Queen of the Unwanted Read online

  Mairah had shrugged and answered without thinking it through first. “To be fair, they don’t really question His presence. From what I understand, they merely believe their ‘Mother of All’ gave birth to Him.”

  Zulmirna had looked at her with an expression of shocked disbelief. “But the Creator created everything. Including the Mother. Everyone knows that!”

  Mairah had been raised in the same tradition as everyone else in Khalpar—and, truly, throughout the Three Kingdoms, except within small pockets of heretics—but she did not feel any particular indignation over the beliefs of the Mother of All worshippers. It seemed rather frivolous to argue over which deity came first, and it hardly affected one’s everyday life. However, the cult was outlawed, and the king would be horrified were he to learn there were practitioners of that heresy within the heart of Khalpar’s capital.

  “Of course they do,” Mairah had said smoothly. Perhaps Zulmirna had brought this information to her out of genuine outrage rather than as an attempt to earn an extra reward. “And I must thank you for bringing this heresy to my attention. Sister Norah and her followers are an affront to this abbey, and I will put a stop to their outrageous behavior immediately.”

  “Will you report them?” Zulmirna asked, and Mairah couldn’t discern whether her voice held excitement or dread at the prospect.

  Reporting them would certainly rid Mairah of all the most troublesome abigails in the Abbey, and it would be a more than satisfactory revenge for all the wrongs they’d done her. In point of fact, it would be too much revenge. Though Mairah liked to think of herself as ruthless, she would not wish a heretic’s fate on anyone. Not even Sister Norah. However, the threat would certainly bring the bitch to heel.

  “It is my duty as abbess to guide and correct the behavior of my abigails,” she said, hoping she sounded both pious and benevolent. “I will have words with them privately and attempt to show them the error of their ways. If I am sufficiently persuasive, then no one but we two need know of their perversion.”

  “You are very kind,” Zulmirna said, though the sharpness of her gaze said she was well aware that kindness had nothing to do with it.

  “I am always mindful of my duties. And I will arrange to catch Norah at one of her illegal gatherings, so that no one will ever suspect you of informing on them.”

  Zulmirna bowed her head respectfully. “Thank you, Mother Mairahsol. And might I ask you to further reduce the number of nights I am required to work the pavilion?”

  Ah. So that was why she’d taken it upon herself to spy on Norah. Mairah told herself to keep Zulmirna’s superior acting ability at the forefront of her mind, for she’d been halfway convinced of the girl’s religious fervor, though she prided herself on her skepticism.

  “I’m afraid I still need your services in the pavilion,” Mairah had told her regretfully. “Especially now that Lord Thanstal has taken such a great liking to you.” The king’s cousin had yet to reveal anything that Jalzarnin could use to ruin him, but it seemed he opened up more and more with each visit. “But let me think on it. I’m sure I can come up with a reward you will find just as pleasing.”

  Zulmirna had been a bit sulky in her acceptance, and Mairah was fully aware the girl could become a problem if she was not kept happy. However, she could hardly regret recruiting her when she’d brought Mairah such useful information.

  When Mairahsol turned the corner into the hallway that led to the kitchens, she immediately saw that the door was closed, and there was light showing from around its edges. The corners of her mouth turned up in a satisfied smile. Paying Norah back bit by bit for every ounce of misery she had caused over the years had been even more enjoyable than Mairahsol could have imagined, but humiliating her in front of her followers—and proving to everyone in the Abbey that Norah was too toxic to befriend—would be the coup de grace.

  Mairah crept closer to the kitchen door. Someone—it didn’t sound like Norah—was droning on and on, though Mairah couldn’t make out the words. In truth, she had no interest in what was being said, although she intended to pretend the greatest possible offense at the sacrilege.

  The abigail stopped speaking, and another voice took over. Still not Norah. Mairah frowned as she approached the door. She would consider her plan a dismal failure if she burst through the door only to find Norah had decided not to attend tonight’s illegal gathering.

