Queen of All

by Anya Josephs

  I turn toward the mirror just as she had. In spite of a thin trickle of blood where the needle had punctured my skin, I can see in myself some of what I usually only see looking at Sisi. I look like a young lady. Maybe even like a beautiful one. “They’re lovely.”

  “I’ve still got to do the second side. Turn around.”

  I pivot obediently. While Sisi is fussing over me, trying to find the perfect angle for the needle to pierce my skin, I try again. “I mean, you did agree to come here, but it seems like you hate the idea of having anything to do with Lord Ricard—why is that?”

  The needle rips through my skin. “You know, you have the most peculiar ears,” Sisi muses, completely ignoring my question. “I don’t know how I never noticed, in more than ten years of sharing a bed with you. You’ve got this extra little bend here, and it almost looks like your ears are pointed at the tops.”

  I scowl at Sisi. I’ve actually noticed the exact thing she’s commenting on before—it’s a small fold of skin within the shell of my ear, where most people’s are smooth. And my ears have a funny shape—coming to a point at the end, not rounded as most folks’ are. She’s not telling me anything I don’t know. And I still hate having any of the ways I’m physically different emphasized to me. Which Sisi, better than anyone else, has reason to know. She must be bringing it up on purpose to distract me, which isn’t very nice but is very typical. “You’re not answering my question.”

  “I know.” She sighs and throws herself across the bed. “The truth is, Jena, I don’t know what I’m so scared of. Because I don’t know what Ricard wants from me.”

  “That makes sense.” It’s more than a little absurd that one of the most powerful and important men in the whole Kingdom would drag an orphaned girl across the Earth to attend a ball, showering her with gifts before he’d even met her. I’m as confused as she is. And I can see why that would make her all the more uncomfortable, knowing he expects something from her but not knowing what it is.

  “There’s only one thing I can think of that he might want.”

  I pause. I have some idea of what she means, from our earlier conversations about it, but I know how little Sisi likes to discuss the topic of desire, especially the desire that men tend to feel for her. I don’t want to make her more uncomfortable than she already is, with her meeting with Lord Ricard looming. “You mean…sex?”

  “Not just that. I don’t even know if he’ll want me that way—and neither does he, for he’s never so much as seen my face. I imagine what he wants is status.”

  “But he’s Second in the Kingdom. You’re only Four Hundred and Whatever.”

  “Fifty-Third,” she corrects, and then laughs a little bit at herself. “Goddess, here I go, acting like any of this matters. When the Earth is dying. When farmers and their families are going hungry because there’s not enough food to eat. When the other peoples who have walked the Earth with us for as long as anyone can remember are all dead or disappearing. And here I am, playing a game in which I suspect I am nothing but a prize. That’s what I mean, cousin, when I say I fear Ricard wants me for the status. He sends me these trinkets of his affection because he means to keep me as a far richer symbol. A beautiful thing, to be admired and envied by all.”

  I can see how that would be Sisi’s worst fear. All she wants is to be treated like she is more than her looks, and to be useful to our suffering Earth. I can’t imagine anything she would hate more than to be admired, and envied, and useless. “So tell him that’s not what you want,” I suggest.

  “Jena,” she sighs. “I can’t just tell him no.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s the Crown Prince, and I’m just the last of an unimportant country house. No one will stand up to him for me.”

  “Aunt Mae would never make you do anything you don’t want,” I argue. “We could just leave and ride for home.”

  “Do you think he would let us go so easily? Do you think, even if our stubborn old donkey managed to outrun Ricard’s fine horses, he wouldn’t be able to follow us to Prinnsfarm? To the ends of the Earth, if he so chose?”

  The thought shakes me to my core. “You’re saying you’re afraid you won’t have a choice?”

