The Women's War Read online

  He was shown into the parlor, which had seen a steady influx of visitors for whom she had forced a façade of strength and stoicism throughout the day. Seeing him and remembering the wedge he had driven between her and her father—a wedge she would never be able to repair—it was all she could do not to burst out in tears. She had allowed him as much courtesy as she could muster by not turning him away. True warmth and welcome were beyond her.

  “Lord Chancellor,” she said in chilly greeting. She made no attempt to temper the frost in her voice. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know how she felt about him.

  “Your Highness,” he said, bowing elegantly. Although he was impeccably dressed and groomed as always, there was a tightness around his eyes that suggested he was grieving, and his shoulders had an unaccustomed slump to them.

  Ellin braced herself against the onslaught of grief he was about to trigger with his sympathy. He met her eyes boldly in a way others today had been reluctant to do, as if her grief might burn holes in them if they gazed upon it too closely.

  “I’d tell you how sorry I am for your loss, but I know you don’t want to hear that from me.”

  Ellin blinked. She’d have liked to answer with some appropriately cutting remark, but none came to mind. “Then why…?” she started, but words failed her. She’d been so certain she knew what he was going to say that she seemed incapable of adjusting to the reality. She was not usually so slow-witted, but grief and lack of sleep had slowed her both in body and in mind.

  “Why am I here?” he finished for her. She nodded, suddenly certain she was not going to like the answer. “I can’t imagine how you must be feeling right now, and I swear I would not be coming to you like this if it weren’t important.”

  Her whole world, her whole life, had crumbled into ashes last night. “What could possibly be so important that you had to bring it to me today of all days?” she asked with some heat. “I want nothing more than to be left alone.”

  Semsulin bowed his head. “I know. And I would honor your request if I didn’t feel it was critical that we talk immediately.” He gave her a shrewd look. “Besides, I suspect you already know what brings me.”

  She squirmed in her seat. All day long, she’d been shunting thoughts of the succession aside, reminding herself time and time again that it was none of her business. But to what else could Semsulin possibly be referring?

  “The succession is none of my concern,” she said. “I presume the royal council will honor Lord Kailindar’s claim to the throne.”

  Kailindar Rai-Chantah was the late king’s illegitimate son by his favorite mistress. While not technically in the line of succession, he was the late king’s closest surviving male relative, and though the king had never married Kailindar’s mother, he had nonetheless acknowledged Kailindar as his son. It was not unheard of for an acknowledged illegitimate son to take the throne when no legitimate heir presented himself.

  The succession would have been irregular, but nothing to consider a crisis, if it weren’t for the late king’s second-closest surviving male relative, his illegitimate grandson, Tamzin Rai-Mailee. Tamzin was everything Kailindar was not. Young. Handsome. Personable. And a veritable hero of the people after his role in wiping out an enclave of bandits who’d been terrorizing the outer provinces. He and Kailindar also harbored a violent hatred for each other. If the council put Kailindar on the throne, it was highly unlikely Tamzin would hold still for it. And with his widespread popularity and legendary ability in battle, he could easily muster a significant army.

  “If the crown goes to Lord Kailindar, there will be war,” Semsulin said. The lord chancellor was not one to mince words.

  Ellin had no doubt he was right. She’d known Lord Tamzin since childhood, though he was ten years older than she. Behind his easy charm and good looks, he was one of the most petty, vengeful men she’d ever known, and she’d never heard of him letting go of a grudge. She’d also heard plenty of whispers—which his adoring fans conveniently ignored—that his defeat of the bandits had not been so heroic as he claimed. Not a single bandit had survived to be put on trial, and while he and his small band of men swore they’d been killed because they had refused to surrender, it was hard to believe every last one—some of them were no older than twelve—had been stubborn and stupid enough to fight to the death. There’d also been rumors that before freeing the kidnapped women Tamzin had supposedly been fighting to save, he’d let his men rape them as spoils of war on the theory that they were already ruined anyway so it didn’t matter. It was a rumor Ellin had no trouble believing based on her opinion of Tamzin’s character. His mask was as pretty as Zarsha’s, but once she’d glimpsed what was behind it, it could never fool her again.

  “Well Kailindar certainly isn’t going to step aside for Tamzin,” she responded with a sinking heart.

  “No indeed. He would only step aside for a legitimate heir.”

  She frowned. “But there is no legitimate heir.”

  Semsulin said nothing, merely looked at her and raised his eyebrows.

  “Surely you don’t mean me!” she sputtered. Admittedly, every time she’d started thinking about the succession, she’d forced her thoughts to turn aside, but she had never even flirted with the idea of taking the throne herself. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a woman.”

  The corners of Semsulin’s eyes crinkled with what looked like genuine humor. “I had my suspicions.” He quickly sobered. “You would not be the first woman to sit on the throne of Rhozinolm.”

