Chapter Thirty-Four The Minister and the Domitian She-Devils #2
Lady Dian, Lady Rahela’s grandmother, must be sixty years of age, though her glossy dark chignon was shot with only a few glittering silver strands.
She was extraordinarily handsome. It wasn’t Dian’s age that made people consider Dian’s daughter the greater beauty.
“That woman’s always thinking at you,” a minister once confided to Pio.
“It’s exhausting.” A schemer, allied not only to men but rich and clever women, and with a talent for being always at the side and never at the heart of a storm.
Nobody was ever able to prove anything about Lady Dian.
They only managed to pack her off to the country when her daughter slipped up.
If Pio had ever been unwise enough to volunteer an opinion on the Domitia family’s scandalous beauties, he would have declared a strong preference in favour of Lady Dian.
Such women were both lure and trap, both sweetness and poison.
Lady Katalin rushed towards Rahela with her hands outstretched, Dian a dignified presence gliding behind her. “Rahela, darling, you were a mere baby when I saw you last.”
Rahela had been eighteen, a woman grown who ought to have married then and certainly long before now. Pio understood why Lady Katalin might not wish to point this out.
“I don’t remember,” muttered Rahela.
“Now you’re all grown up, and betrothed to our Emperor, who has come to us at last like a star descending upon earth to choose the most beautiful bride among all mortals.
” Lady Katalin laughed, and smoothed Rahela’s hair.
Then her eyes narrowed, as if seeing the untidy locks for the first time. “What’s this, my dear?”
“I was – I was ill,” Rahela mumbled. “My mind became bewildered, and I can’t recall you perfectly. I’m sorry.”
When had Lady Rahela suffered from any ailments? The whole court would have known. Pio would certainly have known. But could this woman lie, after she had taken a potion to show her true heart? Pio realized he was not sure.
He also realized he was not the only one who thought Rahela’s story suspicious. The Emperor had grown very still. His stillness had the intense quality of a hunter suddenly beholding the quarry he had waited for and almost despaired of finding.
Lady Katalin said sharply, “Has this illness recently befallen you? Is that why you appear at court with your hair and dress like a slattern’s?”
Rahela jerked her chin up and held her head high. For all that Pio disliked the woman, her untidy hair became suddenly a dark crown.
“Is how I look so important it’s the first thing you comment on? After years?”
Lady Katalin’s generous mouth thinned as though someone was drawing her red velvet purse strings tight. “Where is your maid?”
“I sent Emer away.”
This news sent Katalin staggering back a step, as though pushed. Pio frowned. Rahela had doubtless had a fine maid, but no servant was irreplaceable.
Quietly, Lady Dian murmured, “My dears, the joy of reunion has shaken both of you. Let us resume this interesting conversation in private.”
Lady Katalin didn’t listen. Lady Katalin took a step towards Rahela to recover the one she had lost, then took another. In a sudden rush, she flew at Rahela, lifted a delicate bejewelled hand, and struck Rahela in the face.
Before the whole court, Lady Katalin accused, “You are not my daughter!”
The court surged into a heaving sea of shock. Katalin spun around, black and red skirts flying, as if she were a petitioner at court begging every minister to hear her and believe.
“Did I not shape her in my body and bear her? Do I not know every inch of what I made? I am a mother! I know my child! She does not speak like this, she does not move like this, and she would not be reckless enough to send away her protector. When did she begin to act so differently? Was it when she first claimed she could tell the future?”
Katalin’s eyes roved the court in glittering demand. If Lady Katalin had not been a noblewoman, Pio thought with distant shock, she would have made a fine actress. The crowd responded to her as though she played on an instrument.
“We heard of her claims she read the future. I thought it a girlish trick, but if her prophecies come true, where does her power of soothsaying come from?” demanded Lady Katalin.
“From the sun and the Great Goddess… or from the darkness where dwell the souls of the hungry dead, longing to come to Eyam and rise? There are many twisted things that would possess a girl’s body, and puppet her to power.
What say you, people of Themesvar? Is she ghost or witch? ”
Hidden in the crush came calls of both “ghost” and “witch”. The cries were faint, but they might yet come clear. Lady Katalin was very convincing.
Lady Katalin turned to the Beauty Dipped In Blood. “Speak. Are you Rahela?”
At that precise moment, a light as small and glowing as a pearl woke in the hollow of the Beauty’s throat. Astonishingly, impossibly, the Beauty answered: “No.”
Her words couldn’t be true, and yet words spoken with heart’s reveal potion on the tongue must be true.
Lady Katalin sprang, tearing at Rahela’s hair. “Monster, demon, unclean spirit. What have you done with my daughter?”
Rahela fought her off, but even wearing her enchanted gauntlets, her strength seemed strangely sapped. Pio could have sworn tears gleamed in her eyes as the two women locked in combat and the crowd burst into utter pandemonium.
