“Do you think he knows? What You really are?” Tertulyn asked after a silence.
I gave her a repressive look. We didn’t discuss such things, even in private. “Who knows what our emperor does and doesn’t believe.” My casual dismissal came out more tremulous than I’d intended.
“Are you all right, Euthalia?” Tertulyn asked softly.
I smiled at my oldest friend. She only worried for me. “Wonderful. Aflutter with anticipation for My wedding night. A girl never forgets her deflowering—especially when it comes with bruises and bites.”
“It won’t happen,” she assured me. “Even His Imperial Majesty wouldn’t dare make You less than first wife.”
“He’s thought of some way around it.” I studied the letter again, trying to still the fluttering wings of fear by employing rational sense. I needed to be smarter than Anure. What are you planning, toad?
She bit her lip. “You’re so good at holding him off. You’ll think of something—You always do.”
“I always do, yes.” But the words rang hollow in my ears. Abruptly I missed my father, a great aching pit of loss opening inside me. He would’ve known what I should do. Without him, I had no one to call on, no one to save me. I could only do my best to rescue myself from this dire future. If I delivered the Slave King and his rebellious minions to Anure, he might be pleased enough that I could extract a reprieve from impending doom.
Regardless, Calanthe’s well-being and continuation took precedence. If Anure did call our waiting game to an end, I needed an heir to pass the orchid ring to.
Once I did that, I could face my own death with, if not equanimity, then a certain relish in taking Anure with me and saving Calanthe at the same time.
“Let me tend to You, Lia,” Tertulyn offered with a soft smile. “It will relax You and keep all Your sacred flowers intact.”
Her deft fingers and soft kisses would help to relax me, but it wouldn’t be enough, not with that feeling that I needed something else, something more. Besides, with the images Anure had put in my mind, even without magical reinforcement, the prospect of being touched sexually … no. Tertulyn cared for me, but even we had so many layers of formality between us. I didn’t want to be tended. What I longed for, what I craved somewhere inside my ice-encased heart, was for someone to hold me and tell me I wasn’t alone, that everything would work out for the best. To touch me out of love, and tenderness.
I rarely allowed myself such sentimental yearnings, and it was a mark of my exhaustion on every level that such thoughts entered my mind.
“Not tonight,” I told her. “You may go, to the parties or your own bed, as you wish.”
“Shall I help You into bed?”
I shook my head. “Take the rest of the wine with you.” Otherwise I’d likely drink it all.
Once she left, glad to have no witnesses to my despair, I allowed myself to lay my head on the table for a moment, sagging under the weight of it. If my eyes watered, that had to be vestiges of the glue-removal solution. Surely my heart had long since frozen too hard for something as tender as tears.
Then I straightened, went to the window. This side of the palace looked out only on the cliffside gardens and the sea. The rosy moon’s light traced long pathways across the calm waters, as if I could step out and walk along them, escape to the horizon and never look back. The scent of night-blooming jasmine rose up, filling the air along with the soft notes of the owls and nightjars calling.
I’d never walk away. Couldn’t, as all this fell to me to protect, and only my death would part me from Calanthe. Which meant I had to fight.
Resolved, I took myself to my solitary bed, praying to Ejarat to spare me the nightmares, if only for the one night. I wasn’t sure I could bear much more.
If I broke … what then?
* * *
Two of Anure’s warships sailed away the next morning—leaving Leuthar and his personal ship behind, and taking the provisions I so generously, if involuntarily, gifted them—and the waters of Calanthe breathed in relief, which meant I did, too. As soon as I felt them leave my seas, I convened my advisers and set my plans into motion. They involved a great deal of waiting, but such is the concubine’s lot in life, to spend her days waiting to find out how she’ll be used. Whenever possible, I employed my wiles to pump Leuthar for information, and he remained singularly unforthcoming. Either Anure had kept him ignorant or Leuthar had developed a caginess I hadn’t noted before.
I placed my bets on ignorance since Leuthar always seemed more inclined to indulge in the most degenerate pleasures of the Flower Court than to extend himself to work at anything. If I were Anure, I wouldn’t trust the man, either. But then Anure trusted no one. For that matter, neither did I.
