The Queen's Bastard (25 page)

Eliza laughed, sharp in the chilly air. “What confession, my lord prince! How much did that cost?”

“More than I’d like.” The impulse to snap was there, to draw himself up and wield insult like anger, cowing the woman into her place. It was an easy trick, a thoughtless flexing of the witchpower he carried inside himself. It was, to Eliza and the others, a mark of royalty, a sign of position he held over them. Javier could not remember the last time he had knowingly used the witchpower on his friends. When they were children, certainly, not more than twelve or thirteen. Before he understood that no one shared his gift; before he understood that using it could only deepen the space between his station and their own. Friendship was rare and precious to him, more fragile than his three companions understood. In his life, they were the only things he was truly certain of.

They, and now Beatrice. Relief and gratitude swept through him, an alleviation of loneliness that took Belinda off-guard. She bit into her lower lip, reaching for the bridge railing as she struggled to shake herself free of that passion. Struggled to ignore a similar welling within herself. Understanding Javier was one thing. Wearing his needs and fears on her own sleeve was a greater commitment than she was prepared to make.

“What is it about her, Jav?” Belinda heard the note of frustration in Eliza’s voice and watched Javier drop his chin to his chest, exhaling heavily.

“I couldn’t tell you.” Merely an evasion. Belinda knew as well as he did, and knew as well that he couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell, not Liz nor their two brothers in arms. “But this is something I need.”

Eliza snorted again. Javier half smiled, turning his gaze down the silent bridge. Belinda steeled herself, ready this time for the influx of sentiment from the prince. It was easier, prepared, to absorb what he felt without being subsumed by it. The bridge was one of his favourite places in the city, particularly at night, with the Sacrauna running through it undisturbed by daytime travellers. Torchlight reflected here and there against the black waters, and when the surface lay very still, the stars. As a child he had laid on the banks, reaching to touch those stars only to watch them ripple away when his fingers broke through the water tension. It left him melancholy, with a sense of loss he could neither explain nor share with others. Belinda curved a humourless smile at the water, familiar with the remoteness that Javier felt, and more comfortable with admitting it than she was with acknowledging the loneliness and recognition of a similar creature that she’d sensed from the prince moments earlier. Even so, she broke away from too deeply pursuing that connection, wary of anything that might alert Javier to her presence.

“What do you need me to watch for?” Eliza broke the silence, staring at the stones beneath her feet rather than meet Javier’s eyes. “Her spending habits? If she keeps secret lovers? You could find those things out without me, Jav.”

“I trust,” Javier said tartly, “that there are no secret lovers.” Eliza breathed out laughter.

“That’s because you’re a man.”

“What does that mean?” He straightened, affronted. Eliza shook her head.

“Only that men see what they want to see, and women must see the truth. We have no other power.”

Cold anger curdled at the back of Javier’s throat, Belinda tasting it with sudden and aroused interest. “Eliza.” His voice came low and dangerous, the witchpower responding even when Belinda could feel he would have it otherwise. A wind snapped up, icy and sharp, and Belinda retreated from her own investigation of his emotions, caution overcoming curiosity: with his power alert, the chances of discovery were far greater, and not worth the risk. Eliza frowned and drew her cloak around herself more tightly, lifting its hood. “Eliza,” Javier repeated. “Are you saying that Beatrice has another lover?”

Her head pulled back as if she’d been hit, complete startlement in the movement. “Don’t be ridiculous. I may not like her, but the woman’s not a fool. I’m just saying if she did you’d be the last to know.”

“No.” The anger and power was still in his voice, deepening it. Belinda could see Eliza react to it, not in fear, she knew him too well for that, but respect, perhaps submission, though she barely lifted her chin at all. More telling than either of those, her stance changed, weight rolling forward through her hips, a subtle offering of desire. It was easier to see in Eliza, with her breeches and men’s shirt, than in court-dressed ladies. Even burdened by her winter cloak, the lines of her hips were more blatant than any woman under a half dozen petticoats could hope for.

“No?” Eliza’s voice had deepened, too, fueled by want, not anger. Belinda caught her breath, tip of her tongue between her teeth, and let her shaking power reach forth again, desire to read the truth of Javier’s interest in Eliza far greater than her fear of being noticed.

