He watched as his family emerged onto the landing:
Justine, holding her daughter Madeleine by the hand, guiding her to one side to make room for Solange; Dominic hovering protectively behind. Tristan drew a deep breath. “Help me find the words, Gabi.” The whisper was a kind of prayer. He wished his sister were beside him now—she would know how to do this right.
Tristan strode up the long walkway and folded his mother into his arms.
G
ABRIELLE WOULD HAVE
given almost anything to be at Tristan’s side at that moment—but not a man’s life. One of the wounded soldiers had spiked a raging fever in the night and lay too ill even to swallow the bonemender’s herbals. Gabrielle’s unique skills were his last recourse, and so she put aside regret and spent the day beside her patient in a rattling cart, pushing back the infection that threatened to overwhelm him.
By the next morning, when Verdeau’s soldiers marched into Chênier at last, her patient was out of danger. All around them, people were cheering, worried loved ones straining to catch sight of the sons and husbands and brothers to whom they had bid farewell a season ago. And there was Solange, clapping and waving for the troops, never again to stand with her husband by her side. The sight of her—a small, erect figure flanked by her two grown sons—all but broke Gabrielle’s heart.
“I can’t stand this. I have to go to her,” Gabrielle said to Féolan.
“Go,” he urged. “You are no soldier. Are you bound to linger here, awaiting dismissal?”
“I guess not. You, either.” She glanced up at the tall Elf walking at her side. She had not questioned his decision to make the
journey home with her, only accepted it gladly. They belonged together now.
“Yet I will stay. Your mother needs family now, not a guest.”
And she had pushed through the thick ranks of men and taken her place with the DesChênes family—her family, always, whatever her actual parentage. Gabrielle could only imagine the effort of will that allowed Solange to stand so straight and composed on the high dais set up in the mustering grounds, welcoming the returning soldiers, praising their victory and sending her own condolences to those who had lost loved ones.
Only later, in their own home, had Solange allowed an embrace and the tears that must follow. And then, ensconced with Gabrielle in her chamber, Solange had insisted on the full, painful telling of Jerome’s death.
“He suffered very little, Mama,” Gabrielle ended miserably. “That much comfort I can give you.”
“More than that, my love,” assured her mother. “He died in his daughter’s arms, not alone, and though it was appallingly foolish of you to take that risk, I will be forever grateful for it.” She took Gabrielle’s hands in her own and squeezed them. “You go on downstairs now.” Her lips were trembling, but she shooed Gabrielle away. “You have guests to see to, I think. And a story of your own to tell, by the looks of it, which I will ask for tomorrow.”
D
ERKH WAS ALREADY
tucked into bed in Gabrielle’s little clinic, with Féolan in attendance.
“Just like old times,” Féolan remarked, as she stepped into the room. He had spent a good part of the previous summer in that same clinic, watching over his friend Danaïs’s recovery.
Gabrielle stood in the doorway and let her eyes roam over the familiar shelves and cabinets, the four neat beds, the bright windows. Once, she thought, this orderly clean space had represented her image of a bonemender’s work: helping people through illness and the natural cycle of birth and death, the occasional setting of a bone or stitching of an accidental cut—not struggling in a sea of gore and filth to keep a man’s guts from spilling out of his body. It seemed a quaint little refuge now.
“This is where you live?” Derkh’s abrupt question cut short her reverie.
“Yes,” she replied, wondering at the tension in the young Greffaire’s voice.
“But this is the castle,” he said, pointing out the obvious. “Are you the Royal Surgeon?”
Féolan laughed. “Gabrielle, you’ve misled the lad. Confess, girl!”
Gabrielle caught Derkh’s anxious confusion and was instantly remorseful. “This is my family home,” she explained. “When I was your father’s prisoner, I didn’t want him to know who I was. And when we met up again later, after the battle, I never thought to tell you. King Jerome was my father.” And even that was not the whole truth, because she was someone else now, wasn’t she? But it seemed more than enough for Derkh, who was shaking his head in disbelief.
“Derkh,” she said, smiling as she pulled up a chair beside the bed. “I am not a different person because of my family.”
The young Greffaire considered this statement in baffled silence. Then he looked up at Gabrielle, dark eyes nearly black against the white pillow. “In my country you would be.”
