Elia said, “He promised to do what he could for me, from Innis Lear.” Truth, but not all of it.
“To fight for you?” Morimaros said quietly. A tension pained his voice, and Elia remembered what her sisters had said, that this Aremore king would take Lear for himself if he was allowed to. Elia stared at Morimaros and realized it was not nations or war at the fore of the king’s mind.
An answer stuck in her mouth as her eyes stuck on his.
Kayo broke the silence. “The young man is angry at the world, sir. I’ve spoken with Ban, and he carries a fire that will burn down whatever he sets it upon. If he will put it to Elia’s cause, she would benefit.”
The king did not look away from Elia. “You need your friends,” he said.
Though Elia was not entirely sure what had passed in Morimaros’s heart, unbidden relief cooled her own. She did not take the scrawled note back from Kayo; instead she broke the seal on Errigal’s letter to finally read for her uncle, in concession to the king of Aremoria.
But she did not need to be holding the note to feel its weight, or to remember perfectly the fast, flawed lines of Ban’s writing, the deep cuts in the paper where he’d pressed too hard. Only a few words of the ancient language, and yet they might as well have been cut into her skin.
I keep my promises.
AEFA
THE ROYAL KENNEL was tucked into the northeastern curve of the secondary wall of the palace. A two-story structure built with pale wood and shingles, with a round grassy yard, it was warm all the time and smelled of hay, hairy beasts, mud, and the leavings of hectic but well-trained dogs. Aefa loved it, for kennels were the same in Aremoria and Innis Lear, so she found homesickness alleviated. And besides, dogs were a refuge of loyalty, love, and honesty in a world that nurtured the opposite.
Though Morimaros kept his raches and bloodhounds comfortably, as befitting their status as the king’s dogs, it was his nephew, Isarnos, who adored the animals. And as Isarnos was the reason the king could delay marriage as long as he had, Morimaros gave his heir almost complete run of the kennels.
It had been Aefa’s flirtation with one of the young prince’s tutors that led her to the knowledge that there was a litter of puppies, and Aefa’s considerable charm applied to royal grooms gained her access to the whelps. She’d visited every other day this past week.
The litter’s arrival was one of several pieces of intelligence Aefa had collected, with nothing more than the casual acquisition of friends. Another week in Aremoria and she’d determine who to pursue for more dedicated personal cultivation, based on a prioritized list of Elia’s needs. After all, Aefa understood charm to be her best tool for acquiring a web of allies and informants, as she’d learned last winter at the Dondubhan barracks. She’d let the adorable legitimate Errigal son seduce her, and in return she pinned him to his pillows to interrogate him on how he made everybody like him so rotting much. He was good looking, and so was Aefa; he was charismatic, and so could she be. Therefore, what could he teach her?
Plenty about sex, it turned out, and then even more about Lear’s retainers and the state of politics under the king. But he had been unable to teach her how to gain access where she was lacking. Rory Earlson had never had to learn. He simply had access; he’d been born with it, and he rarely noticed its effectiveness as a tool or a weapon. Aefa was not an earl’s son, or even an earl’s daughter. Her parents had been seasonal servants at Dondubhan until her father’s humor caught Lear’s attention; because of that and the lucky virtue of sharing a rare birth star with the king, the Fool was raised high. Though the king himself promptly forgot his Fool had ever been less than the equal of, say, a valued, honored retainer, the vast majority of the king’s household certainly remembered. Here in Aremoria, Aefa was again fettered by status, even elevated as a princess’s most trusted companion.
Aefa shook her head, hoping to shed the bitter taste in her mouth. She crouched down in a pool of her own skirts, surrounded by fluffy, slithering puppies, each large enough now to argue and snap over space on the girl’s lap. Aefa smiled and teased them, rotating the little creatures as fairly as she could manage: they each got a verse of poetry along with some scratching. The mother of the litter, a beautiful chestnut dog, leaned nearby, watching with sleepy brown eyes, her feathery tail thumping slowly against the wooden floor. She was sleek and long-legged, with a wide head but a longer snout, and not nearly so rangy and shaggy as the deerhounds preferred for hunting on Innis Lear. A little page boy swept the length of the smooth wooden floor, humming along with Aefa’s hushed rhymes. The windows were grated, but open to the afternoon, and a fine cool cross-breeze blew through smelling of river and crisp city fires.
The only two things marring Aefa’s happiness were missing the island under her feet and her inability to decide how—and who to use—to best curry favor for Elia. In terms of pleasurable seduction, La Far would have been Aefa’s personal choice, though he was more than ten years her elder. The way he moved, and the vast heaviness peering out of his eyes, intrigued her to the point of distraction. Consequently, he was a poor choice, if her purpose was Elia’s benefit, not merely that of her own loins.
Then there was Ianta, the Twice-Princess and King Morimaros’s sister. The woman was fat and delightful, and she’d winked at Aefa three days ago, and she was rich and in a perfect position to
