Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Map
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Interlude
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Long Live the Queen
About the Author
Copyright © 2015 Melissa McShane
ISBN-13
Published by Night Harbor Publishing
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any way whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Yocla Designs
North sign and shield designed by Erin Dinnell Bjorn
For Jacob,
because it’s your favorite
PART ONE
Chapter One
Alison alighted from the carriage, accepting the coachman’s hand with a smile and a nod. It was a tradition dating to an era when all women of rank wore huge skirts, never trousers, but the man seemed to take pleasure in doing this small service for his Countess, and she was pleased to let him. She entered Quinn Press with another smile for the receptionist, who waved her over. “Mister Quinn left this for you this morning,” Molly said, handing Alison a sheet of paper.
Alison scanned the page and scowled a bit. “Coward,” she muttered. “He didn’t want to tell me this to my face, Molly.”
“I thought he was trying to maintain a professional relationship with you,” Molly said.
“He is. I’m just not sure why he thought this would be better than telling me in person. He’s totally wrong—it’s going to make a terrific book. Thanks, Molly.”
She bounded up the stairs, dancing from side to side to make them creak musically. She was having a wonderful day, this message aside. The weather was clear, the first hunt of the season was coming up, and she wasn’t even dreading the Harvest Ball that accompanied it. Quinn Press was going to almost double its publications this year, from 250 to 480, making it the biggest publisher in Kingsport thanks to adopting the new printing Devices that were so much faster than engravings. This little message was nothing by comparison.
She passed her own office and went all the way to the end of the hall. The sign on the scuffed, unvarnished door read MARTIN QUINN, EDITOR. Not “editor in chief” or “publisher,” just “editor,” as if he alone hadn’t built this business from nothing. She wondered again why he’d never moved the offices to a nicer part of the city, one where the sounds and smells of horses pulling wagons to and from the port didn’t remind you forcibly of how modern Kingsport wasn’t. Someone should invent a Device to clean the streets.
Alison pushed the door open without knocking. The office beyond was painfully tidy, the walls lined with portraits of men and women whose faces the amateur artist Martin Quinn had found interesting, the drapes pulled back from the single window to let in the autumn sunlight as well as the noise from the street below. She waved the sheet of paper in her father’s face. “You’re not even giving it a chance,” she said.
Father took his feet off the desk and kicked an inkwell that Alison, moving quickly, caught before it could splash more than a few drops onto her hand and the floor. “Sorry,” he said.
“Not even a chance,” Alison repeated. She flipped the cap closed and set the inkwell precisely in the middle of the worn oak desk that was older than she was. “I’m telling you, a history of the Consorts of the Kings and Queens of Tremontane will do very well now Zara North is on the verge of marriage again.”
“The key word being ‘again,’” Father said, pushing his thick gray hair back from his face with both hands. “This is, what, the third time since she came to the throne? I think it’s just rumor. Queen Zara is a canny woman. I don’t see her as someone who will share power easily.”
“Choosing a Consort isn’t sharing power. You didn’t become a Count when you married Mother, did you? And you’re changing the subject.”
Father spread his hands in acquiescence. “Convince me.”
She reached back to shut the door. “Thurford’s a new—oh, excuse me!” She’d managed to nearly shut the door on the post boy, who let out a grunt of pain and staggered a little. Alison caught the parcels and the black scroll case that slid off the sack of mail, revealing the boy’s face; he was the only person on Quinn Press’s staff shorter than she was. “Sorry about that,” she said, and set the parcels and case on her father’s desk. The post boy blushed and rather hurriedly and forcefully dropped the sack beside them, then muttered an apology and rushed out the door.
“I think he’s in love with you,” Father remarked. He opened the mail sack and began taking out letters.
“I think I just intimidate him,” Alison said. “Let me have your knife.” She began cutting the strings of the first package. “I think these are the new self-inking pen Devices you ordered from Aurilien. I can’t wait to try them out. Their motive forces are supposed to be the size of a pea and last for over a year.”
“Trust you to get excited about pen Devices,” Father said, picking up the scroll case and twirling it absently like a baton in his thick fingers. “I only have bills. There are always too many of those.” He took the address tag of the case in one hand and went very still. “Alison,” he said.
“What?”
He held the scroll case out toward her. “Read it.”
Puzzled at his odd reaction, she took the tag rather than the case. Her full name and title were printed on it in block lettering: ALISON QUINN, COUNTESS OF WAXWOLD. She looked at her father, then took the case from him and examined it closely. It was sealed at both ends in dark blue wax with an imprint she knew well, that everyone in Tremontane knew well: the rampant panther sign and shield of the royal house of North.
