3. Chapter 3
Chapter 3
T he journey took several weeks, and was a curious exercise in land-study.
The busy heart of the realm, crisscrossed with trade-fostering rivers, was soon supplanted by green and quiet fields of Ielthe. So silent were those parts, so full of verdant and contented slumber, that Julia wondered for a second if people here even knew that one ruler had been supplanted by another - or, for that matter, cared.
Then the greenery of the landscape started to peter away, and a new sharp pinch of cold entered the air.
It did not take long for Julia to see the grey expanse on the horizon, as though the lines of the world themselves have turned silvery and mutable.
The Glittering Sea.
Who on earth had called it this way, she wondered? When she was a child, she imagined it glistening in the sun with the strength of a thousand diamonds. As a young woman, she had seen it up close, changing from blue to green and storm-black. Now, as an adult, she was coming back to it - to sit upon its bleakest shore and watch the ships in the distance.
It was better than the alternative , Julia told herself, shoving the regretful thoughts away. Much better.
Greyharbor lived up to its reputation - Julia could notice that even while they were approaching it. Built in the fashion of two or three centuries ago, when the passion for airy and gilded decoration in the foreign styles had not gripped the people yet. There were ornaments to be sure - gargoyles to ward off the evil spirits coming from the sea, for instance - but by and large, it was a grim and stolid castle. A castle built for the era when you could expect an attack from your neighbor after breakfast and a northmen raid at dinner.
The latter at least have subsided, have they not?
Julia thought back to her years on the waves. Say what you want about the priest-king who had Craerenth in his grasp back then, but he was brutal at defending the realm from incursions.
Of course, he had also been brutal at pretty much everything else.
Julia glanced at her husband, sitting confidently upon his black mount. There was no visible reaction to his coming home after years of campaigning and an astonishing victory save a tension in his shoulders.
On the other hand, Julia thought, her homecoming years ago was an even more distressing thing.
She shivered upon crossing the threshold. The draughts in the air were almost as cold and cruel as the wind from the sea. No oil portraits in the new style upon the walls, but plenty of tapestries - hunting scenes, a white doe on the run from some horsemen; ships engaging in battle or foundering at sea. The bright cloth had been partially corrupted by salt over the many decades of hanging there.
Julia turned her head to ask Lord Waite a question when she heard a joyous shriek coming from the direction of one of the corridors.
“Athelstan!” Someone cried. “You’re back!”
In a doorway leading into the stone depths of the castle, there stood a little girl no older than nine years of age. She was dark-haired and grey eyed, dressed in a gown of lightly-dyed wool, and would have been called quite comely - if not for the awkward way her left foot was turned.
Julia’s suspicions were confirmed when the child took a few steps towards them. She did not walk gingerly, as someone suffering from a fresh injury, but she was dragging her foot nonetheless, and stepping slowly.
“Athelstan”, she repeated. “I thought you’d be here ages ago!”
At this, to Julia’s astonishment, Lord Waite smiled slightly.
“Do forgive me, Roxane,” he said with an expression that could only be called a parody of the utmost earnestness Julia had seen on his face so far. “I will try to comply with your wishes better in the future. The baggage train delayed us, though.”
“Oh,” the little Roxane turned her gaze to Julia, looking embarrassed. “Oh, I forgot. You have a wife now. Of course. How do you do, my lady?” The last phrase was added hastily, not without some blushing.
“I am very well indeed, Lady Roxane,” Julia responded with the same serious air - at least, as serious as she could muster. “I say, I had no idea my husband had such a young cousin.”
“I’m not his cousin. I’m his sister.”
“Oh. Then... then it’s even more peculiar. Shouldn’t you be at court now, celebrating the victory and making friends with other young ladies?”
“Our brother didn’t want me there,” Roxane said with all the disarming bluntness of a child. “He said, I won’t be able to dance, I won’t be able to play tennis, and... and... and there is no point.”
Julia thought of Orwyn Waite, His Majesty in his golden crown presiding over a golden court; thought of the revelry of her own wedding, the sculpted naked nymph and the priceless wine flowing like a river.
Thought of her husband’s swift dispatch to his family seat.
She did not need either of them to spell it out. King Orwyn did not want to blight his brilliant new court with the presence of a cripple.
