As each of the newly minted ministers approached and knelt, Amélie stood and affixed upon the lapel of each their badge of office with the seal of their new ministry (the Imperial Skull plus symbols befitting its portfolio). Each she guided through the words of their oath of office, itself a variant of the oath they had each taken a dozen times upon their ascent to power. Each was met with thunderous, if somewhat forced, applause by the courtiers gathered in the room.
Amélie's voice rang out over the din, swiftly silencing the applause. "The new ministers I give leave to depart for Bouillabaisse Harbor to enact my will upon their ministries - save for the Ministers Ryalor and Rainblade," she added as Dusk started quickly for the door, bringing the femme to a halt. "They shall stay as my honored guests tonight, to discuss ongoing matters of security. All others have my leave to return to their amusements."
Dusk could feel Amélie's eyes upon her, a sudden taste of bile rising in the back of her throat. She'd hoped that the Empress would simply forget her in the pomp and circumstance of the day, but she should have known better. In Amerone, there was no escape from Amélie. Dusk turned and bowed deeply to Amélie, holding it as courtiers began filing from the room, heading off to whatever chambers they occupied to while away the endless tedium of the Imperial Court. She caught sight from the corner of her eye as Irene Stickypaws, the new Minister Nicolas's wife, left arm in arm with her husband, the stiffness between them giving Dusk only the smallest satisfaction that she wasn't the only one whose marriage seemed less than satisfactory. How they ever managed four kits between them, I'll never know. A part of her winced, knowing that she'd likely be forced to endure the proximity of and actual interaction with the molly soon enough. There's just no escaping the past, is there?
As soon as the room was suitably vacated, the Empress descended from her dais, the subtle shifting of her silk gown hinting at curves that made Dusk's face burn beneath her fur, sudden jealous fantasies of exactly where her husband's paws had been flashing through her eyes. Dusk knew all too well the changes that bearing five kits had wrought upon her own body, and it infuriated her that even three seemed to have had minimal impact upon Amélie's figure. She schooled her face into a mask of polite deference as the Empress approached Talinn, one paw playfully brushing nonexistent dust odd his shoulder. "My dear minister, I promise that we shall discuss the matters at paw in great detail soon enough. You and your darling wife must stay for dinner; my chefs are currently preparing a full course of Fyadorian delicacies to give you a little taste of home. I particularly look forward to the pufferfish; the numbing of the venom is such a delicious sensation, like a light, brushing kiss from death."
Dusk hated pufferfish. She wondered how Amélie had known.
Amélie's paws moved to Talinn's collar, straightening it for him with a touch so domestic, so reminiscent of Dusk's old role in his life, that it made her want to put her own paws on the Empress’s throat to throttle her. "Until dinner is ready, why don't you go find the princes?" Amélie suggested to the newly-appointed Minister of Justice. "They've so missed your visits. I'm certain you will find them in their play rooms. Perhaps you could instruct Ambrose on his swordsmanship, show him some of your Fyadorian forms."
It ranked Dusk to know that Amélie had picked entirely names beginning with A for her kits. Dusk hadn't even been allowed to keep that solely for herself and Talinn. Her ire almost made her miss Amélie's next words. "In the meantime, I think your beloved wife and I will take a little stroll through the gardens together. It's been so long since we've gotten to have our girl talk together."
Since never. Dusk gave a small bow to the Empress, feeling her husband's warning glare upon her head, a reminder not to do anything rash or make things worse. Normally she resented such reminders, but she had to admit, today she needed them. She'd thought she'd been ready to deal with Amélie after all these years of avoidance, but clearly she'd been wrong. She could only straighten up and allow Amélie to lead her away, sparing her husband one last longing glance over her shoulder.
