The Gathering Storm

Would it have been better to have stayed in Gent, safe behind bland walls? Yet she had grown tired of the friendliness of Gent’s servants and of her caretaker, Frederun. Everyone knew Frederun had been Prince Sanglant’s concubine when he’d wintered over in Gent the year before, on the road east; they spoke of it still, although never in Frederun’s hearing. He had given her certain small tokens, but she had stayed behind, bound to the palace, when he had ridden on. The prince had had a child with him, but no one knew what had happened to his wife, only that she had, evidently, vanished when the daughter was still a newborn infant.

What had happened to Liath?

When she closed her eyes, she saw the fever dream that had chased her through her illness, the hazy vision of a woman winged with flame whose face looked exactly like Liath’s. At night, she sought Liath through fire, but she never found her. King Henry, Hathui, even Prince Sanglant no longer appeared to her Eagle’s Sight, and Sorgatani came to her only in stuttering glimpses, clouded by smoke and sparks. It had been so long since she had seen Wolfhere that she had trouble recalling his features. Only Bulkezu’s beautiful, monstrous face coalesced without fail when she stared into the flames. Even Ivar was lost to her, invisible to her Eagle’s Sight although she sought him with increasing desperation. Had her sight failed her? Or were they all, at last, dead?

She felt dead, withered like a leaf wilting under the sun’s glare.

Rain delayed them. “It will ruin the harvest,” Ernst muttered more than once, surveying sodden fields, but Hanna had no answer to give. She had seen so much ruin already.

After twenty days, they rode into Osterburg under cover of a weary summer drizzle that just would not let up. A gray mist hung over the fields, half of them abandoned or left fallow after the trampling they had received from two armies but the rest planted with spring-sown oats and barley and a scattering of fenced gardens confining turnips, peas, beans, and onions. Stonemasons worked on scaffolds along the worst gaps in Osterburg’s walls, but although there were still a number of gaps and tumbled sections, the worst stretch had been repaired. Inside, the streets seemed narrow and choked with refuse after so many days out on the open road.

Stable hands took their horses in the courtyard of the ducal palace. She and Ernst walked at the rear of Lady Leoba’s escort as they crowded into the great hall, glad to get out of the rain. A steward, the same stout, intelligent woman who had met the Lions outside Gent, escorted them up stairs to the grand chamber where Princess Theophanu held court.

Despite the rain, it was warm enough that the shutters had been taken down to let in the breeze. Theophanu reclined at her ease on a fabulously padded couch, playing chess with one of her ladies while her companions looked on in restful silence. Two women Hanna did not know but who bore a passing resemblance to the notorious Lord Wichman fidgeted on chairs on either side of Theophanu; it was hard at first glance to tell which one was more bored, irritable, and sour.

“Ah.” Theophanu looked up with a flash of genuine pleasure. “Leoba!” They embraced. Theophanu turned to address the women sitting to either side of her. “Cousin Sophie. Cousin Imma. Here is my best companion, Leoba. She is out of the Hesbaye clan, and was married last summer to Margrave Villam.”

“But isn’t she dead yet?” asked the one called Sophie, with a leer. “How many wives has Villam outlasted?”

“Nay, it will be a test of the Hesbaye and Villam clans to see which one can outlast the other on fourth and fifth marriages,” retorted her sister.

Leoba colored, but Theophanu drew her attention away, making room on the couch for Leoba to sit beside her. “How fares Gent?”

“Well enough. A spring sowing of oats and barley was put in on the fallow fields. The winter wheat and rye crop has flourished. There are four excellent weaving houses. Each one produced enough cloth over the winter and spring that there is surplus for trade. The market brings in folk from three days’ walk away. Merchants have sailed in from as far as Medemelacha. They pay the regnant’s tax willingly enough. The year the city lay under Eika rule hurt their custom and their routes to the east. There’s to be a harvest fair that will likely bring folk from a week’s walk. Gent is a prosperous place. I have brought five chests of coin and treasure to give into your coffers.”

“That is Saony’s tax!” cried Imma. “It belongs to our family.”

“Nay, Imma,” said Theophanu mildly, “it belongs to the regnant, and to Saony. You have not been named as duchess, I think?”

“Because I am the elder!” said Sophie triumphantly.