Ysolde's Gambit

The invitation came on thick cream paper, sealed with a snowflake in blue wax, and it was so perfectly polite that Berylla held it away from her body like a dead mouse.

"A winter tea," she said. "In the Orloff apartments. At the fourth bell. The Lady Ysolde requests the pleasure of the Lady Solaia's company, and hopes that past misunderstandings may be set aside."

"She hopes."

"She writes it in a very pretty hand."

"She wrote it in the hand of someone who has been practicing." Solaia took the card, turned it over, and set it down on the dressing table beside the hatchling, who promptly tried to eat the corner. "I'm going."

"My lady, I strongly—"

"If I don't go, I'm afraid. If I'm afraid, she wins." She picked Soot up and detached the card from his teeth. "I've been in worse rooms than a tea."

Berylla's lips thinned. She did not argue. She went to the wardrobe and, after a moment's careful thought, took down a gown of deep wine-colored velvet with a high collar and long sleeves, severe as armor.

"Then you will wear this," she said, "and you will not eat anything you did not see poured."

…

The Orloff apartments were in the south wing, and they smelled of lilies in winter.

It was a warm, bright, mirror-lined set of rooms hung with silk the color of a frozen lake, and the tea table in the center of the long salon had been laid with a small fortune in porcelain. A dozen young women of the court sat in a loose half-circle on cushioned chairs. They wore pastel gowns and sweet smiles, and as Solaia came in, their conversation stopped with the smoothness of a door being closed.

"Lady Solaia!" Ysolde rose from her chair. She looked radiant. She had dressed herself in white and ice-blue, with pearls in her braided hair, and she crossed the carpet with both hands extended as if greeting a dear friend. "How kind of you to come. I was so afraid you would refuse."

"I was curious."

"What an honest answer." The small hands pressed hers. They were cold. "Do come and sit. We were just speaking of you."

"I'm sure."

A ripple went through the half-circle, too light to call a laugh.

Solaia sat. A footman set a cup in front of her without being asked. It was already poured, a clear amber, steaming faintly. She did not touch it.

"You will forgive me," Ysolde went on, settling opposite her in a rustle of silk, "if I say what everyone is thinking. The Festival was a dreadful night. And you were so very brave. We have all been wanting to thank you."

"There's no need."

"But there is. And more than that." She tilted her head. "We have wanted to make you welcome. You see, it is a hard thing to arrive at court with no family and no friends, and no..." the faintest pause, "... instruction. It must be so confusing. All these little rules. So I thought, why not have a few of my dearest friends help you learn them?"

"Learn them."

"Only the simple ones. For instance." Ysolde's blue eyes traveled, with the delicacy of a cat, over Solaia's wine-colored velvet. "A lady of the household does not wear a mourning color to a winter tea. It is a very old rule. One does not like to remind the Emperor of the dead."

A girl in pale green giggled behind her fan.

"It isn't mourning," said Solaia. "It's wine."

"In this court, my dear, wine is for the funeral of a traitor." Ysolde smiled sweetly. "I knew you would not know. Do not trouble yourself. We forgive you at once."

Ah, thought Solaia, and felt the old coldness descend on her, soft and bright as snow. So that is how it is done.

It was not a trap that could be sprung with a knife. It was a hundred little cuts, delivered smiling, each one so slight that to object would make her look absurd. The cup of tea. The wrong gown. The rule she had not been told. By the time the hour was out, the whole half-circle of laughing girls would have repeated in a dozen salons that the Emperor's pet could not be trusted to dress herself.

She leaned back in the chair.

"How kind of you to tell me," she said pleasantly. "And is there a rule about what a lady does when a guest is rude?"

The salon fell quiet.

"I beg your pardon?" said Ysolde.

"I only wondered. I'm new. Do we ignore it? Or do we say so?" She took up her cup at last, studied the amber surface, and set it down again. "Because in the place I come from, if a girl invited you to her home and told you your clothes were for a traitor's funeral, you'd either hit her or leave. I thought you might have a better custom."

A very small, strangled sound came from the girl in green.

Ysolde's smile did not move. But a faint color rose, slow and bright, from the high lace collar to the roots of her golden hair.

"I only meant to be helpful."

"Of course you did." Solaia's tone was warm. "You've been so helpful from the start. You told me about Ashvale. How it burned beautifully." She let that sit. "I do hope your father is well. I understand he's had a trying month."