~~~
The silence between the vixens as they walked through the hedgerow maze in the Amarone gardens was stifling. The maze was built on a concave slope, all sides dipping inward toward the stately, white-painted tower of wood and lattice at its center, complete with a stately gazebo at its peak - and a slight gap through which one of the Empress’s snipers could watch the pair as they walked. Like all of Amarone, all of the Imperium, the garden was a stately panopticon, its beauty disguising the constant surveillance upon even the beast who should be the Empress’s most trusted security advisor. It rattled Dusk to be to vividly reminded that the entire vast security apparatus at her paws was merely one wing of the whisper network constantly feeding secrets into Amélie's ears.
Amélie spoke, her tone cool and detached. If the powder under her eyes was to obscure the lines and shadows of exhaustion, she just as thoroughly obscured any tell of it in her voice. "You must imagine, I'm sure, that my agreement with Talinn was made to spite you."
Dusk blinked, uncertain how to respond to the supposition. The Empress did not turn to look at her; the vixen's chin stayed raised, her gaze fixed on the path ahead as she walked this labyrinth with a measured ease, each step certain of her destination. Dusk's tongue felt like it was swelling to take up her whole mouth, and for a moment the paranoid side of her worried that there had been some poison in the tea they had been served. Finally she managed to form a response. "I cannot imagine what offense there could have been that would warrant such spite," she deflected, trying to constrain her own tone from revealing any of the vitriol that bubbled beneath her calm demeanor. "After all, we had never met, nor your grace and my husband before that moment."
"That is not a denial of the supposition."
Dusk hated when she did that. Nearly forty years the now-minister had been playing her games, fleecing beasts with her guile and charms, and this vixen saw her as clearly as if the minister were stripped bare before her. Clearing her throat, Dusk tried to find a safe half-denial to offer. "Any resentment would surely be illogical," she stated, keeping her own voice level. "After all, your grace and my husband came to your accord as an agreement between warriors. No general consults his wife to see if the terms of surrender are acceptable."
"No general surrendered quite so much either." The Empress’s tone turned pointed, and Dusk had to clutch her paws to restrain the impulse to scratch out those pretty blue eyes. She knew she would be dead before she could do any lasting damage; she even knew which poison would lace the arrow that ended her life. She might walk freely with the Empress through her gardens, but beneath its gilded exterior Amarone was a prison, and Amélie its warden. Dusk, as the prisoner, would do best not to offend the beast who held her freedom in their paws.
"I never assumed that your grace intended to spite me," the minister stated flatly. "I never assumed that your grace considered my feelings at all. Your grace obtained what she wanted; she was in a position to do so, and having such, there was none who could offer reproach."
The Empress stopped, and Dusk had to reach a paw into the hedge to grab a branch and steady herself so as to not trip over the hem of her dress. The Empress turned, something like a coy, amused smile on her face, the corner of her eye turning upward. "You imagine that Talinn was what I wanted?" The Empress laughed, that perfectly-pitched, musical sound like shattered glass in Dusk's ears. "My dear Dusk, did your husband tell you that, or did you surmise it for yourself? I ask only ask to know whose self-deception is to blame." She turned back to the path, resuming her winding course through the maze. "No, I did not want Talinn," the Empress confirmed. "Why would I? An aging fox, nearly my father's peer, with a wife and family of his own to resent my interference in their harmonious accord? If my goal was simply to procure heirs to the throne, I could have done so far more easily - and more enjoyably - with any number of young courtiers, rather than tying myself to one aging duke.
"No," the Empress continued, following a series of winding turns down the slope, "I did not make that negotiation to take your husband from you. I made it because I needed his loyalty and the peace that would come with it, and he had only one weakness I could exploit: his ego. You know, he never once questioned why I would want his kits," she remarked, looking to Dusk with something akin to bemusement. "In fact, I did not even offer those terms at first. I merely insinuated an offer of my company; he was the one who assumed I desired his offspring, and I proceeded based on his assumption. Was there ever a point in your marriage that you two discussed whether you wanted to have kits, or was it merely assumed that there would be heirs?"
Dusk felt her face burn. Her claws were digging painfully into the back of her paw and her own pads as she squeezed, a small trickle of blood creeping out between them. "I cannot imagine what your grace would gain by my answer," she responded, the coolness of her voice approaching the frigid.
