BVC Announces Servants of the Empress
Servants of the Empress
by Brenda W. Clough
Marian married a pirate. Was it fair to expect him to be a gentleman?
There is a power in secrets: the sheathed sword, the word not spoken, the ring sunk deep in the Rhine. But only if, at some moment, you draw the blade, say the word, wield the ring.
In a marriage, who changes whom?
Marian may have made a fatal error, falling for Tsan Ziyahn Lord Sze. Transplanting an Asian pirate to high society London may be impossible. The pirate lord brings dangerous plans and implacable enemies to England.
Meanwhile, at the exclusive Travellers Club in Victorian London, an unknown man ignites and burns away in a locked and sealed upstairs bedchamber. Marian and Walter Hartright follow the trail up to Windsor Palace. Is the Queen of England a target of the deadly plotters that Tsan has brought with him from Asia?
Marian Halcombe #12
The Thrilling Victorian Adventures of the Most Dangerous Woman in Europe
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Brenda W. Clough writes novels. These include How Like A God from Tor Books, and the Edge to Center time travel trilogy from BVC. Also look for Revise the World, expanded from her Hugo and Nebula finalist novella, and the eleven earlier volumes of the adventures of Marian Halcombe.
REVIEW
Just last night finished reading Marian Halcombe: The Thrilling Victorian Adventures of the Most Dangerous Woman in Europe, by Brenda W. Clough, and I had such a good time! The steadfast alliance between Marian, the dangerous woman of the title, and her more decorous sister, Laura, is a delight, as is the growing consternation of the men–hero and villain alike–as they come to realize just exactly what–who!–it is they’re dealing with. The book’s voice is pitch perfect, which adds to the fun.
I’m in for the next one.
–Sharon Lee, co-author of the Liaden Universe novels
Buy Servants of the Empress in the BVC bookstore
Read a Sample
Walter Hartright’s narrative
German folklore tells of a magic ring, forged of dragon gold. It confers supreme power upon the wearer. But the golden ring lies hidden, deep under the rushing waters of the river Rhine. Steal the magical ring from its guardian nymphs, and death and destruction follow. For mortals, even the knowledge of the ring and its magic is perilous. Only the Rhine Maidens can safely keep it.
I had dismissed this as fable. But now, I believe.
Part 1
A postcard depicting Balmoral Castle
Annie, if I make my fortune this very year, will you marry me?
A.
1 June 1881
Marian, Lady Sze’s journal
3 July 1881, London
It was before teatime yesterday that my new husband, Tsan Ziyahn Lord Sze, looked up from his letter. “Marian, may I use you?”
I blushed right up to my hair! My visible discomfort made the strong black eyebrows slant together in a frown. “Did I say something amiss?”
English is not his first or second, nor even his third language. “In the West,” I stammered, “there are requests one may not voice in public.”
“Ah! I understand.” He is very tall, over six feet, and in one long stride he was beside me. Powerful hands slid around my waist and his lips found mine. The long moustaches, braided to either side of his mouth, tickled my neck as he bent me back over the arm of the sofa, and I pulled out the combs that held up my hair so that the black mass of it tumbled down.
We have been wed for a mere six months, and the dizzy novelty of his affection overwhelms me – almost. “Not here in the drawing room, my love! What of the servants, your guards?”
Tsan’s deep chuckle made me quiver with happiness. “You cannot believe they are children.” I am no feather, solidly constructed in fact. But without effort he swept me up in his arms and carried me giggling up to my bedchamber. “What word did I use that carries that meaning? I must know it, to employ again.”
I am improving his English, so that he may be a proper envoy to the Court of St. James from his native Asian country of Parubalatang. And he’s teaching me terms in Paru Chinese that must never be spoken in public. There may be words for these acts and organs in English, but they are not taught to women. We may be the only couple in England who can converse about these matters!
Yesterday it took him some while to rehearse me in vocabulary and pronunciation. Only when we lay exhausted on top of the tumbled bedcovers was I able to reply to his original query. “The word I mistook is ‘use.’ You were not asking for what you just received.”
“Whenever you offer, be certain I shall accept.” He lifted me up to repose on his broad bare chest. “Short words in English are dangerous sailing, full of shoals. Are the other meanings of ‘use’ equally stimulating?”
