herself to Mora’s side of the table and sat with a cranky groan.
“I don’t need your trust, girl,” Ianta said. “And honor is for the dead.”
Hotspur snorted into her cup as she drank again, and Hal poured Ianta another.
Hal said, “I have to try, Ianta. I’d rather do it with you.”
“Do what? Try what?”
“To make something new,” Hotspur said, as if it were obvious.
Hal nodded, grateful Hotspur understood. She held the wolf’s fiery gaze a moment too long, counting her heartbeats. Then she turned to Ianta. “As Hotspur says. I have to keep everyone alive now, my mother and Mora and myself. And my sister, for worm’s sake. She’s only sixteen, and I have to keep her out of the line of fire. You don’t have to help me, but I’d like you to.”
“What can I do to help?” Ianta sniffed hard, eyes on her cup of wine. “I’m an old, fat woman, a used-to-be knight with no family living and a reputation for deviance. If you bring me to your side, Hal, it will be recalling the worst things said of Rovassos—the Merry King. And myself, his consort in freakishness and perversion. Hard enough for you to strip away your proclivities without inviting me back to court.”
“I don’t intend to—to strip away my proclivities.” Again, Hal slid a glance at Hotspur, who hid her face in another drink. “And you were just as old and just as fat last year, at the height of your power. So don’t give me those as excuses.”
Ianta pursed her lips. “Then you’ll have to marry, secure the line. That will be the fastest way for you to protect your family and friends. Not through me.”
No one had said this yet to Hal’s face, though surely some had thought it, among the echelons of Lionis Palace. “Morimaros,” she began, seeking any delay, “did not marry.”
Banna Mora laughed once. “Morimaros is more my ancestor than yours, lion.”
“Mora!” cried Hotspur.
Hal, too, was surprised. To say so was nearly a challenge to Celedrix’s rule. To distract, she said, “I think I saw his ghost, at Strong Water Castle.”
“What? What is this?” Ianta asked, suddenly less drooping.
“He was standing with my mother, when Hotspur and I rode into the courtyard. I thought I recognized him, but couldn’t … place him. And he just vanished. Later … later I realized who the man looked like: it was Morimaros the Great.” Hal forced a shrug, gulping her wine.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Hotspur snarled.
But Mora said, “I saw him, too.”
Everyone stared at her. It was one thing for Hal to make up a wild story, but Mora was hardly imaginative.
“He stood beside me, on the day you returned to Lionis. I knew him immediately,” Mora said, with cool superiority. “He did not look as he does in the portrait in the Princes’ Gallery, for he was a king already. Thirty, strong, with fire-blue eyes and a traditional foot soldier’s gambeson from the last century.”
“Yes!” Hal said, more excited than competitive. “He wore a steel pauldron pressed with the crown.”
“Worms,” Lady Ianta breathed.
Hotspur’s face was pink, her lips pressed together. She looked furious.
“Hotspur?” Hal nudged her, and Mora reached over to touch the wolf’s shoulder.
Hotspur burst out, “I saw a man like that with Mared Lear! When the Learish prophecy was given!”
“Prophecy!” Ianta cried, flinging wine from her cup.
“You didn’t hear?” Mora said lightly. When Ianta demurred, Mora continued, “At the queen’s tournament. Solas Lear sent her nephew to congratulate Celedrix, and with him a prophecy for her new reign.” She took a breath, then said, rather hushed:
“When the saints are singing and the restless are reclaimed, the dragon will burn, the lion will break, and the wolf will choose the end. What do you think of that?”
Ianta shook her head slowly, a certain awe in her eyes.
Hal said, “This is incredible. To have all three of us seen Morimaros! What does it mean? Is he a ghost, or an earth saint? His body—”
“Worms, Hal,” Hotspur said. “Earth saints!”
Mora shrugged. “When the saints are singing.”
“You can’t believe in all of this, Mora. Earth saints are children’s monsters, and prophecies are—they’re shadows and wind.”
“Well, good for us then that this is not Innis Lear,” Mora said. “We won’t be swayed by shadows and wind in Aremoria.”
Hal wondered skeptically if that were true. She was pure Aremore and greatly swayed toward magical thinking.
Ianta sighed. “I would be. Rovassos would’ve been. You know he used to get me and Prince Mato to do rituals