AN: Subtitle: A Sinter Binds With Fire, since Jade wouldn't let me keep that as the original title. This fic idea was born October 12, 2014, after an anon on Tumblr messaged me a bunch of AU ideas. It's been an idle daydream ever since, something I tossed over and over as I fell asleep, but I knew I couldn't execute it the way I wanted back then and for many years I couldn't figure out how to resolve certain missing pieces. In 2020 I finally sat down and outlined it, which is usually the moment I "start" a fic in my head, but that outline still sat untouched until this year, when reading a half-dozen McKillip novels over Christmas break sparked that itch to get words on the page again. By that point I had enough hammered out in my head that the writing part came blessedly smoothly, and the majority of this piece was written in the first two weeks of January.
On that note, let me take a moment to again extol the extraordinary editing talents of jadesabre301. Her ability to take something nice and make it right is peerless, and I remain honored and grateful that she's been willing to share that gift with me for so many years. She unerringly pinpoints the weak places I've tried to hide every single time I give her a long work, and every single time she patiently shows me how to build them up until they're strong instead, and in fact something I can be proud of after all. Anything remotely resembling plot in this piece only exists because she forced my hand to it, for which I am unceasingly thankful.
As always, this fic is completely written as of this posting. I expect it to land around twenty-four total chapters, with likely four to five of those being epilogues and a missing scene as I decide how and where to post them. I intend to update Fridays as work allows and as I make final edits, but the bulk of the work is done and I can certainly promise it will be posted in its entirety.
For once I have no particular warnings aside from traditional Danarius-related implications and the fact that I have entirely ignored any suggestion of canon geography. This piece is more than anything else an ode to Patricia McKillip, who passed away last year, and whose prose quite literally shaped how I love stories.
I very much hope you enjoy!
Let Poesy from sleep awake,
And touch her strings and rouse her lyre,
And roll celestial balls of fire,
Till all shall act for Duty's sake.
—The Call to Duty, George Reginald Margetson
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part one
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Fenris shaded his eyes, observed that the road to the base of the mountain had not appreciably shortened in the last fifteen minutes, and resolutely did not clench his jaw. He also did not bother to wipe the sweat from his eyes or hurry his horse onwards, taught by the last several hours of the futility of both. Had he been alone, without this great useless carriage and the retinue of nearly as useless guards—but had he been alone, he wouldn't have been here in the first place.
"I think just over an hour, perhaps," said the lady Merrill, standing in the stirrups of her little pony as if the height might help. She was a slight, slender woman in high brown boots and a green kirtle, prone to irritating prattle, but her eyes were clear and sharp, and Fenris trusted her instincts. At least here, he amended, on the road and in arms' length and when it came to distance traveled, where he could see her movements clearly and there were no magic mirrors for her to curse or accidentally set upon cursing others. "But it will still be slow up the mountain once we're through the gates. The carriage is so very large and unwieldy."
"Yes," Fenris said shortly, and one of the guards riding to his left stifled a snort.
Fenris threw Druvond a sharp look. The lieutenant stiffened, all mirth falling from his face. "Apologies, Captain," he said smartly, and the horse tossed its head at the tightened bit, breaking into a trot for a few paces before falling back into sedate line.
He did not know Druvond well, even after six weeks of slow, slow travel along the road from Starkhaven. His reputation was that of any strong warrior in Prince Sebastian's White Guard: forthright, a formidable opponent, loyal, a little stupid. He had been selected, Fenris thought, more for his prowess in a gavotte than a garrison; he was a handsome man, tall as an oak with hair like burnished bronze, and he smiled easily and conversed well. Fenris did not like him.
He suspected Druvond knew it, too, and after a moment the lieutenant dropped back a half-dozen paces and struck up a conversation with Murena, who was an excellent bowwoman and, more importantly, had hair like a black sheet and a laugh like bells. More than half his retinue had been selected like this, Fenris thought waspishly, hearing the chatter behind him grow to include Linnea, who could toss daggers like children's toys and was widely regarded as the greatest wit at court, and strong stone-faced Hanley, nephew to the second-richest baron in Starkhaven and a suitably disposable asset for a foreign cortege. How else to win over the hearts of a suspicious mountain people who would rather break teeth on stone than accept the prince of Starkhaven stealing away their crown princess?
