The Tenth Queen of Ilyen

Ardania. Bilokamin.

Livienna

My mother taught me to dance in this hall. Kazimir taught me to stand. Both lessons came down to the same thing: keep your back straight, and never let them see it hurts.

The russet gown dragged me down towards the flagstones, the heavy brocade bit into my shoulders, and my mother's pearls closed round my throat like a noose about to squeeze out my last breath.

I stood at the right hand of the carved walnut throne. My mother used to sit here, listening to her councillors report on harvests and on the monsters of the Beyond, while I hid in the folds of her skirts. Now the usurper's heavy hands lay on the broad armrests.

Kazimir smelled of costly eastern oils and weapon grease. Whether my feet hurt was nothing to him. I had been put on display like an expensive doll, so that the whole hall could see the living heir of the white crown. A living seal. The one who would soon consecrate every stolen scrap of this land.

The conqueror shifted. His fingers slid slowly off the carved walnut of the armrest.

"Does the feast please you, my love?" Kazimir's voice poured out like silk, meant for my ears alone.

Unlike his father Radomyr, he wore no beard. His face, with its sharp, predatory cheekbones, might have been cut from marble — the flawless beauty of a blade wiped clean of blood. Thick black hair fell softly to his broad shoulders. The velvet of his caftan, embroidered with silver thread, glinted coldly in the torchlight. He was older than me by only three years, and between us lay an entire graveyard.

Kazimir put out his hand. Long, well-tended fingers settled on my wrist, where the pulse beat like something cornered.

The muscles under my corset drew into an icy knot. I held my breath, forcing myself to endure the touch, not to snatch my hand away. Back straight. Face still.

Though what I wanted, more than anything, was to smash my fist into that marble face and run — into the night, into the Russet Wood — anything rather than moulder here as an obedient plaything for sorcerers.

Kazimir dared to look me in the eye and smile gently. Dared to touch me as though nothing had happened. As though it were not he who had bathed my home in blood with his own hands, and cut my father down in front of me.

That touch carried me back into that cursed day. And suddenly the smell of roast boar and spices rotted into the sickening reek of hot iron and burning meat. The torchlight swayed, and the hall spilled over into a crimson mess.

The crack of the oak doors. The ring of my guardsmen thinning under the attackers' press. My father tore out his sword — a quick, desperate movement. But Kazimir moved like a shadow. His blade went into my father's chest softly, almost tenderly, as into melting butter. He did not even slow his step. He simply stepped over the body bleeding out on the floor and walked on — towards my mother.

By then other men's mercenaries had hold of me. Fingers bit into my elbows, my joints cracked while I tore my nails on their rough leather gauntlets, trying to break free.

I caught my mother's last look. There was no fear in her green eyes.

Don't be afraid of anything, my love. You are stronger than you think — her voice sounded in my head a moment before the dark swallowed me.

I wanted to die then.

I came to on silk pillows in my own bedchamber. Kazimir sat on the edge of the bed, holding my hand, looking at me almost tenderly, smiling shyly. And below, in the hall, the servants were washing my parents' blood off the white flagstones.

"You are beautiful as a star, Livienna," he said. "You have bloomed these three years. I shall be the happiest of men when you become my wife."

Bile rose in my throat. It seemed that if I opened my mouth I would be sick over his silver-embroidered velvet. The monster that had destroyed my family was sitting here. It dared to touch my skin. Dared to stroke my cheekbone with its thumb.

I screamed.

Wildly, out of my senses, until my throat tore. I promised to cut his throat open. I choked on tears, wrenching my hand out of his fingers.

But Kazimir did not lose his temper. Oh no. He set about comforting me — stroking my forehead softly, and that counterfeit sorrow on his face made me want to flay the skin off myself alive. Later he went out, and in the quiet of the corridor the lock clicked heavily.

The worst of it was that I had known him before. Three years earlier Radomyr had brought his son to the feast of Fireblossom, and I, a small and foolish girl, had gazed enchanted at the slender guest from the east, danced with him and hidden my blush. Now I would draw my mother's pearls tight round the throat of the girl I had been.

Kazimir left me alive out of pure calculation. Since I was fourteen I have been his betrothed, and in a few months my body will come of age, and then he will set me on the throne beside him. He will order the priests to bind our hands with a ribbon, and the butchery that happened in this very hall will be given the name of marriage.

Until then — stand at his right hand, and hold your tongue.

The stag hewn from grey stone above the arch — our family crest, which the usurper had never got round to knocking down — watched me with empty sockets. Reproaching me without words: Why are you still alive, last of the House of Ilienna?

Because dead, I take no revenge. That is the whole price of my life.

Kazimir's fingers still lay on my wrist. The reek of burning meat melted back into the smell of roast boar, and the crimson in the cups became simply wine.

"The feast is too loud for my taste," I answered in the same flat tone I had trained myself to use with him.

Slowly, a hair's breadth at a time, I drew my wrist out from under his fingers. Kazimir did not hold on. He only twitched his lips thinly in a smile and leaned back against the throne, losing interest entirely. Like a player who has made his move and now waits idly for the answer.

Below, at the long oak tables, the drunken revel churned. Lords who only last winter had kissed my father's ring and sworn to die for Bilokamin now gulped greedily at fatty meat, drowning their beards in strong ale. They trembled — not for my fate, but for their lands, which the new master could redraw with a single stroke of the pen. So they bought his favour with loud laughter.

