replied. “Henry of Aulun’s first wife was sister to your father. There is no surviving Walter heir from that union; Constance, their one daughter, is dead these thirty-some years. Lorraine’s a bastard child begotten through desperation that severed Aulun from Cordula and birthed the Reformation Church, and she, too, is without an heir.” Belinda drew a breath. “She’s run Lanyarch’s royal blood into the earth, leaving you the wedded queen to the throne, but without a child of Lanyarchan blood. Rodrigo woos Lorraine still, more in Cordula’s name than his own, though if he should succeed, such a marriage might legitimize Javier’s claim to any throne on the islands. In her eyes you and Javier, who are not of Aulunian blood, but who can trace line of descent to her throne, are pretenders to her crown, and dangerous.”
“And it is your opinion…?” Sandalia’s voice was so steady she might have respected the opinion Belinda offered, though in contrast to her vocal quality, humour sparked around her to Belinda’s witchpower senses.
“That with no legitimate Walter heirs, Aulun should be ruled by the royal family closest to it. There are those in Aulun who would make themselves kings,” Belinda admitted with a shrug, “but the de Costas already bear God’s seal of approval, and through Catherine you and Rodrigo are…” Too late, far, far too late, she recognized the injudiciousness of being so free with her opinions. She had, for a terrible moment, shared Beatrice’s naive beliefs, that faith and rightness and God’s will would protect her. That as a woman engaged to a prince, she might speak frankly to that prince’s mother and have her opinions respected and considered. That Javier would protect her, even when she spoke sedition to a queen.
Her stomach knotted, knocking upward so hard as to make her teeth set with the impact; it took sudden and frantic control to not let that reaction complete itself. She spoke without swallowing down sickness, forcing herself to remain untouched visibly by raging alarm, and finished, “possibilities.” If it was a trap, it was neatly set, and she was all the more a fool for stepping into it. If it was a trap, she richly deserved its jaws closing around her.
“You are a fool,” Sandalia said. “Either a fool or so trusting as to be one, and I can afford neither. You’re a political tool, Beatrice.” The tiny queen turned to face Belinda, eyes large and dark and utterly without mercy in her heart-shaped face. “You’ll help us to see if Lorraine can be shaken loose from her throne, but you will not marry my son, even if he should insist on it.”
“Your Majesty-” It took appallingly little effort to put the quaver in her voice, Belinda’s hands cold with dismay. She knew better, had been trained better, and had still let herself be led. Witchpower danced golden and warm through her mind, uncaring of the danger she danced with. “Yes, Your Majesty, of course, but how-”
Sandalia offered a smile that laid her open to the bone. “You’ll find a way to make him hate you, my dear.”
“Oh…oh, no, I couldn’t, I…I lo-” The words stuck in her throat, bringing warmth to her cheeks. Belinda clenched her hands in her skirts, allowing Beatrice’s distress to override the coldness pounding within her. Denying the desperation with which she wished to wrap herself in stillness and forbid anything to touch her. The words that finished her protest were the emotions of a silly noblewoman, not of Belinda Primrose. Her heart fluttered and beat against her ribs, a wild thing trying to escape the sickness inside her. She was Belinda Primrose, the queen’s bastard, an assassin and a spy, and she could not love a prince.
Sandalia’s smile turned positively radiant, bringing a beautiful glow of youth and good health to the pretty queen. “You will,” she said implacably. “You will, Lady Irvine, because our solution would be far less pleasant than that. We are finished with this discussion.” She flickered her fingers, shared language of the body from queen to gutter rat, and said, pleasantly, “You’re dismissed.”
Belinda, uncaring of her dignity, of her lifetime of trained untouchability, uncaring of anything but the bewildering, consuming ache that rattled her bones and took her breath, gathered her skirts, dipped a clumsy curtsey, and fled.
SANDALIA, QUEEN AND REGENT
5 December 1587 Lutetia “That’s her. That’s the witch who did Lord Gregori to death.” The girl standing in Sandalia’s private chambers might be pretty, did hate not so contort her features. She is young, perhaps nineteen, with blond hair so thick and heavy she could be dangled from it. Her hands are clenched in her skirts, making wrinkles of plain working fabric, and she’s terribly afraid of her surroundings. “I don’t care that she’s all tarted up and dressed as a lady. That’s Rosa.”
