“Agreements were made,” Paren said. “Promises were made. Those promises have not been honored. Indeed, there are rumors that he is unstable. I believe the king is ruling more and more like a tyrant every single day.”
Emily agreed, wholeheartedly. Randor had always been a dictator - he’d been born to rule as king - but he was growing darker. Breaking promises was never a good sign, even promises made to merchants and commoners. The king knew, thanks to her, that the rebels were growing stronger, their ideas spreading through the kingdom, yet he didn’t seem inclined to moderate his rule. And...
And you don’t even know what he did to Alicia, Emily thought. And just what it might have done to Alassa.
“It isn’t just the Assembly that is at risk,” Paren added, when she said nothing. “The unconfirmed aristocrats have been gathered in the castle, while the king appoints his men to run their lands. He is slowly gathering all power into his hands...”
Emily held up her hand. “I understand the problem,” she said. “What would you like me to do about it?”
Paren gave her a long look. “The king respects your judgement. Talk to him.”
“I tried to tell him the dangers,” Emily said. “Right now, he’s caught between three different sets of demands. His kingdom rests on a knife-edge.”
“There aren’t many people who care to understand his point of view,” Paren told her. “The commoners are restless, Lady Emily, while the aristocracy is trying to reassert their power. It will not be long before there is an explosion.”
Emily sighed. “You think?”
“You taught everyone how to read, write and do their sums,” Paren said. “Ideas spread faster than ever before, faster than the king can shut them down. People are asking questions about why the king has the right to rule, why the aristocracy has the right to keep everyone else down, and they’re not coming up with any good answers.”
“I’ve seen the leaflets,” Emily said, flatly.
Paren stared at her. “Then surely you understand what is at stake!”
“Right now, I don’t know what the king can do,” Emily said. “He cannot concede power to the Assembly without provoking his nobles...”
“But by crippling the Assembly, he’s pushing the commoners into the hands of those who want a violent uprising,” Paren snapped. “The nobles are men. In the end, they’re grossly outnumbered!”
Emily sighed. Reshaping Zangaria into a parliamentary democracy, with a House of Lords and a House of Commons, might work, but she doubted the system was mature enough to handle it. The aristocracy - and the king himself - would have to be willing to work within the system and everything suggested they wouldn’t be willing to do anything of the sort. And yet, without some compromises, the commoners might revolt, smashing all traces of the previous order. King Randor didn’t know what would happen, when the barricades finally went up, any more than Louis XVI had known. But he’d been beheaded by his own people after the revolution.
And a long period of unrest in Zangaria helps the neighboring kingdoms and the necromancers more than it helps anyone else, she thought. Who inherits the throne if Randor and Alassa are both dead? Alicia’s child?
“The king probably isn’t pleased with me at the moment,” Emily said. In the cold light of day, it was clear she’d placed Randor in an unstable position. “I can try to speak to him after the wedding...”
“I don’t know how much time we have,” Paren said. She shuddered at the bitter hopelessness in his voice. “Not everyone talks to me any longer, Lady Emily.”
Emily cursed under her breath. Maybe, after the stress of the wedding was over, she could talk Randor - or Alassa - into opening discussions with the rebels. If, of course, there was a way to talk to them. But there was no way to do it before the wedding.
She leaned forward. “Do you have a link to the rebels?”
“I can try to pass a message to them,” Paren said, “but they’ll be untrusting of anything from me.” He tapped his jacket with one long finger. “I am a nobleman now, you see.”
“They think you’ve sold out,” Emily said. The fine silk he wore would have been flatly forbidden to a commoner, no matter how wealthy the commoner was. “That once you were given a title, you belonged to the king.”
She wondered, briefly, if it wouldn’t have been smarter to try to convince Paren to move his operations to Beneficence, rather than staying in Zangaria. There was no way to keep the king from having his say, or trying to co-opt some of the more interesting inventions for the good of his kingdom. Imaiqah probably wouldn’t have minded the move, if it had happened before she’d been ennobled herself; hell, she could have stayed close friends with Alassa while the rest of her family moved away from the kingdom. It might even have made it easier for her to offer Alassa the advice she needed.
