‘She is asking for you,’ the servant says as they enter the castle kitchens. They set down a silver bowl full of water fragranced with winter rose petals, and cast down a muslin cloth. Syndony eyes the fabric as she rises from the long table where she had been making arrangements with the cook. It is stained brown and red, and flecks of grey flesh cling to its weft.
‘Take a rest,’ she tells the servant, patting him on the shoulder as she passes. No one can bear to be in the presence of that stench for long.
She makes her way out of the kitchens and climbs the long, narrow servants’ staircase to the royal turret. As Castle Brynd’s stewardess of some thirteen years, she is now permitted to use the nobles’ passages, but it has become habit. Besides, she will never forget where she comes from. Nobles are adept at giving orders but have not learnt to wipe their own arses. She’ll stick with the servants’ passageways, thank you.
Dowager Queen Huntlye, the last surviving wife of the current king’s father, lies like a discarded carcass upon her royal bed. The chamber is oppressive. The curtains have been drawn to retain the heat from the fire, but no amount of sweet-smelling heartwood can disguise the rot that emanates from the old queen’s body.
Lord Atthill, a man of seven and forty years with a fine head of grey hair and a patrician face, is hunched over her. He clutches her hand and does not bother to look up when Syndony makes her presence known. All pretence is set aside, Syndony sees, in their final moments together.
‘I was told her majesty was asking for me,’ Syndony tells Atthill’s back.
‘Yes,’ he says. His voice is mud-thick. ‘She wants to say her farewells.’
Syndony raises an eyebrow. If either of them could see her, she would be more tactful, but the old queen’s eyes are closed and her long-time lover is too steeped in grief to care.
‘Very well, my lord,’ she says, approaching. He kisses the back of Huntlye’s hand and hastily wipes his eyes on his sleeves before standing.
‘I will be outside,’ he says, to Huntlye more than Syndony. Syndony tenses. What does the old man think is going to happen, that he needs to stand guard?
Once Atthill has closed the door behind him, Syndony sets herself down upon his stool. She does not take Huntlye’s hand. She may have served the woman for nigh on two decades, but there is little affection between them. The stench of rotten flesh is overwhelming, but Syndony is prepared. She turns away in case the old queen sees, and dabs a drop of fairy nectar beneath each nostril. Immediately, the smell is replaced by the scent of childhood memories, of wonder at small beauties, of thyme steeped in midnight rain.
The woman’s eyes are slits. Her shift, made of the lightest silk so as not to exacerbate her skin condition further, rises and falls slowly, like meat on a spit at the end of the night, when the turnbroach’s arms are aching. Syndony does not look at the hints of bare flesh protruding from beneath the scuffle of blankets. The physicians can do nothing for the grey rot, and Syndony refuses to be moved by it.
‘You wished to see me, highness?’ Syndony says.
For a while, she thinks the old woman might be sleeping – the kind of sleep that starts shallow, then wades out into the depths of death – but eventually Huntlye stirs.
‘Mistress Syndony?’ Every syllable is a rasping effort.
‘Yes, highness.’
‘I cannot see you.’
You can hear me well enough, what more do you want? Syndony thinks, but the old queen’s fingers are scrambling for her, so Syndony takes her hand.
‘There you are.’
‘Here I am.’
Syndony looks away, towards the fire. Her heart is strangely quick. The fire conjures memories of her first meeting with her mistress. Huntlye had been newly widowed, back then. She was like that heartwood fire: a mighty woman of cropped hair, and skin like the purple-black flowers of the monkshood that grows in the castle’s gardens. A warm fury, a bright challenge. A fishwife, some of the servants used to call her, and she was, but Syndony never minded. At least this mistress did not pretend at niceties with her household, only to throw them to the dragons later.
‘You… know things. Know people,’ Huntlye says.
What does that mean? Does the old queen know what Syndony does when she is not acting as stewardess of Brynd? Does she know of the gold exchanged for knowledge – much of it, over the years – almost, now, enough to sustain her and her family should they fall upon difficulties.
Or perhaps she is merely rambling in her dying moments.
‘Yes, your highness,’ Syndony says.
‘My daughter.’
‘The queen of Alpich, your highness?’
Huntlye squeezes Syndony’s hand. Yes.
Syndony leans in. Lord Atthill may be both loyal and discreet, but Syndony does not like to risk openly talking of the queen of Alpich on Elben’s soil.
‘What of her?’ she says, low in Huntlye’s ear.
‘I have not seen her in so very long.’
‘No, your highness.’
Not in twenty years or more, when the former king’s oldest child was sent to marry a foreign king. Syndony remembers the celebrations well: the young princess’s procession through Pilvreen was a rare moment when the people of that territory came out in support of their queen and her regal daughter. The townspeople sold biscuits with the princess’s likeness stamped on them, and the royal women threw pretty ribbons into the crowd as they passed, to be kept as heirlooms – silk touched by not one but two queens.
‘The king… he will not… He is angry…’ Huntyle says, squeezing Syndony’s fingers again and shaking her head. Her eyes are closed, but there is nothing peaceful about her grimace.
‘Alpich has declared war upon Elben, your highness,’ Syndony says, as gently as she can manage. ‘Of course his majesty is angry.’
