“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 grippedBan’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 heard 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 islandhad 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 hisfather’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.
