by Lucy Tempest
I almost slammed into the ceiling when Loujaïne spoke next to me. “Miss Greenshoot will attend to the merchant-prince’s wife. Lady Cherine will accompany the merchant-prince’s son. Princess Ariane will escort the captain’s first mate, and Princess Fairuza will host the advisor to the prince of Almaskham.”
She went on to describe the details of what the girls were supposed to do.
When she overtook me, I was forced to ask, “What about me?”
Loujaïne looked back at me with the usual contempt. “I suppose you can help Fairuza host the prince’s advisor.”
Fairuza’s and my exclamations clashed together, an unintelligible warble of distressed noises that bounced off every surface of the mosaic-spread passage.
“I’m not working with her,” Fairuza protested. “She has no experience, no formal training and no manners. She will ruin the negotiation for us.”
“Those manners of yours are what would ruin anything,” I snapped.
Fairuza’s eyes hardened, becoming colder than the matching line of polished turquoise around her throat.
Just when I’d thought we’d reached some sort of understanding yesterday at the court. But Fairuza wasn’t Cherine, who was here to compete but not alienate her competition. Fairuza would never be half the noblewoman Cherine was, or half the person I was…
The charged air between us was cleaved by Loujaïne blocking our view of one another.
“How you handle the situation will reflect on you,” she said bluntly, effectively ending the conversation.
As we stepped apart, I thought I’d rather dangle off the mountain’s edge again than be stuck a few hours with Fairuza.
Chapter Eleven
I was meant to co-host someone from Almaskham, a prince’s advisor no less.
I’d heard so much about Cahraman’s northern neighbor, but with Loujaïne questioning if I had any Almaskhami blood, and my growing suspicions, the idea of meeting someone who represented the land had me buzzing with curiosity.
I only hoped they’d be less obnoxious than Fairuza.
Master Farouk bowed in the first party, announcing them as “Captain Baher Qursan, head of the Deep Red Sea Navy, and his First Mate Yorgho.”
Captain Qursan had a rough, booming voice, a lined, tanned face as bloated as the rest of him, and a red, bushy beard that reached the middle of his massive chest. I suspected he was balding under his fancy sea-foam turban.
His first mate on the other hand was what I imagined a merman to look like. Tall, tan and built like a swimmer, he had wavy blond hair scattered with sun-streaks that passed his waist. He wore a necklace of seashells and wore no shoes, and I suspected both his hair and shirt were wet.
Just the sight of them made me miss the windy, humid city of Galba, and every coastal city I’d visited before settling in Aubenaire with Bonnie
Loujaïne gracefully bowed her head and Ariane half-curtsied in a stumbling step. The captain held out a necklace of white pearls to Loujaïne, slipping it over her bowed head. Yorgho picked Ariane’s hand and kissed it lingeringly, making her flush pink and giggle stupidly, earning her a raised eyebrow from Loujaïne.
Blushing deeper, Ariane held an arm out to Yorgho, and both she and Loujaïne led their guests out of the hall.
Captain Qursan’s voice was still reverberating back to us long after they’d left our sight when Farouk announced, “The Lord Eukharistos, merchant-prince of Lower Campania, and his lady wife Galena and son Rhodion.”
The merchant-prince, a short, pot-bellied man, had a trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and a shock of blackest hair. He wore a wine-red cloak over a beige tunic overlaid with a diamond-studded medallion. His wife, long-nosed, as plump as her husband, had her tawny hair in a curly bun. She offered Cora a glass jar of herbs before following her reluctant shuffle out of the hall. Her son, a bit younger than us, awkward and gangly, seemed to be immediately terrified of Cherine who took hold of him and dragged him out, already talking his ear off, not in the least bit subtle about what she wanted out of him today.
Lord Eukharistos held out his pudgy hand to Cyrus. “I take it you’ll be negotiating with me today, Your Highness?”
Cyrus gave him a firm yet friendly handshake, nodding. “I will, but I hope you don’t mind Master Farouk escorting you to my offices first. My father has been delayed this morning, so I need to greet Prince Miraz in his stead.”
