Stranger to the Crown Read online

  Faraday glared at her for a moment longer. Then he slowly sat down. “Your Majesty has legal precedent on your side,” he said. “I withdraw my objection.”

  “Thank you, Mister Faraday. Anyone else?” Elspeth looked at each Council member in turn. Most of them seemed stunned. Lady Quinn on Elspeth’s right had her hand over her mouth as if concealing a laugh. Faraday’s sour expression hadn’t changed. Well, she already knew she wouldn’t win him over. “Then that’s settled. As I said, I’ve asked Master Keswick to join us next week for his first Council meeting, but his investiture will happen tomorrow morning.” She’d wanted it to be yesterday, but she judged the Council would be upset about her, as they saw it, usurping their rights, and she didn’t want to push so hard it turned into a real fight.

  The rest of the meeting was a discussion about Caxton’s financial reports. Elspeth let most of it wash over her. She’d read through the report several times and had never gained any enlightenment. His bookkeeping methods made no sense to her, and learning from showing them to Simkins that the methods were standard financial practice didn’t reassure her. She didn’t like feeling out of her depth, especially since she was sure Finance was a key department she ought to have some basic understanding of.

  She was watching the shouting match between Caxton and Beckett about the Defense budget when she became aware of someone staring at her. She turned in time to see Faraday’s gaze flick from her to the argument. He’d been unexpectedly quiet after she’d made him back down, and again a tiny flame of guilt sparked in her heart. He was cruel, and arrogant, and power-hungry, but she hadn’t exactly been polite to him—no, it didn’t matter, because he didn’t deserve any consideration and she shouldn’t feel guilty about anything.

  Finally, when it was nearly noon, she said, “I think we need to break this discussion down into smaller pieces, because there’s a great deal of material here—no, Mister Caxton, that wasn’t a criticism. I would like to call an interim meeting—” a term she’d learned from her black leather book— “in three days to discuss the taxation reports, and I want each department to prepare a budget report to be presented at the next regular Council meeting in a week. Does anyone have any other suggestions?”

  No one did.

  “Then—thank you again, ladies and gentlemen, you’re dismissed.”

  She couldn’t tell for sure, but she felt the councilors left with more alacrity than they had the first time. She had no idea if she’d done the right thing, but Hien had always said When someone makes a demand of you, turn it back on them and you will see how urgent the demand truly is and Elspeth had decided having the departments spend energy on budgets would at least give her time to come to grips with Caxton’s accounting procedures.

  She rose from her chair after the rest of them and nearly bumped into Faraday, who alone hadn’t moved for the door. Anxiety gripped her heart—if he was going to yell at her, it was going to turn into a shouting match. She knew from her reading she couldn’t dismiss a councilor unless he broke the law or all the other councilors agreed, so that shouting match would only make her life harder. “Yes, Mister Faraday?”

  “Your Majesty,” Faraday said in a low voice, though there was no one nearby to hear, “I realize we have frequently been at odds, but I truly do need to speak with you. If you can overcome your need to disregard everything I say.”

  Elspeth gaped. “My need?” she exclaimed. “Mister Faraday, you have done nothing but criticize and belittle me since the moment we met. You are determined to see me fail, and I’m starting to wonder if I should be watching my back!”

  Faraday’s jaw tightened. “You dare accuse me of sabotage? Your willful ignorance is going to destroy this country!”

  “I am not willfully ignorant, you…you insensitive clod! I don’t know why you think you can get away with treating me like a child, but so help me, if I could remove you from office, I would!”

  Faraday spat a blistering curse that made Elspeth blush. “This is getting us nowhere,” he said. “You and I will always be at odds, since you—” He cut his words off and gained control of himself. “What I have to say is important. Can we call a truce long enough to discuss it?” he said, more calmly.

  Elspeth made her fists relax. “All right,” she said, “truce. What is it?”

  “I would prefer to discuss it in private.”

  “There’s no one here. How much more private do you want?”

  Faraday scowled, but the expression wasn’t as fiercely angry as before. He closed the Council chamber door and came back to where Elspeth stood. “These financial reports are confusing,” he said. “I think that’s deliberate.”

  “Deliberate? You think Mister Caxton did something shady?”

  “I can’t tell what he’s done. But I’m sure he’s concealing something. With Finance, that could be serious.”

  Elspeth nodded. “Mister Faraday, I admit I don’t understand the finances at all. How can we prove whether or not Mister Caxton is…I don’t know. Could he be stealing from the Crown?”

  “That’s one possibility. Another is that he’s manipulating the budgets to conceal where money is being moved illicitly from one department to another.”

  “Which would mean the collusion of another department head.”

  “Almost certainly.”

  “But Mister Caxton is the one in charge of the finances, and if this were happening in another department, he’s the one I’d go to for answers. How do we inspect the one who ought to do the inspection?”

  Faraday looked thoughtful. It made him look surprisingly human. “With your permission, I can bring in some Masters from the Scholia to do the analysis. I can vouch for their discretion—if that means anything to you.”

  Elspeth ground her back teeth. “Mister Faraday,” she said, “I don’t like you, I don’t like how you treat me, but you have never given me any reason to doubt your honor. Don’t ascribe worse motives to me than I actually have.”

