The Queens of Innis Lear

  “What happened to him? Will he be all right?”

  “If he comes back safely, yes, perhaps. Or perhaps he will be blind.”

  “Blind!”

  “Everything I can do, I have done.” Brona met her gaze with such force of certainty, Elia let her eyes drift closed. For tonight, that was true of herself, as well. Everything I can do, I have done. But when the sun rose again, so much would rise with it.

  “Your mother lives two cottages south of this one,” Brona said to Aefa.

  Elia said, “Go, see your mother, Aefa.”

  With a frustrated little press of her lips, Aefa nodded and dove back into the rain.

  “Tell me how my father is, or was,” Elia asked, as Brona sat her down beside the fire and began pulling off her hood and coat with quick, efficient movements.

  “Lear is lost in himself, and in the stars inside his head, much worse now than at this time last year, or even from the start of summer,” Brona said, after she’d stripped Elia of the wettest outer layers, and poured hot water into mugs for them both. Elia huddled in a blanket at the ancient wooden table while Brona pressed dry her hair and picked out the worst tangles.

  “My sisters,” Elia whispered. “They set him out into this.”

  “Your sisters…” Brona’s hands paused, but the words continued. “Lear was on this path before Gaela or Regan did anything. It began long ago.”

  “Their choices did not help,” Elia said stubbornly, gripping her clay mug, seeking the warmth as if she could draw it through her palms and into her heart.

  “No, they did not help. They let anger and hurt drive them.”

  “They should be better, if they would be queens.”

  Behind her, Brona sighed. The scrape of the pick was gentle on Elia’s scalp. “No, neither should wear the crown.”

  Elia turned in the sturdy old chair. “Why do you say so?”

  Firelight found all the warmth in Brona’s lovely face. In her hand she held the horn pick, and the loop of small amber beads unwound and free of Elia’s braids for the first time in days. Brona stared rather bleakly at the fire and said, “Gaela abandoned both stars and roots, and believes in no authority but her own. And Regan is afraid of her own power, as she is lost to her own heart, too consumed by the magic of the island. Both will lead to no better ruling than your father’s obsession with stars, without balance.”

  So the wind and trees believed, too. Elia sighed. “Gaela won’t be swayed by this reasoning—she’ll say Aremoria has no rootwater, no prophecies, and still is strong, does well enough to win every battle they’ve had, these last few decades. And she’s right.”

  “Aremoria is not Innis Lear.”

  “I know, very well, what Aremoria is,” Elia said irritably. “But then Gaela will also say she believes in Regan’s power, enough for us all, that they make their own balance together, enough to lead those who would wish the stars to bear true and those who long for the roots.”

  “Gaela is incapable of balance!” Brona cried, flinging the horn pick to the ground with such force it snapped. The witch gasped for breath as Elia gaped at her, never having seen the woman so out of sorts. Then Brona put her fists hard against her hips. “I am sorry. I shouldn’t—Kayo. It was Gaela who hurt him, Princess Elia. Your sister lashed out when he only tried to protect your father, and … he may go blind for it.”

  Elia’s shock was drowned by the storm’s sudden gust; it tore and crashed into the shuttered windows and rattled the front door. They were out in that maelstrom: her father and uncle. Aefa’s father. She set her mug on the hearth and went to Brona, taking the witch’s cold hands. “Everything we can do, we have done,” she whispered.

  Brona looked steadily at Elia, coming back to herself. Her cheeks were flushed. “There is more reason you should be queen instead.”

  “Oh, Brona,” Elia murmured. She did not want to hear, not now.

  “Neither of your sisters can bear children.”

  “Are you certain? How can you know?”

  “Gaela, ever drastic, chose to make herself, and ensured nothing could be planted within her. While Regan never was given the choice. This is not star prophecy or wormwork, but simply the truth.”

  “Oh, poor Regan,” Elia whispered to herself. Even so many years ago, when Elia had been a brand-new woman, Regan had made clear her desire to be a mother, and her awe at the processes.

  Brona went to the door and pressed her hand against it as if to bear up the house with her strength of will. She whispered something Elia could not quite hear but she thought was a prayer to the island.

