Shadowforged (Light & Shadow) (17 page)

“I could not do other than say yes. My heart and my duty are as one,” Miriel assured him. She knelt with him on the floor. “Your Grace, Garad, my love—I will be your Queen.”

The light creeping under the door gilded her hair as he kissed her, and I heard him murmur, “Then stand by me, wife, and none shall part us.”

Unbidden, I had a memory of a face: blue eyes, sandy golden hair. A boy as passionate as Garad, and yet as determined for reform as Miriel. And I had the wish, which I would later regret with all my heart, that Wilhelm could be Miriel’s King.

Chapter 17

“He wanted to come to your rooms—and you let him?” the Duke was prepared to be furious.

“Catwin was there the whole time,” Miriel said calmly. “She can vouch for me.”

“No one will take a servant’s word for this,” her uncle reminded her. Then he looked at her more closely, at the small, self-satisfied smile on her face, and the glow in her cheeks. “What are you so smug about?”

“He said he wanted to come speak to you,” Miriel offered. She smiled at her uncle’s stony expression. “I’m getting closer to it than you thought I could,” she challenged him. “Am I not?”

“Then even you are not such a fool as to believe this is a done deal,” he rejoined.

“Of course not,” she said scornfully. “He will renege on his agreement with—who was it? The Torstenssons?” As if she did not know perfectly well who it was. She raised his eyebrows at his flicker of surprise. “You did not know? Ah. Well, I will not trust an agreement. I will think it done only when there is a marriage treaty, signed and sealed and announced to the court.”

“You had best think it done only when you have a crown on your head,” her uncle said sharply. “This is a man who could renege on anything. So don’t you allow him to touch you until the High Priest pronounces you his wife. In public.” His eyes narrowed. “You didn’t allow him liberties last night, did you?”

“I let him kiss me,” Miriel said, untroubled. Of the people in the room, only I knew that she had practiced that line a dozen, a hundred times, in front of her mirror. She raised an eyebrow at the Duke’s face, which was beginning to turn red. “And he would have done more, had I not stopped him.” She looked as satisfied as the cat that had the cream. Only I, and Temar, would have thought to look at where her hands were shaking in her lap. The Duke was only watching her face.

“If you or he breathes a single word of this to the court—“ the Duke’s voice was strangled with rage. This was the betrayal he had been waiting for, Miriel making decisions behind his back. It was time for her to capitulate, and I prayed she would know that.

I should not have worried.

“My Lord uncle.” Her voice was placatory, sweet as honey. “He came to my rooms because I had refused to meet with him that day. You had told me to get him back, and I had staged a retreat. He came forward to it, he came to my rooms. He had planned to tell me about the Torstenssons, and say that he could not see me again. But—as I had told you I would—I enchanted him, and he swore that he would go back on their agreement. Yes, after he proposed marriage to me, I let him kiss me.”

“He has spoken of marriage before. I don’t see why this time should be any different.” He glared at her.

“Because we were closer to losing him this time,” Miriel said simply. “Because my mind alone was not enough to keep him from his duty.”

“So even you view his marriage to you as an abdication of his duty?” He was intrigued.

“Not really.” Miriel shrugged one shoulder, negligently. “No other woman can advise him as I can. But if he wants an advantageous marriage, from a noble who is well-connected…then, yes.”

I had the thought that the Duke might have been less angry if only she had been wrong. If she had made a horrible mistake. He did not want her to be able to choose a gamble on her own and have it pay off; he would prefer that she fail, rather than use her own techniques and win. I wondered if he knew, in some part of his mind, that as soon as she became Queen, she would have him destroyed.

“
If
he comes to talk to me, I will entertain any offer he names,” the Duke said warningly. “If. I doubt he will, Miriel. I doubt it very much. By now, he will have remembered his duty. But if he does indeed come to see me, I will speak to him of your marriage. And
you
—you will not let him come to your rooms anymore. You will insist on meeting him at another place, so that you can give me forewarning.”

“So you can spy on me,” Miriel said flatly, before she could stop herself.

