Ban nodded.
“Come on,” Errigal said, clapping both their shoulders again. “I want a word with Bracoch, to see the lay of alliance and whether he’ll stand with Connley.”
The Oak Earl nodded, but because Ban had been looking, he saw dislike move swiftly through Kayo’s eyes. Interesting.
“You clean yourself up and join us, my boy,” his father ordered Ban. “We’ve rooms up there, can’t miss the Errigal banner. Be at dinner in the hall, too, if you want to see the princess before she’s a wife. This one,” he said to Kayo, “used to trail behind Elia, all devotion and round eyes. Now I remember it, the king even called him her dog—a tamer sort of fox he used to be, I guess!” Errigal laughed at his own joke.
“Not tame anymore, Father,” Ban said.
“Ha! So like your mother! Stars, I miss her.”
It was on his tongue to remind his father that his mother was easily found, but curse him if Ban would aim Errigal back in her direction.
“Farewell for now, Ban the Fox,” Kayo said gently, as if he knew the storm brewing inside Ban’s chest.
Clenching his fist, Ban closed his eyes and withdrew. It was appalling how easily his father set his teeth on edge, made him want to scrub his face and strip the black from his hair, be as gold-speckled as Rory. But it wouldn’thave mattered: the king, and therefore Errigal, cared only for birth stars and the orders of privilege that came with title and marriage. Ban could have been more handsome and sandy and gilded than Rory, and they would still have scorned him. One truth Ban had always understood about his father: Errigal swung to the winning side, or the loudest side, or the mostpassionateside, but he was rarely static. As a child Ban had struggled to follow him, to stand next to him, and win some approval. It took years in Aremoria to realize he and his father stood opposite each other across a dark and vicious chasm called legitimacy, and nothing would bridge the gap.
A figure half the yard away caught his attention.
It was her.
Elia Lear, slipping quietly along the inside of the curtain wall, toward the royal tower. She wore the dull regalia of a star priest, gray skirts snapping around her ankles, and worn boots caked with mud. She kept her chin tucked down and her hood held low, as if avoiding attention, but a warm band tightened around his chest. It washer.
She was small, though she had to be twenty, as Ban was. As he stared, her hood slipped back in a gust of wind and her hair fell free in spiral curls, dark brown and copper, shining as if spun from the very metal itself. She gathered it in her hand and tugged the hood back up. Even from this distance her eyes were wide, bright, and black as polished horn beads.
He knew he stood like a dullard, or like useless statuary, and when she did glance his way, her eyes passed over him on their way to the tower. No more than he expected, for though she had grown only more lovely, Ban knew he was harder and sharper than the mischievous slip of a child he’d been. She’d never seen him with a sword before, or with his hair so short and greased, spiked with a few tiny braids. Why would she remember Errigal’s bastard at all, or if she did, give him a second glance?
This sulking was not why he was here.
Ban gritted his teeth and turned away.
ELIA
IT WAS EASYfor the youngest princess to make her quick way beneath the arching iron gate of the outer wall and across the muddy inner ward, full of people going about their day. Head ducked to hide her face and hair beneath the undyed gray wool of her cloak, and otherwise unremarkable in the drab dress of a star priest, she ignored the new construction on the north wall and avoided the maids and retainers she knew, so as not to be stopped. It was overcrowded, and smelled it, for the high keep walls blocked most fresh air from the ocean, and the number of people was nearly double that of the Summer Seat’s usual residents, thanks to the kings of Aremoria and Burgun.
She’d seen their banners from the high coast road as she and Aefa and a trio of soldiers from Dondubhan approached. Dreading meeting any other king before she’d reconnected with her father, Elia had abandoned Aefa and the soldiers to sneak alone into the keep, safely incognito in her priest robes. The retainers she could not avoid at the gate nodded solemnly when she bade them keep her secret.
The narrow passages of the inner keep had been built of rough black rock generations ago, tight for security and lacking windows but for regular arrow slits. Golden hay covered the stone floor of the family hall, rather more dusty than usual. Elia climbed the curling staircase up the first tower, hood falling entirely off her curls. She passed retainers lounging lazily in a guard hole, sharing a meat pie between them; one even had a smear of gravy marring the star on his blue tabard. They sprung to attention at her judgmental glance, muttering fast apologies, but Elia did not stay to chide them or make them glad it was not her sisters who’d caught them relaxing. The corridor near her father’s chamber widened, and a sharp ocean breeze pushed through the arched windows cut wide enough for a face to peer out.Several dogs piled in a corner, stinking of mud and meat. They wagged their tails at her as she passed.
Wishing she’d paid more heed to the state of the keep as she snuck in, Elia frowned. Her father had kept a clean home all Elia’s life. Smelly dogs had been roped in the kennels, near the goat pens, and retainers ate in the retainers’ hall on the eastern edge of the yard. She resisted the temptation to veer off into the guest tower or the great hall to make certain they were still presentable for the visiting kings. Or presentable at all! Her own people deserved a Summer Seat well-tended and bright.
Worry dragged her heels and she scuffed the thin soles of her boots on the stone floor, shoving aside seeds and dirt. Ahead, at her father’s chambers, two more retainers stood, these at least upright, beards braided and belts polished. She approached with her chin up, recognizing one, but not the other. “Seban, is my father fit for me?”
“He is, Lady Elia,” the older retainer said, though some sadness put hesitation in his answer. “Preparing for his next audience, but I’m sure you’ll be more welcome yet.”
Instead of questioning him further, she pushed straight through the door and into the chamber.
Incense sharp and thick greeted her, a familiar sticky scent from the star towers, much too cloudy here. Waving a hand before her face, Elia peered around at the trappings of her father’s anteroom: the hearth burned hot, and incense spirals created the smoke that filled the air, not enough of it fleeing up the chimney. Rugs sprawled over the floor, piled in thick layers. Pillows were strewn about, along with charcoal sticks and flapping star charts. Elia picked a path through them to the arch that led into Lear’s bedroom.
The king of Innis Lear stood before a tall window where the incense cleared, as a maid restitched the cuff on his outstretched arm. His dark blue robe fell from bony shoulders, a heavy hem of velvet and black fur holding the folds in place. Lear murmured to himself, a recitation of star signs in the shape of a child’s poem he’d taught Elia ages ago. The princess mouthed the words with him, not interrupting lest she startle the maid with her needle, or ruin Lear’s patience to let the girl finish her repairs.
This room was less familiar to Elia, though she knew the high oak bed had been there, just so since her mother lived, near the line of three tall, narrow windows overlooking the sheer cliff drop and crashing ocean to the north. A good view for the first evening stars; Lear always preferred to stand there watching and waiting for them, alone, after the queen had died. The rugs here were vibrant teals and blues and oranges, evenone impossibly rich black, from the Third Kingdom; the dyes had been imported at great expense for the queen’s pleasure, and though most of the rugs were threadbare now, Lear refused new ones. Only the wall tapestries were woven in styles of Innis Lear, with star-spotted trees and rampant swans. Lear’s desk pushed unused against the far stone wall, covered in letters and ink pots. There the curtained door led to his private privy down three stairs, hanging over the cliffs.
“Are you nearly finished?” The king broke halfway through a verse of his poem, testy and wrinkling his long nose.
“Yes, sir,” the girl replied, tying off her thread as quickly as her fingers could manage.
Elia smiled and stepped farther in, inviting her father’s irritated “What now?” and the sewing girl’s obvious relief.
