Page 32 of Heart of Winter
Tessa wanted to do more research, so Oliver went with her up to the library and pointed out the books that Erik had showed him last night. She accepted them eagerly, and settled down at a table with a quill and parchment, her expression eager and studious.
“I can’t believe it,” Hilda said at Oliver’s elbow. “They really hid the dragons? All this time? It’s unconscionable, is what it is. Just awful.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“I’ll help her,” Hilda said, nodding once, determined. “I’m good with putting things together.” She went to sit opposite Tessa, and the two soon had their heads bent together, talking in low, excited voices.
Werethere still living dragons? Oliver wondered. He struggled to conceive of such a thing. But if there were…if they could be tamed, and taught to cooperate…Tessa wasn’t wrong about the war effort.
If nothing else, marriage or not, coming here had been worth the effort to have learned this. Even if he wasn’t sure how to think about the duchy of his birthplace anymore.
With nothing else to do, a wealth of deeper curiosity, Oliver settled down to do his own research.
When he lifted a stiff neck, and rubbed at eyes going sore from reading, he saw that Tessa had taken a break and stood at one of the windows, looking down into the yard. He joined her and looked down to see that the children were having weapons’ practice down below, red-nosed and trampling in the snow beneath the eye of their white-bearded tutor, and a thickset, stern-faced man who must have been the weapons master. Oliver spotted the redheaded boy, Bo, swinging a wooden practice sword far too big for him; he overcompensated and went face-planting in the snow, much to the amusement of the others, all save his blond friend who helped him back up and dusted snow off his sleeves while Bo gamely tried not to cry from embarrassment.
“Do you know who they are?” Oliver asked her. “All the little ones.”
“Leif says they’re lords – the heirs of lords, at any rate. All from border territories.”
“Erik’s taken them as wards?”
“Not exactly, no. From what Leif says, there’s been skirmishing with the clans on the borders. A keep was fired – it didn’t catch, because it’s stone, like the palace, but they lost a door, and some grain stores. It frightened the lord – that was Bo’s father.” She pointed; little Bo was wiping at his nose, but getting his sword sorted again. “The border heirs have all been sent to the capital. There’s good tutors here, but mostly it’s for their own protection.” She turned to him. “It was King Erik’s idea, apparently. He offered to protect them here where the defenses are strongest.”
“That was – kind of him.”
She smiled a small, pleased smile that he didn’t understand and glanced back through the window. “Yes, I think it was.”
The thunder of running footsteps in the hallway drew their attention around to the door, and a moment later Rune appeared in the threshold, pink-cheeked and out of breath from hurrying. “Lady Tessa! Would you –oof!”
His brother shouldered into him, so both princes were all but wedged in the doorway side-by-side. Leif shot his brother a glare before schooling his features, and in a much calmer tone said, “Good afternoon, Lady Tessa.”
Tessa kept admirably poised. “Good afternoon, your graces.”
“I wondered–” Leif began.
“Do you want to go riding?” Rune interrupted.
Leif sighed.
Oliver turned away to hide his grin, and caught Hilda laughing to herself.
“Ah, to be young,” she murmured.
~*~
The snow gleamed in the sunlight, so bright it hurt her eyes, but Tessa didn’t dare close them, for fear of missing any of the beauty that was an Aeretollean pine forest.
Unlike Hannah back home, Hilda had professed to being quiet the avid horsewoman. “I know I look too old for it” – “No, not at all!” – “but I do love a good gallop every now and then.” Properly cloaked, booted, and hooded, she and Hilda had set off with the princes just after lunch, mounted on tall, big-boned horses with hooves the size of dinner plates. Tessa spotted a few lean, swift coursers in the stable, but Leif said, “They don’t handle the deep snow so well. Great for summer – that one’s my mum’s – but we best take the big ones out today.” He’d then sighed when he saw which horse his brother was saddling.
“Rune. Leave him here.”
“And let you best me in a race?” Rune had grinned, and patted the dappled neck of his own leggy gelding, much lighter in build than their three. “Not a chance.”
They’d started out at a walk, the snow crunching beneath the horses’ hooves, its smooth crust glittering beneath the winter sun.
Rune took the lead, and his horse strode eagerly, seeming to know the way. They cut across a broad, flat field, then found a trickling, mostly-frozen stream, and followed the dark ribbon of it to this enchanting stretch of forest.
The pines grew far taller than those of home, their trunks fatter, branches stouter, and their needles thicker and more plentiful. The boughs drooped beneath the weight of accumulated snow, ice crystals glinting like diamonds on the ends of the needles, so that the shafts of sunlight filtering through the branches blazed on all their many facets. Occasionally, snow slid off a branch and fell with a muffled thump that echoed hollowly off the trunks, the sound threaded with the call and twitter of the birds that flitted between the branches. When the breeze rustled through the needles, they chimed together, ice on ice, with a sound like the soft tinkling of sleigh bells.
