Page 10 of The Castle & the Cloister

A few feet from Ariana’s bedside, Orden stopped and waited expectantly. Uncertainty gripped the queen as it never had before. As she’d always done, as she always would do in Orden’s presence, Ariana struggled up. With great care, she got off the bed and onto her knees and ignored the slip of water and blood down the inside of her legs as she knelt before her king. She did not heed the pain knotting itself inside her, because it was no match for the flare of triumph as Orden hurried to her side.

Whatever had gone wrong, whatever she’d failed to see that led to his new determination to wreak havoc on the Hand, she still moved kings, though it cost her dearly to do so.

“Gods, Ari,” Orden said roughly, and there was reverence in his voice. “I didn’t know if you’d do it. There’s never been anything more beautiful to me than you on your knees—not since the day we met.”

Ariana shut her eyes and said nothing as he helped her onto the bed once more. The searing pain in her had doubled and trebled and she was forced to breathe through it, hearing nothing of what he said for several minutes. When at last she could dredge up the remnants of her focus and fix her mind on Orden, he was seated at her bedside and staring at her in confusion, a trace of sternness in the set of his mouth.

“Did you not hear a word of that? I came here for your help, Ari. This wasyourchoice, after all. You begged for it, and against my better judgment I gave in. It can do no good to have Afon here, under our roof. Caervallion’s king is… he’s not someone I would choose to have in your presence.”

“I didn’t hear,” Ariana confessed, her voice cracking on the words. “Forgive me, what was the trouble?”

Orden ran a hand across his handsome, commanding face. “This wretched council you planned—Corrin’s Arbiter and Arbitress have reached the city, and Song Royale’s retinue isn’t far behind with Gileta—”

“Yes, I know.” Ariana cut him off, and her disorientation and discomfort were so great that she hardly noticed she’d done it, or saw the shadow cross his face. “I made all the arrangements for their accommodations. I did it weeks ago, knowing I might be in some discomfort during their stay, but I never expected—”

She bit back a cry and rolled onto her side. All of her shook with each breath she drew, and to breathe was her only anchor, the only thing that might keep her from being swept away on this riptide of pain. As she breathed, a sound dragged itself out of her, low and desperate and anguished.

When the pang had subsided, Ariana glanced up at Orden from where she lay, soaked with sweat and gone beyond herself into a realm of heat and torment. He looked regal and composed by contrast, and though there was pity in his eyes, there was a ruthlessness, too, which she quailed before.

“I had word late last night,” Orden said. “Afon’s already here. In Inverlyn. How he managed to get past the guard unnoticed is beyond me. The man might as well be a witch. He’s been staying at… no. You don’t need to know the name of the place. Suffice it to say, it’s somewhere a man of Afon’s tastes would appreciate. I don’t want him in our home, Ari. Let him stay in the whorehouse he chose. He’ll make it a charnel house before the end, but at least he’ll be away from you.”

Cold resolve swept over Ariana. Afon of Caervallion was, in many ways, what the Invers’ sire had been upon first seizing control of Honoria. More warlord than sovereign, a man of violent tastes and impulses, bent on subjugation and domination and shoring up his own power at any cost. Afon was a thorn in Orden’s side, and to have the two of them under one roof would be like lightning in a hayrick.

Or the improbable path to peace. Lyria had worked greater wonders, in the stories and histories of the Beloved Three. With Orden already bent on war and his allies threatening a total repudiation of Honoria if he made good on that resolve, Ariana had nothing to lose. She’d invited Afon to the summer council she hosted annually, although Caervallion’s king had never been included before. Her hope was to find some accord, some previously unrecognized common ground between the two, and to chivvy them toward peace by any means necessary. All this she’d planned, believing she had a month yet before Orden’s newest child arrived.

“… what I’ll do if Gileta plays us false.” Orden carried on, seeming oblivious to the titanic struggle taking place within his queen, as her body worked to tear itself open in service to the crown. “You know she’s been muttering for years about opening her trade in incaendium powder to Caervallion. If Afon uses this as an opportunity to ingratiate himself to her, it’ll mean far less incaendium for us. Without it, our witchsmoke refineries will fail, and the front in Vesper will be decimated. I could be the king who loses the Progenitors’ War unless I find incaendium elsewhere, and there’s only one place besides Gileta that it can be got.”

