But he looked to the roiling black clouds, and thought, I can out-scorn this wind and rain. A storm like this pitied neither wise men nor fools, and Ban would not, either.
He stripped off his coat and tossed it to the mud. Laughed, harsh and high, but the sound was lost in the black, demanding, raging noise.
White Forest, I am Ban the Fox! he yelled in their language.
The ground slid away, and Ban fell down into a creek. His sword twisted in the belt, pinching his hip as he landed hard. He stood. Fast water curled around his shins, tugged at his ankles. Yet he stayed upright, his legs strong as the mountain even as a gust of wind thrust at his chest, burned tears from his eyes, and made his teeth ache. He bared them, grinning furious at the storm and unsheathing his sword.
Maybe he would die in this blustering, frantic night. But Ban did not think so. Worse had not killed him. This was not war. Island bears or lions from Aremoria or hunger-pinched wolves might hide their heads tonight; Ban the Fox would not.
He lifted his face to the sky.
Ban Ban Ban! Ban the Fox! the forest cried, thrashing.
The rain, the wind, the lightning and thunder could hurt him, but not truly destroy him. Not like his father might have, or the king of Innis Lear, those men who should have loved him and wanted him, expected the best of him. Instead of leaving it to foreign kings! This storm was not to be blamed; it was not unkind. For what was kindness but offering comfort where none was owed?
This storm was not his father. It owed him nothing.
Ban laughed and walked on, sword in hand.
Soon he stumbled and fell to his knees, dropping his sword. In the darkness, it vanished, leaving him to crawl forward through clinging ferns, and up to his feet again. Ban saw blackness and streaks of lightning-silver rain. He saw branches like claws. He saw rain dripping down trees in rivulets, and thought of crying.
His father might be dead now.
Ban wished this wind would blow the earth beneath him back into the sea forever. End all this. The end of the Lear line, the end of this very island. His own miserable life.
Heat prickled his eyes; it was tears.
Ban the Fox was crying.
He’d left his father to die. And worse, he’d deceived his innocent brother. He’d betrayed Mars, completely. His only friend. And Elia, too, his own secret voice reminded him.
Ban gritted his teeth; he closed his eyes.
It was over, it was done. Ban would not pretend all his actions had been justified. He was not more sinned against than sinning. He had loved a girl, and been torn from her only for being a natural boy in a world that only welcomed star-blessed men, and there a seed of destruction had planted within his heart, and here it burst out of his chest full-formed, with thorns and vines and bloodred blossoms.
Sinking to his knees in the muck, Ban knew that no matter what else, he was as wrecked as this island. He was no vainglorious, distant star, but a creature of earth; flawed, desperate, and with a heart so ready to be hurt it could feel nothing else.
Ban was a wild gale, all raw and screaming, attacking anything unwise enough to face him. He welcomed the taste of cold rain on his tongue, the storm mingling with those tears that coursed down his cheeks.
Ban the Fox! cried the White Forest; Ban responded with only a wordless howl. This was pure magic, wild and electric, blurring the air and mud into one chaos, a tempest so violent there was no difference between sky and earth, star and root; all was all, and he was part of it.
No hero, no good man, but a force of nature.
With his hands firmly in the mud, Ban pushed upright. There was no way to go but forward, on a terrible night such as this. He could only blow himself out with the storm.
ELIA
IT WAS THE middle of the night, and Elia had yet to sleep. After a long discussion of queendom and rootwater and war, and it became clear there was no point waiting up for Kayo to return with Lear and the Fool, Brona had flung on a cloak and ventured outside. Elia tried to keep the woman here with her, but Brona had insisted, “I must check on the canvas over the garden, and one of the new families was having trouble with their roof—we’ve not managed to re-thatch it. Stay here and let me do my work. I will retire with Alis, or—or see if the trees will help me find Kayo. You will be queen; you must guard yourself.”
It took every ounce of Elia’s will to even pretend she might agree.
The storm sang to her as she lay alone on the straw mattress. The fire was low, popping around black and sun-red coals. Wind and thunder rattled the heavy wooden shutters tied down over the cottage windows and tore at the thatched roof. Elia curled onto her side, and the straw mattress crackled. She whispered a prayer for Lear, for Kayo, to the trees and wind. It cried back with every word, from every angle.
Elia needed to find her father, to speak with her sisters. As she’d said, her family was broken, and in breaking kept the kingdom unwell. That was what it whispered, that was the lament of Innis Lear. She needed to try to make them all see, her sisters and father, and Kayo and Connley and Astore, all: they were a family, and wouldn’t Dalat have wished them together? The island did. Together, between the stars and rootwaters. It would have them
