Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Aurelia
I slip out of the palace in the pale sunlight just after dawn. Most of the court is still asleep; the only talk I hear is the chirping of the birds.
I make my way swiftly and steadily to the herb garden around the side of the building near the kitchen. We’re meant to leave for the Temple of Fruitful Fields tomorrow. I don’t know how much access I’ll have on the road or at the smaller imperial residence near Ubetta to the various common ingredients I might require for a potion or salve.
It seemed wisest to gather a small stash now in case I should need any of them before we return.
I’m prepared to find one or two of the kitchen staff among the rows of herbs, gathering what they need for the day’s planned meals. But when I come around the last row of hedge sculptures, the sight of a woman bending over one of the small bushes in an elaborate silk gown draws me up short.
Bianca’s head twitches toward me at the soft tap of my footsteps on the path. We stare at each other, her smooth brown face seeming to yellow in the wan light.
She straightens up abruptly and pats her sleek upswept hair as if making sure the strands are in order. Her other hand clutches a sprig of thin leaves I can’t imagine what she’d do with.
“Your Imperial Highness,” she says, her typical haughty voice just slightly roughened. “What a delight to run into you out here.”
I tread closer, knitting my brow. “What are you collecting rosemary for?”
The vicerine tucks her acquisition closer to her flowy skirt. “I enjoy the flavor.”
Is she planning to simply chew on the stuff? And what’s even more odd— “Why didn’t you send your maid to collect some, then?”
Bianca lets out a dismissive sniff. “I can do a few things on my own. If even the empress roams the gardens of her own accord, why shouldn’t I?”
None of that really answers my question. In fact, her response gives me the distinct impression that she’s doing everything in her power to avoid answering directly.
I pause to take in her stance, the cant of her posture, the set of her face. A sharper suspicion prickles up inside me. “You’re in pain. What’s the matter?”
Rosemary has some mild pain-relieving effects. I wouldn’t have expected a court noble to be aware of that, but it’s a common enough folk remedy, so there’s no reason the vicerine couldn’t be.
And the rigidness of her body suggests she’s holding herself very carefully to avoid provoking the problem into worse discomfort.
Bianca shakes her head and gives a crisp laugh that would probably leave most people embarrassed to have questioned her. “I’m perfectly fine. Why don’t you see to your own business and let me tend to mine?”
She’s being more antagonistic than the last couple of times I’ve spoken to her, which only convinces me more that she’s hiding something. She’s trying to get me to leave before I discover what.
If it’s a matter of her health, I don’t need her to tell me with words.
I focus on my gift and aim my honed attention at her body. What could I concoct that would heal what ails her?
The flurry of images that form behind my eyes make my pulse lurch. She’s concealing much more than I would have guessed. No wonder she’s barely moved since I came upon her—it must be taking all her self-control not to reveal her injuries.
I could leave her to it, even though the rosemary will merely dull a little pain, nothing more. She once left me for dead, beaten and broken in a hollow in the palace woods.
But every bit of my nature balks at the idea of abandoning a person in need. It isn’t as if she’s made any move to harm me since the trials were completed.
My voice softens. “You need a lot more than that rosemary will provide if you want to be back to rights soon. You know what my gift is—I have an ointment already prepared that will soothe some of your ills, and I can brew you a tonic that will help with the rest. Unless you’d rather go to the palace medics. They’d be even more able to?—”
“No,” Bianca interrupts, her face going even more taut. “It’s really not necessary. Any of it.”
What is she so worried about ?
Her gaze flicks beyond me—toward my ever-present guards who’ll be hanging back by the hedges. The fact that she came to the garden herself despite her pains, that she wouldn’t have visited the medics… Is it something she doesn’t want any of the palace staff finding out about?
Nothing my gift showed me indicates any reason for such secrecy. Some part of her flesh is bruised and torn, and an infection is starting to set in.
If someone’s attacked her, shouldn’t they be brought to justice?
Every bit of her behavior shows that she wants to avoid even acknowledging she’s wounded. She obviously isn’t willing to admit it in front of company.
I’d rather not bully her into submission, but with difficult patients, it’s sometimes the lesser of two evils.
I lift my chin with an imperious air. “I’ll gather a couple of ingredients I’ll need, and then you’ll accompany me back to my chambers so I can tend to you. Either that, or we can keep standing here until more of the staff are moving about to notice your early-morning activities.”
It appears I’ve gambled right that she’d rather as few people as possible see her moving around the palace. With a sigh, her shoulders slump. “You really needn’t trouble yourself?—”
“I’ll be more troubled if I don’t do what I can. Consider it an order from your empress.”
