Chapter 51 #2
I waved him in, not missing the disapproval Isolde gave him as he closed the door behind himself. “How’s your morning?”
“Excellent. Having everyone gathered like this makes completing arrangements much more straightforward.” He wandered over, his velvet doublet neat as a pin, a lock of his hair falling forward over one eye until he absently tucked behind his ear.
“Your Inker is earning her pay today. I didn’t think to check if she’d survived—I should’ve brought ours along all the same.
She’s got a queue almost as big as yours.
” My expression must’ve showed the spurt of guilt that made the food turn to stone in my belly.
His expression softened. “They’re happy to wait, Audrey, and if they aren’t, they’re free to return later. Take a moment to eat.”
I reached for the half-formed wonderings I’d had this morning about the man before me. He just leaned against the stone beside the window, watching the comings and goings in the bailey.
The quiet had always been easy to share with him. Stirring it felt akin to asking for trouble.
You’re a kraken. Elnyta’s words were caught and carried by the bees humming in my mind. They bounced into each other in their haste to return to the hive. “Thanking you for apologizing, yesterday.”
He looked surprised. “For what?”
My heart softened dangerously, but I sat with that sensation. “For being an ass about the perfume.”
“Oh.” The surprise vanished. “’Twas only fair. No thanks needed—quite the opposite.”
Mayhap that was true, and I was rewarding him too quickly for too little. “I’ve started to think about what will happen once my father returns,” I said, on a whim.
His expression didn’t change. His gaze staying locked to mine. “You feel things will change?”
“I do.” I wasn’t going into it any more than that. I didn’t trust Luca well enough to see if he could use that sword at his waist. “He isn’t going to be happy with me, and nor will those who support him.”
In the past, he would’ve talked of protection, of managing everything for me. Now, he said, “You knew that, going in.”
The words stung a little. Yes, I knew it. Yes, I’d done what I’d felt I had to. Mayhap I should’ve held the candle closer rather than expose my light to so many. But Luca didn’t really know my full plan. I didn’t need him to. Moreover, no matter how much I’d warmed to him, I didn’t want him to.
“If it comes to it, will I have your support?” I asked him. “Not against my father, but those who stand behind him.”
Agreement would’ve been given quickly in the past—a thoughtless agreement worth the time spent on it. Now he stood before me, his face devoid of expression. I lifted some roast squash to my mouth. He watched it vanish behind my lips.
“You don’t mean the army,” he said. I nodded confirmation in case it was a question rather than the statement it appeared to be.
“From our class, Audrey, your father’s supporters are few and far between.
Consider instead those who are apathetic, who will come along for a good show, cheer for whomever they think will win, and care only for themselves.
They’re the majority, and, as such, they hold sway—though they don’t know it. ”
The idea shifted something deep inside of me.
It made perfect sense. It’s what I’d seen at play in La’Angi after the plague.
Those with something at stake or big hearts were happy to take action, even if that action was simply to do the job tasked to them.
It was the self-interested, powerful but not too powerful, pockets where I’d faced resistance.
“I can’t promise I can help much there until your father’s power base is unsettled.” He glanced over toward Isolde, as if she would ever betray us. “The others you need to consider,” he added, dropping his voice a little, “aren’t your father’s allies, but his competitors.”
“He doesn’t have them.”
One corner of his mouth quirked up as if I’d said something funny. “You’d be surprised at how many think they could do his job, and better.”
If that was all it took to be a competitor… “Most of them won’t be true threats.”
“Unless the apathetic majority like them,” he offered. “Any other time, or any other country, and you’d need to worry about the King, but on this side of the Aza Ranges…his grasp is weak even at his center of power. I’m not saying any of this, Audrey.”
“Neither of us are,” I agreed, my mind spinning. I needed to figure out who these competitors were. I needed to be ready to slap back their grasping hands.
The simplest way for me to do that was to be married.
I resisted the urge to set down the food as my belly churned.
“I’m not asking for marriage,” I told him, and his expression softened, as if I was a wounded doe. Kraken, my lord. I chewed, forcing the life-giving food into my body.
“You can,” he said, the words as smooth as velvet. “I’m not against taking things into our own hands, and you know I’ll always do my best for you and your interests.” A smile quirked his mouth, as he glanced over the bailey and toward the orchard. “However ambitious they are.”
“If we were wed, how do you think this” —I waved a fork toward the alleged queue of men waiting for me on the other side of the wall— “would have worked, Luca?”
His expression fell back into neutral lines. “Do you think I’d ever stop you from doing something both clever and necessary?”
“Yes.”
The flicker of his eyelids was the only sign I’d hurt him. “You think so little of me?”
“I met you as a child,” I told him, identifying a piece of meat rich in fat and juicy with the stuff that would keep my body whole. “I was scared. I was, in fact, utterly helpless.”
“You were nothing to me,” he said, no infliction in the words. “Just a promise for the future. I went to the King to push back our betrothal to protect you.”
My heart hurt. He had indeed. “You let me stand on your feet when we danced.”
“And yet you still don’t trust me?” he asked. “Is that about me, Audrey?”
The blow stung. I didn’t let him see. “You let me stand on your feet. You had me pretend to be someone I wasn’t, Luca, to meet their expectations, rather than tell them it was ridiculous a scared, exhausted child be forced to dance a dance she didn’t know before them all.”
He drew in a breath. “I don’t have the sort of power you apparently think I do.”
“I don’t have the sort of power anyone in this city thinks I do,” I shot back. “And yet here I am, Luca, with people waiting for my signature and stamp.” His eyes flickered again.
Please, learn.
I’d given him what I felt I could. He gave me nothing in return. But I’d thought we were done after the perfume debacle and he’d come back from that, given time.
“I’ve work to do,” I told him, turning away. “Thanking you for your visit. Please send in the next waiting as you leave.”
He stood there as I shoveled the food into my mouth and turned back to the desk, reviewing the next few documents I’d laid out precisely to one side. When he did eventually go, it was without a word, his steps hesitating as if he was unsure of the very ground beneath him.
It was, of course, simply as reliable as it ever had been. He just hadn’t acknowledged it.