Ally of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  The hall ended in a pair of wooden doors carved all over with the sort of abstract art Fiona identified as peculiarly Veriboldan. They had no handles, but their guide pushed gently on them and they swung noiselessly inward. “Enter,” the guide said, bowing.

  They found themselves on a balcony which ran the full circumference of the round chamber. It had no stairs that would allow access to the main floor some twenty feet below, just an ornate wooden rail supported by balusters carved to look like people. The figures were elongated, but still recognizably human. Fiona was sure, based on her knowledge of Veriboldans, that each was unique, though she didn’t feel like examining all of them to prove this. Maybe if she were bored enough, she’d change her mind.

  The room was comfortably cool, with a draft coming from waving fans mounted in the ceiling. The moving air carried with it the scent of cinnamon, a popular fragrance in Veribold. Fiona liked the smell and hoped she wouldn’t get sick of it before they left.

  In the center of the ceiling, a clear glass dome let in the early morning light, illuminating the floor below. Fiona let go of Sebastian’s arm and walked to the railing. She couldn’t see the whole room below, because the balcony jutted out over it, concealing the walls. What she could see were four pedestals with wide, flat tops and a single Veriboldan basin-chair. A woman in the white of an Irantzen priestess sat cross-legged in it, her eyes closed, her hands resting loosely on her thighs as if in meditation. The four candidates stood at the pedestals, all of them writing on sheets of paper piled half an inch thick on the pedestals’ wide tops.

  Fiona’s eye went instantly to Gizane. The woman had just dipped her pen in her inkwell and resumed writing a line of script Fiona was too far away to read. She seemed so normal. They all did. They looked like a bunch of overgrown children copying out their lessons in a strange round schoolroom presided over by a silent mistress.

  Fiona examined all the other candidates in turn, wondering if they were conscious of being observed. They had to know there were witnesses; it was part of the challenge. The Eskandelic envoys and a handful of Veriboldan landholders were already present. Nikani and Salena, elegant in cool silk robes over white trousers and shirts that were subtly different from their Veriboldan counterparts, drifted over to meet them. “It is dull, isn’t it?” Salena said in a low voice.

  Sebastian shrugged. “I understand it’s more interesting when the oral recitations begin. Not that I’d understand that either.”

  “They use us as monitors, to prevent cheating,” Nikani said. “It is difficult to falsify the exam when one has observers in the rafters, so to speak.”

  Fiona wasn’t sure about that. True, it would be impossible to smuggle in a list of answers without being seen, but nothing said a candidate couldn’t somehow get a copy of the exam beforehand and memorize the answers. Queen Genevieve had said Gizane had manipulated the election; that might be one of the things she’d done. Briefly, Fiona wished for an inherent magic that would let her read someone’s thoughts, though it wasn’t as if she could have done anything with the knowledge if she did.

  She heard the slightest creak as the doors swung open again, and turned to see who had entered. To her dismay, it was a group of white-clad priestesses led by Hien. They spread out like a seed pod bursting, drifting silently in all directions. Hien, on the other hand, stood still just inside the door, forcing the other women to step wide around her. She had her eyes fixed on some point directly opposite the doors. Fiona looked in that direction, but saw no one and nothing of interest, at least to her.

  When she turned back, Hien was a few steps away and approaching rapidly. Fiona swallowed hard to rid herself of the lump in her throat. Her hand closed tightly on Sebastian’s sleeve. “Fiona?” he said. “Is—”

  “Prince Sebastian North,” Hien said from behind him, making him jump. “Lady Fiona North. Welcome to the Election.” Her voice was flat, uninviting. She might as well have cursed their names instead.

  “Thank you,” Sebastian said, turning to face her and bringing Fiona, her hand still on his sleeve, with him. “It’s an honor to be invited.”

  “Walk with me,” Hien said. “I wish to know your opinion of the proceedings.”

