Crown of Stars

“A servant meant to carry messages,” retorted Hathui. “By all accounts, although I never saw him, King Arnulf was a kinder master than Anne.”

“Weary,” whispered Hedwig.

Liath leaned forward. “We have exhausted you. I pray you, pardon us.”

“He was weary,” Hedwig repeated, strengthened, it seemed, by a hint of annoyance that she was dismissed so easily when it was to her that Liath had come in the first place. “When I saw him here. The last time. Weary. Troubled. Sad. So might a man be who is at war within himself. Such a man can never be trusted. He can never trust himself.”

Her breath whistled. The speech had winded her. They waited, listening to her labored breathing.

Finally, Liath shook herself and rose. “I thank you for what you have told me, Hedwig.”

The old Eagle’s fingers stirred but she could not, it seemed, lift them off the blanket. Nor could she speak. She wheezed a little.

“I will send Clara to attend you,” said Waltharia.

They left, stepping out into the cold, dark night. The wind stung nostrils and eyes as they walked across the courtyard. At the entrance to the hall, servants were dispatched to take coals, a hot poultice, and an attendant to sit out the night with the old woman.

“Why do the Villams shelter her?” he asked. “Has she no family to take her in?”

Waltharia’s smile made him uncomfortable, and she glanced first at Liath and only after that at him. “She was for a short time one of my father’s many, many mistresses.”

The Eagle was so old a woman that it was easy to forget that Villam, too, had lived a long life.

“My mother, before she died, made me swear to take her in if she needed shelter in her old age.”

“Your mother? Why would she trouble herself in such a way?”

She glanced at Liath. They looked. They smiled, each a little. They did not look at him. “Because my father would not. My father was a good man and a strong and canny margrave, Sanglant, but thoughtless in other ways. Hedwig was one of my mother’s young servants. She became an Eagle after—well, it was considered a disgrace in her family. They threw her out. Had my mother not made provision for her care, she would have died as a pauper.”

“This history surprises me,” said Liath. “I thought the Eagles took care of their own.”

“So they do. Not many survive to such a respectable age. When they are too crippled or old or ill to ride, they are pensioned off, just as old Lions are—those who survive their service. The Villams accepted the pension for the care of her.”

“It was a saying among the Dragons,” remarked Sanglant with an unexpected swell of bitterness, “that all Dragons died young, guarding the honor of the regnant.”

“Will you muster a flight of Dragons?” Waltharia asked him. “You must think of these things, you know. There are Eagles and Lions to be recruited, to strengthen your army. And Dragons, to fly swiftly to where the need is greatest.”

He frowned. “Who to lead them?”

“Sapientia has a daughter, does she not?”

“Still a child, not more than six or eight at the most. Nay. Let me see what noble youths are cast up at my feet. Then I’ll decide what to do.”

Liath had stepped out from under the eaves and stood staring up at the sky as if her gaze could pierce the clouds. He thought she wasn’t paying attention, but she spoke. “I will have my own mustering, of scholars.” She chuckled. “A nest of phoenix. That’s what I’ll call them.”

“Phoenix?” Waltharia was startled, and showed it.

“I think not!” said Sanglant.

Liath turned to look at them. He could only see her shape, but he knew that her vision, in such darkness, was much keener than his. What she saw, seeking in their expressions, he did not know. “The phoenix flies, like the eagle. It is born out of fire, out of passion, and renews itself. Would the phoenix not be a fine beast for scholars?”

Sometimes she was so naive!

“I pray you, Liath,” he said, then faltered, hearing how annoyed he sounded and knowing it was not her but his memories of Blessing that hurt him.

Hathui stepped forward. “Perhaps you are not aware that the phoenix has become spoken of in the same breath as the heresy, the Redemptio. A story circulated—”

“If Wichman can be believed, it was true enough,” said Sanglant, “since he was among those who slaughtered the beast.”

“Slaughtered a phoenix?” Liath breathed, horrified.