Selida had forgotten how glacial Emmeline's pace had become, her boned kirtle of black wool weighted down by jet-beaded overskirts and floor-length, sable-lined sleeves. Her memory of the Tidelands princess who had once swam her by the hand through the royal kelp grotto trailed them up the coiled staircase like a ghost. The tower felt a hundred stories tall.
"I am sorry I was not in the courtyard to greet you, but from the window I saw Ser Kahldar's face as he left your side." Emmeline squeezed Selida's arm. "Do you plan to continue your pursuit?"
Selida wanted to discuss many things with Emmeline. Ser Kahldar was not among them. She picked a neutral tone. "He might make for a fine splash in the surf, but I judge him far too prejudiced for anything more."
Emmeline continued up the stairs past the family apartments on the second floor. "Ser Kahldar is a better study of Tidelander custom than Ser Aegison. He has only been at Wyvernsvow a handful of years. Perhaps his narrowness will continue to erode with time and exposure."
"Ser Kahldar wants no further intimacies from me."
"Is that why he rebuked our young squires so vigorously?"
"He made his stance perfectly clear at Harvest Shoredance last year. And after the joust during Spring Moonrise. And this afternoon, come to think of it."
"And when has that ever stopped a Cleric of Aluna?" Emmeline patted her arm. "Dawnlanders of his character are not the splashing sort. Their chastity thaws only with marriage." She paused at the third floor landing and tugged Selida into the narrow hallway. Beyond the arrowslit windows, the gray fog deepened into indigo. "You've made your dower contribution to the church several times over, our Grand Cleric writes me. It would ease her heart to know you did not continue to galavant up and down the coast alone."
"I am sure she would not want me to pick a Welded Dawnlander."
"Perhaps not," Emmeline said placidly, "but we must look to the future."
Selida swallowed her first reply. Before she could shape a second, Emmeline stopped outside a small door at the end of the hallway. It was painted blue, and stenciled at heart-level sat the moon and stars of Aluna's faithful.
"Here we are," Emmeline said. "Your surprise." She reached into her sleeve and withdrew a brass key. "Go ahead. Open it."
Selida lips parted, touched in spite of herself. She took the key, opened the door, and huffed a laugh.
"Do you remember it?"
Selida's fingers tightened on the key. "It was a linen closet. The year we all came to Wyvernsvow for the peace treaties, you, Laurence and I would come here to play. Our fathers could not bear the sight of us, after the discussions started to go sour."
"I met Lydris here. He had come to investigate our scuffling. I knew at once that a man who could build this keep would build an equally solid alliance." Emmeline's voice softened further. "I stood on this spot and swore to myself that if our fathers could not find peace through conversation, that I would secure it with a wedding."
When Princess Emmeline Skyfawn had ended the war by marrying Lord Lydris Magnus, many people, including Selida's father, had far cruder words for what had happened.
Selida looked around. The little room housed a dozen chairs, arranged in two half-circles. Facing them stood an altar of wood, chased with mother-of-pearl. Behind the altar, two latticed windows looked out over the inky coastline. On the dark blue painted ceiling, winged and coiled constellations of white and gold circled the full moon. Under her boots, the floor undulated with teal dyes in patterns of snakes, waves, and tides. To her left, a banked fire smoldered in the hearth. To her right, an alcove housed a clean pallet and a beachwood trunk: open, empty, and waiting for her things.
With effort, she banished the fantasy of Kahldar, dark hair tumbled across that clean bedding, from her mind. "It reminds me of your mother's chapel, in the old capitol," Selida said instead. "And I am grateful for any private space, given your many guests." She considered her next words. "Did you fix upon it before or after the Dominion offered to send you a pair of Welder Clerics this winter?"
"Ah, you heard." Emmeline waved her hand in languid dismissal. "I've been mulling over this project for years. Lydris and I worked on it all summer. Of course, it is nothing like the temple that used to stand on this promontory, but this is not the year to build a new church, no matter what the Grand Cleric writes me."
Selida bit her lip. "The Grand Cleric is merely concerned."
Emmeline tilted her head. "What, that the Welded will consume every religion in the Dominion?"
