The Queen's Bastard (20 page)

Robert will take no pains to remind her of his own lowly beginnings.

He finds the mechanism that opens the door, slides it open, and looks down at Akilina Pankejeff, a grand duchess within Irina’s court. She, like Lorraine, is not beautiful, but in her age she will be terrifying. Black hair sweeps back from a violent widow’s peak, one that rumour says grows sharper with every lover who dies. Akilina Pankejeff has outlived two husbands and three well-placed lovers, the last of whom was Count Gregori Kapnist, and she is only thirty-two. The superstitious and fearful—nearly everyone in this stars-forsaken place—call her Yaga Baba behind her back, and make the sign of God to ward off witches. She has a golden cast to her skin, and eyes as black as her hair; there is nothing soft about her, not even when she comes to him dressed in loose sleeping gowns. They only play up her narrow shoulders, her small breasts, and the length of her limbs.

The door hisses shut behind her and Robert kneels without speaking, putting his hands on her hips. Her eyes can’t darken any further, but surprise colours them and she touches his hair as he gathers her nightgown, one palmful at a time, toward her waist. He is attentive and delighted to please; Akilina is lusty and ready to be pleased. Minutes later she stands slumped against the wall, fingers still knotted in Robert’s brown hair, gasps chuckling from her. “Not what I came for,” she breathes, “but well worth coming for. No wonder the Titian Bitch keeps you at her side.” She pushes Robert’s hands away, not unkindly, and lets her sleeping gown fall again. Robert wipes his beard without a hint of discretion and climbs to his feet still licking his lips.

“Then why are you here?” He’s surprised for the second time in a day; that doesn’t often happen. Akilina smiles, unexpectedly predatory, and walks her fingers up his chest. He, too, is dressed for sleeping, and her touch is warm through the soft linen of his shirt. He does not catch her hand and pull her back to the bed to roost above him; that decision is hers.

“I require an escort, my lord Drake.” She offers another smile, as pointed as the first, and leads with her hips as she steps into him. “I’ll pay you in whatever coin you prefer.”

He kisses her fingertips, politeness, not ardor. “An escort, my lady?”

Playfulness falls out of her gaze, leaving it flat. “Our winters are long and cold, and my lover’s five months in his grave. I’d intended to retreat to my estate for the winter, but if I can go farther afield that’s much to be preferred. A woman might travel safely in your party, Lord Drake.”

“I travel light, my lady.” Robert isn’t trying to dissuade her. More likely to convince a snake not to bite, he thinks, though he’s far too diplomatic to let the thought anywhere near his expression. “Myself and a handful of men, and with winter coming on we’ll set a hard pace. Can you keep up?”

The challenge glints in her eyes. “I won’t travel as light or as fast as you’d prefer, my lord. Wherever I winter, I can have new gowns made, but a woman of my stature can’t arrive in a new city with nothing but what’s on her back. Give me an extra day for every three you travel in speed, though, and I’ll keep your pace.”

“Where will you go?”

Akilina smiles. “I’ve always wanted to see Aria Magli.”

B
ELINDA
P
RIMROSE
15 October 1587         
         Lutetia, Gallin

My Dearest Jayne;

The letters were etched into parchment, retraced so many times they might have been inked onto the table beneath it. In the deepest of the grooves, ink sat in shallow puddles, the parchment’s ability to absorb it lost. Belinda picked up her quill for the dozenth time, scraping it over the shapes of the letters. She had thought too much; she must simply write, and when the words had spilled out of her she could choose and decide what she ought and ought not say in a letter to the Aulunian spymaster.

