Chapter 35
Chapter
Anne knew she must begin to shove the machinery of the castle and city and realm back into motion.
But, she conceded, perhaps better to do it while sitting down.
So clean linen was found for her, and cold water and wine.
She knew naught of the city’s governance, neither its councils nor its guilds, and she suspected that many of these shocked and clamorous people might try to claim authority they had not.
Some might murmur that she was a stranger and a foreigner. She must grapple with them all, but her senses were swimming, her strength nearly at an end.
To the old knight, whose name was Matelin, she said, “Can you keep the ambitious from my door for half a day?”
His face softened. “I can,” he said. “But I think they will abide. It was—a very terrible curse, and the city is only realizing how terrible now that it is over.” He paused. “There are some who might not survive much longer, for they abetted the queen in all her whims.”
Anne sat still. “Can you keep people from making their own justice? It is not meet.”
“I can, for a time, but they will want to be heard.”
“I will hear,” said Anne. “After I rest.”
A chamber was found for her, clean and austere. She slept as she had not slept since she was a child, with the sunlight and the wind pouring off a sky-colored sea.
When she woke, she felt creased and rumpled, but ferociously alive. She slipped out of the bedchamber to the anteroom and saw the old queen of the korriganed there, humming to herself and stitching on a cloth.
Anne and the lady looked at each other. The lady’s eyes were sad. A moment of kinship flowed between them. Like fencing-partners of long standing. Anne said, “Your granddaughter is dead. I am sorry.”
A dismissive gesture. “In her heart, she died long ago.”
“She sought love and there was no one to love her.” Anne felt a stirring of anger. Who would she have been without her father? Without Isabeau?
“There was that. Also, she is half-korrigan, and we are intemperate in our rages. Cruelty might grow from hurt, but it is still cruelty. She is in the Lost Lands now, set free to wander. Perhaps she will find her peace at last.”
Anne said, “Lady, where is my family?”
“At Guérande, in sight of the sea, as I promised.”
“And how many days have passed in the mortal realms?”
“Seven,” the lady answered evenly.
Anne nodded. It was not disastrous. “Will you be my ally? Will the korriganed remember their ancient friendship with the people of Keris? I would make a place in my councils for your people, if they follow mortal law, and I would forbid them to be threatened with iron.”
“I am not sure you want sorcery seeping back into the mortal world,” returned the lady with cheerful malice. “Also, are you sure you are not offering us your alliance because you want to vanquish the French at any cost?”
“I imagine not,” said Anne shortly. “But I have been too busy for self-reflection.”
The old lady sighed. “Once I had hoped that when Gralon—such a brave, golden-haired creature, to be sure—came to woo my Malgven, they should have a child fit to rule our lands together. Instead, all this nuisance happened.”
A thousand years did not seem like a mere nuisance, but Anne was not a korrigan. The lady then said, “How do you suppose I can help you? I have no armies.”
“All the more reason to step out of the shadows,” said Anne. “That our lands may thrive together. Between your people and the sorcerers in Keris,” she added practically, “I am sure we can devise something.”
“Politician!” said the old lady cheerfully.
“I am not sure you understand the import of all you have done. I think perhaps we can secure your borders for you, and allow traffic between men and korriganed. We have fond memories of the mortal world, after all. I hope you will not regret it, small queen. Do you still mean to marry yourself to this Charles, or to remain wedded to Maximilien?”
“No,” said Anne shortly. “If this city’s coffers will furnish me with monies enough, I shall send a great bribe to Rome to have all annulled.”
“Your Orléans loves you.”
“He is already married,” said Anne. She did not mean to dwell on it.
The city of Keris heaved with realizations, chief among them that hundreds of years had passed in an endless night, and also that the queen was dead. And that a lady had come to them riding a unicorn, across the trackless wastes of the Lost Lands, and they meant to crown her instead.
Anne did not wish to rest in the people’s minds as a mere figure of rumor, so she rode out into the city just as she had been before, in the pearl-sewn gown, the fillet of unicorn-hair bound round her brow. Her horse was no unicorn, but she was delicate as a deer and gray as the sea.
