The White Queen: The Black Prince Trilogy, Book 2

by P. J. Fox

  Instead, Ariadne had managed to form a liaison quite without his knowledge. Or, needless to say, consent. And she’d stolen from him, stolen a great deal, before disappearing into the night with her new lover. That poor bastard had been the son of a minor house and he’d been absolutely besotted with the woman he believed was both innocent and virginal. As to the latter, women had their wiles and she’d been able to trick him. But as to the former…no being was capable of hiding its true nature forever.

  Ariadne’s husband, much like the last and most beloved wife of the fabled Bluebeard, had eventually discovered that he’d been duped into marrying a witch. And he’d made Ariadne suffer for it. He’d hurt her and in turn she’d killed him. A bit of an overreaction, Tristan thought; Ariadne was hardly the victim, for all that she’d temporarily adopted that cloak. She was no shrinking flower, dependent on and living in fear of her husband. No man had ever been Ariadne’s lord and master, and had she so chosen she could have talked him around.

  Or taken responsibility for her stupidity and come back to Tristan.

  Hunted, wanted, she’d fled the North and come here. Here, he believed, to keep an eye on House Cavendish. Perhaps she’d had designs on one of its scions. Powerful blood ran in their veins, and a union here could have been the start of a spectacular lineage indeed.

  Like all young, beautiful women, she’d imagined that the parade of suitors would last forever. She’d never sought, even with Tristan, to form a partnership based on anything deeper than shared need. Something she thought that he, perhaps, as a demon didn’t see. Or was incapable of seeing. She’d used him, and he’d let himself be used; but he’d harbored a certain—the closest term was affection, he supposed, for her.

  What had she wanted from her husband? Power? The legitimacy she felt that her former lover had never given her? That long ago viscount had truly wanted to marry her; she may have, Tristan realized with some surprise, entered into the union as a way of getting back at him. He’d made it perfectly clear, at the outset, that he’d never marry her.

  Not because he was opposed to marriage, per se, but because there was nothing in it for him.

  Not with her. Not then. They’d been…too much alike, perhaps. And so Ariadne had fled him, and fled her husband, fled each situation as it proved to require the hard work and sacrifice that were real life. None of this, Ariadne had been sure, was her due. Had she tried to seduce a member of the then-earl’s household? To secure a place within House Cavendish for herself? And when—and how—had she failed?

  She hadn’t, Tristan was certain, intended to end up here in this cottage. When had it been built? And when had she begun establishing herself as Enzie’s local wild witch of the woods? He’d kept a general watch on her, but never paid terribly close attention to her particulars. She was no threat, that was all he needed to know.

  Sitting here now, in this deceptively charming cottage—as deceptively charming as Ariadne herself—he couldn’t help but picture her as a bloated old spider crouching in its web. Waiting for something succulent to come along. Something just dumb enough to, attracted by the glistening filaments, flutter right up to the web to investigate.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  “I’m a different person, now,” Ariadne said quietly.

  Their eyes met briefly, before hers dropped back to her tea. Indeed, you’re different, he thought. You’re old. Ariadne, unlike himself, wouldn’t last forever. He wondered, with no real investment in the answer, whether the years weighed heavily on her. She might, he decided, truly believe that she had changed. People most often, after all, tried to convince others of what they most wanted to believe about themselves.

  She’d made him tea but he hadn’t touched his cup. He wasn’t that stupid. But she drank hers without comment, long, aristocratic fingers wrapping the cup as gracefully as if she’d been drinking from pewter with the king.

  No, he’d enjoyed their time together but he’d never been faithful. She’d never expected him to be; despite her protestations of love, she’d never cared for him enough to want that from him. A fact that hadn’t escaped his notice, even then. He hadn’t been the student of human nature that he was now, but nor had he ever been stupid. What Ariadne wanted lay not in his cold, unbeating heart but in his magic.

  His differing nature had been an…attractant to her, he supposed was the correct term, but there had been no acceptance there. Not like with Isla. Isla wanted nothing from him except the one thing he truly could not give. But she loved him regardless, loved him not as a demon but as a man. Wanted him, too, neither as a figure of worship nor as a servant but as a partner. It was the first time he’d ever experienced such. When Isla touched him, her reverence was for the man she loved.

  And she was—if not content to go without, then willing to. As a sacrifice. Because she loved him. She was, in effect, sacrificing her own heart on an altar she scarcely understood.

  She was the opposite of Ariadne. And Tristan, for long now, had wondered what Ariadne wanted with her. That Ariadne had befriended her had been no accident. And Isla, a lone and friendless person, had been an easy target. She looked at Ariadne and saw, not the vain and foolish sorceress that Tristan had come to know so well but Cariad the herbalist and friend to women.

  He thought again of Bronwen, whose name meant white. Bronwen, the heroine of the world’s saddest fairy tale. He’d quoted the line to Isla, the line every child knew: with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony. He remembered the line from his own childhood. Or, rather, his host’s. But those memories were his now, he and his host long since joined into one individual. And he’d wondered, too, in recent decades if some part of his host’s consciousness hadn’t lived on inside of him.