From that favored perch I could bury my nose in his ear. The nooks of his body smell of foreign places, strange foods and unknown spices, a heady innate perfume. Marriage involves hand, and then body and heart, and I do so enjoy it! The ring set on my finger, I may love deeply and irrevocably, a joy that, twice widowed, I thought I would never know again. Somehow from across the globe Tsan and I found each other, a miracle so unlikely that it must have been ordained by heaven.
“Short words in English perform multiple functions. Also, there’s a wealth of slang and euphemism about bedroom matters, and short words have been pressed into that service precisely because of their versatility.”
“So, I have just used you.”
“And I you. A mutual act.”
He keeps his fingernails trimmed to the quick, shorter than English gentlemen do, the better to manage bow and sword. When he trailed them delicately over my skin I shivered with delight. “You’’ve changed my life. One year ago today, what were you doing?”
“Preparing to go to Cranmorden for the Summer Ball. Where, as I recall, I hit a clergyman over the head with my parasol and tipped us both into the lake. What of you?”
Laughter made his chest shake. “Would I had seen it! I was at sea, between Parubalatang and Da Nang, capturing a ship.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, it was unprofitable. They had already been robbed by the Goza.” He gave my bare bottom a pat. “Let me use you again.” He plucked his paper from under the drift of discarded petticoats, and eased me down to the mattress so that I could read it.
I skimmed it, a letter from the Foreign Office to his Eminence the envoy from Parubalantang. “I remember treaty negotiations opened last month.”
“This letter seems to indicate the Crown is not interested.”
“It was you, my love, who taught me how to bargain. This is but the opening move.”
“Pirates do not bargain.”
“Ever?”
“The hunter preys upon those too weak to argue.”
I rolled to my side and stared into his bamboo-brown face. The strong cheekbones and narrow black eyes are purely Asian. His high broad brow speaks of a powerful intelligence that has enabled him, under my tutelage, to become almost English. “In England,” I said, “if you’re strong, your duty is to help the weak. Rob the rich and give to the poor, like Robin Hood. Or to emulate Christ and feed the hungry and heal the sick. It’s how gentlemen behave.”
His smile was sardonic. “My dear, you know I am no gentleman.”
My mouth opened as this sank in. Of course, I must have known this. I married a pirate prince. Princes are noble, but how can a pirate be a gentleman? A mere year ago he was capturing ships on the high seas!
But he was going on. “You and your sister aid the weak. Even Hartright does it. But you do not, you cannot believe this is common. Many are the strong in Britain who happily prey on the poor. And if the weak achieve strength, they return the favor and oppress their neighbors. It’s the way of the world.”
I sat up, burning with a familiar emotion that I’ve never been able to name. “Then this world is fallen. It’s not right, Tsan. It’s the Empire’s shame that this, the richest and most powerful nation in history, tolerates so much abject poverty. Someday we shall account for our sin before God.”
Tsan wasn’t thinking about the poor. “When the strong face each other, more subtle arts than haggling come into play. My goal must be to encourage the Foreign Office to over-reach themselves. You shall assist me in defeating them with their own strength. Turning their advantages against them, so they fall.” He tugged me down again onto himself.
“Oh, I do that.” I leaned on his strong brown chest. “Letting men believe I’m helpless, and then tripping them up. Women have so little power, we’re forced into contrivances. Any woman sure of her own wits is a match for a man unsure of his own temper.”
“Huntress.” We were almost nose to nose, and his black eyes were half-closed in bliss. “When next you look in your mirror…” My bare skin trembled as his strong fingers, calloused from sword and bow, slid with exquisite slowness all the way down my spine. They loitered, deliciously, and then slid up again to wind themselves into my loosened hair. “View in the glass my mightiest prize. A treasure that I could not steal, but only win: hand, body and at last the heart. Slowly, with the most indirect arts, I lured the falcon into my hand. Turning her own strength against her, so that she did not even look around…”
“What?” But he pressed my mouth onto his, too strong to resist even if I wished to. I stroked the long braided moustaches past the lean cheek, lost in his kiss.
Every thought flew out of my head. Only after a long eternal moment was I able to speak. “Say it.”
He leaned my forehead on his. “I love you.” He added, as he always does, “Tell no one.”
