by Terah Edun
Embarrassed silence fell before all three muttered sorrys and platitudes left and right. But it didn’t appease the man who still hadn’t introduced himself to the lady of the room.
Before the three wilting individuals in front of her could stutter any more apologies, Ciardis interrupted with a hasty “Excuse me, but who are you?”
He gave a flourish and a low bow. “I, milady, am your lady-in-waiting—Cedric.”
Ciardis stared him up and down.
Then she sat on the edge of her bed, mildly confused.
Politely she asked, “Don’t you have to be, well…a lady…for that?”
Cedric snapped up out of the bow so fast that Ciardis feared he gave himself whiplash.
“No,” he said, and she wondered if his voice ever went into an octave that could be characterized as lower than too high.
“My mistake,” Ciardis murmured in polite astonishment as she raised an eyebrow and surreptitiously studied his ornate tattoo of a striking snake on his face. The fangs encircled his eye, twisting down in sinuously graceful loops over the arch of his left cheekbone. The tail dipped underneath his earlobe and back into his hair to disappear into a strong silver hairline.
Mesmerizing, Ciardis thought as her eyes traced the delicate auburn lines that made the snake appear to bloom from thin gossamer strings that almost shined but didn’t quite shimmer with their own light.
Staring at this newcomer, Ciardis muttered to herself, “I really need to get some attendants. Or at least a doorman. Crazy people always seem to find me.”
She was thinking of the duke who had unceremoniously tried to assassinate her in bed early one morning, with no cause as far as she remembered.
“What was that, milady?” Cedric said in a polite if cautious tone.
Ciardis stood and crossed her arms with a quizzical but polite expression of her own.
“We can skip the pleasantries of why I need a lady’s maid. I know I look a fright. My hair is a rat’s nest from a week in a dungeon and then being thrown from wall to floor in my own private hell,” she finally said.
One of the haberdashers made a sound like a cut-off chuckle.
She slipped him a genuine smile. She liked individuals who actually had a sense of humor. Cedric, however, didn’t bend a single corner of his perfectly lined lips.
So she shrugged and continued, “Now we can get straight to the point of why it should be you who is the person to turn me from ragamuffin to proper consort.”
Cedric opened his mouth to respond.
Ciardis held up a warning finger in preparation for the words he had yet to release. “Let me warn you, Master Cedric,” she said calmly. “I’m operating on very little sleep, a whole lot of anxiety, no breakfast, and absolutely no time for nonsense. So I don’t want your résumé and I don’t want to know what kind of tailor you are.”
Cedric’s shoulders twitched in what she presumed was annoyance, but he didn’t interrupt her, and neither did he show his emotions on his face.
Which she liked. He was calm, cool, and collected. Even in the face of the imperial court’s famously temperamental Weathervane.
When she had paused long enough to indicate she had no desire to speak further, Cedric said, “Then I ask a boon, milady: What is it that you wish to know? What words would convince you to keep me on? Say it and those words are yours.”
This time it was Ciardis who was surprised.
Hmm, she thought. A man who can keep his confidence under pressure and is quite well-versed in court parley? My, my, Master Cedric, where did you come from?
Aloud Ciardis Weathervane asked, “Who sent you?”
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t hesitate. Instead with aplomb, her new lady-in-waiting replied, “The council of the Companions’ Guild.”
Ciardis hummed and trailed a finger up and down her left forearm as she thought about it. She had no quarrel with the Companions’ Guild. She was a Companion, after all, first and foremost, and they were her benefactors.
So I don’t think they sent this Cedric to undermine me. In fact, just the opposite, Ciardis mused. They would see it as their duty to do anything in their power to ensure my rise to power. After all, a Companion on the throne is a novelty.
Not exactly unheard of, but certainly not an accomplishment seen in this last century.
Smiling, Ciardis relaxed fully and finally said, “And why precisely did they choose you?”