"Clarity, which you have now provided. Your husband assumed he was being asked to sacrifice for peace; he did not understand that I gave up far more than he did in the bargain. I merely had the grace to let him imagine himself the martyr. After all, he is always far easier to induce to obedience when he slinks, ashamed, from my bed in the morning, the guilt a chain he places around his own neck. You must have suspected it though, did you not?" Amélie peeked at Dusk from the corner of her eye. "Surely the Lady of Storm's Peak discovered how easily he is led after a night of satisfying his desires."
"He only agreed because he believed it was your price," Dusk spoke up, more vehemence in her voice than she intended. "He lay with you out of duty, not desire."
Again that hideously perfect laugh. "My, the self-deception! He may have crawled into my bed with his tail between his legs, but he never once failed to perform. I never needed him to satisfy me, my dear Duchess; what I needed was his pride and his guilt. Pride to make him believe that what he had to offer was special, even indispensable: that his offspring would be the line that one day united Fyador and the Vulpinsula. Can you believe the hubris? As if my lineage could not accomplish the same just as easily with any other parentage. Does he truly imagine his seed to be so magical that it can turn an artillery officer into the mother of emperors? As if I did not work wonders by seizing the throne myself, in spite of all of the odds and all of the foes arrayed against me."
Dusk seethed, hating the Empress more with every word out of those crimson lips. It had been one indignity to bear when she'd thought that her husband's infidelity had been the price to pay for peace; the burning rage she felt to learn that it had never even been desired, but was merely a tool of control, threatened to turn her murderous.
Amélie noticed Dusk's expression, and she chuckled, giving Dusk a coquettish smile. "Oh come now, Dusk, there's no need to look that way. Isn't it some comfort to know that I never had his heart, because I never desired it? Haven't you feared this whole time that I was simply better than you: younger, more beautiful, more desirable, and, most of all, more lovable? Surely it's a comfort to know that we are the same. We both made a choice, surrendering our bodies to egotistical todds in order to achieve our own ends. We both gained power and luxury far above our station at birth by virtue of our sacrifice. The one thing you have that I do not is Talinn's love, and you can keep it; I have never once desired it. He has given me everything I need of him... Save, perhaps, for one thing more."
A chill ran down Dusk's spine, and she glared at the Empress. "What more could you possibly take from him?" she spat.
"Oh, no need to be like that, Dusk. Why, we could be like sisters, sharing everything," Amélie cooed, her paw straying to Dusk's shoulder. Dusk didn't dare to brush it off. "All I want is for us to be even, as a security measure. You have four kits by Talinn; I have three. He may be a broken todd, clinging desperately to the accord we have made for a sense of security, but he is ultimately a pragmatist. If his loyalty were tested between us, it would hardly be a contest; he would side with the femme who holds more of his offspring in her sway. After all, that was why he sent dear Alwyn to my court for so long, wasn't it - as an assurance? Well, four kits will assure me that, if ever he were given reason to choose between us, it would at least be a difficult decision. Don't look at me like that, Dusk," she playfully rebuked as Dusk's eyes burned with promises of fire and death. "I never once told him he had to leave you behind. In fact, I once told him that he could bring you to our bed if that would make it easier for him. Oh, but he didn't pass along that invitation, did he? No, I suppose he wouldn't. Regardless, you don't have to stay away; we can learn to share, I'm sure."
Dusk had always thought of Amélie as a spider weaving her web over the whole of the Imperium. Now she realized just how close to the center of that web she was, and how near to being wrapped and cocooned, a morsel for the Empress to consume at her leisure. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, the old adage stated; it was strategy more than wisdom for Amélie. The more that she involved Dusk, the more that what happened became Dusk's decision, not an edict from on high that she could resent. Even refusing the offer would be Dusk's choice, not the Empress’s. Whatever happened would be by her own paw, it seemed.
