“Chert!” Opal called back. “Did you hear what Flint said? You’re going to have an audience with the princess—and I will be going, too!”
“What? Flint, what are you talking about?”
“An audience with the princess and many others, in two days’ time,” the boy said. “It is very important, Papa Chert. You really must go.”
“With Princess Briony? And how did you hear of this?” he asked. “Did someone in the princess’ household tell you?”
“Oh, no,” he said, opening the door as they reached the bottommost floor. The late afternoon sun flooded in, so that for a moment Chert could not entirely make out the boy’s shape and he seemed something else, something unknown. “No,” Flint told him. “No one told me. I just thought of it.”
50
Cuckoo in the Nest
“Great Kernios declared that that since he had sent his wife away he was in need of another wife, and that if Zoria would take Mesiya’s place, Kernios would let the gods take the Orphan up into heaven to live with them ...”
—from “A Child’s Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven”
TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS, Eneas Karallios, Prince of Syan and North Krace,
My dear friend and protector,
It is with a heart still mourning my beloved father as well as pained by the loss of my twin brother, although at this moment he lives and breathes only a short walk from the room where I write this letter, that I come to this, a task I have been avoiding all day. I would rather tend to any number of dreary chores, such as the examination of the accounts with Nynor, which demonstrate my kingdom to be in just as shocking a condition of poverty and mismanagement as anyone might guess, than to write this. But write it I will, because the alternative would be to speak these painful words to your person, and to see their effect in your kind face.
Eneas, I cannot marry you. I promised I would consider it when I knew what fate awaited me here in Southmarch, and so I have pondered your proposal with the deepest and most grateful attention. Who would not be honored to have received such an offer? More importantly, what woman, even if she did not admire you as I do, would be foolish enough to turn such an offer down? Having traveled with you these months and seen your quality, I can promise you I am more honored than I can ever say, but I still cannot be your wife. The woman who will someday have that good fortune and reign at your side as queen, whoever she may be, will be perhaps the most fortunate of my sex in all of Eion.
Please understand, noble Eneas, there is no failing in yourself which leads me to this decision, no insufficiency in either your character or your treatment of me which urge me to decline you. You have been nothing but honorable to me, and your kindness has been far more than I could ever deserve, were I to dedicate my life from this moment on solely to earning it. Rather, it is my country that makes demands upon me, my people who need me, and my ruined home that begs for my complete attention. I know that if I married you, I would not be discouraged from rebuilding Southmarch, or even giving the greatest part of my thoughts to my own people, but you would be doing your own subjects a disservice if you absented yourself from them, so we would marry division as well as each other. It also seems true to me that eventually, by the nature of your sex and the importance of your own country, Southmarch would become merely an outpost of Syan. That alone is enough to ensure that I marry no other monarch. Seeing what the last years have done to my beloved home has torn at my heart, and I have come to realize that I am, above all else, my father’s daughter. I truly value my people more than my own happiness.
You will say that none of these are true impediments to a marriage, that they are the fears of a young woman who has suffered many losses. That may be, but you deserve better than to marry a halfhearted bride. You are the very paragon of Trigonate knighthood, dear Eneas, and you deserve a consort who can be always by your side without lamenting her own neglected kingdom.
But please know this—my debt to you is deep. Whatever happens, I pray that our two countries always remain friends, but even more so that you and I remain fast friends as well. . . .
The guards observed his expression with alarm, but he ignored them—it was not the guards who had earned his anger.
One of the maids let him in; he paced the antechamber until she returned and led him through into Briony’s retiring room. The princess had been writing a letter; as he came in she blotted it, rolled the parchment, and put it aside. The summer night was warm but Briony wore a heavy sleeping robe, perhaps for modesty’s sake. The rest of the maids were still dressed, which was a good thing considering Ferras Vansen’s plans.
“I must have some time to speak privily with Her Royal Highness,” he said. “Princess, will you send your attendants away? I apologize for the intrusion, but it is a matter of utmost urgency.”
She looked at him, trying to read his face. “Of course, Captain Vansen. Give them a moment to compose themselves. Ladies, I know that Duchess Merolanna sits up late these nights because she has trouble sleeping. You can find a fire and some company in her chambers.”
When they had all trooped out, whispering at this strange and sudden intrusion, Briony seated herself in a large chair and drew her feet up beneath her. “You have my attention, Captain Vansen.” She shook her head. “I will not be able to call you that much longer, will I? Soon the coronation will come, and the honors will be given ...”
“Hang that,” he said. “I care nothing for honors or titles. You know that.”
“Why such anger at me?” she asked. “I looked to you many times yesterday but all I saw was your frowning displeasure. You would not meet my eye.” For the first time her mask slipped a little and her voice shook. “I offered you my heart and my lips the night before. Why should that earn your scorn?”
He stood in front of her with fists clenching and unclenching. “Scorn? It was you who would not look at me! I tried to catch your eye when you first came and you stared at me as though you had never seen me before! As though you were so choked in shame you could not bear to show me even the kindness you show to the youngest stable boy, or even old Puzzle!”
