3 AT FAULT
“IT WAS A TRAP.” Lara’s declaration fell heavily in the damp, smoky air within the tent. “Those powries were waiting for me.”
A few yards away, Cailean growled a curse. He and Bree had just returned from scouting and come straight to the meeting pavilion. Skaal was with them, sitting at the chief-enforcer’s side as if she too were a member of Lara’s council. “Mor’s fucking servants.”
Silence fell, drawing out until Lara broke it.
“I came close to being impaled on a powrie’s pikestaff,” she admitted huskily.
In truth, in the aftermath, she felt a little sickly and shaky, although she was careful not to let anyone see.
She was also still berating herself for giving in so easily to the lure of the corpse candles. “But luckily, someone got there first.”
“And who is this ‘Alar mac Struana’?” Roth muttered. The captain wore a thunderous expression. Since her brush with the powries, he hadn’t met her gaze squarely—and didn’t even now.
Blank looks followed. No one gathered around the table, Lara included, had ever heard of him. The name ‘Struana’ was unusual, for it was female. It was tradition in Albia to take your father’s name, not your mother’s.
Cailean snorted. “What interests me is what he was doing out there in the midst of the woods.”
“A hunter, perhaps,” Lara replied. The chief-enforcer’s gaze narrowed. Lara wasn’t surprised. It was his job to be suspicious. “When the captain called out to me, he melted into the shadows as if he were one of the Shee.”
Cailean’s frown deepened. “Are you sure he wasn’t?”
“He had Marav eyes.”
“Aye, but he could have been glamored.”
“If he were Shee, why would he have saved my life?”
The chief-enforcer didn’t answer. She had him there. Besides Bree and her brother, Gil, who now worked as Lara’s archivist back at Duncrag, no Shee would save the High Queen of Albia’s neck.
Another silence followed. As it drew out, Lara reached out and traced a finger across the large unfurled map of Albia upon the table.
Her fingertip traveled east over the lower Uplands to where Doure sat upon the coast. Trying not to let the penetrating gazes of her council unnerve her, Lara focused on Doure and its surroundings.
Over the past moons, they’d discussed the best way to take the fort at length.
Like most Albian forts, it sat upon high ground and was protected by lofty stacked-stone walls.
Impatience fluttered up then. We need to get back to the task at hand.
Nonetheless, her council wasn’t ready to discuss the siege yet.
“How could a single corpse candle lure you out of this camp?” Annis mac Gord, her chief-counsellor asked. The woman’s round face, framed by hazel-colored braids, was strained, with a deep crease between her eyebrows.
“It all happened so quickly,” Lara muttered, defensiveness rising.
“One moment, I was walking back to my tent … the next, the light ensnared me.” And it had.
The flame had consumed her, and for a short while, all that mattered was reaching it.
When she’d let it dance upon her palm in the clearing, joy had erupted like a cloudburst inside her.
But she wouldn’t admit that part.
Gods, she didn’t want anyone to think she was a ‘fire-wielder’.
Sweat beaded upon her skin then. She wasn’t, anyway.
She couldn’t be. That ability had been lost centuries ago, after all those who could wield fire were tracked down and killed.
The bloodlines had been lost. No, her ability to call to fire, to play with it, wasn’t dangerous, forbidden magic. It was innocent. Innocuous.
“I take responsibility for this,” Roth said gruffly then, drawing everyone’s gaze. A nerve flickered in his cheek. “I should have escorted you to your pavilion.”
“And why didn’t you?” Bree demanded. “You were supposed to shadow the High Queen while I went out on patrol. I entrusted you with her safety.”
The captain’s broad shoulders went rigid at this, while the other members of Lara’s council shared veiled glances. Indeed, it looked to them as if Roth had been grossly incompetent.
But Lara couldn’t let him shoulder the blame. “Captain mac Tav isn’t at fault here,” she said softly. “ I insisted on walking back to my tent alone.”
Bree’s eyes snapped wide. “Why?”
Lara favored her with a sheepish smile. “I just wanted some time alone, I suppose … and thought I’d be safe within the perimeter of the camp.” She didn’t look Roth’s way as she spoke.
The chief-sacrificer, Gregor mac Hume, muttered something under his breath. He was a big, rawboned man with a shaven head and high cheekbones, who wore blood-red robes. And he wasn’t one to bandy words. “That was foolish, My Queen.”
“It was,” she murmured, even as warmth spread across her chest. Gregor had never missed an opportunity to patronize her since she’d replaced her father on the throne—and now, she’d played straight into his hands. Clearing her throat, she met his eye. “But it won’t happen again, I assure you.”
Gregor gave her a look that made the heat burning between her breasts creep up her neck.
Curse it. She was the High Queen, but sometimes both Annis and Gregor made her feel like a goose-witted lass who should be weaving by the fireside, not leading warriors into battle.
Swallowing, she dragged her attention to Cailean.
The chief-enforcer wore a scowl. He wouldn’t criticize her like the others, although his unspoken censure was almost worse. “Cailean … did you note anything of concern on your patrol?”
