Heart of Winter by Lauren Gilley
2
“What’s the delay?” Oliver demanded. So far, his official tone hadn’t garnered one ounce of respect on this journey, and he couldn’t decide if it was because he was a bastard, or because, given the war, no one cared about anyone’s breeding anymore.
“It’s the ice floes,” one of the boatmen said, and spat over the side. “They make it tough going.”
They’d set sail out of Blue Harbor, to begin, and sailing had been steady up the coast. But when they hit the northern climes, their captain had put ashore, and they’d been forced to book passage on a sequence of shallow barges, steered by long poles the boatmen plunged into the icy waters. The coast of Aeretoll, it seemed, was a kind of cold-water swamp, its reeds coated in a thick sheen of ice, its inlets and bays numerous, irregular, and non-navigable for anyone not born to them.
As he watched, two boatmen sank their poles at the edges of thick, white ice chunks that bobbed and slapped at the sides of the boat.
He nodded acknowledgment and went to find Tessa.
His cousin, only sixteen, stood at the rail near the bow, staring out across the frosted ice of the North Sea, her hands clenched tight together, the breeze blowing her auburn hair out behind her like silken banners.
He paused a moment, to feel regret for her. Regret that she was young, and beautiful, and highborn, and about to marry for a military alliance.
He moved to settle beside her, forearms braced on the rail. “Doing all right?”
She gathered a breath, first, before she blinked and turned to him, and scraped up a smile. “Yes. I’m fine.” Her chin trembled, and her eyes were red-rimmed, but she held herself up bravely.
For all that his cousin John had loved him and made him feel like a welcome addition to the family, Oliver had always felt, in some ways, closer to the girls. Trueborn though they were, they lived and prospered at the discretion of their trueborn male relations. Her father and brother were dead, but Tessa couldn’t stay to comfort her mother; couldn’t take possession of Drakewell as its lady. Instead, she was being dragged across the kingdom to marry a king with a forbidding reputation, and a ferocious army at his back. At sixteen, she should have been mooning over soft lordlings who’d written her poems and offered her posies, not offering her trembling hand to a warlord more than twice her age.
It was monstrously unfair.
So were most things, in Oliver’s experience.
He reached to pluck the hood of her new fur-lined cloak up over her head, covering her wind-chapped ears, and smiled back, feeling sure his own smile was as wobbly as hers. “It won’t be much longer now,” he said, for whatever consolation that was worth. “And the palace at Aeres is said to be impossibly warm. They have great fireplaces, and underground hot springs. The kitchens and storerooms are built into natural caves that – what?”
She laughed, a sad, bubbling thing, but he was glad to hear it – the first time she’d laughed since they set out from home. “You’ve been researching again, haven’t you?” she asked.
“Again?” he huffed. “As if I ever stopped.”
She laughed again, and shook her head – though it didn’t come across as cruel. Oliver’s father – it was hard to think of him as anything but Alfred; father had so rarely crossed Oliver’s lips – had despaired of his only son’s bookishness. “You can’t inherit, but you could at least make a name for yourself on the battlefield!” But Oliver had loved books more than swords. His mother hadn’t been literate, what little of her he remembered, but she’d loved stories; would spin him yarns while she worked, as he sat on the floor at her feet, hanging in raptures from her every word. She’d done voices for all the characters, and pantomimed the more frightening bits. Oliver loved hearing and reading about brave derring-dos…but participating had always turned him clammy and sick (often literally).
“I wanted to know what to expect of our new home,” he said.
She glanced out across the water. “You mean my new home. You’ll be going home to help Mother, once I’m settled.” Her voice shivered in a way that he knew had nothing to do with the cold.
“Tessa–”
“It’s fine. I’m fine.” She offered another smile, this one tight and strained. “I know my duty, and I shall do it gladly.”
He stepped closer, so that their shoulders were pressed together, and together they watched the ice floes slip past.
~*~
For all her strengths, Lady Katherine did not have the most…subtle way with the written word. She had signed her name with a flourish at the bottom of the page, and pressed her signet ring to the wax seal, but it was Oliver who’d written to King Erik of Aeretoll. He’d approached the correspondence with delicacy, and tact, sure to begin with great praise for Aeretoll and its reputation. He’d spoken then in – perhaps too lavish – detail about Drakewell; about its people, and its farms, its trade, its agricultural bounty. Drakewell was a duchy of fields, and fells; of rolling hills, and bumper crops; of sleek horses, and fat pigs, and cows that came lowing every evening, bells chiming across the pastures, audible on a clear spring night even from the ramparts of Drake Hold. He wrote about the ducks, just a little, because he had to; the constant Vs flapping noisily overhead, off for a fresh pond that gleamed like glass.
