Chapter VII
VII
… And when faced with the darkness, so vast that it threatened to swallow the earth and wither all things growing, so deep that it blotted out even the faces of her elder sisters the Sun and Moon, Lyria the Gentle shattered into infinite pieces, into shards of light uncountable and unknowable.
She made of herself such a fragmented thing, her parts so small and scattered, that even the darkness could not extinguish them all.
Where the force of the Sun and Moon could not prevail, Lyria’s mercy triumphed, and the darkness was vanquished not by a flood of light, but by her soft, innumerable stars.
—FROM “LYRIA AMONG THE SHADOWS,” A SACRED STORY OF THE BELOVED THREE
An intolerable lassitude had settled over Ariana.
She wanted to sleep—her body was starved for it—but her mind would not let her slip into the relief of unconsciousness.
It had fractured, pieces of it left with the cloister in Corrin, with her eldest living daughter safe in Dolenza’s care, with the baby she’d entrusted to Fia and the Priest, with the small unnamed boy child who dozed in her arms. Ariana had been born for breaking and always viewed it as a service to Blessed Lyria, but it seemed terribly hard that her family should be torn apart, too, the bonds between her children severed before they could even speak.
She’d never begrudged Lyria a single act of service, but this—this cost her dear.
In an attempt to unite the fraying threads of her attention, Ariana reached for the letter Dolenza had sent. The Matria’s determined script cut across the page, certain and assertive and bold—things Ariana herself had never been.
To Ariana Inver, mistress of all Honoria, greetings and blessings from our Beloved Sun.
I’ve been reminded recently that the time for your childbearing is close.
So I offer you my very best wishes for a safe birthing and a healthy child.
Along with those wishes, I send a postulant of mine—Fiametta Raeana, a mountain girl who covets the office of a soria.
If it pleases her, she may stay awhile in your service.
If it does not please her, I suspect there’s little in the world that can induce her to go against her will.
Your Majesties will be gratified to hear that the summer fishing is progressing well.
We’ve taken in over three hundred barrels of whitehead and well over five hundred of smallfish in the last week alone.
I offer up prayers daily for an abundant harvest, both on sea and on land, and a winter of peace and plenty.
Your devoted servant,
Matria Dolenza Raeana
Ariana let her eyes lose focus and her vision blur.
Further weariness washed over her at Matria Dolenza’s words.
The letter did not just contain well-wishes, and it had nothing to do with fisheries.
It was a reminder, and an admonition, spoken in the form of a cipher.
Over three hundred Corrinians who’d reached the age of their majority and over five hundred Corrinian children had been smuggled onto Vesperin ships by the sorias since summer’s onset.
Every Vesperin ship they’d boarded hid under a cloister flag, disguised as part of the fishing fleet.
To even enter Honorian water was a dire risk to Vesperin vessels, yet for the sake of Corrin, and Lyria’s outlawed sect, they gambled with their own safety.
The agreement had only been struck after Ariana herself agreed to meet covertly with a Vesperin emissary, providing them with a queen’s assurance that she would do all in her power to ensure their ships remained safe.
It had been one of the greatest risks she’d taken yet, but so few places offered sanctuary to the people Ariana had been born among.
Honoria itself had no sympathy for the hapless and helpless and unarmed.
Or rather, Honoria did not sympathize outright. Because here lay Ariana, having passed through blood and tasted death, as all women did in childbirth, and every action she undertook, every breath she drew, was calculated.
Will this decision advance the cause of peace? Will the words I’m about to speak save lives, or end them? Will the nod or the bow of my head make my own life easier in the moment, but cause misery or death to others in the end? Will my smile purchase a reprieve, or my frown incite disaster?
These were the questions that plagued the queen at every turn, until she felt like a wraith, a shadow that haunted the castle’s halls.
I pray for a winter of peace and plenty, Dolenza had said, but made no mention of Orden’s new war. No admonition, no request that Ariana intercede with the king, no dire hints at sanctions to come.
That explained the nightglass.
