It’s a gamble. Justin’s parents are not only his Achilles’ heel, but also a potential trigger for his volatile temper. I don’t know which way the dice will fall tonight. When I told Lord Aaron I’d speak to the King on Sir Spencer’s behalf, I’m not certain this is what he intended. Nonetheless, empathy can be a sharper weapon than hate and I’m not picky about what goes into my arsenal.
“What the hell does this have to do with your dinner party?” the King bursts out in exasperation.
Diversionary tactics it is. “I want a dining room and I want it unmonitored! I’d like to assure my guests that for one evening they needn’t worry about politics and scrutiny and you—yes, you—and I can’t do that if I know M.A.R.I.E. is taking notes.”
He lets out a low growl and tugs at his cravat, unraveling the knot. He’s going to have to get a dressing-bot in here before he can be seen in public again, and I love that I’ve riled him.
“For someone who fought every attempt to make her Queen, your defeated sulking was incredibly short-lived,” he says, his voice edged like broken glass. “Suddenly it’s jewels, gowns, special security privileges that have conspiracy scribbled all over them—you’ve done nothing but make demands for days!”
“You made the bargain, Justin. You kept your throne by giving the other one to me. I kept my end of the deal.” The lie slides off my tongue like butter. “Now is hardly the time to complain about the price.”
“I was coerced!” he yells, slamming one hand against the top of his desk. “And so were you, but only one of us seems to regret it.” He sniffs and straightens, getting ahold of his temper. “Besides, believe it or not, I prefer to keep my word, once given. I also prefer to deal with people who associate with me willingly. You’ll recall I offered you a way out.”
“I also recall that you rescinded it by the time I said yes.” He’s being surprisingly candid, all things considered. Finding myself unaccosted in spite of being alone with the King makes me bold. “After that, can you really blame my mother for any of this?”
Justin pauses, considering. He considers for rather a long time. In a gesture that sets the hair at the back of my neck on end, he rises, rolls his shoulders back, and shrugs out of his formal evening jacket, laying it over the arm of his chair. He steps around the desk to face me, the picture of easy sexuality in his linen shirt and deep maroon waistcoat, his dark brown curls soft and shiny at his shoulders.
Perhaps I’m to be accosted after all? I take comfort in the fact that I have a clear path to the door.
“Fine,” he says silkily. “Have your dinner. And the next night, you have dinner with me. Alone.”
“Why?” I blurt.
He raises one hand and runs his knuckles down the side of my face. I don’t let myself flinch. “Because I want to know you better. You are my wife, after all. Maybe we don’t have to hate each other so much.”
“You’re not going to wrap your hands around my throat and demand it?” I say flatly. “Back me into a corner and declare you can take me against my will anytime you desire?”
“I told you from the beginning: if you wouldn’t fight me so hard, I wouldn’t have to guide you so roughly.” He looks quite amused with himself.
I hide my disgust at his predatory logic. “Deal.”
He seems surprised that I’ve acceded so easily. Should I have negotiated harder?
No, that sort of thinking is what led me to turn him down when he first offered to send me, along with Saber and my father both, away from all this. I won’t be stupid twice. If you’re getting what you want, and believe you can spare the cost, say yes.
“How will I know?”
“Know?”
“That the room is unmonitored. That you’ve kept your word. And don’t you dare tell me I’ll have to trust you. We both know I don’t, and that I have good reason.”
The look he gives me is…inscrutable. When he speaks, it’s not to me, but to the mechanical mind that maintains the palace and the lifestyle of its inhabitants.
“M.A.R.I.E., access profile, Danica Wyndham, executive override four seven alpha tango. Display surface facility monitoring isometrics.”
I don’t jump when my Lens activates without my request, but it’s a close thing. The palace’s familiar floor plan is superimposed on my vision, as if I’d just asked for someone’s location.
Justin continues. “Set facility monitoring privileges to level seven, read-only.”
