The Skull Throne

  Amanvah’s veil billowed as she blew out an angry breath. She and the Duchess Mum locked stares, but after a moment she gave a curt nod. “I will wait, but if I have not seen my husband and assured myself that he is well by sunset today, I will hold your oath broken.”

  Araine’s foot began to twitch, but she said nothing.

  Leesha struggled to remember Rojer’s lessons as she smiled at Rosal and Jessa, come at the Duchess Mum’s summons, presumably to discuss Gared’s very obvious interest in the girl.

  Rojer had taught her much about royal bearing, how to project her voice even when speaking quietly, and how to hold a mask in place, showing only serenity to others no matter what she was feeling inside. It was a lesson she struggled with to this day.

  “If you please, mistress,” Leesha said, “Her Grace would speak to Miss Lacquer alone, before you are called into the discussion.”

  Rosal glanced at Jessa in concern, but the woman waved dismissively. “Go on, girl.”

  “I’ll make you proud,” Rosal promised.

  Jessa touched her shoulder affectionately. “You could never do otherwise.”

  The words struck Leesha, mirroring almost exactly her last words with Mistress Bruna. She wondered what it meant for the women. It might be goodbye for them, as well.

  She led Rosal through the doors to Araine’s cavernous sitting room. They kept on all the way through, going through another set of doors to a private receiving room with thick walls to deter eavesdroppers.

  Inside the chamber, Wonda closed the door, standing to one side of the portal. On the other was another Cutter woman, Bekka, equally huge and menacing. Amanvah sat in a corner by the back wall, staring impassively. The tiny Angierian girl glanced at them nervously before dipping into a graceful curtsy to the Duchess Mum. Gone was the arrogance she had shown Leesha in her chambers.

  “Your Grace,” Rosal said, remaining bent so her face was nearly on the floor. “It is an honor to be summoned. I am your obedient servant.”

  “Stand up, girl,” Araine snapped. “Give a turn and let me have a look at you.”

  Rosal did, obediently giving a slow turn, her posture perfect and face like a carven statue.

  “The baron wants your hand,” Araine said bluntly. “Any fool can see it. And a man who wants something that much will usually get it.”

  Rosal’s cheeks colored artfully, but there had been no question, and so she remained silent.

  “But not this time,” Araine said. Rosal did well to hide her dismay, but even this artful creature had a twitch to her face at the words. “You’ll be more likely to spend the rest of your days in a dungeon cell than the count’s bed.”

  At this, Rosal’s composure fell away, her jaw slackening. “Your Grace?”

  “Whose seed did you bring Mistress Leesha?” Araine demanded. “I know it was not my son’s.”

  Rosal froze, eyes wide as a frightened doe. She glanced at the door, but the two Cutter women stepped in front of the portal, crossing their arms.

  “I’m not hearing an answer,” Araine said testily. “Unless you want to end the day hanging from a gibbet in Traitor’s Square, you’d best become cooperative.”

  “J-Jax,” Rosal said. “The seed was his.”

  “Why?” Araine demanded.

  “Mistress Jessa,” Rosal began, and the Duchess Mum gave a hiss. “She said Mistress Leesha sought to supplant her as Royal Mistress, stealing her position and taking control of the school.”

  “I want no such … !” Leesha began, but Araine silenced her with a sharp gesture.

  “You put the whole duchy at risk for your mistress’ reputation?” Araine asked.

  Rosal shrank to her knees, tears streaking the pencil around her eyes and the powders on her face. “I-I didn’t … Mistress Jessa would have found a cure, if one was to be had. W-what could I do?”

  What indeed? Leesha wondered. Mistress Jessa held Rosal’s life in her hands. She could not be expected to betray her and hope the duchess took her word over her mistress’.

  She felt for the girl, but there was nothing of mercy in Araine’s glare. “Have you been poisoning the duke, as well?”

  Rosal seemed genuinely shocked. “W-what? No! Never!” She paused. “Sometimes Mistress Jessa give us fertility potions for him …”

  Araine waved her off. “I believe you, girl, though it makes your deed no less treasonous.”

  “Please, Your Grace …” Rosal began.

