“Her name is Anastacia.”
“That’s not her name.” The wind plucked a spill of black hair from behind Calenne’s ear. She tucked it back into place. “That’s what you call her.”
Calenne had disliked Anastacia from the first, though Josiri had never been clear why, and the passage of time had done little to heal the one-sided divide. Anastacia seldom reciprocated the antipathy, though whether that was because she considered herself above such things, or did so simply to irritate Calenne, Josiri wasn’t sure.
“Because that’s her wish. I don’t call you Enna any longer, do I?”
Blue eyes met his then returned to the book. “What do you want?”
Josiri shook his head. So very much like their mother. No admission of wrong, just a new topic.
“I thought you’d be with me to greet Makrov.”
She licked a fingertip and turned the page. “I changed my mind.”
“We were discussing the arrangements for your wedding. Or do you no longer intend to marry at Ascension?”
“That’s why I changed my mind.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
A rare moment of hesitation. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I see.” Steeling himself, Josiri edged closer. “What are you reading?”
“This?” Calenne stared down at the book. “A gift from Kasamor. The Turn of Winter, by Iugo Maliev. I’m told it’s all the rage in Tressia.”
“Any good?”
“If you admire a heroine who lets herself be blown from place to place like a leaf on the wind. It’s horrendously fascinating. Or fascinatingly horrendous. I haven’t decided yet.” She closed the book and set it on her knee. “How did the meeting go?”
“I’m to make a speech tomorrow, on the topic of unity.”
She scowled. “It went that badly?”
“I didn’t have my sister there to charm him,” Josiri replied. “And . . . he reacted poorly to mother’s portrait.” No sense saying the rest. Calenne wouldn’t understand.
She sighed. “And now you know why I stayed away. If Makrov reacts like that to Katya’s image . . . I didn’t want complications. I can’t afford them. And I do want this marriage.”
Josiri didn’t have to ask what she meant. Katya in oils was bad enough. Her likeness in flesh and blood? Even with Calenne at her most demure and charming – a rarity – there was risk. With every passing year, his sister more resembled the mother she refused to acknowledge. Perhaps she’d been right to stay away.
“You think Makrov has the power to have it annulled?”
She shrugged. “Not alone. But Kasamor’s mother isn’t at all pleased at the match. I’m sure she’s allies enough to make trouble.”
“Kasamor would truly let her interfere?”
On his brief visits to Branghall, Kasamor had seemed smitten. As indeed had Calenne herself. On the other hand, Josiri had heard enough of Ebigail Kiradin, Kasamor’s mother, to suspect she possessed both the reach and influence to thwart even the course of true love, if she so chose.
“On his last visit, he told me that I was the other half of his soul. So no, I don’t believe he would. He’d sooner die, I think. And I . . .” Calenne shook her head and stared down at the book. “It doesn’t matter.”
Josiri frowned. “What? What doesn’t matter?”
Calenne offered a small, resigned smile. “I’ve had bad dreams of late. The Black Knight. Waking up screaming doesn’t do wonders for my mood.”
The Black Knight. Viktor Akadra. The Phoenix-Slayer. The man who’d murdered their mother. He’d taken root in the dreams of a terrified six-year-old girl, and never let go. Josiri had lost track of how often in that first year he’d cradled Calenne as she’d slipped off to broken sleep.
“Is that why you’re back to hiding up here? He’ll not harm you, I promise.”
“I know he won’t.” Her shoulders drooped, and her tone softened. “But thanks, all the same.”
She set the book aside and joined him inside the tower proper. Josiri drew her into an embrace, reflecting, as he so often did, what a curious mix of close and distant they were. The decade between them drove them apart. He doubted he’d ever understand her. Fierce in aspect, but brittle beneath.
“The world’s against us, little sister. We Trelans have to stick together.”
Two
The kraikon loomed through the trees, as implacable as the colossal bronze statue it resembled. Burgeoning moonlight revealed an angular, stylised form more than twice Josiri’s height. Golden magic hissed through lesions in an antiquated frame, crackling across the king’s blue tabard and segmented steel plate. Empty, expressionless eyes swept the undergrowth from beneath an open helm.
Josiri held his breath. He pressed against the black oak and willed the kraikon to continue its patrol of Branghall’s overgrown gardens. There wasn’t a curfew as such. As ever, the bars of the cage were carefully hidden to ease cooperation. But to be caught beneath the estate wall at so late an hour? That would provoke questions he didn’t wish to answer.
The kraikon stomped away through the night, the tip of its horsehair plume scraping against overhanging branches. Josiri allowed himself a sigh of relief.
“Evening, your grace.”
The whisper was so close that the breath of it fell warm on Josiri’s ear. He jumped, the involuntary yelp forming on his lips. A gloved hand stifled the cry, then slipped away.
“Careful.” The whisper returned, leavened with amusement. “Don’t want to upset the lummox.”
Cheeks warming with embarrassment, Josiri pulled away. Revekah Halvor offered a toothy grin and sat carefully on an exposed root.
Anastacia’s teeth gleamed white. She cut a ghostly figure so far from Branghall’s foundations. The bark of the great black oak was clearly visible through a faded dress and translucent skin. Her fingers danced, shadow coiling in their wake. The oak sank silently into the soil, collapsing the arboreous tunnel that was Josiri’s only connection to the outside world.
The tree’s roots had always run deep, and far further than the estate wall. Under Anastacia’s influence, they ran farther still, weaving the passage by which Revekah had broached Branghall’s imprisoning wards. As notorious a soul as she had no hope of gaining official entrance through the main gate – the ward-brooches that allowed visitors to breach the enchantment were carefully and rarely doled out.
But there were other magics in the world than those pressed to the Council’s service, by whose grace Anastacia had woven the hallowgate from the oak’s gnarled flesh. Old magics, learned from forbidden gods. Or at least forbidden in Tressia, where Lumestra held sway. Remnants of temples to her heavenly sister, Ashana – or Lunastra, as she was named in the oldest scriptures – remained out in rural areas; shrines to Jack, the King of Thorns, in places wilder still.
Not for the first time, Josiri wondered where Anastacia had learned her magics. And where the Council had found her. “Demon”, Calenne had named her – pejoratives aside, it suited her well.
“Where’s Crovan?” he asked.