The Queen's Bastard (39 page)

A
NA DI
M
EO
22 November 1587         
         Lutetia

Aulun is such a little distance away.

Ana di Meo fingers a letter sent to her only three days earlier, from Alunear across the channel, and imagines the journey it would continue on for days or even weeks yet, if it had to reach her in Aria Magli. There are mountain ranges in the way, a difficult enough journey in summer; in the winter it’s easier to take a ship beyond Essandia’s most westerly points and bring it back again into the Primorismare. There are storms to risk, of course, but there are always storms.

And one is brewing now, between Aulun and Gallin.

Ana climbs to her feet, letter held in her fingertips, and collects a warm fur to wrap around her shoulders as she crosses to a window that overlooks Lutetia. It’s a grey city in the failing winter light, with the Sacrauna cutting a broad dark slash through it. She’s not as close to the water as she’d like to be: after a lifetime of Aria Magli’s canals, it surprises her how uncomfortable she is with cobbled streets and so little sound of running water. But she can see the river from her tower, and see the city besides. A cathedral rises up as the landscape’s dominant feature, overwhelming even Sandalia de Costa’s palace. God reigns here more surely than Man, and Ana supposes the church would have it so. For herself, she’d rather be back in decadant Aria Magli, where God and Man wrestle in the sheets every night and come morning bob and greet each other on the canals like distantly polite strangers. Lutetia thinks itself quite the centre of culture, but Ana finds it stifling.

Rue carves lines in her face and she taps the letter against the windowsill. If it’s stifling, it’s in part her own fault: she’s chosen life in a tower, like a princess or worse, God forbid, a nun. Lovers and servants come to her full of gossip, and she rarely leaves her protected place. Not for her own sake, but because Belinda Primrose has made herself a fixture in the palace, and Ana di Meo, much as she would prefer to stand and watch the young woman weave her way through Lutetian politicians, can’t risk Belinda seeing her. Ana knows herself to be striking; men remember her after only a glance, and she shared far more than that with Belinda.

And might have shared more yet, had the girl not drawn back, fever and distress blanching her features. Even now that expression stings Ana, though when Robert Drake had arrived to take Belinda away, much was explained. Ana had thought it revulsion; now she knows it for guilt, and that she can sympathize with. Women of their nature are rarely allowed moments of freedom, and to be caught up when they’re stolen…

Well. Ana paid the price for the path they’d looked at travelling, too, as damned by unfettered desire as Belinda had been. Robert had snatched away a chance for a few hours of joy without price, though to hold him accountable is both petty and pointless. She knows that as well as she knows her own name, and also knows her own character well enough to place blame comfortably, whether it was warranted or not. There is little in the way of bitterness in doing so, but everyone, queen or courtesan, counts coup.

Ana unfolds the letter onto the sill, reading over words she has no need to be reminded of. Robert’s strong hand is undisguised in the pages, words of loyalty and love scrawled out as though passion had captured him in a fit and forced him to the pen.

He warms her with his promises, even when she reads the requests hidden by careful phrasing. It isn’t her love he seeks, but news of Belinda’s feelings for Gallin’s crown prince. Not Ana’s loyalty he wants, nor his own pledged to her, but details of Belinda’s to her duty. It’s a pity the world is not other than it is, for Ana can imagine one in which Robert’s missives to her are nothing of coded questions, and all of the desire and fondness written on the surface.

But that is not this world, and so she calls for a servant to bring warm clothes not at all in the flowing new fashion set by the prince’s cheapside friend, and not at all in the startling strong colours Ana prefers. She has her hair disguised beneath a hat, and dismisses the servant to do her own cosmetics, aging herself, and it is a different woman entirely who leaves the courtesan’s tower. Gossip carried by lovers is all and well, but if she’s to judge Belinda’s emotions for Javier, she must see them together.

She joins a host of petitioners to see the queen, confident she won’t be called upon: there are dozens of applicants, and she only one drab old woman among them. What matters is slipping through the palace doors and coming into the royal hall. She hasn’t been this bold before; when she’s taken it upon herself to watch Belinda with her own eyes, she’s done it in church, or parks, or city streets, but that has been to watch the girl at play with the other men she’s used to reach the prince. To tell Robert what he wants to know, Ana must stand among the privileged and observe without being observed.

And what she realises in moments is that something new has come over Belinda Primrose, a confidence that rivals her lover’s. They do not stand together, prince and consort: he sits at his mother’s side, a step or two below her while Sandalia listens patiently to a merchant complaining of ruined wares. Belinda stands well away, across the hall from Javier, but their connection is such that it takes Ana’s breath. They have a sense of the forbidden about them, strange for a pair whose engagement has been announced. But Ana has no other way to describe the intensity that flows between them. If she didn’t know better, she would think them thwarted lovers, ready to die for each other if they could not live together. Nor is she the only one who sees it: murmurs and smiles surround her, courtiers and commoners there to watch young lovers as much as pay attendance to the queen.

Of the two, Belinda is the more reserved: her gaze is cast downward, a picture of modesty in one of the new-fashioned gowns. It makes her look sweet and delectable, like a creature who should be thrown on the floor and tasted of, taking her innocence with tongue and fingers and shaming her modesty when gasps of unlooked-for delight come to her lips. And yet an undercurrent of strain seems to vibrate through her, telling Ana that despite her outward demeanor, Belinda listens, judges, plans. That’s good; that’s what Robert will want to hear.

