by C. E. Murphy
“The Essandian prince believes God’s divine touch graces us with the leaders we deserve, my sister. We’ve known a stretch of peace through these years. Perhaps God feels we’ve needed the gentle touch of female regents to guide us through it.”
“Or perhaps we have peace because women don’t look to war first.” Ambition rides Sandalia’s words, and she repeats, “Not first,” beneath her breath. “But no true leader shirks from it when it’s necessary. Lorraine’s too old to pitch a battle herself. She won’t see me coming, and if Irina is offering you troops—”
“She offers me troops, Dalia, not Gallin.”
“Gallin and Essandia are allies, my lord.”
“You would have me take Khazarian troops to conquer Aulun in your name?” Danger warns in the edges of Rodrigo’s question. Sandalia ducks her head, making herself petite and pretty and harmless, then looks up again with a flirt of eyelashes.
“In Cordula’s name, brother. In Cordula’s name.”
ROBERT, LORD DRAKE
27 June 1587 Alunaer, capital of Aulun
“We are unobserved?” The question is a matter of ritual, thirty years’ habit forcing it to Robert’s lips even when he knows as well as his queen that their meeting room is cloistered against all listeners. Knows better than she, indeed, though he can never confess to the unearthly skill that allows him to be absolutely certain of their privacy.
“Have done, Robert,” Lorraine says with ill-concealed impatience. “We have yet to hear whispers of anything discussed in this room hissing around the court. We are unobserved, and the lusty pair playing at our voices in the bedchamber will be obliged to violate our virgin reputation if we do not hurry. What have you for me?”
A smile shifts the shape of Robert’s beard, prickling his skin. Lorraine’s shields are unbreachable, her restraint and control beyond any he’s ever met, but she can let her guard slip in words. When she does so with him, allowing herself the familiar me or I, it means more to him than the tasting of her thoughts ever might. “Gregori is dead. Irina is free from his pursuit and is indebted to us. Our negotiations may proceed.”
“The Khazarian army,” Lorraine breathes. “Think of it, Robert. Aulun’s fleet and the masses of men who can be called to arms under Irina’s banner. We might hold all of Echon in the palm of our hand, a summer hence.”
“We might.” Temperance fills Robert’s voice. “But Essandia and Gallin will rise under Cordula’s call, and Reussland will not take easily to Khazar rolling over it. We must maintain caution, Your Majesty.”
“Caution!” Lorraine spits the word, coming to her feet in a rustle of heavy skirts. No longer the Titian Bitch in truth, her hair flames false red above a white-painted face that makes mockery of the striking youth she once was. “We have been cautious our entire life, Robert. We tire of caution. We would have confidence in our legacy, the measure given a man, not the weak-legged tripping steps of a woman.”
“You have consolidated and held power for a lifetime, Lorraine.” Robert softens his voice, daring the use of the queen’s name. “You have played men against one another and kept yourself free, a regent in your own right when too many thought the throne ought not be yours. You have made yourself an icon whose name will never be forgotten. Kings would weep for lesser legacies.”
“And Sandalia de Philip de Costa has done the same in the name of two thrones, and stands on my northern border, mocking me and waiting for me to fall. She has years, Robert.” Bitterness taints the admission. “She is fifteen years the younger. I must command at least a fraction of Irina’s army to hold my own country should my health fail. We have waited long enough.” Her shoulders draw back, wattle tightening with the resolve that the formal we announces. “We will ally ourselves with our sister queen on the Khazarian throne. We will offer Aulunian ships and privateers to run their ice-blocked harbors and coasts so they might more easily enjoy the trade treaties we have built. In exchange we will accept some small part of her army under our command, so that we might all understand our delicate relationship to one another, and we will not threaten her throne in any way, for we understand what it is to be a woman alone at the head of a country.” Lorraine takes a breath, satisfaction glinting in her grey eyes. “And in time we will enjoy discussions of where our alliance might further bring us, and what it might mean to the Ecumenic Church and Cordula.”
