Chapter 4

“There. We’re even now,” said Geert, rolling over to wipe his chin on a towel. “I didn’t want to leave feeling I was in your debt.”

“You could stay,” Andras said. But he knew it was pointless. His lover wanted to go home, and he could respect that. Neither of them had ever had any illusions that this would last much longer.

There was a knock, and Andras hurried to pull on his trousers while Geert closed the bed curtains and burrowed into the covers. At the door, Andras found one of the housemaids, a pretty little thing named Tillie. He and Geert had discussed inviting her up to join them sometime, but they had never gotten around to it.

Andras, darling,

I’m home. Come see me. We need to talk.

Love,

Mother

He sent Tillie away with a penny for her trouble and finished dressing. “Did you want to come with me?” he asked Geert. “You’ve never met my parents.”

“No thank you. You’ve never met mine, either,” said Geert, his voice muffled by the covers, “so it’s perfectly fair. Besides, if I ever make it out of this room today, I need to go buy supplies for my trip. I’ve been putting it off too long.”

They parted at the common room, and then Andras rode over to Hafoc Street, past the university and skirting the bustling market square. All the homes of Myrcia’s oldest and most powerful families were on Hafoc Street, and his parents’ house was one of the biggest and grandest of them all. There was an iron fence out front, overhung with huge flowering lilac bushes. A pair of granite bears, snarling up on their hind legs and carrying the arms of the Byrne family, stood on either side of the gate. Those were new, and Andras found them tasteless.

The front hall was perpetually gloomy—the hammerbeam ceiling was too high, and there were too few windows. He almost didn’t see his sister Lauren at the far end, where the light was a little better, but then she called him over.

“Thanks for coming so quickly,” she said, standing to give him a hug. She was holding a sheaf of parchment covered in densely-packed writing.

“Another one about...,” he searched his memory for the character’s name, “Lord Heartthrob?”

“Lord Byron Heartsbane. No, she’s ended his series. She thinks she’s mined out that particular vein. I’m supposed to ask you if you’d like to read this one. I think you would find the hero and his lady love rather...interesting. A bit familiar, in fact.”

“Maybe later.” He thought the princess was a fine writer, but her little tales of courtly romance were not his usual fare. “I’ve got to see Mother first.”

“Yes, that would be best,” said Lauren, setting the story down on a little cherry side table. “She is in a bit of a state. I haven’t gotten the whole story out of her, but her visit to Drohen went...poorly.”

On the one hand, it would be a relief to never again feel ashamed of what his mother did with the king. A month ago, he’d been obliged to knock some sense into a Trahernshire knight who had dared to call Duchess Flora “The king’s whore.” But on the other hand, that relationship had brought all sorts of benefits to their family, and there was no telling what might happen now if the king’s ardor for the duchess had cooled.

He found his mother in the upstairs parlor, where a collection of ancient Kenedalic animal totems hung along one wall—foxes and bears and badgers with wicked little grins. A few of the figures sported comically large erections, too. In more innocent times, Andras and his younger sisters had made a game of trying to toss hats over them from across the room. On the other walls, there were banners and coats of arms from the knights and lords who had been defeated by Byrne armies over the centuries. Some of those were quite new, and Andras had helped put them there.

His mother was mixing a pot of her famous spiked coffee—half whiskey—and when she saw him, she immediately poured him a cup. “It’s so good to see you again,” she said, giving him a hug once he had taken a sip.

Her face looked drawn and pale, and somehow the wrinkles and the white hairs among the red were more noticeable now than they had been last time he had seen her. There were bags under her eyes, and her shoulders sagged. For the first time in his life, it occurred to Andras that his mother was getting old. She was past 50 now, though for many years, she had seemed to keep herself young by sheer force of will.

First she asked him about his time in Pinshire, and she smiled proudly as he narrated his adventures in battle, even though the fighting in Pinshire was now more cleaning up small groups of resisters and bandits than fighting a war against another proper army. She was a formidable warrior, and whenever they talked of soldiering or hunting, it was nearly like talking to another young knight. There were a few motherly touches, though. A fellow knight wouldn’t give him a gentle rebuke for sleeping out in the rain on the march, or tell him, “I hope you remembered to wear warm socks, dear.”

Eventually, however, he ran through his store of anecdotes, and he had to ask the question: “How were things in Drohen?”

Her face fell, and she poured herself another cup of spiked coffee. “I should never have gone.”

“The king....” She looked away, her chin quivering slightly. Then she dabbed at her eyes, and her jaw set again. “I wanted to talk to you, Andras, because I’ve been feeling lately that the Gramirens do not appreciate us as they should.”

She scowled. “King Broderick has a perfect right to do whatever he likes and to...associate with whomever he pleases.” She clenched her fists and tugged at the velvet arms of her chair. “I am speaking more generally. The king has not given Pedr his own command, despite repeated promises that he would.”

“That’s true,” said Andras. His older brother, Pedr, was a good officer, and there was no reason not to give him his own independent column. Except maybe the king was still bitter that Pedr had slept with the queen. Andras didn’t need to mention it, though. He knew his mother had the same suspicions.

