Queen of the Unwanted Read online

  Falcor laughed at her expression. “I said you can do it every day, not that I expect you will. With every strike, you—and, naturally, your opponent—will be trying to land a blow between here and here,” he explained, indicating first his shoulders and then his hips. “The guards I’m about to show you are designed to protect you from those cuts, though there is a way around every guard.

  “Start in this position.” He stood with his left foot forward, the sword held at hip level, pointed upward.

  If Shelvon had thought she felt ridiculous just holding the sword, she wasn’t sure how to describe how she felt trying to stand in the position Falcor was showing her. She had always been taught to keep her legs demurely pressed together, and the wide stance felt vaguely obscene. She was certain her pale Nandel skin revealed her blush of discomfort, but Falcor showed no sign of noticing.

  “From there, you’re going to bring your left hand up and across your body,” he said, demonstrating what appeared to be a complicated maneuver that ended with his forearms crossed and the blade held above his head, pointing downward.

  “You’re kidding,” she grumbled, but when he showed her a second time more slowly, she found that she could follow the motion. The sword didn’t feel as light when held so high, and the position felt even more awkward than the last.

  Falcor nodded approval. “It’s all right if it feels a little unnatural at first. It will get more comfortable.” He ignored Shelvon’s unladylike snort of disbelief. “Now move back to first position.”

  He demonstrated, and she followed. Then he had her move back and forth between the two until the motion flowed more smoothly and did not feel so awkward. When she had mastered—or at least gotten reasonably comfortable with—those first two positions, he expanded her repertoire, teaching her each of what he called the basic guard positions and having her move from one to the other in quick succession.

  Well, not so quick, at least not at first. It was all so awkward and foreign, and the movements were certainly not designed for the ease of ladies in stays and layered skirts. But after that first terribly self-conscious quarter hour, she started to get into the rhythm of the movement. After a half hour, Shelvon was sweating profusely as the sun beat down on them, her breath coming hard and her arms feeling heavy. Her entire mind was focused on the movements of her body, of getting each guard exactly right without having to readjust. There was no room for thought or worry, no room for self-doubt or self-consciousness.

  They stopped when her arms and legs were quivering with fatigue and she could barely lift the sword anymore, no matter how light it had felt when she’d first taken it. Falcor gently took it from her, and there was no missing the pleased approval on his face.

  “An excellent first lesson, my lady,” he said. “And you may wish to take a restorative potion before you sleep if you hope to get out of bed tomorrow morning.”

  Still panting, only now beginnng to feel the aching tiredness of her muscles, she had to agree.

  All in all, it had been a surprisingly pleasurable exercise, more calming than she ever could have expected for such vigorous action. But when Shelvon was back in her house—no, the house—drinking the restorative potion Falcor had recommended, the melancholy returned. It had felt good to play at swords, to let the physical activity quiet her mind. But the fact remained that she was adrift in life, a divorced woman outside the walls of an abbey, with no greater purpose than to exist. It seemed a poor and unsatisfying way to live.

  * * *

  —

  A thrill shivered through Mairah’s body when Jalzarnin was shown into her office. Always before, she had met him in the Abbey’s playrooms, where she was fully aware that despite whatever affection he might feel for her, she was a commodity that he had bought. She was not so foolish as to think herself his equal, but now she at least had the luxury of choice.

  “Lord Jalzarnin,” she said with a respectful bow of her head. “How lovely to see you.”

  “And you, Mother Mairahsol,” he said, his eyes twinkling despite the formal greeting. They both waited in silence for the abigail who had shown him in to depart and close the door.

  Mairah expected him to cross the distance between them and take her in his arms the moment he could no longer hear the abigail’s footsteps. Like most men, he found it difficult to have a civilized conversation until after he had slaked his lust. But though her circumstances were now very different than they had been the last time she’d seen him, she had every intention of indulging him still. After all, even when he’d paid for her services, she had quite enjoyed his skills as a partner.

  “How do you like being abbess?” he asked. He smiled at her with all the warmth she had come to expect, and yet he did not embrace her and remained an arm’s length away.

  Mairah blinked, wondering if she had misjudged him. Perhaps now that he had succeeded in having her installed as abbess, he was no longer interested in bedding her. She was, after all, hideous to look at—as she had been told often enough that the insult had almost lost its sting. Perhaps he believed now that she was so thoroughly beholden to him, he need no longer bother with seduction to get what he wanted out of her.

  He must have seen her confusion, for his smile warmed even more and he reached out and took her hands in his. “I no longer have to pay for you by the hour,” he said. “We needn’t rush into things.”

  She sighed with relief, reminding herself yet again that she was now the abbess and he was her guest, not her customer. “Then please do come and have a seat,” she beckoned, directing him to the sofa before the fireplace. The sofa was something of an eyesore, clearly someone’s cast-off, with dingy gray fabric and battle-scarred legs, but it was comfortable enough and felt like a decadent luxury compared to the hard wooden stools and benches she was used to.

