Ten minutes into my weekly meeting with Vigrante and Alexandris, I wanted to scream.
‘… at least my Government is getting legislation through,’ Vigrante snapped.
‘How dare you!’ Alexandris said. ‘You blocked the extra funding for the orphans–’
‘I intervened on that,’ I said mildly.
Vigrante hadn’t even been against the extra orphan funds. He’d blocked Alexandris’s legislation because that’s simply what he did, as Alexandris spent these meetings being a burr under Vigrante’s saddle because that’s what he did. I’d had to use one of my precious overrules to push the funding through.
Alexandris flushed. ‘Apologies, Your Majesty.’
‘My lords, is there anything we actually need to discuss today?’
‘Yes,’ Vigrante said.
Joy.
‘Speak, please.’ If we kept to our usual timetable, there was about another fifteen minutes left.
‘It’s about your marriage, Your Majesty,’ he said.
‘As far as I’m aware, nothing has been decided. Unless you know something I don’t.’
‘Oh, no, Your Majesty! It’s just... you don’t appear to be giving incentives to anyone.’
‘I never intended to imply my choice through incentives.’
‘Ah.’
‘Say what you mean, Lord Vigrante.’
He made a good impression of worrying over his words. Alexandris chewed a pastry loudly.
‘Should you choose Princes Aubrey or Hasan’ – he smirked at Hasan’s name – ‘well… Othayria and Eshvon have never had Edar’s best interests at heart.’
Unsurprising, with our close ties to Farezi.
I arched an eyebrow. ‘We are well aware of this.’
‘My Government shares my concerns, Your Majesty. As does the Opposition, no doubt…’
Alexandris tensed.
I sighed. ‘What you mean to say – when we’re all turned grey, apparently – is you fear I’ll put my husband’s interests before Edar’s.’
Vigrante squirmed. He’d probably expected me to wait him out. Unfortunately, I’d no patience left today. ‘It’s a legitimate concern.’
Silence.
‘Would either of you have said this to my father?’
‘With greatest respect, Your Majesty,’ Vigrante said, ‘your father didn’t marry a foreigner.’
‘You wouldn’t be happy if I married from the Court, either. I already know the rumours: my husband will grasp for power through me, or behind my back. Yet I can hardly remain unmarried and childless.’
Vigrante turned red. ‘I – Your Majesty–’
‘Enough.’
He clamped his mouth shut.
‘Is there anything else to discuss?’ I asked Alexandris.
‘No, Your Majesty,’ he said, ‘as far as I’m aware.’ His enquiring look at Vigrante was mild and insulting.
Vigrante’s nostrils flared. He shook his head, then stopped. ‘Actually, a moment, if you please, Your Majesty? Alone?’
Finally. ‘Of course.’
I wished Alexandris well until the next meeting, ignoring his anxious expression, then faced Vigrante when the doors closed. ‘Speak.’
‘Half my Government wishes to reconsider your merchant legislation,’ he said. ‘I’m suppressing them. Somewhat.’
So this was what he’d been doing while I played the marriage game. ‘Has the bill given them cause for concern?’
Vigrante raised his palms. ‘The foreign nobility dislike Parliament’s distasteful influence. They seem equally appalled that we passed legislation to help the merchant classes.’
Laws proposed by me, so obviously none of these opinions had been voiced in my company.
‘How has the Opposition reacted?’
‘Alexandris has kept the Opposition in line,’ Vigrante admitted. Unsurprising, since the Opposition had been the bill’s strongest supporters. If Alexandris hadn’t kept them behind it, he risked facing a power grab. Vigrante wouldn’t be under the same pressure.
‘And what is your advice?’ I asked. Of course he wanted to drip in my ear.
‘I can delay a new vote until next week,’ Vigrante said, ‘but it will be put forward. I suggest compromise.’
His compromise, I reminded myself, was getting someone else to kill unwanted allies and enemies. I had to remember Brenna. I had to remember the Riavaan boy.
And I could never back down on something I’d already made law.
