Before she could act upon this urge, there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” the king called out in his throaty bullfrog’s rasp.
Agnes turned and watched his chamber fill with bodies. First came Waltrude with the child in her arms. Agnes’s heart winced to see it again, that white swaddling that held so much lovely innocence within. Then, to her surprise, came Pliny, and to her even greater surprise, Liuprand. Yet she could not have expected the last to enter: Marozia, her handmaiden attending her, and her daughter asleep against her breast.
A lump swelled in Agnes’s throat and almost choked her. A mere day had passed since the labor that had nearly killed her, and Marozia somehow looked as preeminent as she ever had. The bulging stomach made impossibly flat again; her face, drained so cruelly of blood, now flushed prettily. Her dark curls were gathered neatly into a golden hairnet; her bare throat, as slender as a white-gloved hand. Her breasts were milk-swollen, straining the bust of her scarlet gown—yet this did not detract from her beauty; it amplified it, swanning the proof of her sumptuous fertility.
Agnes tasted it again. The sour bile of envy. No word, no blow, could wound her as grievously as the sight of her cousin, lush and flowering, with her daughter in her arms. Liuprand’s child. Despite the lack of sympathy between husband and wife, here was a thread that bound them to each other, inextricably and mysteriously, forever obscure and forbidden to Agnes. She wanted to howl her sorrow, but it was an invisible thing. Absence could not be seen.
“Your Majesty,” Marozia said. Her voice was clear and bright as ice melt. “I present my daughter for your viewing.”
“I can view nothing from here,” the king said. “Come closer.”
Marozia did. Her heeled slippers sunk into the damp carpet, and thus her footsteps were soundless. She leaned over and showed the infant’s face to King Nicephorus. The infant stirred, but only to give a sweet whimper. From her vantage point, Agnes could glimpse theloose, soft coils of golden hair. The petal-pink, toothless mouth. Yearning and more yearning filled her.
“She will be fair,” the king proclaimed after several moments’ inspection. Marozia gave a nod of pride and drew the infant to her breast again. She stepped back to her handmaiden’s side.
A subtle gesture then, which was not observed by any but Agnes: Marozia allowed Ninian to rest a hand on the small of her back, steadying her. Agnes could not place why, but it sickened her to see this. In that moment she hated—and she was shocked by the force of her own loathing—this mousy handmaiden with her queer, mismatched eyes.
“Now bring the other,” Nicephorus said.
Obediently, Waltrude now stepped out of line and approached the king. When the infant was held out for inspection, he did not stir at all; within his swaddling, he was as still as a stone. Agnes’s stomach clenched nervously—was he in truth a sickly child, infirm? She could not bear it, if it were so. But the king’s brow furrowed as he examined the princeling’s face, and then at last, he proclaimed, “A handsome child.”
Agnes suppressed an exhale of relief. Such gore and madness, yet against the odds, all was well.
“Leech,” the king said, jerking his head toward Pliny. “Tell me—are they hale?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” There was an odd hollowness to Pliny’s tone. Perhaps the horrors of Marozia’s labor had left a mark upon him. But that would be strange—had he not seen worse before? Had he not witnessed his own master’s brutal slaying, the total emptying of the Master of Blood’s noble veins? “To the best of my judgment, both will grow strong.”
Pleasure spread across the king’s red-blistered face. No, perhaps not pleasure. It was satisfaction, which was not quite the same thing.
“Then all will proceed according to my design,” he said. “The boy-child is heir. One day, he will wear the crown. It is good to have the line of inheritance secured so early. And the girl-child will be wed to Lord Unruoching’s son as soon as she can walk and talk—ha! Would that shecould be wed before she gains the faculties of speech; the line of Lord Fredegar does so like its silent brides.”
The air seemed to crackle, to prick against Agnes’s skin. She heard Marozia draw a sharp and uneven breath.
“Your Majesty,” she said in a voice that was no longer clear, no longer shining, but that twisted and strained, “it is the custom of my house that the first daughter of the first daughter be named Mistress of Teeth and be given all the rights afforded to the head of a great house.”
Nicephorus’s damp, reptilian eyes narrowed. “And is the child not, equally, the blood of Seraph?”
Marozia’s mouth quivered. Against her breast, the babe shifted.
“She is,” Marozia replied at last. “But—”
“Then there is no more to be said,” the king cut in. “The child has been promised to Lord Gamelyn since before her very conception. She will be wed as young as the House of Blood will have her. It is done.”
Again the chamber was utterly silent, and yet, when Agnes turned to Marozia, a shuddering transformation took place that froze the marrow in her bones. She saw her cousin not as she was now, rigid and upright with her daughter in her arms, but rather as she had been a mere day ago, prone on the cold stone floor, blood pouring from between her legs. The sweat-soaked and soiled nightgown, the plum-colored head of her daughter cresting forth. This image of Marozia shrieked and howled, yet it was silent. Her mouth opened to a chasm, and no sound came out. Her body convulsed. Her mute tongue thrashed.
And for this, Agnes wanted to scream until her vocal cords withered to nothing.
But Marozia did not speak. Her chest heaved, and the color drained from her face, and then without a word she turned and fled the room. Ninian gaped in shock and then scuttled after her. In her haste, she overturned a bowl of fruit, and its rotten contents scattered all over the floor.
Agnes dared a single peek at Liuprand. She had not laid eyes on him since their disloyal tryst in the chapel. The blood on his cheek had driedblack and jagged and harsh; his pride had not allowed Pliny to treat the wound as he should. The swollen lip was only swollen now with the memory of her kisses. It seemed to her both debauched and tragic, her love as ruinous as his father’s hate. Liuprand’s throat pulsed as he swallowed.
“Is this all you wish to say?” he asked curtly.
“Only a faithless son grows weary of his father’s voice and counsel.” Nicephorus dropped the empty bowl without ceremony, and it fell soundlessly to the soaked carpet. “The boy shall be brought up as a prince, trained in all the arts befitting a future king of Drepane. And take him to the tiltyard the moment he is old enough to hold a sword. I’ll not have him grow up a milksop with his nose in a book.” He looked with a shining eagerness at Liuprand, as if he hoped the words would rile him.
Liuprand’s expression remained unmoved. However, in a flat voice, he replied, “Every wise and humane father wishes for his son to be greater than him.”
