When Sophronia comes back to her sitting room after lunch, she finds Violie waiting with an armful of papers, looking quite pleased with herself.
“Please tell me that’s not my correspondence,” Sophronia says, eyeing the stack—there must be hundreds of papers there. She knows Beatriz is prone to rambling in her letters, but this seems like a new extreme.
“They’re bills,” Violie tells her, dropping them on the round table, which has been cleared since Sophronia’s earlier coffee with Queen Eugenia. “I did a bit of asking around, but this was all I could access. It’s only for your household, but I thought it might help.”
“Did you look at them yet?” Sophronia asks. She knows she’ll find no war chest funds noted alongside her dressmaker’s bill, but Violie is right—it will be helpful. Especially since, until recently, Sophronia’s household was Eugenia’s.
Violie shakes her head. “No, Your Majesty. I’m afraid I can’t read, so it would all be gibberish to me. But Mrs. Ladslow—she’s the woman in charge of your accounting—assured me that all the relative documents are here.”
“Oh,” Sophronia says, cheeks reddening. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“No worries at all,” Violie says. “Did you want to take a look at these? Or should I bring them back to Mrs. Ladslow?”
“No, I’ll take a look,” Sophronia says, sitting down at the table and reaching for the topmost piece of paper.
“Would you like any tea? Coffee?” Violie asks.
“No, but some help would be appreciated,” Sophronia says, motioning to the seat across from her.
Violie hesitates. “As I said, I can’t read.”
“That’s fine,” Sophronia tells her. “I’ll read aloud and we can pick our way through. You’ve been in Temarin longer than I have. I’m sure you have insights to add.”
“If you say so, Your Majesty,” Violie says.
“Sophie,” Sophronia corrects. “You can save yourself some breath and I can stop expecting my mother to be standing behind me.”
Violie smiles. “Sophie, then,” she says.
“This one is for the brunch I hosted last week for Leopold’s cousin’s daughter’s birthday,” Sophronia says, scanning the sums. She reads the numbers three times to make sure they’re right. “It cost ten thousand asters? I wasn’t aware we were giving out stardust-coated gold nuggets as party favors.”
Violie laughs. “You aren’t far off, actually,” she says. “The sparkling wine was imported from Cellaria. Five hundred asters a bottle, and the guests were quite thirsty. There were other costs, but I believe that was the biggest one.”
“Who arranged the menu?” Sophronia asks. “I don’t recall approving any of this.”
“Queen Eugenia said you shouldn’t be bothered with such minuscule details, so she reused a menu from a previous brunch she hosted,” Violie says.
Interesting, Sophronia thinks. Five hundred asters a bottle isn’t unheard of for sparkling wine, but for a brunch? And the fact that it was imported from Cellaria piques Sophronia’s curiosity. She wonders what else that money paid for.
“I remember that sparkling wine,” she says after a moment. “Can you find the name of the vineyard? Since Eugenia is so fond of it, I might want to order a bottle for her birthday.”
If Violie thinks it an odd request, she doesn’t show it. “Of course, Your—Sophie, I mean.”
Sophronia goes back to reading. She decides to break the stack of bills into groups—events, clothing, décor, food, and other. It quickly becomes clear that other is primarily made up of gifts to various courtiers. She recognizes the bill for the bracelet she had sent to Duchess Bruna when she hired Violie from her, one thousand asters, but there are others she has no knowledge of. In the last two weeks alone, she appears to have made gifts of everything from a prize Frivian stud horse to Lord Verimé to a summer estate on the southeastern border for the Croist family.
“I have yet to meet half of these people,” she says to Violie. “Did Queen Eugenia arrange these gifts as well?”
Violie frowns. “If so, the request didn’t come through me, though it’s possible there is still some confusion between your household and hers. Perhaps the gifts were billed to you as a mistake.”
Or Eugenia is using me to cover her tracks, Sophronia thinks. Not all of the gifts come from Cellaria, but Sophronia notices that all of the luxury items, like jewels, silks, wine, and apparently even horses, weren’t bought in Temarin but imported from other countries, meaning the money spent didn’t go into Temarin’s economy at all. A coincidence, maybe, but the coincidences are piling up, and combined with Sir Diapollio’s letter, a sinking suspicion has firmly taken root in Sophronia’s gut.
It isn’t proof, she reminds herself. She can’t go to her mother with anything less than solid proof.
When she’s halfway through the stack, she pauses, rubbing her temples to stave off the headache blooming behind her eyes.