  “Quiet,” Araine said. “You’ve told me what I needed to know. If you’ve an interest in keeping your tongue, keep it still while I speak to your mistress.”

  She turned to the door. “Be a dear, Wonda, and escort Jessa in.”

  “Ay, Mum,” Wonda said, opening the door and returning soon after on the heels of Mistress Jessa.

  Jessa strolled into the room casually enough, but stopped short at the sight of Rosal kneeling on the floor, tears streaking black down her face. She glanced back, but Wonda had already closed the portal, and she and Bekka blocked the way with arms crossed.

  Jessa took a breath and turned back, scanning the room with a predatory eye. She wore a pocketed apron, and Leesha knew well how much mischief she might still cause with its contents.

  “I take it Your Grace does not find Rosal suitable for the young baron?” Jessa asked.

  “How long have you been drugging Rhinebeck into seedlessness?” Araine demanded.

  Jessa took a step forward, spreading her hands. “This is nonsense …”

  “Take off your apron,” Leesha said.

  “What?” Jessa took another step forward, and Leesha dropped a hand to her hora pouch.

  “Wonda,” Araine said, “if Jessa takes another step without laying her apron on the floor, put an arrow in her leg.”

  Wonda drew back an arrow. “Which leg?”

  The corner of Araine’s mouth twitched a smirk. “Surprise me, dear.”

  Jessa’s brow tightened, but she did as she was bid, removing the apron and laying it on the floor as she glared at Leesha. “Your Grace, I don’t know what she’s told you …”

  “Nothing Bruna didn’t tell me decades ago,” Araine said, “though I was too stubborn to listen.”

  “What proof …” Jessa began.

  “This isn’t a court,” Araine said. “I need no magistrate to dismiss you from service and throw you in irons for the rest of your life. You’re not here to argue evidence.”

  “Then what am I here for?” Jessa demanded.

  “You’re here to tell me why,” Araine said. “I’ve always been good to you.”

  “Why?!” Jessa demanded. “When Rhinebeck treats my girls and I like spittoons? When the Duke of Angiers is fool enough to be led around by the nose by his mother, and throws poor Halfgrip out in the street just for sleeping in the wrong bed?”

  “So you thought to replace him with one of his fool brothers?” Araine asked. “They might have had an extra scrape or two at the whetstone, but none of them is terribly sharp.”

  “I don’t care how sharp they are,” Jessa said. “None of the others tried to stick me.”

  “Eh?” Araine asked.

  “I don’t work. You promised,” Jessa said. “I was to recruit willing girls and train them, but my skirts were to remain down.”

  Araine’s mouth tightened. “But Rhiney didn’t see it that way.”

  “He wasn’t even interested in me,” Jessa said. “All he wanted was to mark every woman in the brothel. He was the duke, his right to spread his seed granted by the Creator Himself.”

  “So you took it from him,” Araine said. “You should have told me.”

  “Why?” Jessa demanded. “What would you have done?”

  Araine spread her hands. “I suppose we’ll never know. What I wouldn’t have done is put the safety and stability of the duchy in jeopardy for decades on end.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” Jessa said. “You’ve no shortage of idiot sons to replace Rhinebeck, and grandsons by Mickae
l. If it came down to marrying the Milnese bitch or naming one of Mickael’s sons his heir, Rhinebeck would have gotten over his sibling rivalry.”

  “Once, perhaps,” Araine said. “But with war brewing, you left us weak for the plucking.”

  “That was your stubbornness as much as mine,” Jessa said. “I expected you to see the night was dark a decade ago and have Thamos slip in and seed one of the endless procession of young duchesses. Instead you sent him on a fool’s errand.”

  Araine blew a breath out her nostrils, foot kicking as she considered. At last she nodded. “I’ll decide what to do with you later. For now, you can wave to young Master Halfgrip from your room atop the West Tower.” She thrust a chin at Bekka, and the woman came forward and took Jessa’s arm in a vise-like grip.

