The Queen's Bastard

BELINDA PRIMROSE

14 February 1577 Alunaer, Aulun; the Queen’s Court He was younger than she expected.

Belinda stood at her father’s elbow, studying du Roz across the gathered court. In his twenties and thin-cheeked, he might be handsome if his disposition were choleric, but standing in the court, speaking with a courtier dressed far more expensively than he, du Roz looked mild to Belinda’s eyes. His hair, like his cheeks, was thin; his hands, in motion as he spoke, were long and elegant. There were worse matches to be made, if a glance could tell her anything.

But it had not yet been made. The queen’s approval came first, and that could not be granted until Belinda had been presented to her. Only after that would the nominal steps of courting be taken and permission to wed asked of Lorraine.

Trumpets blared, half a dozen courtiers nearby flinching into squared shoulders and sucked-in guts. Belinda smoothed a hand over her skirts, watching du Roz. He straightened, but not in startlement, and turned to the far end of the hall with calculated smoothness. Belinda, guided by Robert’s hand on her shoulder, turned as well.

The doors swept open with a rush of warm wind that carried the sound of the queen’s footsteps down the length of the silent hall. Seconds passed before Belinda saw her clearly; the room from which Lorraine entered was dark, making her entrance all the more dramatic. From darkness into light; Belinda, despite her own excitement about being at court, could not help a rise of amusement at the deliberate pageantry behind the staged arrival. Then, fighting down laughter, she admonished herself for the thought that Her Majesty, queen of all Aulun, had to earn her, Belinda’s, approval for how she manipulated her court. Belinda shifted forward a little to see beyond the barrel chest of the courtier beside her.

Titian hair fell loose, bloody curls against translucent skin. A crown, gold and understated, nestled among the curls. Lorraine bucked fashion-or, more likely, set it-with a gown of stiff brocade that pushed her breasts high and left her throat and shoulders exposed, sleeves set further out than fashion dictated, just at the curve of shoulder. Thin grey eyes, a high forehead, and a proud chin, lifted in expectation of received adoration.

Thunder pounded through Belinda’s veins, narrowing her vision to pinpricks, until she saw no one but the queen. Motion of bodies nearby told her to curtsey deep and slow, as the men and women around her did, and she did, black gaze fixed on the floor. When she straightened again, Lorraine had moved beyond them, and Belinda could stare openly at the queen’s fine, slender shoulders. Robert had not told her.

It must not be found out. Belinda closed her eyes, letting Robert’s chuckle wash over her. “Beautiful, isn’t she?” he murmured above her. “Fear not, Primrose. Very few, upon their first visit to court, are affected differently.”

The very lowness of his voice itched through her, making it seem as though he spoke from much farther away. Through a distance of comforting grumbles, perhaps; through a barrier of red-tinged warmth so familiar it wrapped around the edges of her dreams. It seemed extraordinary that she had never quite known it before, not the way she knew it now. Her vaunted memory had not abandoned her, but neither had it offered the puzzle piece that she now recognized. Heat burned her cheeks, a thing so unusual that she had not yet learned to control it with the stillness. It was something to work on, as she’d worked on keeping her breathing steady and her presence unremarkable even when, as now, astonishment and curiosity sparked through her like the promise of a blaze. She knew. She knew. She had thought she’d understood when Robert had spoken of her fate, but now, in the press of courtiers and hangers-on among the queen’s court, Belinda Primrose knew the heart of what had gone unsaid for all her short life, and wanted to fly with it.

“Then I will try not to be too embarrassed.” Her reply was soft and clear, betraying nothing of excitement. Blackness had faded from her vision. All around her, the queen’s attendants exchanged astounded whispers over Lorraine’s daring gown. The women of the court clutched at their partlets and blouses as if they longed to rip them away at that very moment. The men looked as if they hoped the women would.

Belinda, in unconscious sympathy, pressed her hand against the embroidered partlet that covered her throat and chest, even curling her fingers against the fabric. Robert’s touch stayed her and she nodded without argument, letting her hand fall again. Lorraine approached the throne, turning with an elegant swish of skirts to sit. The gathered court let out a collective breath, voices rising into low murmurs as, Lorraine’s procession over, they began to fill the empty space in the middle down which the queen had walked. Robert put his hand on Belinda’s elbow, guiding her through the crowd. Every step echoed through Belinda’s heels and rattled into her bones. She curtsied as deeply as she could, her eyes lowered, when they reached the throne.

