“Everything all right, dear?” she asked.
“Aye, Mama.”
She and Papa exchanged a glance, but they said nothing more about it. “I’ll have Hilda make some tea. Robart, Leyda, Mari, come.”
Edmund and Anjey sat as they filed out and fell to quiet discussion of the practical matters that awaited us that evening. Alastair stood with arms crossed by the hearth, watching the fire. The green facets of the lindworm’s heartstone glinted through his open collar, and I felt the equal weight of the lamia brooch tug at my bodice. They were the last things we’d retrieved before leaving Edonarle.
I did not sit. Before Mama could reemerge with tea, I slipped into the old room I’d shared with Anjey and shut the door behind me. Here at last there had been some changes. Imagining the sisterly battle that had led to Leyda taking over our room instead of Mari drew out the shadow of a smile. Gowns and shawls lay strewn over the bed, the nightstand, and the floor. Teacups and saucers littered the windowsill. I almost tripped over a pair of tangled trousers.
The door opened and closed softly behind me. “Are you all right, khera?” Alastair asked.
“I’m . . .” I looked down at my hand. “I don’t know.”
He took me in his arms and rested his chin on my shoulder. “Was this your room?”
“Mine and Anjey’s. Leyda’s claimed it now.”
“I can see that.”
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. His face was serious, but there was the threat of a dimple just below the scar on his cheek, and it broke down a wall in me I’d not realized I’d built. From somewhere deep inside, beyond grief and fear and pain, a laugh bubbled up. It was a little thing, hardly more than a chuckle, but bright and heartfelt and, in its way, defiant. Alastair smiled and kissed my forehead. We had looked into the dark, we had fought through the night, and we had lived to see the dawn. It was worth celebrating.
The day passed in a quiet bustle. After tea began a steady stream of visitors, their tentative knocks growing bolder as the morning turned to afternoon and afternoon to evening. Master and Madam Carlyle came with Rya to deliver their condolences to Anjey. Despite the efforts of her mother to disguise it, Rya could not tear her eyes from my bandaged hand. Master Carlyle did not meet my eye. They did not stay long.
Henry Brandon joined us for lunch, hungry for our version of what had happened at Edonarle but doing his best to restrain himself. I took him aside after we finished and promised to tell him more about it at the first opportunity. He took my arm carefully and pressed a gentle kiss to the back of my good hand. “It was not in vain, my lady. I take it as my life’s work to make sure all of Arle knows what you’ve done.”
“Thank you, Henry.”
Something approaching a smile alighted on Anjey’s lips as she closed the door after him. “Aliza, do you need help with that?” she asked, noting my surreptitious struggle to tighten the loosening strip of bandages with one hand. “Here, let me.” We moved closer to the windows. “You’re very dear to him, you know,” she said in an undertone.
“Hmm?”
“Henry. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has the ‘Alizasong’ ringing in every tavern in every city in the kingdom by the Winter Quarters.”
“Alizasong”? The name sat uncomfortably, all rough edges and ill-fitting corners and the dangerous gloss of praise. I looked across the room, where Alastair and Edmund were in quiet discussion with Papa. Leyda and Mari sat on the fringes of their little circle, trying desperately not to look like they were hanging on every word. I wondered if Alastair was giving them the details of the story that Silverwing’s report had lacked. Death came in the shape of our brightest legend, soul-sucked and nursed on six centuries of hatred by a godsforsaken creature older than the earth. The shadow of the Elementar lifted a little at a new thought. Six centuries of hatred that could not stand before a flower.
“No, not that,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“There will be songs, aye, but they won’t be mine.”
“Well, they certainly won’t be Ellia’s.” She tugged hard on the bandage, making me gasp. “Sorry!”
“It’s all right.”
There was a long pause. “Aliza, would you do something for me?”
“Anything, dearest.”
She opened her mouth, frowned, and seemed to change her mind. “I’ve asked Lord Merybourne if I can stay in the North Fields lodge for—well, for a while. I know you and Alastair have duties back in Edonarle, but I can’t go back there. Not yet.”
“No one would ask you to.”
“I want to stay there tonight, but I don’t think—I don’t want to stay alone. Would you and Alastair stay with me?”
“Aye, of course we’ll stay with you.”
“Thank you.” She nodded to the door. “Edmund and Julienna too, if they like.”
I turned to see Julienna enter, her wind-burned cheeks flushing even redder under Mama’s greeting. She and Mar’esh had made good time. I sighed. With the last of us assembled, there was no more putting it off.
As the sun began to descend, we started off on the familiar road to North Fields. Anjey and Silverwing led, drawing the bier with Brysney’s shrouded body slowly over the now-well-marked path. In the hand that wasn’t gripping Silverwing’s neck, Anjey held a lantern, its flame just visible in the setting sun. Alastair and I followed on Akarra, with Julienna and Mar’esh and Edmund and Whiteheart on either side. After them came what felt like most of the Manor: Lord and Lady Merybourne, the Carlyles, Henry and his apprentice, both carrying their lutes, Gwyn and Curdred and their little son, my family, and the rest of our friends. The procession stretched for nearly a quarter mile behind us. The Manor-folk talked freely, but among the Riders nobody said much. There wasn’t much to say.
I felt a familiar catch in my throat as we broke through the eaves of the forest and looked out over North Fields. Where there had once been tossing green, there was now gold and brown, amber and rust, as if the woods had licked up the funeral fires from the Battle of North Fields and preserved them in a new and living medium. The earth at the northeastern end of the fields lay unevenly in humps and hollows around the great curving bones of the lindworm. Fire and scavengers had eaten away its flesh, leaving only the skeleton, raw and white and horrible. I glanced at Anjey in alarm, but against the flinty resolution in her expression, there would be no argument. This would be Cedric Brysney’s final resting place and no other. Charis and her brother would at last be reunited.
The pyre was simple, just a mound of kindling piled atop a small cairn of stones. Silverwing’s talons and wingtips bore the scratches from having gathered them. We joined him and Anjey as they bought his bier to a halt. Alastair dismounted, and along with Edmund and Silverwing, they moved Brysney’s body onto the pyre. Each bowed deeply as they stepped away. Alastair returned to my side and took my arm. I didn’t need to look to know he was crying.
Anjey paused for a moment at the end of the pyre with her head bent over his, fingers brushing his shrouded temples. Her lips moved as she placed the gods’ sigils on his forehead, lips, and heart. Then gently, lovingly, she opened the lantern, drew out the candle within, and laid it in the kindling.