Chapter 76 James #2
James turned to find Calythra walking toward them.
The queen of Cardiff embodied everything that Harendell feared about astromancy.
She was dressed in furs and her face was painted with the constellation of her ancestors, the skulls dangling from her headdress brushing against the wrinkled skin of her cheeks.
Her hair was as gray as steel and her eyes as gold as the metal itself.
While Ronan’s first wives were political matches that yielded many children, he had eventually married Caly out of love, the pair having been close since they were young.
She was equal parts beloved and feared in Cardiff, and while Caly cared little for politics, his uncle heeded her every word when she deigned to opine on matters of state.
James had known Caly all his life, and he respected her deeply. Yet she also made his skin crawl as though a thousand fire ants danced upon it, magic seeming all too real in her presence. It was not lost on him that he’d not heard a door open or shut; the queen seemed to have appeared from nowhere.
“I was sitting in the corner, Jamie,” his aunt said, patting his cheek as she passed. “You just weren’t paying attention.”
Rather than easing the prickling crawl of his skin, her ability to read his thoughts only made the sensation worse. Especially given that, from her expression, Lestara hadn’t known her mother was in the room either.
Caly knelt on the thick rugs before Lestara’s chair and took one of her daughter’s hands.
She turned it over and examined the lines, muttering in Cardiffian, which hardly anyone spoke anymore and which he didn’t understand.
Lestara understood it, though, and James did not miss how the pulse in Lestara’s throat fluttered faster and faster, her fear of her mother palpable.
“I was the one who told you that you would be queen,” Caly finally said. “And now you sit at the right hand of the king on the Twisted Throne. Tell me, girl, have the other certainties I whispered in your ear come true?”
“Yes.” Lestara was trembling, looking on the verge of tears. “Many have come true.”
“So you believe the things I see, yes?”
“Yes.” A tear trickled down his cousin’s cheek, and James grimaced. There was no love lost between him and Lestara, but he hated seeing her terrified.
“Good.” Caly pressed one hand to Lestara’s pregnant belly, then withdrew a handful of polished bones from a pouch at her waist with the other.
Human finger bones and knuckle joints, for though any bones could be used to cast, James knew the lore that the bones of one’s enemies told the clearest truths.
Caly bounced them in her hand, then cast them carelessly onto the table.
Her voice was soft yet somehow as loud as thunder as she said, “Look.”
It was like having someone grab him by the back of the head, forcing his gaze to the bones, but James resisted even when he heard Lestara sob, “I can’t cast for the child inside me any more than I can cast for myself. Our fates are yet entwined.”
“I cast the bones. You can read what they say.”
Lestara shook her head, her whole body trembling and the hair at her temples dampening with sweat.
Caly snorted in disgust. “James, prove you still remember what you were taught and read the cast.”
Against his will, James looked at the table.
Except it was not the finger bones his eyes fixed upon, but the tiny skull in the center of them that he swore had not been there a moment before.
Above the skull, set in a pattern in the shape of a W, lay finger bones, and for all the world it looked to him as though the skull wore a crown.
“Power,” he whispered, forcing himself to look at the other patterns.
“Influence. Leadership. Justice…no, revenge.”
“What else?”
He saw many things, but James gestured to the skull with the crown.
“I’ve never seen this pattern before, but the meaning seems obvious enough.
” He pointed to bones that sat in a V shape.
“A fork in the road, a critical choice. Though there is no way to know whether it speaks of Lestara or her child.”
Lestara overcame her fear and looked down, and a gasp tore from her lips as she saw the crowned skull.
Caly said nothing, only pulled a bag of blue sand from her belt and let it trickle through her fingers, creating an outline around the fallen bones.
When she finished, James’s stomach dropped, because it perfectly replicated the shape of Harendell on a map.
“God have mercy,” James muttered, rubbing at his temples. His head had begun to throb.
“There is no God here, boy,” Caly answered. “You know that.”
The queen of Cardiff then rounded on her husband. “Do you still question the legitimacy of the child?”
Ronan stared at the skull, his normally rosy cheeks pale. “No.” He then gave a sharp shake of his head. “Peering into the future takes a toll, Lestara. You should seek your bed and the rest that comes with it.”
It wasn’t a suggestion but an order, and James felt a touch of surprise when Lestara rose to her feet.
She nodded to her father, but lowered her head in respect and submission to Caly before walking swiftly from the room.
James scanned the corners to ensure there were no additional hidden listeners, and then settled more deeply in his chair.
Caly was staring at him, her head slightly cocked and her golden eyes unblinking.
Yet she said nothing, and it was his uncle who broke the silence.
“You didn’t come from the northern passage, lad.
You came off a Cardiffian ship sailed by sailors who know the wind and the waves but whose skin best knows the southern sun.
