by E. P. Clark
“Why what?” I returned, as playfully as Sera herself.
“Why would you make me an offer?” he demanded. “After everything that has gone between our families…do you think this is a way to win back,” he made a face, “him?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think it would work, and even if it did, I don’t think I’d want it to. I don’t want him back anymore, or anyway, I don’t think it would be a good idea. This has nothing to do with him.”
“You hardly know me, Valeriya Dariyevna,” he pointed out.
“True,” I agreed. “I’m afraid that this has little to do with your personal qualities, although they were a part of it. The Empress wishes me to make a match, an alliance that will help her and our family. You happen to be a good alliance, and she thought that…well, it’s not very flattering to me, but she thought that there were few out there whom I would not set aside at the first opportunity, and you were one of those few.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Well, I am hardly a model of patience…”
“No, I mean, why are you telling me this, Valeriya Dariyevna? Do you expect me just to…agree on the spot?” His voice was firm, and I was pleased to note the displeased expression on his face as he voiced that thought.
“I guess I thought you should know,” I said. “Impulsiveness is another one of my flaws, even worse than impatience. And no, I don’t expect you to agree on the spot. I just…didn’t like you being in the dark about this, and I thought you might like the chance to think it over. Weigh your options.”
“So you’re saying I’m free to choose, is that it, Valeriya Dariyevna?”
“No,” I told him soberly. “Neither of us is. You have to understand, Vanya: I do as the Empress commands. And right now she has commanded me to make a marriage alliance. If she had commanded me to make it with some, some stringy old goat who preferred the company of men, then that’s whom I would marry, but for a multitude of reasons, her choice has fallen on you. By the way, you don’t prefer the company of men, do you?”
He stared at me as if I’d grown a second head.
“You probably don’t know, do you? You’ve never tried?”
He continued to stare at me, looking more and more shocked, and also more and more stubbornly determined not to reveal something like that about himself, before finally giving his head a tiny shake.
“Well, anyway. They say it’s best to make sure of that sort of thing before you get married, rather than afterwards, so if you wanted to…experiment, I wouldn’t hold it against you and neither would any sensible bride.”
At this statement Ivan gave me a look as if one of us had taken leave of our senses, although he wasn’t sure which one of us it was. And now that I thought of the kind of cruelty that often passed between men in the name of, or in lieu of, affection, I realized that the crazy person was probably me, and that I probably would mind very much if he decided to experiment in that direction. An unspoilt virgin was still the best choice, when you considered the alternatives. But it was too late to take it back, so I didn’t. Instead, I decided to leave off that line of conversation and return to the possibility of a match between him and a woman; that is, me. “But all that is neither here nor there,” I said. “The Tsarina’s choice has fallen on you, Ivan Marinovich, and so I must do everything I can to bring this match about. And you…the Tsarina’s word weighs a little less heavily for you than it does for me, but it still weighs heavily. And your mother’s word weighs more heavily still. Unless you get up from this table and flee to a sanctuary this instant, I can guarantee, my head for beheading, you’ll end up married before the year is out. So neither of us is free, Ivan Marinovich, but I thought you should know that you have more choices than one.”
“And if I say no?” he asked.
“To my offer?”
“Yes. What if I say no?”
“If you say no today, that still won’t stop me,” I said. “I’ll have to try again.”
“Because of the Empress, or because you like to win?”
“Because of both,” I said. “Among other reasons. And also…” I held his gaze firmly in my own, “because I want to.” I paused to let that sink in. He had stopped looking stubborn and gone back to looking flustered, but also rather flattered. “So telling me no today isn’t going to make me quit this,” I continued. “But…” I released his gaze from mine and let us both look back down at the table, “I let him go, in the end. When he told me he wouldn’t come with me, I let him go. I would do the same with you.”
“That’s hardly comforting.”
“It might be more comfort than your Eastern bride can offer. If you really, really don’t want this match, then I won’t force it upon you, and I won’t let the Empress force it upon you either. But I’m not just going to drop it before I’ve even begun.”
“I see,” he said slowly. He stared at the table for a while in silence.
“Vanya,” I said, after I’d had enough of it. He looked up.
“It’s not the end of the world. I haven’t even officially made the offer yet. I just wanted you to know. You can think about it. But if you do accept…if you do accept, you’ll be a prince, a real prince, of a great province, and maybe even…you know I am the Tsarina’s heir?”
“Yes,” he said in a small voice.
“Well, it could happen, although I dearly hope it doesn’t, but it could happen that I could end up on the Wooden Throne, and then you would be my consort. But even if it didn’t, and I pray to the gods every day that it doesn’t, you would still be a prince of Stepnoye, and your children would inherit the province. You would never want for anything, your entire life.”
He gave me a look of distaste. “Are you seeking to buy me, Valeriya Dariyevna?”
“No. I’ll leave that to your mother’s merchant bride. But you should know that you would not have to suffer for this alliance. Both the Tsarina and I would see to that. And you could live wherever you want. If you wanted to live in Krasnograd, you could, or if you wanted to live with my family on the steppe, you could do that too.”
