The Queen's Rising(21)

“Liadan Kavanagh said so.”

“But Liadan Kavanagh has been dead two hundred and fifty years.”

“She may be dead,” I said, “but her words are not.”

“What words, Brienna?”

“The Queen’s Canon.”

Cartier leaned forward, as if the table cast too much distance between us. And I found myself leaning closer too, to meet him in the middle of the oak, the wood that had witnessed all my lessons. “And what is the Queen’s Canon?” he asked.

“Liadan’s law. A law that declares Maevana should be ruled only by a queen, never a king.”

“Where is proof of this law?” he asked, his voice dropping low and dark.

“Missing.”

“The Stone of Eventide, lost. The Queen’s Canon, lost. And so Maevana is lost.” He leaned away, settling back into his chair. “The Canon is the law that keeps the power from kings, granting the throne and the crown to the noble daughters of Maevana. So when the Canon went missing in 1430, right after the Stone of Eventide was lost, Maevana found herself on the brink of civil war until the king of Valenia decided to step in. You know the story.”

I did know it. Valenia and Maevana had always been allies, a brother and a sister, a kingdom and a queen’s realm. But Maevana, suddenly void of a queen and magic, became a divided land, the fourteen Houses threatening to splinter off into clans again. Yet the Valenian king was no fool; from the other side of the channel, he watched the Maevan lords fight and squabble over the throne, over who should rise to power. And so the Valenian king came to Maevana, told each of the fourteen northern lords to paint their House sigil on a stone and to toss their stones into a cask, that he would draw who should rule the north. The lords agreed—each of them was hindered by pride, believing he had the right to rule—and anxiously watched as the Valenian king’s hand descended into the cask, his fingers shifting the stones. It was Lannon’s stone that he drew forth, a stone graced with a lynx.

“The king of Valenia put the Lannon men on the throne,” I whispered, regret and anger entwining in my heart whenever I thought of it.

Cartier nodded, but there was a spark of anger in his eyes as he said, “I understand the Valenian king’s intentions: he thought what he was doing was right, that he was saving Maevana from a civil war. But he should have stayed out of it; he should have let Maevana come to her own conclusions. Because Valenia is ruled by a king, he believed Maevana should also embrace a kingdom. And so the noble sons of Lannon believe they are worthy of Maevana’s throne.”

It wasn’t lost on me that Cartier would probably lose his head if loyal Maevans heard him speak such treason. I shivered, let the fear gnaw on my bones before I reassured myself that we were tucked into the deep pocket of Valenia, far from Lannon’s tyrannical grip.

“You sound like the Grim Quill, Master,” I stated. The Grim Quill was a quarterly pamphlet that was published in Valenia, paper inked with bold beliefs and stories written by an anonymous hand that loved to poke at the Maevan king. Cartier used to bring the pamphlets for me and Ciri to read; we had laughed, blushed, and argued over the belligerent claims.

Cartier snorted, obviously amused by my likening. “Do I, now? ‘How shall I describe a northern king? By humble words on paper? Or perhaps by all the blood he spills, by all the coins he gilds, by all the wives and daughters he kills?’”

We stared at each other, the Grim Quill’s bold words settling between us.

“No, I am not that brave to write such things,” he finally confessed. “Or that foolish.”

“Even so, Master Cartier . . . surely the Maevan people remember what the Queen’s Canon says?” I argued.

“The Queen’s Canon was authored by Liadan, and there is only one of them,” he explained. “She carved the law magically into a stone tablet. That tablet, which cannot be destroyed, has been missing for one hundred and thirty-six years. And words, even laws, are easily forgotten, eaten by dust, if they are not passed from one generation to the next. But who is to say a Maevan won’t inherit their ancestor’s memories, and remember these powers of the past?”

“Ancestral memories?” I echoed.

“An odd phenomenon,” he explained. “But a passion of knowledge did extensive research on the matter, concluding that all of us carry them in our minds, these select memories of our ancestors, but we never know of them because they lie dormant. That being said, they can still manifest in some of us, based on the connections we make.”

“So maybe Liadan’s will be inherited one day?” I asked, only to taste the hope of the words.

The gleam in his eyes told me it was wishful thinking.

I mulled on that. After a while, my thoughts circled back to Lannon, and I said, “But there must be a way to protect the Maevan throne from . . . such a king.”

“It’s not so simple, Brienna.”

He paused and I waited.

“Twenty-five years ago, three lords tried to dethrone Lannon,” he began. I knew this cold, bloody story, and yet I did not have the heart to tell Cartier to stop speaking. “Lord MacQuinn. Lord Morgane. Lord Kavanagh. They wanted to put Lord Kavanagh’s eldest daughter on the throne. But without the Stone of Eventide and without the Queen’s Canon, the other lords would not follow them. The plan fell to ashes. Lannon retaliated by slaughtering Lady MacQuinn, Lady Morgane, and Lady Kavanagh. He also killed their daughters, some who were mere children, because a Maevan king will always fear women while Liadan’s Queen’s Canon lies waiting to be rediscovered.”