“Someone made this place.”
“The earth saints, long ago. They’re grown into the ground now. Indestructible.” Elia sounded defeated, but sure.
“Like a father’s love?” He could not help the mockery.
She broke in half, bending at the waist. “I don’t understand it, Ban. I don’t understand how he let this happen. What did I do?”
Rage cut through him, turning the starlight to sparks and fire.
“Nothing,” Ban whispered. “You did nothing wrong. I will prove it to you, somehow, how easy it is to ruin a father’s heart. To turn them against a beloved child.”
The idea blazed in him: he would show her.
He would use Morimaros’s game to his own advantage. If he could convince Elia, draw her over to his side, the world would be right, for the first time, no matter how terrible the truth might seem. Elia of the Stars and Ban of the Earth, bridging that terrible chasm. “You’ll see, Elia, that it’s not a flaw inyoumaking this happen, but in Lear himself. A flaw your father embedded into the heart of this island. Fear and absolutism. When youunderstand he has no power over you, then you can be home.Iwill make you a home with this proof.”
Elia pulled hard away from him
“Don’t be afraid. Be bold, like you were today.” He slapped his hand on his chest. “All I have is what I was born with, no star promise, and it’s made me bold, won me what little I have. It’s what will push me further, allow me to take what is mine. That is what I want. What doyouwant? What is yours? What is it that makes you bold, Elia? Bold enough to look your father in the eye and be honest?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Find it.”
“Help me.”
“I can’t, Elia. You have to do it yourself. I went to Aremoria and found who I am. And now you could do the same. You aren’t your father or your sisters or your mother. Who are you?”
Elia touched the back of his hand. “Who am I?” she asked softly.
In the language of trees, he said it again:Who are you?
And she replied the first words he’d taught her, twelve years ago:Thank you.
Elia Lear,the island whispered, but she stared at him as if she did not hear its voice at all.
Ban left her at the stone and went to the edge of the cliff. Before him yawned a black, churning chasm of rocky teeth and hungry waves. Eating away at the island. Someday it would eat through enough that the earth where he stood would fall on its own, cleave apart because of that hungry sea. The stone circle would fall, destroyed and invisible to those cold stars.
Part
TWO
FIVE YEARS AGO, EASTERN BORDER OF AREMORIA
THE ONLY THINGthe king of Aremoria disliked about himself was this weakness he had of avoiding the hospital tents for hours or even days after battle.
It was not that he was bothered by injury, violence, or gore; no, he met with plenty such on the battlefield itself. His aversion was, he believed, a weakness of heart, and one he would need to conquer before he could truly lead Aremoria. Mars did not like to see the damage he’d caused to his own men. The permanently scarred or disabled; the dying; the sleepless moans; the cries of specific, prying pain. Their hurt overwhelmed him now as it had not when he was merely a prince and a soldier by their sides, not bearing responsibility for the damage done in the crown’s name. Mars saw the pinched eyes, the twisted mouths, the clenched fingers, the shallow breathing, and the soft pleading for mothers, wives, and children, and he could not keep from imagining those very people—mothers, wives, children, and fathers, too, cousins, friends, grand-folk, who would be immeasurably violated by the loss of a single soldier. Because of him.
Consequences lurked in the hospital tent, hungry and violent.
When Mars lay on his mat to sleep and his mind raged with possibilities, with shifting roads ahead, with history and borders and numbers and supply trains, with political operations and flag signals, all the complex trappings of running a campaign, the king of Aremoria knew how to hold it all in hand. It would build from a collection of pieces, as if each were a star scattered in its shifting—but accurate—place in the sky, and the work of a leader was to draw connections and patterns. The sky was a maze, and he must find, for his people, the way through. Consequences were only myriad pinpricks of light, distant and maneuverable.
And as Mars charged into battle, every soldier, every horse and spear, every shield and boot and arrow, the muddy, churning ground, the rain or blinding sun, the pain and sudden gutting surprises, the glint of swords, the splash of blood, the battle rage singing in his ears—that was whatmattered most. He was a sword himself, a spear of light driving at the fore of his army to slice apart the enemy. Battle was a fork in the branches of the tree of war, and the options Mars saw meant only one thing or the other. Success or retreat, life or death—for himself, for the soldiers, for Aremoria. Consequences were immediate, dreadful, echoing, triumphant.
Then, home in his capital, Lionis, everything was words and plans, elaborate banquets and scheming with friends against enemies, marriages and lines of succession and blood knotting into ropes of generational manipulation. It was family and keeping them safe. Consequences linked together and spread out in spokes through cities, towns, farms, like a living system of royal roads. Mars could see the turns and breaks, the bridges that needed repair or would need it soon. His mission then became balance: strength and nurturing, losses and gains.
In most every aspect of his life, consequences were a map that Mars could manipulate. He could change things, make choices to improve the outcome, reach for the good, better, best results. There was always hope: Aremoria will be better for this step I take, for this word I pronounce, for this path I lead us down.
But in the hospital tent, Mars could affect nothing.