  “I’m saying I expect that I won’t. That, whatever it is Ricard decides he wants from me, I’ll have no choice but to give it to him. And since I don’t know what that will be, or why he might want it…”

  “I understand.” And I do, far more than I ever have before. She’s dealing with something almost beyond the scope of my imagination, but now I at least know enough to be able to think how it must be affecting her. No wonder she’s been so different from her usual self since we arrived at the palace. She must be constantly on edge, waiting for the next gift to arrive, wondering what the price for all these favors she never asked for will be, when it comes due.

  Sisi’s eyes dart toward the door—still firmly closed and locked—and then she whispers fiercely, “I hate him, Jena. I hate what he did to Kariana, and to women like her. I hate him for the role he may have played in my parents’ deaths. I hate him for the other things he’s done to this Kingdom, things I can’t yet prove. But more than any of that, I hate him for making me feel this way. Like I’m just some thing, powerless to stop him from whatever game he’s playing. Alone against a threat I can’t hope to prevent.”

  “But you’re not alone,” I tell her. “I know I’m not much, Sisi, but you’ve got me. You’ll always have me.”

  That wins a small smile from her. “You’re a better friend than I deserve, little bird.”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m not little.” I indicate my girth with a grin.

  “You are short, though.”

  I stick my tongue out at her and she laughs.

  “What did I ever do to deserve a friend like you, Jena? A friend that would follow me to the ends of the Earth like this, and still make me laugh?”

  “You didn’t have to do anything,” I say simply, truthfully. “Just be you.”

  Sisi rises from her bed then and crosses the room back over to me. She drops a gentle kiss on top of my dark hair. “I love you, Jena. I hope you know that.”

  “I love you too. More than anybody.” We don’t say it a lot, but it’s true, and it always has been. I hope it always will be too, no matter what dangers we have to face.

  The moment of tenderness doesn’t last long. With Sisi, it never does. “Well, my loyal lady companion, can I trouble you to help me dress?”

  I arrange Sisi’s skirts and do her hair so that she’s ready to go in plenty of time. She’s still looking a bit fretful, not at all like her usual confident and composed self, but she doesn’t seem to be quite so much on the edge of a breakdown anymore, and I decide to take that victory where I can find it.

  My evening, spent in the rooms waiting for them to return, is not so much peaceful as boring. I’m too shy to try to engage any of the maids in conversation, so I end up eating my (admittedly very fine) supper of roast hare in silence.

  It’s nearly midnight, and I, still used to going to bed with the sun and rising before it comes up in the morning, am yawning fiercely by the time Sisi and Aunt Mae troop back through the doors.

  Aunt Mae gives me a sharp look. “You ought to be abed, Jeni.” She glances from me to Sisi, and back to me. “Well, I suppose I’ll only catch you creeping through the corridors in the middle of the night. You might as well go tell your cousin everything, Sisi.”

  Sisi, subdued, leans over and kisses Aunt Mae’s cheek. For the first time, I notice Sisi has grown so tall that she actually stands a few inches over our aunt. “Thank you, Auntie. I won’t keep Jena up too late, I promise. We’ve lessons in the morning, after all.”

  That uncharacteristic conscientiousness earns Sisi a suspicious glance, but Aunt Mae lets us go, back into Sisi’s room with the door closed and locked behind us.

  Sisi immediately begins undoing the back laces of her gown, and I rush over to help her. “Damned thing is
cursed uncomfortable, and Ricard wouldn’t rest until he’d stuffed me full of delicacies from all Four Corners of the Earth.”

  I remind myself that she has good reason to be upset, and that it’s not fair to be resentful just because she’s complaining about having been fed fancies from all over the Kingdom by a handsome prince, something any ordinary woman ought to be thrilled about and which I, personally, rather imagine I would enjoy. Well, at least the first bit, with the pastries—I’m not sure what I would do with a man’s attentions.

  Now stripped down to her corset and shift, Sisi steps out of the abandoned gown, leaving it pooled on the floor. I help her unlace her corset and tentatively ask, “So, was it horrible?”

  “Not as much as I feared,” she admits. “Ricard didn’t do or say anything inappropriate…though that leaves me with the same trouble as before, simply not having any way to know the nature of his intentions.”