“The court isn’t even that merry, you know”, Julia lied. “Quite a fiendish place for those who dislike loud company, too. I am sure there are many better amusements we could have here at Greyharbor.”
“I like company,” Roxane objected. “Just - sometimes. I talk to the silk-gatherers, the women from the village, when they bring me sea-silk to weave.”
“You have mollusks growing sea-silk by the coast? No wonder Greyharbor is such a prosperous keep, then.”
“I can show you my weavings, if you’d like”, Roxane smiled tentatively.
“Of course! And your embroidery, too.”
“I’m not good at embroidery. I prefer the weaving. You make solid things when you weave. Embroidery is just - it’s like foam upon the sea.”
“Maybe,” Julia said. “But foam on the sea is a pretty thing, is it not?”
***
“Any letters for me?” Athelstan asked briskly, striding into his study.
It was quiet and dustless, as though the past years, with their horrors and their triumphs, had never happened. He could have walked out of this room to follow his brother to war yesterday, the years between compressed into nothingness for all the effects they had on the castle.
Of course, Athelstan knew that such sentiments were ridiculous. Why on earth would they have had any effect on the castle? Greyharbor had never been taken, albeit it was besieged at one point. The garrison held, the castellan was rewarded for his bravery. Little Roxane persevered. Now that peacetime had returned... well, of course Greyharbor looked the way it always did.
“Quite a number, my lord”, Father Telmen replied. “A number of missives came while you were on the road”.
“Belated congratulations upon my nuptials, I suppose.” Athelstan sat down at the desk and wrapped a letter from the top of the pile. “How interesting. This is precisely what it is. The Fosters of Irongate send their regards. And apparently Lord Ragnald Amberly of...” His eyebrows rose. “When did Orwyn grant that man Swallow’s Nest?”
“I know little of such matters, my lord. But from what I’ve heard, he had been vital in provisioning His Majesty’s army during the righteous war”.
“No doubt he was. But I would have thought that making him the Chancellor of the Treasury is an honor enough. He’ll be demanding a noble bride next”.
“I have always known you to be a man to judge his fellow humans by their abilities alone, my lord.” A gentle reproach in the chaplain’s voice - the reproach of someone who had known him as a sullen child.
“I have no quarrel with the man’s origins, or the lack of them. What I detest is unscrupulous ambition.” Athelstan continued sorting through the letters. Everything was as he had expected. A fair number of families who didn’t feel the dynasty was secure enough for them to risk a journey to the capital, but who were cautious enough to send regards nonetheless.
It was the missive at the bottom of the pile that made him raise his eyebrows.
“When did this come?” The folded paper was stained with saltwater, and Athelstan highly doubted it were the bereft tears of the writer.
“A fortnight ago, my lord.”
Athelstan unfolded the letter, the sense of unpleasant expectation growing beneath his skin. He knew that handwriting. He also knew that it rarely brought good tidings.
“Yarl Ivarr expresses desire to meet,” Athelstan said grimly.
“He wants you to pay him vergeld.” It was more a statement than a question.
“He does, damn him to the frozen depths. We hadn’t needed a payment to keep the northmen at bay since the days of my grandfather.”
“A treaty was never officially brokered,” Father Telmen noted.
“Because it was all in the days before those men even knew what a written treaty was, and a generation before they could sign their names at the bottom.”
“They are ingenious shipwrights nonetheless, and their gods are powerful.”
“I know it. Those are the reasons we had to pay them vergeld in the first place. They didn’t dare to demand it in my father’s lifetime - he kept them away from our shores with a different sort of metal. Now they sense a weakness, like sharks smelling blood in the water, and attack.”
“Not literally.”
“Not yet. Triad, if it were up to me, I would have taught the bastards a lesson.”
But it was not up to him. Younger brother to the king he might have been, but technically, he held Greyharbor only at the sovereign’s pleasure. Taking such decisions without consulting his elder brother and monarch... well, Orwyn was not the type to see treason everywhere, but he was unlikely to look kindly upon such conduct, either.
Athelstan reached for ink and parchment, and hoped that a courier’s journey to the capital would be shorter than the patience of a northern yarl.