by C. E. Murphy
“Must we play this all the way to the end, Belinda?” Akilina interrupted so gently Belinda overrode her for several words. It was the use of her name that stopped her, chills creeping over her skin and making her grateful once more for the all-encompassing gown: barely more than her fingertips and face were visible to give away any changes in complexion that she might be unable to control. However Akilina had found her out, the thoroughness with which she had done so devastated everything that Belinda had ever been. Her name on the other woman’s lips struck away her last chances at anonymity; even if she survived the next few minutes, Belinda Primrose would be forever associated with Beatrice Irvine, and neither would ever be able to hide again.
But she drew herself up, dragging all the self-respect and command that poor Beatrice had left to her and met Akilina’s eyes. “We must.” The quaver in her voice belonged to Beatrice, whose fright and anger went nowhere near the depths of Belinda’s fury. “I don’t know who Belinda is, or why you seek to destroy my reputation, but if you insist on playing this farce I’ll see it to the end, my lady. I see no other choice.”
Marius cried out, a warning that came an instant too late. Belinda whirled, less grace or power in the movement than she might have wished, her clothing hampering her. Ilyana, forgotten as Belinda made her pleas to throne and countess, leapt forward with her hands clawed, scratching and scraping at Belinda’s eyes. Belinda flung her hands up, green silk gown tearing with a shriek as dreadful as the sound that ripped from Ilyana’s throat. They collapsed to the floor, Ilyana’s weight bearing Belinda down, Belinda’s arms crossed in front of her face. She could fight back, even constrained by the gown, but Beatrice didn’t have Belinda’s taught skills, and to cower was far better than to out herself by competence beyond that which she should have.
Another sound, terrible and pained, erupted from Ilyana’s throat, and her body went rigid above Belinda’s. Whimpering, half crying in the shock and fear that her persona felt, Belinda dared lower her arms a few inches, then screamed outright as Ilyana coughed blood and bile, blue gaze accusing even as it turned glassy. Her body jerked, then slumped heavily against Belinda’s chest, blood drooling down her chin. Belinda screamed again, scrambling backward to get out from under Ilyana’s weight, and knocked into Javier’s shins. She looked up, gasping for breath, to see his unsheathed sword dripping blood on Sandalia’s pristine carpets, and his gaze locked on Marius who stood on Ilyana’s other side, his own blade still buried in the dead girl’s back.
Marius let go his blade as if it burned him, lifting his hands against a sudden shuffle of guardsmen. “Forgive me, my prince. I forgot whose presence I was in.”
“Away.” Javier’s abrupt word was to the guards, not his childhood friend. “I can hardly fault you, Marius, when your impulse was the same as my own.” Each quiet word was infused with apology, the most a prince could offer, and the silence that rang between the two of them made Belinda’s heart ache and pound and ache again, until spots of blackness came into her vision. Marius bowed finally, so deep it might have been mockery could she not, through waves of dizziness, feel profound sorrow and respect from the young man, and a lonesome forgiveness that would break the heart of the man he bowed to, could he but feel it.
“Beatrice.” Javier’s voice was gentle, as gentle as it had been to Marius. He offered her a hand, helping her to her feet; to her relief and embarrassment, the darkness faded from her vision as she was better able to catch a breath. “Are you all right?” He touched her cheek, making her aware of stinging where Ilyana’s nails had caught flesh, but she nodded, carefully folding her arms across her torso as she tried to hold the bodice of her gown back together.
“I’m all right, my lord. I fear the same cannot be said for my dress.” She offered a weak smile and cast her glance downward, not daring to look toward either Akilina or the queen. At her feet, though, lay Ilyana’s body, and the part of her that was Beatrice shuddered and turned away, hiding her face against Javier’s chest. His heart echoed loudly in her ears, and his voice came deep from her close quarters.
“Are you satisfied, Lady Akilina? What more would you have Beatrice go through? Your guardsman admits he’s lying and this wretched creature is dead for your plotting.” He rested one hand around Belinda’s shoulders, lifting the other to snap and gesture for Ilyana’s body to be taken away. His mother, still on her feet at his side, had not spoken or moved during the entirety of the display; now she turned her attention to Akilina as well, cool curiosity in her voice.