But stone was all they had in their kitchens lately, and gravel in their quarries and ice in their bitter rivers, and Starkhaven sat abreast the richest lea and moorland south of the Minanter. And Sebastian Vael, the young prince of that country, needed a wife.
"Well, would you look at that. If you aren't the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, my lord, I'll throw myself off the mountain."
Fenris reined sharply, the black gelding letting out a snort of irritation. It was a young woman's voice, low-toned but pitched to carry, and he was annoyed he had not seen her before she spoke. But—she sat on the ground, he realized, lower than he'd expected, propped against two haybales set beside a haystack twice the size of a man. They'd passed many such haystacks on the road—farmsteads dotted the flat valley like pox, growing more frequent the closer they came to the base of the mountain ahead, eking out hard lives from thin, worn earth—but their farmers thus far had been mistrustful, eyeing them warily from their porches with arms crossed and hats pulled low, and the woman wore clothes too fine for a farmer, anyway.
"Well," she said at Fenris's silence, "I would if I were on it, anyway. I don't suppose you're going to the castle?"
It was a stupid question, and Fenris thought she knew it. Twelve armed and armored guards on horseback, including Fenris himself in Starkhaven's white surcoat with gold chasing, a clearly high-born lady on a pony with silver bridle and barding, and—perhaps most obviously—a great white carriage decked with crimson bunting, with golden wheels the size of hunting hounds and with none of their ability to track a straight line. Two wheels had had their broken spokes mended with stout oak staves, but she couldn't see them from where she sat.
"Onwards," Fenris said curtly, and the company fell into movement at his gesture.
"No—wait, wait, my lord, please! So sorry—listen, wait a moment, please."
Fenris did not stop, but Merrill did, and he was forced to circle back to her as she leaned down from her pony. "Are you all right?"
"Oh, you know," the woman said brightly, and then her face fell. "I'm sorry. I've hurt my ankle. Thrask's not in the house—I think he's visiting his grandsons in the city, and it's miles to the next farm down the road. If it's all the same to you, I'd like to be back at the castle before dark."
"We will send a guard from the gates for you," Fenris said, voice brusque, but Merrill turned with a snap of green eyes.
"Captain," she said, smooth as the surface of a stone before it was broken by creeping vines, "we can't leave her here. Surely not. By the time we reach the gates it will be dusk, won't it? And then it'll be well after dark by the time they reach her. No, we can't possibly."
"I don't take up much room," the woman offered hopefully. "I could ride in the carriage."
Druvond laughed again, turned it with moderate success into a cough. Fenris looked from the woman on the ground—whose left ankle, he could see now that he was looking, was swollen nearly twice its size and a livid purple—to Merrill, who was wearing the polite, slightly daft smile she always wore when making his life impossibly difficult.
"If you insist on it," he said at last, dismounting before he was forced to see the victory in her face. He led his horse the woman in the hay and knelt beside her. "Can you stand?"
"Yes, I think so." She was not lovely, her nose long and her mouth wide for her face, but her eyes were a deep crowning blue the color of the afternoon sky and framed in dark lashes. Her hair was black, tied into a loose braid that tumbled down her shoulders, and she wore a lavender tunic over grey leggings, one cuff tucked into a sturdy black boot, the other rolled above her injury. The cut was plain, but the fabric was fine, and someone had embroidered roses at her collar in dark purple thread. Not money herself, he guessed, but dear to someone with a great deal of it. A servant at the palace, perhaps. Someone's favored second cousin.
He gripped her forearm and pulled her to her feet. She put weight on both feet out of habit, went white, and grabbed at his arm for balance.
"Can you mount?" he asked, the gelding standing obediently before them.
"With a little help," she said. "No carriage ride, then, I take it."
He could not suppress the curl of his lip. Her boots were eight inches deep in mud, her hands filthy to the wrists with dirt under every nail. She saw it, close as they were; a quick, unoffended smile flashed across her face, and she placed one hand on the saddle's pommel.
"Well, as long as you don't mind the company, sirrah." He did, and she knew it, but he gripped her bent knee and lifted her atop the gelding, who stamped once and settled. Her hands closed on air as if expecting reins, then clasped firmly around the saddle. "Will you walk, or should I ride pillion?"
