Rebecca Ross - The Queen’s Rising

“How cumbersome,” Abree lamented.

Ciri’s gaze sharpened. “You do recall, Abree, that Brienna and I are about to become passions of knowledge.” She was offended, yet again.

Abree took a step back. “Pardon, Ciri. Of course, I meant to say how enthralled I am by your capacity to hold so much knowledge.”

Ciri snorted, still not appeased, but thankfully left it at that as she looked back at me.

“Are you ever going to meet your father, Bri?” Sibylle asked.

“No, I do not think so,” I answered honestly. It was ironic to me that on the day I vowed to never inquire of him again I would be dressed as a Maevan queen.

“That is very sad,” Abree commented.

Of course it would be sad to her, to all my sisters. They all came from noble families, from fathers and mothers who were in some measure involved in their lives.

So I claimed, “It truly doesn’t matter to me.”

A lull settled in the room. I listened to the rain, to Merei’s distant music mellowing the corridor, to the scratch of Oriana’s pencil as she replicated me on parchment.

“Well,” Sibylle said brightly, to smooth away the wrinkles of discomfort. She was an arden of wit, and was skilled to handle any manner of conversation. “You should see the portrait Oriana drew of me, Brienna. It is the exact opposite of yours.” She retrieved it from Oriana’s portfolio, held it up so I could get a good glimpse of it.

Sibylle had been staged as the perfect Valenian noblewoman. I gazed, surprised at all the props Abree had scrounged for this one. Sibylle had worn a daring, low-cut red dress studded with pearls, a necklace of cheap jewels, and a voluptuous white wig. She even had a perfect star mole on her cheek, the marker of feminine nobility. She was beautifully polished, Valenia incarnate. She was etiquette, poise, grace.

And then here was mine, the portrait of a queen who wielded magic and wore blue woad, who lived in armor, whose constant companion was not a man but a sword and a stone.

It was the stark difference between Maevana and Valenia, two countries that I was broken between. I wanted to feel comfortable in the fancy dress and the star mole, but I also wanted to find my heritage in the armor and the woad. I wanted to wield passion, but I also wanted to know how to hold a sword.

“You should hang Brienna’s and Sibylle’s portraits side by side,” Abree suggested to Oriana. “They can teach future ardens a good history lesson.”

“Yes,” Ciri concurred. “A lesson as to who you should never offend.”

“If you offend a Valenian, you lose your reputation,” Sibylle chirped, picking dirt from beneath her nails. “But if you offend a Maevan … then you lose your head.”

It took Oriana another hour to complete my sketch. She didn’t dare ask me to linger any longer as she began to color it; she could sense I was anxious to shed the costume and resume my studies. I handed the cloak, the armor, the flower crown, and the sword back to Abree and left my sisters’ laughter and conversation behind in the studio, seeking out the quiet shadows of Merei’s and my room.

Traditionally, Magnalia’s arden of music was the one student privileged with a private bedchamber, to accommodate the instruments. The other four ardens were paired as roommates. But since the Dowager had done the unexpected and accepted me as her sixth student, the arden of music’s bedchamber had become a shared space.

As I swung the door open, the smell of parchment and books greeted me as loyal friends. Merei and I were messy, but I would blame it upon our passions. She had reams of music scattered in all places. I once found a bundle of music in her quilts, and she claimed she had fallen asleep with it in hand. She told me she could hear the music in her head when she silently read the notes; such was the depth of her passion.

As for my part, I was books and journals and loose papers. Shelves were carved in the wall next to my bed, crowded with volumes I had brought up from the library. Cartier’s books also had several shelves, and as I looked upon their soft- and hard-bound spines, I wondered what it would feel like to return all of them back to his possession. And realized that I owned not one book.

I bent to retrieve my discarded dress on the floor, still drenched, and found Francis’s letter. It was smeared into unintelligible ink.

“Did I miss it?” Merei declared from the doorway.

I turned to look at her standing with her violin tucked beneath her arm, the bow extending from her long fingers, the storm spilling lavender light over her brown complexion, over her rosin-smeared dress.

“Saint LeGrand, what did they do to your face?” She moved forward, wide-eyed with intrigue.

My fingers traced my profile, feeling the cracked trail of blue paint. I had forgotten all about that. “If you had been there, this would never have happened,” I teased her.

She set her instrument aside and then took my chin in her fingers, admiring Oriana’s handiwork. “Well, let me guess. They dressed you up as a Maevan queen fresh off the battlefield.”

“Do I look that Maevan?”

Merei led me over to our commode, where a pitcher of water sat before the mullioned window. I tucked Francis’s letter back in my pocket as she poured water into a waiting porcelain bowl and took a washcloth. “No, you look and act very Valenian. Didn’t your grandfather claim you were the image of your mother?”

“Yes, but he could be lying.”

Merei’s dark eyes quietly scolded me for my lack of faith. And then she began to wipe away the paint with the washcloth.

“How are your lessons coming, Bri?”

This was the one question we continued to ask each other, over and over, as the solstice grew closer. I groaned and shut my eyes as she began to vigorously scrub. “I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?” She paused in her washings until I relented to open my eyes again. She gazed at me with an expression trapped somewhere between alarm and confusion. “There are only two more official days of lessons.”

“As I know. But do you want to know what Master Cartier asked me today? He asked, ‘What is passion?’ as if I were ten and not seventeen.” I sighed and took the washcloth from her, dunking it back into the water.

I had told Merei my suspicions. I had told her how I believed the Dowager had accepted me for some mysterious reason, not because I held potential. And Merei had witnessed firsthand that second year I had struggled in music. She had sat beside me and tried to help coach me when Mistress Evelina seemed overwhelmed by how poorly I played. Never had a violin sounded like it wanted to die.

“Why didn’t he refuse me when I asked him to take me on as his arden?” I continued, scrubbing my face. “He should have said that three years was not enough time for me to master this. And if I had been smart, I should have chosen knowledge from the very beginning, when I was ten and had plenty of time to learn all these wretched lineages.” The blue paint was not coming off. I tossed the washcloth aside, feeling like I had peeled half of my face away, revealing the true bones of who I was: inept.

“Need I remind you, Bri, that Master Cartier hardly makes mistakes?”

I cast my gaze to the window, watching the rain streak as tears on the glass, knowing that she was right.

“Need I remind you that Master Cartier would not have accepted you as his arden if he thought for one moment that you could not passion?” She took my hand, to draw my attention back to her. She smiled, half of her curly black hair caught by a ribbon, the rest loose about her shoulders. “If Master Cartier believes you can passion in three years, then you can. And so you will.”