In Heaven and Earth (21 page)

“
He is my
brother, you know,” Ivarr said, a little huffily, and for a moment,
trouble threatened.

Then Celyn had the bright
idea of offering to show them how the lodestone was rigged to steer
the ship, and all notions of proper princely behavior were promptly
forgotten.

Llinos
was sailing over the foothills on the Axholme side
of the ridge, her sails bellying before the wind. Up here, the sun
was bright and warm, although the air was cool enough in the shade
that both Ivarr and Hrolf shivered a little. The valleys below were
silver with mist, only brown ridges and occasional lines of dark
forest rising into sight. Ahead of them, the rough crags of the
higher ranges rose in blue-brown folds. The wind was fresh from the
northwest, steady but not too strong, and they were making good
time across the morning sky. A tour of one of Axholme’s lodestone
mines was on the agenda for the morning, and then they would be
tacking back to the capital at Holmebury for the evening’s
feasts.

This close to the Axtooth
range, where the lodestone was mined, the attraction was so strong
that the sailors had only exposed a tiny sliver of the black stone
to allow them to counteract the boat’s natural tendency towards its
home island.

“
What happens
if we open the lead casing completely?” Ivarr wanted to
know.

“
Well,” Celyn
said, gratified that even Hrolf was hanging on his words, and
trying to sound knowing, “either the lodestone would rip itself out
of the side of the ship, tearing the hull apart, or it would take
us with it, and we’d crash into the side of the
mountain.”

“
Brilliant,”
Hrolf breathed, and Ivarr looked intrigued, his blue eyes widening
with excitement.

But Celyn was a son of
Ys, and the boats were too precious to relish the thought of one
crashing, even if it was a truly spectacular crash. “Better not,”
he said. “Not after all the fuss they made about writing those
marriage contracts.”

But there were still
gears to investigate, and altitude floats to prod, and the workings
of the steerage to be explained at length. And there was good old
Captain ap Gwenfor, who had known Celyn since he was a baby and
therefore indulged him like one of his own grandchildren, who was
delighted to show Celyn’s new fiance how to steer a flying
ship.

Later, in front of his
disapproving elders, Celyn tried to explain how what happened next
was simply the final inevitable stage of an unavoidable process.
Indeed, he would go on, it could hardly be blamed on him or poor
Captain ap Gwenfor. Any Ysian child knew how to keep a boat steady
in the sky by the time they could write their own name. How were
they supposed to know that it wasn’t some innate ability shared by
all boys, even landlocked ones like Ivarr?

At the time, as the ship
plunged suddenly towards the ground, he was too busy screaming and
hanging onto the side to think of excuses.

It was only a matter of
moments before the captain wrestled control back from Ivarr and
brought them out of their dive. It was long enough to set everyone
on the ship bellowing with panic, though, and send Hrolf staggering
to the rail to vomit the moment they were level.

“
That’s
probably going to land on a very surprised goat in a few minutes’
time,” Celyn said, just to prove his nerves were steady.

Ivarr stared at him in
shuddering outrage. “We nearly died, and you’re worried about the
goats!”

And then, before Celyn
could respond to that, adult retribution appeared. It came in a
rather striking form: a lean, dark-haired man in the gray leather
favored by the Axholme border guard. His hair was pulled back
severely, and his blue eyes were icy with rage, but he was still
one of the most handsome men Celyn had ever seen. By the expression
on his face, and the uniform, Celyn guessed this was Ivarr’s
bodyguard and he wasn’t impressed with his charge.

“
What are you
moronic little shits doing?” he demanded, and his voice was a
surprise too. Even when rough with rage, it had a low musical growl
to it that made Celyn’s stomach clench in an interesting way. “I
swear it, Hrolf, I will hang you from the prow by your toenails if
you fuck this alliance up.”

Well, that was patently
unfair, as Hrolf, annoying as he was, hadn’t been involved at all
and was, in fact, still heaving over the side. Celyn forgot about
how good-looking the man was and said indignantly, “It wasn’t
anything to do with Hrolf!”