  The storm battered the house, raging, then for a moment quieted itself. In the gentler melody of rain alone, Brona turned around. “Their truth leaves one option only. You, Elia, must be the queen, or Dalat’s legacy, and the dynasty of Lear, will end. For your mother—for her line, for her hopes—you must.”

  “It’s not a good enough reason alone,” Elia whispered. “That I might have a fertile womb! It reduces me to only that, and I dislike it.”

  “It is important to consolidate power this way.”

  “In the eyes of men!”

  Brona lifted her eyebrows.

  Disgruntled, Elia grimaced. “I would like to … be a mother. One day. But not to rely on it, for the sake of a country more than even my own. And we can’t be certain I can conceive, because I’ve never tried. Maybe all three of us are cursed. Maybe this is the end of the kingdom of Lear, and the island will become something new. Maybe we never did belong here after all.”

  “Is that what you truly believe, that you and your sisters are not part of us? That Dalat did not make her heart into another root of Innis Lear?”

  Elia stopped breathing. She stared at the blank tension in Brona’s expression, feeling as though she were slowly tipping over an edge into some great writhing vortex of emotions. It would be so easy to give over to it, now.

  Then she gasped and was solid again. “No,” Elia said quiet, but firm. “I know we are of Innis Lear; this island was hers, and ours. It whispers in all our dreams. It is just so hard. Why is it so hard?”

  “People make it so.” Brona came to her and knelt upon the packed earth, touching both hands to Elia’s knees. “I will help you. I loved your mother.”

  “As she loved you,” Elia said, though it was merely a guess. “And my family … We are Innis Lear, and maybe healing our own divisions, the wounds in our past, can heal this island, too.” Elia paused, ordering her thoughts. “I want … I want the island to be strong, the people to be safe and secure. I want a king or queen who loves our home and can protect it.”

  “It should be you, Elia.”

  The storm blew, hissing and screaming against the cottage. Elia could not hear words in the fury, but her breath shook out, full with fear. She touched Brona’s hands. Elia could not agree, not yet. She did not know how to speak it; she did not know how to open her heart to so much vulnerability, when she had only just now relearned to open it at all.

  REGAN

  THUNDER CRASHED OVER the towers of Errigal Keep.

  Regan Lear seethed, her hands in fists, leaning forward as she stared at the once-Earl Errigal—this stamping bull of a man, her father’s greatest support—flushed and red-splotched under his beard.

  “Bring me my sword!” Errigal roared, loud enough to follow lightning.

  Connley’s breath was even, and Regan struggled to match his ease, despite the pulse of her heart under her jaw, the throbbing in her palms and temples. How dare this false, braying earl undercut them! How dare he turn to Elia! And Aremoria!

  Her perfect nails cut into her palms with all their sharpness.

  Ban the Fox had left, charged into the storm, and Regan wished to join him, to run and spin madly, to scream her rage with the wind and trees, and then harness all that power to her will. Take Connley and Ban both, put herself between them and the sky and the earth, dig and cut into herself, until Regan had her new life, or until she was dead.


  But first, they would deal with this traitor.

  A side door crashed open and a retainer burst in, gasping for orders from the raging Errigal. He skidded to a halt, looking between duke and earl.

  “This man has proven a snake in the breast of Innis Lear,” Connley said, holding his sword low. “Bring him a weapon to defend himself.”

  “Do it!” Regan snapped.

  The retainer hesitated, and behind him others of the household slipped in, drawn to the growing commotion.

  “Yours will do,” Errigal said, holding a large hand to the retainer. As the sword was given over, the earl added, “I am no traitor, though a fool.”

  Connley pressed his lovely, hard lips together. “A traitor to me, who has always sought your support and friendship.”

  “Your wife betrayed her father, my king, long before I thought to act against you,” Errigal said. “We have all first been betrayed by the stars themselves!”

  “While my father betrayed the island beneath their blind eyes,” Regan spat.

  “And yet you wonder why you can’t bear a child? It is punishment for all your conflict and undaughterly ambition. I’ve seen your star sign, I was present for your birth—”

  Connley leapt forward, attacking with smooth grace. Regan gasped at the beauty of it, and gasped again at the clash of their swords.

