It had been a welcome change of subject matter when, through a number of strategically placed notes, Katherine understood that her presence was required in the stables the next morning. She had not spoken to the Gineforts that had come from the Baradrans into the warm embrace of Souchon Palace, for the Chavanets had not given her the opportunity to, but their presence weighed heavily on her.
The notes were unsigned, bar one note being precisely only a signature — Freyza’s. It did not surprise her to find his severed signature away from any letters, as their dalliance had been cut short during their last encounter, and she knew that his blood ran hot in anticipation of their meeting. And then there was the matter of the impending diplomatic relationship between her and his magnanimous Sultan.
To be frank, Katherine had expected more from the ambassador. A romp in the hayloft, through generally a more secretive answer than many to the question that they found themselves having, was something she had started considering unrefined. Perhaps, she thought, Freyza did not yet have the wealth of experience to consider it so.
Needless to say, there was no doubt in her mind about whether she would go — she had the morning off save for council which she tried to never attend anyway. After receiving the notes and trying with all her might not to forget one of the details lest they be relevant later, into the fire they went just in time for Grace and Constance to join her during the evening, as they wound down and picked kirtles to wear the next morning. Katherine said not a word about her plans.
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Perhaps it was a silly idea after all, to imagine going unnoticed through a heavily guarded Souchon Palace, but when she had the idea to discontinue her search, she had already gone down to the main hall and out into the courtyard from there. She had had the most visible places and now only had only a shortcut to go until she would end up, through a little known door, into the back of the stables. Fine.
The door croaked when it opened, and Katherine immediately scanned the stables for any sign of life, though initially was only greeted by the horses, and a large carriage seemed to be getting ready to leave. Her back straightened instinctively as she thought of an excuse for her presence there, in case those in the carriage were of a questioning sort.
‘Your Majesty!’ she suddenly heard Iskander holler.
Katherine narrowed her eyes. Why was Freyza’s assistant here?
‘Iskander,’ she replied, her eyes darting between his small pudgy form and the carriage. ‘Where’s your master?’
‘Oh, wouldn’t you like to know, Your Majesty…’ he began mischievously. ‘Alas! I am but a simple servant and cannot help you with such queries. However, you might be enticed to know that Master has left gifts for you in the carriage…’
Katherine was somewhat taken aback. ‘I’ll be leaving,’ she announced before turning on her heels, but Iskander ran after her.
‘No, no, no, Your Majesty…’ he begged. ‘Master is awaiting you.’
Katherine looked over to see Iskander reduced to his knees on the dirty hay-covered stable floor. ‘Know that these tactics may work in your south, sir, but to an upstanding Ilworthian woman, your pleas sound like the perverted cries of a man trying to lock me into a carriage.’
Iskander looked up at Katherine expectantly, some mischief brewing beneath his despair. ‘Your Majesty, my master would not dream of locking you in a carriage and luring you in with gifts and food.’
‘You’re smiling,’ Katherine noticed.
‘Yes…’ he replied. ‘I fear that I must tell you all of Master’s plans to convince you to go, must I not?’
She peered at the carriage — roomy, painted pink and gold, immaculately maintained…
‘Do you think your master would be disappointed to learn that I asked?’ she asked, turning to face him again.
He nodded and scrambled to his feet. ‘Your Majesty, Master would be sick for the rest of his days if the simple honour would not be bestowed upon him to surprise and delight Your Majesty.’
She thought briefly. There was little that was asked of her today, and if this rendez-vous fell through, she would likely spend the rest of this still young Thursday knitting and gazing wistfully at people having more fun than her. No, that simply would not do.
‘If I learn that you have deceived me, I will have your head,’ she ordered. ‘Do you understand?’
Iskander nodded quickly and with a type of subservience that almost appeared nonhuman, like a well-trained cattle dog. ‘Yes, yes, Your Majesty. Please, take a seat.’
Iskander’s insistence brought new doubts to the surface, but she decided to ignore any glimmers of worry in favour of an adventure. She walked past him as he stood, still dumbfounded by the glamour of being in her presence, and waited for him to open the carriage door for him.
Inside the carriage, the upholstery was all pink velvet, thick and cushioned, decorated liberally in gold as was the outside, and on one of the two benches lay a large basket, a small chest, and judging from the shape of its neck, a bottle of Baradran wine. On the other bench opposite it, lay just an envelope.