I also leveraged something I’d held in store to keep Leuthar thoroughly distracted. It’s not always easy to judge when to access those things saved for lean seasons. What seems to be an emergency today might be eclipsed by a far worse one in the future. I went with my intuition—and the newly acquired voice in my head, which meant either magical assistance from the ring or encroaching insanity. No reason it couldn’t be both.
I summoned the Lady Delilah, something I never did. She had “ruled” the Night Court since long before my birth. We rarely crossed paths, in fact, as she slept during daylight hours to better fuel her nocturnal revelries. She also expressed zero interest in Calanthe’s internal politics, preferring instead to focus on exploring the world of sensual pleasure and her own intimate games of power and control. I couldn’t imagine how she hadn’t exhausted the possibilities in her nearly five decades, but according to Tertulyn’s reports, Delilah managed to keep her delights endlessly renewed.
I didn’t trust Delilah enough to make her one of my ladies, but she could be depended upon for behavior predictable within a certain set of boundaries. She took being the emperor’s vassal to heart and eagerly displayed her desire to please our cruel overlord by indulging Leuthar as proxy. Her ambitions likely reached to some fantasy of bedding Anure himself.
Though I strongly questioned her taste, the single-mindedness of her scheming made her useful. She also made a study of Leuthar’s various perversions and displayed remarkable inventiveness—so Tertulyn relayed to me—in catering to them.
Delilah and I maintained a relatively simple truce: She didn’t hurt anyone, she fed information to me via Tertulyn, and I turned a blind eye, allowing her full sovereignty over her shadow kingdom. I leaned a bit on that scale by asking her for this favor, so I didn’t do so without careful consideration.
Still, the odd whispers of the ring, along with a possible army of feral wolves descending on my peaceful shores with an explosive weapon that had dropped the walls of Keiost like fragile glass, convinced me that the lean season had arrived in full force.
Delilah agreed to assist, though she clearly disliked being called to attend me, and I rewarded her generously. Hopefully she wouldn’t withhold valuable gossip from Tertulyn in retaliation. I funded a small project to supply Leuthar with a new vice, yilkas, a powdered seed that produced exotic dreams when smoked. Combined with sensual pleasures—and fortunately Leuthar possessed enough physical charms to lure plenty of willing partners in that—a person could lose days, even weeks, in that haze if carefully tended. Leuthar wouldn’t be in any state to observe my preparations to elude Anure’s grasp while fulfilling the letter of his demands.
I also fostered an air of increased frivolity in the court, and throughout Calanthe, increasing the gifts to the Morning Glories and making sure they heard plenty of chatter about good things to come. We laughed off rumors of rebellions and dire whispers of the Slave King. If all went well, Anure’s forces would deal with the threat, and we would indeed go on, if not in true prosperity, then at least as well as before.
The emperor would reward me—and all of Calanthe—for our loyalty. The worst would not come to pass. If this Slave King slipped through Anure’s grasp, I would marshal the true might of Calanthe against him,
and only hope that that Anure would never catch wind of the power we held in check.
In the meanwhile, I wanted my people strong and happy. Their joy was Calanthe’s, so I did my part in keeping that flow untainted.
Every night I dreamed of Calanthe falling into the bloody sea and the chained wolf becoming that cursed man asking me to help him. No—actually demanding my cooperation, while my true responsibility burned around me. And every morning, in the sanctity of the dreamthink—when I could wake in time—I carefully put it all back to rights again, banishing him and that pitiable wolf to the anguished night where they belonged.
Begone ye foul specters. In the dreamthink, I have all the power. I wave my hands, my orchid ring a blaze of exotic splendor, its fragrance a faint counterpoint, shedding daylight and spice.
The wolf and man both vanish, taking their chains and pleas with them.
Calanthe blooms in serenity, the sea restored to blue.
There. All restored to harmony. I only wished it could last longer than the next nightmare, or that I could be like my ancestors and work those spells and ones even greater as the tales told.