He gave me a puzzled look. “Why would I want to do that, Valeriya Dariyevna?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Some men…it is possible for a man to be settled too close to his mother, after he is married. Some men prefer to make their households elsewhere, when they have the chance.”
“But then I would just be…a hanger-on in your parents’ house, rather than my own!”
“No,” I said. “If you married me, Ivan Marinovich, you would no longer be a hanger-on, Princess Velikokrasnova’s ill-advised love-child. You would be Prince Stepnoy, and the head of the Stepnoye household in your own right.”
“I believe your father is Prince Stepnoy, Valeriya Dariyevna, and would be the head of the household.”
I grinned again at this show of spirit. “My father may be the current Prince Stepnoy, but I rule the steppe, as everyone knows. And my husband would be at my side. Think on it, Ivan Marinovich. As I said, you are likely to get other offers. But you are unlikely to get any other offers that would allow you this much freedom. On the steppe we go with the wind, Ivan Marinovich, the men as well as the women, and rule with a light hand. No one is kept cloistered up in towers and bowers and barracks. You would be a ruler in your own right, Ivan Marinovich, but the ruler of a free people who would ask little of you in return other than that you defend their freedom.”
Something flared in his eyes then, and I knew that, although he was likely to resist for a good while longer, I might very well have just won his hand. It gave me a queer feeling. I suspected it was excitement. By the look in his eyes, the same queer feeling was fluttering in his belly, coursing through his veins, but he knew even less what to do with it than I did.
He stood up. “May I go, Valeriya Dariyevna?”
“Of course,” I said, standing up as well. “Are you very angry, then, Ivan Marinovich?”
He shook his head, but as if to clear it, not to deny my word
s. “I…I don’t know, Valeriya Dariyevna. I honestly don’t know what to think. I want…I have to think on this.”
“Then think on it,” I said. “And if you have questions, ask them.”
“I don’t have any questions.”
“Well, you might by tomorrow,” I said. “Meet me again tomorrow morning, and you can ask them then.”
“You expect me…you expect me just to come and train with you, as if nothing has happened?”
“Sure,” I said. “No point in losing a good training partner. And you might have questions. And you might want to get to know me better.”
He looked startled at this thought, but after a moment said that he would come, unless his mother arrived early and prevented it. I said I would be waiting for him, and then I watched him walk out of the tavern and leave. I thought he was walking differently than when he had come in, as if the mere fact of my proposal had made him more of a man than he had been before. Once he was out of sight, I left a few coins on the table as a reward for the serving girl who had so assiduously kept herself and everyone else away from us, and left.
***
When I returned to my chambers I found a serving girl waiting for me with word that the Empress wished to speak with me, which saved me the trouble of requesting an audience myself, so as soon as I had washed off a bit and changed into a clean shirt, I set off in the direction of Sera’s chambers. I found her pacing her front room, looking much better than she had since I had arrived.
“The Princess Council is tomorrow,” she said. “We must prepare. Where have you been?”
“With Ivan Marinovich.”
She stopped pacing and raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And have you made any progress there?”
“Maybe. And I have three things to tell you.”
“Well, spit it out then.” She made an impatient motion with her hand. “But quickly. We need to decide what we’re going to do about the Princess Council.”
“Very well,” I said. “The first is that Ivan Marinovich knows what we’re up to.” Her face darkened at that, so I proceeded hastily before she could express her displeasure. “The second is that I think his mother is up to something—something to do with the slave trade, perhaps.” Her face darkened even further, so I pressed on. “And the third is that I think Mirochka might be gifted.”
At that her face cleared, although I could tell that she would return to the first two items in short order. “Gifted?” she asked. “What makes you think that? Has she ever shown any signs before?”
“No. Not that I had noticed. But this morning she had a dream about what I had been thinking. I had been thinking about my upcoming journey while she slept, and she suddenly woke up and asked me about my journey, and told me several things she had seen in her dream that matched what I had been thinking about. I can’t believe it was just coincidence.”
“I see,” said Sera after a moment. She thought for a bit more. “It doesn’t sound exactly like any manifestation of our family’s gifts that I’ve heard of before.”
“I know. But when they show themselves, they do so differently for each person. Some could foresee, and some could farsee, and some could see into the hearts of women, but as I understand it, it was different for each one. This seems close enough, does it not?”
“I suppose,” she said. “Although just one instance…we shall have to see if it happens again to be sure.”
“I suppose none of the boys have shown any signs?”
She shook her head. “No, unfortunately not, although that’s not surprising—it hardly ever shows itself in the male line. I keep hoping, though…My mother never showed any signs of being gifted, and my own gift is so weak it hardly even deserves the name, which I always found so strange. You would think that direct descendants of Krasnoslava and Darya Krasnoslavovna would be sure to have at least some gift…But the only person who has ever shown any traces of it is you.”
“Not this again!”
She picked a scroll off the small table by the stove. “What can you tell me about the person who wrote this scroll?”
