"I cannot keep on a serving girl who lies, Rosa." The chastisement was light and mocking. "Do you think it can be trained out of you?"
Belinda swallowed again, letting her eyes drift shut. Gregori's skin was too hot, his eyes too bright, his colour bad. He had been well yesterday, and his symptoms were not those of the arsenic. Perhaps Dmitri need not have worried: this once it seemed nature and the queen's bastard had the same agenda.
But fevers could be healed from, if a man had strength, and the hold Gregori still had on her wrist told Belinda that he still had strength to spare. She remembered the strong dose of poison in his cooling tea, and certainty warmed her: the drug wouldn't hurt as she worked to achieve her ends, but there were other ways available, too. Cutting a man's hair wasn't the only way to drain his strength.
"Rosa?" His voice was more pointed, angrier now. Belinda lifted her chin to meet his eyes, letting a tremble come back into her voice.
"Perhaps w-with a strong hand, my lord." Let him take her hesitation for fear. Let him revel in his stronghold, while she eked the soil from beneath fortress walls.
Gregori's smile sharpened, and Belinda steeled herself against pain.
Viktor's mouth thinned with anger when she undressed that night. "No," she said, before he had time to fling the accusation. "It wasn't you." She kept her eyes lowered, though she watched him through her eyelashes. "I drew the count's attention this morning."
Jealousy struggled with loyalty, thinning Viktor's mouth to white beneath his dark beard. "I wouldn't betray you," she continued, voice low and beguiling. "You must know that." She didn't call him by name; she never called them by name. It made it easier for most things, although in moments like this it would be useful to play that card. Men-and women, too-liked little more than the sound of their own names being spoken. If only she were sure it was was Viktor, and not Vlad, she might calculate the risk and take it. Instead she let her shift fall a little further around her breasts, clutching it loosely. "I had no choice." Viktor, and not Vlad, she might calculate the risk and take it. Instead she let her shift fall a little further around her breasts, clutching it loosely. "I had no choice."
"If he gets you with child, I'll marry you." The man's words were blunt and hard in the quiet room. Belinda forgot coquettishness in astonishment and let the shift drop, only catching it at the last moment. She drew it up too late; the bruises against her throat Viktor had already seen, but the others, on her arms and breasts, she'd thought to hide until twilight dimmed to darkness. Viktor curled his lip and came forward, using both rough hands to pull the shift down. Belinda folded her arms over her breasts as he scowled and knelt, putting his palm over marks left by Gregori's hands, without touching them. Her ribs, her hip, her thigh. The last he put his hand on, making her pull away, making her open her legs. The marks there, against the backs of her thighs and curving inward, were welts, not bruises. Viktor's hands, usually warm, felt cool against the raised marks. "Do you like this?" There was so much anger in his voice that the words scraped from his throat. Belinda answered truthfully, surprising herself.
"Not particularly." It was true, although not the whole truth. Lust rode a dangerous border between pleasure and pain, and she was well-versed in giving herself over to desire. When the line blurred, she rarely minded in the moment, riding it as a kind of power of her own. Even now she could reach back to the morning and feel Gregori's strength waning; feel it as though she drew it away like a succubus, increasing her own vigor. That was heady enough to savor, though days of soreness and bruises after made her sullen, and she never eagerly anticipated the lick of a cane or a hard hand.
"Do you like him?"
This time she smiled, more a sound, breath snorted out, than a curve of her lips. "Not particularly." She unfolded one arm from over her breasts and touched Viktor's hair. It was cleaner; he'd washed today. The realization clicked in her mind and she lifted her chin, staring sightlessly at the far wall. "You knew."
"Everyone always knows." Viktor's voice remained gruff. "So? Will you have me?"
Gregori would never get her with child. It took a simpleton of a servant girl to not know the sharp-flavoured flowers that grew, the seeds of which could be brewed into a strong tea and prevent a child from quickening in the womb. But men didn't like to think of such things, taking the very idea of an unrooted child as an affront to their masculinity. Belinda, touched with a rare compassion, closed her fingers in Viktor's hair as gently as she could. "You deserve better than I can give you." She meant the words, if not in the way the guardsman heard them. He hawked a rough sound, denial.
"You think I don't believe you when you say you have no choice? He's the count. You're nothing."
Anger flared up in Belinda's chest, taking her breath with it. She was far from nothing; she was a secret weapon, a secret child, a secret truth, and for a shocking moment the impulse to lay that bare hammered within her. She subsumed it, astonished at the emotion's violence; not in all the years since she had realised her hidden heritage had the desire to share it struck out. To do so was disaster for all; to discover that the notion to confess, or declare, lay in her thoughts astounded and frightened her.
