Stranger to the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  Dyer was, in fact, waiting in the east wing drawing room, standing before the blazing fire with his hands clasped behind his back. Elspeth wondered briefly why that hearth hadn’t been filled in and replaced with a Device. Whatever the reason, she was grateful for it. She had no idea how efficient Devices were, but there was something about an actual fire that warmed her more deeply than any brass box.

  “Your Majesty,” Dyer said. “I apologize for not having explained today’s schedule last night. You were expected in the north wing ten minutes ago.”

  Embarrassment swept over her. One more thing she’d done wrong. Then she felt angry with herself for letting Dyer get to her. “Yes, that would have been good to know,” she said. “Who decides the schedule?”

  Dyer raised an eyebrow. “Why, your secretary, of course. Miss Simkins is very well organized. If you’ll come with me, I’ll introduce you.”

  She had a secretary? It made sense, though Elspeth wasn’t sure she wanted to give control of her life over to anyone, however well organized.

  She followed Dyer through the halls, doing her best to memorize the path and not cringing at the narrow, dark hall that had unnerved her the day before. Soon enough, they arrived at the short flight of stairs leading to the north wing. The steps looked worn, but the North blue carpet and stair-rods were new. Elspeth entertained an idle thought about the wisdom of covering over something that might need to be replaced, told herself it wasn’t her business, then remembered it might actually be her business. If it was, it was so far down the list of what she had to deal with it might as well not matter.

  The north wing was all dark wood paneling and heavy, ponderous doors with oversized brass knobs. It weighed on Elspeth as she passed through its halls. She couldn’t help feeling judged by this place that had seen so many sovereigns, not just her ancestors but Valants and Cammertons and all those kings and queens who’d lived so long ago they didn’t have surnames. All those people down to Elspeth North, uncertain ruler of a country that hadn’t expected her and might not even want her. It was enough to make her want to flee.

  Men and women passed them in the halls. None of them bowed or even made eye contact. It reassured Elspeth, even though she knew it was only that they didn’t know to recognize her. Soon enough, that would change.

  They came to an open space like a miniature Rotunda, though without the domed roof. A semicircular desk filled half the space, attended by a frazzled-looking man who sorted through piles of papers. “Dyer, you—” he began before looking up and seeing Elspeth. “Is this my replacement?”

  “Your Majesty,” Dyer said, leaning heavily on those two words, “this is Edrick Branton. He manages the departments and coordinates with Miss Simkins to organize your schedule. Branton, you ought to rise for her Majesty.”

  Branton shot to his feet. “My apologies, your Majesty, I had no idea—please forgive my rudeness—”

  “It’s all right,” Elspeth said, feeling uncomfortable. That was two people who’d been afraid she’d take serious offense at their lack of manners. She hadn’t thought Francis, or even Landon, the type to punish people for simple mistakes. “You manage the departments? I thought that was what the Council members were for.”

  “Oh, no, your Majesty, I mean, yes, the Council members are responsible for their departments,” Branton said, “but when they make decisions or have things the Queen must sign off on, that comes to me, and then Miss Simkins and I arrange for you to receive them. At a convenient time for you, of course.”

  “I see.” So Branton and the mysterious but well organized Miss Simkins had complete control over what Elspeth would or would not see? That struck her as a lot of power for two people who didn’t have official government positions. “I’d like to meet Miss Simkins now, if you don’t mind.” That had slipped out accidentally. Elspeth inwardly groaned.

  “Certainly.” Dyer gave Branton a glare Elspeth was sure she wasn’t supposed to have witnessed and led her past the desk and down another ponderously paneled hallway. The door he opened, however, led to a room that was blindingly bright by comparison. The half-paneled walls were a bright cherrywood below and a pale ivory above, and floor to ceiling windows of fine, thin glass, very modern, filled one wall—the east wall, Elspeth realized, because the rising sun was visible through them. It was so cheerful she relaxed immediately.

