Leda

Chapter Four: I Will, I Am, I Do

It had been two years since Leda last crossed the plateau. How she missed it: the way you could see down to Brennac on one side, the occasional fishing boat bobbing upon its waters. Lapwings sang high above, riding currents of air, while blasts of wind rippled through the heather and gorse. On a clear day, you could even see Dal Reniac steepling out of the moorland. But not today: the clouds were too low.

She thought of her city, of its winding, stone clad streets, its people bustling along them with their heads down as they hurried home or to the market place. And at its highest point lay her new home ˗ the fortress. She had never felt quite as comfortable there as at Hannac. The keep was draughty and high, and a maze of chambers, passages and halls lay within. But she had always known that one day it would be her home. And she had done her best to make it feel like one: augmenting her father's old library with her own books, draping bare walls with tapestries and paintings, offering patronage to philosophers, theologians, writers and artists. At least, in this way, she could keep abreast of happenings in the world beyond Dal Reniac's walls.

But life was never simple there, never easy. There were always disputes to be settled, petitions to be answered, decisions to be made. And there were even those men and women, those merchants and city guardians who resented her presence and held Edæc in contempt. They saw him as an upstart, a crofter. She knew exactly what they thought. Why should they, the fathers of the city, submit to the rule of a mere peasant?

She put such thoughts from her mind. At least here at Hannac she felt like a child again. So many times she had run across this same moor with Edæc, had flown kites on its edge or learned to hunt along its heights. She missed it so much that the lacking of it was an ache. And it was an ache for which there was no cure. She was no longer Leda with her wild tangle of curls who could charm cakes off Elis or a laugh out of Hal. Now she was Lady Leda Nérac, heir to Dal Reniac, one of the most powerful nobles in the empire. And childhood was already a distant memory, sealed in the resin of innocence and freedom, lost to time and circumstance.

Then again she was not, it seemed, the only one to have cut ties with the past. Hal strode ahead leading Pæga's tenants back home, her hair long and knotted, tumbling to her shoulders. Something must have happened over the last few weeks and months, something that had stolen Hal's verve, her wit and energy. Leda turned to look at her mother who walked beside her, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her great coat, the hem of her dress heavy with clay and sprigs of heather.

"What's wrong with her?" Leda asked Meracad in a half whisper, nodding at Hal's departing back.

Her mother also appeared quieter these days, more watchful and withdrawn.

"I don't know," Meracad said, contemplating Hal for a few moments. "She's been like this since the harvest ˗ or rather its failure. So...careworn. So ill at heart. She rarely laughs except in bitterness, she won't...won't talk to me."

Meracad's eyes grew hard and bright, and Leda knew she was holding back tears. She slipped an arm around her mother's slender waist, pulling her close. "Perhaps she feels...guilt?"

"Why would she feel that?" Meracad asked, resting her head against Leda's shoulder.

"Well, probably she feels responsible for her people. That she squandered last year's supplies of grain and food."

"She was always generous to a fault." Meracad managed a quiet laugh. "But it's not that. She seems to have lost faith in herself."

"And will she recover that?" Leda suppressed a pang of unease.

"I don't know." Meracad's expression was unreadable. "I really don't know."

***

Hal stopped at the entrance to the great hall of Pæga; the troupe of tenants crowding in around her to peer at their dead master. He lay, stretched across a trestle in the very centre of the room, taking up as much space in death as he had done in life. His huge, distended belly sagged and his arms and legs were splayed as if he had merely passed out in a drunken stupor.