Ellin’s throat ached with the pain of holding back tears as she sat rigidly straight in her carriage, eyes fixed ahead on the quartet of rose-covered biers, each drawn by a solid black cheval. The scent of the roses carried in the breeze, strong enough to make her eyes water without the additional weight of grief. The streets were lined with mourners, many of whom threw yet more roses into the midst of the procession. The day was sunny and temperate, not at all funereal weather, but the brisk breezes meant the thrown flowers frequently missed their intended targets. If it weren’t for the spells contained in Ellin’s carriage, she had no doubt she’d have been smacked in the face with a flower more than once.
The procession finally reached the Temple of the Dead, situated on top of the highest hill in the city of Zinolm Well, Rhozinolm’s capital. The crowds led up to the base of the hill, where they were held back by a row of soldiers. Only the funeral procession itself was allowed onto the sacred ground. Knowing she would still require a great deal of strength and resolve to get through the rites to follow, Ellin nevertheless relaxed just a little when the crowd dropped away behind her.
Her throat tightened with renewed force when her carriage reached the top of the hill and she caught sight of the enormous funeral pyre that waited in the center of the open-air temple.
The procession came to a halt, and the bodies were ceremoniously lifted one by one, bier and all, onto the wooden platform that would be their final resting place. Ellin waited in the carriage for one of her honor guardsmen to open the door for her and give her a hand down. But it was not an honor guardsman who opened her door and offered her a hand. It was Lord Tamzin.
Both Lord Tamzin and Lord Kailindar had paid her formal visits when they’d arrived at court, and they’d all exchanged condolences over the deaths of their fathers. However, she had been so busy adjusting to her new life—which had so far included nothing that resembled social engagements—that she had had to spend little time in their company. Today, there would be no avoiding either of them.
Knowing it was rude, she nonetheless hesitated for a beat before accepting the hand Tamzin offered. He was dressed all in black, as befitted a man in deep mourning, but he had an ostentatious streak he had never tried to tame. His doublet was studded with tiny black pearls that caught the sunlight, and the cloak that draped his shoulders was lined with glossy black fur that was far too warm for the temperate weather.
Ellin herself had dressed in the strictest mourning, her black gown and headdress unadorned with lace or jewels or even embroidery. Fitting funeral attire for a queen, although the elegance of Tamzin’s outfit made her feel frumpy and common. She assured herself that she had looked by far the more dignified and appropriately dressed during the procession, but Tamzin’s understated splendor had no doubt drawn many an admiring eye.
She intended to offer her cousin a polite thank-you before moving off without him, but as soon as her feet hit the ground, he put her hand through his elbow as if she could not possibly have any objection to walking arm in arm with him. She gritted her teeth. There was no love lost between them, but it was not worth making a scene at a funeral to refuse his overly friendly—and no doubt purposeful—gesture. With the death of her father, one of the most pressing duties as sovereign was to name the next lord chamberlain, who was the second-ranking member of the royal council, after the lord chancellor. Tradition held that the lord chamberlain should be a member of the royal family, and she had little doubt that both Tamzin and Kailindar wanted the position. She was tense and ready for Tamzin to begin stating his case at this most inappropriate time.
When they arrived at the semicircle of seats before the pyre, Tamzin released her hand and bowed. She regarded him with deep suspicion, but there was no cause to quarrel with anything he had done. She only hoped that her expectation of ulterior motives would prove false.
He waited until she was seated, hovering over her solicitously, then took the seat beside her without awaiting an invitation. She seriously considered objecting to his presumption at sitting next to the queen as if he had some natural born right to it. Only immediate family could legitimately take such a liberty. But with a renewed stab of grief, she remembered that she had no immediate family left, and that Tamzin had more right to that seat than anyone else in attendance.
Lord Kailindar approached the seat on her other side, but he, at least, had the courtesy to wait for an invitation before sitting. She was very much aware of the clash of male egos as her uncle and her cousin glared at each other over her head. She wanted to remind them that they were here to honor their fallen fathers, not to make a public spectacle of their hardly secret enmity.
Ellin took a slow, deep breath in an attempt to soothe her nerves, but the stink of the roses made her sneeze. Both Kailindar and Tamzin offered her a handkerchief, silently vying with each other for the great honor of helping her wipe her nose. Since she was well prepared for tears, she already had a handkerchief of her own tucked discreetly up her sleeve, and so she ignored both offers.
The rows of seats quickly filled, the gathering solemn and nearly silent as the nobility of Rhozinolm continued to grapple with the terrible reality of having lost so many members of the royal family in so short a time. Ellin had been to funerals before, even a royal one with the passing of her grandmother, but never had the silence been so oppressive or the grief so real.
The priests spoke for what felt like an eternity, their words barely penetrating the fog that drifted over Ellin’s mind. She could not stop staring at the body of her father, lying so still and pale amidst the red and white roses. Had he lived, she might never have forgiven him for the marriage he had planned to force on her, but she realized, now that it was too late, that she would rather have married Zarsha ten times over than have lost her father.
