this.”
“I can pull my weight, my lady. Always have, always will.”
“I know. It’s just that I worry about you.”
Fenrik made a show of looking abashed. “Your father. The earl, I mean. He would have been proud to see you finally come into your own.”
She smiled at him, then eyed the open box. A sparkling array of stones nestled on a bed of ivory silk. A necklace of sapphires and another of sea-green emeralds, three pairs of earrings, an assortment of rings and bracelets. Resting in their midst was the crown. Interlocked golden circlets formed the base of the diadem, sweeping up into nine delicate points. The whole thing was encrusted with enough precious stones to feed the city for a month. She reached out with one hand, but stopped before touching it.
“Allow me.”
Fenrik whisked the crown out of the box before she could protest and settled it upon her head. Josey glanced into the mirror set in the lid of the box. The image that looked back at her was a stranger, far too regal and serene to be her. She wasn’t sure she liked the change.
“What’s that?” he asked.
Josey followed his gaze to the parchment in her hand. She folded it up and slid it into her pocket. “Nothing, Fenrik. Just a reminder.”
The door opened again, this time admitting a gentleman with a balding pate, one of the court’s many secretaries. “Your Majesty, the court waits at your pleasure.”
Squeezing Fenrik’s arm, Josey bid him good-bye and followed the secretary, her long skirt swishing. Two guards in burnished armor waited in the hallway outside. They fell in behind her as she walked down a winding staircase to the ground floor.
When they reached the door to the Grand Hall, the secretary looked to Josey, but she held up a hand for him to wait. Her stomach was uneasy again. The crown felt like it wanted to slide off. She took a deep breath as she reached up to adjust it. Just breathe , Josey . It will be fine . When Josey got the diadem balanced, she nodded to the secretary, and he held open the door with a bow.
Although she had grown accustomed to the opulence of palace life, Josey’s pulse still quickened each time she entered the Grand Hall. The elaborate tapestries, the vast marble floor, the graceful pillars rising to the domed ceiling—they filled her with reverence. Yet ghosts also lingered in the vast chamber. The bloodstains had been removed, but in her imagination she could still see the spots where the assassin Ral had kicked over boxes holding the severed heads of the Elector Council. And when her gaze strayed too high, the paintings depicting the glories of the True Church illuminated above brought her back down to solid ground. She might be empress now, but her rise to power had not been easy, or without bloodshed.
Sixteen ministers of the Thurim—less than a third of the officials who’d held the post when her father reigned—stood upon her arrival. They were old men, nobles for the most part, but two were elected by the common people of Othir. That had been one of her more progressive ideas.
Josey ascended the dais where the Elector Council’s thrones had been replaced with a gaudy eyesore of mahogany and teak decorated with golden studs over every conceivable surface. The palace staff had retrieved it from some cellar storeroom where it had sat since the overthrow of her father and restored it here. She sat down with all the grace she could muster on the seat as hard as an old stump and forced herself to smile.
Hubert stepped to the foot of the dais and made a deep bow. “Majesty,” he said, loud enough to be heard throughout the hall. “Have we your leave to begin this day’s proceedings?”
When she assumed the throne, Josey hadn’t much of an idea what an empress actually did . Presented with a host of questions, from whom to appoint to various administrative posts left vacant when the Church officials who had been running the country were removed, to how to raise a new police force