19. Chapter 19
Chapter 19
A thelstan was not sure was led him to Roxane’s door that evening. An obscure sense of guilt felt like a faintly-glowing coal in his chest.
The words formed in his head when he had already crossed the threshold.
His sister jumped from her desk, the earnestness in her expression transformed into delight:
“Did you come to check on my lessons?” She asked.
“Not in truth,” Athelstan replied, rather uncomfortable. “But - if you’d like, I can listen to them”.
“Lady Julia is teaching me Parthan! Did you know she spoke Parthan?”
“I did. Though I didn’t know she spoke it well enough to teach”.
“They have six cases, and I’ve memorized the ones for nouns today! Lady Julia says Aervan had six declensions, too. Brother, why do we not speak Aervan anymore? Not even in the capital?”
“Because the Aervan Empire of the East fell”.
“But the language is lovely!”
“They speak some strain of it in Cimera.”
“I’d like to see Cimera one day”.
A softer man would have said, false cheer ringing like false coin, that he was sure she will.
He knew it unlikely - unmarried ladies did not travel unless with their guardians, and he had little desire to see the proud southern province. Little need of it, too.
Saying so to Roxane, however, proved impossible. What was he supposed to utter? You won’t; you are going to live in Greyharbor until you are old and grey as these stones?
The words stuck in his throat.
“Perhaps,” Athelstan said reluctantly. “Perhaps you will, one day. If…” Triad, but it would have been easier to face an enemy once more. “If your future husband would have business there, or if you would want to undertake a pilgrimage, or visit a friend.”
“Can’t I go on pilgrimage now?”
“Not without me. Unmarried girls don’t do such things”.
“It’s unfair”.
“I know. But such is the way of the world”.
“I know you want to be kind”, again, that emulation of an adult expression, “but you don’t need to be. No one will marry a cripple.”
He will. Just not for your sake.
No good solutions here.
“There might be someone,” Athelstan made himself say at last.
“Who?”
“The chairman of the Fishmongers’ Guild has a son, only slightly over your age. A comely youth, I suppose. I am no judge of these things.”
“The Fishmongers’ Guild?” Roxane repeated. “But His Majesty would never allow that.”
“I am not saying you would have to wed him on the morrow. Only that a betrothal is possible.”
Betrothals could be broken, too. On the other hand, Athelstan would loath to go back on his word as soon as the danger was past.
If the danger would be past.
“Can I meet him?” Roxane’s eyes were full of apprehension. Her chin was raised resiliently, however.
“Of course you can.”
Roxane was right about one thing: their brother was going to be furious.
But then, Athelstan reflected, his brother was going to be furious about many things. He might as well get used to it at last.
***
Julia did not cry out when she felt unfamiliar hands on her shoulders.
Instead, she spun around, ready for a fight - then saw who the stranger was.
“Vittorio? How did you get in here?”
“And they call it the greatest stronghold in Mearnt. This herbal garden’s wall could be scaled by a child”.
“Only if the child had spent years climbing the rigging. Why are you here?”
Julia expected a jest, but instead, Vittorio’s eyes were as serious as she had only seen them to be once or twice.
“I have news for you, sea-flower”, he said. “News you aren’t going to like, you or your lordly husband.”
She shuddered, and the reason had nothing to do with the nip of the coming autumn in the air.
“Tell me.”
“The yarl”s dead”.
She barely registered the shock at first.
“Yarl Ivarr?”
“He’s the one you’ve been curious about, isn’t he? He’s dead as a doornail. Rumours say, he and his second-in-command had a falling out, and the young man did him in.”
“Do they still decide ways of succession and kingship like this, in the north?” It was not so much an earnest question as a delaying tactic. Something to say while the implications were seeping into her thoughts like poison.
Vittorio laughed at last:
“Ah, yes, because His Majesty King Orwyn’s dispatching of the man who sat the throne before him was just so civilized”.
“That was different-” She took a deep breath. “Very well, very well, very well. I’m not here to talk about the fall of kingdoms. I only need the truth. What is the chance that the northmen would turn on each other? Now that they have no leader, it must be possible.”
“I don’t think so. Sigurd’s a strong man. He has most of the captains of the ships under Ivarr’s former command on his side”.
“Then it probably wasn’t a chance quarrel. Preparations had been made. What of the old yarl’s family?”
“Son and wife, both butchered. I don’t know if Sigurd - yarl Sigurd now, I guess - really planned to grab the power from the first day, but now that he did so, he isn’t going to take any chances”.
Julia thought of Helga, the woman with streaks of silver in her hair and a battle-scar across her neck. The woman who had been kind to her back when she was still blundering through her new life here like a blind person. Her talk of unimaginable lands far away, of cyclopean serpents from the deep.
“Bastard. Bloody bastard who needs to be thrice-murdered.”