The palace map, ordinarily outlined in white, takes on a green cast—except for a handful of rooms I recognize as nonresidential workspace, mostly belonging to executive officers. These are outlined in red.
“What you’re seeing is monitoring status: green is on, red is off. Simple. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Now you do.”
I stare blankly.
“Juvenal? No? Never mind. The point is, you have your assurances. It will display on a tablet as easily as your Lens via M.A.R.I.E.’s app. Show your guests. Have your dinner. Remember my price.”
He said “read-only.” So I’ll have no way to adjust the monitoring—only to check it. But just knowing it’s there, having access to the data, is an important step toward manipulating it. A flurry of delight swirls in my chest for an instant, but I’m suddenly beset by the worry that I’m being conned.
That skepticism must show on my face, because Justin holds out his hands in protest. “You sat right here and listened to me do it. Unless you think I was able to code that response between the time you made your request and now…?”
I raise an eyebrow at him and he curses under his breath.
“You used to be so much easier to deal with.”
“I used to be a lot stupider.”
“I liked you stupider.”
“I bet you did.”
“Is there no winning with you? Do you want me to go back to denying you every pleasure, every freedom?” He presses close, invading my personal space, his chest pressed hard against mine, his face a breath away. “I told you I could make your life a living hell and I haven’t. Don’t I get any credit for that?”
I turn my head so he’s breathing onto my neck instead of my cheek. “Credit for decent human behavior? What sort of trick pony do you think you are?”
“The facility monitor program works,” he says, leaving me and pulling his jacket back on. “Trust me. Root around in it on your own; get your friend Lord Aaron to look at it; go to the head of the godforsaken security department, for all I care. But that’s the last time you get to question my work without consequences. And you won’t like those consequences.”
He strides toward the door, pauses halfway there.
In a breathy whisper he adds, “Or maybe you will.”
I SEND GUARDS for Sir Spencer. Overkill, perhaps, but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that my lord husband might attempt to assassinate his political rival. I don’t flatter myself that I could stop him if that were truly his aim, but I would prefer it not be while said rival is en route to my party.
Still, I worry until the doors open to reveal the liveried guards with Sir Spencer a few paces in front of them, looking pale and wan, but unharmed.
“Your Majesty,” he says, bowing low, not meeting my eyes.
“Sir Spencer.” I gesture to a spot at the cozy table, elegantly set but only just big enough for four. He edges past me awkwardly, a stranger in a strange space. I’ve been hearing about Sir Spencer for ages, watched him carefully at assemblies and soirées, but we’ve spoken scarcely a dozen words to each other in all that time. How can someone I scarcely know feel oddly like a brother?
Lady Mei pops in moments later with her usual bubbly chatter. She’s not Molli—she will never be Molli—but her company has its own appeal. I abandon my Queenly façade and pull her close for a hug. A little Ooh! escapes her mouth as I apparently shock her into both silence and stillness. But in a moment she softens and squee
zes me back. It makes me feel momentarily human.
Lord Aaron slips in as I’m frantically blinking away a mist of tears. I smile and kiss his cheeks, then point him to the table while I seal the doors.
Just the four of us. No Saber tonight. I can’t plot against Reginald and allow Saber to know any details. He didn’t like being excluded, but in the end there simply wasn’t anything he could do about it.
“Please help yourself,” I say, gesturing to the small feast laid out on the buffet. I retrieve my tablet and open it to the facility monitoring schematic.
The Queen’s Rooms are outlined in red.
I chafe at the few minutes that pass as everyone fills plates, wishing I’d thought to have them arrive a few minutes early. I was promised one hour of privacy, and everything that needs saying must be said during that time.
“All right,” I say the instant the four of us are back in our seats. I’ll let them eat while I talk; nerves have killed my appetite. I reach into my pannier pocket and pull out three contact holders and lay them on the table. “Lenses out.”
Sir Spencer and Lord Aaron don’t hesitate, but Lady Mei looks at me strangely.