My Dearest Jayne;

Lutetia agrees with me more than I might have dreamed, and I have been remiss in writing to tell you of it. The weather is temperate—a blessing after stormy Lanyarchan nights!—and the people are kind. I have made friends both high and low, from a woman whose beauty is so extraordinary I would scarcely believe it real had I not met her myself, to a man of the greatest power. I would tell you his name, though I think you will not believe me: he is Javier, prince of Gallin and heir to that throne and another: Essandia, should Rodrigo fail to marry as seems so likely now that he is in his fifties. And la: listen to me, calculating out the heirship as if I might someday bear children into it. A good Lanyarchan woman would not cast her gaze so high—and yet there are moments, dear sister, when I wish it were otherwise. He is handsome, and commands power. Any woman might dream of such a husband, even a woman widowed with no sons to prove her fertility.

He is very kind, the prince, and has taken me into his group of friends—

All but on cue, Nina knocked on the door and opened it, ducking her head in a brief curtsey. “Marius is here, my lady.” She smiled, full of bright hope and cheer; in the weeks that had passed since the opera, Marius had given no sign of being daunted by Belinda’s friendship with the prince, and called as often as his duties would allow. The merchant’s son was a good match, bordering on excellent, and Nina was determined that her mistress should not miss it. Belinda felt a brief unaccustomed pang of guilt through her belly, wondering how long the young man would continue courting her.

“Thank you, Nina. Tell him I’ll be down momentarily.” Belinda set the quill aside with more care than was necessary and scooped a palmful of sand over the paper, shaking it to take away excess ink. Tilting the paper sent fine grains sliding back into their cup, though several stuck in the deep-scratched lines of the salutation, glittering as the light caught them. Her father would be amused by the emotion wrought in those deep lines. Belinda scowled at them, determining to rewrite the letter even if the words came out flawlessly. She stood up, exasperated, to discover Nina still hesitating in the door. “Well? What is it?”

“Do you not like him, my lady?” the servant asked timidly. “He is a fine match, and, forgive me, my lady, but—”

“But royalty is beyond my grasp, no?”

Nina blushed and dropped her gaze. Belinda put her hands on the desk and leaned heavily on it for a few moments, letting the weight of her head stretch an ache into her spine. “I like him well enough. Are you too polite to tell me that my chance is slipping away?” She looked up. Nina’s eyes remained fixed on the floor, but she nodded, a minute gesture that spoke more by daring to be made than the sentiment expressed. “And how do you know that, Nina?”

Guilt rolled off the girl in waves, thick enough to flavour the air. Belinda took a deep breath of it, closing her eyes and savoring it. It was her secret, her one secret from the prince in the matters of witchcraft. For six weeks, through summer’s end and into autumn, they had stolen as many hours as they dared, pressing the borders of the longer nights to study together. Study, and more. Even with the mixed blessing of too-clear memory, Belinda could only hazily remember a time when she felt as if she’d had enough sleep.

But the walls that Robert had placed in her mind had softened. Where there had been a hard-won pinhole of access to her witchbreed power, there was now a pool, serene and calm at the heart of her. There was more yet to be gained, but she no longer struggled every night simply to cup her hands together and call witchlight to them. Even now she felt the impulse to curl her fingers and light the tiny glow, curtained by her palm. It was a small thing, but each new lesson gave her ideas as to how she might increase her gift and her strength.

Behind it all, though, was the talent she had been stayed by need from sharing with Javier, and which she kept close to her heart now for the joy of secrets. The little things she had learned paled by the depths to which she could now read emotion. Fear and lust, delight and anger were all writ in the air around the men and women she encountered. Contentedness and ambition, hope and despair, so heavy around them that Belinda wondered how she had never seen it before. The difficulty was no longer in delving for those secret emotions, but rather in fending them away. It took no more than a thought to know if a man desired her, and what kind of needs he had in bed. No more than a wish to know, to discover if the neighbor’s wife feared her husband discovering he was being cuckolded. It lent Belinda glorious confidence, and she resented her father’s decision to lock that gift away behind a barrier in her mind. Only a little: she could not afford resentment or anger to any great degree—the stillness wrapped around her and tightened on her bones when she pursued rebellious thoughts. They ill-suited her; at the core of her, beneath newfound power and even beneath her precious, long-nurtured stillness, Belinda knew herself to believe, without reservation, in her duty to a mother who could never acknowledge her. She let herself wonder, very briefly, what she might feel now from Lorraine, with this burgeoning power at her disposal.