“Such words, and from a lady?” Vittorio teased. His expression, however, remained unsettlingly earnest. “What’re you going to do now? Given what will happen - “
“I don’t need it spelled out. A new leader needs a great raid to set his reputation in stone, to banish from the heads of his followers any thought of following his example in regicide. A great raid, or, better yet, a great conquest. Yarl Ivarr had been belligerent. But this one’s going to butcher us the first chance he gets, because his power depends on it”.
“A great report. Now, am I going to get paid?”
***
“You did what?” Julia breathed, looking at her husband. Her cheeks were still burning from the slap-like shock of the news.
“I’ve rejected the chairman’s demands”, Athelstan admitted with clear reluctance. “It might have been rash. I did not want to hurt my sister.”
“I understand. Triad, I do. There was a time in my childhood I’ve dreaded the day of having my marriage arranged, and I’ve seen how it leads to horrors as often as to happiness - “
“If you are trying to refute my case, you are doing it very strangely,” Athelstan tipped her chin up to look into her eyes.
Julia fell silent for a second.
“Triad,” she repeated, her voice quieter, “I cannot believe I am trying to convince someone to send a girl into an arranged marriage with someone they barely knew. Were it anyone else, anywhere else, I would have been on the other side of the battle, you know. A trouble of a woman, helping her escape.”
“I know.” His voice was grim, but he did not take the disapproval at her ways further.
“But... the royal fleet isn’t coming. The Undying Fire - the Fate alone knows what would Father Telmen manage to accomplish. Our sea-levies won’t be enough, and mercenaries cost a pretty silver dove, and without the Guild’s help...”
“There is something else, isn’t there?” He looked into her face intently. “Julia...”
She swallowed, and delivered the news:
“Yarl Ivarr is dead. So is his heir, so is his widow. It’s yarl Sigurd now, and you know what such a change of power means”.
“Stars’ bones”, he swore quietly.
“Our bones, more like.”
“Triad. I really have no choice, it seems.”
“His Majesty is not going to be pleased.”
“I know. He is not going to be pleased if we conceal the secret of the Undying Fire from him, either.”
“Is that what you are intending to do?”
“Julia, you have seen him. You have seen that cursed fountain at our wedding. Is he the man you would entrust the Undying Fire to?”
“Then he is not a safe man to cross, either.”
“It was Father Telmen”s request. I gave him my word.”
“And if you didn’t? If there was no promise binding you? Would you have -”
“Yes, Julia. I would. I know you wouldn’t want our children to live in the world where my brother wields the power of the ancients. So I won’t let this world come to pass”.
Something softened in her chest then; some tight knot untied.
“Perhaps, Roxane is going to be as happy as I am,” she said, trusting her own words little; but more so that she did minutes ago.
“Perhaps. But, first and foremost,” her husband replied, pragmatic as always, “she is going to be alive.”
***
The meeting was excruciating. It was not so because of some seething highborn outrage - Athelstan had dealt, during the war, with men of far lower birth than Master Heneage. It was because he had to rescind his words, and smile, and hope for the best.
He wasn’t sure he managed the smile well.
“Well, I am glad you’ve changed your mind”, the chairman said, admittedly without gloating.
The parlor of his townhouse was well-appointed - the windows glazed, the room adorned with a small fireplace. It was now sleeping, the day outside too warm for a fire. There was no great hearth here, no ancient injunction to keep it burning.
“I have conditions of my own.”
“I have expected as such.” No mockery here. He must not have heard of the coup, and thus didn’t know just how desperate their situation really was.
Else he would have laughed at any notion of conditions-setting.
“Roxane won’t be fully wedded-” The prim side of him prevented him from saying and bedded , “Until her seventeenth birthday.”
“That is sensible. Grown wives make for healthier mothers.” A pause. “Do you give us your word that there would be no reprisals from on high?”
Triad, how could he give him such a word? And a word he would have to keep, too.
“I swear that I will do my best to ensure that there won’t be any.”
“A careful phrasing,” the man observed. “Not exactly ironclad. But one can hardly expect more. How soon would you need our ships?”
As soon as possible. That was the last thing Athelstan wanted to say. Desperate men made for men easy to exploit.
“By the full moon.”
“We could do that. I think it would be beneficial for the children to spend time together during their betrothal.”
“I suppose. I’ve promised Lady Roxane as much.”
“Is that the only reason?” The merchant’s eyebrows shot up. “Do noble-born couples so betrothed not do that as a matter of course?”
“They correspond. Their tutors help them with the phrasing.”
“Lady’s girdle. I’ve always thought myself an enemy of license, but surely a walk in the garden or an afternoon watching a play won’t hurt anyone’s chastity”.
“Greyharbor has no actors’ company.”
“It does as of this year. I know it because I am sponsoring it.”
“Then, I suppose, my lady sister can see a good tragedy with her - intended. Provided we are all still alive then.”
“I see, Your Lordship, that the rumors of your sunlit disposition were all true.”