“My adopted daughter, Your Majesty. Belinda Primrose, the daughter of my late sister and her husband.”

“Yes.” Lorraine’s voice held no remembered warmth; it was rich and cool and arrogant. She leaned forward a scant inch, examining Belinda as if she were a mote found on a piece of jewelry. “Born in Brittany and raised by your people at your Aulunian estates.”

Robert inclined his head so far it was nearly a bow. “The lands so graciously provided by Your Majesty.”

“What pretty courtesy you always remember to pay us, Robert.” Faint mockery coloured Lorraine’s voice. Belinda heard in the derision all lies of her heritage, and in her own mind, gave words to the truth: she was Belinda Primrose, natural daughter of Robert Drake and Lorraine Walter.

The queen’s bastard.

She straightened as Lorraine spoke her name, stepped forward as the queen beckoned to her. Cool fingers took her chin, turning her face to the left and right. Belinda kept her eyes lowered, but satisfaction in Lorraine’s voice made her dare to glance up. The queen’s grey eyes showed no sign of recognition, no subtle acknowledgment, but neither, Belinda remembered with a shock, had Robert’s, the night he looked through concealing shadow to see her. For an instant, Belinda held Lorraine’s eyes, willing the stillness inside of her to betray nothing. Inside that moment of no exchange, certainty settled around Belinda’s heart. Lorraine could never, and Belinda must never, confess. Belinda lowered her eyes again, lowered them so far that she sank into another deep curtsey, the only acknowledgment she could make. Lorraine clucked her tongue and once more drew Belinda to her feet.

“We are well pleased you have finally allowed us to see your adopted daughter, Robert. She is an attractive child and we are sure great use will be had of her.” Lorraine’s hand brushed down the bodice of Belinda’s dress, and moved up again, touching the partlet that covered the girl’s throat.

“We suggest you continue with this until the summer months,” she murmured, bringing her mouth close to Belinda’s ear. “We have a rash, and the lace irritates it, and so today we have chosen to go without modest coverings. Tomorrow the ladies of the court will be most distressed when having followed our lead makes them both chilled and unseemly. But in the spring, we think we shall flaunt our assets.”

Lorraine flicked a brief, mischievous smile at Belinda, and sat back again. “Heed our words come May Day, girl.” She made a dismissive gesture with one long-fingered hand, and Belinda murmured thanks as she backed away from the throne. “My lady Primrose.”

Belinda’s spine stiffened, the tiny dagger making itself felt for a moment. She turned; Rodney du Roz stood a few feet away, head inclined politely, though his gaze was fixed on her through dark eyelashes, calculating and interested. “Forgive me.” His words were marked with a Gallic accent, but carefully spoken. “Forgive me, my lady, but I overheard your introduction to Her Majesty, and thought I might make so bold as to present myself to you. Baron Rodney du Roz.” He executed a small bow, arms folded to the front and back of him.

Belinda allowed herself a smile and dipped a curtsey exactly as deep as du Roz’s bow. “My lord Baron. I am honoured.”

“I think the honour is mine, my lady. For an Ecumenic at the Aulunian court, a friendly smile is beyond price, and yours does me gladness. I am forward, I know, but it is the way of Gallic men.” Self-deprecating humour lit his eyes and curved his mouth for a moment. Belinda had been right: with passion, his thin features could be handsome. “Would you walk with me, lady?”

“You are forward,” Belinda agreed, amused, but when he offered his arm, she took it. “Outside, perhaps?” she suggested. “The courtroom…I am unaccustomed to so many people, pressing so close.” Du Roz nodded, escorting her through the crowd to a side door.

“You’ve never been to court before, then?” he asked as they slipped out of the courtroom and down a hall. Arrow-slit windows allowed patches of soft grey winter light to blotch the floor and change the aquamarine shade of Belinda’s overdress. She shook her head as they approached the end of the hall, du Roz pushing open the iron-bound wooden door for her. “Then you must see Alunaer from the palace walls,” he announced. “There are a dozen times in a day when it’s most perfect to be seen, dawn and noon and darkest night.”

Belinda laughed, carefully gathering up her skirts to avoid slush and half-frozen mud. “But it’s none of those times, Baron. It’s mid-morning.”

