One Good Knight (3 page)

Besides, she didn't dislike him all that much. It was only that he was such a fop. It wouldn't be hard to
pretend
to respect him.

It was not only a plan, it was a
good
plan. Workable, logical. And if Solon was as ineffectual as she thought he was, as long as she acted the shy and mousy bookworm, he'd be likely to take what she gave him and look no farther than the surface, figuring that a word or two of praise would be all the reward she needed.
Huh. Maybe it's not so bad a thing that no one looks past my oculars.

For that matter, this might pave the way to ridding her of governesses…because if Lord Solon wanted her to do research, he'd want her to have her time free, and to do that she'd have to do without all those stupid lessons in precedence, genealogy and the Royal Houses of the nearest Kingdoms. Not to mention the dance lessons, etiquette lessons, deportment and posture lessons, embroidery and so on…

This is better than a good plan. I'll not only have something to do, I'll be effective.

It was with difficulty that she kept herself from leaping up and running down the stairs to press the notes she had written into Solon's hands. For one thing, he would be with the Queen in those meetings. For another, she wanted to go over them and make fair copies before she gave them to him. This might be the most important bit of scholarship she
ever did in her life. If she was going to convince him of her usefulness, she had to be sure that what she gave him was
better
than what he was getting from his secretaries.

So instead of pelting down the stairs, she sat quietly and ate her lunch while mentally reorganizing how she was going to present her work, and decided that a bit more digging in the library would not be amiss. For one thing, she hadn't included anything about the foreign merchants, and that would be a gaping hole in an otherwise presentable report, a hole that she could not, at this point, afford.

By the time she had finished eating, she felt she was ready, and she gathered up her things with a feeling of determination.

At least, in this battle, she was going in well armed. And as she headed down the stone stairs to take up her “weapons” of pen and paper, she felt herself grinning—because this was exactly the kind of battle she was best suited to win.

The Queen paid little attention to her luncheon, concentrating instead on the notes from yesterday's conferences as she ate. The morning had been occupied with purely Acadian concerns, but this afternoon she would be dealing with the Merchant Captains again. She hoped Solon's secretaries had managed to unearth more information, particularly on the foreign merchants. The men had been rather opaque and difficult to read, and had not been at all forthcoming with responses in the initial negotiations. Worse still, when she had made certain purposefully offhand remarks, there had been no reactions. The Merchant Captains were worse than professional taroc players. In her experience, most men let down their guard at least a little around a beautiful woman—but not these.

She heard Solon's familiar footsteps, as always,
accompanied by the soft rattling of his myriad charms and amulets, and did not bother to look up. A stack of papers appeared beside her notes.

“I suggest you read this,” said Solon, his soft and pleasant voice with a dry edge to it that told her there was something about this report that was of particular interest to him.

Still without glancing up, she shoved the notes aside and took his stack. At once, she knew this one was not from one of his usual sources. The handwriting was different from that in any other report she had seen—neat, precise, academic. Not an agent, then. A new secretary?

If so, this was the most competent secretary Solon had found yet. She did not permit her eyebrows to rise, since such incautious expressions made wrinkles in the forehead, but she did nod approvingly. This person, whoever he was, not only duplicated everything she already knew, he provided her with a few facts and figures that were new. Nothing earth-shattering, but useful, especially the information on the foreigners who had been so opaque to her.

“Well!” she said, when she had finished. She looked up at her Chief Adviser. Solon was not particularly tall, but he was well-proportioned—nothing like her muscular Royal Guards, but she happened to know that beneath his embroidered linen robe, he had a very fit body. His face was a little too long for classic beauty, but it was very pleasing to the eye. His hands, graceful and immaculate, and skilled, were
the best features of a man who was widely considered one of the handsomest of her court. “I am impressed. Instead of merely competent help, you have conjured up someone quite clever! This will come in quite handy in my subsequent discussions. I hope you intend to keep him.”

“Her,” Solon replied; unconcerned with wrinkles, he did raise one immaculately groomed eyebrow. “And I am not at all certain you will be as happy when you discover that this report was pressed upon me at breakfast this morning by your daughter.”

With great difficulty she kept her own eyebrows under control; true, her daughter was a scholar, too much of a scholar really, but Cassiopeia had not expected so…practical a turn to her scholarship. “Andromeda?” she replied, astonished. “All this? Was
this
what she was babbling to me about yesterday over breakfast?” She had long since gotten into the habit of turning a deaf ear to Andromeda's chatter. Perhaps she should have been paying more attention. Andromeda had evidently gotten beyond the peasant histories of Fauns and Centaurs (who were purely rustic creatures and of no practical importance). Now she was turning her mind to practical matters that had bearing on the governance of the Kingdom.

