, or confessed his prior allegiance to Morimaros? The very consideration of such action had shaken him. No, he must not admit to anything. Yet.
Ban had thought furiously as he met her gaze. “Did you not give your letters to Kay Oak to deliver, as I and my father did? And is it not likely Elia used the earl to pass her messages back? Perhaps it is not your sister who spurns you, but your uncle.”
“Ah!” A spark lit Regan’s eyes. “He would favor Gaela, of course, having no love for my lord.”
“If the Oak Earl believes Gaela to be stronger, better for Innis Lear—or rather,” Connley had said darkly, “if he believes Astore to be better, he would undoubtedly seek to tilt favor. And we do know the Oak and I have never been friends. Though he seemed always to dislike me before I even knew his name.”
A fast, thin jolt of something closely related to panic pumped through Ban’s heart then: it had been the battle joy, the thrill of a plan coming together. Though he’d had no plan at all. “Kay Oak has returned from Aremoria,” Ban said. “I saw him when I visited my mother. He wanted me on his side. He said, Together we would make a strong alternative to Connley.”
The duke had grabbed Ban’s arm, hard, the one he’d injured when enacting the drama of Rory’s betrayal. The healing scar ached like a fresh bruise. Connley said, “Why did you not mention this, Fox?”
“I denied him.” Ban had held his treasonous arm rigid, but did not pull free. This near, Connley’s eyes were like verdigris. “I do not wish to sow discord, and also I thought he had no more allies here. I am not a politician, my lord. Just a soldier.”
Regan had stroked her husband’s jaw with her knuckles. “Sir. Harm him not.”
Connley released Ban and tugged his gray-and-black tunic straight. Blood rushed back into Ban’s arm, promising another thick bruise by morning. Regan took her husband’s place, leaning suspiciously close to Ban.
“There is something else, though,” the lady had said silkily as she gripped Ban’s chin, tilting it up so he met her uncompromising gaze. “What did you write to my little sister, Ban the Fox?”
“What?” Connley snapped.
“He said, as I and my father did. You wrote to Elia, Ban. Tell me.”
Lowering his lashes as blood heated his face, Ban had whispered a version of the truth.
“I told her that at least one person on Innis Lear still loved her.”
The duke had snorted, amused.
Hollow and cold, Ban had thought, Is there no one I have yet to betray?
A day later, surrounded now by laughter, gray sunlight, and the conversation of strangers he did not know how to befriend, Ban scowled and drank the last of his beer. Sour with guilt more than alcohol, Ban found the old retainer Med and returned the borrowed cup with his thanks. It was several minutes before he could extricate himself from the praise, and from the retellings already spinning about the morning’s battle games, eager faces adding what legends they’d heard of the Fox’s exploits in Aremoria. The captured underclothes he’d used to humiliate the enemy, the disguises, the vandalized Diotan flag. Ah, saints, how Ban had lived: rushing and surviving by his desperation and skills. Someone began a cheer, “Long be the Fox!”
Drunkenness muddied his thoughts, as Ban felt pulled in too many directions. He’d sworn to Morimaros of Aremoria because that king had respected him enough to ask for his skills, and not command them. Ban loved Elia, but perhaps only a memory of her; he hardly knew her now. But Regan and Connley, they were like him: ambitious and powerful, and they understood the roots and needs of the trees! Connley had tried to open the Errigal navel well yesterday, arguing with Ban’s father that it might make the iron sing freely again.
The duke and his wife would never give up speaking to the trees, as Elia had. When it had mattered most, Elia had chosen her father’s path, taken all her solace from the stars. She’d let Ban go, never fought to stay at his side. Yet, when Ban’s heart ached at seeing the closeness between Connley and Regan, it was Elia he thought of: Elia’s black eyes alight with flitting magic, her solemn whisper, and the sad, broken cry Ban’d he
ard ripped from her throat that night at the standing stones.
What could he still do? For her, or for Regan, or for the poor magic of this island, left to sink into itself while the cutting stars glared down.
Morimaros of Aremoria couldn’t help these Learish roots, either, not the heartblood of this island, no matter how strong was his own land.