  Bookcases stuffed full of papers and untidy leather-bound books lined the south wall, with framed maps of Tremontane and the northern continent hanging above them. A desk positioned to catch the full morning sunlight took up most of the eastern end of the room. More books, papers, cups holding pens, and a rack with pots of ink cluttered its top, which was barely visible. Elspeth walked around to look at it more closely. She counted twelve drawers of various sizes, two of them with keyholes, all of them carved with ornate abstract designs. A chair was pulled away from the desk as if inviting her to sit.

  “This was King Francis’s office,” Dyer said. “You are of course free to choose a different room, but you will naturally want to familiarize yourself with the business pending your approval.”

  Elspeth looked up at him, stunned. “You mean this…mess?” she said, aghast.

  Dyer smiled politely. “I am afraid King Francis’s illness meant much was left undone. The Council, however, knows what needs to be addressed, and I am sure they will be happy to assist.”

  Elspeth sank into the chair. From that angle, the mess looked worse. She tried one of the drawers with a keyhole and discovered it was locked.

  “Top center drawer, your Majesty,” Dyer prompted.

  The top center drawer was more cluttered even than the desktop, but a small ring of keys lay where anyone might walk off with it. Elspeth tried a few keys until she found the right one. The drawer was empty. Disappointed, she closed it without locking it and put the keys into her pocket.

  “If you pull the cord behind you, it will summon Miss Simkins.” Dyer pointed. Elspeth leaned back, grasped the cord, and pulled. She couldn’t stop staring at the desk. This was going to take a lot more than assistance from the Council to fix.

  The door opened behind Dyer, and a short, round woman entered. She appeared to be in her forties, with the first hints of gray showing in her brown hair, and she walked with short, precise steps that made her seem to be bobbing. Spectacles attached to a long ribbon perched on her nose, with the ribbon fixed with a silver pin to her starched white shirt. A fat brass pocket watch attached to a long chain hung at her right hip. The hem of her long black circle skirt brushed the ground, concealing her shoes. She held a large book bound in white leather in the crook of her left arm. When she drew near the desk, she curtseyed. “Your Majesty, I am Desdemona Simkins, your secretary. I look forward to serving you.”

  “Thank you, Miss Simkins. I know I will depend on your assistance,” Elspeth said, feeling like a prig. Depend on your assistance. She might as well have asked the woman to spoon-feed her.

  “I have your Majesty’s schedule for the day, if now is convenient.” Simkins opened the book and looked at Elspeth expectantly.

  “Oh,” Elspeth said. “Um…Mister Dyer, you are excused. Thank you.”

  Dyer looked disappointed, but concealed it well. He bowed himself out. The instant the door was closed, Simkins said, “Your Majesty is to meet with your Council at nine-thirty. Dinner is served in the east wing promptly at noon. At one o’clock you are to meet with the master of ceremonies to plan your coronation. At three-thirty—”

  “Wait,” Elspeth said. “My coronation? Aren’t I already Queen?”

  “Yes, your Majesty, but there is a formal ceremony,” Simkins said. She sounded irritated at being interrupted. “The formal introduction of the staff is scheduled for three-thirty. Between four o’clock and six o’clock you have a meeting with the head of Internal Affairs. I believe the subject is—this.” She indicated the desk. “Supper is at six-thirty, and you have no other meetings or ceremonies after that.” She shut the book with a snap. “
That is not usually the case, but I believed it sensible not to schedule too many things at first.”

  “Thank you,” Elspeth said, feeling faint. If this was not too many things… “I’ll need time to go over…this…if I’m to have a meeting about it this afternoon.”

  “I believe you will have time between the Council meeting and dinner, and just before the staff is introduced.” Simkins drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t very. “Does your Majesty have any instructions for me?”

  “Um…no. Not right now. Thank you. No, wait!” She felt even more foolish. “What time is it?”

  Simkins looked at her. For a moment, something like sympathy crossed her face. “It is 8:42 exactly,” she said, looking at her watch. “Does your Majesty not have a timepiece?”