T
RISTAN
, his face set in a solemn mask, stared out over the bowed heads of the crowd. Verdeau’s regents, high officials and noble families had traveled from every corner of the country to attend King Jerome’s funeral rites; the Great Hall was packed tight with mourners and stiflingly hot.
What is wrong with me? he wondered. He had felt restless since his return home, as if an uneasy beast were pent up inside him, pacing back and forth in its confinement. He lay awake night after night, a new and unwelcome experience for a man who had always slept soundly, even on the ground in the Krylian foothills. And now here he was, unable to concentrate on his own father’s funeral. He tried to find some meaning in the long, dismal service, or at least from standing with his family and with the people of his country, to honor Jerome’s memory. But he could not grasp onto the stream of words or close the distance that set him apart from those he loved.
Afterward, an endless line of well-wishers filed past to greet the royal family. Tristan and his family stood in formal order: first his mother, Solange, erect and gracious despite the exhaustion she must feel; then his older brother, Dominic, Regent of the Blanchette Coast, and Dominic’s wife Justine; and Gabrielle, so different from Tristan with her mysterious insights and abilities, yet so close to him too. By the time they make it to me at
the end of the line, he thought, they are probably as tired of the whole business as I am.
Tristan had always connected effortlessly with people from all walks of life. Today, though, was almost more than he could endure. An hour crept by, more, and still he was grasping hands, nodding politely, mouthing platitudes. His eyes swept down the visitation line—still so many people—and came to rest on a tall, slightly stooped form and gray head just visible above the crowd. André Martineau of Blanchette. Rosalie’s father.
It was like awakening from a foggy dream. For several anxious moments his view was blocked. Then André stepped forward, and Tristan caught a glimpse of Rosalie’s dark head and pink cheek. She came, he thought, and his heart tripped into a canter, mourning or no.
Tristan had left for the war without telling Rosalie how he felt about her—without even telling himself. But all the way home she had hung in his thoughts—a small, dark-haired, high-spirited girl with laughing brown eyes and round pink cheeks. Now, from a single glimpse, he realized what had been eating at his heart.
The line inched along until at last he was shaking André’s hand, murmuring his thanks at the words of condolence. And then Rosalie stood before him, her eyes welling with tears. “Tristan, I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t hesitate. He wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug, despite the crowd of onlookers, and held on for dear life. “Rosie,” he whispered. “Rosie, I’m so glad you’re here.” Her answering squeeze made it clear she was glad too. He released her, keeping hold of one hand. Such a small, neat hand. “Will you be staying for a while?” he asked. “Promise you won’t run back to Blanchette without telling me, like last time. I need to talk to you.”
D
ERKH SAT IN
the little garden outside Gabrielle’s clinic, legs extended, head tipped back to the warm spring sun. He appeared relaxed, but his belly was tight with anxiety. As Derkh’s wound healed and his strength returned, worries for the future had begun to trouble him. What was he doing here? He was a Greffaire soldier. That Gabrielle had first healed and then befriended him did not change that fact. By rights, he should be a prisoner, not a guest.
A creak of hinges interrupted his brooding thoughts; craning his neck, he saw Gabrielle step through the clinic door behind him.
“Hi,” he said, the word feeling strange in his mouth. There was no real equivalent in Greffaire: either the greeting was more formal, addressed to a superior, or omitted altogether. “Come to check me again?”
Even in her plain mourning dress she looked radiant, and her quick smile washed over him like sunshine.
“I’ll take a look, yes, if I may. But unless you’ve had an unexpected setback, I’m thinking it’s time for you to stop being a patient. I’m having a room prepared for you upstairs, and you can take your meals with us from now on.”
Derkh’s face flushed dark. Here was something he had not expected. It had been shock enough to discover that Gabrielle was, in fact, of Verdeau’s royal family and to find himself in their very castle. Yet the DesChênes family, including the queen herself, had shown him nothing but kindness. Derkh’s family was of high enough rank in his own country, but even his father Col, who as high commander of the armed forces certainly attended tactical meetings with the emperor, would never have lodged in the palace nor spoken with the emperor’s family. Derkh was well aware that his fate would have been different indeed had the situation been
reversed and he a Verdeau soldier captured in Greffier. At first he had been too full of dazed gratitude to feel anything else.