  Instead of throwing the door open the moment she reached it, Mairah used a dab of the ever-convenient Keyhole ointment to peek inside.

  When Zulmirna had told her that Norah was orchestrating meetings of the Mother of All cult, Mairahsol had pictured a half dozen or so of the old women of Mother Wyebryn’s generation sitting around a table and complaining about how they’d suffered under Mairah’s leadership. She’d assumed they occasionally discussed their beliefs as part of the Mother of All cult, but she’d been certain their main purpose had been to do what they could to undermine her.

  Which might indeed be the case, although at the moment, the Keyhole ointment revealed the elderly Sister Ide reciting a passage that sounded like it might have come from the Devotional, if it hadn’t referenced the Mother of All. And there were nearly two dozen abigails gathered round, hanging on Sister Ide’s every word. Norah was there, too, smiling like a proud mother as she mouthed the words herself.

  This was not some little gossip circle made up of Mother Wyebryn’s favorite crones! This was a gathering of fully a quarter of the Abbey’s inhabitants. Worse, as she remained crouched by the keyhole she’d created, listening and watching, Mairahsol heard someone address Norah as “Mother Norah.” Norah rebuked the abigail, but Mairah heard ill-disguised pleasure in the old woman’s voice.

  The passage Ide was reciting told a story about the Mother’s fall from grace that was very different from the one with which Mairah was familiar. According to the Devotional, the Mother had broken Her marriage vows to the Creator by bedding Their son, the Destroyer. The Destroyer had been cast out of the heavens, His impact with the earth creating the lifeless Wasteland. In penance for Her sin, the Mother had vowed eternal subservience to the Creator and decreed that all women should be subservient to men.

  But according to this heretical version of the Devotional, the Creator had been jealous of the Mother of All’s greater power and status. He was Her creation, beholden to Her and clearly lesser. She foreswore some of Her power to make Herself His equal, and yet still He was not appeased. Until finally, She cast away a part of Herself, diminishing Herself as a salve to His wounded pride.

  The heresy made Mairah uneasy, despite her distinct lack of faith. And now, when she pictured herself throwing that door open, she imagined not the shocked and frightened faces she had originally assumed, but the angry and determined faces of women who were more than ready to turn on her. With the prospect of questioning by the royal inquisitor before an inevitable death by fire, those women were more likely to tear Mairah apart with their bare hands than cower in terror. The punishment they would face for Mairah’s murder would be nothing compared to what they would suffer should she reveal them as Mother of All worshippers.

  Heart pounding with this sudden recognition of her own vulnerability, Mairahsol backed slowly away from the door. Bursting in on this meeting was clearly not an option, and she was going to have to put a great deal more thought into how she would make use of the information Zulmirna had brought her. But make use of it she would. One way or another, she was going to destroy “Mother” Norah. And any abigail who took the bitch’s side against Mairahsol was bound to regret that decision very, very deeply.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Chanlix resorted to a touch of potion to remove the last of the puffy redness from her eyes, then regarded herself closely in the mirror and decided she looked presentable enough to be seen in public. She took a long, slow, deep breath before stepping out the door, making certain the last of her urge to c
ry had left her.

  Tynthanal was the kindest, most honorable man she had ever met. He had never judged her for what she’d had to do as an inmate of the Abbey, had not treated her as a damaged woman. Nor did he act as though she were a lesser being because she had been born female. Because of all this, she had somehow not expected him to be so profoundly attached to the idea that a woman required marriage to validate her existence. While marrying him made a nice fantasy, Chanlix had never truly believed it was a possibility, and she’d been perfectly content with her role as his unmarried lover. She did not like the thought of him marrying another, of course, but she understood the necessity and was prepared to live with it.

  “You do realize practically everyone in Women’s Well knows I’m sleeping with you now even though we’re not married,” she’d argued when he’d railed against what he saw as Alys’s ultimatum. “I have not been stoned as a whore nor perished of shame.”

