TWO
GRANDMOTHER HADN’T STINTED on the evening meal, which had less to do with Helena and more to do with Aestival. Tonight’s feast marked the end of winter, and the late-night revelry would give way to a night of prayers to herald the dawn of a new day and with it a new year. This afternoon’s confrontation had soured my eagerness for the Aestival feast. Still, my hopes for a peaceful evening rose as I took my seat. It was hard to remain angry when food flowed freely.
The feast included haunches of venison and entire roasted pigs for all, even those who took their meal in the surrounding courtyards. There was apple sauce for the pig, cheese sauce for the vegetables, fruit pastries with cream in between courses – even lark’s tongue.
Coming hard on the heels of winter, the court was reduced to its bare minimum, with few emissaries to break the familiar circle of faces. The Falkere housecarl sat at table with the master of horses and the master of hounds. The falconer broke bread with Oren, officially the master of the dovecote and unofficially the man with an agent or contact in every drighten’s court. In a month, with the Aestival progressions finished and the gadderen beginning, this hall would be crammed with drightens and their vassal thanes, but tonight it was only half filled with merchants and freemen.
Grandmother sat at the head of our table, her stony expression at odds with the finery of her garments. She had bound her white hair back into a crown braid, from which not a strand dared escape.
Opposite her, Helena’s expression remained as serene as the surface of milk. Even Grandmother’s refusal to allow Helena’s son at table hadn’t affected her, although she’d needed to hold in a quick breath before she ordered the boy back to his rooms.
The Ilthean men had been more perturbed. The older frowned and opened his mouth to speak until a look from Helena silenced him, although the effort required to still his tongue was considerable. The younger stared at the food and shifted in his seat, an angry flush staining his cheeks. Meanwhile, the flaxen-haired woman sat with her hands folded in her lap, her gaze fixed on the infinite. Grandmother probably would have liked to refuse them a seat as well, but their status – and her curiosity – made that impractical.
Though the rest of the dining hall rang with the clatter of crockery and the clamour of conversation, at the high table we sat dull and stupid as the meat in our trenchers.
Perhaps the meal’s festive atmosphere wouldn’t be enough after all.
‘Aunt Helena, perhaps you might formally introduce your companions?’ I said, my voice faltering at the end, fearful of Grandmother’s reaction, though she didn’t so much as glance at me.
‘Certainly,’ said Helena, taking a sip of wine first, an indication I wasn’t the only one wary of Grandmother’s temper. ‘Mother, Matilde, may I present my brothers, Flavian and Varis. And Varis’s wife, Cassia.’
I smiled mechanically in my turn, noting Helena’s omissions. She’d neglected to mention the clan of her Ilthean kin, and their clothes lacked any insignia, familiar or otherwise. Too, why bring your husband’s kin but not your husband?
After a wary glance at Grandmother, Flavian addressed me. ‘It is an honour to meet the relations of our esteemed Helena.’
‘And to sit at your table for such an occasion,’ added Varis.
Cassia said nothing, nor did she bother to shift her stare from whatever blank spot on the far wall she found so much more interesting than our conversation.
I knew precisely how she felt, though sitting silent wasn’t an option I could choose. ‘Aestival is my favourite time of year,’ I said, smiling at Varis. ‘The last of the winter freeze, the new growth everywhere. Sharing the experience is part of its charm.’
Grandmother’s gaze conveyed what she wouldn’t voice in front of others: Frippery does not become you, child. But keeping my mouth shut wouldn’t gain me the knowledge of Helena’s activities while in the south.
Helena rewarded me with a smile. ‘I’ve always loved it, too. For all its stuffiness’ – she slanted a look at Grandmother – ‘I’ve missed Aestival in the Turholm. There’s nothing like it for spirit.’
‘It’s different, in Ilthea?’ I asked.
The mention of the empire which had been pressing at our southern border for generations, back even to the years of the Raven’s reign, brought a wave of silence in its wake. I hid a wince behind a sip of ale, though Grandmother sawed at the meat in her trencher as if she’d not heard any of the conversation.
‘It’s larger,’ said Cassia, her voice full of disdain. ‘With less emphasis on cavorting around a fire and glutting ourselves. Your aunt wouldn’t know. She spent little of her time in the capital. Aestival in the remote and less civilised corners of the empire is all she’d understand.’
The ale turned to a sour stone in my throat. On second thoughts, maybe silence wasn’t such a bad idea.
‘Please forgive my sister,’ said Helena, favouring Cassia with a frosty look. ‘She is homesick, and more intemperate with it than usual. Ilthea is unforgettable.’
‘And its reach is long,’ Cassia retorted.