"That King Harald, upon his deathbed, will demand every Dominion state adopt the Church of the Heavens."
Emmeline lowered herself onto one of the chairs, like a great bird folding in its wings for sleep. "Our treaty would surely trump such a mandate. That said, I confess that my heart has softened towards their scripture."
Selida unclenched her hands. "You cannot mean to see some Dawnlands sun god raised up as Aluna's equal, or see Her reduced to some minor aspect of their myopic duology."
"I know. But surely you see that the Tidelands would be stronger standing together with the Dawnlands than apart."
"I would not see the Tidelands shackled to that church any more than I believe a cleric of Era must wed a cleric of Exos to perform holy functions."
"And you are in no hurry to pursue holy marriage and all it entails?" Emmeline smiled and closed her eyes. "Worry not. King Harald is decades yet from his grave. Aluna's dominion over Her shores is as absolute as any mortal could desire."
Selida wanted to throw one of the wooden chairs out a latticed window. Instead, she crossed to the altar and began to set out candles and incense. "Luckily, no sane person would ever think I would make a suitable Welded wife."
Emmeline shrugged. "At dinner we will tell your petitioners where they can find you. Now, if you would light the votives, I will offer Aluna my evening prayers."
***
Darkness blanketed the coast as the smoldering sandalwood saturated the chapel. As the scent drenched her, Selida opened her heart. An old hymn came quiet to her lips, and she sang Emmeline's meditations into the black waters beyond. The familiar verses lent her quiet courage. She'd arrived three weeks early to pose a question to an old friend.
Tidemother, let us still be friends, after.
"Have you considered marriage?" Emmeline's voice, meditations complete, floated dreamlike between them. "After the treaty, I remember your father had arranged a marriage for you â to a Dawnlander, like my Lydris. It is a pity that the Church chose that summer to requisition you from your family."
Selida hummed the last few bars of the verse. "Only a very special kind of man would be content to trail me up and down the coast."
"What if you petitioned the Grand Cleric to let you stay the year in Wyvernsvow?" Emmeline cocked her head. "You are not too old to bear children. You might still find that happiness."
I would rather eat glass. Selida turned towards the altar so Emmeline could not see her expression. She wondered if her charge had just prayed for her living son, or the three she'd lost stillborn before him. Seven-year-old Lydris held the hopes of the entire coast. She took a deep breath.
"Lydris grows in promise with every passing day, but I can see that the events of this summer have worn on you." She found a seat at Emmeline's side, reached out, and clasped her friend's hand. "I am sorry."
Emmeline's eyes dropped to her lap. "Lydris and his father used to go to the caves together, every day. After my love's death, I could not deny him this one childish joy, as long as he took either Ser Kahlar or Ser Aegison with him." She shivered as she sighed, and Selida remembered the night before the wedding: the frantic search for the bride-to-be, the abductors, the rising water. Emmeline avoided the caves still. "And that was how he found this treasure. Sometimes I wonder if the villagers are right, and there is a curse upon it."
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
"So it exists?"
"Alas."
"I heard a rumor that hoard contains an enchanted pearl, the sort our ancestors used to communicate across great distances. Have you seen such a thing?"
"Oh, as soon as we realized what we had, Ser Aegison declared the caves off limits. He fears a thorough accounting will lure good folks astray." The rings on Emmeline's free hand glittered. "I'm sure my husband would have declared the same. Best to let the King's artificers handle the lot of it."
Selida hesitated. "I know you preserve his memory but it seems... wrong to me to send it all to a foreign King. These treasures belong to our people."
"Our people? As opposed to their people?" Emmeline offered Selida the tiniest shake of her head. "I know it might be hard for one such as you to believe, but when I look at my son, I see that we are all one people now. If you were to bear such a child yourself, you would, I am sure, come to see it as I do."
One such as you? She plowed onwards. "Nonetheless, in Aluna's name, I would see this treasure with my own eyes. What if it rightfully belongs to Her church? What the King has never seen, he will never miss."
