The Queen's Weapons

by Anne Bishop

  “Sadi, you’re as bad as a Sceltie with a single sheep,” she said as she picked up the mail that had been left for her review.

  “I’m not that bad,” he replied. “Besides, I have two sheep.”

  She laughed. “Well, one of your sheep sent you a letter.”

  “Which one?”

  Not the daughter. She held out the envelope.

  He opened the envelope, unfolded the paper, and let out a whoop of laughter. Then he handed the paper to her.

  “Oh, Hell’s fire. He’s not even at the school.” She laughed with him.

  Titian’s drawing showed two fluffy sheep on the school’s green. One had Titian’s face; the other had Zoey’s. And the Sceltie busily trying to herd them . . .

  “Titian captured Daemonar’s likeness very well,” she said.

  “Hmm.”

  Suddenly he turned toward the door, an alert predator. A moment later, she picked up the psychic scent of her daughter. Agitated.

  “What’s she doing here?” Surreal said, feeling a pang of concern.

  Jaenelle Saetien rushed into the sitting room, barely giving Helton time to open the door. Then she stopped so fast, she almost lost her balance.

  “You’re here.” The girl sounded surprised—and not pleased—to see her father.

  “We’re often here,” Daemon replied.

  I am, Surreal thought. You’re not. Was the girl in some kind of trouble that would provoke a lethal response from Daemon and end with some idiot being executed? Was that why Jaenelle Saetien had hoped to find her alone?

  Since Daemon seemed willing to wait for hours for an explanation, Surreal didn’t break the silence. Lately, she and Jaenelle Saetien couldn’t seem to agree on the sky being blue, let alone anything else, so the girl had to be desperate if she was coming here for help.

  “There’s going to be an important dance at the school, and I need a new gown,” Jaenelle Saetien said in a rush.

  Feeling a little weak with relief, Surreal nodded. A new gown for a special dance made sense. She just wished the girl had shown more sense and control after realizing that Daemon was in residence. Being happily excited was one thing; rushing in like the city was under siege usually meant a Warlord Prince needed to sort out the problem in some bloody and permanent way. “All right, we can—”

  “I don’t want some fusty old thing from your dressmaker.”

  The room chilled at the discourteous tone. Surreal didn’t think Jaenelle Saetien even noticed.

  Foolish girl.

  “The young Ladies at the school have some preferred dressmakers?” Surreal said. Then to Daemon on a psychic thread, *You agreed to this, Sadi.*

  “Very well,” Daemon said, sounding cool. “One dress made by the dressmaker of your choice, whatever the cost.”

  Hell’s fire. She wasn’t sure she wanted him to agree that much.

  “However,” he continued, “your mother has to approve the dress before I pay for it.”

  “But . . . ,” Jaenelle Saetien began.

  “My wallet, my terms.”

  “But . . .”

  *Sugar, if you really want this dress, stop arguing with him,* Surreal said on a psychic thread. *His temper is sharp enough right now.*

  “Very well.” The words weren’t graciously said, but they were said. “We can go to the shops tomorrow morning—”

  “You have classes in the morning,” Daemon said, “and you’re not going to ignore your education in order to buy a dress when you can shop in the afternoon.”

  “But this is so important!”

  Daemon said nothing.

  “I’ll pick you up tomorrow after your classes,” Surreal said. “Will Titian and Zoey be coming with us? I imagine they’ll want new dresses too.”

  “How should I know?”

  The room went bone-chilling cold, finally knocking the girl out of her self-absorption.

  *Sadi, leave the room. Please. Let me handle this.*

  His eyes were glazed when he looked at her, but he said, “If you will excuse me?”

  “Of course.”

  He walked out of the sitting room.

  Surreal let out a shaky breath and looked at the girl, who had already shrugged off her father’s displeasure. “You cannot win a pissing contest with him.”

  “Don’t be vulgar, Mother.”

  “Don’t be a bitch, Daughter. I don’t do favors for bitches. Ever. Remember?”

  Jaenelle Saetien looked surprised, then a bit uneasy, as if she’d been testing how far she could push and hadn’t expected this reaction. And that made no sense.

  “You are standing on dangerous ground with him,” Surreal warned.

  Jaenelle Saetien tossed her head in a practiced move. “He wouldn’t hurt me.”

  Thinking of when she’d been a brash, foolish girl who had broken Daemon Sadi’s trust, she looked her daughter in the eyes and said, “Don’t count on it.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Daemon studied the drawing Surreal had left on his desk and didn’t turn around when she walked into his study after taking Jaenelle Saetien back to the school.

  “Maybe this drawing is more telling than I thought,” he said. “For years, it was the three girls whenever they could get together here in Amdarh. Now there are two of them and no sign of the third.” He looked at Surreal. “Jaenelle Saetien hasn’t been at that school for a full month yet, and she doesn’t know if her cousin and a girl who has been a friend since they were children are going to this important dance?”

  “It’s easy to become dazzled by something new. New place, new friends.”

  “Maybe.” He set the drawing on his desk. “Did you get things settled?”

