The pilgrimage party, Margarite among them, departed.
The King saw them off. Margarite could not quite bring herself to meet Chesa’s eyes.
The days that followed were outwardly the same as always. The King attended to affairs of state as he always had, went hunting as he always had, fulfilled his duties as he always had. But his irritability had grown considerably, and his moods had darkened well beyond his usual measure.
In public he seemed to restrain himself somewhat, but in private he made no such effort.
Hyderlin endured, pressing a cloth to her temple where a flying shard of a vase had cut her.
So long as you can be a perfect king where it counts. As long as that is true—I can do anything. That is my purpose.
It was autumn when the Saint’s pilgrimage came to its end. Chesa was half-drunk. He sat with his head buried in both hands and muttered to himself.
“If only I could press my lips to her cheek. I would have given anything for it. Perhaps even my life.”
Hyderlin watched the wine trembling in its silver cup and listened to Chesa’s lament in silence.
“She’s coming back soon. But I won’t be able to stand at her side the way I used to. She turned me down with such finality.”
“……”
“Why did she refuse me? Because she’s a Saint, meant to carry out God’s will? But couldn’t she do her charitable work as a queen? Wouldn’t she be able to do it even better that way? She could—couldn’t she? Think of how much gold and grain I have—all of it would be hers the moment she married me—”
“……”
“I can’t understand why she refused me.”
Chesa’s mouth twisted.
“Could it be she refused because my origins are too low-born?”
“……”
“You’d think a handmaid’s bastard was beneath a Saint’s notice. I suppose you’d need to be at least a Sarg Gloriosa’s level before it was even a question of compatibility.”
“Chesa.”
Hyderlin said it quietly, but the warning was clear. She had long been vaguely aware that Chesa carried something sharp and painful around the subject of his mother’s humble birth. But to give voice to it was beneath him.
Even after Hyderlin’s caution, Chesa did not calm himself. If anything, he turned to her with a face that had gone coldly still.
“Sister. You told me once that you would do anything for my sake.”
The deep lines of Chesa’s face were half in shadow. His dark eyes—so like Hyderlin’s own—burned without warmth.
“Make that woman my queen.”
Nonsense.
“…You’ve had too much to drink.”
Hyderlin rose from her seat. She removed the wine cup and the bottle from in front of Chesa. Chesa seized her wrist.
“I can’t live without her.”
“Don’t say stupid things. You can.”
“If she becomes happy with another man, I’ll kill him and then I’ll kill myself.”
“……”
“I’ll die, I tell you.”
The words of the one person left in the world who shared her blood fell on her like a blow. Hyderlin’s grip on the wine bottle went white at the knuckles. She felt something surge up inside her.
Chesa kept murmuring, like a man who had lost his mind.
“Do you want me dead, Sister?”
“……”
“After all—if I were gone, the throne of Lotsa would pass to you—”
“Chesa Bisretio san Lotsa! That is enough! How long are you going to make a fool of yourself over a woman?!”
It had been a very long time since Hyderlin had raised her voice at Chesa like this. Chesa finally fell silent. Hyderlin felt, with some surprise, that she wanted to cry.
“…Go to sleep.”
She pulled her wrist free. His hand fell limp.
Hyderlin forced Chesa into bed and dropped into the chair beside it herself. She pressed both hands over her face.
The dark behind her eyes was absolute.
Autumn in Nadirotsa brought frequent rain. Tonight had been no exception—a heavy downpour had swept through earlier, and Hyderlin’s coat was still soaked through.
Leone, however, took it from her with no apparent concern for the state of it.
“Thank you for coming all this way, Your Highness.”
Hyderlin had a weakness for fine food. Leone Collozzo—lord of the underworld—knew it. He drew freely on the fortune he had built straddling the line between the lawful and the unlawful, procuring rare and exotic ingredients to lay before her at their meetings.
Truffle soup. A roasted veal calf seasoned with costly spices. Wine poured from the finest red grapes….
Leone fed her well and sent her home with a heavy purse. The Captain of the Royal Guard, in return, turned a blind eye to Leone’s operations and lent him her hand when it was needed.
Mutual benefit, generously described. Tawdry bribery, if one chose to be honest about it.
Tonight’s meeting was a continuation of the same arrangement.
Hyderlin dropped into her chair. She was wringing the water from her damp hair with a dry cloth when servants began carrying dishes to the table.
Leone, seated across from her, sliced open the breast of a roasted goose with a silver knife. A plume of white steam rose, carrying with it a rich, savory fragrance. It was the sort of wine she herself had never managed to acquire.
“I ought to have come to call on you myself, rather than making you come here like this.”
Leone was always the one who played host, and Hyderlin was always the guest. The nature of their arrangement meant that their meetings had always taken this form—Hyderlin coming to him.
Had that stung him, somewhere?
Hyderlin chewed a piece of goose and replied without ceremony.
“I feel a bit guilty, always being the one who receives the invitation. I’ll have you over on my side sometime.”
“I wouldn’t know if that were wise. My standing being what it is, setting foot in the palace carelessly might tarnish your reputation, Your Highness.”
“I wouldn’t have expected you to worry about a thing like that.”
“Of course I do. You’d be astonished how much I care about reputation.”
“That’s an interesting thing to say from someone who’s cultivated quite a notorious one.”
“Infamy is nothing more than praise for my power. I can hardly object to praise.”
Leone smiled, all teeth.
“But for all that praise, I have my limits. They may call me the lord of the underworld—but I am not a true nobleman. I have always found that sad, you know. Here—please, allow me.”