And what did it mean that Elia had come home? And now? The island had told Ban, but not anyone else, not even Regan. And worse, since the morning of their intense wormwork, Ban was having an impossible time conversing with the trees, as if all their attentions were elsewhere! Not on him, no; he was never chosen first. Never the most beloved.
Ah, stars, Ban was a mess.
This was why he did not drink. Even the voices of the wind had slurred. Or perhaps it was the susurrus of the coming rain, the air full of mist already.
He should return to the Keep for shelter, where Connley and Regan likely had already nestled, at a hot fire, together. He thought of their bond, their burning passion, and their gestures beckoning him to share. Sweat broke along his spine, and in his drunkenness he imagined going to them and giving them everything they seemed to want, from his body and spirit.
Shame stopped the too-vivid dream. They would likely reject him anyway, if it came down to it. Laugh that he’d taken their flirtations too far. Choose each other always, abandoning him. Everyone did.
Ban lowered his eyes to the uneven lane. Straw and dry grass had done its best to harden the mud into a level path, but he still needed to pay heed to the way. The noise of the public house faded behind him, replaced by villagers eager to shutter their windows and get all the animals inside. Ban cut away from the row of smithies, aiming up the foothill toward the mountain. Here the Steps were mostly short houses of chalk daub, except for the stone star chapel that waited at the edge of the town, at the highest point before the sharp incline and the earl’s road that lead only to the Keep itself.
Ban slowed his footsteps as he approached the chapel. He’d spent hours in this particular chapel as a boy, his only appearances, then, on his father’s lands, at every anniversary of his birth. Errigal would demand his presence, and so Brona would bring him, in order that Errigal could lord over a star-cast for his bastard. The priests knew how to sweeten their patron’s generous nature even further, for every casting complimented the last: Ban Errigal had been born to impress the world from below. The left hand, the power behind power; always the second, the almost-as-good. His castings had been presented counter to Rory’s, the gilded, the legitimate.
What a sorry fool he was, Ban thought, pausing at the long, thin window of the star chapel, that such old insults still affected him so, made him crave approval. Pathetic: he truly was no better than was expected of a bastard.
A movement up the path from the Keep flattened Ban back into the shadowy crook of the chapel door.
Errigal! Ban knew the coarse gait, despite the cowl pulled low over his father’s face. He darted silently around the sharp corner stones and waited while Errigal knocked softly on the wooden chapel door, and it was answered. The earl went inside, and Ban came back around to the long window. Unlike most in the Steps, the chapel was set with glass and so impossible to discern sound through, and all he could see was the blur of fire inside. Frustration made him grit his teeth, wishing to slam the butt of his sword into the glass.
Seething, Ban sought to calm himself with deep breaths. He had been drinking, and it would not do any good to let that get the better of him. The Fox was needed to think it through: Errigal had no reason to come in secret for a star-casting. Everyone knew the earl was as devout as Lear had been. But to pull a cowl over his head as if in hiding, before any rain fell to necessitate such a thing, meant Errigal was up to nothing loyal and good. What a fool, and useless at subterfuge, Ban thought scornfully. If his father had secret business, he ought to stride calmly here and pretend he was only arriving for a casting.
No, Errigal had business here that he feared Connley discovering. Or that he wanted to keep from Ban himself.
Anger shot through him again, and Ban swung around to the entrance. He grabbed the handle and barged inside. The door was lighter than he remembered, and his enthusiasm slammed it back against the inner wall.
Errigal and the star priest shocked apart, but not before Ban saw the paper pass between them, Errigal to priest.
“Ban!” cried his father. “What is this?”
Filling the door with his presence, Ban replied, “What is this, Father? What need have you, the Earl Errigal, for secret meetings with star priests?”
The priest was a young man, hardly older than Ban himself, with a cloud-pale face and glossy black hair caught in a simple tail at his neck. He stared at Ban, firelight reflecting annoyance in his eyes, and brightening the constellation tattoos on his chin and left cheek. “There is no proscribed time for a casting,” the priest said softly.
Ban snorted.
Errigal did, too, exactly the same. He sent his bastard son a long, weary look. “I have letters from Alsax, from Elia, and there is one for you.”
Eagerness pushed through all else, and Ban reached out for it. The priest handed him a tiny square of folded paper.
Do not keep promises by causing more pain. E.
That was the extent of it.