Here goes nothing, she thought, half-expecting Iskander to close the door behind her and lock it in an instant, no doubt accompanied by wicked laughter.
But once seated, she was not confronted with anything, and instead could find a comfortable seat, begin to wonder about the destination, and consider the contents of the basked and chest before her instead. Yet, the envelope called to her most.
She broke the seal in two to free the edge of the paper, and just as she began to read, she noticed the carriage was beginning to move.
I wished to accompany you, Lady Katherine, but I was held up in bartering. All sweets and treasures within this carriage are for your enjoyment — I hope this may be a small consolation. Worry not of your schedule, your advisers believe you are headed for my country house in order to be taught the basics of the Sbaian tongue. I shall leave it up to you to decipher in the mean time, how much of this is a fabrication, and how much of it is elegant use of language. MF
Katherine smirked. Her letter was finally replied to — though she believed little of his excuses. Likely he was too cowardly to act upon his instinct so directly, and wished to buy himself some time. How much time, however, was still unsure to her. She imagined even the shortest trek would warrant a carriage. Though Freyza was not prestigious, he was filthy rich — even richer than Katherine had known before she saw him in a full suit of cloth of gold. Even King Henri was not so easily seen in gold, let alone a man who was by name a Duke, but referred to himself just as Master Freyza: MF. The lack of hierarchy had caused her to imagine him as an unimportant merchant, a slaver with a decent lineage, not a man in head-to-toe gold. He was far wealthier than he let on, but somehow willing to share a bit of his frivolity and splendour on her.
Dorothy would have vetoed the type of spending Freyza seemingly did with no issues — then again,unlike her, it was his very own coin that he spent.
His country house… somehow she thought she would be headed to the coast, but when she took the first look out from the velvet curtains, they seemed to be headed to the mountains instead. She frowned and recalled, as the first sting of annoyance, Diane’s property of Le Roumont. If she was to be taken to that whore’s estate, if he would even suggest that this would be his country house, she would not be responsible for her own doing…
Luckily, the chest and basket demanded her attention. From the former, she plucked a delicate and surprisingly long chain of emeralds set in white gold, long enough to be worn over one shoulder like a scabbard. It was an unusual piece of jewellery, were it not that Katherine had been wearing this style of necklace far more as of late with her doublets and riding suits, harked back to men’s clothing in a way that made the Massouric royal family wonder about Katherine’s intentions, but were utterly clear to Henri. Even their first informal meeting had made this very clear to him.
An animal who can be ridden, and a jockey suitable to ride it.
Though, she would be surprised if Freyza understood even the reference to the scabbard — had he known that the animal in question was now the country of Massouron rather than any mortal man, he would likely make more from soothsaying. Still, it was an oddly suitable gift to be given on her first day back in Massouron out of the grasp of the Chavanets.
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Then, there was the matter of the basket, with its two elegant crystal glasses waiting to be filled, the pastries piled high and divided with elegant pale lilac tissue papers, each of which covered in powdered sugar and whipped cream and strawberries. She began to believe him in his letter: there was no way that he would organise this amount of pastries to just serve one.
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Freyza was exasperated. He had sent the carriage in the early morning, and now the afternoon was slipping out of his hands rapidly, did he begin to have time to consider his actions of the day. He had spent the full morning mapping routes, bribing innkeepers and locals, and checking the temperature of the ancient baths to be just right, so that the steam mixed with the eternal fog in the mountains and the snow melted, revealing a couple of snowdrops he had not expected.
It was one of his maddest ideas yet, the only antipode he had to the masked ball, for Freyza’s prestige did not reach all the way to the western world, but his coins surely did. As he looked over the minute sleeping town that he had bribed to remain quiet about the coming events, he was satisfied. He stepped back in, greeted by the warmth that had been whisked away for a thousand years previously, and lay eyes on the carefully scrubbed floors, the newly painted details on the murals that had chipped off before, and noticed the smell of mulled wine. In his mind, he was counting up the hours since the carriage left the town of Sanlieu.
