10. Heir Apparent
ten
Heir Apparent
A ceiling to floor red banner hanging behind the darksteel throne altered the atmosphere of the ballroom. It was the silence too, as lords and ladies lined along the aisle cutting through the ballroom, sentinels on either side. Aleksei stood by the dais, hands clasped behind and his back to the red banner wall. Sofia stood with the count which put her closer to the door than to the throne, but she’d been smiling at Aleksei from across the ballroom when the count cleared his throat. Sofia turned to him.
“Stand straight.” He pinched her arm. “Your back is going to be turned to the queen.”
“Yes, Gavril Illeivich.”
He was going to say something else, displeased with her as always, but the herald announced, “Her Majesty the Queen!” and the trumpeters bellowed the royal salute, followed by the orchestra playing the Song of Shields in all its battlefield glory, drummed to the rhythm of a galloping horse.
The Lords bowed and the ladies curtsied.
A dozen watchmen, full darksteel armor with a red cape, marched in escorting the queen. They were tall, had bent horns on their helmets adding to the height, and the head of a dead dragon with serpent tongue spilling out was forged on one shoulder, making the cape appear as though they were wearing the flayed skin. That was their mythos, dragon slayers, and in the fairy tale, the many-headed dragon was a metaphor for Elfur.
In the light, they were very much alive and couldn’t be mistaken for empty armor, but all of them had gleaming red eyes behind the black visor, and a chill crawled down Sofia’s spine as they passed by her. The gold alchemy on their chestplate glowed as though they were actively using magic.
The queen was as pale as snow with eyes as red as the capes of the watchmen. Dressed in all black, her grand obsidian kokoshnik inlaid with gold glittered like the starry skies. She didn’t appear mad but sneered with every ounce of her being.
The tall bony man draped in a white robe accompanying the queen was, Sofia assumed, Mage Grigori. He had long black hair and a thick beard and carried a longsword in a red baldric. His pale blue eyes were haunted as though he was looking at a dying man, and Sofia inadvertently clutched her husband’s arm when the mage took a double look at her, frowning.
“Can’t you fucken curtsy?” the count hissed through the side of his mouth, digging into her arm till Sofia winced.
Thankfully, the mage’s attention passed, his gaze shifting to the archmage, and his thin lips twisted in disgust.
After the queen settled on the throne, Aleksei’s voice cracked like a bullwhip through the ballroom. The command sounded like a foreign language to Sofia, but the formation of sentinels folded, and marching like the mirror image of one another, they dispersed from the center of the ballroom and lined along the walls where they remained like fixtures, not moving at all and hardly breathing.
The queen gestured with her hand and the whole court rose, and the music resumed with a waltz. The children of Boyar Duma started the dance where everyone else spectated, and as far away as she was, Sofia saw Lev go to Zoya Chartorisky to invite her to dance, and the girl passed by him to curtsy in front of Aleksei, holding out her gloved hand.
Pot stirrer, that one. Aleksei bent and kissed her hand, then pulled her and spoke into her ear. He was declining because he was on duty, obviously, and Zoya must have known he would do that. Then she stood there, speaking to him about something, fanning herself and sniggering.
The lords and ladies of Boyar Duma occupied the center of the ballroom with their waltz while the other nobles stood in a circle. The archmage, vain, vain man that he was, was doing his ‘monster’ thing to use the extra limbs to hold his gold robe so it twirled and flared grander than everyone else’s. He was a spectacle.
As the second song started, the floor opened up for everyone, but Sofia turned to the door. Her feet ached, and since there were no available seats inside the ballroom she wanted to sit in the drawing room.
The count grabbed her arm. “A dance, Sofia.”
She curtsied, giving him her hand. Great, now Aleksei would see her husband. A man who’d stuffed himself into white breeches two sizes too snug and looked like a sausage. It wasn’t his age. There were plenty of older lords, like Lord Skuratov who was in his fifties but carried himself with the posture of a fighter, who appeared refined. Not a scholar, not a philosopher, not a poet, not a soldier, Gavril Illeivich was the worst thing possible—a pretender—and she disliked him much.
Though she never cared for his appearance and had cried after she’d seen him the first time, she’d been hopeful about their marriage and her life, but that hope had eroded day by day over the years. Up until recently, she’d cared about very little, but that boy over there in black, speaking to Zoya Chartorisky while tracking Sofia through the dance floor with his unwavering attention for her had made her want more out of life.
