Two Queens (Seven Heavens Book 1) (21 page)

“Such beauty,” he said.

“You like it? I am glad. The unicorn is my favorite. I must show it to you when it is lit. The light plays on the stand most delightfully.” She sat with hands clasped on settee,. Her right arm had a rest should she want it, and her back as well, with room to her left should she wish to put her feet up.

Paris looked around the room. A spinning wheel stood in the corner between the window with spools of thread hung on the wall behind. “My lady's handiwork?”

The girl blushed. “Not half. Mother wishes me to make myself useful but Rhoda is the adept.” She looked at the older girl, not quite twenty, who was brushing her hair. Rhoda bent her head.

The silence grew. “Mother says you are of Kyriopolis.”

“Yes, that is true. It is a great city, though not so beautiful as your own.”

Her eyes dropped. “I have been there once, long ago. I do not remember it, save marble columns in a long portico. But I have the word of many I know and art's depictions also. You need not hide your pride in your home, even here in Avallonë. Is it your home?”

“The family of Paris have lived in Kyriopolis many years. I am the eighth to bear the name.”

She turned bright red. “Oh of course.”

He raised his hand. “No need to apologize. It is not for the royals to concern themselves with a house so humble as mine.”

“As humble as yours! But yours is the pride of Kyrian nobility. It is uncouth, aye even unjust, to say so.”

“Fortune has favored us.” He shrugged.

“Rhoda, you must help me. This lord is much too self-deprecating for our taste. Rhoda!”

The young woman swayed forward and kept brushing.

The girl continued. “I do insist that you stop. If you do, you shall remind me of my unspeakable rudeness and I shall take it amiss.”

“As you say, Princess.”

“How were your travels? I wish I could travel, but father does not like it. There is always so much happening here for my parents.”

“My travels were satisfactory. Yet the greatest joy I take from them is in their recent completion, leaving me in happy circumstance.”

“Do you have a house here in Avallonë, then?”

“No, though that has been a fond wish of mine.”

Rhoda stepped back and set the brush down.

“Come come, you must be our guest. I shall speak to Mother on this matter. Rhoda, you must remind me. I wish to see you again, Lord Paris, but my tutor has my next hour. Good day.”

He rose and bowed, then exited. She was still a child. The obvious infatuation with the unicorn myth and speech that both unthinking and excessively polite grated on him. But she had a taste for the foreign and exotic—he must have some stories ready, he noted—and was too spineless to be any real hindrance. Pretty? Incontestable. Were their places swapped the maid would do no worse.

Once outside the palace he spit into the dirt. Royals and nobles: donkeys and peacocks! The barrier his fathers had never been able to breach. But not him.

That night Desdemona did not bring Orion his food. He looked on as the others scrambled over the food in the trough. They'd been fed better, a last attempt to make them appear healthy and strong. There was even some food left over at this last supper. He could take some, no fight needed. His stomach writhed. He let Aeneas throw it away and curse them roundly for wasting good food. Eat it yourself, lame old man.

He felt so alone that night. He thought of his neighbors, the red bearded men he would likely never see again. Perhaps some of them were like Theo: inquisitive, talkative, often doing the wrong thing by accident. He wondered how many more of them there were. Did Simon kidnap them as he had him? They seemed to make this trip each several times a year: how many hundreds of slaves had gone through his hands?

Orion shuddered. And he was just one of them. Even if he could speak to his mother's kin, why would she care? There were many people here, more passed by each hour then he'd ever seen in Darach. He spoke more like his father than his mother. He was dirty. Life was valued where he came from. Here? There seemed to be too much of it.

He thought it would be different. He was his parent's only son. First child then her then only child once again. They were his only parents. And there wasn't much else. But say he met a relative, someone who saw a hundred, even a thousand—could it be possible?—others in the passing of one day. Who would care for him, when there were so many?

He thought of the curse. Was this because of his mother? He knew there were powers greater than human and far more ancient. Why did some weak kardja live while a strong one died? Who could explain that? Perhaps some part of the Unicorn she spoke of was left in the very fabric of the soil beneath him, hurting him in every step. If so, better to die alone then bring the curse on anyone else.

He didn't sleep that night. He looked at the stars. Flat and distant they seemed, devoid of their sheen. He wished to fall asleep and never wake.

The next morning they continued on. No one spoke to him the whole morning. Simon and his crew were more lively in their actions, almost jittery, yet over all the rest a somber quiet settled as they neared their destination. They stopped for a short lunch where the last of the food was served. In the distance in front of them the faintest trace of the city of Avallonë could be seen.

It was a long lunch. Simon had Desdemona, then Theo, ride Kerry until he approved of the performance. When the girl was done she walked back to the wagon. Orion, still undecided up to that point, made himself act. “Desdemona!”

She walked to him but kept at a distance, as if ashamed of how open she was the night before.

“I have something for you.” She looked curious but didn't come closer. He took the small clasp knife from his cloak. “I've used this often to remove a thorn from Kerry's coat. I want you to have it.”

She took it and turned it over in her hands. “Thank you,” she breathed. There was silence. “What are the markings?”

“They're words.” If he continued, he could not turn back. “'
The Sun also rises
.'”

She looked up at his voice, face clouded. He began singing.

“If our courage lights the match

A new dawn may come to be

And over despair hope we cast

Others may ride in our calm lee.”

He stopped in shock. He thought his mother sang it too. The female voice continued on alone.

“East came enemies, east came a Friend,

East came the one who both Makes and Mends,

So never fear, in the east the Sun also rises.”

She breathed a long breath. “You know the song?”

“What do you mean? How do you know it?”

“I didn't know. Until now. It is what my mother sings in my dream. How?”