A low feminine laugh cut
in on them, and Celyn looked up to see a woman scramble onto the
quarter deck, her skirts scooped out of the way in one hand. He
knew her, and liked her, and could almost see why so many of his
cousins thought she was the prettiest woman alive: it was in her
wide, laughing mouth, and the way her red hair curled out of the
intricate braids that held it off her face, and the forthright way
she moved and spoke.

“
Was it Ivarr,
then?” Princess Mathilde asked. “I didn’t think you knew how to
make mischief, sweetheart.”

Ivarr went pink, but set
his shoulders and said, “I’m very sorry, Highness.”

“
Ivarr?
” the rude bodyguard said
incredulously. “And I thought you were the one person who wouldn’t
embarrass me. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Now that was rather too
much, even allowing for the shock of a rough flight. Crossly, Celyn
protested, “You can’t talk to him like that! He’s a
prince!”

Ivarr sighed miserably
and confided, “That doesn’t really mean anything. So is
he.”

Celyn stared at the man
again, his eyes narrowing. Now he looked properly, he could see the
resemblance to Ivarr: their dark brown hair waved back from their
foreheads in the same way, and their eyes were the same pale blue,
although what looked like sea glass on Ivarr was closer to ice in
this man. They had the same slightly pointed ears, but there the
resemblance ended. Celyn couldn’t ever imagine sweet-tempered Ivarr
looking as ferocious and humorless as this oaf.

“
Oh,” he said,
trying to fill his voice with all the disdain he’d learned in a
short lifetime at court. “You must be the brother.”

Sjurd: Aged
21

SJURD was too tired to
deal with this shit.

His back and
shoulders ached with the strain of too many battles and too little
rest in between. His calf still throbbed from a misthound’s bite a
fortnight ago, the raw pain of its teeth followed by the cold numb
wrongness of venom pumping into him. His head felt permanently
heavy on his shoulders, and his jaw constantly ready to lock shut,
and always in the back of his mind, steady as a heartbeat, was the
knowledge that
the Empire is coming, the
Empire is coming
.

He wanted nothing more
than a warm body to curl around and a day, just one day, to do
nothing but sleep. Instead, he was here, playing diplomat to
impress not just the Challoners but a shipload of crazy Ysians as
well. He wanted his brother married well and safely, and at least
Ys was the final nation before the endless western sea, but he
didn’t understand these people, with their jawbreaking language,
their cryptic and epic poetry, and their heedless
pacifism.

Thank Thunder he didn’t
have to marry one of them. He’d known Mathilde for years, since
he’d been just a border commander from a minor branch of the royal
family and she had been his equivalent on the Challoner side of the
border. He hadn’t even thought about the throne back then, so it
had been a shock when King Snorri announced he was appointing an
heir and all his cousins started voting for him.

He and Mathilde would do
well together, though. He didn’t really see the need to spend a
week sailing around the mountains to prove that the two of them
were compatible. They were already friends. Wasn’t that enough for
their respective governments?

Clearly not, for here
they were, floating too high above the ground in a flimsy bit of
wood and sailcloth he was convinced would drop out of the sky at
any moment. And that was without the help of his idiotic little
brother, whom he’d always thought was far too meek and mild to try
crashing an airship.

Of course, Ivarr being
Ivarr, he’d managed to find a new friend, one of the ship’s boys by
the grease on his face. From a purely brotherly perspective, Sjurd
admired Ivarr’s talent for making instant friends from every
possible background. He’d love to be that at ease with strangers
himself. On a diplomatic mission, however, it had its
disadvantages.

“
He doesn’t
look like a proper prince,” the brat remarked to Hrolf, squinting
at Sjurd. “He’s a bit scruffy around the edges.”

Hrolf (and, seriously, he
knew they had to bring Ivarr, since he was one of the ones getting
engaged, but what idiot on his father’s homestead had decided to
send that muttonhead Hrolf, too?) straightened up, still looking
green, and said, “You wouldn’t know a proper prince if one punched
you in the nose.”

