A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos)

The first time Glorian saw her own blood, she was twelve years old. It was Julain who had spotted the smear, stark on her ivory shift. So splendid were the stories of Berethnet blood, Glorian had almost expected it be molten gold, for her blood kept a great wyrm shackled in darkness. Instead, it had been a dull, rusty brown.

It is less than I thought, she had remarked, and less had carried a few meanings. Julain had left to fetch a clout and tell the queen.

The second time Glorian saw her own blood, she was fifteen and a half, and the end of a bone had knifed through her skin, between the shoulder and the elbow.

This time, Julain Crest was less composed.

‘Fetch the Royal Surgeon,’ she shouted at the guards. Two went running. ‘Quickly, quickly!’

Glorian stared down at her bone. It was a small piece that poked through, not much longer than a tooth – and yet it was somehow lewd, naked when it ought to be covered.

The night before, while the fire burned low, Helisent had shared a tale from the north. People there believed that oak galls – growths like apples on those trees, used in the making of ink – could hold signs of the future. If a bumblebee had nudged inside, the next year would be joyful. If a gallfly was there, caught in a thing of its own making, the year would be stagnant or riddled with blunders. Whatever was inside, there was some fate attached.

Heathen talk, Adela had muttered. Such tales stemmed from the days before the Saint, but Glorian had found it both charming and harmless. At sunrise, she and her ladies had ridden out in search of fallen galls, only for her horse to take a sudden fright and throw her.

A rush of pain snatched her back to the present. She must have fainted, for suddenly there was a flock of people, and the Royal Surgeon was staring at the chip of bone, and the horse, Óvarr, gave a terrified whinny. A groom was trying in vain to calm her.

‘Lady Glorian, can you hear me?’ the Royal Surgeon asked her. She nodded, dizzy. ‘Tell me, now, do you feel your legs?’

‘Yes, Doctor Forthard.’ Glorian blew out a breath. ‘Though I . . . feel one of my arms more keenly.’

Grave faces crowded around her. She was strapped on to a length of wood and lifted by four guards.

Strong hands kept her head in line with her backbone as they marched her through the queenswood, past the lake, towards Drouthwick Castle. Above the south gate, the Berethnet standard proclaimed that Queen Sabran was in residence. Pain struck Glorian like an axe on a shield. When she tried to look at the wound, she found her head still trapped.

As soon as they entered the gloom of the keep, a familiar voice called her by name, and then Lady Florell Glade was at her side, flaxen curls tumbling from their net.

‘Glorian,’ she said, aghast. ‘By the Saint, Doctor Forthard, what is this?’

‘Her Highness fell from her horse, my lady,’ Sir Bramel Stathworth said.

‘The heir to Inys,’ Florell said hotly as she kept up with the board. ‘You are duty-bound to protect her, Sir Bramel.’

‘The palfrey was calm all morning. Forgive me, but we could never have stopped it.’

‘Please,’ Doctor Forthard said, ‘don’t touch the princess, Lady Florell. You could sully the wound.’

Florell had seen it by now. She stared down at the place where the bone peeked through, her face ashen. ‘Sweet child,’ she said hoarsely, ‘do not fear. The Saint is with you.’

The flagstones swallowed the sound of her flight. Glorian let her eyes close again, and all was shadow for a time, the tilt and sway of the board like a cradle.

Next she woke, she was in her own bed, and her left sleeve had been cut away to show the mess of her arm – white skin, red blood, that fang of bone. Doctor Forthard was soaping her hands in a basin of hot water, accompanied by two strangers: one in the brown herigald of an apprentice sanctarian, the other in a red tabard, a white tunic beneath.

A bonesetter. Her father paid a small army of them to crack his neck and back. This one stood with their hands tucked into their sleeves, as if to avert the imagination from the agony they were about to inflict.

‘Lady Glorian.’ The apprentice came to her. ‘Drink this. It will dull the pain.’

He held a wineskin to her lips, and Glorian drank as much as she could. The wine left a meaty aftertaste of sage. ‘Doctor Forthard,’ she said, ‘what must you do?’

‘We must draw the two halves of the bone together, Highness,’ Doctor Forthard said, ‘so they may knit back into one. This is Mastress Kell Bourn, a member of the Company of Bones.’

‘Your Highness,’ the bonesetter said, low and calm. ‘Please, stay as still as you can.’

Sir Bramel prayed under his breath. Glorian tensed as the strangers moved towards the bed. The apprentice sanctarian stood by her feet, while the bonesetter appraised her arm. ‘I want banewort,’ Glorian said. ‘Doctor Forthard, please, I want to sleep.’

‘No,’ Dame Erda Lindley said firmly. ‘None of your herbs or potions, Forthard. Queen Sabran forbids it.’

Doctor Forthard ignored the guard. ‘Highness, even a spoonful of banewort can kill the drinker. It is a gentle poison,’ she said, ‘but poison, nonetheless.’ She turned back to the bed. ‘And you are the great chain upon the Nameless One.’

Glorian did not feel like a chain, great or otherwise. She felt like a child with a broken arm.

‘Please,’ she forced out, ‘be quick, if you cannot be kind.’

Without replying, Doctor Forthard held Glorian by the shoulders. The apprentice sanctarian pinned her ankles to the bed. The bonesetter exhaled like an archer before they grasped her arm, brown hands big and firm as stirrups. The last thing Glorian heard was her own shriek.

****

When she woke, her flesh was ablaze, a heat so strong it stoppered her throat. Her upper arm was enveloped in plaster and fixed to her side with a leather strap.

Glorian had not often had to endure pain. Thimbles protected her for needlework, bracers when she drew a bow. Pain had been rare headaches, a bruised knee, her courses. All she could do now was escape into sleep.

‘Glorian.’

