Rider of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  “I hope that is a natural lake and not a hole scooped out by diggers to fill with water,” Imogen said.

  He laughed. “No, it’s been there for…probably longer than Aurilien’s been around. The park was planned around it.”

  “I am glad. It is good they plant hedges, but moving a lake is—seems wrong.”

  “I agree.”

  “Jeffrey, is this where you’ve gotten off to?” Diana Ashmore exclaimed, coming up the low rise toward them. She sat down on Jeffrey’s other side, forcing him to shift so Imogen had barely any part of the bench to sit on. “You’re neglecting your guests.”

  “It’s not that formal a party, Diana, and everyone seems perfectly happy.” Jeffrey looked down at where Imogen sat and put his hand on her waist to keep her from sliding off. “Have you been enjoying yourself?”

  “I am now I have such good company. Imogen, how do you like the park? I don’t suppose you have anything like this in the Eidestal.”

  Diana’s words were innocent, but behind them lurked a sarcastic and mean-spirited intent. “We do not have trees as you do,” Imogen said, deciding to reply to Diana’s overt meaning, “and we do not live in one place to make such a park. But there are places we go that are beautiful in a different way.”

  “Really? Tell me about some of them.” Jeffrey turned his attention fully on Imogen, and Imogen, who was looking at Jeffrey and Diana both, saw unexpected anger cross the woman’s face.

  “There is a place where the river comes over hills very fast. It looks like it boils and it makes spray that tickles your face if you stand close. Then there is the plains and the sky makes a blue glass bowl over it, all the way in every direction you can look. And there is a lake where the reindeer come. It has trees with needles, not leaves, and it is in shade all year. The reindeer drink at it and they bring their children. We do not hunt there.” Imogen felt tears sting her eyes and looked away. She was suddenly so homesick she wanted to leap up and run north until she was home.

  She became aware of Jeffrey’s hand on her waist, squeezing just a little as if trying to give comfort. “Your land sounds beautiful,” he said quietly.

  “Yes, very wild,” Diana said with a laugh that had an edge to it. “Jeffrey, did you name Clare Goodwin to be the ambassador to the Kirkellan? Perhaps she’s seeing these things right now! I know I wish I could be there.”

  “Speaking of being there, I thought you were leaving for Daxtry two days ago,” Jeffrey said, his voice noticeably cooler.

  “You’re not eager for me to leave, are you?” Diana laughed again, a wobbly sound that would have made Imogen feel sorry for her if she weren’t so annoyed at her rudeness.

  “Since I feel better when I know you’re in command of your forces, of course I’m eager for you to join them.” His expression was placid, but there was steel in his words, and Diana recoiled, fear flickering across her face for the briefest moment before she regained control of herself and smiled broadly.

  “How flattering! No, I’ve had word from my second-in-command and I’ve decided to stay another week so as not to neglect my Council duties. You won’t be rid of me that easily!” She patted Jeffrey’s cheek fondly, but she looked at Imogen as she did so and her eyes were angry and cold.

  “I’m so glad to hear that. Imogen, would you like to see the lakeshore? There are sometimes ducklings in the rushes.” He stood and offered her his arm, and Imogen took it; they left Diana sitting there, mute, and walked down the gentle slope toward the lake.

  “I apologize for her rudeness,” Jeffrey said quietly. They took a wide path that steered them away from strolling couples and groups chatting at the arched pavilions put there for that purpose, the guards following at a discreet distance. “She…” His voice trailed off.

  “She does not like me,” Imogen said.

  He made an exasperated face. “She’s in love with me,” he said, “or wants to be Consort, at any rate. She’s territorial.”

  “I think—thought you did not know.”

  “It’s fairly obvious, don’t you think? But we’ve been friends for years, and this…infatuation she’s developed only happened about a year ago, so I pretend I don’t notice so I won’t have to ruin our friendship by telling her off.”

  “I think perhaps she has already ruined it by how she is.”

