Eugenie’s smile melted away. “Dama Antonia, I choose to believe it is your vigorous care for me that so taints your words with insult.”
Quicker than a hummingbird’s flight, Antonia was sitting next the queen, kissing her hand. “Oh, dear child, forgive,” she said, raw and tremulous. “Injustice and treacherous circumstance ever raise my ire. Naturally, Anne bears no personal fault in these matters. We women are forever at the mercy of the men we love.” For that single instant, Antonia might have been a player entirely stripped of wig, rouge, and mask.
Astonishing that a quietly spoken reproof could induce so desperate a retreat. Gracious, Antonia had spoken slightingly to Dante
.
What could frighten her more than the vile mage? Surely she had numerous resources of influence and wealth to weather a minor pique from her daughter—who seemed the least likely person to hold grudges of anyone I’d ever met.
“Philippe’s bailiff told Ilario it was all a mistake. Anne was not in the least implicated in the unfortunate events at the prison,” said Eugenie, laying a hot hand on mine. Firm, far stronger than one would ever expect, that touch communicated a harmony of trust and sympathy. “What honor would I gain for Sabria were I to bend to innuendo and rapacious gossip aimed at me through my handmaids?”
Eugenie kissed her foster mother’s hand and picked up her tea, thus dismissing the matter of Ambrose and my detention. The queen had far more of kindness in her than I. Had Lord Ilario caught my hint about Antonia? Had he warned Eugenie?
Antonia snapped her fingers at me and pointed to Eugenie’s dressing table. Anger and spite sparked behind the dowager’s tight smile, a reaction that cheered me ferociously. Antonia’s stranglehold on Eugenie seemed exactly the correct place to keep pushing, as Duplais had advised. Her handprints were everywhere in the conspiracy. What did she gain from it?
I prepared the dressing table as I had been taught, selecting hairbrushes, combs, pins, and adornments to suit Lady Patrice’s wardrobe selection for the queen’s first engagement of the day. Eugenie’s engagement calendar, a stiff page of meticulously inked times and places, lay on the writing table where Lady Eleanor left it before dawn each day.
At midday Eugenie would dine in the Peony Courtyard with the wives of the knights and officers preparing to accompany the king on the spring campaign to quell a border uprising. Immediately following she would make a round of ten calls, one to the merchant headquarters of each demesne major in celebration of another successful voyage returned from Syanar. Journian nobles would escort her on her rounds, as a reminder that the king’s own house would claim first shares of the voyage’s profits. The round would end with supper at the Journian merchant guild. Just reading the plan exhausted me.
Antonia dosed Eugenie’s tisane with a red tincture, insisted she swallow two spoons of a peppermint elixir, and passed her a little box containing pastilles of pressed herbs to suck on, should she become nauseated during the afternoon’s activities.
As I brushed Eugenie’s luxuriant hair, I noted a few strands of gray, the clear signal of her constricting future. Her age must be near five-and-thirty. If she failed to bear her king a healthy child soon, she would be declared
cerrate vide—
an empty cask—and my goodfather’s counselors would force him to set her aside. The words must beat an unceasing tempo in her heart. Indeed, as I clasped a delicate carcanet of diamonds about the queen’s long white throat, her racing heartbeat pulsed beneath her heated skin.
Once Eugenie was dressed and awaiting her escorts, Lady Antonia ran me through my paces. She seized every opportunity to confuse me, listing fifty-six separate steps for drawing Eugenie’s bath, declaring that Her Majesty never wore green on Third Days, as it was bad luck, and insisting that her cup of chocolate before bed must be exactly warm enough to wilt a rose leaf, but no warmer. While never contradicting her foster mother aloud, Eugenie made sure to arch her brows in such gently humorous fashion as to reassure me that this was all a bit of exaggeration.
By the time the two women had departed, my head was bulging with minutiae. I retired to the salon with a journal I’d brought to record just such information.
My eyes wandered to Duplais as I wrote. As ever, he sat apart from the ebb and flow of ladies’ emotive conversation, giving serious attention to the mundane queries of all who approached him, jotting notes in his journal as if Lady Alice’s cracked teacup was on par with necromancy. So intense a mind. Such a singular focus.
