Queen of the Unwanted

by Jenna Glass

  —

  Mairah gagged as she emptied the last chamber pot into the privy, feeling sick and dizzy despite the rag she’d tied over the lower half of her face to try to block out the stench. She’d had to empty chamber pots when she’d first entered the Abbey of Khalpar, but that abbey was civilized enough to use spelled pots that blocked out the odor. Apparently the Abbey of Aaltah felt such luxuries were too good for its ruined residents, and though Mairah had more seniority than any other abigail in the Abbey—since all the experienced ones had been exiled and later formed the principality of Women’s Well—Administrator Loveland declared that she was to take up all the least desirable duties regardless.

  It was all Mairah could do not to pitch the pot in the privy along with its contents, but she’d tried that on her first day of duty, and received yet another sign that this abbey was nothing like the one she was accustomed to. She’d expected to be forced to fast and perhaps even beaten with a strap for her disobedience. She had not expected to be whipped like a criminal. Nor had she realized how much deeper the whip bit than the strap.

  She had never suffered such terrible pain before, and now her back was covered in scars far more vicious than the light ones she had borne before. Much as she would have liked to prove herself uncowed, the fact remained that she was terrified of Loveland, and for the first time in her life tried to act obedient and pliable.

  Well, to an extent. She had no intention of wasting away in the Abbey of Aaltah for the rest of her life. She still hoped that someday she could return to Women’s Well in triumph, although her path there would be anything but straightforward now. No matter what, she had to get out of this abbey, and the only way she could imagine winning her freedom was to convince Loveland that one of her confiscated potions was the key to undoing the Curse. When she was free, she could pursue her research into her spell to close the Mindseye—and if she could miraculously escape from Aaltah and return to Women’s Well without being caught, then her suffering here would be well worth it. And if not…Well, she could still hope that her special seer’s poison would prove her worth. She did not want to return to the Abbey of Khalpar, even as abbess, but she would greatly prefer that fate to the ones she saw for herself imprisoned in the Abbey of Aaltah.

  When she’d found the courage, Mairah had tried to convince Loveland that she had invented a potion that could be key to undoing the Curse, that she only needed a little more time and study to perfect it. He had first laughed in her face, then had her beaten for “making up stories” as he put it.

  And so Mairah had realized she had to aim higher than Loveland. Evidence suggested that King Delnamal was as eager as King Khalvin to see the Curse reversed, and if she could somehow get word to him of what she had accomplished, he might well snatch her out of the Abbey and put her to work. She still hadn’t the faintest idea how she would escape if and when she created a potion powerful enough to poison the water supply, but she could only face her challenges one at a time.

  So Mairah had watched and waited and endured, until at last she managed to persuade one of the Abbey’s customers to send a flier to the palace on her behalf. It was a daring and perhaps foolish risk, for if Administrator Loveland were to find out what she’d done, she was certain she’d be whipped again, and she didn’t know how she could endure such agony a second time. But convincing the king that she might have the means to reverse the Curse was her only hope of escaping this wretched abbey, and so she sent her message and prayed that it would be heard and believed.

  * * *

  —

  Queen Oona was still pale and exhausted-looking from her hours of labor, and yet when Delnamal stepped into the birthing chamber, her eyes glowed with unadulterated joy. In her arms, swaddled in layers of deep blue cloth, was a tiny, red-faced creature with wrinkled skin, tight-shut little eyes, and no hair. To Delnamal’s eyes, it looked barely human, but the midwife had assured him he was now the father of a healthy baby son, and Oona looked at the infant with such adoration that he felt a pang of jealousy. Once upon a time, she had looked at him like that, but lately she’d seemed barely willing to meet his eyes.

  Today, she looked up at him with that beaming, glowing face and said, “Isn’t he just beautiful?” in a reverent voice.

