Serpent and the Throne (Fedosian Wars #1)

3. For the Road

three

For the Road

Trying to impress Lev perhaps, the count had brought out his finest silverware, and they had breakfast in the rarely used dining room with a crystal chandelier and mahogany furniture. The ceiling wasn’t tall enough for the grand fixture and it hovered mere feet above the table. The count picked a round table, Sofia thought, because as the lord of the house he should sit at the head, but his guest was Lev Guard and he’d grown uncertain about the seating arrangement.

The count served wild boar for breakfast so he could tell his hunting story, Lev drunk already, and Sofia cut into an apple while the dolled-up Illeivich girls giggled among themselves, covering their mouths with their fans as they whispered.

The count had asked something, Sofia supposed, because he looked at Lev and waited. She nudged Lev under the table, and her brother blinked.

“Right you are,” said Lev, nodding.

“I’m glad you agree, Lord Lev.” Count Gavril Illeivich had a tall forehead made larger by his retreating hairline, large eyes that his daughters had inherited, and a mustache he groomed with care. He wore a silk shirt with silk trousers, put on his military doublet with gold tassels on the shoulders when he had guests, and carried his saber around the house—the mark of nobility and bravery.

Lev looked at Sofia, asking what he’d just agreed to, but she had no idea either.

“That’s wonderful,” said Ania, looking pleased for once. “Thank you, Lord Lev. It’s not our first time in Krakova, of course, but my sisters and I aren’t yet acquainted with many of the courtiers, and we’re very pleased to have you as our chaperone.”

“Oh fuck no,” Lev said. Jaws dropped around the table, and Sofia kicked him under it. “You don’t want me around your virtuous daughters, Count Illeivich. I’m quite the harlot, and an irresponsible drunk.” He lifted his wine cup to showcase his point. “But I’ll ask one of the baronesses. They know the ins and outs of the high society and would be pleased to show your daughters around.”

The girls looked disappointed but accepted.

“What do you make of the tension at the western border?” the count asked. When he discussed politics, it never ended, and Sofia gazed out the window, wishing to be on the road already. She’d missed Papa, had been worried about him since she heard of Aunt’s passing, and wondered if he was an old man now.

“For ninety-nine years the house of war has been flaunting the threat of war,” she heard Lev, his voice somewhere distant. She had no interest in such things and imagined instead what a royal ball might look like, then got concerned about her lack of attire. “… it’s what keeps Shields on the throne.”

“I’m so thrilled about seeing the prince,” said Kira, the middle daughter. “I hope he’s handsome.”

“Handsome,” said Lev. “That’s an odd way of pronouncing imp .”

“He’s not good looking?” asked another daughter.

Sofia stared at the deep red of the wine in her cup. She heard the low rumble of thunder outside. They weren’t leaving today, she supposed. Not that people didn’t ride coaches in bad weather, but the count would find a reason to have dinner and invite his friends to display her brother like an exotic animal. At this rate, they’d never leave.

“Soful.” That was Lev.

Sofia blinked. “Yes?”

“Ana here—”

“Ania,” the girl corrected.

“ Ania here just asked me why I don’t like the queen.” Lev took a drink. “Perhaps you can elaborate.”

“The boyars, or the nobility of Fedosia, are the backbone of the empire,” Sofia regurgitated a thing the count said often. “High taxes on landowners impose an unfair burden, especially during peace, not to mention the abolition of serfdom which was a blind robbery. The throne manufactures tension with Elfur and the church tells tall tales of necromancers to frighten the commoners—”

Sofia got kicked under the table. It was the count. She wasn’t supposed to speak poorly about the church with Lev present was her guess. It didn’t matter. Everyone understood the real reason Lev didn’t like the queen was she was a Shield, and the bad blood between Shield and Guard began a hundred years ago.

Before then, the nine great houses of Fedosia, collectively called the Boyar Duma , had ruled for a thousand years, the gold scepter changing hands as the houses married each other, shared magic, and mixed bloodlines. Then came the Elfurian War, a devasting decade for Fedosia where hundreds of thousands died, and half the empire burned.

The tsar at the time had been Aleksander the Wise, a famous Guard who’d been sainted since, and he took a queen from the House of Red Shield. Their alchemy was steel, and theirs was the house of war. Though in the end Fedosia prevailed in beating back the Elfurians, the tsar didn’t enjoy the peace for long as he took an unfortunate flight from the top of his keep.

The Shields hadn’t surrendered the throne since, marrying minor nobles who often ended up dead. A hundred years of Shield reign brewed only bad blood between the throne and the boyars, including the Guards who still believed the Shields murdered the last rightful tsar.

Queen Kseniya of Shield, the sitting monarch, never took a husband and claimed Saint Neva of White Guard to have visited her in a dream and impregnated her, therefore giving Prince Nikolas a claim over the church. Needless to say, it infuriated the archmage.

The two greatest houses were at each other’s throats as they had been for a hundred years. The only reason they hadn’t slaughtered one another was when Fedosia fought within, Elfur came knocking—always.

Just as Sofia had suspected, the trip was delayed till the next morning, and after night fell, she sat by her window with her macaw and gazed up at the stars. There were so many of them, one for each saint, past, present, and future. She would name them for her bird, the ones she knew anyway, but she didn’t think he retained. He was dead.