  “Dress and dressmaker of her choice, and I won’t approve of anything that will have you bouncing off the ceiling.”

  He smiled because she needed him to. He’d stay long enough to support her through the purchase of this special gown that Jaenelle Saetien wanted for the dance. Then he’d return to the Hall. Or go to the Keep and get the help he needed to settle a temper that was now too sharp to deal with this childish performance that ignored everything his daughter had known since childhood about how to behave around a Warlord Prince.

  “We really should invite Beron over for dinner soon,” Surreal said. “At least we know how to deal with his kind of drama.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Surreal had thought the shopping trip was going well until Jaenelle Saetien spotted another girl who was looking for a dress. When that girl loudly announced that the gowns weren’t good enough for her to blow her nose on, let alone wear to a special dance, Jaenelle Saetien looked mortified that she’d been seen in that shop—and suddenly there was nothing that was good enough for her to try on, so they got in the carriage and went to the next shop on the list.

  Things should have gone well there. Jaenelle Saetien found a dress that cost more than a District Queen’s quarterly income, but the girl loved it and looked wonderful in it. And then . . .

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Weary of drama, Surreal walked into the town house behind Jaenelle Saetien, who turned on her and screamed, “Why are you trying to ruin my life? Why are you being so mean? I hate you!”

  Right now, the feeling is mutual, sugar.

  “Ladies.”

  Shit shit shit. That was the voice of the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan. She just hoped Daemon wasn’t in a meeting with one of the Province Queens.

  “If you have something to discuss, we’ll do it in my study,” Daemon said. “If you want to stand there and scream, then do it outside so that everyone in the square can hear why you’re in your current snit.”

  A dismissive word for such a storm of emotion. A cutting word coming from him.

  “You don’t know!” Jaenelle Sae
tien wailed.

  “And I won’t know until you’re ready to discuss the problem.” He walked back into his study but left the door open.

  Tearful and resentful, Jaenelle Saetien stomped into Daemon’s study.

  “Young Ladies feel so much about so many things,” Helton offered as he eased into the entryway from the sitting room.

  “Yeah,” Surreal replied.

  “Perhaps a restorative tea?”

  “For her or me?”

  Tiny smile.

  “I’ll let you know.” She walked into the study, determined not to participate any further in a battle that made no sense.

  Apparently Jaenelle Saetien had given her father a condensed version of the afternoon.

  Daemon gave Surreal a baffled look. “You told her she couldn’t buy a second dress?”

  “Yes!” Jaenelle Saetien looked triumphant. “That’s what she said.”

  “No, that’s not what I said.” Not exactly.

  Daemon turned his attention back to his daughter. “Jaenelle Saetien, if you want another dress, you can certainly buy another dress.”

  “I can?”

  “Of course.” Daemon continued to look baffled. “As long as you have enough money in your account to cover the cost, you can buy as many dresses as you like.”

  “But you’re supposed to buy it for me!”

  Shit shit shit. Now he finally understands, Surreal thought as a chill came into those gold eyes.

  “I agreed to buy one dress for this dance, and from what you told me, you found a wonderful dress,” Daemon said.

  “But I need two! Everyone who is anyone will have two!”

  “Why?” Surreal couldn’t hold back her own frustration. “Do you really think these girls are going to change into another dress in the middle of a school dance?”

  Jaenelle Saetien turned on her. “You don’t understand anything!”

  “I understand you’re being played by someone who is, at best, misinformed and, more likely, unkind.”

  “Enough.” Daemon’s voice rolled through the town house like soft thunder, but that thunder was the prelude to a potentially violent storm. “You have the dress for the dance.”

  “I can’t go to the dance. I can’t. Titian is going to Ebon Rih instead of going to the dance. I want to go too. I can’t be seen in that rag Mother made me buy.”

  The girl ran out of the room.

  “Well,” Surreal said, “I hope you don’t choke on the bill for that rag.”

  Daemon settled in the chair behind his desk. She sank into a chair on the other side.

  “Tell me what happened,” he said too quietly.

  She told him about the shop and Jaenelle Saetien’s response to the other girl’s comment about the gowns, and ended with Jaenelle Saetien choosing a second gown after they had purchased the first and announcing loudly that her father would buy that one too. The drama exploded when Surreal informed her that Daemon wouldn’t buy the second dress but she was welcome to do so with her own money. Apparently the loud comment was meant to impress some of the other girls in the shop, and Surreal’s quieter correction was humiliating and vicious.

  “Did you sense any power?” he asked, his voice still too quiet, too close to lethal. “Any spell or use of Craft that might have spurred this bizarre reaction?”

  Surreal blinked. “You think . . . ?”

  “Jillian’s behavior became erratic because of that ‘if you loved me’ spell. Is it possible someone at the school has wrapped a spell around our daughter and the other girls in the shop provided the key to releasing it?”

  A spell that couldn’t be detected by someone wearing the Gray or the Black?

  She thought about it, then shook her head. “The truth, Sadi? Peers are more important than parents right now, and even you couldn’t have competed with the opinion of that bitch in the first shop.”

