by E. J. Beaton
Derset listened in silence.
“I could hardly blame you if you were angry,” she said.
“Angry? No.”
“You do not feel I should have consulted you?”
“Bowbray or Tuchester or Pelory would have felt so, I am sure. They have always made it clear to me that an advisor’s role is to direct their ruler. But I am of the opinion that the best leader is one who knows how to direct herself.” There was his gentle smile again. “Of course, I am a little taken aback that you worked so industriously in secret.”
He reached to brush a piece of dried leaf off her sleeve. Her hand fell onto his and she let it linger, a little longer than usual, pressing down against the firm length of his palm and thinking of the moment they had been pressed to each other on the ship’s deck. There had been nothing but warmth in the world: his warmth, and the thumping of his heartbeat.
She had to force herself to return to strategy, relating her meeting with Luca and his request to merge guards, and coming to the Periclean man’s attack.
“It may have been that the White Queen’s spy was trying to kill Prince Fontaine, just as it appeared. If Prince Fontaine is truly your ally, the timing of the strike on the Grandfleuve may have been a coincidence. He may have been defending himself today. I think it not impossible,” Derset said.
“Not impossible. A glowing vote of confidence in Prince Fontaine, then.”
“My lady, I would not wish to suggest—”
“Speak plainly, Lord Derset.”
Derset put down his goblet of wine, his brows knitting. “Then I think we should also consider the possibility that Prince Fontaine is tricking you into yielding information. If he arranged for a soldier to run at him, he might be seeking to gain your trust by slaughtering the man in your presence—could anyone deny that it would work to his favor? The fox knows the shaded path to its lair far better than its prey ever can.” He paused and met her glance. “We cannot ignore that he is a master of stratagems, after the Room of Accord.”
She could still see the blood spreading across the ground from the assassin’s body. “I knew you would strike the nail on the head.”
“By merging with you, he gains the precise details of your plans, for some purpose or other. I do not say that it is an ill purpose—perhaps he merely wishes to make sure of your loyalty.” He gave a polite but rather unconvincing smile.
“Perhaps.” She rose and paced to the window. The White Queen had used the expression won Prior over . . . and was it unreasonable to suppose that a request for a dance was somehow part of a campaign? She pictured Luca’s face again, after he had killed the assassin: his eyes closed shutters.
“I think we should attempt to protect ourselves against him,” she said. “Give him some of the guards’ locations in the inns, to pacify him, for he has gleaned them already; but give him false details as well.” Nothing covered a lie so well as a little truth. She had written that at the end of the third chapter of An Ideal Queen, after analyzing the bloody string of first-century conspiracies.
“A good plan.” Derset considered, taking another sip. “A risky plan, too, but I suppose so long as you act with great care . . .”
She walked back to him. “I told Fontaine I only have a hundred guards.”
Derset’s goblet clinked against the table. He was looking at her as one might regard a markswoman who had just hit a target. Ever so slightly, his mouth quirked. “A bare-faced lie to a prince. You remind me of someone, my lady.”
“And who is that?”
“Her late Majesty, Queen Sarelin.”
She laughed. When she was back in her suite without an advisor to face, and without a mask of confidence to assume, she did not laugh any more. She took out the gold quill and held it in her palm, unbuttoned her doublet, stood in front of the mirror, and looked at the chain of fluid silver around her neck. The links caught the sun, dripping radiance onto her skin: a curve of metal singing.
* * *
• • •
There was no such thing as being left alone when you were a Councillor of Elira. Dante and Jale called on her at separate times that afternoon, but she sent Litany to make her excuses. She suspected that her supposed ailment was forgotten in the excitement that followed. Dante had bloodied the jaw of a Lyrian guard who muttered an insult at him in the corridor, and although competing versions of the guard’s remark were circulating, Litany had gathered that it had had something to do with the north being the last refuge of savages who thought with their lower parts, illegitimate brutes seeking to rut, who had no right to pursue southern leaders. She also reported that the Valderrans had cheered Dante on as he laid a blow.
