Chapter VII #2
There was little of a queen about Ariana by the time Glora had finished with her.
In her simple garb, with her hair bound up, she could have been the daughter of a lesser merchant.
A shy young plains farmer, even, heading to harvesthome at Raea’s cloister in her best gown.
But not the mistress of all Honoria. The single peculiarity of the gown, and a nod to Ariana’s position in Inverlyn, was that the back had been cut unfashionably low.
It dipped to the bottom of the queen’s shoulder blades, so that all could see the expanse of fair skin between them, marred by a healed brand in the shape of the royal flame.
“Well, you don’t look like an Inver, I’ll say that much.” A familiar note of disapproval had crept into Glora’s voice as she stood back and surveyed her handiwork.
“And what does an Inver look like?” Ariana asked.
Her exhaustion had calcified into what felt like splinters of broken glass, cutting at her insides, making her shorter-tempered and more brazen than was her wont.
Making her indiscreet, undevout, a creature that would bring shame to the perfect goddess she adored.
Ariana tried to breathe through the uncharacteristic spike of temper and found she could not.
She’d breathed through too much already—through days of heat and fire and anguish, and could not manage another pacific breath.
“Proud,” Glora said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Undaunted. Powerful.”
Ariana took her hours-old son from where he lay on the bed, still sleeping soundly, and settled him into the crook of her arm.
“You understand what will happen to Honoria and to the Inver line if Gileta and Song Royale turn their back on us, yes?” Ariana pressed.
“Our one staunch ally on the Hand? We will fail on every front in Vesper. Our armies will die weaponless without the incaendium we purchase from Song Royale. In seeking to return home, they’d find our ships burned and no new ones arrived in their stead, because the pitch that seals their timbers is brought in from Song Royale.
And here? Caervallion will make a meal of us.
It is only the fact that Song Royale stands with Honoria that grants us more might than Afon.
Should Gileta move her favor to the north, we would not be equally matched but weaker, thanks to the burden of our other war.
Afon’s citizenry would call it liberation if he conquered Honoria and put every Inver to the sword, and half of Song Royale would agree.
So please, tell me that I don’t look like an Inver.
Tell me that I know nothing of battle or war or power—that I’m foolish and weak and too gentle for this great house, because I see the need to defend what we already have, as well as to strive for what we wish to acquire.
Tell me that I am unworthy. I should like to hear you speak the words. ”
The queen’s voice had not risen at all. She’d said everything quietly, but there’d been bitterness in it—greater bitterness than she’d ever let herself vent before.
Guilt closed around her heart like an iron band.
It was shameful that she should let herself falter so because of mere weariness. Lyria deserved more, and better.
“I’m sorry,” Ariana offered at once, anguish behind the words. “Glora, I should never have spoken to you so. Please forgive me.”
“No,” Glora said with a troubled frown. “I won’t. Not when the fault is mine.”
Something new and uncertain lay between the women.
Ariana had never chastised Glora before, and the chatelaine had never admitted a shortcoming.
The difference nagged at Ariana. She did not like the unknown—for seven years she’d made it her business to understand just how every member of the court felt about her, and how they might be swayed, one way or the other, to serve her purposes.
Any shift could be dangerous, any misunderstanding a disaster.
But there was nothing she could do, with the king waiting, but gather up her skirts and leave the room with Glora following in her wake.
From the corridor outside the audience hall, Ariana could already hear raised voices, the sounds of chaos and dissent.
Walking faster, she stepped into the room, and tension struck her like a great wave.
Orden stood nearby, among his guard beside the dais.
He was imperious and irritable in a cloth-of-gold doublet, and undoubtedly a moment away from some sort of outburst. The Priest was at his side, for once out of his sanctuary and engaged in an affair of state.
To one side of the hall, a bevy of Song courtiers had gathered.
Gileta stood at their center, poised and confident, her expression watchful.
The Imperatrice had governed Song Royale for more than forty years, during which time she’d known three Inver kings.