Dusk raised her chin, a challenge implicit in the gesture. "There's one thing you haven't considered," she pointed out. "I could simply tell Talinn-"
Again, that infuriatingly melodic laugh. "Tell him what? That I hold him in contempt? That I never loved him? And how do you think that will go?" The Empress tilted her chin down, looking at Dusk knowingly. "You, the famously jealous, possessive wife, a renowned and infamous liar, and I, the sweet, privately devoted imperial mistress, the one who held his head and stroked his fur while he sobbed into my chest in the night, whispering words of comfort? Which do you think his ego will demand he believe? After all, all I am asking of him is one last kit to remember him by. You are the one demanding he return to a marital bed you have thrown out in the cold this past decade.
"Besides, there is no need for such theatrics," Amélie waved a paw. "Surely you cannot imagine that I was the first femme he strayed with? He is a soldier, and soldiers are infamous for seeking their pleasures, as you are for yours. Does Talinn know how many males you have laid with? Can you even count that high? Tell me, did you ever take Colonel Jere to you bed in the end, or was the guilt too much for you?"
Dusk stiffened, affronted, but ultimately not surprised. In Misanthropy there was a joke that at least three beasts knew any given fact at any given time: the beast who originated it; the spy who uncovered it; and the Empress in whose ear it was whispered. Dusk knew for a fact that far more than three beasts were aware of her tryst with the Colonel. She struggled for a retort as they walked on together, turning into a straight procession to the white lattice tower.
The Empress broke the silence, a note of musing in her voice. "You know, every Nameday and Giftsgiving, my father would present me with two gifts. Before I could open them, though, I would have to go fetch one of my existing toys and throw it into the fire. When I was younger I agonized over this choice; I spent the months between holidays mourning preemptively for my beloved dolls and stuffies, contemplating which I could bear to part with. One year I refused to decide; without a word my father threw both presents into the fire, and then went up stairs and picked two of my favorites to follow. I sobbed for days afterward. It wasn't until I was older that I realized the lesson he was teaching me: that nothing is gained without sacrifice, and refusing to make a decision only leads to greater loss. It was a lesson that made me the commander that I am."
Dusk peered at the Empress suspiciously, trying to discern whether this tale was fact or fiction. Rulers frequently reinvented their kithood to better suit the narrative of their life they wished to tell, and Amélie, as a self-corronated Empress, had more reason to do so than most. In the end, it didn't matter whether it was true or not; that the Empress had even concocted such a story for her upbringing said everything about her character.
Dusk tested the waters. "I hope that you will raise the princes with more generosity than you were shown."
The Empress clicked her tongue, a sound that made Dusk's ears twitch in irritation. How had she known that sound was one of Dusk's greatest peeves? "They will each need their own lessons," the Empress assessed, "to shape their characters appropriately." A glance at Dusk turned into a lingering search that the minister felt rifling through her soul. "I wonder how you were treated, Dusk," she mused, "what toys you were given, which were withheld, and what was taken away to make you who you are."
Dusk felt icy water run down her spine to the tip of her tail. An infant sister's carelessness, a broken doll. A vendetta lasting decades started in that moment.
I never could let go of my toys.
Dusk met the Empress’s gaze, holding her own in response. "What is it that you would want to gain, in exchange for giving up your claim on Talinn?" She kept her tone plain and pointed. If the Empress was open to negotiation, then fine, she would negotiate.
The Empress clicked her tongue again before humming, and Dusk fantasized about pinning that tongue to her office door. "Well," she assessed, "if you can't bear to give me one, maybe two more nights with your husband to make sure the deed is done, then I suppose I will need a kit by him another way. Perhaps he would agree to give me one of yours."