His horse was over seventeen hands at the shoulder, the largest of their party's save the draft pair, but he shook his head. "Lethendralis has traveled hard today. For now, I'll walk."
He saw approval in her eyes as well as gratitude. "Captain," she said, and she smiled again. It brought unexpected warmth and beauty to her face, like sunlight glimpsed through the tapering edge of a grey storm, and Fenris turned back to the road in serious temper. "Onward," he repeated, and the caravan lurched into motion once more.
"Thank you," she said softly to him alone, and then she straightened, and to the rest she said more broadly, "And to whom do I owe my rescue? Not Kirkwallers, surely, as you've not asked me once for coin."
Fenris snorted, but Merrill rode beside them in great cheer, and in short order she had explained their origin, their purpose, and their destination. The woman seemed interested in it all, and Merrill seemed glad for the audience; soon she had turned to describing every bump and crook in the road and every solitary bird she had seen in the last six weeks, and every shift of the sky from pink to orange to blue to black and back again. Druvond hied beside her and joined in, relaying a tale of Linnea sleepily falling into a river at the last inn; he told it well and the woman laughed often, stroking through the horse's mane and patting his neck. Lethendralis nickered twice, tossing his head against the reins in Fenris's leading hand, and through his late afternoon sweat he managed only with great effort to avoid silently branding the horse a traitor.
"But, lady," said Druvond at the end of it, smiling handsomely, "we've not yet heard your name. Look, the gates are already approaching, and we don't even know with whom we ride."
"Hawke," said the woman, waving a hand.
"Lady Hawke," Druvond suggested.
"Only on church days."
Druvond laughed, and Merrill smiled, reaching out a hand from her pony to touch Hawke's left knee. "Then tell me, Hawke, how you managed this? Not dropping silently on some hapless field mouse, I think."
"No, not at all. Thrask has a bull."
"A bull?"
"He keeps it penned on the land behind his farm, away from the roads." Her voice was merry. Fenris listened despite himself; he caught her eye by accident as he looked behind, and turned again, flustered, to the dwindling road. "He also has a yellow dog who loves apples and who had a litter eight weeks ago. As I walked by, I saw the pups had got into the pen and were harrying the bull."
"You faced down a mad bull for a handful of dogs?" Linnea, astonished.
"Good heavens, no. I snuck about a great deal for a handful of dogs, threw half Thrask's washing line into the far corner of the pen as a distraction, bribed the pups away with potato skins, and tripped over the pig's trough on the way out."
Merrill laughed, delighted, and Druvond smiled. "Truly a formidable opponent."
"And it stank, too. Look, here's the gates."
And here they were indeed, two gates of solid iron stretched across the whole of the broad road and three times as high. The wall continued on either side, wrapped around the base of the mountain like a coiled, sleeping serpent; the only place it did not continue, Fenris knew, was behind the mountain where it met the bay, and that was only because the cliffs dropped down in sheer open-faced miles upon it.
The iron was finely worked, engraved with runes of protection and prosperity, warding and warning. Kirkwall make, Fenris knew, hewn from her endless quarries and smelted in the great reeking foundries at her heart; Kirkwall power in the carvings. Perhaps even witch-blood, if the rumors were true. Slaves had sweated in the mines in ancient days, not freemen, and there were always stories of strange workings in the Kirkwall mountains. Fenris knew better than most that pain could seed great power, and in sunless quarries full of slaves...but those were dark thoughts, neither useful nor relevant to his duty, and he rested his palm on his horse's neck until his mind cleared.
Small guardtowers were set upon the wall every so often, doubled here at the gates, and as they approached two guardsmen in Kirkwall crimson came out to meet them, spears ready but not brandished.
"Hail," said one, and reached out an open hand. "You've traveled a long way, strangers."
Fenris drew the letter with its wax seal from his breast. "I am Fenris, captain of the White Guard of Starkhaven, come on behalf of the Prince Sebastian Vael of Starkhaven for Kirkwall's first daughter." He gestured blandly at the carriage, curtains still drawn around its extravagant contents. "With gifts, guardsman."
The guard's eyes flicked from Fenris to the woman Hawke and back again, clearly perplexed, but he drew back and signaled for the great gates to open. "Do you know the way to the castle?"