  “I am settling in quite nicely,” she told him with a smile of satisfaction as she drank in the warmth of the fire. Elsewhere in the Abbey, fires were only lit when the cold reached dangerous levels, making the winter a season of constant chills and shivers. Mother Wyebryn had carried that tradition into her own office so that she was no warmer than the abigails who served her, but Mairah had done away with that practice first thing. It was barely autumn now, but already the comfortable warmth of the fire was welcome.

  “The older abigails aren’t giving you too much trouble, I presume?”

  Her smile broadened even more as she enjoyed the memory of today’s luncheon, during which Norah and a half dozen of her closest friends had been forced to stand hungry and drooling while they watched their sisters eat. The fasts Mairah had imposed on those who resisted her were saving the Abbey money, which she could then spend on more firewood to keep her office toasty.

  “They are learning that there is a heavy price for disobedience,” she said. “I expect that I will have broken them of any bad habits within a month, if I haven’t already.”

  His eyes twinkled. “Mairah, my dear, you are practically glowing.”

  She laughed. “I won’t pretend it isn’t very…satisfying to give them some firsthand experience of what they put me through for all those long years.”

  “Of course it is,” he said, nodding. “But I do hope you’ve been taking advantage of your new position in other ways, as well.” He raised his eyebrows.

  “Naturally,” she assured him. He seemed to genuinely enjoy seeing her happiness, but she could never allow herself to forget that he had installed her as abbess for his own purposes. “I have tasked a select few of my younger abigails with reporting to me anything untoward their customers might reveal in the throes of passion. I have nothing of any great interest to report just yet, but one of those abigails has been cultivating a Lord Thanstal, with whom I believe you are acquainted.”

  Jalzarnin’s eyes lit with excitement, as she’d suspected they would. Thanstal, one of King Khalvin’s cousins, was quickly rising throu
gh the ranks of the priesthood. With his blood ties to the king, he was a likely successor to Jalzarnin, and if he decided he would prefer not to wait until Jalzarnin retired of his own free will, he might be able to persuade his cousin to appoint him as a replacement.

  In short, he was just the sort of man Jalzarnin hoped Mairah could keep tabs on now that she was abbess.

  “What a pleasant surprise,” Jalzarnin said. “Considering some of the sermons I have heard from him, I would have thought him the sort never to set foot in such a den of iniquity as the Abbey.”

  There was no small amount of sarcasm in Jalzarnin’s voice, and she returned it in kind. “Yes. It’s so rare that someone who makes such a great show of piety is not himself as pious as he pretends.”

  Jalzarnin grimaced in distaste. “I cannot abide hypocrites. I have my faults, but at least I am man enough to own up to them.”

  Mairah nodded again, although she did find it amusing that Jalzarnin would rail against hypocrites. He might not make a great show of his piety, but he was still a priest, and there was no question that he would preach about the sanctity of marriage vows when prompted. Just as he would warn others to beware the terrible sins of ambition and avarice.

  “I don’t know yet how impious Lord Thanstal might be,” Mairah said. “According to Zulmirna, his tastes in the bedroom have so far been unremarkable, but he does seem inclined to linger and talk once he’s been sated. I will keep you apprised of anything interesting he might say.”

  “Yes, that would be helpful. Obviously, I can’t hold his visits to the Abbey against him, no matter what the Devotional might teach about a man’s duties to his wife.”

  “Obviously,” she replied rather dryly. “But it’s a rare ambitious man who does not have one or two secrets that might disqualify him from office were they to become public knowledge.”

  Jalzarnin shot a sharp glance her way, but she smiled and blinked innocently as if completely unaware of the subtle…well, not threat exactly, but maybe warning that she had just issued.

  * * *

  —

  Alys stared at the scrolled parchment, sealed with cream-colored wax, that her lord chancellor was holding out to her. She was sure her face had gone pale, and her stomach rolled over in visceral reaction at the thought of so much as touching something Sovereign Prince Waldmir had written. She shook her head in urgent denial, glad Tynthanal had chosen to approach her in private with this message.

  No one in Women’s Well had expected any overtures from Prince Waldmir. Especially not Alys or Chanlix or Tynthanal, who had all been involved in sending him a Kai flier loaded with Vengeance when they’d thought it might protect Jinnell from his lust. If that flier had struck him, he would know exactly who to blame for it, no matter how nondescript it might have looked.

  “Perhaps our flier never reached him,” Tynthanal said. “It is a long way from here to The Keep, and fliers sometimes struggle to navigate the mountains and their storms. This is unexpectedly good news. He is reaching out from one sovereign to another when we had no reason to believe he would accept either our independence or your rule. He sits on the greatest supply of iron and gems in the entire world, and—”

  “Enough,” she interrupted. For months, Delnamal had tortured Alys with threats of marrying Jinnell to the monstrous Sovereign Prince of Nandel, and the man had become synonymous with what she had once thought was her worst nightmare. Now the thought occurred to her that if Jinnell had married Waldmir, she’d be alive right now.