“That bad?” Violie asks.
Sophronia doesn’t say anything for a moment, instead leaning back in her chair and casting her gaze toward the ceiling. She can’t tell Violie what she suspects of Eugenia, but there is another problem.
“My mother thought it was important to understand finances,” she tells Violie. “Ever since my sisters and I turned ten, we managed our own accounts, paid our own bills. There were a few times when one of us overspent our allowance and she would refuse to give us more until the next month. Once, my sister Beatriz ran out of funds a week before the end of the month and had to eat off Daphne’s and my plates, sneak her gowns off to the palace cleaners with ours, even do her own hair before parties.” She shakes her head. “It must sound so frivolous.”
Violie smiles. “It sounds like a lot of responsibility for children.”
Sophronia bites her lip. “My sisters hated it, but truth be told, it was one of the only lessons from my mother that I enjoyed. It’s a bit like a puzzle, and I’ve always enjoyed puzzles. Stars, if Leopold knew how to manage his own accounts, perhaps…” She trails off, remembering herself and remembering Violie, who is still more stranger than not. “Sorry,” she says.
“Is it really so bad?” Violie asks, looking between the piles of papers now taking up the entirety of the table.
Sophronia makes a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat. “On its own? No. As much money as it is, if it were spread out from taxes across Temarin, it wouldn’t cost too much. There’s certainly plenty that I can cut—that I will cut going forward—but what concerns me is that I know this is just the start of it. If we were to look at more accounts, at Leopold’s, at the dowager queen’s and the princes’, at those of every aristocrat who takes their living by taxing people who live in their territory…I’m worried that it will be more of the same and, put all together…”
“Worse, even, in some cases,” Violie murmurs. When Sophronia raises an eyebrow, Violie shrugs. “When I worked for Duchess Bruna, it seemed she was always caught up in an effort to one-up her friends. If Lady Kester had a new gown embellished with a hundred diamonds, Duchess Bruna had to have one with two hundred. It was the same with parties, summer homes, carriages. And the men are even worse. Most of them lose thousands of asters in a single night gambling, and horse and hound trading is its own very expensive hobby. It’s something I’ve noticed since I arrived—I’d always heard that war was an integral part of Temarin culture, but I suppose since they’ve had no war in decades, it’s been replaced by sheer decadence.”
“But it isn’t their money,” Sophronia says softly. “I can’t request tax documents without stoking animosity from the court,” she adds. “They’d think I was a foreigner meddling.”
“Technically, you are a foreigner meddling,” Violie says before catching herself and turning a shade paler. “Sorry, Your Majesty.”
Sophronia laughs. “Why? You’re right. But I’d rather not have my people think of me as their enemy.” She pauses for a moment, but she knows what she has to do—she just doesn’t like it. “Will you coordinate with Leopold’s valet and see if we can find a time in our schedules for a picnic?”
Violie gets to her feet, smoothing out her gown. “I’ll do that now,” she says.
When she’s gone, Sophronia casts another gaze at the piles of bills and picks up the next one.
It takes several days before Sophronia’s and Leopold’s schedules allow them time for a picnic, but the stars at least seem to be on her side, because the weather is perfect—sunny and bright, but crisp enough that she isn’t sweltering in her heavy satin gown, this one a brilliant sapphire blue.
Leopold looks handsome, Sophronia can admit that. His sage-green jacket brings out the color of his eyes, and in the sunlight, his bronze hair looks gilded.
“You’re angry with me,” he says, jerking her out of her thoughts. He says the words softly, though their guards keep even the nosiest courtiers far away.
Sophronia looks at him, ready to deny it and tell him that everything is just fine, but the second her eyes meet his she knows it will be fruitless. She is angry at him, and perhaps she should tell him as much.
“Yes,” she says, holding his gaze. “I suppose I am.”
He shakes his head. “If I could do it all over again, I would do everything differently,” he tells her.
Some foolish corner of her heart lights. “You would?” she asks.
He nods. “I would have taken you another route that day. Around the north side of the palace, maybe.”
That corner of her heart goes dark once more. “Oh,” she says, turning away from him and looking instead at the silhouette of the palace. “I suppose I wouldn’t be angry with you then, though only because I’d be too stupid to know that I should be. Would you rather I be stupid?”
Leopold lets out a long sigh. “That isn’t what I meant, Sophie,” he says.