"I can show them, Keran," Hawke said behind Fenris, and when he looked her eyes were inscrutable. "If you like, anyway, Captain. I do seem to still have your horse."
He would like very much nothing more than to throw her right back into the haystack, but if nothing else, Sebastian's last exhortation on his temper rang in his ears. He settled his irritation by force. "You said you wished to return the castle before dark. It seems we will go the same way."
"You just want to keep me around," she said softly, so that only he could hear it, and when Fenris glared she only grinned. "How handsome you are, Captain, that you should smile so rarely!"
That caught him off-guard; he coughed into his fist, and his horse balked the first few steps into the opening gate before they caught each other's rhythm. The carriage creaked through behind them, ostentatious and ponderous, and two of the Kirkwall guard detached from their company and took up the rear. Murena shifted nervously, caught Fenris's look, and stilled.
"You can see the road better now," Hawke said, and it was true. The late afternoon sky was gold and hot, and in its light Fenris could see the broad paved avenue that wove back and forth up the mountain like a string of icing on a tiered cake, draping itself over promontories and weaving between thick stony outcroppings where ancient iron had been mined. Buildings scattered up the mountain-face like some great hand had thrown fistfuls of black, glittering sand across it. Some were new, brick and wood braced upon stone with pillars of wood and rock; others were older, carved from the mountain itself, homes and businesses built behind time-smoothed walls of shale and limestone.
It was not precise to say Kirkwall stood alone upon the mountain. Instead it capped the end of a long range which curved around the northern edge of the Waking Sea like a thumb and forefinger. The rest of the Vimmark mountains were too steep to build upon easily, cold in summer and impassable in winter, but the mountains held iron in them, and silver and streaky gold, and the miners who had founded the city in misty memory had settled as close as they could.
Here, on the northern side of the mountains, only a low rocky plain divided Kirkwall from the rest of the world, hence the great gates. But behind the mountains, Fenris knew—had had it hammered into him by Sebastian's nervous tutors—the sheer rock was covered in thousands of intricate platforms, stairways, ropes, and pulleys, all designed to move the precious metals of the mountain as quickly as possible to the foundries hidden deep in the mountain's heart, to the impressive—rumored clockwork—docks where Kirkwall's great merchant vessels waited to distribute her treasures to the continent.
"The castle is there," Hawke said, touching his shoulder lightly, and she drew his eyes up to the highest part of the mountain. It was little more than a speck with distance, but he could see the glint of setting sunlight on the blocky obsidian towers, the white stripe off the sloping silver eave. Six generations of the Amell house had held that seat of power, ruling the small country with a ruthlessness bordering voracity, selling its riches dearly and to very few. The newest queen was rumored to have a lighter hand, but she left her kingdom no more frequently than her forebears, and Fenris had never met her.
"You've been to Kirkwall before, Captain?"
"No," said Fenris, weaving out of the way of a man with a handcart and goggling eyes. Their caravan had drawn attention, as he'd known it would, and he scowled as the crowd around them grew larger, children peeking around their mothers' skirts, shopkeepers in their leather aprons staring openly, city watchmen in armor almost as fine as the guards tapping each other on the shoulder and pointing. Lethendralis tossed his head nervously as they crossed yet another stone bridge over a grey mountain stream cut through the rock; Fenris stroked his nose and he settled. Sebastian's etiquette tutor raged at him voicelessly. "It seems…a fine city."
Hawke laughed, throwing back her head, and the saddle's leather creaked. "Poor man," she said, waving cheerfully to some child atop her father's shoulders in the crowd, who laughed herself and waved back. "Why do I get the feeling you'd rather be anywhere but here?"
He cut his eyes up at her before he could stop himself, and she laughed again. "My prince charged me to come," he said after a moment, tone steady. "And so I came."
"And so you will discharge your duty with honor and aplomb, reflecting the virtue of Prince Sebastian more than your own. Tell me, do all handsome green-eyed Starkhaven captains bear such markings, or is that for you alone?"
He felt abruptly conscious of the white tattoos: paired narrow stripes down his chin, elegant bars ribbing over his throat, long lines up the back of his neck under his short-cut white hair, the curls and dots caught in glimpses on his gloved hands. His skin was dark enough to stand them in strong contrast, and in retrospect, he was amazed she'd waited this long to raise their discussion. Starkhaven guards knew better than to ask him directly; he found himself out of practice in the answer. "These are mine alone," he said at last, and surprised himself with a bitter laugh. "Although there is one who would wish their ink returned."