“Exactly so!” His hand slammed down on the arm of his chair. “I do not like this game you are playing. I doubt you can win it. And so I—“ he jabbed a finger at himself “—
I
will make sure that if you fail at your game, you are not ruined. I will ensure that you keep his ear and his heart, even if you are not Queen.”

“Little good that would do me,” Miriel rejoined, and the Duke smiled.
I did not like that smile.

“Perhaps. Now go. And not a word of this to anyone. If anyone asks you, you are to say that you know nothing of it, that your uncle will surely tell you when a marriage has been made for you. You, Catwin, will say that you have heard no rumors of the King’s marriage to Miriel. None. That is all. Go, both of you.”

Miriel obeyed him in this, as she always did when he gave her a direct order. She walked through the court as if nothing at all had happened. She was dressed in gowns no finer than she ever wore, she did not claim a place of seniority at the maidens’ tables at dinner. She was so sweet and so deferential that it was nearly sickening. She never showed, through a single flicker of her eyelashes, that she knew Linnea Torstensson was her rival.

But within only a few days, the court knew. Somehow, the court knew both that the King was entertaining thoughts of a marriage with someone who was not Miriel—no one seemed to know who—and that, despite it all, his public indifference to Miriel was only a show. There were rumors that the two met secretly in the night, so many wild rumors that even Temar, with all his skill, could not scotch all of them. The court was violently divided between those who thought Miriel was a girl of absolutely, unswerving virtue, and those who thought she was no better than a whore.

It was not long before the court knew, also, who Miriel might supplant. And this time, when the men of the Council knew that the King had been close to a marriage, they backed the family who might have secured the Queenship. This was not Guy de la Marque, ready to flaunt an army, this was a family that had petitioned, as any family might. Linnea was a charming girl, very kind. The Torstenssons were one of the oldest lines, nearly royal in their own right, ancient rivals to the Conradines. And the alternative…

And so the rumor swirled that the King would discard an alliance that came with the goodwill of the entire country, for a smile from an upstart’s daughter. The councilors narrowed their eyes at the Duke, who disclaimed that he’d not petitioned the King for such an honor, and they watched Miriel, as if their fury could cripple her.

Miriel affected surprise. She shook her head and parted her lips and blushed. She protested that such a decision had little enough to do with her—a flagrant lie, but then, such an impossibly strange situation needed such a lie. She said that she had heard nothing from her uncle regarding her marriage, and that until she did so, she would assume that the rumors were only that—rumors and lies. She praised Linnea Torstensson as a fine girl, a well-born girl, and said that it would be a fine match for the King—but, of course, she had not heard any evidence that he was considering Linnea, or even herself.

This did not save her from the enmity of the Dowager Queen. Isra would take even a secret marriage treaty over a marriage with Miriel. She would not be pushed aside for a commoner, and yet she had learned that she could not go against her son, not openly. And so she launched her own subtle campaign against Miriel. One day, only the maidens from the oldest families might be invited to dance at dinner, another day, each maiden was to wear cloak pins to show her heritage: her mother’s crest on her right shoulder and her father’s crest on her left shoulder, so that Miriel alone must wear a copper pin on her cloak, while the other girls wore silver and gold. I heard whispers that the Dowager Queen prevailed upon members of the Council to question the Duke’s ability to rule Voltur.

And no matter how the King might protest against it, the Dowager Queen kept alive the talk of mistresses and wives. Each day, it seemed, I heard one man or another jest with the King about the joys a ruler might have. When I heard even the Torstenssons laugh about it, I had a thought to look over at Linnea. She was a pretty girl, indeed, generous and kind. I knew she had not ever been one to join in the talk against Miriel. I did not think that if she got the crown on her head, it would bring her much joy—not if her own family was willing to have the crown on her head and another woman in the King’s bed.

Miriel had no time for sympathy, as I had.

“A rival is the same thing as an enemy,” she told me, with scant patience. “If you think Linnea would have no joy being Queen, well, help me become Queen instead.” I could not fault her logic, and yet, I wanted to ask her if even she would have any joy of being Queen. But we never spoke of that. I only let myself admit in the depths of the night, to myself, silently, that I sometimes doubted that our goals were worth the price we paid for them; neither Miriel nor I would ever question it aloud. We looked only forward to the goal.

