Two Queens (Seven Heavens Book 1) (28 page)

A part of Adara wanted to ask where this was but the rest of her could not allow speech. It was enough. This Astra had left Avallonë and never been seen again, at least by those of Avallonë. She was of such a look that Adara herself brought back memories amidst a city full of dark-eyed dark-haired women. A sudden worry hit her. “When did this happen?”

“Nineteen years ago come harvest.”

Nineteen. Orion was older than her but not by much. There was one more question that would lay this to rest. She hesitated and was silent. It was not her secret to share. Perhaps, though, she could find out without telling.

“What did this Astra look like?”

“What? Like you, I said. And why do you say 'this Astra'?”

“No, I mean, did she have a favorite color, or fashion for her hair, a necklace she wore often?”

“No. I mean, she was Astra. Why do you ask?”

Adara's mind spun. She looked around the room and a painting caught her eye. “If I am to judge my likeness to her, perhaps someday I shall see a painting. Is there a sign or a badge, a token that would, should you not be there also, tell me that the painting was of her?”

“Oh, yes, good point. Now if you had asked that of Queen Sophia I could name a good dozen items. But Astra didn't....” He grew quiet. “There is one way to remark her at the palace. It was painted by a master unequaled since his passing. For his sake they did not blackout her face and burn the canvas, as happened to all her other portraits. It is also the last memento of the lost ancient treasure of Artemis—”

Adara's nerves were pulled to the breaking point.

“—a great clear stone set on a silver band.”

Twenty-two

“Up, up,” a harsh voice grated on his ear. He looked, no sleep to rub out of his eyes, just a body foggy from fatigue and slow to react. His legs protested when he told them to get him up. Slowly they obeyed.

“Up now!” The voice was not patient. Metal drove into metal and squealed its submission as the door bar was driven back. The door sprung inwards, making Orion's left shin ring. He sucked his teeth.

It may have been the man from the night before but perhaps it wasn't. He didn't know. In Darach he knew none save his mother, and for a short time his sister, that were so dark. Seeing hundreds in the city confused him. Did he have his own appearance? Or was he just another one of nature's runts run amok?

He didn't resist as the man had led him passage through passage with enough turns to make him dizzy. How foreign to become lost in something so small as a city, he who had roamed mountains!

He did notice the passages changing. It helped that some feeling came back into his leg, so that he enjoyed the soft gray carpet underfoot: soft compared to the stonework but tough to bear the passage of many booted feet.

The man stopped at a small door. Guards rose to their feet as they approached. One, unarmed save for a richly gilded knife and better dressed than his fellows, exited the door and with a curt “Stay there” returned inwards.

Orion stood there. This was not like to Riley or Simon. This was wealth and power. Did some noble take a special interest in foreigners? Why was he here? His foggy mind gave up again. What happened would happen.

He eyed the soldiers. After the first minute they no longer noticed him and had sat back down. Often one would rise and pace the corridor but never left Orion's sight. He looked at their weapons. Each was girt with a short sword. Some carried rolls or stacks of paper bound with scarlet thread; those that didn't bore a spear, not quite shoulder height.

Something didn't seem right. Their countenance didn't match their weaponry. As if they were decorated as soldiers but were not. He looked closer. That was it. They held their spears as one held a weaver's loom, gently, with precision and art. They did not hold it as Kerdae held his blacksmith's hammer.

Orion smiled. What he wouldn't give to see that broad-shouldered friend now! He would rush through a whole passel of guards like a cat through chickens.

Then he noticed what else was missing. Hunger. None of their faces was marked with it. He ached with hunger but not for himself. For those of Darach in the lean years. For almost everyone he had met on the long road here. He despised these men. Food should go to those who worked for it.

His sorrow furrowed his brow. A soldier noticed and laughed, an easy laugh, one with no malice or spite in it. “He sees what's coming. Makes a man serious, doesn't it?”

“What's coming?” Another soldier, just arriving, looked to the speaker. “Have we a guilty one? The stocks, the lanyard?”

“What does it matter? He's got no patron.” The first soldier went back to his ennui and the second continued his errand.

Perhaps this is why we were despised. Not that we were different but that father's kills and mother's skill kept them fed when others hungered. He looked again at the guards. He would do anything to get Adara back, but had he thought twice about any of the red bearded men? He hadn't even tried to learn their names. If your family was safe and well fed, why worry about what happened in lands as far away as legend?

The man with the gilded knife appeared through the doorway. “Come.”

Orion waited for the man to pull him along. But no pull came. His arm was released.

“Come.”

He still looked at his arm, then at the man who shrugged off his look and backed to the wall.

“Avallonë is a free society. Anyone is free to enter as he pleases. No one shall force you in,” the gilded knife man recited as for the thousandth time.

“So I am free to leave?”

“Avallonë is a free society. Anyone is free to enter as he pleases. No one shall force you in. You are free to leave. If you wish to leave, you are freely giving up any rights you have as an inhabitant of Avallonë.” He spoke faster now.

“So I'm not free?”

“Avallonë is a...”

Orion ducked past the man and walked through the door. I have come: may I be able to leave as freely.

The door shut behind him.

Adara saw a man with moving lips in front of her but heard nothing. The Astra he spoke of was the one Orion spoke of. She saw her, as in her dreams, her face still clouded but the hand there, and the stone. She felt as if she'd been tossed in the Gihon.

But what if it were common to have rings of this sort? Perhaps there were many Astras and many rings that could deceive her eyes? She thought of Orion had said. His mother, her mother, thought it worth being taken to the Queen. Had used her sacred last words to say so.