"Unfortunate, as it seems rather attached to you at the moment. Walter, if you don't give that back right now, I'll tell Evelina and she'll have you in the kitchens until this time next year."
Fenris turned, startled, and a guilty-looking boy with a gap in his teeth proffered one of the flags from the gelding's flanchard. It was cloth-of-gold with Starkhaven's white cup at the center, the binding cut clean, and Fenris took it silently. Walter sketched an unpracticed bow and darted back into the crowd. Fenris watched him go, watched the crowd watch him, not with enmity but with, he thought, wariness, and not quite enough welcome for his liking.
He gripped the saddle and swung up in front of Hawke, who leaned back to allow it, then took hold of his surcoat. "How close are we to the castle?"
"A good ride yet. Your warhorse is a giant, but you said you travelled hard today."
Fenris bent down and smoothed a hand over Lethendralis's neck. The horse tossed his head, then eyed him balefully. "He is well. Ride on."
They continued their laborious path up the mountain. Hawke rode well behind him, the horse more at ease now with Fenris mounted, and she pointed out landmarks of interest as they rode. Evelina's orphanage, children playing in the rocky yard; a narrow white waterfall just beside it, and a round pool someone had carved into the stone before the channel continued down the mountain. A small bronze-capped church with glass in the windows and brassy bells ringing at the setting sun. A squat, wide inn with an effigy of a man dangling upside down at its door.
"The Hanged Man," Hawke said with relish, and two of the miners still black with rock waved at her passing as they entered. "It's smoky, small, and loud, and the ale is terrible. I'll have to take you sometime."
"Why?" Fenris said, mystified, then put up a hand to check her. "It doesn't matter. We'll be at the castle soon enough, and you'll be on your way."
"And you'll be on yours, with all your retinue dangling off you like priests' pendants." She twisted in the saddle to look behind her at the carriage, at the slowly growing crowd of onlookers trailing in their wake. "And all this is bride-price, then?"
"Yes."
"I don't suppose you'll tell me what's in it."
"No."
"Jewels," she said, and he saw in his periphery her eyes close with fancy. "Great heaping chests of gold. A little lark in a gold cage. Inkwells made of labradorite and jade, and a necklace with rubies the size of quail's eggs. Am I close?"
"Is that what your princess wants?" Fenris asked, curious.
She opened her eyes to look at him, and the blue caught the last of the light in cold fire as the sun dropped behind the mountain. "It's not what I would want," she said evenly.
"And what would that be? A leashed tongue?"
He regretted the impatience the moment it left his mouth, but Hawke only smiled. "A new penknife," she said lightly, and looked past him to the rising road. "And a storehouse of endless grain."
Chastened, Fenris fell silent, and Hawke eventually resumed the quiet description of various features as they passed them, pointing out bridges of note, small paths that led to lovely overlooks, the places where the most industrious citizens had been able to coax small gardens to grow from nothing. Men and women waved to her when they saw her on Fenris's horse, emerging themselves from great caverns cut into the mountain's face, those roads almost as wide as the main and lit with strings of torches like yellow pearls that vanished around corners into the dark.
Now and again Merrill drew up her pony beside them, or Druvond with his easy smile, but as they doubled back and back again on their way up the mountain, the road grew narrower and narrower, and the world dipped to a cool twilit purple. Warm pools of yellow and orange lit starlike across the mountain-face: candles in windowsills, torches in the hands of men and women walking home from their workdays, the sudden yawning of a door opening wide to welcome them. Lamplighters darted across their path, the little flames at the end of their long rods spreading to the glass-and-iron braziers set beside the road, lighting the safe way ahead.
The houses grew finer and taller as they rose; the storefronts' glass windows widened, and the clothwork on the watchful passersby grew richer in color and cut. He could see more stars now—true stars, and the eyelash curve of the moon—now that they had risen above the foundry smoke, now that they neared the mountain's peak.
