Chapter Sixteen #2
Hal had hoisted himself up. He laid a gentle hand on my shoulder. The other swiped across his bloody lip. “Enough, Bianca.”
I tore myself away.
Outside, snow had begun to fall. Hal pulled me into an alleyway and spat a wad of blood into the snow. “Bianca, you are my responsibility—no, not only that.” A shake of his head. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
“I’m fine.”
His thick brow furrowed. “Truly?”
“I will be. Besides, now you have plenty to write to Roland.”
He gathered snow, held it to his jaw until his hand could no longer bear the cold. “Oh, yes? What shall I tell him?” I brushed his cheek with my fingertips, pulling back when he winced.
I thought for a moment. “That I fight better than you.”
“He already knows that.”
“Prospero was right about Mars. He predicted you’d hurt yourself.”
He made a face. “Yes, but I will always be hurting myself or being hurt by others. Does it take a magician to tell me that? If my father had his way, if he listened to every little thing Prospero saw for me, I’d never leave my rooms or pick up a sword or ride a horse.
They’d sand the edges of my entire world until there were no sharp points to tear and bruise my precious skin. ”
I pinched his arm. He batted me away. “Will that bruise?”
We huddled together for warmth on the way back to Redhall. Slowly, the world began to thaw.
March. The court had moved to a new castle along the Snake.
The wood behind Archerhold teemed with life.
The king threw pageants and feasts on the green beside the tiltyard to celebrate Prospero’s great triumph: Hal’s betrothal to the princess of Bastian, his third bride-to-be since the age of seven.
Prospero’s alliances were often shifting; Lionesse was now the enemy.
Soldiers marched with lances and pikes to invade their beaches.
Carmin to the north and Bastian to the east were in favor, despite the troubling gossip that Bastian’s emperor preferred the company of the dead to the living.
It was said many had wasted away in the endless lines to see their lost loved ones, neglecting food and drink. It was said the palace staircases were draped with these corpses.
Hal was given a portrait of the princess in a golden locket the size of his palm. It had a small clasp, hung on a thick red ribbon. We peered down at the painting together. I touched the princess’s chipped face and told him she was rather pretty, wasn’t she?
Hal said it was not something he wanted to discuss with me.
“Why not? She was born under Capricorn, so she must be strong-willed. You’d like that, Hal.”
“Does it matter if we like each other?”
He was in a foul mood the rest of the day, riding off with Tom Guildford and the other boys whose company he didn’t enjoy, who oiled him with pretty smiles all day long.
At one of Prospero’s nearby manor houses, I tried to work on my translations. I could hear the stacking of coins upstairs, then the piles collapsing, Prospero’s clipped order to clean it up.
My pen stalled when I thought about all the things I would never have. Some noblewomen my age were mothers. The princess of Bastian—younger than me and betrothed.
I was still by the fire when Hal swept in, handed his hat over to one of Prospero’s secretaries, and flicked rain from his hair. “Evening, Royal Highness,” the secretary said. “Is the lord chancellor expecting you?”
“No, he isn’t.” Hal hid displeasure well. I shrank back into the shadows and buried my face inside my book, but he’d already bounded up the stairs to Prospero’s study. Although I heard their greeting and Prospero’s clap on his shoulder, the door was quickly shut.
I left my book and gown on the armchair and flew up into the rafters as a bat. Perched on a wooden beam, I could listen with startling clarity now—the scrape of Prospero’s chair as he settled behind his desk, and then another chair groaning, which must have been Hal’s.
“How did you find that portrait?” If a grin could be heard, it would be in Prospero’s voice.
“Prospero,” said Hal cautiously. “How final—and by that I mean, considering the previous arrangements with Carmin and then Lionesse, and now Bastian—”
The groaning of wood. “Was she so repulsive to you?”
“I had no issue with the portrait,” Hal said.
Prospero caught on quick. “What issue have you, then?”
“My father had a love match.”
“Oh, yes, yes. Has Roland, in his romanticism, convinced you of this? Your father and mother might have been a love match when they married, but they are no longer in love, for they no longer speak. Though perhaps not speaking has done them good. That’s my first argument for you.
My second, and listen very, very carefully, is that your father’s armies, the ones you so desperately seek to join, are sailing up the coast of Lionesse at this very moment.
Whose alliance is most necessary to us now? ”
Hal muttered, “Bastian’s.”