Bianca holds still while I snatch up a few leaves of one plant and more of another. It’s not at all the larger supply I was hoping to collect, but I can return later today.
By the time I’m done, childish laughter bounces from around the side of the building. Some of the palace nursemaids must have brought their early-waking charges out to the gardens for some fresh air. The noble children are so often kept away from court, restricted to their parents’ chambers with the staff who care for them, that it’s easy to forget they live here too.
The sound of increased activity nearby makes the vicerine tense more. At the beckoning flick of my hand, she follows me toward the palace without further protest.
As soon as she starts walking, her discomfort is obvious. She takes steady steps, but they’re slower and stiffer than I’ve normally seen her move. Her mouth tightens.
I wish I had some magic to convey her up the stairs to the third floor. She climbs at an even more mincing pace, glancing around her as if she’s simply taking the time to enjoy the mosaics embedded in the walls, but her knuckles pale where she’s gripping the railing. As she takes the last step onto even ground, she can’t restrain a wince.
The moment I have her inside my chambers, I motion her toward the sofa at the far side of my bedroom. Bianca sinks onto it with a faint noise of relief and peers around her at the vast space with all its trappings.
“Well, the empress’s rooms are nearly as fancy as His Imperial Majesty’s. You are looked after well.”
“I earned my place,” I say mildly, which she knows as well as anyone, and retrieve my tea box and brewing apparatus from my trunk.
Bianca watches with undisguised interest as I pick out a few more ingredients. Right on time for my morning preparations, Eusette’s voice carries through the door. “Your Imperial Highness, are you already up? I’ve brought the water for your morning tea.”
I hustle over to the door and take the small pot from my maid, blocking her way in. “Thank you. I’m having a private conversation with a friend, and as you can see, I’ve dressed myself. Could you come back just before breakfast to give me a hand taming my hair better? ”
Eusette’s eyes widen with a curious glint, but she bobs her head and departs.
I turn around to find Bianca staring at me more incredulously than before. “Why are you doing this?” she blurts out.
I don’t know if it’s my calling her a friend or the fact that I’m protecting her secret at all that’s bewildered her, but the answer would be the same regardless. “You’ve been hurt. I can help heal you. We may not exactly be friends, but we aren’t enemies anymore, are we?”
She ducks her head with a wince. “No, I wouldn’t say we are. But I wouldn’t have blamed you for considering me one.”
I grope for the right words to encompass all that’s happened between us. “I don’t think any of us were behaving at our best during the trials.”
Bianca sits in silence as I prepare my miniature cauldron over its burner. A weariness comes over her pretty face that unsettles me nearly as much as her difficulty walking.
When she speaks again, her voice is quiet. “You were. No matter what anyone did to you, you played a fair game.”
“I can’t claim that wasn’t strategic in its own way. It’s the approach that’s always worked best for me.”
“Fausta’s approach obviously didn’t work for her.” Bianca rubs a gleam of tears from her eyes. “I won’t make excuses for her. She did what she felt she had to do too. It’s an honor being part of the court, but it also comes with certain… restrictions. She finally had the opportunity to be something more, something more powerful.”
“And you helped her,” I say evenly.
“She was like a little sister to me. Of course I wanted to see her elevated as far as she could be. And any threat to her winning would mean her dying instead. That was all I was thinking about. It was nothing to do with you personally.”
She pauses. “I suppose you were an easier target because we didn’t know you, and a more important one because you’d already won Marclinus’s attention once. But in the end, you tried to look out for her too, even though your life was on the line. I never properly thanked you for that.”
The way she’s laid it out so plainly reminds me of conversations with Nica back home. My friend could sometimes be too blunt for politeness, but she knew how to cut to the heart of the matter when it was important.
Perhaps if Bianca and I had been able to talk this way to begin with, we might have forged something like an actual friendship.
Shrugging off the pang of homesickness, I stir the potion that’s now coming to a simmer. “My attempt didn’t do much good for her in the end.” Lady Fausta still plummeted to a painful but hopefully brief death during the final trial.
“Perhaps not. But the trying matters to the rest of us still here. It matters to me, anyway. I’m sorry for how we hurt you that one night. You didn’t deserve that.”
She sounds resigned, as if she doesn’t expect me to accept the apology, but I think she means it.
I retrieve my ointment for soothing wounds and glance up at her. “I expect you’ll forgive me for not wanting to take any midnight walks in the woods with you going forward, but I have no interest in punishing you for the past. I’d rather we move forward with respect and mutual understanding. This needs to go directly on your injuries. Where are you hurt?”
A flicker of panic passes through Bianca’s expression. She draws her posture more upright on the sofa, her legs tucking together. “I’d rather see to the application myself, on my own. If you’d allow me the use of your bathing room?”