  But Tynthanal had been past seeing reason and had shouted about the “terrible” shame that would befall her should his infertility be cured and she become pregnant without the benefit of a husband. As if men ever showed a lick of shame over the children they fathered—and most often abandoned—out of wedlock. Chanlix herself had grown angry, and harsh words were exchanged, words she’d regretted the moment they left her mouth.

  It had been a good forty minutes since Tynthanal had slammed out of the house, too angry to bear any company but his own, and Chanlix had used those minutes to put her emotions in some semblance of order. There was no question in her mind that establishing an alliance by marriage with the chief rival for Queen Ellinsoltah’s throne would give Women’s Well a degree of safety and legitimacy that nothing else could. If there was any way they could make it happen, they had to seize the opportunity. Which meant that Tynthanal had to try those potions, and Chanlix was likely the only person who stood a chance of persuading him.

  There was only one place Tynthanal might have gone in his search for solitude, and Chanlix followed the well-worn path that led to what had become their own special spot, a tiny alcove in the spring that housed the Well, blocked from view by the lush growth around the water.

  As she expected, he was standing in the shallow, clear water, his shoes off and his trousers rolled to his knees. (Although he was no longer in the military, he often eschewed the civilian garb of breeches and doublet for his more familiar shirt and trousers.) The Well beneath the spring gave off a hum of power that was both soothing and invigorating, and many were the times the two of them had waded together in the quiet.

  He turned at the sound of her approach, and though he couldn’t manage a smile for her, there was at least a slight lightening of his scowl.

  Without a word, Chanlix sat on a log—one she was quite certain had been appropriated from a building site, for there were no trees of its size yet in the land that had once been barren—and removed her own shoes.

  “You’ll ruin your dress,” Tynthanal called as she inelegantly hiked up her skirts and waded in after him.

  The shock of cold water drew a gasp from her throat, expected as it was, and the hum of power brought a small smile to her face. “It will give me an excuse to buy a new one,” she said. For decades, she’d worn nothing but the red robes and wimple of an abigail, and it was a delight to be allowed to wear whatever she wanted—and have the money to spoil herself shamelessly with new dresses when the mood struck her.

  She reached his side, escaped folds of her skirt dragging in the water, and for a few minutes they stood there together in peaceful silence. Since they had first come here and discovered the Well, they had spent many a stolen hour like this, sometimes talking, sometimes making love, sometimes just enjoying the peace.

  Beside her, Tynthanal closed his eyes in what looked almost like physical pain. She let go of her skirts with one hand—they were already wet anyway—and put that hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently.

  “I’m sorry I lost my temper,” he said without opening his eyes. “I hope you know it is Alys I am angry with, not you.” He finally shot her a sideways glance as if afraid of what he would see on her face.

  “You have no cause to be angry with either of us,” she chided. “Alys is doing what she feels is best for everyone. And she’s not wrong. You know that.”

  The mulish expression that crossed his face was becoming frustratingly familiar. “I love you. I will either marry you, or I will marry no one at all. I will not drink Alys’s potions. She can’t force me to.”

  Chanlix wondered if he’d ever noticed he’d never actually asked her to marry him. He just assumed she was his for the taking—which, to be fair, she would have been under other circumstances.

  “So I have no say in this?”

  “You can’t want me to marry another!” he protested in outrage.

  “I don’t want you to. But I would like to participate in the decision instead of having you make it for me. Whether you choose to take the potions or not, you are not the only person involved here.”

  He rubbed his hands on his trousers, an unusually nervous gesture for one so habitually self-possessed. “I just assumed…”

  “Yes, that’s the problem.” Hooking her arm through his, she leaned her head against his shoulder. “I have endured more shame and humiliation than you can possibly imagine over the course of my life,” she said, feeling his muscles tense with the admission although it was nothing he didn’t already know. “If you imagine the prospect of being your mistress will cause me to faint away in maidenly shock, you are much mistaken. I would happily bear you as many bastard children as my body can produce while it still can, for I know you would love them just the same as any legitimate ones you might have.”