Perhaps, if he could write the letter again, he would tone it down a bit.
But. From the pastoral beauty of Drakewell, he’d moved on to talk gently of an old alliance, a meeting long past, between his own grandfather and King Erik’s father. And then, years later, between a young King Erik and Oliver’s Uncle William. No treaties had been signed, but an understanding had been reached, hands clasped in friendship over a brazier in a tent, while snow fell in silent profusion outside. He spoke of the war that was on now, the uncertain stalemate. Of advantages, opportunities for trade.
Spoke lastly of his cousin Tessa’s gentle nature and rosy beauty. Of her readiness and willingness to pledge herself to a strong husband.
It took up three pages, all told.
The reply, which had come several weeks later, had said only:
Come and bring the girl. We shall talk.
Oliver had no idea what sort of welcome awaited them, as the barge pushed into the crowded harbor, and drew slowly in to dock.
Despite the hard chill and the ice on the water, the snow on the banks turned to sticky mud along the footpaths, the harbor bustled. Sailors called to dockhands; great booms lowered nets full of crates down onto ice-slick boards. In the cacophony, Oliver caught bits of song, angry curses, friendly ribbing, and hearty laughter. He recognized flags and sail shapes from all over the South, even, he noted with a lurch, the star-emblazoned banners of the King of Aquitania, his king, technically. One with no heir, and losing ground in every way that mattered to the Sels from the west.
The air smelled of frost, and fish, and the deep breaths he took of it did nothing to quell his nerves.
Tessa wasn’t doing much better, he didn’t think, judging by her wan complexion and the way she held a gloved hand to her throat, as if she was choking.
The bargemen threw out ropes. “This is where you get off, your lordship,” one of them called.
“Yes, yes, we’re coming.” He took his cousin’s elbow. “Are you all right?”
She shook her head, and swallowed with difficulty. Forced a smile. “There’s nothing for it, is there?”
“No, darling.” He smiled back, and hoped she could take at least some measure of comfort from it. “There’s not.”
She looped her arm through his, and together they walked up to the makeshift gangplank the crew had fashioned of a few loose boards. They were slick and shiny with ice, as was the dock beyond, but the porters who’d come to collect their trunks didn’t seem to be troubled by this – probably thanks to the metal cleats Oliver glimpsed strapped over their boots.
He and Tessa, though, despite the heavy wool and fur cloaks they’d purchased before their trip, wore boots with soft, leather soles. Please don’t let us fall, he prayed, and took the first step.
He managed all five steps across the plank, Tessa clutching at him the whole time. Then they hit the dock, and a patch of invisible ice, and Oliver’s right foot slipped out from under him.
“Oh, bollocks–”
A hand grabbed his free arm. A large hand – a strong one. Somehow, miraculously, he didn’t fall and drag his poor cousin down with him. He was picked up, and set back on his feet, and a deep voice with an unfamiliar accent said, “You all right there, lad?”
He glanced up, startled, a little afraid, he could admit, and laid eyes on the largest man he’d ever seen. Tall, and broad-shouldered, and draped in layers of fur that made him look more bear than man, his hair a long, wild tangle, save for where it was braided down the sides, and, at his temples, shaved in long, thin lines.
“Shit,” Oliver said, before he could think better of it.
The man grinned, revealing one gold canine tooth. “Well. There’s a welcome.”
“Oh, no, no, I didn’t–”
“Are you from Drakewell? The Drakes?”
“I…”
“I am Tessa Drake,” Tessa said. “Lord William’s daughter. And this is my cousin, Oliver.”
Other long-haired, fur-clad men waited behind the giant holding Oliver, he saw. All with braids, and beards, and heavy, embroidered cloaks. All of them watching with amusement – as the big man himself turned an appraising eye on Tessa.
His grin widened. “Aye. You’ll do nicely, lassie.”
Oliver spluttered, and managed to brace his feet and jerk his arm free. “I beg your pardon?”
The man laughed, and his hand finally withdrew. “Oh, you’re polite.” He laughed again. “See how far that gets you.” He stepped back, before Oliver could offer another protest. “Welcome to Aeretoll, my lord, my lady. This is the home of King Erik. He has sent us to retrieve you.”
3
The man-who-looked-like-a-bear introduced himself as Bjorn, which was fitting. He explained, in quite cheerful tones, one massive hand still at Oliver’s elbow to keep him from almost falling again, that he was a childhood friend of the king’s, and now the captain of his guard, a contingent of which he’d brought along with him to the docks to greet them. They escorted Oliver and Tessa to a series of reindeer-drawn sleighs.
