Quatrain (27 page)

In another half hour, we had completed our camp and were once more seated on the blankets on either side of the fire. Now there was nothing to do except stare at the flames and try not to quarrel. And worry.

“What do you suppose is happening back at the castle?” I asked in a low voice, after we had passed some time without talking. “Is Dirkson’s army there yet? Has there been any fighting? Has anyone—has anyone been
killed
?”

Orlain shrugged. “No way of knowing,” he said. “So no point in thinking about it.”

“I can’t think about anything else,” I said.

“Your father has troops coming from all seven of the other provinces,” Orlain said. “More than enough to hold rebel forces at bay.”

“Six of the other provinces,” I said in a subdued voice. “Goff of Chillain has sent soldiers to Dirkson.”

“Ah,” Orlain said. I couldn’t tell by his tone of voice if he’d known that already but just hadn’t mentioned it, or if it came as news.

“Why would anybody want to throw my father off the throne?” I burst out. “He’s the best king of the past seventy-five years!”

“And how would you know that?” Orlain asked lazily. “You’ve only been alive for seventeen.”

“It’s what everybody says,” I replied. “
Including
people who are seventy-five years old.”

“He
is
a good king,” Orlain admitted. “And even if I didn’t know that by my own observation, I’d think so because that’s what my uncle Roderick says.”

“He’s my uncle Roderick, too,” I snapped.

Orlain grinned. “So he is,” he said. “I always forget.”

Despite this strange connection, Orlain and I are
not
related by blood, a fact for which I am everlastingly grateful. It works this way: My mother’s sister fell in love far below her station, and married an ordinary guardsman named Roderick. Well, Roderick is not so ordinary, in my opinion. He’s thoughtful and smart and loyal—and good-looking for someone who’s so old—and I never mind it when he teases me because it’s always clear that he likes me anyway. Orlain is Roderick’s brother’s son. So Roderick’s brothers own farms and work the land. His in-laws sit on the throne. He straddles the divide with more grace than most men would show, I think, but he doesn’t have to do it often. He and my aunt rarely come to Castle Auburn, preferring to spend their time on the estates that she inherited from my great-uncle Jaxon when she married.

“But some people don’t care whether or not a good man sits on the throne,” Orlain was saying. “They’re only interested in power for themselves.”

“Dirkson claims he’s fighting on behalf of the illegitimate prince,” I said.

Orlain shrugged. “And who’s to say he’s telling the truth?” he asked. “Who’s to say he wasn’t just lucky enough to find some red-haired boy in the street and decide to make trouble?”

“My father has met him,” I answered. “He said the young man looked like Bryan. He said he could understand why people might be willing to fight for him.” A chill passed over me, and I hitched myself closer to the fire.

“I wouldn’t trouble myself quite so much, if I were you,” Orlain said, his voice unwontedly kind. “There are two things people value more than any other, and those are prosperity and stability. King Kentley has brought both of these to the realm, and his subjects know it. A new prince might be exciting, but he trails trouble and uncertainty along behind him, and that’s a bad bargain. And Dirkson is not so popular himself that people will warm to the idea of installing him in the castle to guide a new king on his way.”

“Goff of Chillain seems to like Dirkson well enough,” I said, my voice muffled as I spoke into my updrawn knees.

“Goff’s a political man,” Orlain said. “He’s sparring for power and concessions. If your father offers him something he wants, he’ll take his armies and head home.”

“Like what? What could my father give him?”

Orlain was smiling again, an edge of mockery in the expression. “Well, now, what might an ambitious man want? A closer connection to the throne? Goff’s got a son about your age, doesn’t he? Maybe he won’t be coming to Auburn brandishing a sword. Maybe he’ll come waving a marriage contract.”

“Goff’s son is fourteen and
hideous
,” I replied. “The last time I saw him, he was half a head shorter than I was and his face was covered with blemishes and he was trying to put a spider down my dress.
No one
will ever marry him.”

Orlain shrugged. “All men at some point were short and pimply and fond of insects,” he said. “They grow up.”