“Ah! But it has snowed lately, and the city is quiet under snowfall, and so that is perfect too. Have you a fear of heights, my lady?”

“No, my lord.”

“Bold and beautiful,” du Roz murmured. “This way, then: think you to risk the guard stairs?” He gestured extravagantly as he led her around a corner. Icy, steep stairs shot upward, a short wall of calf-height the only barrier between the stairs and a long fall. Belinda blanched, then nodded with determination. She took the first step, and felt du Roz’s hands on her hips. “Fear not, my lady. I won’t let you fall.”

Belinda laughed again, breathless. “I trust you will not, my lord Baron.” She climbed, placing her feet carefully. Du Roz took his hands from her hips in order to better balance himself. Nearly three-quarters of the way up, she paused, her hand pressed against her chest as she turned to lean against the high wall, looking out over the low. “Forgive me,” she pleaded, taking in quick, shallow breaths. “I’m unaccustomed to climbing so many stairs, and the corsets are tight.”

“Not at all. Even from here, the view is remarkable.” He took a step past her, gesturing over the palace walls at the city beyond.

“It is.” Belinda studied his shoulders, falsely broadened by his doublet, rather than the view, and her father’s voice echoed in her flawless memory.

“And this is how it shall go, my Primrose. Heed me well. Du Roz visits Aulun for one purpose and one purpose only: he is sent by the Essandia court, by Rodrigo the prince, to bring down our beloved queen and instate an Ecumenical pretender on the Aulunian throne. He is too minor a noble to be suspected, too hungry for land and wealth. Should he be found out, Rodrigo can easily claim no knowledge; du Roz will be called an opportunist, working alone to impress a foreign prince.”

Belinda touched a hand to du Roz’s shoulder. He turned, avarice filling his eyes. She smiled, and he stepped closer.

“The man you believe I mean you to marry,” Robert’s voice murmured in her mind, “is the man Aulun needs you to kill.”

Stillness filled her, a calm centre. Belinda smiled again, putting her fingertips gently against du Roz’s chest. He made a pleased sound in his throat, edging closer on the icy steps.

Belinda straightened her arm, full force of her body weight behind the shove. Astonishment filled du Roz’s eyes, then panic as he fell, silent, hands clutching uselessly at thin winter air. It took a surprisingly long time for him to crunch against the flagstones below. Belinda stepped forward cautiously, looking down. The body, small, puppetlike, convulsed twice, then was still.

She edged back against the wall, lifting her gaze to the snow-covered city. In the far distance, chimney smoke rose up, blue against grey clouds; the scent of wood smoke, rich and sharp, intruded on her senses, now that the task put to her was finished. Closer, black-branched trees with snow-dusted caps littered the parks that surrounded the palace. There were distant voices, lifted in argument and in laughter and carried on the wind. “You were right,” Belinda murmured. “It’s beautiful.”

Only then did she begin to scream.

Ten years later Belinda came awake with a start, the lurch more emotional than physical: stillness was inscribed so deeply in her soul now that she sometimes had to remind herself to react in ordinary company. At times she even thought she might have to tell herself to breathe, the silence in her so complete. But not now: her heartbeat was too fast, breath shallow from sleep. Dreaming of du Roz was never a good sign.

Nor was waking to the scratchy beard and bad breath of a Khazarian lover. Belinda exhaled, and carefully slid her shoulder out from under his head. He grunted, burrowing further into blankets in lieu of the pillow she’d made. She sat up, rubbing away stinging prickles left by his beard, and drew a discarded sleeping gown around her shoulders. Linen, silk-soft from age, hissed as she slid it from beneath the Khazarian’s weight.

Belinda frowned at him, trying to remember his name. Vlad? Vasilly? Valentine? No, it had been shorter than Valentine. Sharper. She had spent weeks in his bed. She ought to know his name with some certainty. But then, there were reasons not to. It was Viktor, she thought. It hadn’t been he, attentive but unimaginative in bed, who had inspired dreams of du Roz. No, there was more. Something coming awake in the belly of the little palace, its stirrings pressing into Belinda’s mind and making her sleep restless. That was unusual; she often slept lightly, but the prickling awareness of things arriving harkened back to her childhood and the night her father had ridden so hard to his estates to make his daughter an assassin. Something had driven her out of bed that night; something now did the same. She could not recall that itch coming over her once in the intervening decade.