  As she was pulled from the room, Jessa’s eyes flicked to Rosal, still kneeling on the floor. “The girl has nothing—”

  “—to gain, having you speak on her behalf,” Araine cut her off. She gave a wave, and the guard dragged the woman off. Leesha tensed, wondering if she would resist, but the Weed Gatherer seemed resigned to her fate.

  “Night,” Araine said, when Wonda closed the door behind them. She seemed to deflate, and Leesha was reminded just how tiny the woman really was.

  But the vulnerability vanished in an instant as the Duchess Mum turned her attention back upon Rosal. “Now, girl, what am I to do with you?”

  Rosal began to sob again, and it wasn’t hard to see why. Jessa might warrant a cathedral tower, but Rosal was … disposable. Araine could have her hung before the day was out if she wished.

  “Amanvah,” Leesha said, surprising herself. “I’ll have my throw of the dice now.”

  The dama’ting looked at her in surprise. “You would waste a question before Everam on a heasah?”

  “On a woman’s life,” Leesha corrected.

  “I’m afraid I agree with the princess,” Araine said. “It hardly seems …”

  “I was engaged to Gared Cutter, once,” Leesha said. “I may have forsworn him, but I still have an interest in the matter. The Hollow needs him, and he needs a woman who can help shoulder the burden better than those vapid debutantes you keep sitting him with at dinner.”

  Araine grunted. “I can’t deny that.”

  “Thank the Creator,” Rosal gasped.

  “Don’t go thanking anyone just yet, girl,” Araine snipped.

  Rosal’s eyes went wide with fear as Amanvah slipped the curved dagger from the sheath at her belt. “Hold out your arm, girl.”

  Rosal shivered, but she did as she was told. Amanvah’s cut was quick, catching the blood in an empty teacup. Araine gestured for Wonda to remove the girl. When she was gone, the duchess turned back to watch as Amanvah knelt on the floor, bathed in the hora’s glow as she cast.

  “She will be a loyal wife,” Amanvah said, reading the pattern, “to him, and to the Hollow tribe. She will bear him strong sons, but it will be his daughter who succeeds him.” She rolled back on her heels, looking to Leesha and Araine.

  “If I agree,” Araine noted.

  Amanvah shook her head. “Apologies, Your Grace, but you have no choice. The son of Steave will accept no other.”

  Araine frowned. “Then let him take her and be done. I want her gone from my sight before I’ve chance to change my mind.”

  “Mistress!” Wonda burst through the door, holding Bekka in her arms. “She ent breathin’!”

  Leesha came forward in a rush. Amanvah was already drawing hora from her pouch.

  “Shut the door,” the dama’ting said.

  Wonda moved to comply, but Araine grabbed her arm. “Where’s Jessa?”

  “Gone,” Wonda said. “Found Bekka lying out in the hall.”

  “Find her,” Araine ordered. “I want every guard in the palace searching for that witch.”

  Wonda nodded, and was gone.

  “Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if Master Piter had just done his ripping job and checked the wards,” Rojer said.

  Sikvah, hidden somewhere in the rafters, did not answer. She seldom did, save when he asked her a question directly, or she needed to speak for Amanvah. Even then, she would drop to the floor and come in close, speaking quietly for only them to hear.

  Rojer didn’t mind. It was enough to know she was there, listening. More than the feeling of safety at her presence, or her warm embrace in the night, it was the sense of companionship she lent him that allowed him to endure his confinement without cracking.

  Someone to listen. Someone to care. What Jongleur could long survive without those things? Rojer had seen once great performers become shadows of themselves when their audiences began to thin.

  “I’d have had brothers and sisters,” Rojer went on, picturing them so clearly in his mind he could almost name them. “Mum and Da were young. They seemed old as the trees then, but looking back I see I was supposed to be the first of many.” He sighed wistfully, thinking of childhood games and laughter lost.

  “Wasn’t an instrument in all Riverbridge, back then,” Rojer said, “much less someone who could play one. Odds are I’d have gone on to run the inn, married some homely local girl, and had a brood of my own. Never gone anywhere, never seen or done anything special. Might’ve just been … normal.”

  There was a snap as the latch of the cell door turned. The portal opened to reveal …

  “Amanvah!” Rojer leapt to his feet and fair flew across the room.

