The Winter Queen

[First couple of pages]

Queen Esebel of Taxia stood before an elegant, full-body, silvered mirror watching as her lady of the bedchamber, Lady Dowager Misel Gevala, laced her bodice. Esebel’s sendal underclothes were as white as the scattered snowflakes still falling outside the windows. But her mind was dark and clouded as she stepped through what the day would bring.

Order, she thought. Order is the key. Without regimen, things got sloppy fast. And in the King’s court, any crack in the order of things was quickly taken advantage of by those wishing favor … or ill.

“Tighter, Misel,” she ordered, and winced as the old woman pulled the laces.

Esebel appreciated the snow. It suited her. The peasantry called her the “Winter Queen.” Hers had been an odd winter wedding, binding, once again, her native city of Totinol in the south to the ruling nobility of Axinom in the north, with King Halis III. It was, of course, an arranged marriage, and a means of appeasing an ever-anxious South from rebelling. The dual relationship between the two regions dated back more than four centuries to when the two nations of Totina and Aximia combined to form Taxia, linking major trade routes, the Bronze Trail in the north, and the Silken Thread in the south. This combination produced untold riches for the nobility and merchants from both regions and peace for all.

“I’ll wear the kermes tiretaine, Misel, and over that, the red velvet dress.” The velvet was a product from the south, traded from the nation of Hamal. The tiretaine was made of wool and linen from up north, traded from the nation of Ongo. Whenever possible, she tried to honor that balance of trade in her arrangements. She would wear ruby earrings mined from her own kingdom of Taxia, out of the Sarsan Mountains, to draw it all together.

“It is not the warmest of outfits, your Grace,” Misel said. “Do you not wish to go outdoors? The equerry readied your palfrey for your weekly ride, and the snowfall has abated.”

“Not today, Misel. But do have my ladies in waiting maintain my strandling stole, just in case.”

As Misel fussed with her queen’s hair and cosmetics, applying a drop of lavender oil on each wrist and the base of the neck, Esebel examined her face in the mirror. No lines there, yet, to etch away at the corners of her dark eyes and high cheeks. Only a few strands of white were in her otherwise jet hair, but she refused to pluck them, nor did she wear the wigs that had lately come into fashion from the West.

She was, after all, a mother now. Maturity was expected.

Esebel stepped out of her chamber and into the solar where her ladies in waiting stood to receive her.

“A most becoming wardrobe today, your Grace,” praised Lady Ais. Esebel nodded, but held her tongue about Ais’ wardrobe, all bedecked in white taffeta and dyaspin like some sort of silk puffball. She was the daughter of Father Rolis Com Dai, priest of the Red Temple. Lady Ais was a court appointment, an agreement reached by the King, no doubt in return for reporting on his wife’s movements. Lady Ais was young and clueless, given to the latest fads of fashion, and always smelled too strongly of myrrh.

“Good morning, your grace,” said Lady Gena, with a proper genuflect. She was dressed in her family color, with green samite over an embroidered brocade. Goldspun horses played over her shoulders. Her family had grown rich over the horse trades with the nation of Scroen. Gena was Esebel’s favorite, and all her other ladies knew it, though the others were not here to fawn and try to win her fancy today. Lady Carso was away on business in the city, and Lady Dowager Hamit had taken ill. Esebel did not mind. Carso preached endlessly about her religion, and Hamit was a spy for the Lord Chamberlain.

(continued)

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