Mother of All Page 3

  Many years ago, after the birth of her first daughter, Leethan had triggered a vision that changed the course of her life—a vision she’d spent decades trying ever more desperately to prevent from coming true.

  Most people scoffed at the idea that there were women who could see the future in visions. The Devotional made only an oblique reference to women who could receive visions sent by the Mother, and conventional wisdom held that such a thing was not literally possible. But the women in Leethan’s family had been discreet worshippers of the Mother of All—the “heretical” religion that said the Mother was the first deity and gave birth to the Creator—and had taught Leethan that the Mother of All sent visions of futures the recipient was capable of affecting. Which meant Leethan should have been able to prevent her vision—one of Waldmir’s youngest and least-favored nephews, Granzin, sitting on the throne of Nandel—from coming true.

  Only in dire circumstances would someone so far down the line of succession take the throne. It would mean Waldmir had no sons to succeed him. But it also meant all his brothers and most if not all of his older nephews were dead, which Leethan surmised had to be the result of a war over the succession. She’d thought it clear that the Mother of All had been telling her it was her duty not to let Waldmir die without a son, and she’d done everything she could think of to fulfill her mission.

  Leethan gave Waldmir as deep a curtsy as her arthritic knees would allow—she was younger than her ex-husband, but only by a handful of years—and hoped he could not read the distress in her eyes.

  “You look well,” he said when she rose from her curtsy.

  “I am,” she affirmed, relieved that he didn’t seem to see anything amiss. “You, on the other hand…”

  The young abigail who’d shown him in was halfway out the door and hunched her shoulders ever so slightly as she slid out into the hall. There was likely no one else in Nandel who would even think to address Sovereign Prince Waldmir in such an informal—some might say insolent—manner. But then Leethan was quite possibly the only person Waldmir had ever truly loved, and she could get away with a great deal. After all, what worse could he do after having divorced her and shut her up in this abbey?

  The corner of his mouth twitched, and she wasn’t entirely sure whether it was a smile or a frown he was suppressing. He nodded approvingly at the merry fire and removed the fur cloak from his shoulders, laying it carefully on the nearest chair.

  “I know the Abbey is isolated,” he said in the rumbling bass voice she’d always admired, “but you have surely heard tell of my recent misadventures.”

  The Abbey was not so isolated as all that, situated within sight of the walls of The Keep, Nandel’s capital city. After all, what good was a whorehouse if it was not easily accessible to its customers?

  “Yes,” she said, allowing just a touch of acid into her voice. “I heard about the death of your latest intended. You have my condolences, Your Royal Highness.”

  Waldmir’s eyes closed in apparent pain, which surprised her. Thanks to his continued visits to the Abbey, she was well aware that he had formed no intimate connection with any of his wives after herself—having gone so far as to have one of them beheaded—and yet it looked for all the world like he grieved the death of Jinnell Rah-Sylnin.

  With a heavy sigh, Waldmir opened his eyes and met her gaze squarely. “Will I ever have a son?” he asked.

  Leethan’s voice jammed in her throat, and she went still as stone. Each time she’d gotten pregnant, she’d prayed to the Mother of All that the child would be a boy, so that she could lay the specter of that vision to rest. And when she had borne daughter after daughter, she’d chosen to turn a blind eye any time Waldmir strayed from the marriage bed. An illegitimate heir was better than no heir at all. But as far as she knew, he had sired neither sons nor daughters outside of the bonds of matrimony.

  On the terrible day when she nearly died in childbirth with their stillborn son, she had sunk into a despair so deep she had even considered taking her own life. None of her pregnancies had been easy, and the midwife had told her as gently as possible that she could not survive another one.

  “Yes, I know you’re a seer,” Waldmir now said, misinterpreting the shock on her face. “I’ve known that for…quite some time.”

  She chewed on her lip as she considered what to say. The only person in Nandel she had ever told about her visions was Sister Jaizal, who had been her friend now for decades.

  It was Sister Jaizal who—once Leethan confided in her—sat by her side and tended to her when she downed seer’s poisons to trigger visions. Leethan could not believe Jaizal would ever have betrayed her confidence—even had she been inclined to do so, what contact would the old abigail have had with Prince Waldmir?—but she could not imagine how else he would know.

  Waldmir sighed heavily and leaned against the chair on which he’d lain his cloak. “If there’s one thing recent events have proven to me beyond all doubt, it’s that to ignore women’s magic is the height of folly. I have had enough of that folly, and I will not risk the health and happiness of another young woman if it is all to be in vain. So I ask again: will I ever have a son?”

  Leethan’s first instinct was to deny being a seer. Surely he could not really know the truth. He must only be guessing. Her grandmothers had told her that women with seer’s blood in them had extraordinarily strong intuition, even if they never tried a seer’s poison. That sometimes it was possible to guess at a woman’s talent based on these preternaturally strong instincts. Perhaps Waldmir had heard that same story and that was why he suddenly thought her a seer.

