Prologue Leonde
PROLOGUE
Leonde
News of King Anslian of Soleb murdering Queen Alenée of Alelune at the Blessedsafe neutral zone spreads swiftly.
Within days, even the farthest-reaching points of both countries are discussing the affair.
Pigeons fly from one city to the next, midnight riders speed from one homestead to another.
It is the only topic of conversation worth having, and citizens stay up arguing their points of view for hours as they try to come to terms with what exactly transpired.
Leonde’s pub has never maintained a particularly political atmosphere.
It has its fair share of military honours on the wall for the soldiers that return home from the front, but rarely do the patrons devolve into arguments over matters of court.
Now, though, it seems to be all anyone is talking about.
Not a single person doubts that Anslian, the former high general of the Soleben army, and very newly crowned king, acted in bad faith by breaking the fundamental rule of the Blessedsafe neutral zone to not murder anyone while drafting a treaty.
They are perfectly content with his capture and are eagerly awaiting news of the execution.
But, even the lay people of Alelune can’t help but wonder if he might have simply been overwrought by passion.
‘How would you feel,’ Cieli asks, gesturing to Leonde for another round, ‘if you found out your nephew was being held captive and had been tortured for, what – almost two years? Something like that? When you thought he had been dead all that time?’ She is not a regular at the Lunar pub.
She arrived not long before the news spread, a traveller on her way to the capital to find work at an apothecary.
Her horse threw a shoe on the road, though, and with the blacksmith out of work from a bad back, she found herself staying in the pub’s storeroom as she waited for someone to tend to her mare.
She is an endearing woman, kind and soft-spoken.
Her manners polished enough to encourage Leonde to board her.
Cieli says please and thank you at just the right time, never seeming too desperate or accepting.
More than that, despite her comely face, she still has not so much as batted an eye at the many single men or women in the pub.
She keeps her head down and her hands to herself, content to drink her water and eat her bread with nary a glance at anyone. But, she does so like to gossip.
Perhaps it’s merely a sign of the changing times, and times have been so strange lately, for the whole town seems to like gossip nowadays.
Leonde hardly knew what to believe when the story was first brought to her door.
Knowledge that their beloved queen had been secretly holding the crown prince of Soleb hostage was startling to say the least. But Leonde is not an expert in politics, and she has no desire to alienate her patrons with a too-forward opinion.
She nods along with Cieli’s arguments in silence, frowning as she rubs down the top of her bar with rough strokes.
‘It’s disgraceful, is what it is,’ Gio announces.
Gio is a regular to the pub. With his great rolling stomach and his tunic that does not quite cover his girth, he is a near permanent fixture at the end of her bar.
He still sits on the same stool he claimed when he bought his first drink.
The wood seems to have conformed to his weight after many years of dedicated use; Gio has earned his place at the bar by loyalty alone.
He swings his arms about now, sending the froth of his beer cascading over the side of his mug.
‘Careful, Gio,’ Leonde cautions, mopping up his mess with a fresh rag.
‘He’s right though,’ Cieli says, plopping down next to Gio.
‘I mean, the High Gen—the King shouldn’t have killed her – may her change be good – but holding their crown prince captive?
For that long? How many of us have family fighting that war right now?
We could have had peace talks ages ago. We could have had Altas ages ago, and all our loved ones could have come home.
Instead, we’re just going to be in for more war. ’
Leonde grimaces at the reminder. She glances over her shoulder at the white ribbons she hangs for her husband and youngest son.
Both died in the war, leaving one sunny day never to return.
Her eldest son had survived his draft and his years of voluntary service but then retired to serve Prince Consort Marias at the Blue Palace.
Even after Marias’s death, he too had never returned, preferring to stay in the Blue Lands and far away from the war.
Her daughter, though, had been drafted when the fighting started up again, and Leonde held on to the hope of having at least one child return to her.
She’d received a letter, only a few weeks previously, telling her that a temporary truce had been called while the armies were relocating to the Blessedsafe for peace negotiations.
