Prologue

In the sanctuary of the Aos Si, Mab's oracle raised her head, and turned to stare at the child acolyte who stood at the foot of the steps, below the Pool of Vision.

"The Black Queen is fallen," she said, "her iron crown to the furnace, her body to the pyre. A maiden sits upon a throne twice hers, once stolen, and the destiny of both her realm and ours may rest on the use she makes of power she does not yet know she possesses."

She paused. "Tell our lady," she said, and the girl turned and ran.

Chapter 1 – Coronation Day

When the cathedral doors were thrown open, Eric stepped back from the sunlit aisle where he had stood and twitched his hood forward over his head. Then, ducking a little to hide his height, he slipped into the edge the crowd as it began to spill out and down the wide gallery towards the forecourt stairs.

As soon as he passed those doors himself, he dropped back into their shadow and made his way at a fast walk along the narrow gallery that led beside the towering hall next door, leading into the second courtyard. Down the stairs then, and across the yard swiftly as he could go.

It was the work of moments only to get his Dane-ax and the belt with his hand axes from the corner under the bed where he'd slept the previous night. He left one of the small gold coins from his purse on the bed, for his hosts—family, he supposed now, so far as he might say he had any. Then back across the court for a brief visit to the castle kitchen, where he collected a loaf, cheese, and a few links of dried sausage into his pockets from one of the trays the scullions were now setting in order to be borne up shortly to the hall, and he was ready to leave.

He crossed back into the forecourt through the south door by the granaries, circling through the throng of common folk now gathering round the foot of the forecourt stairs. Here he had the cover of what was left of the giant trebuchet, the charred ruin of which still sat to the side of those stairs, and he might also thank the enterprise of those who had pulled an arc of wagons around the edges of the crowd, that they might climb up for a better view. He walked faster, as the murmuring of the crowd gave way to cheers among the nobles now lining the staircase three and four deep. A glance told him the knights of the queen's honour guard were descending to space themselves evenly the length of the range, and it could only be moments before Snow White would begin her passage after them.

It was easier than he'd hoped, not to look back as he went. Beyond enough to have been present in the chapel. Unease still tightened his insides at the thought of it: coronations were for the royals and nobility, and even if it had been proclaimed that all men might come to this one who'd borne arms in the attack the day before, that had felt like little enough surety in his case, of any safety. None of anything at all, he suspected, if Duke Hammond had seen him and thought to have him seized. Questioned, as to what had given him the presumption that day before, to push through to the princess' side, and make sure of riding with her that last stretch to the castle gates. That and the sass to flirt a little, and be there to distract her a little from the worry in her eyes at that last step before word was given to begin the assault. He might have had an answer for that—am I the last man here to remember she's still but a girl, and might well stand knowing herself not alone, at such a time?—but it would defeat the purpose of their discretion, for that to happen.

I'd be lucky, he thought, if it didn't end with her havin' to rescue me again.

Neither of them could really afford to be known that far friends.

It had been an uneasy matter too, fearing that either his nerve might yet fail, or hers, if at any point they'd come close enough to see each other this morning. Could he have looked her in the eyes again, and still left? He must, so yes, he could, but he was less sure of how she might take it even now. But hearing no change in the crowd's murmuring as he hastened through the open gate, he was confident she would not see him go.

And then it was as he'd imagined yesterday: off up the slope towards the village, into the brightness of a sparkling spring day. No better time than this, to try going home.

The village was as deserted as he'd expected. No question every last soul would be gone down to the castle this morning, by any means they could get there. It was deserted enough that he could even risk passing by the house where he had formerly rented a room, to collect the last of his things before moving on, steadily, towards the edge of town.

At least, it was deserted until he passed the ruin of the gatehouse that had once stood over the main road into town, and a cheery voice said, "Well, ahah! About time you were along, lad!"

"Jeff?" He pulled up short and swung round to find Anna's husband stepped out beaming from where he had been lounging against what was left of the gate. Ready for travel, from the pack slung across his shoulders, and the staff in his good hand, and not alone either, for behind him a smaller man in a monk's kirtle led a modestly laden mule.

"What the devil are you doing here?" Eric backed up as the pair proceeded into the road beside him.

"Well, waitin' for you, aren't we?" Jeff stepped past, giving him a sharp eye sideways, and his companion paused with a smaller, tightish smile. "Waitin' for you to be done sayin' good-bye to our new queen, who I'm guessing you've seen crowned now, and come on along—"

"Jeff, I've no plans but to be goin' on alone."

"Well, plans are great things aren't they, but how often do they come out as planned?" Jeff gestured towards his companion. "This here's Brother Anthony, by the way. He's a friend of mine down from the library at Hammond's, come to see we neither of us come to any harm, and because he's got an interest in stories."

