Summer turns to fall. With Leo and Christophe back at school, Alyssa has to figure out ways to fill her time when she’s not dealing with James. (Or worse, Endymion.) Every morning, James demands predictions, and nearly every night, he comes to her room for chess and conversation. He also starts having Alyssa accompany him at court functions, which gets people talking—who is this foreign girl, and why does the King spend so much time with her? The uncomfortable intimacy that develops teaches Alyssa just how cruel James can be—and if it weren’t for Corbenic’s excellent healers, she would have the scars to prove it. It also stokes the attraction that has been simmering away between the two of them.
EXCERPT
That afternoon, Alyssa was informed that His
Wisdom wished her to attend the evening’s banquet. She never knew if it was
because of the Clayton is a King conversation, or if it was something James had
made up his mind about a long time ago. In either case, she was informed
through Clotilde, who looked pleased at the prospect of getting her all gussied
up.
The banquets were held nearly every
weeknight at the palace. They were meant to be social occasions for the
visiting nobility, but, as Alyssa quickly learned, they were just an
opportunity for more political dickering.
For her first attendance, Clotilde dressed
her in a gown of gold and brown brocade, and gold jewelry with amber gemstones,
dark as cognac. When Alyssa was ready, she waited for someone – Henri or Geoff,
she presumed -- to come escort her to the dining room.
Instead, when her door opened, it was James
who appeared. For dinner, he was wearing a jade-green coat with white
embroidery and a satin vest sewn with rubies.
She curtsied. “Your Wisdom.”
As she straightened up, he looked her over
approvingly. “I thought we’d make use of your telepathic abilities this
evening. Before dinner, there will be a lot of mingling. I want to know if
certain parties are lying to me.”
She nodded. “My field commander and I worked
out a system to help him win at cards. He’d sit at the table and I’d See what
the others were holding. We had signals worked out for when he should go all
in, fold, that sort of thing.” She touched her throat. “This meant they were
bluffing.” She touched her left ear. “This meant they were cheating.”
Sighing deeply, James’ hand went to his
heart. “Ah, chèrie. A soothsayer and a card sharp?” A roguish grin lit up his features. “So, being
unable to lie does not preclude other forms of dishonesty? What fascinating
implications.”
Biting her lip, Alyssa looked down. Maybe
she shouldn’t have said that?
Quickly, James put his arm around her. “It’s
all right. I was hoping to work out a similar arrangement. As I said, I want to
know if I’m being lied to. It would be helpful to know if someone is concealing
something from me as well. Shall we say that this means someone is lying?”
Here, he touched her throat. “And this means they’re hiding something?” He
touched her ear.
Again, she nodded. His arm was still around
her, and he gave her a gentle squeeze. “Good girl.”
Endymion was waiting for them in the
hallway. When he saw her on James’ arm, he scowled.
The three of them went downstairs to one of
the dining rooms. As far as state soirees went, in Alyssa’s narrow experience,
it was a small one-- only fifty or sixty people. The guests eyed her curiously.
She was still quite the novelty, the strange foreign girl who was Prince
Leopold’s affianced. They were even more curious to see her with the King, who
had never shown the slightest interest in any of his daughters-in-law before,
or any other woman for that matter.
Over the course of the evening, their
curiosity grew. James kept Alyssa close, his hand on her back, or sometimes at
the nape of her neck, steering her around. It made her deeply uncomfortable.
She caught the looks on Henri and Geoff’s faces. They didn’t like it, either.
Not one little bit.
For the meal, she was seated on James’ left,
across from Endymion, who took the opportunity to send her some pretty major
bitchwaves. She did her best to ignore him since she was on the clock.
Listening in on the King’s conversations was
easy work for her-- dull, in fact. She barely listened to the words themselves,
just read the intentions behind them. And the lords were easy to fool. She
didn’t even have to be subtle with the hand signals. Once the men were engaged
in conversation, she became a non-entity. It’s not as if women were expected to
join in, much less have an opinion.
Afterwards, James was so pleased with her
performance, he gave her a pat on the head before he sent her back to her rooms
with Henri. Maybe next time he’d balance a piece of cheese on her nose.
The next night was the same, and the night
after that, and the night after that. Clotilde dressed Alyssa often in the
Sarpedonne house colors. To her profound relief, they hadn’t stamped the back
of her hand yet. (Thia explained that that wouldn’t happen until the marriage
ceremony. Wives were stamped on the left hand, mistresses on the right.) Still,
Alyssa could see could how puzzling her position must be to everyone. If she
was engaged to Leopold, why did the King keep her at his side like that? Why
did he put his hands on her as he did?
In the course of listening in on their
thoughts, Alyssa discovered that the nobility’s opinions of the King were
sharply divided. About a third of the people hated him, a third loved him, and
a third were too terrified of him to either truly hate or love him. Hatred and
fear she understood, but why did so many people love him?
