Dracaena Morgan Leffoy (dracaena) wrote in lightning_war, @ 2008-09-15 16:31:00 |
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Current mood: | worried |
Early Tuesday afternoon, 15 September 1942, at Malfoy Manor in Tintagel...
Keresek p’Steren walked past the guard at the door of Dracaena’s study with a thin twist of his lip that almost resembled a human smile, waved to Melina Zabini, and sat down in the chair at the side of Dracaena’s desk, watching her write. After about five minutes of this, Dracaena set down her quill. “Yes?” She knew this meant she had lost the round, but she didn’t care. She didn’t have time for the game.
Keresek glanced sideways in the direction of the sewing room, his eyes dark, and then looked back at her. “My sister was in there. Earlier, when they were all playing with dresses.”
Dracaena considered this. “It bothers you that Moruith is making friends with Liane and Bella and Charis?” Moruith had been a child when Steren and Keresek had first come out of the woods with her, but she was almost an adult now. She had her own personality, her own way of thinking. She was very different from her mother and brother; she was sparkling, and bright, and she smiled, which was something that Steren and Keresek did not do unless they were contemplating violence. Dracaena had never asked who her father was, and she doubted that Steren would have answered that question. But he had to have been from another court, with different ways.
Keresek shook his head. “Not friends,” he said with a shrug.
Dracaena frowned. Bella was not interested in other girls as lovers, and Liane did not seem likely to be inclined that way, either. “Your sister and Charis?”
Keresek laughed out loud, then shook his head. “Not friends, nor lovers either. Moruith sees the crown on the little queen’s head and may leave us.”
Dracaena leaned back in her chair. This made no sense whatsoever. “Liane isn’t going anywhere. Except possibly off to school, and I can’t think your sister would like to go there.”
“Then Mother did not tell you,” Keresek said, scowling. “She is a little queen. There was no queen in Brocéliande when she was a child. I think the Black woman must have done something to rid herself of them all, and so the little princess grew a crown. But something is wrong in Brocéliande. No-one has been able to take it for years now; but for nearly a year, no-one has even been able to go there.”
Dracaena frowned. “I know this,” she said, “and you know that I do not know why.” The gates in Brocéliande, the leys and paths that led through the forest: none of them functioned. The forest was cut off from the rest of the world, in stasis; she could not imagine what it was like inside. Hopefully it only meant that everything which lived there just went on, as if the rest of all the worlds did not exist; but that could only go on so long before the land was poisoned. She did not know what to think about it, because it had stopped the Axis’ allies in Faerie from coming through it and into the Bois des Malfées, which had once been a part of Brocéliande. And yet she knew that something terrible had happened there.
“Nor do I,” said Keresek, shaking his head. “But I do know that you have another queen in your house, and that cannot last.”
Dracaena frowned. “You know, Keresek, that we are not actually bees.”
“I know,” said Keresek, “but we are also not like the iron-folk.” He shrugged. “She will divide your house. She is your kin and you must not harm her; but she cannot live here for long.”
“I don’t think so,” Dracaena said in a peevish voice. “She’s seventeen and has no idea what she is.” She did not have time to deal with this, nor even with the question of Brocéliande. She had too many other, more immediate problems. “What do you think she will do, grow wings and fly? No-one has done that, this side of the mists, for hundreds of years. Except me.”
“She will not learn her nature from you,” said Keresek. “She has never had a mother. She has not yet grown wings, and she has already lost her true-love; she will be bitter and cold like the harshest of winters.”
Dracaena was now scowling. “There is nothing cold about that girl,” she said, her chin set. “Domitian has hurt her, hasn’t he? And do you really think she will grow wings?”
Keresek shrugged. “Her voice is stronger than her father’s will. She has been hurt, but I think he must have set others upon her. I knew that she was a queen when I smelled her. Doesn’t her scent make you irritable?”
Dracaena winced. “Yes,” she admitted. “And she bothers Charis, a little.”
“And yet, Charis follows her. And Charis follows you. How long can she follow you both?” Keresek shook his head. “This little queen, she has been raised with iron. She dances on spikes of steel. She is more familiar than you are; she is a comfort to those in your court who remember and love not only the world of iron, but the world of the head-blind. The longer she stays here, the more of your people will follow her when she leaves.”
Dracaena shrugged. “I don’t demand that anyone stay. If your sister wants to go with her, then let her go; she can always come home.”
“You should give this little queen a rath of her own,” said Keresek. “That way you can keep her allegiance for yours. You will be High Queen. It is not worth arguing. Even the Great Raven sends feathers to you. So she may be one of your queens, a buckle on your garter.”
Dracaena considered this. “She is seventeen years old and has no mate. Domitian will try to be her prince. And the only land I have to give, if she cannot take Brocéliande, is in Avebury. Which is rather far from my tutelage.”
Keresek nodded. “The stones there are reckoning stones, and she is a reckoner,” he said. “Perhaps she can hold that land. We know that it rejects you.”