"Aye." Eric gave the shorter man a curt nod. "Then he's missed the one that matters today, though if you were to hop on that mule, Brother, and trot it back to the castle, you might still see some of it."

"Oh, there'll be enough witnesses to that one," said the little man brightly, "and Master Ambrose there to draw pictures as it happens. I'd sooner be around for things most won't see."

"Like me walkin' off over the hills by myself," said Eric. He met Jeff's cheerful gaze, a touch more grim. "I mean it, Jeff. You've no business being anywhere right now, but back there in that crowd with Anna beside you,"

"Oo, no, there you're wrong." Jeff leaned the staff into his shoulder, and reached with his good hand to shift his injured arm in its sling. "I'm no' fond of crowds at the best of times, and as I can't enjoy myself playin' music with the rest afterwards at our new queen's party, I've already told my girl I'd as soon come along and see to you." He paused. "You're going to need me, lad, to get away from here, you know. I'm the one as knows the watchword you'll have to give the riders patrolling by the road up ahead, because it happens to be the Duke's order that none may leave this place without it, for the next three days."

"What?"

"You notice the bells aren't ringing, either."

He hadn't, but Jeff was right. He might have expected bells, and from the other's nod, his face must have shown his surprise. "That's right. Her Majesty's order, and the Duke's. You can bet she's asking that crowd right now, to help her keep all this quiet a few days yet.

"That might be the biggest castle in the country, but it's only one," Jeff went on, "and there are plenty more, a good few near as large, that the Black Queen's men still hold." He laid a finger alongside his nose. "The longer we can keep it from any of them, that she no longer rules, the easier it'll be to get them back."

"Aye." Eric considered him, then nodded. "If any get their gates shut, it'll take more than the Duke's army to winkle them out."

Jeff pointed to a rider now approaching along the road from the forest. "Hence my friend Ollie and a dozen or two like him, riding patrol back and forth, with an archer or two in the bushes, to go with each one." Jeff smiled. "Or more." He laughed, when Eric stared at him. "Or less. D'ye think I should tell ye the truth of it, even if I knew?" He waved, and the horseman dropped his lance point aside, as they closed on each other. "Eh, Ollie! Havin' a busy day yet?"

"No more'n in a graveyard at midnight," said the horseman, bringing his horse to a stop. "So, Jeff, have ye a word for me, then?"

"Angelus," said Jeff. "For the first of the bells you haven't heard ringing this past hour."

"That'll do," Ollie nodded. "Coronation's done, then?"

"Aye." Jeff jerked a thumb at Eric. "Now Brother Anthony and I are just seein' Eric here home for a day or two, but we'll all be back by Sunday."

"Na," said Eric. "They'll be back, but I won't."

"An' we can talk about that as we go," said Jeff, and patted him at the shoulder. "Come along now an' leave our man to watchin' for no one more, we'll hope."

"At least tell me this wasn't Her Majesty's idea," Eric said, as they continued on into the woodland, and he began to look for signs of the old trail towards the western coast. "I'd expect she'd mind her word better than that."

"It's no'," said Jeff. "I've had no word from her in any of this. Nor had my Anna, when she put me up to it."

Eric favoured him with a skeptical eye. "When did she do that?"

"Oh, sometime round that hour in the night after we'd both enough sleep to do us a while, and no one else was stirrin'—an' for what it's worth, when she suggested it, I asked!—'now, would it be that nice young girl you've been tending, has put you up to such an idea?'—and she said no, and I believe her."

"An' then I'll wager she distracted you from askin' any further questions," said Eric, and Jeff grinned evilly.

"No!—she'd already done that." He laughed when Eric looked round at him. "Eh, lad, you don't think we were awake at midnight t'be talking about you, do you? With neither of us having seen the other since mid-winter, I should say not! We'd better to do, an' made fine distraction of it, by the time we got round to the matter of it bein' a few days before we might see as much of each other again."

"An' why should that be?"

"Because she'll be sticking close to Her New Majesty a few days, until she sees she has more than green girls to mind her! Young Greta and the two we're leavin' from our village, Catherine and Lisl, they'll do well enough to do anythin' she says, but they've no more sense than she of what's proper to her state. Not that Anna can say she's any great sense of it, either—but at least as a married woman with a few years on all of 'em, she can keep 'em out of too much mischief."

"Huh." Mischief as such wouldn't have been his first expectation of Snow White, but that might only be Anna's word for it. He shook his head and pushed on through the branches.

"What? You don't think she'll have the gift for it?" Jeff asked, following him.