  “Yes, he is,” Delnamal answered, because that was clearly the only acceptable thing to say, no matter what he might really think. He had never seen a newborn infant before, had never realized how revolting they looked when so fresh out of the womb.

  He was standing more than an arm’s length from the bed on which his wife lay, and it was all he could do to keep his feet firmly planted when what he really wanted to do was turn away and escape the room. The air felt too hot and close, and he was all too aware of how his wife and the midwife and his mother expected a new father to look and behave. He should be sitting at his wife’s side, staring at that tiny bundle with pride and gladness. Not standing halfway across the room trying to persuade himself not to flee.

  Only the dowager queen seemed to realize Delnamal’s indifference toward the birth of his first child. Sitting on the far side of Oona’s bed, the dowager watched him with steady, reproving eyes.

  “Come closer and meet your firstborn, my son,” Xanvin beckoned.

  Delnamal swallowed hard—hoping Oona was too absorbed by the sight of the child to notice—and took several cautious steps closer to the bed. The infant stirred in Oona’s arms and made a soft cooing sound before settling more comfortably in the swaddling.

  That is your son, Delnamal chastised himself, willing himself to find some hidden depth of paternal love somewhere deep inside. What kind of father looks at his baby and feels nothing? He shuddered in revulsion at his own unnatural disinterest.

  Oona offered him a brilliant smile, lifting the swaddled infant toward him. “Would you like to hold him?” she asked, as if there were no possible answer but yes.

  It was all Delnamal could do not to recoil. Panic rose within him, making his heart race and coating him with sweat. Where had all the air gone? And how had his wife survived hours of labor in this stifling room?

  Oona’s brow creased with concern, and the dowager gave him a look that combined exasperation with command. Pull yourself together and hold your son, the look seemed to say, but he could no more force his feet forward than he could fly.

  “Excuse me for just a moment,” he rasped, taking first one step backward then another. “I’ll…be back. I’m just…I just need to…”

  He turned and fled the room before he could stammer like an imbecile anymore. He ignored every courtier and guard and servant who tried to congratulate him with either words or smiles, hurrying through the halls as if pursued until he reached the comfort and safety of his own sitting room, where he abruptly poured a large dose of brandy and downed it as if it were water. Then he downed a second glass for good measure, and poured a third to sip.

  The soothing warmth of the alcohol helped ease the panic in his veins, smoothing it out and sanding it down until it was barely noticeable.

  Surely, he reasoned, he was not the only man to feel such ambivalence toward his child when it was first born. Caring for and loving babies was women’s work, after all. Men might feel fondness and responsibility toward their babies, but he’d never seen a man cooing and cuddling one.

  He would come to love the child when it was a little older, when it looked more recognizably like a human being. When it had developed a personality he could bond with. Until then, he would let Oona do all the loving and cooing and cuddling, since it was what she was born to do in the first place. Something his first wife had somehow failed to comprehend.

  Delnamal breathed out a deep sigh of relief as his seething emotions calmed and settled. He was letting the changes that had rocked the world with the casting of the Curse color his judgment. Always before, there had been clear lines to separate what was a woman’s responsibil
ity and what was a man’s. Now that there was a woman on the throne of Rhozinolm and a pretender who called herself the Sovereign Princess of Women’s Well and a man needed to coax his wife to provide him with children—and might pay with his life for demanding his conjugal rights—the lines had blurred in ways that were naturally bound to confuse a man such as himself.

  That damned Curse was to blame for the panic Delnamal had felt in the presence of his son! Fathers were meant to be strong, stoic protectors of their children, not to turn into mush and coo and coddle them. The Curse had fooled him into thinking that his natural male detachment was somehow wrong and abhorrent, and that was why he’d fled the room.

  When Melcor had first brought him the ridiculous claims of the former Abbess of Khalpar, Delnamal had refused to even consider hearing the woman out. She was clearly desperate to return home to her own abbey, where she would be coddled and given respect she did not deserve. She would say anything to escape the Abbey of Aaltah. But if there was any chance—even the smallest—that she had found a way to reverse the Curse, then he owed it to himself—and all the other men throughout Seven Wells who had suffered so horribly from the effects of this Curse—to listen to what she had to say.

