LITMIR.BIZ

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unfortunately too wet for storing castle goods, and there were times smugglers would need to be cleared out. Gaela glanced up the cliff toward the black walls of the castle, high above and leaning over in places. She thought perhaps to install stairs, or some system of ladders, and wondered, too, if the cave could be transformed into cold storage, if they could put in high shelving to keep the water off. But it seemed too complicated to be practical.

      She reached the mouth of the cave and paused, one hand on the rough edge of the mouth, her lips curled in a frown. For five years now she’d only come alone, since Regan had married. Elia hadn’t been welcome in the caves, not since she chose Lear over her sisters, damn her. Today, Gaela would’ve preferred to have Regan with her again, but her sister had kept herself away in Connley unexpectedly, even since their summons.

      On her own these two days, Gaela had been assessing the state of her kingdom behind her father’s back, first meeting with the strongest earls, Glennadoer and Rosrua and Errigal, and discussing a tax for the repair of that blasted coastal road, if her father did refuse funds from the treasury. It was necessary, especially that the worst erosion be bolstered before the fierce winter storms. She and Astore had been appalled at the state of Lear’s accounting records in the past three years, demanding Lear’s stewards find a path through the mess. The earls had promised records from their own holdings that would make up for some of the confusion. When Gaela took the throne, she’d be ready to put resources exactly where she wanted them: trade and a stronger standing army. Her grandmother was an empress, and Gaela would transform Innis Lear into a jewel worthy of such a relationship. By the time she died, no longer would this land be a blight clinging to the sea, its inner woods a mystery of ghosts and hidden villages, the people known for superstition and old magic. Kay Oak had told Gaela that Lear’s star prophecies were considered an artful, childlike folly in the Third Kingdom, where the study of stars was a science. Even in Aremoria the king was building great schools, and his father had turned his people away from magic. Innis Lear was a backward holdout.

      Gaela would change it all. She would not be remembered only as the prophesied daughter who killed a beloved mother, but as the king who dragged Innis Lear away from venal superstition and filthy wormwork.

      She entered the cave. The floor was sand; her boots sank into watery puddles and the meager warmth of the sun vanished. Layers of rock, slick with algae and striped gray with pale green stratification, cut away, curving deeper. Salty, wet stone-smell filled her nose, and she even tasted the delicate flavor of dark earth on her tongue. The air seeped with it. A drip like a pretty chime echoed farther back, where she could not see.

      It was like standing in a frozen moment of rain, surrounded by a refreshing, cool breeze and droplets of water that never quite touched her. Gaela’s mother had said there was nothing like this in the desert. And that standing here, breathing, was as near to sharing God’s breath as Dalat had found since leaving her old home.

      Gaela often wished she could visit the Third Kingdom, but Innis Lear was her birthright. In Dalat’s home, Gaela might be allowed to govern a city, or work her way up in the ranks of the armies to general. But here she would rule over all. If she had a god, it was this island. She would make her name, and the name of Innis Lear, so strong and great that the words and spirit of them would travel to the desert in her place.

      “I am so close, Mother.”

      Her voice remained low, but Gaela had no need to be heard. It was the memory of her mother to whom she spoke, no ghost. She had not brought a candle to light; a thousand candles burned for Dalat every night in the north. Nor did Gaela bring mementos: eagle feathers pinched her heart, but what good were they buried in this sand or tossed into the ocean? Gaela was unsentimental, and her mother was gone. Taken from her by Lear, by the reign of his stars. Nothing could bring Dalat back, no rootwater nor blood, no star prophecy nor faith in even the great god of her mother’s people.

      When Gaela spoke to her mother’s memory, she really was talking to herself and the island.

      “There are things I’ve done you would not approve of,” Gaela said, crouching. Her bottom leaned on the craggy wall for balance, and she rested her wrists on her knees. “My barren body, my loveless marriage. You were so happy when I was young, because you loved him, and you had us, and I remember you found so much joy in so many mundane things I still don’t understand. But I did what I had to do, and I’m not sorry, Dalat. I will rule Innis Lear, and Regan’s children will be my heirs.”

      Gaela pictured her mother’s face, though Dalat looked rather more like Gaela herself than she truly had; it was the best a daughter could do so many years later. Kayo had brought a small bust of Dalat-as-a-girl from the desert, and her orange clay face at fifteen was so much like Elia’s instead: round and sweet and smiling. Gaela had rejected it.

      “Mother,” Gaela said, “I miss you. You wanted me, despite everything, but he never did. You gave me the ambitions to rule this island. You taught me I could, encouraged me to find my own way to strength, because our ancestors are queens and empresses. He pretended I was nothing, tolerating me despite the prophecy, because he loved you. When Elia was born, and her … her stars were perfect, he’d have named her heir if she’d been a boy. If I wasn’t married to Astore and hadn’t made myself into a dangerous prince, he’d try it now. Fortunately for all of us she has no ambition of her own, or I’d have to kill her. He and his stars would necessitate it.” Gaela closed her eyes. The ocean outside matched the roar of her blood. Sometimes she thought that men had created star prophecies solely to benefit themselves.

      “I don’t understand how you loved him, Mother. He used you, and me, to prove the truth of the stars, and I will never let that happen again. My kingdom will not be defined as yours was, and I will not let him, or any of them, trap me as you were trapped. I love you, but I will not be like you.”

      She spat on the ground, leaving that piece of herself there, her body and water, for the sand and tide and Innis Lear.

       MARS

      MORIMAROS, THE KING of Aremoria, was annoyed.

      He’d been directed outside to a nearly empty garden, along with his personal escort of five polished soldiers, to await a second audience with King Lear. Mars had assumed that meant an immediate audience, an intimate discussion of his matrimonial goals, but instead he’d been waiting long enough for the shadow of the stone table at the center of the yard to shift a hand-span. The walls of the courtyard reached high, lime-washed and painted with gray trees, star shapes, and graceful flying swans, the art faded now and in need of retouching. Pine boughs and sweet-smelling lavender littered the earthen ground. Deep wooden boxes in the four corners grew with emerald moss and creeping rose vines that bloomed bloodred and creamy orange.

      Though it was altogether a lovely atmosphere, something tugged at Mars’s awareness, as if invisible cracks had formed in the very air. As if the roses wanted his attention.

      Mars was not practiced at idleness. It led him to imagine fantasies.

      He wondered if his Fox had arrived yet.

      I have a game for you to play, Mars had said, the afternoon he’d received his invitation to this Zenith Court. Did you know her, Elia Lear? His Fox had lied when he answered, Barely, sir, with something of shuttered grief in the tremble of his words.

      The Fox had served Mars passionately and well for years, discovering secrets no other spy even thought to look for, slipping into fortresses and enemy camps as if he could spin himself invisible or as quick as the wind with which he spoke. Yet that always hidden thread of angst was too easy for Mars to pluck and set against Innis Lear. Until now, Mars had held back from doing so. Things built so easily tended to be just as easily broken.

      But it was time. Mars was here for one thing: Innis Lear itself, and he stood at the center of several paths to claim

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