“I do.”
“You weren’t telling me what I wanted to hear. You were telling me a truth I needed to hear. Well, here is one for you. We are your friends, and we need you with us. That might conflict with your plans, but you’ll just have to live with it.”
Crow closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He cleared his throat. “Still, couldn’t you have found another way to do this, Princess? It’s such a transparent strategy, no one will believe it.”
“They’d not believe I could succumb to your charms?”
“If I had any.” Crow smiled. “Don’t evade the point. By claiming to be married to me, you have completely destroyed your value as a dynastic marriage partner.”
“An added benefit.”
“Be serious.”
She let her hand trail down his arm before returning to her saddlehorn. “I am serious. You know that I was trained to lead armies. This was what my father wanted, and he told Preyknosery Ironwing. The Gyrkyme honored my father’s wishes, and King Augustus saw to it that I had the help and training needed. They and he know my value to the world. My grandfather and my great-grandaunt, however, do not. They see me as a brood mare to be married off to some prince to strengthen alliances so we’ll have support in taking back Okrannel. They’d put me in a bed to earn more troops, when I could lead fewer and take Okrannel myself.“
“That may be as you say, Princess, but no one will believe we are wed.”
Alyx smiled. “The Norrington and Perrine stood as witnesses to our nuptials. Prince Erlestoke was there, may the gods keep his soul.”
“Two friends and a dead man as witnesses? No one will accept their word.”
“But they will accept mine. They have to because that is the way of the nobility. To accuse me of lying has consequences.”
“But when it is shown you are, Princess…”
She shook her head adamantly. “You listen to me, Crow, and listen well. I know your story; I’ve known it all my life. The shame, the lies, how they painted you are all irrelevant, I’ve met you. You have saved my life; I have saved yours. We have shared a wineskin after a battle, we’ve stormed a pirate haven, and we’ve killed a sullanciri. I know that the Hawkins of legend, of infamy, is not you.”
“Yes, but…”
“No, Crow, no buts.” She swallowed hard as a lump rose in her throat. “I would like to think, had my father lived, he would have been there when they tried you and would have raged against the injustice. Had King Augustus not been in Okrannel, I’m certain he would have as well.”
Crow shook his head. “They would have had no choice.”
“We’ll never know, but I know Augustus and know he’d not have sanctioned such an injustice. My point, however, is simply this: the crowned heads, in order to preserve their realms, chose to destroy your life. They created a lie and used it to destroy you. You said your father stripped your mask from you. Do you think he would have done that if he knew the truth?”
The man shivered for a moment, then his voice sank low. “He knew a truth, and that made him take my mask. He didn’t need their lie.”
She frowned, not understanding. Time for that later. “Crow, the world’s leaders are the ones who did this to you. I will not stand for it. This lie has done enough damage.”
“So you’ll fight it with another lie?” The words formed an accusation, but the grin tugging at the corner of his mouth softened it.
She nodded. “It stops your summary execution and buys us time. Many will work hard trying to talk me out of the marriage. I could trade an annulment for a pardon and we would be done with it. After all, everyone knows that Hawkins killed himself. You were just mistakenly identified as him. Remember, among the Vorquelves, the stories of Kedyn’s Crow predate the last war.“
Crow laughed. “Oh, you have this all thought out.”
“Had to. Will and Kerrigan ask the most annoying questions. Of course, as with any plan, it will come apart when we engage the enemy.” Alyx shrugged. “But we have to win, so we will.”
He looked over at her, then shook his head. “Scrainwood isn’t an imbecile, but he thought he was just picking a fight with me. He’s going to get far more than he ever bargained for.”
“He called this tune a quarter century ago, and has been dancing to it for a good long time.” Princess Alexia squeezed Crow’s shoulder again. “The time has come to pay the piper.”
8
The column of snowflakes swirled across the Aurolani landscape moving toward her as if with intelligence and intent. Isaura reached out with an ungloved hand. Long, slender fingers sheathed in flesh barely darker than the snow itself sank into the whirlwind. At her touch the snow-ghost flew apart, small flakes lighting on her long hair and gown, hidden there as completely as if they had fallen back to the snowfield beneath her feet.
The breeze that had animated that tiny cyclone spawned others that raced toward the Conservatory as if Southlands warriors mounted an assault on the building. The Conservatory had been built into the side of a mountain. The magicks the sullanciri Neskartu had used to create it had molded molten rock into towers and chambers. Even the exterior walls, having been battered by a quarter century of fierce northern storms, still retained their pristine, glassy surface.
Students stood in the white field before the Conservatory, for those who had studied there for years had become at least partially inured to the cold. Those trained in combat dueled each other, male and female alike stripped to the waist, their bodies adorned with colorful tattoos. Magicks crackled between them, the sounds carrying crisply through the cold air. If the combat mages even noticed the rising breeze, they did not seek shelter from it.
Other longtime students wore more clothing, but likewise ignored the wind. The newest students, however—most children and all facing their first winter—huddled together, their backs to the wind. As distant as she was, she could feel them attempting to summon a warming spell. Having been trained on Vilwan, their methods were awkward, their efforts stunted, and their results meager.
Isaura tilted her head slightly to the left and watched them. The Vilwanese students had been plucked from the sea and brought to Aurolan to be trained by Neskartu, but they resisted him and his methods much as they tried to resist the cold. And suffered equally for both.
Isaura did not resist the wind and cold, but embraced it. The Vilwanese saw cold as the absence of heat, but she knew this was merely shortsightedness. There was still heat in the wind, for heat was merely energy, and if there was no energy, there would be no wind. Heat is there; one merely has to know where to seek it.
Another whirlwind bore down on her, and she sensed its intent immediately. She turned, looking back at the frosted fortress of black stone that dominated the high-walled mountain valley. Where the Conservatory had been shaped of stone, the fortress seemed like a tooth that had erupted from the snowy landscape, strong and sharp.
She caught a flash of white in a window of an upper chamber and smiled. Isaura began to walk swiftly toward the castle, the whirlwind tugging at the skirts of her gown, urging her on. She flicked a hand at it, reweaving the threads of energy running through it, and it collapsed into a small cloud of ice dust.
From it rose another whirlwind, this one more powerful. It circled her once, eliciting a shriek of delight as her hair danced on its teasing tendrils. The storm lunged at her, surrounding her in its fury. The wind howled inarticulately, then lifted her up and bore her on an icy pedestal to an upper balcony of the castle.