“No?” she asks. “Those boys would still be dead, wouldn’t they? And so would stars know how many others. Only my knowledge of it would be gone. Perhaps it’s not too late—speak with your empyrea if you like, see if you can wish for a stupider wife.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” he tells her. “That isn’t even how wishes work.”
“I know that,” Sophronia snaps. “Because I’m not stupid, Leopold. I’m not angry with you because I saw the hangings. I’m angry that they happened at all.”
For a long moment, he doesn’t respond. “What would you have done?” he asks.
Sophronia hesitates. It doesn’t matter what she would have done. She isn’t meant to be a true queen, just a temporary one. Soon enough, Temarin will be under Bessemian rule—her mother’s rule—and Leopold, his brothers, and his mother will be shipped off into exile in some distant place. None of this will have mattered.
Except it will. It will be another few weeks at least before Temarin and Cellaria go to war, months more before that war hobbles Temarin enough that her mother can claim it as her own. And that’s not even counting whatever Eugenia may be up to. How many people will die—of starvation, of execution, of the cold itself once winter comes? It is important. And there is no reason Sophronia can’t carry out her mother’s orders and help the Temarinian people.
“You said Temarin’s crime rate is at a high,” she says. “Has it decreased at all since you imposed your stricter punishments?”
“They aren’t my stricter punishments,” he says. “My council decided—”
“The decree has your name on it,” she interrupts. “Those executions happened on your orders. Not your mother’s, not your council’s, yours.”
He grimaces but doesn’t disagree. “No,” he says. “The crime rate has even gone up in recent weeks. I just heard that the jail will have to have twice-weekly executions now because the cells are too full.”
Sophronia nods. “So,” she says. “All of those people—even more people—have decided that even though they very well might die for it, it’s worth stealing. How desperate does a person have to be to make that choice, Leopold? Those boys were children. They should have been out playing with their friends, like your brothers do. Instead they decided to risk their lives stealing from people more fortunate than them. You should seek to understand why.”
He doesn’t speak for a moment, so she continues.
“It’s a question I’ve been thinking a lot about,” she admits, seeing her opening. “And I even took the liberty of looking over my household bills. I’ve spent well over five million asters, just in the two weeks since I arrived.”
He frowns. “Is that…a lot?” he asks.
Sophronia forces herself not to roll her eyes. “Yes,” she says. “Even one million asters would be enough to buy food for everyone in Kavelle for a month. I checked. And most of it went toward gifts for people I’ve never met, parties I never wanted to throw, services I never requested. Did you know that the curtains in our bedroom are steamed three times a day at a cost of a hundred asters a steam? Which is a lot,” she adds, because he still looks confused. “I believe most of these payments are billed recurrently every week or month, left over from when it was your mother’s household. It’s an oversight, easy enough to fix, but I suspect we might find similar oversights in your own records, and the records of other households that the crown supports financially. Your mother, your aunt, your brothers, anyone else who relies on your kindness. Our kindness.”
Leopold’s brow furrows. “You wish to examine their accounts?” he asks. “I can’t imagine they’ll take kindly to you monitoring their spending.”
“They don’t have to know,” Sophronia says, offering him a small smile. “Unless I find something truly alarming.”
“I don’t know, Sophie,” Leopold says. “It’s our money, and we can afford the luxuries our station demands.”
“Our money,” she repeats, staring at Leopold for a long moment as something clicks into place. “Leopold…where do you think our money comes from?” she asks.
He shrugs. “Never really thought much about it, to be honest, but I imagine it’s in a vault somewhere, maybe beneath the palace?”
It takes all of her self-control not to shake him. “It comes from taxes, Leo,” she says. “Every month, we collect taxes from the people for the privilege of living in our country. They send money to their landowners as well, whatever duke or count or earl owns the ground their house sits on. Almost every last aster in the palace comes from the pockets of the same people who are so desperate for money they are willing to risk their lives to steal it.”
He stares at her as if she is speaking gibberish. He sits up a bit straighter, his brow deeply furrowed. “Are you sure?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“I had no idea,” he murmurs. Silence stretches out between them, Leopold deep in thought and Sophronia watching him. It’s possible, she thinks, that he is not cruel, merely oblivious. She isn’t sure if that’s better or worse.
“Leopold, can you request the latest tax laws from around the country?” she asks him.
He nods. “I’ll ask about it today,” he says.
“I’d also like to take you up on your offer to join in on your council meetings,” she says. “When is the next one?”