The Grand Duchess's Seat

Lydia's name did not appear twice on the roster in the antechamber of the regency council hall.

Cassian Roen was on the third line of the list of regent candidates. Lydia Avern was written not beneath him but off to the side, at the very end of the roster of attending spouses. The scribe held his quill upright while Lydia read that line. It was the posture of a man with no intention of correcting anything.

“Where is the Avern seat?” Lydia asked.

The scribe answered without looking into the hall. “It has been sealed for the duration of the preparations for the treason hearing.”

Through the gap in the hall doors she could see a red sealing band. A thin band was wrapped in an X across a high chair carved with the Avern crest. Lydia did not touch it. The moment she did, someone would record it as damage.

Instead she heard the sound of a low chair being moved.

Two of Queen Dowager Beatrice's attendants carried in a small chair and set it behind Cassian's place. The chair was finely made. An insult that does not stoop to shabbiness lasts longer. The back was low, there were no arms, and its height was such that whoever sat in it could see the hall only over the shoulder of the person in front.

“The Grand Duchess's seat,” the attendant said.

Lydia looked between that chair and the sealed Avern chair. One was too low, and one was bound too high.

The others in the antechamber pretended not to look. A gaze that pretends not to look lasts longer than an open insult. The Karst family's proxy was measuring the height of the low chair while pretending to fasten a glove button, and the royal chamberlain checked that the knot on the sealing band had not loosened. No one insulted Lydia directly. The furniture and the roster and the routes did it for them.

Elias spoke very quietly. “If you have the chair removed, it can be recorded as a refusal of the spouse's seat.”

“Leave it.”

“You will not sit?”

“It has to be empty to be seen.”

Cassian came to her side. “I can trade seats with you.”

“Then it becomes Your Highness's seat.”

“That is how it will look.”

“Then I have no use for it.”

He did not press further. “What will you demand?”

“Not a spouse's seat. An interim representative's seat.”

“Not a formal restoration?”

“Representation for the 90 days of the hearing. If I demand the formal seat now, it becomes an excuse to bring down the treason hearing first.”

Cassian nodded once, briefly. It was as spare as agreement on a battlefield. Lydia nearly liked that agreement, and put up her guard at once. Even an agreement she likes comes out of the other person's position.

“I will not make the demand,” he said.

Lydia looked at him.

“Say so if you want it. Otherwise I will stay silent.”

“Silence can look like indifference.”

“I will take that cost.”

“No. Part of it will come to me. Even so, do not speak for me.”

This time he did not nod. Perhaps he understood that a nod could look like permission too, because he only stepped aside, the way a man holds a door open.

Inside the hall, it became clear that Lydia was standing only after everyone else had sat. The low chair was empty. Set inside the shadow behind Cassian, that chair drew a good many eyes in the room. Beatrice offered a warm smile from the Queen Dowager's seat. Oswin looked at the record stand, and the scribe wore the face of a man wondering whether to enter even an empty chair into the minutes.

“The Grand Duchess will be seated,” Oswin said. “The emergency council cannot be delayed.”

“The grounds for being seated must be settled first.”

The air in the room thinned. Cassian did not move. Lydia saw the instant he meant to open his mouth. His jaw dropped just slightly, then stopped.

“A spouse has no right to speak,” Oswin said kindly. “Today's council is a council of the regent candidates, the royal house, the representatives of the Twelve Houses, and the representative of the Three Ports.”

“Correct. That is why I did not sit in the spouse's seat.” Lydia looked at the sealed Avern chair. “The formal Avern seat is sealed until the hearing. But if this council means to discuss the freeze on port assets and the joint sealing procedure, it cannot decide with no one accountable for the frozen assets. For the 90 days of the open hearing, I request the interim representative's seat for Avern of the Three Ports.”

“You are saying the daughter of a house accused of treason is demanding a representative's seat.”

“I am saying a council that has frozen the property of a house accused of treason is about to debate the wages and provisions that property pays for.”

Oswin straightened the edge of the minutes with his fingertips. “The freeze on Avern assets is not a punishment. It is preservation of evidence. If the duke's daughter is granted the right to speak, a right of access to evidence will be claimed along with it. The kingdom cannot bear the risk of tampering right now.”

“Which is why I said the scope of interim representation would be limited to the use of frozen assets and the review of records. I did not ask for the right to remove original evidence.”

“Reviewing records is reviewing strategy.”

“If the freeze list holds the wages of port laborers and the keys to the grain warehouses, is that strategy too? Then it means people can be starved under the name of strategy.”

Somewhere along the side of the hall someone pushed a chair slightly. It was a small sound, but because of it Lydia checked whether her voice had grown too loud. The louder anger is spoken, the more readily it is dismissed as emotion. She lowered her next sentence.

“My demand is not my father's innocence. It is interim accountability for frozen authority.”

Beatrice's gaze moved from the chair to Lydia's hands. Lydia did not fold them. She had no intention of coining a memorable line. A sentence that is needed does not have to be long.

Cassian said, “My wife's intent is...”

He stopped there.

Lydia did not look at him. If she looked, something she could not name as gratitude or anger would show. Cassian corrected himself.

“Scribe, read the petition of the Avern duke's daughter exactly as written.”

The scribe looked at Lydia, flustered. Lydia drew out the single sheet she had tucked behind her copy of the contract. It was the draft Elias had written for her in the corridor of the hearing office. The ink was not fully dry, and the corner smudged on her hand.

