He wondered what they looked like above the Northern Plains, without the teeth of mountains biting into them. He used to know, once.
“Blaine?” Honovi asked into the quiet.
He drew in a breath and steadied himself against the inevitable. “I will hear the North Star’s decree.”
And he knew he would obey it, even in the face of Honovi’s quiet despair that radiated off him like starfire.
Five
HONOVI
“Why was I never informed?” Honovi demanded.
He kept his voice level, but anger gave it a depth that rang through the air of his father’s office in the capitol building. The space was decorated with artwork created by Clan Storm artisans as well as tintype photographs of their immediate family. Honovi had spent many a day with his father in this space, learning how to govern. At the moment, the space did not give him the comfort it once had.
Alrickson sat behind a wide desk overflowing with files and paper, a jar of fountain pens in danger of falling off the edge. The connecting door that led to a larger office housing his aides and the telegraph machine there was closed and locked. Honovi couldn’t make out any sound of people working beyond, which made him wonder if his father had sent them away so as to not overhear this private meeting.
His father let out a heavy sigh, and Honovi took a moment to study him. Alrickson’s dark hair was threaded through with copious amounts of gray, the jeweled metal hair adornments he wore far more elaborate than even Honovi’s finest set. The wrinkles bracketing his mouth and eyes appeared deeper than they had even a year ago. Honovi was uncomfortably aware of his father’s age, though it hadn’t slowed him down.
As with the othercinn-chinnidh, Honovi’s father wore a kilt and a long-sleeved button-up shirt, neatly ironed and embroidered on the front. The jacket over that was a deep gray, and the draped plaid that fell over his left shoulder was pinned in place by an eagle brooch. The fall of the fabric would reach the ground when he stood, a length onlycinn-chinnidhwere allowed to have.
“For the same reason none of the otherjarlswere informed. Secrets don’t live long in silence when many people hear them,” Alrickson replied.
Honovi unclenched his jaw with effort. “This concerns my husband, Father.”
“It concerns where he came from, and that was information we could not simply ignore, my son.”
Honovi reached up to touch the torc hanging around his throat. “Blaine is E’ridian. I was there that night when the Dusk Star commanded him to be, remember? As were the otherjarls.”
“His clan status will not change, but my job asceann-cinnidhand your job asjarlis to weigh the requests that come before theComhairle nan Cinnidheanwith respect, an open mind, and keen ears. The winter messenger made clear they had come at the behest of Ashion, not Daijal. The star priest who judged his truth was in agreement. They believed the same of Mainspring.”
“The cogs she brought with her are magicians. She may be as well. What’s to say their magic is different than that of our star priests? Different enough to lie through?”
The two guards who had stood silently behind Mainspring during her argument before theComhairle nan Cinnidheanhad said nothing. Honovi had not missed the empty ties on their belts that would carry a clarion crystal–tipped wand. The focus weapons were banned for outsiders in the chamber, and the astrolabe held a dampening spell that made casting magic with or without a wand difficult.
“Do you doubt the strength of your mother’s belief?” Alrickson asked mildly.
Honovi flushed and shook his head, feeling like a child in that moment and not a man of thirty years. His mother, Isla, was the high priestess of the Star Order in E’ridia, one gifted with tremendous magic—magic which Honovi had not received, though his younger sister had. He’d felt lacking as a child because of its absence in his blood. Perhaps that was why he’d thrown all that he was into piloting airships. Flying was something he could be good at, a skill where magic wasn’t required to succeed.
“No, of course not. But I doubt these Ashionens have our country’s best interests at heart.”
It went unsaid he thought they didn’t have his husband’s best interest at heart.
“TheComhairle nan Cinnidheanagrees. That is why we allowed the winter messenger to return to the Ashion spymaster and send us a representative.”
“The Clockwork Brigade does not have the backing of their government.”
Alrickson nodded in agreement. “Not publicly. It can’t.”
Rebellions were messy, and the one that had risen from the ashes of the Inferno in Ashion was a stubborn thing. Honovi had been privy to theComhairle nan Cinnidhean’s spy reports on the actions the Clockwork Brigade took against the Daijal court over the years. He hadn’t paid much attention to it all, because Ashion wasn’t E’ridia, but he realized perhaps he should have.
“The Daijal court has spent several hundred years attempting to remake their sister country in its image through subterfuge. TheComhairle nan Cinnidheandoes not believe that hunger for power will die after they absorb Ashion,” Alrickson said.
Honovi stared at his father, a coldness settling in his chest. With a sigh, he kicked out the nearest chair so he could sit, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “I doubt they could cross the Eastern Spine to become a threat. The eastern provinces of Ashion are against everything Daijal stands for. I’ve heard that rhetoric enough when we trade with them. The Clockwork Brigade is embedded deep along those borders.”
“Expansion is not off the table.”
“They’d try for Urova first, or Solaria.” Honovi smiled thinly. “I wish them well with attempting to take the southern empire and its Legion.”
