Page 21 of The Traitor's Curse
Had he tried to kill me last night? His perfect courtier’smask told me nothing either way, and of course he’d have known, when no one summoned him in a panic, that I hadn’t died. He’d have had more than twelve hours to make sure his disappointment didn’t show. Did he have darker shadows beneath his eyes than usual? Perhaps. But that didn’t mean much.
Anyway, my presence would surely annoy him whether he’d been the would-be murderer or not, and I’d be happy to give him as many reasons as possible to regret his failure. Old bastard.
It’d help that I’d arrived on time and looked the part of a duke, in my black velvet robes all embroidered with silver and pearls. Past practice allowed me to swirl them impressively as I took my seat. The silver inlay and ornately carved ebony and mahogany of the throne framed me well, if slightly overwhelmingly. It’d been made for a somewhat larger man.
Benedict would fit it.
A little tremor there, but Benedict wasn’t the one with the crown on his head, so fuck him.
I shoved that thought away and settled in, allowing my gaze to drift over the assembly with regal nonchalance. My courtiers had arrayed themselves, as usual, down the length of the throne room to my left. That side faced out on the palace’s great courtyard and steps, and a score of windows provided light and ventilation for Calatria’s noble and ambitious. Their jewels competed for the most ostentatious sparkle in the muted sunlight, and the open windows hopefully would provide an exit for their abundance of hot air.
Before me stretched an expanse of intricate black and white tile leading to the double doors to the throne room and the ceremonial guards in their polished armor and peaked helmets, as still as statues, who flanked it.
And then to my right, marshalled into perfect silence andorder by far less ceremonial guards, were my petitioners of the lower orders: merchants and tradesmen, country gentry, and the occasional laborers or peasants who’d mustered the nerve to place their grievances directly before their duke. Anyone could insist that I hear them; the unstated but understood risk was that I’d probably give them short shrift if I felt that my time had been wasted, and that a lower authority could’ve dealt fairly with the problem.
A rustle and low murmur ran through the crowd as everyone in the room took their own seats again now that I’d assumed mine. The leg of a bench scraped and squeaked, one of the ladies to my left tittered, and Lord Zettine cleared his throat and stepped forward.
“His Grace Duke Lucian will now graciously hear his subjects’ petitions,” he intoned, with only the slightest sarcastic twist to the wordgraciously.
He had state robes of his own, also black but with only a tasteful touch of silver around the collar and in the cord of his button loops. The robes billowed magnificently as he stepped forward and took his own richly upholstered seat at the foot of my dais. I had to consciously relax my hands to keep them from clenching into fists on the armrests of the throne.
No. I would not be jealous of my elderly chancellor’s dashing appearance, because that would be a new low. And besides, I was the one who’d spent the morning with the court’s most notorious lover between my—
And again, no, and now I had to clench my fists to take the edge off of the heat that tried to flood into my cheeks. The ones on my face, specifically, although the others…more between them, really. Where I’d been stretched, pulled open, and then forced open with Benedict’s…
Another pointed throat-clearing tumbled me back into reality with a shocking jolt, as if I’d fallen several feet into mythrone.
Lord Zettine had turned to face me, eyebrows raised, and below him knelt the first of the petitioners. By the strained silence in the throne room, he’d been waiting there for me to bid him rise and present his case for rather longer than protocol dictated.
Oh, bloody hell.
I had to clear my own throat and cross my legs, subtly adjusting my robes to make sure nothing was visible in my lap, before I could speak.
“Rise and approach,” I said, in my best approximation of my usual judicial calm. “We will hear your grievance.”
The brass badge of the vintners’ guild he wore on his shoulder gleamed as he hefted himself to his feet, and he launched into an improbable tale of woe involving soured vats of wine that he swore on all the gods and his own life had been delicious—“Fit for your own table, Your Grace!”—before his rival had hired a mage to spoil them. Reading between the lines, the rival had simply made a better batch of wine despite my petitioner’s best attempts to badmouth his products.
The local magistrate had declined his case and sent my court clerk his reasons why, and his pungent commentary on idiots who’d clearly consumed too much of their own vinegar made me smile. He deserved greater scope for his legal talents and sense of humor. I lifted a finger to summon the clerk, meaning to have him make a note for me to promote the magistrate into a higher position within Calatria’s justiciary.
But as the clerk mounted the steps, pencil and tablet at the ready, a prickling tingle swept up my spine, raising all the hair on the back of my neck and settling in my scalp, the silver circlet I wore suddenly too heavy and too tight.
My fingers went rigid around the armrests of my throne an instant before Benedict’s voice rang out from behind me.“Perhaps I can offer my humble assistance, Your Grace.”
Humble? Every syllable dripped with arrogance, and as he took up a position beside my throne, cloak swirling in a way that even Lord Zettine would have to envy, a low murmur went through the assembly, lords and commoners alike.
No, I would not give him the satisfaction of looking directly at him, even though his presence exercised a nearly irresistible magnetic power. Instead, I tilted my head barely enough for a sidelong view and nodded at him as he bowed, one hand resting dashingly on his sword hilt, glossy hair and ruby earring swinging. My neck had gone so stiff the nod felt jerky and awkward, hopefully not visibly so.
How had he snuck up on me? He must have followed me through my private antechamber behind the throne. Hopefully he’d refrained from skewering Gerfred, either with his cock or his sword. But I doubted he’d made much of a fuss about allowing Benedict through. No one ever did, damn them.
I allowed myself a smirk in Benedict’s general direction, raising one eyebrow. We might have a private arrangement, but if he wanted to interrupt my public audience with condescending offers of help, distracting everyone present with his eye-catching appearance, then I could publicly jab at him, too.
“I welcome your opinion, Lord Benedict,” I said. “You of all men are qualified to offer one on large quantities of cheap wine.”
A nervous-sounding wave of laughter swept through the left side of the room. On the right, someone chortled, coughed, and went abruptly silent.
Benedict stared down at me, his expression completely bland—except for something heated and dangerous kindling in the depths of his eyes, something no one else in the room would be near enough to see.
Everything faded away but Benedict, and the uneven hum of my blood pumping too fast, too hard. His eyes bored into me, penetrating right through the velvet robes and the mask of indifference and unerringly finding that soft, inner part of me that had no defenses at all.