“During the 90 days of the open hearing, and limited to resolutions concerning the freeze on Avern's Three Ports assets, the petitioner requests the interim right of representation and the right to review records.” The scribe's voice wavered partway. “Restoration of the formal seat shall follow the outcome of this hearing.”

Oswin did not counter at once. A narrow demand is hard to cut cleanly. He tapped the record stand and looked around the hall.

“The emergency council must fix the procedure for confirming the king's incapacity and the schedule for electing a regent today. The Avern interim right of representation will be put to a vote tomorrow. Until then the freeze on port assets stands.”

“I will have copies of the freeze list and the unpaid wage items before tomorrow's vote.”

“I will consider it.”

“If you refuse, record the refusal as well.”

“It seems the word record feels like a shield to the duke's daughter.” Oswin's voice was still mild. “But a record leaves accountability too. If your petition is voted down tomorrow, Avern remains the house that delayed the procedures of the emergency council.”

“If it is voted down, record that outcome.”

“Are you not afraid?”

“I am afraid.” Lydia answered at once. “That is why I will not hide behind a chair.”

Cassian's hand paused for the smallest moment on the desk. Lydia pretended not to see. If she leaned on that reaction too, what she had just said would slip under another kind of protection.

Beatrice spoke for the first time. “The Grand Duchess is fond of records.”

“Without records, goodwill and threats are left in the same voice.”

The Queen Dowager's smile did not fade. “A good answer. Though a good answer does not guarantee a good seat.”

“Which is why I am asking for one.”

Beatrice motioned for her attendant to leave the low chair as it was. “Then let us leave that chair empty today. An empty seat speaks too, sometimes.”

It sounded like praise, but Lydia did not accept it as a gift. The authority to leave it empty still belonged to the Queen Dowager. What Lydia had gained was only permission not to have the chair taken away.

The minutes also recorded that Lydia had not sat in the spouse's seat. The scribe looked at Cassian before writing that sentence, and Cassian gave no signal. So the scribe looked at Lydia. When Lydia nodded, the pen moved.

The first item was the procedure for confirming the king's incapacity. The second was the 30 day deadline for electing a regent. The third was emergency procurement authority, and there the Avern name came up again. Oswin argued that keeping the Avern ports frozen was what would stabilize supply to the North Gate. Lydia had no right to speak, so she said nothing. Instead, every time Oswin said “port cooperation,” she had Elias mark it. The word cooperation was used often without consent.

Cassian looked at those marks once and said nothing. His silence was more uncomfortable than words taking her side. Lydia endured that discomfort. To keep from asking him to speak for her, she also had to accept the coldness of the moments when he did not.

After the council ended, the gallery was crowded with footsteps. The attendants carried the low chair out again. To someone it was a small piece of furniture, but to Lydia it was the political height assigned to her for a day.

Cassian stood beside her. “Why did you not share my seat?”

“A seat received as a share ends up being Your Highness's seat.”

“So you chose to stand.”

“Standing makes my legs ache. But my weight is my own.”

He did not argue. Instead he took the North Gate supply map from Elias and held it out to her. “Material for tomorrow's vote. And another problem.”

The map marked the North Gate fortress and the route of the grain ship. A number was written where one red line broke off. Six hours.

The map had many fold marks. As befitted a report sent in haste from the North Gate army, the ink was blotted here and there, and a vessel number was written in place of the grain ship's name. Lydia looked at the number and narrowed her eyes.

“There is no ship name?”

“Army reports put the number first.”

“Ports put the name first. With only a number, it takes time to find the captain and the dockhands.”

Cassian did not deny it outright. “Do we have that time?”

“Six hours, you said. The less there is, the more the name matters.”

Elias made a blank space beside the map. “I will send a confirmation request to the port proxy.”

“The North Gate grain ship has left its scheduled route,” Cassian said. “If it does not arrive within six hours, rations at the fortress are cut off.”

“Must Your Highness go there yourself?”

“If I go, I miss the vote. If I stay, I leave the judgment on the grain ship to a subordinate.”

Lydia turned toward the door where the sealed Avern chair had been visible. Tomorrow's vote was the matter of her seat. The North Gate grain ship was the matter of Cassian's army. But both were matters of food and authority, and if one was given up the other would not hold long either.

“If Your Highness goes, Oswin will try to dispose of my interim representation in the gap you leave.”

“I know.”

“If you stay, a subordinate may see the ship as nothing but military supply. If it is towed by force without consulting the ports, the Three Ports move further away at the next vote.”

“I know that too.”

Cassian's answers were short but not rough. A man who could not state a conclusion was hiding the displeasure of having his own helplessness exposed. Lydia knew that displeasure was not her fault, and still she was careful with her next sentence.

“If I say I will take tomorrow's vote, that is not a spouse's role. It is the matter of my seat.”

“And the North Gate is the matter of mine.”

For the first time, two sentences with the same structure lay between them. They were not the same answer.

“What will Your Highness choose?”

“I have not decided yet.”

That was heavier than she expected. Cassian was a man who began with his conclusion. Having no conclusion meant that either choice would take away someone's share.

At the end of the gallery, Oswin's messenger appeared again. “The Chancellor says the North Gate supply matter will also be placed on the emergency council's agenda. He asks to be told at once whether His Highness the Grand Duke will leave for the field.”

Lydia looked back and forth between the empty Avern chair and the six hour report in Cassian's hand. The low chair was gone, but someone was still trying to set the height of the choice.

One day remained until tomorrow's vote, and the grain ship had only six hours. Two clocks in the same damp gallery were pushing different people toward their own heavy council doors, still closed.