Sensing her ease, Cedric’s face softened just a tad. Not enough to veer into the territory of friend-to-friend—he was much too well trained for that, she could tell already—but certainly of an individual who saw an opportunity and was open to reaching for it.
He waved an impatient hand at one of the men idling behind him. The haberdasher hurried forward, almost running across the carpeted bedroom floor, to drop to his knees and pick dresses out of the pile of at least a dozen garments that had been stacked carefully in his hands.
Soon the matron, too, was on her knees assisting until they found one particular piece.
It was silver, like Cedric’s hair. The two individuals on the floor each gingerly held up a sleeve woven with the brightest of threads as they turned to look up at Cedric with an appeal in their eyes.
Cedric, however, wasn’t looking at them.
Instead, her golden eyes met his as he raised a sharpened eyebrow with an almost challenging look in his eye.
In a voice that was pleasantly devoid of censure, Cedric asked the Lady Companion and Empress-to-be standing before him, “I would say this is why. What say you, milady? Would you agree this is the one dress you’d choose to emphasize your new rule before your courts?”
Ciardis blinked and coolly swept her eyes over the revealed dress with its smooth, flowing bodice and intricate beading, then she looked back toward the man who stood for all the world as if he were the benefactor and she the attendant.
Ciardis took no offense. Not as she carefully measured the worth of the dress with her eyes and the visual cues that radiated off Cedric with her senses.
She bit the right side of her cheek to keep from smiling and tipping him off that she knew precisely what he was up to.
Even though she had said time and again that she wasn’t a fan of games, especially of the late Emperor’s variety, this time she would play along. Because this was fun, at least to her…and apparently to him.
It was also a way for an employer to get to know an employee.
Tastes.
Measures.
Desires.
All in one setting.
Finally Ciardis said, “It would be the one if I was a debutante looking to land her first big family contract as a merchant. It shows prosperity of family, pride in homeland, and even a touch of intercoastal knowledge, as I can hazard a guess that this particular fabric isn’t native to our lands.”
Cedric nodded as he said, “It is not, milady. Go on.”
Ciardis waved an empty hand and continued, “This is not my style. But I think you knew that already.”
“I had heard that your tastes were more…staid,” Cedric said carefully.
Ciardis laughed. “I prefer to consider them elegantly simple.”
His lips twitched into an almost-smirk as he replied, “Perhaps I can work with that.”
Ciardis dipped her head in acknowledgment at the witty remark. “Good, now show me that I can work with you. Find me something spectacular for an evening’s work amongst the poor and the rich, amongst the weary and the tired. Most of all…find me something that projects strength.”
Cedric dropped to his knees and quickly dove into the pile before him, pushing aside the haberdashers with busy flaps of his hands. They stumbled back to the wall uncertainly as he got to work.
As he did, Ciardis turned away and finally went to wash up, saying to herself, “Find me something that projects strength…because the gods alone know we’ll need it today.”
25
Hours, not days, later Ciardis stretched weary
hands to the sky and twined her fingers together as she bent backward and loosened her weary muscles.
It was the crack of dawn, but she’d just finished another intensive night of meetings, during which they’d managed to convene another rushed conclave, if a bit smaller this time, where important individuals had been set to tasks in communities and estates across the empire.
Talking to herself mostly, Ciardis said, “It’d be nice if they ever decided to have those meetings at a normal time of day. At this point I’d just take any time before the moon rises.”
She was half jesting and half serious. But she knew that no one had wanted to be at another late-night discussion for the third night in a row. Things had just so happened to work out that way, and they had no one to blame but themselves. They’d been working from dawn to dusk trying to gather all the pertinent information they could about the old Empress’s battle plans and what exactly it would take to unlock her infamous ley-lines scheme.
Just as she wearily gazed at the bed with eyes that were already half-closed, and began to shuffle toward its beckoning warmth, the hollow sound of knocking on the antechamber door rang out.
