baby to Arcadius. She probably didn’t want you to feel trapped, or maybe she didn’t want her growing up in a whorehouse. In any case, she knew she would die before introducing you to your daughter. That’s why she told me to. Royce, you have a daughter, you old bastard!” He reached out and took hold of Royce’s face. “Part of Gwen is still here! Do you hear me?”
“Is he my father?” Mercy asked, drawing closer. “My mother told me that one day I would meet my father and that he would take me to live in a beautiful place and I would become a fairy princess and a queen of the forest.”
Royce’s eyelids twitched.
“Now!” Hadrian told Arista, but it was not necessary. She was already chanting. The chanting quieted to a hum and then Arista went silent. She jerked abruptly and violently. Hadrian took hold of her. He had one hand on each of them as he prayed to Maribor. Every muscle in Arista’s body was taut and her head hitched as if she were being slapped. Then suddenly she shook and her breath shortened to gasps. The time between gasps grew until she stopped breathing entirely.
All around them the crowd stopped breathing as well.
“Royce!” Hadrian screamed at him. “She’s your daughter, and if you die, she’ll be an orphan, just like you! Are you going to abandon her and leave her alone like your parents did? Royce! ”
Both bodies lurched in unison and they gasped for air. Arista, damp with sweat, laid her head against Hadrian. Royce breathed deeply, and slowly his eyes fluttered open. He did not speak, but his eyes focused on the little girl.
CHAPTER 28
The rear wheel of the wagon fell into another hole and bounced so hard that Arista woke. She pulled back the blanket and squinted at the sky. The sun was low on the horizon and the movement of the wagon made the forest on a hill to their right look as if it were marching in the opposite direction. Her neck and back were sore, her muscles stiff, and she was still groggy. She realized that despite the bouncing buckboard, she had slept the day away. Now her stomach ached from hunger. Her teeth felt fuzzy, almost sandy, and her left hand was numb from her lying on it. She rode in the back of the wagon that Magnus and Degan drove. Hadrian had made her the best bed he could, laying down all their blankets as padding in the space left by the consumed supplies.
Modina and the girls rode with her. Allie and Mercy were asleep between her and the empress. The two curled up in tight balls, their knees pulled to their chests. Modina sat with a blanket around her shoulders, staring off at the landscape. The sled runners had been replaced by wheels and they traveled on a rutted, muddy road that formed a dark line between two fields of snow that occasionally showed a patch of matted, tangled weeds. Seeing them got her thinking. She wiped her face with the blanket and, digging her brush out of a nearby pack, began the arduous process of clearing the snarls from her hair.
She pulled, grunted, and then sighed. Modina looked over with a questioning expression, and Arista explained by letting go of the brush and leaving it to hang.
Modina smiled and crawled over to her. “Turn around,” she said, and taking the brush, the empress began working the back of Arista’s head. “You have quite the rat’s nest here.”
“Be careful one doesn’t bite you,” Arista replied. “Do you know where we are?”
“I have no idea. I’m not really much of a world traveler, you know.”
“This doesn’t look like the road to Aquesta.”
“No,” Modina said as she worked on a particularly tough snarl. “It’s too late to travel that far today, and neither you, Royce, nor Hadrian were up for a long trip. After all, you three had a pretty big day.”
“But the people in-”
Modina patted her shoulder. “It’s all right. I sent Merton back with instructions for Nimbus and Amilia, and Royce sent the elves with him-well, most of them. A few insisted on staying with their new king. There’s nothing left in Aquesta to go back to. The city was destroyed. I ordered the remaining stores to be divided between those who survived. The people will be sent to Colnora, Ratibor, Kilnar, and Vernes, but organized into equal groups so no one city is too overwhelmed.”
Arista laughed and shook her head, making it hard for Modina to work. “Are you sure you’re the same Thrace Wood I once knew?”
“No, I don’t suppose I am,” Modina replied. “Thrace was a wonderful girl, naive, starry-eyed, bursting with life. For a long time I thought she was dead and gone, but I think-no, I know-some part of her still exists, but I’m Modina now.”
“Well, whoever you are, you’re amazing. You truly are the empress worthy of ruling all of mankind.”
Modina lowered her voice and said, “I’ll tell you a secret-it’s not me at all, really. Sure, on occasion, I come up with something intelligent-and I am usually surprised by it myself-but the real genius behind my throne is Nimbus. Amilia deserves everything this empire can give her for hiring him. The man is a wonder: quiet, unassuming, but utterly brilliant. If he had a mind to, he could replace me in a heartbeat. I am convinced he could organize a perfectly lovely coup, but he has no aspirations for power at all. I haven’t been in politics long, but even I can see that a man as capable as he and yet so absent of greed is a rare thing. Do you know he still sleeps in his cubicle? Or at least he did until the castle was destroyed. Even though he was chancellor of the empire, he lived in a tiny stone cell. He, Amilia, and Breckton are my jewels, my treasures. I don’t know how I could have survived without them.”
“Don’t forget Hadrian,” Arista reminded her.
“Hadrian? No, he’s not a treasure of mine and neither are you.” She paused in her brushing and Arista felt Modina kiss her head. “There’s not a word that can describe how I feel about the two of you, except perhaps… miracle workers.”
The center of the village clustered along the main road. Wood, stone, and wattle-and-daub buildings with grass-thatched roofs lined either side, beginning at the little wooden bridge and ending before the slope that climbed a hill to the manor house. They consisted of a ramshackle assortment of shops, homes, and hovels, casting long shadows. Beyond them, Hadrian could see people in the fields working in the strips closest to the village. Down in the valley, near the river, the fields were nearly clear of snow and villeins worked to spread manure from large carts. Hooded in wool cowls, the workers labored. Long curved rakes rose and fell in the faltering light. In the village, smoke rose from a few of the buildings and shops, but none came from the smithy.
As they approached, their horses announced their arrival with a loud hollow clop clip clop as they crossed the bridge. A pair of dogs lifted their heads, the sign above the shoemaker’s shop squeaked as it swayed, and farther down the road a stable door clapped absently against its frame. The intermittent warbling wail of lambs called out from hidden pens.
Hadrian and Royce led the procession through the village. Behind them rode three elves-Royce’s new shadows. Now that Royce was their king, and given what happened to Novron, and his predecessor, they were adamant about his protection.
The change in the elves’ demeanor had been dramatic. The moment Royce got to his feet, they all knelt. The sneering looks of contempt were replaced instantly with reverence. If they were acting, Hadrian thought they were all remarkable performers. Perhaps it was seeing Royce come back from the dead, or some magic of the horn, but the elven lords could not appear to be more devoted to him.
Royce did not protest his new protectors. He said little on the subject and rode as if they were not there. Hadrian guessed he was humoring them-for now. Everyone, especially Royce, was too exhausted to think, much less argue, and Hadrian had just a single thought-to find shelter before dark. With that in mind, he headed south, following the little tributary of the Bernum River he knew simply as the South Fork, which brought them to his boyhood home of Hintindar.
A man sitting in front of the stable was filing the edges of the coulter on a moul board plow when he caught sight of them. He had a bristling black beard and a dirty, pockmarked face. He was dressed in the usual hooded cowl and knee-length tunic of a villein. The man stared, shocked, for a handful of seconds, then emitted a brief
