‘Worried? Why should you worry?’
Off behind her he noticed Osen and Alleen again exchanging glances. Well, yes, okay, so he’d only managed to get out of bed and stop throwing up about two hours ago, there’d been a nasty while when it looked like Osen might have to receive her in the king’s place. But it had been a hard few days. Tiring. And it was Osen’s fault, really, he’d chosen the drinks last night.
Thalia bent her head closer. ‘And I … I have news.’
‘News?’ Oh? Oh! A hope ran through him. And a shudder. Tried to brush it away. The things he had seen in her face, shining there, when he first saw her, and knew, and was so very afraid of her. Why have you come to me? But she had only smiled, and looked puzzled, and shaken her head. He took her hands protectively now. ‘You shouldn’t have risked it, in the snow. You’re getting snow all over you. Let’s get inside out of the cold. I’ve had men out scouring all the jewellers’ for you. Such beautiful things!’
There was a stirring on the other side of courtyard, people moving forward around another horse, helping Kiana Sabryya down. The joy faded. Watched a servant thrust walking sticks into Kiana’s hands, take her weight, help her steady herself on her feet. Kiana saw Marith watching and her eyes flashed in irritation. Osen hurried up to greet her. Marith heard her sigh.
‘Marith …’ Thalia squeezed his hand. ‘Leave her.’
Osen and Kiana seemed to be arguing about whether Kiana needed Osen’s arm to lean on. Marith turned away.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Thalia said gently.
War kills people. War hurts people. That’s not exactly a big surprise, hey? She fought a demon, it injured her. What did she think it would do?
He shook himself. ‘Obviously it wasn’t my fault.’
They went slowly into the throne room. Servants, lords of empire, all falling to their knees as they passed. Thalia’s wet furs were swept away: beneath, she wore a dress of pale grey velvet the colour of the winter sky, embroidered with a thousand tiny diamonds. She was blazing fire. Too brilliant to look at. Light rippled off her perfect face. Marith escorted her up the dais, seated her on the throne.
‘The Queen of All Irlast!’
She laughed sadly. Bored laugh. I was already the Queen of All Irlast, Marith, her face said. ‘The Queen of All Irlast.’
Everyone present prostrated themselves on the floor.
Marith gestured to Alleen. Servants hurried in carrying boxes. Poured out a river of gemstones at Thalia’s feet. Her smile was sadder even than her laugh.
She is carrying my child. My child! It will all be better now, he thought. There was a memory, he was sure of it, his mother holding Ti in her arms, newborn, wrapped in white lace. ‘Come here, Marith, look, you have a little brother, thank the gods, Marith, thank Amrath and Eltheia, you have a brother.’ A tiny pink fist waved at him, and he had bent, kissed his brother’s pink face. Such love … Such a precious little thing. They were so close in age, he was a baby himself when Ti was born, a false memory, his nurse had said, he was too young to remember, and besides an Altrersyr prince would have been wrapped in red silk, of course, not white lace. But he remembered it. A child! Oh, please. This time, please.
He reached down, picked up a necklace of rubies from the glittering pile at Thalia’s feet. Held it up and placed it around her neck. His hands shook so badly he couldn’t fasten it. It fell limply on the dais. In the light from her face the rubies winked up at him like scabs.
The next morning they went out riding.
‘Are you sure it’s wise?’ Marith asked Thalia.
‘I rode here, didn’t I? I …’ She frowned. ‘I don’t want – I mean – it seems better, this time – but it could still – like before – and I – I don’t want …’
‘No. Yes. Of course.’ Had absolutely no idea what she was trying to say to him. Except that it hurt her. Saying it.
She had lost three pregnancies. Miscarried three times in the first few months. She was four months gone this time already, she said, you could see the swell of her belly through her dress if you knew to look. Waited to tell him, this time. Spare him false hope and grief. After three months, four months, the pregnancy becomes more certain, the wise women and the doctors all agreed on it.
‘The doctors say that I should keep myself strong.’ Her hand moving to her stomach, up to her throat, to the knife scars on her arm. ‘Last time, I … I didn’t go out at all. Didn’t ride. Barely walked, even. Rested in bed. You know. And—’
He grasped her hands. Kissed them. Deep luminous bronze skin. His own skin white as moonlight. Our children must have your skin, he had told her once, and your eyes, and my hair. ‘I know you did,’ he said. Don’t say it. This time it will be good and well, it will, it will, it must be. I am a king. A god. A peasant in a hovel can father a living child, if my father could father living children … I raise my sword and a thousand men lie dying. I close my eyes and stab my knife into a map and an army marches and a city falls. I can father a living child, if I can do that.
Tiny pink flailing fists … Such love.
He said, ‘Well … Come on, then. If you’re sure.’
But the riding was good, for both of them. The snow cold washing them both clean. Forget. They avoided the city, skirting out to the east towards the Ane Headland. The wind was blowing against them. Blowing the smell of smoke away. The ground rose smooth and open; thick grassland, good horse country. Thalia spurred her horse to a gallop. The wind blew back her hood, her hair whipping up. Like black bare branches. Like birds’ wings. The snow flew out from under the horse’s hooves; the sunlight caught it, made it sparkle, it looked like the waves of a churning sunlit sea. Marith raced his horse to catch her, shouting ‘Ha! Ha!’ as he went. His breath puffed out like a dragon. ‘Ha! Ha!’
Thalia pulled her horse to a standstill at the top of a high ridgeway. Marith stopped further down the slope, looking up at her outlined against the sky. The light was changing, clouds gathering, the light becoming flat and white and heavy, waiting for the snow. He trotted up to join her, looked down in delight at the plain spreading out before them like looking down into a pool. Thick with snow, untouched. And there, on the horizon, the dark line of the Sea of Tears, and what he could pretend in the blur of far distance were the fire mountains of Tarboran beyond. A farmstead with a copse of firs behind it, hawthorn hedgerows flushed red. Tiny black shapes that must be cattle. A beech tree in brilliant copper leaves. Thalia pointed and he saw a hawk holding absolutely still in the white air. The hawk dived. Fast as thinking. A dog barked somewhere below them, loud, another barked in reply. The cattle moved in their field. He thought he could see the hawk flying up again. Perhaps it will all be well, he thought. Different, this time, or the next time. Look at it there! A beautiful world. Waiting for me.
Thalia slid down from her horse.
Threw a snowball at him.
Marith laughed, threw one back, missed. Thalia retrieved it, threw it, it smacked into his shoulder and the snow stuck to his cloak. He gathered a handful of snow, tossed it up into the sky, aiming over the edge of the ridge into the world spread beneath. Tossed another handful over Thalia, showering down around her as he had showered her with gems the previous night. Snow on her face. She wrinkled her snow-covered nose. Pushed him over in the snow. Dropped snow right on his head.
‘Stop! Argh!’
‘Stop?’
‘Stop, oh my queen!’
She pulled him to his feet again. Furry with snow: he felt like a furry white bear.
‘I am absolutely bloody freezing