“What—Will you tell me what he’s done? He’s not here—with Elia. Where is he?”
The Fox’s mother sighed. “With Regan certainly, and Gaela, too, most likely. Beyond that, you could say more surely than I what he is responsible for.”
Mars heard the implication there perfectly: the witch meant Mars shouldknow what he himself was responsible for. “I would have him at Elia’s side,” he said. “For that is where I intend to be, if she allows it.”
“How unfortunate it is, King, that we cannot control the path of a storm.”
There were a hundred things Mars could have said to defend Ban Errigal: that he was not chaos, that he had meant so much to Mars, that she should have cared better for her son, if she was so concerned with his behavior now. That the Fox had been determined and wounded, afraid and jealous and desperate for a friend, or a leader, or at least for a decent man to appreciate everything that Ban could offer, which was exactly what the king had been.
In the end, Mars said nothing.
Brona asked, “Do you love my son?”
“That doesn’t matter anymore,” Mars answered, harshly, for he had, indeed, loved the man. Trained him personally, lifted him up, trusted him! Simply enjoyed his thorny company. And missed him when he was gone.
She tilted her head and said, with the first lilt of maternal tenderness he had noted in her: “It matters to me.”
That hurt the king, and he struggled not to show it. Instead he only nodded, and said, “I did. But I can no longer.”
The ocean crashed below them, and the wind rushed past, twisting and tossing up dry grass in tiny whirlwinds. There came a moaning, a sorry cry, and Mars somehow knew it was the voice of Innis Lear.
FIVE YEARS AGO, EASTERN BORDER OF AREMORIA
BANERRIGAL WASalone, and dying.
He gripped the tear in his gambeson, wishing he knew any words to whisper that might stop this gush of hot blood through his fingers. Words to knit flesh together, words to slow his heartbeat, or words at least to dull the pain until he could find a healer. But then, what did it matter if he knelt here to die; none would even notice.
He’d not even been given mail or breast plate, only this foot soldier’s leather armor, buckled cheaply across his chest, and a quilted shirt. Nothing better for the bastard cousin from Innis Lear, foisted upon the Alsax though they’d rather have had his half brother Rory, the legitimate heir. Ban had not been given a choice, either.
A quarter mile behind him the sounds of battle continued: a constant rush of noise like the crashing of ocean waves or autumn winds through the White Forest’s canopy.
This wound had come from a Diotan soldier, bigger than Ban—though everyone was bigger than Ban—who knocked Ban off his feet and tore away his buckler. As Ban had rolled against churned mud, reaching desperately for the small shield, the soldier had kicked him, then stomped down on his shield arm. The pain of a cracking wrist bone was enough to whiten Ban’s vision and give the soldier an opening for a fatal stab.
Only the sudden arrival of another Aremore foot soldier saved Ban’s life. The sword had skewed sideways, catching the quilted edge of Ban’s shirt. It tore through the gambeson and into Ban’s side, instead of his heart.
He’d scrambled away, leaving buckler and his own dropped sword behind, toward the edge of the battle. Ignored or unseen, Ban had made it free of the melee, head pounding and blood hot, with a roar in his ears that drove him to his feet again. Dazed, he’d stood, panting through clenched teeth, and stared at the slope of the battlefield. Aremore soldiers cleaved through the forces from Diota, winning. Cavalry to the southeast, foot soldiers pressing hard, all wearing the bright orange of their young king.
Ban wore it, too, under the leather chest piece. The long gambeson, thinly quilted, was dyed that sunrise orange, now streaked a brilliant scarlet.
He felt strength draining out of him along with the blood, and tucked his broken wrist against his chest.
What am I doing here,he wondered then, hazy from pain and weariness.
He took a step away from the battle, away from Aremoria itself. Pain surged from his sword wound; this would kill him. Hissing with every careful movement, Ban made his way toward…peace,he supposed dully. Shade and quiet.
If this were Innis Lear, the wind would tell him where to go, the trees beckon him with teasing secrets and the promise of help.
Ban walked too slowly. His boots crushed thick summer grass as the sun beat down, hotter than ever it did at home.
He had no home.
Blood soaked through the hip of his pants, sticking the wool to his skin. It trailed along his thigh, until Ban’s entire right side darkened with thick, crusting blood. He was only fifteen years old, but he would die here, and nobody would care.
His mother, perhaps, for a moment might think sadly on Ban’s fate, but then she’d turn her attention again to the people of Hartfare, her other strays and homeless witches, the lost and found of the island to whom Brona devoted herself even before her own son.
His father would cry false tears, wail with the singular passion for which he was known, and tell stories of Ban’s young wildness: stories that always would deteriorate into a reluctant condemnation of his bastard stars.
Rory might miss his brother, but only long enough to play at avenging his death here against Diota.