“It’s odd, though, isn’t it?” Litany said. “The First Sword’s reviled by the southerners. Yet last night, it looked like he was heading toward Prince Chamboise’s quarters.”
“Mmm,” Lysande said.
They looked up and their gazes met.
“Do you think they . . .”
“Possibly,” Lysande said.
“I have heard the Valderran guards boasting of the First Sword’s virility. They say he has bedded some of the most famous noblemen in the north. Yet he does not marry. They say he looks for a better match.”
“Maybe it is all rumor.” Lysande’s tone failed to convince even herself.
“Maybe. But it seems to me that Prince Chamboise would be a great prize. He has royal blood and a fortune beyond any in Elira. And as for the other side of the match, well,” Litany blushed, “the First Sword is very handsome.”
“You astound me, Litany.”
“Have you not noticed that he has the build of an athlete?”
“Of the two, I must admit, Prince Chamboise is more to my taste.”
Litany grinned. “‘The balm of a pretty man’s face.’ Callica’s phrase?”
“Inara’s. But do not get your hopes up, Litany. I doubt either one of them is looking our way.” Lysande ran a finger over her sword-hilt, remembering the moment she had watched Dante pacing in the maze-garden. “And besides, I would be very surprised if the First Sword sees Prince Chamboise as a prize. He takes oaths seriously. I think it very likely that he takes love seriously, too.”
She resisted the temptation to ask Litany what she thought of love. Some things should not be broached with a person who could split an arrow in the middle of a target.
In the aftermath of the altercation between Dante and the Lyrian guard, Lysande managed an hour of quiet study, poring over her charts of the White Queen’s past maneuvers. Cassia’s attentions were harder to avoid than Dante and Jale’s, for she turned up in the thick of a group of armed soldiers and insisted on being let in. Litany went out not twice, but six times.
Impermeable, Lysande thought, as she looked at the bouquet of fiery red flowers Cassia had left her.
She turned to studying the book of military accounts she had taken from the Academy, but the records of the war served no use except to tell her what she already knew: that the White Queen did not like risking her own neck when she could send another to attack in her place. More hours passed, and the difficulty of holding off from her store of scale increased. She tore strips off her nails several times. The more she tried not to think of blue flakes, the more she found herself dreaming of the room transmuting to gold around her, of the feeling of quiescence washing through her, and the scent of spiced wine lingering in her nostrils, like the ceaseless thrum of Sarelin’s voice, pushing her concerns into retreat. The heat searing through her forehead and cheeks, the writhing of her stomach, the knocking of her heartbeat like an angry drunkard against her ribs: those effects of scale, her memory chose to sift out.
Even though she had told Derset to meet her in her suite, she had forgotten about it whilst plunged into the depths of research, carried away by books and charts. A gust of wind caught the door as he entered, banging it s
hut, and they both jumped.
There was no need to pretend that they wished to talk or check arrangements; the look that passed between them said enough. Lysande grasped his hand and led him to her bed, feeling his body respond as she pressed it down.
Inch by inch, leaning over him, she lowered her mouth to his earlobe, then ran her teeth over the skin without biting; stopping; then shifting her body to kneel over him. For a moment, it was hard to read his expression. Then he smiled, ever so slightly.
“Are you sure you want this?” She could not help the words from slipping out. Was it naïve, to ask? She thought of the woman in the orangery, years ago, backing away from her.
“You’re forgetting.” Derset’s glance deepened. “I like what you like.”
“I have seen you reading poetry.”
“My lady?”
She quoted the verse in full:
If ever I should choose to hunt
A poor shot would I be—
But I would gladly lay before
The one who hunted me.
The words rang out in the airy chamber. Derset was looking at her with appreciation. “You are observant, my lady.”
“I like to observe you.”
Was he blushing? Surely not.
“And how do you find Inara’s sonnet?” he said, at last.