"That is exactly the sort of temptation Ser Aegison seeks to avoid." Emmeline clicked her tongue. "Say no more, Selida. As much as I delight in your company, I can l have no whisper of insurgency sully the future my son embodies."
Selida flexed her cold fingers. "I wish the Fox and his men could be so easily convinced. They see that hoard as their heritage."
"They disrespect the peace Lydris and I bought with our bodies and our blood. I have very little sympathy for their yearnings, backwards looking as they are."
This was it. Selida felt her breath, heavy in her gut. "All the same, if in their bid, you or your son were... harmed, a whisper of insurgency would be the least of our people's problems."
A rekindling of war, was how the Grand Cleric had put it, when she had called Selida to her office. Fire that only blood will quench.
Emmeline tried to tug her hand free. "Oh Selida, do not speak of such things, I beg you. Lydris and I know full well the burden he carries."
"And that you carry, seeing him to his majority." Selida ducked her head, trying to find Emmeline's green eyes under the shadow of her veil. "He is what, seven? Eleven years is a long time to persuade your neighbors to wait for a strong lord. If he had siblingsâ"
Emmeline did not flinch. "He is a strong boy. And he will be a strong man."
And now we are at the heart of it. "All of that is true, but you and I both know that you could be stronger."
A terrible silence. And then: "You are mistaken. Whatever it is you mean to say, stay your tongue."
Selida lowered her voice. "Emmeline, your marriage forced the coastal lords to stand down. Your blood ended the war, and it is your blood that now holds the peace."
Emmeline turned her face away.
Selida pressed on anyway. "Hold Wyvernsvow in your own name: as Princess Emmeline Skyfawn. Do this, and the Fox will either disperse his men or stand with you outright, should King Harald object."
Silence.
Selida squeezed Emmeline's fingers harder, because now both their hands were clammy. "You're tired, I know. It is not fair to ask this of you. But Lydris is young and the harvest was short. The winter storms may slow the Dominion's reinforcements. I've seen the larders. Wyvernsvow will not survive an extended siege."
Emmeline barely breathed.
Selida reached into her quiver and drew her last arrow. "Emmeline please. Don't let the people we once called kin slay those you now consider family. That is what will happen, if you and I do nothing."
Emmeline pressed her lips together. Selida could see her thoughts, flickering under layers of grief and exhaustion. Then, she composed herself, pulling her spine upright. Hope rose. And thenâ
And then Emmeline cupped Selida's face with her free hand. Her voice was kind, but girded in iron. "Listen," she said, "because I will only say this once. If I do as you advise, the Dominion will crush us. King Harald will take my son away, destroy my husband's legacy, and render all my sacrifice in vain."
"Emmelineâ"
"No." Soft. Absolute. "We must wait until Lydris attains his majority. If that means withstanding a siege by some faithless bandits, then so be it. The walls my husband built will stand."
Selida studied Emmeline's face, and found no chink in her wall of certitude. Her heart sank. She had taken enough confessions, and seen enough mothers, to know that she had made her gamble, and lost.
Fire that only blood will quench.
But there was nothing for it. She found her voice. "Alright, Emmeline. If this is the only way you see forward, I will not weaken you by making you doubt yourself."
Emmeline breath escaped in a soft, pained laugh. "You could not take more than what Aluna has already taken from me." She released Selida's cheek. Her voice softened, regretfully. "I suppose you must now ride back to the Grand Cleric, to tell her of my refusal to cooperate?"
Selida stared at her. "What? That's madness. The Fox is nearly at your door."
"I doubt he poses any threat to you."
Selida's mouth fell open. She had underestimated her friend. She had walked into a trap, indistinct and courtly, made of words and compliments. The safest route out was to avoidâretreat-concedeâbut then she thought of all those people, crowding the great hall. She thought of Kahldar, braced under the wall at Ser Aegison's command. "My lady," Selida tried, "without a cleric to heal the wounded and fill the cistern, Wyvernsvow will fall for certain."
"Is this the Grand Cleric's logic?" Emmeline mused. "She put you up to this, did she not? Is she so afraid of the Welded that she thinks to use you to persuade me to eat of poisoned fruit?"
