Taran, you said you’d end this. Why isn’t it over yet?
My question made the queen wince. She was barely into middle age when we met, but the murder of her daughter and three years of war had put streaks of white into her plaited dark hair and deep purple shadows beneath her eyes.
“If any of your people are young enough to still need taking care of, they’re young enough to take up a new trade. They don’t need temples to farm or smith or—can’t they just pick up apprenticeships like anyone else? And you…you know I want the best for you, Iona.”
She paused, pursing her lips in thought, then scanned the crowd of nobles seated at the long plank tables. Her eyes finally came to rest on her cousin, Lord Fentos. Unlike most of the court, he wasn’t paying attention to my conversation with the queen, instead looking disconsolately into his goblet of wine.
“Fentos! You were saying last week that one of us would have to remarry soon.”
Her statement made little sense to me, but the crowd got there before I did. They fell quiet as their interest was seized; I didn’t realize I was the target until I saw Hiwa abortively reach out for me.
Why were we talking about royal marriages? I was just here to ask for enough money to take the surviving acolytes somewhere quiet and out of the way.
I wheezed in helpless panic when I understood.
Lord Fentos suppressed a scowl and craned his neck to look me over at the queen’s invitation. Even though his appraisal was more commercial than lascivious—a horse he wasn’t certain he wanted to buy, not a woman he wasn’t certain he wanted to sleep with—I inhaled with instinctive rejection as his eyes traveled across my unimpressive figure to linger on my straight waist and narrow hips.
I clutched Taran’s ring and twisted it on my finger like it might offer me some protection, but a drunken sot to Fentos’s right took it upon himself to play matchmaker.
“You could do worse for a bride. The hair’s a matter of taste, but she sings, you know—wouldn’t that be nice to hear in your house? And her family was probably peasant trash, but Wesha’s temple would’ve educated her, so your children won’t bark like dogs.”
Fentos rolled his eyes, but he didn’t disagree with this assessment of my marriageability.
“How about it, Iona? I’d give you the dowry I planned for Elantia,” the queen said grandly, and I should have been overcome with gratitude to be treated like a daughter of the royal house, but instead I made a sound like someone had struck me in the stomach. Nobody seemed to notice that I had started shaking.
How did I stop this? What were the words I could say that would not insult the queen but appropriately convey that I would sooner jump off the highest cliff in the land than marry her cousin? Marry anyone at all? I couldn’t make my mind work, and it only got worse.
“Are you still a maiden, maiden-priest? You never took your vows, did you?” Fentos reluctantly asked, and he made an effort to be quiet with his inquiry, but I still flushed hot and crimson, feeling naked despite wearing more clothing than any other woman in the room.
“Fentos! That question at your age, and you a widower,” the queen responded for me, with the prim outrage I couldn’t muster over the horror of the entire situation. “You remember Taran ab Genna. They were practically married. I’m sure she’s as virtuous as any maiden-priest, but you can’t expect—”
“And Idon’texpect otherwise, but weren’t they betrothed almost two years? With no child? If you’re not going to remarry, I need to be sure of an heir.”
“I suppose you’re right,” the queen said after considering it. They both examined me as though my heir-producing potential might be visible through the layers of Wesha’s white wool vestments. “What do you think, Iona?”
I wanted to say the most vicious curses I knew. Instead, I made the mistake of turning to Hiwa for help, but her face was all cautious hope rather than anger on my behalf.
My brain wasn’t so addled that I couldn’t follow her thoughts—she’d been watching me night and day for five months so that I wouldn’t do something terrible to myself, all the time worried we’d starve when the queen’s generosity ran out, and if I married into the royal family, both problems would be solved.
She probably didn’t even think it was a bad match—Fentos might have two decades on me, but he wasn’t hideous, and I’d never heard that his first wife had had any complaints.
Wesha married a worse man to bring peace to the world. That had to be why Hiwa thought I would do it. I’d never hesitated to make a single sacrifice for my people, and Hiwa had seen me ready to die for them that day on the beach. I could marry Fentos and atleast provide for my friends, have children, perhaps influence the path of my country if he did inherit the throne someday. It made sense.
Taran was dead, after all, and there was still work that I was required to do.
No. No.
I was going to be sick. I was going to be sick all over myself in front of all these people.
With my focus expended on containing the wave of nausea that threatened to turn out my stomach at the image of Fentos standing in Taran’s place at a betrothal ceremony, I lost track of my breathing, and a loud sob rattled up through my throat. I gasped for air, and another sob sealed my throat shut.
Someone snickered and was loudly shushed, leaving the ragged noises coming out of my chest as the only sounds in the room. A few people here would remember the day that I staggered into the old palace in Ereban to tell the queen that Death had butchered her only child on his altar. I heard the queen had come to Taran’s funeral too, but I’d been even less coherent then and hadn’t noticed.
For the first time, a flicker of uncertainty crossed her face. A little recognition of our overlapping mourning.
“Your Taran was a fine young man, Iona, but you weren’t even married yet, and—”
I didn’t stay to hear the end of that sentence. I ran. My bad foot twisted under me before I could run ten steps, and my hip caught painfully against the table I lurched into, sending wine tumbling into the laps of two minor officials. I couldn’t manage an apology, just fled faster, tears blurring my vision.