  Fiona didn’t dare look at Nikani and Salena to see what they thought of this. Well, it wasn’t as if Hien could have them executed in the middle of the challenge of knowledge. Probably.

  Hien made a little gesture indicating that they should precede her. Since Fiona had no idea where they should go, this made her nervous, but Sebastian nodded to the Eskandelics and strode off along the curve of the balcony. Fiona was just as happy to let him set the pace, but she wished she could see Hien. Having the woman at her back made her even more nervous.

  They made it about a third of the way around the room, passing priestesses who looked at them curiously, before Hien said, “Stop here.” Sebastian and Fiona stopped. From where they stood, the priestess overseeing the challenge was visible only as the top of a dark head, and the exam papers of the candidates closest to her, Alazne and Bixhor, were white blotches against the pale blue stone of the pedestals.

  “Why are you here?” Hien said after a silence Fiona was afraid to break.

  “We’re representatives of Tremontane,” Sebastian began.

  Hien cut him off with, “Then you are who you say you are. This time.”

  Fiona winced at the sarcasm in her voice. Sebastian said, “I don’t know what you mean.” Time to brazen it out.

  “You deny having come to us under false identities before?”

  “We have never used false identities. We may not have been forthcoming about our entire identities.”

  “Then you are a doctor, your Highness?” Hien’s voice sharpened. “And Lady North is fatally ill?”

  Sebastian didn’t flinch. “A ruse to protect our true identities.”

  “To deceive us.”

  “For privacy’s sake.” Sebastian was doing well. He hadn’t lied at all yet.

  “And to steal from us.”

  “We never stole from the Irantzen Temple.”

  “A theft occurred. You fled in the night. We are not supposed to take that as an admission of guilt?”

  “You have no proof that we stole anything. Personal circumstances required us to leave the festival early.”

  Hien let out a hiss of exasperation. “You, Fiona Cooper who is now Fiona North,” she said. “Why did you come to the festival?”

  Damn. There wasn’t a way out of answering that question, was there? “I can’t tell you,” Fiona said, clinging to the hope that she might yet avoid compounding her guilt.

  “Then you are guilty.”

  “Sebastian told the truth. We did not steal from the Irantzen Temple.”

  “And from Gizane of the Araton?”

  Fiona closed her eyes. She wished Hien weren’t standing behind her, armed with who knew what kind of weapons, even if they were only words. “Are you allowed to harass the representatives of a foreign government?” she said. “If you have proof of your allegations, present it. Otherwise, stop trying to put words in our mouths.”

  Silence, again, for the space of several breaths. Then Hien said, “If you were innocent, you would answer my questions.”

  “That’s an invalid assumption,” Sebastian said. “Someone innocent of a crime who can’t prove that innocence might as well be guilty as far as the law is concerned.”

  “I have said nothing about the law. I simply want answers.”

  “Which we’ve given you.” Sebastian turned around, bringing Fiona with him. “What was stolen?”

  Hien’s lips compressed into a tight line. “You know very well, even if you will not admit it.”

  “Then you have no proof it was us,” Fiona said. “And we’re not going to admit to a crime we didn’t commit.”

  Hien’s eyes came to rest on Fiona, and Fiona managed not to flinch. “I trusted you,” she said. “You deserved to be at the festival. I am ashamed of both of us that you
failed to discover why that was.”

  Fiona opened her mouth to speak, but words failed her. Hien turned on her heel and walked away rapidly, forcing another priestess to step back or be mown down. Sebastian said, “That went better than I’d hoped.”

  “So she either can’t or won’t come out and accuse us of theft,” Fiona said. “I’m leaning toward ‘can’t’. I feel awful, Sebastian.”

  “You know why we’re here,” Sebastian said. “Achieving that is our primary purpose. Everything else has to wait.”

  Fiona said nothing. She watched Hien exit through the carved doors, walking stiffly, as if her back pained her. “But it matters to her,” she said in a low voice.

  “Not to sound callous, but should that be important to us, how Hien feels?”