BELINDA PRIMROSE
17 July 1587 Aria Magli, Parna
It was Aria Magli; it was always Aria Magli. The city’s peculiar streets, littered with gondolas and filled with vice, were the one place Belinda thought of with anticipation. She sat in a gondola now, leaning forward from under its canopy, allowing herself an unfeigned, unrestrained smile as the boy at the back of the boat poled it along the busy canals.
Rich and poor brushed elbows here; it was thus in any large city, but the possibility of a wealthy lady being dunked in the canal made watching the passersby much more entertaining than in the streets of Alunaer. A man with a rooster balanced on his head leaned out over the canal, one hand firmly wrapped around a water-way pole. Around his feet were caged birds, squawking with indignation. His voice rose over the din, over the sound of water lapping and the voices that bounced back and forth between the canal-separated buildings. The Parnan language rang liquidly in Belinda’s ears, every word a promise, even if the speaker was only hawking chickens. He waved as he caught Belinda’s smile, and she lifted a hand, snapping her fingers to gain the gondola boy’s attention.
“This one will rob you blind, madam,” the boy warned. “I know a better man, much better, and handsome, too. Almost as handsome as me.”
“But are his chickens as healthy?” Belinda asked with a laugh. “I’m not buying a man, I’m buying dinner.”
He clucked as sorrowfully as the chickens did and pushed the gondola toward the lichen-covered canal wall. “What kind of a woman doesn’t want a handsome man to sell her things?” he asked mournfully.
“The kind who wants a handsome man to buy her things,” Belinda suggested.
“If I buy you a chicken, you will see my man!” the boy enthused, and leapt forward to snatch up one of the cages from the hawker’s feet. They fell to bargaining, speaking too low and too quickly for Belinda to catch the words. She settled back beneath her canopy again, entirely certain that the price of the chicken would be added to the fare for her afternoon ride. Another gondola slid by, an expensively dressed woman reading from a book of poetry to a man who doted on her. Belinda watched them go until the curve of the canal took them from her sight, then smiled and searched for another such pair.
Courtesans. Their days of great power in the Maglian courts were over, brought low by the plague and the Heretical Trials half a century earlier, but their stories were still told throughout Echon. Had she been born to the warmer Parnan climes instead of foggy Aulun, Belinda thought she might have been one of them. Not necessarily beautiful, but well-educated in studies forbidden to most women, and then taught to be hedonistic lovers as well. Their lives weren’t so different from Belinda’s own, although a courtesan worked for money, and Belinda for—
A cage with a shrieking chicken was dropped at Belinda’s feet. She looked up to see the gondola boy, who stood with his chest thrust out and arms akimbo. “You see!” he crowed. “I have gotten you a chicken, and now you will see my man.”
“What do I need to see him for,” Belinda asked, “if I’ve already got a chicken?”
The boy’s face fell, comical and quick as melting wax, but he recovered with lifted eyebrows and widened eyes. “He’s wealthy and handsome, lady. Maybe he’s a good husband for you, huh?”
“Or maybe he’s a thief who wants my necklace. Tell him it’s paste and have off with him, boy. I want my afternoon ride.” Belinda searched for biscuit crumbs from the lunch she’d carried with her, and dropped them into the chicken’s cage. The bird stopped protesting and fluffed its tail feathers into the air, pecking at the crumbs. The gondola boy pushed the bo
at back into the canal, still entreating her.
“But he has asked for you, lady. He says he will give me two guineas for bringing you to him.”
“Two, hm? I must be very important, then.” Belinda smiled again, watching a girl above the canals lean out of her room and wave. Someone smacked her skirts, making her jump, and she fled back inside, but not before Belinda returned the wave and a young man caroled out a ribald poem.
“Yes, lady,” the boy said, undeterred. “He said to look for you, to not take any other riders but you.”
“And how did he tell you to know me?” Belinda asked, willing to continue the banter. It was the courtesans, her sisters in all but name, that made her feel as if she belonged here. She knew rare moments of peace and satisfaction in her life, but only in Aria Magli did she know happiness. Until her father or one of his men met her, she would spend her evenings slipping uninvited into parties, hiding behind masks to speak of politics and poetry to women whose names she would never know. It was the closest thing to freedom the queen’s bastard had ever known.