“Oh,” Tessa breathed, when she saw the deer, with their velvet antlers, and their red-dyed harnesses, stamping in the snow. “Aren’t they lovely?”
Oliver hoped they could carry them swiftly to somewhere warmer.
Bjorn climbed in with them, all but crowding Tessa into Oliver’s lap, and took up the reins. “It’s only a short trip, don’t you Southerners worry,” he said, laughing.
The lead sleigh took off, and theirs lurched forward in its wake, and then it was a cold, stinging wind against their faces as they traversed a white landscape. Through the bustle of Aeres proper, past shops, and market stalls, and houses, from whose yards fur-wrapped citizens lifted hands in greeting toward the sleigh caravan. Bjorn shouted back greetings, his laughter booming off the house fronts.
Humanity thinned; gave way to a vast, snow-covered landscape of rolling, low hills. The bells on the reindeer harnesses jingled softly; the traces creaked. They passed frozen streams that gleamed in the dull sunlight like satin ribbons.
Despite the cold, and his nerves, Oliver found himself sitting forward, the lap blanket hastily thrown across him slipping down, as he admired the crystal-wrapped trees and the white mist rising off the glittering lakes.
It was…beautiful. Like a painting.
“Gods,” Oliver murmured, staring at twisted black branches stamped against a white-mist sky.
“Aye,” Bjorn said, chuckling. “That’s nothing, though.”
“What do you…” Oliver began, and then he saw it, rearing up through the mist.
The palace.
Drake Hall, back home, was low, built of yellow stone, with plentiful mullioned windows that gleamed in the ready sunlight. It was a lord’s home, rather than a king’s, a suitable manor house with two dining rooms, plenty of bedchambers, and attic space for the servants. He’d liked to spend summer afternoons on the flat rooftops, leaning against the parapets, the breeze in his face, looking out across the rolling pastureland. It was grand, although he’d seen far grander in his books, his very many books.
This, though…the Palace of Aeres…
Despite a backdrop of snow-capped peaks, it stood on its own majesty: a colony of up-thrust round towers leaking steam against the sky, their windows small and leaded and shuttered. Gray building stone against the natural gray stone of the hills, it was hard to see where man-made edifice gave way to the rock outcroppings that must surely house the cellars, and kitchens, and hot springs.
A high, stone wall encircled all of it, its drawbridge lifted, its moat frothing in the breeze where it wasn’t a flat plane of ice. The portcullis was down, formidable, dark iron.
This was a castle. A place from which to repel a siege.
Oliver swallowed with difficulty.
“Aye, it’s rather grand, isn’t it?” Bjorn said. He clucked and slapped the reins, and the sleigh surged forward.
A yell startled Oliver – and Tessa, too, if the way she gripped his arm was anything to go by. He glanced over to see a rider coming up on their right: a fur-wrapped man astride a horse that high-stepped through the snow. His hand lifted, and Oliver nearly waved back, stupidly, before Bjorn shouted laughter and called, “Don’t lame your horse, you idiot!”
“He can’t,” a voice called from the left, and Oliver turned to find another rider, astride a stout bay, one hand held loosely on the reins, the other lifted in greeting. A steady seat; a glimpse of blond hair, and a beard, and bright blue eyes. “He’d have to go faster than a trot for that.”
Bjorn laughed again, and the two riders surged forward, cantering ahead, toward the gate; they passed the train of sleighs and drew together in front of the first, leading the way. The portcullis went up before them, and the drawbridge came down, soon enough that their caravan didn’t have to slow.
“The crown princes,” Bjorn explained. “Leif and Rune.”
The names reminded Oliver of his research. “The king’s nephews?”
“Aye, from his sister. His heirs.”
His heirs for now, Oliver thought. If the marriage happened, and Tessa proved fertile…
He recoiled mentally at the idea, thrusting his poor cousin into the role of unwilling mother like that.
The caravan jingled to a halt in the middle of a bailey of tall, hard stone walls, flickering braziers, snow, and small, wood-tiled outbuildings.
Bjorn climbed out, graceful for all his bulk, and reached in to lift Tessa out with both hands at her waist, handling her as if she weighed nothing – which, to him, she must.
“Oh!” Tessa’s hands fluttered a moment, but then she was on the ground, and safe, and Oliver was hurrying out of the sleigh to double check.
Bjorn swept his arm out in a grand gesture toward the crenelated towers and wall-walks encircling them. “Welcome to the Palace of Aeres. Pretty remarkable, eh?”