After, Anne closeted herself with the heads of the guilds and the great lords—who numbered as many women as men. Keris had always traded much with the korriganed, who never quibbled at the authority of women.
How to defend Keris was not so obvious as it might have appeared, though the city stood in the midst of a great blue bay. They had never feared attack, because of the sea-drakes in the harbor. But there were no dragons in the water now.
Sorcerers were rare, she learned. But the city had half a dozen enchanters who could make attackers see nothing but fog all around, or impassable flames, and so she bade them keep watch on the wall. She had told them what had happened in Brittany.
“We have a few days,” she said, “which we must use to our advantage, but the city must be defended too. And we must relieve Rennes, and garrison Nantes.”
It was dusk when she dismissed them, and she sat in the council-chamber alone, feeling lonely and out of her depth. That is when she saw Louis, dark-eyed, in the doorway.
She stumbled to her feet.
He was wearing fresh clothes, in the manner of the men of Keris, and the blue sword. He stared at her in silence. He didn’t speak.
She whispered, “The unicorn came. I had to go. I made Gralon Meur promise to send you here if I lived or take you home if I died. Forgive me, forgive me.”
Slowly, Louis answered, “He did send me, as you see. He opened a door in his own house and there you were, as I see you now. I do not understand traveling in these Lost Lands. Although I will admit to unseemly fury. I woke and you had gone alone to win a kingdom.”
Anne crossed the room to him, and saw the light in his eyes. “I am sorry,” she whispered.
“Do you apologize for such a victory? Why? I do not begrudge it, though I would have liked to have been there.”
He put up a careful finger and traced it along her cheek. “Do you know how you glow now?” he said. “Like starlight in your skin. Is it from riding a unicorn?”
“It is the sorcery,” said Anne. “Moreau was the same. It sets light about you sometimes that isn’t there.”
She wondered if he would pull away.
“It is very beautiful,” he said only.
She tipped her face into his hand and he put his other arm around her. “I like this fashion of Keris,” he said into her ear. “An absence of layers.”
She drew away, and his hand dropped.
She said, “I am not—I will not give up sovereignty. Not even for love.”
He burst out laughing. “Do you think I am come to take the city away from you? They would not allow it. Why would you think I want you to give up sovereignty? It is what you were born for. The unicorn came for you; there is this light in your face.”
She was silent. Then she asked, “But what do you want, truly?”
He made an exasperated noise. “To let my Jeanne go to a convent forthwith; sainthood is the only thing she’s ever wanted.
She’ll weep tears of gratitude and put all France right with God.
Then I shall marry you, and lead your army, if you will have me.
It is possible that France will object to my adding the duchy of Orléans to the crown of Armorica; that we will have to see.
No matter. I shall take you to bed as often as you’ll let me, and we shall learn what this world holds for us, this world that you have changed forever. Is that enough, to begin with?”
When she stared at him, disbelieving, he shook her very gently.
“Anne—I am not angry. You did what you must; it is in our blood. Has it not yet come through your head that it need not be a penance, being married? You were so willing for so long to yield up your very self, so long as your realm was saved, that you have utterly failed to notice that the case is altered. It is I coming suppliant, with a disputed dowry. If you marry me, you need not leave home. You need not yield sovereignty. You do need help, and I do not think—I very much do not think—that you are the kind who will like sleeping alone.”
His fingers traced clavicle and throat and shoulder; his hands were hot. “Anne,” he whispered, into the hollow of her throat. “I’ll have no one else.”
And because he was a conniving man, as were all born to his position, he kissed her, there in the privacy of the empty council-chamber, and sent white lightning through all her tired limbs.
“Oh, very well,” said Anne. She tried to sound resigned, but she could hardly breathe. “With an ironclad marriage-contract, and Keris our capital.”
“As you say,” he said, not looking up. Anne laughed suddenly with joy. “Would you even love me?” she whispered, into his hair.
“Until the end of my days. But didn’t you know?”
“I knew,” said Anne, and kissed him.