I raised my eyes higher — to where the July night stood frozen in the lancet windows. On the rim of the horizon a predatory russet band showed through the blackness. The Russet Wood.

Mortals called it the Beyond and whispered that no one comes back from there. In the Russet Wood a mad, unending November burned.

My nurse had taught me from childhood never to call aloud those who live past that band. Call them the Kindly Ones, the Neighbours — whatever you like, only never by their true name, or they will hear. Kazimir's people still shied from the russet curtain beyond the windows, and at night they barred their doors with oak beams as thick as a man's arm.

The wood did not frighten me. It called. Russet light lay across the wine-spattered white flagstones and teased my fingers, and I thought that to step in there and not come back was not the worst way out. At least there is no throne there.

Kazimir barely moved two fingers.

The noise in the hall was cut off as though with a knife. Hundreds of voices, laughter, the clatter of dishes — all of it choked into silence so suddenly that we could hear the hoarse panting of a hunting hound under the nearest table.

"I am tired of eating to your grunting." Kazimir's voice came quietly, almost gently. That softness cramped my stomach. "Let us be entertained. Haw!"

He did not raise his voice. He simply let the name drop into the silence, and it took root.

The side door creaked. The jester came into the hall as easily as though this castle, Bilokamin and the whole of my ruined country belonged to him alone. With every smooth, catlike step the copper and silver bells on his broad collar and long sleeves sniggered at us.

He was vexingly beautiful. Gifted with that slippery beauty that blinds the human eye: you look and cannot look away; you turn aside and nothing is left but a sweet faintness, as though you had been let for a moment into something forbiddenly lovely. But I had seen through him since our first meeting at Fireblossom.

Now the carmine and white lead lay on his cheeks perfectly even, like somebody else's skin. This court, which betrayed without pause and swallowed the slaughter of my family in silence, adored the tyrant's fool.

That was why I hated him most bitterly of all. He capered before a murderer. He fed from his hand. Looking at that sweet smile painted in carmine, I wondered with disgust what such spinelessness cost.

"My lord." Hawthorn bent in a deep bow. The long sleeves of his black-and-red motley swept the dirty floor. When he straightened, a heavy ashwood board for tavlei had already appeared in his hands. "A game?"

The jester tilted his head slyly, and the silver at his neck answered thinly.

"You do so love to smear me across the squares in front of these honoured swine."

"I love beating you," Kazimir agreed calmly, without so much as a glance at his nobles. "And people are merely witnesses to my advantage."

Pages darted forward and set a low carved table between the throne and the jester. White bone and black bog oak. The pieces lined up on the ruled field like two hostile armies. Kazimir played as he made war: decisively, mercilessly, squeezing his opponent in a vice.

The air by my elbow stirred. A page swiftly set a heavy silver cup on the table. The thick scent of wild honey, cinnamon and cloves struck my nostrils — the smell of my home before it was despoiled. A petty, mocking mercy from the tyrant, so that his future seal should not waste away.

My fingers closed of themselves round the cool silver. To think about what exactly is poured for you in captivity is the straight road to madness. And I had sworn not to lose my mind.

I lifted the cup, breathing in the steam, and in that same moment I met a corrosive stare.

Below, at the first table, sat Malva. The tyrant's favourite had got herself up today in poison-green silk. She was looking straight at me, baring her teeth.

I knew that curve of the lips too well. That is how one looks at an irritating but temporary obstacle.

Until you come of age, the place at his right hand is yours. But soon I shall feed you to the dogs.

In my chest a clean, hot fury flared — the fury of a half-dead girl with nothing left to lose but her dignity. I raised the cup higher, almost in mockery. Your health, poisoner. And lifted the silver to my lips.

"A-ah," the jester drawled suddenly.

He was not looking at me. Nor was Kazimir. Hawthorn's long pale fingers hung over a black warrior, and then with one sharp movement he threw the piece halfway across the board, knocking aside a white pawn. The silver bell at his wrist rang thinly.

Hawthorn spoke into the empty air in that sing-song, half-witted voice in which jesters talk nonsense:

"Don't drink, my king, from the right-hand side — there the honey runs bitter and the water lies…"

The drunken hall burst out laughing. Kazimir snorted, well pleased: his right flank on the board had indeed been left open.

And my fingers on the cup turned to stone.

I was standing on the right. At the right hand of the throne. With wine in my right hand.

Hawthorn glanced at me for one instant only and went on clowning over the board, but through my skin I felt an icy, predatory stillness draw tight beneath the layer of white lead. It was aimed straight at me, like a bowstring in the dark.

Slowly, with my teeth clenched, I drew my hand back.

Not because I had understood the warning. I swear, I was too blind with hatred then to look for rescue in the words of the king's fool. I did it out of pure spite. The usurper's fool had dared to weave me into his joke? For the amusement of traitors?

I would sooner have swallowed broken glass than given him the pleasure of watching me drink obediently to his singing.

I set the cup down. Pushed it away so that the dark wine splashed onto the wood, leaving a dirty wine-trail. And then I looked down at Hawthorn — a heavy, contemptuous look, full of revulsion.

Let him know that he disgusted me.

I truly hated him. Then.

****

I mostly translate into English rather than writing original works, so I don't have a large body of my own writing. However, I currently have a fantasy series running on Patreon—*Iliyen*—which is infused with the flavor of the Polissia region and elements of Celtic mythology, so I’ve started translating it.