The Councillor

by E. J. Beaton

  Once ensconced in Charice’s chamber, she had taken two spoonfuls of blue flakes, heated them, mixed them with the amounts of sugar and water specified in the old physicians’ records. A scent of old books had wafted up to her—the particular smell of her favorite histories and compendiums of stories from the library, the ones with well-thumbed pages and worn covers—and as she brought the goblet closer to her, the scent mingled with the fruity notes of spiced wine, compounding her desire. The heating of her cheeks and forehead as blood surged up beneath her skin; the writhing of her stomach; the quickening of her heartbeat until it knocked at her ribcage: she felt the symptoms as she drank, and chose to endure. Charice had watched her down the chimera scale, not saying a word.

  By then, it had become clear to Lysande why Charice was good at keeping secrets, and why she never spoke when others were discussing magic. Amidst the fear and furtiveness, they had rolled together, like the glass balls that wealthy children played with, until the duties of work parted them. On certain nights, they found their way back to each other, each reflecting the other’s light. Lysande had studied many poems, but she knew the poetry of Charice’s body best of all: the meter of her breathing; the ever-twisting metaphors of her tongue; the syncopated rhythm of her fingers, which wandered along well-worn routes and then veered onto new paths without warning.

  They had not begun with skin. Skin had simply become a part of the flowing thing between them, after one of their card-games, when Lysande had approached, amidst a cloud of Charice’s thick and fragrant pipe-smoke, and discovered that Charice did not mind her hungry eyes at all. In fact, Charice welcomed the hunt, when Lysande was the one encroaching.

  Sometimes, she found Charice’s door locked. Sometimes, she found an ocean of paper covering the table, and Charice tidying it away, the pages whisked into a box before Lysande could glimpse more than a word. Sometimes, she found a stranger leaving, always different and always pretty; Charice greeted her, on those nights, with a look that dared her to object.

  All this, and she still had not guaranteed Charice’s safety.

  The empty room confronted her. She was on her way out when, treading on a floorboard, she heard a creak. She squatted down and tapped three boards. The one in the middle replied with a higher sound.

  She loosened it with her dagger and removed the slat to reveal a hollow. Picking up the box in the hole, she brushed off the wood-dust. A chimera stood rampant on the lid, wings spread, horned head lifted proudly.

  It took all her strength to lift the chest, but there was no need to search for a key. Her breath shortened when she saw the contents. She sat down unsteadily on the floor, staring. Did forty-four jars of shredded chimera scale mean jail, or execution, if you were caught?

  She pried out the paper wedged between the bottles and the back of the chest.

  For L.—a gift I pray you will discard.

  Sorry that I could not say goodbye.

  Until we meet in some happier place,

  C.

  For a long time, she stared at those lines, reading them over and over, gripping the page by the top corner, until she realized that she had torn the paper.

  When she reached Axium Palace, she galloped to the stables, where Raden was removing his saddle from his stallion. “Tell the steward that there will be no more executions,” she said.

  The thud of the saddle dropping went unremarked by both of them.

  He was staring at her face, and she knew that he would be reading the infusion of red, the naissance of a flush, but she did not care. Emotion did not stop her from digging deep and finding a handful of logic. “There is a precedent. In the Legilium, Volume Three. I intend to transcribe it freshly, write it in calligraphy on silver-edged paper, and have a copy of the new order slipped under every courtier’s door.”

  “But Queen Sarelin . . .”

  “Is the woman I love most in the world.” Her voice did not waver. “Now that she has left it, that is still so. But I am in charge, and while I am, I do not intend to sever necks.”

  Raden could not be made to understand about Charice. The words of Perfault and other philosophers on ethics would do little here, she knew. But there was one thing that Raden cared about very much indeed.

  “The army answers to me,” she said, “by Queen Montfolk’s Decree of Velvet and Steel. I am Councillor, and a Councillor holds military authority until the monarch is chosen.” A shudder ran through her. The words had sounded . . . like sunlight refracting off a gauntlet. “I want the Axium Guards to halt the executions. Tell no one. Wait until they ask, and only then let them know what I have decided.”

