Prisoner of the Crown Read online

  “Afraid?” my mother asked, her gaze sharp on my face.

  “No, Mother,” I said, though I didn’t know why I lied that time. Some animal instinct in me unwilling to let her see that much.

  She smiled, thinly, sharp lizard’s teeth showing. “Because you don’t yet know fear. You have no idea what it means. That, my daughter, is the next lesson. Ah, Hede. You may approach.”

  My mother was wrong. I did know fear at that moment. It made my legs go watery. In my head, I heard Kaia’s screams for mercy. The cloying scent of Mother’s opos smoke made me want to gag.

  “Light whipping,” the empress was instructing Hede. “No scarring, but make sure it hurts. It’s time for my daughter to learn something of pain. The lesson must be memorable, but I doubt it will take much to get her attention, indulged as she’s been.”

  If Hede answered, I don’t recall. I’m not even sure what she used on me. I remember resolving not to run and then trying to escape anyway. Something impossible for my little girl self, though I fought enough that Hede bound my wrists, tying them to a ring on the wall. As my mother predicted, it didn’t take much to reduce me to a spineless puddle of weeping.

  The pain has faded in my memory. I mostly remember the terrifying surprise of it, the way it gutted me. And the humiliation burns bright, urine and worse running down my thrashing legs. Being naked and Hede’s expressionless face as she paused, then began anew when my mother declared it not quite enough.

  And Mother, watching. Asking me if I understood, then nodding at Hede to continue because each time I sobbed that I did, I did understand, that I’d never tell any secrets ever again, she said she needed to be absolutely sure of me.

  I have no idea what finally satisfied her. Most likely Her Imperial Majesty watched me for signs that she’d broken me down enough. I’ve learned since that such techniques are developed as a refined art, and the practitioners pride themselves on knowing such things.

  Afterward, she called in Kaia to clean me up. And she gave me a vial and told me to drink, just a tiny amount she said, to drive the final lesson home. With nothing in me to even question, I drank it.

  And then I vomited for two days, my hair coming out in clumps, Kaia soothing me as best she could.

  That part is the fever dream.

  When I could eat again, Mother came to see me. I lay in bed, propped against pillows, swathed in the same numbing salve they’d given me for the lizard bite. My stomach had stopped roiling and I felt both light and hollow. Floating in nothingness.

  “Show her,” Mother said to her servant girl. Obediently, she held up a hand mirror. The girl in it looked nothing like me. Huge blue eyes in a face with no color but for purple shadows in the dark corners. Wisps of pale hair clung to a scalp reddened and scabbed from my scratching at it when Kaia wasn’t there to stop me. Nothing left of me.

  Mother sent her servant and Kaia away. Closed the door. She’d come in the middle of the day and so was dressed for court. In shining silver, draped with diamonds and pearls, her hair wound in elaborate coils, she looked like a painting.

  “Your hair will grow back,” Mother said. “Take utmost care of it as it does, for it will be fragile. The same for your skin and nails. Cherish your beauty, for now you understand how easily it can be taken from you. You drank the tiniest dose of poison and I can have you given more at any time. If I suspect at all that you mean to betray our secrets, I’ll do it. I’d rather mourn a dead daughter than suffer your treachery. Do you understand?”

  She’d kept asking me that, over and over, and I now knew only one correct answer to it. “Yes, Your Imperial Majesty.”

  “Do you understand why I was forced to teach you this lesson?”

  Some spark in me wanted to shout at her, to fling her cruelty in her face, but I only nodded. “Yes, Your Imperial Majesty.”

  “Explain it to me, in your own words.”

  I wouldn’t cry. Not ever again. “So I would know the price for disobedience and for betraying our secrets.”

  She smiled, ever so slightly, sliding the jeweled wedding bracelets around on her wrists. “A taste of the price. The true price would be a hundred, a thousand times what you suffered. But, because you did pay a terrible price, I shall reward you. Would you like that?”

