by C. E. Murphy
“Believes you’ll put me aside, my lord.” Belinda sighed, more genuine regret in the sound than she was comfortable owning to. “The same story you told your mother. A mother might eventually forgive, but a friendship like Marius’s is a precious thing to waste.”
“He’ll forgive me, in time.” Javier’s unflaggable confidence rang false. “It would help if I had a sister to marry him off to. Marius is inconsistent in love. You were—” Discomfort wrote itself over his face. “You were the first he bothered introducing to us.”
“If I’d known about the witchbreed power,” Belinda murmured, “I might have come straight to you, and we might have spared Marius’s heart.” Again, there was more truth in her words than she liked, and Javier drew her closer, sensing her melancholy.
“We two are alone,” he said into her hair. “You couldn’t know. Nor, I think, would you dare introduce yourself to a prince. You fail to watch your tongue often enough, Beatrice, but that boldness might have been beyond your ken.” He chuckled without humour and moved away from her, tension in the lines of his body. “Or did you choose Marius so you might meet me?”
“What a horrible burden to always walk beneath,” Belinda said after a moment, letting raw sorrow touch her voice. “It is lonely to be a prince, isn’t it, my lord? Rumour said that Marius Poulin was your friend,” she admitted cautiously. “I did not imagine he would bring me to meet you so readily.” Truth lay in fine shards beneath her words, Javier seeming too delicate, in the moment, to ease with soothing falsehoods. “I could not have imagined what has happened.” That, at least, was truth unvarnished, so much so that Belinda uttered an unnaturally rough laugh. “Who could?” she added, unable to help the question. To her relief Javier turned back with a wry smile.
“Not I. And I think that even if you had deliberately sought Marius out and used him to reach me, that I might forgive you for it, Beatrice. I have been alone with God and my power all my life, and whatever means brought you to me are means that I am thankful for.”
“Then be thankful for a strong Lanyarchan oak, and the clever hands of shipwrights,” Belinda quipped, and Javier smiled again. “Come, my lord,” she said more quietly, and then amusement slid into her voice despite herself. “We have other things to think about, do we not? A wedding to plan, a throne to topple, and Lanyarch to frame for it.”
ROBERT, LORD DRAKE
19 November 1587 Alunaer
“We are unobserved?” The question is a matter of ritual, and that is the only thing that brings it to Robert’s lips tonight. He stands in the queen’s private meeting room with a letter clenched in his fist, a letter that has made its way by ship from Lutetia to a miserable hovel in Northern Aulun, then by horse, of which it smells, to his estates to the west, and finally by his own harried courier to Aulun’s capital city, where it has come to end its days as a smear of ink in Robert Drake’s large fist.
“We are,” Lorraine answers, and for a rarity she sounds amused at the question. It’s because of his own agitation, he knows, and yet he finds himself too piqued to present even a semblance of calm. “What on earth has happened, Robert?” Lorraine is in fine form, indeed; perhaps he should remember that his distress improves her humour. He is accustomed to being level-headed, and Lorraine has always thrived on the temerity offered by her red-gold hair. It’s believed redheads are more prone to temper fits than others, and if Lorraine is to be taken as an example, superstition is right.
“It’s Belinda,” he manages to grate, and for a startling moment both of them cease all motion, the weight of that girl’s name heavy in the air between them. Robert refers to her as Primrose when he must discuss her at all with Lorraine, but their daughter is a topic he prefers to avoid. It’s a matter of practicality, not sensitivity; a queen ought not know the details of those doing murder in her name.
“You have our attention, Robert,” Lorraine says archly, when silence has gone on too long. “Pray, share your news with us.”
“She has—She’s—” Robert splutters and thrusts the bedraggled letter toward his queen. Her finely plucked eyebrows elevate and she takes it as if it were diseased, which may not be far from true. She unwrinkles it between long white fingers—even in her age, Lorraine’s hands are lovely—and scans the travel-stained contents of the paper. Her eyebrows inch fractionally higher as she reads, until wrinkles appear in her forehead; she is not given to allowing herself such expressions, for they leave marks in skin that’s no longer as resilient as it once was. When she looks up her expression is hugely amused, and that, Robert fears, is deadly.