“He said you would have fair skin,” the boy all but sang, “and hair like the rich brown earth turned up to the morning sun. He said your eyes were the green of new leaves, and your smile softer than a thousand roses.” Belinda twisted to look over her shoulder at him, astonished. The boy looked immensely pleased with himself, and she laughed out loud. “He also said you would be wearing a dress of blue and gold, and gave me the address you lived at. I waited half the morning, lady, and missed many commissions,” he added more prosaically. “Now we have to go to him, or my father will beat me for losing so much money on a day like today.”
“Would he really?” Belinda asked, the question mere noise to hide the dismay that dragged her heart down. There were patterns to follow in Aria Magli: dresses of particular colours, each selected for the day of the week; one address of a half dozen to stay at, rotated through. Either her father or one of his men was here to tell her more of Dmitri’s cryptic message, and to give her a new assignment. There would be no long nights trading whoring secrets and stories with the courtesans, not this time. She lifted her hand, gesturing that the boy should take her where he’d been told, and looked, without expression, at the contented chicken. The boy answered her in the affirmative, babbling on with tales of his father’s heavy hand and the eight, or fourteen, or twelve, brothers and sisters who all scrambled and worked to keep him in his drink and happy. Belinda laughed in the right places, gasped dramatically when it was called for, and heard nothing he said.
He had been waiting, then, her father or his man. For days, perhaps, even weeks; the journey from north of Khazar all the way to Aria Magli was easiest in high summer, but still not quick. She’d parted ways with the coachman—a more inventive lover than poor Viktor—in Khazar’s capital city and travelled alone, only arriving in Aria Magli late the night before. They had been waiting for her, watching. The morning’s taste of freedom had been a false one, and the open, sun-lit canals seemed a mockery now, instead of a pleasure.
The chicken finished its snack and bwocked with irritation. Belinda turned a faint smile on it. “You may have found a stay of execution, my little friend. I may not be here for supper.” And if she were not, the bird would go to the boy and his eight or fourteen or twelve siblings, perhaps a finer meal than they’d had in weeks. Then again, a chicken hadn’t the sense to comprehend false hope, and Belinda did. It left a taste of bleakness in her throat, bitter as almonds.
The boy poled the gondola beneath a low bridge. A coin glittered down off the bridge, landing at Belinda’s feet with a flat tap. She leaned past the chicken cage to collect it, gold a heavy weight in her hand, warmth undiminished by its brief sojourn through the air. “Here,” she said. “At the next steps.”
“No,” the boy said with determination. “The man told me—”
“He told you wrong,” Belinda interrupted. “Here, boy, at the next steps, and this is yours.” She lifted the coin between two fingers and all but felt the avaricious leap of the child’s heart. For a few seconds the image caught her, the stamped golden coin brilliant in the afternoon sunshine, giving a warm cast to her fingers. Beyond her hand, in poor focus, was the water, blue with reflected skies in direct light, brown with debris in shadow. Farther still were figures on the streets, mostly in the strong shades favoured by the wealthy. Probably not her father, then; he preferred the less ostentatious parts of Aria Magli for meetings such as this. Belinda had long since learned it was often as easy to hide in plain sight, as plumed as a peacock, but Robert would have no changing of his ways.
“If you like to dawdle,” she continued, “stay a while. It may be that I’ll return.”
“My father,” the boy hazarded. Belinda smiled a little.
“A bargain,” she suggested. “Wait an hour, and if I haven’t returned, you have the guineas, this coin, and this chicken here to take home to your father.”
“And if you have?” he demanded.
“Then you’ve all of those things and my fare for the rest of the day,” Belinda replied. Another chicken could always be purchased, or dinner taken at one of the inns in the traveller’s part of town.
But she’d reminded the boy with her words, and he hopped forward, a palm extended. “Your fare for the morning,” he said. “Four guineas.”
Belinda lifted her eyebrows. “Two.”
The child looked affronted. “Three and a half.”
Belinda laughed. “Three, and it’s done.”
