barely enough to master it. She would no more dare release witchpower in Lorraine's presence than she might set a wild boar free upon the unarmed queen. She was her mother's daughter, and a creature of her father's making. Loyalty defined her; duty made the boundaries of her life. It had, for nearly twenty-three years, been enough. If she could now reach back to a solitary meeting with Lorraine, more than ten years earlier, and make a small jape of it, then perhaps that was diplomacy, and its success worthy of a smile.
“Do you laugh at us, girl?” Lorraine was cool as winter winds, drawing herself up. She was tall for a woman, taller than Belinda herself, and beneath full square skirts, boxy shoes added to that imposing height. Illusion, but effective: Belinda ducked another curtsey in a show of contriteness, and when she lifted her eyes it was with no hint of merriment.
Nor did she feel it any longer, its spirit quenched beneath necessity. Beatrice Irvine might laugh too easily, but Beatrice was a construct, and as such could even yet be put away when needs be. “No, majesty. I beg forgiveness,” she said again, and this time meant it.
Lorraine stared down a long nose at her, weighing the sincerity of that plea. Proper deference would have Belinda drop her gaze and wait on the queen's clemency; proper as a subject, a daughter, and a secret. Proper, too, if she fully embraced the learned ability to not offend, to hardly be there even when she was obviously present. She had spent her life honing that talent, and could make herself small and meek and unthreatening, everything in her stance and stature hinting of her place beneath notice-or, if noticed, beneath the lord of the manor. It would work on Lorraine; it worked on everyone, except perhaps Belinda's own father, and on Dmitri, the other witchlord man of Robert's acquaintance.
Belinda did not do what was proper, and saw in Lorraine's eyes that she marked it. She met the queen's gaze and looked her fill: it had been more than ten years since she had seen the woman who'd birthed her, and might well be ten years before she saw her again. There was little enough chance for making such memories as these, and she judged it worth risking Lorraine's wrath to burn the monarch's image into her own flawless memory.
Ten years earlier, Lorraine had still held the last edge of youth that gave her beauty. Then, as now, as always in Belinda's memories, titian curls fell loose, bloody against translucent skin, but now the translucency was born of far heavier white paint than Lorraine had worn a decade ago. She had been in her forties then, a woman of unprecedented power; indeed, she had set the precedent of a queen ruling without a king. Sandalia in Gallin had held her own throne partly in ironic thanks to her bitter rival across the straits: if Lorraine could manage alone, so, too, could the one time Essandian princess. And much farther to the east and north, Irina Durova reigned as imperatrix of the enormous Khazarian empire, unchallenged on her throne since her unlamented husband's death. They were a sisterhood, these queens, a sisterhood of loathing and distrust and tension, bound together by a determination to hold power in the face of innumerable men certain they were incapable of doing so.
Those things were etched around Lorraine Walter when Belinda looked at her; as much fixtures of who she was as the signs of aging: the wattling neck; the length of nose brought out by flesh falling away; the long lines of a face that had once been striking and now fought age in an inevitably losing battle beneath the white lead face paint. Belinda saw that it had been years, perhaps decades, since Lorraine's hair had been naturally red, and knew that even at the height of youth it had never been that especial shade. But those were trappings, a prison to the spirit housed within, and that spirit burned bright. Her eyes showed it, thin grey gaze expecting and receiving adoration. Even, perhaps especially, from the secret daughter, adoration.
“You are not afraid,” Lorraine said in time. She sounded a mix of pleased and perturbed, and her mouth pursed as though she'd encountered an unexpected flavour. “You are unafraid of us. We wonder if you realise how rare that is.”
Belinda folded a deep curtsey, eyes lowered. “No, majesty.”
“You were not afraid when first we met, either. Rise,” Lorraine said sharply. “Rise, for I would see your face when you give me answers. Why are you not afraid?”
Belinda did not rise, but lifted her face so she could look at Lorraine. The position put a crick in her neck, but she held it, exhaling a quiet sigh of satisfaction. Small discomforts were how she had begun training herself in stillness. To have one upon which she could now fall back helped her to remain steady as she watched her queen. “My life has not taught me to fear, majesty, but to be bold. I would dishonour myself and you by pretending otherwise when in your presence.”