But this. To eat with them, and while they mourned for the king his own people had killed—it was unthinkable.
He didn’t know how to respond. He didn’t understand Verdeau protocol, the manners and conventions that lay behind his hosts’ easy manners. He only knew he must refuse.
“I think I should eat in the kitchen, with the servants,” he mumbled. That would be bad enough: all of them knowing where he came from, reminded of it every time he opened his mouth to speak, tolerating him only because of Gabrielle’s protection.
For a moment Gabrielle looked as though she had been slapped. Derkh hated himself for causing that look. Then she covered it with a warm concern he wished he could deflect. “If that’s what you want, Derkh, of course,” she said. Not happy, though hiding it. “But you are our guest, and more than welcome at our table. I wish you would join us.”
“I can’t,” he said. “Gabrielle, I can’t. Your mother. She should not have to...” Make polite talk with her dead husband’s enemy over breakfast, he thought, and could not find less vicious words to say.
Gabrielle’s calm voice rescued him. “It’s all right. I’ll tell the cook to make a place for you and to let you know when mealtimes are.” And then changing the subject: “Why don’t you take that bandage off and let the air at your skin? I’ll come back in an hour or so to redo it.”
She hesitated at the door to the clinic, turned back to face him.
“Derkh...I know it must be awkward for you here. But give it time. Things will work out.”
Will they? he wondered. How?
I
N TRUTH
, Q
UEEN
Solange no more thought of Derkh as the enemy responsible for Jerome’s death than she would a Greffaire warhorse. She saw only an abandoned, sick boy, and her immediate instinct had been to gather him into the fold. She asked about him at dinner that night.
“I thought Derkh might join us tonight.”
“I offered,” Gabrielle said, still puzzled. “He seemed alarmed at the prospect. He asked to eat in the kitchen.”
“Maybe because we are in mourning,” Solange suggested. Jerome’s funeral rites were only a few days past, and his absence at the table still loomed large over their meals.
“Yeah, he’s what, maybe fifteen years old?” offered Tristan, his words emerging—barely—through a large mouthful of pheasant. Gabrielle didn’t necessarily want this view of his half-chewed dinner, but she was glad to see that her brother’s legendary appetite had returned. She’d been a bit worried about him. “When I was his age, I wouldn’t have wanted to sit with a bunch of strangers who just had a funeral. I’d have been afraid they’d be weeping all the time, and me not knowing what to do.”
Tristan had, in fact, done his share of weeping over Jerome’s death, including at mealtime. But his sense of loss was changing now into something less sharp, something held more quietly in the heart.
“Mama, Uncle Tristan is talking with his mouth full,” Madeleine pointed out. Tristan crossed his eyes at her and opened his mouth as wide as it would go, giving her such a cavernous view that Madeleine’s prim smirk dissolved into helpless giggling.
“Yes, Madeleine, and it’s equally rude to point out other people’s mistakes,” replied Justine, doing her best to ignore Tristan’s antics.
“You might try that little trick with Rosalie, Tris,” suggested Dominic. “It’s sure to impress her.”
Gabrielle joined in the laughter, but her mind circled back to Derkh. She wished she could talk to Féolan about the boy’s growing unhappiness. Oddly enough, he seemed to have a closer rapport with Derkh than any of them.
But Féolan was riding north, to his home in the Elvish settlement of Stonewater. “There will be a lament for our own fallen,” he had explained to Gabrielle. “I may already have missed it, but I must try. I do not even know who has been lost and who lives.”
T
RISTAN’S
eyes followed the watercourse of the Avine River as far south as he could see. Somewhere beyond the limits of his vision lay Blanchette and the ocean.
“It’s long since I’ve been to the coast,” he mused. “In my memory, the wind is always blowing. I remember feeling it would catch my clothes and lift me into the air like a kite.”
Rosalie and Tristan had ridden south to a lookout terrace that jutted out over the river some miles from Chênier. They had picnicked and chatted and teased each other, and if Tristan did not speak soon he would find himself back in the castle and this carefully engineered opportunity wasted.