The boy spat in his palm, offering it to her before he thought. Then dismay filled his eyes and he wiped his palm hastily against his grubby shirt, offering his hand a second time. Belinda dropped the guineas and the larger gold coin into his hand, watching as he secreted each coin into a different, heretofore unnoticed, pocket or pouch in his clothing. “An hour,” he said with the air of an aggrieved parent. “Not a minute more, fine lady.”
“Not a minute more.” Belinda gathered her skirts and climbed from the boat, her picnic basket swinging from one elbow. A young man with dark gypsy eyes and a ready white smile offered her a hand up, and she took it against her better sense, murmuring, “Grazie.”
His smile flashed deeper, showing dimples. She pressed a small coin into his hand and moved away, climbing up the steps and turning to walk back to the bridge the gondola had passed under. When she looked back, the gypsy man was staring at the coin in his hand with an expression of indignation.
A woman waited on the bridge, leaning over stone that made up railing and wall both, watching her reflection in the water below. Belinda took up a place on the far side of the bridge, several feet down from the other woman, and studied her as she waited for her contact. She was lovely in the expensive way of a courtesan, not the more demure beauty of a well-behaved wife: she wore chartreuse, the strength of the colour far beyond what Belinda would ever be able to wear. Her corsets made her torso long and slender, narrowing her hips and pushing her breasts high. The skirts were full but light: Belinda imagined the woman could ride a horse astride in those skirts. Her hair was dark, highlighted with gold in the afternoon sun, and her forehead high. Lorraine would approve, adoring the popular theory that a high forehead was a sign of intelligence. The women of Lorraine’s court plucked their hairlines to emulate the queen. Belinda stilled her hand before it wandered to explore her own hairline; she already knew it followed Robert’s more closely than Lorraine’s, and that was just as well. Lorraine’s widow’s peak was distinctive, and a girl marked with it would draw comment and speculation that the queen could not afford.
Belinda deliberately inhaled, changing the tilt of her head to help chase away thoughts of Aulun and the queen. The woman across the bridge laughed unexpectedly, flinging a hand out. A gold coin sparkled through the air and hit a passing gondola’s deck with a thunk barely audible above the sound of water lapping against the canal walls. Belinda went still within herself, keeping her expression mildly animated as her gaze went to the gond
ola passing beneath her. A delighted pole-boy scampered forward and scooped up the coin that had landed on his boat, shouting, “Thank you, signora!” up at the bridge.
“You’re welcome!” the woman shouted back. She turned toward Belinda, looking through her and beyond her, a smile curving her full mouth. She waved; Belinda looked over her shoulder to see the gypsy man bowing deeply and extravagantly. The woman laughed and turned away again without meeting Belinda’s eyes; without giving her any sign that she was to be approached.
Belinda looked back at the water, watching the shadow of another bridge swallow the second gondola the woman had gifted with a coin. She tapped one finger against the stone wall, and decided: she would wait, and see how fate ruled a third time.
When it ruled in favour of another coin thrown to a bright-eyed young gondola lad, Belinda tilted her face up to the sun and swore under her breath.
“Gone and left you then, has he?” The woman across the bridge had a warm alto, a burr to her voice that gave it an edge of sultriness. A voice practised for the bedroom, Belinda thought, and glanced at the woman. There was still a chance; her father had never before sent a woman to meet her.
“Abandoned and left cold,” she replied. “Ungrateful bastard.”
The woman laughed again, a rich comforting sound, and crossed the bridge to lean next to Belinda, her hands turned wrist-out against the stone wall. “Was he rich?”
“No,” Belinda said. “Nor handsome, either.”
The woman arched finely shaped eyebrows. “What’s the point, then?”
“I suppose it’s all in what we do for God and country.” Belinda spoke the coded words with a shrug. The woman’s eyebrows shot up.
“Sod God and bugger country. I want a palmful of coin and a feather bed.”
Belinda let herself laugh aloud, relaxing against the rail. The dark-haired woman at her side was certainly not her contact. Despite what had seemed to be the signal coin, her answer left everything to be desired as a pass code, though not as a brazen woman. “With four posts and a canopy?” she asked. The woman shook her head vehemently.