  Ellin swallowed hard and made her way to the nearest chair. Her wobbly knees threatened to collapse beneath her, and it was all she could do to sit gracefully and with an air of control. “But that was centuries ago,” she breathed. “And Queen Shazinzal took the throne because there was no male heir to be found and we were at war.”

  Semsulin nodded sagely. “And you will take the throne to prevent a war. Lord Kailindar and Lord Tamzin would take up arms each against the other, but they are far less likely to take up arms against you.”

  She thought that might be true about her uncle Kailindar. His hatred of Tamzin was legendary, but in all other ways he seemed a steady and reasonable man. He was not without ambition, but he was hardly power-mad. He would not want to put the kingdom through a war as long as he didn’t have to stomach bending a knee to Tamzin.

  Tamzin, on the other hand, made no secret of his desire for power and his lack of interest in anyone but himself. She imagined his first thought on learning of the deaths of the king and his heirs was that the crown would look most excellent resting on his own head. The best interests of the kingdom were unlikely to be of much concern to him.

  Semsulin read her doubts easily. “A bastard heir raising an army to challenge the claim of another bastard is one thing. But you are the legitimate heir to the throne—our new Queen Shazinzal. It will be much harder to raise an army against a legitimate heir, especially when there’s a clear precedent. Tamzin is bold and he is arrogant, but he is not stupid.”

  Ellin nodded absently. Queen Shazinzal was one of the most beloved monarchs Rhozinolm had ever known. She’d been on the throne when Rhozinolm finally won one of its many long and costly wars against Aaltah, which earned her a great deal of good will. And after the war, she’d promptly married one of the royal dukes and ceded the throne to her husband. In total, her reign had lasted less than two years. Ellin doubted history would have been so kind to the sovereign queen had she attempted to remain on the throne, nor did she think her own ascension to that throne would be met with such wholehearted support.

  “Of course,” Semsulin continued, “if you were to take the throne, marriage with Zarsha of Nandel would no longer be an option.” There was an unpleasant gleam in his eyes—the gleam of a man who knew exactly how to get what he wanted and did not for a moment scruple to play with the lives of others.

  Ellin’s heart nearly ski
pped a beat. Of course she couldn’t marry Zarsha if she became queen. Like Queen Shazinzal before her, she would be expected to cede her throne to her husband when she married. Which meant she could not marry a foreigner, for no foreigner could ever be accepted as king.

  “It is for the good of all that I ask you to take the throne,” Semsulin said. “To stop a war, and to escape a fate I know you did not wish for yourself.”

  She glared at him. “A fate I would never have faced had you not whispered in the king’s ear!”

  The lord chancellor snorted. “You truly think the king needed me to suggest a marriage with Nandel? He’d had his eye on those trade agreements for nearly a decade, and he knew exactly how best to assure they were renewed on favorable terms. You were bound for Nandel since you were a child, whether you knew it or not.”

  Ellin gripped both arms of the chair she was sitting in and fought—no doubt in vain—to keep her feelings off her face.

  How easy it had been to blame Semsulin for suggesting the despised marriage. She owed him no family loyalty and had never liked him. Her father had assured her the marriage was the lord chancellor’s idea, though he had also assured her—with much feigned sympathy—that both he and the king agreed it was best for the kingdom. It was her duty as a daughter of Rhozinolm and a member of the royal family to marry for political advantage. An “unfortunate reality of life” her father had called it.

  Ellin’s eyes were stinging, and she prayed that she wouldn’t start crying in front of the odious man. She reminded herself that he might be lying, trying to ingratiate himself to the woman he intended to put on the throne and distance himself from the machinations that had doomed her to a marriage bound for misery and disaster.

  “It was you,” she whispered, barely able to force any sound from her throat.

  Semsulin grabbed a nearby chair and dragged it closer so he could sit an arm’s length away from her. It was a breach of propriety when she hadn’t offered him a seat, but her emotions were too out of control to let her rebuke his behavior without the risk of a humiliating breakdown.

  “If the king had been so thick he needed my prompting, then I would have suggested it,” Semsulin said. “But, Your Highness…Your Majesty, King Linolm was a shrewd man and wise, and he was cognizant that his first duty would always be to the kingdom. Not to his family. Not even to himself. It is the only appropriate attitude for a sovereign, and it is one you yourself will have to adopt when you take the throne.

  “We will have to find a new way to motivate Nandel to renew the trade agreements now that we no longer can offer your hand in marriage. That will not be easy, especially not when the prince’s daughter is married to the heir to the throne of Aaltah. We needed a royal marriage to cement the alliance, and now we can’t have one.”

  Ellin’s head was spinning again. “I lost my whole family less than a day ago,” she rasped, shaking her head. “You’re telling me I have to take the throne myself to stop a war. And you want me to tackle a sensitive political issue that yourself, the king, and the entire royal council couldn’t solve without using my marriage as a tool.”