  The lie sat on the tip of her tongue, but somehow she could not force herself to give it voice, instead standing mute and indecisive before him. Even after the divorce, she’d still labored to prevent her vision from coming true. After she’d recovered from the first despair, she had redoubled her efforts to help him sire a son on another woman. When he visited her at the Abbey, she convinced him as often as possible to take one of the other abigails to his bed, hoping against hope that the woman would conceive. Because if Waldmir didn’t have a son, then it would mean Leethan had failed to do the Mother of All’s bidding.

  The Mother of All did not give visions unless it was within the seer’s power to affect the events, and if Waldmir died without an heir, then it was without question Leethan’s fault. She could not put her finger on what exactly she could have done differently; however, she was sure that there must have been some piece of sage advice or some obvious precaution that she must have ignored during that final, fateful pregnancy. If she couldn’t find a way to help Waldmir sire an heir, then the only way Leethan could have fulfilled the Mother’s wishes was not to miscarry that baby. And that meant there must have been some way to prevent it.

  “Please, Leethan,” Waldmir urged more softly, his head bowed and his eyes lowered. He looked as vulnerable as she could ever remember seeing him. He was not a man who allowed others to see his vulnerabilities. Ever. And yet when he was around her, some of the walls that sealed off his heart weakened. “If there’s still a chance I might have a son, then I must marry again as soon as possible for the good of Nandel. But I don’t…”

  His voice trailed off, and he rubbed his eyes, shaking his head.

  “I don’t want another loveless marriage. Please don’t make me do it again if I don’t have to.”

  Leethan had thought she’d hardened her heart to her ex-husband many years ago, and yet even so she felt a tug of sympathy. He had never been lighthearted or carefree, even in the earliest, happiest days of their marriage, but it was impossible to miss how the burdens of being sovereign prince—of always putting the needs of Nandel above his own—had chiseled away at all that was warm and happy within him. He had assured her many times—and she believed him—that if she could have borne him a son, they would still now be married.

  She imagined he h
ad felt some disappointment when she’d borne daughters instead of sons, though he had kept that disappointment hidden from her. But the birth of their stillborn son had been nearly as soul-destroying for him as it had been for her.

  She was still lying abed, recovering from the birth that had almost killed her, when her husband, weeping openly for the only time in her knowledge, gave her the news that she was Abbey-bound. Even knowing the blow was coming had not fully resigned her to her fate, and she remembered begging shamefully for him not to send her away.

  In fact, her pleas had moved him to the point that he offered to abdicate his throne to stay with her. He could not stay on the throne while married to a woman who could never provide him the male heir he needed, and he’d been willing to give it all up for her. She certainly had not wanted the divorce, but she’d known Waldmir’s abdication would have been easily as problematic as his death without an heir. His brothers were dead by then, but he had way too many nephews, many of whom already hungrily eyed the throne. And thanks to her vision, she knew that if Waldmir did not have a son, almost all of those nephews and their sons would have to die for Granzin to end up on the throne.

  Leethan did not want to be consigned to the Abbey, but she did not want Nandel to devolve into civil war, either, so she had refused his offer. But with each successive wife who failed to bear him an heir, Waldmir had grown more unhappy and more bitter.

  “If you refuse to remarry,” she reminded him gently, “then one or more of your nephews will likely seek to topple you from the throne. There will be war in Nandel.”

  He winced in what looked like pain. “If I’m never going to have a son, all I am doing is delaying the inevitable. I will die without an heir, and my nephews will tear Nandel apart in their eagerness to succeed me. So if I will have no son, there is no point in making some other woman miserable.”

  “Then perhaps you should try marrying a woman who actually wants to marry you,” she responded, a little more sharply than she intended.

  He snorted and shook that argument off. “I have already decided that I will not marry a woman against her will ever again.” His eyes met hers with that familiar intensity. “I told you once that I will never love again, and nothing that has occurred since has changed my mind. I don’t want another wife, and that makes it unlikely any future bride would be satisfied with me. So I ask you yet again: will I have a son?”

  Leethan frantically racked her brain, desperately hoping the right answer would miraculously occur to her. Silently, urgently, she prayed for the Mother of All to tell her what to say, but there was no answer.

  This time, she was on her own.

  “I can’t say that I know for sure,” she hedged, staring at the floor to avoid seeing the look in his eyes. It was still theoretically possible that he could sire an heir, but between the vision, and common sense, and gut instincts, she felt certain he would not. “But based on what I have foreseen…” Scraping up her courage, she raised her head once more. “If you were going to have a son, you would have had one by now.”

  The look of anguish that appeared on Waldmir’s face sent a stab of guilt through her heart. It was because of her failure that he’d married three other women, to each of their misfortunes, and because of her failure that Nandel was bound for a war of succession that would tear it apart.

  Waldmir closed his eyes, and his hands clenched at his sides. “Then it has all been for nothing,” he whispered hoarsely, and there was such grief and bitterness in his voice that Leethan flinched. “Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve sacrificed…”

  “Maybe I’m wrong,” Leethan said, willing to say just about anything to ease his pain.

  “We both know you’re not wrong. I have failed my people and my principality and dishonored my father’s memory.”