“Yes,” Paren said. There was a hint of bitterness in his voice. “To them, I am an untrustworthy aristo. To the aristos, I’m a jumped up little merchant who cannot possibly do anything without the king’s support. Neither fish nor fowl nor big red hen.”
“I’m sorry,” Emily said.
“Don’t be,” Paren said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Emily opened her mouth, then frowned as she heard someone knocking on the door. “Alassa is here,” she said, surprised. She couldn’t remember Alassa coming to her rooms - ever - while she’d been staying in the castle, but the wards recognized her. “Hang on.”
Paren rose. “Thank you for your time, Lady Emily,” he said. There was an odd note of finality in his voice. “And thank you for what you did for my daughter.”
Emily opened the door. Paren bowed to Alassa and Emily, then headed out the door as Alassa walked into the room. She looked normal, but she was clearly wrapped in a powerful glamor. Emily closed the door and stared at Alassa, trying to see through the haze. It popped, seconds later, revealing that Alassa’s face was streaked with tears. Emily hastily helped her to the sofa, horror flickering through her mind. She honestly couldn’t remember Alassa ever crying in front of her...
“What happened?” A nasty thought struck her. “Did he beat you?”
Alassa shook her head, miserably. Emily stared. What had happened? King Randor would have to be insane to tell Alassa she was no longer in the line of succession, or that her marriage had been canceled, or...or what? What could he have said to her that made her cry?
“It’s all right,” she said, unsure what else she could say. “I’m here. It’s all right.”
Alassa held her tightly for a long moment. “He...he told me off. He...”
Emily hesitated. “About Alicia?”
“Yeah,” Alassa said. She shuddered, violently. “He told me off for that. Told me I’d be in deep trouble if I ever thought about hurting the little bitch again. And then...”
Her voice trailed off. Emily frowned down at her. She’d seen Alassa get told off by Lady Barb, Professor Lombardi and Madame Beauregard, all of whom could deliver scathing lectures without raising their voices. What could Alassa’s father have said to her that made her cry?
“He asked me questions,” Alassa said. There was a bitter helplessness in her voice that shocked Emily to the bone. “I had to answer.”
She looked up. “Emily, he asked me questions about you!”
Chapter Thirty-One
EMILY SWALLOWED, HARD.
“He said he wouldn’t,” she protested, numbly. “He told you...”
“Reasons of state,” Alassa said, sourly. All of a sudden, her crying made a great deal of sense. Her father had used the Royal Bloodline and forced her friend’s secrets out of her. “That’s what he told me, Emily. Reasons of state.”
Emily sat down on the sofa next to her, feeling stunned. Alassa couldn’t keep any secrets from her father, not if he saw fit to demand answers. She’d noticed that there were some questions King Randor had never asked his daughter, just to give her time to make up her own mind about things. And he’d promised he’d never interrogate Alass
a about Emily.
She cursed under her breath, then wrapped an arm around her friend. “What did he ask about?”
“Everything,” Alassa said. “Your...your origins, your time at Whitehall... everything.”
“Shit,” Emily said.
She fought down the urge to panic. King Randor knew she wasn’t Void’s daughter, knew she wasn’t the inventor of everything she’d introduced to the kingdom...so what? It wasn’t as if it changed anything.
Except it did.
Randor might share the knowledge with others, like Caleb’s father. What would he say if he knew Emily’s true origins? And how many magicians would start looking for ways to hop across the dimensions if they learned it was possible? God alone knew what they’d bring back to the Nameless World...
They might wind up stuck, she thought, nastily. There’s no magic on Earth.
“I’m sorry,” Alassa said. Her voice shook. “He just kept asking questions and I kept on talking!”