“Enough!” roared the Emperor over the noise, rising like a tsunami from his throne. “ENOUGH! Guards!”
The gold-masked guards fell upon Katalin. Pio’s chest clenched like a fist, anticipating another massacre. He did not think he could bear to watch the ghouls rip apart a noblewoman in the throne room.
The Emperor checked himself, perhaps considering that to have ghouls eat his perhaps-still-betrothed’s mother might be unwise. “Take Lady Katalin to her chambers until she is calm,” he ordered.
Lady Katalin made a noise of protest. The Emperor’s voice rose ominously.
“Take her away,” he repeated. “Until I am calm.”
They all saw the moment when Katalin realized she was in the grip of the dead. She froze, a whimper escaping between her locked lips.
The Emperor regarded her from a height. His eerie voice created echoes on its own. “You may know your daughter. You do not know me. But you will know me well enough to fear me. Soon.”
Katalin let herself be dragged away. Rahela stood swaying.
“Lady Dian?” The Emperor whirled upon a fresh victim. “Do you wish to repeat your daughter’s wild accusations?”
This lady was far too clever to show she was wild.
“Of course not, Your Imperial Majesty,” murmured Lady Dian. “My poor child is driven out of her wits with excitement. She will sing a different tune on the morrow.”
Lady Dian’s tone suggested she would see to it personally.
Still holding the arm of his throne, the Emperor’s claws tapped on the carved bone. “I look forward to hearing that song.”
As the Emperor’s attention was briefly directed elsewhere, Pio seized his chance.
He addressed Rahela. “Do you wish to show your true heart by advising the Emperor? As part of the Trials?”
Rahela stared at him blankly, then burst out laughing.
It was a frenzied sound, the kind of laugh that tore at a throat, that made you think of torn hair and clothes and madness.
Her hair flew about like black ribbons at a midnight maypole.
In that instant, the Beauty Dipped In Blood looked every inch a dark spirit.
“My true heart,” repeated Rahela. “What a joke. This is my true heart. I never get anything right.”
Pio wondered if the Emperor might intervene, but the Emperor watched Lady Rahela silently. Perhaps he, like most of the court, was considering whether she might be witch or ghost.
“Lady Rahela has declined to complete the second round of the Queen’s Trials.” To avoid another disaster, Pio clarified to the Emperor: “This means you cannot choose her.”
The Emperor answered, “I never intended to choose Lady Rahela.”
Pio prepared a look of politely gratified surprise. Here it came. Finally, the moment of Ninell’s triumph.
The Emperor reached out a hand, the shadow of his gauntlets falling over the golden mosaic of the floor, giving the effect of a huge wild beast clawing at the sun.
“Lady Glacia. I wish to honour you above all women. You are the winner of the second and final round of the Queen’s Trials. Come to my parlour, and tell me your secrets.”
So Lady Rahela’s preferred candidate had been selected.
Pio checked to see if Rahela looked triumphant.
Instead, Rahela, standing alone in the court, wore for an instant the bleakest expression imaginable.
As if she were a child abandoned in a storm.
The worst part was how utterly unsurprised she seemed, as though she had always known she would be abandoned.
Witch or harlot, spirit or liar, one thing was clear: Rahela would never keep the love of a god.
“My, what a distressing scene,” said a voice behind Pio.
He wondered how the lady had got behind him. She must walk as soft as a cat.
“It appears to me,” remarked Lady Dian, “neither of us got what we wanted here.”
As the throne room doors swung closed behind the Emperor and his new favourite, Pio gave a curt bow. “Unlike the Emperor, I am not asking ladies for counsel at this time.”
“Naturally. You are Prime Minister of this court and chief advisor to the Emperor.” Lady Dian smiled acknowledgement of his accomplishments.
“Such a powerful man could never need aid from me. But if you wish, I would be happy to listen to your troubles. The whole country knows how clever you are. Perhaps as you tell your tale, the answer you seek will become clear.”
“The whole country knows how clever I am?” Pio repeated. “Perhaps. Unfortunately, I know how clever you are, madam. I decline to be manipulated into pouring out my troubles, and my secrets with them.”
“Oh dear,” murmured Lady Dian, unruffled. “I must be losing my touch.”
Pio bowed. “Not at all. I’m certain it would have worked on most men. As for myself, I’m flattered you thought me worth manipulating.”
Lady Dian’s eyes were dark pools that invited drowning, but Pio could not tell her either his worst fear or his great hope.
His fear, that he was learning to hate his Emperor.
Or his hope that, after the Emperor choosing another woman and her own mother spurning her as a monster in full view of the court, Lady Rahela – the murderous Beauty Dipped In Blood, the vilest of the Domitian she-devils – was finished at last.