He resisted the urge to change out of the fur-lined rough leather doublet he wore padding around the snow, the riding boots that were more practical than the slippery shoes of court, to tame his hair which had turned to the curliest version of itself now he had been out in the snow without the possibility of pomading it into submission again. It was Diane’s doing that he felt more comfortable in this more salt of the earth version of himself. Apparently, it had more power to these overdone court ladies not to see Freyza as an equal, a powerful nobleman in his own right with likely far larger territories, but rather like a mysterious merchant who scandal followed wherever he went, with the type of lanky build and exotic colouring that made him even more intriguing, for it was so unusual. He learned, too, that the most impact that he had made on Massouric court was when he had gifted Queen Katherine that fateful potion that rendered her three days unconscious. That he was known as something of a mischievous entity.
With all of the qualities he was concerned with controlled, both inside and outside the ancient baths, he considered the time of Katherine’s arrival would be soon. He had informed Lord Overleigh and Lord Milden Cross of his intent to have their first meeting in a small monastery town in the mountains, not to teach her the basics but rather to make her aware of the mission before them, and they had seen no trouble with it. When they would return was equally uninteresting to the secretary of state and the spymaster. Surely, there would at least be a spy sent his way, but he had not caught anyone shadowing him during the planning of it.
He hoped that Katherine was equally willing to make the appointment. He had dreaded the process of invitation: the idea to meet in the stables was a rather unbecoming one, the implications of which he did not enjoy. Though he wished to be near her, he knew for certain that lowering himself to the status of the common favourite would only make him replaceable.
Halfway up the mountain, he suddenly noticed torchlight through the fog.
Freyza stood dumbfounded as the light floated just below the effervescent surface of the fog, first left and then right, until it reached the town just below him. Unmistakable: it was the pink carriage he had sent to Souchon that morning.
He took one last look behind him at the Roman architecture, and then put his arms behind his back, where he could nervously pick at the hangnail on his thumb with the knowledge that his nervousness would not come across when, a few moments later, the carriage stood before him on the cobblestone path and halted. Iskander, bundled up in a heavy woolen cloak, was beaming.
‘Master,’ he said.
Freyza raised his brows. Did this cretin expect to be praised just for doing his simple job?
Furthermore, he kept seated with the horses’ reins in his hands. Freyza gestured him to get off, but when Iskander appeared not to understand, he sighed and strode towards the carriage doors himself to open them.
He knocked twice — one simply never knows — and opened, bearing the widest grin he could bear without dipping into disingenuousness. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Sanlieu.’
Katherine had certainly gotten comfortable. She sat with her legs extended over up on the bench opposite her, her lap bearing crumbs and across her chest, her new necklace. Freyza clenched his jaw. He wished that he had been able to pick her up as had been the plan.
‘You’ve a summer house in Sanlieu, of all places?’ Katherine chuckled, taking his hand to leverage herself out of the warm confines of the carriage. ‘I thought this place was deserted.’
She looked up over Freyza’s shoulder and caught sight of the baths. ‘Your country house is an ancient relic of a past civilisation?’
He chuckled awkwardly as he looked upon the carnage that Katherine had left behind of the many pastries. ‘A guise, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘I had to consider the possibility that an adviser would read it before you, or that we were being shadowed.’
‘I wonder — if I ask Lady Diane about Sanlieu, will she know this trick as well, despite her lack of royal advisers, and far too little importance to ever be shadowed?’
Freyza’s face turned sour briefly. ‘Let us go inside for now. I have a bit of a confession to make on Souchon Palace life, if you do not mind.’
‘So instead of Sbaian language in a country house, it’s a confession in an ancient bathhouse?’ Katherine asked.
Freyza began walking. ‘I have a cold predisposition and I know that so do you. I’d say the natural springs are the only way I reckon we can comfortably stay up here, and the view truly is marvellous.’
She paced forward not to fall behind. ‘I do not enjoy the knowledge that I am so far from civilisation that I would likely never make it back if anything were to happen to me up there.’
Freyza opened the door for her and let her pass through the entrance. ‘I’ll have you know, my lady, the next town over really is a monastery town. I’m sure the monks will be happy to help no matter what befalls you, no?’
There was a certain sardonic tone in his voice that Katherine picked up on. She looked at him and flared her eyes. ‘Is this a do-over of that time you rejected me, though I came to look for you upon my return?’
He shook his head and signalled her to look forward and upon the frescoes, the skylight that had its snow removed just a few hours ago and was still spotless, and the tricking water into a small basin from which a small amount of steam rose. ‘Decidedly not,’ he said. He sighed then. ‘Please, my lady, you know why I requested your presence.’
