Chapter IV #5
Suddenly, Matria Dolenza’s insistence that she leave her own darling daughter behind and travel to court made terrible sense.
The Matria had offered no explanation to Fia, just told her to pack her bag and be off, though there were any number of sorias who might have made the trip more conveniently.
And now here was the true reason for her departure—this stricken queen, so devastatingly afraid and alone at the heart of the mountain.
Fia had not thought Soria Aurelia recognized her from her service in Corrin after the battle summer.
Or if so, she was certain the soria had been too busy to notice much about her when she’d tended the maimed and dying.
Aurelia, evidently, had been watching. She recognized Fia upon her arrival at the cloister.
And she recalled the small, bright friendship that had sparked between Fia and a young woman who had somehow become mistress of all Honoria.
This was no three-day matter. Fia understood it was not just a letter Matria Dolenza intended for her to deliver to the queen. It was Fia herself. Even the manner of service expected from her was clear.
Still unnoticed by anyone save Ariana, Fia seethed.
She shut her eyes and thought of Miriel back home—yes, home, she would say it—and of how the oldest sorias would pass the baby back and forth between themselves, all trying to outdo each other for the sake of a smile from the tiny girl.
When Miriel laughed, their faces split into a thousand delighted wrinkles.
They never tired of her. Little Ortestra, they called her.
Little sunrise, though Fia had named her daughter for the sea.
Even her birthing had been a matter of peace; a rite to Raea the blessed sun.
But Fia remembered, too, the words that had passed between herself and Matria Dolenza, when the hearing of her fidelity oath was postponed.
Is there no one else you care for? No one else for whom you want—what is it you said? Peace and security?
You’ll think me very hard-hearted, I’m sure. But no. To me there is no one else.
Not hard-hearted. Foolish, perhaps. Ignorant of the world. But those things can be remedied. A loveless heart cannot.
This was a test, then. Of the state of her heart—its openness and fitness for devotion to Bright Raea.
“It’s like a furnace in here,” Fia said briskly, stepping forward and adopting the tone Matria Dolenza used with uncooperative merchants. “Don’t you think Her Majesty and the new prince might want a breath of fresh air?”
“All Inver children are born by firelight,” one of the court ladies answered, sounding shocked and indignant as she finally took notice of Fia’s presence.
She looked like one of the empty-headed songbirds that sang overloud in the cloister’s olive trees before dawn—all dressed in garish yellow and green, with nodding feathers in her hair.
“Who are you, anyway? What are you doing in here?”
“She’s one of Dolenza’s brood,” the thickset man at the queen’s side said dismissively.
He was a physician, judging by his air of authority and the perfunctory way in which he felt for Ariana’s pulse.
“Brought a letter or some such for Her Majesty. Well, will you give it to her and be on your way or not, girl?”
Fia bristled and hid her annoyance behind a sharp-edged smile.
“This Inver child’s been birthed already,” she said. “Do they live their entire lives by firelight as well, or are they ever allowed a glimpse of the sky?”
The physician scowled at Fia and reddened alarmingly as she crossed the room and threw back the curtains, only to find locked shutters behind them.
“The prince isn’t meant to see the sky until he’s been blessed by our Priest,” the physician croaked. “His Majesty doesn’t want the mistakes that were made with his firstborn to be repeated. From now on, his children will be inured from birth to the wiles of false goddesses.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about false goddesses,” Fia said, still brisk, still aggressively cheerful.
“All I know is I’ve been sent up from Raea’s cloister to bring a blessing for the child and to offer my services to the queen for a few days.
Consider it a gesture of goodwill, from one power of the land to another. ”
An elderly, pinch-faced attendant with a severe profile and hair piled high on top of her head sniffed. “What service can you possibly offer that none of the court women are able to provide?”
“I’m the wet nurse you’re in want of,” Fia answered flatly, keeping her voice emotionless to hide the way her heart ached. “Matria Dolenza thought the queen might prefer me, until she and the prince have got to know each other.”
“Oh, thank the gods,” the attendant holding the babe said. “I don’t care where you’ve come from, so long as you’ll take the child and feed him.”
But Fia held back.
“With your permission, Majesty?” she asked, looking only at the queen. After a brief pause, Ariana nodded.
An attendant passed the little prince to Fia as if the baby was made of glass.
When she took the child and cradled him it was jarring, to look down and see the queen’s dark hair and unfamiliar Inver features, rather than Miriel’s sunny face and cap of golden curls.
The difference set a shocked, breathless pain inside Fia—the sort that came after a hard and sudden jolt.
Nevertheless, there were the attendants waiting.
And there was Ariana, still lying among her blood-soaked sheets, pleading to Fia with her wide brown eyes.
The baby’s cries had grown insistent, and so Fia did not hesitate.
She pulled down the neck of her shift and bared a breast, bringing the king’s son to it with a deftness born of practice.
“Not in front of the queen!” the physician barked, though at the sight of the prince contentedly feeding, some of the tension drained from the room.
“Whyever not?” Fia asked. She looked down at the baby and smiled, as tears welled in her eyes and dropped gently onto the side of the child’s face.
She couldn’t help it—the knowing that she’d left her own daughter behind, even for a little while, was an icy weight inside her.
But the tears were a good gift. Already this little princeling had been blessed by blood and milk and saltwater, each sacred to one of the Beloved Three.
Perhaps it would make him gentler than his forefathers had been.
Crying in front of anyone made Fia irritable, though. She pushed a few loose strands of hair back from her face and fixed the physician with an unflinching stare.
“The queen’s got a pair of her own, hasn’t she?” Fia asked. “And I’d assume, if you were in want of a wet nurse, that the king objects to sharing them. Well, I’ve no king to worry about—no husband nor wife, either—so far be it from me to quibble over who sees my tits.”
An affronted murmur broke out among the courtiers, but they all fell silent as a hoarse sound came from the bed. It took Fia a moment to realize the queen was laughing.
“She’s right,” Ariana Inver rasped. “And I’ve no more need of any of you. Leave me. You’ve all done what you came for, and I won’t hold you any longer. Let me be alone.”
The physician looked as if he’d swallowed a frog, and as if he’d like to protest, but Fia carried the prince over to the queen and stood at her side stalwartly as the child gave suck.
With a disgusted shake of his head, the queen’s warden swept out of the room, and everyone else trailed along in his wake.
When they’d all gone, Fia bolted the door. Still cradling the prince with one arm, she doused the fire with a hopper of sand, then crossed the room to throw open the shutters as well as the curtains. Clean mountain air rushed in, and at once the room felt bearable.
“There,” Fia murmured as the prince turned his small, wizened face toward the light.
She spoke to him as she would to any new child, pointedly ignoring the fact that he was an Inver, and the king’s heir, and might one day sit on Honoria’s throne.
“That’s Raea, the sun. Tonight you’ll meet Silith the moon, and Lyria’s many stars.
They’ve all been waiting to get a glimpse of you, my love. ”
“Fia,” Ariana called, her voice weary. Fia turned and saw the queen had dropped back onto the pillows and looked even worse than before, with her pale skin and blood-streaked legs. Holding fast to the bundle containing her stillborn daughter, Ariana beckoned to Fia with her free hand.
Fia went, instinctively falling into the rocking gait of a woman with a babe in arms.