“I relate to the hunter.” Lysande met his eyes and saw approval again.
They took longer than before. Considerably longer. The encounter almost relieved her inner ache, and his movements matched her own, responding to her restlessness with speed. She unbuttoned his robe, like the last time, though soon his hands worked more swiftly than hers. At one point, she pressed so hard against his brace that he flung out a hand to grip the sheet, his fingers tangling in blue silk.
Yet even amidst the press and yield of limbs, there was something pricking away at her mind, a tiny but steady jab that she thought was the effect of going without the familiar concoction of sky-blue flakes, sugar, and water. Just when she was about to swim away from the craving, into deeper waters, the jab came again.
Other preoccupations resurfaced, too. At one point, she realized she was thinking about Luca’s pulse beating under her hands, her mind fixed on the moment when she had leaned over the tactos-board and touched Luca’s neck.
It rose and subsided, and rose and subsided, the hunger, the need for satiation. Derset did not question her or ask how she felt. He was adapting to her desire, she could tell, and she did not like how easily she had accepted that.
A ruler’s work will not bring her pleasure. Her pleasure, therefore, need not bring her work. Convenient, how the Mirror for a Monarch could justify your needs.
Derset’s final gasp softened into suspiration, a half-voiced prayer.
They lay still on the silk, still enough that they might have been sleeping. After a few minutes, Lysande trailed a finger down Derset’s hip. He turned onto his left side, and she ran her palm down his back, feeling the warmth of the skin, and glad that he could not see her face as she thought: This is mine, this living thing.
When he had gone, she tried to ignore the guilt that had crept, like a many-legged insect, into her consciousness. Should she not be working to restrain, constrain, subdue, pushing down those desires which threatened to flow out of control? She stood at her desk for quite some time, sipping honey-water, trying to force herself back into the flow of her duties, telling herself to make use of her research in the most practical way: by making a counter-move.
She slipped down to ground floor of the palace to meet Raden, making an excuse for her tardiness, and they edged their way past the Lyrian guards to the area where items were being carried to the back door. Tables were lugged past, sometimes in pieces, other times whole. Tanks of something covered in cloth were bustled along, and great quantities of mesh that Lysande presumed was some kind of decoration were brought to the door. All in all, the procession seemed more expensive and a lot noisier that it would have been in Axium.
“Do you see what this means?” Raden said. “They’re holding the ball outside. We don’t have to station the guards in one or two rooms.”
“The back wings, the stables, or the gardens . . .” She peered out of a gold-edged window. “What does a captain’s eye make of the layout?”
Focusing on details of fronds and foliage, she kept her mind off the lure of a vial of blue flakes. She considered the spare rooms on the ground floor, which were easy to break into, and the possibility of stowing the guards with the horses; yet the only place that was likely to hide them all, in Raden’s opinion, was the palm garden behind Rayonnant Palace. Jale’s mother, Ariane, had attempted to gather ten of every kind of palm in Elira—the result, Lysande thought, looked leafy enough to hide a legion of guards.
Separating her other hundred guards from Luca’s would be more difficult. But had she committed to her role for what was easy?
As she went over the positions of the scouts with Raden, she wondered what Vigarot would do if he knew that Axium Guards were being smuggled in under his nose. She was risking a breakdown of the Council, she knew. Some people probably found it simple to take risks. They probably didn’t feel a churning of anxiety.
If I’ve managed this far, for those like me, I can damned well keep on working.
It was not only the crowd at the ball she was protecting, she reminded herself, but all the people across the realm, the destitute and hidden and starved people, who would feel the White Queen’s wrath too. And no matter how altruistic it might look on the surface, these people were the ones who cheered her name louder than those of the other Councillors. She knew from where she might draw her base.
Yet another thought kept popping up in her head.
“So, we put half the scouts along the Grandfleuve, a quarter in the desert, and a quarter along the coast. They’ve got hundreds of doves. We’ll know as soon as there’s any sign of an army. Then—are you listening to me?”
