Ban did not hesitate to desert the field.
THE SUN SANK, and the king studied his youngest daughter as she studied the sky.
Lear lounged upon the rug he’d brought, a half-empty bottle of wine gouged into the damp earth beside him, his wool-encased elbows bent to support his weight, his bare ankles crossed. He watched his daughter as she tilted her head and spoke some phrase the wind kept from him. She clapped suddenly, in delight, as if she alone could see the precise moment the gentle pink clouds became loose violet haze. Her hair bobbed in its own rhythm, like a cloud itself: an ecstatic, curling puff of copper and brown. It strengthened the king’s aggrieved heart to see her, his favorite, intent upon the final moments of twilight, so ready to mark which star might first appear.
But then the princess fluttered her hand at the young boy crouched a few paces from the hem of her dress, and as the boy glanced up at her his face went from scowling and concentrated to relaxed and smiling. She had that effect on many, though the king would rather it not extend to Errigal’s bastard. The boy’s legitimate brother yelled and skidded half the meadow away, a wide stick held up like a sword in a very good offensive position to fight off invisible enemies. That one, the king thought, was destined for great purpose. The stars had clearly stated it on the night of his birth. He was the king’s godson, named Errigal, too, though to distinguish him from his father the earl, everyone called him Rory. Would that Elia showed her preference to the gilded Rory, who was so beloved by the sun and saints of the earth that he bore the marks of their affection: dark red freckles all over his skin. As if his body were made an earthly mirror to the firmament itself.
As the king stared fondly at his godson, his youngest daughter clapped again, and he saw her fall to her knees in the churned dirt where the bastard boy had turned over a heavy field stone. The flat granite stood upright for a moment, then tipped away from the children, landing with a solid thump against the meadow grass. The king’s daughter laughed, and the boy bent over the fresh filth, digging with one hand, touching the princess’s hem with his other.
Lear’s daughter scooted nearer the bastard and dug her hand into the mud with him, dragging out a long, fat worm. “Elia,” the king said, frowning.
His daughter glanced at him, thrusting out the worm with a smile of triumph. It was pale and slick-looking in her eleven-year-old hand. No elegance or rich gleam like the sorts of ribbons that should curl around her noble wrist. The king shuddered at the grotesquery and opened his mouth to chide her, but she giggled at something the bastard muttered, turning away from her father.
The boy, wiry and smaller than his gilded brother, smaller than the king’s favorite daughter even, though they were of age, splayed his left hand. It was nearly as dark as the princess’s, though less smooth, less bright: she was a statue molded from fine metal, and he a creature built of mud and starshadow. The king had always thought so: the boy had been born under a dragon’s tail moon, and forged in an unsanctioned bed. What a disaster for Errigal, the king had always said, always counseled his friend the earl against such passionate dalliance. But some men refused to govern their bodies as they would their minds.
The bastard displayed on his outstretched hand a shining emerald.
No—merely a beetle shimmering all the colors of a deep summer day. The boy plucked the beetle from his hand and placed it upon the princess’s.
She squealed that the tiny legs tickled her skin, but she did not toss the insect away.
The king watched through narrowed eyes as their heads leaned together, temples brushing until her puffed curls and his black braids blended. “Elia,” the king said again, this time a low command.
She tossed him a smile and glance, then showed him the emerald beetle clinging to her finger like a union ring, as Dalat once had presented her own hand to Lear, so long ago. “See, Father, how its shell shimmers like a pearl,” she said.
It pained the king, vividly reminded of his queen, his dearest queen who had loved Innis Lear, had seen beauty in every piece of his island, even in him. The king blinked: his queen was dead, no longer able to love him, or his island, or anything at all.
“Insects are not suitable rings for princesses,” he said, harshly.
Surprise shook Elia’s hand; the bastard gently caught the beetle as it fell.
The princess dashed over to her father. “But there were stars in its eyes,” she whispered, pushing aside hair from her father’s ear.
He murmured fondly, softening as he always did with her, and pulled her gently back to her proper place, seated beside him on the woven rug. Where her mother, too, had sat.
A cool evening wind brushed its way through the meadow. Elia leaned her head against his shoulder, both of them tilting back to watch the sky. The king told her quiet lines of poetry about the wakening stars as the bastard lowered his fingers to the earth so that the beetle could crawl off him and back into the dirt. Always the boy kept the princess in the corner of his eye. The king was aware. And displeased.
The brother, Rory, stomped over, sweating and triumphant. “Ban!” Rory threw his pretend sword to the ground, scattering grubs and beetles in one swoop. “What is that terrible thing?” He scuffed his boot near a curled white creature with several thin legs. The bastard did not answer.
The king called for Rory to come to the rug, to join him and his daughter, to look at the darkening sky. “The first star you see will be a portent of your year, children, for tonight is halfway between the longest night and the longest day. Cast your gaze wide.”
Delighted, the princess rounded her black eyes and tried to see the entire sky at once. Rory, a year younger, flopped down at the king’s feet and knocked his skull against the rug-softened ground. He peered directly up to the dome of heaven, focused on one spot.
The king watched them both affectionately. His youngest daughter and his godson, intent upon his will, intent upon the prophetic stars. As he bid them, as was right. He could abide the bastard for the evening, since his presence pleased Elia.
His daughter gasped and said, “There!” Her little hand shot up, pointing near the horizon.
The king laid his old white thumb against her burnished brown forehead. “That, my daughter, is Terestria, the Star of Secrets. Terestria was so beloved by the stars that they drew her up with them when she died, so her body was buried in the blackness of the night sky instead of swallowed by the earth. I would make for you, my Elia, my dearest, a grave of stars, if you were to die before me.”
His daughter smiled in acceptance while Rory squinted his face more tightly to find another star above. The bastard gripped his brother’s discarded sword-stick and jammed it into the ground.
“You won’t find stars in the mud, boy,” the king admonished.
Elia frowned but Rory laughed, while the bastard dropped the stick and stood still as a tree, staring at the king with eerie light eyes. “I’m not looking for stars,” he said.
“Then go from here, for we are about the stars tonight, and your petulance will mar their shine.”
The bastard’s jaw squared stubbornly, then he dropped his gaze to the princess, who clutched her dress, caught between the king and the boy. His eyes lowered, and the boy turned away without a word. Good riddance.
“I found one!” crowed Rory, leaping to his feet. “Ban, look!”
The