She slipped out the door without bothering to fasten her sleeping gown with more than a ribbon. The sky, pale with summer twilight, told her it was still early, perhaps three in the morning. Without winter’s chill to ward off, no other servants were likely to be up, not within the house itself: no fires needed building, no breads to set baking, not for another hour or two. Belinda had the narrow servants’ halls to herself.

They ran as shortcuts from one part of the little palace to another. The count, a stark man with grey at his temples and an eye for beauty that led to tales of sexual prowess, would not stand for delay. Not with his women, not with his wine, certainly not with the wealth of which he enjoyed showing unsubtle flashes. The ancient buildings that had stood his family for generations had been torn down, stone by stone, and rebuilt again to his pleasure. He was master and architect here, and now, with the back halls well-laid and well-lit, it took a maid, running at full bore, no more than two minutes to fetch any hot tea or cold drink from the kitchen back to her master in his study. Belinda had made the deliveries herself, all too aware that downcast eyes and a heaving breast were as much a part of what Gregori delighted in showing off to guests as the astonishingly rapid service. Her gowns were cut accordingly, square necklines a nearly imperceptible fraction lower than decorum permitted, breasts shelved high and mounded against the stiff bodice fabric. The line of propriety was so narrowly skirted that it was a rare man indeed who noticed Belinda’s face. Gazes locked on the sharp line of fabric pressing into pale flesh instead, searching for a blush of pink. Other women used rouge to suggest that colour, but Belinda left nature alone, trusting men’s imaginations over cosmetics.

The deliberate heavy bindings of daily wear made traversing the halls in little more than a shift against her skin all the more delicious. From kitchen to bedroom, library to dining hall, it was the same. Delicate bells with half a dozen tones strung the upper walls of the servants’ halls: the deepest tone signaled a runner from the kitchen, and the highest, purest of them bespoke the bedrooms. Belinda had learned within a day which halls ran where, and to stand well back from the crossroads when a bell rang. Causing a wreck in the servants’ halls earned even the most beloved servitors a beating. Rumour had it that more than one maid had left the count’s service after such a beating, bellies rounded with disgrace. Many men blurred the line between violence and passion, and there was no one to press Gregori Kapnist to a gentler hand.

Belinda had made neither the error of clumsiness nor wanton sensuality; her position in Gregori’s household was one of unobtrusiveness. When she was gone, no one should remember her face, only generous breasts and dark hair tucked away under a tidy white cap that emulated the rich snoods of the wealthy.

It was unfortunate for Viktor, snoring away in Belinda’s bed, that her need for him had passed once she was ensconced in Gregori’s household. The nights she’d spent with him since were necessary payment to keep a lustful man happy; most of all, to keep him from naming her a whore to his lord and master. No one believed the legendary chastity of the serving classes, but neither would anyone employ a maid denounced as a slut. A rough man like Viktor, in his lord’s employ as an armsman, could and would destroy her, unless she turned him away by means of finding a lover of more power within the household hierarchy. To do so was beyond Belinda’s needs, and meant a sad end to Viktor’s days.

A breeze caught her gown, cool and unexpected. Belinda curled her fingers into the fabric at her throat, feeling her body react to the brief chill. She stepped back against the wall, lowering her head while shifting her gaze left and right. She’d come from the servants’ quarters behind the kitchen, small and uncomfortable but private. The halls opened to the outside in two places: the east wall, the servants’ entrance around the corner from the main southern entrance, and the north wall, where the stables lay. The breeze lifted her hem again, and she turned her head to the right.

To the north, the stables. Someone’s assignation, likely, no more legal than her own. Belinda loosened her hand from the throat of her gown, pushing the fabric open to bare her collarbones. She folded one arm beneath her breasts, lifting them, and judged the effect from above before twisting her hair over her shoulder in dark, artless curls. She clutched the skirt of her gown in one hand, letting her stance and body language claim she was afraid of being caught.

But stillness washed over her as she lowered her head and gaze. Sometimes it seemed that the childhood memory came real again, and that men and women looked through her as if shadow had swallowed her whole, even when no shadows were to be seen. The sense of certainty that had accompanied that one frozen moment had never reasserted itself, and so each time now she was made to wait, and to see if she would be seen.