"We serve, all of us," Viktor went on, oblivious. "No one, not serving maid or guardsman, says no to the master's whim."
Belinda's eyebrows arched slowly. "A guardsman?" Now that was a secret she hadn't so much as heard a whisper of, which meant either Gregori was incredibly discreet, or she was misinterpreting. Viktor's face curdled red under her hand, and she masked a laugh by forcing a lie of wonder into her voice. "I didn't know men could...could-but not the count, surely."
"I only know rumours." Viktor moved his hand up sharply, bisecting her sex with thumb and forefinger, ending her speculation. She closed her eyes briefly; the flesh was tender, and his touch hadn't been gentle. "I've never understood the need to hurt a woman," he said in a low growl. He pulled her closer, sliding his other hand over her bottom, bumping his fingers over welts laid there by Gregori's cane.
"Do you wish to explore it, my lord?" Belinda whispered. The hard hands of three men in a day was more than she remembered counting before, and Viktor usually laughed when she gave him the appellation normally reserved for the master of the house.
Not so this time. He pushed his thumb into the cleft between her thighs, pressing his finger against the already-abused centre of pleasure there, and ignored her question to say "You haven't answered me."
Belinda's stomach tensed, the small of her back tightening at his rough touch. She moved her hand through the guard's clean hair, savoring the feeling. He had known. Had taken care to wash and clean himself, knowing that his lover would come back bruised from their lord's ministrations. Had come to offer her a path out of disgrace and had got down on his knees like a love match, even if the wherefores were not love. It was a generous gesture, showing more kindness than she was accustomed to. It was his misfortune to have landed in her bed; he deserved a better ending than he was likely to find there. And now he rhythmically stroked the welts on her backside as he waited for an answer.
"Yes."
Viktor groaned and twisted his hand to drive his fingers inside her. He dragged her forward as she gasped, burying his nose in the thatch of her dark curls, tongue seeking the spot his thumb had abandoned. Belinda clutched at his hair and for a wall, shuddering as her ill-fated suitor brought her to come.
"He is ill." The castellan waggled his jowls, turning ponderously from the fires to face the assembled maids and manservants. It was barely dawn; for the count's illness to be worthy news already meant he was more gravely unwell than Belinda had counted on. There had been loud voices in the halls at three of the morning, and now she knew what they all did: a doctor had been called. Nothing less would precede so early an announcement. Belinda twisted her hands in her skirts, mimicking the girl next to her, and kept her eyes lowered. Her dress today was exceedingly modest, covering her from throat to toe and wrist to shoulder, the only way to hide marks on her throat. The bruise on her cheek had been covered expertly by cosmetics; today she didn't need to catch the count's attention. The castellan droned on, more taken with the sound of his own voice than the imparting of information: the count was sick, and it was serious, else the doctor would not have come, but his words implied renewing energy and restored health. Maid and manservant alike knew them for lies, but no one would dispute the truth with the castellan.
"Rosa."
Belinda allowed herself a startle, knotting her fingers more tightly in her skirt. "Yes, sir?" She barely lifted her eyes; the castellan liked his women dim-witted and submissive.
"The count asks for you to attend him today."
A whisper rustled through the other servants, knowing looks and glances of bitter jealousy. Everyone always knows, Viktor had said. Belinda knew it was true. She dropped a curtsey, fingers still clenched in her skirt. "My honour, sir."
"That will be all." The castellan flipped his fingers dismissively; the standing crowd stepped back, breaking apart. A girl hissed "Harlot" at Belinda's back, and a man's low chuckle followed it.
"And wouldn't you be, too, if the master bade you spread your legs," he muttered. The girl let out a gasp of outrage, then a squeak as he slapped her on the arse, hard enough for the sound to be recognizable through layers of skirts and petticoats. "Hold your tongue," he said. Belinda waited two breaths, then looked over her shoulder to meet the speaker's eyes. A coachman, awake enough to have been the one who fetched the doctor, unimportant enough in the household that Belinda didn't know his name. He gave her a wink and she inclined her head, the only thanks he'd get. She gathered her skirts, curtsying again to the castellan, and went to fetch Gregori's breakfast and tea.
Even knowing the doctor had been there, the count's colour was worse than she'd expected, and made worse still by comparison to the rich brocade duvet he lay beneath. "My lord," Belinda murmured as she set his tea tray by the bed. She'd wiped the cosmetics from her face, leaving the bruise an ugly greening mark on her cheek, and even in sickness she saw his eyes go to it, before amusement curved his mouth and he lifted a hand-thin-boned and pale, far more so than a day earlier-to curl his fingers into the high collar of her gown that hid the ring of bruises he had left.