  She shivered in a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature in the room. Women’s Well had shown little inclination to change with the seasons, the daytime temperatures ranging from comfortably warm to scorching. However, within an hour of the sun setting, there was always a bite to the air, and sometimes she lit a fire to combat it. She moved closer to the small fire in the hearth, holding out her hands to warm them, though the fire had no power to fight the cold that welled from inside her.

  “I can’t do it,” Alys croaked, shaking her head again. “I can’t negotiate with that man.”

  “Ultimately,” Tynthanal said, “he is not the one who hurt Jinnell. Delnamal shoulders one hundred percent of the blame for that.”

  He tried once again to hand her the parchment, and she recoiled as if he held a venomous snake. “I know that,” she snapped. “But I am entirely certain he would prefer to see Women’s Well razed to the ground than enter into any kind of agreement that might benefit us. I have no interest in making contact with him.”

  “You are the sovereign princess,” Tynthanal tried again. “Negotiating with people you can’t abide comes with your title.” He practically poked her in the chest with the scroll. She jerked away and folded her arms, tucking her hands underneath her armpits.

  “Not him,” she insisted. “I don’t care if you think I’m being immature or irresponsible. I will not negotiate with the man who planned to force my daughter into marriage.”

  “Let’s at least see what he has to say.” He’d been coaxing and persuasive at first, but now his irritation was showing through, his tone becoming increasingly curt.

  “I said no!” And because she knew he was not going to let up—and she had no intention of allowing herself to be persuaded—she reached out suddenly and snatched the scroll from his hand, throwing it into the fire.

  Tynthanal’s eyes smoldered, but at least he made no attempt to rescue the scroll from the flames. “You’re right: I do think you’re being immature and irresponsible.”

  “Then so be it.” She crossed her arms once more and stared at the fire as the scroll quickly turned to ashes and disappeared.

  * * *

  —

  Lord Creethan stared at Ellin uncomprehendingly, blinking like a man who was sure what he saw could not be real. Surely he had expected some unpleasantness when he’d received her peremptory summons, and when she’d questioned him about the Abbey, his discomfort and defensiveness confirmed he’d known perfectly well she would not approve.

  “You may go,” she told him, but she wasn’t entirely surprised he remained rooted in place.

  “Surely…” he started, then shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs. “I will, of course, discontinue any practices of which you disapprove, but—”

  “No, you won’t,” she interrupted. “Your successor will.”

  “Your Majesty—”

  “This is not a negotiation. I will not have a man on my council who has betrayed my trust, and there is nothing you can say that will change my mind.” Which was nothing but the truth, for Semsulin had said everything he could think of to try to talk her out of dismissing her trade minister. Not that he approved of what Creethan had done, but he had rightly pointed out that dismissing a man of his stature—and with his family connections—would be politically problematic.

  “Punish him, by all means,” her lord chancellor had counseled, “but don’t dismiss him.”

  Ellin had listened to Semsulin’s wise words and had known he was right. There were many on her council and among the nobility of Rhozinolm who would not see what Creethan had done as any true crime. They might acknowledge that it had been inadvisable for him to do it behind her back, but she was sure many would privately praise his ingenuity in wringing more money from the Abbey. After all, the women there were already disgraced, considered no more than whores, whether they worked the pavilion or not. Creethan and his influential family would no doubt frame her decision as choosing those Unwanted Women over a sage and respected adviser, and that was unlikely to go over well with the rich and powerful men of Rhozinolm.

  But Ellin had imagined what it would be like to sit in council meetings with Creethan, knowing what he had done and knowing that he would happily scheme behind her back if that was what he needed to do to have his way. Dismissing him might not be politically expedient, but she could see no alternative. She
could not trust him, and his actions proved him to be the kind of human being she could never respect. Therefore, he could not remain on her council.

  “You can’t mean it,” Creethan said, his voice caught somewhere between incredulity and outrage. “I have served the Crown since before you were born. I maintain I was still serving the Crown when I instituted the new policies—and that it would be folly to reverse them—but you have made your objections abundantly clear. I will change the policies, and we can—”

  “I don’t think you’re hearing me, Lord Creethan. I said you were dismissed, and I meant it.”

  The incredulity and outrage were turning into something darker as he continued to stare at her. The muscles of his jaw worked restlessly, and both his hands were clenched at his sides. “This is foolishness! You cannot dismiss a member of the royal council for doing his job!” This last was said at a near roar, and he took a step closer to her desk.

  “Yes, Lord Creethan, I can,” she said calmly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of her honor guardsmen take a step closer to her. She couldn’t blame him for his caution, for Creethan looked like he was on the brink of losing his tenuous control of his temper. It took an effort of will not to flinch back from what she saw in his face. “Every member of the royal council serves at the sovereign’s pleasure,” she reminded him. “I thank you for the service you have done to me and for your years of service to my grandfather, but I will not have you on my council any longer.”

  Creethan shook his head and sneered. “This display of feminine hysterics is unbecoming of a sovereign! The Kingdom of Rhozinolm would be better served if you were to step aside and allow your grandfather’s true heir to take his rightful throne. He can marry you to the Nandelite, renew the trade agreements, and—”