Blackveil (61 page)

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Authors: Kristen Britain

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #fantasy, #Epic

BOOK: Blackveil
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“Master Destarion?”
The huddle broke apart and they all turned to her.
“Yes, my lady?”
“I believe he has a fever.”
Destarion hurried into the bedchamber with his assistants on his heels. Estora intended to follow, but Colin called to her.
“My lady,” he said, “may we have a word?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
Colin extended a hand to her and guided her to the nearest chair. “This has been a most difficult day, and as acting castellan, I wish to convey the realm’s deepest condolences on the passing of your father. He was a good lord-governor and much loved by the people of Coutre, and I know all the eastern provinces looked to him for guidance.”
Estora nodded, accepting his words for what they were.
“I’ve asked the royal death surgeons to care for your father’s remains in accordance with your and your mother’s wishes.”
“Thank you.” Having the royal death surgeons attend her father was a great honor. Their services were usually reserved for only the immediate members of the royal family, but now and then special personages were designated for their attention. Had Colin not offered their services, she and her mother would have had to contact a suitable undertaker in the noble quarter, which would have been very trying in the midst of their grief.
“We are most appreciative, Counselor Dovekey,” Richmont told Colin. “Lord Coutre was a great man. Like a father to me.”
Colin bowed. Then to Estora he said, “This has been doubly difficult for you, for now your betrothed lies injured within as well, and we do not know how it will go for him.”
Estora began to wonder what Colin was leading up to, for she had never heard so many words from him at one time. She glanced at Richmont, his expression was eager, and she grew very suspicious. General Harborough stood off some paces watching the proceedings.
“You may as well come out with it,” Estora said. “The lot of you obviously have something you wish to say.”
Colin and Richmont exchanged glances, and then Colin explained. He told her how it was unclear whether or not Zachary had designated an heir, and they would only find out when the lord-governors all assembled and opened the Royal Trust, which contained certain state secrets and Zachary’s will. Colin described the upheaval that could erupt between the lord-governors, especially if an heir was not named.
“It could be the Clan Wars all over again,” Richmont interjected. “As when King Agates Sealender failed to name an heir before his death.”
“It is why your betrothal to Zachary was so welcome,” Colin said. “With a king paired with a queen, there is stability in governance knowing that children will be born to carry on the line unbroken. Unfortunately that stability is now at great risk, especially if there were to be infighting among lord-governors contesting the realm’s leadership. There are enemies that would like to see Sacoridia weakened by it. The Hillanders brought unity to the provinces after the Clan Wars. It would be a disaster for it to dissolve.”
Estora had no difficulty in surmising where all this was leading. “You wish to move the wedding up before . . . before Zachary dies.”
“Yes, that is so. We would ensure its legitimacy, that it is indisputable you are our queen. Then, after the proper period of mourning, you may choose a husband of noble blood to join you in your rule.”
“If Zachary lives,” Estora said quietly, “I am not sure he’d be very pleased.”
“We take the responsibility entirely upon ourselves though we may forfeit our freedom or our lives for it,” Colin replied. “He will not blame you. I think in time he’d recognize we moved in the best interest of the realm.”
“When do you propose to do this thing?”
“Immediately,” Richmont said.
“Immediately?”
“The gravity of his wound dictates it,” Colin said. “Destarion recommends sooner rather than later.”
Estora’s brain reeled. “Where is Captain Mapstone? I should like to hear her thoughts on this.”
Colin shifted his stance, looked uneasy. “She took ill rather suddenly while you were in with Zachary. She’s in the mending wing. I think she was ... overcome.”
Estora raised an eyebrow. Overcome? There was not anything that would easily overcome that Rider captain, nothing that would keep her away from Zachary in his need. Illness? Perhaps, but Estora was not so naive that she didn’t know times such as these, with a monarch failing, were very perilous for all who surrounded him. She would see to the captain’s welfare later.
“I should like to speak to my mother then.”
“I will send for her,” Richmont said. “She is aware of our proposal and seemed to approve.”
Estora sighed. They had it all planned out.
As good as their word, they brought Lady Coutre to her, now a widow garbed in black, and left the two alone in Zachary’s dressing room to speak in private. Estora’s mother looked pale and severe in her mourning clothes, but stately with her shoulders held erect. Estora’s parents had never met prior to their wedding day. Their coupling had been prearranged, a matter of alliances within the province. Despite being strangers to one another in the beginning, a deep fondness had developed between them. Estora recalled how her formidable mother never backed down from her father when he was in one of his blustery moods, and how she complemented his reign with her grace as the lady of Coutre Province.
“It is what I’ve prepared you for since you were a child,” Lady Coutre said. “How to be a good wife to a nobleman of power.”
“But the circumstances!”
Lady Coutre took Estora’s hands, and suddenly she looked frail, scared, alone. “My dear, dear child, when we enter a marriage, we never know what will happen the next day. This morning when your father awoke from bed, he was robust, as healthy as I have ever seen him with a shine in his eyes and ready to challenge the world. By the afternoon, he was dead. Cold, so very cold.
“Tomorrow, Zachary may be gone, or he may not be. His fate is up to the gods, but it is clear to me he needs you more than ever to watch over him, and to watch over his realm. Who better to advocate on his behalf than the woman with whom he agreed to spend the rest of his life?”
They embraced and cried together, and Estora came to a decision.
 