  Errigal used his greater weight, leveraging it to shove the duke back, but her husband was faster, younger, and he bounced free, turning hard with a new attack that the earl barely blocked.

  Each steel strike rang in Regan’s bones, vibrating with its own frenzied song. All around the hall men and women of the Keep had gathered, clutching one another and watching, too. The storm blew, and Regan whispered “Destroy him”; in reply the freezing wet wind shrieked in through the open great doors, slamming them back. It rushed at Errigal, spinning around him to disorient. He cried out, and Connley smiled viciously.

  “This is no fair fight!” called out a rough voice. Curan the iron wizard, with his wife Sella holding his huge muscled arm in a vice grip. Curan’s mouth moved again, with a hissing command, and the fire in the hearth flared.

  Regan pointed at him. “I will flay your skin from your bones if you aid this traitor.” The wind whipped away from Errigal, pulling his hair, and blasted Curan. The ironsmith stood like a wall and whispered something so that the wind fluttered and skirted softly around him.

  Lightning struck and, two paces behind, thunder roared.

  The duke and the old earl panted in the wake of the storm’s anger, then the earl growled and renewed his attack. They battled hard, all striking steel and grunts. Errigal caught Connley’s sword with his hilt, twisted, and hit Connley in the face. Connley fell to one knee, but turned, upright again even as Regan cried out, carving space with a good, desperate swing of the sword.

  A pause as the two men faced each other again.

  Regan said, “You would have done better to be ours, as your less loved son, Ban the Fox, has been. He will inherit this Keep, and be honored by us, by the queen myself and the king my sister. But swear yourself to me now, Errigal, and we will show you mercy.”

  “Mercy like you gave your father?” the old earl snarled. “You’re an ungrateful, dry bitch, just as he said, all the better to have not been allowed to breed!”

  Regan screamed, throwing herself forward, just as Connley drove his sword through Errigal’s lower chest.

  The earl flung his weapon wildly, slamming the flat of the blade against Connley’s ribs. Connley fell to one knee and let go of his sword, which stuck in Errigal’s chest: blood poured from the wound and spattered Errigal’s chin as he stumbled back.

  Regan rushed to the old earl, commanding another gust of cold wind to keep any retainers far back. The earl hit the wooden floor with a massive thud, and Regan leapt upon him, straddling his waist. Her skirts ballooned around them, and she leaned forward to grasp the hilt of the sword. She twisted it. The earl choked on a scream: it sounded exactly like the shriek of the ghost owl. Regan released the sword. Crawling up his body, she put her hands on the earl’s face, hardly breathing—or perhaps breathing too hard, nearly out of her body. She curled her fingers. Sharp nails cut into the soft skin under Errigal’s eyes. Regan said, “I should take these, old man, and prove how sightless you are, how useless and stupid, how extreme a fool.”

  The earl’s handsome eyes brightened with tears before they spilled from the corners, and Regan, too, was crying suddenly, thinking of her father and this weak man’s complicity in her persecution, and thinking of that lovely heart-faced owl she’d killed for nothing. With a scream, she tore her fingers down Errigal’s face, scouring his cheeks.

  Errigal twitched and his shoulders shrugged, caught in a jerky death dance.

  “Go to those cold stars,” Regan whispered. “Wait you there for my father!”

  He died with her crouched over him like a spirit of vengeance.

  Regan slid off, awkward suddenly and empty inside. The earl’s blind eyes stared up at the ceiling, and Regan looked where they would have: nothing but air and limewash and the dark wooden beams. She shook with weeping.

  “Lady!” cried Sella Ironwife.

  The iron wizard and his wife knelt at Connley’s side: the duke bent over his own knee, hands on his ribs. He coughed, his face contorting in pain. Blood spots flecked his lips.

  Regan ran to him. “Connley!”

  Curan carefully supported her husband, lowering him to the ground, then tore the duke’s tunic and pulled up the bloody linen shirt. Connley’s entire right side was billowing black and vibrant red with a massive bruise; a bloody gash stretched over at least the bottom two of his ribs, broken open from the weight of Errigal’s sword. When Connley breathed, the shape of his ribs was not right.

  Terror froze Regan, a cold panic that blinded her and stole her breath. “Connley,” she whispered.