Prospero sighed wearily. “Yes, that’s right.
I have gone back and forth to settle this agreement with the ambassador, and it is signed and dated and sealed by a Mercury, and so you will marry the princess for your father, and for me.
” His voice softened. “I’ll convince him to let you play soldier. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“But—”
“Take whoever you’d like for a lover.” Prospero set something down, and I could hear the impatient rap of his knuckle against the desk. “Do you have someone else in mind? Is that it?”
My breath caught. I lost my balance. I hung upside down on the beam, gripping it with the talon in my wing. All I had was the canvas of their emotions—the swirling red of their shared frustration, and then Hal’s anxiety, bursts of it, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to speak.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. Softly, like he was reluctant to hear it himself.
“Your Roet name is coveted and ancient, your eyes are as gray as the bedrock beneath us now. All the power-hungry daughters of the court are beneath you. Whoever she is, she is not worth your father’s wrath.
” The shuffling of Prospero’s papers. Another sigh.
“You’ve always been honorable. Do the honorable thing now, won’t you?
And I’ll send you to Lionesse so you can finally draw your sword. ”
Hal stormed from the room shortly after, grinding his teeth. He accepted his cap and ducked back into the rain—it pounded down hard and fast, so he quickly blended into the night.
We raced through the forest, and he could not catch me, for I was a doe and then I was falcon, horse, fox, horse again, and whenever he leapt over a fallen tree or skidded around a corner, I overtook him.
“Damn it,” he said, pulling back on his stallion. It was Roland’s horse, Jester. Hal had promised to look after him.
Both were sweating from the ordeal, and he took a moment to wipe his brow with the sleeve of his doublet. Then he noticed where we were. He spun around several times to admire it: a wild, fleecy meadow, radiant with dappled sunlight. Cicadas humming, dragonflies flitting around our heads.
He jumped off Jester’s back, dropped the gown and slippers we’d packed in his saddlebag by my hooves. He hid his face against the stallion’s flank while I transformed from horse to woman behind a tree.
“Will you help me pin this?” I asked. It was more layers than I usually wore when I rode out with Hal—Prospero was presenting me to an ambassador at suppertime.
I’d already struggled into my shift, but the kirtle and gown and detached sleeves hung around my waist. Hal was no lady-in-waiting, and he’d had grooms to dress him his entire life, so he had no idea what to do.
He collected my hair and draped it over my shoulder, then spent several fumbling minutes with my laces and pins before he groaned and said he gave up.
I decided it was warm enough, and we were deep enough in the forest, that I might as well just wear my shift.
It was white linen, thick enough to cover me.
I let the rest of my gown fall to my ankles and stepped out of the fabric. He gripped my shoulder, spun me around.
When his gaze caught on the outline of my breasts, we both flushed. Hal and I had seen each other half-naked when we’d waded into algae-rich ponds as children, but that was many years ago.
I tumbled into the long grass, flinging my hands above my head, and he fell beside me. We turned on our sides and blinked at each other through the gaps between the blades. I eyed his new stubble. The sun coaxing out the red in it.
His mouth twitched. “What?”
I reached forward. Almost touched him, then held myself back. “You need a shave.”
He swatted me away. “I do not.” When he rolled onto his back and stared up at the canopy, I took in his profile—his supple mouth, his strong nose.
His golden-brown hair was longer than it had been in winter; now, it fell over his cheeks as Roland’s did.
He could feel my eyes and snorted, but didn’t turn.
“I’m going to Lionesse,” he said. “In a fortnight.”
“Oh.” I twisted onto my back, too, folding my arms over my chest.
He stole a glance at me. “Did you already know?”
“I knew it was only a matter of time. You were restless here.”
He laughed to himself. “All I’ve ever wanted is the opportunity to die like anyone else, I suppose.”
“Don’t say that.” I tied a blade of grass into a knot. “You won’t die.”
“Of course I won’t. Father will have me stay far away from the field.
Perhaps,” he added bitterly, “I’ll get to ride my horse to the top of a hill and watch better men fight in my stead.
Those soldiers are poor, ripped from their homes, or they know the only way to feed their families is to go to war. Why am I worth more than they are?”
I pictured him with a blade. How he whipped it from one hand to another, sometimes twisting it behind his back before he struck. I’d always wondered how someone as good as he was could be so well-honed for killing.