“I was wondering,” Lysande said. “Raden, would you still want me as leader of Axium if you knew that my parents were . . .”
“Were what?”
“Well, not Axiumites.”
He shrugged. “I suppose I wouldn’t mind if they came from another city. So long as it’s not Rhime, of course.” The force of his hand gripping hers took her by surprise. “The way I see it, you’re not your parents. And whoever they were, you’ve made your own way without them. That’s true as a leather sole.” He let go.
Lysande felt a little surge of relief and smiled as they pulled apart. She had the urge to clap him on the back, but she knew, from one memory of an encounter in the Axium Palace grounds, that Raden did not take hugs lightly—they were far too intimate for a man raised on salutes. A handshake was already pushing the bounds of propriety. “In a time like this, it means the world to have a friend of many years on whom I can rely.”
Raden smiled and gave a quick nod. She recalled the day they had sat beside the lake, while dappled light filtered down to them through the dragon-willow leaves, and how Raden had waited patiently as she tried to calm her breathing, recovering from the sight of four guards carrying Sarelin’s body. As he walked away now, she noticed his steady strides.
It was with more energy that she finished running through their plans and left Raden to write to the scouts. The image of scale appeared occasionally among her thoughts, but she managed to push it away. She was almost back at the Axium rooms when she felt the itch.
It began in the middle of her palm and spread. Halting next to a statue of a pair of twined lovers, she scratched at the skin with her fingernails, raking the spot.
This was a time for concentration. She should be thinking about what she had she just witnessed. Every detail of the ball’s layout might be crucial in stopping the White Queen. But she was thinking of her palm, instead. She ran a finger over it again. She c
ould not forget that she had five days until the maturation, and when it happened, the ball would be over, and she could retreat to a house in Ratchley or Weicester outside the capital and remove herself from the public eye. And learn what kind of monster I am.
The early evening inched by, in a string of cravings that saw her pacing around her suite. The thought of the calm, golden glow that just one small spoon of scale would afford worked through her like viper poison. She resorted to re-reading the map-book and compiling a list of spots where the White Queen might infiltrate Elira. Target practice and a final check of plans with Raden did not go quickly enough.
An hour before the ball, Lysande made her way back to her suite. A cloak had arrived with Jale’s compliments—a voluminous emerald thing with silver trim and tiny white jewels in the shape of Axium crowns dotting the lower half, it left scarcely any space on the bedcover for her doublet and trousers. She stood side by side with Litany, staring at it.
“What do you say to a dressmaker’s fee, Litany? I pay uncommonly well.”
“I beg your pardon, but the cloak is already—” Litany caught her eye. “Oh.”
Lysande picked up the long garment for a moment, letting the soft material flow through her hands. “This is of Lyrian make, you see. Light, for the desert. It will blow open in the slightest breeze, exposing the dagger-belt, but I am rather proud of my daggers. If a woman is likely to be attacked, she does well to have several hilts at hand, even if her enemy sees them.” She laid the cloak down and picked up the doublet. “If she is taken, on the other hand, she requires a garment with certain capacities which must not be seen.”
Litany turned her face away. When she spoke, her voice was rich with emotion. “I thought you would ask me to fight her.”
“Fight Mea Tacitus—alone?”
“I have worked my whole life to defend the crown, Councillor.”
Lysande saw that the girl was looking at the floor, her lips pressed together, a narrow seam. You could see the motto everything in its place hovering around the ears of most Axiumites, waiting for a moment to slip into the ear canal and travel all the way to the brain, so that all the pages and the cobblers and the stable-hands and the smiths stayed in their place, and Lysande knew the look that the dutiful wore: a kind of hopeful daze, as if they might be rewarded at any moment by those above them. Litany had never worn that look. She could think of several reasons why Litany would mention her years of service now, and none of them had to do with blind commitment to hierarchy.