Allesandra ca’Vörl
“YOUR BOY’S SHOT was as good as any I could make,”
Fynn declared.
Allesandra doubted
that. Jan might not have the bulk and power of Fynn’s muscular
frame. He might not be able to wield the heavy weight of
water-hardened steel someone like Fynn could manage with ease, but
the boy could ride like no one else and he had an eye with an arrow
that very few could match. Allesandra was certain that neither Fynn
nor anyone else there could have hit, much less brought down, the
stag from the back of a galloping horse.
But it seemed best to
simply nod, give Fynn a false smile, and agree. It was safest, but
conceding the falsehood still hurt when her pride in her son made
her want to object. She stored it with the other hurts and insults
Fynn and her vatarh had given her over the years. The pile in her
mind was already mountainous. “Indeed, Brother. He’s been taught
well in Magyaria. Pauli was famous for his horseback archery when
he was young; it would seem that Jan has acquired that ability from
his vatarh.”
“It was lucky I was
there to take the final shot, though, or the stag would have
escaped.”
Allesandra smiled
again, though she knew it was neither luck nor fortune, only Jan
demonstrating that he knew better than to entirely eclipse the
presence of the Hïrzg. A political move, as adroit as any she might
have made.
The two of them were
walking along the eastern balcony of the Stag Fall Palais—as
private as one could be within the estate. Gardai stood at stiff
attention where the balcony turned to the north and south, their
stoic avoidance of the Hïrzg and A’Hïrzg obvious as they stared
outward; from the windows left open to catch the evening breeze,
they could hear the murmuring of the guests at the table they’d
just left. Allesandra could pick out Jan’s voice as he laughed at
something Semini said.
She looked eastward,
toward the evening mist rising in its soft, slow tide from the
valleys toward the steep slopes in which the palais was nestled.
The tops of the evergreens below them were wrapped in strands of
white cloud, though the wind-scoured and treeless peaks above
remained swaddled in sun that sparked from the granite cliffs and
the clinging snowbanks. Somewhere hidden in the mist below, a
waterfall burbled and sang.
“It’s truly beautiful
here,” Allesandra said. “I never realized that when I was here as a
girl. Great-Vatarh Karin picked a perfect location: gorgeous, and
perfectly defensible. No army could ever take Stag Fall if it were
well-defended.”
Fynn nodded, though
he didn’t seem to be looking at the landscape. Instead, he was
fiddling with the brocaded cuff of his sleeve. “I asked you to walk
with me so we could speak alone, Sister,” he said.
“I thought as much.
We ca’Vörls rarely do anything without ulterior motives, do we?”
she said. A quick smile played with her lips. “What did you want to
say to me, little brother?”
He grinned—briefly—at
that, the thick scar on his cheek twitching with the motion. “You
never knew me when I was little.”
“There was good
reason for that.” Yes, that hurt was at the very heart of the
mountain inside, the seed from which it had all grown. . .
.
“Or a bad one. I
didn’t understand then, Allesandra, why Vatarh left you in
Nessantico for so long. After he finally told me about you, I
always wondered why Vatarh let my sister languish in another
country, one he so obviously hated.”
“Do you understand
now?” she asked, then continued before he could respond. “Because I
still don’t. I always waited for him to apologize to me, or to
explain. But he never would. And now . . .”
“I don’t want to be
your enemy, Allesandra.”
“Are we enemies,
Fynn?”
“That’s what I’m
asking you. I would like to know.”
Allesandra waited
before answering. The marble railing of the balcony was damp under
her hand, the swirls of pale blue in the milky stone varnished by
dew. “Are you thinking that if our positions were reversed, that if
I’d been named Hïrzgin by Vatarh, then you would consider me your
enemy?” she asked carefully.
He made a face, his
hand sweeping through the cool air as if he were swiping at an
annoying insect. “So many words . . .” He sighed loudly and she
could hear his irritation in it. “You make speeches that slip in my
ears and make my own words twist their meanings, Allesandra. I’ve
never been someone able to fence with words and speeches—it’s not
one of my skills. It wasn’t one of Vatarh’s either. Vatarh always
said exactly what he thought: no more, no less, and what he didn’t
want someone to know, he didn’t say at all. I asked you a simple
enough question, Allesandra: are you my enemy? Please do me the
courtesy of giving me a plain, unadorned answer.”