The man nodded understandingly, patting Cyrus’s shoulder. Farouk, seemingly surprised, exchanged a glance with Cyrus before escorting Lord Eukharistos up the stairs without announcing the prince and his companion.
Prince Miraz walked in, a young man around the same age as Cyrus, but more baby-faced. His golden skin barely managed a light stubble, and his black hair parted down the middle, accentuating the emerging squareness of his jaw, and the doe-eyes radiating optimism. With the way his mouth curled into a lopsided grin and his hooded eyes were set into his long face, the prince looked a bit like Ayman. But his straight black hair, dark eyes and long legs reminded me of myself, adding more weight to Loujaïne’s suspicions.
Prince Miraz passed the blinding daylight of the window, coming more into focus. He wore a heavily embroidered, white gold cotton kaftan that stopped past his knees with dark bronze satin pants and same color curling shoes. His adornments were a heavy gold bracelet on one hand and a big diamond ring on the one he extended to Cyrus who met him halfway.
They greeted each other warmly, like they were old friends, clasping hands and moving into a hug.
“Miraz, it’s so good to see you.” Cyrus for once sounded honest and enthusiastic in his pleasantries. “We were expecting your uncle today. What’s with the surprise?”
Miraz answered with all the rushed eagerness of a child. “I told Azal that—as the future leader of Almaskham—I need to learn how to handle diplomacy myself. And what better place for me to try my hand at it than at the home of a relative?”
“That way, if he makes a fool of himself, you will go easy on him and there will be no risk of war,” an old woman walked in, surprising all of us, including Miraz, with her cutting remark.
My heart sank as I realized she was the one Fairuza and I would share.
She was a short, unamused woman in a verdigris silk gown with a downturned mouth and crows-feet framing her half-moon eyes. They were the same dark blue as the lapis lazuli that dangled from her ears, but their drooping eyelids shadowed them so much I’d first mistaken them for black. Her hair was long and graduating from pale silver in her crown roots to white-gold that tumbled past her shoulders in waves. The color of faded blonde hair, not the greying of brown or black.
From the style and shade of her hair, and her sun-kissed skin—with a warmer, rosier undertone than Miraz and my cool-toned olive and Cyrus’s pale gold—she could have been Cora’s grandmother.
Miraz panicked slightly, almost tripping as he bowed to introduce her. “Prince Cyaxares and lovely ladies, I present to you, my grandmother and advisor, the Dowager Princess Aurelia.”
Aurelia raised a thin, curved eyebrow at us, hands on her whitewood cane, not making a move towards us herself.
The surprise she instilled in me soared. It had never occurred to me that someone could be a princess into old age. The idea of a dowager one never crossed my mind to begin with.
While Fairuza, Ariane and Loujaïne did look the part of a king’s daughter, in decorative clothes and priceless jewelry, the Dowager Princess Aurelia, mother of a reigning prince, and grandmother of the heir before us, was more like a fairy queen from Ericuran folktales. Old, somber, a bit unnerving but radiating power and confidence.
Clearly no run-of-the-mill grandmother. She seemed more likely to beat me over the head with her fancy cane than offer me sweets.
How was I supposed to convince this woman to do anything, let alone influence her to sway her grandson? As an advisor, she had to be well aware of how to manipulate people’s opinions and shift their thoughts around. As a grandmother, she coul
d just flat out tell him no, we’re not doing that, and he’d have to listen.
Cora and Cherine were meant to help broker a tit-for-tat trade deal with produce rather than money—spices from Cahraman for rare fruit from Campania. Ariane was meant to ask for the freelance navy to work with Cahraman to expand its trade routes across the seas to island nations. Fairuza and I were meant to ask Almaskham to help us invest in both these ventures, with the argument that both nations would benefit.
How was I supposed to do that with such an uncompromising woman? While keeping Fairuza from derailing my efforts? She’d agreed with me yesterday, if for her own unknown reasons. I didn’t expect anything would make her cooperate with me again today.