As it was, I did what I could to disguise how each passing night eroded my foundations. I am the queen of masks, the image of all my people hope for. I wore blithe happiness like a wig or flower-strewn gown, covering the wrenching terror and dread that plagued me.
I knew. I understood it with that part of myself that had found the dreamthink and heard the message from the orchid. The wolf would soon be at my door, dragging his broken chains behind, along with all that went with him.
I would have to kill it. Put it out of its misery. But only as a last resort. Just as joy and pleasure fed Calanthe and her deep magic, murder and violence would poison her.
I’d carefully laid my plans, and then sat back to wait. If he brought his war to me, I’d capture the threat. Lock it up in quarantine and forever lose the key. And I knew just the tools to employ.
10
“Calanthe. Surely you don’t mean the pleasure island?” Sondra spoke into our astonished silence, which made me feel more sane—and helped me not growl in Ambrose’s delighted face.
The inside of my skull itched with frustration. Better that than dull disappointment. Calanthe. I had no intention of wasting my time on some pretty, flower-strewn island of traitorous weaklings when I could have Anure’s neck in my grasp. Fuck the Abiding Ring.
“Calanthe,” I ground out. “They rolled over to become Anure’s pets. None of our usual approaches would work.” I was the king of the miserable and oppressed for a reason. The fat and happy denizens of Calanthe, hand-fed by the tyrant and having their soft bellies stroked by him … they had no reason to throw in with us and every reason to betray us. I coughed, a burning scrape of my throat. Things were simpler when I could swing my rock hammer at them. “That island would be no foothold, but a disaster in the making. I won’t do it,” I got out. The throat-soothing potion was wearing off. Too bad I’d drunk all of it.
Ambrose’s face fell. “But the Abiding Ring—”
“We can’t possibly attack Calanthe,” Sondra explained for me. She, at least, understood me well enough to speak for me. “We’d be wiped off the beaches and tossed back into the sea before we could mount our vurgsten charges. The population won’t welcome us. Even if we succeeded in conquering and occupying Calanthe, the emperor’s entire navy would be staring at us across a relatively narrow channel. He’d come down on us like the fist of Sawehl and we’d be trapped on a tiny island with no resources. Old King Gul welcomed Anure with open arms, and the people there have never suffered any privation. They won’t love us, because we wouldn’t be saving them from anything. We wouldn’t have the support of the temples, or any of our usual inside allies. We might as well sail directly into Yekpehr, wave at the emperor, and let him kill us quickly.”
I nodded. At least the direct approach gave us a shot at Anure. Stopping at Calanthe would be suicide. I didn’t mind facing my own death—I looked forward to it, in fact—but I’d vowed to take Anure with me.
“Aha!” Ambrose wagged a finger at me and tapped the ledger again. “I perceive your doubts and am undaunted. You will succeed in defeating Anure once you have Queen Euthalia on your side.”
Euthalia. Why did I know that name? I didn’t and did. It was familiar in that odd way of dreams, when you meet someone in them that you know as well as yourself, and only realize on waking that they’re a stranger, that you’ve never met them at all. A trick of the mind. I’d never heard of this Queen Euthalia. Judging by Sondra’s expression, she hadn’t, either—and Sondra had memorized all the royal bloodlines as part of her education as a lady, before Oriel fell.
“Never heard of her,” I said, hardly growling at all. There. Polite and mostly patient.
“Gul’s daughter.” Ambrose raised and lowered his brows in a gesture I belatedly realized he intended to be salacious. “Old King Gul,” he clarified, “now feeding the fishes his people send to the emperor by the shipload.”
“The emperor drowned Gul?” Sondra echoed my surprise. “But Gul was his ally, nearly from the beginning. Even for the emperor it makes no sense to kill such a staunch supporter. And despite his other excesses, Anure at least has hesitated to bring bad luck on himself by directly killing a king.”
“You lot really did miss out on a lot, didn’t you?” Ambrose shook his head in bemusement, then held up apologetic hands when I scowled at him. “I know, I know—no news in the mines. The emperor didn’t kill Gul, just what he loved most. It’s said the old fellow died of heartbreak as in the ancient tales. In Calanthe, they consign their dead to the sea, with full observance and regalia. The emperor even attended and spoke the prayers to Yilkay. Gul’s daughter is queen of Calanthe now. Euthalia.”