But the other, the prince: he watches Belinda more often than he watches the queen or the people who will someday be his. It’s his place, Ana supposes, to be the one who looks on her, being a man with no need for decorum. He looks like the one who
would
take Belinda on the floor, so much need burning in him that he would hardly bother sending courtiers away first. It’s glorious to see, how passion warms his pale skin and how people glance toward Belinda with admiration, as though Javier’s lust for her influences their own opinions. Javier is a natural leader, if he can pursuade men so easily that his passions are the ones they should follow.

Robert, Lord Drake, will be very pleased indeed if the prince of Gallin will follow Belinda Primrose to the ends of the earth and beyond.

Satisfied, Ana gathers her skirts and slips out of the palace hall to write a letter of reassurance. Oh, yes, she will write, there is love and lust and loyalty between them, but it runs deeper on Gallin’s part than Aulun’s, an opinion Robert ought to trust, for there’s not a much better judge of character than a whore. And then she’ll seal the letter and let a rider take it to a ship and the sea, for Aulun is such a little distance away, and Robert so very close.

B
ELINDA
P
RIMROSE
/ B
EATRICE
I
RVINE
24 November 1587         
         Lutetia

“Viktor.” It had become too easy to use names in the weeks—months, now—that she’d been Beatrice Irvine. It would take retraining to fall out of the habit again, though at least a servant wasn’t expected to be on personal terms with her mistress and master. Belinda whispered the guard’s name again, almost singing it, and extended witchpower through the word, drifting magic through Sandalia’s palace.

She felt him stiffen in more ways than one when her will touched his. Even from the distance his emotions surged, desire mixing with fear to make a potent cocktail. He stepped away from his posting, gaze lingering on Akilina for an instant, a moment in which Belinda thought she could
see
the raven-haired woman through his eyes. She was barely dressed for breakfast, wearing a shift of linen and an open robe thrown over it, and her gaze went briefly to her guard, then away again, dismissive as she turned her attention back to her meal. A thrill danced through Belinda at the possibility that another’s eyes might be used to spy in such a way, but the images faded so quickly as to have been imagination, as Viktor walked blindly through the halls, drawing closer without seeming to know where his feet took him. Lust all but rolled ahead of him, strong enough that Belinda thought she could smell it, musky and warm in the cool stone hallways. It pricked her own interest, and for a fleeting instant the idea of risking taking her onetime lover anew appealed to her.

She cut off a sharp laugh at the back of her throat, making a fist at her side. That impulse was the witchpower, not her own intellect; she’d come to recognize its base desires quickly enough to route them. Anything else would be tantamount to suicide: the prince’s soon-to-be wife could not, under any circumstances, be thought unfaithful. Even Sacha had ceased playing at that game, his obsession turned to searching for Eliza, though Belinda still waited for him to betray her to Javier. That she’d set up a defusal for his accusations was a start, but perhaps not enough, and the uncertainty rankled.

Witchpower whispered around the edges of her mind, golden and sultry, offering itself as a method of dealing with the stocky lord. Belinda set her jaw and put the temptation away: power was best used discreetly, and Asselin could be controlled through other means. She would not have wished Eliza to disappear, but it drew Asselin’s attention elsewhere, and that was a gift not to be overlooked.

She had yet to confirm a meeting betwixt Asselin and the Khazarian countess, even with Viktor’s help, nor had guarded inquiries into the young lord’s finances turned up any hint of proof to back her theory of conspiracy between the two. That, too, rankled, though with more of a challenging itch than genuine irritation. Asselin was a surprisingly worthy adversary, his skill at dissembling nearly equal to her own—equal, perhaps, had she not borne the witchpower within her as an unseen weapon. Belinda liked him for his skill and loathed him for what knowledge about her he owned; that she fully intended to bring his life to an unexpected and violent ending seemed a reasonable recourse to the dichotomy of emotion.

A new spill of laughter, less sharp, washed through her at the silent admission. She was unaccustomed to finding herself wishing personal revenge, and wondered if that, too, was the witchpower, or if it was the noblewoman’s trappings she’d worn the last few months. A serving girl manhandled by a lord had no path to reprisal, and in a decade of playing those roles Belinda could not, even with her haunting memory, recall a time when resentment had risen up against a man’s greedy hands. It was the manner of the world, and nothing was to be done about it. Sacha Asselin had come into her life at the strangest time she could remember, and it would be to his own health’s detriment.

Belinda shook herself, turning her gaze out a palace window to watch flakes of snow idle toward the earth. Asselin, half at Javier’s request and mostly at his own demand, searched for Eliza, and kept himself out of Belinda’s way. For the moment, that was enough. Until Viktor could confirm her suspicions with reports of a meeting, she would focus on tasks closer at hand.

Her thoughts conjured the guard, whose wave of lust rode her again just before he pushed aside heavy velvet curtains that protected Belinda’s alcove from the hall, and the hall from winter’s chill creeping in around the edges of lead-lined glass. Viktor let the curtain fall behind him, a questionable prudence that Belinda didn’t comment on. She could neither afford to be seen with him nor be seen pretending
not
to be seen with him, but this floor of the palace was poorly travelled, and the wing she’d chosen even less so. All the better to flip her skirts up and have the man on his knees before her.