  “I just wish I knew a graceful way out of it. I need her focused on County Daxtry, not distracted by my rejection, and—well, you heard her, she’s putting off returning to the border, probably because—” He stopped speaking abruptly and stared down at the edge of the lake. “Look, duck footprints.”

  Imogen wasn’t fooled. “It is because I am your friend and I am a woman.”

  Jeffrey nodded. “Like I said, territorial.” He put his hand on hers where she held his arm. “I’m sorry you have to be mixed up in this.”

  “I am not. I will still be your friend and it does not matter what Diana thinks.”

  He looked at her, unsmiling, his blue eyes serious. “Your friendship matters to me,” he said. She was conscious of how close he stood, of his hand on hers, and she made herself smile and say, “I did not think I would be the friend of a King. You are much unlike Hrovald.”

  His eyes widened, then he laughed hard. “Unlike Hrovald,” he said when he could breathe again. “Madam ambassador, that is high praise indeed. Shall we return to my guests, and see if Diana is right that they feel neglected?”

  No one seemed to have noticed they’d been gone. Diana, too, had disappeared, rejoining the group just a few minutes before they were all to return to the city, coyly saying she’d found a new trail and followed it to its exciting end. On the return trip, Imogen’s coachmates were more subdued, mostly speaking among themselves in quiet voices, but Imogen barely noticed, even though they frequently looked at her. She again stared out the window, but this time her thoughts were more confused than angry. She remembered his hand on her waist—that had been totally unnecessary—and on her hand—surely that indicated his sincerity and nothing more—and wished she knew what that serious look in his eyes had meant. Nothing, probably. The real issue was not what Jeffrey felt for her, it was that she’d experienced an undeniable attraction to him that afternoon, and that was unacceptable.

  She returned to the embassy. No one else was back yet. She felt irritable again; it was too late for her to join them, and she really wanted to see the track the riders had built. She cadged bread and cheese from the kitchen staff and took it to her room to eat, sullen and alone. Tomorrow she was going to put aside the ambassador and return to being what she really was. Tomorrow she would be a rider of the Kirkellan once more.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Imogen wavered over what to do about investigating Bixhenta’s claims for several more days. She told herself it was because she had too many demands on her time, between the track and sparring and social events and suppers and diplomatic functions, but the truth was she was afraid he was right, which would mean Jeffrey had lied to her, and that idea made her heart ache. Finally she decided she was being a coward. She considered sending a Kirkellan warrior to her mother with the message for security, but having made her decision, she didn’t want to wait more than a week for a reply. So she set off for the palace.

  The palace telecoders occupied a vast marble-floored room that had started life as a reception hall. The tapping of the brass arms, so tiny next to the wall-sized bases, echoed from the arched ceiling high above. It would be nice, she thought, not to have to send a message asking about Tremontanan military movements on a Tremontanan telecoder, but she was equally afraid to send the message by way of a public telecoder, so this was her only option. She sought out an inactive telecoder. Its operator sat in a narrow, battered folding chair, her hair pinned by two pencils, cleaning her fingernails with a pen nib. “Sign in for your turn,” she said without looking up.

  “This is for diplomatic business and I do not have to sign in,” Imogen said. She’d dressed up in semi-formal gown an
d soft shoes and had Jeanette arrange her hair neatly on her head, thinking people were far less likely to challenge her right to use the telecoder if she looked like an ambassador than if she wore the scruffy trousers and shirt she planned to change back into for her ride after this. The operator looked up, blinked, and sat up straight.

  “Madam ambassador,” she said. “You have a message to send, or to receive?”

  “To send, and then wait for a reply.” Imogen held out the paper she’d composed her message on.

  “I can’t read this,” the woman said.

  “You do not have to read it as long as you can send it.”

  “I’ll get a operator who can read Kirkellish.”

  “No, this is…confidential diplomatic business. I do not wish for it to be read.”

  “But that will take forever, sending it a letter at a time.”

  “Then it will take forever, and you should start now.”