His ears rang and he stared, not understanding.
“Your brother is there,” Errigal said darkly. “The princess writes to me that he fled to her side. And also that she would have her father with her in Aremoria.”
Ban stopped listening for a moment, realizing Elia guessed exactly why and how Rory had found his way to her. Do not keep promises by causing more pain. She rejected his evidence. She preferred to forgive her father than to see the truth.
Ban said, “But Aremoria cannot have both Elia and Lear.”
“Yet we must do something. We must find a way to help our king.”
Maybe it was bile, maybe it was hatred, maybe it was love; Ban swallowed it. He grasped the plain round pommel of his plain sword in one hand, forced the other loose against his thigh. “Help the king? Connley forbade it.”
Errigal waved the priest away and dragged Ban inside, kicking the door shut again. “That is why, don’t you see? Connley forbids me—me, his most loyal retainer—to tend the king? He and his lady will not do it, Gaela Astore will not either, and so I put the king himself to bed in the mud-brick house of my old mistress? That will not abide.”
“Her bed was good enough for you once,” Ban snapped.
His father clapped him on the shoulders. “Don’t be dull, boy. This is no insult to Brona, but to our island, our king himself.”
“He causes insult, Father. To all of us, to the island.”
Errigal growled wordlessly, brow lowered, mouth pressed tight behind his beard.
Ban needed to rein the situation in, control it, before he lost sight of himself. So the Fox put on a stare of disbelief and said, “Connley has been your patron. A good one, too, who recognizes what must be for the good of Innis Lear. And you—what are you doing? What does this priest have to do with it? Will you tell me and let me help you?”
“Ah, boy, I follow the sun of loyalty to my king, and the moon of careful deceit. It is not in you to aid me in that.”
“Not in my stars, you mean? That I cannot follow your same sun and moon?” His play-acting was nearly consumed by the truth of his bitterness.
Errigal hugged him suddenly, hard and rough, with his large arms a vise pinning Ban against him. “You keep yourself clear of this, for I do not know what they may do if I am caught out. If I go, Ban, if I die, you must find your brother—call him from his cousins—and make him come home to take his title, over my dead body as he had professed to want.”
“What?” Ban shoved at Errigal, honestly surprised.
“I know,” the earl said darkly. “It would not be my preference now, but the line must hold. Rory must keep his place, and rule then as Errigal. It’s in hi
s stars, you know, and meant to be as such. We must end this terrible cycle of child against father! This disaster with Lear and his daughters has shown me, Ban. I should have known, and looked past my rage to find forgiveness. In truth, for what comes, Rory is what I would have.”
“Only he.”
As always had been before, Errigal fondly patted Ban’s head, cupped his face. “You’re strong and good, Ban, but not my true line, not the star-ordained right of Errigal. Would that you were, Ban. My son, firstborn by season, if not bed.”
“But Rory wished to murder you,” Ban managed to say, the words grit and sand in his throat. “At the end of it all, after everything you have said, wishing I was your legitimate … You would still rather a patricide and traitor, a murderer, as your heir. You are so resolved to choose other than me.”
“Ah.” Errigal lifted his eyes as if he could see through the roof to the stars. “We are men, Ban. We kill, we send men to kill and be killed. We are all murderers here.”
Ban put his hands to his eyes.
“Do you cry?” his father said, incredulous.
“I am drunk,” he muttered, wishing his father was mad like Lear, not this constant, certain coward, this devotee to rules of destiny. Errigal was such a rotting follower. Ban needed him to be magnificent, like—like Connley and Regan. Like Mars. How could a woman like Brona have ever admired this man?
Errigal laughed his hearty, generous laugh. “Good. I heard such good things of you today on the battlefield, and I am proud to have you back on these lands.”
“Tell me,” Ban choked out. He dragged his hands down his face. “Tell me at least, the contents of that letter. If I am a good son, as you say.”
Nodding, Errigal said, “I had word, too, from Alsax, here. They say Aremoria will set his navy to winter down, but he and Elia have been negotiating over his invasion of this—our!—island. And now the stars, too, say it will happen: the king of Aremoria will come here before the month is out. And also, the prophecies say that we must get Lear to Elia. She will keep him safe; she is all the hope we have left.”