C. Murphy - The Queen_s Bastard

Belinda thrust those thoughts away, refusing to linger on the possibility or the fear or the hope, and instead plucked her partlet from around her throat to show Ilyana yellowing bruises. “Would a woman who could do a man to death let him do this to her? Is this what you’re so eager for?” Sharp inhalations seemed to thin the air, greedy eyes trying to stare and look away all at once.

“You bespelled him,” Ilyana snarled. “Maybe bruises are the price you pay for your magic, bitch.”

“Ladies.” The castellan, face bleak with anger and grief, stepped between them. “We are all too emotional now. Forget this, and let us behave with the decorum that best suits us.”

Yes, Belinda thought, the serving classes, so much more concerned with propriety than their wealthy masters. But she didn’t miss the castellan’s eyes lingering on her, or the suspicion and doubt that had been planted behind them. “Sir,” she murmured, and backed away, eyes lowered. There would be no time for a discreet exit, then. Ilyana would expose her to angry nobles looking for someone to blame. Belinda had no intention of dangling her slender neck in a hangman’s noose. She stepped into the first servant’s crossed hall off the kitchen, pausing there to consider the ends that needed tightening.

“I leave within the hour,” the coachman said from across the hall. Belinda raised her head, eyebrows lifted. “To bear tidings of the count’s death to the capital city.” He hurried down the hall, booted heels snapping against the stone floors. Belinda watched him go, then gathered her skirts. Viktor could not be found in her room.

27 June 1587 Isidro, capital of Essandia “I’ve waited twenty years, Rodrigo.” Sandalia whirls herself across her brother’s private rooms, fully aware she s giving in to the histrionics of a much younger woman. “Javier’s long since old enough-”

“Javier,” Rodrigo interrupts, “is his mother’s most loyal subject, and doesn’t itch for a throne. You haven’t been waiting, Sandalia.” He stands, cutting a deliberate swath across Sandalia’s stormy path to pour cups of wine and hand one to her. She glowers, knowing he’s trying to settle her agitation, but takes the cup regardless, sipping quickly.

The years have been kind to the prince of Essandia. In his sixth decade he’s still slender, with streaks of silver highlighting his temples and beard. Noble women still dance their daughters past him, and negotiations have never ceased between the royal families of Echon. Sandalia’s own curvaceous figure will be unlikely to fare as well over the next decades, but for now she knows she, too, makes a striking figure, especially at her brother’s side.

A side that is not supporting her the way she wishes it to. “I have been waiting-”

“Waiting suggests doing nothing. Complacency. Idle hands. You’ve gathered your strength, made the Gallic people love you-and that, princess of Essandia, is no small trick-kept Lanyarch’s heart beating from afar, and have raised a son to follow you. You have kept an army strong enough to stave off Reussland’s encroachments onto Gallic territory, and you have done so without crippling your people with taxes, or building their resentment so high that they refuse to fight in your name. Any…any of those things,” Rodrigo emphasizes, lifting his voice over Sandalia’s protests, “is not waiting. All of them together are preparing. You would have been a fool to move after Javier’s birth, Sandalia. So soon after Louis’s death. No one would have supported you, and Aulun would have crushed you and taken Gallin and Lanyarch in Lorraine’s name.”

“Aulun would have crushed me, and you, backed by Cordula, would have decimated the Aulunian army and destroyed their fleet,” Sandalia retorts tartly, but sighs and looks away. “It’s easier to see it as preparing from the outside, Rodrigo. I was a girl then, and suddenly heir to two thrones.”

“Three,” Rodrigo says mildly. “I still have no heir.”

“You should marry Irina. She’s been a widow ten years now, and no one misses Feodor. Let Ivanova take the Khazarian throne and have the imperatrix breed you a son or two of your own.”

“Irina.” Rodrigo lifts an eyebrow and sips at his wine, casual curiosity in his actions. “That’s not one of the more popular suggestions. Khazar’s church isn’t Cordula’s.”

“Think of it, Rodrigo. The Echonian states would be caught between Khazar’s massive power to the north and east, and Essandia’s long arm south into the Primorismare. Couple that with me on the Gallic throne, and you would hold over half of Echon’s coastline. Aulun would come to heel or be left in the cold, unable to trade.”

“We would surround Reussland,” Rodrigo says with thoughtful dismay. “The kaiser might take exception to that.”

“We’ll marry Javier to his daughter,” Sandalia says. “He should be married soon anyway.”

“This urgency is new, Sandalia.” Rodrigo puts his wine cup away and does the same with hers, so he can fold her hands in his. “What prompts it?”

“There’s nothing more to prepare,” Sandalia says. “Either I move or I accept waiting for Lorraine’s death before Lanyarch is released from Reformation hold. I move now, or I’ve spent a lifetime preparing for nothing. I’m not willing to wait, Rodrigo. As heir to Lanyarch’s throne through Charles, I have a claim to Aulun’s, and Javier will look well upon that seat. If I do nothing, I am only a woman. Not a queen, not a visionary, not an expansionist as all of us but you want to be-”

Rodrigo laughs. “You and Lorraine and Irina are women, Dalia. You rule well, all of you, but none of you have been to war. It’s not that I don’t want to regain Aulun for the Church. It’s that I know war’s price personally, and prefer my expansions to come through the signing of a treaty. You’re determined to make this move?”

“Soon.” Sandalia nods. “There’ll be a moment when the stars align, when the time to move is clear. Maybe Irina-”

“Irina,” Rodrigo says, “has proposed a treaty with me.”

Sandalia picks up her wine again, using the motion to cover surprise. “Over a wedding bed?”

“Over a fleet. It seems the imperatrix hungers for economic expansion, if not new lands.”

“Khazar’s five times the size of Echon as a whole. Irina doesn’t need any more land. What will she give in return, Rodrigo? The thing you need most-”

“It is not a marriage proposal,” Rodrigo says firmly. “She offers troops, not an heir.”

“Troops. For the war you don’t want to fight?”

“It’s not always necessary to meet battle on the fields, Dalia. They can be fought in mind and heart and on paper, and if I have Khazar’s military to call on, the Red Bitch can’t possibly hope to rally an army of equal size. All the better if she can be pressured into capitulating without a drop of blood spilt. Aulun will come back to Cordula.” Rodrigo’s voice deepens, a passion for his religion dominating all else. “We lost too many faithful in the aftermath of the Heretical Trials, and Aulun’s rebellion only sparks more radical thought against the Church. Aulun must be brought to heel within our lifetimes, or Cordula seems weak. I will not have the world worshipping a false god, Sandalia. I will not have it.”

“And so you’ll threaten and bluster with Irina’s army and hope for Lorraine’s acquiesence?”

Rodrigo focuses on her again, putting God away for the world he must live in. His expression goes dry, and drier still are his words. “God save Echon from women who rule. The kaiser and the caesar in Parna must shudder every time they think of their neighbors.”