Ciardis didn’t even try to hold back the moan of frustration.
She bet Sebastian wasn’t having this problem of random people showing up in the early morning.
“One just doesn’t show up in the Emperor-to-be’s chambers,” she said to herself.
Adding in a disgusted voice as steps approached her bedroom door, “No, just the wife-to-be’s.”
“What was that?” Cedric called out in a chipper voice as he practically waltzed into the bedroom from the adjoining bathroom facilities.
Probably on his way from laying out the day’s clothes, Ciardis thought, despite her weary state of mind.
“This is ridiculous!” she snapped, waving a hand at her door to show that she didn’t mean him. “I haven’t even gone to bed yet!”
“Well, would you like me to take care of it?” Cedric asked in a voice that conveyed not an ounce of commiseration.
It wasn’t that she expected one, necessarily. But it would be nice to have a show of solidarity. Especially from her own staff.
Cedric, apparently not oblivious to her darkening mood, gave her a wink and a smile. “I’ll get it, then put some coffee on.”
Ciardis gave him an irritated look. He was a morning person. She hated morning people. Precisely because she despised this time of day ever so much.
This situation just wouldn’t do.
All she wanted was her bed.
And, okay—maybe a massage, but mostly her bed. This angry knock promised she would not be embracing those soft sheets as soon as she would have liked.
“No coffee,” snarled Ciardis. “No visitors. I’ll take care of these idiots myself. If I have to kill them on my doorstep, they are not stepping one toe through that door.”
Cedric’s face changed drastically. He looked as if this time, he was taking her hatred of mornings quite seriously.
“No, milady,” he quickly managed. “I’ll send them away.”
“I said,” Ciardis snapped as she started toward the door with gritted teeth and angry lines lodged into her forehead, “it’s handled. Go back to what you were doing.”
As an afterthought she added, “I did so love the outfits you picked out yesterday morning, after all. It wouldn’t do not to have them ready. Even if I am on death’s door from lack of sleep.”
No response came from behind her. She didn’t expect one.
Ever weary, she trod on.
“At least they bothered knocking this time,” she muttered to herself.
She was grateful. Barely.
Just as Ciardis walked past her own bedroom doors and into the small chamber that represented her personal sitting room, Cedric’s hurried past her, cutting her off.
He wasn’t quite running to the door, but it was certainly a dash to get there before she did.
To accommodate him—it was silly to tussle with a servant unless she planned to kill him, after all, not to mention she didn’t want to fall over her own tired feet—she stopped midstride and watched from the center of the antechamber as he opened the door to let in her latest early-morning visitor.
It also proved the perfect vantage point to watch a rain of fire tear straight through the door and engulf poor Cedric in a blazing ball of flame.
Ciardis barely had time to dive to the right side of the floor before the flames went straight over her head and into the back bedroom beyond.
The heat of the fire that brushed her skin was so hot that she felt singed.
She would have been outright terrified if she wasn’t still staring in shock at the rapidly crisping husk of the man who had served her for less than a full day.
The fire was still being directed at his screaming body, the sound of which abruptly cut off as Cedric succumbed to massive internal and external wounds.
Being cooked alive brought about a right quick death.
For that, at least, Ciardis Weathervane was grateful.
Looking on, she watched in disbelief as the flames died down and the shoddily dressed attacker walked toward her with a ground-eating stride.
Agape, Ciardis barely had time to shake off her shock and stand as she shouted in frustration at the interloper, “What did you do that for? He’s the best tailor and dresser I’ve seen yet!”
The person, or rather the dragon, didn’t answer.
Instead, the Ambassador of Sahalia grabbed Ciardis by the upper arm harshly enough to bruise and dragged her backward into the bedroom, slamming the door back into place with a strong enough jolt that the solid wood cracked along a diagonal line straight across the middle.
Raisa didn’t care.
At the moment, neither did Ciardis. She was starting to wonder if she was going to lose her arm just from the force of the ambassador’s grip. The dragon was that angry.
