20
Mace didn’t take Tasia’s invitation to sit on divan, but lowered himself back into the armchair he’d been sitting in during the meeting. Tasia lifted the wedding dress and stepped off the platform and sat on the divan herself.
Her gaze lingered on Joslyn for a long moment. “Joslyn? Sit beside me?”
Joslyn was puzzled, but she nodded and sat on the divan’s edge next to Tasia.
“Mace, there’s something I need you to know,” Tasia began. She glanced at Joslyn, hesitating. “There is no other way to say it, so I will just state it plainly. Joslyn of Terinto is more than the Commander of the Palace Guard and my personal bodyguard; she is my lover.”
Joslyn’s heart dropped into her stomach. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting Tasia to say, but it hadn’t been … this.
“No – I want to amend that,” Tasia said. She drew in a long breath even as Joslyn lost the ability to breathe. “The word ‘lover’ makes it sound as though Joslyn is but a tryst. The kind the highborn were so eager to gossip about when I was still Princess. Or like … like a temporary amusement, I suppose.” Her gaze hardened. “But I want to be absolutely clear with you both: if the customs of our Empire were other than what they are, it would be Joslyn I married this afternoon and not you, Mace. I want to call Joslyn my … well, neither ‘husband’ nor ‘wife’ exactly fit. I want to call her … my equal. My co-Empress.”
Joslyn felt as though all the air had left the room. Tasia kept her eyes on Mace, but she reached into Joslyn’s lap and laced one of her hands with one of Joslyn’s.
Mace sat with his mouth half-open and his brows drawn together, as though wanting to say something but incapable of finding the right words.
“I have known since I could recite my alphabet that my duty as a daughter of the House of Dorsa was to marry a man of my father’s choosing and bear that man an heir,” Tasia went on, filling the heavy silence. “It is the duty I have had since birth as a daughter of the House of Dorsa. But I have given much thought to this and … Mace, I simply cannot share your bed. Not only am I uninterested, I feel that to do so would amount to a betrayal of Joslyn. However, I also remain perfectly aware that this Empire needs an heir. It cannot be my sister—not only is her nature too gentle to rule an Empire, but I have also made an arrangement with Lord M’Tongliss of House Paratheen, and we all know that the Empire might well be even less prepared to accept a Terintan emperor than a Terintan woman as secret lover to the Empress. This creates a challenging situation. I must still produce a child, an heir. Yet, if I refuse my new husband’s bed … well, I think we can all agree that this brings us to something of an impasse.”
Tasia refused to share Mace’s bed. She refused. Joslyn had heard it with her own ears.
No one spoke for what seemed to Joslyn to be an interminably long time.
But finally Mace broke the silence with a burst of laughter. “I always knew you two were unusually close for Empress and guard. And I don’t care what my Wise Men taught me; Mother Moon does answer prayers!”
Joslyn lifted an eyebrow, and Tasia now looked as surprised as Mace had been a minute earlier.
“Tasia – Empress,” Mace said, “I say this with the utmost respect, but I also must confess that I do not have the slightest interest in sharing your bed and never have.” He chuckled again, glancing from Joslyn to Tasia. “My grandfather disgraced House Gifford by joining the other Western lords in rebellion against the crown, and when your father executed him and made my own father the new Lord of House Gifford, my father swore an oath to himself that he would restore our good name and make us the most powerful house in the West. My mother proceeded to give him three daughters but only one son. Which meant I had no way to escape his ambitions. And you?” Mace said, gesturing at Tasia. “Taking his House from shame and ruin to placing an Emperor’s crown on the head of his only son in a single generation? Securing my marriage to you has been my father’s greatest accomplishment. But it has always been about his wishes. Never mine. I suspect you, of all people, can understand that.” Mace shook his head. “I don’t wish for a crown. And your beauty is legendary, Empress, but I don’t wish for you, either.”
Tasia’s face relaxed. “I hope you don’t mind me telling you that I am exceedingly glad to hear that.” She cocked her head. “So what is it you do wish for, Mace?”