Oliver said, “That’s one word for it.” He spotted at least six guard towers, snow clinging to the arrow slits, and didn’t doubt there were unseen murder holes up there, too. Guards in thick furs and gleaming steel helmets walked there, pikes on their shoulders. For a place that lay beneath a blanket of quieting snow, it seemed no measure of defense had been spared.
The arched stone mouth of a stable offered lamplight, and cozy hay smells; a contingent of grooms came out for the reindeer, and for the princes’ horses. The heirs had dismounted, handed off their mounts, and joined them.
Both princes wore leather under heavy, fur-mantled cloaks; fur wrapped their boots, and trimmed their hoods; both wore blades at their hips, and the dark-haired, younger one carried a bow and quiver on his back, but neither exuded Bjorn’s ursine wildness.
“Prince Leif,” Bjorn introduced. “And Prince Rune. These are our Southern guests.”
Leif was the older by a few years, Oliver knew; tall, and strong-looking, with a blade for a nose – but a quiet, friendly softness to his smile. He wore his beard short, and his blond hair in a sequence of small, elaborate braids that he’d tucked behind his ears, the rest hanging loose down his back. Blue eyes. Pretty, Oliver thought.
His brother, Rune, wore his brown-black hair in a hasty knot, windswept from riding, one unraveling braid hanging down in front of his ear, its end adorned with silver beads. His beard was short, just a dusting of stubble, really, and his smile was boyish, betraying just how young he was beneath all that fur and leather – and, yes, a bit of mail, too. Gods, were they expecting an invasion at any moment?
Belatedly, Oliver remembered his manners. “This is the Lady Tessa.” He hooked his arm through hers in a show of support. “I’m her cousin, Oliver.”
Rune’s brows shot up. “The bastard? The one who didn’t want to go to war?”
His brother elbowed him in the ribs. “What did I say about that?” he asked from the corner of his mouth. To Oliver: “Ignore him. Mum dropped him on his head as a baby.”
“Hey!”
“Lord Alfred’s son, right?” Leif asked.
“Um.” Oliver had faced any number of insults about his bastardy from courtiers of both sexes; snide comments and veiled looks. But though the word would always carry a sting, Rune hadn’t sounded rude – and now his face had fallen, his dark eyes guileless and defensive.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said, half to his brother and half to Oliver. He mumbled, “Sorry, my lord.”
Oliver took a breath. He’d expected savagery in this strange land, and doubtless it was here, but so far there was nothing coy and cutting in evidence – an unexpected, but refreshing change from home. “No, no, not a lord. I am a bastard. But,” he added, feeling his face heat, “I was ill when the war started, and then encouraged not to come to the front.”
Rune’s nose wrinkled. “Really?”
“Rune,” his brother hissed, “stop asking awkward questions.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m not exactly a soldier,” Oliver said, lifting his arm in helpless invitation for them to examine his absolute lack of a soldier’s physique.
“So?” Rune said, shrugging. “You could learn.”
Leif stepped on his foot.
“Ow!”
Then he bowed to Tessa, the beads in his hair clicking together as it fell in gold waves over his shoulder. “My lady.”
Oliver bit back the sudden urge to smile, thoroughly charmed by this point, even more so when Rune gave his brother a rude shove in the shoulder that didn’t manage to disturb Leif’s very respectful bow.
They were cute.
Gorgeous and gallant, even.
“Oh,” Tessa said, with a little sucked-in breath. “Oh, um, hello.” Her cheeks were pink, and Oliver didn’t think it was only from the cold.
When Leif offered his palm – calluses from hunting, and hard work, flash of silver rings, just visible with his fingerless gloves – she set hers delicately, trembling, into it, and he bent to kiss the back of it.
Tessa’s flush deepened.
Leif’s mouth curved in a small, pleased smile.
For Tessa’s sake, Oliver hoped the boys’ uncle was equally handsome and charming.
“All right, all right, you sheep heads,” Bjorn said. “We’re going in. Lead the way.”
~*~
Open stone archways led onto what Oliver realized was a flagstone-floored gallery that overlooked what must have been a garden in warm months. A sequence of heavy oak doors and stone hallways fed, eventually, into a vast stone chamber with soaring, timbered ceilings, and three fireplaces, all of them tall enough to walk inside, all of them roaring. Oliver’s cloak was immediately too warm; walking ahead of them, snow was melting on Leif and Rune’s shoulders.
They were in a great hall, Oliver noticed, as Tessa’s hand tightened on his arm, one filled with people, and very large, shaggy dogs lounging across the flags, and one dominated at one end by a dais, and a massive banner hanging on the wall behind it. The banner was crimson edged with blue, and in its center, a reindeer with massive antlers picked out in white thread.
Then Oliver laid eyes on the figure seated just below the banner, and everything else faded to a dull roar and a blur of color.