“Good morrow, dear ladies, gallant gentlemen! Divine grace be with all of you on this delectable morn!” Chevalier Ilario bustled into the salon with his usual exuberant disruption. “Such news I have for you! But hold, I must prepare our shepherd.”
He moved straight for Duplais and settled into a long conversation, illustrating his exchanges with gesticulation appropriate to a marketplace orator. The chevalier’s overexpressive manner and ruffled finery—today expressed in vermillion satin and yellow lace—left the administrator almost invisible. Duplais might have been a door facing. How did he hold patience with people such as Lord Ilario?
Duplais had done his best to put distance and public hostility between us over these past two tendays since he’d fetched me here. By leaving me exposed and isolated, he had deflected attention from his own pursuits, as well as giving me an opportunity to prove my loyalties. Fair enough. Racing to the Bastionne to rescue me had compromised that carefully crafted position. Thus I had to live as if nothing had changed between us, push forward on my own to find answers to the mysteries that plagued me—and Sabria, too. For if I had learned anything from the trip to the Bastionne, it was that Lianelle had exposed no simple magical rivalry.
The Book of Greater Rites.
That was the incendiary agent, a match awaiting only my blood and Lianelle’s key to strike fire. And Mage Dante, the mercenary, was the touchhole, the meeting place of fire and nitre powder at the center of it all. I just could not comprehend the shape of the conflagration to come. I needed to know more about magic.
With Duplais unavailable, I was left with few choices. An unreliable link of ink, paper, and distance lay between me and Lianelle’s friend, Adept Guerin. Jacard lived in much too close proximity to Mage Dante. Perhaps the trustworthy ally Duplais had promised could provide answers. All in all, it was reassuring to feel that I had
two
allies here—even if we could not communicate freely as yet.
Of course, I had one other acquaintance who knew of magic. Dared I trust a man I had never met in person? He could be a Camarilla prefect, for all I knew. I’d heard not a whisper from my mysterious friend all morning. Unless . . .
A frisson of wonder washed through me, and I glanced over at Duplais yet again, only to find his eyes peering over his spectacles, straight at me. He ducked his head even before I did. A man of quiet intensity, of intelligence and education. A man of secrets, who made himself invisible, who could work magic yet buried his talents in mediocrity, allowing even his beloved mentor to believe him incapable. Who could be lonelier than one who lived so? Was it possible . . . ?
“Hear, hear, sweet ladies, generous gentlemen!” Lord Ilario climbed onto a couch to address the assembly—entirely unnecessarily, as he topped anyone in the room by a head. “I bear grand tidings! As these abbreviated days inform us, the year wanes, drawing down on our heads all the tedious business of harvesting and tidying up and fluffing pillows and blankets and such that entirely fill one’s head with dust and smoke and make one’s housekeeper and steward entirely grumbly. And with the change of season arrive the duties of demesne lords, which are also tedious, certainly, but do give one the chance to see a variety of people and connive a celebration or two or at least a festive dinner party along the way. But, then again—”
He halted abruptly, clapping one lace-draped hand to his forehead. “Now, where was I? Oh yes, the news! His Majesty, being a most diligent and gracious lord of his demesnes, has decided to make his quadrennial progress through the demesnes major of Sabria an entire year early—and we shall certainly not discuss the bellicose circumstances on the northeastern borders that might preclude such an extended journey next year, as they are quite too depressing to express before such a gentle assembly. Rather we shall rejoice at news that must surely dispatch this gloom that so blackens our fair kingdom. For King Philippe has notified Lord Baldwin that he shall begin his tour
here
at Castelle Escalon in a tenday’s time!”
Lord Ilario leapt off the couch, jostling the elderly dame who sat at the opposite end, and promptly began relating the same information in much elaboration to each person in the salon in turn. His ringing tenor was instantly drowned out by an explosion of conversation. The most reliable gossip had indicated the king was not expected at Castelle Escalon until the new year. And now this . . .
