Chapter 10 – The Duchess of Andelin’s Salon
From earliest childhood, Empress Esmene Agnephus, née Melun, had heard one ringing and eternal admonishment.
For the glory of House Melun.
It explained everything. Commanded everything. Justified anything.
Melun was an ancient House, high in honor and tradition, even more ancient than the Divine House of Agnephus.
Almost all the ducal Houses had preexisted the Empire; there had been people in Argence before the arrival of Ospret Far-Eyes, after all.
Back then, they had been a cluster of many kingdoms, constantly fighting among themselves.
Technically, the only land to which the House of Agnephus had any claim was Starfall, the island that Ospret had raised from the bed of the River Emme. But even before this feat, his wisdom and vision were so great that seven kings had chosen to bow to him, and made war on those who refused.
House Melun had been one of the seven. When she was four, Esmene had learned the line of her ancestors, descent through the male line all the way back to Heveroult Melun, the earliest patriarch of the House.
To this day, those names were invoked at the Feast of the Departed.
The proof of a true scion of House Melun was the ability to reckon one’s cousins to the fifth degree.
That was how she knew exactly when the sacred blood of the House of Agnephus had entered House Melun, and they had been husbanding this precious resource ever since.
The Emperor’s House had never been prolific, but every so often there was a princess or second son to spare.
House Melun had fought clandestine wars to snap up these sacred scions for themselves.
And when Emperor Onsetin Agnephus had produced a single son named Bastin, House Melun already had three daughters of appropriate age, candidates to be his Empress.
“That will be your husband,” Esmene’s father told her when she was eight, on the day the five-year-old Crown Prince was presented to the Court of Nobility. “You will be the perfect Empress, Esmene.”
It was not for her sake that he made that promise. Nor even his own, though Dardot Melun secured his own legacy within the House when she was betrothed to the Crown Prince, and became the patriarch of House Melun when he was scarcely more than forty.
It was a triumph all the way around. Esmene was born to be an Empress.
There had been something intoxicating about the fact that even the Divine Emperor could not keep her out of Starfall, even if she had had to settle for the Palace of the Distant Star.
She had married him, she had taken every prerogative and honor due the Empress, and she could look into the face of Emperor Bastin Agnephus and know that through him, she had achieved every dream of her House.
Well. Almost.
“I hope we might leave early tonight,” she murmured to her husband when they arrived at a state banquet for the merchant princes of Ispichov.
“We will do our duty,” Bastin replied, intentionally ambiguous, and moved away to speak to a merchant prince with gold and silver chains dangling from his pointed, barbarous ears. But tonight, Esmene followed. This was one area of their marriage where she had not yet been able to subjugate him.
“Radiance,” said the merchant prince, Eminent Malkhaz Kandelaki, one of the long-lived Lords Merchant in Ispichov. He bowed, smiling at Esmene with the glint of a diamond embedded in one sharp incisor. “Your Highness. Your beauty is blinding.”
Bastin threw her an irritated glance, but Esmene smiled, smiled, smiled. It was mortifying to be seen tagging after him, no matter how gracefully done. But tonight was the night he would come to her bed, and she meant to keep him there, even if it required the crude tool of wine.
Since that first agonizing night together, Bastin had been specific and adamant about the nights he would share her bed. They were scheduled weeks in advance, they were loveless, and they were never more often than was absolutely necessary.
And five years into their marriage, Esmene had yet to become pregnant.
At first, it hadn’t seemed a matter for concern.
Esmene’s father sent a woman to educate her on the fundamentals, and the Emperor visited her palace once a month, regular as clockwork.
There was no hurry. The great battle had already been won.
They were married, and House Melun was notoriously fecund. A child would come, sure as starlight.
Even if it hurt. It was excruciatingly painful.
It was humiliating. After their first year of marriage, her father summoned her to remind her that a child was necessary to cement their control of the Empire, and she had had to bite her tongue.
How could she tell her father what it was like?
Surely, surely this was not how it was supposed to be between a man and his wife.