This could be either dangerous, or useful. If useful, Cassiopeia had no compunction about using her.

If dangerous, she had no compunction about finding a way to get rid of her. There were things that
Cassiopeia did not want anyone aside from her and Solon to know.

Least of all Andromeda.

“Quite possibly.” Solon's long and very handsome face remained sober, his blue eyes dark with thought. “I know she always has her nose in a book, but I was under the impression that she was reading poetry or mythical tales or something equally girlish. I had no idea she could put her finger on any fact or figure in the Palace library, but this—” he indicated the report “—seems to indicate that this is exactly what she can do.”

“This could be very useful,” Cassiopeia replied, tapping one graceful finger on the table. “She isn't someone we would have to pay, she doesn't leave the Palace, she is young and naive, she doesn't talk to anyone who matters and she should be easy to control. Much easier than some of your past secretaries.” She smiled slightly. “Furthermore, she is as eager to please me as a puppy. If I begin paying attention to her, she'll work three times as hard.”

“True, true.” Solon ran a hand through his long, black hair. “Her eagerness to please her mother will certainly be a powerful hold over her. Attention from you—more to the point, direction from you, and an indication that you are pleased with this turn in her studies, would probably be more effective than any reward I could devise for the others. But I am still…concerned. I am not certain she will remain naive.”

“Then you would be wise to see that as she gains in knowledge, she also gains in understanding just what a ruler is.” She allowed herself a slight smile. “And the difference between the ruler and the ruled.”

Ambition. That was what had gotten Cassiopeia here. And ambition—properly channeled and guided—might be a useful thing in her daughter.

“And if she persists in her…delusions?” Once again Solon raised an eyebrow.

Cassiopeia dismissed his question with a flick of her wrist. “She is my daughter. If she is half as intelligent as you think, she will quickly come to the appropriate frame of mind.”

 

Andie tried not to be impatient as the afternoon wore on, but it was hard. Solon had not only taken her report, he had begun reading it as he walked away. Surely he would be at least a
little
impressed, for she had included some anecdotal information about some of the foreign Merchant Captains from copies of ships' logs of Acadian merchants. Copies of all logs of domestic merchant ships were filed in the Great Library purely as a matter of historical record, although most contained little that was of historical interest. She had a notion that Solon's secretaries hadn't thought to look at
those,
and she had been right; from the slight layer of dust, it appeared they hadn't been looked at since they were put on the shelves.

But it wasn't until dinner that she received a summons from one of her mother's ladies to attend the
Queen. Since this was not an evening when the Queen usually held a more formal dinner with the Court, it meant that Cassiopeia wanted to see her daughter alone, or relatively so. Although Andie had been ravenous, her throat closed and she lost her appetite.

With her maid's help, she changed from her tunic into a gown, and waited, twisting her hands nervously in her lap while her maid put up her hair, and consented to adding a simple necklace of gold and garnet beads, something she almost never did. Wishing now that she had taken lemon juice to the ink stains on her fingers, she made her way out of her own wing, through the marble Reception Hall and Great Hall, and into the Queen's Wing. At this hour, no one was in any of the public rooms except the Guards, one stationed at each doorway. The rooms were lit only by token lamps, otherwise in shadow, but the fact that most of the Palace was built from light-colored marbles made a little light go a long way. In winter, these rooms could be awfully cold and drafty, but now, in the middle of summer, the cool air flowing through was pleasant. When she was a child, she used to come here at night when she was too hot and just sit quietly in a corner while the heat leached out of her body.

Two of the Royal Guard were on duty at the bronze doors into the Queen's private quarters. They let her in with a wink and a nod of encouragement, and she stepped onto the first of the many thick, brightly patterned, imported silk carpets that had
been her grandmother's dower when she came here as a foreign bride. The first chamber was a reception chamber for small audiences; softly lit by a few lightly perfumed oil lamps, it was empty of all except one of her mother's maids. As ever with any of the Queen's servants, the girl was flawlessly groomed, her simple linen gown spotless, not a hair out of place. Like most natives of Ethanos, she was dark-haired and dark-eyed. Many beautiful women preferred that their servants be plain; Queen Cassiopeia had always insisted on physical attractiveness in those who waited on her, and this maid was no exception to that rule.

“Please follow me, Princess,” the maid said, without the faintly contemptuous tone her mother's maids usually used when they saw her. Evidently this time her appearance passed inspection.

