The Quartered Sea Read Free

if on your way to Fort Kazpar, you visited the spot where it happened, it might help you heal."
     
    "I doubt it."
     
    Boots tossed to the hearth, Magda stood, trying to decide if the protest sounded petulant or obstinate. Not that it mattered; queens could ill afford the luxury of either. "Jelena, you have got to move past the moment of your mother's death."
     
    "So you've said." Jelena's left hand jerked up into the space between them, the royal signet inches away from Magda's face. "But how can I when everything I am, I became when she died? Her death made me Queen. How can I get beyond something I have to live with the rest of my life?"
     
    "That's a question only you can answer."
     
    Jelena's hand fell back to her side. "You are no help at all," she muttered, spun on one heel, yanked open the door and stomped off down the hall, her two guards hurriedly falling into step behind.
     
     
     
    "Of course I'm worried about her," Magda snapped, "but keep in mind it's been barely four quarters since her mother died. Her spirit, her kigh, was wounded. That takes time to heal."
     
    Behind the barricade of his desk, the Bardic Captain raised both hands in symbolic surrender. Although he could, as much as any of the bards, Sing the fifth quarter, the kigh carried by every living being, Magda i'Annice a'Pjerin was the first and, so far, the only person in Shkoder who could Heal it. That she was half his age made no difference; in this, he and everyone else in Shkoder—except perhaps her mother—defered to her.
     
    Sighing deeply, Otavas leaned forward in his chair, slender brown fingers clasping and unclasping between his knees. "I hate to see her so unhappy. It's like the Jelena she was and the queen she is are two separate people. I just don't understand how she can feel guilty about something she had nothing to do with."
     
    "The death of her mother made her queen," Magda reminded them, "and in her grief she began to believe that all those times she'd said 'when I am queen, I'll do this, or when I am queen, I'll do that,' she was wishing her mother dead."
     
    Otavas cut her off before she could continue an explanation he'd heard a hundred times. "Maggi, I understand it up here." He tapped his temples with his fingertips then pressed both palms over his heart. "But not here. It wasn't her fault."
     
    "Jelena has the same problem, Tavas." Of an age with the consort and second cousin to the queen, Magda had been more friend than healer until this last, dark year. "She knows in her head it's not her fault, but she can't convince her heart."
     
    "If only she had something to distract her," Kovar mused, one finger stroking the graying length of his mustache.
     
    The consort leaped to his feet. "Don't you start," he snarled at the astonished bard. "I have had it up to here…" His hand chopped the air above his head."… with everyone in this unenclosed country wondering why we haven't had an heir! There's nothing wrong with either of us!"
     
    Kovar opened his mouth and, with no idea of how to respond, closed it again.
     
    "It's not often you see a bard at a loss for words," Magda murmured. When both men turned toward her, she shot them her most professional calm down expression. Kovar was quite honestly confused by the response he'd evoked, but Otavas' kigh was beginning to feel as fragmented as Jelena's and that wasn't good. "Jelena doesn't need a distraction, she needs to find acceptance. And, given the sudden tragedy that put her on the throne, it's only natural the people should worry about an heir—although I realize the speculation hasn't made this year any easier on her." When Otavas continued to glower, she added, smiling, "No one's suggesting you're not doing your part."
     
    "Magda!" Ears burning, Otavas sat down, wondering if the healer had read that fear off his kigh or if it had been out on his face for anyone to see. Honesty forced him to acknowledge, at least in the privacy of his own mind, relief that