The Lioness

She flung up from the bed, and the belled anklet made no sweet sound, only a tinny jangling. In one angry instant, Kerian reached down and yanked it from her ankle, flinging it across the room in almost the same gesture.

Calmly, the elf king said, “Kerian, I will send my men out into the forest to see what they can learn. I will speak to Rashas about Thagol.”

With cool steadiness, Kerian said, “Do you think men of yours will be able to find a Wilder Elf if he doesn’t want to be found? We both know that Thagol has just begun to count heads.”

She stilled. In that instant, standing upon an anciently woven carpet, in the bedchamber of a king who longed to make her his queen, Kerian looked like a wild creature, head up and testing the air. Wilder Elf! He had not seen her so in many years. Her tattoos enchanted him, his lips, his hands loved to trace the shape of them, but he didn’t remember, or not often, that these twining vines signified that his Kerianseray had been born in Ergoth and lived in the upland forests on the foaming sea coasts, wilder places than ever he had visited. They marked her out as a member of the White Osprey Kagonesti, the daughter of the leader of that tribe, the sister of the man who surely led it now.

“Kerian,” said the king, now firmly, “you underestimate my determination. I promise you my men won’t come back till they’ve found safe word about your brother.”

Kerian shook her head. “No matter how careful your men will be, Gil, Iydahar will know they’re coming almost before they leave the city. No.” Her jaw stiffened. “Iydahar is my brother. He is in danger. I must go myself.”

“Kerian, you haven’t seen Iydahar in years. You can’t have any idea where he is.”

Kerian looked at him long. “We know how to reach each other, Gil. There is a village, and there is a tavern. I can go there and leave the right word in the right ear. He will find me, or someone will show me the way to him.”

She said no more, though he waited. At last, into his silence, she said, “My lord king, I will not give away Iydahar’s secret.”

He answered as her lover, the man who feared for her safety, who could no longer imagine how impoverished his life would be without her. Unfortunately, when he spoke, he sounded like her king.

“It’s not only his, Kerian. It’s yours. Tell me.” Gilthas rose, tall above her, and when he looked her deeply in the eye he trusted she would see his heart. “You might as well, because you know you cannot go yourself. There are brigands in the forest, outlaws and highwaymen. There are Knights who might well mistake you for any one of those things.”

She swallowed hard but said nothing, the jut of her chin growing more stubborn.

“Kerian, if you go… if you go, you will be gone from Rashas’s service without leave, and I won’t be able to help you. You will be considered a runaway. You will be hunted.” He stopped, caught suddenly as though by a cold hand out of nightmare. “Kerian… if you go, if you are hunted, you will be branded a fugitive. You won’t be able to come back.”

He said no more. They were silent for a moment. “Tell me the name of the village and the tavern, and I will send men to learn if your brother is well. That is the end of the matter.”

Kerian looked at him long, head up and suddenly cool. “It is the end of the matter, my lord king, if you, like Rashas, are ordering a servant.” She did not add, as her brother might have, “or a slave.” Still her sharp words hung between them, edged like steel.

In that silence they heard other voices in outer chambers, the king’s dresser and the wardrobe master preparing his clothes for the senate meeting. Neither Kerian nor Gilthas spoke, and Kerian herself barely breathed. There could be no story to make seemly her presence, barefoot and weeping in the king’s bedroom. Eyes on each other, like crossed swords, the king and his lover kept utterly still, completely silent.

The stubborn line of Kerian’s jaw softened. She kissed the king tenderly. Her lips against his so that Gilthas did not so much hear her words as feel them, she said: “He is my brother, Gil. If you want to stop me, you have only to call the guard.”

She turned from him. He grabbed her wrist and caught her back. Eyes flashing, Kerian spun on her heel, angry words on her lips where a moment ago he’d felt regret.

The king held up his right hand. With his left, he removed the topaz ring from his forefinger. It was a lover’s clasp, two circlets of gold each shaped as a hand. Worn together, each hand would hold the topaz. It had belonged to his father and before that to some ancient elf king, a trinket worth a royal ransom in the times before the Cataclysm when kings might be ransomed for other than steel. In silence he gave one half of the lover’s clasp to her; in silence she took it.

Outside, the dresser said to the wardrobe master, “Oh—look, there are his rings on the wine tray.” A quiet gasp, then, low, “By all the vanished gods—! He’s in his bedchamber.”