  “I don’t. Could you find me one? Or find someone who could find me one?”

  “It would be my pleasure, your Majesty.” Simkins curtseyed again and left the room.

  Elspeth sagged deeper into the chair. It had no cushion and its seat felt hard and smooth, making Elspeth wonder how many people had sat in it over the years. It would take some getting used to.

  She flicked through the drawers. Most of them were as cluttered as the desk. Finally, she couldn’t stand it any longer. She removed the ink stand and the pen cups, setting them on the floor where they couldn’t be knocked over. Next, she made stacks of the books piled on the desk and moved those to the floor as well. She thought about putting them on one of the bookcases, but even if those shelves hadn’t been entirely full, the books on the desk might be there for a reason, and she didn’t want to mix them in with all the others.

  Removing all that made the desk look…well, it was still far too cluttered, but it felt manageable. She picked up a sheet of paper and glanced over it. It was a report on crop yields in Barony Avory. She hadn’t thought the ruler of Tremontane would be concerned about that level of detail, and she had to set the paper down and do some meditative breathing to calm herself. She didn’t want to give up before she’d even begun, but this was worrying. Time enough to deal with it when she’d met with the Council.

  She’d made several small piles of papers by the time someone knocked on her door. “Your Majesty,” he said in response to her invitation to enter, “I was sent to bring you this.”

  He came forward and handed her a watch the size of a turnip, made of solid silver. Its case was matte-bright from hundreds of hair-fine scratches, suggesting it had been well-used over the years. Elspeth turned it over in her hands, marveling at how smoothly its hands moved. Then she registered the time, and squeaked in dismay. “Stop!” she called to the man, who was almost out the door. “I need to be at the Council chamber in two minutes. Can you direct me there?”

  The man blanched, and Elspeth realized he wasn’t much more than sixteen. Probably he was a low-level errand runner, not someone accustomed to speaking to his Queen. “I—your Majesty, maybe—”

  Impatience swept over her. “Do you or do you not know the way to the Council chamber?” she demanded.

  The young man nodded, ruddy and inarticulate.

  “Then you will take me there at once. I realize it’s not your usual duties, but I don’t have time to find someone else. Please, lead the way.”

  The young man nodded again and held the door for her. Elspeth swept past, then stopped for him to precede her. She didn’t bother trying to keep track of the turnings, and the young man moved too quickly for that in any case. He led her up a ramp carpeted in red and opened the door at its top for her. “Your Majesty,” he whispered, and made his retreat.

  Elspeth resisted the urge to check her watch again. If she was late, there was nothing she could do about it now. She pushed the door open wider and stepped through.

  5

  The windowless room was lit entirely by Devices shaped to look like oil lamps. Elspeth was starting to draw all sorts of conclusions about Tremontane from its Devices, most specifically that somebody in the palace wanted to cling to the past while embracing the future. Brightly woven banners hung on the walls between the Device lamps, tapestries representing the eleven provinces, the triple peaks of Tremontane, and the blue and silver panther of the house of North. They cheered the room considerably.

  An enormous round table occupied the center of the room. Its top was a round cross-section of a tree so large Elspeth couldn’t imagine how it had looked when it was alive, let alone where it might have come from. She also couldn’t imagine how they’d gotten the table into the room in one piece, because it was too large to fit through the door she’d entered by and might be too large for the second door on the far side of the room. It was a deep, rich brown with black rings circling its center, and although the bark had been removed, cracks still radiated from the edges across the grain, some of them deep enough for her to fit her hand into. It gleamed with polish bright enough to reflect, however imperfectly, the ten people around it who’d risen when she entered.

  Elspeth’s gaze swept the room, not coming to rest on any one person. They all stared back at her in silence. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do. Etiquette according to Jones White said that the Queen was never introduced to anyone, that others should be introduced to her, but there wasn’t anyone to do the introductions, and maybe the rules were different for the Council, some of whom were lords and ladies themselves.

