by Lucy Tempest
“You’re the youngest in your family?”
I poured her the tea in a flowery, gold-rimmed teacup, and fanned out ridged anise biscotti in a matching saucer. “That I know of.”
“What? You can’t quote your family tree by heart?” she sneered witheringly. “Can’t tell me all about what relic spawned your line? Whose niece and half-cousin thrice removed you are?”
I sat down across from her and pulled my chair in. There was another one meant for Fairuza, but she hadn’t joined us so far. “To be honest, I’m lucky I even know who I’m named after.”
“What did your father do?”
I had a feeling she wasn’t asking about his occupation. “What do you mean?”
“Either your whole line has been wiped out or one of your parents did something to alienate the rest of the family.” She dunked her biscotti into her tea, just like I liked to do. “So, which is it?”
“Both, I think?”
“How so?”
There was no way I could spin a whole family history without painting myself into a corner. I hadn’t even given myself a family name, as those were traceable and Fairuza likely knew every noble family in her kingdom.
I composed myself and took the easiest route in a soft interrogation. A variation of “I don’t know” and letting her fill in the blanks as she saw fit.
Her deep blue eyes watched me from over the flared rim of her teacup, intrigued. “So, you have no family worth mentioning, no titles worth stating and I’m guessing no money. Another in-name-only noble trying her luck here for a better future, is that it?”
I nodded. “Pretty much.”
“What future is that, may I ask?”
One where a vengeful witch wasn’t going to make my best friend a monster’s dinner. One where I could have my cake and eat it too—save the Fairborns and win the competition. Have it all. Have Mr. Fairborn walk me down the aisle, have Bonnie meet Ayman, and have all of Cyrus’s pretty green-eyed children, and live happily ever after.
My wishful, sentimental streak aside, either or could happen. Or neither.
I sighed. “A future where I don’t have to be so tired and stressed all the time.”
“Do you think the life of a woman in a palace is relaxing?”
“No, but at least at the end of a nerve-wracking day I can sleep on a goose-feather pillow and eat food I didn’t have to ration or scrounge for myself.”
She set the cup down, empty, folded a hand on top of the other, showing me the biggest ring on her thin, wrinkled fingers. Bulky and platinum, it had diamonds studding the side patterns and a gold seat clutching a faceted, rectangular aquamarine stone. A smaller ring kept it from slipping off her finger. It was clear it wasn’t hers. A man’s. Her husband, the late prince’s?
“Do you have any idea what it takes to be a prince’s wife? A king’s?”
“No, but I have a good idea, and I’m no stranger to the daily grind.”
She scrutinized me. Not in the suspicious way Loujaïne did, but like she was checking for something she knew she was going to find. “Tell me, girl, if you hadn’t been chosen to come here, what would you be doing?”
It was an answer I didn’t have to modify, because it was the truth. “Living as a guest in a relative’s home and working a job or two in the town.”
“You have actually worked for other people?”
I nodded.
Surprise edged her crabby mood. “Is your family that disgraced?”
Years of loneliness suddenly weighed down on me and I felt their misery and stress creeping over my face. “They’re all gone, Your Grace.”
Dead or taken. And if I didn’t win, the taken were as good as dead.
“What will you do if you don’t get picked by the prince?”
“I don’t expect to.” I released some tension by cracking down on the tough biscotti.
“So, once you’re sent home you’ll resume that pitiful existence you called a life?”
“Seems so.”
She suddenly slammed her hands on the table, upturning her empty teacup and saucer and making me inhale dry crumbs. “For goodness sake, where is your ambition?”
“I’m sorry?” I coughed a throat-full of anise seeds and crumbled biscuit.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and you’re fine with letting it pass you by?”
“I don’t have a choice in that, do I?”
I expected a lot of things. But I would never have expected this elderly, dignified princess to roll her eyes at me and go “Ugh!”
Then she leveled her disapproving glare on me. “You’re a girl who’s willing to work hard to survive, who’s strong enough to do so with no one to help her out and who isn’t stupid enough to try and play games with me. What use are all those qualities with no ambition?”
I gulped cold tea to soothe the burn in my throat. “I—I don’t know?”
“Why don’t you know? You obviously have the ability and the willingness to do the grueling job part of being a princess. I’d say you had a good chance, considering your competition, a girl with clear ambition to win but no drive to work, a girl who has no idea what it would take to rule a kingdom.”
“But she was bred for it. Her parents are a king and queen.”
“And? Mine weren’t.” She drummed tough, bony fingers, sending tremors through the bronze table and rattling every item on it. “Do you want to know how I became who I am? It wasn’t because my parents had planned for it or because I was one of few options for a future ruler.”
“No?”
“I’m a miller’s daughter from a village in Orestia.”
Once again, the last thing I expected. The idea of a common woman, and a foreigner at that, becoming the princess of another land only seemed to exist in folktales, never in real life.
Instantly fascinated, I forgot everything else as I sat forwards. “How did you get here then?”
She regarded me for a moment, as if gauging if I was worth a story.
