The Seasons of Salt

Chapter Eighteen

Féon had invited her brother’s family up to Grimkeep for the Naming ceremony of little Caedric Maxon Rowley. She had told Maxon so last night, beaming up at him from her place beside him in the cold and draughty bed. He was getting used to her nightly visits again now. He never went to her. He never needed to. She had never been this voracious after the birth of their own children. She had not come to him this often since the first days of their marriage, in fact, when she was so desperate for a son to hold. More desperate for a child than even he had been. She was not desperate now. She always pushed him away just before the end, sending his seed spilling out onto the covers instead.

She had said it so blithely, with such boundless unconcern, that he just stared at her. She had not seemed to think it worth asking – not about the Dowse visit, they came often enough and they were good enough houseguests, never overstaying their welcome, going as easily as they came – but about the Naming Ceremony.

She had already launched into the middle of a long list about the necessary arrangements when he had found his tongue.

“Féon,” he had told her incredulously. “We cannot celebrate the damn thing. It’s a firebeast. It’s a hostage. There is not one family in our halls that does not know someone lost to dragon-rage or dragon-fire. I myself lost my father to their burning wrath. How well do you think that will look? Rejoicing over the prince of our killers?”

“It is too late already, Maxon,” she had sounded surprised. “I have already sent corryns inviting the other houses of Aridshire up to feast with us in your name.”

The fight that followed had been furious and long, and he was not sure that either of them had really won it. He glanced at her now, along the high table as the breakfast plates went round.

The child is a gift from the Fae, Maxon. He is a gift for us. She had said it a dozen times last night as they raged. She seemed to truly believe it, too. Bridgenford folk were always more superstitious than the other counties. He blamed the Fae worship. Spirit gifts, bonfires, the river dance. There were myriad different customs that speckled the lives of the county folk, all appeasing these strange and capricious beings no one had ever really seen. At least in the northern counties they revered people they knew. People who would be invested in their success. What were the Fae to them, after all? Why should these mysterious Fae care what the folk of Bridgenford did?

He glanced down at her again. She was playing the Large Lady well this morning. She always had, even when she was cold and stone-bound she had done her duties. She made polite conversation to the ladies and laughed moderately at poor jokes. She smiled gently now at the newest serving maid who was fumbling the watered wine across the table. No one would guess that she was locked into enmity with her husband right now. No one would ever think Maxon had been an inch away from sending her back to her father’s house last night.

He snorted to himself at the thought. Dowse would take that ill for certain-sure, having Féon land on his doorstep out of the wide, blue sky. He’d bring her back accompanied by a regiment or two to ‘ensure her safe passage after her familial visit’ and Rowley would either have to swallow the implied threat or raise his own men and yet another war would break out. If it came down to a territorial spat between Bridgenford and Aridshire, there was no saying who might come out atop. Aridshire had fierce men, hardened and tempered by the ill-landscape and the constant threat of dragons, but Bridgenford was large. They could raise an army to make even the hardiest of men consider twice and that was not including the Fen’s Men. The smaller, more northerly counties could not afford a standing army like the southern counties held.

Besides, however she tempted him to it, he’d not send Féon away now. It would only be cruelty to their children if nothing else. And yet, by all his ancestors, she did tempt him to it. Signing his name to this wretched Ceremony, without his consent, without even informing him beforehand. Because she knew he’d decline the honour, he thought darkly.

He mopped up a stray sliver of grease upon his plate with a husk of bread and chewed upon it ruminatively, his dire mood darkening the table around him.

He would have had new corryns sent out saying that due to unforeseen circumstances it was no longer possible to celebrate the new child at his house, but he worried that that would only make him look weaker than acquiescing in the first place. At least this way he could pretend that there was some semblance of unity in his own home. That he could control his own wife.

No, he could not afford to back down now. He had to claim this foolishness as his own, try to make it seem like some stroke of strategy. Cosying up with the princeling. Tempting the men to discontent. Even Aridshire will not be loyal forever. It went round and round in his head, a haunting refrain with every morose chew.

 He’d have to take Féon in hand. She was risking all of them. Despite Telliford’s dire prognostications, Rowley did not believe they were on the edge of rebellion yet, but as Ferris had found to his cost, no one was safe forever. Not with enough provocation.

Still, it was an ill wind that brought no good, as they said. At least he had an excuse for avoiding this damnable betrothal party down at the Brenin Peninsula now. That was probably a mistake too. He had sent the corryn back this morning, with grateful thanks and a reluctant refusal. He had to sort out his own affairs first and could not afford to leave Aridshire yet. He had just returned from war and his lands sore needed him still. All the old excuses that were true enough to be accepted, even if they were not believed.

