C. Murphy - The Queen_s Bastard

He could not have made a better dress if his plan had been to forbid her any chance of stealing Sandalia’s keys in the bare moments they would be that close to each other. Moving quickly enough, subtly enough, to pick the queen’s pocket was unlikely even if she’d been graced with the chance to wear one of Eliza’s gowns; doing it in the rigid contraption she now wore would be an impossibility.

She would have to risk the poisoned darts and damaging Sandalia’s desk. It lacked any degree of delicacy, but perhaps there was someone she could hang for it, some servant who could be made out as a spy. An Aulunian spy, no less, though the idea brought on a laugh so breathless it could be called a giggle, escaped her. Pierre, disapproving of levity, turned a ferocious glare on her, and Belinda subsided, nibbling her croissant and sipping at the wine. Her heartbeat was too quick, and stillness kept slipping away from her, even when she ought to have held it close and let it help her forget the discomfort of too-tight corsets. It had seen her through a day and a half of Pierre’s ministrations; to find it deserting her now was an irritation.

“The bells will ring the hour in some ten minutes.” Pierre’s voice cut through her reverie and Belinda shook herself, looking up. Her wine was finished, the croissant gone, and the napkin Pierre had offered was caught in her fingertips. She cast her thoughts back, recalling finishing the food and asking for the napkin, but it was a hazy memory, as if breathing shallowly had fogged her mind. She would be glad indeed to shed the dress, even if it made her regal.

“Thank you,” she said yet again, and took the dressmaker’s hand to let him help her rise; without it she feared she may well have been doomed to an afternoon of uncomfortable lounging, unable to rise or sit without some drastic change of state.

Breathing seemed to come more easily again once she stood; movement appeared to be the trigger, the changes of pressure tricking her into thinking she could draw more breath. She curtsied to Pierre, a small thing-the most she dared, and probably more than his station could ever aspire to-and left her chambers in a slow, stately glide that had far more to do with being unable to move more quickly than any particular need for the dramatically slow pace.

The corridors were empty, servants working to prepare a dinner feast and courtiers already in attendance in the audience hall. After five weeks of being watched, Belinda was finally alone in the palace, and completely unable to make use of that private time. Even if she dared slip through shadows to search Sandalia’s chambers again, there was no way to do it in the dress she wore. Better to follow what plan she had, and make her careful way to the audience hall to accept the gift Sandalia had in mind for her. It was as well she was a woman, and not a man come to be knighted. Bad enough to have the chamber hall doors swung open slowly in front of her, ponderously, with the rush of wind they made heralding her arrival even before a crier could shout out her name. Not since childhood, not since she’d bowed for the first time before the queen of Aulun, had Belinda felt the weight of so many gazes upon her.

Then, they had been tolerant, disinterested, amused. Now they judged, and not kindly: she was their prince’s intended, she was backwater and without connections, and she was loathed by many for those things alone.

That she was also, this one day, beautiful, softened some hearts toward her and hardened others. Even uncalled for, the witchpower stretched out, tasting emotion and bringing it back to her in powerful waves. She was prepared for that, braced for it; the stillness held a cool calm centre against which admiration and dislike and envy broke and fell around her. Out of the cacophony she could pick out individuals whom she knew well: Marius, a bastion of regret, his pain a lonely note in the mass of broader sentiment. Sacha, full of smoldering rage tempered by a sense of intent that Belinda couldn’t define.

Sandalia, nearly as cool as Belinda herself, as if she, too, had drawn stillness around her and did only what she must. Viktor, unexpectedly, his hunger and lust pounding through Belinda’s control to bring the faintest heat to her cheeks. Akilina, whose easy laughter felt spiked, as if she had a delicious secret no one else shared. And Javier, whose pride in Belinda’s appearance was softened by a heart-filling joy that Belinda could not, or dared not, name.

Below it all she felt a rumbling anger so thick and murky it seemed familiar; a human predilection toward violence, perhaps, the thin line that kept a group from being a mob near to being crossed over. She was not loved here, though with the thought her gaze skittered back to Javier. She was not loved here, save, perhaps, by one. Her slow footsteps measured the length of the hall with ear-shattering sound, no voices raised in murmurs to discuss her, even after she’d passed.

She curtsied before Sandalia, dropping straight down and inclining her head; there would be no forward bow from the waist to deepen her obsequiescence, not in that dress. For the second time she thought it was as well she wasn’t a man coming to be knighted; the prospect of kneeling in the gown she’d been sewn into was absurd to the point of bringing a smile to her heart, though she didn’t dare let one curve her mouth. She held the pose an achingly long time, the breath gone from her body before Sandalia finally murmured, “You may rise.”

She may, Belinda thought, but whether she could was entirely another question. Concentrated effort pushed into her legs helped her to straighten, so slowly she knew others would call it grace, so long as they didn’t see the tremble that suffused her body. She flickered her glance up once in thanks, then lowered it again, waiting for Sandalia’s words.

They came, soaring over her head to reach the back of the audience hall; Belinda was merely a tool in a showcase; none of this was for her. “Today we have the pleasure of granting a noble title to one who has done this court great service. We have lands in Brittany to our north that are ripe and wooded, well-made for hunting and, we are told, for planting. We regret that there are no living quarters yet on these lands, but we have arranged for a generous allowance so suitable quarters might be built.”

Delight sparked off Javier, boyish excitement at the prospect of overseeing the creation of a new retreat suitable for royalty. Sandalia, in marked contrast, remained wonderfully neutral; Belinda thought she herself could not do better. “We shall recommend artisans,” the queen went on, “and perhaps it will be our honour to visit when building is complete.

“We shall provide a stipend for five years,” she continued, “long enough that the fertile earth should begin to give its return, so our new friend might earn a living from her lands and provide to the crown some small measure of appreciation for the gifts we offer. All of these things and more we are delighted to give to one who has done us such service.

“But first,” she said, and her attention finally came to focus directly on Belinda. “First, we must attend to the matter of Belinda Primrose.”

The core of stillness within her turned to ice, utterly frozen, even as blood thundered in her ears, washing away all other sound. It brought back memory, memory so old that others said it couldn’t be at all: a battlefield, red-tinged and rushing, but what had once been comforting now only emphasized the words that she had carried with her since her birth.

It cannot be found out.

It carried fear into her, intense and sharp, a part of her that could never be cut away. It cannot be found out. Somewhere, extraordinarily distant to where she now stood, Javier’s voice tickled through the centre of her being, bewilderment lifting it high: “Mother?”