She speaks Khazarian, a tongue that Sandalia has only in smatterings. Sandalia looks to her translator, who repeats the girl’s words back in Gallic. Sandalia nods slowly, and doesn’t laugh: the wretched creature is using hate to push away fear, and Sandalia is not one inclined to believe accusations of witchcraft from the frightened. “Why do you think she’s a witch?” She lets the translator do her work and keeps her focus on the girl whose face tightens with rage and, unless Sandalia is greatly mistaken, envy.
“Lord Gregori was strong and fit, my lady. A fever came on him too fast to be natural, not in the summer. Winter’s the time for sicknesses like that. It came on him when she came-”
Sandalia lifts a hand as the translator speaks, and the girl breaks off. “When-Rosa-arrived in Gregori’s household? That was when he became ill?”
The servant curls her lip reluctantly. “No, not till she went to his bed.”
Sandalia once more refuses a smile, and nods for the girl to continue. “She went at him without stopping for three days, and on the fourth he was dead. Then she ran, like the craven devil’s creature that she is. Why would she run, if she hadn’t done him to death?”
Sandalia knows enough not to argue that question with the girl, either. Instead, she murmurs, “Why, indeed,” which is translated to the serving girl’s obvious delight. “You’re certain it’s the same woman,” Sandalia says one final time, and the girl tosses her head with a sniff.
“Sure as the sky is blue.” There’s such a sparkle of laughter in the translator’s voice that Sandalia suspects the servant said something far more crude, and that diplomacy has won out over accuracy.
“Thank you, Ilana. We shall-”
“Ilyana.” The girl doesn’t seem to realise she’s correcting a queen, and Sandalia’s elevated eyebrow has no effect. After a moment she amends herself, mostly because there’s no sense in antagonizing the unpleasant young woman, and goes on: “Ilyana. We shall call on you again when we require your testimony, and in the interim you’ll be expected to remain within the walls of the cottage we have provided for you.”
Ilyana doesn’t understand enough to know she’s being placed under arrest. Her expression lights up as the translation is made, and she ducks a curtsey. The cottage is no doubt a far finer home than she’s ever known, and as a guest, involuntary or not, of a queen, she will be waited on as if she were the lady and not the servant. It will be a rude shock to her to return to the life she once had, if she’s lucky enough to be allowed to do so. She’s allowed to go to the door unescorted, and beyond it, two guards, one Khazarian and one Gallic, will bring her to Sandalia’s cottage. Only when the girl is gone does Sandalia turn to the translator, eyebrow lifted again in curiosity.
“Do you believe her, Lady Akilina?”
Akilina stands with animal grace, lithe even beneath the weight of petticoats. She wears a shade of coppery gold that should look terrible on her, but somehow enhances the angles of her beauty. “I believe she’s a nasty little girl who wanted Gregori’s bed for herself, but she’s as certain as my guardsman that Your Majesty’s Beatrice and their Rosa are one and the same. Viktor,” and the heaviness of a Khazarian accent weights the name, though her Gallic is usually exquisite, “tells me that Rosa wore a blade beneath her chemise, under her corsets. A small knife.” She holds up a hand, giving the knife its length in demonstration. “Your Majesty could ask Javier…”
“No.” Sandalia’s reply is slow, thoughtful. “Better to see where his heart lies in the heat of the moment, I think. We’ll discover the blade in another way. How,” she adds absently, “did you get that little wretch here so quickly? It’s a month’s journey to Khazan even in summer.”
“Viktor told me about her when he told me he was certain Beatrice and Rosa were the same woman. I sent a pigeon,” Akilina says carelessly, “and the journey is a month if you travel in comfort. It can be made more quickly if you truly desire it to be done.” She shrugs, coquettish thing, and throws a smile toward Sandalia. “And Ilyana’s comfort wasn’t my concern.” Her smile fades, leaving her features beautiful but sharp; this is a woman honed to a blade, Sandalia thinks. “Did anyone come to you asking for Gregori’s death?”
Sandalia finds caution stirring in her belly, cool and slow, at the question. She knows Akilina was Gregori’s
