The Councillor

by E. J. Beaton

  Was this a test? To check if the new Councillor was really clever, by setting her a puzzle and inviting her to guess why the flower was sent to her? The whole thing spoke of arrogance, or at the very best, a supercilious toying with someone who this Prince Fontaine thought should be honored by his attention.

  She tried to recall any details about the prince of Rhime that Sarelin might have scattered into a conversation, but all she could remember were Sarelin’s remarks about the latest examples of Rhimese cunning, delivered amidst a cascade of insults. The thought of Sarelin’s vividly creative phrases hurt so much that she clutched at her chair, breathing deeply for a moment. She took the three jars of chimera scale out of her bag and held them up.

  No. It would not do. She would not be herself if she imbibed before the meeting.

  A crunch of wheels sounded outside the eastern gate, as a cart trundled to a halt. Lysande moved to her window. Something inside her recoiled as a woman in a hooded robe dismounted and trudged across the grass.

  Hunched on the back of the cart, four prisoners gazed up at the palace, their faces streaked with grime; the fat missing from their cheeks gave them the aspect of ghosts, and they shivered, their hands cuffed. The executioner tapped her foot.

  Of course, Lysande thought. Of course, Sarelin was not alive to give her permission. The fact was still not quite real, like a phrase from a story in another world.

  She hurried down the stairs and crossed the lawn. By the time she arrived, a noblewoman in an emerald doublet was standing at the gate, conversing with the executioner. Lysande edged toward the speakers. She made out the prisoners through the bars of the fence, noting how the elementals in the middle of the cart huddled together. Something wrenched inside of her.

  The painting in the eastern corridor showed magical people flying over villages on chimeras, but the elementals in that scene sat proudly upright in their armor—they looked down with the contempt of the mighty, like the elemental rulers in the ancient histories. All of the surviving accounts suggested that at the time of the Conquest, those who could move the elements were powerful beyond measure. Tempero handcuffs had put a stop to that, as Lysande had heard Raden remind his guards last night.

  She knew this, and yet something twisted within her at this sight, all the same.

  Drawing her gaze away from the prisoners, she felt heat surge under her skin, and recognized the guilt at last. The executioner unwrapped an axe from a sackcloth cover.

  “You can put that back,” the woman in the doublet said, staring at the executioner as if she were a fly. “You know how Her Majesty did these things. She would want the next one to look them in the eyes.”

  “Where can she take them?” Lysande said quickly.

  The woman in the doublet turned. Her gaze passed up over Lysande’s tall person, lingering on her unkempt hair, taking in the lock of deathstruck silver among the red strands.

  “Back to jail,” she said. “We can’t have them burning houses and flooding the streets like savages.” She surveyed the frayed edges of Lysande’s coat. “Good day.”

  She gave a tight smile. The velvet of her garments shone as she walked away. Lysande turned back to the gate and watched the cart jolt its way down the road until the faces of the prisoners on the back were nothing more than dots.

  Sarelin would not have executed anyone without reason, she thought. Yet she saw the queen’s two bodies: the armor-clad warrior who was the realm, who brought down a gauntleted fist on elementals; and the woman who drank, laughed, and debated philosophical texts with her into the evening. Perhaps she was to blame for not winning the former over.

  High above her, the midday bells began to roll their clangor into the palace.

  * * *

  • • •

  The staircase to the fourth floor curved around in a long arc, its walls lined with portraits of Axiumites of note, and the ascent dampened her spirits, the pictures seeming to sneer at her as she passed. She shook off her melancholy to greet a portrait at the top. Shining in a silver frame, it stretched almost from ceiling to floor, showing Sarelin in her armor, clutching a dagger in her left hand and a tapestry in her right, the pale steel blazing against her skin.

  Lysande felt something strain inside her, as if her very flesh was trying to shift from her bones. Her body wanted to throw itself into the frame. It was a flat image. She knew that. And yet knowing that made no difference; the ghost of past joy was standing in front of her.