Suppressing a shiver, Ariana felt under her pillow for the pendant the Priest had surreptitiously given her.
With Fia and her star-marked daughter gone, the queen finally allowed Glora to send up a chambermaid, who’d cleaned the room and freshened the bed.
Exhausted as she was, Ariana had remembered the nightglass and palmed it furtively when she got up, tucking it away once more when the bedding had been changed.
Now, she drew it out and sat still a moment, the cool chip of faintly glowing stone lying in her cupped hand like a fallen star.
It took a great deal of courage for Ariana to set the nightglass to Dolenza’s letter, where the transparent stone revealed cramped symbols between each line of the Matria’s decisive handwriting.
They were an ancient cipher, each symbol representing an entire word or idea, and Ariana had learned them well as a soria.
The ink with which they were written was only made visible by nightglass, and Ariana moved the pendant slowly along the page as she read the warning scribed there, and trembled.
By Raea the Sun, by Silith the Moon, by Lyria the Stars: rein in your king, or it will be done for you.
Seven years she’d spent working tirelessly for peace, and it had not been enough. It was all in ruins now, thanks to a whim of Orden’s that she could not comprehend.
As if the goddess mocked her exhaustion, a voice sounded from the door.
“Your Majesty.”
“Come in.” Ariana glanced quickly at the steel-and-glass water clock on her nightstand.
Only three hours since Fia had left her.
She wondered, briefly, if you could die of weariness—if the aching weight of her body could bear her all the way to the grave.
It certainly felt as if it could. Every inch of her hurt, both without and within. Both the body and the soul.
“Majesty.” It was Glora, standing over her, and there was an almost unrecognizable look on the chatelaine’s stern face. It took Ariana a moment before she could place it.
Pity.
“The summer council representatives have all arrived, but they’re off to a bad start. The king sends his apologies and requests your presence in the audience hall.”
Ariana’s heart sank.
“But I…” She swallowed past a tightening in her throat.
The councils which Orden held to further trade and commerce between nations had been an idea put forward by Ariana herself, and she had always scrupulously managed them.
It would be dangerous to leave Orden to his own devices in such a setting for long—bringing together the leaders of the Hand had always been an idealist’s undertaking.
Now, with Afon present at Ariana’s own request, Inverlyn was a witchsmoke vial, waiting to be shattered into a billow of killing fumes.
She needed to be there. Orden was right.
“Will you help me dress?” Ariana asked Glora, and the chatelaine nodded.
“Yes, Majesty,” she said, with more deference than was her habit.
“Imperatrice Gileta is here already?” Ariana said foggily, shifting herself to the side of the bed and taking care not to wake the sleeping prince.
She could feel a rush of blood slip out of her at the movement, and knew she’d need fresh linens soon.
Ariana always lost more blood in the aftermath of a childbirth than she ought.
Occasional tremors took her, too, and she would have to find a way to still them before she entered the audience hall.
“Yes, Gileta arrived first. The problem downstairs is between her and Afon—he wants to commence the council with a blood sacrifice, and Gileta’s refusing to allow it, saying it’s heresy and that Afon ought to learn Silith’s ways better.
She’s come with her back up—tried picking a fight with our king almost at once, but he wouldn’t be baited.
That’s your hand on him, I think. He’d never have been so tolerant before you. ”
Ariana could not tell if Glora meant the last as a compliment or a reproach.
“Silith’s children will be the death of me,” Ariana murmured, getting to her feet.
“There’s a pale blue taffeta in the wardrobe, trimmed with a bit of lace but quite plain.
Bring that, Glora, and a length of white ribbon for my hair.
Orden prefers a spectacle, but Gileta favors austerity, and it’s her we need to please just now. ”
Glora returned from the wardrobe with an armful of garments and held out a new pair of short cotton breeches padded with extra linens for the birthing blood. Ariana only looked at them for a moment, warring within herself, before shaking her head.
“No. I won’t be needing those.”
“But, Majesty, you’ve already bled more than—” Glora began with a frown.
“No,” Ariana repeated firmly. “Now help me with the rest.”