  I would, but I couldn’t trust it. She came over and sat on my bed, a sparkling jewel of a woman, and caressed my cheek with her sharp nails. “It’s all right, Jenna, my love, my darling daughter. The pain is behind you now. Your reward is that you will never suffer this again. Be obedient and I shall give you luxuries you cannot imagine. You will become the most powerful woman in the world. Right now, you are so powerless I could call Hede to beat you to death and no one would stop her. I can have your food poisoned and you’ll die by morning. You understand that now.”

  My mouth dry with terror, I nodded, and Mother’s smile warmed.

  “You won’t always be powerless. Do as I say and you will have everything. All the power. The entire world at your feet and no one able to hurt you ever again. Do you want that?”

  “Yes, Your Imperial Majesty.” And I did understand, deep in my hollow belly, exactly what that meant. Power was everything.

  “Tell me,” she murmured, a playful smile on her painted mouth. “I want to hear the words.”

  “I want power.” My voice came out fervent.

  “Will you do what you’re told and set aside everything to have it? Kill for it? Will you laugh as you grind Hestar under your heel?”

  “Yes.” I gazed into my mother’s beautiful eyes, seeing myself in them. Perhaps she would be the one I’d kill someday. And perhaps I’d laugh.

  I don’t know if she saw it in me, but her smile straightened and she dipped her chin, a nod of confidence and approval. “Good girl. Once you’re better, we’ll commence your lessons in earnest.”

  After she left, Kaia returned. Without a word, she changed the bedding I’d wet when my bladder voided. And when she gave me soup, I drank every drop.

  Days later, when I emerged from my apartments, to the extravagant welcome of all the ladies who extolled my return to good health, Hestar and Kral had gone.

  I wouldn’t see either of them again for many years.

  ~ 3 ~

  “It’s not fair,” Helva complained, her voice gently modulated, but her lower lip thrust out in a way that wasn’t lovely at all. “Inga’s only seventeen, so I don’t see why she gets to go to the debut ball and I don’t.”

  “Because it’s out the doors,” Inga replied, her hair a mid-process chaos of teased strands and dangling ribbons as her girls worked on it, “and you’re only fifteen.”

  “I’ll be sixteen in less than a year,” she muttered.

  “Which is still not eighteen, or even seventeen,” Inga countered. “You’re too young.”

  And she was Jilliya’s daughter. My mother would never stomach the second wife’s daughter and Hestar’s full sister at my debut. Inga’s mother, Saira, posed less threat. Of her babies so far, only Inga, Ban, and Mykal had survived, and Ban wasn’t quite right in the head, so the gossip reported. And Inga was fourth-born to a third wife. She’d make a good alliance for the empire, but she would never be in a position to vie for the throne.

  Though Helva was sixth-born, Hestar being named heir to our father had elevated her rank in subtle ways. The balance of power in the seraglio tipped almost imperceptibly with the breath of such intangible weights, despite Jilliya’s inability to help her. Saira, for all her good natured smiles and gentle ways, had managed to stay strong and healthy, despite my mother’s best efforts. Besides, the other ladies liked her. Normally that sort of goodwill didn’t count for much, not in the face of the empress’s ruthless use of her own power. But Saira had used her influence to make sure Inga would also debut that night. Something that annoyed my mother no end.

  Jilliya was another story. She
spent so much time pregnant, recovering from pregnancy, or miscarrying that she had no energy to conspire. Still, the emperor favored Hestar, and thus Helva, like a hand-me-down klút from Hulda herself, all the more valuable for its previous owner, rather than used. The weight of our father’s favor and delight in Hestar seeped into the warmth of the seraglio like the chill draft that sometimes gusted through the doorway when someone went in or out.

  Saira had plans for Inga and my mother hadn’t been able to suss out what they might be. I’d tried, too, but I thought Inga didn’t know. She hadn’t had my lesson in keeping secrets. That lesson had been burned into my very soul. My mother had tried to enforce the custom that such a young and impressionable girl should remain behind the doors until her eighteenth birthday—or longer, if she remained not yet engaged. Saira had protested, naturally, bending the emperor’s ear when she visited his bed. We knew this because he’d told my mother as much during her own bedding.