Ariana fought back the urge to scream.Why?she wanted to rage at him.With Honoria already stretched so thin, why would you choose another conflict? Do the ghosts of your forefathers haunt you so maddeningly that you must risk your own crown and the lives of countless people to appease them?Struggling to prop herself up a little, Ariana reached outand took Orden’s hand. His grip was dry and warm, her own sweat-slick and clammy.

“Gileta will stand by us,” Ariana said. Her voice shook with effort. “I’m not the one who made Gileta and Song Royale our ally, Orden, that was you, years before I came to the throne. She choseyou, and will do so again. All will be well. This council will be as I wish—a chance for you to show strength to the other powers of the Hand. And this time to present them with a new heir, and security for the Inver line. It will be an opportunity to humble Afon, as well, so that he makes amends for whatever it is that has brought your ire down upon him.”

Orden looked at their joined hands, and for a moment seemed very far away.

“I don’t care about Gileta,” he said. “Not when it really comes down to it. I would not care for Afon, either, if he did not plague me so. The only person I think of is you, my star. Whether you’re happy or not, and willing to stand by me. Can you do so still?”

“Look at me.”

The king shifted his gaze to the queen’s at her command, and she held it. Ariana refused to falter. She fixed her eyes on Orden’s, and with everything in her—every last fragment of faith, of failing conviction, of foundering hope—she feigned certainty. She made the words an oath and a prayer. “I promise you. On my life, on our gods, on this child I’m bringing into the world, I remember where my heart lies. I could never forget.”

But her heart lay in a thousand pieces, and every one of them seemed to be at odds with the other. Orden was silent, and it felt as if Ariana’s pulse might stop. At last, he bent and brushed a kiss to her forehead.

“SometimesIforget,” he said, “how you’ve fought and bled for Honoria in your own way. You suffer for us all and bear it with such grace that none of the fools at court see your work for what it is—the glory of battle on a different front.”

Ariana kept very still so that he would not see how the words, meant for praise, cut her to the quick. And as he left, she writhed on her bed and cried out, for the worst of her trial was coming, and it felt as if she would be torn in two.

IV

It is hereby writ into law that every Honorian province must cede to the army a tithe in flesh: upon reaching the age of fourteen, each village must provide ten of its ready youths per annum—or half of those achieving their majority, whichever number be the greater—which young people are to be able in body and sound of mind, and handed over to the king’s impressment forces without resistance or delay. Every town must provide a hundred or half, every city a thousand or half, and for those families living outside the bounds of such community, one youth or half.

—AN EDICT OF HARAXAS INVER

The road from Raea’s cloister to the capital, Inverlyn, was a long one, winding through the foothills, and fiercely hot in midsummer. Though you could see the mountainside castle from the cloister by the sea, it disappeared from view for long stretches as the road led through sinuous valleys and shadowy woods. But always, the castle reappeared, asserting its presence once more from that lofty perch midway up the mountain. You’d be able to see all of the Solis Plains from up there, Fia thought.

She pressed an arm to her bound breasts for the thousandth time since leaving the cloister only half a day and a night past. They ached mercilessly, and the front of her bleached linen postulant’s kirtle was damp and sour-smelling. If she’d grown feverish, she couldn’t tell—theweather alone had her slick with sweat. Even the mule, complacent between her legs, frothed a little on the inclines, though it put its head down and carried on doggedly.

So they went, under the hot midsummer sun, toiling their way to where Orden Inver sat on his throne, keeping an eye on the plains. Keeping an eye on the cloister. Fia fought the urge to duck her head as she rounded a final bend in the road and the castle and its surrounding city sprang suddenly into full view. There was level upon level of it, spreading across the foothills. As the city scrambled up the mountainside, it seemed to become of a piece with the landscape, half built of unforgiving gray stone, half hewn into the mountain itself. Gardens grew on every terrace, spilling fragrant vines and errant flowers out onto the walls, but they made the place look no less forbidding.

Before the great gate that led into the first level of the city, Fia paused on the narrow road to look back. She caught her breath at the sight, and pressed an arm to her chest once more. This time it was her heart that pained her, though.