Dracaena winced and covered her face with her hands. “A winter queen. At Stonehenge. For the love of God and the land, Keresek, no. It is simply not to be thought of.”
“It will be cold,” said Keresek, “and food will be scarce there. But she will be harsh when she needs to be. Which has been a hard lesson, for you.”
Dracaena sighed heavily and looked at all the old documents she’d dug up from the family archives—records Justine and Abaddon Malfoy had kept of their disagreements and troubles with Erasmus and Alvederus Weasley. “That land is at the heart of the curses we’re trying to break. I’ve been looking at all the old documents, talking to the ancestors…it is almost certain that Lucius will have to hold it and take it, and perhaps with his little red-headed friend.”
“Then let your heir be her prince,” said Keresek. “You have the healer-prince. He is prince enough for you; you know well how to rule. The little queen does not know how to rule, and your heir was a true prince yesterday; no-one can doubt it.”
Dracaena groaned. “Keresek, he is too young!” she protested.
Keresek rolled his eyes at her. “He thinks so, yes, because you tell him so, you and your lover and all of your friends. But he does what he has to do. Which is more than the man you once called your father does.”
Dracaena’s stomach hurt. It had been hard enough to send Lucius to Hogwarts, where he would be able to go to lessons and play with other children. Sending him to Avebury to be a king was beyond all bearing, especially after last night. “So you don’t have a problem with this. Marry him off to his friend, send him off with Liane, whom you tell me is heart-rent and wintry, and don’t even think about that? I cannot.”
“Then you should have eaten Marcus Weasley’s heart, as my mother said.” Keresek shrugged. “That would have put an end to all this.”
“A catastrophic end,” Dracaena muttered; she was not going to have that argument again. “At any rate, Liane is not a winter queen. I refuse to believe it,” she said, flushing as she realised that in so saying, she had acknowledged Liane was a queen. “She is too bright for that. She shines and sparkles like springtime. She is almost a maiden. There is darkness inside her, and she has been hurt, but she is not made of the darkness.”
“Almost?” Keresek raised his brow. “You are not taken in by the lie that a maiden must never have known man?”
Dracaena snorted. “No,” she said. “But a maiden’s heart is wholly her own and I do not think that is true of Liane. She despairs of whoever it is that she’s lost. But she hasn’t gone cold. She doesn’t sting. Some part of her knows that whoever has told her he’s gone is a liar, and she doesn’t believe it entirely.”
“Perhaps she stung the Germans who tried to use her,” said Keresek pragmatically.
Dracaena scowled at him. “Then she would not be here. She would be in Brocéliande. And the Occupation would rot from within. And if they had thought it worked, they would not have tried to take Urielle.” She shrugged. “No. I don’t believe she was raped in a grove. She is not so dark as all that. She is dark as much from a thing she has done as from what was done to her. She has lived ten years in the past eight seasons.”
“True.” Keresek shrugged. “I still want to kill her father.”
“Don’t we all,” Dracaena said mildly. “I think Alessio should have the first right, if it comes to that, if we have to turn him out and name him outlaw.”
“The falcon?” Keresek laughed. “You amuse me, Lady. Though I know the falcon will strike, at his master’s command or in his defence.” He tossed his hair back. “I care more for the little queen than I do for the falcon, though you must not worry; whatever my sister does, here I remain. I only wonder: if the little queen’s lover is dead, who killed him?”
Dracaena winced. “This is all beginning to sound like a gothic novel.” She shook her head. “I half expect to see Heathcliff come up to the door now and ask for her.”
Keresek stared at her. “Who?”
“Never mind,” said Dracaena, laughing at herself. Of course Keresek hadn’t read Emily Brontë. “A wholly disturbing book.” She got up and began to pace. “I will ask her who her lover is, or was; but if she is a queen, she may lie, and I will not know it. I’ll talk to her, but I can’t think about any more of this right now.”
“As you will,” said Keresek. “If you wish to consult my mother, she would know more about this than I do; but she has not yet spent much time with the girl.”
Dracaena frowned. “She ought to examine her, but Liane may take it as some kind of insult.”
“Well, perhaps you should not have her maidenhead checked.” Keresek chuckled, a soft, malicious sound.
Dracaena frowned, her mind going back to the first news from Brocéliande, and to Liane’s story; she had come to Britannia almost a year ago. A little bit after Brocéliande had caved in on itself, instead of falling, as she had expected it to. “Keresek,” she said. “That girl is the reason they can’t take Brocéliande. She’s done something. I don’t know what, but she has to have had something to do with what happened there.”
Keresek blanched. “I hope you are wrong,” he said after a very long moment.
“I don’t think I am,” said Dracaena. “I wish I knew how to talk to her. She told me just a little while ago that her father is dead to her, and that she will not receive him again, that he had lied to her for the very last time; but she would not explain. And I cannot make her.”
myr_avallenau (Keresek p’Steren) and dracaena