I looked it over. “Nobility from the coast. I can’t remember her name right now, but probably Princess Primorskaya’s third-sister once removed, the one who’s out of favor with her family right now. Writing to you in haste in response to your request for information, but she can’t tell you much, and what she did tell you is puzzling, not useful.”
Sera took it back from me and looked it over too. “How did you know? There’s not even anything about the Primorskaya family on the seal. And as for the rest…”
“The seal was made at a waystation somewhere along the Breathing Sea. All the coastal waystations use that symbol of a ship for their seals; I’ve seen it before. But the directions on the outside just say ‘To the Empress,’ and are written in the hand of someone who writes a lot, but is not a scribe. An actual waystation mistress would most likely write with a coarse hand, if she wrote at all, and for something like this she’d probably hire a scribe. So someone who is trained in writing, who writes frequently, and who directs her own letters. A noblewoman, then, but one without scribes and serving women taking care of this kind of thing for her. A commoner or a scribe would also give you a much longer title. Only a family member or one of your closest councilors would address you so briefly, but it seems unlikely that a close councilor would be sending you letters from a seaside waystation. Princess Primorskaya’s third-sister once removed, however, is family and was even fostered here for a time. She fell out of favor with her close kin when she asked to be allowed to remain here in Krasnograd and serve you rather than return home and make an arranged match. But then, if I remember correctly, she did return home, but she didn’t make the arranged match, nor has she been living with the Princess. So I have to assume that she is serving you in some way up there, probably gathering information.
“And here she has sent you information, but the scroll is slender, so it can’t be much. The paper is the same paper you have there on your desk, so my guess is that this is part of the scroll you sent her first—she’s just reusing the paper from your original message. Judging by the staining and the wear, as well as the waystation seal, the scroll was sent by regular caravan, not special courier. Someone like our third-sister wouldn’t have easy access to an Imperial messenger, so if it were really urgent, she’d bring the message herself, but she didn’t. So it can’t be a matter of life or death, or at least neither of you thinks so. But it is something that’s weighing on your mind, because you have it sitting out here and it was the first thing you reached for when you wanted to test me. You don’t know what to think of it, and you’re hoping I’ll shed some light on it somehow.”
Sera stared at me in silence for a little while. “And you claim not to be gifted,” she said eventually.
“That’s not a gift, that’s just observation.”
“I believe Krasnoslava Tsarina said the same thing about her gift.”
“It doesn’t feel like a gift,” I argued. “It doesn’t feel like anything magical. It just feels like…I’m seeing what’s there.”
“I believe that is the essence of our family’s gift,” Sera told me, quirking her mouth. “The mirror that reflects only reality. I understand why you think there is nothing magical about this, but to me it looks awfully like a gift from the gods, not just the sharp eyes of a mortal woman. You could have guessed any number of things from those signs that you observed, but you didn’t. You guessed the truth. That is the part that is a gift. It is uncannily close to what Darya Krasnoslavovna could do.”
“But…” I began. She held up her hand to stop me. “It is a gift, or close enough,” she said. “Does it even matter whether it is magic or not? Let us continue to observe your Mirochka, and if she shows more signs of being gifted, let me know. If necessary, we can arrange for a sorceress and a priestess to tutor her in magic and the will of the gods. In fact, she should probably be schooled in those things in any case.” She stopped and looked do
wn for a moment at her belly. “I wonder…” she said softly.
“We will find out soon enough,” I cut in before she could develop that thought any further. At the sight of her daydreaming over the possibility of bringing forth a gifted daughter, my heart had given a terrible squeeze. I told myself that it didn’t mean anything other than it was bad luck to speculate about things like that, especially this early.
“Yes, of course,” she said, looking back at me. “Well, I am glad that Mirochka may be manifesting signs of our family’s gifts, and we will just have to see if they continue to develop. But back to other things. How does Ivan Marinovich know of our plans? Did he guess?”
“No,” I admitted. “I told him.”
“You told him?”
“It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
“It always seems like the right thing to do at the time to you, Valya! Will you ever start thinking before you act?!”
“Probably not. And it seemed like the right thing to do at the time because it was the right thing to do at the time. His mother will be arriving tomorrow, determined to marry him off to some Eastern woman, some non-Zemnian from beyond the mountains. He does not look with favor upon the match, but he’ll go through with it for his mother’s sake unless we move fast to prevent it. I wanted to make sure he knew there were other options, and to get him to start thinking along the lines of accepting our proposal. He will need time to think it over.”
“Why will he need time? He wouldn’t need time if you managed to turn his head properly!”
“I don’t think his head will be that easily turned. He’s incredibly innocent, and also dutiful, and stubborn as well. The three combined make a bad combination for seduction. Besides, he thinks he’s a bad match and the only offer he’ll get is the one his mother has arranged for him.”
“Whyever would he think he’s a bad match?”
“Probably because his mother and his stepfather have done their best to convince him that he’s a poor marriage prospect and not a real prince,” I said, my lip curling in involuntary distaste.