No... Dusk felt her skin blanch under her fur as the Empress continued. "I did so enjoy Alwyn's company in Amarone; such a handsome and considerate boy, and how his younger brothers adored him. Still, he is much too busy to live with us full-time now. As for your youngest, Anastasia, I think she would find Amarone too small for her tastes. Besides," she peered at Dusk knowingly, "you favor your oldest and your youngest, don't you? Oh, don't give me that line about loving all your kits equally, Dusk; it's just us girls here, we can be honest. I wonder which of your two middle kits you care for the least, enough that they're worth trading for having your husband all to yourself again for two extra nights. The quiet, meek Alexei, perhaps? It could do him some good to spend more time with Mileya. Perhaps I could even arrange their marriage; if there's anyone that girl would tolerate as a husband, it would be her younger cousin. Oh, don't give me that look, Dusk, we both know they aren't blood relations, and even then, the Ryalors are more inbred than the line of Mar'kan ever was. If not Alexei, then perhaps Ameliya? Such a flattering choice of name, even if by coincidence. I wonder how long it would be before the poor girl would be calling me 'mother'. After all, mine might be the first true affection she's ever received. So, which is it, Dusk? Which of your kits do you love less than you hate me?"
Dusk could barely see that smug face through the sea of red swimming in her vision. More than the offer, she hated that she wanted to take the deal. She loathed herself for being wiling to give up Ameliya, her plain-faced, quiet middle kit, just to have Talinn back and exclusively hers. The pragmatic part of her mind whispered that they'd had five kits to ensure there were spares. The emotional part reared its head and bit back hard, proclaiming that she would never give up one of her precious children. "Fine," she choked out. "You can have your nights with Talinn, but he will never forgive you for demanding even more of him."
That horrible laugh rang out again. "Oh, Dusk," the Empress chuckled, stepping forward and embracing the minister. Her touch felt like silk and poison. "Don't you know how happy Talinn will be? After all, once a male has a beautiful, intelligent femme to wife, the only thing he has left to desire is a second one. And, with your blessing, he can actually relax and enjoy himself, guilt-free. Unless, of course," her eyes sparkled with malice, "you want your husband to suffer through your choices. That would be selfish of you, after all."
Bitch. That was the kindest of the words that flowed through Dusk's mind as the Empress held her, not so much in a hug as a full-armed grapple, pinning her in place, unable to flee. Dusk could smell the remnants of the morning's perfume on Amélie's neck; a wild, jealous part of her wondered if it was Talinn's favorite scent. So what if I'm selfish. So what if I want him to be miserable with you. So what if I don't want my husband to have a single happy moment in another's arms.
That pang of guilt shot up from within her heart as she pictured Talinn and Amélie together, a vile fantasy she conjured up whenever she wanted to feel utterly wretched. Her only comfort in that moment was to picture Talinn as pained, laboring in his efforts as if struggling up a mountain. The thought of him at ease, the same soft smile on his face that he used to give her... Only the knowledge that vomiting on the Empress would be a hanging offense was enough to keep the morning's breakfast in her stomach.
"No," she said flatly. The Empress stepped back, paws moving to Dusk's shoulders, eyebrow raised in quizzical surprise. "No," the minister repeated, stepping back out of her grasp. "No, I will not. Talinn may have my permission to give you his body, but he will never have my permission to give you his love - and for him, that would be what he gives in that bargain. Have your little prince - or perhaps a princess for a change, I don't care," she snarled, her paw sweeping between them. "In the end, Talinn is mine. His first oath was to me, and it will be that oath to which he returns time and time again. You borrow him from me, Empress. He is not yours to keep."
The two vixens locked eyes, neither looking away. This was a risk; to stare down an Empress was a challenge that could well invite death. Dusk felt her eyes watering as she fought to not look away. Finally, Amélie blinked, turning once more to look to the lattice tower ahead of them. "Very well; let your husband's senseless misery be on your head," she remarked, and this time Dusk caught a small huff in the Empress’s voice. "It is not me that you inconvenience. Go find your husband; tell him I will expect him in my chambers tonight, and a month hence, just to be certain."
Dusk blinked, wondering whether she'd just won or lost that conflict. "Your grace shall not desire my company any further?" she inquired.
Amélie waved a paw dismissively. "We shall not, until dinner at the least. See yourself back to the palace." The Empress continued down toward her private tower, leaving Dusk alone in the middle of a maze of the Empress’s design, wondering how she had gotten there, and how she would find her way out.
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