"I'm disappointed, Rosa. Do you always hide the marks of love?" His grip had less strength than it had the day before, but he was still strong, stronger than she was.
"I had not thought to see you today, my lord, else I'd have taken more care in my dressing."
"Did you not?" His voice sharpened. "Do they tell you I'm ill, Rosa? That I must be coddled and treated like a child?"
"That you're ill, yes, my lord. That the doctor has been and gone, and that you'll be well enough soon." Belinda straightened; Gregori's hand in her partlet pulled the fabric tight, and buttons slipped free. It was made to do so, all the easier for assignations. His mouth thinned with pleasure and he yanked hard on the fabric. Buttons flew loose, the partlet tearing away. Belinda lifted her chin half in response to the pull and half to display her necklace of bruises. "It seems to me you're neither ill nor weak at all, my lord." The hollowness beneath his eyes and in his cheeks gave lie to her words, but nothing in her voice or gaze did. Later, when she lay with her teeth set together against the pain of too much use, she thought that nothing in his passion gave lie to her claim, either.
But the next day she was flush and healthy, and Gregori all the worse, and the doctor's face had grown deadly grim. Whispers ran wild among the staff, fears for the count's life and tales of what illness bore him down. Belinda shivered when a canker of the stomach was hinted at.
And the word spat after her then was not whore but witch. That gave her pause, her heart seizing with the fancy that the accusation held merit, and then simply seized, a place too cold for the stillness to fill opening inside her. Witchery was a forbidden craft; an impossible one, by any rational thought. But rational thought had never ruled, and very little stood between a woman and a stake to burn her at when the word flew. Belinda's heart lurched from one beat to another, staggered with the weight of real fear. Bitter thoughts on a midsummer morning did not not bring on sudden illness, no matter how useful that illness might be to her. Dismayed nausea at a task interrupted did not leap from her frustration to poison a man's body. bring on sudden illness, no matter how useful that illness might be to her. Dismayed nausea at a task interrupted did not leap from her frustration to poison a man's body.
It was not herself she had to convince.
Hands relaxed, disdain and insult in her eyes, Belinda turned back to face Ilyana, petite and blond and jealous, and looked down at her from the advantage of height she held. She said nothing, only looked; after a steady moment or two Ilyana blanched, then gathered her skirts and ran.
"You ought not have done that."
Belinda smoothed her skirts without lifting her eyes to meet the coachman's. "Perhaps not. A woman named whore will be run out of house and home, but a woman named witch will be burned." She looked up then, without humour, without betraying the pounding of her heart or the cold spurts that made her hands thick as they stroked her skirts again. "One I can live through. The other no one can."
"You've made an enemy."
Belinda shook her head. "No, sir. An enemy can do you harm. Ilyana can't do anything to me." She curved her mouth into a smile, still without humour. "Certainly not so long as I have the count's eye."
"And if he's as ill as they say?"
Interest lit Belinda's eyes. She swayed her hips forward, her smile turning fuller. "You drove the doctor. Do you have more than servant's gossip?"
The coachman shrugged, easy loose movement. Viktor, Belinda thought, would never move with that much grace. Viktor, though, would do her bidding, and the young catamount here might have ideas of his own. "Yesterday the doctor came away shaking his head and frowning, as bad a sign as I've ever seen. Today..."
Belinda edged forward again, inviting intimacy, her gaze wide on the coachman's. "Today?"
"Today he's silent."
Belinda caught her breath, wanting it to warm the coldness inside her and instead feeling the accusation of witchcraft dancing in the chill. Arsenic and a bad summer cold and a woman willing to spend all of Gregori's spare strength-that's what brought the count low, not spells chanted over an animal's spilled blood. It was not witchcraft, only coincidence and cruel, deliberate machination. She forced sluggish fear away, wrapping herself in the memory of sunlight cloaking Robert's shoulders. Slow warmth replaced the cold, calming her breathing and her heart, and, protected by stillness, she nodded to show the coachman she understood.
His mouth twitched, not with amusement. Recognition, rather, and the acknowledgment that she understood what he learned from silence. "You've known a lot of doctors, then."
"A few," Belinda said. "Enough." She glanced down the hall, then dipped a slight curtsey. "If you'll excuse me now, the count wants his tea."
"And his girl," the coachman said without malice. "If he's not stronger by morning, watch yourself, Rosa. Ilyana's got a mean tongue in her."
"Thank you." Belinda let his warning slip away as soon as her back was turned, and Gregori was dead with the sunrise.
