Summerfall (8 page)

11

R
INKA AWOKE
in her bedroom to Alban hovering over her.

“Rinka,” he said, his face sagging with relief. He sounded as though he hadn’t slept in ages. “Rinka, you’re all right. I’m here.”

He kissed her wrists, her palms, her fingers, the soft skin beneath her eyes, her lips. And Rinka let him—until she registered the presence of the silent, green-cloaked King’s Guard at the door.

She pushed Alban away with what strength she could gather. Her head still pounded, but her side and leg were stitched up neatly; her bed linens were fresh and free of blood.

“You forget yourself, my king,” Rinka said tightly.

“My guard is discreet and loyal.” He gathered her hands in his and continued to kiss them. “And you are alive and well, and kissing you helps reassure me of that.”

She softened despite herself, despite the presence of the guards. She pressed Alban’s hands. “Tell me what happened.”

Solemn, he settled beside her on the bed. “The assassin is dead. He was dead when Leska found you. She heard you screaming from her rooms. She summoned the healer, and the healer summoned me.” He stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Apparently you were calling for me.”

“I killed him.” Rinka closed her eyes, the attack coming back to her with vivid clarity—every blow to her skull, every surge of terror. “I used magic to kill him.”

“And I’m glad you did, my darling. Never have I been more glad for your faery blood. You’re healing quickly.” Alban pulled her close, pressed a kiss to her forehead and held her. “Although now we can’t question the man, to find his employer.”

“He did say something . . .”

“What? What was it?” He moved away, his expression ferocious. “Anything, Rinka, could be helpful. I will find them, whoever they are. I will tear them to pieces for hurting you.”

Rinka nearly repeated the assassin’s words, understanding their meaning in a way she hadn’t in the moment:
Long live the dragon.
The dragon—like the one emblazoned on the Drachstelle crest? Like the golden one the queen wore on a chain at her throat?

“He said,” Rinka said, drawing a measured breath, “that this is what happens to faery whores.”

Alban swore softly. He dismissed his guards and drew Rinka into an embrace. He breathed declarations of love and promises of justice into her hair, his voice breaking, and Rinka allowed the touch of his hands to melt away her worried thoughts. He was gentle, and every caress unwound the knots of tension in her belly.

Long live the dragon.
The words stuck in her mind like barbs, urging her to tell Alban, but whenever she imagined doing so, a terrible fear stopped her—the fear that, if she said the words, everything would change. The king would abandon discretion and rage at his wife; he would hate and distrust her even more than he already did. He would antagonize her cousins and wind the city into a frenzy, rooting out anyone remotely related to the Drachstelle family for interrogation.

He would start a civil war. Rinka did not want that blood on her hands.

But Alban read her silence, and paused to examine her face. “Is that all, Rinka?”

She paused. She found she could no longer keep the words unsaid. “Long live the dragon,” she whispered. “He said that, too. Long live the dragon.”

Alban hissed a string of violent curses and threw himself out of bed, jarring Rinka’s leg. She gritted her teeth and put out her arm to him.

“Alban, please come back. Sit and talk with me.”

“What is there to talk about, Rinka? Curse the Drachstelles, and curse Liane, for surely she knew.” He pounded his fist against the wall.

“You mustn’t say anything to them, or do anything differently. Everything must remain the same. Alban, hear me. They must think us ignorant, otherwise . . .” She paused, took a breath. “They know we will have to be on our guard now, and they will have to be as well. They will need time to regroup, and that will give us and your spies time to gather the necessary evidence against them. In the meantime—”

“I must wait.” His hands were fists at his sides, his eyes bright. “I must dine with them and drink with them, discuss politics with them, and know every word of peace they utter is a lie, and somehow not lose my temper.”

“Come back to me,” Rinka said, unsure how else to show him comfort when she needed it desperately herself. So she said nothing, and let him love her until there was nothing left of fear between them.

*    *    *

Rinka stepped onto the main thoroughfare of Erstadt, Leska at her side, and strove to ignore the eyes upon her.

