LITMIR.BIZ

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my dearest daughter obliges, and perhaps in your stars she’ll find some preference for her favors.”

      “I would petition the jewels of heaven to tilt in their courses toward me,” Ullo said prettily.

      Elia wished Morimaros would say, I need rely on no such petitioning, or some such, that might put the king of Burgun down, but Morimaros was silent.

      She gestured for the charts to be placed upon the well’s tabletop and glanced between the two kings. “I must begin with knowing your times of birth, so we might choose the correct charts.”

      Morimaros paused in consideration.

      “Do you know it?” she prompted gently.

      “I do, lady,” he said just as gently. “I only would not want to remove from Ullo the chance to be first.”

      “Sporting of you,” Ullo snapped. “Perhaps there is some star sign now which of us should be preferred.”

      Casting her gaze up at the blue sky, Elia said, “I’m afraid the afternoon stars have no signs for us, influencing instead beyond our means to see.”

      “Perhaps a worm sign, then?”

      She looked sharply to the speaker: it had been Morimaros.

      “Do you listen to the language of trees?” the king of Aremoria continued. He held his expression as cool as ever, but Elia warmed at the question.

      “Worm signs!” Lear cried, scrubbing the air with his arms. “None such in my court.”

      Elia’s pulse jumped, and she forced her pleasure hard away. “Of course not, Father,” she soothed.

      Ullo frowned sympathetically. “Only the purest prophecy for such as ourselves.”

      “Indeed,” Lear said. “I will be the star of this afternoon and say Ullo will have his reading first.”

      Elia glanced at Morimaros with slight apology, wishing she might say something to him, but in the end these kings mattered little to her.

      Ullo was twenty-four years old, born under the Violet Moon of the Year of Past Shadows. Elia paged through the proper charts while Ullo leaned over her shoulder, smiling prettily in the corner of her eye, but not pressing near enough to touch or overwhelm her. He smelled of properly burnt sugar and a current of sweat, but not unpleasantly so.

      The Year of Past Shadows had been full of repeating patterns in the dawn clouds, tied back to the year before, and thus given its name. Elia kept that in mind as she carefully marked a blank sky map with stars from the night of Ullo’s birth, counting everything forward, wishing she knew the clouds and very worm signs Morimaros had asked after. Or had a handful of holy bones to cast. But her father did not allow bones, or any such earthly predictions, in his records. Unlike bones and earth, Lear said, the stars see all, from their greater vantage point, and are not marred by subjectivity.

      The king of Burgun’s birth star was the Rabbit’s Heart, rising under a crescent moon to inflict sharpness on an otherwise generous spirit. Perhaps the sharpness of a crown, she assured him, so long as he did not allow it to make him bitter.

      “With so sweet a lady as you beside me, bitterness would be impossible,” he replied.

      Elia demurred, but her father laughed approvingly, and the Fool pointed out that some bittersweet flavors remained longest in memory.

      Morimaros of Aremoria would turn thirty in just over a month, several days before this year’s equinox. “But it was the equinox itself the night I was born,” he offered.

      “Ah,” King Lear intoned excitedly, putting a sour tilt to Ullo of Burgun’s smile.

      “That is helpful,” Elia said, repeating her charge of marking down stars and counting forward as she’d done first for Ullo. The Aremore king had been born in the Year of the Sixth Birds, and on that autumnal equinox, an hour before dawn in Aremoria, it was the Lion of War that crowned the sky. Elia glanced at her father, whose eyes narrowed on the chart. “That constellation holds your counter star, Elia,” he said testily.

      “It is, my lord,” she agreed. “The Lion of War, rampant and constant as Calpurlugh, but instead of a stationary constant, it circles the same piece of sky, protecting or confining.”

      Morimaros cleared his throat. He had not moved nearer to her for his reading, but maintained his stance at the fore of his retainers, shoulders back and hands folded behind him. “Is Calpurlugh not the Eye of the Lion? It has been years since my astronomy lessons, but I thought they were pieces of each other.”

      “Pieces that never see one another, yes,” Elia said. “They are not in sequence together, but only one or the other. Depending on the stars around them, it is either Calpurlugh or the Lion that shines, never both.”

      “Alas,” Ullo of Burgun said.

      “But the Lion is bold, and on an equinox dawn as this is, he is isolated but surrounded by … possibility.” Elia felt an unusual urge to couch her reading, for this was a lonely one, and she could imagine it heartbreaking for a man already isolated within a crown. It was not a future she would choose for herself.

      Morimaros did not seem affected, though, or particularly invested in the reading. His blue eyes remained calm, and he showed neither disappointment nor pleasure, as if none of this mattered at all.

      Irritated to feel she’d wasted her time, when he had requested this reading in his letter—had it been his only way of flirtation? Appealing to her interest though he shared it not at all?—Elia straightened. “I am weary, sirs,” she said, “and my companion must have arrived by now. I must see her and rest after my travel down from the north.”

      Immediately, Morimaros bowed, accepting her withdrawal.

      The Fool clapped his hands. “I would go with you, to see Aefa.”

      “Please,” Elia said.

      Lear put a hand on Ullo’s shoulder, but said to both kings, “You will see my Elia again at tomorrow’s Zenith Court, where all I have promised will be decided.”

      The king of Aremoria said, “I hope I may speak with you, Lear, further?”

      Truly, Elia thought as she kissed her father’s cheek, it was her father that Morimaros had come to treat with, not her. He obviously wished alliance and dowry; not a queen, not herself.

      Ullo offered his hand, and she took it, glad he at least bothered to pay her personal attention, even if his eyes lingered too long on her neck, on her wrists and the line from breast to waist. Tomorrow she would be rid of both these kings.

      The king of Burgun escorted her out of the courtyard, the Fool following behind with a weird, affected gate. When they emerged into the inner yard, Elia angled toward the family keep. “Thank you,” she said.

      “I hope we can continue our courtship, even beyond tomorrow.”

      “I have … enjoyed your letters,” she acknowledged, thinking of Aefa’s recitations.

      Drawing her nearer, Ullo said, “I would rather your good opinion than your father’s. Aremoria may be a great commander, but I rule from the heart, and I want only what is best for my people. I think you are it, and beautiful.”

      Though uncomfortable at the touch of his hip to hers, Elia appreciated the honesty. “I will not favor Aremoria over Burgun based on these stars.”

      His smile was radiant.

      The Fool’s face appeared between hers and Ullo’s. He smiled madly, showing all his teeth. “I was born under a grinning moon, see?”

      “I do,” Ullo said, laughing as though charmed. He took the hint, and stepped back from Elia, bowing over her hand. “Until tomorrow, princess.”

      The king of Burgun and his maroon retinue passed beyond

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