And then, if there was anything I’d learned from working in several service establishments, getting someone to invest in something, even if it made sense and sounded lucrative, was difficult. Investment in general was a gamble and gambles were, largely, unnecessary. Not to mention dangerous.
You could always maintain your business as-is and keep your money. But if you try to multiply it by investing in something new—like Cyrus was investing in the Bride Search and Nariman was in me—it might bring you prosperity—or ruin you.
I wished him the first outcome, and her the second.
Cyrus bowed to Aurelia. “Your Grace.”
Aurelia’s beady eyes followed Cyrus as he continued with “It’s a great honor to have you here for the first time in years. The people of Cahraman have missed your presence” and other pretty, empty courtesies he was trained to spout.
She cut him off mid-sentence, “I don’t see any of your mother in you.”
I could almost hear the halting crash in his mind.
“Taita…” Miraz whined, embarrassed.
She cut him off too with a silencing gesture.
Unease trickled back into me when Fairuza stepped forward, curtseying and bowing low enough to not have her bejeweled tiara slip off her gleaming head.
In a sweet, accommodating voice I’d never heard she greeted, “Your Grace, I am Princess Fairuza of Arbore, and in all my years of duty as part of a royal house I have never heard of a woman as accomplished as yourself. My mother, Queen Zomoroda, always uses you as an example in efficiency and poise, and I hope that, in your brief time here, you can impart some of your wisdom on me.”
That was perfect. Something I couldn’t hope to match.
Forget punching her in the eye. I now wanted to kick out her pearly teeth.
The urge deflated when Aurelia just tsked and said, “Why’s that?”
Fairuza straightened, still holding the sides of her skirt, a hint of confusion furrowing her brows but not reaching her effortless smile. “So I can be the most supportive wife to a noble king.”
“Support? Is that what you think you’re here for?”
Unfazed, still smiling, Fairuza flawlessly replied, “Why, yes, of course. While a king is guided by his council, his unwavering support should come from the wife raising his heirs.”
Somehow, Aurelia remained unimpressed. “Tell me, did you come up with that yourself or did your governess write it down for you?”
I held back a disbelieving laugh as Fairuza’s resolve cracked.
“I’m not sure what you mean, Your Grace,” she said innocently, her voice an octave higher.
“Do you actually believe what you are saying or are you just regurgitating the same poppycock your betrothed here has been force-fed since infancy?” Aurelia asked callously, not lifting her hand to wag a finger between Fairuza and Cyrus disparagingly.
“Taita, please!” Miraz yelped, scandalized. “We’re guests here!”
Cyrus moved in to correct her. “Your Grace, the princess is not my—”
She cut him off again. “What are you still doing here talking to me?”
Cyrus blinked at her. “I…pardon?”
“Don’t you have that fat oligarch waiting for you, eating baklava in an office somewhere?” she said scathingly. “It’s rude to keep him waiting, though I guess you wouldn’t know since your oaf of a father is keeping my grandson waiting as well.”
“My father is held-up with his council—”
“That’s no excuse. We’re not some envoys he can keep waiting. Not if he hopes to have us loosen our purse strings for his harebrained schemes.”
This woman didn’t give anyone the chance to speak. How was I supposed to get a word in, let alone out of her? Why would she listen to me when she didn’t listen to the prince who was second in power in the kingdom she was a guest in?
But then she wasn’t here as a fellow blueblood, but as someone with business to conduct. Cyrus had emphasized that the members of the Almaskhami ruling family were here to invest. As an investor, Aurelia was here to be impressed, not flattered.
She was a customer.
And from experience, I knew that there were three types of customers.
The first kind saw servers as an extension of the business, someone they could boss around and get mad at when something didn’t go their way. The second were always insecure about their orders, took ages to make up their minds, ate a wrong order or drank a cold coffee or flat beer to avoid confrontation. Finally, the third who only wanted to get what they paid for, preferably with a few perks, friendly waitresses not included.