  He leaned forward, and if she didn’t know him too coldhearted to experience such human emotions, she would have labeled the look on his face as sympathy. “I’m not suggesting you solve it immediately. It’s urgent, to be sure, but we still have a year before the old agreements expire. I merely wish you to understand the challenges you will face when you take the throne. There are certainly others, but I won’t burden you with them now.”

  “I haven’t said yes yet, you know.” For all the power of the lord chancellor and the royal council, they could not put her on the throne without her consent.

  “But you will,” he said with absolute confidence. “You were willing to marry Zarsha for the good of the kingdom. That tells me all I need to know about your character and sense of duty.”

  Her fists clenched, and she glared at him. “It shows you I feared being sent to the Abbey of the Unwanted more than I feared marrying that insufferable bastard and living as a barbarian in the mountains.”

  He shrugged as if the distinction were insignificant. “I trust that you will fear our kingdom being torn apart by war more than you fear the burdens of the crown.”

  He stood and returned his chair to its original position, lining up the chair legs with the faint impressions they had made in the carpet beneath.

  “I will leave you with your thoughts,” he said. “Send for me if you need me. If I don’t hear from you, I will be back tomorrow to discuss your decision. We cannot leave the throne empty for a moment longer than necessary. You can be certain both Kailindar and Tamzin will be coming to the capital the moment they hear the news, and we should have you in place before either arrives.”

  He bowed and left the room, and Ellin wondered when she would awaken from this all-too-vivid nightmare.

  * * *

  —

  Alys planned to return home from the meeting with her father as soon as humanly possible and was making her way through the palace halls to gather her children when into her path stepped the man she least wanted to see. She came to a wary stop just out of his reach and eyed him with what she hoped looked like cool aplomb.

  Delnamal Rah-Aaltyn, the Crown Prince of Aaltah, was eleven years Alys’s junior. He’d been eight years old when she’d left home to marry, and already well on his way to being thoroughly disagreeable. He bore a striking resemblance to his mother, Queen Xanvin, with his round, dimpled face, his slightly upturned nose, and his unfortunately diminutive stature. The queen, however, possessed a level of grace, humility, and dignity her son could never hope to match. Alys couldn’t say she was fond of the woman who had supplanted her mother, but she at least respected her. She could not say the same of the crown prince.

  Delnamal’s lip rose in a sneer of distaste. Alys wished she’d chosen a different path to the children’s rooms. Her emotions were still raw after everything that had happened, and she wasn’t sure she trusted herself to hold her tongue when Delnamal inevitably managed to get under her skin.

  “I see you’re not in shackles,” he said, shaking his head wonderingly. “Pity.”

  Alys clenched her teeth and reminded herself that silence was always her wisest option. He had an impressive ability to turn even the most harmless pleasantry into fuel to kindle his temper. A dutiful sister might be expected to give him condolences for the loss of his heir-to-be, despite his scathing words. However Alys could clearly see the opening such condolences would give him, so instead she said nothing.

  “I suppose this means you managed to convince Father of your innocence,” her half-brother continued. “I can’t say I’m surprised, though I had hoped he would finally see sense about you.”

  He took a step closer. Alys debated whether to step backward to try to maintain a safe distance. Showing fear—or even discomfort—in front of a bully was rarely a good idea, but her survival instincts insisted that staying out of his reach was important.

  Reminding herself that Delnamal was more of an emotional bully than a physical one, Alys forced herself to hold her ground. When he glared at her, she held his gaze, refusing to look away as if she were guilty of something.

  “How long have you known what your mother was planning?” he asked. He was now close enough that she could smell onions on his breath. Perhaps he felt a man of his rank needn’t abide by court etiquette, which suggested using a minty mouth rinse after each meal. Then again, his straining doublet told the tale of a man who did not confine his eating to meal times.

  Alys surreptitiously scanned the hallway, wondering if there were any witnesses around who might inspire Delnamal to keep his temper in check, but she saw only servants. He wouldn’t care if he made an ass of himself in front of servants, considering them as background scenery rather than people.

  Alys stepped to the side, hoping to sli
p past him without a word, but he was expecting the move and blocked her path once more.

  “I asked you a question, sister mine.”

  His eyes bored into her, and he leaned ever so slightly forward into her space. He was no taller than she, but his weight made him an imposing figure nonetheless. Despite her assurances to herself that she was in no physical danger from her half-brother, he was easily large and angry enough to intimidate her.

  “You have no interest in my answer,” she said, “so there’s no point in demanding one. Now let me pass.”

  She tried another side step, only to be blocked again.

  “You think that because you can fool Father, you can fool me,” he snarled. “Well you’re wrong!”

  Alys rolled her eyes dramatically. All well and good to tell herself to stay silent, but it seemed Delnamal had no intention of allowing it. “Just because you would like me to be guilty of something doesn’t mean I am. Not that I expect you to understand such a subtle distinction.”