She heard it with the others, being nowhere near important enough to sit out his death watch with him, for all that she'd been closer to him in the last days of his life than anyone else in the household. No, his son from a first marriage had come, riding in late the night before, and the regal, sharp-featured woman who was his noble lover had arrived in the small hours of the morning. Belinda had stood awake on the palace turrets, watching the hurried arrivals, and knew that morning would bear the news of the count's death.
Now, with it spoken, she heard the shrieks and wailings of Ilyana and other women, and stared thoughtfully at her own feet. She'd been in Gregori's employ only a few months; to leave immediately would call more attention to herself, even make her suspect. To stay with Ilyana and her spiteful tongue might cost her far more. The young count wouldn't want to risk her carrying his father's child, and the high-born lover would likely as soon see a bruised servant girl dead as not.
Over Belinda's thoughts and over the cries of the women, the castellan boomed that no one was to worry, that the young count would not put them out of job and home, and that if he did it would surely be with handsome recommendations. The others' alarm lifted the hairs on Belinda's arms, making her run a hand down one as she pursed her mouth. There would be chaos for a day or two while the estate was reordered. Most pressing was the matter of Ilyana: if she left off her cries of witchcraft, Belinda would stay. She lifted her eyes to consider the blond girl, who seemed to sense the look, and turned on her.
"It's your fault! Whore! Witch! You charmed him and did him to death! Been here no time at all, and now the lord is dead! It's your fault!" Shrieking, Ilyana pitched herself at Belinda, who fell back, catching the other woman's wrists more clumsily than was her wont, but with more ease than Rosa the serving girl might have done. Anger fueled by fear rose up in her, and she let them both show through: the coachman had been right after all, and no one should have been as calm in the face of an accusation of witchcraft as Belinda had been.
"Did him to death, did I?" She shoved Ilyana backward, throwing the smaller girl to the floor. A part of her sang with the truth of it: yes, she had done the count to death, but it had not been witchery, simply a stupid man more interested in showing his prowess than conserving his strength. That, and the arsenic, and perhaps a touch of lucky fate when she'd looked for nothing of the sort at all.
And beneath that, far beneath it where she barely allowed the thought to form, she wondered in terror and hope if Ilyana was not somehow right, and she had pulled a killing power from within herself. She had hidden in shadow once, as a child, and had been forbidden that talent by her father's interference. If it was witchcraft, if she was born to a dark art, he might have done well by her to hide it. If this was its maturity, the ability to murder a man by her will alone...what a gift that would be, and what horror.
Belinda thrust those thoughts away, refusing to linger on the possibility or the fear or the hope, and instead plucked her partlet from around her throat to show Ilyana yellowing bruises. "Would a woman who could do a man to death let him do this to her? Is this what you're so eager for?" Sharp inhalations seemed to thin the air, greedy eyes trying to stare and look away all at once.
"You bespelled him," Ilyana snarled. "Maybe bruises are the price you pay for your magic, bitch."
"Ladies." The castellan, face bleak with anger and grief, stepped between them. "We are all too emotional now. Forget this, and let us behave with the decorum that best suits us."
Yes, Belinda thought, the serving classes, so much more concerned with propriety than their wealthy masters. But she didn't miss the castellan's eyes lingering on her, or the suspicion and doubt that had been planted behind them. "Sir," she murmured, and backed away, eyes lowered. There would be no time for a discreet exit, then. Ilyana would expose her to angry nobles looking for someone to blame. Belinda had no intention of dangling her slender neck in a hangman's noose. She stepped into the first servant's crossed hall off the kitchen, pausing there to consider the ends that needed tightening.
"I leave within the hour," the coachman said from across the hall. Belinda raised her head, eyebrows lifted. "To bear tidings of the count's death to the capital city." He hurried down the hall, booted heels snapping against the stone floors. Belinda watched him go, then gathered her skirts. Viktor could not be found in her room.
3
SANDALIA, QUEEN AND REGENT
27 June 1587 Isidro, capital of Essandia
"I've waited twenty years, Rodrigo." Sandalia whirls herself across her brother's private rooms, fully aware she s giving in to the histrionics of a much younger woman. "Javier's long since old enough-"
"Javier," Rodrigo interrupts, "is his mother's most loyal subject, and doesn't itch for a throne. You haven't been waiting, Sandalia." He stands, cutting a deliberate swath across Sandalia's stormy path to pour cups of wine and hand one to her. She glowers, knowing he's trying to settle her agitation, but takes the cup regardless, sipping quickly.
The years have been kind to the prince of Essandia. In his sixth decade he's still slender, with streaks of silver highlighting his temples and beard. Noble women still dance their daughters past him, and negotiations have never ceased between the royal families of Echon. Sandalia's own curvaceous figure will be unlikely to fare as well over the next decades, but for now she knows she, too, makes a striking figure, especially at her brother's side.