As if coming to a decision, she sat back, harrumphed. “Our village was the halfway point between two warring kingdoms and that made trade, our only way to survive, ever harder. Still, any man with a boat was better off than those without one. Then while trying to open up trade routes to the far south, my father and uncle encouraged a dozen girls to accompany them, to find husbands in the foreign lands.”
“Why?”
“Because we were all poor. Our parents couldn’t support us and no man had the means to build a home with us.”
“And that’s how you met the prince?”
“No.” She started spinning her ring around her finger, the distracted caresses speaking volumes. “After a year sailing the oceans, we finally stopped at a port in the Deep Red Sea and disembarked. None of the grooms we were promised were there, but the slavers were.”
I slowly set down my cup, heart pounding as if I was watching it all happen.
Aurelia looked out to the garden, watching the palace denizens putter around the hedges and stroll through the courtyard. “Apparently, a lot of men in the region were willing to pay good money for a blonde girl, because they believed they were the descendants of fairies and had magical powers.”
“Did your father…?”
“No. Of course not.” She gave a dramatic pause then added, “He did worse.”
I slid to the edge of my seat, stunned.
“The grand-vizier came to pick a few girls for the palace, but asked first what kind of magic we could do. My father, the blithering goat, told him that none of them could work magic, but his own daughter could.”
I gawked at her, horrified. “And he believed him?”
“He seemed to. He forked over enough money for me to buy all the other girls!”
“What happened after that?”
“Nothing, at first. Then the prince summoned me and demanded that I do tricks for him, like a witch would. I managed to use their complete ignorance about fairies and witches against them and told t
hem that our magic needed a lot of focus, and privacy. ”
She purposefully paused again, and my curiosity flared out of control. I couldn’t help badgering her for more details. “What did he ask for?”
“Things my father claimed I could do, like turn coal into diamonds and straw into spun gold. If I didn’t manage them then my father would give them the money back.” She barked a harsh laugh. “By then, he was far into the ocean on his way home.”
“Did they sell you to someone else when you didn’t?”
“Oh, no. The alternative to getting their money back was for me to be beheaded.”
I choked on another piece of biscotti. That hit too close to home, making a chopping block where I could meet my end float before my mind’s eye.
She flicked her hand disdainfully. “I just did whatever ridiculous task they asked of me.”
I coughed the debris from my windpipe, eyes watering. “H-how did you do that?”
She faced me, still toying with her ring. “I didn’t spend a year on a trade ship preparing to be a good wife like the other girls. I learned how to barter for anything. I had information and favors to promise in return for the gems and gold I obtained. Once I managed that miracle enough times, they believed that I was magical.”
“And then you married the prince?” I was getting excited now.
“No.”
“Then what?” I whined. I couldn’t wait for every detail to be laid out before me, not only to sate my curiosity, but also in hopes of finding what I could use in my own dilemma.
“They debated whether I should be kept around the palace as a resident enchantress or given to a temple to be trained as a priestess to appease their gods. If I stayed, I would have been asked to perform more miracles, and sooner or later, they’d ask something I couldn’t barter or manipulate my way into obtaining, and if I left…well, it was one guess which kind of goddess I’d end up serving. And by the all the fish in the oceans I was not going to be forced to become a temple courtesan.”
I recoiled at the thought.
“Exactly,” she said, tapping her teacup.
I poured her another cup. “Which option did you choose then?”
“Neither.”
I paused, teapot poised over my cup. “What?”
“I made a third option.”
“How?”
“Easy. Once people believe you have power, any kind of power, you can leverage that over them, even if you have nothing and they can crush you.”
“But how do you do that?”
She raised one finger. “First, learn everything you can about the place you’re in and its people.” Another finger. “Second, learn the arts of misdirection—manipulation so subtle you’d make those you’re steering believe they’re acting on their own ideas.”
“And then?”
“In between each maneuver to better your position, be observant, never speak first, never contradict yourself, make people talk about themselves instead of answering their questions, and tell useful truths at strategic moments. But most of all, give good advice, so when it works they never again doubt what you say.” She sat back, huffing. “Safe to say, within a few weeks I had replaced the old bum who bought me, then I was the one whispering into our reigning moron’s ear.”
I jumped in my seat, clapping. “You became grand-vizier!”
She snorted dismissively. “Child, I became better than that. I became an unofficial confidante and advisor. Having a title that says you have the prince’s ear puts a target on your back.”
It finally clicked in my mind. That was what Nariman had been here.
She had risen to that position, hoping it would become a precursor to being queen.
“I take it you didn’t marry the prince you were advising?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact, I didn’t.” Her grouchy snap was less cutting than before. I could hear the smile in her voice even though it didn’t reach her face.
“Who was he?”
Every stern line, in face and body, softened as a wistful gleam appeared in her eyes, a hint of sadness seeming to weigh her bony shoulders down. “The unlikely heir, his nephew, Prince Faisal.”
“Unlikely how?”
“There were six others in line for the throne before him, so our marriage didn’t cause too much of a stir like it would have had he been the heir.”
