have been useful. Securing Lorraine’s throne was the obvious end game, but allying the massive eastern country of Khazar to tiny Gallin had to go beyond that. Perhaps that alliance might end in a victory for Aulun that Belinda couldn’t yet see. She would have to risk a letter to Robert, seek his guidance. Nothing else could clear her way.
“How will you secure the troops?” Javier asked softly. Sandalia dimpled at him, suddenly youthful.
“Your plot with Beatrice is proving to be the perfect foil. Troubles stir on Lanyarch’s border. We need only push it far enough for Lorraine to risk invading, and then Lanyarch, under my banner, can call to Cordula for help in repelling the Reformation soldiers.”
“Khazan is a long way from Cordula, Mother. We don’t so much as share a religion with them.”
“Irina treats with Cordula as well.” Sandalia’s voice was full of the same casual arrogance that her son’s often carried. “The Pappas and his patriarchs see her overtures as a softening toward the Ecumenic faith, and intend, in time, to use them to convert Khazan. Until missionaries are sent, though, Cordula is happy to accept troops willing to fight where Cordula decrees.”
“In Lanyarch and Aulun.”
“And Alunaer,” Sandalia finished, savage light of fanaticism suddenly bright in her voice. “We’ll take the battle to the Titian Bitch’s doorstep, Javier, and when it’s done you’ll sit on the island throne with a queen at your side.”
“And what of Beatrice?” Javier’s voice softened, deceptive in comparison to the resolve Belinda felt stiffening within him. “She and I have spoken of the need to put her aside, but we both believed there would be a match waiting for her. Marius is…no longer available. What of Beatrice?”
Sandalia touched his arm, a mother’s reassuring gesture, and smiled. “She’s come to mean a great deal to you, hasn’t she, Javier? You spoke of giving her lands; I’ll have papers drawn up for some small holding in Brittany. Marius may be consigned to another’s wedding bed, but your Beatrice is young and pretty enough. Another man will come along. I promise to take care of her,” she said, and Belinda could see in her eyes, and in Javier’s, that once more, they both took what they wanted from her words. Sandalia felt of honey-coated steel, and Javier struggled with shards of hope and belief fighting against his determination to not release the witchbreed woman he’d found. It was he who acquiesced, though, lowering his gaze and his head to murmur, “Thank you, Mother,” as a dutiful son should.
Belinda, slipping out behind them many long minutes later, wondered if such promises were what a noose tightening around a slender neck felt like.
* * * *
BELINDA PRIMROSE / BEATRICE IRVINE
11 January 1588
Lutetia
Five long days of watching had not managed to provide Belinda with the opportunity to steal the keys that Sandalia kept on her person. She had, once, made her way back into Sandalia’s private chambers with lock-picks in hand, only to narrowly avoid a tiny, vicious needle, its tip stained dark, popping out from the lock. Belinda had sworn under her breath, searching her skin for marks, and used a blotter to press the needle back into place. The lock required keys: they needed, it seemed, to be turned simultaneously, and two hands were simply not enough to hold in place two separate locks and turn them together. The witchlight couldn’t be formed into something solid enough to manipulate the locks with her will, and after over an hour of attempting the job, she had reluctantly given up and let herself back out of Sandalia’s rooms.
That had been one of the few times she’d successfully escaped watching eyes in the past several days. Much as she’d chafed at her guards in the previous month, they seemed ever-more ubiquitous now, perhaps the vestiges of Javier’s uncertainty about her faithfulness. She saw no one and went nowhere without armed accompaniment unless she was with Javier in his chambers.
The morning previous, she’d been awakened by a dour-faced dressmaker, who stripped her to the skin—Belinda palmed her tiny knife frantically and threw it into the bedclothes as she was hauled toward the centre of the room—then stood her up and kept her there, corsets bound tight, while he built a dress on her, regardless of the pleas she made on her bladder’s behalf.
He had none of Eliza’s wild imagination when it came to fashion, but if his purpose was to turn Belinda from a provincial Lanyarchan into a Gallic noble