There has been no letter since, but Leonde knows: Soleb will have to answer for its betrayal, and her daughter will be back at war.
‘How long do you think the fighting will last this time?’ she asks quietly.
Cieli must see her ribbons because her face seems to fill with the most terrible kind of sorrow there is – the shared agony of understanding.
Cieli folds her hands in her lap and looks down at her twisting fingers.
Leonde wonders if she lost loved ones to the war too.
Everyone has, so it is not surprising. Still, Leonde wonders how many Cieli has lost, to be travelling to the capital all by herself.
‘The fighting won’t start up immediately,’ Cieli says. ‘They’ll have to crown the kings first…get new orders. I saw the columns marching back towards Altas though. They won’t attack immediately, but it’ll be soon.’
‘But who’s’all getting crowned?’ Gio slurs.
He leans forward on the bar. The remainder of his froth spills over the side of his mug as he wags his finger at them both.
‘We don’t know where this Crown Prince Elician is, right?
Is he still in Alerae? Or is he back in Soleb?
And then – then there’s Gillage, and truly the gods have damned us all with that fool child. ’
Leonde peeks over Gio’s shoulder. The rest of the pub seems to be discussing their own opinions with such interest that no one has heard her top patron’s lack of patriotism.
She still scolds him and rubs down the bar with a bit more intensity.
‘You can’t be saying things like that,’ she tells him.
‘You don’t know who’s going to hear you! ’
‘My brother used to live in the palace,’ Cieli whispers.
She scoots her stool a bit closer to the bar and to Gio.
Gio scoots his in too. Leonde ducks in tight and they all lower their voices, trying to keep their thoughts to themselves in the loud rattle of confusion that is now the pub’s norm.
‘Spent a lot of time in the underground, if you catch my meaning.’
Leonde does. It’s where all the Reapers of the city are kept, safely out of the way from the rest of the public.
No one is meant to talk about the Reapers, or how they can kill with a single touch.
They are evil and wicked and wrong, incapable of dying no matter what is done to them.
Just speaking of them could bring on ill fortune.
Leonde has read every book in print on the Reapers, and on all the brave heroes who rose up to defeat their filth.
She easily imagines Cieli’s brother just like the men in her tales: a stalwart guard, patrolling those wretched cells, tall and dark-haired with a firm passion for justice.
‘So, he knows things,’ Cieli continues, leaning a little closer.
Their heads are almost touching, but none of them make contact. To do so is taboo. Only family are permitted such intimacies. Leonde and Gio hold their breath, waiting to hear what Cieli seems so desperate to say. ‘He was there when the first stello died.’
‘Alest?’ Leonde asks. It’s been years since she thought of the poor boy.
The little heir to Alelune who never lived past nine years old, drowning in a river under the careless eye of his retainers.
She saw him once. A great parade had come through the city and Queen Alenée had ridden in a carriage with her charming heir.
They waved to their people as they passed.
The boy’s cheeks were flushed with excitement, baby-down brown hair wisping beautifully about his face.
He smiled and giggled, cheerfully saying hello to everyone he could.
At one point, the Queen even let him down from the carriage so he could carry the Alelunen flag through the streets.
Leonde had always been impressed by the sheer determination on Alest’s face as he held up the flag of his country.
It was such a marvellous juxtaposition: a boy with a nation in his hands.
When she went home that night, she sent up a few prayers for the young stello.
She was truly sad when she heard the boy had died.
Sadder still when over the years it became obvious that Alest’s younger brother didn’t quite live up to his potential.
Worse yet, Gillage didn’t appear to adopt any of the strengths of his mother either.
He seemed, instead, twisted and wrong. Openly mocking and cruel to citizens and dignitaries alike, never once endearing himself to his people.
His mother had been right not to name him with the appropriate Ale preface all rulers of Alelune had.
She must have known he would turn out wrong.
Cieli chances a look over her shoulder. Then she says, ‘Stello Alest is alive.’
Leonde jerks back from the bar. One hand covers her mouth even as Gio starts blaspheming through curses.
