The queen was murdering parsnip.
Slowly it should be pointed out, in a deeply controlled manner. The sort of violence a vegetable received only when it had become the nearest available representative of a larger and more complicated problem.
The private dining room had been chosen because dinner was meant to be quiet or at least, that had been the idea.
It was not one of the grand dining halls where servants moved in lines, nobles watched each other chew, and every cup lifted from the table risked becoming a statement about factional loyalty. This was a private dining room made for the royal couple within the kings own royal apartments. There was a narrow hearth, a polished table, two chairs set close enough to allow conversation. Two servants stood near the wall with the practised invisibility of people who understood that true service often involved appearing to be furniture with excellent posture.
The king sat opposite his wife and watched a parsnip be slowly eviscerated.
He had seen battles begin with less commitment.
The queen cut again. The knife struck the plate with a delicate sound that somehow made both servants become even stiller.
The king lifted his cup and considered the matter over the rim.
They had a good marriage.
Not by bard standards, of course. Bards had ruined marriage for everyone. According to bards, a good marriage involved secret glances across moonlit balconies, impossible vows, dramatic misunderstandings, and at least one heroic horse ridden far too hard in the rain. According to kings, queens, treaties, dowries, border disputes, and old men with maps, a good marriage involved shared interests, tolerable attitudes, no open hatred, many heirs, and a willingness to warn each other before someone’s cousin was becoming a problem.
By that measure, theirs was excellent. Except the heirs part, they had been trying for some time.
Their betrothal had been arranged by men who had cared more for grain roads than affection, and their wedding had been attended by half the kingdom nobility and several foreign representatives who had spent the ceremony calculating which families had been seated too close to pillars. It had not begun as love.
Over the years, they had come to understand each other. Respect had come first, love had blossomed later.
He knew the line that appeared between her brows when a noblewoman had been stupid in silk. She knew the exact point at which his patience with a report became dangerous to the table beneath it. He knew when her silence meant anger, amusement, or the quiet arrangement of someone else’s future humiliation. She knew when his laughter was real and when it was merely a courtly courtesy designed to keep a man talking until his mistake became clearer.
This silence was deep. It was not helped that this silence had parsnip in it.
The king set down his cup. Choosing his words carefully, he opted for something neutral, “My queen,” he said carefully.
The knife paused. The queen glanced across at him, the king could note the resentment at being interrupted.
“Is something wrong?” He asked, slowly with a smile.
The queen turned to face him properly. “The bloody brewer,” the queen said with a twitch her brow.
The king was taken aback, he did not hear her majesty swear very often. “What has he done now?” he asked, his eyes wide.
The queen looked down at her plate. Then, to his surprise, she pouted.
Not the sort of expression anyone at court would have recognized as such. On a lesser woman, it would have looked like wounded dignity. On the queen, it looked like someone had cancelled her favorite play and replaced it with a lecture on drainage.
He stared, then he scoffed. Her eyes narrowed. He tried to turn the scoff into a cough. It was too late and they both knew it. The servants certainly knew it; they both tried to enter a state of professional nonexistence.
“It is not funny,” she said, he expression turned flat but then the pout returned.
“I have not yet been told what it is.” The king said, his chest still shaking.
The queen’s knife came down beside the parsnip, sparing it for the moment. She paused picking the right words, “There is a new women’s garment spreading through the city.”
The king waited. His expression arranged itself into cautious patience. There were categories of conversation in which kings were wise to move slowly. Women’s garments belonged high among them, somewhere between succession disputes and temple doctrine.
“A gown?” he asked keeping his face flat.
“No. It is an undergarment.” She said watching his expression carefully for any signs of humorous betrayal.
The king nodded and stayed silent.
The queen continued with the air of a woman discussing troop movements. “It replaces chest wraps. Or improves on them, rather. Support without the same restriction. Better shape beneath a gown. Better movement, no pinching. It is useful, discreet, comfortable, and apparently every woman with sense or coin is trying to get one.”
The king absorbed that. “And the brewer is involved how?” He asked tentatively.
“He designed it.” She said, letting out a deep breath out of her nose.
The king looked at his wife and spoke slowly. “The brewer designed a woman’s undergarment?”
The queen nodded, it was however a sulky nod. The king leaned back, the first laugh escaped before he could stop it.
The queen lifted her knife, without pointing it at him, merely waved it to get her point across.
“Do not.” She said holding up the knife, keeping her expression flat.