  Her eye fell on the one empty chair in the room. It was ornate enough almost to be a throne, and sat pushed a little way back from the table as if waiting for someone to sit. Yes, you idiot, it’s waiting for you. Elspeth walked around the table, drew the not-a-throne back, and took her seat. It moved smoothly over the wooden floor, and she was able to pull it in easily.

  “Please be seated,” she said. Her voice didn’t shake or squeak, her hands weren’t trembling, and she felt her confidence return.

  The people all sat. Silence returned, broken only by a cough from someone who might be the oldest person there, with wispy white hair floating around his bald head and a liver-spotted, wrinkled face. So no one wanted to speak first. Maybe it really was her job, after all.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said. It was a nice, banal opening, even if it did imply that she’d arranged this meeting instead of being directed to it like a child. “I know this tragedy has put us all in a difficult situation. I’m sure you’re aware I never realized I would become Queen, but I hope to rule justly and wisely. And I know all of you will do your part to assist me.”

  Some nods, a few shiftings of position, another cough from the old man. “You all know who I am,” Elspeth went on, “but I can’t say the same for you. I would like you each to introduce yourselves and your role on the Council. Then we can discuss whatever is on the agenda.” She knew enough to know agendas were the sort of thing Councils had, but none of her oh-so-helpful staff had given her one. She hoped she hadn’t just made the kind of mistake that would make her look foolish.

  The woman immediately on her right stood. “Teresa Quinn, Countess of Waxwold,” she said. She was young, probably no older than Elspeth, and pretty, with nut-brown hair and eyes to match. She had her hands clasped nervously in front of her. Instead of shirt and trousers, she wore a high-waisted muslin gown with long sleeves and a gold brooch shaped like a leaping wolf pinned at one shoulder. She hesitated as if considering something else to say, but sat down in silence. Elspeth, looking at her, felt so out of place she wanted to flee. Why hadn’t anyone said there was a dress code?

  The man beyond her was up before Teresa Quinn’s bottom touched her seat. “Duncan Faraday,” he said. “Head of Internal Affairs.”

  Elspeth remembered she had a meeting with him that afternoon. He, too, was dressed more formally than Elspeth, though he’d left off the frock coat that should have gone with his waistcoat and wore no cravat. He seemed young to be the head of a department, or whatever it was the heads were in charge of, not in his thirties yet, but his expression was hard and unfriendly, his dark blue eyes stony. Elsp
eth’s hope that they might be able to get along died.

  She focused on remembering names to go with faces and positions. General Griffin Beckett looked like someone you would put in charge of Defense, with his stern demeanor and stocky build, almost a defensive wall himself; Junia Hardison of Transportation looked like she wished she were somewhere else; Annis Wilde, the Baroness of Marandis, looked like she wanted to be anywhere but where Hardison was. The elderly man was Simon Heath, Count of Huddersfield, and he greeted her with a smile and a friendly nod that cheered her. Both Hardison and Lady Wilde were dressed informally, relieving Elspeth’s mind. So she hadn’t completely made a fool of herself.

  One face she knew already, and for the first time in her life she was happy to see it. “Welcome to Aurilien, your Majesty,” Felix Harrington said.

  “Thank you for your welcome, Lord Harrington,” Elspeth replied. The head of Foreign Affairs had been a familiar sight whenever Elspeth’s family had visited Aurilien, and while Elspeth had never been anything to her father’s putative superior but a precocious child, he was still someone she knew.

  The introductions went on. Lady Serena d’Arden, head of Commerce, was an attractive woman a few years older than Elspeth. So much for her theories on how old you had to be to have this job. Lady Jessalyn Beaumont was in charge of Agriculture and looked exactly the way someone with charge over crops and livestock ought to look, in Elspeth’s opinion, with her windblown, frizzy hair and ruddy complexion as if she spent a lot of time outdoors. The head of Finance, Julius Caxton, had a round, cheerful face, but his eyes were cold and calculating and made Elspeth nervous.