C. Murphy - The Queen_s Bastard

She never was.

Colour rushed along Belinda’s jaw, crawling upward until her cheekbones felt scarred from the heat. Her reflection, faint in the frosty window, darkened perceptibly. She pressed her forehead against the glass, listening hard for a hiss, like water striking hot metal. Ice melted against her skin, silent, a bead trailing down between her closed eyes. It tickled, pushing the blush back down with an itch. Belinda relaxed her jaw, keeping her eyes closed, determined not to rub the tiny blot of water away. It slid down her nose, the itch subsiding, and she let out a puff of air. Frost steamed, melted, and crystallized again under her breath.

Clear memory was a curse, when the memories were of waiting for the call that never came. In summer of her ninth year it was Robert’s honour-and burden-to host the queen’s court for a month. The estate was in a flutter; Robert came early, barking orders and clapping his hands together, suddenly master to a house that had drifted along in quietude without him. He carried Belinda around on his shoulders, deliberately unaware that she was too old and too big for such behavior. Giddy with happiness, she was blind to exchanged glances among the servants. For a blissful week, she rode out every day with her papa, hunting and bringing back boar and deer to dress the tables with for the queen’s visit. She pleaded, cautiously, for a new dress, and got two. The evening before Lorraine’s arrival, Robert came to Belinda’s room and knelt, taking her hands as he smiled at her.

“I will call for you, do you understand? When it’s time for you to be presented to the queen, I’ll come for you, my dear. Until then, it’s best if you stay out of sight. Will you do that for me?”

Belinda, dressed in one of her new gowns, tightened her fingers around Robert’s and nodded eagerly. “Of course, Papa. I can wait.”

For thirty mornings, Belinda dressed with care, choosing one of her two new gowns or the very best of the older ones, and stood by the door, fidgeting and breathless with hope. At noon and night she ate the same rich meals that the courtiers in the dining hall below ate, but dined alone in her room, meals carried up from the kitchen by the servants, and waited with all the reserve she could muster. At sunfall each evening, she undressed as carefully as she’d dressed, and retreated to her bed, strands of coldness wrapped around her heart and tempered with hope for the next dawn.

At the end of thirty days, the queen and her court rode away again, Robert with them. Belinda knelt in the window of her room, fingers pressed against the thin glass.

Robert did not look back.

Belinda began, that morning, the game of stillness.

It was a game of nonexistence, of not being there. The rules, as Belinda laid them out in her mind, were simple: she would be stronger than the events around her. A biting fly might land on her skin; she would learn to ignore the tickle of its feet as it walked across her throat. If it bit, she would learn to hold inside the flinch of pain and the slap of motion to dislodge it. A scratch earned in a fencing bout would no longer pull a gasp or paling cheeks from her; a burn from the embers might raise a blister, but not a cry.

The rules were easier in thought than action.

In the beginning there were more failures than successes. Belinda taught herself to use the memory of Robert’s shoulders in the soft gold sunlight of morning as a cloak, wrapping it around herself. She made it into armour, hardening the memory of being left behind into a layer of protectiveness between her skin and the invading entities.

The tiny dagger, held against the small of her back, began as an irritation, and became the test itself. Days turned into weeks, and the stiffened brocade of her dresses changed from pressing the hilt of the dagger uncomfortably into her spine to something she no longer noticed, and finally felt undressed without. She sharpened the little blade, and drew it carefully against her palm, waiting days for each last cut to heal, until she could part the skin without tears.

Then she began with fire.

When Robert returned at Yuletide, nothing could touch her unless she allowed it to. She had grown, taller and more slender, beginning to leave a child’s shape behind even at the youthful age of nine. The cloak of memory grew with her, pinning tightly against her skin, constricting and safe. Robert’s gaze upon her was sharp and appraising, even approving. She thought, in between moments, that he could see the wrap of memory that clung to her. Challenged, she strengthened it, lending it her indifference in the form of an uplifted chin and a cool hazel gaze.

Robert’s smile grew warmer.

Once rooted in her bones, the game of stillness spilled out of her. The near-perfect memory that both blessed and dogged her wouldn’t let her forget the moment when the stillness became larger than she was. She was dressed unfashionably, though the brown velvet was expensive enough to almost forgive the colour; Belinda didn’t care. The depth of the fabric made her hair rich and soft-looking, especially against the gold net snood that kept loose curls from falling into her eyes. The dress was a Yuletide gift, warmer than the two summer gowns. Extra length was nipped into the hem, a seamstress’s silent expectation that Belinda would grow taller still before spring. For now, she curled her fingers into the velvet’s weight, lifting it a few inches to allow her feet clearance from the petticoats and skirts. She clung to the shadows along the manor stairs, following the curve down into the great hall. It was cold, the new year a few hours from ringing in. Belinda’s boots, lined with rabbit fur, flashed beneath the hem of her gown as she trotted down the steps.

Voices echoed upward from below. Belinda hesitated between torches, recognizing Robert’s voice and uncertain if she was welcome to greet his evening’s company. Footsteps echoed off the stone floors, coming closer. Robert’s voice dropped in confidence, words becoming murmurs that rumbled in the small bones of Belinda’s ears. She stood frozen with indecision, then knotted her fingers in her skirts and scurried back up the stairs, ducking into a shadowed doorway.

The choice was well-made. Speech became more easily understood as Robert and his guest mounted the stairs. Belinda caught her breath, leaning into the doorway, pulse leaping in her throat as she willed herself not to be seen. Her dagger, like a reminder, pressed neatly against her spine. Belinda’s breath spilled out of her again, on the verge of silent laughter. The next breath was slow, calmness washing through her. Tranquility stretched taut, like a pulled bow, then snapped. In silence, it surrounded her, tucking her safely into the shadows. Belinda lifted her chin brazenly, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. She leaned forward from the doorway, confident in the darkness and eager to see the man in whom Robert confided.

They came around the head of the stairs shoulder to shoulder, heads inclined toward one another. Robert was the broader, his shoulders dwarfing those of the other man, who was narrow and thin-featured. Black hair, thick and oily under the torchlight, was swept back from his face, worn much longer than fashion dictated. Whoever he was, he could not belong to Lorraine’s court: Robert’s brown hair, clipped short with a hint of fringe to hide the hairline itself, was the style favoured by the Queen for her courtiers. The stranger’s beard followed the line of his jaw, mustache neatly trimmed around a thin mouth; that, at least, was the popular look. He had a hawkish nose and deep-set eyes, black in the torchlight. His voice, low-pitched, was marked with an accent: Khazarian, from the sprawling empire beyond Echon’s eastern borders. “-begun. The imperatrix is with child-”