Lestara is gone now, so spit out the truth. ”
Your son will be king of Harendell, Lestara. Caly’s words repeated in James’s head even as his plans crumbled to dust.
Except what choice did he have but to try? For Ahnna, he would take any risk. “Ahnna didn’t murder my father. Alexandra did, and she inflicted her own injuries so no one would suspect her.”
His uncle’s eyes narrowed but Caly only sipped at her ale, not moving from where she sat on the rugs as Ronan said, “Cormac said you were infatuated with the Ithicanian woman, but I did not think it was so deep a sentiment that you’d be this easily manipulated.”
“The only thing Ahnna is guilty of is being the scapegoat in Alexandra’s schemes.
” James drew in a deep breath. “Alexandra knows everything. So do not sit there and say that she didn’t have a motive to kill my father, especially given the way he treated her their entire marriage.
Especially given the way he treated William. ”
“There is nothing fiercer than a woman protecting a child,” Caly whispered, staring at the contents of her cup. “The she-wolf will sink low and then rise high.”
Tension crackled, but she said nothing more.
James took a sip from his cup, steadying himself.
“Alexandra is allied with Katarina. She was a silent player in Silas’s gambit to take the bridge, but their ambition to possess it didn’t die with him.
Yet their alliance goes back much farther than that.
All the way back to when Alexandra believed that the only way to my father’s heart would be to kill the woman he loved, and Katarina saw the opportunity to gain leverage over Harendell’s young queen.
This is not speculation on my part, but a fact confirmed by Katarina herself just before she imprisoned me in the Furnace.
They conspired together to kill my mother, and I’ve no doubt they conspired together to kill Uncle Cormac.
I may have struck a blow by killing Carlo, but his death will not have sated the stars’ desire for vengeance. ”
“Because it will not be you who sates them,” Caly whispered. “It will not be you who strikes the killing blow.”
No one spoke. No one even seemed to breathe, and James swore the fire itself fell silent in the tension.
The metal of his uncle’s cup abruptly collapsed beneath his grip, ale sloshing over his hand and clothes, but Ronan didn’t seem to notice. Only stared at James, unblinking, like a bear just before the charge.
“Edward was certain,” his uncle whispered. “Amaridian poison. Members of Katarina’s dark guild spotted racing away from Verwyrd. Nothing could be tied to Alexandra—he looked and he looked hard, which is why rumors flew that Alexandra was behind Siobhan’s death.”
“Katarina made certain to look guilty,” James replied.
“Leverage over a dead queen is no leverage at all, and my father would have hanged Alexandra for killing my mother. But Lestara is wrong to believe that Harendell will ever take revenge on Amarid, Uncle. My mother will only fade from memory until she is never again mentioned at all, because that is how Alexandra has planned it.”
Ronan abruptly hurled his ruined cup at the hearth, the metal clanging as it hit the stone. Then he doubled over and wept. “Oh, Siobhan. My sweet little sister, I am so sorry. I am so very sorry.”
James had seen his uncle rage with such violence that everyone went running.
Had seen him laugh with such force that the walls shook.
But never had he seen King Ronan Crehan weep, and he didn’t know what to do.
Didn’t know what to say, because while he’d wanted his uncle to rage against Alexandra for her crimes, he had not wanted this.
Guilt settled in James’s chest, so it took a moment before he realized that Caly was staring at him with her uncanny eyes.
Without him noticing, she’d regathered her bones, and quick as a snake, she reached out to grab James’s hand, her long nails tearing open the cut healing on his palm as she cast the bones.
“When you were a babe, I read your future, but Siobhan forbade me from ever doing it again, and I honored her request. But I think it is time to see what your mother will tell us from the grave.”
James ripped free, blood dripping from his hand, but his anger didn’t stop him from looking at the bones scattered across the table.
“Your heart is bound to the south.” Caly rose to her feet and circled the table. “To Ithicana’s princess, as Cormac believed, but he was wrong to call it an infatuation. You love her, nephew.”
“She’s my wife.” Only a fool would lie to Caly’s face, and in truth, James wanted them to know that Ahnna was his, now and until he drew his last breath.
“Death has always surrounded you,” she murmured, fingers ghosting over the bones. “Tragedy and heartache too, but this is new, Jamie.” Her hand paused over four bones that had fallen interwoven. “Do you know what this means?”
Sacrifice.
“Yes,” she whispered, though James had not spoken aloud. “But what you will give up, I do not know.”
His jaw worked from side to side, and though he did not want to ask, the question needed to be voiced. “What else do you see?”
His aunt walked around the table three more times, and then her golden eyes locked on his. “I see many things, nephew, but there is only one that will matter to you: Ahnna Kertell will never be queen of Harendell.”