Her eyes snapped open. ‘Florell?’

Florell Glade had served Queen Sabran since their childhood, and was now her First Lady of the Great Chamber, tall and lovely as a sunflower. Hearing her voice was such a salve that Glorian almost wept.

‘Hush, hush. It’s all right.’ Florell kissed her forehead and smiled at her, but shadows underlined her blue eyes. ‘Doctor Forthard sewed the wound. The Saint is good.’

Glorian wished he could have been good enough to stop her mount unseating her in the first place. She knew better than to express this out loud.

‘May I have a drink?’ she said instead.

Florell brought a cup of ale. ‘I feared you might take fever,’ she said. ‘Not long before your birth, my father put his kneepan out of joint. He never woke when they tried to right it.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Thank you, sweeting. Queen Sabran was generous enough to pay for his entombing.’

‘Has she come to see me?’

‘Her Grace asked me to watch you in her stead. She is in council.’

Though Glorian tightened her jaw and swallowed, fresh tears clouded her eyes. She had hoped her mother would make her excuses to the Virtues Council, just this once.

‘She knows you aren’t in danger,’ Florell said in soft tones, seeing her face. ‘It is urgent business.’

In answer, Glorian could only nod. There was always business more urgent and important than her.

Florell guided her back to the bolsters and stroked her damp hair. Queen Sabran had sometimes done the same, when Glorian was still young enough to lose her teeth. Those memories glinted, bright and distant – coins spent in a well, sunk too deep to pluck back out.

She took a closer look at her arm, sheathed in a cast from shoulder to just below her elbow. Beneath it, her skin itched. ‘How long must I wear this?’

‘Until your arm heals. However long that may be,’ Florell said gently. ‘Doctor Forthard made sure to purge the wound well, and the air is sweeter this far north. You are already mending.’

‘I won’t be able to ride.’

‘No.’ When Glorian sighed, Florell took her by the chin. ‘We must always be careful with you, Glorian. Of all the people in this queendom, you are the most precious.’

Glorian fidgeted. Florell smoothed her hair once more before she went to stoke the fire.

‘Lady Florell,’ Glorian said, ‘where is Julain?’

‘With her mother.’

‘Did they not let her stay with me?’

‘I think she would have been permitted.’ Florell looked at her. ‘She blames herself, Glorian.’

‘That’s silly. It was the palfrey, not Julain.’

‘Lady Julain is mindful of her duty. One day, she will be to you what I am to Her Grace – not just your friend, but your sister in all but blood, your protector. She will always fear for you, as I feared for your mother when she stood before the Malkin Queen.’

Glorian turned her cheek into the pillow. ‘Send her to me in the morning.’ She glanced back at Florell. ‘Will you fetch my poppet, the one Father sent for my birthday?’

‘Of course.’

Florell took it from the chest in the corner and folded it into her hand. Glorian held it close – a tiny figurine of a warrior girl, whittled from bone. She pressed it to her heart and slept.

****

The next day, Doctor Forthard brought her a dish of chopped fruit and insisted she drink a pungent tonic. ‘To cool and fortify you, Highness,’ the physician said. ‘Apple vinegar, garlic, cropleek, other goodness.’

Glorian suspected it was her visitors who would need fortification. At dusk, after prayers, Florell came with a comb and a jug of lavender water.

‘I asked for Julain,’ Glorian said, while Florell coaxed the knots from her hair. ‘Will she not see me?’

‘She must if you command it, Glorian.’

After a moment to consider, Glorian said, ‘I do command it.’

Florell smiled faintly at that. When she had finished combing, she left, and Glorian sat up in bed, wincing at the pain. At least now she smelled of lavender as well as vinegar and garlic.

After a time, the door cracked open. ‘Lady Julain Crest,’ her usher said, and in stepped her friend, garbed in a russet gown with a green bodice. Her dark hair hung in a single plait.

The door shut behind her, leaving them alone. Julain looked at Glorian, at her bound arm.

‘Why did you not come earlier?’ Glorian asked, a little hurt. Julain clasped her hands in front of her and bowed her head. ‘Jules, Óvarr threw me suddenly. What could you have done?’

‘I don’t know,’ Julain said thickly. ‘It scared me that I didn’t know.’ When she looked up again, Glorian saw with surprise that her face was tearstained. ‘You could have died. I thought you would. What if you were in danger again, and I couldn’t save you?’

‘I don’t need anyone to save me. All I ever ask is that you not abandon me.’

Julain sniffed. ‘I swear it.’ She dabbed her face once more, then drew back her shoulders. ‘I swear it, Glorian.’

‘Very well.’

There was a pause before they both broke into relieved giggles, and Julain brushed her cheeks.

‘Talk to me a while, before I fall asleep again.’ Glorian patted the bed. ‘I reek of garlic, so that can be your punishment for blaming yourself for my arm, and not a foolish horse.’

Julain used her stepstool to reach the bed, while Glorian moved a bolster to make room. ‘Goodness, you do smell of garlic.’ Julain wrinkled her nose. ‘And . . . cropleek, I think.’

‘And lavender,’ Glorian insisted. Julain wafted a hand. ‘Oh, you’re right. I can’t drink any more of this before my commendation, lest I knock Mother from her throne with my breath.’

That made Julain stop smiling. ‘Has Her Grace come to see you?’

Glorian looked away. ‘No.’

Julain nestled up to her. It was a wordless and familiar comfort. Glorian clasped the hand she offered, trying to ignore the hollow, gnawing ache of envy. If Julain had taken such a grave fall, her parents would have sat with her all night, just to make her feel better.

Glorian wanted that from her mother. She also feared her coming, for she knew exactly what Sabran would say: that it was time for the larks of her childhood to end.

It was time for Glorian to learn what it meant to be the future Queen of Inys.