Briony laughed, a sudden burst of merriment that caught him by surprise. “Puzzle! Gods, are you jealous of the jester because I kissed his head and gave him a couple of coppers? He is a century old if he is a day!”
Vansen hated being laughed at; he would rather have been back in the depths of the Mysteries being strangled by the autarch himself than to have this woman, whom he loved so much his heart ached when he was away from her, laugh at him that way. “You mock me, my lady. You mock your servant because he is nothing more than that—a servant. Your pardon. I was foolish to think I could be anything more.” He turned and walked stiffly toward the door, his head like a windy night full of blowing leaves.
“Wait.”
He stopped. She was his sovereign, after all.
“Turn and face me, Captain. It is not proper to stand with your backside to your queen.”
Vansen turned. “With respect, Highness, you are not the queen yet.”
Her eyes were red, but she was fighting not to laugh, which confused Ferras Vansen mightily. “Merciful Zoria, you were right, Captain Vansen. You are a fool!”
“Then if my ruler has no further need of me,” he said loudly, “perhaps she will be so kind as to release me ...”
“Gods in heaven, Vansen, what is wrong with you?” She put her pale feet on the floor and stood up, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. “Release you? Are you truly upset with me because I would not gaze at you lovingly in front of all my subjects, in front of Prince Eneas and the new autarch? What do you want, man?”
“A sign.” He did his best to calm himself. He had a sudden vision of Briony’s ladies standing in the hallway with the guards, all of them listening at the door. “Some small sign that the other night meant . . . something.”
Now she came toward him, spreading her arms. “Meant something? Oh, sweet Heaven,
how can you ask? Does this mean something?” And as she pressed herself against him her robe fell open and he felt the length of her whole and warm, with only a thin cotton nightdress separating him from her flesh.
He pulled her close and for a long time only held her, squeezing until she could barely find her breath. “Oh, gods, I hunger for you, Briony. I am no poet, no courtier. I have never loved like this before and I do not know the rules of the game! I was frightened because I saw nothing in your eyes. It was as though . . . I could not ...” He shook his head and buried his face in her golden hair, which was still so short he could feel the skin of her neck hot against his cheek. “It was as though everything else we had together . . . had been a lie.”
“Fool, dear fool. I am soon to be a queen. I cannot show people my thoughts in the construction of my face. I would be dead today if I could not hide my feeling from others.”
“But there are no others here now,” he said, and lifted her chin until he could look into her face, the face he had been able to see only in memory for so long; for a moment it all seemed a dream again, but the feel of her reassured him. “No others. No one but us.”
“Then you will see what our love is truly made of,” she said, and brought her lips to his.
“Are you well, my love?”
She stirred. “Well, indeed. A little pain, that’s all. They say the first time is always that way.” She smiled. “You are my man now, forever and ever—the only husband I will ever have, even if a temple never hears our vows. Do you know that?”
“I would be nothing else.” He traced circles on the skin of her belly, but could not do so for more than a moment before the urge to kiss her there became overwhelming.
“Stop!” Briony said, laughing. “We cannot! Just think of my ladies-in-waiting, who will be spreading this story all over Southmarch tomorrow morning if I do not bring them back from Merolanna’s rooms before midnight.”
“I told them it was a matter of grave importance,” he said. “Did I lie?”
She smacked at his head and then rolled over so she could kiss him. “Oh, I wish we could be like this forever, Vansen.”
“My first name is Ferras,” he told her, almost shyly.
“Do you think I don’t know?” She laughed again. “I know everything about you that I could discover. At first because I thought you the worst man ever. Later . . . well, my feelings changed . . . or at least became clearer.” She looked at him, her face suddenly earnest. “Would you prefer I call you by your first name?”
“I don’t care which you choose as long as you speak it with that look in your eyes, always,” he said.
She rolled onto her back. “But I can’t, you know. Not in front of others. You know that, don’t you? Please say that you do.”
“I suppose,” he said. “But how can you love someone so much lower than yourself, that you must hide that love from everyone?”
“Foolish Captain Vansen! I could make you a noble in an instant. I will make you a noble—otherwise, you cannot be my lord constable. But even so, the way we feel for each other must stay a close-held secret.”
“There are no secrets in a place like this—the servants and guards know everything, always.” He shook his head. “I can live without marrying you, Briony, although I will die if you marry another . . . but why must our love stay hidden? Don’t you feel the same for me?” He suddenly felt stricken. “You do, don’t you? Feel the same?”
“Of course, you wonderful, truehearted man—but I have more than my own happiness to think about. If Kendrick or my father had lived, things would be different. Even if Barrick had not changed so greatly ...” She shook her head, her expression darkening like a sky clouding over. “But an ordinary life is not what Fate has given me. I must keep myself aloof, or seem to. I’ll have to pretend no man has won my heart . . . but that any man might, if he brings a useful alliance to Southmarch. That’s how I’ll make policy. That’s how I’ll keep our country free from the influence of powerful neighbors.”
“Even Syan?” he said suspiciously.