"No!" Eric didn't look back. "She—" he stopped, then, and did. "She'll not try to, Jeff, she's a good lass as far as that goes. It's just she gets distracted an' wanders off a lot. Mostly, unless she's got a bee in her bonnet about anything in particular, she'll look first to see what anyone else wants of her."

"Eh, well, that's most of what Anna said." Jeff turned to hold branches aside, as Anthony led the mule along behind them. "That she'd be a good girl an' not ask or send after you, as she promised." He dug in with his staff and followed after.

"That still begs the question of why she's sendin' you! Anna, that is," Eric added, as the older man once more caught up with him. The trail was still clear enough, here under the trees, where the bushes were thinner.

"Eh, well, she's not done with you, is she?" Jeff peered pointedly around at his bad side. "She wants you back in a day or two's time, to have another look at that gash in your side, and see it's mendin'. How's that all doing, anyway?"

"Well enough to go on" He sighed, and trudged on. "Hurts, but it's clean, an' dressed tight enough to help."

"Couldn't get your arm up this morning, could you?"

"How'd you know that?" he asked, and Jeff chuckled.

"Your hair's tied back sloppy an' at collar, not crown. After all the pullin' you did yesterday, at that gash in your side, ye couldn't get that hand high enough to catch it higher," he said.

"Doesn't mean I'm goin' back." Eric set his jaw and swung steadily on up the path.

"Does, though, if I don't like the colour of those bandages by nightfall." Jeff dug in with his staff, to keep up with him, and held up a warning finger at his glance. "An' no glowerin' at me about it, ye know it's not ill-meant!"

"No, but it's no' happening," Eric muttered. "I'm no' goin' back."

"An' there's another matter," Jeff went on. "Third day from now, there's a big service planned for the church down by the village. Outside in the churchyard if the weather's fine, wi' the Archbishop presiding, along wi' all his party, an' Her Majesty an' all the lords to hand, to say a memorial mass for all that fell retakin' that castle an' crown. Not a funeral as such, for they'll have 'em all buried by then, but a service and a readin' out of the names for all they can learn names of, our lads and the Black Queen's dead as well, as it's been turning out that more of them have been ours to begin with, than we counted on." He swung his staff out to clear a branch aside. "You need to be there for that service, lad."

"Oh, I don't think so!" Eric said. "They've no need of me, an' you just said it yourself, Her Majesty's to be there."

"As if that were to be any matter for you to be concerned about, you not bein' part of her party!" Pursuing him into the more open ground, Jeff rapped his arm. "Stop a moment, lad." When Eric did, Jeff reached to catch the edge of his hood, and flipped it up over his head again. He pointed an admonishing finger. "Even if it's fine, it'll be a cool day. You but keep that hood up and stay amidst a few of our taller lads, an' she'll never know. Why should she look for you, anyway?"

"She shouldn't! But I shouldn't be there, anyway!" Eric threw the hood back again. "What? Take such a chance for no reason? Risk having anyone who might see me bear any word back to her, of me bein' there? For nothing? For no one else to whom it'll matter?"

"That's the way you think now, an' it needs to be mended!"

"I see no other way I should think!" He shook his head. "There's none to whom it'll matter whether I'm there or not, and if I can get home today, I see no reason why I should march back again tomorrow or a day later, to be there for it."

"Then you might just consider how it may do you some good," said Jeff. His tone edged. "I don't say there's any to whom it should matter, Eric, whether you're there or not. But if you turn down that chance to stand and witness with all of us that were there, what it cost to make it happen, do you think none will ever remember the fact? You think none'll wonder or gossip, about how that adds to all the rest?"

Eric stared at him, his insides going cold. "What're you talking about?!"

Jeff met his look with a grim expression.

"If you want a future in this land, son, on the same footing as every other man who's fought to win its freedom, the least you can do is be seen showing proper respect for those who've given their all for it.

"Fail in so little," he went on, "and you can bet on it being a damn sight easier for all of us who've done better these last ten years, in facing the fact upholding the law weren't the same as upholding the right, to ask how you could miss that fact as long as you did. Until ol' Fate dropped the princess right into your hands, in fact."

"Aye." Eric nodded. "Well, that gives me your measure, then. A righteous man, Jeff, who'd have no free men in your world but those who are righteous. Like you. So I can see I've no chance, have I?" He turned away and pushed on, ignoring the pain in his side, and avoiding the other's gaze. "You'd ha' got on well wi' my father."

"An' that's a problem for you, is it?" Jeff followed, closing on him again. "That righteous men such as I might ask, 'what did you do, while Ravenna ruled?' and think less of you havin' any power to resist, and doin' nothing?"

At that, the cold in him ran hot, and Eric turned on him.