She’d not held power for so long without learning statecraft to rival anyone else’s on the Hand.
Her choices were sometimes surprising, but never rash or ill-considered, and always in the best interests of Song Royale before all else.
At the back of the room, Corrin’s Arbiter and Arbitress stood near the door.
Their inclusion in the council was a grudging concession on Orden’s part, and so Ariana zealously withheld her attention from them when they attended.
Let Orden think they were present to be snubbed by the queen who’d abandoned their country in exchange for a throne.
She wanted no more than for them to listen, anyhow, and to act in accordance with what they saw and heard.
It was Ariana’s aim for every nation on the Hand to have representation at Orden’s summer councils, save for Skandara, which lay beyond Honoria’s far northern border.
Since the rise of the Invers, Skandara had cut itself off from all outside contact, managing its isolation with uncanny success. No one went in. No one went out.
Lastly, on the room’s south side, where a long bank of windows was thrown open to the midsummer sun, two figures stood in the blazing light.
Caervallion’s ambassador, Gwylen, and Afon of Caervallion himself.
The room was fraught with untested connections and unknown quantities, and awareness of it made Ariana’s skin crawl.
Golden-complexioned, with close-cropped dark hair, the Caervallin diplomat Gwylen had the most prominent goddess mark Ariana had ever seen.
A milk-white patch on her neck formed the shape of a crescent moon, stretching from her jaw to her collarbone.
Ariana had met traders from Caervallion during her time at Lyria’s cloister, and the ambassador dressed like most of their people—in loose robes, with a belt at the waist that held a curving knife in an embossed leather sheath.
Afon, by contrast, was fitted out for war.
A powerfully built man several decades Orden’s senior, he still carried himself like a warrior.
He’d donned studded leather and chain mail for the occasion, or perhaps had worn it all along the road.
Despite the heat of Honorian summer, Afon had paddings of bear’s pelt beneath his armor, and while the sheath that had housed his sword hung empty—no weapons were permitted at summer council—even Orden had not dared to suggest his Caervallin guests lay aside their knives, which marked them as free citizens of their fierce northern nation.
Ariana knew all too well the damage a blade like his could do—a Caervallin knife had left the scar running from the corner of Afon’s right eye down to the edge of his mouth. She could recall every detail of the moment that wound had been given to him.
Raea and Silith’s daughters had withdrawn from Corrin, leaving only Lyria’s devout to oversee the very last of the convalescent soldiers. Both Honoria and Caervallion had sent word to Ariana’s Matria, Serafine—they would depart on the morrow, seeking the northward and southward roads.
Serafine and the rest of Lyria’s sorias were attempting to do something about the dead.
There was a mass grave behind the sole remaining hospital tent, and bodies were heaped high in it.
They could not be treated as the sorias usually treated the dead—the incaendium they used to desiccate a corpse and render it highly flammable had long run out.
Neither could the fallen soldiers be left much longer.
The smell around the grave was nigh unbearable, though Silith’s sorias had thrown layers of earth over the bodies as they were laid down.
A great deal more of it was needed, and so Lyria’s daughters were digging.
Ariana was left alone to oversee the remaining convalescents, who would be collected by some emissary from their respective armies shortly.
She’d been exhausted and feverish the last two days, and so Serafine had given her this lighter duty.
Ari sat in the close, stifling shade of the canvas enclosure and felt utterly spent.
Since Raea’s daughters had left, and with them the redoubtable Fia, it had been impossible to escape full awareness of what had happened to Corrin.
Everywhere Ariana looked, she found devastation.
Where once the hills of their small country had been green and lush and beautiful, they were now a wasteland of pitted, sere earth, scattered with overlooked corpses and abandoned machinery of war.
Honoria’s witchsmoke had tainted the soil, and Ariana feared it would be a very long time before anything grew again.
She found herself humming unconsciously, a plaintive hymn to Lyria that cried out for peace. None of the soldiers spoke—the only sounds besides Ariana’s humming were an occasional cough or shifting weight on a camp bed.