This was a different market than the one she had enjoyed before the attack in her chambers three weeks earlier, before her first visit some three
months
earlier. This was a market full of people who hushed when she neared, who whispered so she could not hear their words, who sometimes shouted so she could not help but hear them.

Beside her, Leska shifted the wrapped parcels in her arms. Surrounding them were four guards, assigned to Rinka from Alban’s own personal guard, despite her protestations. They matched stride, boulders in the shape of men. At first Rinka had been irritated at their appointment to her.

Now, she was forced to admit, she was glad of their presence.

Leska inched closer. Rinka felt the cold buzz of her magic, on high alert. “Perhaps next time you find yourself needing new clothes,” she suggested wryly, “we can summon Madam Farber to the castle instead.”

Rinka forced herself on, her eyes straight ahead. So, the people of Erstadt wanted to stare at her. Let them stare; she did not answer to them. She did not answer to the whispering courtiers, either, who watched her from behind their fans as she and Leska passed through the stone arches of the southern courtyard.

She did not even answer to the other faery delegates, who at turns showed her disgust and concern. Though no one spoke of it openly, they seemed to understand why she had been attacked.
Go home, Rinka. Go home while you can.

How could you, Rinka? A
human
?

And Garen . . . Garen said nothing. He simply ignored her.

Something had changed, the night of Rinka’s attack. Something essential at the core of the city had altered in these past weeks, with Ottmeyer’s death, with the Drachstelles’ arrival, with the assignment of Alban’s personal guards to the faery woman from the south.

Rinka imagined that the city was a buzzing fog of whispers.

Why do you suppose
she
has been assigned guards
,
and not the other faeries at court?

Countess Rinka must be much more important than the others.

Countess Rinka must be more
dangerous
than the others. Do you see the pendants they wear? The bands at their wrists? Filthy faeries. Always playing tricks with their magic, always hiding in the trees like beasts.

Or maybe
Countess Rinka has pleased His Majesty, and he wants to keep her close and chained. Like a pet.

Like a whore.

She has charmed him. She has bewitched him, our good, kind king.

This is what happens to faery whores.

Once inside the corridor that led to her chambers, Rinka allowed herself to shut her eyes and breathe regularly once more.

She wished for Alban, but was too frightened to seek him out.

*    *    *

The gown did not fit.

Rinka stared at her reflection, half-dressed in periwinkle chiffon with coy lace sleeves. The gown should have fit; Madam Farber had her measurements, and her previous gowns had fit . . . once.

But that had been some time ago; late spring, and now it was nearly autumn, and so many things had happened between now and then. Her gowns had become more and more ill-fitting of late, and then there was the new sleeplessness at night, and the bouts of sickness in the mornings. Only now, faced with the glaring reality in the mirror, did Rinka realize how she had been pretending not to notice these things.

But she could not deny them—or disguise them—any longer.

She undressed, peeling the ill-fitting gown from her lower half, folding it methodically into a tidy square. She found her dressing gown on the bed and wrapped herself back into it, but the embroidery felt cheap and rough against her skin.

Its touch chilled her, made her realize the alien quality of her new body, and she hurried to the bathing room and was sick in the basin.

Leska found her, sometime later, hunched and miserable on the cold tile, and when Rinka raised her head, she saw on Leska’s face the same suspicion she herself had been desperate to explain away.

Rinka tucked her robe more firmly about her body and placed a protective hand on her belly, not sure what to say. She felt torn between more tears and hysterical laughter.

“Oh, Countess,” Leska whispered, kneeling beside her. She touched Rinka’s forehead. Rinka closed her eyes and let the coolness of Leska’s magic seep into her skin, soothing her. “Does the king know?”

“I’ve only just known it myself. Or accepted it, anyway.” Rinka looked to Leska, imploring. “What should I do? I don’t know if . . . The Drachstelles will . . . The child will be—”

“The child will be . . .” Leska paused, her smile strained, “unique.”

Unique. Laughter burst out of Rinka, building until she could hardly breathe.
Unique
indeed. The child would be the only of its kind—half human, half faery—and an offense to everyone in Cane. Mage, faery, human—they would consider her child an abomination, and they would never stop hunting it. Oh, how could she and Alban have been so absolutely foolish?