The short answer was basically the Monty
Python song, “What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?” The Romans are all
bastards, they’ve bled us till we’re white… Like the Romans, James had made
sure all of the major cities had new water and sewer systems. Filtration
dramatically decreased water-borne diseases. He’d also improved the hospitals
around the world, subsidizing their operational expenses from the royal
treasury. Along with that, he’d ordered the first wide-scale vaccination
programs—smallpox, tetanus, cholera, and some others. Healers around the world
were developing new treatments. Before James, there hadn’t really been an
educational system to speak of. Of course, there was the Great Lodge in the
Capital, and all the provinces had at least one Lodge school, but their
curriculums were surprisingly disparate. James had worked with the Grand Master
to create a standardized curriculum for all the Lodge schools, to endow more
scholarships for disadvantaged students. He also set compulsory education for
peasant boys through age twelve—reading, writing, arithmetic, and some history
and geography. Alyssa gathered that the compulsory part was not as
well-enforced as he’d like, but it was a start. And finally, he’d overseen
large-scale infrastructure projects. Old roads and bridges underwent repairs
and new ones were put in. Cartographers were employed to update maps and
atlases. If they weren’t already, all the major cities were put on power grids
(fueled by the ley lines, of course). And on and on.
Well, Mussolini made sure the trains ran on
time and Hitler loved his dog, Alyssa thought sourly. Though she couldn’t imagine James had done any of
those things out of love or compassion. That wasn’t his way. A man like James
didn’t want to merely conquer the world; he wanted the world he ruled over to
be worthy of him. Still, Alyssa had never expected listening in at the banquets
would be so interesting.
That was how she stumbled onto a different thread altogether, from the women. Some of them were sympathetic to her plight. All of them were in arranged marriages. Many of them had been traded for political gain in the wake of James’ wars. Bleeding provinces trying to hold themselves together—what better way to build alliances than with marriages? Some of these women had even been abducted by their current husbands. Alyssa remembered how blasé Rainier had been when he’d asked, He stole you, didn’t he? Like, it was just a thing here, no big deal. Christ.
One evening, James turned loose of Alyssa
just long enough for one of the women to approach her. “Good evening,
mademoiselle,” she curtsied. “I am Sandrine Adele Bellerophon Taliesin. My
husband is Lord Gaspard Taliesin.”
Alyssa curtsied back. “Alyssa Calderon. Nice
to meet you.”
Lady Taliesin smiled. “We met before, at
your engagement party. I’m sure you don’t remember.” Coming forward, she
clasped Alyssa’s arm. Up close, Alyssa could see that she was about
twenty-five, though the serious look on her face made her seem much older. “I
just want you to know that you’re not alone here. You have friends, if you wish
it.”
Alyssa did not get a chance to respond. From
behind them came the King’s voice, “Chèrie.”
In spite of herself, Alyssa flinched. He was
not angry—not yet. But his voice had carried, and the room went silent,
breathless. Alyssa turned to see him, holding his hand out to her.
Lady Taliesin
whispered, “Just know that you are welcome in our home anytime, my dear.”
Alyssa smiled gratefully,
then returned to James’ side. Pulling her close, James glanced at Lady
Taliesin, then at her husband, who had joined her.
Lord Taliesin
bowed. “Your Wisdom.”
The King gave him
the most cursory of nods.
After dinner,
James escorted Alyssa from the dining room. As soon as they were out of earshot
of any guests, his fingers tightened on her neck. “Don’t do that again.”
“She spoke to me.
What was I supposed to do?”
“Keep your mouth
shut, for a start. You’re here to listen.”
“I can’t even make
friends?”
He snorted.
“They’re not your friends; they’ll never be your friends. They’re only
interested in you because you’re engaged to Leo. They want to use you to
further their own aims.”
“Gosh, what must
that be like?”
He turned her
roughly to face him. “You’re mine. The only person you need to worry about
pleasing around here is me.”
“All right!” she
snapped. “I get it.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. But could you just, please, maybe,
lay off the whole manhandling thing? It’s pretty unnecessary.”
“Evidently, it
isn’t. I can’t trust you not to wander off.”
“Wander
off? I was like five feet away--” She took a deep breath. “Forget it. It’s
just… People are starting to talk. It’s why that lady approached me. It has
nothing to do with my relationship with Leo or even Henri. But I think you know
that.”
“And what conceivable difference could it
make to you, what they think?”
“To me?” she shrugged. “Not much. Might mean
something to Leo though.”
He let go of her then. His features
softened; his eyes grew warm. For a moment, he was so handsome, it was
blinding. “Well,” he traced her cheek, ran one fingertip lightly across her
lips. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
A shiver went through her and she tried to
take a step back, but he caught her arm again. “Oh, don’t worry,” he laughed as
they continued to the stairs. “As you said, people are already talking. Why
validate them?”