“Please?” I add, but my tone is fairly terse.
She studies me for several more seconds, and I hope she’s not going to continue to be reluctant, but finally she takes one of the holders and removes her Lens.
“I have just under an hour during which M.A.R.I.E. is not monitoring this room, and we’re about to commence a battle on multiple fronts. By the time we leave, I need a plan. So I don’t have time to be gracious and kind—I barely have time to be civil. Lady Mei,” I say, turning to her, “you’re here because I need your help. But you’re late to the party, so to speak, because you can’t keep your mouth shut.”
That very mouth falls open in shock for several seconds before Lady Mei regains her composure and closes it with a sharp snap.
“You know it’s true,” I add with an eyebrow raised. She answers only with a deep flush of her cheeks. “But I think I can induce you to do so. I’m going to tell you three things that no one outside this room knows, and if a single one of them gets out—the barest hint that even sounds like any of these things—believe that I will use my new position to ruin you.”
Her eyes are so wide I’m a little afraid she’s going into shock. “You’re blackmailing me into being your confidante?”
“Yes,” I say without shame.
“What about them?” she asks, flinging her arms out at Lord Aaron and Sir Spencer.
“They’ve proven themselves already.”
Lord Aaron smacks Sir Spencer’s back when he chokes.
But tonight isn’t about their secrets; it’s about mine. “We’re about to play a high-stakes version of the age-old game Two Truths and a Lie. One: six months ago, Lord Aaron and I broke into your house and stole your family’s Madame de Pompadour sapphires. We put them back,” I add at her audible gasp. “Two: the King and I despise each other, as, against my will, my mother blackmailed him into marrying me for the support of my father’s shares in Monday’s attempted coup. And three: Lady Cyn found out she was carrying the King’s child the day before our wedding and begged him to call it off. She’s so angry at me because the King—obviously—refused.”
Lady Mei’s eyes are so wide I briefly wonder if they could actually fall out of their sockets. I’ve thrown her into the middle of our pool of deception and the bottom is very, very deep. She’s stopped eating, perhaps has gone a little pale, but seems otherwise hale. Which is excellent, as I don’t have time to coddle her.
“The test has begun. Two of the things I just told you are absolutely true. One of them is utterly false. All of them are the best possible gossip. The two truths could possibly get out on their own—unlikely, but possible. But you let the wrong one slip, and I’ll know it was you,” I say quietly.
“You don’t trust me,” Lady Mei says.
“Would you in my place?” When she says nothing I add, more gently, “I want to trust you. That’s the only reason you’re here.” I take a deep breath. “And I am going to trust you—all of you—with one very, very big secret, starting this very night. This,” I continue, laying a canister of Glitter in the middle of the table, “is why you’re here tonight.”
“Your makeup?” Lady Mei asks, clearly not following. I sympathize; I’ve practically whiplashed her with information tonight.
“Exactly. This is what I was asked to sell, by a man who claimed he could give me a new life and identity outside Versailles. Unfortunately, I later discovered that it’s laced with an addictive recreational drug so new that no one has even heard of it. And instead of helping me flee before the wedding, he left me here and insisted I continue to sell his product.”
Neither complete lie nor truth—I’ve been keeping it in reserve, my grand alibi. I didn’t know the makeup was drugged! I’m as much a victim as anyone! After all, as far as anyone—including Lord Aaron—knows, I wear it too.
“You knew all this?” Lady Mei asks, her eyes darting to Lord Aaron and Sir Spencer for the barest moment before returning to the sparkling Glitter in the middle of the table.
I watch the men carefully. Lord Aaron caught on to Glitter’s nature more or less independently, and used it to his advantage. He has to know I was aware of that nature early on, since I deliberately withheld it from him, but it’s not something we’ve discussed in detail. I asked him not to ask, and he didn’t; I suppose true friends never do. But Sir Spencer? I’ve made a lot of assumptions about how much he knows—how much Lord Aaron has been confiding in him. Fortunately, my suppositions are confirmed when the two exchange a glance and then both nod.