At a distance, Oliver caught only the fact that the man had Leif’s nose – or Leif had his – and Rune’s dark hair, in loose waves on his shoulders, shot through with lines of silver. Broad shoulders, large hands on the arms of the chair, rings glinting in the firelight, and in his hair – more beads, like the princes.
A strong man, a man like a lounging predator, his faint scowl exuding threat and impatience.
An unapproachable man.
A massive hand landed on Oliver’s shoulder, and Bjorn said, “Aye, there’s Erik.”
“I figured,” Oliver said.
Bjorn steered them in closer.
The king, it appeared, was listening to petitions.
Fashions were different in this part of the world, but Oliver knew a farmer when he saw one: the man stood with a woolen cap in his hands, his weathered face tipped up in entreaty. “You see, your majesty, it’s the glass in my hothouses. It’s all been shattered.”
“By the cold?” King Erik asked. His voice was low, and deep, and rusted at the edges.
“No, your majesty. It was – it was sabotage!”
The king rested an elbow on the arm of his throne, and his chin on his raised fist. His beard was dark, and kept close. It still offered a glimpse of the hard line of his jaw. “An assumption?”
“I found rocks, your majesty, and not decorative ones, neither.”
“Hmm.” The king stroked his own chin in contemplation – and then his gaze lifted over the farmer’s head and settled on Oliver and his cousin and his escort, for one piercing second. Then away again. “Bjorn!”
Bjorn stepped past them. “Aye?”
“Send someone to have a look round Gorm’s farm. I want to know if someone’s breaking hothouse glass on purpose.”
“Aye.”
The farmer – Gorm – bowed, murmured his thanks, and left the hall.
Which put them next in line.
Bjorn fired off a command to one of the men lounging against the wall – who nodded and left – then his hand was back on Oliver’s shoulder, pushing him forward again.
Right to the base of the dais, close enough to see that King Erik’s eyes were blue, but nothing at all like’s Leif’s, with their warm, quiet amusement. The king’s were hard, and flat, and unreadable – the nearest emotion seemed to be disdain.
Oliver gulped, quite against his will.
“These are the Southerners?” the king asked.
“Aye,” Bjorn said, and shook Oliver. He felt like a puppy in a giant’s grip. “Cousins! Lord Oliver and Lady Tessa.” Oliver was tired of correcting him, at this point. Bjorn laughed. “Say hello to your bride, Erik!”
Echoing laughter rippled through the crowd of bystanders, and Oliver bristled on his cousin’s behalf.
But Erik lifted a ringed hand and the laughter cut off suddenly, and completely. He stared at them – Oliver struggled to keep his shoulders back, and his spine rigid beneath the cold, judgmental weight of that stare – and then finally curled a single finger and said, “Approach.”
The princes stepped apart, their gazes watchful, and Oliver wasn’t going to let Tessa – now trembling – approach on her own. He covered her hand with his own where it rested on his arm, and they walked forward – up the three steps to the dais itself when that finger crooked again.
“Your majesty.”
“Your majesty,” Tessa echoed, softly, and executed a perfect, one-handed curtsy, though she shivered all over with nerves.
The king studied them each in turn, cold blue eyes moving impersonally over them, head to toe. When it was his turn, Oliver felt sure Erik could see how nervous he was – how afraid.
Watery sunlight pierced a high window, a single, white shaft that caught the silver of the heavy ring on the king’s first finger: it was shaped like a stag’s head, antlers and all, Oliver noted.
Finally, King Erik nodded. “Yes, fine. You’ll suit.”
“Beg pardon?” Oliver asked, as Tessa’s hand closed vice-tight below his elbow.
Erik met his gaze, finally, managing to be both disinterested, and piercing. “She’ll do. We can draw up the contract after supper.”
“Contract – your majesty,” Oliver said, trying to keep the desperation from his voice. “I’d thought you might like to get to know Tessa a little, before you agreed to marry her.” The king was certainly as handsome – gorgeous, his brain supplied, unhelpfully – as his nephews, but lacked all their charm.
Erik tipped his head back a fraction, so he managed to look down his nose at Oliver, despite being the one seated. He snorted. “I won’t be marrying her, Mr. Meacham.”
“But…the letter…” Oh, Gods, had there been some horrible miscommunication? Did Erik not know?
Another snort, this one accompanied by the faintest ghost of a mocking smile. “Do I look like I’m in want of a teenage virgin bride? No. She’ll be marrying my nephew.”
The statement should have been a relief – Tessa certainly relaxed with a sudden exhale – but it was said like a threat, and Oliver could sense nothing like a welcome.