“This is the song my mother sang to me and my sister as we fell asleep.”

“Your sister? Where is she?” Her voice squeaked.

“She died a long time ago. She was sick and they sent her to Avallonë to be tended to.” He stared at her.

Her face puckered. “Is your family—was your family wealthy?”

“No. I mean, we never lacked for food, but no,” he said.

She looked as if she stood on a ledge and wanted to step off it into the dark. “In my dream I saw a ring with a flashing stone on her hand as she tucked me in.”

“You know of the ring?”

“There
was
a ring?”

Just then Simon and Theo returned. Aeneas, already in the wagon, clucked at the horses and the wagon started moving forward. Orion half fell at the first jerk then walked on dazed. Desdemona, Adara, his sister, walked beside him.

He smiled at her. She smiled back then looked forward. He sneaked glances at her, breathing. He felt something bump his hand. It clasped his hand and he clasped back. He dare not look at her.

“Where is Mother?”

“Gone. Dead.”

“For sure? Not like your sister dead?” She smiled then looked scared.

“It's okay. Yes, for sure. I've stood at her grave.”

“And father? Do I—we—have a father?”

“Dead too.” Welcome home, Adara.

“Oh.” She looked down. “So my name is—what was it?”

“Adara.”

“And your name is...” He told her his name and how he thought it was Brian for so many years. She liked this, how they both had two names. She liked the “Orion” better and he was glad. She didn't say what she thought of “Adara.” He told her the names of their parents and began talking, hesitantly at first, then more easily, spurred on or diverted by her questions.

“Desdemona! In the wagon!” Simon said. They both looked up. He rode back to them.

“Why?” she asked.

“Just go, we'll speak more later,” Orion said.

“When?” she asked over her shoulder as she headed toward the wagon.

Oh no! What if Simon found out? His smile masked his face but worry crept in. He now hated his bonds. Why didn't they know this at the river? He was trying to help her, to do the right thing, but had condemned her. She was fine until he included her in his plot.

He should have left her alone. How could she miss a brother she never knew of? Now he might ruin her life. She caught up with the wagon and climbed in, looking back at him.

Might? He already had. Instead of a dream she had an enslaved brother she would see no sooner than she saw her parents who, by the way, are dead. You didn't know that, sister? Happy I could help.

They passed houses and shops on right and left, as if a dozen Darachs welcomed their approach to the city proper. The moment Orion had so long waited for came: he had reached the city of his dreams. Where he wanted to go and become a great man. Now that the moment had come he could care less about the city. He hated it. What kind of place attracted slavers? Where kidnapping flourished? Where money ruled lives?

He didn't know what he wanted. Well, he did. Freedom. And Adara and Kerry with him. For that matter, why not his parents alive once more?

Right now there was only one choice. He had lost Kerry and his freedom. But Adara still had hers, or something not much worse. Once he left she wouldn't be mistreated. He hoped.

He wanted to speak to her one more time. Tell her that Kerry was hers. That she should ride her away, flee from Simon. There were other places, places Simon did not go. She could be free, really free, and live the life her father had lived. He hoped she didn't ruin herself for him.

Orion eyed a knot of soldiers, crimson cloaked, long swords at their belts. They spoke among themselves, hardly glancing at the steady flow of people, carts, and horsemen leaving the city, only the one accosting those entering.

The wagon slowly approached the gates. A lumbering ox cart turned in front of them, probably on its way to a nearby farm, Fleet-footed city folk did the same almost constantly, weaving away eastward through the side streets. Simon yelled at them and told Aeneas and Theo to watch so nothing would be pilfered from the wagon.

Orion took a last look to the setting sun on his left before a mildewed house practically leaning against the wall blocked his view. He walked through the gate. He felt squished, trapped under its arches.

In front of him countless houses of stone proceeded, row upon row. Trees there were, here and there, but they seemed to make the stones more stony, as if proclaiming what could be here instead of the dirty houses.

He heard a noise like a crash of lightning. He looked back. Two crimson figures stood walking the doors of the gates inwards. His last view of the Arcadian plain narrowed. He plodded forward, jerked by the wagon. Clang! The doors shut.

He had arrived. He had made it to Avallonë. And it was nothing he had hoped it would be.

Eighteen

Paris followed the steward down a corridor of the palace. He glanced over the carvings on a great panel of cherry wood. A unicorn, a bowl, a great tree: more of the same local flavor. The steward selected a key from his great ring and opened the first door after the cherry paneling. “Your quarters, sir.”

He walked in. It was four times as large as his previous lodgings had been and well furnished. He stood in the shadows, glancing around the room. The steward walked briskly past him and drew the blinds. The light hurt. He turned his gaze to the edge of the room.

It was rectangular, twice as long as it was wide, a sort of sitting room from the door half arranged with chair and half-table and cupboard for boots. The chair faced another chaise longue, the same style as had been in the Princess's antechamber. Behind the chair a screen stood, embroidered with a full tree in green, red apples hanging from it and birds resting in its branches.

The screen marked the beginning of the quarters proper. A canopied bed filled up most of the space except where a large wardrobe stood, again carved with a tree.

The steward stood at the window, watching him meander. “Anything else, sir?”

“No. You may go.”

The man left without a bow. Rude. Paris added to his list of details to take care of once he came into his fortune. Something caught his gaze. He walked to the window and looked out.

He braced himself for another look at their leafy shrine and faded stonework. The vista was not as he expected. The room overlooked a quiet square, the palace bounding the square on each side. There a willow stood, and birch and elm and a small stand of blueberry bush. A pool lay under the willow, almost hidden by its boughs. Elsewhere lichens and ferns caught what sun the palace roof and tree leaves let through save for a wandering path of cut stone.