Esmene heard enough gossip from her ladies-in-waiting to know that the act should be pleasurable.
But every month, Bastin appeared, and performed his duty exactly as he had the first time.
He undressed, laid down in her bed, and told her to get on with it.
And there was no child.
She comforted herself with his compliance, at first. It was proof of her victory that she could compel the Divinity, Beloved of Stars, that she could drag him to her palace and put him in her bed.
Sometimes that gave her a little vengeful pleasure, that even though his spirit refused her, she could command his body.
She could force an orgasm from him. Those fleeting moments when he grunted under her and began to helplessly thrust were the nearest thing she felt to satisfaction.
But there was still no child.
After four years, she had begun to reconsider. Perhaps she had been short-sighted to alienate him so completely. Four years was a dangerously long time to go without a babe.
“You must come more often,” she had told him when they were done, lying in bed with her thighs clamped together and tears in her eyes. Sex with him did not arouse her. Even oils were not enough to ease the way. “I cannot make you an heir if you only visit my bed once a month.”
“I must do nothing,” Bastin replied coldly, shrugging into his shirt. His chest was marked by her fingernails; Esmene had tried to rouse him, but except for a few grunts at the end, he had done nothing but stare at the ceiling. “I am fulfilling my obligations to you.”
“Bastin.” She rolled over and spoke softly. She had not said his name a dozen times in their entire marriage. “I want to fulfill my obligation to you. A child. I know we began poorly, but—”
“Is this another Melun Proposal?” he asked contemptuously.
Bastin was not an ill-favored man, but in private, when he did not have to conceal his hate, his face twisted with loathing.
“Do you think to confine me to your bed, as your father confined my father to his? You will find it more difficult, this time.”
“No,” she said, stumbling out of bed and catching his arm. She could feel the hot sting of blood between her legs and let him see it, used her pain as a weapon. “Can we not make it better for both of us? Bastin, it…hurts.”
“Yes, it does.” He shrugged her off and buckled his belt. “Good night.”
Furious that she had humbled herself, she had gone again to her father. But this time, whatever levers he had been able to apply to Bastin four years ago had been removed.
“Do whatever you must,” Duke Melun told her.
She had gone to see him in the vast study at Ereseide, the estate named for House Melun’s patron star and the seat of their power.
“The Temple will not support us in this, not with that fool Dardinne as the Prior of Segoile. This is becoming a problem, Esmene. There are whispers that you are barren.”
“Not that he is infertile?” she asked icily.
Her beautiful face showed nothing, but inside, she was burning with fury.
She wanted to scald her father’s ears with the tale of what she was doing for the glory of House Melun, how she tortured herself with every sexual encounter, how she tore inside because she had never felt anything like desire during the act.
How Bastin made her feel like some base prostitute.
Or no, worse, as if he were a whore she had summoned, unwilling.
For one moment, the thought rose, bubble-like, that that was the truth.
But no, she was the Empress. Sworn and blessed under the stars, joined eternally to the Emperor and the only proper vessel for his seed. And they had come too far to stop now.
“They will never say the Divinity is infertile,” said Dardot Melun. “It is blasphemous.”
“Father. The Emperor has never been…willing,” she admitted. “It must make it more difficult to conceive.”
It seemed a very long time since she was a little girl, and her father had tucked a silver bellflower behind her ear and told her that she was his glory.
“Then you must make him willing,” he answered pitilessly. “Win him, whatever it takes, for the glory of House Melun. One child, Esmene. That is all we need.”
He had no idea what he was asking.
But Esmene gritted her teeth and tried.
“Bastin,” she began, after their next agonizing assignation. “Please give me a moment. You cannot like this either. I confess, I did not consider your wishes as I ought. But surely it would be better if we could come to some terms. We will be married all our lives…”
He listened. It wasn’t quite an apology, but Esmene had begun to build a very reasonable case for why they ought to mend things when he walked out of the room.
The next month, she had offered an actual apology.
The month after that, she cried.