‘Unacceptable.’
‘Then you must make an example of those who want to repeal the merchant laws.’
I raised my eyebrows. His motives most likely stemmed from his pride: a new vote would weaken his position, and reflect poorly on him if Edar rolled back newly passed laws. We were already considered backward and unsophisticated without our politics and law-making appearing unstable.
‘I can suffocate the motion for a revote,’ he said, ‘and give you the associated names.’
‘People whose views no longer correspond to yours, perhaps?’
‘Perhaps.’
Was this how he’d got what he wanted from Uncle? Influenced him so subtly that it was impossible to consider anything else?
‘I’m not my uncle, Lord Vigrante.’
‘Believe me, Your Majesty, I’m fully aware.’
Matthias would have advised diplomacy. Xania would have kept Vigrante talking.
I couldn’t stomach edging around his webs any longer. It was time to cut through to his heart. The merchant legislation was my first political victory. How better to make me look weak than by overturning it? So why was Vigrante, after months of fighting me, trying to stop it instead of encouraging it?
‘What prompted this change of heart?’
He sighed. ‘Your uncle was much easier to work with.’
‘My uncle was easier to manipulate.’
‘You underestimate how many miss him and his Court.’
‘My heart bleeds.’
‘Think beyond his weaknesses, as you consider them. Rassa and the Farezi Court, for example, remind people what they enjoyed about your uncle’s reign: his generosity, his humour, his indulgence. As their nostalgia grows, they’ll resent you.’
Mother had always been secretly relieved that she’d never become Queen. Now I realised why. It was impossible to win.
‘The people you want expelled from your Government. Do they also fondly remember my uncle’s reign?’
‘So they say to your foreign guests.’
On Vigrante’s encouragement, no doubt. ‘What are you not telling me?’
‘I have no wish,’ he said, ‘for our Court to resemble Farezi’s – or any other. In this, I will support you, no matter my personal feelings.’
Unsurprising, since the foreign nobility despised the political system that gave Vigrante – with only a political title – his reach and influence. Something had alarmed him, and I was now the best of his bad options.
If I agreed to help him, I was no better than Uncle. I’d be turning my back on the merchants, and the boy murdered for my efforts. I’d be turning my back on Xania and Brenna’s vengeance.
Was I any better than Uncle?
This was the closest I’d come to having Vigrante’s support. For all I despised him, I couldn’t deny his influence. Having this sort of leverage over him could only make me stronger.
Mother had always warned my idealism was too rigid, that I’d have to sacrifice for what I wanted. What had Uncle dreamed of, his hopes and aspirations? Had Vigrante’s first compromise been too easy to accept for an easier life?
‘We will consider your suggestion, Lord Vigrante,’ I said, ‘with the care it deserves.’ I wouldn’t promise him anything for now – not after murder, and months of stalled legislation.
‘Very well, Your Majesty.’ He stood and bowed. ‘I await your response.’ If he was frustrated or resigned, he hid it well.
That was the problem: he manipulated so well, his lies and truth did
n’t look all that different.
Chapter Thirty
Xania
When I opened the door to the hall, my hopes for slipping by my family evaporated. Zola, leaning against the opposite wall, pointed at the double doors to the main suite. I sighed, but followed her back inside.
She hugged me. ‘Happy birthday!’
Mama had been determined to celebrate our first birthdays after Papa’s death. ‘He loved you,’ she’d said, when Zola burst into the first of many tears during her day. ‘It’s an insult for us not to celebrate being alive when he is not.’ I’d hidden my grief better, but Mama found me weeping the night of my birthday anyway.
If she had wept, she did it far away from us.
Mama’s hug enveloped me in her familiar three-rose perfume. ‘Happy birthday, my dear.’ I hugged her back, then briefly embraced Lord Martain before he turned uncomfortable. The table groaned under all the food. I was eighteen, finally of age. My family had insisted on a fuss.