“Congratulations, Robert. Your silent weapon is silent no longer.” Lorraine hands him the letter and he crumples it again as she lounges in her chair, tapping a fingertip against scarlet-painted lips. A smile hovers behind her mouth, playing at the muscles of her face but not permitted to burst forth. “Has ambition proved too much for her? A queen’s ba—”
Robert silences her with a slice of his hand through the air, abrupt motion that he would never dare in public. Lorraine’s eyebrows shoot up again, more than enough commentary, but of all things, he will not permit her to say the words she nearly has, not even in the privacy of her unobserved meeting room. There are no ears to hear it, but it remains far better if there are no words to be heard. “A queen’s bastard” is a condemning phrase, and not to the child, not in this age, not in this world. “If she were working from ambition,” and this he believes, “she wouldn’t have warned us of Javier’s plot. It’s enough, Lorraine.” He uses her name deliberately, something he doesn’t often do; he hopes to sway her with its importance. “It’s proof of movement against you. It’s time to act.”
He can see before she speaks that she’ll reject his insistence. Lorraine’s greatest weakness is her caution, though it may also be her greatest strength. That caution has let her hold a throne for nearly thirty years without losing it to a marriage bed or a battle. But it has also kept her from acting when she should, especially against Sandalia, who holds ambition like a flare against the night. The men of her court call it feminine sentiment, and still, after three decades, name it proof that Lorraine should not be permitted to rule alone. Robert knows that sentiment sways his queen less than a too-precise understanding: revolution and regicide are dangerous tools, and once broached, catch imagination far too easily.
Frustration rises, dark and hot within him as he’s proven right with Lorraine’s slight shake of her head. “An ambitious boy doesn’t lay the grounds for action taken against another crowned head, Robert. Your Primrose says Sandalia approves, but words aren’t proof. I will move.” Her voice sharpens, as does her cool grey gaze, and for a moment Robert recalls that he is indeed in the presence of royalty. Lorraine expects her will to be obeyed, and in the end, he knows he won’t go against her. To do so is not in his nature, no more than it is in Belinda’s.
“I will move,” Lorraine repeats, “when no other crowned head of Echon would hold it against me for doing so. We demand proof, Robert, unquestionable proof. We demand words written with treacherous intent and signed in Sandalia’s name before we will call our sister-queen a pretender with ambitions to our throne and strike her down for it.”
“My lady.” Robert bows his head, unwilling to argue. Lorraine holds a hard gaze on him for long moments, establishing that her will is as supreme here, in her private chambers, as it is everywhere in Aulun. Only when he has held the submissive posture long enough does she relent with a quick gesture of her long fingers.
“We will, however, play your Primrose’s game,” she says more softly. “We will agitate and rumble and smell of fear, as if we are so uncertain of ourselves and our throne as to quaver at the idea of a Lanyarchan uprising. Perhaps we ourselves will lure young Javier into a trap, and hold his mother at bay that way.”
She relaxes suddenly, regality fleeing from her stance and weariness greying her eyes. “Am I such a wicked queen? Robert,” she says, and he’s uncertain if she wishes him to answer. He think
s not, but Lorraine’s lapses into ordinary humanity are as unpredictable as her temper, and she never questions herself, not in public, not in private. “My sister held the throne through a reign of bloodshed; my brother for so few days he is all but forgotten.” She stands, crossing the room to where a window once was; now its only mark is stone of a lighter shade than the surrounding walls. She puts her hand against the seam, gaze turned outward, as though she sees things he can’t. He is more certain now that she does not want an answer of him, only for his ears and silence.
“It’s been a half century and more since my father split the Church and laid down Reformation law.” Lorraine’s voice holds a note of wryness: in confessing those years she confesses to her own age, for her mother was the woman Henry split from Cordula over. It’s not an acknowledgment she cares to make; in fact, Robert often wonders if she quite realises how many years have passed. He knows she’s too intelligent to deny the passage of time, and yet the determination with which she plays at youth and teases fresh marriage proposals on the proposition of child-bearing is so deep-set that it seems impossible she could maintain the facade without believing in it herself.