“
Probably
because punching people in the nose isn’t princely behavior,” the
brat retorted, and then smirked at Hrolf. “Although for you, I’d
make an exception.”

“
I’d like to
see you try,” Hrolf retorted and lunged forward.

Sjurd grabbed
him by the collar and stretched out the other hand to stop the brat
in his tracks. Holding them apart, he roared, “
Enough!
”

“
There’s no
need to shout in my ear,” the brat protested.

“
Let me go!”
Hrolf bellowed, squirming in Sjurd’s hold.

“
I
will
,” Sjurd growled, in
his best command voice, “knock your heads together hard enough to
leave you both unconscious for the rest of the trip.”

That shut Hrolf up, but
the brat still had to say, “You people really are barbarians,
aren’t you?”

Mathilde stopped laughing
long enough to say reproachfully, “I think you started that one,
Cel.”

With a sinking heart,
Sjurd took another look at the brat. Grease-smeared and grubby he
might be, but his clothes were fine under the muck, the colors deep
and the cuffs stiff with embroidery, golden patterns of complex,
intertwining knots. He looked like an urchin, his fair hair
sticking up in tufts and his ears too big for his face, but he was
pink-cheeked and healthy. It was the eyes that gave him away, the
same clear pale green as King Pryderi, passed down the royal line
of Ys like their high cheekbones and peculiar sense of
humor.

Sjurd looked at
his brother, who was hanging his head and trying not to meet
anyone’s eyes. “
This
is your fiance?”

“
Sjurd,”
Mathilde said, laying a hand on his arm. She was still grinning
widely, and her eyes were dancing. “This is your future brother,
Prince Celyn ap Iorweth of Ys. Celyn, First Prince Sjurd of
Axholme.”

“
My
commiserations, cousin Mathilde,” Prince Brat said, so mildly that
it took Sjurd a moment to catch his meaning.

“
If he’s going
to be my brother, I’m free to hit him, right?” he asked.

“
In the nose!”
Hrolf contributed enthusiastically, but went quiet again when Sjurd
turned his glare that way.

Prince Brat sniffed. “My
brothers don’t hit me.”

“
It shows,”
Sjurd growled, and watched those green eyes go wide.

“
Also,”
Mathilde said sensibly, “your brothers are six, Cel. Now, leave the
poor captain alone, all of you. Get back onto the main
deck.”

“
Except you,”
Sjurd added to Ivarr. “You can go to your cabin and think about how
stupid you are.”

“
Sorry,” Ivarr
said, looking forlorn. Sjurd hardened his heart. In two more years,
the boy would be old enough to join a border garrison. If he still
had a head full of clouds, he wouldn’t survive his first encounter
with a misthound.

“
No mine tour,
and you’re on dawn watch tomorrow.”

“
Sjurd!” Even
as a baby, Ivarr had happily slept well into the
morning.

“
I’m sure this
ship has latrines you could scrub as well,” Sjurd added, just to
see the indignation on his brother’s face.

Prince Brat
chose that moment to share, “I
really
don’t like him.”

“
He grows on
you,” Mathilde said.

“
Like a
fungus?”

Her lips twitched, but
she simply said, “I hope you have a change of clothes on board,
Celyn. If I were you, I’d change before King Pryderi catches
you.”

Prince Brat looked down
at his grease-smeared finery and actually blanched. Then he bolted.
Ivarr took one more look at Sjurd’s face and went after him, the
ever-loyal Hrolf on his heels. Sjurd sighed, and turned to offer
his apologies to the captain. Really, keeping track of his own
family was hard enough. How did anyone expect him to manage a
kingdom?

Well, he thought grimly
as he followed Mathilde back to the main deck, they probably
didn’t. King Snorri had a good few decades in him yet, and by the
time he passed the Empire would be in spitting distance. His blood
kin hadn’t chosen him as heir because they thought he’d make a good
king. They’d wanted a general.