  Men speak easily after sex, she’d instructed me, and have their guard down after being well-pleasured. No matter how many concubines or rekjabrel the emperor might take, a wife is superior, and knows what her husband likes. Her body might be aged, but she has the benefit of experience and noble blood. Give him exactly what he craves and then, when he’s soft and sated, whisper in his ear. Saira had played on his ego to plead for Inga to be allowed to attend formal functions with the ladies who did such things. Jilliya had tried to do the same for Helva, but she could not beat my mother in ruthless guile. It hadn’t taken much to put the worry that Helva, in her impressionable innocence, could be corrupted with ease, and to such an extent that it could stain Hestar’s future rule.

  My mother had turned it around with Inga, arranging things so my half-sister would accompany me as my attendant—and Saira not at all. A small reminder of who held the keys to the doors. Metaphorically, of course. Hede and her seconds kept the actual keys to the internal doors—and Hede obeyed only the first wife—while the guards outside kept those locks.

  As for me, I had breathed a prayer of profound relief that Inga would be with me—a sentiment I’d made sure to hide from my mother. If she’d discerned that I leaned on Inga’s support in any way, the empress would have seen Inga sickened or incapacitated in some way, if only to teach me to rely on no one but myself.

  “But we’re the only three imperial princesses,” Helva continued to argue. This was another reason she fell easily to manipulation by the soft breezes of female power—Jilliya couldn’t teach her the way Saira taught Inga.

  Inga observed a great deal, her eyes often intent on me in a way that made me aware of the sharp mind behind them. They were a startling shade of aqua, those eyes, like our lagoon at the shallow points, where the water took on the same color as the tiles that lined it.

  My own eyes were the same as my mother’s, a vivid deep blue that the ladies all exclaimed over and I secretly loathed. Every time I saw my face in a reflection, I saw Hulda, Empress of Dasnaria and poisoner of my very existence.

  “You look so beautiful, Jenna. Your hair is nearly the same color as the pearls, the same as your skin, and now your eyes look bluer than the deep lagoon.” Helva sounded so wistful that I gave her my warmest smile. She didn’t smile back. “I hate that I have brown eyes. What’s brown? Nothing good!”

  “Jilliya has brown eyes,” Inga reminded her. “And your mother is beautiful—lovely enough to marry the Emperor of Dasnaria. And lots of good things are brown.”

  “Poop, and that’s it,” Helva declared, making the other ladies giggle.

  Inga and I exchanged a glance. This was the final reason Helva couldn’t attend my debut ball. She remained childish enough not to govern her mouth. Unfathomable to me, but then she hadn’t had the harsh lessons I’d had on watching my words.

  “Lots of things outside are brown,” Inga clarified. “Like the trees of the forest.”

  “But have you seen them?” Helva demanded, her rebellious nature showing.

  “You know I haven’t,” Inga replied with remarkable patience. “However, you and I will both see the forest someday when we leave the seraglio to marry, and I imagine it will look exactly as has been described.”

  “But how am I going to marry anyone if I never leave the seraglio?” she demanded on a much too loud wail. “I don’t even know what a man looks like!”

  “Enough of that,” Inga snapped before I could. Our attendants had gone skittishly silent, eyes cast down, while Inga and I surreptitiously checked that none of our mothers—particularly mine—had overheard those indiscreet remarks. “You’ll marry the man the emperor arranges for you,” Inga continued, in a hissed voice, “as well you know and you’d be wise to not speak otherwise.”

  Helva twisted her unbound dark blonde hair into a knot, eyeing our elaborate braids. Kaia sat by, supervising, as my maids worked ropes of pearls into my hair, braiding as they went. Since my mother had broken Kaia’s fingers as a punishment a couple of years earlier, she no longer trusted herself to tend to my hair. Her fingers had healed but remained stiff, and the joints stood out stark under her skin as she wrapped them around her ever-present mug of hot soothing gryth tea. She only drank about a quarter of what she brewed, mostly holding it to warm her hands. A good thing, as the numbing properties of the tea might ease the joint pain, but it also muddied her thoughts and made her far too susceptible to scheming by the other servants. My mother viewed my old nurse as a liability and wanted me to be rid of her, but I’d convinced her—through an admirable bit of dramatic pretense on my part—that Kaia remained a weak point my mother could use as leverage on me.

