be far less pleasant than that. We are finished with this discussion.” She flickered her fingers, shared language of the body from queen to gutter rat, and said, pleasantly, “You’re dismissed.”
Belinda, uncaring of her dignity, of her lifetime of trained untouchability, uncaring of anything but the bewildering, consuming ache that rattled her bones and took her breath, gathered her skirts, dipped a clumsy curtsey, and fled.
* * * *
SANDALIA, QUEEN AND REGENT
5 December 1587
Lutetia
“That’s her. That’s the witch who did Lord Gregori to death.” The girl standing in Sandalia’s private chambers might be pretty, did hate not so contort her features. She is young, perhaps nineteen, with blond hair so thick and heavy she could be dangled from it. Her hands are clenched in her skirts, making wrinkles of plain working fabric, and she’s terribly afraid of her surroundings. “I don’t care that she’s all tarted up and dressed as a lady. That’s Rosa.”
She speaks Khazarian, a tongue that Sandalia has only in smatterings. Sandalia looks to her translator, who repeats the girl’s words back in Gallic. Sandalia nods slowly, and doesn’t laugh: the wretched creature is using hate to push away fear, and Sandalia is not one inclined to believe accusations of witchcraft from the frightened. “Why do you think she’s a witch?” She lets the translator do her work and keeps her focus on the girl whose face tightens with rage and, unless Sandalia is greatly mistaken, envy.
“Lord Gregori was strong and fit, my lady. A fever came on him too fast to be natural, not in the summer. Winter’s the time for sicknesses like that. It came on him when she came—”
Sandalia lifts a hand as the translator speaks, and the girl breaks off. “When—Rosa—arrived in Gregori’s household? That was when he became ill?”
The servant curls her lip reluctantly. “No, not till she went to his bed.”
Sandalia once more refuses a smile, and nods for the girl to continue. “She went at him without stopping for three days, and on the fourth he was dead. Then she ran, like the craven devil’s creature that she is. Why would she run, if she hadn’t done him to death?”
Sandalia knows enough not to argue that question with the girl, either. Instead, she murmurs, “Why, indeed,” which is translated to the serving girl’s obvious delight. “You’re certain it’s the same woman,” Sandalia says one final time, and the girl tosses her head with a sniff.
“Sure as the sky is blue.” There’s such a sparkle of laughter in the translator’s voice that Sandalia suspects the servant said something far more crude, and that diplomacy has won out over accuracy.
“Thank you, Ilana. We shall—”
“Ilyana.” The girl doesn’t seem to realise she’s correcting a queen, and Sandalia’s elevated eyebrow has no effect. After a moment she amends herself, mostly because there’s no sense in antagonizing the unpleasant young woman, and goes on: “Ilyana. We shall call on you again when we require your testimony, and in the interim you’ll be expected to remain within the walls of the cottage we have provided for you.”
Ilyana doesn’t understand enough to know she’s being placed under arrest. Her expression lights up as the translation is made, and she ducks a curtsey. The cottage is no doubt a far finer home than she’s ever known, and as a guest, involuntary or not, of a queen, she will be waited on as if she were the lady and not the servant. It will be a rude shock to her to return to the life she once had, if she’s lucky enough to be allowed to do so. She’s allowed to go to the door unescorted, and beyond it, two guards, one Khazarian and one Gallic, will bring her to Sandalia’s cottage. Only when the girl is gone does Sandalia turn to the translator, eyebrow lifted again in curiosity.
“Do you believe her, Lady Akilina?”
Akilina stands with animal grace, lithe even beneath the weight of petticoats. She wears a shade of coppery gold that should look terrible on her, but somehow enhances the angles of her beauty. “I believe she’s a nasty little girl who wanted Gregori’s bed for herself, but she’s as certain as my guardsman that Your Majesty’s Beatrice and their Rosa are one and the same. Viktor,” and the heaviness of a Khazarian accent weights the name, though her Gallic is usually exquisite, “tells me that Rosa wore a blade beneath her chemise, under her corsets. A small knife.” She holds up a hand, giving the knife