"My father—"

"Is under the Emperor's displeasure. Yes. Everyone knows." Her eyes were perfectly steady. "It would be a pity if his daughter made it worse by insulting the woman the Emperor kissed in front of his own guard."

It was a guess. She had seen the balcony, and the white face, and nothing else. But she watched the bolt strike home, and she saw Ysolde's fingers tighten on the arm of her chair, and she knew she had been right.

"You presume," said Ysolde, very low.

"I presume nothing. I'm only a beggar. I just notice when people look at him." She smiled, and let it show her teeth. "You do. You always have."

There was a clatter.

Ysolde had risen so abruptly that her knee struck the table. The porcelain jumped. A full cup toppled across the white cloth, and a spreading tide of amber tea washed over the silk, over the nearest lady's lap, over Ysolde's own white-and-blue skirts. The girl in green shrieked. Chairs scraped. In the confusion, Ysolde stood very still, with the wet staining her gown to the knee, and her eyes locked on Solaia's with an expression of such pure and naked hatred that for a heartbeat the room seemed to dim.

"Get out," she said.

"Gladly."

"You think he loves you. He does not. He wants you. It is not the same." Her voice shook. "I have known him since we were children. I know what he looks like when he has a thing he cannot have. And I know what he does with it, afterward."

Solaia rose.

She was a little taller than the other girl, she found. She had not noticed.

"Then I'll be sure to ask him," she said.

…

The news had reached the Frost Chamber before she did.

She came into it flushed and a little shaky, with her heart still thudding, and found the Emperor already seated at the long black table with a pen in his hand and a piece of parchment before him. Crane stood at his shoulder, grim as a headstone. Across the room, standing very straight on the carpet, was the Duke of Orloff, in the half-formal robes of a man who had been woken for an audience.

"Your Majesty—" the Duke was saying.

"You have a daughter," said Kieran, without lifting his eyes from the page.

"Yes, Majesty. Lady Ysolde. She is a girl of the highest—"

"She attempted this afternoon to publicly humiliate a member of my household." The pen scratched. "I have a report from four ladies who were present, none of whom, I suspect, wished to be. I am told there was a question of wine."

"A misunderstanding, Majesty, surely—"

"I am told there was a question of traitors."

The Duke fell silent.

Kieran set down the pen. He looked up. And Solaia, standing in the doorway, felt the temperature of the room drop several degrees in the space of a breath.

"Your Grace," said the Emperor, "you have held the Orloff lands for thirty-one years. You have held three seats on my council. You have a daughter who is intelligent, and beautiful, and, until this afternoon, I would have said discreet." His voice was perfectly pleasant. "I find I am mistaken."

"Majesty, I beg—"

"Your seat on the Council is suspended. Your northern garrison will be reassigned to Commander Crane. Your daughter will remain in the south wing until I decide otherwise." A pause. "The next time a member of your house raises her voice to the Lady Solaia, I shall consider it a declaration of war. Do I make myself clear?"

The Duke was gray. "Perfectly, Majesty."

"Go."

He went. The doors closed on his bowed back.

Kieran sat for a moment in the silence. Then he turned his head, and looked at Solaia, and the ice in his face melted into something dry and tired and unmistakably amused.

"You provoked her," he said.

"She provoked me."

"You told her she was in love with me."

"She is."

"I know." He rubbed his eyes. "I have known since I was seventeen. It has never been of the slightest interest to me." His mouth twitched. "Did you really tell her you were going to ask me?"

"I might have."

"Dear God." He began to laugh, helplessly, with his hand over his face. Crane made a noise in his throat like a kettle coming to the boil and turned very quickly toward the window. "I have just stripped a Duke of his seat on the Council, in front of my Commander, because my... because you were rude over tea."

"You did it rather well."

"I did it extremely well. That is the difficulty." He wiped his eyes. Then he sobered, slowly, and studied her. "Solaia. You must understand something. She will not forgive this."

"I didn't ask her to."

"No. But I would rather you were careful." His gaze moved past her, briefly, to the door through which the Duke had gone. "I have known Ysolde a long time. She does not weep, and she does not rage. She waits."

At that very moment, in the south wing, in a silent room full of spilled tea and shattered cups, a slender hand in a blue silk glove was passing a folded square of paper to a servant in gray livery.

The paper was sealed with silver wax. The servant did not look at it. He bowed, and slipped it into his sleeve, and was gone down the back stair before the lady had finished wiping her hands.