Page 60 of Heart of Winter
“A little.” He twisted around to look toward the buffet table. “Did I see griddle cakes over there?”
“With jam.” Rune bounced lightly to his feet. “I’ll get you some.”
“Oh, you don’t–”
“Be right back.”
Oliver watched him go, shaking his head. “In the last week, I’ve had a king bathe me – twice – a princess sit watch over me, and a prince go to fetch me breakfast.”
Tessa giggled. “So much for the Barbarians of the North, hm?”
“Indeed.”
There were indeed flapjacks, with strawberry and fig jam. Rune brought them both plates heaped with far too many cakes slathered in jam, and with piles of bacon and hash on the side. With the food in front of him, Oliver found his stomach growling, and his appetite returning, and he dug in with grateful thanks for the hand-delivery.
Oliver ducked his head over his plate, but stole glances toward Tessa and Rune, noting the way they couldn’t seem to look away from each other. Tessa all but ignored her food in favor of laughing and exclaiming in all the right places of Rune’s complicated story about a reindeer sleigh race gone wrong last winter.
“What’s that?” Tessa asked, breaking off mid-sentence.
Oliver lifted his head in time to see that, as the breakfast-goers drifted off elsewhere in the palace, and kitchen staff came to clear the plates and wipe the tables, a group of burly young men were carrying in great armfuls of greenery. Pine boughs, Oliver realized.
“They’re decorating,” Rune said, launching from one excited tone to another. “The solstice is next week. By that time, this whole hall will look like a forest, and on the night of the feast, they’ll bring in the great yule tree and everyone in the palace will help to trim it.”
“Oh!” Tessa exclaimed, cheeks pink with delight. “A real Northern Yuletide celebration!” She grabbed at Oliver’s arm. “Remember how lifeless they are at home?”
“Vividly.” In the South, belief in the gods had become a sort of…obligation. More often than not, they were invoked in curses and pleas, but rarely in prayers. The Yule Feast in Drakewell was a ball: an excuse for nobles of all sorts to dress in finery and frippery and spill out of carriages into cresset-lit ballrooms where they drank, and danced, and plotted, and ridiculed one another. There were a few sprigs of holly, and some pine boughs, yes, but nothing greater to differentiate it from all the other balls that took place. They were occasions to strut, and show off, and gossip, but not places to come together, and celebrate the solstice, and feel closer to the heavenly halls of their creators.
Oliver hated those bloody balls, and, to his surprise, found himself looking forward to a Northern Yuletide. He could only think, based on experience so far, that this Northern tradition would be another that left him quietly in awe of their new Aeretollean friends.
Friends? That word again. It felt mostly true, by this point.
~*~
Leif arrived, just as they finished breakfast, and Tessa accepted an invitation to go hawking with him. “Just beyond the gate,” Leif assured Oliver, after expressing his own gladness to see him up and feeling better. “We’ll be within shouting distance of the guards, I promise.”
Oliver nodded in silent thanks to this bit of caution. “Happy hunting.”
For his own part, he fixed a second, stronger cup of tea and made his slow, careful way back up the stairs with a mind on conducting more research – who knew what other secrets of his homeland he might discover in this foreign library? – and ran into Olaf on the landing.
“Ah, just the patient I was coming to see.” He gripped Oliver’s arm with one gnarled, surprisingly strong hand, and steered him the opposite way from the library, toward a part of the palace he’d never visited before.
“Oh, I was just going to–”
“That can wait,” Olaf said, sagely, marching him along. “First: an examination.”
“Fine.”
“Yes, it will be.”
Oliver bit back his sigh, and tried not to lean on the old man as much as he had on his cousin.
The hall ended in a wall set with a wide, arched, leaded window that overlooked the bailey, front gate, and the snowy road beyond that led down to the rest of Aeres, a series of cheerful dark smudges against the half-moon gleam of the harbor, trails of chimney smoke puffing up into the blue sky. Olaf steered him to the left, past tapestries stitched with great battles and hunt scenes. One, wildly impressive, showed a lioness and a wolf battling a reindeer with massive antlers, blood stitched with crimson thread.
“It represents the struggle within each Aeretollean king,” Olaf explained without slowing. “The battle between the Southern and Northern blood in each of them, ever since King Rolf the First was born of an Aquitainian mother and an Úlfheðnar father. The reindeer has always been the sigil of the Aretollean king, the beast of burden caught between two predators who would slaughter each other, or him, willingly.”
“The story’s a bit different in the South,” Oliver mused.
“Hm. No doubt. Here we are.” He led him through a heavy oak door and into a wide turret room with a soaring timber ceiling – from which dangled metal cages full of birds: doves that cooed, and ravens that cackled, and something that shrieked in a high, shrill, almost human voice. “You’ll have to excuse them. They always get excited for company. Sit there, please.” He directed Oliver to a low stool beside a work bench loaded down with bottles, and vials, and flasks of all sorts, the glass gleaming in the sunlight from a half-dozen windows, some of the contents jewel-colored liquids, other questionable, murky solids.