  He…wanted to love.

  Did that count?

  He wondered if Bronwen, fleeing into the woods, had felt betrayed by the discovery of her stepmother’s evil intent. If she, like Isla had with Ariadne, thought of the older woman as a mentor. A figure of trust. To Isla, Ariadne had been a good person. If, as the fairy tale suggested, the truth was in the mirror then the mirror was malleable. People saw what they wanted to see; what was reflected back to them.

  And might not the spirit in the mirror have lied, for reasons of its own?

  He knew, from personal experience, that demons were not always truthful.

  Even so mortals, foolish as they were, believed them such. Believed that surely, a face in the glass held more wisdom in terms of who was beautiful and who was not than their own loved ones. And why? Because all demons were experts at exploiting their masters’ frailties. What one feared might be true always seemed more real, when voiced, than merely what one hoped. Bad news had ever carried more weight than good, and it was a peculiar feature of all people that they seemed to value it far more. A thousand blessings—years of health, the birth of many children who themselves passed into adulthood, a roof over one’s head and food to eat—were wiped out in a moment next to the fact of, say, a wasting illness. Then that man’s life was a tragedy; then things suddenly turned unfair.

  Whereas a demon would regard the situation and conclude only that, as the eastern sages said, one must take what one wanted. And then pay for it. The bill had merely come due.

  “She thought you were her friend,” he said.

  “I was.”

  “Was that before or after—tell me,” he said, his eyes narrowing, “what exactly is it that you planned?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You hid here all these years, watching over her, watching her grow, for nothing.”

  “To protect her,” Ariadne hissed.

  “Protect her from what?” he asked. “Others, who might exploit her gifts before you had the chance to?” The protection of which Ariadne spoke was no more than the protection one might give one’s swine, before leading them off to slaughter. Keeping them safe from mountain lions, so the food wouldn’t end up in the wrong creature’s belly. What glorious generosity.

&n
bsp; “To protect her from—from men like you!”

  “But female predators are no danger?” And then, “look at you, Ariadne, pretending to care. I hear from the locals that you’re quite the champion of women. Encouraging them to lie to their husbands, even as you mix them abortifacients. How that must help them in the long term.” His tone was dry. Women like Ariadne talked a good game but their interest was hardly altruistic. They convinced women that it was in their best interests to be independent, when in actual fact nothing could be further from the truth.

  Tristan was, at heart, neither male nor female and despite his years of living in the world he lacked the mortal man’s conviction in his own strength. At least partially because he knew that a mortal man, however strong his sword arm, was not the apex predator in this glorious kingdom. He didn’t disagree with Ariadne out of any conviction that a woman was less than a man but rather from a rational acceptance of the world as it was.

  A woman, cut off from her husband, was utterly helpless. She couldn’t testify in court; she couldn’t hold property in her own name, except under very specific circumstances. Rather than an ally, which she needed, lying to him would only make him an enemy. Men’s problems, though little understood by women, were just as real; and might not a man finding out that his wife had killed their offspring cause an irreparable rift between them?

  Ariadne could dispense her potions and lectures, and then move on. Come the following morning, she’d still have her snug cottage and her wisdom and her hoard of treasure in the basement. But the women she cared for weren’t so lucky; they had no means of independent support. Women were…weak, not mentally but physically.

  He knew well that, had he not come when he had, Isla would now be blind—or dead. All the courage in the world couldn’t substitute for a strong sword arm. Women, even strong women like Isla, comparatively educated and independent women, lived in the shadow of fear. They had to learn, from an early age, how to deal with men in such a way that didn’t cause men to kill them.

  And when a woman was pregnant, she was truly helpless. He found himself thinking, as Ariadne sipped her tea and waited for him to reveal his real reason for visiting, about children. He’d considered the issue before, of course; all creatures felt a drive to procreate, he supposed, whatever their nature. But, in his current form…children were impossible. He could never get Isla pregnant; that was one more sacrifice she’d have to make, to be with him. He had no power to create life, only to take it. He’d never see Isla as he’d seen Jansen’s wife, so swollen with the creature growing inside her that she was barely able to move and oddly all the more appealing for it. Jansen, when he’d died, had left behind five children. He’d had eight, but two had died of the plague and the other in a riding accident.

  “You’re being irresponsible,” he told Ariadne.

  “With what?”

  “These peasants.”

  “And with precious Isla.”

  “Is that a note of jealousy I detect?” he asked quietly.

  “Hah!” She made a dismissive gesture, oddly vulgar. “As if she had anything to tempt me. That little milksop. She asked me to remove your mark, you know. I told her I wouldn’t. She believed that I was scared of you and—would you believe it—she felt sorry for me.”

  “You don’t deserve her friendship,” he replied.

  Ariadne’s gaze hardened, her eyes meeting his, realizing perhaps for the first time that she’d made an enemy. That Isla truly did have something that Ariadne did not, something apart from youth. Indeed, Isla possessed a youth that Ariadne had never possessed. Ariadne, Tristan was certain, even as a small child, had never felt wonder. Only scorn.