A man’s footsteps, taking long, sure strides. Belinda watched the floor through her eyelashes, marking the swiftness of steps. Her breath barely stirred her bosom as she inhaled, and with the exhalation, the man strode by. Expensive boots, black and well-made, the stitching impossible to see at a glance; well-shaped legs. A scent of the outdoors, of horses, of perfume made with an exotic spice: a rich man’s scent. Perhaps Gregori, returning from a visit with Akilina Pankejeff, whose grand duchy put her out of line for the throne, but far above what a count might call his own. There were a few who whispered that Gregori eyed the widowed imperatrix, and laughed in their sleeves at the idea. She was born too high, and he too low, though no one could fault him for his taste in women, and some admired the long reach of his ambition.

A hand closed in Belinda’s hair, knotting in the curls she’d pulled over her shoulder. Her coquettish downward gaze had lost her the chance to watch, and there had been no change in his pace to warn her the man had turned back. She forbore to flinch or squeal as he pulled her head back, forcing her chin up to make her meet his eyes. Hazel eyes, dark with patchy light from well-spaced torches, and a well-shaped mouth thinned with anger. “Better, I suppose, to have it here than wake whatever cock you’ve got roosting in your nest.”

Dmitri! Belinda knew this man, the expressive mouth and low voice a match to the one she’d heard as a little girl, in her father’s own home. Surprise dilated her pupils, one of the few reactions she couldn’t control. For a few seconds the halls seemed brighter, as if early-morning sunshine had somehow spilled through stone and around corners to light the place where they stood. Her pulse betrayed her by bumping higher in her throat, just one beat before she swallowed it down. “My lord?” A soft voice, properly cultivated as benefited a servant of a wealthy house, but with country vowels. Her Khazarian could be high- or low-born, less learned than absorbed in infancy, as had been her native Aulunian tongue. Gallic she spoke like an Aulunian, but that was artifice; she could swallow her accent and make herself sound a native if she had to.

But a country-born serving girl in a Khazarian palace would have no speech but her own, and Dmitri had spoken Aulunian. “My lord?” she asked again, eyes wide with uncertainty that was only partly feigned.

“Do not play me for a fool,” he growled, fist tightening in her hair. “I’ve travelled long and late to meet you, and morning comes on harder than I’d hoped. Time is running out.” Belinda’s chin came up with the weight of his hand, exposing her throat. His gaze flickered to her pulse, and pleasure she couldn’t allow on her face warmed her belly. She had him: the tiniest signs of vulnerability were the ones men could resist the least. The slightest signs of a man noticing weakness were the ones she could exploit the most.

“My lord,” she whispered a third time. “I don’t understand.” He couldn’t recognize her; he’d only seen her sleeping, and that more than ten years ago. He’d changed very little, only the style of his hair, cut shorter now than Belinda remembered. His beard was still thin and trimmed to the line of his jaw, his cheekbones and figure as sharp as they had been a decade earlier. She recognized in him now what she’d been too young to see before: he was, if not handsome, at least deeply compelling. His features might never grace the classic busts of ancient Cordulan emperors, but they would damn a woman’s heart to break. He had, even in repose, what du Roz had lacked: passion.

And he was not now in repose. Irritation turned his eyes from hazel to murky black as he slid his hand behind her neck, pulling her head back another degree or two. His hands were unexpectedly soft, though the touch was not; the hands of a man who had never done heavy work or held a sword. Belinda’s stomach tightened and she pressed her back against the wall, feeling her dagger dig against her skin.

“I think you do,” Dmitri breathed, still in Aulunian. His accent, which had marked him as Khazarian in Belinda’s childhood, was gone, words untainted by any other language. He pressed his mouth against the pulse in her throat, leaning his body into hers. His clothes were still cold from the outdoors. Belinda’s flesh went to goose bumps against the chilly fabric. There was no extra padding to the man, not in body nor in garment; his thighs, slender and muscular, trapped one of Belinda’s between them, his sex hard against her hip bone. Belinda ghosted her fingers at his hip, rather than reach for her dagger. A man’s own weapons were the best ones to use against him.

“You are Belinda Primrose,” Dmitri rumbled against her skin, so quietly that a passerby would hear nothing at all. “Adopted daughter of Robert, Lord Drake, favoured of Lorraine, queen of Aulun, and you are here to see to the death of Gregori, favoured of Irina, imperatrix of all Khazar. I am here to tell you that time is shorter than we believed, and the thing must be done now.” The words vibrated through her skin, leaving warmth that spread as surely as chill from his clothes had. The spice that lingered on his skin was cloves, fresh and clean. Belinda willed herself to loosen her jaw, trying to fight off the heady pulses of desire that were too poorly denied, in light of the words he said. She didn’t know him, other than a moment’s encounter in her childhood; he could be a spy, a test, a trap. Belinda dared not risk that he might be otherwise.