  Faraday looked past Elspeth toward one of the banners on the wall. “You’re right,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that. Will you allow me to contact the Masters?”

  “I will. Please ask them to—no.” If he could bend, so could she. “Have them report their findings to you, and then I’d like you to let me know the results.”

  Faraday raised an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you trust me.”

  “I’m giving you a chance to prove you’re not a self-centered, arrogant git, Mister Faraday. Don’t disappoint me.”

  To her utter shock, Faraday smiled. “You assume what you think matters to me, your Majesty.”

  She was about to slap him when she realized it was a joke. “Then do it for your country,” she said, smiling despite herself.

  “I think that’s a cause we can actually agree on,” Faraday said.

  It felt so odd not to be fighting with him. “I do want what’s best for Tremontane,” she said. “I know you don’t think I’m qualified, but I’m doing my best.”

  Faraday nodded. He looked down at the Council table, where Elspeth’s hand rested. “I would like to apologize,” he said, his voice once again almost too low to hear, “for what I said to you at the reception. It was uncalled for, and I didn’t realize what an insult I’d given you until it was too late.”

  Stunned, Elspeth said, “You…you’re right, that was a terrible insult.” A shadow of the pain he’d caused her touched her heart and vanished.

  Faraday grimaced. “You called me a puppet master. I’m afraid that struck a little too close to home, and I lost my temper. Again, I apologize.”

  “I accept your apology.” Then the import of his words struck her. “What do you mean, too close to home?”

  Faraday shook his head. “It’s not important.”

  “It is important. Do you mean you really were trying to manipulate me?” Her accord with him dissolved like chalk in rain.

  He let out a deep sigh. “Let’s say I assumed the worst about you, and did everything I
could to keep your inexperience from having lasting effects on this country. In my defense, all anyone knew about you was that you were a timid, sheltered young woman—”

  “Excuse me?”

  “—who was committed to a foreign religious community and had had no instruction in anything necessary to ruling a country. To say that I was terrified for Tremontane is an understatement of epic proportions.”

  Irritation rose up within her. “So you made a lot of assumptions and then blamed me for all of them? What is it about this country that everyone assumes religious means sheltered and ignorant? Let me tell you—”

  “Please, no,” Faraday said. “It may have taken me time, but I realize now I was wrong in what I thought of you, and I apologize for my actions arising from that misunderstanding. It’s true, you lack experience, but you’ve done much to remedy that. Though it didn’t help that you ripped up at me every time I tried to give you direction.”

  “Well, it didn’t help that you were committed to giving me direction in the most insulting, dismissive way possible.”

  “That is not—” Faraday pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. “We have thoroughly misunderstood each other,” he said. “Can we start over? Beginning with each of us assuming the other has good motives, regardless of how our behavior looks?”

  Elspeth thought back over her interactions with Faraday. She had to admit she’d been at fault sometimes, too. If she gave Faraday credit for having really wanted her to succeed, even if his methods had been…flawed, she could see how her actions might have looked irresponsible or selfish. And when she thought about the joke he’d just made, she realized it was possible she’d taken at face value words that were meant to be humorous, like that dig about becoming a law-speaker. “You’re right,” she said. “If I believe you want what’s best for Tremontane, I can look past the things you do that make me react badly. And…I’m sorry. For assuming the worst of you.”

  “I hope this means we can work together instead of being at odds,” Faraday said. “Especially since the documents requiring your signature have piled up in the last three days.”

  Elspeth swore under her breath. Faraday blinked. “All right,” he said, “I hope you won’t take this as another insult, but I genuinely didn’t believe priestesses used that kind of language.”

  “I wasn’t a priestess, just a priestess in training. But we don’t believe heaven is closed to those whose vocabulary is vulgar. And most of those words, I learned from my superiors.”

  Faraday smiled again. “I’ll bring those papers to your office after dinner. And I’ll let you know what the Masters find out. If I contact them immediately, they might have an initial assessment before the interim Council meeting.” He gestured to her to precede him out the door. “At the risk of disrupting our newfound accord, I have to admit I took those papers so I could be sure the important ones didn’t get overlooked. King Francis—” He shut his mouth on more words.

  “It’s all right. I’ve already guessed Francis wasn’t the King he should have been. But thank you for not wanting to speak ill of my dead.”

  Faraday stopped. Elspeth, a few steps ahead of him, turned to see what was wrong. There was a peculiar, unreadable expression on his face. “Your Majesty,” he said, and bowed. “It will be a pleasure working with you.”

  Elspeth thought about that. “You know,” she said, “I think I feel the same.”

  11

  I won’t say everything is better, Elspeth wrote, but Mister Faraday is less overbearing, and I think I’m less oversensitive. And I realize now that he is good at his job, now that he’s no longer trying to do all of mine as well. I feel more secure than I did when I wrote that last letter. Please don’t worry about me. I miss you all and hope you can arrange a visit soon.

  She signed the letter and folded it neatly, sealing it with dark blue wax impressed with her personal signet. She never wore the ring, which had been made for a man and would have been far too large even if it had been made for a woman, but carried it with her on a string around her neck and hoped that was secure enough. It sometimes tapped against the toan jade, a reminder of how her two worlds were still at odds however much she wished otherwise.