  Fiona shook her head. “Maybe. I don’t know. Keeping Veribold from falling into chaos must be at least as important as…the other thing.” She didn’t know how far sound carried in this room, though their footsteps, at least, were muffled by the thick carpet. Not speaking their secrets even in semi-privacy seemed the best course of action.

  She looked down again at Gizane and her heart beat once, painfully hard, when she saw the woman looking up at her. Gizane’s eyebrows rose. Then she smiled, amused the way a parent might be at a child’s first steps. It chilled Fiona, as if Gizane could read her thoughts and knew Fiona was no threat. Well, let her go on believing that. Fiona turned her back on her enemy. Gizane might know all the rules of this alien society Fiona had been thrust into, but if she thought Fiona was harmless, she was in for a nasty surprise.

  31

  Fiona slept late the following morning, waking sharply the way she did when she was conscious of having missed some important appointment. She rushed out of her bedroom into an empty sitting room. No Sebastian waited impatiently for her to rise. Confused, she knocked timidly on his bedroom door and got no response. Surely he wouldn’t have left without her?

  She returned to her bedroom and discovered Georgette had laid out clothes for her, this time dark ivory Veriboldan-style shirt and trousers with an over-robe of North blue embroidered with silver cats. That might be a nod to the North sign and shield. The robe made her feel awkward, as if she were accepting an honor not actually due her. It must have taken someone a dozen days to embroider the robe, and whoever it was thought it would be worn by an actual North. If you married Sebastian, her terrible inner voice told her, and anger supplanted awkwardness. She donned the clothing anyway. As far as anyone here knew, she was a North, and she needed to behave like one.

  The sitting room was still empty when she emerged. Puzzled, she went downstairs in search of anyone who might know what was going on. The interchangeable attachés continued to ignore her, only flicking glances her way that might have been calculating or admiring or even dismissive for all she was able to read them.

  “Lady North.”

  Fiona turned to face Carris, who looked as unruffled as ever. “His Highness asked me to inform you he would meet you at the challenge this afternoon,” he said. “He has business in town this morning.”

  “Oh.” Business? She couldn’t imagine what business Sebastian might have in Haizea. “Then I haven’t missed the challenge.”

  “No, milady. The carriage will call for you after dinner.”

  “Oh,” Fiona repeated. “Thank you.”

  “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  The way he said it, so smoothly, as if he practiced in front of his mirror every day, made Fiona uncomfortable. “Thank you, no,” she said, and retreated up the stairs to her suite without looking back to see if he was watching her. She had a feeling Carris didn’t respect her, probably because of the stunt she’d pulled the day they arrived. Well, she hadn’t been very polite to him, and maybe she should apologize…or was that another thing royalty didn’t do, apologize to their inferiors? At any rate, it was too late now, because when she reached the top of the stairs, Carris was gone.

  It was late enough that even though she was hungry from having missed breakfast, it made more sense to wait for dinner. What didn’t make sense was staying in the sitting room for an hour. She decided to explore the embassy. That might also be frowned on as not something a North would do, but Fiona didn’t care. She wasn’t going to change everything about herself to fit these people’s notions of propriety.

  A little poking around led her to a library, dimly lit and windowless, stocked with elderly books bound in worn leather. Two chairs matching the books for age and wear flanked an ultra-modern light Device that made the whole room look tawdry, like a set for a historical melodrama. Fiona browsed the shelves until she found something marginally newer, though it was still most of twenty years old, and seated herself in one of the chairs to read.

  She’d heard talk of new Devices that would make the production of books easier, but no one ever knew more than that they were possible. Fiona couldn’t imagine how making books might be easier, unless it was Devices to carve engraved plates more rapidly than a human could, or to ink the plates more neatly. She turned a few pages. It was a history of Haran’s journey to the Eidestal, something that had coincidentally been on Fiona’s mind in the past few weeks. Maybe heaven was trying to tell her something, though Fiona didn’t think she was important enough for heaven to send her messages.