  Again, sun and steel rang in her voice. It felt very new, and she did not dislike it. After a few seconds, he nodded, still staring at her, and she returned the nod without bowing.

  * * *

  • • •

  In the mid-afternoon, she wound her way through a lesser-known grove in the region of the grounds that was farthest from the palace, searching among the beds of blooms—cultivated and maintained beds, since wildflowers were only allowed to grow so much on the palace grounds. Her fingers brushed the heads of sugar-poppies and heather flowers until at last she sighted a pale yellow bloom sitting atop a tall stem, its petals tapering to a point. Seeing it up close and noting the even size of the petals, she knew that her idea was worth pursuing; the species was a terrible gift for a friend, but as for the prince of Rhime . . .

  She plucked the flower out with a single motion. Back in her chamber, she halted, one hand on the small cabinet, allowing herself a moment’s misgiving before she pushed her qualm aside: it was a particularly clever puzzle, if she thought so herself. She had every reason to be satisfied.

  The flower wrapped up well in a piece of emerald cloth. The ribbon she chose was long enough to tie in a quadruple knot; she had to practice the ancient tying techniques several times before getting it right, but it was a distraction she had needed, even yearned for, amidst the pain. When she walked through corridors now empty of Sarelin, she had to make a concerted effort to breathe deeply. Far better to focus on tying a complicated knot and preparing a reply, even if it was a slightly too-bold reply. She could not guess whether Prince Fontaine would like her puzzle or consider it an act of effrontery, but something inside her wanted to find out.

  Once the flower was wrapped, she mixed a goblet of scale from the jar in her drawer, the other jars stowed beneath her bed. Her stomach writhed long after the mixture had gone down, but she ignored its spasms, letting the golden afterglow wash through the room.

  The possibility of needing more scale in the future could not be dismissed. Forty-four jars would take care of the foreseeable future, however. There was no need to cloud her mind.

  She added a paragraph to An Ideal Queen before abandoning her treatise, perusing the chart of the White Queen’s tactics during the five years of the White War instead. She was aware, even as the calm spread through her, that something required her attention.

  “Two strikes,” she said, to the air. The words had been Sarelin’s once.

  Derset’s knock came just as the sun was lowering itself beyond the forest. He waited outside until she was ready. They descended the tower, and her new advisor said nothing as they walked on. The main building of Axium Palace boasted many capacious chambers and masterworks of sculpture; they passed the statue of a chimera being slain by a warrior with a lance, entitled The Winged Horror, the jaws of the horned creature opened wide as if to roar. Lysande always felt an urge to stop and stare at it. Tonight, Derset guided her to a staircase she had rarely used, and she put all thoughts of ancient beasts behind her.

  They descended several flights until she guessed they were down among the cells. Instead of prison bars, a narrow corridor greeted her, stretching as far as she could see.

  “Have you ever been to the crypt before, Councillor?”

  She had be
en eight, and still reeling, on her first tour of the palace. “Once.”

  “I know you were close to Queen Sarelin.” Derset glanced at her. “I thought you might like to say goodbye.”

  Lysande did not trust herself to speak, but gripped his forearm.

  Down, down, into the bowels of the palace; the royal crypt was buried deeper than the cells, and the air felt icy against her neck. The unadorned walls led to a single door whose hinges protested shrilly. They passed into a long room with a low ceiling, its silver stone almost entirely hidden behind slabs of white marble: hundreds of squares lined the floor and walls, engraved with capital letters. Lysande recognized the names of advisors and envoys through the ages, a chronicle of the appointments of the women and men who had worked for each monarch. Some of them had helped leaders to rise, while others had been instrumental in their falls.

  Dynasty after flowering dynasty. It was thanks to their trading advantages that Elira had never been invaded by the Royamese or the Bastillonians, Sarelin had said once. Meditations on history had been rare from the Iron Queen, and Lysande had copied that one down in her notes.