“The moon is crescent,” she said. When it was full, sometimes it would look like a face—silly.

Her parents never made it to the stars, but she hoped there was somewhere, a land beyond the dark treetops and the boundless ocean, where those who suffered in this life could go to find peace.

“What do you think about heaven, Prince?” she whispered, petting the singed feathers of her macaw. “Do you suppose it’s real?”

The count gifted Lev a saber with a gold embellished sheath. They were downstairs, drunk along with the count’s friends, talking about glory and such. They were friends now that Lev revived some rose bush for the count. She remembered Erlan the gardener getting such a beating when the count’s exotic bushes didn’t survive the winter. They were flowering now as though it was already summer, and there was something unnatural about that.

She didn’t like magic. Perhaps it was only jealousy because the archmage wouldn’t train her. When they expected something from her, she would get scolded, ‘Lady of Guard, behave like one,’ but when she wanted to do anything remotely related to being a Guard, such as learn magic, she was the Elfurian necromancer’s daughter.

The trinkets used in alchemy had to be cast in gold, so she’d bribed the smith into melting the few pieces of jewelry she’d inherited from her mother and making her such a trinket. But she hadn’t understood at the time the lines and symbols inside the gold circle weren’t something she could make up from her fancy to make it look pretty. Each step of the transmutation required a different equation, meaning she would need dozens of such circles, all with different symbols, to accomplish a simple thing such as mending a broken vase. That wasn’t how the archmage cast spells. It wasn’t how Lev created fire. There was a shorthand for them, an equation containing many equations within, and those weren’t in the codex. Knowledge was power and no one was sharing theirs with Sofia.

The count was a plain man. His family didn’t practice alchemy, and he’d get furious when Sofia fiddled with things he didn’t understand. He’d only hit her a few times and it was mostly over magic, and once because she’d worn a dress exposing the cleavage and a young lord had complimented her. They’d been at the provincial harvest festival, which the count himself hosted. So, she didn’t have any dresses they might wear at court, and thinking of such things saddened her. Silly, she realized, for a grown woman nearing her crone age, but she didn’t get out much and didn’t want to be ridiculed by courtiers… Perhaps it was better she didn’t go.

“What do you think, Prince? Maybe we should just stay home.”

He didn’t answer. She wasn’t that mad.

She latched her door before she went to bed, but someone broke in and frightened her. It was Lev, again. He passed out on her carpet, and in the morning she saw he’d thrown up on it as well. She opened the window because the stench was vile and she was cleaning it when he opened a single eye and said, “What the fuck are you? A servant? Get someone else to clean that shit.”

Yeah, he’d grown, and not in the way she’d hoped. But he was just stressed, she reckoned, because he didn’t want the burden of being a mage. It was unfortunate Papa didn’t have more children, but he’d been hopelessly in love with his wife and spiraled into a deep depression when she fell ill. Auntie had been bedridden for a long time, and it had been some relief, if she was being honest, to hear of her passing. At least she was free now.

Sofia abandoned hope of ever getting on the road when afternoon came and went and the men were still recovering from their drinking, but as evening came, both the count and Lev found sudden urgency to leave. Lev had a race to win, and the count needed money from the archmage.

They left at dusk, some would say a bad omen, but Sofia found herself giddy and couldn’t stop smiling as she looked out through the shutters and saw the Illeivich estate being left behind.

“Please don’t wear that shit, Soful.” Hungover, Lev groaned and opened the door when he gagged. “For all the saints.” He slammed the door shut. “Cheap wine is the worst.”

“What’s wrong with my dress?” Sofia looked down at her skirt.

“You look dreadful, like a dead woman’s portrait from a hundred years ago,” he said. “Never mind, I’ll find you something better once we’re in Krakova.”

“Do you think they’ll make fun of me?” Sofia frowned.

“If you go like that, yes.”

As the soft knocking of hooves and the gentle sway of the coach pulled her further and further from her home of ten years, nervous energy replaced her earlier delight.

“Do you have any jewelry?” Lev asked.

“No.”

He grimaced, thinking, then said, “Papa hoards Mama’s things and doesn’t give them to anyone, but I suppose I can ask Zoya.”

“Zoya?” Sofia asked.

“Chartorisky,” he said, naming one of the great houses.

“Oh.” Sofia arched a brow. “Is she pretty?”

“She’s the crown jewel of the court.”

“I look forward to meeting her,” Sofia said. So there was a girl. “Tell me about her.”

“Chartorisky.” He shrugged with a single shoulder, perhaps trying to appear casual. “ Boyar Duma , you know that.”

“Yes, I know that. ” She slapped his knee with her gloves. “What about her other than her family name?”

“I’m hoping if I marry her, the archmage will leave me alone about joining the church,” he said. “So I’m courting her, so to speak.”

Ah, there was the trouble. Mages didn’t wed or sire children, but her brother was smitten. Though he was downplaying it much.

“Come on, sit here.” Sofia pulled him. “We have much to catch up on and I want to lay my head on your shoulder. You’re big enough for it now.”

Lev moved to sit on the same side as her and produced a bottle from his satchel. “For the road,” he said, and produced a wine cup as well. Just one cup because he was going to drink alone.