I would, but her immediate refusal to reveal the location combined with the shifting of her stance sends a jolt of ice through my veins. How many places could she be injured the way my gift suggests without my having noticed her favoring a specific limb or the bulge of a bandage beneath her dress?
My hand tightens around the pot. “Did Marclinus do this? Is he the one who hurt you?”
He’s been domineering but never brutally rough when he’s taken me to bed—but I’ve never let him carry out the full act. Who knows what violent intimacies he might be imagining in the grips of the hallucinations?
Bianca’s cheeks flare ruddy as she must realize I’ve caught on despite her attempt at avoiding the subject. “No. I wasn’t with him last night. I…”
Her fingers curl into the folds of her skirt. She looks down at her lap and back at me. After a tense moment, she must decide there’s no point in making up a story.
“My husband would rather not share my affections,” she says tersely. “But of course he would never deny His Imperial Majesty. Mostly he tolerates it, but every now and then he lets out some of his frustration on me. He’s never been quite this rough before.”
My stomach sinks. How badly must Viceroy Ennius have manhandled her for her to be not just bruised but torn and fighting off an infection?
“That’s not right. You should see the medics, so there’s a record—you could appeal for divorce?—”
Bianca cuts me off with a shake of her head. “No! I’m happy with my position. It’s not as if I’d be so much better off with anyone else.”
I frown at her. “What do you mean? There are plenty of husbands who wouldn’t… treat you so forcefully.”
“How many of them would ensure my place in court? The kind of life I’d like to live? Tolerating the way they huff and rut is the price women pay for the other benefits of marriage. ”
My mind leaps back to certain “ruttings” I’ve savored in recent weeks. “With the right partner, it can be enjoyable.”
Bianca snorts as if the idea is absurd. “That’s the tale they dangle to soften the blow—and to make us feel like we have to play-act a lot of swooning to appease their egos. What’s there to actually enjoy? It’s a sweaty, pawing mess. Even with an emperor, as I’d imagine you well know now.”
I can’t exactly tell her that I’ve enjoyed myself plenty with men other than my husband—or that I haven’t fully experienced what my husband might have to offer. I’m too stuck on the fact that she has and yet she’s talking like this.
“But you—why do you encourage Marclinus’s attentions if you’re not getting anything out of it?”
The vicerine peers at me as if I’ve grown a second nose. “I get plenty—the envy of the other ladies, the gifts and benefits of being favored by the imperial family, the knowledge that a man who could have anyone wanted me …”
She falters, and her gaze slides away. “Although, to tell you the truth, I haven’t found much satisfaction in that pursuit in recent days. It doesn’t feel much like an honor when he has a woman he’s so much more devoted to. I’m only a plaything for when he’s momentarily bored.”
I’d imagine that’s what she’s always been in Marclinus’s eyes. Maybe it didn’t feel so much so when he was unmarried, when many available women were vying for his attention and he chose her as one of his favorites regardless.
If she’s never seen sex as anything but a chore and a bargaining chip… is it simply that she’s never been with the right man, or is she simply not inclined to enjoy that sort of physical intimacy at all? One of the dukes in our court in Accasy never dallied with any of the court lords and ladies and adopted the son of a family friend as an heir. He always said he didn’t see any appeal in romantic entanglements.
Bianca might have taken a similar position if she hadn’t wanted the advantages her marriage and trysts could offer. And perhaps she was afraid of appearing the odd one out. Or she honestly believes that no woman ever enjoys the carnal act.
Who would have thought that the lady at court who’s established herself as having the most seductive wiles doesn’t take any pleasure from the most direct result of those seductions?
It isn’t my place to poke any further into her personal concerns. My gift judges my concoction done, so I take the cauldron off the flame so it can cool. “I won’t invade your privacy. You’re welcome to use the bathing room to apply the ointment. Only on external areas. The tonic should help reduce inflammation and speed healing inside, as well as warding off infection. It’ll be cool enough when you’re done tending to your injuries.”
Bianca nods with obvious gratitude and accepts the pot of ointment from me. As she stands up, her gaze turns wary. “Thank you. I— You did say you weren’t going to interfere with my relations with His Imperial Majesty—that it was all right?—”
Is she afraid I’ll be upset after what she’s revealed?
“You knew him long before I did,” I say. “And I’ve seen from the start that he’s not one to be tied down. Whether you think it worth continuing the association is completely up to you.”
She exhales shakily. “All right. Please don’t mention this morning’s incident to him. I don’t want him thinking I might be… damaged.”
She hurries away into the bathing room, leaving me wondering how it is that such a vile man has so many of us catering to his every whim above our own.