“My lord-”

Dmitri snarled and struck her, a backhanded blow that caught her cheek and knocked her to the floor. Belinda crumpled, lifting the back of her hand to her cheek and injured eyes to the dark-dressed man above her. Her dressing gown had come open; through flashes of pain she hoped it had done so artfully, for her own vanity’s sake. Men, in her experience, rarely cared for art, so long as a breast was bared or a thigh exposed.

Dmitri seemed no different. He took her in, the tears tracking down her cheeks and falling to follow the curve of a breast. Under the trickle of dampness her nipple hardened, and even through a blur of tears Belinda saw his gaze darken. He crouched, mouth pressed thin, to lift her breast and close his fingers over the nipple. She caught her breath, lips parting, and he knotted his other hand in her hair again.

“If there were time,” he said through compressed lips, voice thick with desire and anger, “if it were not so urgent that I be far gone at dawn’s coming.” He pinched her nipple again, making her stomach jump with distress and want, then yanked her dressing gown closed and stood up. His eyes were black and furious, his cheeks flushed. “Within the week, Belinda. We have no time. Ill winds ride in Gallin.”

He turned on his heel and stalked back down the corridors, leaving Belinda on the floor, cold and afraid. It was because he hadn’t taken her that she was convinced it wasn’t a trap. That, and her childhood recollection of him; that, and the itch of warning that had sent her from her bed faded as she watched him ride away. She had climbed to a palace turret to watch him leave, a place where serving girls were certainly not supposed to be, but it wasn’t fear of discovery that made a thick pulse of nausea pound in her stomach. It was malevolence, some small degree of it directed at Dmitri as the dawn took him away, but most directed at the count whose life she held in her hands. They conspired between them to take away the elegance of her assignment, Dmitri by insisting on speed and Gregori by his too slowly declining health.

For weeks she had slipped tasteless, colourless arsenic into Gregori’s drinks and onto his foods. It was a slow death, meandering from illness to madness to the grave, but discretion had been more important than speed. Now, if the thing had to be done with all haste, other poisons would do, but they left their mark in discoloured skin, in distorted features, in distended tongues, no more subtle than the cut of a knife. That was arsenic’s beauty as an assassin’s tool: it left no traceable sign. With large enough doses she could have him dead in a week, but the necessity of forcing her hand where time had only lately been a friend rankled in her.

Belinda curled her hands in front of her stomach as if she could take the sickness she felt there and turn it into a weapon itself, forcing it upon the count. As if it were a canker that could be put on another.

A tremble of sweat dampened her upper lip and her temples despite the cool summer morning as the bellyful of illness broke and passed from her, leaving her momentarily light-headed and disoriented. Then sense returned, sharp and clear: she ought to return to her room, ought to convince Viktor the bruise on her cheek was his fault, and ought to do it all before guards came to find her on the palace turrets where she should not be. It would be job enough to blame Viktor without having to worry about another man or two to fuck or leave for dead.

She pressed her fingertips against her cheek gingerly, wondering if the bruise might be used to her favour. Belinda drew her gown around herself again and hurried back to her tiny room. Viktor was a lout, but not cruel. She could see in his eyes that he didn’t remember the night, and took no pains to ease his fear. He rushed on the errand to fetch cosmetics that would disguise the mark on her cheek.

Disguise, but not entirely hide. Belinda stood in shadow, her head deliberately lowered for the morning inspection. The palace’s castellan looked twice, but not closely, and gave her the typical morning approval for dress and demeanor before the day began. Once the castellan was gone she tucked her breasts higher, fetched a tea tray, and went to wait on her master.

His morning rooms were already too hot, low fires built at either end, drapes drawn closed against morning light. Belinda inhaled the warm air deeply, setting her tray against her hip as she pulled the door closed. There was a faint scent of sickness in the air, unexpected. Gregori should show signs of arsenic poisoning soon, but for the smell to linger already in his private rooms gave her odd heart: perhaps the smooth workings of her plan would be less disrupted than she’d thought.