A side that is not supporting her the way she wishes it to. "I have have been waiting-" been waiting-"
"Waiting suggests doing nothing. Complacency. Idle hands. You've gathered your strength, made the Gallic people love you-and that, princess of Essandia, is no small trick-kept Lanyarch's heart beating from afar, and have raised a son to follow you. You have kept an army strong enough to stave off Reussland's encroachments onto Gallic territory, and you have done so without crippling your people with taxes, or building their resentment so high that they refuse to fight in your name. Any...any of those things," Rodrigo emphasizes, lifting his voice over Sandalia's protests, "is not waiting. All of them together are preparing. You would have been a fool to move after Javier's birth, Sandalia. So soon after Louis's death. No one would have supported you, and Aulun would have crushed you and taken Gallin and Lanyarch in Lorraine's name." of those things," Rodrigo emphasizes, lifting his voice over Sandalia's protests, "is not waiting. All of them together are preparing. You would have been a fool to move after Javier's birth, Sandalia. So soon after Louis's death. No one would have supported you, and Aulun would have crushed you and taken Gallin and Lanyarch in Lorraine's name."
"Aulun would have crushed me, and you, backed by Cordula, would have decimated the Aulunian army and destroyed their fleet," Sandalia retorts tartly, but sighs and looks away. "It's easier to see it as preparing from the outside, Rodrigo. I was a girl then, and suddenly heir to two thrones."
"Three," Rodrigo says mildly. "I still have no heir."
"You should marry Irina. She's been a widow ten years now, and no one misses Feodor. Let Ivanova take the Khazarian throne and have the imperatrix breed you a son or two of your own."
"Irina." Rodrigo lifts an eyebrow and sips at his wine, casual curiosity in his actions. "That's not one of the more popular suggestions. Khazar's church isn't Cordula's."
"Think of it, Rodrigo. The Echonian states would be caught between Khazar's massive power to the north and east, and Essandia's long arm south into the Primorismare. Couple that with me on the Gallic throne, and you would hold over half of Echon's coastline. Aulun would come to heel or be left in the cold, unable to trade."
"We would surround Reussland," Rodrigo says with thoughtful dismay. "The kaiser might take exception to that."
"We'll marry Javier to his daughter," Sandalia says. "He should be married soon anyway."
"This urgency is new, Sandalia." Rodrigo puts his wine cup away and does the same with hers, so he can fold her hands in his. "What prompts it?"
"There's nothing more to prepare," Sandalia says. "Either I move or I accept waiting for Lorraine's death before Lanyarch is released from Reformation hold. I move now, or I've spent a lifetime preparing for nothing. I'm not willing to wait, Rodrigo. As heir to Lanyarch's throne through Charles, I have a claim to Aulun's, and Javier will look well upon that seat. If I do nothing, I am only a woman. Not a queen, not a visionary, not an expansionist as all of us but you want to be-"
Rodrigo laughs. "You and Lorraine and Irina are women, Dalia. You rule well, all of you, but none of you have been to war. It's not that I don't want to regain Aulun for the Church. It's that I know war's price personally, and prefer my expansions to come through the signing of a treaty. You're determined to make this move?"
"Soon." Sandalia nods. "There'll be a moment when the stars align, when the time to move is clear. Maybe Irina-"
"Irina," Rodrigo says, "has proposed a treaty with me."
Sandalia picks up her wine again, using the motion to cover surprise. "Over a wedding bed?"
"Over a fleet. It seems the imperatrix hungers for economic expansion, if not new lands."
"Khazar's five times the size of Echon as a whole. Irina doesn't need any more land. What will she give in return, Rodrigo? The thing you need most-"
"It is not a marriage proposal," Rodrigo says firmly. "She offers troops, not an heir."
"Troops. For the war you don't want to fight?"
"It's not always necessary to meet battle on the fields, Dalia. They can be fought in mind and heart and on paper, and if I have Khazar's military to call on, the Red Bitch can't possibly hope to rally an army of equal size. All the better if she can be pressured into capitulating without a drop of blood spilt. Aulun will come back to Cordula." Rodrigo's voice deepens, a passion for his religion dominating all else. "We lost too many faithful in the aftermath of the Heretical Trials, and Aulun's rebellion only sparks more radical thought against the Church. Aulun must be brought to heel within our lifetimes, or Cordula seems weak. I will not have the world worshipping a false god, Sandalia. I will not have it."
"And so you'll threaten and bluster with Irina's army and hope for Lorraine's acquiesence?"