The Queen's Rising(8)

“How long do you think it will take?” I panted as we opened the doors and stepped into the shadows of the back hall, soaked and shivering.

“Not long,” Abree replied. “Oh! Remember how you were helping me plot the second half of my play? The one where Lady Pumpernickel gets thrown in the dungeon for stealing the diadem?”

“Mm-hmm.” Even though I was no longer studying dramatics, Abree continued to solicit my help when it came to plotting her plays. “You don’t know how to get her out of the dungeon, do you?”

She sheepishly blushed. “No. And before you say it . . . I don’t want to kill her off.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “That was years ago, Abree.”

She was referring to the time when I had been an arden of dramatics and we had both written a skit for Master Xavier. While Abree had authored a comical scene of two sisters fighting over the same beau, I had penned a bloody tragedy of a daughter stealing her father’s throne. I killed off all the characters save for one by the end, and Master Xavier had obviously been shocked by my dark plotting.

“If you do not wish to kill her,” I said as we began to walk down the hall, “then make her find a secret door behind a skeleton, or have a guard shift his allegiance and help her out, but only at a twisted, unexpected cost.”

“Ah, a secret door!” Abree cried, linking her arm with mine. “You plot like a fiend, Bri! I wish I schemed like you.” When she smiled down at me, I felt a drop of remorse, that I had been too frightened of the stage to become a mistress of dramatics.

Abree must have felt the same, for she tightened her hold on me and murmured, “You know, it’s not too late. You can write a two act play in eight days, and impress Master Xavier, and—”

“Abree.” I playfully hushed her.

“Is this how two of Magnalia’s ardens behave a week before their solstice of fate?” The voice startled us. Abree and I stopped in the hall, surprised to see Mistress Therese, the arial of wit, standing with her arms crossed in blunt disapproval. She looked down her thin, pointed nose at us with eyebrows raised, disgusted by our drenched appearance. “You act as if you are children, not women about to gain their cloaks.”

“Much apologies, Mistress Therese,” I murmured, giving her a deep curtsy of respect. Abree mimicked me, although her curtsy was quite careless.

“Tidy up right away, before Madame sees you.”

Abree and I tripped over each other in our haste to get away from her. We stumbled down the corridor into the foyer, to the mouth of the stairs.

“Now, that is a demon in the flesh,” Abree whispered, far too loudly, as she flew up the stairs.

“Abree!” I chided, slipping on my hem just as I heard Cartier behind me.

“Brienna?”

I caught my fall on the balustrade. My balance restored, I whirled on the stair to look down at him. He stood in the foyer, his stark white tunic belted at his waist, his gray breeches nearly the same shade as my dress. He was fastening his passion cloak about his neck, preparing to depart in the rain.

“Master?”

“I assume you will want another private lesson Monday after our morning lecture with Ciri?” He stared up at me, waiting for the answer he knew I would give.

I felt my hand slide on the railing. My hair was uncommonly loose, falling about me in wild, brown tangles, my dress was drenched, my hem dripped a quiet song over the marble. I knew I must look completely undone to him, that I looked nothing like a Valenian woman on the verge of passioning, that I looked nothing like the scholar he was trying to mold. And yet I raised my chin and replied, “Yes, thank you, Master Cartier.”

“Perhaps there will be no letter to distract you next time?” he asked, and my eyes widened as I continued to stare down at him, trying to read beyond the steady composure of his face.

He could punish me for exchanging Francis’s and Sibylle’s letters. He could impart discipline, because I had broken a rule. And so I waited, waited to see what he would require of me.

But then the left corner of his lips moved, too subtle to be a genuine smile—although I liked to imagine it might have been—as he bestowed a curt bow of farewell. I watched him pass through the doors and melt into the storm, wondering if he was being merciful or playful, desiring that he would stay, relieved that he had departed.

I continued my way up the stairs, leaving a trail of rain, and wondered . . . wondered how Cartier always seemed to make me want two conflicting things at once.





TWO


A MAEVAN PORTRAIT



The Art Studio was a chamber I had avoided since my first failed year at Magnalia. But as I tentatively entered it that rainy afternoon, my wet hair wound in a bun, I was reminded of the good memories that room had hosted for me. I remembered the mornings I spent sitting beside Oriana as we sketched beneath the careful instruction of Mistress Solene. I remembered the first time I tried to paint, the first time I tried to illuminate a page, the first time I attempted an etching. And then came the darker moments that still sat in my mind as a bruise, such as when I realized my art lay flat on the page while Oriana’s breathed and came to life. Or the day Mistress Solene had pulled me aside and said gently, Perhaps you should try music, Brienna.

“You’re here!”

I glanced across the room to see Oriana readying a place for me, a new streak of red paint on her cheek. This room had always been overwhelming with clutter and mess, but I knew it was because Oriana and Mistress Solene made their own paints. The longest table in the room was completely covered with jars of lead and pigments, crucibles and earthenware bowls, pitchers of water, chalkstone, stacks of vellum and parchment, a carton of eggs, a large bowl of ground chalk. It smelled of turpentine, rosemary, and of the green weed they boiled to mysteriously render pink paint.