“And of all the houses, it was ours who made greatest profit from this magic,” said Marozia. “My great-grandfather, your great-great-grandfather, raised whole armies of the dead. Bravely he fought against the conqueror’s cruel blades. We were stronger than the rest. And we were the very last to submit to Berengar, the last sword to crumble.”
At this, Ninian shivered. Meriope gnawed on her thumbnail.
“This is your inheritance, my sweet one,” Marozia said, and strokedher daughter’s hair. “Such power. Such glory. It is said that even the conqueror’s knees trembled. Berengar the Boneless, they should have called him. For while he was mighty on the field of battle, he was a dastard in the feasting hall. He had to trick the lords of the island into acquiescence. And then he killed them, in the traitorous manner of a coward, slitting their throats over their goblets of wine.”
Marozia let out a breath that was shuddery with fury. For the briefest moment, silence reigned in the princess’s chamber. Ninian held the heavy pot aloft, afraid to interrupt this rare interlude of quiet with her scrubbing.
“What do you think of that, my dearest?” Marozia asked, dipping her head to look her daughter in the eye.
She was a beautiful child, Meriope, with the best features of both her parents—Liuprand’s azure eyes and hair of gold, her mother’s curls and dimpled chin and pearlescent skin. Her beauty might one day surpass that of Marozia, Drepane’s bright-blooming rose. Every nobleman in the kingdom would clamor and humble himself for her hand—that is, if she were not already promised to another. If her fate had not been fixed before she was even a dream in her mother’s mind.
Meriope removed her thumb from between her lips and wiped the spittle on the front of her blouse. “I’m hungry,” she said.
So Marozia unlaced the front of her gown, baring her breasts to her daughter’s waiting mouth. The room filled with the sound of suckling. And Ninian returned to her task.
Ninian finished with the chamber pot as Marozia tucked her daughter into bed. The single bed was large enough to fit the three of them, though just barely—when Meriope grew into her girlhood, there would not be room. Except Meriope would not grow into her girlhood here in Castle Crudele. Her time within these cold walls was nearly through.
Marozia perched on the other end of the bed as Ninian undressed her, first unlacing her slippers and sneaking a feel of her soft, supple calves. These past years had not drained even a drop of her mistress’s beauty. The bitterness in her heart did not show on her face. The rage within her was kept fettered, invisible to the errant eye. Only Ninian was able to see when it raised its fierce, blood-red head.
As Ninian slid the princess’s gown from her shoulders, Marozia said, “Go to the leeches’ bay. Fetch me the potion.”
Ninian stilled, the gown held limply in her hands. Her mistress’s linens were stained with milk, sticky and translucent. For six years they had been such, her breasts full and heavy, her nipples bitten and sore. It pained Ninian to see. She remained silent for yet a moment more, and then said, softly, “Perhaps it can be deferred for tonight.”
At that, the sanguine maw of Marozia’s fury reared. The princess jolted to her feet and seized Ninian by the front of her dress.
“Do not defy me,” she rasped, “else I will banish you to the kennel to sleep with the dogs.”
Ninian flinched. “Yes, my princess. I am sorry.”
“Go now. I will finish disrobing myself.”
Marozia released her, and Ninian—so in love, even now—shivered at the loss of her touch. Brusque as it was, Ninian longed for it, suffused to the brim with need. She tried to quash this desire as she left the princess’s chamber and walked the halls, footsteps nearly soundless, a seizing, throbbing sensation between her thighs. Later, she would tend to herself later, after she had serviced her mistress.
It was evening, and most of the leeches in the bay were resting on their cots. The stench of herbs and poultices was so strong that it made Ninian’s eyes water and her nose itch. She traveled between the cots, most of the beige-robed men not even bothering to lift their gazes as she passed, until she reached the very back of the chamber, which was mostly cloaked in shadow.
There, Truss and Mordaunt sat. Even in the half-light, she knew them, if not for their faces, then for the ever-present rattling of dice. They scattered across the upturned barrel they were using as a tableand showed on one Seraph’s winged lion, and on the other a skull and crossbones.
“I’m here for the potion,” Ninian said, lifting her chin. “For the princess.”
It was Mordaunt who leaned forward, into the light. The years did not show on his face. He had looked gaunt when Ninian had met him, and looked gaunt still now. And Truss was still flabby above the belt.
“Here again,” Mordaunt said, shaking his head. “When will your mistress abandon this ghoulish practice?”
Ninian’s spine straightened with a jolt of anger. “It is the custom of her house. The most noble and most ancient house in Drepane.”
Truss wheezed a laugh. “The most noble house in Drepane is the House of Berengar.”
“Quiet, you,” Ninian bit out.
The years might not have changed these leeches, but Ninian had grown both bitter and bold with time. Almost beautiful, too, she thought modestly. The princess had her robed in fine gowns of pale violet, lavender, and gray, and her hair, though still the dull shade of muddy straw, was done up in a crown of gleaming braids. Her skin had lost its rough, peasant ruddiness and was nearly as pale as her mistress’s now, for she, too, spent all her days in the east wing of the castle, never stepping, even by accident, into the light of the sun.
“Come now, girl,” said Mordaunt, in a pitying tone that only made Ninian hate him all the more. “You are doing your mistress no favors by maintaining this charade. In sixty-six days, Meriope will be wed. She will be taken to the marshes and tumbled into the Master of Blood’s bed. The princess would be better off preparing her for this fate than pretending she is still an infant in need of her mother’s milk.”
Fury seared through Ninian. She would have smashed the leech’s face into the barrel if she could. “You are aleech,” she hissed. “You are lower than a worm. You have no right to question the will of the princess.” Her face was as hot as an open flame. “And besides—you give this tonic to Waltrude without trouble.”
“We have not given it to Waltrude in years,” Truss broke in. “Theprinceling is far past the need for a wet nurse. And it is her only task in this world to wring out her breasts in service of the Crown. A princess has greater purpose. She should not debase herself in this vulgar way.”
“The only thing my mistress wishes to be is a mother,” Ninian said. Her voice had grown soft against her will.