The castle grew closer with every other switchback too, and larger. Now he could see the stylized wings cut into the stonework above the great double doors, the red banners bearing the crest of the Amell house; now he could make out the ring of ancient red glass and obsidian set crownlike around each tower. It was a tall narrow castle, craggy and spired just like the mountain it crested, and in many places where it jutted from the black stone the builders had left it unfinished and unpolished, reminders of what they had carved from rock and what power the mountain still kept over them.
It was not beautiful, not in the way that Starkhaven's fine marble and granite palace was beautiful, but it drew the eye and kept it, ruthless and implacably compelling. It was a hard castle for a hard-lived people, and as they made the final turn of the road and drew level with the castle at last, many guards emerged on the black walls to watch them—and their trail of townspeople—arrive. Their torches lit along stern eyes, the polished edges of black Kirkwaller armor, black helms with the red Amell wings blazoned at the temples.
A guardswoman in red and black drew open the last gate across the road, another solid worked-iron thing, though not as tall, and the whole procession lumbered at last into the small stony courtyard before the castle. One side of the bailey kept only the iron wall between it and the long fall back down the mountain; the other was penned in by the last thrust of mountain-rock before open sky.
Their train of onlookers trickled in behind them, spreading like water along the edges of the courtyard. Someone called for torches; someone else called for the queen, and Fenris shut his eyes.
He felt all the jangling absurdity of the carriage behind him, of the trinkets and baubles wrapped carefully within. Not quite so useless as Hawke had guessed, but not, he thought, worth what the Starkhaven treasury had paid for them, not here. Across the bailey, one of the great double doors of the castle pulled open with arduous effort. Not iron here: stout oak instead, polished to a mirror shine and stained almost black, with great iron rings set in the center of each. He could see the strong gleam of torches and hearthlight inside, hear the crush of many voices calling to each other.
"We should have brought less jewelry," Fenris muttered bitterly, "and more hammers."
Hawke gave him a placating pat and he startled, having forgotten she was there. "It's all right," she said, her voice warm. "We'll buy the hammers with it." A figure emerged in the castle doorway, broad in silhouette and tall as the mountain, and Hawke grabbed his arm in sudden anxiety. "Listen, Captain Fenris, there's something I ought to tell you—"
"And here you are!" came the voice, booming across the courtyard in warm welcome and rebounding off the high, rough stone. Its owner emerged into the pool of torchlight, a giant of a man with black hair, trimmed short, and a black beard shot with grey over a strong, square jaw. His eyes were light, the color hidden behind torches, and they crinkled at the corners as he spread his arms wide in greeting. Fire glinted along the iron circlet at his brow, two bars of black twisted around each other. No jewels, no other adornment. "I am Malcolm. My wife will be here in short order. Come in and sit down and eat."
Fenris dismounted wearily, then dropped to one knee. The gesture pricked dully as it always did, but the king-consort of Kirkwall pulled him to his feet again almost before he touched the ground. "None of that, young man. There's little ceremony here. Not until after you've eaten, anyway."
"Your Majesty," Fenris said, and pulled again the envelope from his breast. A murmur rippled among the onlookers. "I am Fenris, Captain of the White Guard of Starkhaven. I come on behalf of Prince Sebastian Vael of Starkhaven, with his good will and gratitude, to seek for him the hand and alliance of Her Royal Highness Princess Euphemia Amell, firstborn of Leandra Amell, queen of Kirkwall, and her husband King Malcolm H—"
He abruptly fell silent. His blank, voiceless horror met the mild surprise in the king's eyes, saw it turn to rueful understanding. The king looked up then, behind him, to the horse where his daughter still sat. "You didn't tell him," the king said.
He heard Hawke slide from the saddle. He turned woodenly to look at her. She was clumsy in the dismount, gripping Lethendralis's saddle to keep the weight off her left foot, and her cheeks were brilliant with shame and defiance. "Good evening, Captain Fenris," she said, offering her free hand to him. "I'm Euphemia Amell, called Hawke, and Malcolm Hawke is my father. I am the crown princess of Kirkwall."
He felt the markings tattooed through his skin begin to flicker with rampant power. He shut his eyes, crushed his heart, and bent with stiff courtesy over her hand. She tried to pull away, embarrassed; he pressed his forehead in brief obeisance to the back of her wrist, then let her go. "Your Highness," he said, iron-cold, and the torchlight blazed in her blue eyes.