This time both Varis and Flavian condemned Cassia with a meaning look and she subsided with ill grace.
‘If the girl cannot comport herself civilly at table, she can feed with the thralls or not at all,’ Grandmother said.
Cassia tilted her chin a little higher, but didn’t respond.
Helena looked as if she was going to say something, then hesitated, worrying at her lower lip with small, stained teeth. In the end she decided on silence, bending her head over her meal.
No one else spoke – and I no longer wanted to play hostess.
Grandmother, however, had finished with silence.
‘Go on, Helena. Tell us of Aestival among the Ilthean. Join your sister,’ she said, the word dripping with scorn, ‘in her censure of our barbarous nature.’
Helena pushed her plate away with both hands, a gesture more dramatic than symbolic, since she’d picked it clean already. ‘It’s been years, Mother, and yet here we are. Immovable. Obviously I was wrong to think you might ever put the past behind you.’
‘You didn’t come here to heal rifts, Helena. You came because it was expedient.’
‘Try and stem the tide all you want,’ countered Helena, her voice strained now. ‘Sooner or later the emperor will turn his eyes this way – and where Jurgas Avita Angeron looks, his troops soon follow. Scorn me as you will, at least I’ve done what I could to prepare for it.’
I fought a surge of panic, made uneasy by the truth of Helena’s words. The Ilthean empire had extended east and north since their last concerted foray into Turasi lands, swallowing the nations which had served as a buffer and gaining control of a second pass through the mountains, making the Juthir tribelands as vulnerable to Ilthean attack as the Majkan tribelands. Even Nureya, the kingdom at the top of the world, had fallen; now only the sacred, impassable peaks of the Sentinels stood between the Naris tribelands and the Ilthean empire’s newest vassal nation.
Our natural safeguards were vanishing, the Ilthean empire’s baleful strength pressing ever closer, and Grandmother, as ever, was fully occupied with keeping the Turasi tribes from squabbling among themselves.
A hot flush crept up Grandmother’s throat. ‘My son’s throne will pass to his daughter’ – if she is worthy always completed this sentence, its omission now conspicuous to my ear – ‘no matter how large an army you camp along our southern march.’
I stared at Helena with dawning horror. Perhaps her husband waited at the southern border, in charge of the army she would use to conquer us, to bring us under the yoke of the Ilthean empire.
My parents loved you. They defended you when Grandmother criticised you, I wanted to say, but the words couldn’t fight their way past the sick lump in my throat.
‘Oh, please!’ Helena waved a dismissive hand with a flash of pale wrist. ‘There’s barely a legion of troops, and they’re stationed in Nureya – miles south of the border, not to mention the mountains in between. Have been for the past five years, I might add. They’ve as little intention of marching as I have of throwing this rib at you right now,’ she said brandishing a pork rib stripped clean of all but a few tatters of flesh, the fierce gesture contradicting her airy tone.
‘Ah yes, Nureya,’ Grandmother said. ‘Your emperor’s pledge that the Nureyan king would retain sovereignty was honoured for all of a season, if I remember correctly. Just long enough to send in his slave-born general.’
Helena drew a sharp breath, and Cassia smirked, her response hinting at politics within Helena’s adopted family.
‘My husband was required at the fort and, being so close to the Turholm, I thought to visit. There’s nothing sinister in it,’ Helena insisted.
I wanted to believe her; there was something bright and bold and hurt about her manner which spoke of sincerity. Only loyalty to Grandmother – and knowledge of her normally rational judgement – kept a seed of doubt lodged in my mind.
‘Five years,’ said Grandmother. ‘And every year the patrols encroach further north. Every year they push at our borders, testing us, shedding yet more of our blood. And now you arrive.’
Helena put her hands on the edge of the table as if to push her chair back. But she remained sitting, rigid and unmoving.
‘Visiting kin,’ she said.
Cassia kept her eyes trained on her plate.
Grandmother didn’t react.
‘They’re canny, Helena, these people you’ve chosen. Perhaps as canny as you. Don’t mistake me for a fool, however. Do you think I don’t know about the symbol you’ve chosen for your son?’
Helena went white, but Grandmother wasn’t done.
‘I know the future you hope for him, but hear me now,’ she said. ‘It will not happen.’
‘You know nothing,’ said Cassia, brazen-faced. ‘The sun is setting on your days, old woman, and it is a simple matter of time before these lands bloom under the sway of Jurgas Avita Angeron, instead of wasting under your stewardship. The world has fallen from your grasp already. You simply don’t realise it. Either of you,’ she added, shifting her stare to Helena.
‘Do your best,’ said Grandmother, addressing Helena as if the warning had come from her. ‘It won’t be enough.’