One of the women, Duchess Henrietta, is Leopold’s second cousin once removed, and the other, Duchess Bruna, is his aunt on his father’s side. When they introduced themselves to her earlier, Sophronia smiled and nodded, like she hadn’t been forced to memorize the Temarinian royal family tree before her sixth birthday. Like she doesn’t know that Duchess Bruna’s husband has a fondness for gambling and women that has left the once-illustrious family deep in debt, or that Duchess Henrietta’s eldest son bears a striking resemblance to her husband’s valet. It’s strange, after so many years of knowing their names and the names and ages of their husbands, children, and other relations, to finally meet them in person. It’s almost like characters from a book coming to life before her eyes, if those characters turned out to be loud and inebriated.
She turns her gaze out the window, to the quiet forest on the edge of Kavelle, trying not to think about what lies ahead. In another hour or so, she will finally meet Leopold. It’s a strange thought—they must have exchanged hundreds of letters over the last decade. Letters that started out stiff and forced, a few stilted words, but in time grew to pages upon pages detailing private thoughts and particulars of their day-to-day lives. In some ways, she feels like she already knows Leopold better than anyone else in the world, except maybe her sisters.
But she doesn’t, she reminds herself. The dossier her mother gave her has proven that. The Leopold she thought she knew wouldn’t have tripled taxes on his subjects in order to increase his own wealth. He wouldn’t have evicted two dozen families and razed their village in order to build a new hunting lodge. He wouldn’t have had a man executed for publishing satirical illustrations of him. But the real Leopold has done all of that and more since taking the throne last year.
She doesn’t really know him, not any more than he knows her, and she cannot forget that again.
Everyone in Temarin is our enemy, Sophronia, her mother said when she gave her the dossier. Fail to remember that and you’ve doomed us all.
Duchess Bruna clears her throat, drawing Sophronia’s attention back to them. She tries to remember what they were discussing, what she’s been asked. Something about Bessemia, something about her mother.
“She asked if the rumors about your mother were true,” a soft voice says in Bessemian. The lady’s maid who helped her get dressed this morning at the inn, though she didn’t say a word to her then. Sophronia is surprised to hear how well she speaks Bessemian, without a touch of an accent.
“Which ones?” Sophronia asks the duchesses in Temarinian. Though she’s in earnest, the women think she’s made a joke and dissolve into laughter. Sophronia looks at the lady’s maid again. She’s around Sophronia’s age, with blond hair almost the same color as her own that’s been pulled back into a tight chignon, pretty but without the ornamentation and ostentation that seem to define Temarinian beauty.
“You speak Bessemian very well,” Sophronia tells her.
The girl’s cheeks turn pink and she drops her gaze. “Thank you, Your Highness. It’s my native tongue, which is why the duchess wished that I accompany her on the journey. I grew up not far outside the palace.”
Sophronia glances at the women to find them watching her, measuring her up. She doesn’t know which one is the girl’s employer, but it hardly matters.
“What’s your name?” Sophronia asks her.
She opens her mouth to answer, but Duchess Bruna gets there first.
“Violie,” she snaps at the girl. “Fetch my fan. This heat is infernal.”
The girl—Violie—hastens to open up the reticule she carries, pulling out an ornate golden fan and passing it to Duchess Bruna, who immediately begins fanning herself with it.
“Poor dear,” she adds, looking at Sophronia. “You must be sweltering as well. This carriage is a hothouse.”
“I’m fine, thank you,” Sophronia says. If anything, she thinks, there’s a chill in the air, though the two duchesses have finished off a bottle of champagne between them, so perhaps that is the reason behind their warmth.
“Such a dear girl,” Duchess Henrietta says, clicking her tongue and taking another long sip from her cut-crystal champagne flute.
The carriage veers sharply to the left, jerking Duchess Henrietta’s flute out of her hand. It shatters on the floor of the carriage, spilling champagne all over Sophronia’s silk slippers.
“What in blazes was that?” Duchess Bruna demands, snapping her fan shut and pushing open the carriage window. As soon as she does, the sound of frenzied shouts fills the carriage—Sophronia counts five voices, two of which she recognizes as the coachman’s and the footman’s.
“Not another robbery,” Duchess Henrietta says, sounding more annoyed than alarmed. She rolls her eyes and closes the window again. “These woods are becoming a nuisance.”
Sophronia peers out her own window to see a group of three masked men, each holding a dagger. One holds his blade to the throat of the footman while the coachman searches the bench, looking for something.
“They’re going to hurt the footman,” Sophronia says, alarmed. She doesn’t understand why the other women are being so calm about it—the men have daggers and the only defense the women have is the empty wine bottle. Sophronia supposes she could make a weapon of that, if necessary, though that would lead to an awful lot of questions from her companions. But the duchesses are acting as though the shattered champagne glass is the worst of their problems, and even Violie doesn’t seem particularly troubled.
“Not to worry, Your Highness,” Duchess Henrietta says with a wan smile. “Unfortunately, it’s becoming quite common in these parts—ruffians looking for easy coin—but the coachman is prepared with enough money to secure safe passage. It’s only a temporary delay.”
She sounds certain, but Sophronia’s unease doesn’t subside. She turns her attention back to the window.
The coachman holds out a white velvet pouch tied with a gold tassel and one of the thieves takes it, peering inside and weighing its contents in his palm. He pockets it, giving the man holding his dagger to the footman’s throat a nod. The footman is released, and Sophronia notices that he doesn’t look particularly troubled by the experience either.
“I didn’t realize the crime rate was so high in these parts,” Sophronia says, closing the curtain.
“Desperate people will do desperate things, Your Highness,” Violie says softly.
“Ungrateful people, you mean,” Duchess Bruna snaps.
Though she can’t say as much, Sophronia is more inclined to agree with Violie. The drastic increase in taxes in Temarin will have been enough to make many people desperate.
The sound of horses’ hooves approaching interrupts. The three thieves hear them too and start to run, but in seconds, a dozen horses appear down the road, ridden by soldiers with pistols raised.