But now regret hollows Robert’s heart to hear her admit to the years. It’s an unexpected weakness to find inside himself, the hope and bizarre belief that Lorraine Walter can hold off age through denial, even when his eyes and intellect tell him it’s a battle she, like everyone, must lose. “Lanyarch chafes under Reformation rule where Aulun has bowed its head to it. I don’t want Constance’s legacy, Robert. I don’t want my name to be whispered as a butcher’s—Oh, stop it,” she says impatiently, and he startles, then curls an apologetic smile toward the floor. Her thoughts may be turned to things beyond the palace walls, but her attention is crisp enough inside the spy-hole room, and she saw his grimace that said she wasn’t supposed to know the names laid at her dead sister’s feet. “I’m neither deaf nor a fool, and Constance’s name was drowned in blood long before I took the throne. A country does not easily sway between one faith and another. Surely it was right to hold with Father’s religion, when a return to Cordula’s brought such bitter bloodshed during Constance’s years on the throne.”
Now she hesitates, and Robert takes it as a cue to speak, though he keeps his voice quiet and diffident. “You have been right.” There’s no other answer he can give, but he also believes it’s true: Aulun’s tender new religion has drawn scars deeply across the whole of the island nation. But those that run deepest are the ones left from Constance’s reign. Lorraine’s older sister, daughter of Henry’s first and only, in Ecumenic eyes, legitimate wife, Constance had been faithful to her mother’s religion, and tried to turn the tide back to Cordula’s church. Hundreds of Reformation believers had burned during her short reign, and in the end, she had paid for her faith with her life. For stability, for expansion, for practicality in moving forward, Lorraine chose wisely in choosing her father’s religion.
And Robert wants nothing more than for Aulun to move forward. “You have been right,” he says again. “I have no answers for contentious Lanyarch, save to cut them free and make them their own country, no longer subject to the Aulunian crown.”
Lorraine turns a look so incredulous it borders on offense toward him, and Robert laughs. “Well, it’s an idea,” he protests, and Lorraine’s expression becomes that much more appalled. Robert lifts his hands in apology and bows deeply at the same time, though he’s still smiling as he rises again. “Forgive me, my queen. It was a terrible idea.”
“Your humour sometimes bewilders us, Robert.” Lorraine falls into formality, but there’s a twitch in her voice that says she might give herself over to laughter as well, were she not a queen. But she is, and Robert wonders if she can laugh at such a jape, or if it’s physically beyond her capability. He sighs, still smiling, and now turns his palms up.
“If I didn’t occasionally befuddle you, my queen, you might grow bored of me and put me aside. My life would be meaningless.” It’s meant as a quip, but his voice softens, betraying too much. Lorraine lowers her eyes as if she were still a girl and uncertain of how to respond to truth disguised as flattery. It was an embarrassment, Robert thought, to actually fall in love with his queen. At least Dmitri would never know, and Seolfor; well, Seolfor.
“Let them play their game with Lanyarch,” he says before silence grows too heavy. “Let Gallin think we tremble. We have Irina’s treaty all but in hand, and with Khazarian troops we can quell that troublesome land if necessary. You must admit,” he adds, suddenly thoughtful, “it’s not a bad plot.”
“Not if I were eighteen and uncertain of my throne,” Lorraine says tartly, but she relents with a nod. “Better, perhaps, for stirring up Lanyarch than for threatening me, but even that can be trouble enough. Are you sure it’s Javier’s plot, Robert, and not your Primrose’s? You taught her to be clever.”
“No,” he says, startling himself into another smile with the recollection of Belinda’s innocent gaze all the times she made the amused claim that he now offers for her: “Her nurse did.”
Lorraine’s eyes narrow and he shrugs it off, briefly and inordinately pleased with the child he fathered. “I believe she’ll press it forward to the point of the hard proof that you require, but not that she would instigate a plot against you, Lorraine. She’s loyal, and if she is not, there is someone there who watches her, and who will tell me if she should falter.” Robert spreads one hand, admission of his own weakness. “I trust her, but I wouldn’t be your spymaster if I didn’t distrust my own certainty. She’s watched.”