Glengower would get it by eventide, most likely. And he would probably take it poorly, even more poorly than he had taken the news of Bara’s hostage-taking in the first place. Maxon sighed deep. It will be a lingering sore between them, he knew, and Lord Glengower – King Burtlett – was not the kind to let a sore heal unprodded. Any regal aid Aridshire received now would be tempered by a wretched dragon child and an absent seat at the betrothal party table, he knew. And yet he could not stomach leaving so soon, and he was not entirely sure that Glengower would not have him surreptitiously assassinated in the capital as revenge. He was not a man to see his slights went unrewarded. He was a man who believed in dagger diplomacy.

No. Better by far to hide away in the safety of Aridshire. Glengower was a peninsula man through and through. He’d not venture so close to the dragon caves just to exact some petty revenge. As long as Rowley stayed up here where he belonged, amongst the rough mountains and the barren fields, he was out of sight and out of mind.

And yet, he might require regal assistance soon, he found himself thinking darkly. The Landless Lords of Starfire were getting worse. They had capitalised on the war to fill their own coffers, as they ever did. Not that Glengower would do much, by all accounts. He and his father-by-law shared a profitable working relationship, so it went. But Rowley’s people were growing ill-contented, and they had reason to be. The coastlands were ravaged, the sea-cliff houses attacked. The fields, which grew little enough under the hard and baking sun anyway, plundered and burnt.  As soon as he had regained his seat, the messages began pouring in, it seemed.

I have just saved you from the dragons, he thought to his vassals bitterly. Must I now save you from the mines too?

He got to his feet and everyone at the High Table quickly followed. He waved them back down again.

“I have work I must attend to,” he said, forcing a slight smile to his lips. “Pray, finish your meal.”

He was off of the dais and out of the door before they had even finished taking their seats again.

There were always a dozen things to do for a Large Lord, and even more after they had come back from battle, but Maxon found he could not face any of them today. He paced his solar alone for half of an hour. Every time he sat himself to his desk, he stared at the parchments before him without taking any of them in. He picked up and threw down his pen half a dozen times without writing a single jot.

It was no good.

Maxon fetched his furs and his warmest boots and trying not to sneak, trying to walk upright and confident as indeed he should his own damned house, he headed out for the crypts instead. He wouldn't be able to talk to his father face-to-face on any day which was not Morti Morturi, of course, but he had a few choice words for him anyway, and he would not be at peace until he had unburdened himself of them.

The crypts were always cold despite the bruising heat of the day. Hewn from the rock itself, they always dripped, damp and uncomfortable on the simple stacked cairns in neat rows beneath the ground. Most folks had their cairns on top of hillsides or in open fields. Maxon always thought he would have liked that best. Who wanted to spend eternity trapped in the rock and dark? Give him wide, free hillsides, cairns at the mountain tops where the sheep-hands roamed their flocks, keeping the wolves at bay. Still, at least here they could speak without being overheard. Mayhap there was method to Aridshire madness.

He stopped before his father’s cairn. Brullim Rowley. The two simple little words which meant so much. His own children had three names, in the Bridgenford tradition, something about a secret middle name protecting them from the Fae? Maxon wasn't sure, there were so many Bridgenford traditions that he lost track of them all. Mayhap he shouldn't have given in to his wife, mayhap he should have insisted Ryland and Little Erilla be raised properly the Aridshire way, and yet for all his reputation, he was not that hard a man. 

His father's name was etched deep into the round, smooth rock. Moss was starting to grow in the cracks now, lichen edging over the mound. He picked it away as he knelt before it. He remembered when these words were stark and new, chisel-fresh, and his mother weeping copiously out here in the dark. He had stood beside her, straight-backed and high-headed, a boy trying to wear the face of a man, and she had fallen to her knees and wept without regard for those watching her, without caring about the dignity of a Large Lady. She had not survived the war either. She’d been buried out here beside her husband by the time Féon came traipsing through the gates of Grimkeep at last, when that long and bloody war was finally done, ready to take the mantle of Large Lady from the mother-by-law she would never know. Ryland and Erilla had never met any of their grandparents.

Rowley made the sacred invocations as he knelt and then paused. He did not know what to say next. His hand rested on the cold stone, and he felt it warming through with his own body-heat, as though he could pour some of his life into it.

“I followed your advice,” he said into the darkness. “I think it helped. The war, at least. Mayhap not the aftermath. Still. Thank you.”

His father did not appear. There was no sound in the echoing crypt but his own voice and the constant dripping. He did not really expect it, despite his hopeless hopes. The next Morti Morturi was not for months yet.