“My wishes … ” Mace laughed again, but then his expression turned thoughtful. “It’s been a long time since anyone bothered to ask about my wishes. I do rather like the city of Gifford, though. The climate is better than Port Lorsin’s. The city is cleaner. Quieter. Less refuse in the streets, fewer snakes in our palace—the metaphorical kind, anyway. If I could live my own wishes instead of my father’s, I would stay there all my life, serving the people of House Gifford.” He looked up. “And … people like you and me, Tasia, we don’t marry for love. We marry to form bonds between houses, and the people we love, we love in secret. But you trusted me with your secret. So I should trust you with mine: I’ve been in love with Kathlyn of House Becker since boyhood. I might have even gotten to marry her – House Becker and House Gifford would make a good match. But then my father put my name forth as a potential suitor for you.” Mace blew out a breath. “That first night we met, when we sat in the gardens and talked and you told me you had rejected all your prior suitors, I thought I was safe. I allowed myself to relax. You were in no hurry to marry – that much was clear. And once word came to my father that I had been rejected by you just like all the rest, I would bring up to him marriage to Kat. He wouldn’t have objected at that point.” He glanced at Tasia. “I thought you would want a suitor with ambition, a suitor enamored with you. And when you heard my lack of interest, noticed my lack of effort to win you over, you would dismiss me like you had the others. But I should have chosen the exact opposite strategy.”
Tasia gave him a rueful smile. “You were honest with me. And humble. I had to marry someone, and I decided you would at least be bearable.”
Mace gave a good-natured chuckle. “If only I had known. I would have done my best to be as smarmy and impressed with myself as all the other lordlings who had pranced around you.” His shoulders slumped and his face fell. “I wanted a quiet life—as quiet a life as a lord can get, anyway. I wanted a manor full of Kat’s children. I wanted to pass my days playing with them, teaching them, and in between I would manage House Gifford’s holding, build on the wealth my father had gained for us, as a good heir is supposed to do …”
He shook his head, like a horse shaking away a fly, and met Tasia’s eye again. “Too late for that, isn’t it? For both of us. Fate or the gods or just luck insists upon putting a crown on my head. But being able to tell Kat that I do not need to share your bed …” Mace’s gaze flitted to Joslyn’s, and with surprise she realized she felt sorry for him. “Well, I am sure Kat will be as grateful as you are, Commander.”
“I am sorry, Mace,” Tasia said. “Truly sorry. If there was a way to free you from this marriage and still hold the Empire together, I would do it. I promise you I would.”
“I know,” said the reluctant future Emperor. “You have a good heart. You’re like Kat that way—except that you’re much more willful.” Mace barked out a laugh, waving his hands hastily. “Which I mean in the best of ways, I promise. That willfulness is the strength that makes you a good Empress.”
Tasia smiled. Squeezing Joslyn’s hand, she said, “So it is decided: we will join our houses but not our beds. That still leaves us with the rather formidable problem of an heir.”
“Would it be … heartless of me to suggest that a city like Port Lorsin is often producing orphans, and maybe one of these could be … ?” Mace held up his palms.
Tasia grimaced, but she nodded. “Yes. I was thinking along those same lines. I could fake a pregnancy, and when the time comes for me to bear a child … It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a highborn family has adopted an infant in secret.”
Joslyn cleared her throat and shifted on the divan. The two highborns turned to face her.
“Faking a pregnancy is challenging,” she said. “Someone will know it is false. And at the palace, one person knowing is the same as all knowing.”
“I know,” Tasia said, “but it might be the only –”
Joslyn held up a hand. “In Terinto, apa-apa milk is a dietary staple, yet mares only produce milk when they are pregnant or when they have recently given birth. But male apa-apa are often slaughtered as calves, while their meat is still tender. And a shortage of male apa-apa makes continuous pregnancy rather challenging.”
Tasia made a face. “What do apa-apas have to do with –”
“Over the generations,” Joslyn continued, speaking over Tasia without meeting her eyes or Mace’s, “the nomads have cultivated methods for impregnating an entire herd of mares with only one viable male.” Joslyn paused, and she could feel an embarrassed flush creeping up her neck and into her cheeks. “I may be an uneducated ex-slave,” she said, “but I am relatively certain that mechanics of pregnancy are the same for humans as they are for the apa-apa.”
The two highborn exchanged a glance, both frowning in confusion. Joslyn sighed. She was going to have to state it as plainly as possible for them.
“I believe that you can bear Mace’s child, Tasia, without actually having to share his bed.”
At last, understanding dawned on Mace’s face. His eyes widened. “You’re suggesting that I … and then somehow we …”
Joslyn nodded. “I’m sure we could find the instruments required.”
But Tasia’s brow was still furrowed. She looked from Joslyn to Mace. “What? What are you two talking about?”