“Last year,” she went on, “for your father’s 55^th birthday, I asked Broderick to give Hugh an earldom in his own right. I thought it would be a nice treat; something to say ‘thank you’ to Hugh for being...so understanding all the time. But do you know what the king said? He said my request was ‘in poor taste.’ Can you believe that? ‘In poor taste.’”

Andras shook his head sympathetically. He wasn’t sure his father would have thought it was quite as much of a “treat” as she did, but if she didn’t understand now, after thirty years of marriage, nothing Andras could say would make her see it.

“And the queen,” she continued, “has refused to make poor Lauren a lady-in-waiting. Your sisters Morwen and Sophie both had court positions, so why not Lauren? It’s an insult, pure and simple. You know Muriel is just jealous.”

“Jealous?” Andras wondered if his mother had heard the same rumors he had. Rumors that the queen was furious with her. And with good reason, too. Her majesty had spent the Winter Solstice in Severn with Sir Arturo, her latest lover, so the king had asked Flora to serve as his official hostess. Flora had accepted—unwisely, as it turned out. After five years of Gramiren rule, it looked as if Andras’s mother had finally crossed a line and done something the queen couldn’t tolerate.

“Yes, she’s jealous. She knows Lauren is prettier than Donella, and will steal all the attention from her.”

As Lauren’s brother, Andras felt it his duty to agree with this statement, even though he didn’t actually think it was true.

“And it’s not just us,” the duchess went on, after a long drink. “It’s all the northern nobles. We’re losing our positions to the king’s friends from the south. To his wife’s family and Annenstrukers.” Her eyes narrowed and the hand holding the coffee cup trembled. “Scheming, backstabbing, perky little Annenstrukers.”

But his mother didn’t appear to have heard him. “It’s an insult, I say, and it’s time for us to reassess our loyalties. I helped put Broderick on the throne, and by Earstien, I can take him off it again.”

Andras raised a finger to his lips and looked nervously around. There were no servants in the parlor, thankfully. “Mother, you can’t say things like that. It’s treason.”

“Call it what you like,” she scoffed, pouring herself another round. “I call it looking out for my family’s best interests.” She leaned closer. “I’ve been in contact with the Earl of Hyrne in exile in Briddobad.”

Andras let out a low whistle. The earl was a commander in the defeated Sigor army and the uncle of young King Edwin Sigor, who had been deposed by King Broderick Gramiren with Flora’s help.

The Sigors had been almost completely defeated in the west, since the Earl of Stansted had been driven into exile and King Broderick had taken the bulk of his vast army to Drohen. Andras had seen the pathetic remnants of Sigor support in the east while serving in Pinburg. The north had been quiet since the fall of Leornian, and the Gramirens completely owned the loyalty of the south. But if his mother, with her huge army, smack in the middle of the kingdom, changed sides, well, that might put a rather different outlook on things.

“Yes, I am,” she said, setting down her cup hard, so a little of the potent mixture sloshed over onto her hand. She licked it off, and then seemingly out of nowhere, asked him, “What do you think of Princess Elwyn?”

He hadn’t seen her in a very long time, but he recalled her being thin and angular and scowling a lot. The main thing everyone remembered about Elwyn Sigor was her foul temper. Andras had once heard Queen Muriel describe her as “unspeakably rude.” In public, other courtiers called her “unladylike” and “nasty.” In private, more pungent terms were frequently used. Then again, that was what people said after her family had been run out of the country. Perhaps the truth was somewhat different.

It was a good thing Andras had nearly finished his drink, because he fumbled the cup and almost emptied it on his lap. “Me? Me? Why me?” His mother had to be joking. “Why not Pedr?”

“Pedr is with the army. It would look a little suspicious if he walked away. But here you are, home from the war, all safe and sound. I’d like you to go to Briddobad and see if—”

“Absolutely not. I’m sorry, Mother, but I refuse. You can’t really expect me to go all the way to Sahasra Deva and woo some girl I barely know.”

“But Mother,” he whined. “I just got home! And I’m too young to get married.” He was barely 24, and while he had known there was a marriage in his future someday, he had assumed that day was far, far distant. “I’ve been looking forward to having a little fun.”

She scooted closer and put a hand on his arm. “Andras, I know you like boys.”

He looked her in the eye, and he saw, to his relief, that she wasn’t mad about it. He had often suspected she might know. “I like girls, too,” he said softly. “Just maybe not this particular one.”

“It’s important to me, dear. And it’s important to your family. I know I’m asking you to make a sacrifice, and I’m very sorry. But we all have to do what we can.” Then a smile. “Of course, if you do like girls, too, I think you’ll find a lot to like in Elwyn. She’s very attractive, you know. A damned sight better-looking than Donella, that’s for sure.” She squeezed his hand. “Think of it as an adventure, darling. A quest, in fact.”

“A quest,” he echoed. Then he let out a long sigh and squeezed her hand back. “Well, I suppose I need something to do now that Geert is leaving. Fine, then. I’ll go to Briddobad, and I’ll talk to her. But I’m not marrying her unless I like her, and she likes me. Is that fair?”