Part 67 (2/2)

The tone of her voice was neither sympathetic nor gloating, but bitterly sarcastic. The tendons across the back of her hand tightened under your roughened fingers, and her face was serene as carven alabaster. You might have seen her in a ruin.

She knew all about being a frightening thing in a museum.

”It's so heavy.” She touched your yoke, one last time, as you knelt before her. What is the difference between a collar and a crown? ”You're so strong.”

An hour pa.s.sed before she summoned the barrister-or Barrister-to return. He arrived swiftly enough that you knew he was waiting, lurking, just within hearing. He eyed you suspiciously as the footman brought him through the door, but you were only sitting cross-legged on a cus.h.i.+on at the center of your chains. The queen had brought down her chess set. Though you could not speak, you could play, and it turned out you were matched.

You were well-amused by the manner in which Barrister eyed you as he entered. There were stories, after all, about queens and bulls. And there were stories about the appet.i.tes of the minotaur. But no matter how he rolled his eyes at you-like one of the nervous carriage-horses-you only turned the white queen between your blunt-nailed thumb and forefinger, and moved her around the board like a knight while you waited for what they would say. Two squares forward and one to the left or to the right.

”We are pleased with the minotaur,” the queen commented. ”You will bring him before us again in three day's time.”

The narrow man blanched, but stayed so silent he might have been as voiceless as you. In lieu of speaking, he turned to summon the footmen to come unlock your chains.

”Wait,” said the queen. She came to you as you rose, something s.h.i.+ning in her hand. A silver-colored disk on a chain. You felt it tick between your fingers as she placed it in your grasp. She leaned over, her hair falling across your wrist, and showed you how to depress the stem twice, so the front and back sprang open like the sh.e.l.l covers on a beetle's wings.

A pocket watch. Steel, not silver or gold. St.u.r.dy, with a crystal on either side to let the light s.h.i.+ne through the jewels and gears of the mechanism as it worked. The case was worked in a delicate scale pattern, except for a mirror-bright, scroll-edged plaque-utterly blank. You stroked your thumb across it, leaving a blur of oil, but that wasn't enough to prevent you glimpsing your pale, pink-nosed reflection.

”Hard to have it engraved with your initials,” the queen said. She looked up, her face gone still again. When she smiled, it was for Barrister, not for you. ”Queens reward their favorites,” she said.

That night, you learned that if you slept with the watch under your pillow, you felt it tick like a heart against your palm.

The museum was as the queen promised: cold and white. They led you in chains along the white marble floors past white marble walls, through white marble galleries. This was, it seemed, a kind of labyrinth. You should be at home in it, but it was a labyrinth without moss, without softness. Without silence or crumbling stones or the trickle of water from the spring. You recognized the white marble statues when you were brought among them: if not the specific ones, then the styles. They were distinctive enough that despite blurring myopia, you could have named many of the artists. If anyone had thought to ask.

Honed by memorizing poetry and history and language, by remembering the turnings of mazes, your memory had always been excellent. As they chained you on a dais, surrounded by velvet ropes, it served you well.

When the queen arrived, veiled and hatted, wearing the clothing of a modest bourgeoise, you recognized her by her way of moving. That, and the faint trace of her aroma that rose over the smell of the crowd and the concealing scent of your fougere. She stood at the back of the crowd, and did not stay long. But she made sure you noticed.

When they brought you to the queen the next time, they swathed you in a silken robe and rubbed oil into your horns to make them s.h.i.+ne from boot-black tip to milk-white base. Again, she asked the footmen to chain you, and dismissed everyone. Again, she brought her chess set down. The men were jet and alabaster, and she gave you white to play.

The first game was played in silence, and you beat her. The second, she rallied, but ten moves in paused with her hand over the board. ”They want me to marry,” she said. But then she paused, considered, and restated. ”Barrister wants me to marry. I should never have made him my secretary of state. I should never have allowed him to go to Greece-”

Her face had gone still, unchanging. She moved a p.a.w.n. You answered.

She said, ”Shall I prophesy for you?”

You knew what became of oracles. An old story, unchanging. If they were true oracles, their prophesies only doom them. The G.o.ds will what they will.