Emily squeezed her tightly. She didn’t really know what it was like to have a true father, unless she counted Void, but the thought of being forced to talk was horrific. There were things she wouldn’t have been comfortable sharing with anyone, even her parents; Alassa had no choice but to share them with her father. And she hadn’t been forced to betray herself, which would have been bad enough. She’d been forced to betray one of her closest friends.
“It’s all right,” she said, thinking hard. King Randor wasn’t likely to start telling everyone, not when he was trying to see what sort of use he could get out of the information. The only truly important detail was the realization that Void might not be particularly interested in defending Emily, if push came to shove. But he had given her a family ring...
She pushed the thought aside for later contemplation. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“He said you were odd,” Alassa said. She sat upright and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “He said you didn’t respond normally or something.”
Emily nodded, curtly. It was commonly accepted in Zangaria that a king would have mistresses, even though queens were expected to remain chaste and faithful. The only real difference between Alicia and a random lady at court was that Alicia was in line for a barony, which might add a political dimension to the match. And even having a bastard wouldn’t be held against the king, not really. King Henry VIII had even planned to make his bastard son king when his attempts at having a male heir had proven largely unsuccessful.
And I was standing up for Alicia, she thought. He might have suspected there was something odd about me before, but my words confirmed it.
“I wasn’t raised in this sort of culture,” she said.
“You weren’t raised in this world,” Alassa corrected. She cocked her head thoughtfully. “How many problems do you face because you weren’t brought up here?”
“Too many,” Emily said. She rose and started to pace. “Did your father have anything else to say?”
“He spoke to Lord Barrows,” Alassa said. She glared down at her hands. “Alicia will be married to him in a couple of hours, a brief ceremony that will make them man and wife and then dispatch them to her castle. She’ll be safe from me.”
“The baby won’t be in the line of succession,” Emily pointed out.
“Not formally, at any rate,” Alassa said. “Did you happen to note the sex?”
Emily shook her head. “It could be anything,” she said. There was even a vague chance that Alassa had damaged the foetus when she’d turned Alicia into a rat. “But your claim to the throne won’t be challenged.”
“Unless the baby turns into a thriving young man,” Alassa said. “I won’t stand for that, Emily.”
“I know,” Emily said.
“He even asked me if I’d be willing to kill the brat,” Alassa added, after a moment. “I had to choose my words very carefully for that one.”
“I don’t think I want to know,” Emily said. “All that matters, right now, is that Alicia is no longer a danger to you.”
“I hope so,” Alassa said. She glanced at the bedroom door. “Do you mind if I use your washroom? I don’t really want to go back to my rooms right now.”
“Not at all,” Emily said.
She watched Alassa step into the next room and then turned to look out of the window, thinking hard. Randor knowing the truth...what did that do? Nothing in the short term, perhaps, but in the long term...?
I should tell Imaiqah and the others myself, she thought, as she heard the sound of splashing from the washroom. Before the king can use the knowledge against me.
She looked up as Alassa walked back into the living room. Her friend had washed her face and used magic to adjust her dress, making it impossible to see that she’d been crying only a few minutes ago. Emily wondered, mordantly, just how long Alassa had been upset before she’d come to Emily, but dismissed the thought. She probably didn’t want to know or she’d just get madder at the king.
“I will be there when they get married,” Alassa announced. She sounded murderous, as if Alicia was her worst enemy. “And then I will watch as they leave the castle. She won’t be there for my wedding.”
“I don’t know how much choice your father gave her,” Emily told her.
“Alicia would have done anything to get her rights,” Alassa hissed. “And...”
She broke off as someone tapped on the door. Emily walked over, opened it and took a parchment scroll from a messenger. It invited her to attend the wedding of Lord Barrows and Lady Alicia, to be held in two hours in one of the king’s chambers. Emily passed the note to Alassa, who read it and snorted rudely.
“Lord Barrows would do anything to please my father,” she sneered. “Even marrying a girl.”