Duplais’ expressionless attention was again focused on his journal. I imagined I heard his pen scratching on the pages. Was my goodfather’s change of plans his doing?
I stifled an impulse to call out for my quiet friend. Satisfying curiosity—even so intimate a curiosity—must wait. If Duplais and I were to keep our secrets hidden from those who might use them for harm, I must tuck that particular speculation deep inside.
Restless, uneasy, I abandoned my trivial occupation and wandered into the courtyard garden. The day had changed. It was as if the ocher haze that colored the daylight had thickened and grayed, settling into a bastion of cloud on Sabria’s horizon. The storm was rising.
CHAPTER 22
20 OCET, EVENING
T
he queen returned to her chambers in late evening. As soon as her waiting ladies departed, she sagged, limp and exhausted, into a chair. Her head drooped onto her fist, the wisps of hair at her neck and temples damp with sweat. Her complexion was flushed, her lips rosy and swollen.
“Sleep . . . dreams . . . are all I can think of.” She drained a goblet of wine in two swallows, licking her lips as if to savor the taste. “The officers’ wives are such brave women to send their men off to war. I near drown myself in sleeping potions and silly amusements when Philippe is on campaign, and he is the king, who sits at the back, well protected. They must think me horrible and proud, as I could not stand and receive them individually. My knees would not hold me so long.”
“Is such exhaustion usual, Your Grace? ” I knew very little about pregnancy and didn’t want to raise an alarm unnecessarily.
She waved me off. “Everyone assures me it
is
quite usual in these early days—as normal as anything in such an awkward time. But such vivid sensations run wild in my body . . . such heat . . . this craving for a man’s—” Her flush deepened. “I’ve not experienced the like. Four times, it’s been. Perhaps
different
signals a better outcome.”
I wondered if she had managed to eat anything during the grueling day. I guessed not, but refrained from inquiring. Better to not annoy her with an excess of mothering right at the beginning. “Let me help you with your gown, and then I’ll bring tea and salt biscuits.”
“That would be lovely. Dare I say this bodice squeezes the breath out of me? Such would be a certain sign.” A wistful sigh blossomed into a smile. “There, you see, I am much too intent on interpreting my every hiccough! It is a dreadful, selfish way to live—and unhealthy, too, so Roussel informs me.”
“The physician seems a sensible man . . . and caring.”
“Very much so. I’ve held no faith in ordinary medical practice since my son’s death. Mages might have saved Desmond had Philippe allowed me to call them in early enough. And despite my blind idiocy in trusting Gaetana, Orviene, and Fedrigo, I’ve not relinquished my beliefs. But I felt I owed it to Philippe to try again with a scientific man. Duplais found Ganet for me.”
In the light of my newfound belief in Duplais, I found this information quite reassuring.
“So Master Dante does not prescribe for your health? ” Dante had paid particular attention to the queen’s medicine box when he’d barged in on Lady Cecile and me.
“No. The mage serves . . . other needs. I know he quite terrifies everyone in the household, but we have an understanding.” Sadness settled about her shoulders even as I unclasped the diamond-studded carcanet. “He does not coddle me or make promises he cannot keep. That’s refreshing.”
“You’re braver than I, lady,” I said, removing the diamond comb from her hair. “I cannot bear him even to look at me.”
“Foolish and stubborn, not brave. But the Creator gave us magic for a purpose, and if I am to endure a life I did not choose, then I shall have my way in the matters of my heart’s need. Even if it means I shelter one of the Fallen for a while. Put Dante out of your head, Anne. I’ll see he doesn’t trouble you.” She shook out her hair vigorously, as if to rid herself of unpleasant thoughts.
Would that was so easy! I brushed out the looped strands of hair, and she sighed in pleasure.
“Have you made friends in the household, Anne?”
“I’ll confess I am not . . . sociable . . . in the way of your other maids of honor, so I’m not familiar with anyone save Sonjeur de Duplais.”
“Whose presence must cause you great distress.” She reached up and patted my hand. “I’m sorry for that. He is very good at his tasks. You must speak to my brother. Ilario knows everyone. He can certainly make introductions for you.”