"I've as much right to live in this land as you do, an' be let live, so long as I do obey the law," he said. "If you think to treat every man as wolfshead, who's not done as you an' your friends, or who doesn't think as you—or who doesn't think the sun shines out your arses, either!—you'll have none left but those her rule reduced to slaves."

"That's not answerin' the question, is it?" Jeff slammed the butt of his staff into the ground between them.

"You'd be more convincing, Jeff Bowyer, if your bein' alive to ask that question hadn't more to do with you having sheltered behind Hammond's skirts all these years, than anything else." Eric let his expression slip to a sneer. "Resist Ravenna? She'd no need to care anything for you, with him keeping you an' all the other hotheads safely penned!

"And what kind of decision was it, to leave your families to face the danger? How many women lost did it take, before they saw scarring their faces must be the price of being left alone?"

"You've no right to cast such aspersions, when you never tried to do better!"

Eric glared at him. "Maybe I'd never any better chance, but at least I stood my own ground."

"Like you're doin' now? Runnin' off home to this property of yours, miles from anything, hopin' the world may leave you alone there?" Jeff shook his head. "It's no start, lad, and it's no help for anything your new queen wants for you, either."

"Leave her out of it!"

"I can't do! She's in it, like it or no!" Again Jeff thumped his staff. "In a year's time, Huntsman, she'll want to see you back! Can you afford to pass up any chance in the meantime, to prove you're worth her knowing?"

"On the terms you'd offer?" Eric shook his head. "With my past hanging forever like a blade over my future? As what you're telling me, is that it always will, here, because you and your friends'll see to it that it does."

"There's a difference between upholding the law, and upholding the right! An' you're dreamin' if you think none will ever now weigh one against t'other, an' ask which you preferred."

"Oh!" he said, voice going rough on him, "I'll no' make that mistake!" He stepped back, momentarily unable to say more, and swept out his ax to block the gesture when Jeff unstepped his staff and followed again. "I expect you and yours will be doing a lot of that," he said. He swung abruptly away, not trusting what more either face or voice might reveal. "It's time for you to go back, now. I've had enough—stood as much of this as I will!"

"Ah," said Jeff, behind him, "well, you're wrong about that, too!" and hearing him reach, and feeling the grip on his sleeve, Eric spun in the direction of the pull, into a hooking left-handed punch that caught the other hard on the side of the head. It cost both his side and shoulder, but Jeff went down like a stone and he could only think, as he drew back gasping and set his teeth against the pain, not badly done. His aim with a blow was undoubtedly better sober than drunk.

"I didn't ask for you, either," he said to Brother Anthony who, past a startled murmur, had no more than stopped in silence, holding his mule's reins. "So when he comes to, you can get him over that mule of yours, and take him back to the castle, and I'll ask you to tell his wife for me, that I regret having to serve her man so. I'd thank her again for her kindness, but I'll make my own way from now on, and she'll likely not see me again."

"I'll do that," said the other, and Eric nodded and turned away up the path.

Author's Note: and so at long last, it begins.

Not because it's FINISHED...that it is not.

Despite running this sequel to That First of Days After through two successful Nanowrimo exercises, and uncounted hours of banging back and forth since June 2013, looking to make all the pieces fit coherently, I am still working on this beast. I've just reached a point of feeling the structure is sufficiently together that I may as well get started posting. At present that's with four chapters ready to go. My plan is to post this one for April 1st, and then the remaining three chapters on successive Friday evenings. If things go well, I may be able to go for a fifth chapter the fourth Friday out, but no guarantees: it was a problem with TFDA that once I ran past my first four pre-written chapters, the whole process got a lot more difficult. I did eventually get the story where I wanted it, but have never been as happy with the results for pantsed Chapters 5 through 9, as for planned 1 through 4. This time...I really don't want to be pushing anything out before it's solid. I'm hoping that with between 30 and 40 chapters rough-outlined, and 15 to 20 with substantial amounts written, it won't be months and months between updates, but it does remain to be seen how this will go.

In the meantime, I'd like to thank all of shorinai, Lcsaf, and Flint & Feather for their help in provoking my thoughts, reminding me of things that, remembered, have contributed a lot to my world-building, and...hopefully will have resulted in a more readable text.

Postscript/PSA re That First of Days After: after re-reading this through a couple of months ago, I am currently doing a re-write on it. It wasn't as embarrassing as I'd feared, but fact is, I do write better today than two years ago. So: once the re-write is done, I'll be doing a chapter-by-chapter replacement to bring the posted story up to my current standards. This will result in at least a few changes, and may create a problem for anyone who may still love it in its original form. Given the difficulty of lifting anything from ffnet these days what I'm considering doing if anyone's interested, is finding some way to making it available elsewhere online, possibly as a zipped file, for anyone who might like a copy.