“So much so that you are willing to disobey my direct command.” Lorraine snapped her fingers and Belinda finally straightened, hairs on her arms dancing with awareness. Twice Lorraine had forgone the use of we and spoken of herself as an individual. A monarch did not do that lightly. Belinda remembered all too clearly, and with blistering shame, how Sandalia had used that apparent intimacy to draw Beatrice's eager, foolish plots to light, even when Belinda had known better. Such a slip could easily prove fatal, and Belinda dared not trust that being her mother's daughter would save her from perfidy now. She held her tongue, and Lorraine breathed a sound of exasperation.
“I suppose you'd be of little enough use if you couldn't see what lines you might walk, and on what ropes you might balance. Where is he, girl? Robert left our side six weeks ago, and we have been obliged to pay a ransom for his return, which has not yet manifested. Tell us what we must needs know, Primrose.”
Belinda's stomach clenched, cold running up her arms despite the sleeves she'd added to the dress. Primrose belonged to a woman now dead, and when it had been hers, only Robert Drake had used it. To hear her mother say it carried more strength than Belinda might have imagined, and to hide that she dropped her gaze, no longer permitting herself the daring of meeting Lorraine's eyes. The curtsey she dipped this time was punctuation, an acknowledgment of Lorraine's demand and a physical intent to respond. That action, like the words she'd spoken to begin their audience, was so familiar as to be ritual, and in the wake of hearing Primrose pass her mother's lips she became aware of how very precious ritual was. “I don't know where he is, majesty. He only said elsewhere, and that I must return to Aulun and take his place at your side for a time. I am here, and yours to command.”
“We have heard stories of his capture. We wish to hear the truth of them.” Lorraine's tones were wondrous to hear, such haughtiness in them that Belinda believed, for a moment, that she could see through them; that she could understand the depths of concern and worry, and perhaps even love, that the peremptory arrogance was meant to disguise.
She murmured, “They're more true than not, majesty,” but refused any mark of emotion in her own voice. She was not high enough to offer one such as Lorraine a sympathetic shoulder, nor rude enough to burden a queen with her own anxiety over Robert Drake. “He was imprisoned for a time.”
“How is it he was betrayed?” Still ice, still caring contained within fury, still every inch a queen. Belinda wanted to wrap herself around that flawless execution of enquiry, to sing admiration she had no right to voice.
Instead she shook her head. “A courtesan, majesty. One I knew briefly and who, it seems, knew my fath-”
Lorraine's grey gaze snapped to her as Belinda broke off the word, appalled at herself. Beatrice Irvine might have said such a blatant thing; Belinda Primrose ought never have let it pass her lips. But once upon a time, before she knew him to be her father in truth, she had called Robert Papa, though she was supposed to be his sister's child, and he her uncle. That, perhaps, could excuse her, and Belinda finished, “father,” with as little hesitation as she could manage.
It was not enough. She knew, even without meeting Lorraine's eyes, that it wasn't enough. A vision of flagstones rose up in Belinda's memory, her own fingers raw and rough as she pulled herself across them in the name of duty, fighting her own desire to turn her back on it and flee toward passion. She had chosen duty. She would always choose duty: it was what she had been raised to do, to be.
She could not, therefore, permit herself a slip as blatant as the one she had just made. “My papa,” she said lightly, “is a handsome man, majesty. I think this courtesan may have had dreams that outstripped her reach, and when they came to dust, found revenge in whatever manner she could.”
“Your papa,” Lorraine said after a long cool silence, “is properly your uncle, girl, and has the eye of a queen. Do not be so bold in naming him father to one whose jealousies can unmake him as easily as he has been made.”
Belinda whispered, “Majesty,” and sank deeper into a curtsey.
Lorraine held her silence another few eternal moments before moving, shaking off reprimand with a rustle of skirts. Belinda lifted her gaze, though she didn't stand again, and watched the queen pace a few steps before coming to a stop at one of the windowless walls. “We have seen the papers you removed from Lutetia,” Lorraine said. “They give lie to treaties in negotiation between our royal self and the imperatrix of Khazar. They speak of
