Song Of Unmaking

Her skin was smooth, like cream, and more golden than white. Her hair was blue-black, cropped into curls. He ran his hand from her nape down the track of her spine to the sweet curve of her buttocks. She never moved, but her breathing caught.

He followed his hand with kisses. She was breathing more rapidly now. He willed her to turn and look into his face. Her name was on his lips, shaped without sound. Valeria.

Five

“You’re not Amma.”

The voice most definitely was not Valeria’s, nor was it Murna’s. It was a child’s, sharp and imperious.

The golden-skinned lover was gone. Euan’s mother’s bed was as narrow as ever. A child was standing over him, glowering.

It was a young child but long-legged, with a mane of coppery hair imperfectly contained in a plait, and fierce yellow eyes. By the single plait and the half-outgrown breeks, it was male—too young yet for the warriors’ house, but old enough to be well weaned.

Euan shook off the fog of the dream. “I’m not your amma,” he agreed. “I’m waiting for my mother.”

“Wait somewhere else,” the child said. “This is Amma’s room.”

“Not unless she shares it with my mother,” Euan said. His eyes narrowed. “My name is Euan. What is yours?”

“No one’s named me yet,” the child said.

Euan’s brows rose. A child without a name was a child without a father—because it was the father who raised the child before the clan, gave him his name and bound him to the people. This one seemed not to find any shame in it.

“Who is your mother?” Euan asked him.

“Mother’s dead,” the child said. “Where’s the other one?”

“What—”

“The lady. Where did she go?”

Euan’s nape prickled. “You saw her?”

“She’s pretty,” the child said.

“Very pretty,” Euan said a little faintly.

He was beginning to think this was a dream, too. A child of the people who saw the unseen was either fed to the wolves or handed over to the priesthood. Somehow he could not see this bright child as a priest.

He seemed very solid, but then, so had Valeria. Maybe this was all a delusion, some sleight of Gothard’s to trap Euan in the starstone.

If he let his mind run that way, he would turn as mad as Gothard. He sat up and breathed deep. The air smelled and tasted real. The child in front of him did not go away.

He was real, then. So was Euan’s mother, coming up behind him. “Ah, wolfling,” she said, “there you are. Brigid’s looking for you.”

The child shrugged that off. “There’s a man in your bed, Amma.”

“So I see,” Murna said. “Go on now. I’ll find you later and we’ll visit the hound puppies.”

This child was not easily bribed. His jaw set and his eyes narrowed. But Murna had raised many a child. Her own eyes narrowed even more formidably than his.

He was headstrong but he was no fool. He sulked and dragged, but he went where he was told.

The fog was leaving Euan’s wits—and none too soon, either. “I don’t suppose that’s mine,” he said.

“So his mother said.” Murna sat on the stool that stood at the end of the bed.

“Who was she?”

“Her name was Deira from Dun Gralloch,” Murna said. “Her father was—”

“I remember,” Euan said.

That had been another winter before another war. There was a gathering of the clans around Dun Eidyn, to celebrate the dark of the year and plan the spring’s battles. It would be far from Euan’s first battle, but it would be his first war against the empire.

He was full of himself that night, and full of honey mead, too. He looked up from his newly emptied cup to meet a pair of eyes the color of dark amber. Gradually he took in the rest of her, smooth oval face, neatly braided hair the precise color of her eyes, and tall body, well rounded, with deep breasts and broad hips.

When he smiled at her, she did not smile back. She lowered her eyes as a modest woman should do, but she watched him sidelong.

He found her in his bed that night, curled up, asleep. When he touched her, she woke completely. She was older than he was but still a maiden—though he did not know that until after it was done. He did not know her name, either, not for the nine nights she spent in his bed.

They spoke of everything but that—the world and the people in it, the One, the empire, the dreams they had and the life they hoped for. She was the first mortal creature he told of his dearest dream, not only to be high king but to sit in the throne of the emperor in Aurelia. She did not laugh at him, either. She said, “I’ll make you a son to give you strength, and to stand beside you when you take that throne.”

“I’m going to do it,” he said.

“I know you are,” she said. Her eyes were dark in the lamplight, drinking in his face. There was something odd about her expression—not sad, exactly, but somehow wistful.

Then she kissed him and he forgot everything else. Five years after, he remembered little of that night but warmth and laughter and such pleasure as a man could never forget.

Toward dawn, she kissed him one last time, letting it linger, then drew away as she had done at the end of each night. But she paused, bending down again. Her voice was soft in his ear. “Deira,” she said. “My name is Deira.”

He reached for her to keep her with him. He opened his mouth to ask her the rest of it—her father’s name, her clan, everything—but she slipped away. That day the people of Dun Gralloch left the gathering. That night, his bed was empty. Deira was gone.

He meant to find her. But first there was the war, then they lost it, then he was sent as a hostage into Aurelia. He had not forgotten her, but five years was a long time. He would have expected that she had married and borne another man sons—that was what any sensible woman would do.

Now that he knew what had become of her, he surprised himself with grief. Out of it, he said to his mother, “She really is dead? Was it the child?”

Murna shook her head. “There was plague the year after he was born. He lived. She died. Her father sent him to me as her last gift, with a message. Keep him until his father comes for him.”

“Was she dishonored? Was she mistreated? Did—”

“She was treated as well as she had a right to expect,” his mother said. “The child was allowed to live. He was sent to the king’s house for fostering. That’s more than most fathers would do for a daughter who despoiled herself.”

“I would have asked for her as a wife,” Euan said.

“I’m sure you would,” said Murna without expression. “Will you give the child a name, then?”

“Of course I will,” he said. “I’ll do it today.”