duke spoke first, calling from halfway down the chamber: “Why, Celedrix, do you bring us here to this cradle of your authority and not welcome us as the friends and intimates we were and thought ourselves still to be?”
The queen stood tall, her slender shoulders made expansive by the black mantle. “Because I am Celedrix, as you are Mercia, regardless of whatever we once were.”
Hotspur stopped, flushing with anger at both the queen and her aunt. She said, “And I am the Wolf of Aremoria, and have done nothing to deserve the censure of my queen.”
“Yet censure is what you assume.” Celeda lifted one thin, dark eyebrow and glanced at Mata of Ithios, who was her cousin. The queen’s royal mother, Vatta Gaunt, had been the eldest daughter of Segovax, and his fourth son, Matomaros, had fathered Mata.
Mata said, “Hotspur is ablaze with her recent victories, and looks for enemies even in the most friendly heart.”
“And my excuse?” Vindomata asked in a voice as cold as Rusrike winter.
“Habits you cannot throw off,” the queen said. “Even in peace.”
“Peace? I have no peace, Celeda. My sons are dead.”
Silence stretched as the queen watched the duke of Mercia. Motes of dust clung to the rays of sunlight shining through rippled panes of window glass.
Hotspur gritted her teeth, and strove for calm as she looked away. The prince should be here. Their sixth. Hal should be here. Hotspur caught only her own reflection in the tall, gilded mirrors.
Caratica stepped forward to the first shallow stair of the throne dais, her cane making no more sound than her soft boots against the marble floor. “It is good to see you, Celeda,” Hotspur’s mother said, a soft smile pursing her lips.
The queen paused, then returned the smile. A weighty rope of years, murder, loss, and delicate loyalty connected their mouths, making their expressions mirrors to the other: one silvered and bloodred, the queen; the other green and hobbled by old injury, but certain of her footing.
Caratica said, “My daughter does not withhold prisoners from our queen.”
Hotspur burst out, “I denied that ridiculous man, not you, Celedrix! For all he represented the queen’s command, he was a poor popinjay and—and had you been there, my queen, you would have done as I did. He approached me on the field, as I tended my wounded and gave final farewell to my teacher and friend, Sir Corio de Or.”
The queen frowned, knowing the dead man well herself, and again met her cousin Mata Blunt’s look of sympathy.
Hotspur took this as leave to press on. “I was weary, tired, and in a rage of grief at Sir Corio’s death, and when your man came he demanded I give him Douglass then and there—and he did not even know his duties. He knew nothing of Burgun burial practices, and he must, to negotiate in your name!”
“It sounds,” Mata Blunt said evenly, “as if you censure the queen herself for her man.”
“If she nominated him personally, she deserves the censure,” Vindomata said, shocking every woman and guard in the room with her boldness.
Caratica murmured her sister’s name, but Hotspur was fully on her aunt’s side in this, and she declared, “He told me if not for all the blood, he might have been a soldier himself!”
Mata Blunt, who was short and stout and impossible to move when she chose to stay, snorted a laugh. “I do know Briginos of Dun, and believe this of him. Perhaps we ought to take Hotspur, and her accounting, over his. She was with us, and has been with us—he was not and has not.”
The reminder of their rebellion alliances hung like garlands around all their necks. Hotspur began to smile, thinking maybe, maybe she’d not have to accept Mora’s proposal, that they could salvage this—if only Hal were here for the exact right joke or teasing comment to move Celeda and Vindomata nearer to each other’s hearts again.
“Yet.” Celedrix brought her hands together with the appearance of casualness. “Yet Hotspur continues to deny us her hostage.”
Hotspur clenched her jaw. She held herself back as the queen stared at her, evenly and hard. Her mother had said of the queen, having known her from long decades of friendship, that Celeda only appeared casual when she was anything but. Her temper, in truth, aligned more with Hotspur’s, but the queen had learned to hide it. Hotspur began to speak, and the queen held up her hand. The garnet in the Blood and the Sea caught the afternoon