‘No. No. That is not what happened,’ Huntlye says, her thrashing becoming more urgent. ‘Henry declared war on Alpich. He declared war on my daughter. My daughter. My own heart. He wants to kill her. He wants-‘
‘Quiet,’ Syndony hisses. She presses Huntlye’s arms into the mattress, hoping that the pressure will calm her. Syndony cannot – will not – be associated with treasonous talk. She cannot risk anyone knowing that Huntlye spoke such words, or else Brynd and all its people will come under suspicion. It would be the treacherous Queen Isabet all over again, that perpetual stain upon the territory’s history.
The queen stills, but her breath is ragged. Syndony neither knows nor cares who incited war: King Henry or his elder half-sister. Alpich, a country of stone and stories and rough mountains, may be one of Elben’s closest neighbours geographically, but it has ever swung between friend and foe. The royal princess’s marriage to the King of that country was designed to forge a stronger alliance, but she was widowed shortly after giving birth. Since becoming regent Dowager Queen Marion of Alpich has done little else but throw insult after insult at her brother in Elben. As far as Syndony can tell, it is naught but a petty sibling quarrel played out upon a vast map. She has no patience for it, for as ever the common people are the ones who suffer most.
‘What would you have me do, your highness?’ she says, more gently.
In the distance, the bells of Pilvreen’s Sanctuary mark the hour with a mournful toll. All ten pass before Huntlye answers.
‘Bring her… to me,’ she whispers.
Syndony closes her eyes. The old queen has lost her mind. Syndony could tell her that there is not enough time – that she has but hours to live and the journey from Alpich, across the Swegan Sea and through the Northern Straight of Sckell, would take several moons. She could tell her that even if the Queen of Alpich could make the journey in time, King Henry and his advisors would see her arrested before her ship had dropped anchor.
‘She is nearly here,’ Syndony says. She withdraws her hand from her mistress’s. The lie feels easier if she is not touching her.
‘Truly?’
‘She sails into Garclyffe harbour at this very moment.’
Huntlye begins to weep silently. Her grimace is softer, her movements like velvet.
‘Thank you, Syndony,’ she says. She plucks at the golden chain around her neck; a ridiculous show of vanity for a woman who is already more corpse than living being.
‘Take it,’ she tells Syndony.
Syndony undoes the clasp and draws the jewellery away from Huntlye’s skin.
‘Are you certain, your highness?’ she says.
‘Yes. Yes.’
The gold lies like a cold, coiled snake on Syndony’s palm. It is studded here and there with opals and Pilvreen garnets that glitter oddly in the sunless room. She pockets it. No point in feeling guilty: the chain would only go to the King or one of his queens, and Cernunnos knows none of them are lacking in finery.
Huntlye closes her eyes at last, and her breathing slows. The lie was all she needed. Syndony opens the door and beckons Lord Atthill in. He returns to his bedside seat and rests his head upon the rotting lap of the woman who has been his lover (or he her’s) for fifteen years or more.
Syndony hovers. She has not been dismissed and can do no more here, and she has a castle to keep running. Yet to slip away now feels disrespectful, not of a dying queen but of this dying woman.
So she waits. In the thickness of the chamber, she fancies she can hear the shouts of imagined sailors all the way in Garclyffe, to the south. They drop anchor and lower the Alpich flag. A woman, light brown skin lined more than it was when she left these shores, is helped onto the walkway. She drops fat bags of gold coins into the hands of her brother’s soldiers, and they step aside to allow her into a carriage. The horses are whipped into a gallop. They careen into Brynd’s courtyard, and the woman hurries out, running for the stairs that will bring her to this room. A knock at the door. Mother, I am here.
The dowager queen of Brynd breathes no more.
Lord Atthill begins to sob, as Syndony quietly opens the door, lifting it a little so that the hinges do not creak. Outside, on the stairs, she gathers herself. Poor, foolish woman. Separated from her only child by the cruel games of monarchs. They only ever bring heartbreak and bloodshed.
She returns to the kitchens, where the news of their queen’s death spreads like spilt cream. No one pretends to be sad – that is the way of the people of Brynd. They do not make false gods of their monarchs. Their grief is practical, not hysterical.
One of her granddaughters – a hale and long-limbed girl of sixteen – is kneading pastry in the corner. Syndony beckons her over.
‘Here,’ she says, dropping the gold chain into the girl’s hand. ‘Tomorrow, get your stepfather to break this down and see what he can get for the gold and stones.’
She nods, examining the jewels and soft metal between her fingers as though sifting flour. Syndony likes the sharp assessment in her study: she has taught her well. At last, the girl slips the chain into her gown pocket and returns to the pastry.
The kitchen rumbles on, an endless machine, like the great wheel of a mill, for though the queen of Brynd is dead, her people still need to eat. Syndony settles herself back down at the long table and takes up her quill to make a change to tomorrow’s dishes. There’s no point in slaughtering a honeydragon if there is no monarch to taste it.
She has no doubt that a new queen will be installed at Brynd soon. Perhaps King Henry has already chosen his bride. Some pretty, pliant chit, no doubt. Whoever she is, Syndony will treat her as she treats all of them. She will offer obedience and gladly take her coin, of course, but that is the limit of her service. For the games of monarchs are cruel, and full of bloodshed, and the price they cost to play is never, ever, worth the gamble.