She smiled, but it was a sad one this time. “Even Syan. Especially Syan.”
He crept closer to her. “Let us not talk of Syan any more. Kiss me.”
When they had done that and more for a while, he sat up.
“Don’t go,” she said, her voice growing a little slow and sleepy. “I take back what I said. The ladies can find beds in Merolanna’s chambers. Tell me more of what you saw down in the caverns. I can scarcely believe any of it. Did you truly fight a god?”
“Not me, no. Not even your brother did. The creature was too far beyond any of us.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it. It is still too close.”
She shook her head. “It’s hard for me even to understand. You say my brother this, my brother that—he fought a hundred men! He swung down on a rope! Some powerful magic must be at work—that is not the brother I knew, who couldn’t even cut his own meat without falling to cursing and knocking his trencher on the floor!”
Vansen smiled, but there was a touch of puzzlement to it. “Magic indeed. It’s as if he aged ten years in a few months. And his arm is healed! He’s changed so much that I hardly recognized him. When the stone-swallowing demons came at us, every last one of us would have died if Barrick and the Qar had not shown up ...”
“The stone what?” She had a strange, troubled look on her face now. “Stone-swallowing . . . ? I have not heard this tale before. Tell me.”
He pulled her closer. “Your maids and ladies . . . ?”
“Leave them be a little longer.”
He described the final battle in the Maze in detail now, of how he and the Funderlings gave ground until there was no more ground to give.
“So brave!” she said. “And not just you, dearest Captain Vansen. Chert’s people have astonished me.”
“All of us,” he said. “We did them a disservice for many years, it seems. But even they could do nothing when the Stone Swallowers came. I don’t know what they were truly called—there were three of them. But each one placed a stone in his mouth and . . . and then began to change ...” He hesitated, feeling her body grow rigid beside him. “Briony?”
“Are you certain they were men?”
He considered. “To be honest, I never saw them before they had already become those . . . things. ...”
“Tell me again. Tell me what the stones looked like.”
“I don’t know,” he said, laughing a little. “Perin’s Hammer, girl, we were in almost complete darkness . . . !”
“Tell me all you remember!” There was nothing of the sweet young woman in her voice now.
And Vansen did, marveling to find that all this time he had been kissing not just his beloved, but also a queen.
Steffens Nynor was wrapped in a heavy wool cloak, but his ankles were bare of hose and he was clearly feeling the cold. “Is it truly necessary to do this now, Highness?” he asked.
“I have learned a lesson.” Briony motioned for one of the guards to knock on the tower’s heavy front door. The booming sound echoed and died. She was just about to order him to do it again when a quavering, childish voice from behind the door said, “Who goes there?”
“It is the Princess Regent, to see Queen Anissa,” the guard said.
The door opened enough for the boy to peer out at the visitors, then the door swung wide. “But the queen is sleeping!” he said, as if the people knocking might not have realized that the time was well after midnight. “She is in mourning,” he offered next, but the guards had already pushed past him and he was left talking to Briony, Vansen, and Lord Nynor.
“Of course she is,” Briony told him, not unkindly. “And so am I. Do you see my black dress?”
He scuttled off up the stairs to the queen’s bedchamber as if Briony had frightened him. The guards on duty in the reception hall had dropped to their knees; she waved them to their feet. Several of them looked to their longtime captain as though he might explain w
hy this ordinarily sleepy duty had been interrupted, but Ferras Vansen took his lead from Briony and kept his thoughts to himself.
Anissa and her retinue were long enough coming down that Briony had begun to consider sending the soldiers up to get them when she heard the queen’s voice preceding her down the stairs. “But why? Why should she want to come here in the night this way? It frightens me!” Now she appeared, accompanied by half a dozen women, one of whom held her little son, Alessandros.
Olin Alessandros, Briony reminded herself. My brother. My father’s child, too.
The sight of Anissa in her nightdress brought back dreadful memories—memories of fire and living shadows, memories of last Winter’s Eve when her entire world had been turned upside down—but Briony did her best to keep her voice even. “I am sorry to bother you at such a time, Anissa, but my sleep was troubled by a thought that you alone can answer.”
Anissa turned to Nynor with a show of confusion, but the aged counselor had no duty here but that of observer. He nodded respectfully to her but made no other sign. “What is it?” she said. “What do you want of me, Briony, that you frighten me so?”
“I want to know how it was that your maid Selia came to you. Do not turn so pale, stepmother. I have recently learned something about the Autarch of Xis and now I need to know this from you. How did your maid come to you?”
“I . . . I do not know. I do not remember!” Anissa looked around as if one of her maids might help her remember, but none of them would meet her eye. Many of them were themselves from the queen’s home in Devonis and knew themselves to be foreigners in the court, protected only by Anissa’s position, but they seemed curiously unwilling to speak in her defense. “She . . . was sent to me,” Anissa said at last. “I asked my mother’s chamberlain to send me a good girl, someone to be my bodyservant. That is all. I scarcely knew her! I had no idea she was a witch! But I have told you this already, Briony—why do you tax me with this now, when your father is dead and I am so upset?”