  She stood before the frame for a long time, staring into Sarelin’s face. Those black eyes gazed back at her. She traced the metaphor with a finger—Elira, the tapestry of many colors, climates and cities, sewn together by one leader.

  At the expense of a certain type of people, her conscience added.

  When she walked on, her boots rang against the floor of the corridor, steady as a knell.

  The palace’s oldest meeting-chamber bore the name of its table, a long construction of dark wood that dated back to the first century, whose ovular shape dominated a room entirely without windows. The sound of voices carried to her ears. She pressed her eye to the crack where the oak doors hung ajar. The Oval’s ambience reminded Lysande of a tomb, and today, more than ever, the candles nestling in apertures on the walls seemed to invite her in, with a votive light that she knew was not hers to enjoy. As she looked around, she discerned six people in emerald robes, five of them leaning over something on the table’s surface.

  She knew that this was the highest she had ever risen; that facing a room of advisors alone would have been unthinkable, before she was Councillor. No matter what aspersions Charice might cast, this was a moment for everyone who had been flattened under two unpolished words: the populace. This was a moment for craftswomen, chamberlains, millers, blacksmiths, fathers at home, and, yes, even scholars . . . for the populace she knew, and did not know. It would probably have felt better if her hands had not been trembling.

  She strained her eyes to pick out details in the candlelight, focusing on the six figures around the table and listening. The murmur of conversation gave way to a single voice.

  “The Rhimese will be the ones ready to act. And bargain. I say her death is a piece of luck,” a woman declared.

  Three

  Her breath hitched, as if someone had yanked a stitch out in the middle of sewing. Although her feet wanted to carry her to the stairs, she forced herself to let the figure in the painting go. She concentrated on the crack between the doors.

  “You all know as well as I do that no one could get the warrior-brute to do a thing she didn’t want,” the same cold voice said.

  Lysande had never heard anyone refer to Sarelin as a “warrior-brute” before. She felt a spurt of anger. The speaker looked up from the table, and with a start she recognized the noblewoman who had fended off the executioner at the palace gate.

  “If you were thinking tactically, instead of ferreting around for a promotion, you’d be looking to replenish our treasury,” another woman said, her cadaverous figure swamped by the folds of her robe.

  “And I suppose you think placing a Lyrian prince on the throne is a bright idea,” the cold-voiced woman said. “They don’t conserve their gold, unless you count slathering it all over their palace.”

  “What about Valderos?” a young man cut in.

  The discussion flowed without a pause. The advisors all bargained as if the city-rulers were pieces to be moved around a tactos-board: indeed, the cold-voiced woman spoke as if the choice of monarch was a mere formality. Anger rattled through her. The five people leaning over the table compared armies, munitions, and coffers like merchants weighing up splitgrain and summer-rice.

  Lysande thought of what Sarelin might say, if she could hear them, and swallowed something that was warm and painful at once.

  “I trust the Rhimese with a crown like I trust a snake with a rabbit,” the young man said.
>
  “I’m not entirely sure snakes eat rabbits, Addischild. Did you borrow that from a tavern song?”

  “A Rhimese snake would sink its fangs in and suck the poor thing dry.”

  At the far end of the table, a man that Lysande had never seen reached for a piece of fruitcake from one of the many platters. His brown hair was sprinkled with a few strands of gray, but she put him in his mid-forties, around the same age as Sarelin, though less beaten by the elements. His robe came up to his neck and his sleeves were neatly brushed. In the pause that opened up, he put the cake down, coughed once, and looked around the table with an earnest expression.

  “Go on, then, Derset,” the cold-voiced woman said.

  “I don’t suppose any of you have considered the Councillor?” Derset, whoever he was, ran a hand through his graying hair. “I hear that she was picked out as palace scholar at the age of eight, when Her Majesty took the cleverest pupil from an orphanage. The queen made the girl her particular companion. This Lysande Prior translated the Silver Songs into modern Eliran when she was twelve. Perhaps, if she has aptitude, she has formed an opinion.”