“I’m sure the power and position makes up for it,” Emily said, dryly. “And he will have his own affairs on the side.”
“Yeah,” Alassa said. She grinned, suddenly. “Do you want to spend the next two hours just talking? We haven’t done that for far too long.”
Emily nodded. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to just relax and talk, even if the subjects ranged from Earth to Caleb and her possible marriage. Alassa offered a handful of droll observations, but ended with the suggestion that she tell Caleb the truth.
“He’ll be shocked when it gets out, because he’ll see it as a sign you don’t trust him,” she said. “And if you don’t trust him, why are you starting a relationship with him?”
“It was hard to tell you,” Emily said. “Earth seems like a dream these days.”
Nightingale arrived, ten minutes later, to escort them both to the king’s chambers. Emily couldn’t help feeling nervous - she had no idea how the king would treat her - but he showed no reaction as she was ushered into the room. Alicia stood at one end, next to a tall man wearing a dark outfit and carrying a sword on his belt. He didn’t look particularly effeminate, Emily noted; indeed, his shirt was so tight, revealing his muscles, that she had a feeling he was overcompensating for something. But she wasn’t sure if someone who didn’t know his sexuality would guess the truth...
Alassa stood next to Emily, her eyes on her father. Emily glanced at her and saw she’d schooled her face into a perfect mask, keeping her feelings hidden. It was clear, however, that she was far from happy. Alicia looked at Alassa and paled, making her skin even more translucent than normal. Emily gave her a reassuring look - or as close to it as she could - and forced herself to relax. Whatever King Randor intended to do with the information he’d extracted from his daughter, she’d deal with it.
“Lady Alicia, Mistress of Winter Flower, Lady of Pine Croft, Guardian of Night’s Ease and Heir to the Barony of Gold,” Randor said. There was a long pause as he allowed the titles to sink in. “Kneel before me.”
Alicia went down on her knees. “You wish to be confirmed in your titles,” Randor said, calmly. “Do you understand the rights, duties and obligations you owe your subjects and your liege lord?”
“I do,” Alicia said, her voice shaking.
Randor nodded. “Do you swear to uphold the laws of your kingdom, to serve your master and to rule your people with compassion, justice, and firmness?”
“I do,” Alicia said, again.
I didn’t have to do that, Emily thought. He just gave me the barony.
She pushed the thought aside as Nightingale stepped forward, carrying a small cushion. A simple golden tiara rested on it, surrounded by a long golden cord. King Randor took the tiara, held it up so it sparkled in the light, and lowered it gently onto Alicia’s bowed head.
“I hereby proclaim you Baroness of Gold,” Randor said, calmly. “And I confirm you in your lands, titles, and possessions.”
“I thank you, Your Majesty,” Alicia said.
Emily felt Alassa tense beside her and winced. No matter what happened, the child would still be a prospective threat, particularly if she did fall out with her father. Lady Alicia wasn’t a serious problem, but Baroness Alicia would have the resources and manpower to be a significant threat. If, of course, Alicia didn’t decide to make sure the child never learned of his heritage.
King Randor turned to Lord Barrows. “You seek the hand of this maiden in marriage?”
“I do, Your Majesty,” Lord Barrows said. His voice was calm and composed. Emily couldn’t help wondering if he saw the advantages of the match or if he was simply helping his master out of a tight spot. Lord Hans and his fellows would probably have crawled naked across broken glass for the honor of marrying Alicia. “I humbly beg your leave to marry her.”
There was a long pause as Lord Barrows slowly knelt before the king. Emily remembered what she’d learned and smiled, inwardly. Randor might have given Alicia her rights - and was about to marry her - but he’d asserted his superiority over them by reminding her of her obligations to him. And, without his blessing, the marriage couldn’t take place.
And if he hadn’t wanted her to marry, Emily thought, she couldn’t.
Wedding Hells (Schooled in Magic Book 8) Page 31