Zola and I were third-generation Riija through Mama. We considered ourselves Edaran, but she’d passed down the heritage our family had kept since Great-Grandmama’s arrival here. I could swear in Riija, read and write it a little, and had a decent grasp of the culture and history so I wouldn’t humiliate myself if I ever travelled there.
I liked having some of the foods Mama grew up with on my birthday, especially the meat dishes, thick with garlic or ginger and shallots, followed by date syrup on thick bread or a cream dish drizzled with violetta honey. If Mama’s suppliers had a good trading season, there were candied rose petals, which I planned to introduce to Lia in the hopes she’d make them popular. Zola was less enthusiastic, but tried not to show it as it worried Mama. She’d been one of the first to marry outside of Arkaala’s Riija community, and she feared being in the Steps meant her culture would fade from our lives.
We sat around the table, talking and laughing, goading Lord Martain to eat until he sweated. He pressed a box into my hands, pretending offence when I protested. I unwrapped it carefully, pressing the bright paper flat, and stared at the necklace: burnished Eshvon gold. The set opal pulled light into itself, changing from green to red to blue with flashes of gold and purple.
‘This is too much,’ I said.
Lord Martain smiled. ‘You’re of age.’ He winked. ‘Don’t expect it every year.’
Zola bounced in her seat, grinning as she shoved a smaller box towards me. My suspicious look turned to outrage when I opened it and found earrings of the same gold, twisted to climb up the edge of my ear – the latest fashion, thanks to Isra. ‘You absolutely could not afford these!’
‘I have sources.’
‘I helped her,’ Mama said, and handed me her own present, ‘because this wasn’t purchased.’ From the shape and weight, it involved books. Her expression, mingled sadness and regret, made me pause before I opened it.
I couldn’t remember why the leather notebooks looked familiar until she said, ‘They were your father’s. He wanted you to have them when you were old enough. He said they’d amuse you.’ When I frowned, she added, ‘His words, not mine. You know what he was like.’
I did. I hadn’t thought about his writing in a long time. Papa had spent hours meticulously recording his thoughts: how to make his Treasury work faster and easier, new flower-breeding techniques, or simply recording his day.
‘Why now?’
‘I don’t know. He insisted I keep them in the vault until you turned eighteen.’
The vault was the last remnant of Mama’s banking career. She owned it, and used it to store our family documents and deeds. It couldn’t be searched without her permission.
I opened a notebook and flicked through the pages. At the sight of Papa’s neat cursive, a flowing record of days and weeks and months, I swallowed until the threat of tears passed. ‘Thank you, Mama.’
She came around the table to hug me.
Lord Martain coughed, and clapped his hands together. ‘Dessert?’ he asked, too brightly, his relief stark when I laughed.
I couldn’t resist a small jump from the passage into Lia’s study later that evening. She lowered her book and smiled. ‘Happy birthday!’ There was no fire, no tray, no refreshments. She wore a plain, rose-pink dress. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders.
My breath still caught.
Lia beckoned me to another wall. She tripped it behind a shelf of Othayrian blue and green porcelain figures, and took my hand as we stepped into the passage. Her thumb brushed my wrist. Everything narrowed to that pinpoint of warmth on my skin.
After several turns, she stopped and opened another panel.
Rows of candles filled the room. The room was larger than Lia’s private study, with dark furniture and two stuffed bookcases. A table was laid out with crystal, silver, and covered dishes. Drawn curtains kept the night at bay. The elegance hinted at outrageous money.
A Queen, trying to impress me. Papa would never have believed it.
A thin box, wrapped in blue and silver paper, nestled between dishes. We sat, and Lia nudged it towards me. I ran my fingertips over the smooth paper before peeling it open to reveal an unmarked mahogany box.
A slender pen lay on crumpled blue velvet. It was reassuringly heavy, black and stamped with golden briars. A tiny rose covered the body of the nib, finished with a delicate, thorn-like tip.
‘I can’t accept this. It’s too much.’
Lia’s face was a comical mix of disbelief and outrage. ‘Are you trying to give my gift back?’
She was a Queen, and before that a princess and heir presumptive; her gifts were carefully chosen. No one refused them.
