Let this be a comfort, an assurance to you, dear lady. We love our poor King Lear greatly, and know in time he will forgive whatever faulthe has seen in you and bring you home. Until then, consider our cousins in Aremoria to be as your own. Their name is Alsax. My son Errigal, who you have known as Rory, would speak for them I am sure, as he fostered there with them for three years. Our other, less spoken of, son, whom you also know, was with them longer. He carries a reputation there himself, as the Fox.
Good lady, look to the heavens. Surely the answer to all our terrible times must hang there. As the stars and dread moon have given life to misfortune this season, so shall they bear the means of our triumph.
Earl Errigal
***
My daughter Aefa,
I know you will share this with your lady, she who is intimate with all your thoughts, though perhaps not prepared for what I would prefer not to speak of. As such, I keep my words brief, though already this introduction has drawn out what might’ve been the truth of brevity into a surplus of concision. So.
I am well.
The king, less so.
I fear he suffers for his unwise decisions to send away both his brother and his daughter. His faith in his stars is shaken, bent, and I cannot tell if breaking it will also break him, or, like bursting a boil, relieve us all. He waits for providence to save him, as he ever has, but he speaks more of Dalat. Both speaks of her, and speaks to her, apologies and regrets, though I cannot discover the core of them. Tell your lady—hello, darling child—he loves her still, and it is a wound in himself he sought to heal when he made all his daughters choose, not a wound in her. He believed in two things: stars and Elia, and to his foolish mind both seemed to turn against him in unison, while the two more like to join in opposition to his will stood hand in hand with smiles in their hearts.
We go tomorrow to Astora, but I know not how long it will last. The eldest daughter of Lear is strong in everything but patience, and Lear As He Is would try even the patience of the sun. I fear soon the king will drive himself away from Astore to Connley, where you know as well as I his welcome will not be assured. But he is not in true danger immediately, from anything but his own stricken madness.
Daughter, I would have you home, but I more would have you wise, and wisdom should keep you in the rich bosom of secure Aremoria. One day soon I will riddle the king into rightness, or he will see a star sign that allows him to pretend I did no such thing, and we will be together again all.
Your father
ELIA
ELIA LEANED INTOthe corner crenellation of Morimaros’s westernmost tower, letting it dig into her stomach painfully.
Sheer clouds slipped over the sky, like dawn lifting a cowl to shutter the stars before they vanished entirely. She stared out from her isolated perch, searching into the last curve of nighttime. It was still dark to the west, over unseen, distant Innis Lear. Stars twinkled, drops of ice on smoky glass; the Salmon nosing over the horizon, the Net of Fate beside it, stretching out toward Calpurlugh, the Child Star. Her star.
Her tutor Danna would always say messages that came with the Salmon needed fast response. Then there would be variations to the prediction specific to the day of the season, measured on distance to the equinox, the exact angle at the starbreak over the horizon; all kinds of details she could not calculate without paper and charcoal, without digging into a sheaf of schedules and seasonal records. If she asked, all such would be provided. For Morimaros’s mother, Calepia, and his sister, Ianta, were determined to give her anything to make her smile. But Elia would not ask: she refused to live her life this way anymore, governed by star sign.
Yet she woke every morning and could not help searching the sky for only those most obvious of signs: star streaks or vanished stars or the rings around the moon.
There! A star shot just past the Salmon’s nose and vanished. As did the final twinkle of Calpurlugh.
A tiny cry escaped Elia, and she bent fully over the crenellation, pressing her cheek to the cold limestone. What was she to do with her days? These terrible aching storms gathered in her stomach all night long. Releasing them out into the dawn was the only way to function, to politely eat her breakfast, to join the Elder Queen and princess for hot chocolate and study in the airy Queen’s Library. The only way to face all the Aremore lords andladies, the bakers, soldiers, maids, all of the cheerful court who believed she would marry their king, yet judged her lacking.
At her feet, Aefa shifted and murmured. Elia held her breath, not wishing to wake the girl. Nearly every morning Aefa dragged herself up to this tower, too, without much complaint, and waited in sleep or silence while Elia mourned. After the first time, Aefa brought the feather quilt from Elia’s fine, spacious bed, and—damp stones be damned—made herself a nest. The other maids and even the few guards who passed or noticed were appalled enough that Elia could see it on their otherwise well-trained faces. Things were more formal in Aremoria, with layers of etiquette and a carefully established hierarchy of service, lordship, royalty, and the delicate dance between. The courtiers overlooked Elia’s Learish manners, but with a raised brow or shared glance; Elia was a foreigner. And although they were more used to dark-skinned people from the Third Kingdom here than on Innis Lear, somehow, that made it worse.
She wanted to go home.
Pressing her cheek harder to the stone, Elia imagined being able to leech the castle rock up and into her body, fashion it into armor, into a beetle’s iridescent carapace or better: a chrysalis in which to take refuge until she was transformed. Take strength from that, not those unfeeling stars and their shattering prophecies. Make herself a shell of Aremore stone, a shield to protect her heart, still rooted beneath Innis Lear.
“Lady Elia,” said a low voice from just around the curve of the tower.
Though she startled hard enough to knock her nose to the stone, Elia managed not to whirl about. She did nudge Aefa too roughly as she rose and turned more slowly to face the king’s Soldier in Charge of Royal Security.
La Far was the saddest-seeming man she’d ever seen, and Elia had thought it before she’d even spoken with him. She suspected he was not truly sad, that it was only the way his eyebrows drooped to either side and the perpetual searching frown on his scarred, peachy face. The king’s age, La Far had risen through the military ranks beside Morimaros, and had recently taken over the palace guard. He slipped in and out of class hierarchies, coarse and warriorlike in his scoured orange leather armor, or elegant in the velvet jacket of low Gallian nobility, his rich accent capping off the trick. Aefa idolized him for this smooth facility—for that, and for his very clear blue eyes—for she wished to learn the art of being both servant and low lady. Her father, Lear’s Fool, held a position of high regard and shifting nature at home, after all. But Aefa was too stubborn and unable to hide emotions behind artifice.
The girl scrambled to her feet, swearing under her breath so softly Eliaonly knew it from the tone and her maid’s habits. Elia drew her shoulders tall and smiled dimly. “Good morning, La Far.”
“The king has sent for you.”
Her heart clutched briefly. “So early. Is something wrong?”
“You have a visitor.”
“Who?” Elia asked, pressing her folded hands at her sternum, refusing to cast her gaze skyward for a hint of what was to come.