  “Could have guessed you’d support Her Majesty’s choice.” A burly woman made the remark. Several of the others snickered.

  “We all remain loyal to our queen,” Derset said.

  “We didn’t all carry her sword around, though,” the burly woman said, smirking.

  “Never mind that. I would sooner have our leader chosen by a silverblood than by the whelp of some farmer or cloth-peddler,” the cadaverous woman put in, her lip curling. “These are not times for muddying the palette.”

  Lysande did not mean to enter, but as she leaned forward to catch their words, she moved a little too keenly, and her shoulder pressed against the wood. The doors swung open. The advisors scrambled to make their bows; there were cries of “Good morning, Councillor” as they recognized the orbed staff in her hand. It would almost have been comical if Lysande had not felt the heat rising in her cheeks. Forcing a smile onto her face, she took a few steps forward, trying to give off the air of one who had deliberately burst in on a group of nobles.

  “Please, do not trouble yourselves for me.” She raised a hand, motioning them to sit, and as she readied herself to join them, she saw the object on the table. The last time she had seen it, she had been standing over the greatest woman in the realm, looking at her stiff body. She had engraved the sight of it into that moment. It was almost a dream, seeing it here, but there was no mistaking the hard glitter of those diamonds.

  She held the crown up just long enough to observe their reactions. The Treasurer, the Master of Works, and the two envoys to the cities: Lysande ticked some of the positions off. They were not roles Sarelin had pronounced with a smile. Nor were their bearers smiling now.

  “I believe we have not met,” Lysande said, facing the cold-voiced woman.

  “Lady Pelory.” Her tone did not warm at all. “Mistress of Laws.”

  Pelory folded one hand over the other. A ring protruded from the forefinger on top. Taking in the emerald in its center, Lysande noted the small but coveted line of rainbow heartstone inside the gem and estimated the ring’s worth at more than fifty chests of gold.

  Swallowing, she looked along the table. All of the advisors were staring at the crown, except the sixth: the man with the sober manner met her gaze as he bowed from the neck. “Henrey Derset, Councillor. I serve as the crown’s envoy to foreign lands. I rode back from Llara in Bastillón last month with an offer to purchase more Eliran steel. Happiness sped me onwards, but I see that sorrow was waiting to meet me. I offer you my condolences, Councillor Prior—to you, I expect, Queen Sarelin was more than just our ruler.”

  The sentiment struck Lysande, and her reply caught in her throat. No one aside from Raden had seemed to spare a thought for her feelings. She was certain that the nobles in the courtroom had not. “Thank you, Lord Derset,” she managed, after a moment.

  Derset sat down again, and Lysande busied herself with looking around the room. The candles burned steadily, thanks to the unseen hands that had lit them before the meeting; the apertures were clear of dust, and the table was so polished that the grain in the Conquest-era oak stood out. The faces surrounding her looked proud, disgruntled, even skeptical.

  She listened to her breath: in and out. In and out. There was nothing but that sound.

  “As you are aware, no doubt, the city-rulers will be here in less than a day.”

  “I, for one, will be ready to judge them.” The burly woman, Lady Tuchester, who Lysande recognized as a former captain, thrust her chest out.

  The young Master of Works, Lord Addischild, twisted his sleeve so that the silver embroidery caught the light. “Some of us have already determined our choice.”

  “You mistake my meaning. I am asking you to oversee preparations for their arrival.”

  Glances darted around the table. Silence followed. Pelory was the first to look her in the eyes. “And what of our duty to help you select the new monarch, Councillor Prior?”

  “I expect you will be busy with the duties of greeting, lodging, and welcome,” Lysande said. She could feel a rasp at the back of her throat, a scratching of something very like the quill-tip of grief, and she strained to keep it out of her voice.