  “What did he say?”

  She draws in a deep breath, now free from all her restrictive garments and clad only in a white linen shift. To me, she looks more beautiful like this than she had in her jewel-encrusted new gown. I start helping her unpin her hair, so it can rise back into its natural puff of curls, as she explains. “He was nothing but courteous.”

  “Wait, wait,” I interrupt. “I can’t picture this story. Start from the beginning. What does he look like?”

  She laughs at that, as I’d intended her to—although my curiosity about the King’s own brother is no jest. “He’s tall, taller than me even. Very slender. I’ll grant him that he has a handsome face. Pale, with strong features. He has chestnut-brown hair that he wears cropped very short. Are you appeased, or shall I also describe the details of his wardrobe, and each of the sixteen courses that were served at supper?”

  Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if she did—I like to be able to picture a thing in my mind’s eye—but I get the sense that she’s hoping to draw to some sort of a point, so I don’t push her for any more unimportant details. Maybe one day she’ll regale me with them while we ride back toward home. For now, I’m happy to listen to whatever she needs to say. “No, no. Tell me whatever you wish.”

  She lies across the bed, resting her head on her crossed arms. “So, handsome and charming, that’s the Prince. Cold, too, as you’d expect. He was clearly always thinking of something else. We made conversation—you might not see how I’m capable of it, but in fact I did manage to keep things civil.”

  “I know you can get along with folks when you want to. You just choose not to.”

  “Exactly,” she says triumphantly, as though she doesn’t notice—or doesn’t care—that I’m teasing her. “I always say you understand me as no one else does.”

  “And… you wished to get along with Lord Ricard?” I’m glad that Sisi hasn’t gotten herself clapped in a dungeon for impertinence or something like that, but I can’t say I quite understand how she has changed course so quickly, when just a few hours ago, she was convinced the man was responsible for every evil that had ever been done in the Earth and probably a few more that were still in the making.

  “Not exactly. But no more did I wish to fight with him.” She isn’t meeting my eyes. “I think… I think he’s cleverer than I expected. Cleverer even than I am.”

  It’s not like Sisi to admit herself bested at anything.

  “I’m afraid,” she continues. “Afraid to move against him. Afraid to keep meeting with him. Afraid even to go on gathering information as we’ve been doing. All the night long, he kept making these little comments—nothing explicit, nothing that I could have said was beyond the boundaries of courtesy—but just enough, so that I got the sense that he knows what you and I have been up to, that he knows we’re trying to figure out what’s going wrong in the Kingdom and that we suspect he’s behind it.”

  “What sorts of comments?” I ask, trying to hide the way my voice trembles in the middle of the question. The thought of Sisi being afraid of anything, anything at all, is enough to send a shivering chill down my spine.

  “Oh, it’s hard to describe, really. It was just…just the tone of voice, I guess. He’d pass me the wine, and then say something about how it had been a particularly good year for grapes in the Third Corner, and I could tell that what he was really saying was, I know you’ve been snooping around, I know you’ve been looking at farm records and weather patterns and seeing all the changes since I sent my soldiers after the witches. And I honestly can’t say how I knew what he meant, because, like I said, every word out of his mouth was perfectly courteous the entire time I was there. It was almost surreal, talking to someone who spoke so much like he was reading from a script rather than actually speaking to me.”

  That does sound unpleasant. “And do you feel like he threatened you at all?”

  She sighs. “That’s a hard question to answer. If his jibes about the state of the Kingdom were subtle, anything he said about me personally was a thousand times more so. He didn’t leer at me, not really, not in front of Aunt Mae. But of course, he said a great deal about how well I looked in the gown, and in the earrings, and there was one…”

  “What?” I prompt gently. Not just because I want to hear—although I very much do—but also because I get the sense that Sisi badly needs to speak the words. After something like what she’s been through tonight, an ordeal that filled her with fears and doubts without being clearly threatening in some obvious way she could point to, she no doubt could use some reassurance that she was not to blame, from someone she trusts. And obviously, I have nominated myself for the task.