It seemed foolish to me that I questioned our plan at all, for the King, true to his word, had indeed approached the Duke. What respect the Duke showed the King when the two of them spoke, I could not imagine, for when he told us of their conversations, my lord was as contemptuous as if he had been speaking to the village idiot.

“He’s wavering,” he told the two of us bluntly, as we stood before him. The respect Miriel had been shown when she was his new ally was gone; the closer she came to her goal, the less the Duke seemed to think of her. The ornamental chair he had once given her was pushed to the side of the room, but she, who had once stood with her eyes on the ground, now kept her head up and her shoulders back. She looked at him as if she were Queen already.

“And yet, my Lord uncle, he came to you today with new conditions for a contract.”

“It’s nothing until it’s signed,” the Duke said flatly. “That woman has every family in the land proposing marriage to him.” There was grudging respect in his voice when he spoke of the Dowager Queen; I understood that he might well have used the same tactic. “You are to prepare yourself for him to marry another.”

“Never,” Miriel said instantly. “I have his heart, he is seeking my advice once more. He undertakes no decision without consulting me first. I
will
have the crown.”

“You will prepare yourself for it,” the Duke said, his voice dangerous. “I say so, and unless you wish to parade about as if you know better than I do—and no friend of mine—then you will do as I say. As you promised to do.” Miriel colored and looked down. The Duke snorted. “You can go. You, Catwin, you stay.”

I heard Miriel’s steps pause, and the Duke smiled, predatory. “The guards will see you back to your chamber,” he told her, and she had no choice but to leave, her head held high but her face set with sudden fear. What could the Duke want with me? When she was gone, the Duke turned his attention back to me.

“What does Miriel need to lure him on?” he asked baldly. “New gowns? Cosmetics?” I shook my head in confusion. The King was, once more, devoted to Miriel. He spoke to her on every topic he could think of. He relied on her, as she had told me he would. For a moment, stupidly, I could not think how cosmetics would aid her.

“He comes forward now,” I said. “He likes her as she is, without adornment. He likes her mind.” I was thinking of her words that love talk meant nothing, that her true power would be in his belief that he could not rule without her. But the Duke snorted.

“Is he hot for her?” I felt myself start to blush.

“I don’t know, my Lord.”

“Then he’s not. And he has to be. So you tell me now what she needs, to make that happen.” When I hesitated, he snapped, “Must I have you trained by whores as well to be of use to me, girl? Temar told me you could see to the heart of men’s desires. Do not show me that his faith in you is mistaken.” On the side of the room, Temar settled his chin onto his fist, watching me. He was unmoved by the slur against his powers of observation, he cared only to see what I might say.

“She needs only herself,” I shot back, my pride pricked on her behalf. “She doesn’t need jewels, she’s beautiful in her own right. She can stir his desire without baubles and ornaments.” The Duke smiled, he was amused by my indignation.

“You’re serving the King’s mistress,” he observed. “You had best be less squeamish. For sure, she has no such qualms.”

“She does! And she’s not his mistress,” I said instantly. “You told her to be pure, and she is. I swear.”
Don’t beat her
. But he only shook his head, impatiently. He snapped his fingers at me.

“Do you understand nothing, girl? Have I found a complete dullard to guard my niece? Her idiocy I can at least understand—she has the crown in her sights. But you should have clearer eyes.”

As much as I hated to admit my ignorance, I had no choice. I swallowed and looked into his grim eyes, and said only, “No, my Lord. I don’t understand.”

“Then let me explain it. Once.” He came around the side of the desk, and I tried not to flinch, but he only paced in front of me as he spoke. “My niece is to be for the King. She is to enchant him. She is to turn his head. She is to bear sons for him and be his clo
sest advisor. It matters not a whit to me if she is his wife or his mistress.” He stopped pacing for a moment and raised his eyebrows at me. “You should know as well as I do that it might even do us more good for her to be the mistress. She would be his forbidden love. It would keep the flame alive for longer.”