“This was not the entertainment we were promised, my lady. Our gown is spattered with blood and our dais stained with it, all for the purpose of making us look a fool, it seems. Is this what your schemings have produced, and nothing more?” Her every word was beautifully precise, as though rehearsed, and for a faltering moment Belinda wondered if it were. Surely Ilyana’s death had not been for show; Marius, for all his youth, would not agree to murder a woman for theatrical court.
That, Belinda thought with a ghost of inappropriate humour, was much more her sort of duty to carry out. But she had no sense of anything from Sandalia, for all that the queen stood very nearly touching distance away. Close enough to steal the desk keys from, but with no way to do it, not now, not at the heart of such a spectacle. The same horrid ghost of amusement came over her, squelching through her insides in search of a place to break free.
“I wish it were, Your Majesty.” Another woman’s voice, more painful in its faint familiarity than Ilyana’s for all that Belinda had never heard it speak the Gallic language before. She lifted her head, the small motion denying all the stiffness that wanted to come into her body. The depth of shock that Ilyana’s appearance had brought seemed to have faded: she felt no outrageous disbelief this time, only a sadness as deep as that which marked Marius.
The crowd of courtiers parted, allowing the woman to come forward. She wore, to Belinda’s surprise and agonizing pleasure, one of Eliza’s fashions, the loose flowing gown making the most of her height and her breasts, the vibrant lime fabric only wearable by a scant handful of women with her generous colouring. She dipped a curtsey, more perfunctory than polite, and kept her eyes on Belinda as she spoke. “I wish it were,” she said again, more quietly this time, as if the words were an apology to Belinda, “and I wish that I had not been called to stand here before you.”
“You are?” Sandalia asked crisply. She was cool and calm, unsurprised, unpredictable, unreadable. Satisfaction swept off Akilina, making Belinda’s stomach tighten.
“I am called Ana di Meo, and I am a courtesan from Aria Magli. I knew this woman in Aria Magli, when she called herself Rosa, but moreover, I know her father. Through him I also know that she is called Belinda Primrose, and that her purpose here is to sow dissent and revolution in Gallin’s heart, and if possible, to take the life of a queen.”
Thunder crashed through the hall, voices rising in shouts of horror and excitement and dismay. Javier tightened his arm around Belinda’s shoulders as if he could protect her from the surge of passion that swept the hall; indeed, the men and women gathered behind Ana stepped forward en masse, suddenly hungry for blood and information.
Belinda felt only silent astonishment, her soul emptied of anything else, even the witchpower rage. It would be her undoing to ask why, though she thought the question might be in her eyes, and that only the lush courtesan would read it as anything other than bewilderment. Indeed, Ana lifted a shoulder and let it fall in such a minute motion Belinda might have imagined it; it did not at all carry the answer she sought. Her gaze carried quiet regret but not guilt: whatever drove her, she would not lose sleep that night over betraying Belinda.
Belinda’s mind danced back to the moment they’d shared at the Maglian pub, the injury she’d seen flicker through Ana’s expression when the tavern’s overwhelming emotional attack had made her draw back from the other woman rather than give in to the sweet, unbartered passion they’d both felt. To condemn Beatrice Irvine as a fals
ehood seemed an extraordinary retaliation for a fleeting moment’s pain, but Belinda knew too well how desire dismissed could go astray, and had no other answer to consider.
Javier’s voice, above her head, cut through the clamor, witchpower giving it strength: “Who is her father, that you make this outrageous claim and lend it his name as backing?”
Belinda thought, did not say, did not so much as breathe, no, and could not let herself close her eyes or flinch in dismay as Ana said, “Robert, Lord Drake, favoured of Lorraine in Aulun.” “Beatrice?” Javier whispered her name through the commotion rising in Sandalia’s audience hall. Belinda allowed herself a laugh, a tiny shaking sound, and turned her eyes toward the prince, helplessness in them.