“I am trying.” He said eyeing the knife with a wide grin.
“You are failing.” She said still holding up the butter knife.
He raised one hand and tilted his head down. “Forgive me. Continue.”
She set down the knife before it could be used as policy.
“If he had brought it to me first,” she said, picking her words. “I could have introduced it properly. Quietly and carefully for just the right ladies at court. A few gifts placed where they would be noticed but not admitted. A whisper through two duchesses who dislike each other enough to compete and trust each other enough to copy. By spring, every important woman in the city would have known who began it.”
The king’s amusement softened. Control rather than vanity.
“You wanted the trend?” he asked, tilting his head.
“I did.” She said letting go of a deep breath, she sat back crossing her arms, staring at a point on the nearby tapestry.
“Of course.”
She looked at him sharply, checking for mockery. There was none.
He knew better. The queen was a master of visibility, approval and taste. The delicate courtly art of making one woman look current and another look as if she had heard the news from her grandmother.
Fashion was not cloth. Fashion was permission people fought to obey.
“It reached the lower city first,” she said, her gaze returning to the tapestry, she unfolded one hand and gestured as she spoke. “Common women, merchants’ wives, adventurers. I would not be surprised to discover half the lower court already wearing some badly copied version while pretending their posture improved through discipline.”
The king smiled despite himself.
“It could still be yours.”
“It can be refined by me,” she said. “That is not the same thing.”
The parsnip had gone cold. The queen looked at it as if it had failed in its supporting role.
Then she sighed. Not one of her public sighs, which could reduce a countess to ashes while leaving no mark for the law to object to. This one came from somewhere lower, somewhere much more annoyed.
“It is very comfortable,” she said.
The king’s eyes widened. “You are wearing one?” he probed carefully.
The queen looked at him. He looked back.
Slowly, with immense dignity and the expression of a woman betrayed by tailoring, she nodded and took a deep breath, twisting herself slowly as she did so.
The king pressed his lips together. The effort failed immediately and he laughed.
“Edrin.”
“I am sorry.”
“You are not.”
“I want to be.”
The queen’s mouth began to move despite herself. She looked away. Her composure was not broken often. When it did break, it tended to look angry first, then human, then dangerous again if anyone was foolish enough to notice too openly.
“The brewer,” she said, with careful precision, “is currently holding up the royal breasts.”
The silence after that was perfect. It crossed the table, touched the walls, inspected the servants, and found no one willing to help.
The king made a sound. The queen made another. Then both of them broke. The king held himself with a hand over the table, leaning forward laughing over the food. The queen sat back, her arms still folded while her chest moved.
This was real, undignified, and entirely unsuitable for people whose signatures moved armies and taxes. The queen snatched her napkin and failed to hide anything important. She may have snorted but no one would never have been admitted it.
One servant discovered urgent interest in the wine jug.
“The brewer,” the king managed.
“Do not say it again.”
“Supporting the crown. The upper crown.”
“Edrin.”
He laughed harder, which proved unwise because he had been drinking wine and he still needed to breath.
The queen’s eyes watered. “I hate him.”
“No, you do not.”
“I hate that I cannot hate him.”
“That is usually where the trouble begins with him.”
She lowered the napkin and tried to recover herself. It took two attempts. The first failed because she looked at him and remembered the sentence.
Finally, royal dignity returned, slightly bruised but functional.
“What will you do?” the king asked.
The queen took another sip of wine. “My tailors will study it, I do not trust his, they rolled over too quickly and I don't think they understand how things are for nobility.”
“Naturally.”
“Properly. Not merely copy the thing like frightened seamstresses chasing coin. They will understand, improve the fabrics, refine the fastenings, adjust the lines beneath court gowns. I want versions for ceremony, travel, and riding.”
The king raised an eyebrow. She ignored him.
“In spring,” she continued, “I will send them as gifts. Carefully, Duchesses first naturally. Then the right countesses. The wrong countesses if it annoys the right ones. Many foreign ladies. Perhaps Baroness Isewald, depending on how useful her household remains.”
She paused to let out a sigh before continuing, “At least then Avengard owns the idea properly. The city may have discovered it, but the court will perfect it.”
“And a queen who makes women more comfortable will be remembered kindly.” The king said tilting his head toward her.
“I know, many queens have been remembered for worse.” She said after a pause.
The king smiled.