Impulse rolled over her in heady waves, anger cutting away intellect. It would be easy—it would be
welcome
—to crowd Eliza against the bridge railing and take her. Her desire and his power had danced a knife’s edge almost as long as either of them could remember. It was a dance that had to remain unconsummated; anything else would too drastically change the power structure among the four friends. Javier forced his hands to loosen and glanced away, Belinda finding herself doing the same, even to letting a breath out in a quiet sigh. Javier felt, and Belinda through him, Eliza’s bright burst of hurt and anger, even without looking at her. He waited a few moments before looking back. Her expression was under control when he did, fresh and open but for a sliver of disappointment that would someday fester into hate. Belinda shivered with pleasure, not at that truth, but at Javier’s recognition of it, and retreated again before her presence was detected.

“Liz….”

“Don’t.” Eliza turned her head away sharply. “Don’t, Jav.”

Javier curled a fist again, then let it go. It was a visible moment before he trusted himself to say, lightly, “I wouldn’t be the last to know, because you would tell me. But it’s not her spending or her lovers I want you to watch. It’s simply what she does through the day. I must know if she can be trusted.”

“Do you intend to marry her?”

Javier’s eyebrows went up. “
Beatrice?
She’s practically a commoner—” And then his thought rolled across his face, so clear Belinda needed no power to read it:
ah, Javier, you are a fool.
Eliza turned a gaze of daggers on him. “Eliza—”

“You know I can’t tell you no.” She looked away again.

“Yes,” Javier said, almost regretfully. He stepped closer, lifting his fingers to brush them over Eliza’s cheek. She stiffened, refusing to look back at him. He produced a wry grin and added, “Because I could order you, anyway, and you’re bound by oath of fealty to do as I say.”

It worked admirably enough that even Belinda smiled. The tension broke, some of the sting leaving Eliza’s eyes as her full mouth curved slightly. “I was ten, Jav.”

“And I was eight. Do you think it meant less to either of us for all our tender years?”

“You were going to have me thrown in the dungeon.” Eliza’s smile grew, and Javier laughed.

“It seemed like a good threat at the time.”

“I was terrified!”

Javier laughed again, shaking his head. “Now that, Liz, I do not believe. I don’t think you’ve ever been terrified.”

“I am.” Amusement left her and she turned to lean on the railing, staring down into the black river. “But the fears that haunt me are very different from yours, Jav. Things you wouldn’t understand. It’s the worlds we come from.”

“You’ve never let me understand.” Javier leaned beside her, fingers dangling over the rail. Eliza shook her head.

“No. And I never will.”

“Why?” Belinda tasted the impulse behind the question: he had wanted to ask it a hundred times, never daring. But there was something raw in the wind tonight, letting them touch on topics they had let lie fallow for fifteen years of friendship. Belinda found herself curling her fingers against the stone railing, wondering if that strangeness was her. She could sense tight control in not only the prince, but in his common-born friend as well. They never spoke of desire or the positions in the world that helped keep them apart. It was harder, too hard, for Eliza; that was what Javier told himself. “Haven’t I been there for your life, Eliza?” He reached over to touch her hair, catching a short-shorn lock between his fingertips. “I remember when we cut your hair,” he murmured.

“The first or the second time?” Eliza gave the river an unhappy smile. “Those were the best years, you know, Jav. Before God saw fit to grant me tits and hips that made sure I could never really pass as one of the boys again.”

“You were a stick,” Javier said. “Narrow everywhere.”

“I was a child. We all were. But you’re a man, Jav, you wouldn’t understand the change in freedom.” Eliza touched her own hair. “My hair was my vanity then, you know. And you three pinned me down.” She laughed, clear sound that Belinda found herself savoring, just as Javier did, for its rarity. “You pinned me down and cut it all off.”

“You were fashionable,” Javier protested, grinning.

“For a ten-year-old boy!”

“I never asked,” Javier murmured. “What did your family say?”

Eliza shook her head, the action draping stillness of soul over her. Her voice went quiet. “They were angry. But in deference to the station of my friends”—a minute shrug—“they let me keep it shorn so short for a whole two years. Until I got my blood.”