“I’m not marrying him,” I said firmly. “I’m marrying for love. My mother promised me I could, since
she
did.”

“Oh?” he asked. “And have you picked out the lucky fellow?”

I hunched my shoulders, irritable that I was even having this conversation with someone as insensitive as Orlain. You didn’t talk about love with a stupid guardsman. You talked about love with your girlfriends and your aunt and sometimes your mother, when she wasn’t lecturing you about some slight imperfection in your behavior. “No,” I said shortly.

“Maybe I could help you look,” he suggested. “Are you set on someone noble? Because those aren’t the sorts that come my way often. But if all you’re interested in is a tall man who doesn’t play with spiders, well, I know a few of those.”

“He must be handsome and funny and intelligent and brave,” I burst out, goaded past endurance. “He doesn’t have to be noble, but he has to have an elegance of mind. And he will love me. He’ll shield me from the wind if it’s blowing and from the wet if it’s raining. He’ll—he’ll make great sacrifices to attain me, and he won’t care if those sacrifices put him in danger. It wouldn’t matter to him if I wasn’t a princess. He would love me just as much if I was a tavern girl. And he will never say an unkind word to me for as long as he lives.”

There was a short silence after I finished up my list of attributes. “Well,” Orlain said, “I’m surprised it’s taken you this long to find him.”

I turned away from him with what would have been a flounce if I’d been wearing the proper clothes.
Why
did I allow Orlain to nettle me this way? “So, no, I don’t think you can help me look,” I said over my shoulder. “I don’t think you’d be able to recognize such a man.”

There was nothing much left to say and no energy to say it, anyway. Within a few minutes, Orlain and I had gotten ready for bed as best as we could—which meant we’d each taken a turn visiting the privy, we’d banked the fire, we’d pulled off our boots, and we’d arranged ourselves under our thin covers. Camping out in the wild, I had discovered, did not offer amenities such as nightshirts and pillows.

“Sleep well, Princess,” Orlain said softly once we were settled in on opposite sides of the fire.

I did not bother to answer.

Exhausted though I was, I did not fall asleep right away. I couldn’t stop wondering what was happening back at the castle. It was true that six of the eight provinces had sent armies to help defend my father’s right to the throne, but spies had raced back three days ago to report that Dirkson’s army was even bigger than we had anticipated. He seemed to have conscripted every able-bodied man of Tregonia between the ages of fourteen and sixty-four to fight for his cause. Dirkson was old, nearly as old as my grandfather Matthew, but still vigorous enough to lead his own troops. Beside him, so our spies had said, rode the redheaded young man called Brandon. Born twenty years ago to a lady-in-waiting who had visited Castle Auburn in the company of Dirkson’s daughter Megan. Possibly Prince Bryan’s illegitimate son.

There were still stories about the wild, wayward Prince Bryan, who had died so suddenly at the hands of an unknown assassin. My father had inherited the throne because he was Bryan’s cousin. While I was convinced that my father—who just
radiated
competence—was an admirable king, I couldn’t help thinking of Bryan as a tragic figure. I had spent some time studying the portraits of him that could be found in strategic places throughout the castle. If he was half as handsome as the artists had made him look, he must have been a swooningly beautiful man.

His most distinctive feature, of course, was his red hair. And Dirkson of Tregonia had produced a claimant to the throne whose hair was a corresponding color. Although, as I had heard Grandfather Matthew say, “If every redheaded bastard born to the eight provinces is going to lay claim to the throne, we’ll be fighting battles for the next twenty years.”

My father had responded, in a very wry voice, “The chances are good that Bryan could have sired every one of them, don’t you think? He very well could have bedded this young woman, since she came to the castle more than once in Megan of Tregonia’s train. The boy that Dirkson is promoting is the right age. He has the right look. He may very well be Bryan’s son.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Matthew had flatly replied. “There is a legitimate king on the throne, who has produced legitimate heirs. The Ouvrelet line continues. There is no throne open to this pretender.”

