Kingfisher Read Free Page A

haven’t taught you yet.”
    He pushed the heavy front door open. The great hall, a shadowy, drafty remnant of a bygone age, held as many cobwebs as there were oddments to hang them on. The full body armor of some long-dead knight stood on one side of the huge fireplace so rarely lit that the pile of logs and driftwood in it probably housed any number of creatures. The knight’s helm, a beaky thing with slits for vision, seemed to stare speculatively at Pierce.
    He asked impulsively, “Was my father a knight?”
    Heloise sank into one of the worn couches scattered around the room. She eyed the cold hearth expressionlessly; Pierce thought that, as ever, she would maneuver around an answer. Her face crumpled abruptly. She tossed a streak of fire at the dry wood with one hand, and with the other, brought the hem of the apron to her eyes. The pile flamed amid explosions of resin, cracklings, and keening that, to Pierce’s ears, might not have entirely been the voices of wood.
    â€œYes,” she snapped. “Yes. And he still is.”
    Pierce’s breath stopped. Everything stopped; his thoughts, his blood, even the fierce, hungry ravages of the fire froze ina moment of absolute silence. He sat down abruptly on the couch beside his mother. He took a breath, another, staring at her, then heard the fire again, and his own breathing, as ragged as though he had been running.
    â€œHe’s alive?” He felt the blood push into his face, the sting of what might have been brine behind his eyes; he seemed, weirdly enough, on the verge of crying for the man who had not died. “What—where?”
    Her full lips pinched; her own face had flushed brightly, furiously. If he had touched her cheek, she might have burned him. Her lips parted finally, gave him the word, a hard, dry nugget of sound.
    â€œSeverluna.” He didn’t move, just let his eyes draw at her, asking, asking, until she finally spoke again. “He has been, since before he was your age, a knight in King Arden’s court. We met there—”
    â€œYou—”
    She held up a hand; he waited. More words fell: flint; fossils; hard, cold diamonds. “We met and married there.” His throat closed; he swallowed what felt like fire. “I had a child. A son.”
    His mouth opened; no words came. He felt the wave break again behind his eyes, the ache of salt and blood.
    â€œThe year your father took my small son to King Arden’s court to be trained and educated was the year I knew, beyond all doubt, that he had never loved me. He loved the queen. Only her. Always her. Before, during, and even now.
    â€œSo I ran.” Her own eyes glittered. Pierce watched one tear fall, saw her catch it in her palm, her fingers close over it, so rare it was, so powerful. “I took you with me. I didn’t—I didn’t know that then. I came here, to the place we chose, during the first year of our marriage, to be alone together. I thought we were alone. I had not realized then that he had brought her with us; even then he carried her everywhere in his heart.” His lips parted to ask; she opened her empty hand to stop him. “No one lived here; it was his inheritance. He came looking for me. Once. To ask me back to Severluna. I told him no. Never again.
    â€œBy then I knew about you. I didn’t tell him. I kept you here, after you were born, so far from king and court that you would know nothing of your father’s life. Down there, no one gives a thought to the distant, isolated margins of the world. I wanted to raise you so far from Severluna that anything you heard or read about it would seem as unreal as a fairy tale.”
    Pierce, motionless, staring at her, felt the world change shape under his feet. No longer bounded by the sea, by the little, ancient town, the dark, endless forest, the narrow road that circled the cape, it expanded to immeasurable lengths, grew complex, noisy,