“It is one of the perks of being of noble birth,” Lord Covier adds. “You understand that, Your Majesty. What is the point of being king if you cannot live in luxury?”
Leopold frowns. “My father might have died before he could teach me much about being a king,” he says. “But he made sure I knew that it was a duty, not a gift. That duty is to the people of Temarin, and it is not one that can be ignored.”
“Eugenia,” Lord Covier says. “Surely you can help explain why this is a terrible idea?”
Queen Eugenia opens her mouth but quickly closes it again when she catches Sophronia’s eye. Though Sophronia doesn’t speak so much as a word of threat, Queen Eugenia hears it all the same, and for the barest instant, she looks like she’d like nothing better than to launch herself across the table and strangle Sophronia with her bare hands. Instead, she forces a smile and turns to her son.
“Of course, darling,” she says. “It is a brilliant plan and I’m sure Temarin will be very grateful to you for it.”
* * *
—
That night, Sophronia tells Violie all about the meeting while Violie helps her out of her dress and into her nightgown and plaits her hair. Sophronia skips over certain bits that Violie doesn’t need to know—like how she’d blackmailed Queen Eugenia into agreeing with her or that her suspicions about Eugenia conspiring with her brother have been all but confirmed—but she doesn’t see the harm in telling Violie the rest. If Violie hadn’t given her the first batch of household bills, she might never have known how bad things in Temarin were.
“You should have seen Leopold,” Sophronia tells her. “He was magnificent. I barely recognized him.”
“It sounds like you were quite magnificent yourself, Sophie,” Violie says, securing Sophronia’s plait with a scrap of yellow ribbon.
Sophronia blushes, but she knows Violie’s right—she was magnificent. She stood her ground against three of the most powerful people in Temarin; she held them responsible for their actions, pushed for a solution they hated, and even blackmailed a queen to see it done. She can’t help but remember all the times she folded before her mother at the slightest hint of conflict. She’d never been able to stand up for herself.
But this wasn’t about standing up for herself, she realizes. It was about standing up for others, for the people of Temarin who didn’t have the power to stand up for themselves. She did that, and she feels proud of herself for it.
“The empress won’t be pleased, I’d bet,” Violie says, drawing Sophronia out of her thoughts.
She frowns, catching Violie’s eye in the large gilded mirror.
“The empress?” she asks slowly. “What does my mother have to do with anything?”
Violie blinks twice before shaking her head. “Sorry, I meant Queen Eugenia. Old habit, I suppose,” she says with a laugh. “Empresses, queens, it gets a bit confusing sometimes. Why are there different names for the same position, anyway?”
“Oh,” Sophronia says, somewhat surprised. She’s heard the story so much growing up that it’s ingrained in her mind, but even though Violie grew up mere miles away from Sophronia, it was an entirely different world. “Well, about five centuries ago, the Bessemian Empire included the whole continent—Temarin, Cellaria, and Friv as well. A few wars later, lands were surrendered, independences won, and Bessemia became the small but proud nation it is today, but the title remains. As you said, old habits.”
Violie smiles. “Well, what I meant was that Queen Eugenia couldn’t have been pleased. She sent her maid to request a meeting with you tomorrow morning, though request might be too mild a word,” she says.
“Oh,” Sophronia says, her stomach sinking, though she isn’t surprised. Eugenia doesn’t strike her as the type to go down without a fight. “What did you tell her?”
“That your schedule was quite busy and you couldn’t possibly fit in a meeting with her for three days at least,” Violie says with a wink. “It seemed smart to give her some time to let her anger go from a boil to a simmer.”
“And it reminds her that she is no longer queen,” Sophronia says. “Brilliantly done, Violie.”
It’s Violie’s turn to blush. “I think you might be rubbing off on me, Sophie.”
When Sophronia says her good-nights to Violie and slips through the door that connects her dressing room to the bedroom she shares with Leopold, he’s already in bed, sitting up against a pile of pillows with a book open on his lap. When he hears her come in, he looks up, his eyes bright.
“Do you know about tariffs?” he asks her.
Sophronia can’t help but smile. He’s taken to reading everything he can get his hands on over the last few days, constantly peppering her with questions about tax codes and economic theories. To her mind, they’re silly questions—things she studied years ago that seem like child’s play—but Leopold is enraptured by all of it. She catches sight of a stack of books on his bedside table with pages marked by bits of parchment.
“What about tariffs?” she asks, climbing into bed beside him.
“Well, apparently, if someone—say Lord Friscan—were to buy a horse from Friv instead of a perfectly fine horse from Temarin, we could impose a fee for him to import it. It looks like Temarin had tariffs in place until about fifty years ago, but they were repealed. What if we put them back into place? It would encourage the wealthy to put their money into Temarin’s economy.”
Sophronia doubts his mother will approve of that.
“I think that’s a brilliant idea,” she says. “Lord Friscan might disagree, though,” she adds.
Leopold waves a dismissive hand. “If Lord Friscan wishes to buy yet another horse from outside Temarin for his already-overflowing prize stables, he can shoulder the cost.”
“The cost that will be paid to us,” Sophronia points out.
“Ah, yes, but I had a thought about that,” he says, putting his book aside and reaching for another, flipping through until he finds the right place. “A public fund,” he says. “We had one about two hundred years back, during the Great Famine. My many-times-great-grandfather allotted treasury funds to establish the donation of food and necessities to those who couldn’t afford them. We could bring it back and—”
Sophronia cuts him off with a kiss, taking both of them by surprise. When she pulls back, they’re both blushing.
“What…what was that for?” he asks. “Not that I’m complaining, but…”
But she hasn’t initiated any kind of physical contact since the hangings, and every time he’s touched her, she’s had to force herself not to recoil. She thought she’d done a good job of hiding it, but apparently not.
She shrugs. “All that talk of tariffs and philanthropy is very attractive,” she says.