  The advisors began babbling about their successful inter-city missions, their experience with investiture, and the quality of their strategies; Lady Bowbray, the Treasurer, made her voice the loudest, arguing over the top of the others’ anecdotes. Lysande had expected this. As the talk continued, she looked to Henrey Derset. He had one hand in his hair, rubbing his scalp. She studied him for a moment, observing the lines cleaving his brow.

  “Will you not argue your merits, Lord Derset?” she said.

  Derset shook his head. “If you would make this decision alone, then it is your right.”

  She wanted me, Lysande thought. Not an envoy, or a treasurer. “I think—”

  A voice cut her off, Tuchester’s complaint ringing through the Oval, and Lysande felt a spark ignite inside her, the tiniest of flames, barely nascent, but accompanied by a reminder that Sarelin would not have borne this.

  “I will take one of you to advise me,” she said, “and only one. Lord Derset, stand up.”

  The talk died. Derset rose, his eyebrows rising with him.

  “I name you as my sole advisor, to work with me as long as I am Councillor.” Lysande looked around the table. “The rest of you may return to your work.”

  “This honor weighs greatly upon me, Councillor.” Derset bowed his head.

  It did not take long: Bowbray, Tuchester, and the other envoy, Lord Chackery, made their exits in a swirl of emerald green. Lord Addischild followed them at a more leisurely pace. Lysande heard their voices echoing in the corridor, then a door slamming.

  Pelory was last to leave. She stopped a few inches from Lysande before departing and looked her over. “Good luck, Councillor,” she said, clipping each word.

  Lysande might have slumped into a chair, were it not for the cough behind her. She turned. Derset’s eyes fixed on her with something like sympathy. “I expect you have had little privacy, Councillor,” he said. “If you desire it, I could show you a place where you might mourn.”

  Lysande hesitated for a moment. “Meet me on the sixth floor of the staff tower, Lord Derset, when the light is fading.”

  The crown felt cool, its silver heavy in her hands as she took it. She walked out, holding it before her. In the corridor, she nodded to Derset and, with considerable strain, managed a smile before turning in the direction of the palace vault. Her stiff bearing seemed to startle the guards and attendants into silence as she passed; it would have startled her, too, if she had not recognized a stirring, beginning somewhere deep within herself, and growing.

  * * *

  • • •

  Splinter
s littered the streets of Axium. Urging her horse through the debris, she found the alley empty of looters; Raden’s latest report of a surge in rioting was real to her at last, in a way that even his riven brow had not conveyed. She had missed the storm, but Charice’s words about the fear and anger of ordinary people fell upon her like midwinter rain, the kind of angry patter that sluices topsoil from graves.

  In Charice’s first room, the quills lay among shards of glass on the floor, their feathers trampled or snapped, and the majority of the ink and paper had vanished. Breath rose, hot in her lungs, mingling with anger.

  The hanging of Sarelin had gone too. It was a curious devotion, avenging the queen and purloining her image at the same time, but Lysande had no time for reflection, her cheeks still reddened from the ride. The door to the back chamber stood open on its hinge.

  No smashed glass lay inside; no powders dyed the floor purple or red. Bare walls sparkled on all sides. The hook that Charice had used to hold the drawing of the chimera had disappeared. She sniffed the wall where it had hung and caught the scent of lemon soap: few elementals fleeing a mob had time to clean their storeroom.

  The thought cheered her somewhat, but anger lingered beneath it. It went deeper than a feeling of obligation, with Charice. They had both stood outside the window of Axiumite society, looking in.

  She had first purchased a jar of blue flakes from Charice when her friend had been taken on as apprentice to an apothecary. One evening, after a particularly savage snipe at her from some of the palace staff, who had made it clear what they thought of an orphan rising to the rank of the queen’s personal companion, Lysande had ridden out to join her friend. Guiding her horse between clumps of crushed paradisiac in the light of the winter moon, with the flowers’ sharp scent rising around her, she had determined to do what she had been thinking about for months.