“Raisa, what—” Ciardis started to say as her sense of unease outweighed her caution.
“Shut up,” snapped the dragon as she tossed Ciardis onto her bed like a rag doll.
Ciardis hit the sheets with a jarring thud, but to her credit immediately got up again. Half expecting an attack, not at all sure what in the name of the seven gods was going on.
Ciardis watched as Raisa paced the room, mirroring the almost-run Cedric had adopted before he died.
Ciardis gulped hastily and asked, “What are you looking for?”
Raisa spared her an irritated glance as she passed Ciardis for a second time, but she did answer her in a rough growl: “Spies.”
Ciardis decided her best option for surviving an angry dragon was to keep her talking.
“Spies?” she asked. “You mean like people listening to our conversation?”
“Yes,” Raisa said as she stopped in the middle of the room, threw back her head and sniffed with rapidly flaring nostrils that were hardened over with a fine layer of scales that were still translucent. To Ciardis’s fascination. She’d never seen Raisa like this before, almost if she were in a deliberate half-transformation.
And half-mad, Ciardis thought. She tentatively reached out to her seeleverbindung bondmates’ mind links, only to find to her consternation that they weren’t there.
She couldn’t sense anyone outside of this room either.
Ciardis realized quickly that Raisa was blocking her transmission. Intentionally, most likely. Rather like a self-obsessed goddess Ciardis had met just two days earlier, if she remembered correctly. In both cases, this wasn’t a good thing.
Things just went from bad to worse, the Weathervane thought miserably.
Aloud Ciardis asked, “Are they in the walls?”
To her own ears, she sounded crazy, but she had to keep Raisa talking. Had to find out what had her so agitated.
Raisa said nothing.
Ciardis repeated her question, this time with an added sense of desperation in her voice as more queries spilled forth from her lips. “What�
��s going on? What spies?”
“No, they’re not in the walls. Now please be quiet,” said Raisa as she lowered her head from its straight-up gaze and turned to look at the fireplace.
Pacing forward so quickly that Ciardis wasn’t even sure she saw the dragon’s feet move, Raisa was at the mantel, sniffing it.
“Sure looks like you think they are,” Ciardis said under her breath.
The dragon threw a look over her shoulder that said she was more than willing to contemplate alternate methods of keeping the Weathervane quiet.
Ciardis shut up. For her own safety.
Which Thanar would have said was a miracle, had he been there.
As minutes passed, she noticed a few more key differences about the ambassador’s appearance. Her hair was no longer neatly coiffed; in fact, it was mussed as if she’d run her fingers through it numerous times and then stood in the middle of a windstorm. It wasn’t just the digits on her hands that were extending into claws, either. Her toenails, at least two inches of razor-sharp lethality, scrapped against the uncarpeted sections of the bedroom floor with almost musical harmony. And her skin was practically glowing.
Not in a good way.
“Your skin is changing,” Ciardis remarked quietly.
Raisa turned away from her then. Almost in shame.
“I know,” said the ambassador in a rapidly deepening voice. “I came here in a hurry. I broke protocol by appearing mid-change.”
Ciardis swallowed harshly. That didn’t sound good.
“So why did you come?” she asked, a bit breathlessly.
The dragon eyed her with eyes that were transforming mid-glance. The pupils were constricting into a sharper slant, and her eyes were taking on a very reptilian yellow haze.
It made Ciardis uneasy.
Raisa seemed both more inhuman than even when in her natural dragon state and, at the same time, uniquely more vulnerable, if that made any sense. And Ciardis wasn’t sure it did, even in her own mind.
As the dragon opened her mouth to respond, a knock sounded at the door.
Not another one, Ciardis thought in despair. She truly wondered how many early-morning, before-the-rise-of-the-sun, visitors she was going to get this week. However many it was, this latest one took the cake in unfortunate timing.