Page 11 of Six Wild Crowns

“So? What is the new queen like?” Lady Ginori asks, her voice flecked with the remnants of her Perfugian accent.

“I heard she’s this close to the ambassador of Capetia,” Lady Rkelen says, gesturing suggestively.

“She’s very arresting,” Seymour manages. She doesn’t understandhow all these people want her to give an opinion on someone she’s barely spoken to.

“You’ll have to do better than that when you speak to the queen,” Lady Ginori says.

As though hearing her desperation to escape, the guard bangs his pole and calls out “Lady Seymour for Queen Aragon.”

Ginori and Rkelen return to their side of the chamber, heads together as they discuss what paltry information Seymour has given them.

Queen Aragon’s chamber is an ode to Quisto. Lush, heavy textiles and statues of reclining sphinxes or chimaeras baring their fangs. Behind the great throne, in the bay windows that look out over the beach, five smaller humanoid statues are lined up. A young lady wearing a black gown and hood, her back to Seymour, polishes each one with a velvet cloth.

Queen Aragon’s throne is hewn from the same sandstone as the palace itself, although it is hidden beneath cushions and throws. Seymour has only met her a handful of times in her year-long service, and she has never seen her standing. Nevertheless, she can tell that the queen is a short woman, but makes up for it with impeccable posture. She wears the beads of her religion – herguirnalda– around her neck, so that when she shifts in her seat they jangle hypnotically. Her skin is tanned, a little darker than Seymour’s. Seymour’s grandmother was from Quisto, a family distantly related to the royals – hence her place in Queen Aragon’s court – and there is some resemblance in their features. The austerity in their cheekbones; the way their mouths automatically lean to displeased. But there the resemblance ends. Where Seymour’s hair is straight, Aragon wears hers in elaborate braids that are just visible beneath her hood, which shimmers like iridescent fish in the sunlight. Curled around Queen Aragon’s neck is her pet monkey, Dizir, uncharacteristically silent for now.

“Lady Seymour,” Queen Aragon says in a voice clipped and proper, from years of studying Elbenese. “How did you find my husband’s wedding?”

Seymour sinks into a curtsey and repeats the platitudes shepractised on the journey here. “Your Majesty. It was nothing compared to your—”

“No. No no no, Lady Seymour. I am told you are devoid of artifice. Do not disappoint me.”

Seymour stalls. Is this the answer to the question she’s asked herself every day since Queen Aragon told her she was gifting her to Boleyn –why her?Did Aragon choose her as ambassador because she’s apparently incapable of lying? It’s not a compliment. Not in any court beneath this sun. No one gets far without being a good liar. Seymour is glad her brothers aren’t here – they would be incandescent at such a description of their sister. But can she really tell the queen the truth? She’s already blundered her way through the gift-giving.

Aragon is watching her shrewdly, a smile hovering around her mouth. Even the lady-in-waiting has paused her polishing duties, back still to Seymour.

“You have more to fear from flattery than you do from honesty,” Aragon says at last. It’s not enough to settle Seymour’s nerves. She grew up with Edward and Thomas, after all, who delighted in tricking her into saying the wrong thing and then punishing her for doing so.

She decides to tell Aragon the facts: the cut and length of Queen Boleyn’s dress, the people present, the tokens she chose. When she mentions the obsidian storm cloud, Queen Aragon shifts. Seymour peters out.

“Go on,” she says. “What can you tell me that others will not?”

Seymour struggles to breathe. She’s not equal to this. She might find it hard to lie, but she also finds it hard to tell a hurtful truth. Aragon rests a hand on the table beside her throne. On it is a curious hand mirror: a silver frame, like the ones passed down in noble houses from mothers to their daughters. But the mirror itself is made of an odd kind of convex glass that refracts light strangely on the queen’s face, like water in a pool. Seymour focuses on it as she speaks what may very well be her final words.

“I believe they love each other very much, Your Majesty. Queen Boleyn is striking and alluring. She’s trying too hard to play thepart of queen, and I don’t think people will like her for it. But she has something about her. I can see why the king married her.”

She waits, head lowered, to see if the queen orders her immediate execution or banishment.

“That is what I feared,” Aragon says at last. “Do you think his love will continue?”

“I don’t know, Your Majesty. I don’t know the king.”

“If you did, you would know that the answer to that question is always going to beno.”

Her face and voice are impassive, devoid of bitterness. She has known the king the longest. She was his first queen. If anyone knows him, she does.

“Well,” she continues, “thank you for your honesty. Do you think Queen Boleyn will like you joining her household?”

“No, Your Majesty,” she says.

“No. I would not either. It was cruel of me, but necessary.”

“You wish me to report back to you, Your Majesty?”

“I am no spymaster, Lady Seymour.”

Seymour bites her lip. She’s not built for the court’s quick footwork.

“Come here, my daughter,” Queen Aragon says. The woman who had been polishing the statues abandons her cloth and moves to the queen’s side. Seymour realises now that she’s not a lady-in-waiting at all, but the Princess Tudor. She’s still just a girl, but she’s tall, like the king, and she has his blue eyes. Her expressions, though, are all Aragon’s. Seymour is ten years her senior, but beneath the princess’s gaze, she feels like a child. From around Aragon’s neck, the monkey awakes and, sensing the tension, begins to chatter.

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