"My Lady, I don'tâ"
"Selida, as much as I would miss you, it would be safer for Wyvernsvow to have no cleric at all, than one who threatens the entire region with the taint of sedition."
"My Lady, I came to aid the people of the coast. They need me as much as you do."
"If you go now, I will tell your parishioners that you were called away. They will not think you abandoned them in their hour of need."
"Emmeline, I cannot leave. I will not."
Emmeline shook her head as if Selida were still half her age, and slow to understand how the tides pulled at the millions of creatures that lived and danced within them. "I don't want to command you to go, of course. But how can I trust your advice will be in Lydris's best interests if your first inclination is to risk him in a bid against the Dawnlanders?"
"My Lady, I want nothing more than for Lydris to inherit this castle, from you, in his time."
Emmeline ignored her. "And then there is your own standing to think of. If you stayed with me, even after failing to persuade me towards treason, would that not endanger your own position with your church? I would never want that for you."
"Now you are presumingâ"
"No, best to return to the Grand Cleric and tell her to send another woman in your stead next spring. That should signal that she ought not to meddle in Wyvernsvow's affairs. And through you, of all people! It is cruel and beneath her." Emmeline smiled wanly. "At least departing now would spare you a tiresome and hungry winter."
Selida heard the trap door close. She gave it one second's serious thought anyway: imagined fetching Dulcis and sneaking out of the castle by the postern gate. She could go in the middle of the night, no one the wiser. She sent me away, she imagined saying to the Grand Cleric. Wyvernsvow is in Aluna's hands now. She imagined Kahldar, walking the halls, wondering why she had abandoned her people.
No. This is failure, but not yet disaster. As long as I breathe and reason, I can yet seek my bloodless solution. And if not... She dared not think of it.
Selida called all her self control and steadied her hands, throat, and heart. With perfect, courtly correctness, she came to her feet and sank into a curtsey due a Tidelander queen. "Forgive me, my lady." Her mouth twisted, but she managed the words anyway. "I have misunderstood the situation, and it is only by the grace of your wisdom that we retain a path forward. If you would bear my presence, I will do my utmost to aid our people through whatever siege may come."
Emmeline let her hold the curtsey at its lowest point as she considered this for ten long seconds. Finally, as Selida's thighs began to burn, Emmeline reached forward to help her back to her feet. "Then you will no longer speak of holding this castle in any but my Lydris's name?"
"I will not."
"And you are mine to command, for the duration of your time in Wyvernsvow?"
"As I always am, my lady."
"I am so glad." Emmeline sat back in her chair. All the animation drained out of her, leaving her nearly transparent. Her voice was nearly transparent too. "I would have missed you terribly."
Selida stared at the floor as Emmeline slowly rose to her feet, gathered her fabrics to herself, and drifted to the door. Step after step after step. At the threshold, she paused and Selida heard the sad smile in her voice: "Really, Selida, whenever I thought of you over the summer, it was to wish you the happiness now forever lost to me. So if you are truly mine to command, I command youâconsider Ser Kahldar seriously."
This? Now? Selida debated not taking the olive branch, imagined letting her pride carry her to the altar where she would drown out this conversation in another litany from Aluna's scripture. War, starvation or worse, she reminded herself. Her pride would have to swallow seawater. It wasn't the first time.
"Because you say so, I will keep that in mind," Selida managed.
"You know, the guardsmen now keep an evening rotation," Emmeline said. "They're up on those parapets all night, watching for the Fox and his men to show themselves. Ser Aegison does not want them distracted, but some tea might help them stay awake. You might take it upon yourself to bring it to them."
"I am sure Ser Aegison would consider that a frivolous distraction."
A thread of lightness entered Emmeline's voice. "Then I command you to do it. Ser Kahldar often takes the graveyard shift for himself."
With immense effort, Selida dipped another curtsey. "Very well. I shall do my best to ensure that Ser Kahldar does not perish of either cold or boredom upon the battlements."
"Let it give you something hopeful to think about."
Selida closed her lips. A serpent would sooner share a rabbit with a wolf. But she held her pose until the door closed with a soft click and she was, again, alone.