I had to confess that, if it had not been
my
family that was under siege, I might have found the young pretender a glamorous figure. It was highly romantic to think of the true prince being sequestered in Tregonia all these years till he was old enough to ride out and claim his throne. As it was, however, I found it very easy to be immune to the charm of his situation. My brother, Keesen, only twelve years old, had looked so young and small and frightened when my mother kissed him three more times and then helped him into the coach that would carry him to safety. I might be the only one who knew that Keesen still had nightmares sometimes, for he would creep to my room whenever he was too afraid to sleep alone. I might be the only one who knew that he was not always the energetic, laughing, rambunctious boy who raced through the castle and upended platters in the kitchen and tore through the gardens, trailing havoc behind him. I had seen him cry as recently as a month ago, when one of the dogs had to be put down.

I could not imagine how he would manage so far from home with no one he loved nearby. I could not imagine how he would get through the scary dreams if I was not nearby.

I couldn’t believe my mother and father separated us. “But he’s so young,” I had said to my mother over and over. “Who will watch out for him?”

“We will send a whole troop with him,” she said.

“But who will
take care
of him?”

“Your grandmother is very fond of him; you know that. Well, as fond as she is of anyone.”

“Let me go with him.”

She had put her arms around me and rested her smooth cheek against mine. “We can’t risk it,” she whispered. “We have to separate you. If the worst happens—if Dirkson finds your brother—we have to make sure one of you is safe—”

“Then let him come with me to Alora,” I begged.

She was silent for a moment. Then, “We can’t risk it,” she repeated on a sigh. “I am almost as afraid of sending you to Alora as I am of sending Keesen to Cotteswold. And yet I am certain that, whatever else happens to you there, you will at least survive.”

“I won’t fall under the spell of the aliora,” I promised her.

She kissed my cheek and pulled away. “Oh, yes, you will,” she said. “Everybody does. You have no idea how seductive the aliora are. And yet I think Jaxon and Rowena will keep you safe. I think they both understand how important it is that you come back to us.”

The only aliora I had ever met was Jaxon’s wife, Rowena, and I had to admit that there
was
something mesmerizing about her. She looked human—almost—although thinner and somehow more ethereal. I would not have been surprised to learn her bones were made of cat-tails or sea glass, her skin from pressed rose petals. She did not seem to walk through the world so much as float through it; I had yet to see a footprint that her shoe had left behind. When she was nearby, it was impossible to be interested in anyone else’s conversation.

If all the aliora were like Aunt Rowena, Alora would truly be an enticing place.

Years and years ago, hunters caught and enslaved the aliora, selling them to aristocratic households for vast sums, but that practice had been stopped before I was born. Stories still persisted, however, that the aliora lured humans to Alora and never let them go home. The humans never
wanted
to go home—that’s what the stories said. Alora was a place of such richness, warmth, and enchantment that once a man crossed its hidden boundaries he was ensorcelled; he was content. He was never seen again.

Jaxon was the only man who seemed to possess the knack of moving between worlds, and even he rarely emerged from that magical place. My mother and my aunt had devised a system of communicating with him by leaving messages in a cairn on one side of the Faelyn River. Now and then these messages would say
Come visit us
, and he would make his way to Castle Auburn or his old estates, where my aunt now lived. He never stayed for long. It was clear that the desire to return to Alora was like a gnawing hunger inside him, an urgent imperative that would not let him settle comfortably anywhere else. He was less restless when he was accompanied by Rowena, but only a little.

No one else who had ever entered Alora had crossed the Faelyn River again.

Oh, there were talismans you could use to try to keep yourself safe from the fascination of the aliora, and my mother had loaded me down with all of them. First and foremost, of course, was the application of a little gold. Metal of all kinds was anathema to the aliora, but gold was the worst. It burned their skin—it had actually been known to leave scars behind, as evidenced by two small marks on Aunt Rowena’s cheeks. If you wore gold on your person, an aliora would be afraid to touch you.

So naturally, I was practically dripping in gold. I wore a bracelet on each wrist, narrow hoop earrings, and a wide, flat necklace. The necklace had been soldered on—at great risk to the skin on the back of my neck, may I say—because my mother had insisted.