In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

After a bit, he felt Henri move, then heard the noise of the file as Henri worked to shave the curve of a wooden plug to the exact fit for its oar port, to replace one eaten away by dry rot. Alain leaned back against the boat, recalling the familiar comfort of familiar patterns. Henri had always had a habit of thinking as he worked, or perhaps it was better to say that working helped him think, that the motion of hands teased patterns of thought into symmetry.

The hounds snuffled into the woods. The sea sighed.

“Is that what drove you?” Henri asked at last. “Seeking your mother?”

“I admit I have always wondered.”

The file scraped at the wood.

“Not so much about my mother,” Alain continued. “What she might have been like, of course I always wondered that. Yet if a birth is witnessed, and the witnesses tell the truth, there’s no doubt of a mother’s identity. It was wondering who my father was that drove me.”

The file stilled. “Do you wonder that still?”

Alain shifted to look into Henri’s face. He took Henri’s seamed, callused hand in his own and held it tightly. “No. I know who my father is. He is the one who raised me and cherished me.”

Tears fell, although Henri wept silently. One coursed down his cheek to land softly on the back of Alain’s hand, a warm salty drop followed by

“No good song is ever sung of a traitor,” he says to Deacon Ursuline.

“It is not treachery. It is an alliance,” she objects.

He sits and she stands in the hall built by his Alban carpenters to replace the one that burned in last year’s assault on Hefenfelthe. Most of his court have retired to their beds for the night, but he is, as always, wakeful, and Deacon Ursuline is persistent.

Torches burn in sconces bracketed every three strides along the wall. The tang of smoke licks at him, reminding him of scorched timbers and dying men. His dogs whine from their corner. No doubt they dream of the slaughter which feeds them.

“That is the point in keeping the old royal lineage alive now that the rest are dead,” she continues mercilessly. “If you marry the eldest princess, then it will bind the Alban people closer to you.”

“She will have turned against her ancestors, the queens, if she agrees to such an arrangement. She was to be the sacrifice to death, not to life.”

“The queens made such alliances in plenty when they ruled. It is the way of noble houses to marry this daughter to that son, this lady widow to that lord’s unmarried brother, to make peace or expand influence or consolidate fortunes. Among humankind, it is not considered treason but wisdom and expedience.”

It is a cool night, cloudy and dark as always these days. Through the open doors and shutters he hears the footsteps of guards on the wall that surrounds the rebuilt hall and repaired stone tower, the heart of Hefenfelthe. Beneath the light of one of the torches, two Eika warriors dice, a game they learned from human comrades. Their human pack brothers doze restlessly beside them, twitching and, now and again, moaning in sleep as they chase dreams. Other Eika guards stand in that strange half dream and half waking stupor that humans mistake for sleep. Even Trueheart, grasping the standard, sways on his feet.

Over the long autumn and this interminable winter and seemingly endless spring, the winds and tides have conspired to confine him to Alba’s shores. Yet while the sea’s caprice chafes him, it has also given him time to consolidate his victory in Alba. The central and southern plains are now quiet. The last of the resistance has been forced into the northern and western hill country, too rugged to pacify easily but possible to contain through judicious use of forts, raids, bribes, and the resettlement of former slaves on those lands closest to the rebels.

“Among humankind such alliances lead to offspring,” he adds. “Should I marry the Alban princess, we could not breed.”

“No, I suppose not. It would be a political alliance only. This, too, you must consider, Lord Stronghand. If you do not make plans for succession, then your empire of Eika and Alba will fall apart when you die.”

“That is true, Deacon Ursuline. I have considered the question more than once over this long winter. All things die in the end. We are only flies compared to the life of stone. We sons of OldMother are shorter-lived even than humankind. Yet this hall—” He indicates the rafters, the plank floor, the steps leading up to the tower. “—will survive me, and it will even survive you.”

“As long as war or tempest do not destroy it. You must build an edifice that will survive despite war and tempest.”

“Using what materials? I have stone, steel, and flesh.”

“You have mercy and justice.”

“I have my wits.”

“With all respect, Lord Stronghand, your wit will not survive you.”

“What if I care nothing for what passes in the world once I am gone?”

“Do you not?”

He laughs. “If I cared nothing, I would not be sitting here.”

In the distance, too faint for the deacon to hear, guards call out a challenge. He cocks his head, listening, and identifies the lilt of voice and rhythm of hurried stride as that of Lord Erling. Strange that Erling should be here in Hefenfelthe instead of tending to his own earldom. Trueheart shakes himself alert.