  A pretense to cover the truth, which was that I loved Kaia and couldn’t bear the thought of what might happen to her, now that I would be leaving to get married. It was the one dark spot in the shining star of my hope. All these years of perfecting myself under my mother’s exacting gaze, training in the ducerse, of burying my hate, biding my time until I could be free—and, on my eighteenth birthday, I would finally go out the doors. I’d meet my future husband—and at last grasp the power I’d been promised.

  “You’re so lucky, Jenna.” Helva returned to her wistful gazing, winding the rope of hair around her fingers. “You get to find out who your future husband is tonight.”

  I gave her a smile, echoing her delighted anticipation. Of course, I alone knew my mother’s deepest and most sacrosanct secrets, how she’d worked my entire life to position me as bride to Rodolf, King of Arynherk

  “And you’ll see our brothers!” Helva added, slumping in her sulk.

  Inga looked to me, startled. “Do you think they’ll be there—all of them?”

  I managed to school my exasperation with Inga. This was the result of Saira’s less than accomplished tutoring. “Obviously Hestar will be there, as the heir,” I pointed out. “He is ever at our father’s side.”

  She nodded uncertainly, though I didn’t see how she couldn’t have heard that much of the gossip the rekjabrel and concubines brought back with them. I should teach her, it occurred to me with sudden and brutal reality. Tonight the emperor would reveal my future husband—though, if all had gone according to my mother’s scheming, with the considerable assistance from the Elskadyrs, the candidate would come as no surprise to us, at least—and within a few days I’d be married. After a week of newlywed bedding, I’d be gone, which meant Inga and Helva would be on their own against my mother, who would no longer have the project of molding me.

  I should have thought of it before, what my final birthday and marriage would mean, but actually leaving the seraglio remained a concept I almost couldn’t wrap my mind around. Helva had a point, that we’d heard the outside world described—but the vastness of things like forests, mountains, and oceans you couldn’t see across, remained nearly impossible to imagine. I’d study the palm trees planted in artful clusters around the tiled lagoons, and tried to multiply them into thousands, and the image
would stutter and fail entirely.

  “Palm tree trunks are brown,” I said, the thought occurring to me, “and dates. Those are sweet.”

  Helva scowled at me. “Not the same color at all.”

  “That’s because your eyes are such a deep brown,” I told her, feeling generous in my chagrin that I hadn’t considered what my sisters would face in my absence. Her scowl didn’t fade, so I abandoned that effort. “Her Imperial Majesty told me that all of our brothers will attend,” I told Inga. Though it hardly counted as privileged information, my stomach tensed at the reveal, and I found myself scanning for my mother, though I knew she was already at court. She had been all day, receiving the many visitors who’d traveled to the Imperial Palace for my debut. “Hestar will be my escort and Kral will be yours.”

  Inga clasped her hands. “Why didn’t you tell me? This is wonderful news!”

  Helva promptly burst into tears, her nurse hastening over to comfort her. “Hestar should be my escort,” she hiccupped between sobs. “Or I’d take Leo and Loke, or baby Harlan. Even Ban!”

  “Perhaps Her Highness should rest,” Kaia suggested to Helva’s nurse, with a pointed look at the pot of gryth.

  Helva didn’t even resist as her nurse urged her to drink the soothing tea, and she went off obediently enough to her early bed. They’d no doubt ply her with enough to keep her sleeping until morning. Hopefully by then she’d be in a better frame of mind and we could tell her stories over breakfast about the ball and give her news of our brothers.

  With Helva gone, Inga and I fell into companionable silence, the quiet of sisters who understood we couldn’t really discuss everything we wished to, not with so many eager ears around us. Besides, the thing we most wished to discuss—who I would marry—remained a mystery, at least to her. We’d already spent the last several years speculating what my husband would be like, with me pretending total ignorance. Which wasn’t far from the case. Though my mother had schooled me in womanly arts—maintaining beauty, ferreting out secrets, the complexity of human nature and how to manipulate it—she’d never shown me a portrait of Rodolf, or told me much about him.