Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

The wasp sting burns in her heart as she faces the veiled figure that is Prince Bayan’s ancient mother. The old woman’s voice rasps with age and, perhaps, exhaustion brought on by weeks of weaving weather magic. “Where are you going?”

Hanna thinks probably she doesn’t mean anything so simple, that no common answer will do: “to the privies,” “west to the king,” “back to my home.”

“I don’t know,” she answers truthfully. Cold bites at her hands, making them ache, and her foot hurts where the splinter pierced her skin.

“No woman can serve two queens, just as no man can serve two masters,” remarks the ancient woman. One of her raddled old handmaidens hurries forward out of the shadows, bearing a tray.

A single ceramic cup, so finely crafted that its lip looks as thin as a leaf, rests on the enameled tray. Steam rises delicately from its mouth. “Drink,” speaks the cricket voice.

The spicy scent stings Hanna’s lips and burns her throat. As she drains the liquid, tilting her head back, she sees a scene engraved onto the bottom of the cup’s bowl: a centaur woman suckling a human baby at her breast.

“In the end,” continues Bayan’s mother, “you will have to choose.”

Cautiously, Hanna lowers the cup. Bayan’s mother sits sedately in a chair, her gnarled and wrinkled hands, age-spotted yet somehow still supple, resting in her lap. The veil conceals her face. The handmaiden waits patiently, like a statue, holding out the tray. Hanna sees no sign of the slave man who escorted her here. They are alone, the three of them, except for a green-and-gold bird perched in a cage that eyes Hanna warily as she sets the empty cup down on the tray. It lifts one foot, replaces it, then lifts the other in a stately if slightly anxious dance, waiting for her answer.

The handmaiden retreats behind the silk curtains, which rustle, sway, and fall silent. The only light in the chamber comes from a lamp. Shadows ride the walls, shifting as though they have caught the movements of unseen spirits.

“I have nothing to choose between,” says Hanna, feeling a little dazed. “I am King Henry’s Eagle.”

“And Sorgatani’s luck.”

The words seem ill-omened. Hanna shudders. “Sorgatani lived years ago. She’s dead.” She chafes her hands nervously, remembering that Brother Breschius lost a hand when the Kerayit princess he loved and served as her slave died all those years ago.

“Souls never die,” chides the old woman. “I had a cousin twice removed who is dead now, it is true. That may be the woman you think you speak of, the one who took the Wendish priest as her pura. But a name is like a veil, to be cast off or put on. It can be used again. You are Sorgatani’s luck, for so is my niece called. In the end, you will have to choose.”

The curtains stir as though in a wind. In those shimmering depths she thinks maybe she can see all the way to the land where the Kerayits roam and live among grass so tall that a man on horseback can’t see over it. Here, in her dreams, she has seen griffins. Here, in a distance made hazy by a morning fog rising up from damp ground, she sees the encampment of the Bwrmen, the dreaded centaur folk. Pale tents shift in the wind, felt walls belling out, and sagging in, as though they are themselves living creatures. She smells the tang of molten metal on the wind. An eagle drifts lazily above the camp, then plummets down, out of sight. A young woman wanders at the edge of that camp, dressed in a gown so golden that it might have been torn and shaped out of sunlight.

Across the distance, Sorgatani speaks, “Come to me, luck. You are in danger.”

Maybe Hanna could step through the silk curtains and find herself in a far land, in the wilderness, in the hazy morning. But she does not move. She speaks.

“I haven’t found your pura yet. I have no handsome man to bring you.”

The sun glints over the mist, riding higher, and its bright light flashes in Hanna’s eyes.

“Liath,” she cries, thinking impossibly that she sees Liath above in the iridescent air, a lustrous play of colors glistening like silk as she pushes through the curtains, trying to reach Liath, only to find the slave man standing silently beside an open door. He gestures toward the door and the corridor filled with sleeping soldiers. With a foreboding in her heart, as though she had turned a deaf ear to a summons she ought to have heeded, she follows him back to the hall—

Hanna woke abruptly as a hand groped over her, fondling her roughly. She smelled the stink of sour breath on her cheek and felt a man’s weight lowering over her. She kicked, hard and accurately. With an angry oath the shadowed form that had been molesting her staggered back and slammed into another figure who had also come calling to the sleeping platform. Women shrieked and cursed. The furs writhed as all at once every woman came awake. One woman, at the edge of the platform, choked out gasping cries as she struggled with a brawny man who had gotten on top of her.