Cieli shushes him quickly, panicked eyes looking all around her.
He manages to regain himself but does so with his drink in his hand, downing the whole thing in a few strong slurps before setting it down with remarkable control.
‘How?‘ he asks, mouth straining around the sound.
‘He’s a Reaper,’ Cieli replies softly. ‘When he died in that river – he became a Reaper.’
‘A Reaper!’ The repetition does not make it feel any better.
Leonde does not want to think about it. She cannot fathom the idea of that sweet, smiling little prince as the living embodiment of Death.
It is foul and wrong. She shakes her head and scrubs furtively at her bar top.
‘You mustn’t say such things,’ she tells Cieli firmly. ‘It’s cruel to the dead.’
‘I swear on my brother’s life, Stello Alest is a Reaper. And there’s no law saying he can’t ascend the throne. He could still be our king.’
‘A Reaper!’ Gio repeats. He rubs a hand over his curling grey beard and moustache.
‘I tell you what, Myrte.’ Leonde flushes at the familiar use of her given name.
The impropriety of it all! She is a widow: that name is for her loved ones to speak, and he is not amongst their number.
‘I tell you what,’ he repeats. ‘It’s a sad day when I say I wish for a Reaper on our throne, but even a Reaper would be better than… than that thing of a child.’
‘Oh…surely Gillage can’t be worse than a Reaper!’ Leonde gasps. They steal life and they end happiness. They do nothing but destroy ceaselessly, with no hope of salvation or love. They are unfeeling monsters. Cruel caricatures of humans that no longer have the capacity to care.
Gio grimaces as he shakes his head. ‘At least Death chose him for something! No one chose Gillage for anything at all.’ He burps loudly, pounding his closed fist on his chest until he finally exhales a long breath of stale air.
‘I was at a party over at Lord Tyron’s estate last quarter.
Gillage was there. I tell you, that child had a servant boy flayed for dropping a goblet of wine.
It didn’t even stain anything, didn’t touch Gillage at all.
But he demanded satisfaction for the embarrassment.
He had that boy’s skin torn right from his body until the boy’s heart gave out.
It was the worst thing I’d ever seen in my life.
I’ll never forget it. Yes, Reapers kill with a touch – but I say that’s mercy compared to what Gillage does.
To his own people no less. Can you imagine what he would do to his enemies? ’
‘But…a Reaper? On Queen Alenée’s throne?
’ Leonde is not sure she can countenance such a thing, not even if the stello she had seen all those years ago truly is still alive.
She bites her lip and looks furtively around the bar, but no one else seems to have overheard their conversation.
That’s good, she thinks. The fewer people know about this, the less trouble it will cause.
‘If Queen Alenée wanted to ensure it didn’t happen, she could have made a law saying so. They have one in Soleb,’ Cieli points out. ‘But she knew her son was alive…They say everyone at court knew, and she didn’t do anything to stop it.’
‘They were just rumours,’ Leonde argues.
She’s heard them for years. Every time Gillage did something that scandalized the sensibilities, someone would mutter about how Alest might actually be out there somewhere.
But it was a dream, a fantasy. Nothing close to real.
Nothing that came with an eyewitness account of the boy in the Reaper cells, truly alive.
Cieli meets Leonde’s eyes, perfectly still and earnest. ‘They’re not rumours,’ she says, firm as can be.
Leonde bites the inside of her cheek. Someone asks for a refill and she hurries to do her duty, escaping Cieli’s insistence and Gio’s sputtering.
When she looks back, Cieli has left the pub for the night and Gio has moved on to share the gossip with another patron.
Alest, alive, and a better candidate for the throne than Gillage even as a Reaper.
She scrubs her bar, nervous and unsettled, wishing she knew what more to say on the topic. Though it seems Gio has no trouble finding the words. The whole bar is soon listening to his prattle. She does not tell him to stop.
Cieli packs her things and leaves the next day, but their town is altered in her wake. Everyone is talking about Alest. And more than a few wonder if it would even be possible to have a Reaper as their king.