  “There was one thing. That he said. When he saw the gown, he said… ‘I knew that color would look well on you. I had Mari send up the sketches, and I’ve thought about it every night since.’”

  I shiver. “Sisi, are you joking?”

  “I wish I were,” she responds, not meeting my eyes.

  “I thought you said it was subtle! That’s not subtle at all, it’s… well, it’s disgusting!” The thought of this man whom she fears and despises thinking about Sisi at night, taking the opportunity to remind her that he fantasizes about her beauty and her body, fills me with anger. If Lord Ricard were here, I’d shove him into the dirt, just like I did with that soldier of his at the inn.

  “I just…” She hesitates, and I remain carefully quiet. I don’t want to push her to share anything she’d rather not, especially not about such an ordeal, but I also want her to know that I’m here for her, here to listen. “I just—there was so much in that. Like, it was such a reminder that he has total control over our lives here, and we’re completely in his power. Everyone works for him. The people who make our food, who make our clothes, who dress us, they all answer to Ricard, and if he told them to do something, they’d have to do it. And… and more than that, he’s thinking about me, like that, like… like, basically, an object. It’s the very thing I’ve been so afraid of. And, I know this sounds paranoid, but…how does he know what I look like, to picture me in the gown?”

  That’s a really good point. I wish it weren’t. “You think he’s been spying on us?”

  “I don’t know. But I have to wonder. Did he hide somewhere to get a glimpse of me? Does he have a way to see into these rooms? There’s so much we don’t know, and it just felt like… It felt like he wanted to remind me of that. Like he was enjoying the fact that he had all this power over me, and… I don’t know, Jena. It just… it made me so angry.”

  That’s a lie, and I know it. Sisi isn’t angry. She’s terrified.

  But I love her much too well to call her out on it. Let her be angry, if she can.

  Sisi shares my bed that night, by wordless agreement. I can’t bear the thought of sending her off to sleep in her own room, where she’d no doubt be tormented by the memories of Ricard’s carefully chosen barbs and the anticipation of what more lay in her future meetings with him.

  She falls asleep easily, as she often does. I can’t sleep, though. I’m consumed by the thoughts of what s
he’d told me of this night.

  I just don’t understand. I know what it is to look at Sisi and feel something like admiration, even desire. All my life, I’ve longed to be as beautiful as she is. Recently, sometimes, I find myself with other longings, too—to press my lips to hers, to take her hand in mine, to catch another glimpse of her as she leaves a room. I don’t know what that means, but I know it’s what men feel when they look at her, too.

  And yet, I can’t imagine caring about that more than I care about her. About her righteous anger, and her hope for a better Earth. Her brilliant mind, and her love for learning all she can about the Earth and its Kingdom. Her love for me, and the small ways she shows it.

  I would love Sisi the same if she were as ugly as I am. I just wish the men, like Lord Ricard, who want to lay claim to her could feel the same. Or, better still, that she and I could go back home together, and stay safely out of their reach forever.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Within a week, my exploration becomes much bolder. Each day, I wait until Sisi is out and then start to journey further into the secrets the castle holds.

  My first stop is the hidden stair I discovered on my very first expedition. It’s pitch dark in the stairway, and my heart pounds, imagining what sorts of horrors could be lurking here, so carefully hidden away.

  Step by step, I continue downward, my hand sliding along the smooth, blank surface of the wall. I wish for a handhold, but find none. The only means I can think of to comfort myself is to count each pace, to keep track of how long I’ve been descending, to remind myself that, whatever it feels like, it has not actually been forever. I can always return to the well-lit safety of my rooms.

  At the count of fifty, I stop, having run face-first into another door. With a little pressure, I am able to push it open, which is a relief, since the alternative would be to die trapped inside this wall. I take a deep breath, preparing myself for whatever might be on the other side, and step through.