“She’s young,” Lorraine says, “and he’s a prince. Loyalty can be bought. We’ll play her game, Robert, but we wish her to be extracted from the situation. Fetch her yourself, or send your man who watches her to do so.” It’s not a mother’s concern behind the command, but a regent’s self-interest.
Robert inclines his head, a promise, then lifts his eyes again to say, mildly, “It will be done, my lady.” He cannot help himself, though: he believes in his daughter, and so adds, “If I’m wrong about her, my head for it.”
It’s careless, meant to show loyalty, but something cool comes into Lorraine’s eyes again, and Robert is once more reminded that he stands in the presence of royalty. She doesn’t need words to remind him that it could well be his head for it, nor that favouritism can fade. Well and truly scolded, Robert bows again, and in the hidden places of that obsequience rues the heart that loves a queen.
ANA DI MEO
22 November 1587 Lutetia
Aulun is such a little distance away.
Ana di Meo fingers a letter sent to her only three days earlier, from Alunear across the channel, and imagines the journey it would continue on for days or even weeks yet, if it had to reach her in Aria Magli. There are mountain ranges in the way, a difficult enough journey in summer; in the winter it’s easier to take a ship beyond Essandia’s most westerly points and bring it back again into the Primorismare. There are storms to risk, of course, but there are always storms.
And one is brewing now, between Aulun and Gallin.
Ana climbs to her feet, letter held in her fingertips, and collects a warm fur to wrap around her shoulders as she crosses to a window that overlooks Lutetia. It’s a grey city in the failing winter light, with the Sacrauna cutting a broad dark slash through it. She’s not as close to the water as she’d like to be: after a lifetime of Aria Magli’s canals, it surprises her how uncomfortable she is with cobbled streets and so little sound of running water. But she can see the river from her tower, and see the city besides. A cathedral rises up as the landscape’s dominant feature, overwhelming even Sandalia de Costa’s palace. God reigns here more surely than Man, and Ana supposes the church would have it so. For herself, she’d rather be back in decadant Aria Magli, where God and Man wrestle in the sheets every night and come morning bob and greet each other on the canals like distantly polite strangers. Lutetia thinks itself quite the centre of culture, but Ana finds it stifling.
Rue carves lines in her face and she taps the letter against the windowsill. If it’s stifling, it’s in part her own fault: she’s chosen life in a tower, like a princess or worse, God forbid, a nun. Lovers and servants come to her full of gossip, and she rarely leaves her protected place. Not for her own sake, but because Belinda Primrose has made herself a fixture in the palace, and Ana di Meo, much as she would prefer to stand and watch the young woman weave her way through Lutetian politicians, can’t risk Belinda seeing her. Ana knows herself to be striking; men remember her after only a glance, and she shared far more than that with Belinda.
And might have shared more yet, had the girl not drawn back, fever and distress blanching her features. Even now that expression stings Ana, though when Robert Drake had arrived to take Belinda away, much was explained. Ana had thought it revulsion; now she knows it for guilt, and that she can sympathize with. Women of their nature are rarely allowed moments of freedom, and to be caught up when they’re stolen…
Well. Ana paid the price for the path they’d looked at travelling, too, as damned by unfettered desire as Belinda had been. Robert had snatched away a chance for a few hours of joy without price, though to hold him accountable is both petty and pointless. She knows that as well as she knows her own name, and also knows her own character well enough to place blame comfortably, whether it was warranted or not. There is little in the way of bitterness in doing so, but everyone, queen or courtesan, counts coup.
Ana unfolds the letter onto the sill, reading over words she has no need to be reminded of. Robert’s strong hand is undisguised in the pages, words of loyalty and love scrawled out as though passion had captured him in a fit and forced him to the pen.
He warms her with his promises, even when she reads the requests hidden by careful phrasing. It isn’t her love he seeks, but news of Belinda’s feelings for Gallin’s crown prince. Not Ana’s loyalty he wants, nor his own pledged to her, but details of Belinda’s to her duty. It’s a pity the world is not other than it is, for Ana can imagine one in which Robert’s missives to her are nothing of coded questions, and all of the desire and fondness written on the surface.