The count stepped on her foot, Sofia winced, and it just so happened they’d turned and she’d been facing the door when she saw the prince dash in wearing server’s attire.
He blew by the herald, laughing, and as the old man in a wig assumed the posture to announce the prince, a sentinel ran in and punched the herald in the stomach. The old man’s wig fell off.
Fascinated, Sofia followed the prince with her eyes, craning her neck each time the count turned her, trying to waltz. She lost sight of the prince as another couple glided by and obstructed her view for a breath, but she spotted the sentinel with his mask up on his crown. He had a very prominent scar down the left side of his face, and he was searching frantically for the prince and cursing, from his expression.
She stole a look at Aleksei and his scarlet eyes were fixed on the scarred sentinel, frowning.
The next time she spotted the prince, he was staring at the archmage, an eyebrow raised. Then he came up behind the dancing archmage and reached up over the archmage’s blond curls. There was nothing there in plain view. The boy was looking at and reaching for one of the archmage’s tentacles waving above his head.
He could see them. Sofia gasped. She’d never met anyone else who could see them. The acolytes couldn’t see them, and Guards like Lev and Papa couldn’t either. Just as the boy was about to grab a tentacle, Mage Grigori fetched him, and at the same time, the archmage turned.
Grigori bowed, keeping the prince behind himself, and backed away.
The scarred sentinel seized the prince and carried him out of the ballroom like a petulant child.
As they passed by Sofia, she saw the prince pointing at the archmage, and insisting, “He has yellow snakes on his back! Look, Eugene!”
“One of these days, you’re going to cost me my head, boy! Come on, the red bitch will see us.”
“But look!”
The sentinel dragged the prince away. No one paid them mind because the heir apparent was in a server’s uniform, the music was loud, the ballroom was busy, everyone had been drinking for hours, and courtiers didn’t recognize their prince—apparently. If Lev hadn’t seen Prince Nikolas in years, no one had either, and Sofia wondered why he wasn’t allowed to attend the royal ball being held especially for him. This whole fifteen-day festivity was for his birthday, after all. Now she was so curious.
“Sofia,” the count hissed.
She turned to him and smiled but his expression said she’d done something wrong. He dragged her across the floor, out of the ballroom, and into the gathering room with powder blue chairs and gold framed mirrors where Zoya Chartorisky had told her she looked ‘lovely for her age’. The count pushed her down onto a chair.
“Are you drunk already?” he whispered while smiling.
“No, I only had a glass of sparkling wine.”
“Then what’s wrong with you?”
Nothing, she thought. She got up and checked herself in the mirror for good measure and saw Aleksei by the door behind her. He was watching her. With everyone in the ballroom, there weren’t many around them. She pretended to fix her hair, nerves tingling her fingertips.
“I’ll sit here till I feel better.” Sofia sat down.
“I’m going to stay a while. Can you go home?” the count asked.
Sofia nodded, her reticule and her hands on her lap. The count scanned around, saw Aleksei, and gestured him over with his white gloved hand. Sofia’s guts fell out underneath her chair. There was something unsettling about how displeased Aleksei looked. It wasn’t the count calling him over. He’d looked that way when she saw him in the mirror. She lowered her gaze to her lap and clutched her skirt.
“Make sure the countess gets home,” she heard Gavril Illeivich say.
A long pause, before Aleksei answered, “I can do that.”
“Thank you.” The count tapped the sentinel on the shoulder and headed toward the ballroom, but not before tossing a single copper at Aleksei, which he let fall to the floor. The count had forgotten he wasn’t at the country fair.
“May I kill him?” Aleksei asked, and that was the look that worried Sofia. Murder, Aleksei had in his eyes. He wasn’t stable, Sofia was beginning to realize, and his emotions swung wildly. Perhaps it was the nature of their alchemy, but everyone she’d encountered from the House of Red Shield had been a bit off—including Aleksei. Yet she was helplessly drawn to him.
“Don’t do that,” she said. Not liking someone and wishing them dead were very far apart in her mind.
“Do you want to leave?” he asked.
Naively thinking he meant to take her home as the count had requested, she got up. “Yes, I’m very tired.”
But after Aleksei walked her to a coach, he tossed silver to the driver, and said, “Red Manor.”
“Aleksei!” Sofia protested as he closed the door.
“Make sure she gets there,” he said to a mounted sentinel as he strode back toward Raven.
“Yes, Captain.”
Then in a hired coach with a sentinel for escort, Sofia was on her way to Red Manor, she supposed.