  The library door opened. “Lady North,” Emory said. “I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you’d left with his Highness.”

  “I took advantage of the late morning to sleep in,” Fiona said. “Should I not be here?”

  “The embassy is open to you. I’m afraid the library isn’t much used. My staff and I don’t have much time for reading.” Emory let the door swing shut and came to take the other chair, easing into it with the air of someone whose joints pained her. Since she wasn’t all that old, Fiona found that surprising.

  “At any rate,” the ambassador continued, “I’m glad to see someone getting some use from all these books.” She gestured, a weary expression that suggested the books felt put-upon at not being read.

  “I’m not much of a reader, or wasn’t for years, but now I feel I have the time.” It was true, to Fiona’s surprise. Roderick had thought reading a waste of time, and Fiona had always been occupied with business responsibilities, but she’d loved to read as a child.

  “I agree. I look forward to leaving this posting behind and taking up a peaceful retirement, sometime soon.” Emory leaned forward in her seat and fixed her gaze on Fiona. “You’re newly married, am I right?”

  “Yes.” She hated lying to this woman, but there was nothing for it.

  “I understand you were married before and divorced. That must have been a strain.”

  “Yes and no. It was a relief to divorce my husband. It was a strain to endure all the sidelong looks and even outright criticism.” Fiona returned Emory’s gaze, steel for steel.

  To her surprise, Emory laughed. “You mean as I’m doing now? I mean no criticism. I was divorced myself before marrying my late husband.”

  “Oh.” Fiona felt as if she’d been pushing against a wall that was suddenly removed. “Was it…a good thing?”

  “He found someone he preferred to me, but he didn’t have the courage to come out and admit it. So we had a couple of years of fighting and anger before I discovered the truth. It was an acrimonious divorce, but yes, it was ultimately a relief. As I’m sure you understand.”

  “I guess I do.”

  “And now you’ve married royalty,” Emory went on. “What a strange turn of events that must have been.”

  Fiona sat back in her chair. “You know I’m a commoner. Was a commoner.”

  “It was in the information her Majesty sent, yes.” Emory’s eyes narrowed. “She was subtle, but it was clear she meant me to be appalled by that fact. Forgive my bluntness, but it doesn’t seem as if your adopted family is all that happy about your marriage to his Highness.”

  Fiona thought of Emily and Great-Uncle Sebastian. “Som
e of them aren’t.”

  “That must be difficult.”

  Emory sounded like she was inviting confidences. Fiona, to her surprise, wished she could share them. “Love can solve a multitude of problems,” she said instead.

  “But not all of them,” Emory replied. “I won’t insult you by giving you advice, but I wish you well. You have a hard road ahead. I know what the Queen’s court is like—there’s a reason I accepted this posting. Navigating the eccentricities of the Veriboldan nobility is far easier than dealing with the nobles of Tremontane.”

  “Thank you,” Fiona said, not sure what else to say. It felt like vindication, to have someone else confirm her suspicious about how the nobles would treat her. It also felt like a blow to the face. Fiona hadn’t realized how much she’d wanted someone to prove her wrong.

  Emory stood, grunting softly. “You’re welcome to dine with me in half an hour,” she said. “I understand you were a trader and a frequent visitor to Veribold. I’d like your perspective, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course,” Fiona said.

  When Emory was gone, Fiona opened her book and stared blindly at the pages. That had been unexpected. If all the nobles were like Emory, Fiona’s problem would be solved. But it sounded like the opposite was true. She made herself focus on the words. She envied Haran, who had faced danger and misunderstanding and opposition with the rock-hard certainty of faith backing her up. Fiona wasn’t nearly so confident.

  She closed the book and moved to put it back on the shelf, then hesitated. She’d never thought of herself as particularly religious, but her recent experiences in the Irantzen Temple had changed that. She wished more than ever she’d been able to complete the festival. Well, maybe this book was a step in the right direction. She took it with her back to her bedroom.