‘These pens can survive anything. I used one as a dart, and the nib survived.’ She had the grace to look ashamed when my mouth dropped open. ‘I was ten. Not my finest moment.’
And that was the crux of the matter. Lia was frugal as Queens went. She fretted about her estate’s savings, and her household, and her tenants. But before they were royal, her family had been wealthy Seventh Step. Her father had never been forced to sell the crumbling family estate and rent a palace suite instead. Her father hadn’t learned how to work with merchants, and taken a Treasury job to improve his income. For all their simplicity, Lia’s clothes reflected her status. Her frugality was always for someone else, never herself.
She thought nothing of giving me a pen worth a significant portion of my dowry. And she didn’t care that I couldn’t give her something similar.
But I did care.
I shook my head. ‘It’s too much. Please.’
Lia sighed and took the box from me. ‘You need to accept this.’
‘I can’t–’
‘No, you need to.’ She carefully held the pen out. ‘Hold the nib away from you. Twist the gold band on the spine.’
I frowned, but followed her instructions. A needle shot out from underneath the nib, viciously thin and gleaming. Lia waited for me to figure it out.
‘Poison,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘If you’re in a situation without a weapon, buy time with this. Poisons won’t corrode the cylinder. Matthias keeps his in pockets sewn into his jacket linings. I have pockets sewn into my clothing. You’re important to me. My enemies are yours. It’s my duty to keep you safe, as you do for me.’
Cold trickled down my spine. She’d gifted me the means to kill.
The knife attack in the passages must still haunt her. We’d eventually got garbled information from the man who’d attacked me, but it had led to a literal dead end of bodies. He’d also briefly slipped into a Farezi accent, but it wasn’t enough proof for anything. It wouldn’t be the first time a trained assassin faked an accent to muddy a trail.
Matthias was furious when I resumed using the passages once my stitches healed, even though we now changed the royal wing’s codes daily. But the passages were mine as much as his. I wouldn’t be frightened from using them.
‘Thank you.’ I twisted the poisoned needle back into hiding, and return
ed the pen into the box with trembling fingers. I cupped Lia’s face and kissed her until she pulled back, laughing unsteadily.
‘I – I need a drink, I think.’ She poured wine, a perfect complement, I’m sure, to the meal neither of us touched. Such a waste of food.
My stomach felt full of spinning knives. The wine, sharper than I liked, slowed them a little. I’d take any form of courage right now.
Lia drank too fast, twining our fingers together. This back and forth hinting of more had gone on for weeks since our first kiss. It tinted every walk, every conversation, even when we were only reading aloud to each other. Pulling away after kisses was getting harder.
She never pushed, or cajoled, though her eyes made her desire clear. And slowly, slowly, the fear of doing more had eroded into want.
‘So,’ Lia said, ‘was my present the best?’
‘The crown makes you terribly overconfident.’
‘The arrogance makes everyone talk faster, so I can take it off quicker. It’s heavy.’
‘It was a close second.’ I smiled at her mock outrage. ‘Mama gave me some of Papa’s old journals.’
Lia’s face lit up. ‘Much better than a poison pen.’
‘I don’t know – with my history, the pen will probably come in useful.’ My smile faded when she didn’t return it. ‘It was a joke.’
‘I know, but…’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No more guilt. It’s over. I’m the one who got a knife to the chest. If anyone should feel something about this, it’s me.’
‘My apologies.’ I laughed at her grave tone, then kissed her again. It started off careful and slowly deepened. When we pulled back and gazed at each other, something changed.
Heat radiated from her as she slid behind my chair and coaxed me up. Her fingers slid down my neck, her mouth following close behind. I shuddered. She trailed her fingertips up and down my arms, then circled my waist, pulling me closer, still pressing gentle kisses to my neck.
I pressed her hand to my mouth, my kisses soft and fleeting until her breath was as unsteady as mine.
I wanted this. I was ready. This was mine, even if little else about us could be.
Queen of Coin and Whispers Page 17
