C. Murphy - The Queen_s Bastard

Sandalia, in fact, lounged on a divan before a half-banked fire, her hair loose and informal; she clearly had no plans to be seen in public again that day. She quirked an eyebrow as Javier came to an abrupt halt and bowed without his customary grace, and a wave of amused curiosity splashed off her. “I won’t like this, will I?”

“Only if you dislike me condemning your favourites,” Javier snapped. Sandalia’s eyebrows went higher and she sat up, making a small imperious gesture toward a chair opposite her. Javier flung himself into it, making its feet bump off a thrown rug and squeak dully against the cold tile beneath it. “Akilina is trying to destroy Beatrice, and she may well have already ruined my friendship with Marius.”

Even consigned to shadows, Belinda put a hand over her mouth to hide the slightest hint of laughter from visible expression. Javier’s easy arrogance appealed to her much of the time, but it could also be both appalling and amusing. Perhaps it was the near-godhood of princedom, but she had thought him able to accept his own failing when it came to the situation with Marius. To hear him place the blame elsewhere was a dreadful sort of delight. Hurt and anger pinged off him in sharp sparks, almost audible, like a rain of needles falling against a hard floor. In marked contrast, fresh humour rolled around his mother. “Do tell, Javier. What’s happened?”

He sketched out the events in the garden, giving Belinda more innocence than she deserved and lingering over Marius’s rejection and hurt. Sandalia listened silently, her laughter at first contained and then slipping away, until her response was as grave as Javier might wish it to be. “And you believe Akilina is at fault, for making more of their meeting than it was? What if she was right, Javier? What if your Beatrice and Marius were lovers?”

Javier snorted, derisive sound that barely touched the bleak disbelief Belinda could feel from him. “He said they weren’t, and Marius couldn’t tell a lie if his life depended on it. You know him, Mother. I’m not wrong.”

Sandalia pursed her mouth, brief thoughtful expression. For an instant Belinda wrestled with the temptation to cross the room and touch the regent’s smooth cheek, to steal her thoughts from her and understand what idea it was that held her for that moment. She held her ground, wisdom greater than curiosity: her experiments hadn’t determined whether she could touch someone while hidden in shadow and still remain unnoticed. The queen’s private chambers would be a disastrous place to discover the limits of her power did not stretch so far.

“It is true,” Sandalia murmured after a few seconds. “Marius couldn’t lie to save his own life.” She watched Javier, who nodded agreement, and the corner of her mouth curled as her son read nothing further into her statement. Belinda breathed a silent exhalation, understanding quite clearly what Sandalia implied and Javier failed to read. Marius might not tell a convincing lie to save his own life, but his known inability to dissemble might well save another’s. Javier, Belinda thought, would have to learn more about the way what was unspoken said as much as what was voiced aloud, or how careful truths could be infallible lies, before he would make a worthy king. She wouldn’t have imagined Marius to have that double-speech within him, but then, he was a merchant’s son. A reputation for honesty and a skill for using the truth to tell lies would do him very well, were he to follow his father’s trade.

And unless Javier learned to not trust those around him to employ such tactics, he, unlike his merchant friend, would never follow well in his father’s trade.

Belinda allowed herself a quick smile at the floor, expression hidden by habit even when shadows concealed her. Not in his reputed father’s trade, at least; she was still curious as to his true heritage, but in the weeks she’d been half-imprisoned in the palace, she’d not yet found a way to direct Sandalia’s thoughts to a lie told a lifetime ago when she could touch the queen’s hand and steal the truth from her. It would come in time; truth always did.

“What would you have me do, Javier? Take Akilina aside and explain I can no longer listen to her counsel, because my son’s jealous heart has taken a dislike to her?” Belinda heard teasing in Sandalia’s voice, though Javier’s tight expression said he was having none of it.

“You’re the queen,” he said petulantly. “You don’t have to explain anything.”

Sandalia laughed aloud, a thing rare enough that Belinda couldn’t remember having heard her do so before. She had a much deeper laugh than expected, in contrast to her sweet soprano voice. It coloured Belinda’s viewpoint of her, enriching her into sudden humanity as her smile carved lines around her mouth and bent her toward likability. It was a striking thought: Belinda had never conceived of queens as being likable or not; that was a thing reserved for ordinary human affairs. Lorraine was a creature for veneration, and Sandalia was her rival and therefore the enemy; that was all that mattered.

Unexpectedly, unpleasantly, Belinda wondered if she wanted Sandalia to die, and the idea rained chaos in her mind, breaking cold sweat on her skin. Within an instant she drew stillness to her, beyond the witchpower she used to hide herself from the room’s other occupants. This was her childhood game, the one of not hurting and not fearing; it could be used as well to not think. Duty and desire lay on opposite sides of a vast divide; it was not her blessing or her curse to consider her own wishes as she served her queen. Duty made her the queen’s secret blade; desire, as she lifted her eyes to look at Sandalia again, seemed a foreign conceit, and as quickly as she’d wondered whether she wanted the petite Gallic queen dead, she wondered why she would not want her dead.

Javier’s sullenness had grown in the instant Belinda’s thoughts were turned aside. He cared for being laughed at no more than anyone, and perhaps less: his royal mantle saved him from it often enough. “A queen,” Sandalia told him, “can do far less as she likes than you might imagine. I will not put Akilina aside, Javier, so draw in your lip and cease your pouting. It ill becomes anyone over the age of three, especially a prince.”

Javier did as he was told, though the emotions that pooled around him and crept toward Belinda were still black. “Why won’t you rid us of her? We asked for no Khazarian contingent.”

“Nor,” Sandalia said after long moments, “did we ask for the support of Khazarian troops that Akilina and I have negotiated, to be ratified by Irina’s own hand.”

Javier’s sulk fell away as abruptly as Belinda’s interest piqued. Impulse again edged her forward, as though she might miss something if she remained more safely sequestered by the door, and she made her hands into fists, leaning toward the royal pair by the fire, but not moving further. “Mother?” Belinda could all but taste the leap of Javier’s heart, excitement suddenly pounding through him where a breath earlier there had been a childish whinge. Sandalia regarded her son another long moment before standing and gesturing for him to follow. Belinda bit her lower lip and pursued them, matching her steps to Javier’s and moving close enough to pass through the door Sandalia opened.

Sandalia paused, holding the door, forehead wrinkled at Javier as he passed in front of her and Belinda stepped to the side, holding her breath and keeping well out of the way. Javier turned back to his mother when he realised she was still at the door, curiosity tilting an eyebrow. “Perhaps you should consider rubbing up to Beatrice only at night, Javier,” Sandalia said drily. “You smell of her perfume.”

Red scalded Javier’s cheeks and Belinda pressed a hand against her stomach, caught between horrified laughter and nausea. She had thought to trick the eye, but never to try fooling the nose. She would pour out her perfumes the instant she returned to her rooms. Javier mumbled an apology that Sandalia brushed off, closing the door behind her and locking it before crossing to a writing desk that dominated the private chamber. The rest of the room was equally businesslike, the windows too small to be looked through from the outside, the chairs arranged in such a fashion as to focus on the desk; here, Sandalia could hold court among counselors, herself sitting amidst the scribes as they scribbled and sketched out treaties as voiced by the men who advised a queen.