Alison looked at her father. Her fingers had begun to tingle in apprehension. “You’d better open it,” he said.
She used her father’s knife to pry the seal off one end, then tipped the case on end and shook it to make the roll of buff parchment—actual parchment, no one used parchment now that clean white paper was readily available—fall out onto the desk top. Parchment meant serious business. Setting the case aside, she picked up the parchment and unrolled it, holding it open, and began to read. The first few lines were her full name and title, and then—
“What under heaven is she thinking!” she exclaimed. She tossed the parchment with some force onto the desk, where it curled up on itself and rolled a few inches. “It’s
ridiculous,” she said. “I can’t possibly be expected to comply.” She prodded the scroll with her fingertip, making it roll further. “I’ve been summoned to Aurilien,” she said. “To serve the Dowager Consort. As a lady-in-waiting. For six months. How do they expect me to give up my life for six months to sit around in an uncomfortable dress and keep the former Consort company? I tell you, it’s unbelievable!”
Father picked up the scroll and furrowed his bushy eyebrows at it, as if its contents might somehow have changed since Alison threw it down. “Dear heaven,” he said. “Why would they pick you?”
“If I weren’t so furious, I’d take issue with that statement.”
“You know what I mean. Do you suppose the Norths have a list somewhere of all the gently-born unmarried women in Tremontane from which they pick Rowenna North’s companions?”
“I neither know nor care. How can I get out of it, Father?”
He shook his head. “Did you see anything in that language that suggested this was something you could decline?”
“I was hoping you’d noticed something I hadn’t.”
Father glanced over it again. “I can’t think of anything Zara North wouldn’t see through. And I don’t want to insult the Queen. And neither, I think, do you.”
Alison covered her face with her hands. She could feel a headache coming on, one of those skull-throbbing monsters she only ever got when a deadline was thundering down upon her. “I don’t.” She pushed a curly lock of her pale blond hair behind her ear. “I have to hold court in two days, and there’s the Harvest Hunt, and I’ve already put Patrick off for a week about the land grants. That’s before I even get to my Quinn Press responsibilities. I’m a Countess, for heaven’s sake!” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say The Queen is out of her mind, but she could certainly think it.
“You’d have the same problem if this were a summons to serve your turn on the Queen’s Council,” her father pointed out.
“Council duties don’t demand every waking hour of your life, and you can at least travel to and from your county when you have to.”
“I’m sure the Queen knows that. And it’s not as if your cousin Patrick isn’t capable of taking over for a few months. He’s your heir; he ought to gain some experience.”
Alison rubbed her temples. “It’s only six months, right? I can endure anything for six months?” she pleaded.
His blue eyes softened with compassion, and he put his hand over hers. “Of course.” He paused, shifted a few letters with the fingers of his left hand. “You will behave yourself, won’t you?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t like society, and you’re not shy about showing it. That’s all very well here in Kingsport, in your county seat. In the capital, you will—I’m not saying this well.”
“You don’t appear to be saying it at all.”
He sighed and picked up a stack of letters, tapped them on the desktop to square them. “I’m saying you’ve grown prickly, these last few years. Heaven forbid a man should try to approach you—”
“We’ve had this conversation before,” said Alison irritably. “I don’t see the point in dealing with someone who’s only interested in my money, or my title, or how beautiful I’d look hanging on his arm.”
“You know not all men are like that—”
“No, only the ones who want to single me out for their attention. And those are the only ones I meet.”
“That’s not true either. You just never take the time to learn what kind of men they are.”
“Because when I do take the time, they turn out to be fortune-hunters or never raise their eyes higher than my chest. Better just to skip the whole process.”
Father sighed again. “Let’s not argue, all right? I just want you to show the world the face I see, not that prickly protective shell you’ve developed. Will you promise me to at least pretend to be civil?”
“I know how to behave myself,” Alison said, but inside, the reproach burned. Was she really so…so detached? (She refused to describe herself as prickly.) It wasn’t her fault the only men who wanted to befriend her turned out to have ulterior motives, or that she’d learned to defend herself against them. Only six months, she reminded herself, and you can come back to your own life.
“It won’t be as bad as you think,” Father said. “From what I’ve heard, the Dowager doesn’t require much of her ladies. You should have plenty of time to pursue your own interests. And—” he wagged his index finger in her direction—“think of the Library.”
“The Library,” breathed Alison. “I’ll be able to visit the Royal Library. Think of all those books. You know they have first editions of everything Landrik Howes ever wrote?”