Leone filled Hyderlin’s silver cup to the brim with high-quality wine from the monastery cellars. The ripe, heady fragrance of well-aged fruit drifted up to her.
Hyderlin smiled faintly, and Leone watched it and continued.
“In the light of day, out of the shadows of the night, I am just a common criminal and a self-made man. Regrettably.”
“Is a noble title what you want?”
Hyderlin didn’t bother dancing around it. Leone gave a short sound of appreciation at the directness.
“As ever, Your Highness. Yes. I want a place in the upper ranks.”
“How high?”
“Countship, at minimum.”
“That’s…not easy.”
Buying a knighthood or a barony with money wasn’t particularly difficult. But above that, money alone rarely solved the problem.
Leone took a sip of wine and said:
“It would be a simple enough matter if you arranged a marriage for me—to a woman who holds or stands to inherit a countship.”
“Hm.”
Hyderlin made a pensive sound and rubbed her chin.
That’s the difficulty, isn’t it. What noblewoman in her right mind would choose to marry Leone Collozzo?
Leone Collozzo had wealth and power to rival any noble, but he had come from the slums. The nobility feared him while privately looking down at him—that much was perfectly plain.
A man of such low origin, and he has the gall.
The nobility was an insular class, obsessed with blood and lineage. No matter how wealthy or well-spoken a person might be, a low-born origin was enough for them to be dismissed.
Even Hyderlin, the King’s own daughter, had known that first-hand.
Daughter of a handmaid.
That was why her life had been a constant struggle. A struggle to be acknowledged as the King’s daughter rather than the handmaid’s child.
She had wielded her blade to prove herself the daughter of the Warrior King. She had received her knighthood, and in the end become the King’s own knight.
She was no longer the handmaid’s daughter.
She was the King’s sister and the Captain of the Royal Guard.
Hyderlin ran through a mental list of noble women who currently held, or might stand to inherit, a title of countess rank or above.
Among them—who would be willing to take the blow to her reputation and ally herself with the lord of the underworld?
Difficult to say, off the top of her head. But a bit of digging into individual circumstances might turn up something—there were always one or two nobles quietly in need of money that couldn’t be officially named.
“I’ll compile a list and send it over within three days.”
But Leone shook his head.
“In fact, there is a particular lady I have in mind.”
“Oh?”
“Your Highness.”
“Tell me.”
“It is you, Your Highness.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“You’re taking this joke too far.”
Hyderlin held Leone’s gaze with a composed smile.
I’ll give you a chance to take it back and call it a jest.
She tapped a finger against the tabletop.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
But Leone did not take the words back. Instead, he assumed the posture of a negotiator presenting his opening terms.
“Your Highness—consider the advantages. You hold the power of the light, and I hold the power of the dark. If we were to marry, the wedding gift would be this country itself. We would have the whole of it kneeling at our feet—more wealth to gather in, more people to command, more fine food to enjoy. Doesn’t the thought of it taste sweet, even in imagination?”
Leone laced his fingers together and rested his chin on top of them.
Hyderlin studied the rings on his ten fingers—gold, white gold, rare gemstones—each one alone worth enough to purchase a manor outright.
The master of the criminal world, draped in extravagance from head to foot, gave her a sideways smile.
“If you will permit me an uncharacteristically romantic addition—I have always thought there was something between us. A kind of mutual understanding. You might even say we are cut from the same cloth. We are, in many ways, alike.”
“You and I?”
The pointed skepticism rolled right off Leone like water.
“You enjoy the authority that infamy grants you too, don’t you, Your Highness?”
“……”
“Both of us started in the gutter and clawed our way to the top of the heap. I was born in a pauper’s almshouse in the slums and made myself lord of the underworld…”
Leone bared his white teeth in a grin.
“And you were born the daughter of a handmaid, and made yourself Captain of the Royal Guard.”
Daughter of a handmaid.
Something inside Hyderlin went flat and cold.
She was the daughter of the late King and the sister of the current one. She was a princess.
By rights, she ought to have considered it an insult to have received a marriage proposal from a common criminal, a man of slum origin—grounds for a slap across the face, or a dueling note at minimum. But considering the history between them, she decided to keep it civilized and end this with a polite refusal.
“Leone. I have sworn to live unmarried. I’m sorry, but I must decline your proposal.”
Leone replied lightly:
“Break the oath.”
“You presume too much.”
“Your Highness. Marry me. And let us make our children kings.”
Hyderlin flung the silver cup without thinking. It sliced through the air in a clean arc and struck Leone squarely in the head with a dull crack before clattering to the floor. Hyderlin spoke into the sound of Leone’s hissed groan.
“Leone Collozzo. There are limits to what I will tolerate from you. If you don’t know the meaning of basic decency, at least learn how to keep your mouth shut.”
Hyderlin looked at the cooling goose and clicked her tongue. She rose from her seat, the legs of the chair scraping an unpleasant note across the floor.
“Have a pleasant evening.”
She turned away and took her coat from the rack. It was still damp, still cold.
When I get back—a hot bath. Then a late supper. Then I’ll sit with Chesa over wine and talk about his marriage prospects.
Base-born or not, Chesa was this country’s King. There was no shortage of noble women of character and refinement who would wish to marry him.
Let him meet a few of them. He would forget the Saint before long.
She had the door handle in her grip. She was prepared to leave. Would have left, in fact—were it not for Leone’s final words.
“In any case, Your Highness will marry me. If you wish to go on living as a princess.”