I sighed, resting my cheek on my palm dreamily. “Did you love him?”
She held out her hand before her, catching the light on her ring. “I did, and in that respect at least, we were extremely lucky.”
“How come?”
“Love rarely has any place in a noble marriage, as they are beneficial first, political second, and personal last—if at all.”
Those three reasons and their descending importance charred any rosy thoughts I had to ashes.
Unlike Aurelia’s husband, Cyrus was first in line to the throne. If Cora and Cherine were beneficial and either princess was political, then I was personal.
But what priority did personal choices have in this world of thrones?
Chapter Thirteen
Over the next cup of tea, my conversation with Aurelia veered into what felt like another lesson, reminding me of the first thing she’d said to Fairuza.
“So a princess’s job is not just to support her prince, but to help him sort through his options and give him alternatives?” I summed up my understanding of what she’d been saying.
“Among other things, yes.” Aurelia dunked yet another biscotti in her tea. She reminded me of Cora in how much she ate without showing it. “As a wife, you oversee how the home, in this case, palace is run. As a princess or even a queen, you help with half of the decisions your husband makes outside the home, give him counsel, nag until he drops bad ideas and chooses better ones, and to do that, you have to know as much as he does outside the palace, and far more than he does inside it. It’s not a life of aimless luxury like the romantic tales of yore would have you believe. It’s a partnership, one that runs not one household but thousands. A kingdom is only as good as its king and queen.”
Fairuza suddenly spilled onto the porch, pink-cheeked and sweating, a few hairs out of place, and tiara askew.
“What are you doing here?”
I gave her a flat stare. “Talking? Where have you been?”
“Looking for you!” she accused, shrill and angry. “I went up to the common room, where we should be, then looked everywhere. Why did you take her here?”
I dunked my biscotti into my tea, giving more attention to softening it than to her. “Fay-Fay, you can’t expect me to walk our guest up two endless flights of stairs.”
“Yes, I can, because those were your orders,” she shouted, fists clenched, arms rigid at her sides.
I bit off the soggy end of the biscuit and chewed slowly, an excuse to ignore her.
“I’m talking to you!”
I popped the rest in my mouth and dusted my hands while smiling at her. “I don’t work for you. No one here does. So you might want to ease up on the demands.”
She glowered at me, her brilliant eyes the focus of her scrunched up face. “You wouldn’t work for me, because I require my servants to have a modicum of common sense or class.”
The skin of my face tightened as I held back a frustrated growl. “Fairuza, I wouldn’t work for you if you paid me all the gold in Cora’s hair.”
“And why’s that?”
“Do you really have to wonder why I wouldn’t want to help anyone who tried to murder my friend?”
“Stop saying that! I didn’t do anything!”
She was so offended, I could have almost believed her. But you couldn’t lie to a liar. “My mistake, it was the wind that pushed a fully-grown girl over a stone wall.”
She bent to slam her hands on the table hard enough to tilt it sideways. “You can’t talk to me like that.”
“I just did.”
“I could have you thrown in the dungeon for insulting me.
You’re practically a peasant and I’m a princess, a future queen!”
I raised my hand, putting down a finger with each count. “One: no, you can’t. This isn’t your kingdom and the judges don’t work for you. Two: you’re not engaged to Cyrus or any prince yet. And three—shut up.”
To my shock, she did.
Deciding she’d had enough, Aurelia whacked her on the leg with her cane. “Sit down! I didn’t travel all the way here to watch you two squabble like children.”
Remembering Aurelia was there, Fairuza’s entire demeanor flipped, becoming just as soft-spoken, sunny and courteous as she’d been earlier. “Your Grace, I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. If she hadn’t spirited you away to this dusty patio, I could have given you a proper welcome. We had arranged for you to be hosted among more suitable company in the women’s common room above—”
“I came here for one-on-one discussions while my grandson did the same. The last thing I need is to be stuffed into some perfumed henhouse.”
Aurelia truly had a unique power of making people shut up. Did she always talk like that? Had she talked to her husband like that before they’d fallen in love and gotten married? Or was this something she’d developed from years and years of navigating court politics?
Either way, leaving people speechless was a mighty useful skill I wish I had, but wasn’t yet fearless enough to cultivate. Probably would never be.
Fairuza finally moved to sit beside her, but Aurelia blocked her with her cane, pointing next to me. “In front of me. I can’t converse with you if I can’t see your face.”
Fairuza obeyed, sitting next to me with no complaints. Yet.
“Now that you have finally joined us, we can get down to business.” Aurelia flicked her fingers up toward us like she was shooing us. “Go on. Begin.”
“Well, Your Grace, today we have other guests from other lands, and each is here to discuss a trade deal with Cahraman,” Fairuza started at once, to beat me to it, but talked slowly, as if to someone slow. “Lord Eukharistos is from a very fertile land, with control and connections in many plantations in Campania, and we would like to arrange an exchange. His fresh and unique produce for our priceless spices. Captain Qursan —”