  Forgetting for the moment his promise to return to the birthing chamber, Delnamal rang for a servant to fetch Melcor.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Staggering under the combination of weight and stench, Mairah carried her stack of chamber pots out into the Abbey’s courtyard and filled a trough with water. Emptying the pots was disgusting enough, but now she had to clean them. By the end of the task, her hands were wrinkled and cracked, and her scratchy robes were splattered with shit and piss. She wanted to weep, and wondered how long she could maintain her sanity under such conditions.

  She rose to her feet, her knees creaking and groaning in protest after prolonged contact with the hard-packed ground, prepared to trudge back into the Abbey for her next menial chore. A well-dressed man stepped out into the courtyard, accompanied by one of the abigails, whose name Mairah hadn’t bothered to learn. The women of this abbey were as cold and unfriendly toward her as the ones in Khalpar, and she returned the favor. The man made a dismissive gesture to the abigail, then strode toward Mairah.

  She studied him as he approached, and something inside her instinctively recoiled. He was neither attractive nor particularly unattractive, but there was something in his expression and his bearing that gave her the instant impression of cruelty. Or maybe it was the strange twist of his thin lips as he regarded her. His bearing was regal and proud, but he was too old to be King Delnamal. Not that she expected the king to come to the Abbey to speak with her even if he was intrigued by her message.

  Mairah swallowed hard and forced herself to bow her head demurely, as an abigail should before any man, noble or common, who crossed her path. She did not speak, did not raise her eyes, barely even breathed. She couldn’t imagine how she must look to this great gentleman with her stained robes and her ruined face and her defeated posture. Something deserving of pity, perhaps, although he did not seem like the type of man who was prone to such soft emotions.

  “You are Mairahsol?” he asked abruptly, looking at her with undisguised contempt, maybe even disgust. His nose wrinkled as the breeze carried the stink of her stained robes to him.

  Mairah weathered a wave of humiliation, then reminded herself of who she was and what she had to offer. She might be forced to feign subservience, but pretending to be a beaten cur did not make her one in truth. Still keeping her gaze lowered, she nonetheless allowed a hint of her former pride to seep into her voice.

  “I am Mairahsol Rah-Creesha, the Abbess of Khalpar,” she confirmed.

  The man looked even more contemptuous. “Don’t put on airs with me,” he growled. “Here, you are Sister Mairahsol, an inmate of the Abbey of the Unwanted. You should be whipped for having the gall to attempt to send a message to the king. In fact, you shall be.”

  Even with her lowered gaze, Mairah saw the flare of lust in the man’s eyes and shuddered. A decade in the Abbey of Khalpar had taught her that some men took pleasure from hurting women, and unless she was very much mistaken, this man was one of them. Fear fluttered in her belly, but she did her best to hide it behind an air of certainty and confidence.

  “It is the Abbey’s administrator who deserves to be whipped,” she said, then silently cursed her lack of proficiency in Continental. By now, she could understand almost everything that was said to her, but speaking herself was far more difficult, and the message she had sent had perforce been written in Parian. She had no choice but to gamble that this dangerous and forbidding stranger would understand Parian. “He kept vital information from the king’s ears and confiscated a potion that could lead to the reversal of the Curse. I was sent to Women’s Well to find a way to undo it, and when I succeeded, I barely escaped the place with my life. I fled to Aaltah because I knew your king was as eager to see the Curse reversed as my own.”

  She could tell by the man’s sharp and thoughtful expression that her gamble had paid off, and he understood her. Her message might not have gained a direct audience with the king, but whoever had read it had been intrigued enough to send someone who spoke Parian to investigate.