Finally, the interminable ceremony was over, and it was time for Ellin to do what she had been dreading all day. One of the priests picked up a torch and came to kneel on the floor before Ellin’s feet. It was the sovereign’s duty and honor to light the funeral pyre, but when the priest knelt, Ellin couldn’t force herself to reach out and take the torch from his hand. Her own hands clenched together in her lap, and her vision blurred with tears. She had the unhappy suspicion that her lower lip might be quivering like that of a very young child.
Beside her, Lord Tamzin leaned closer, dropping his voice to something just above a whisper. Ellin might have thought he was attempting to be discreet, except the gathering was so silent that there was no chance of anyone speaking softly enough not to be heard by those nearby.
“Perhaps it would be best to allow me to take this burden from you,” Tamzin said.
Ellin swallowed the hard lump in her throat and blinked her eyes rapidly to clear the glaze of tears. Tamzin made it sound as if he was offering a kindness, but she didn’t for a moment believe he was trying to spare her the pain and burden of lighting the funeral pyre—he was trying to make her appear weak in front of every person of consequence in Rhozinolm. And cast himself as the gallant gentleman who came to her aid. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kailindar stiffen beside her. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one to sense that particular undercurrent. She also wondered if Tamzin thought she was fooled.
“Thank you for your most generous offer, Lord Tamzin,” she said, finding the anger was doing an admirable job of chasing away the paralysis of grief. “But the burdens of this duty are mine and mine alone, and I am never one to shirk my duties.”
She took the torch from the priest, pleased to see her hand did not shake.
“I’m sure no one here would feel you were shirking your duties if you allowed another to light the pyre,” Tamzin pressed. His face and voice were full of gentle concern, and judging by past history, the majority of those seeing this exchange would believe he was genuinely trying to be helpful and supportive.
Ellin locked eyes with her cousin as she gripped the torch. Was she being unjust in thinking she’d heard a subtle threat underlying his words? Those dark, hooded eyes of his bored into her, and she didn’t think the hunger she saw there was her imagination. Whether he saw in her his key to the power of the lord chamberlain’s office or an impediment to his own ambitions for the throne was yet to be seen. Either way, she had no intention of giving him any reason to think she was weak or vulnerable.
“I appreciate and will fondly remember your kind offer,” she said as she rose to her feet. The dread and the grief that had filled her when the priest had first offered the torch faded to the background, and though she still felt them, both her hands and her legs were firm and steady. “But only the rightful sovereign can light the pyre, and so I must once again refuse.”
There was a hint of dark amusement in his eyes as he nodded his head respectfully. To her, their bout of verbal sparring seemed a matter of life or death; to Tamzin, it was nothing but a source of amusement, or at least that was what his now relaxed manner suggested. But she would not soon forget that spark of hunger in his eyes, nor could she doubt that they’d been speaking of something other than the lighting of the funeral pyre.
Swallowing hard and holding her chin up high, Ellin stepped to the pyre. Her eyes swept one more time over the family who had once held so prominent a place in her life. She braced against a renewed swell of grief, but she felt next to nothing, her emotions suddenly walled off and inaccessible. She thrust her torch into the pyre and watched it catch instantly. She had never asked, but she suspected the torch was a magic item, spelled to spare her any potential difficulty in getting the fire quickly lit.
The fire blazed hot and bright, the scent of roses quickly obliterated by the billows of smoke that lifted into the sky.
Tradition held that a royal funeral did not come to a close until the funeral pyre had burned itself out, although after the pyre was lit, mourners were free to rise from their seats and move about. Ellin took herself to the opposite side of the fire from Tamzin, and though this was meant to be a time of quiet reflection about the lives of those who had been put to rest, there was no doubt that the jockeying for position in the new royal court had begun. Ellin watched out of the corner of her eye as Tamzin made the rounds, talking softly with each member of her royal council, no doubt to curry favor. Judging by the warm reception he appeared to be getting, he was doing an admirable job.
Lord Kailindar seemed to be doing much the same thing, although with less obvious success. He did not have Tamzin’s easy charm, and based on his shadowed eyes, Ellin suspected that unlike his nephew, he was hampered by genuine grief. There was little doubt in her mind that the council would have much preferred to put Tamzin on the throne if they could have found a legal way around Kailindar’s stronger claim.
One thing that quickly became clear was that the rich and powerful noblemen of Rhozinolm were a lot more interested in striking up conversations with Tamzin—and to a lesser extent, Kailindar—than with her. Oh, no one was rude, and there was a continual shower of condolences being sent her way. But no one was treating the funeral as an opportunity to ingratiate themselves to their sovereign queen, which let her know exactly how much power they thought she had.
Grimly, she decided that tomorrow she would start scheduling private meetings with each of her councilors. Learning statecraft from books was not enough—she needed to understand each man’s role on the council. And make it clear that she meant to rule as a queen, not sit on the throne meekly as the puppet of the royal council.
The flames were continuing their inevitable decline into oblivion when Zarsha appeared at her elbow. She hadn’t realized she’d become lost in her thoughts as she stared into the fire until his sudden appearance at her side made her start.
