Lanaxis regarded the giants with a cold eye. “You may start by standing, Anastes,” the titan rumbled. “I have summoned you here to amend the wrong committed by your ancient paramount.”
The storm giants turned the color of snow and looked up with uncomprehending eyes. The birds left their shoulders, filling the air with a melancholy din of chirping and trilling. Peals of the thunder rumbled down from the sky, and the graupel sounded like a drum chorus as it hammered the exposed planks of the tower’s third-story floor.
“Stand I say!” Lanaxis ordered. “I did not call you here to brood.”
The giants obeyed, but the wind picked up, and the graupel fell harder than ever.
“Forgive our feelings, ancient uncle. Your news comes as a great shock-as much as we welcome it.” Anastes’s voice sounded anything but happy. “At a time like this, it is difficult for us to control our emotions.”
“Vilmos had no trouble.” Lanaxis cast an impatient glance skyward, then lowered his hand to display Brianna. “Beneath her cloak, this queen carries the new emperor of Ostoria. You will guard her while I sleep-and if you allow anything to become of him-or her-I shall give you reason to storm for centuries.”
Lanaxis stooped down and thrust Brianna into the second-story foyer. When she retreated through the door, she found the room filled with flitting birds. From the chimney flue came a faint scratching sound, which she at first attributed to the birds, but quickly realized was more likely Avner scratching at the mortar in the fireplace below.
Brianna went to a corner and chased a bevy of siskins off the floor, then sat down and opened her cloak to check on Kaedlaw. His face remained round and ugly, but his skin was pink, and the sparkle had returned to his brown eyes. He raised one of his chubby hands toward the queen’s breast. She lifted him to suckle. Nothing came out, and he growled.
Brianna cringed at his gravelly voice, then switched him to the other side. “You’re a hungry one, aren’t you?”
From across the chamber came Anastes’s melancholy voice. “A baby giant does need plenty of milk.”
Brianna’s heart jumped into her throat. The noises in the chimney suddenly sounded dangerously loud, and she had to struggle to keep her gaze from straying toward the fireplace. She looked instead toward the shattered arrow loop, where Anastes’s sad eyes were staring into the room. It seemed unlikely he would hear the faint scratching of Avner’s knife, especially over the hissing wind and the fluttering birds. Still, the queen did not know how keen the giant’s ears were, or what he might learn from his pets within the chamber.
Brianna pulled up her cloak to shield Kaedlaw and her partially exposed breast. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m nursing.”
“I’m truly sorry for the intrusion.” Anastes made no move to look away. “And if you’ll forgive me for expressing my concerns, I must say a tiny thing like you will never keep a baby giant fed.”
“Lanaxis thinks I’ll make a fine nursemaid.” Although the scratching had grown no louder, it filled Brianna’s ears like a trumpet blare. “He seems to believe that’s all a mother is good for.”
“I suppose that’s what comes of being born to a mountain.” Anastes was referring to the legend that Lanaxis and his brothers had been born of the mountain goddess Othea. “When one crawls from the birthing cave fully mature and immortal, how can one fathom the soothing balm of a mother’s love?”
“Perhaps you’d better teach him,” Brianna suggested. “Or your new emperor will grow up as warped as your titan.”
A doleful look came to Anastes’s silver eyes. “Would that I could, but we storm giants have already brought misery enough to the world. By trying to change what is destined to be, we can only make things worse.”
“How convenient for you.”
Anastes’s face darkened to sullen blue. The thunder outside growled plaintively, and a flurry of birds flashed past his face. The sulking storm giant looked away, turning his enormous ear to the window.
The queen’s stomach knotted with alarm. She rose and paced across the floor, holding her son to her shoulder as though she were burping him. Kaedlaw immediately growled his protest, filling the chamber with such a rumble that the birds fluttered off their roosts. Even Brianna could no longer hear the scratching in the fireplace.
Anastes turned back to the chamber. “Poor child. The pain of life is so new to him.”
“Perhaps he is cold,” rumbled a second storm giant. “We could strike a fire.”
“No!” Brianna spun around to find a huge gray eye peering through the arrow loop behind her. A pair of brown falcons were roosting on the sill, their cocked heads turned toward the giant. “The chimney’s blocked. We’d choke on the smoke.”
“That’s a small matter to fix,” offered another giant, this one peering through an arrow loop by the chimney. “I’ll have the flue clear in an instant.”
“I don’t want a fire!” Brianna insisted. She doubted the smoke would trouble Avner in the bottom of the chimney, but she didn’t want a giant dropping a stone on the young scout. Besides, the queen suspected she would find it difficult enough to crawl into a flue that was cold. “I’ll only have to put it out when Lanaxis lifts the tower, and even then I’ll have embers flying all over.”
Anastes knitted his brows, but did not argue. “Is there anything we can do to make you more comfortable?”
“What I really need is to eat.” It was the truth, but Brianna also hoped to keep the storm giants busy. “If you want to help, bring me some fresh rye bread, goat’s cheese, and a warm meatcake.”
“There’s a pair of moose in the fen beyond that forest,” rumbled one of the giants. “Wouldn’t they be enough for you?”
Brianna shot an impatient scowl at Anastes. “Do you see my cooks here? Or perhaps you expect me to eat raw moose?”
“Nikol and Ramos can cook them for you,” offered the giant.
“Very well,” Brianna sighed. “But my moose must be slow-roasted on a spit, and cooked through. Of course, I shall need wine to wash it down, a honeycomb to sweeten the flavor, and a bowl of pottage to settle my stomach.”
Anastes paled. “You have demanding tastes, milady.”
“You’re the one who suggested moose,” Brianna reminded him. “I’d be just as happy with my first request- but if that’s too much trouble, perhaps you could keep the milk flowing for your new emperor by feeding me finches and falcons.”
Anastes winced. “No, of course not! We wouldn’t think of such a thing!”
He was speaking more to the birds than to Brianna, but that did not keep the queen’s unwanted guests from leaving the chamber in a squawking flurry. Clearly, the creatures understood more than she would have liked.
Kaedlaw let out an enormous burp and stopped growling. Brianna continued to pace, sliding her feet across the floor to mask the sound of Avner’s work.
“Well?” she demanded. “What shall it be?”
“We will cook the moose,” Anastes sighed. His head rose out of view, then his muffled voice reverberated across the third-story floor. “Nikol and Ramos, you roast the moose. Sebastion, you and Patma find some wine and vegetables for the queen’s pottage. Eusebius, see if the thrushes can guide you to a beehive.”
The giants did not rush off to do their paramount’s bidding.
“Before we go, I would like to behold our new emperor,” said one. “Perhaps we are not worthy of the honor, but it is truly my heart’s desire to lay eyes on him at least this once.”
Brianna started to pull Kaedlaw from beneath her cloak, then thought wiser of it. She might make better use of this boon later.
“The emperor is resting now.”
The storm giants sighed, and a chain of frigid drafts twirled through the chamber. Somewhere above the tower, half-a-dozen hawks voiced a string of forlorn tseers. The wind picked up and whistled past the arrow loops, spinning flurries of graupel into the room, and, save for Anastes, all of Brianna’s captors lumbered off to gather the food she had demanded.
“You are right to deny us, of course.” Anastes looked away, and a peal of long, soft thunder rumbled across the sky. “It is wrong for us even to hope we might lay eyes on one so sublime.”
“And why is that, Anastes?” Brianna was at once sympathetic and impatient with the giant’s self-pity. She went to the shattered arrow loop and stopped there. “What ancient wrong did Lanaxis call you to amend? No deed
