The Dragon Queen's Gambit novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: The Seal
Torvald saw her land with a baby and swears silence; Aldous asks for her seal on Elowen's naming, and she gives it.
Ysmera did not scream at the well, and she did not pull her dagger.
She closed the dead woman's eyes with two fingers and stood.
"Carry her to the priests," she said. "And find out who was on the kitchen stair last night."
"No one, Majesty," the guard said.
"Then you will find out who was no one."
She walked back across the courtyard with her spine straight and her hands shut.
Torvald Eskrin was waiting at the foot of the tower stair.
He was captain of the Dragonguard, twenty-nine years old, tall and black-haired, with a short beard and a white burn scar across his left hand.
He had been at the roof gate when she landed at dawn the day before, and again this morning.
He bowed.
"Majesty. A word, with no one near."
She took him up to her room and shut the door.
"I stood watch on the east roof the night you flew," he said.
"You flew out with nothing and came home with a scrap of baby blanket in your saddle buckle."
"I took it off before the grooms saw."
He laid a torn piece of gray wool on her table.
Ysmera stood very still.
"What did you tell the guard?"
"That the queen walks her dragon at night." He met her eyes. "That is the oldest habit of the line, and no one questions it."
"And if the consort asks?"
"I saw nothing, Majesty. I am the captain of your guard, not his."
His voice was steady, but the scarred hand hung tight at his side.
Ysmera crossed to the window.
The sun was coming up over the city, and the palace bells had begun to ring for the dead.
"You know why I flew," she said.
"I know the midwife is in the well this morning."
"I know the consort smiled when he said so."
He paused.
"I do not know the rest, and I do not need to."
"You will."
She told him.
She told it plainly, from the nursery door to the cottage, and when she finished he did not move or speak for a long time.
Then he went down on one knee on the stone.
"Burn him," he said quietly. "Give the word, and the guard burns him in the hall."
"And then the river fleet burns the city, and my daughter grows up in the middle of a war."
"Then what do you want?"
"Twenty years," Ysmera said.
"I want him to love his lie so deeply that he cannot live without it."
"And I want every man who ate at his table to stand in the hall when it falls."
She heard how cold her own voice was.
Torvald lifted his head, and he did not look afraid of her.
"I will carry your letters to the hold," he said.
"I will keep the roof gate."
"I will lie to any man in this palace who asks."
"Why?"
"Because you came back for her," Torvald said.
"On the first night, bleeding, with no one in the world to help."
"I have served four queens and a regent, and none of them would have done it."
She felt something loosen in her chest.
It was very small, and it frightened her, so she put it away.
"Stand up, Captain," she said.
He stood.
They were close enough that she could see the pulse in his throat.
A fist banged on the door.
"Majesty!" a steward called. "The consort asks for you in the council chamber. At once."
Torvald stepped back and became a guard again.
Ysmera opened the door.
The council chamber was crowded.
Twenty lords sat along the long table under the high windows.
At the head of it, in the chair beside her empty throne, sat Aldous.
Beside him, on a stool, held in his lap with one hand, was the dark-haired baby in a white blanket.
"My queen," he said warmly. "You are pale. Come and sit."
"What is this council for?" Ysmera asked.
"For our daughter."
He lifted a roll of parchment, and the wax on it was soft and still unstamped.
"The law says a princess is named heir by the queen's own seal, in the first week of her life."
"I have drawn up the paper, so you need not trouble yourself while you are resting."
Every lord watched her.
They were waiting to see whether the queen would balk at her own child's name.
She walked to the table and read the paper.
It named the princess Elowen Harrowby, heir of Karnath, by the queen's seal and her consort's counsel.
Aldous held out the pot of red wax.
For one breath, Ysmera saw how it would be if she said no.
She would be a mad queen who refused her own baby, while a smiling man held the child in his arms.
She took the seal from her belt and pressed it into the wax.
The lords cheered.
Aldous kissed her hand, and his lips were warm and dry.
"Thank you, my love," he said.
"You are welcome, husband," she said.
She looked at the old dragon on the high sill outside the window, watching her with one gold eye.
Let him climb, she thought.
Let him climb as high as he can climb.
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