The drapes needed opening; the room needed light and air to clear away that telltale scent. Better for her, if worse for Gregori, if no one noticed the count’s illness in such early days, and besides, the scullery maids ought to have their ears bent for leaving their lord and master’s rooms in the dark. Tray balanced on her hip, Belinda stalked to the windows, yanking a handful of heavy curtain back.

“Leave them.”

Twice in a single morning she’d been taken off-guard. Belinda, facing the curtains, allowed herself to press her eyes closed, nostrils flaring. The cut of discovery ran deeper within herself, a tightening in her stomach and groin. Not panic, but something akin to desire.

“My lord,” she said in a low voice, curtsying even as she turned toward the voice. “I’m sorry, my lord. I didn’t see you.” She kept her eyes lowered, more to hide her irritation with herself than out of deference to the count.

“You’re injured,” he said.

Belinda lifted a hand to her cheek, then twitched it away again as if aware she’d betrayed herself with the gesture. “It’s nothing, my lord.” Now her eyes were downcast to hide the light of success: she’d read him correctly. He noticed what his castellan had not.

“Come here.”

Now she dared glance up through her eyelashes, if only to gauge the distance.

Gregori languished on a divan, startlingly pale against the heavy greens and golds. He was dressed loosely in sleeping gowns under a brocaded robe; his hair, usually swept back and tidy, was in disarray. Belinda was surprised to see how much curl, and how much grey, it had. His eyes were unnaturally bright, reflecting more light than the room had to offer.

Belinda came forward, setting his breakfast tray on a small table, and knotted her hands together below her waist. The stance bespoke fear and respect, and protecting herself; it also drew his gaze to her hips, where it lingered a few moments. “They call you Rosa, do they not?” he asked without lifting his eyes. She tightened her fingers in front of her groin, knowing he saw her knuckles whiten.

“Yes, my lord.” The name was a safe one, part of her own and repeated in one version or another in nearly every Echonian language, and oft-used in Khazar as well. “My lord, are you well?” She whispered the words, hearing a quaver in her own voice, and nearly believed her own performance. A serving girl had no right to ask after her master’s health.

“Well enough.” Gregori put his hand around her wrist, pulling her hands away from her belly. His hand was feverishly warm, thumb and forefinger more than encircling her wrist. Belinda stumbled a half step forward. Gregori bore down on her wrist, and she dropped to the stone floor, hard enough to bruise her knees even through skirts and carpets. Her gaze darted up to meet his, her eyes wide. He kept his grip on her wrist as he lifted his other hand to touch the bruise on her cheek. Belinda hissed, jerking her head away a fraction of an inch, then held as still as she could, eyes intent on his expression.

He wet his lips, pressing his thumb against the masked bruise. Pain stung at the back of Belinda’s throat and in her eyes, dry and without tears. “What happened?”

“N-nothing, my lord. Only my own clumsiness. I opened a door too quickly-” Belinda had heard a dozen women use the same excuse. Gregori believed it no more than she had.

“A door with knuckles, and a round stone ring. Have you a lover, Rosa?”

“No, my lord!” Horror shot Belinda’s voice up, and she clapped her free hand over her mouth. Gregori’s fingers tightened around her other wrist.

“Have you ever?”

Belinda dropped her gaze again, shivering. “Yes, my lord.” Let him think she was too frightened to lie to him. The truth now was better than the outrage of a man later denied virgin blood. To her surprise, Gregori chuckled.

“You’re either very foolish or very wise to admit that, Rosa. Which is it?” He took his hand from her cheek and settled it at her bodice, plucking at the ties with the casual confidence of a man who knew time was in his favour. “Do these stays and ties hide other bruises, I wonder?”

Belinda shook her head mutely, amending the answer privately: not yet.

“You’ve lied to me once and told the truth once, Rosa. Which is it now?” He smiled at her for the first time, and as she took a breath to answer her bodice loosened. He slid his fingers, hotter and softer than Dmitri’s, under her shift, catching the weight of her breast in his smooth hand. Too smooth: there wasn’t enough water in his body, the heat speaking more of fever than desire. Belinda thought of the desire she’d had to force sickness on him, and wet her own lips, semiconsciously copying his behavior of moments earlier.

“The truth, my lord.”

His smile broadened. “But you don’t deny that you lied?”

She shook her head silently a second time.

“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 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 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.