Katherine let her eyes glide over the artworks that were older than her dynasty’s legend, and slowly let herself look back upon Freyza. ‘I did not even think to thank you up until this point,’ she said. ‘This must have been an ordeal.’
Freyza scraped his throat and nodded once. ‘I am honoured to say that winning your attention and your favour has caused me to make even more effort. So far, quite fruitlessly, and I hope my efforts do not come across as unwarranted or undesired. Let us walk on, please, I’ve arranged a sitting room. Thereafter, I will happily show you around.’
‘It is fruitless by your own hand,’ Katherine cooed and followed.
The corners of his mouth twitched — it was that very thing Katherine said, that he had been saying to himself for months.
The sitting room was fully redone and had both a Massouric and Sbaian element. Its refinement, in a way that would be legible to a Massouric nobleman, came from the paintings on the wall that portrayed ships at rough sea and hunting scenes, a harpsichord in one corner, and a couple of elegantly upholstered chaises. The Sbaian elements were introduced merely as touches: a choice of fabric harking back to the textile industry of the empire, a deep red carpet, a taxidermy wild cat that Katherine had never seen before.
‘Katherine, I wish to make things right,’ he said as she sat down on one of the chaises and raised her legs to dangle off of the end of it. ‘I’m acutely aware of my own foolishness. I have set terms between us that were not only ridiculous, they were also not my true intentions. If, in order to remain close to you, I must grovel at your feet, so be it. I am willing to admit this to you.’
She stared at him and remained quiet, and brought him to sit down just with the oppressive nature of her long, judgemental look. Her hands were clasped together in her lap in a way that, compared with her regal posture, read as conniving and poised rather than bashful as it would on any other young woman.
‘You’ve entered Henri’s camarilla,’ she said all of a sudden, her voice cutting through the calm air, ‘And still, you consider it groveling to become my favourite. Does Diane treat you like you wished for me to treat you, Freyza? Are you the elegant Sbaian nobleman with a duchy the size of a country when you are with her, or are you the exciting slave merchant who put me under for three days? Are you a prince or a rogue to her?’
‘Lady Katherine, I frankly was nothing more than a source of income for Lady Diane — the rumours of our affair or relationship or whatnot were fabricated and paid for handsomely on my end.’ Freyza scraped his throat again. ‘It was my belief that it would catch your eye. That is what I was meaning to tell you.’
She pouted. ‘What about the diamonds?’ she asked.
Freyza chuckled. ‘They look good in candlelight, don’t they?’ he asked. ‘They’re not real diamonds, however. Not that it matters. I’d build you a castle made out of diamonds if you insinuate that it will win your heart. I’d spend my life mining diamonds if it be your will. Have you thought to forgive me, Katherine?’
‘Be warned, Freyza. If I find out that you are lying to me and I do forgive you based on this fact, I’ll have to do your next object of desire a favour and castrate you.’
‘Understandable,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask Diane to inform you, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to keep the story alive to court proper. It’ll reflect badly on me if I am caught fabricating.’
Katherine’s lips curled into a smirk. ‘So I hold a grave and terrible secret, then?’ she wondered, her brows raised. ‘I’ve thought to forgive you. You could’ve just asked me in the stables, you know? Would’ve likely given you a bit more of a hard time, but I would’ve come to forgive you as well. I have thought too. I’m glad you’ve changed your position on our terms, and I am glad that so have I. If you wish not to be part of my public life as favourite, so be it. But then it will mean that our dealings will remain completely in secret. You’ve given me something to leverage over you — I will not be returning the favour. If anyone learns of it, your head and your neck will soon be distant acquaintances.’
‘That is equally understandable,’ he said. ‘I can keep a secret. Your advisers have given me carte blanche to teach you the basics of Sbaian as to strengthen the alliance between our countries. I say this is a good starting point. For some reason, Lord Overleigh and Lord Milden Cross might as well believe me to be a eunuch. I don’t think they suspect anything.’
Katherine snorted. ‘You’re not my type,’ she admitted. ‘My favourites have up until this point haven’t been diplomatic ambassadors, rather crude knights and unduly exalted footmen — I’m not known to appreciate an agreeable and noble demeanour like your own. I believe this may have been enough talking. My throat is parched. Show me around, won’t you?’