Though at first she seemed like the first kind of customer, I could tell that Aurelia was actually the third. The kind who wanted to be served exactly what they expected, or else surprised with the unexpected quality of their order. They didn’t want to chitchat, to be told that swapping a part of their order was impossible or to haggle with their waiter. Not because they feared confrontation, but because the whole point of paying for a service was to give an order and have it carried out to their specifications without cajoling or argument.
Cyrus had started the unwanted chitchat, and being here instead of his father was the equivalent of replacing her potatoes with a salad without warning, then haggling with her to make her accept it. Fairuza was also the overfriendly waitress, the kind that could get cranky and lose her tip.
While I—I could handle this. I thought.
Aurelia turned her eyes on me. I immediately felt the scorching heat of her disapproving gaze searing my skin.
“And who are you?”
I didn’t bow, I didn’t curtsey, didn’t do anything her title required because she knew all too well that it came before her as a person, and I didn’t want to remind her of that.
I used my hostess voice, not too chipper, not too neutral, just in the middle, and unhurried. “I’m Ada.”
She scowled at me. “Ada what?”
I shrugged. “Do you really care?”
Her penciled eyebrows shot up. “As a matter of fact, I don’t.”
I offered her my arm. “Good. Now, why don’t we get you seated? Would you like to put your feet up? It must have been a rocky trip getting here.”
Aurelia nodded, limping away from an aghast Miraz and a watchful Cyrus. “About time someone asked. From how long I’ve been left standing, you’d think I really looked as young as all the sycophants tell me.”
She bumped past Fairuza, not evening throwing a quick “Excuse me,” over her shoulder. Fairuza audibly gasped in offense.
Linking her arm with mine, leaning half her weight on me, Aurelia motioned with the end of her cane. “You better not make me walk up the stairs.”
I was supposed to take her up. To the ladies’ common room, where all female elites and heads of every post in the palace gathered to drink tea, gossip, snack and, occasionally, nap on the giant cushions.
But supposed to or not, the customer was always right and if she asked for wine instead of beer she was getting wine, on the same floor, with a view, too.
“But we’ll have to walk a bit,” I said. “So brace yourself.”
“It had better not be too far, or else you’ll have to carry me,” she warned.
“As long as you don’t mind being thrown over my
shoulder like a sack of potatoes.”
She made no reply to my comment, just eyed me briefly before facing ahead.
As we turned the corner, I saw Fairuza still standing back there, mouth half-open. I resisted the urge to wag my tongue out at her, to rub it in her face that I had won the opening round, whatever it entailed.
Released from his grandmother’s intimidating presence, Prince Miraz jabbered excitedly next to Cyrus, who was intently watching us leave.
His full, sculpted lips finally cracked a true smile, one I hadn’t seen since we’d been in the marketplace.
It was a genuine emotion that reached his eyes and shone through them like starlight. Meant for only me to see, straight from his heart to mine.
Then he mouthed, “You’re doing great.”
And the crazy urge to take all this seriously, to do everything in my power to win, came back with a vengeance.
Chapter Twelve
After seating Aurelia on the porch overlooking the southern gardens, I pretended to go in search of a footstool.
I did find one but I mainly wanted to get what was set up to pamper her upstairs. A servant saw me carrying the tea tray and insisted on taking it down for me, while another carried the footstool and I threw a shawl over my arm.
After they set everything on the porch and left, she greeted me with an abrasive, “What took you so long?”
“The tea got cold and I had to ask for a fresh pot,” I answered, not entirely lying.
I set the tray on the polished bronze table between us, the footstool under her tiny feet and offered her the shawl.
She squinted at it. “What’s that for?”
“It gets breezy here. And it cools during the evening.”
“It’s still early noon.”
“We could be here a good while,” I reasoned. “That and you’re old and dressed too lightly, and there’s a risk of you catching cold.”
I was expecting a caustic retort to that, but she just nodded and snatched it from me. “Have you much experience with old people, girl?”
“A little.”