“Is
that
what happened. I remember you being sulky for weeks and looking like a hedgehog while your hair grew out.”

“No one would marry a woman with a boy’s haircut, Jav. And an unmarried woman is only a burden on her family. My father had daughters enough without the added trial of trying to marry off one who wears a boy’s haircut.”

“I would have taken care of you, Liz. Of your whole family.”

“Oh, aye. My whole family. And the cousins, Jav? And their babies? And the hangers-on and the families down the block who were related by blood three generations back? Until you had all the poor of Lutetia in your chambers, maybe. Maybe then you’d understand what you can’t. It isn’t your fault, Jav. You come from places that are too high.”

“And you won’t let me walk in the low ones, Liz.”

“No,” Eliza agreed. “Because you can’t save us all. You can’t even save one of us.”

He reached out to touch her hair again. “I saved you.”

“And my mother and three sisters died, Jav. Sacha and Marius should never have brought me to the palace.”

“You had the fever, Eliza. What were they to do, let you die? They would have brought you all. They say your mother refused. That she only let them take you because you were so very ill. I remember the second time, too, Liz. You looked so damned fragile, so pale and sick. They were afraid your hair took too much of your strength, and you needed it all to live.”

“And I looked like a shaved skull when I woke up. My mother thought I was Death come knocking on the door when I went home.” Eliza fell silent. “And she was right, Jav. They all died.”

“I would have tried to save them,” Javier whispered. Eliza sighed and put her hand over his. Belinda flinched, feeling the warmth of the woman’s hand on hers, and jerked her gaze to her own hand before looking back toward Javier and Eliza.

Eliza had long fingers, her hands nearly as big as the prince’s, for all that he was a half-hand taller than she. He turned his palm up to lace his fingers with hers, holding on hard for the few moments that she let him.

“I know, Jav. But we all have our pride.” She stared down at the river. When she spoke again her voice was carefully neutral. “It left me barren, you know that? The fever. I used to dream of marrying a prince.” Her smile had no humour in it, only years of resigned sadness. “I knew it was only a dream. Royalty doesn’t marry commoners, no matter how pretty they are. But still, I dreamed. Then the month after the fever my blood didn’t come, nor has it in the five years since. Not just common, but common and barren. No dream can survive that.”

“Eliza.” Cold flooded Belinda’s hands, Javier’s horror her own. He tightened his fingers around Eliza’s, uselessly, and she flashed him another sad smile.

“Sacha knows, can you believe that? I got piss drunk a few years ago and he asked me point-blank, I don’t know why. And I told him. Made him swear not to tell you. Then we fucked. It hasn’t happened again, so he thinks I don’t remember, but I do. Nineteen, I was nineteen and despite looking like
this
,” she jerked her hand from Javier’s so she could gesture at herself, “I was a virgin.”

“Really?” Javier’s voice broke with surprise and he glowered at the black river below. Eliza laughed without real humour.

“Really. I’d wanted—” She shrugged, stiff, and leaned on the railing, her elbows hyperextended with the pressure she put on them. “I’d make a fine rich man’s mistress, Jav.” She strove to keep her voice light, stretching her throat long to do it. “He’d never have to worry about by-blows.”

“You’re better than that, Liz.”

She smiled and turned to him, putting both hands on his chest and patting her fingers against the soft fabric of his doublet. “Yes.” She sighed and dropped her hands a few inches, putting her forehead against his chest for a moment. Then she stepped back, holding her right hand up. Gold coins glittered between her fingers, then jumped as she flipped her hand over and bounced the coins, three of them, across her knuckles. “I am.”

Javier clapped his hand to his purse. “Eliza!”

She laughed, popping the coins over to land stacked in her palm. Javier picked them up, scattering them across his own palm; they were all faceup, all imprinted with the same year. “How do you
do
that?”

“Practise,” Eliza said with a shrug. She bent her wrist in and fetched a fourth coin from inside of her sleeve, holding it up between two fingers. “Practise and a healthy disregard for other people’s belongings.”

Javier snatched the coin out of her fingers, grinning. “Are there more?”

Eliza spread her arms. “You’ll have to look.”