  “Regan,” her husband said, bloody and harsh. His left hand reached for her, and she grasped it with both of hers, dragging herself nearer to his heart.

  “Bind him,” she ordered. “Bind it well and—and ready a wagon, now.” A flash of insight hung in her imagination: Connley submerged in rootwater, at the oak altar in the heart of Connley Castle. Sleeping, calm, healing.

  Kissing his knuckles, she whispered, The island and I will make you well again, beloved, in the language of trees. Outside, the storm howled its disagreement.

  ELEVEN YEARS AGO, DONDUBHAN CASTLE

  BEFORE HE WAS Connley, he was Tear, son of Berra Connley and Devon Glennadoer. He’d been born when his parents were old, both of them in their fifth decade, because his mother, Berra, had been previously determined to marry the king of Innis Lear. She’d been wed to Lear’s middle brother, without issue, and thus widowed when the man died. In desperate hope she put off all other suitors, even after Lear had married Dalat of Taria Queen, and for the four years after, while they failed produce an heir, and thereby legitimize the crown of the foreign usurper.

  But Gaela had been born, and all the island knew the prophecy was real: Dalat was fated to be their queen for at least sixteen more years.

  Berra had raged for three full months, then married the second son of the Earl Glennadoer and, after some struggle, got herself with child.

  Tear was born eight months after Regan Lear. He did not meet her until the year memorial for her mother’s death.

  The great hall of the Lear’s winter castle at Dondubhan was built of cold gray stone that vaulted higher overhead than any room Tear had been inside before. He could not help but be aware that to preside over this fortress had been his mother’s lifelong goal. Massive hearths burned at either end, and a long stone channel ran down the center length, filled with hot coals. Servants replaced them regularly, scattering small chunks of incense that melted and released spice into the air. Candles dangled from chains along the walls and off the arched ceiling, though the highest were not lit. Berra told her son as they entered that the king had
forbidden their lighting—because despite how the high candle flames would imitate stars hovering over their feast, lighting them required magic. And there was to be no more of that in the king’s house.

  She’d said it with no expression, but Tear knew his mother well enough to recognize the disquiet in her blue-green eyes.

  At fourteen, Tear Connley was tall and slightly awkward, having not yet grown into his height. But none who looked upon him would doubt the regal lines of his jaw and cheeks and brow, nor the strength of his family nose. He was colored exactly as his mother: straight blond hair that tended toward red-gold, lovely blue-green eyes, and unblemished skin as smooth and light as cream. His lips were pink and sometimes the tips of his cheeks, too. If he smiled, he would be beautiful. But Tear rarely did.

  He looked like a prince, which was why two people in this hall had already asked him if he was the young Aremore heir who had been sent by his father for the memorial. Tear tilted his chin down, both times, and said only, “No,” slanting his gaze toward where the real prince sat, resplendent in orange and white like a summer’s day, with only a finely embroidered strip of pale gray silk tied to his arm.

  Abandoned by his mother, so she could more freely gossip and plot with her array of Connley cousins, Tear leaned his shoulder against the corner of a stone pillar, softened by time and darkened from hundreds of hands. He’d pulled his bloodred coat on to cover the mourning gray wool that he’d worn out on to the Star Field for the procession at dusk. Tear was beginning to be aware that the bolder color made him shine, instead of drawing him wan as it did his darker father. His mother approved, having raised him to use every weapon in his arsenal.

  The great hall was crushed with people, most blending together in their mourning shades of white and gray, though some still wore jewels and silver that sparkled, in hair and at wrists or waists. Tear played a game with himself, trying to name every faction, and invent some plot for them to discuss. His own young cousins were mostly girls, and so they did not desire to spend time with him, given that he did not flirt or pretend to protect them. The boys were all ten years Tear’s elder, thanks to his parents’ long wait for children. Those boys had little interest in his cold quiet and used to call him his mother’s daughter when they were younger and stupid enough to forget he would be their duke. Though Tear had hardly minded. They would be his allies when the time came, because he knew everything they wanted, and he would be in position to grant it, or not. And because he was, in many ways, his mother’s daughter. She taught him very, very well, and he learned, adeptly and eagerly.