“And you are set upon this course of action.” It isn’t a question, yet she feels the need to justify herself.
“The bordweal weakens. If it fails entirely, then Elben’s enemies will take it; there is no doubt of that. If we queens reclaim our power, then we can shore it up and Cnothan will remain mine.”
Johana is watching her closely. He shakes his head. “I do not think that is why, cousin. Cnothan and Mathmas are the most defensible castles in Elben. With preparation, you could hold it against any army.”
She throws her hands up. “What do you want from me, Johana? I have not lied to you.”
“I am merely trying to understand why you of all people are setting in motion something that can only lead … well. You know where it ends.”
She does. The throb of war drums and armour is loud in her ears. She cannot hold her cousin’s gaze. So it is worse than they had anticipated: what had they gleaned in Ezzonid? What diluted rumours had reached their spies?
“We used to laugh at the notion that gods would help mankind,” Johana says. In times of war, faith either strengthens to steel or dissipates entirely. Her mother and sister had become fanatics. She and Johana: sceptics.
Her heart clenches. Would her mother be disappointed in her if she knew the truth?
In a small voice, she says, “If you had been at the Moon Ball, you would understand. I felt the divine power, Johana. It flowed around me, through me. And it felt like …”
What did it feel like? She thinks back to that evening, and how the religious ecstasy and the carnal twisted with each other, knotted together until she could not say where one ended and the other began.
“Do you remember the phoenix?” she says. Johana nods. It had been just before the unrest, when they were still children in mind as well as body. Their parents had taken them to the cloudy peaks of the Rhozche Forest, where the tree trunks are coated in ice and their uppermost leaves are brown from the relentless sun. The hunt that the Ezzonidian royal family takes part in just once in a lifetime.
Johana had climbed one of the trees to look for the bird. When he came back down to the forest floor, his tanned face was crisp with sunburn. As they approached it, they heard its song: a melody like hot glass.
To harm or steal from a phoenix is to be cursed. They had climbed the tree, one by one, to seek the creature’s blessing. Her father had gone first and returned humbled. By the time it was Cleves’s turn, her limbs were stiff with cold despite the furs she wore. As she moved from branch to branch, her face upturned, pushing through damp leaves, she thawed.
The nest was smaller than she’d expected. The phoenix, too. But oh, though she’d pictured it for months, it was like nothing she could have imagined. Its feathers were long, crisp and in all the shades ofsunrise. But it was the bird’s face that made her gasp. It looked at her as newborn and ancient at once, with the wonder and wisdom that sees into a soul. She had always been an active child, always climbing, riding, running, but in that moment she felt an immense peace, like climbing into a warm bed after a long day outside.
She was supposed to say words of thanks, a rite the whole family had practised in preparation. But all she could bring herself to say was, “Bresn.” The Ezzonid word, its true meaning lost to time, to end a prayer.
She was not granted a feather, but her younger sister was. The first to be given a phoenix gift in more than a hundred years. Sybil climbed down from the canopy with the plume tucked into her blouse, her reddened cheeks streaked with tears. They all wept with her, for such a blessing in their lifetime.
“Keep it with you always,” their mother had told Sybil. “This is life itself. It is priceless.”
They had learned, not five years later, how much life was worth, and how easily it could be spent.
“I remember the phoenix,” Johana says. “How could anyone who has seen it forget such a sight?”
“The feeling. You remember that?”
Johana’s eyes widen. “The divine power is like that?”
“Yes, Johana, yes.”
He does not need to say that he understands. She can see his resolve. If he could feel that way again, she knows he would lay waste to a hundred kingdoms to do so. They all would.
“So,” he says, clapping his hands, all jollity once more. The wispy sentimentality in the chamber vanishes. “Tell me more about the Moon Ball. Therein lies the key to your problem, does it not? For when else have you experienced the divine power?”
Cleves surges from her chair, unable to stay still in her frustration. “I have thought on that, cousin, and all I can conclude is that enough queens were in the same place, doing the same thing, that it brought Medren to us.”
“Then there you have it.”
She clips him around the top of his head as she passes. “Grolsch. Even if we could gather the queens in one place without attractingHenry’s attention, how could we possibly do so quickly enough to intercept Cecilia’s ship? And besides that, conjuring the divine power is very different from understanding how to wield it.”
“Well then, you are all out of time and good fortune,” Johana says. He is sitting back in his chair, his fingers steepled together, with that infuriating smile that saysI know something you do not.
“I am going to throw you out of that window,” she tells him.
“Well, it is your window to do with as you wish. But before you do, consider the holy books.”