“No,” she answered
firmly, and then shook her head. “Fynn, only an idiot would answer
you with anything other than ‘No, we’re not enemies.’ You know
that, too, despite your protestations. You may be many things, but
you’re not that simple, and I’m not
that foolish to fall into so obvious a trap. What’s the real
question you’re asking?”
Fynn gave an
exasperated huff, slapping his hand on
the railing. She could feel the impact of his hand shivering the
rail. “There . . . There are people . .
.” He stopped, taking a long audible breath. When he released it,
she could see it cloud before his face. He touched the plain golden
band that encircled his head. “Vatarh told me before he died that
there were whispers among the chevarittai and the higher téni of
the Faith. Some of them opposed his naming of me as the A’Hïrzg.
They don’t like my temper, or they say I’m too . . . stupid.” He
spat out the word, as if it tasted sour on his tongue. “Some of
them wanted you to have that title, or wanted someone else entirely
to take the band of the Hïrzgai.”
“Did Vatarh tell you
who was doing the whispering? Where did it come from?” Allesandra
asked. She had to ask the question. She shivered a little, hoping
he hadn’t noticed. “Did Vatarh tell you who had said
this?”
But Fynn only shook
his head. “No. No names. Just . . . that there were those who would
oppose me. If I find them . . .” He took a long breath in through
his nose, and his face went hard. “I will take them down.” He
looked directly at her. “I don’t care who they are, and I don’t
care who I have to hurt.”
She faced away from
him so he could not see her face, looking at the fog drifting among
the pines just below. Good. Because I know
some of them, and they know me. . . . “You can’t punish
rumors, Fynn,” she said. “You can’t put chains around gossip and
imprison it, any more than you can capture the mists.”
“I don’t think Vatarh
was deceived by mists.”
“Then what do you
want of me, little brother?”
That was what he’d
wanted her to ask. She could see it in his face, in the dimming
light of the sky. “At the Besteigung,” he began, then stopped to
put his hand atop hers on the railing. It did not feel like an
affectionate gesture. “You’re the one that everyone looks to.
You’re the one who could have been Hïrzgin had Vatarh not changed
his mind. The ca’-and-cu’ still like you, and many of them think
that Vatarh did wrong by you. The rumors always circulate around
you, Allesandra. You. I want to stop
them; I want them to have no reason at all to exist. So—at the
Besteigung—I want you, and Pauli and Jan also, to take a formal
oath of loyalty to the throne. In public, so everyone will hear you
say the words.”
They would only be
words, she wanted to tell him, with as
much meaning as my saying now “No, Fynn, I’m not your enemy,” Words
and oaths mean nothing: to know that, all you need do is look at
history . . . But she smiled at him gently and patted his
hand. Perhaps he really was that simple, that naive? “Of course
we’ll do that,” she told him. “I know my place. I know where I
should be, and I know where I want to be in the
future.”
Fynn nodded. His hand
moved away from hers. “Good,” he said, and the relief sang a high
note in his voice. “Then we will expect that.” We . . . She heard the royal plural in his voice,
all unconscious, and it made her lips press tightly together. “I
like your son,” he said unexpectedly. “He’s a bright one—like you,
Allesandra. I’d hate to think he was involved in any plots against
me, but if he was, or if his family was . . .” His face tightened
again. “The air’s chilly and damp out here, Allesandra. I’m going
inside.” Fynn left her, returning to the warmth of the palais’
common room. Allesandra stood at the railing for several more
minutes before following him, watching until the mists were nearly
level with her and the world below had vanished into gloom and
cloud.
She thought of being
Hïrzgin, and it came to her that the High Seat in Brezno would
never have satisfied her, even if it had been hers. It was a hard
realization, but she knew now that it was in Nessantico that she’d
been most happy, that she’d felt most at home.
“I know my place,
Brother,” she whispered into the hush of the fog. “I do. And I will
have it.”