  The operator shrugged, looked up Mother’s telecoder in her book of codes, and began tapping out the message. Imogen looked around for another chair and prepared to wait. She was uncomfortable, being so secretive, but she instinctively felt asking the Kirkellan for information on Tremontanan troop movements was something the Tremontanans would not like, even if it wasn’t exactly secret. After all, the Kirkellan were working with the Tremontanans, so they knew the troop movements. She worried about the telecoder operator working at the other end; he or she would read the message and would be in a position to pass along the information that Imogen was asking for military…again, how secret could this be if the Kirkellan knew about it? Even so, Imogen felt better not broadcasting her intentions.

  Bixhenta claimed Tremontane was preparing for invasion. The disposition of troops would tell her if he was right. She hoped he was wrong. She crossed her legs at the knee and rotated her left foot. She could ask Maxwell Burgess about Tremontane’s diplomatic relationship with Veribold. That couldn’t be construed as nosiness, since the mutual aid clause in the Kirkellan treaty with Tremontane meant the Kirkellan could be pulled into a conflict with Veribold if Veribold attacked Tremontane first. The Kirkellan ambassador ought to know how likely a possibility that was. Burgess would probably also know what evidence Tremontane had for suspecting the rebels were secretly funded by Veribold. Having spoken to Bixhenta, Imogen’s instinct was the rebels were independent, but he himself had told her to examine the evidence rather than take his word, and now that she’d decided not to accept the Tremontanan side so unquestioningly she felt she ought to do the same for the Veriboldan perspective.

  She yawned. She hadn’t realized how long “forever” could be. The operator looked as bored as Imogen felt. Several minutes passed before the operator sat back in her chair and said, “That’s done. Now we wait for a reply. You could come back later, if you want,” she added, with the air of someone doing Imogen an enormous favor. Imogen stood and stretched. It was tempting to go off for a ride, come back later for the message, but she didn’t like the idea of what could be potentially damning evidence lying around where someone who could read Kirkellish might see it. So she said, “I do not mind waiting,” and took her seat again.

  It was over an hour before the telecoder began tapping out its message. Imogen impatiently stood over the operator’s shoulder until the woman glared at her, then she went back to her seat and fidgeted. Finally the woman tore off the tape and handed it and the transcription to Imogen. “If it’s so secret, you should probably keep the original,” she said. Imogen thanked her and returned to her rooms in the embassy.

  The message was long, and the woman had written all the letters down without spaces between them—naturally, since she would have no idea where the Kirkellish words began and ended—so Imogen took pen and paper and recopied it so it was legible.

  TROOPS OF FIFTY ACCOMPANIED BY TIERMATHAS CONCENTRATED ALONG NEW BORDER NORTH. SOME DISPERSED INTO INTERIOR TO CONTROL RUSKALDER SETTLEMENTS. VERIBOLDAN BORDER NOT PATROLLED. TROOPS COVER ASSIGNED AREA AND OVERLAP WITH NEIGHBORING TROOPS. TIERMATHAS MAKE BROAD SWEEPS. OCCUPATION SUCCESSFUL TO DATE HOPE YOUR MISSION EQUALLY SO. GOOD WORK.

  It was unsigned, but Imogen knew her mother’s praise when she read it. She poked the fire into life and burned the folded paper and the tape. So Tremontane wasn’t massing forces along the Veriboldan border. Of course, it could still mean Bixhenta was right, that Tremontane would turn its attention on Veribold after securing its Ruskald border, but in the absence of evidence she was inclined to believe his fears were unfounded.

  She changed into her riding gear. Jeffrey hadn’t lied to her. The thought cheered her more than it probably should have. Let’s not be attracted to the foreign King, she told herself. He’s a good man, and a friend, and it doesn’t matter that he has those blue eyes and those broad shoulders and that way he smiles at you like…and now I can’t stop thinking about him. She pounded down the back steps and out to Victory’s new stall. She wished she was like Kallum—all right, not in the essentials, but he was so good at appreciating beautiful men without his heart getting involved. If it weren’t for the stupid flutter she felt in her chest every time she saw Jeffrey, everything would be fine.