You nodded your head anyway, because it seemed to help her to speak of it. And it was not as if you could betray her confidence.

”If I marry whom Barrister suggests, within five years he will have gathered all power in the Empire.” She gestured to you, to herself, to the rooks and bishops in between. ”If I do not marry, I may hold him off for ten. But my single state is a liability. I have no heirs.”

And if you marry of your own choosing? you would ask, but of course you remained speechless.

You touched the back of her hand. She moved a knight. You tipped over the black king.

In your chains, in the museum, you overheard a great many things. Barrister, you came to understand, was popular. And the queen was at the mercy of her advisors, of the parliament, of her const.i.tuents. Only men held suffrage. She was a woman alone, leading men who thought they knew better than she. Who saw themselves as lumbered with a weak woman, ineffectual, on the throne.

And she had not the courage to do what she would do, and d.a.m.n their expectations. You understood; you had dwelt in your own labyrinth long enough, killing because it was expected.

You watched from the dais, and thought of honey-brown hair, of eyes the color of brandy, of toast. With a hand in your pocket, you felt the watch tick on its chain, though you only brought it out to let the light s.h.i.+ne through it when you were certain you were alone.

The women in your quarters liked you, maybe. They competed to interest you, anyway. One baked desserts. One went about naked and smelling of roses, an aroma that served chiefly to make you hungry. One came to tell you she was pregnant, which was true. You had smelled it on her breath, in her hair, before she knew it herself. You wondered if it would look like your father, yourself. Or like the mother.

Your heart beat like the tick of the pocket watch when she told you.

A child.

The third time they brought you to the queen, you realized that her palace was a labyrinth as well. Barrister did not accompany you this time. You wondered if you were meant to understand that he did not approve. Instead you walked surrounded by servants, their onus, the center of a cross of chains. They bound you as before, before the queen descended from her chair, and filed out in silence.

She came down the steps and you bowed low before her.

”Stay there,” she said. She laid a cool hand on your neck, steadying you in your awkward position. With her other hand, she one by one unlocked the clasps that held the gold chains to your yoke. Unattached, they were too heavy for her to hold one-handed, and each by each they rang to the floor.

When the fourth one fell, she nudged you upright. ”There,” she said, as you rose up over her. ”Now we can sit in chairs to play.”

You doubted she would have a chair that would bear your weight. Mostly the chairs and benches here were fussy, padded things with spindly, curved scrollwork legs and eagle claws clutching the b.a.l.l.s at their feet. But this one surprised you: it was an oaken bench, and she must have ordered it made for you especially.

You sat, and took up a pair of mismatched p.a.w.ns. She chose the black, and you returned them to the board. You opened with the King's Gambit.

”I want children,” she said. ”And I am no longer a young girl. I must decide, and soon, if I want a kingdom or a son, Asterion.”

You were so absorbed in interpreting the speaking serenity of her expression that for a moment, you did not realize it was your name that she had spoken. Your ears swiveled. When you swung your head up, the weight of the steel ring tugged painfully in your nose.

With her own hands, she poured you red wine in a gla.s.s delicate as a soap-bubble-a gla.s.s you would not have trusted in your own enormous hands. She pushed a china sugar bowl across the table, so you could snack.

”The name is recorded,” she said. ”It is Asterion?”

It's just as well she could not have understood the gabblings of your thick cow's tongue, because at the moment you could not have spoken. You swallowed, the yoke tightening against your throat until the ripple pa.s.sed, and nodded.

She smiled then, and met your white p.a.w.n with her black one. ”Drink your wine,” she said, and waited until you had sipped and set the gla.s.s down to continue, ”You play chess. Do you write, Asterion?”

Not English. You shook your head.

”Greek?”

Your head grew heavy. Your heart began to flutter, ticking like the watch. For a moment, you wondered if the wine was poisoned. Wouldn't that be ironic?

You nodded, and the queen-her face unreadable again-produced paper and a fountain pen. In Greek, she wrote, painstakingly, the letters awkward as a child's-what do you want, Asterion?

Your own hands trembled as you took the pen. To speak, you wrote, at first so lightly that the pen made no mark on the paper. You turned it in your grasp and tried again. If you pressed too hard, the nib would break, and who would give you another? To speak. To be beautiful.

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