your thinking.”
Hotspur licked olive oil from her lip and took another drink of wine. The bottle was nearly half empty; she’d had too much, but the warmth dragging at her mind and popping in her cheeks was more pleasant than the echoing pain in her shoulder. She needed to remember to put salve on her temple and side and hip where bruises had formed, and at the raw spot at the front of her right shoulder where the chest plate had rubbed.
“Hotspur.”
Clearing her throat, Hotspur said, “I am keeping him. I caught him, he’s my hostage. I’ll negotiate.”
“Celedrix will appreciate that not at all.”
“She should have brought Mora home then!”
The yell startled Hotspur herself more than Vindomata, who only raised dark eyebrows and waited.
Hotspur caught her breath.
It was a gross injustice that Mora had not been ransomed home. Celedrix flaunted the rules of war and honor by letting Innis Lear keep their cousin—the former heir!—prisoner on those grimy shores. More than a year Mora had been trapped there—and the March still flew no flag.
Vindomata said, “Tell her.”
“What?” Hotspur ate a dried fig, for a moment to think.
“Tell our queen to bring Mora back, if she wants Douglass from you.”
“That sounds like a threat more than a request.”
Her aunt shrugged, for all the world seeming relaxed, casual as a daybird lounging in her robe on Hotspur’s pallet. “As you said, Celeda should have brought Mora home already.”
“She needs to know we remember,” Hotspur whispered. She’d written to Celedrix three times over the past six months, asking in the most direly polite terms for the ransom.
“She is the one who must remember.” Vindomata frowned, and the delicate lines at her eyes and lips deepened. Her eyes fluttered as if weary. She was nearly fifty years old, after all, though still strong, lean, and battle-hardened.
“Remember Mora?”
Vindomata accepted the wine bottle from Hotspur and drank, never taking her gaze from her niece’s. “Remember,” she said, giving the wine back, “why she rebelled against Rovassos. Injustice. A king reaching beyond his means. The opposite is just as deadly. To reach not at all.”
Hotspur lowered her voice to barely a whisper. “You don’t trust Celeda anymore.”
“Do you?”
The question hung between them like a string of bile. Hotspur’s stomach rolled; she told herself it was too much wine too fast, and the pain of her shoulder, and exhaustion.
But she saw it in her aunt’s light eyes: Vindomata had been a king-killer once. And a queen-maker. For without Mercia and the Persy strength, Celedrix would not wear the crown now. And it had cost Vindomata her two children, regardless of how they’d been killed. Either way, they were dead.
The queen owed them.
“I trust you, Aunt,” Hotspur said.
“Good. The question that matters most, dear one, is whether our queen trusts us. Does she trust that we will negotiate over Douglass in good faith? Does she trust us enough to speak with us honestly about why she leaves Banna Mora on Innis Lear? I do not know the answer.”
Hotspur cried, “She should! We are loyal to Aremoria, we are her sword!”
“Hush, hush, Wolf.” Vindomata laughed softly.
Drinking, Hotspur closed her eyes. Vindomata had never asked her about the prophecy; perhaps she’d never heard of it. The wine tingled at the roof of Hotspur’s mouth. She swallowed slowly. “Tell me I must not give over my prisoner.”
“Not yet, at least. We will take him home and see. Now let me comb out your tangled hair, Niece, and scrub the last of bloody battle from your scalp.”
Hotspur obeyed, sitting again before her aunt at the pallet until, lulled by the gentle tugs of fingers and comb, she sighed herself to sleep.
BANNA MORA
The Summer Seat of Innis Lear, midsummer
THE SUMMER SEAT of Innis Lear was a feral place. Perched on a promontory surrounded by sheer cliffs, the black castle was ancient and rough, fortified by raw nature and the hungry ocean clawing below. The tower stairs were worn in the center from generations of feet, and the privies hung off the side of the cliffs, so when the wind was right it howled eerily through the openings. Most residents lived on the island side, in the town of Sunton, where they farmed and raised chickens and pigs to feed the castle’s guests.
As someone fostered in Aremoria most of her life, the Summer Seat had initially struck Mora as primitive. But after a spring and half a summer here, Mora felt a kinship to the daring, desperate way it clung to the island. When someday