  On the right side of the chamber, fourteen white tombs stood in a line, spaced apart, each several times the size of a commoner’s grave and fashioned of thick marble. Statues loomed from the headstones. A hawk swooped above Queen Ann Montfolk’s tomb, its wings spread and talons outstretched, the stern eyes and cruel beak as intimidating as Queen Ann had reputedly been. The lion atop King Aydul’s tomb was missing its left paw as well as a large piece from its tail. Lysande remembered Sarelin saying that a visiting Rhimese noblewoman had sneaked into the crypt and attacked the stone with a mallet after King Aydul imposed sanctions on the Rhimese for stealing carts of grain.

  Standing before the tombs, she felt very close and yet very far from them.

  Axium to Rhime. Valderos to Lyria. Pyrrha to Valderos, and back to Axium again. Monarchs had died heirless enough times for the crown to pass from city to city; how forward-thinking Elira was, the silverbloods claimed. How equitable. Of course, they preferred not to mention that you could only tilt at the crown if you were a city-ruler, that only those of a certain lineage could expect to serve in court, and that the crown itself sat on the head of the monarch like a thornbush curling inward.

  She wondered what Sarelin had thought of this room: if she would rather have been buried on the battlefield, in living earth, instead of in dead stone.

  “This is Queen Illora’s tomb.” She ran a hand over the first headstone, whose lioness monument cast a shadow over the inscription. “This room . . . it must date back to the construction of the palace.”

  “It is old indeed. The bones of all the queens of Elira lie here, and our few kings’, too.” Derset was looking closely at her. “It is also a place where a servant of the crown might speak without being overheard, if he were commanded to, my lady.”

  “I am no lady, Lord Derset. I have no blood claim.”

  “Yet I know that you were the queen’s companion. The woman I knew as the Iron Queen wasted no affection on those she found unworthy. Lysande Prior, she said to me once, is like the goddess Cognita mixed with Queen Brettelin—the right combination of wisdom and strength. I suspected years ago that she was training her scholar for something more. You do not fawn on your advisors, but nor do you insult those who resist you, or fly into a rage.”

  Henrey Derset had a manner of ancient courtesy about him, but it did not disarm her. “If you have advice about my task, I would hear it now.”

  “You must know, my lady, that Queen Sarelin was very dear to me. What station I have, I owe to her. And as Her Majesty trusted, so do I.”

  She thought again of the remarks about his devotion to Sarelin, and of the way that the others had snickered in the Oval, as if remembering some past incident. “I have heard it said that you carried her sword.”

  The words came out before she could stop them. Derset colored slightly. “Once, my lady, when the King of Bastillón was visiting, she permitted me to bear her sword for her, during the hunt in Axium Forest.”

  “I see.” And she could see it, too . . . the Axium Guards, following their queen through the trees, the captains milling around the royal party; the Bastillonian and Eliran nobles walking behind; the advisors up front, and Derset, with an emerald-studded scabbard and a leather belt in his hands, falling into step behind Sarelin. She had seen it in person, with a different young man holding the weapon each time. The silverbloods used to joke that the man who carried the Iron Queen’s sword by day would feel her strokes at night.

  Derset had been envoy to the foreign lands. He had come and gone from Sarelin’s side for years. He must have known how her interest changed, surely.

  “Her Majesty did love to have a man trailing her,” Derset said, as if he had guessed her train of thought.

  “It was in her nature to be followed,” Lysande said, carefully.

  “As a bear’s nature is to be obeyed.” Derset’s voice did not sound resentful.

  She noticed the flush in his cheeks again. She considered telling him that she had heard him defend her appointment in the Oval, but felt that admitting to eavesdropping would not be a good way to repay his trust. She could see that he was still struggling to contain a pressing sentiment.