The ceremony took place in Zachary’s dimly lit bedchamber, the groom restless in some fevered dream beneath his sheets while an assistant mender applied cold, wet cloths to his forehead. The bride still wore her riding habit and mourning shawl. Someone had found dried flowers for her to hold since the ground was still much too cold for plant growth.
The castle’s moon priest and a pair of his acolytes performed the ceremony, and it was witnessed by Lady Coutre, Estora’s sisters, Richmont, Colin, General Harborough, Master Destarion, and the lord-mayor of Sacor City, who was accompanied by a law speaker. Four Weapons stood in the corners, both guardians and witnesses. Zachary’s chamber was spacious, but it didn’t feel so with such a crowd in it. Estora felt the absence of her father keenly and fought back tears. He should have been here.
The priest droned on about fidelity and companionship, love of the gods, love of family, and fertility. He tinkled a series of delicate silver bells each representing one of the seven virtues. They were supposed to exorcise past sins so the couple could enter marriage unencumbered and unbesmirched by the past. Estora was instructed to take Zachary’s hand. It was hot and sweaty. Heavy.
“Do you pledge to the gods your love and fealty for Zachary our king?” the priest asked her.
“Yes.”
A like question was asked of Zachary about her, but since he could not answer, Colin spoke for him.
“The rings,” the priest said.
Colin produced the rings, both gold, both filigreed with an interlocking crescent moon design. Estora and Zachary had been measured for the rings months ago. She had not known their crafting was complete.
The priest sang over the rings, then asked Colin to slip Estora’s on. He did, trembling as if he were the groom himself. Then Estora worked Zachary’s ring onto his swollen finger.
“Zachary and Estora, you are wed. May the blessings of Aeryc and Aeryon be upon you now and forever.”
Estora bent and kissed Zachary’s unresponsive lips to seal the spiritual contract. There was no clapping, no jokes, no well-wishes called out to the bride and groom. One final rite would remain unfulfilled this night, the tradition of the bride coming to her husband’s bed for the first time, the rite of consummation.
Those present paraded from the chamber like mourners to sign the legal contract of marriage awaiting them in the anteroom, proclaiming them witnesses to the event. Only Estora’s mother and sisters paused to hug and kiss her. They also bent to kiss Zachary who was now son and brother to them by law.
When they were gone, Estora slumped into the chair beside Zachary and said, “I should like to hear what you’d have to say about the wedding being moved up by three months. I pray that I shall.”
He did not respond. She took his hand again, the one with the ring, and pressed it to her face. “Please don’t die,” she whispered. “I’m not ready to do this on my own. Please don’t die.”
She’d already lost her first love, F’ryan Coblebay, to arrows. She was not sure she could endure another such loss again.
THE LIGHTED PATH
W
hen Karigan’s boots touched the ground on the Blackveil side of the wall, she felt as though she faced another wall, but this one of shifting mists that wafted between her companions, graying some of them out while exposing the others. Tree limbs reached out of the vapor, crooked, amorphous, adrift.
She was also met with a wall of silence. Her companions did not speak. The Eletians stood so still they could have been ancient statues of lost Argenthyne. Lynx bowed his head and covered his ears as if the quiet hurt them. The others peered into the forest, trying to see beyond the mist, their hands on the hilts of their swords.
“They smell of fear.” Graelalea had come silently to stand beside Karigan.
“What about me?” Karigan asked. “Do I smell of fear, too?”
Graelalea did not respond, but Karigan could guess. As for the Eletians, their features remained stoic. Did they feel fear being in Blackveil? Despair? Outrage at what had become of their ancient land?
When Karigan glanced once more at Graelalea, she was startled to find a pair of tears gliding down the Eletian’s cheeks. Karigan watched them plummet to the forest floor and splatter among the choked weeds and muck.
Sorrow,
Karigan thought.
That is what they feel.
Graelalea strode over to Lynx. She lifted his hands away from his ears and spoke quietly to him.
“I hear everything and nothing,” he responded. “As though the world howls.”
Graelalea said something more and Lynx nodded.
“I shall try it.” He closed his eyes for several moments and his expression and posture relaxed. When his eyes flickered open, he said, “Yes, that worked. It’s barely a murmur now.”
“We must begin,” Graelalea announced, and that was all it took for the company of twelve to fall in line. Grant abdicated the role of leader without, notably, a word of complaint, and Graelalea strode to the head of the line as if there’d never been any question.
They set off, keeping the wall beside them as they headed east. There was a road Karigan remembered—more from Alton’s reports than her own experiences—that they must be traveling toward, an old Eletian road that intersected with the wall. They walked on in silence, Karigan in the middle of the line behind Yates and ahead of Ard. Yates glanced back at her with a grin, but it didn’t look quite so jaunty now.
Karigan shifted the unfamiliar weight of her pack on her shoulders and grimaced at the stiffness of her infantry boots. She really should have tried to break them in more before now. She hoped they did not break
her
in first. Otherwise the walking cane the Weapons had given her would be needed for more than the occasional support. At the moment it remained strapped to her pack.

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