  “I imagine my wife”—he said the word as if it left a foul taste in his mouth—“would be less pleased with such an arrangement.”

  “She would join the great sisterhood of women who have learned to look the other way. Such is hardly out of the ordinary in any marriage, much less a marriage of state. If you’re worried about my feelings, rest assured I would rather be your mistress with children than your wife with none.” She tensed, fearing he would take that assertion as some form of rejection, but Tynthanal merely ground his teeth.

  “I’m a selfish bastard. I want both.”

  She shook her head. “Honestly, Tynthanal, what good would it do us to marry and have children when we’re teetering on the edge of destruction? If Queen Ellinsoltah were to become unable or unwilling to uphold our alliance—if, say, her council should decide Lord Kailindar was the rightful king—we would be doomed. I want to have your children—but only if I have reason to think those children would live to see adulthood.

  “Try your sister’s potions,” she urged. “There is no point in wrestling through all this only to find she can’t cure what ails you anyway.”

  “And if one works?”

  “If one works, we talk about it again. You will listen to me, and I will listen to you, and together we will decide what’s best for all involved.”

  He heaved a huge sigh. “And we both know what that is,” he said, his eyes full of anguish. He put his arms around her suddenly and pulled her to him. She laid her head against his chest and heard the steady thump of his heart. “You deserve so much better than this,” he whispered into her hair. “After everything you’ve been through, all you’ve suffered…”

  “You can give me your love. And maybe, just maybe, you can give me a child. It’s so much more than I ever hoped for.”

  He was silent for a long time, wrestling with his demons. As wonderfully understanding as he had been about her past, she knew that he had not completely shaken off the notion that a woman having a child out of wedlock was a source of terrible shame. Even in Women’s Well, she was sure there were plenty of people who shared his opinion, and her life as an unwed mother—should she be lucky enough to have it—
would not be easy.

  “What you said before—that you’d rather be my mistress with children than my wife with none—that’s been your position all along, hasn’t it?” he asked. “Even when we had no specific reason to believe my marriage could save Women’s Well from destruction. Having children means that much to you?”

  She heard the plaintive thought behind the words: Am I not enough? “It’s more that marriage means so little,” she said, hoping to take any sting out of it. “If I have a man that I love, if I have his child, and if I am not shunned and scorned for it, then what need have I for a priest’s blessing?”

  His arms squeezed so tight around her that for a moment she could hardly breathe, and yet still she reveled in his embrace. “I cannot bear to cause you pain,” he said in a choked voice. “Don’t tell me it would not hurt you to see me wed another.”

  She pulled away and looked up into his eyes, willing him to see both her love and her acceptance. “It will hurt us both,” she said. “And it’s what we both signed up for when we set out to create Women’s Well as an independent principality. I will do my duty. Will you do yours?”

  Another long silence ensued before Tynthanal finally sighed and said, “I will drink the potions.”

  * * *

  —

  Smithson had never been so excited as he had been on the day when Lord Jailom had announced that the Citadel of Women’s Well would break with all tradition and allow sons of commoners to join up as cadets. Smithson had been learning his father’s trade—metalsmithing, of course—since he’d been old enough to hold a hammer, but had shown little aptitude for the work. He despised the heat of the forge, and the repetitive hammering bored him to distraction. He was forever burning himself or hitting himself with the hammer or breaking whatever piece he was working on.

  His father had been almost comically relieved—and embarrassingly overjoyed to approve—when Smithson had asked permission to become a cadet, and the last six months of military training had been the most satisfying of his young life. Other boys his age complained of the strained muscles and the small hurts of sparring, but Smithson much preferred those pains to the constant burns and the occasional smashed finger.