  She set the letter aside for Gloria to take to the post and climbed onto her bed to sit cross-legged against the pillows. It was far too soft to be comfortable for meditation, but the floor was too hard and cold and the chairs too angular. Normally, she meditated before sleeping, but the interim Council meeting was scheduled for this afternoon, and after what Faraday’s Masters had found, she needed all the inner peace she could get.

  The toan jade’s soapy texture calmed her even before her fingertips sought out a meditation ritual. The third one, the path of wisdom, called to her today. Maybe this was something she should have been doing all along, seeking for wisdom. She ran her fingers along the deeply carved symbols, words in a language older than either Veriboldan or Tremontanese. Drink deep, and be filled, they said, and she exhaled and felt herself fall into the deep contemplative state beyond language.

  Her breath sounded like the wind stirring the new leaves, her heartbeat was a drum counting out the moments with its slow, measured beats, her skin tingled as the fine linen of her shirt rubbed over her arms. In these moments of deep contemplation, she felt she floated in the pool deep beneath the Irantzen Temple, as if the soft, skin-temperature water bore her up and washed away all her troubles. She let her mind drift without touching on any of the problems and questions that plagued her waking mind, and reached out to heaven for a solution.

  The chime of the mantel clock, sounding the half-hour, brought her gently back to herself. She let out a final calming breath and opened her eyes. Her hands still touched the toan jade, but they’d moved without her direction from the third meditation ritual to the fifth. The path of harmony. That seemed unlikely, given that what she intended to do today would create the opposite of harmony.

  That which is two becomes one, her fingers read, but much must be shed to achieve it. Harmony never came without sacrifice. Maybe that’s what she needed to remember—to embrace harmony without fearing the road to it. She kissed the toan jade, thought briefly of Hien and what she might be doing now, and uncrossed her legs. It was possible Hien was meditating with Elspeth’s medallion right now, but unlikely, given that it was earlier in Veribold than it was in Aurilien and Hien was more likely leading the priestesses in worship. Still, it was a comforting fantasy.

  Elspeth tucked the toan jade away inside her shirt. Her new wardrobe had grown gradually, appearing piece by piece until the dressing room was half full. Elspeth never saw anyone adding to it, which created the illusion that the wardrobes spontaneously generated clothes. She’d folded away her Veriboldan clothes into a single drawer, not wanting to get rid of them entirely, and hung her formal robe with the rest of the clothes.

  She’d taken to wearing warm woolen trousers, a linen shirt, and a loose coat not made to button up the front so it hung open over the shirt. Its shoulders and wide sleeves were decorated with cording that made a pretty abstract pattern Elspeth liked, and it was of twilled cotton heavy enough to feel like wearing flexible armor. She hadn’t seen anyone wearing anything like it, but no one had made any critical comments, not even Simkins, and Elspeth had figured if Simkins approved, it must be appropriate garb for a Queen. Elspeth only cared that it was warm. The palace was never warm enough except in her own bedchamber, the east wing drawing room, and Elspeth’s office, where she’d insisted someone build up the fire early so the room was roasting when she finally arrived.

  Now she shrugged into her coat and combed her hair. She ought to get used to Honey helping her dress, but the idea of someone else putting clothes on her, clothes anyone could manage for themselves, made her uncomfortable. So she had Honey come to her in the evenings when she had to dress for supper and told herself that was good enough.

  Simkins waited outside her office when Elspeth arrived. “I have made the arra
ngements you requested, your Majesty,” she said, her lips pursed as if those arrangements included Simkins eating a lemon.

  “Thank you, Miss Simkins.”

  Simkins didn’t leave. “There is a…gentleman…requesting audience with you,” she went on. “He gave his name as Bakarne of the Arhainen. I thought I should speak with you before making the appointment.”

  Meaning Simkins didn’t think a Veriboldan worthy of speaking with the Queen. “Bakarne of the Arhainen is the son of the Proxy of Veribold and an old friend,” Elspeth said, drawing on some of Simkins’ snobbishness to put steel into her words. “He’s to be allowed to see me at any time. Wait—do you mean he’s here now?”

  Simkins nodded, managing to do so while keeping her chin high.

  Elspeth checked her watch. “Show him in. I have some time before the Council meeting.”

  “Yes, your Majesty,” Simkins said, her voice as icy as Elspeth’s. She turned and walked away.

  Elspeth went into her office, shut the door, and said a few words Hien would deny knowing. The more comfortable Elspeth felt in her role, the less happy she was with Simkins’ attitude. And yet the woman was extremely competent, and Elspeth quailed at the idea of teaching someone else all the minutiae of Simkins’ job, especially when Elspeth didn’t know all of it herself. She sighed and crossed the room to stand in front of the blazing fire, warming her hands. Someday she’d be acclimated to Tremontane, but she didn’t have to be happy about it.

  The door opened. “Bakarne of the Arhainen, your Majesty,” Simkins said disapprovingly. Elspeth ignored her and crossed the room to clasp Mihn’s hands.