  Leethan reached out a hand, wishing she could offer some comfort—and praying he would not ask her to tell him precisely what she’d seen. The look on his face was bleak enough already without seeing the evidence of how brutal the war that followed his death was destined to be. He would most definitely not want to know that it would be Granzin, of all people, who succeeded him. The only worse future she could paint would be Granzin’s older brother—and Waldmir’s least-favorite relative—Zarsha ascending the throne.

  “Don’t,” he snapped, jerking out of her reach. His eyes flashed with fire and something that hinted at near panic. “Don’t you dare pity me.”

  “I don’t,” she said, knowing full well that he would not understand the difference between pity and empathy. “But you’re not the only one who failed. If only I hadn’t lost our son—” Her voice suddenly hiccuped to a halt. All these years later, the loss still hurt, and the pain had nothing to do with the disappointment of failure.

  Some of the wildness faded from his eyes, and he let out a huge sigh. “I suppose the truth is it’s neither your fault nor mine. We both tried our hardest. Thank you for sparing me from another marriage.” He met her eyes briefly, then looked quickly away.

  “I…may not be back for a while. There’s just…no point.”

  Leethan tried not to flinch at that, then scolded herself. Surely she was long past pining for Waldmir’s love. His visits had always been for practical purposes, not sentimentality. At least if he didn’t visit the Abbey any more, she could comfort herself with the knowledge that he was not lying with other women.

  “I will miss you,” she could not help saying.

  He took her hands and squeezed. “I will not abandon you,” he promised. “I just need a little time to…come to terms with my fate.”

  Leethan gave him a tremulous smile and refrained from any further comment. But she couldn’t help feeling somewhere deep down in her gut that he would not visit the Abbey again. And she hated the way her treacherous heart sank at the idea.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Corlin Rah-Sylnin had never felt less like the Crown Prince of Women’s Well than he did right now, lying in a mud puddle with the blunted point of a sword pressing into his windpipe. His own sword had gone flying with his last, graceless attempt to parry, and his opponent had further immobilized him by stepping on his wrist. The pressure was just shy of snapping the bone, and it was sure to leave some impressive bruising and swelling in its wake.

  Cadet Justal’s eyes were alight with triumph, although Corlin couldn’t see what made the older, larger cadet so proud of himself—it had been clear from the moment they’d been ordered to spar that Corlin was meant to lose and be humbled. If anything, Justal should be embarrassed that Corlin had lasted as long as he had.

  Captain Norlix let the hulking third-year cadet enjoy his victory pose for far longer than necessary, and Corlin ground his teeth to keep any protest from escaping. During his time as a cadet in the Citadel of Women’s Well, he had escaped the traditional hazing that ordinarily befell first-years because of his status as crown prince. Such was clearly not going to be the case in Aaltah. It did not come as a surprise, but that didn’t make it any less unpleasant. What did come as a surprise was that instead of merely tolerating the hazing, Captain Norlix was openly encouraging it by forcing Corlin to fight a cadet two years older and substantially larger than he. If his instructor had it in for him already, Corlin wondered if he could survive his training.

  Eventually, Norlix called off his dog and Corlin was allowed to rise, dripping, from the mud. Several of the cadets who’d been watching the match snickered and whispered to one another, and Corlin stifled a groan. He had, of course, landed on his backside, and he could only imagine what he looked like with mud coating the seat of his trousers.

  Not so long ago, the laughter of his fellow cadets would have sparked his temper, and he would have said or done something that would have led to yet another painful and humiliating thrashing. Even now, his temper stirred, but all he had to do to quell it was remember the last time he’d given it free rein.


  He remembered Cadet Smithson’s cry of pain and surprise, remembered the bright splash of blood, remembered how the boy’s face had gone ashen as his knees weakened and he fell to the barracks floor. All because Smithson had dared to try to calm him when Corlin was hacking up his bed in frustration at the news that his hated uncle Delnamal had died without being punished as he deserved. That Smithson had survived and fully recovered from the injury did nothing to assuage the guilt that Corlin suspected he would carry till the end of his days.

  With what dignity he could scrape up, Corlin retrieved his sword from the far side of the sparring circle where it had landed, wondering if Norlix was going to punish him for losing by making him go another round. He was relieved to be commanded back to his place while Justal remained in the center, for though he didn’t shy away from a fight, he was not especially eager to be trounced again.

  Corlin’s relief quickly gave way to a creeping discomfort when Norlix ordered Cadet Rafetyn into the ring against Justal. Like Corlin, Rafetyn was a fourteen-year-old first-year cadet. However, the poor kid had yet to hit any kind of adolescent growth spurt. Standing at his tallest, the top of Rafetyn’s head barely reached Justal’s shoulder, and his chest was approximately the width of one of Justal’s thighs.

  Justal had no business sparring with first-years to start with—and of all the first-years, Rafetyn was by far the most overmatched. What was Captain Norlix thinking? Corlin looked on in horror as Rafetyn grimly entered the circle and took up a ready position without a hint of protest—although, with his build, he looked far more suited to a life of quiet scholarship than to life in the military.