“Nearly, Your Highness,” said the royal dressmaker, a plump, red-?faced woman who towered over her diminutive monarch. “One more, if you please. Take a breath and hold it.”
Raesinia complied, and the dressmaker whipped a knotted cord around her middle with expert speed. She muttered to herself and tugged it a bit tighter, then looked.
“Wonderful. Thank you, Your Highness. I must say you are very lucky to have such a slender frame. And such beautiful skin! You will look magnificent.”
Raesinia caught her own gaze in the mirror over the dressmaker’s shoulder and rolled her eyes. Stripped down to her underthings, she could see the truth clearly enough. I look like a child. And she always would.
Her unaging state could be inconvenient, but her actual appearance had never really bothered her. It could be useful even—?with the right outfit, she could pass for a boy, and political opponents had a persistent tendency to underestimate her. She’d never particularly wanted male attention, though it had occasionally come her way regardless. Poor Ben, who tried to protect me and died for it. Now, though...
“One in sea green, I think,” the dressmaker was saying. “And one in that lovely Hamveltai crimson. I know just the supplier. And then—”
“I leave it entirely in your hands,” Raesinia said. “But you must excuse me. There’s a great deal of business to attend to.”
That was wrong, she realized at once. A queen didn’t ask a servant to excuse her. I should tell her to go. But politeness had been ground into Raesinia since her earliest education, and now that she was back in the palace, all the old lessons had resurfaced.
“Of course.” The dressmaker bowed deeply. “I am honored by your custom, Your Highness.”
Joanna opened the door. The large, silent woman and her slim, more talkative partner, Barely, were on permanent detachment from the Girls’ Own as Raesinia’s personal guards. Their presence had already become a comforting part of her landscape, and it was hard to imagine that she’d once been without them. They’d been part of the group that rescued her from the Penitent Damned and Maurisk’s Directory, and they’d stayed at her side through the horrors of the Murnskai campaign. While Joanna was resplendent in a well-?tailored blue-?and-?silver dress uniform, Raesinia had no doubt that the sword and pistol on her belt were extremely functional. Even with Vordan more or less at peace, it was a comforting thought.
“Tell Barely to send the girls in, please,” Raesinia said.
Joanna nodded and leaned out the door. She never spoke, but she and her partner had a private language of hand signals that let her make herself understood. Raesinia was resolved to learn it herself someday. When I have time.
Someday I’ll have all the time in the world.
Two young women in palace livery swept in and went to work, silent and efficient. Raesinia stood stock-?still, raising or lowering her arms as required, feeling a bit like an articulated dummy. On campaign with the army, she’d mostly gotten away with reasonably practical riding outfits, and before that she’d still been in official mourning for her father. Now, though, with the echoes of the victory celebrations still fading from the palace and life returning to something like normal, standards had to be maintained. Or so said Mistress Lagovil, the intimidating head of the palace staff, and Raesinia hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to argue with her.
One of those standards, apparently, was that the queen couldn’t be seen in any outfit that she could possibly don under her own power. Raesinia had pushed for a little practicality—?she did have work to do, whatever Mistress Lagovil might say—?but that still meant yards of lace and silk, carefully matched with rings, bracelets, combs, necklaces, and whatever else could be scrounged from the Royal Jewelhouse. To Raesinia’s eyes the final effect was, at best, “sparkly.” She’d been raised to appreciate palace fashion, but the lessons had never really sunk in.
Mistress Lagovil had apologized for the sorry state of the wardrobe, and indeed the rest of Ohnlei. The palace had been sacked once by the revolution and again when Janus’ army had been quartered there. Furniture had been broken up for firewood and drapes torn apart for uniforms and bandages. Much of the staff was gone, fled or drafted into the army, and only a handful had returned despite the end of the war. The nobles who’d once lent their splendor to the court were still mostly hunkered down at their country estates, waiting to be sure the storm had well and truly passed, and Raesinia couldn’t say she blamed them.
At least some of the more tedious rituals had been temporarily suspended. Raesinia could take her meals in her quarters—?the Grand Hall had been used to stable cavalry mounts and was still being cleaned out—?and there were few dignitaries who required official receptions. No one suggested going hunting. Privately, Raesinia dreaded the day the full splendor of the palace was restored. Before her father’s death, her days had been as tightly regulated as a clockmaker’s apprentice, jammed with lessons, formal dinners, court outings, and other official occasions.
Once she was dressed, Raesinia took a few tentative steps in front of the mirror, to confirm that she could walk without anything falling off. It wasn’t a bad dress, really, a deep Vordanai blue accented with silver, flattering to a figure that didn’t have much to flatter. Raesinia rolled her eyes at herself again, signaled her approval to the maids, and followed them out into her private chambers.
Eric was waiting for her, practically vibrating with nerves, and Raesinia stifled a sigh. It really wasn’t his fault, as he’d been thrust into a job he’d had no preparation for—?he’d been a clerk doing the palace accounts until Raesinia had asked Mistress Lagovil for an assistant, and he was still overawed by the royal presence. He was competent enough, but...
No but. It’s not his fault that he’s not Sothe. Every time she saw Eric’s too-?serious face, struggling to maintain the constipated expression he associated with proper dignity, Raesinia missed her old maidservant. Maidservant, bodyguard, spy, assassin. Friend. She’d left, after thwarting Orlanko’s assassins on the final night of the Murnskai campaign. Where are you, Sothe?
“Your Highness,” Eric said. “You look lovely. And the dressmaker has given me her assurances that everything will be ready before—”
Raesinia waved a hand. “I’m sure she’ll do fine. What do we have today?”
Eric looked down at the leather notebook he always carried. “The Duke of Brookspring is expecting you in twenty minutes, Your Highness. Then lunch with Mistress Cora, and you agreed to grant an audience to Deputy d’Andorre.”
See? I do have work to do. Even if it sometimes seemed like everyone wanted her to sit back and ignore it. “We’d better get started, then.”