“Don’t remember a daughter,” I mused. It shouldn’t feel like a lie, because—despite the dreamlike feeling of familiarity—I’d never heard of her. Of course, Calanthe had always sounded like a fairy-tale place when my tutors spoke of it. The Isle of Flowers. Untouched paradise. Blah blah blah.
“I remember her name now,” Sondra said slowly. “She was a little girl, the flower princess, when … well.”
When my family was slaughtered, Oriel pillaged, the rest of us sent to the mines—and this flower princess lived happily in her paradise. Right.
“She must be young still,” Sondra added with an opaque glance at me.
“Mid-twenties,” Ambrose inserted, nodding with enthusiasm. “And said to be very beautiful. Of course, Calanthean women are noted for their beauty, but she’s apparently exceptional even in that frame. Common knowledge has her engaged to the emperor—”
“Then she’s an enemy,” I broke in. Why were we even talking about her? She had to be either an idiot or as corrupt as Anure to marry the toad. Both possibilities made her no one I wanted anything to do with. “No one I want as an ally,” I clarified aloud.
“Reserve that opinion,” Ambrose replied with good cheer. “There’s more to her than you assume. Somehow she’s managed to avoid making it an official engagement—beyond the betrothal promise her father arranged—or marriage. She’s held Anure off for years. They call her the virgin queen.”
Sondra snorted. “In her mid-twenties with the famed pleasures of the Court of Flowers at the least crook of her finger? Not possible she’s a virgin.”
I didn’t know how Sondra could be so frank about such things. Just thinking about the things I’d seen … well, I couldn’t because it made me ill to call up those images. And my sister’s screams, how she called for help and no one answered.
A light flush graced her sharp cheekbones when she read my expression. “Apologies, Conrí, I—”
I held up a hand to stop her and she clamped her lips shut, glancing away, chagrined. She knew better than to bring up such things around me. I was honestly surprised she could bear to.
“The point,” Ambrose continued in a more sober vein, “is that Queen Euthalia has no offi
cial lovers to claim her loyalty, regardless of her actual virginal status. She maintains the appearance of keeping herself for Anure. She has no close companions, other than her ladies-in-waiting.”
“One of them could be her lover,” Sondra pointed out.
“But as you’ve noted, the Flower Court is far from prudish. If she loved one of her ladies, the tales would likely tell.”
“Or more than one,” Sondra replied. “I could repeat some stories about Calanthe that—”
She stopped when I cleared my throat, yet again.
Ambrose knew no such delicacy, pointing a finger at Sondra. “I know some good tales, too. Let’s exchange stories later when the company is less forbidding.”
I only wished I were that forbidding. Then they wouldn’t have gone down that precarious path in the first place.
Ambrose gave me a slight bow of apology, tapping the ledger again. “The old alchemist suspected that Euthalia is quite intelligent though she doesn’t always display it directly. He made something of a study of her. She apparently attracts luminaries of all sorts of arts and sciences to Calanthe, promising them sanctuary and her patronage. This confirms information I’ve gleaned from other sources, by the way.”
Ambrose’s “sources” could be what the moonlight told him, for all I knew.
“Friends of mine,” he clarified, reading my frown. “Human ones, who received invitations of this sort.”
“But not you?” This whole conversation irritated me. I was tired. And frustrated. This strange sensation that I knew this pampered queen and had forgotten something important didn’t help. It felt like trying to remember a name I knew well and had blanked on for no reason.
Ridiculous, as we’d obviously never met—we’d been children at the same time, in distantly separated realms. Though we’d shared similar stations in life back then, by the time we’d each passed our first decade, our life paths had dramatically diverged. Calanthe, the land of sniveling cowards, had turned up its belly at the emperor’s first frown. She’d never suffered a day in her life, in her court of pleasures and flowers. While Oriel had fought the noble fight and fallen.
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