And then a thought occurred to her, buzzing and terrible. She clutched the pendant at her throat and tried to focus her magic into something small, a dart to toss at the window.

Nothing, nothing. No answering surge up from her center. For the first time in her life, she could not find her magic. It was as though it had bled from her fingers in the night, and drifted out the window like ash.

Leska, watching, sat down heavily on the floor. “It’s true then. It’s . . . gone?”

The words of the old stories, the ancient taboo, flew through Rinka’s mind, too slippery to catch.

“But . . .” Leska shook her head, distraught. “You used your magic the night of the attack, and you—” She gestured quietly at Rinka’s body. “You are obviously much further on than that. I don’t understand.”

“Maybe it takes some time for it to happen, for the magic to fade,” said Rinka, numb. “Maybe it’s different for each person . . . not that I can ask anyone. No one’s as complete a fool as me.” She let out a sob.

“Don’t say that,” said Leska, but Rinka pushed her away.

Hardly more than children’s tales
, indeed. Rinka spared a thought for Alban, and felt a pang of sadness as she imagined how horrified and guilt-stricken he would be. And yet she was just as responsible, had been just as quick to dismiss the threat of some old-fashioned superstition. Why shouldn’t a faery and a human love each other, in this new world she and Alban were to build together? What could possibly come of it but goodness?

Goodness, and sacrifice. A lack, a loss, an absence of a lifelong vitality in her veins she had always taken for granted.

And if a human and one of the magic folk dare to love, it will not come without grave cost.

The human, chosen by the land, will be spared.

But not the other. The other’s veins will be drained of magic.

For there is a power in such a union, too great for the world to bear, and someone must pay the price.

Each of the old tales explained variations on the same idea, and yet—and yet . . . silly children’s tales, weren’t they? Rinka had thought so too.

In a fit of grief, she tore the pendant from her throat and flung it away.

It landed near the door to her bathing room, at Garen’s feet. He stood looking down at her coolly, in his crisp, tasseled
bretzhenner
coat.

“You missed breakfast,” he told Rinka. He seemed a stranger before her; she had rarely seen him for weeks now, and knew that had been deliberate on both their parts. He hadn’t even come to see Rinka as she lay recovering from her wounds. His eyes were empty as they took in the sight of her on the floor, her hair and clothes disheveled.

Rinka couldn’t stand that emptiness, not when she was feeling so completely on edge.

“Garen,” she said, rising with Leska’s help. “I need to go home. You must help me go home, to Geschtohl.”

He did seem surprised at that. “I don’t understand.”

“Garen.” She wiped her face and grabbed Garen’s hand to place it on her belly. “Feel.”

Garen recoiled at her touch, as if he knew instinctively the new absence within her, and its replacement. “What are you doing?”

“
Feel.
” She guided his hand around her belly, and as his hand moved, she saw his eyes widen. He took a step back, shook his head, sank into the chair before her vanity.

“Salt of the seas, Rinka,” he breathed. He stared at her with a mix of revulsion and awe. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“I’m not. Garen.” She knelt before him, hoping some piece of her old friend remained, some piece that still cared for her, despite how far apart they’d drifted these past months. “I must leave. I must go to Geschtohl.”

He let out a thin, incredulous laugh. “What good will that do?”

“If the queen finds out—” She paused, swallowing past her fear. “Father will protect me. He won’t turn me away.”

“No,” Garen agreed, “but then what?” Garen put his head in his hands and stared at the floor. “Rinka, does the king know?”

She flinched. “Not yet.”

“Good. Don’t tell him.” Garen stood. “We’ll leave tonight, and they’ll find us gone in the morning, before the Drachstelles realize what you carry. Leaving unexpectedly might be explained away, but this . . . this would ruin everything. How could you have been so selfish, Rinka?”

Rinka couldn’t answer. The thought of running away, leaving Alban to not only contend with the Drachstelles but also to never know
why
she had left him was an unendurable agony.