“We won the war,” he said. “Bara helped us to win the war. Glengower is less than pleased, but he was not there. It was not his decision to make. He must know it secured the victory. He will see reason.”

He paused. The frigid air dripped some more.

“We have the strength of arms to defend Aridshire,” he muttered, more to himself than his father, who did not seem inclined to reply anyway. He wondered if his father even heard, or if he was occupied with his own business over in the Afterlife. “Dowse will back us and bring us the Bridgenford men should we require them, and probably the Halfnorth will come to our aid, should it come to it. They have more in common with us than with Glengower. He is a Peninsula man to the bone.”

There had been some discontent, actually, about Glengower claiming the crown when he brought the least men to the battle-field, but Rowley had not cared. It was not like he wanted the Brenin Peninsula, after all. He was more than content to be the Large Lord of Aridshire, and leave the rest of it to someone else.

“Answer me!” he shouted desperately, knowing even as he did so that he was being unreasonable, that his father could not reply even if he wished to. “Féon is…” he cut that thought short. He knew what Brullim Rowley would say after all. The hand you give in marriage must be a firm one. The wife is the first subject of her lord.

Weak. He would say Maxon was too weak.

Mayhap he would be right.

“Who are you talking to?”

He whipped around, drawing his sword as he rose to his feet. Wyvona stood in the semi-darkness. She was bundled up tightly with half a dozen furs and cloaks, and still she shivered.

“These are sacred grounds,” he said tightly. “Who told you that you could wander here?”

“No one, my Lord. But I saw the gate was open and I was curious.”

She looked to the cairns slowly, her hands running over the nearest stone.

“Who was Brodik?” She asked.

“My brother. He died in youth. I have asked you to leave.”

“Please do not send me away.” She took a step forwards into his lantern light and he saw tear tracks shimmering down her skin. He hesitated.

“You are hiding,” he realised aloud. She smiled ruefully, her hands running over the dark crypt walls.

“It reminds me a little of the Kir-Karn caves here,” she said, “Though our caves are always warm. Everything is so wretchedly cold here.”

For a fire-beast, mayhap, but not for a mortal. The sun-baked the lands of Aridshire were hard and dry,  save for the crypts, cellars and very worst of winters. The world was always warm here.

“Forgive me that we do not have the magma streams of the Kir-Karn,” he said sourly. “Our homes were made for mortals, you see.”

“I miss the heat,” she muttered ignoring him. “Almost more than anything else. Dragons were not made to freeze.”

“Return if you wish to. You are the wet-nurse, not the hostage. We will find a mortal to feed him.”

She bristled at the thought of it, her head whipping round to his in a very snake-like way.

“You are trying to send me away too,” she spat. “Is it not enough that your wife has stolen my only living kin? Is it not enough that she dresses him as her own son? That she treats him as little more than a mortal?”

“I would have thought you would be grateful she was so kind to him,” he said coldly. He did not allow his expression to change, did not allow the slightest hint of agreement to cross his features. Féon was his wife. She deserved to be defended by her husband if nothing else. “His treatment here could be a grand deal worse, and you know it. My son would not be so well treated in your household.”

“Bara is a Dragon! That means something! He is not a mortal! He should not be raised to believe he is a mortal!”

“How Caedric is raised is no longer a concern of yours, Princess Wyvona. He is being well treated, and I have not broken my blood oath to his parents. That is all that need worry you.”

“My brother, the king, did not give his life to spare his son, only to have him raised as food.”

“We are no longer to be food, which is why I took your brother’s life. There was very little giving about it.”

Her hand whiplashed out in the darkness. It was very hard and it left a cut across his cheek. It burnt, a scalding handprint across his skin. His hand fled to his sword again before he had thought about it. He slashed it high across the dripping air and stopped the blade an inch before her throat. She was breathing in heavily and he found he was too.

“You are a guest in this house,” he spat. “You have over-stretched your privileges.”

“Guest? I am a servant. A hostage!”

“You will return to your chambers and you will remain there until you are sent for to fulfil your duties,” he told her coldly, ignoring her outburst. “The next time you lay your hands upon me in violence, you will lose them, as any mortal servant or hostage would. Have I made myself clear?”

She spat at him. The saliva hit his face and burnt like lava as it landed. By the time he had scrubbed it clean she had stalked back out of the darkness, presumably back to her chambers.

“You see what you have landed me in,” he said angrily to his father’s cairn. His father still did not appear. “It would have been easier to fight the war upfront,” he muttered. “At least we all would have died quickly and cleanly none of this wretched lingering hell.” He strode out of the darkness too, slamming the iron door to the crypt behind him with a clang, in a worse mood now than he was when he had entered it. And they said a little religion was good for the soul.