“But how…who did…?” I see the moment it registers on Lady Mei’s face. “Molli,” she says softly. “You told Molli and not me.”
I refuse to look away from her accusation.
Lady Mei laughs weakly. “I do have a weakness for gossip,” she murmurs into her glass before taking a large swallow.
“Not anymore, I hope.”
“I don’t have much of a choice.”
“No, but I’d like to believe that now that you know how serious this is, you’d have chosen to join us anyway.”
She gives me a coy, one-shouldered shrug, but I can see her eyes sparkling.
Good.
“Now, my three enemies: the King, Lady Cyn, and Reginald.”
“Reginald?” Lady Mei asks.
I hesitate. But I need another friend. Another young lady of the court. “Reginald is the man who agreed to give me a new identity and a new life. He’s not from Versailles. He’s a Parisian, a crime boss of some sort. I should have realized he would deal badly with me, but I was desperate.”
“Desperate…to not be the Queen of Versailles.” There is no criticism in Lady Mei’s question—only a deep confusion. She eyes Lord Aaron. “Am I the only conspirator among us who actually likes it here? Oh, don’t give me that look,” she chides as his carefully plucked eyebrows creep toward his hairline. “I’m carefree, not stupid, and I love my friends, though you brood and conspire to abandon me. And sell me tainted maquillage,” she adds, turning back to me. “Though it is very fine makeup, and surely no worse than sneaking a cigarette avec mes amies. Don’t let it trouble you.”
It’s hard not to goggle at how smoothly Lady Mei trivializes my betrayal. I’d like to believe that my story was simply that persuasive. I can’t help but suspect it’s actually her addiction to Glitter at work. Either way—I’m on a schedule.
“I’m more troubled that he’s trapped me,” I say, tapping a finger on the Glitter canister still sitting in the center of the table. “If I stop selling Glitter, he’ll rat us all out to INTERPOL. It could potentially trigger the collapse of the entire kingdom. But with your help, I think we can arrange Reginald’s downfall, without destroying Versailles. Lord Aaron, I need a tracking device, and I’m too
closely watched to do it myself.”
“One M.A.R.I.E. can’t detect?” he asks, and I hear wariness in his voice.
“Easier—it just needs to be small enough to avoid human notice.”
Lord Aaron grins. “Hardly worthy of my skills.”
“The smaller, the better.”
“Consider it done. Why?”
I spread my hands on the tabletop. “At the moment, I have no advantage over Reginald whatsoever. If I can ferret out where the Glitter is coming from, perhaps I can cut Reginald out of the equation.” It’s a delicate claim—I can’t forget that I’m technically talking to addicts who might resist a plan to destroy Glitter at the source.
“Your…secretary, he doesn’t know where it comes from?” Lord Aaron asks.
I shake my head emphatically. “He needs to be involved as little as possible. I fear that even an errant whisper of our doings could endanger his life. And no, I will not share that secret tonight,” I say, raising a finger and pointing at Lady Mei, whose mouth is already open and forming the question. Or ever, I add to myself.
Lord Aaron understands and nods grimly. Ever the activist; Saber’s slavery must vex him no end, and I love him for that.
“A GPS tracker, then?” Lord Aaron asks, breaking the awkward silence.
“Indeed,” I reply, returning to the business at hand. I must get better at hiding my weakness. “Within the week, if you could.”
Lord Aaron considers, and then nods.
I touch my napkin to my lips. “That’s step one with Reginald. On to Lady Cyn. She has no idea how great a threat she actually is to my endeavors, but her inadvertent interference is a complication that must be done away with. This is where you come in, Lady Mei. For the next week or so, you’re proving yourself. Proving your ability to keep a secret. But while you’re at it, I want intel on Lady Cyn. I can access her public schedule, but I want to know when and where she meets with the King.”