“What should I say, my prince? I can’t end this farce by agreeing with them. I’ve never been beyond Lutetia, much less as far as Aria Magli. My father’s name was Robert, it’s true, but he was Robert Stewart, and held a plot of land in the highlands of Lanyarch. I don’t know why they’re doing this.” She felt distressingly exposed, as if wearing Beatrice’s too-raw emotions so openly stripped her to the skin. As if Ana had the power to undress her with words and show the Lutetian court the truth of the woman beneath Javier’s consort. She could do nothing other than hold her ground and maintain her innocence, but doing so was draining the strength from her, and she didn’t dare reach for the witchpower’s uncontrollable fire to shore herself with.
“That is all you need say.” Javier pressed his lips to her forehead, then lifted his voice. “We find this woman, these women,” he said, including Akilina in his accusations, “to be troublesome and cruel-hearted. Beatrice has done none of you any harm, and a woman’s life has already been paid for your foolish, bitter games. I know this woman whom I hold in my arms.” Passion deepened his voice and he tucked Beatrice against his chest more solidly. “She has given me more joy in the brief months I’ve courted her than a lifetime has known before. I had believed myself to be alone.” His voice gentled again and he set Belinda back, his hands on her shoulders as he gazed down at her. The grey of his eyes was bright with passion, his fingers warm against her skin where her gown had torn. His thoughts whispered to her things he wouldn’t say aloud to the gathered assembly: She’s like me, more than any of you can understand. She shares the power that I have. I will make this all right if I have to bend each and every one of you to my will, even you, Mother. I will not be left alone again.
“She’s shown me that I’m not alone,” he said, almost for her ears only. “For that gift alone I would defend her to God Himself.” He looked up again, anger darkening his face. “And I will hear no more of these accusations. We know where Beatrice Irvine is from. Ask yourselves instead what ends the Khazarian countess gains from this drama.”
The crowd turned with his speech, grumblings twisting away from Belinda to focus on Akilina. Only the scant handful at the front of the throne room held steady in their stances: Marius, for whom Belinda could do no wrong; Asselin, for whom she could do no right. Akilina’s confidence flagged not at all, and Sandalia held suspicion above any other conceit. Javier’s steadfast trust was strongest, but the walls of dissonant, strident belief from each of them battered at her, threatening the still core she dared not release.
“I don’t gain a throne from it.” Akilina’s reply was light. “You know that as well as I, Prince Javier. My aspirations reach beyond my grasp, I fear; I must learn to content myself with lesser objectives. This has nothing to do with me, my lord, and everything to do with the safety of your mother’s realm. Of your realm, your Highness. How might I convince you of this?”
“Produce Drake,” Javier spat. “Let me hear it from his own lips. Condemn Beatrice that way.”
A serpent’s smile slipped across Akilina’s mouth and she curtsied so deeply as to border on ridicule. “Viktor.”
The guard, whose eyes had never left Belinda, flinched at the sound of his name, coming to attention. Akilina nodded and he broke from formation, stomping down the cleared aisle through the courtiers. They drew back, watching him as if he were an alien thing, dangerous to them, and Belinda watched him go with a surety and a sickness rising in her. The doors at the end of the hall banged open to allow him exodus, and shut again with a final-sounding boom behind him.
Rage, underlying, too familiar, scented of chypre in the back of Belinda’s mind.
“Do forgive me his condition, my prince,” Akilina murmured to the silent hall. “He’s been most reluctant to cooperate.”
Belinda trembled in Javier’s grip, not from fear but from fury. Akilina’s smugness, her utter pleasure in the situation, was truth enough as to who would be dragged through the doors when they opened again. Belinda wanted, even without seeing Robert, to fall to her knees, to cry aloud and shriek her horror and dismay. She wanted her hard-learned stillness to desert her, to be allowed to be a child abandoned and forgotten but still seeking approval; to break away from what she and her father had made of her and be nothing more than an ordinary woman in a trying position.
Like everyone else, she flinched when the doors banged open again. The tiny reaction felt like her single nod to humanity, for she could not allow herself to fall into despair as Viktor and another man dragged Robert Drake’s broken and bleeding form down the audience chamber aisle.
