“And so I am,” said Carolin gently, “Carlo was my childhood nickname, as my little cousin is called Caryl. And my mother gave me the country estate called Blue Lake when I was a boy of fifteen. And if I was not what you thought me, why, neither were you, for I thought you a stable boy, some MacAran’s bastard, and not a leronis, and now I find you.”
She remembered that he had seen her in boy’s clothes, and she sensed that he had known her a girl quite soon, and for his own reasons had kept silent. That silence had allowed Orain to befriend her, and for that she was grateful. She said, “Your Majesty-”
He waved that aside. “I stand on no ceremony with friends, Romilly, and I have not forgotten that if it had not been for you, I would have been the banshee’s breakfast. So; you will fly the sentry-birds to keep my advisers ahead of Rakhal’s – or Lyondri’s – movements into battle?”
She said, “I shall be honored, sir.”
“Good. Now I must speak with my kinswoman and relieve her fears,” he said. “Dame Jandria, too, I think, still has enough love for Lyondri.”
“For what he was,” said Jandria quietly, standing in the door of Maura’s tent, “not for what he is, Carlo. It goes against me to raise my own hand to him, but I will not lift a single hand to hold back his fate. If I had laran enough, I would be among your leroni today, to hold back what he has become. If he still holds enough of what he was to know what he is now, he would pray for clean death.”
Maura’s eyes were wet with tears. She said, “Carlo, I swore I would never raise hand or laran against my Hastur kin. I am Elhalyn, and they are blood of my blood. But like Jandria, I will not hinder you from what you must do, either.” She went to the perch where Temperance sat and bent her head before the bird, and Romilly knew it was because she was crying.
This war that sets brother against sister and father against son . . . what matters it which rogue sits on the throne or which greater rogue seeks to wrest it from him . . . ? she was not sure whether it was Ruyven’s thought she heard, or whether her father spoke in her memory, for it seemed that time had no more existence….
Carolin said, looking at them sadly, “Still, I swore to protect my people, even if I must protect them from the Hastur kin who are unmindful of that oath. I wish you could know how little I want Rakhal’s throne, or how gladly would I cede it to him if only he would treat my people as a king must, respecting them and protecting them. . . .” But at seemed he spoke to himself, and afterward Romilly was not sure whether he had spoken aloud or if she had imagined it all. Her laran, it seemed, was playing strange tricks on her, it seemed as if her mind was too small to enclose everything that wanted to crowd into it, and she felt somehow stretched, violated, crammed with strangenesses, as if her head were bursting with it. She said to Carolin, “May I greet my good friend, your horse, my lord?”
“Indeed, I think he is missing you,” Carolin said, and she went to Sunstar, where Carolin had flung his reins around a rail when he dismounted, and flung her arms around the horse.
You are a king’s mount but still are you mine, she said, not in words, and felt Sunstar in her mind, reaching out, mine, love, together, sunlight/sunstar/always together in the world. …
She discovered that she was clinging to the rail alone; Sunstar was gone and Ruyven was touching her hesitantly. “What ails you, Romy? Are you sick?”
She said brusquely, “No,” and went to the birds. Again, somehow, it seemed, she had lost track of time. Could this be some new property of her laran that she did not understand? Maybe she should ask Maura about it. She was a leronis and would certainly be willing to help. But she could hear Maura in her mind now, weeping for Rakhal who had once sought her hand, so that afterward Maura had become leronis and a pledged virgin . . . mourned for Rakhal as Jandria mourned for Lyondri . . . and she for Orain’s old comradeship . . . no, that was gone, what was wrong with her mind these days?