He shook his head. “With Skaal guiding us, we managed to draw close to Doure. They have sentries around twenty furlongs out from the fort … but no farther.”
“That doesn’t mean they aren’t watching us,” Bree replied, her voice unusually brittle. Her gaze was shadowed as she met Lara’s eye. “However, they should leave us in peace tonight.”
Lara nodded, even as an ache rose under her breastbone. Her friend’s disappointment in her was a blade to the chest. She’d let her anger at Roth’s presumption cloud good sense.
“Shall I gather my bards for another protection sain on the western perimeter, My Queen?” A sharp-featured young woman with red-gold hair, robed in green, asked then. “Just in case more powries are lurking in the woods.”
“Aye, thank you, Ren.” Lara placed her hands firmly upon the table before her. She was relieved to see the tremor she’d marked following the attack had gone. Even so, the stares around the table were getting to her. “Shall we go over our plans for tomorrow now?”
Her gaze lingered on her hands for a moment then.
On each one, she bore rings that had once belonged to her parents.
Upon her left hand, she wore her mother’s delicate silver ring with a rose-colored garnet.
A chunky amber stone upon an iron band—her father’s signet ring—sat upon her right ring finger.
It was the Ord-ree Seal . But for the first time in many generations, it sat on the hand of the High Queen, not a High King.
Her father hadn’t carried the ring into battle. Sometimes, Lara wondered if things might have gone differently for him if he had. Instead, wary of damaging the precious ring, he’d handed it to his wife on that fateful morning.
The Ord-ree Seal was the color of flame, gold with flecks of red at its heart.
Its gleaming surface flickered in firelight sometimes.
It symbolized the indomitable spirit of the Marav.
Her people weren’t blessed with lifespans that reached thousands of years like the Shee, but they ruled this land, nonetheless.
Or they had, before her father’s inglorious defeat in The Uplands.
“As discussed, Doure will be a challenge,” Cailean replied after a lengthy pause. “I just hope your warriors understand this siege won’t be a short one. It could last days … or even a moon’s turn.”
Nerves fluttered under Lara’s ribcage. Like many Albian forts, Doure perched upon a high crag. It could only be taken from the west. She’d also discovered that there was a deep, spike-filled ditch defending the landward side. They’d put up ladders, but if anyone fell, they’d be gored.
“The warriors all know,” Roth assured him. “And they’re ready.”
“The omens have been conflicting since we left Duncrag,” Annis spoke up then. “I do not trust them.”
Lara glanced over at her chief-counsellor, alarmed. “Such as?”
“Odd numbers of geese flying overhead, the sight of a lamb in the fields at the wrong time of year … and a blight upon all the apple trees we’ve passed.” Annis’s lips pursed. “We should proceed with caution.”
Lara fought to keep her worry from showing.
Like most Marav, she wasn’t one to discount omens. All the same, her father’s ill-fated campaign—which he’d believed was Gods-favored—had taught her the folly of putting too much store in such signs.
She’d heed the warning, yet she couldn’t let Annis’s words get to her.
“What do the bones tell you, Ruari?” She shifted focus to the lanky, solemn-faced man clad in blue who stood next to the chief-bard.
“Little, My Queen,” he replied.
“No troubling dreams?”
The chief-seer shook his head. He then glanced nervously over at Annis. “None.”
Lara sank down into the furs and rubbed at her temples.
A headache thumped behind her eyes. A few feet away, her handmaid, Mirren, warmed some milk in a pan over the nearby brazier, while her other attendants—Florie, Ani, and Lilith—readied clothing and food for the morning, for they’d be making a swift and early departure.
As she worked, Mirren kept darting Lara concerned looks. “Should I get Eldra to mix you a tonic?”
Lara shook her head. “I’m fine.”
Her maid gave a soft snort. “You were attacked by powries this evening, My Queen … no one would think less of you for being shaken.”
Lara grimaced. “I’m not so sure about that,” she replied. “By now, everyone will be gossiping about the foolish woman who recklessly left her escort behind before allowing a corpse candle to lure her away.”
Ani and Lilith—two red-haired sisters who’d only recently joined the High Queen’s personal staff—stilled in their work, their gazes flicking up.
Meanwhile, Florie’s already doe-like eyes grew huge upon her thin face.
Although Lara spoke informally with Mirren and Bree at times, she rarely did when anyone else was present.
Tonight though, in the aftermath of the attack, and with her temples pounding, her defenses had lowered.
Mirren shook her head, causing her curly brown hair, which often had a life of its own, to bounce. “No, they won’t … instead, they’ll be thanking The Mother that you’re alive.” Pouring the milk from a pot into an earthen cup, she then carried it across to the furs.
Lara sighed, wrapping her fingers around the cup. “All the same, I’ll be more careful in future.”
Mirren’s sea-blue eyes shadowed. “Good,” she said softly. “Albia needs you … we need you.”
Lara smiled. Mirren had been with her since before her marriage to Dunchadh of Braewall. Their friendship was a gentle one, and their differing ranks meant there was a reserve between them that didn’t exist between Lara and Bree. But it was something she could count on.
“Thank you, Mirren,” she murmured. “I will remember that.”