  “You speak nonsense, husband,” Amanvah said quietly as they embraced. “You are touched by Everam. You could never be normal. If Master Arrick had not brought you to the fiddle, another would have. Sharak Ka is coming, and it was inevera that you bring the Song of Waning back to Ala.”

  “You could have done that without me,” Rojer said.

  Amanvah shook her head. “You may have passed some of your gift to your wives, but it was yours to pass.”

  She lifted her veil, kissing him. He tried to tighten the embrace, but she put out her hands, pushing him back while her veil drifted back down in front of her mouth like a curtain after the last act.

  “I have but an hour with you each day, husband,” she said, “until this matter is resolved. There are things we must attend first.”

  She clapped loudly, and the door opened again, two burly acolytes hauling in heavy casks of water. Another carried a small wooden tub, just big enough for Rojer to scrunch himself into. Behind them, little more than a shadow, Sikvah flitted to the floor and out the open portal.

  “You carried that all the way up here?” Rojer asked, looking at the heavy casks.

  The men glared at him looking none too pleased, but they said nothing.

  “Do not take their silence for rudeness, husband,” Amanvah said. “They are forbidden to speak to prisoners. Her Grace has ordered better food for you, and thrice-weekly baths. These men are proud to follow her royal commands.”

  The men did not look proud to Rojer as they gave him one last look and huffed out of the room.

  “Sikvah …” Rojer said quietly, as the door shut behind them.

  “Will ensure our privacy for the next hour,” Amanvah said, dropping warded silver stones into the casks. They hissed as magic heated the water.

  “Please, husband,” she said, gesturing to the tub. Rojer knew better than to argue, undressing and climbing in. The lacquered wood was cool, and he shivered, breaking into goose pimples as Amanvah lifted the first cask to pour hot water over him.

  Immediately Rojer began to calm. This was not the great tub at Shamavah’s, but the daily bathing ritual was something he had become accustomed to, and had not even realized he missed.

  “I have begun making you an earring,” Amanvah said as she worked at him with a brush and cake of soap. “But it will be weeks of work, and I hope to see you free long before it is complete.”

  “No doubt it will have other uses as well,” Rojer said. “What greater purpose could magic have for me, than to hear your sweet v
oice from afar?”

  Amanvah embraced him, choking back a sob. Rojer hugged her to him, mindless of how he was soaking her robes.

  Amanvah broke off with a sniff, stepping back to remove the wet silk. “If you put me on my back and spend in me, husband, you will get me with child.”

  Rojer had begun to relax at last, leaning back in the tub, but he stiffened at the words, sitting up sharply. “Amanvah, this isn’t the time …”

  “It is,” Amanvah cut in. “If I wish to carry your child, it must be now.”

  Rojer swallowed. “I don’t like what that says about my chances.”

  Amanvah knelt by the tub again, running her hands over his bare chest, no longer washing. “Nor I,” she admitted. “Your future is clouded, but not only yours. We are approaching a great divergence, and many in this city may walk the lonely path ere it passes.”

  She slid a hand up his neck, cupping his cheek and pulling him into a kiss. “But there is a pillar in the stream. If you have me now, I will bear your child.”

  “So you will survive this … divergence?” Rojer asked.

  “Until the birth, at least. After that …” Amanvah shrugged, kissing his neck.

  Rojer flinched. “Maybe we should wait, then.”

  Amanvah looked at him in confusion.

  “I don’t want to leave you to raise our child alone,” Rojer said. “You aren’t even twenty. If I die, you should take a new husband. One who can …”

  Amanvah took his face in her hands. “Oh, husband. I will not be alone. I have my sister-wives, and you do not understand us well if you think we will forsake you if you must travel the lonely path.”

  She stood, accentuating the sway of her hips as she walked to the small bed. “I am dama’ting. All Everam requires is that I bear a daughter and heir.” She lay on her back, opening her legs. “Give her to me, and I will never need the touch of another man.”

  Rojer was out of the tub in a rush, mindless of the wet as he climbed atop her. “A daughter?”

  Amanvah smiled. “Sikvah already carries your son.”