It would not, she was certain, be the guilt and discomfort that made Nina squirm in the doorway. “He complimented you,” Belinda guessed with a faint smile. “Did he impose himself upon you, Nina?”

Surprise replaced guilt, washing off the girl as her eyes jerked from the floor to meet Belinda’s. “No, my lady. Only—” She swallowed and flinched through the chest, making her breasts twitch with the motion.

“Only told you that you have lovely breasts, and lovely eyes.” Horrified embarrassment swept over her, Nina’s ears burning red. Belinda smiled and touched the girl’s bodice as she passed by. “He was right.”

Nina’s confusion and startled desire followed her down the stairs.

“There is snow in the air.” Marius walked with his hand at the small of Belinda’s back, a touch that was barely there. It made her aware, as she rarely was, of the tiny dagger she wore there, nestled beneath layers of clothing. Not for the first time she let herself smile at the ridiculous placement of the thing; trapped against her skin it did no good whatsoever for defense, and more than once she’d had to palm it away into the fallen folds of her gown when a man undressed her. It didn’t matter. The knife was sentimental, a reminder of who she was and a reminder of the stillness, not a weapon. She turned the smile up at Marius, curiosity in her eyes.

“Does it snow this far south, my lord?”

“Beatrice,” Marius said with mild exasperation. “How many times must I ask you to call me Marius?”

“At least once more.” Belinda smiled again, letting her gaze drift from the boy at her side. It was harder among intimates of a higher class, she was discovering, to follow her own rule of never calling a man by his name. Formality drenched every move to such a degree that the calling of names became far more important than it was as a serving girl. She found herself unable to forget Marius or Javier’s names, unable to not learn them, as she’d been able to not learn…
Viktor,
she reminded herself. Poor Viktor.

Asselin was easier; she saw him less, and his gaze on her was frank and lustful and open, like most men’s. Over the weeks he’d given no sign of recognizing her as the strumpet from the tavern. Without that concern threatening their play, it was clear he understood the game between men and women in a fashion that Marius did not, and Javier disdained. Asselin called her Lady Irvine, openly mocking the formality, and she called him Lord Asselin with all the sly wit and sexual rejoinder that he sought.

Eliza was different. Belinda’s own law didn’t stand in the face of women. Women only rarely had power and most of that came through the men they wed or whored themselves to; it was rare indeed that Belinda was sent after a woman. There was no need to misremember Eliza’s name, or call her by a formal one.

Then again, friendship had not blossomed between them, though they were not quite enemies. Eliza had too much respect for her friend—and Belinda wondered for the dozenth time, lover? The answer was there for the taking if Belinda chose to read either of them deeply enough, but the curiosity was more thrilling than the answering. Eliza would not declare open warfare on a woman Javier chose to invite into his circle of friends, or his bed, until he tired of her. Belinda admired Eliza’s loyalty, recognizing it for the bitter draughts of unrequited love.
That
was a cup of poison Belinda had no desire to ever drink of, and it left her with a trace of sympathy for Eliza’s position. She refused to be drawn into cat fights with the other woman, frustrating Eliza and amusing Asselin.

“You are not with me.”

“What?” Belinda cursed herself, turning her gaze back to Marius, who watched her eyes older than his years, not so much sad as weary. “Forgive me, my lord. I was lost in thought.”

“Thoughts of Javier.” It was half a question. Marius lifted his hand to brush his fingers across Belinda’s cheek. Her eyebrows drew down, then lifted.

“Eliza, my lord.”

Surprise and a trace of hope graced Marius’s expression. “Eliza?”

“She doesn’t like me.”

Marius smiled and looked away. “Eliza doesn’t like anyone who lands in Jav’s bed.”