Dalat did not make another stop. She’d said her farewell to Brona last night, and could only hope those ladies she’d befriended these past twenty years, and the retainers’ wives she loved, and especially her companions from home, would understand. Understand, and watch out for her babies. Understand and hold this kingdom together with her husband, despite how terrible his grief would be.
She’d left the vial of starweed in their bedchamber, to force herself to go back to him, else Dalat feared she’d have taken it outside, not found the courage to face him as she died.
The king of Innis Lear snored softly in the light of a single wide candle. Though it had melted to a stub, it still managed to flicker over the volumes of star charts he’d been reading before sleep. His head tilted to the side in his repose, one hand on his chest, the other flung over his head, with two fingers twined in his long brown hair. He did that, twisting strands around several fingers as he pondered something, like wool around a spindle. It was so rich a brown, his hair, thick and dry and waved. Sometimes Dalat found single silver hairs and plucked them, eliciting a hum of irritation from him: he wanted their proof of age and wisdom, for he was, after all, halfway through his sixth decade, and old. You must think younger, to keep up with me, she would say in turn, and drag him to bed for a romp. Dalat teased that she alone kept him in shape, for without her, he would hunch over a book or slump in his throne, disaffected and bored with all but the stars.
Quickly, before she could change her mind, Dalat went to the small table that was her own, covered in slim books of poetry and her letters. She unstoppered the thin vial and drank every bit of the slick poison. Then she took it to the window and dragged open the heavy shutter. Lear stirred at the noise, but Dalat ignored it for the moment. Below her bedroom window was a small garden of sturdy fruit trees and juniper. She tossed the vial at the trio of gnarled cherry trees, where Brona knew to collect it in the morning.
Light in the east turned the central tower of Dondubhan Castle into a black silhouette. I will be air, and I will be rain, and I will be dust, and I will be free, she thought to herself, another old desert prayer. Maybe Dalat would see her own mother again, soon. Maybe death would feel like dry desert wind.
Returning to the bed, she slipped out of her robe and under the wool blanket with her husband. Pillowing her head with her arm, she lay on her side to study him. There already had been wrinkles at his eyes and mouth when she first met him, stepping off her ship and onto this rocky island. She’d come from the Third Kingdom via five foreign ports, meeting kings in all, and eating new foods and singing new songs. But the look in his warm eyes, blue as a shallow lake in a face pale as melon rind, caught her immediately and never let go. He was so much older than she, with a purity of passion like she’d never before known. Nothing got in the king’s way when he set his heart on a thing, especially when that thing came as a mission from his stars.
Dalat had been glad to be such a mission. Destiny was romantic, and not something the Third Kingdom empresses put much stock in: hard work and loyalty made queens, they said, not prophecy. But there was little room for adventure without faith.
The queen of Innis Lear sighed. Here she’d had twenty years of destiny, and she would not go back and change a moment. Dalat kissed her husband. “Gaelan,” she murmured against his mouth.
He had refused for so long to speak of this moment; now she would give him no choice. This they would experience together; he owed her that, because he loved her. Because his stars and his enemies had built this cage around her. She would kiss him as she died, exchange vows of love once more, and then he would know that his faith in the stars was true and right. He would keep his faith and be able to love their daughters. Without her. Be both father and mother.
Her fingers tingled: the poison would numb her and put her to sleep, Brona had promised, and she would die in a daydream.
“Gaelan, wake up.”
Her husband frowned, groping for her. She guided his hand, and he woke as he found her. “Dalat,” he whispered, eyes unfocused. He licked his lips, blew a long breath, and rolled his shoulders, all with his hand gripping her waist.
“Dawn is here.” Her voice wavered.
“What is…” The king sat up swiftly. “Morning. Gaela’s birthday! My love—Dalat. You’re alive.”
Her smile was tired. Dalat felt heavy, her limbs slow as cold honey. “I love you,” she said.
Gaelan gathered her against him, eager to push their bodies together. “I love you, more than everything.”
“Hold me … tightly.”
He obeyed, and stroked her braids, his mouth at her ear as he said, “I have thought, over long nights, that if you did not die, if your heart still beat this morning, if your spirit was as glorious as ever, we should rename you only my wife, and make Gaela our queen. She could be ready now, to make the bargain. That would fulfill the prophecy well enough for all the stars. A new queen, reborn, and crowned with her own name, her own glory. The old queen’s death symbolic. And it ties neatly with star and moon cycles of death and rebirth.”
The king leaned back, smiling proudly, triumphantly, until he saw the tears in Dalat’s eyes. The slackening of her mouth. “Dalat?” he whispered.
“You did not tell me any of that. You … wouldn’t talk to me,” his queen managed. Her chest hurt. And her stomach. “I asked you, and I asked you, in so many ways this year, to…”
“What? This? I did not—could not risk changing anything with words!” Gaelan curled his long fingers around her bare shoulders. Her head lolled, but with a great strength of will Dalat lifted it again.
“My heart was strong enough,” she whispered, horrified, so very heavy now, and scared. “I only die because I thought there was no other way. For my—us.” I thought you would never bend. I thought … my daughters would be torn to pieces by Connley and—and Glenna—Glenn—and …
“No, you aren’t dying. You’re here, with me. What is wrong?” Gaelan shook her, then released her shoulders to grasp her head. The queen’s arms flopped against the bed.
“I thought you were too afraid to lose me, or else lose your stars. I thought you would never make a plan in case they failed.” Was she saying it all out loud, or only trying to? Dalat could barely tell. But Gaelan’s face contorted as if he could hear her. “So I made a plan on my own,” she said.
This time when her head dipped back, Dalat could not lift it.
“No!” the king cried, laying her down. He bent over his wife. He slapped her; when her head turned from the force it did not turn back.
Her eyes drifted shut. His frantic, beloved voice faded in and out as he argued with her, as he demanded to know what she’d done. His lips on her mouth, her face, his wet lashes brushed her cheek. The damp kiss of tears. Or gentle rain. Or
ELIA
THE NIGHT CAME to its end when the roots of the Thorn Tree vanished under the western horizon, while its branches still stretched toward the seven constellations that in this hour of this month were known as the Mantle.
Five hawthorns huddled in a line down the lee of the rocky slope, protected from the harshest sea winds. The trees had given Scagtiernamm its Learish name: Refuge of Thorns. It was a portentous place and time for a star reading, in the Refuge of Thorns, beneath a sinking Thorn Tree constellation, before the Salmon nosed up or the Star of Fourth Birds burst visible as a trailhead for the following sun.
Elia trudged up the moorland alone.
As she walked, she asked the world, Why is there no language of stars?
The wind shivered her eyelashes. What do you think your charts and numbers have been? asked the nearest hawthorn tree in a creaking, hissing old voice.
The stars speak a silent language, she murmured.
Yes.
Do they care about us here?
Neither the wind nor the roots replied.
“Why should they care?” asked Ban Errigal.
It seemed she was not the first to arrive.