She sighed again, though this one held less murder. “I do not blame him. Not truly. He did not seek credit. Terven confessed as much. Apparently, the brewer wanted no name attached to it.”
“That sounds like him.”
“Cowardice in the face of gratitude dressed as wisdom.”
“Also sounds like him.”
The queen picked up her knife again, but the parsnip was spared. Its role in the evening had ended.
The king leaned back slightly. “Perhaps the brewer can redeem himself.”
The queen’s eyes narrowed. “Has he invented another garment?”
“No. His port arrived, the new drink, that is something we can control.” The king said with a smile and nod.
The queen’s expression shifted, the servants moved by the smallest fraction, and the king knew at once that the palace had already begun telling stories about the dark, sweet, dangerous wine taken from the brewer’s cellar. She nodded at him.
He smiled and turned his head toward one of the servants. “Bring a jug of the brewer’s port.”
The jug arrived in a covered silver vessel, deeply polished. Two large goblets were set down before the servants poured to the brim.
The port was dark. Not red in the way ordinary wine was red, but deeper. Heavier. It caught the candlelight in slow glints and held them there.
The queen lifted her cup and smelled it. Her expression changed.
The king smiled.
The king took his own drink. It was as good as he remembered. Better, perhaps, because his private dining room did not contain clerks snapping charcoal, two tasters, a guard captain praying for death, and Alric looking like a man asked to sacrifice a favourite child in a cup.
“It is young,” he said.
Morning arrived like an invading army. It entered through the curtains first, thin and pale and entirely without mercy.
The king opened one eye. Pain noticed immediately and came closer.
For a moment, he did not remember where he was. This was concerning because the ceiling was his own, the bed was his own, and the arm currently lying across his chest was almost certainly his wife’s.
He tried to move. His head objected.
Not with a throb. A throb would have been rustic. This was grander. This was a full court session of headaches, attended by every noble house in his skull, all speaking at once and none in favour of mercy.
Someone knocked very softly. The sound entered his head carrying a spear. The king closed his eye again. Another knock.
“Your Majesty?” a voice whispered from somewhere near the door.
The queen made a sound beside him. It was not a word. It did, however, express several things he agreed with.
The king tried to sit up and discovered that one leg was outside the blanket, one arm was numb, and his body had arranged itself crosswise across the bed as though attempting to escape during the night and failing due to drink.
The queen lay diagonally, one hand over her eyes, hair partly undone, dignity present only in theory. The blanket had surrendered to both of them and retreated toward the foot of the bed.
The door opened a cautious fraction.
Two attendants entered.
One was the king’s valet. The other was one of the queen’s senior women. Both had the expressions of people approaching a wounded animal that technically outranked them.
“Your Majesty,” the valet whispered. “The morning council…”
“No.”
The word hurt him to say. He respected it for doing its work anyway. The valet stopped.
The king opened one eye again. “The king is indisposed today.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
He glanced toward the queen.
She had not moved except to pull the blanket slightly higher with the slow determination of a woman reconsidering existence.
“The queen too,” he added.
The queen made another sound. This one suggested agreement, resentment, or possible future revenge.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the attendant said.
The valet hesitated. “Lord Calven has already arrived.”
The king considered Lord Calven. He was useful. Loyal. Clever. Good in a crisis. Exactly the sort of man who could endure being disappointed by a closed door.
“Tell him to govern paper until noon.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Possibly tomorrow.”
The valet, to his credit, did not react.
The attendants withdrew with the skill of people who knew that survival often depended on leaving before further instructions became stranger.
The door closed. The queen shifted. This was a mistake.
The bed creaked. Her breath caught. She rolled slightly, stopped, considered death, and then settled back into almost exactly the same position.
“What,” she said, voice low and rough, “does that man put in his drink?”
The king chuckled and he regretted it immediately. Pain struck him behind the eyes with a ceremonial mace.
He winced. “Grapes, I believe.”
“Do not be clever.”
“My dear, right now I couldn’t be if I tried.”
“What demon does the brewer put in it to make this happen?”
The king laughed once. Regretted it again, the queen glanced at him with one partly shut eye. It was impressive. Even in this state, she could aim displeasure.
“I would also like to know,” he said.
The king stared up at the ceiling. The demon in the drink.
Not literally. Probably not literally. With Alric, one had to leave a small door open for the absurd, because the absurd kept arriving with receipts.
“Still, this gives me an idea.” The king said although half with a groan.