Aremore wizard lines, and he told her nothing, shrugging one bony shoulder as if it didn’t matter. When she mentioned the last wizard being gone from Aremoria for at least a hundred years, he startled her by asking the name of the king.
“Celedrix,” she replied. “For two years now. My mother.”
The wizard eyed her for a long moment, paused in his walking, and then nodded to himself as if choosing to believe she, this messy fool he’d met sleeping near her own vomit at a holy well, might in fact be the heir to the crown. Then he said, “How long since the nineteenth year of Segovax of Aremoria’s rule?”
“Oh, ah, he died twenty-two years ago, and he’d been king for twenty-three years, so … twenty-six years ago was the nineteenth year.”
“That is how long since I last walked these forests, then,” he said, seeming sad.
Hal was too starving and hungover to disbelieve. She dragged him with her through the gatehouse of the keep and through the corridor into the family hall, then remembered he was naked, and she was a disaster, so called out for baths and fresh clothes to be sent up and then told the steward they would come down for as much food as could be prepared in half an hour’s time.
“There’s a messenger from your mother,” the steward said, apologizing with a grimace. “You are to return to the palace at Lionis immediately, to meet with Echarmet of Kurake Queen.”
“Oh, worms,” Hal said, putting a hand to her suddenly throbbing head. “Did Ianta and Nova already go?”
“Nova, yes, did not even sleep, but Lady Ianta has not gotten up yet.”
The wizard watched it all, bemused, and said, “I would go to Lionis with you.”
Hal shrugged and groaned and told the steward nothing was changing about what she needed in the moment; after getting clean and eating she would drag herself back onto a horse and they would go beg the queen’s indulgence.
And so it happened as she instructed. She did not think about Echarmet of Kurake Queen. After washing, Hal sank down into her bathwater and held her breath.
If she sucked in a lungful, how long would it take to die?
Too long, and too painful.
The water, she guessed, would be heavy and cool inside, filling her stomach—no, her lungs. Or would it burn? Anything burned when breathed badly, she knew from choking if she laughed too hard while drinking or swallowed sack down the wrong pipe.
She wondered if the wizard could breathe water, and if so, would he teach her?
Dressed in a plain riding suit and chewing a hunk of bread, Hal went into the guest room to find two young women helping the wizard tie up a dark brown jacket. The laces were tight under his arms, as well as up the front, to better fit it against his slight torso. They watched him as though he were a feral kitten; adorable, but prone to slicing their fingers.
The wizard thanked them gently, and Hal noticed his Aremore was perfect.
They’d brushed his hair and even maybe trimmed it, for instead of the brambly, tangled mass it had been when he appeared, it was woven in three thick braids against his crown and temples, then bound back simply in a tail past his shoulders. Hal supposed he was handsome, in the way of men.
“Do you ride?” she asked, and he nodded.
Together they ate in the family hall, surrounded by dogs and the steward who had a dozen questions for Hal to haphazardly answer—though she cared, truly, about Tenne-Tiras, she didn’t know why it mattered if they bought mackerel or salmon, when there would be no guests to speak of. Hal did say that yes, she thought she might come here for the winter, thinking to herself it was very likely she’d want to escape the palace if Echarmet of Kurake Queen haunted her footsteps in Lionis. Or if her mother tried to send her to the March.
The amount of food the wizard ate both comforted and unsettled Hal; spirits did not eat, after all, and he enjoyed the dark wine and the lentil mash particularly, but it seemed, indeed, as if he’d not eaten in years. He thanked the servants and the steward, and when he was cutting into the heavy barley bread with the table knife Hal realized his hands were scarred at the knuckles and his wrists corded, and in fact the way he held himself put her more in mind of a soldier