“So it will be all right,” her father said cheerfully. “And I’ll hold your job for you until you return.”
“As if you could replace me,” she scoffed, smiling fondly to take away the sting.
Ten days later Alison sat with her feet up on the opposite seat of her carriage and watched Aurilien grow up around her. Outlying farms became tiny settlements that turned into villages and then to extensions of the capital itself, as if the city’s golden walls could not contain its people and let them spill out like water slopping over the side of an overfull glass. Past those walls, hundred-year-old buildings, their wooden frames softened by time, sat beside construction sites; neighborhoods of wattle-and-daub gave way to stores and houses made of the same golden stone as the city wall. Unlike Kingsport, which treasured its status as the oldest city in Tremontane and maintained its construction accordingly, Aurilien seemed determined to embrace change, and as rapidly as possible.
Alison wiped her palms on her trousers, then pushed her hair back from her face. It was almost certainly frizzy in this heat. Frizzy, sweaty, exhausted, and on edge: she would make a grand impression on her new…employer? Mistress? Liege lady? There didn’t seem to be a good word to describe what Rowenna North would be to her, but Alison had already made up her mind to be polite and demure to the woman.
She knew very little about the royal family. The popular Rowenna North was King Sylvester’s widow and mother of his children, Zara and Anthony. Queen Zara was twenty-six and had been Queen for six years. Her brother and heir Anthony was three years younger, nearly Alison’s age, and had a reputation for being a man about town, including having had a number of affairs. Alison was a little appalled by that; the bonds that joined Tremontanan families together were severely strained by sex outside marriage, and a Prince ought to respect his family bond better than that. That was the extent of Alison’s knowledge. She cracked open a window and breathed in fresh air that only smelled a little of the manure of hundreds, possibly thousands of horses. She would probably learn a great deal more about them in the coming six months.
The carriage turned to make its way up the curving palace drive, and Alison caught glimpses of the palace, glinting in the sunlight. It had grown up with the city and had a patchwork appearance, like a quilt of stone and metal and glass. Left of center stood the oldest tower, a skinny black stone finger pointing at ungoverned heaven as if issuing a challenge. If you looked at it the right way, the gesture was a rude one. Domes and shorter towers and ells spread out from that tower in defiance of any known theories of architecture. It might be a metaphor for Tremontane itself, patched together centuries ago from tribes who came together for mutual protection and stayed together because of the lines of power that crisscrossed the land and bound its people to ungoverned heaven and to each other. But it was more likely just the end result of generations of rulers who didn’t know how to stop building once they’d started.
The carriage came to a halt at the foot of the black marble steps, and a man liveried in navy blue and silver, North colors, opened the door and offered Alison his hand. “Welcome to Aurilien, milady Countess,” he said.
“Thank you,” Alison replied. “I don’t suppose you know where I should go?”
“The Dowager i
s expecting you in her apartment,” he said. “I’ll have someone escort you there, and your luggage will be sent on after you.” He turned and gave some kind of imperceptible signal, because a woman in the same livery trotted down the steps and bowed to Alison.
Calling the palace a maze was a little like calling the ocean a collection of water drops. After they passed through the entry and made a few dozen turns, Alison lost track of where she was and hoped she wouldn’t be expected to find her own way back to the front door. Eventually the woman led Alison down a short corridor to a small white door outside which stood another pair of armed guards, knocked, and waited. The guards ignored them both. After a minute, a woman wearing something Alison would have called a uniform if it hadn’t been a soft pink opened the door. “The Countess of Waxwold,” Alison’s escort said, and the pink woman opened the door more fully and bowed Alison in.
Alison took two steps and was afraid to take any more, for fear of leaving smudges on the brilliantly white plush carpet. This room contained only a pair of sofas facing one another, upholstered in white velvet with gilded legs, and a long, low table painted white and gilt that bore a floral arrangement taller than Alison was. Gilt-framed paintings of fanciful landscapes lined the white walls between white doors with brass knobs and gilt trim. There were seven doors—eight, if you included the one Alison had entered by—and between the doors, the pictures, the sofas, and the table, the room contained more gilding than Alison had ever thought to see in one place. It was a style that had been old-fashioned fifty years earlier. Alison began to form a picture of the Dowager in her head: lots of white, lots of lace, lots of ribbons on her gown and on the lace cap she wore on her iron-gray hair, pulled back into a severe bun. She probably liked sentimental poetry, too. This might turn out to be a very long six months.
Servant of the Crown (The Crown of Tremontane Book 1) Page 1