With a nod, Andie obeyed, moving through several more chambers, also barely lit, until they came to the lesser dining chamber. This one, of marble beautifully ornamented with jewel-tone mosaic wall-murals made of millions of bits of glass depicting enormous baskets of flowers and fruit, held one large table. The Queen sat at the head of it; to her left was Solon, and to her right, an empty chair. Farther down the table sat three of her more favored ladies. Andie knew two of them by name; those two were young members of the Queen's regular Court, while the stranger was middle-aged or older. The young ones were dressed in a less elaborate version of the
Queen's gown, with formfitting bodices, low necklines, full skirts, and tiny sleeves that left most of the arms bare. The Queen's gown was a pale blue silk with festoons of heavy lace, which suited her blond beauty. The young lady to the right, raven-haired and olive-skinned, wore cream color with a silk fringe, while the one to the left, also raven-haired but with a translucent complexion, wore pink with garlands of tiny ribbon rosettes. The older woman wore a somber gown of dark ocher with ornaments of jet and longer sleeves that covered her arms to the wrist.

“Andromeda, please join us,” Cassiopeia said, with the slight smile that indicated her favor. She turned to look down the table at one of the three ladies, the one in cream. “Kyria, do you think you could manage something more attractive for those lenses than that wire frame?”

“Without a doubt, Majesty,” replied the lady, whose hobby was jewelry design, and whose talent for it was so formidable that the Queen would have no one else design for her. “The magician is a fine fellow, but his concern is function, not form.” She tilted her head to the side and one attractive, raven curl brushed her cheek. “As the Princess is young, and her tastes are austere, I believe that a carefully wrought frame of white gold will suit her personality as well as her face best. And I believe that I will ask him to construct larger lenses.”

“Larger? Surely not—” Cassiopeia objected.

But Lady Kyria smiled. “Majesty, larger lenses will
allow one to see the Princess's eyes properly. Instead of being obscured, nearly eclipsed by small lenses, they will be enhanced. A little kohl, some malachite on her lids, and one will see the eyes first, and not the lenses. The oculars will become secondary to her face, not the first thing one sees.”

Cassiopeia's blue eyes warmed slightly with approval. “I bow to your singular ability, Lady Kyria.”

As the Queen spoke, Andie had gingerly taken the empty seat at the Queen's right, clasping her hands in her lap. She could hardly believe what she was hearing. Her mother was not only acknowledging her oculars, she was going out of her way to make them attractive?
Larger lenses? I'll be able to see so much better!

“Now, Andromeda,” the Queen said, turning to Andie. “It is time to speak of why I asked you to dine with us this evening. Solon gave me your report over luncheon, and I am pleased. It was useful to me this afternoon. I was under the impression that you were wasting your time with purely scholastic interests— I was favorably impressed to see that you have, in fact, been turning your intellect and talents to practical matters.”

Andie couldn't help herself. She beamed. “Oh, Moth—I mean, Your Majesty! I hoped I could do something to help. I hoped that Adviser Solon would see that I—that I know that a Princess—is not free to choose her own interests. Not like ordinary people are.” She decided to press her case while her
mother was still looking interested. “I'm good at finding things out from books and records, and I think I can be useful to you. Please, Your Majesty, I
want
to be useful, I want responsibilities—”

“And you shall have them, child,” the Queen interrupted with a throaty chuckle. “Tell her, Solon.”

The Adviser coughed slightly. “Your report provided both an example of what you can do, and a reminder to us that, despite your outward appearance, which is that of a much younger person than your true age, you are not a child any longer. The fact that you wish responsibilities speaks well of your maturity, and the Queen has determined that we have been remiss in allowing your appearance to mislead us.”

She blushed at his description of her. Well, so she was slight and flat-chested! And she didn't like to fuss over gowns the way the Queen's ladies did! Did he
have
to dwell on that?

But he wasn't finished, and her flush faded. “So from today, you are to provide exactly the kind of information analysis to us—that is, the Queen and I—that you provided in this report, and to signal the change in your status and responsibilities, there will be some significant changes in your household. Your governess will be dismissed—you clearly have no more need of such persons. If you determine you need a tutor in some subject, another language, perhaps, you will have the wherewithal to engage one yourself and dismiss him when you are through with
him. You will have a secretary of your own appointed to serve you in your researches. Your personal staff will be augmented. Lady Charis will become your Lady of the Wardrobe, designing your clothing in accordance with both your personal taste and the needs of your new position.”

The second of the two ladies present nodded at Andie in a friendly fashion. “The austere style suits you, Princess,” Lady Charis said, and Andie suppressed a sigh of relief. “Columnar gowns will make you appear taller, and a very simple Gordian Knot hairstyle will suit your face. I will simply be making certain that any time you make a public appearance, you are not left to the dubious choices of an ordinary maidservant, and that your gowns will be kept in immaculate condition.”