  “I must say this now, or I will forever regret it. You are going to be dining with these four rulers and entertaining them. For two days, you will be surrounded by the ice-bear, the cobra, the spearfish, and the leopard. What do the four emblems of the cities have in common, my lady?” Derset said.

  “They are all beautiful. Animals of royal grace.”

  “Beautiful, yes, but more than that. They can all kill.”

  The animals surrounding the crown on the Eliran crest swam into her mind. They were displayed on flags, cushions, and tapestries; yet everything she knew of the cities felt distant, filtered through the pages of books or passed on through Sarelin’s anecdotes.

  She could see the queen lying on the grass. Points of light from her crown danced in her hair.

  “These are dangerous people, my lady,” Derset said. “Who do you think gains from Queen Sarelin’s death? Who profits, in the realm, by the queen dying without an heir?”

  She did not need to reply. Had she not dwelled on that very thought last night, unable to sleep? Once the word of Sarelin’s hunting accident spread across the country, the city-rulers had had an opportunity ripe for the taking, and one of them might well have taken it. This was a time to shake off her feeling of inadequacy. This was a time to scrutinize. She pushed down the grief inside her and compressed it into something hard, something like a weapon.

  “A few drops of poison . . . it could have been done while the physicians slept. Even those at work grow drowsy after a time. And there are assassins who know the ways of silence, my lady.”

  Lysande hesitated for a moment. She thought of Sarelin’s words in the carriage when she had returned from the hunt bleeding. All of Elira is thinking about my death right now. Not just Axium. Valderos, and Lyria, and Pyrrha and Rhime.

  “Wait until the queen is injured, and suddenly the palace is in chaos. Physicians are coming and going, and orders are flying back and forth,” she said.

  “Indeed. Everyone busies themselves with trying to help.”

  “Two strikes,” Lysande murmured.

  She recalled, again, the chart of the White Queen’s tactics she had made, each pair of attacks laid out after the other. Panther and poison. Two strikes. Sarelin had observed it first, of course. Sarelin had told her how the White Queen could wait until a battalion was limping, bleeding, struggling to draw breath, then spring out with flames or steel, never hesitating.

  For another long moment she looked at the same infusion of color in Derset’s cheeks. She could imagine him in Sarelin’s chamber, years ago, when his bloom of youth was fresh. Sarelin had always b
een able to pick unusually beautiful men from the court and its milieu; she would bring not only athletes and hunters to sit at her table, but poets, dancers, and merchants, too, in an ever-changing pageant of companions. Derset was not what silverbloods called a “high beauty.” His features lacked the delicacy and softness which made some men widely coveted. He would have been honored by the queen’s favor, eager to please, and that, Lysande thought, would have held a different kind of appeal.

  “You must have known the queen well, my lord.”

  “Not as well as she knew me. I would have followed her into the flames, though, if she had asked me to.”

  They met each other’s gaze in the noiseless crypt. “Lord Derset,” she said, “there is something I must tell you, too. Queen Sarelin did not die from her wound.”

  They slipped out of her, then: all the events of that horrible afternoon, from the monkey capering among the bushes to Sarelin pouring a goblet from the jug of pink vivantica. The effort of sharing stripped away a little of the pain inside her. Yet something had to be kept back, to ensure a layer of protection. She left out Sarelin’s last words about the Shadows—those had been meant for her alone, she was sure. Derset listened in silence. When she had finished telling him of Raden’s efforts to extract a confession, she saw him shake his head. “I doubt the physicians are to blame.”

  She nodded. “A physician’s salary is more like a drabble of coin than the river needed to buy a rare poison. I had a conversation, once, with a friend, who heard rumors that the last vials of chimera blood were purchased a long time ago.” It was important to tread lightly, here.

  “Is your friend an envoy, by some chance?”

  “A merchant from Rhime.” The truth could be a little malleable, surely, in some circumstances. “She heard smugglers saying that the last vials of chimera blood found their way to someone who dwells in the Periclean States, across the North Sea.”

  “Excuse me, my lady, but I fail to catch your meaning.”