  Her ride in the Park didn’t calm her as much as she wished. The placidity of the other riders, the way the pedestrians ambled along the paths, made her, perversely, more restless. Her thoughts alternated between reminding herself she could be attracted to Jeffrey without acting on it and wondering what it would be like if he felt the same about her. She kept trying to suppress the latter thought, only to have it spring back up every time she saw a dark-haired man ahead of her. Finally she determined to think of other things entirely, like how Victory had been the first to take all five hurdles at the new track without tipping one, and whether her new gown would be ready in time for the Spring Ball. She had been invited to supper that evening at the palace and she would have to talk to Jeffrey without any of her inner turmoil showing.

  When she returned to the embassy, she found a small pile of envelopes on one of the tables in her sitting room. She picked one up and turned it over in her hand. It had something written on it in curly script that, when she turned it around, might be her name. The others were variations on the first. Imogen broke the green wax seal on one and removed a piece of paper that had been cut to fit the envelope exactly. It smelled so strongly of violets it made Imogen sneeze twice. The paper was covered in curly handwriting she couldn’t read. A message for her. She felt a moment’s irritation at the sender for assuming because she could speak Tremontanese, she could read it too.

  What was she supposed to do with them? Simon was out of town for a couple of days, and she didn’t think this was something she should entrust to Mistress Schotton or one of the servants. She gathered up the envelopes into a neat stack. Elspeth could read them for her.

  She’d been so impatient about her messages she was early for supper; the east wing sitting room was empty. She went looking for Elspeth. All the doors in the hallway looked alike to her, so she knocked, and waited, and moved on until a door opened halfway and Owen poked his head out. He looked mussed, as if he’d been wrestling with someone. “Imogen,” he said in Ruskeldin. “Do you need something?”

  Imogen held out her handful of envelopes. “Someone left these for me and I can’t read them.”

  “Neither can I,” he said. He didn’t invite her in. The silence between them stretched. Suddenly Imogen understood. She covered her mouth to hide a smile and said, “Never mind. You…do whatever it was you were doing.” He shut the door, and she fled, not laughing until she reached the sitting room.

  Well. That meant Elspeth was unavailable. Imogen sat down on a sofa and tossed the stack of envelopes on the table in front of her. They slid and scattered, and one fell off the edge onto the floor. She bent to pick it up, looking at the handwriting as if she might miraculously become able to read the ornate script. Suppose these were important messages? She laughed. Important messages did not come drenched in scent.
>
  “Something funny?” Jeffrey asked, entering the room. “You look lovely.” He did not look lovely. He looked haggard and grim, lines dragging down the corners of his mouth.

  “You told the Council your decision,” she realized.

  He nodded. “Two new baronies to the west of Daxtry and of Avory, Daxtry and Avory to gain land so the Snow River flows entirely through their territories. I may regret it later, but for now it saves me a jurisdictional nightmare and might ease Howard and Diana’s disappointment at not gaining counties. Neither of them looked happy when I told them the news. Diana….” He ran a hand through his hair, disordering it and making it stick up in back. “Extending Daxtry’s boundary all the way to the west would have made it a third again the size of our largest county, and I’m not going to weaken this country just to make her happy.”

  “I am sorry,” she said. “It is hard to be the King, I think.”

  “Very hard,” Jeffrey said, sitting down next to her. “I don’t know how my father managed it. At least this decision was obviously the best choice for Tremontane. Sometimes you just have to pick from a host of good options—or bad ones—and weather the storm of disapproval.” He vainly tried to smooth his hair down again. She half-lifted her hand to help, then felt uncomfortable at the idea.

  “You are a good King,” she told him instead, and the blue eyes met hers with a directness she found uncomfortable.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” he said with a smile. “Half the time I think my councilors just put up with me because fate handed me the Crown. I certainly wasn’t prepared for the responsibility.”

  She shook her head. “I have watched you and them both. They argue, but then they stop when you speak. You have….” She struggled to express the word charisma. "It is to say, people listen to you even when you say things they do not want to hear. And it is not just because you are handsome and a King. It is because you are the person you are.”