“It is only me, Your Majesty,” he said with a smile that showed only the slightest sliver of his teeth. For all his natural good humor, even Zarsha honored the solemnity of the occasion by dimming his usually dazzling smile. “How are you holding up?”
“As well as can be expected, I suppose.” She took as deep a breath as the smoky air and her stays would allow. Soon, the ordeal will be over, she told herself. Not that tomorrow wasn’t likely to be just as unpleasant. She would need to name either Tamzin or Kailindar to the royal council, and either choice had serious drawbacks. She did not relish the thought of having Tamzin present at every council meeting—and whispering in every council member’s ear. But neither did she relish overriding her council’s wishes. She’d studied enough to know this was one of the few decisions for which she did not require the council’s approval, but perhaps it was unwise to start her reign on adversarial footing.
Zarsha dropped his voice, though there was no one standing near enough to overhear them. “You rose admirably to Lord Tamzin’s challenge.”
She considered feigning ignorance, but there seemed little point when Zarsha had obviously interpreted the interchange the same way she had. She lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug. “This is neither the time nor the place for posturing.”
The corner of his mouth twitched and his eyes twinkled, but he suppressed the smile before it fully bloomed. She was almost tempted to smile herself, for the moment the pyre had been lit, every man in attendance had begun posturing and vying for position.
“I’m sure you already know this, but both of them have their eyes on the lord chamberlain’s seat.”
“And Lord Kailindar may be the only man in attendance who believes it will go to anyone but Lord Tamzin. Yes, I know. Although strangely neither one has yet approached me to convince me he deserves the seat, even knowing the decision is ultimately mine.”
Zarsha raised his eyebrows, but there was no true surprise in his expression. “It is assumed you will bow to the wisdom of your royal council,” he said in a tone that suggested he himself did not make the same assumption. She wondered why not.
“Whom would you appoint, were you in my position?” she asked out of curiosity.
“It would gall me,” he answered promptly, “but I would choose Tamzin.”
It was her turn to raise her eyebrows, for he did not seem to be as easily seduced by Tamzin’s charms as so many others were. “Oh? And why is that?”
“He will be furious if the honor goes to Kailindar, and he will take that fury home with him to nurture and grow where you cannot easily monitor him. I would not want a man with his popularity and power to rabble rouse behind my back. He would be dangerous on the council, but at least you could see the danger and counter it.”
“And the same cannot be said of Kailindar?”
Zarsha shook his head. “He will be insulted and sulky, but not so much as Tamzin, and he hasn’t Tamzin’s persuasive skills. The perceived insult would not be great enough to win people to his side.”
She nodded as she looked at the two men in question, one smiling in animated conversation, one dour and stoic as he listened with an air of distraction and did not speak.
“Of course,” Zarsha said with another of his small smiles, “I am not the one who would have to sit in council meetings with him and watch credulous fools be blinded by his charms.”
She cast a sharp glance his way. “It seems you’ve formed a remarkably strong opinion of Lord Tamzin on short acquaintance. Have you met before?”
“No. But my father was a diplomat, and I’ve spent my entire life bouncing from court to court to court. I know his type all too well.”
She made a noncommittal noise, thinking his familiarity with courts outside Nandel explained a lot. Like why there was no trace of Mountain Tongue, the unlovely language of Nandel, in his accent. And why he knew the steps to popular court dances when dancing was considered frivolous and common in Nandel. And maybe even why his charm so often struck a false note with her—he was so used to making himself “fit in” with foreign courts that he naturally kept his true self hidden from view.
“When will you be returning home?” she asked, for despite his stated intention to continue courting her, he had no reason to remain in Rhozinolm.
“Eager to be rid of me?”
She gave him a quelling look.
“I am awaiting instructions from my uncle,” he said. “He will likely have a new assignment for me now that I am unattached once more.”
“You don’t sound especially eager to return to Nandel,” she ventured. Most of the Nandelites she’d ever met had given her the impression they found Rhozinolm to be a decadent den of iniquity they could not wait to escape.
Zarsha grinned at her with genuine humor, until he remembered he was at a funeral and instantly sobered. “Let’s just say that my relationship with my uncle improves with distance. I suspect that if you and I had married, we would have lived in The Keep for at most a year before he decided to post me elsewhere. Thanks to my other rather prolific uncles, I am far enough down the line of succession that my presence at court is not strictly necessary.”
Considering how Sovereign Prince Waldmir was reputed to treat those closest to him, she supposed being sent away wasn’t much of a hardship for Zarsha, after all.
“And now I suppose I have taken up enough of your time,” he said with an almost hurried bow.
She sighed when she spotted both Tamzin and Kailindar heading her way, probably to compete for the honor of handing her into her carriage. She quickly reached out and hooked her arm through Zarsha’s elbow.
“You won’t mind escorting me to my carriage, will you?” she asked and was grateful when Zarsha played along so smoothly and effortlessly that no one watching would have noticed she initiated the contact herself.
“You do me a great honor, Your Majesty,” he said, the slight twinkle in his eye betraying his amusement.
Ellin could only imagine the sour faces Tamzin and Kailindar made behind her back.