  “What does she have,” Ariadne asked, “that I don’t?”

  “It’s not what she has,” he told her. “But who she is.”

  He saw that Ariadne understood. That Ariadne perhaps regretted now letting Isla go so easily. Had, indeed, forced her out. Isla hadn’t told him much, but he’d seen the truth in her eyes. In the hurt there. Well, let her go on believing that what she’d seen in the mirror was real. There was no need to tell her the truth, save to cause hurt, and he’d avoid that if he could. What Isla would have to endure, in the coming months, would be bad enough.

  A pain that Isla didn’t want, and didn’t know was coming. A pain that Ariadne had once craved—and perhaps still did. Tricks aside, Ariadne couldn’t keep herself young forever. A fact which even she must realize, as vain and foolish as she still was. Ariadne the necromancer, who’d hidden her true nature from these people for so long. Ariadne would have done anything to experience what she called the sacred pain, the thinning of the veil between the worlds. A gift that she now understood would, in fact, be offered after all.

  Just not to her.

  A gift that, long ago, Simon had tried to see forced on Brenna.

  Ariadne regarded him in silence for a long moment. And then, “does she know what you’re going to do to her?”

  THIRTY-SIX

  We stopped checking for monsters under our beds when we realized that the monsters were inside us.

  Brom had said that, a long time ago. And Tristan had forgotten, a long time ago, only remembering after he’d been in the East for some time. Drowning himself in all the pleasures that could be found there. Fully inhabiting his body for the first time as he ate, not for hunger but to taste; as he played various erotic games with both men and women, not from lust but for the novelty of sensation that each new experience afforded.

  He’d been a guest in many homes by that point; by that morning when he’d first, for lack of a better term, come to his senses. Risen up toward clarity, as toward the surface of a lake, from what seemed a very great distance. He’d been in the dark, a dark of his own making, for years. He’d been at this particular palace almost a year, having made—friends was perhaps a strong word—with its owner. He’d shared the young sultan’s libraries, which were excellent. And his harem. And eventually the sultan’s own bed.

  He’d smoked opium again, the night before, gazing through half-closed lids as the sultan’s favored pets danced before him. Men, women. All young, some barely more than children. They had a habit in the East, of selling unwanted children into slavery. Children their parents couldn’t afford to feed, or had simply grown bored of. The more attractive ones ended up in places like these. Some escaped, through marriage or a more permanent concubinage. The sultan himself had married a former prisoner of war, a beautiful woman who seemed—if not precisely in love then at least resigned to her situation.

  Tristan didn’t particularly care for opium. Or not care. It was an experience, like any other. And for the first time in his life, truly for the first time, he was his own master. He hadn’t been, before, although he’d imagined himself as such; he’d gone back to leading his host’s life, subject to the rules of his host’s world. And, indeed, the responsibilities of his host’s position within it. He’d become, in his own way, as much of a slave as he’d been before—only to a different master.

  But in the East, as time passed…amidst his reading and his note taking, it had slowly dawned on him that he could do whatever he wanted. That if he chose to buy a slave, he could; that if he chose to sleep with one woman, or six, he could. One woman, or one man. One horse. The East was a place of license, an enormous continent of land fought over by a thousand different potentates. There were mountains, and deserts, and jungles. Monsoons and heat strong enough to bake a man alive. Every few square miles were ruled over by different men, all equally rich, all charging into battle on their elephants.

  What was one scholar in the midst of all this?

  He’d learned…all manner of things. And for awhile, until that morning, he’d managed to forget things too. He’d managed to forget about Brom. And Brenna. And the rigid northern concepts of duty and honor that meant nothing here. Here, indulgence to the point of depravity was seen as a badge of honor; the more a man’s constitution could take, the stronger he was. The more other men r
espected him. Moreover, as different as he was—or perhaps because he was so different—the men of the East accepted him as one of their own. He was clearly a prince, too. And an exotic one at that.

  Men long since jaded past the point of accessing simpler pleasures reveled in this. In his exoticism. In his danger. Some might have guessed his true nature, but none cared. They were too full of liquor, and opium, and ennui to care.

  They wanted to feel, only to feel—just like him.

  The East would fall; Tristan saw that clearly. Fall prey to a stronger and more organized force that would come, either from the West or from further east, to colonize it. These rulers were no rulers…and for a long time, Tristan didn’t care. But then, that one morning, he woke up and found himself considering the question. Brom’s face swam up from the depths of his memory, and Brom’s words. And he began to wonder, for the first time, what was happening at home.

  Brom was long dead. Brom’s son was long dead. Everyone that Tristan had ever known was long dead. Had to have been. Not even the healthiest, longest-lived man was eternal. Brom’s bones, he realized with something like shock, were assuredly dust in their grave.

  The world was changing, ever changing, all around him.

  The night before, Tristan and his host had watched as the sultan’s choicest slaves were let consort with each other. It was rare that he let what he referred to as his stallions touch an actual woman. Mostly he demanded that they find amusement with him. Or his male guests. Most of whom had long since forgotten their natural inclinations.