  “I am Lord Melcor,” the man said with an unmistakable air of self-importance. “I am His Majesty King Delnamal’s personal secretary, and my time is of great value. If you have wasted it by drawing me here with falsehoods, a whipping will be the least of your punishments.”

  “I swear by the Mother and the Creator that I am not wasting your time,” she said while inside she quailed with terror.

  “And if I allow you access to the king and you waste his time…” He let his voice trail off and shuddered theatrically. “His Majesty is already most put out with your king for treating with the leaders of this rebellion against the Crown of Aaltah, and he will be more than happy to express that displeasure in some most creative ways. Now, do you still request an audience with the king? Or would you prefer to return to the safety of your existence here at the Abbey?”

  Safety? He called this safety? Mairah bit down on her tongue to keep a litany of retorts from escaping. She honestly wasn’t sure that a slow and painful death would be worse than an entire long lifetime spent in this abbey. She had dreamed of comfort and safety and even respectability as a member of the Women’s Well Academy, had been within hours of making that dream come true, which made Norah’s betrayal and her own subsequent downfall all the more bitter to swallow. She could not bear to imagine giving up hope of escape, no matter what the risks.

  “My king believes it is the will of the Creator that this abominable spell be reversed,” Mairahsol said. “I will play whatever role my king and the Creator command of me to return the world to its natural order. Therefore, I must speak to your king about my discoveries. You can be certain I would not have been forced to flee Women’s Well in fear for my life if those discoveries were not significant.”

  Melcor sniffed disdainfully. “I warned you before not to put on airs. You are nothing but a disgusting whore—hardly someone with whom the gods would entrust such a vital mission.”

  Panic swelled in Mairah’s breast as she saw doors slamming shut in her face, saw her last hope turning his back on her and leaving her trapped here in misery. She fell to her knees, hardly noticing the pain that shot through her when kneecaps met packed earth with too much force.

  “Please, Lord Melcor,” she begged, letting tears well in her eyes. For every terrible thing Mairah had suffered in her life, she had never before been reduced to begging, and her insides shriveled. This was more humiliating even than scrubbing chamber pots. But if there was one thing Mairah had proven about herself time and time again, it was that she was willing to do whatever it took to get what she wanted. If Melcor wanted to see her humbled and begging so he could savor his power, then that was exactly what he would ge
t. But his name would go on the ever-growing list of people she was determined to see destroyed, no matter what she had to do to accomplish it.

  “I will bring your ridiculous petition to the king,” he said, sneering at her even as his darkened eyes revealed his pleasure at her distress. “If it will entertain him to do so, His Majesty will summon you for an audience at his convenience.”

  Mairah all but prostrated herself at his feet.

  * * *

  —

  When she had lived in Aaltah, Shelvon had taken pains to avoid as many social calls as custom would allow—which, granted, was very few. As wife of the crown prince and then as queen, any invitation she declined could potentially have unacceptable political ramifications, leaving prominent citizens feeling insulted. She couldn’t count how many times Delnamal had made snide comments about her shy and awkward interactions with Aaltah high society, and that had not made accepting the invitations any easier.

  While she was a great deal more comfortable in Women’s Well, she was very much aware that she still didn’t really fit in. She was used to getting only the occasional invitation to attend dinners and balls—most of those invitations coming, no doubt, at Princess Alysoon’s urging—and when she accepted, she found herself as socially awkward as ever. She did not know how to talk to other women of her station, her upbringing in Nandel having inculcated in her the importance of being meek and quiet and unassuming. Open, lighthearted conversation—especially when inhibitions were loosened by drink—left her eying the door longingly.

  But something changed after the night of the attempted kidnapping.

  To Shelvon’s shock, instead of being scandalized that she had wielded a sword and actually wounded the man who’d attacked her, people began greeting her with every appearance of sincerity when she encountered them on the street. Even people to whom she’d never been introduced would catch her eyes for a moment and flash her an approving smile or nod.