  “What about putting Jaenelle Saetien in a different school?”

  “And have her hating us for the next few decades—or more—because we ruined her life? No, thank you.” Surreal hooked her hair behind her delicately pointed ears. “Those girls all come from aristo families. I’m sure they all go to that school, and that means they come from families with money. Jaenelle Saetien will be dealing with them for the rest of her life. If you don’t let her make her own choice about these girls, she’ll never forgive you. Not all the way forgive you.”

  “Would you have, when you were her age?”

  “If you had forced me to follow the choice you knew was better for me instead of accepting the path that had been my choice?” She sighed. “I would have hated you, especially once I realized you were right. That’s the truth of it.”

  Now he sighed.

  Best to tell him now. “I bought an estate a few months ago.”

  One eyebrow rose in query. “I haven’t seen any paperwork about it.”

  “It’s not a family holding. It’s mine.”

  He didn’t move. She wasn’t sure he even breathed. “And you want me to stay away.”

  She nodded. “But if I call for help, it’s because things are going to get very bloody, and I need your particular skills.”

  He leaned back, folded his hands, and rested his forefingers against his chin. “Explain.”

  “I purchased a run-down estate that had been owned by an aristo family who slunk away instead of paying their tithes to the District Queen—and who, as their fortunes declined and the whispers began, weren’t comfortable about being on the other side of a village that caters to one of the SaDiablo estates. Seems too many pointed questions were being asked by people of consequence in the village about how they were spending their fortune that they couldn’t afford to take care of the estate.”

  “Hayllian memorabilia?” Daemon asked.

  “Don’t know.” She called in a folded sheet of paper and set it on the desk. “That’s their name and what your estate manager knew about them. Or Lucivar’s manager, since Yaslana owns the deed to that Dhemlan estate.”

  “Are you going to live there?”

  “No. I’ll stay at the family estate when I’m visiting. I bought this place as a sanctuary for girls who were broken on their Virgin Night and need a safe place to heal and learn who they are now.” She felt the air turn cold. “It’s always tragic when a witch is broken, but the breaking isn’t always deliberate.”

  “Something compelled you to set up this place now,” Daemon pointed out.

  “Maybe it’s as simple as feeling like I can’t help my own daughter because she doesn’t want my help, but maybe I can do some good for other girls.”

  Daemon took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What can we do for our own girl?”

  “I don’t know, Sadi. Let her go to Ebon Rih. Let Lucivar deal with her for a couple of days.”

  “If she’s like this with him, he’ll drop her in a cold mountain lake.”

  She shrugged. “It might do her some good.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Daemonar sat on the riverbank, staring at a familiar waterfall and fighting to keep a rein on his tongue and his temper as he listened to Jaenelle Saetien’s tearful . . . rant . . . about a dress. She’d needed someone to listen, and she’d needed to say things away from the adults, and had asked him to bring her here.

  Now he knew why.

  When there was silence for a full minute—he counted—he finally looked at her. “Your father bought you a dress that cost more than Tamnar earns in a year, and you’re pissed at him because he wouldn’t buy another dress when you already knew he would only buy one?”

  “He was supposed to buy me another dress! Everyone else’s father—”

  “Whose father?”

  “Everyone—”

  “Everyone is no one. Who, exactly, was going to have a second dress for this dance? Give me
names, Jaenelle Saetien. If someone told you this, then that person knows the names of the girls whose fathers are so indulgent or so spineless that they buckle under a girl’s petty whining. So who is going to have a second dress for a school dance?”

  “You don’t understand!”

  “I understand that your father drew a line and held it, just like he’s always done. Just like my father does. You were testing him to see if he would give in to your hysterics about a dress, as if that would prove he loves you. But if he’d given in after he’d set the terms, you would have lost respect for him. He held the line because he does love you, and if you stopped being a whiny, selfish brat for a minute, you’d realize that.”

  She leaped to her feet, her hands clenched into fists. “You take that back, Daemonar. You just take that back.”

  He rose to his feet slowly enough to be insulting. “No.” He gave her a lazy, arrogant smile. “If you throw a punch at me, I’ll hit back. Do you really want to explain to my father why we’re fighting?”

  She hesitated, as he’d known she would. Then she came back swinging—verbally. “Everyone—”

  “I don’t want to hear about everyone. But let’s say there were a few girls who brought a second dress to the dance, intending to change halfway through. I’ve seen how long it takes you and Titian to get ready to see an amateur musical evening in Riada. If you’d brought a second dress, the dance would have been over by the time you left the changing room.”

  “That’s not true!”

  He’d had enough. “Come on. I’ll take you back to the eyrie.”

  “I want to stay here a while longer.”

  “I’m not leaving you here alone, and I want to go home.”

  “Are you afraid I’ll throw myself in the river?”

  “A few months ago, I would have said you wouldn’t do something that stupid. Now? Yeah, I think you would do it for the drama, to prove how unhappy you are about not getting your way about some damn dress.”