She wondered what sort of other rings there would be. Noticing her surroundings once more she saw Evandor, no longer speaking, just looking at her. “May I see the ring?” she asked.

“The Ring, child? Did you hear nothing of what I just said? No, it is lost, gone. It was Greer's after his wife's death but none thought of it, not until it was too late and he had died. Then the palace searched his estate but in vain. Some say Astra took it with her; others, that Greer hid it, or worse, out of spite for the City that had rejected him.”

“I beg your pardon, I mean your rings. Do you have rings?”

He was surprised. “Of course, if you wish. You must forgive me. But jewelry it is! Much more interesting than an old man's stories.”

She was hurt to see the pained look in his eye. She squelched the response rising in her breast: this was important.

He led her to the Wood Room. “Do not worry about being trapped; what happened before will not happen to you now.”

She nodded.

He opened the chest and pulled out an intricately carved box. It had several drawers. These he slid out and set on the top of the chest. Each had several rings in rows of felt.

“There is a story to these too.” He started speaking again, of names and places Adara did not know. She looked at ring after ring and none had the brilliancy of the Ring. “Try some on if you wish,” Evandor interrupted himself, and pushed new rings in front of her as his remarks continued.

“Ah, now this set.” His fingers ran over the polished oak of the last drawer. “These are the Nine. No, do not try these on. I tried once. I will not do so again.” He tapped a ring with a green stone.

These rings raised doubts in Adara's mind. They were elegantly crafted, immediately grabbing the eyes and showing off their perfect artistry, even to her. If Evandor could have a full set, what manner of rings could there be in all of Avallonë to fool her?

“These are beautiful. But not like rock. Like a doe's eyes are beautiful. Or a snake's.” She shuddered at one.

“Yes, yes, they seem to have their own personality, do they not? Perhaps that is why they are still in this room. If they are their own, who else could own them?”

“True. Is the Ring of... what did you say? Is it as well-crafted as these?”

“Yes, if there's one other to match this set it is the Ring of Artemis, the only ring forged from song. By Apollo himself. None other there are in Avallonë, throughout Arcadia, and even into the treasure stores of King Meladrys himself!”

How could one grow up as she had and dream such craftsmanship as this? “How can this be? Your house must be the wealthiest in Avallonë to have accumulated this.”

Evandor laughed. “No, no. The Nine have been for generations the greatest heirlooms, saving only the Gifts, of noble families spread across the Seven Heavens. Through happy chance my family was one. See this one with the slate inscribed in strange runes? We knew it as the Ring of Memory. It is the only one with runes on it.

“No, none would be wealthy enough to acquire the Nine: mere money could not collect this. One after another the noble houses fell and rumors spread that the Nine were cursed. There were mysterious deaths and tales whispered with short breath in the dark. What is known is that in time, all found their way to the tutor.

“It was quite the event, almost fifty years ago, when Queen Hespera approved Hermes as guardian of the Nine. After that, those of the surviving houses, mine included, were given into his safekeeping, and so eight of the nine sat here undisturbed for many years, as I saw once as a youth.” His face clouded.

“In fact, no one living has seen all ten, unless perhaps Hermes himself. The Ring of Artemis was brought out but rarely: I, for one, never saw it on Astra save by the painting. And I found the last, placed here by Hermes, I suppose, only after I came into ownership.”

“I have.”

“What? What do you mean, girl?”

“All ten. I saw the Ring of Artemis, long ago.”

Wave after wave of doubt, shock, surprise, and suspicion crashed over Evandor's forehead.

“It was my mother's.” She wept, sinking to the carpet and wrapping her arms around her knees.

Stairs rose in steep ascent immediately after the door. Orion walked up. He felt as if he had woken into a dream of a thousand stars and unimaginable wealth.

He stood in a small enclosure. Above him, higher than he thought possible, stretched a dome overhead. Across it many bright-colored figures danced. Only the night sky's glories served to protect him from being completely undone. It was as if the glories of the stars were close enough to touch.

But each one was no star, but men and women life-size and greater than life-size. The ceiling swarmed with their paintings in rich rainment. His words did not serve to explain what his eyes saw and his heart drank in. The only proper homage he could pay was understanding, for the first time, a bit of why his mother loved Avallonë.

It took him several moments to realize he was not alone in the domed room. A white-haired man with the greatest beard Orion had seen sat across from him. Orion had never seen a throne but he knew instantly this must be what a throne was.

The bearded man spoke. “In the matter of Orion, freeborn, caught fleeing at a dark hour for reasons unknown, this Court shall determine the truth and forward the cause of the Queen's justice. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Orion gulped. “Me? What?”

“Yes, yes, stop with your acting. All the fashion nowadays; believe me, it shall not help you. Tell me! What is your defense?”

“Defense?”

“Your opinion. We are free here, and everyone may share his opinion. It is the hallmark of our most beneficent justice. To reiterate, this is the matter of Orion,—that is you, correct?” Orion nodded. “—freeborn, caught fleeing at a dark hour for reasons unknown—what have you to say?”

“I did not know it was a crime in Avallonë to leave a house after sunset.”

“Right. And that's where ignorance leaves you. You see, slaves must always be where there masters want them, otherwise what good is a slave?”

“I'm sorry, sir.”

“It's is 'Your Honor,' defendant. If you meet me tomorrow it shall be 'my lord' but today, in here, you are to address me as 'Your Honor.' I always forget that, but as my fellow noble and Most Honorable Judge of yesterday says, 'Without custom we are but savages.' So?”

“Your Honor.”

“Very good. Go on.”

“You spoke of Orion, freeborn, but then referred to slaves when you spoke of staying where one should.”