She did permit herself a cry of dismay, fingers pressed against her mouth, eyes round with horror. Beatrice Irvine was a gentle woman, and a man broken under torture was far from a sight she was prepared to see. She turned away, painful abrupt movement, to hide her face against Javier’s chest, a plea shaking her voice: “My lord, I don’t know this man. What have they done to him? Surely we’re not such monsters…?” Witchpower raged beneath her skin, searching for a weakness that would permit it to burst forth and act, though what form that action might take, Belinda didn’t know. She only knew she wanted to lash out, and that she felt a marrow-deep resentment of the training that forbade it as powerfully as she felt reassurance at that training’s strength.
Grimness filled Javier’s response, more in feeling than in words. “I believe I would know the Aulunian queen’s consort anywhere, even as badly treated as he has been. Akilina, you will explain this.” Sandalia, at his side, sparked with a curious blend of resentment and relief that her son seemed finally willing to take a leading position. He was too much like his uncle, Belinda thought abruptly, and wondered once more at the father who’d gotten Javier on Sandalia. The distraction, however brief, was a welcome one, diverting some of the edged fury elsewhere. Sandalia, just within Belinda’s line of sight, said nothing as she turned to the Khazarian countess, awaiting answers to Javier’s demand.
“Viktor and Ilyana both spoke of this woman.” Akilina gestured with her hands as she spoke, graceful motion encompassing first where Ilyana’s blood patterned the rugs, giving the name to the dead girl, then including Belinda as a woman unworthy of naming. “They knew her as Rosa, on a Khazarian estate north of Khazan. My lover Gregori Kapnist died there and on that same day this woman fled.” She all but wove a spell with her words, speaking softly enough that everyone leaned in to hear. “Tell me, Prince Javier, does your woman wear a knife at the small of her back?”
Javier’s expression became nonplussed, turning from Akilina to Belinda and back again. “Not that I’ve seen.” He offered a faint smile, suggesting, “If you like I could take her away from here and investigate in private.”
A voice distorted with lust and envy came out of the crowd: “Strip the whore here and let us all see you’re not bespelled, Red Prince.”
Javier turned shocked eyes toward the courtiers, who tightened ranks rather than fall apart and expose the speaker. Belinda tried to call a blush and failed, anger at her inability bringing colour to her cheeks a moment later. Javier set his jaw and returned his attention to Akilina, whose unimpeachable confidence had faded a notch at his confession. “I had her journey traced,” the countess said, voice lowered further. “To Aria Magli, where she met
this woman and this man, whom I know myself. She was sent here from Parna, Your Highnesses, to bring down your throne.”
“Drake has confirmed this?” Javier scraped the words out, earning Akilina’s laugh.
“Not yet, my lord prince, but he will. Or perhaps Belinda could spare him the pain, and tell us all the truth.”
“My name is Beatrice Irvine!” Belinda cried her reply with all the passion she could muster, frustration bringing tears to her eyes. Emotion leapt in Robert, sharp spike of pride that all but undid her, making tears more real than they had reason to be. “I do not know this man or this woman! They mean nothing to me, and I have no way to prove myself to you!”
“You do,” Akilina said, full of liquid delight. Beatrice turned to her, hands spread beseechingly, and Akilina offered a razor smile. “Perhaps his highness would lend you an already-bloodied sword, and you might end Robert Drake’s life to show your loyalty to your affianced and his kingdom.”
Honest astonishment dropped Belinda’s jaw, though it was Beatrice’s horror that whispered, “You want me to…kill a man?”
“You’re eager to bring down the Red Bitch’s throne, aren’t you?” Akilina asked gleefully. “Kill her favourite, prove your loyalty to Javier, and force Lorraine to overextend herself into an attack on Gallin in one smooth blow.”
Sandalia stepped forward, exchanging a brief glance with Javier as Belinda turned to them, heartbeat high in her throat. “My lord, my lady, I…I can’t-”
“It’s a dangerous game you play, Akilina.” Sandalia spoke thoughtfully, watching Drake and the Khazarian woman in equal parts. “You stand in our court and suggest a ploy that would have our country invaded by another. You must be very confident indeed of your resources.”
Akilina, with wonderful precision, said, “As confident of the breath I draw, Your Majesty. There is no need to fear it will not come.”