7KPP Fictober 2020
[Tiny fic fragments for the first twelve prompts since I'm so far behind the curve. The character is Marguerite Niarin of Corval, a court lady who's cunning, callous, and in love with Princess Gisette.]
1. Rise
Marguerite hates mornings, which makes keeping secrets harder than it would otherwise be. Not that it's ever easy to keep a secret in a castle packed with hundreds of servants, when one is rarely if ever truly alone. It would still be easier to keep gossiping tongues from wagging if Marguerite didn't have the wretched habit of falling asleep in Gisette's bed, and then being too sleepy to wake up early in the morning and slip back to her own room, undetected.
Gisette can't bring herself to mind too much. After the second time they get caught by a nosy maid, she solves the problem with a bribe and a promotion and even manages to get a new spy out of the whole ordeal.
2. Shade
It's high summer, and the city is sweltering. Outside the walls, along the banks of the river, the wind makes the heat is more bearable. Gisette likes to go riding along the river and insists on taking Marguerite along with her, even after seeing her dismal riding skills first-hand. Riding at night is out of the question, so they brave the summer heat together. When the sun becomes too intense, they seek out shelter under one of the trees by the riverbank.
Gisette wears a veil to protect her fair skin from the sun, which Marguerite can't help but tease her about, telling her she'll grow up to be just as vain as her mother. Secretly, she's just glad that Gisette knows how to take care of herself.
3. Weave
Gisette writes letters, and Marguerite lounges in the window seat and watches her at work, never asking to whom she writes or what plots she might be weaving. They attend the same parties and salons, where Gisette sweetly introduces Marguerite as her future sister-in-law. Later, in the carriage ride back to the palace, she'll spill all the sordid secrets that polite company won't tolerate to hear.
She knows that Marguerite has her own webs to weave, and knows that she shouldn't ask what they are, or how she accomplishes them. Marguerite never writes letters. She dictates all of her correspondence. There can't be very much secret in it if she's willing to repeat it aloud to servants, Gisette tells herself over and over again.
4. Gold
She shuddered when Marguerite told her about her mother's red-and-gold wedding dress. She never would have thought of Gisette as a superstitious person, but apparently being wed in widow's weeds is one line too far to cross. Reluctantly, Marguerite abandons her grand fantasies of fashion.
The mercer sees her downcast face and pulls out a bolt of cloth from the bottom of his cart. For the lady from Corval, he says. Special price.
Her eyes light up at the sight of it, the gold-on-gold embroidery and the opal shimmer of shot silk. It looks like the sort of cloth the Empress of Corval would ban her ladies-in-waiting from wearing for being too gaudy and attention-seeking. She can't possibly leave it on the shelf, and she doesn't even care about the price.
5. Worn
When the first letter from her mother arrives, the envelope shows obvious signs of creasing. She presents it to Gisette without comment, waits to see her reaction. Her fine, arched brows draw together as she examines the paper and the handwriting, turning it over and over in her hands. She doesn't ask about the creasing, but she does look puzzled.
She offers to read it aloud, and Marguerite accepts, citing an imaginary headache. Resting her head in Gisette's lap, she listens to the rise and fall of her voice and thinks about how much better this is than letting her maids read her letters to her. She doesn't think about whose hands the written words passed through, after leaving her mother and before reaching her. There's no point in that, not when there's nothing she can do to change it.
6. Transient
Gifts of flowers, she'd always thought, are rather silly. Her mother adores them and fills every room she can get to with enough fresh flowers to make the air inside heavy and sweet. Servants are constantly occupied with secreting away the wilted bouquets and replacing them with fresh ones, and all before the Queen can see and lose her temper.
Once or twice, she thought about mentioning that maybe the floral perfume isn't quite the thing for the headaches her mother often complains of. Today is one such day, as she watches a maid laden with dozens of violets, and the room takes on a cloying atmosphere, like sitting inside an incense censer. Gisette bites her tongue and turns her eyes back to her book. She can tell Marguerite about it, later.
Like the flowers soon to wilt, the Queen's good mood won't last very long. No need to cut it down prematurely.
7. Exalt
The wedding and the coronation will take place on the same day, and Marguerite is as tense is nerves as she is alight with anticipation. Gisette can't blame her. She's waited her whole life for a chance at a crown, and here one is finally within her grasp, and at such a low price to herself. Once she'd wedded, she'll be Crown Princess, fourth in precedence, ahead even of Gisette herself.
The loss of precedence doesn't bother her, any more than the idea of her brother being heir over her. She does her best work quietly, from the shadows, after all. Not like Marguerite, who needs the glitter and light of the throne. They're still in this together and she knows the wedding won't change anything between them, not when it's the two of them, alone together. She's not jealous. She's not jealous.
8. Reticence
On the days leading up to the wedding, Gisette is increasingly quiet. Not the watchful quiet that Marguerite most associates with her, but a still, sulky silence that bothers her. She can't pretend she doesn't know why, although they don't talk about it openly, even in those rare hours during which they have complete privacy. She can't pretend she's looking forward to her wedding night, either, but she doesn't mind the thought as much as she thought she would.
Then again, it's not like she can say that to Gisette.
9. Renown
The nobles gossip that the Crown Prince has married the most beautiful woman in the world, and Marguerite preens, like a girl who has been told all her life that she'll never be anything but a great beauty. Gisette recognizes the signs. She's seen them in her mother, and part of her wishes she could have brought her grandfather to reckoning for it. Her father is a lost cause.
She wondered who said it to Marguerite. Her father is long-dead, and she's read enough of her mother's letters to know that Lady Solange has nothing in common with the Queen of Revaire in the mothering department. The Empress of Corval, perhaps, she thinks. A spiteful former lover, looking to wound. Perhaps the Arlish princess she mentioned befriending. Arland is not exactly known for valuing women for their intelligence.
10. Surrender
Marguerite feels soft and small when she rests her head in Gisette's lap, eyes closed, and listens to her read. It's a familiar ritual that started with letters and eventually drifted to include selections from Gisette's private library. It helps that Gisette finds history as tedious as Marguerite herself does. Her favorite books describe complex military strategies or the grisly exploits of notorious pirate captains.
It's an odd backdrop for this moment of vulnerability, but they are neither of them ordinary women.
11. Hidden
It's during one such moment of vulnerability that Marguerite finally reveals her secret. She describes begging her mother to read her stories, long after she was too old for it. Recounts the tutors who threw their hands up and quit, despaired of teaching her even the most rudimentary of scholarship. She talks about training her maids to take her letters, and how she conceals hidden meanings between the lines, without ever touching the paper herself, and or the hours she spent perfecting her signature, painstakingly drawing it out over and over, until she could do it with her eyes closed.
One by one, the pieces click into place, and Gisette realizes that Marguerite doesn't know how to read.
12. Temperate
In public, Marguerite is a model of temperance, never drinking anything stronger than watered wine. Spilled wine spills secrets, she says. The King scoffs, but the Queen praises her habits persistently. Her headaches became less severe, she insists, when she reduced her wine-drinking.
Marguerite exchanges a meaningful look with Gisette, and turns subtly to look at her husband, to see if the message is sinking in. It's a long, tiresome road to make any real change in her behavior, but marriage is a long commitment, as the Empress so often lectured her on, in the days leading up to the Summit. With time, good habits will rub off on him, and neither the Crown Prince nor the Queen need to know what she does in private.
Gisette does, of course. There's very little that Gisette doesn't know about her, anymore.
