“Not another word, peasant. Utter one more ridiculous aspersion, and I will cut your tongue from your mouth!” he snarled.
“It would grow back,” the witch laughed. His cheeks flushed pink, and his eyes glistened like raindrops on glass. Drunk, Anryn realized.
“What is your name?” he demanded.
“Maertyn Blackfire,” the witch answered. He picked up his chair and sat back down. He started to chew on a fingernail. “This is my house. I am not used to having people in it.”
Anryn could well believe it. This peasant, living all alone in an abandoned village, had no sense of manners or even conversation. His voice was strange, too—uneven, as though the man had forgotten how to speak. So much the better, Anryn decided. It would make it harder for him to cast spells.
The prince drew himself up and, with the sword still pointed at the witch, spoke with all the authority he could muster.
“I am not ‘people.’ I am a prince,” Anryn said. “Your prince; this is my father’s land you live on. You do him homage by giving me shelter. I will be sleeping here tonight and departing tomorrow.”
“That... is good, I think,” Maertyn said around the fingernail in his mouth. “But is your father sending more men to kill you...? Like the one in my yard?”
Anryn thought of the sleigh driver, remembering the colors of the jacket. The tip of his sword wavered in the air. Had his father sent that man?
He was the only son of the Lightning King, born late in his father’s reign. King Anathas had no other heirs. Even Anryn’s cousin, Gruffydd the Younger, had never been named more than a godson to the King. Anathas needed Anryn—not only to succeed him, but to marry a rich heiress with a mighty fleet to lead into war with Nynomath. The wedding was just weeks away.
Perhaps Anryn was more of a disappointment than he’d even realized.
The witch held out the teacup full of whiskey to him. “You want a drink?”
Anryn took the cup from the witch. He gulped it down, for once heedless of what his father might say.
CHAPTER 2
Ammarish fashions were designed by the devil, Beatrice decided. Insulting enough that she, the daughter of Duke Cesar of Sanchia, had to cover her hair and her face—two of her most prized assets in the marriage market—in her first audience with her new father-in-law. That she also needed to wear a starched collar beneath it seemed the very epitome of unfairness. Who could possibly appreciate the crisp whiteness of it beneath three layers of dyed silk gauze?
Beatrice’s patience wore thin awaiting her audience with the King. She must’ve sighed—her brother Riccardo shot her a reproving look. As a marquess representing their father, he dressed to show off the wealth and riches of Sanchia while still paying homage to Ammar’s local customs. He wore a long Ammarish court frock with its many buttons, but embellished it with heavy jeweled pins and an embroidered cravat that matched Beatrice’s veil in color and cost.
Duke Cesar and his Duchess Sofia raised all their children to believe that pride was a virtue, not a sin. Their sons sailed the galleons of the Golden Fleet with an eye toward one day captaining the warships when Ammar called its bannermen to war. Daughters took the role of great ladies, raised to genteel deportment and fine manners, so that they could marry lords and elevate Sanchia’s position in the theater of the world.
The Duke wanted all his children to rise to the pinnacle of power. He taught all his children, regardless of sex, to defend their pride, even to the point of violence. Beatrice would have cut the starched collar from her throat with a knife, if Riccardo hadn’t taken all her weapons from her before sailing for Ammar.
Not that she was a violent person. Raised in a court full of effusive troubadours and opportunistic privateers, however, she’d learned that it was always a good idea to have a few tricks up her sleeve... or tucked between her breasts.
Beatrice sighed again, this time with flourish—her shoulders sweeping up and down so that the gauzy folds of her veil would ruffle. They had been standing in the reception area for what felt like hours. Even sighing was hard in Ammar, with her dress cinched tightly under her ribs by a jewel-encrusted silver belt.
The belt at least she was proud of. It had been a gift from her father on the occasion of her first menses only four years ago. Her mother said that she should wear it often, to signal to the world that she claimed a woman’s place. The shape the belt gave her served as an advertisement of her hips and bosom and how well they would bear and suckle babies.
The veil thoroughly spoiled the effect. Beatrice understood the entire point of the garment—protection from unwanted gazes—but she still resented it. Sanchia’s ladies wore them only at Church because that was where God might be watching; Ammar’s ladies wore them all the time because their King commanded it.
“Settle down,” Riccardo whispered to her in their native language.
Prick, she thought, scowling at her brother—knowing that he couldn’t see her scowling. Foul language, and an unkind thing to think of her own brother. Yet the colorful insults and coarse words of Sanchia were some of the most fun words to say. They captured her feelings better than any formal language could.
Right now, Beatrice had a few choice words for Ammar. The more Beatrice saw of the country that was to be her new home, the angrier she became at her brother, her father, and every male she met. With each passing moment, she felt herself becoming less a person and more a piece of furniture. She wondered if her betrothed, Prince Anryniel, might try to sit on her as if she were a chair.
“You wouldn’t talk to the Queen of Ammar that way,” she hissed at Riccardo.
“You’re not the Queen yet,” her brother hissed back.
But Beatrice would be, if the King of Ammar liked her. Cesar of Sanchia coached his daughter on this legal point: Ammar’s King was an absolute monarch, and as long as he lived, all she needed to do was to please him, and her marriage would move ahead. Then, one day, she would be the Queen of Ammar. Maybe then she could do away with the veil at court and say as many foul words as she liked.
At last, a steward said they might approach to be let into His Majesty’s presence. Beatrice moved her arms out from her body in a half circle as if she were about to embrace a child. This helped to lift the layers of her veil a little away from her legs, a trick her mother had taught her to avoid trodding on the embroidered hem of it. Hers had nearly two pounds of silver and green thread worked throughout the silk gauze—both to weigh it down and to showcase her skill with a needle, a prized trait among all the wives of the civilized world.
Ammar, the country made rich by her family’s privateering and rich again through conquest in and around the enchanted lands of Nynomath, appreciated functional decoration. Their buildings were made of long halls of stacked stone and timber, the floors of fine buildings laid with geometric mosaics of polished wood. The palace in the capital, Mahaut, had a square center flanked on either side by crenelated towers lined with stained glass. Beatrice noticed with approval that fine Sanchian rugs had been placed in the throne room when she entered. She hoped it was a sign that opulence wasn’t too much to hope for in the life of the Queen of Ammar.
The throne room of the palace looked like the Duke of Sanchia’s. Long, low benches that could be pulled up to tables or pushed back against the walls, and only one chair for the King to sit on, a throne.