I kissed him again. He only lays his armor aside here, in my arms. But for the first time I wondered: why? Why is his love secret? Before I could ask, he went on. “You see now how I want to use you. What do you advise, about this letter?”
The idea of discussing a diplomatic treaty in our current position made me laugh. “The Foreign Office has opened negotiations by expressing disinterest. Your secretary Mr. Ng must write back and indicate that you are not especially anxious about it either.”
“Lure them in, hah.”
“Exactly. Mention only in passing that Her Majesty’s government might wish to contemplate a few points. Which I trust you know. What are Parubalatang’s main diplomatic goals in this?”
“Money.”
The blunt word made me blink. “Do not, I beg, say that outright. If you cannot wrap it up in fine linen, ask me to do it. Is the treaty indeed so simple as that?”
“One does not resort to piracy for entertainment, Marian. When fishing and farming do not prosper, we take to the sea. Naturally the British Navy deplores this.”
“And if they pay you, you’ll stop.”
“To harvest the same sum without the labor of piracy? Certainly.”
Well, Danegeld is an ancient practice. “I can see why the Crown would rather not.”
“It was the Governor-General of Hong Kong who suggested that a treaty would make his tasks easier. They have not forgotten how my mother set fire to the town before the British came.”
“What if there is no treaty?”
Beside me Tsan’s smile was his terrifying one. “My brother Raba is not nearly as patient as I.”
“He sacked Manila after the great earthquake.”
“With my assistance, yes. Which reminds me – is it tonight, that I’m to speak of that adventure at the Travellers Club?”
I gasped. “Tsan, you’re the guest of honor!” From his discarded waistcoat I seized his watch, my wedding gift to him. “Oh, heavens. We must dress immediately! Look at the time, we’ve dallied the afternoon away. We haven’t time for tea.”
“We’ve had our refreshment.” His caress as I jumped up made me squeak!
Shall I need a secretary, to manage our increasingly complex social calendar? Fortunately I have Yvette, an experienced lady’s maid. And Sewell, who joined the household in June, is not only a butler, but Tsan’s valet. It’s never a simple matter to find reliable staff, and our difficulties are multiplied by Tsan’s foreignness. He does not know how to expect service as an Englishman of the upper class does. And a valet capable of braiding long moustaches to an even length is rarer than hen’s teeth. Tsan’s first English servant was too old to adapt. It’s my hope that Sewell, who came from the late Sir Ambridge Skyllington’s establishment, is young enough to regard it as an adventure.
We retired into our separate dressing rooms to be put into our dinner wear. Yvette had to put my hair up again. In honor of the occasion, she used the long gold-tipped pins that Tsan once wore himself, when his hair was as long as mine. Before we arrived in Europe the braids were barbered so he would look like a civilised envoy. Now he has passed the pins to me. Last night was the first time I wore them, and it shall take my scalp some time to be accustomed. Fifteen inches of sharp metal tipped with twining Asian dragons in solid gold weigh heavy. I should have had them made into a corsage brooch.
My gown was of Paru silk, a shimmering electric blue trimmed with curlicues, swoops, and feathery patterns of fine black soutache braid. When we met at the head of the stair, I inspected Tsan in his formal dinner coat. Sewell had dressed him perfectly, the cravat symmetrical, not a fleck of dust on the summer-weight black wool trousers, the boots a mirror shine. “Very good,” I said, dividing my accolade between them, and Sewell bowed.
We hurried downstairs just as my beloved sister Laura and her husband Walter Hartright stopped at the door. Tsan’s two guards jumped onto the back of the carriage, which whisked us all to the Travellers Club in Pall Mall, where we were just in time to go in to dinner.
London brims with societies, clubs, and associations of every flavor. The members of the Travellers having pursued all their adventure, dissipation and peril on foreign shores, the club is disappointingly and deliberately stodgy. The pleasure in returning from the headwaters of the Zambesi or a Polar ice floe are evidently enhanced by sitting down to a resolutely plebeian English meal.
We dined upon overdone mutton and peas boiled too long. If she had been sitting near, I would have suggested to Laura that the pudding would be a marmalade roly-poly. A menu so appropriate for boarding school must be intentional, chosen for contrast. When the invitation had been proffered, I had warned Tsan that if the club did not host interesting speakers, no one would attend the meetings at all.
He’d been sardonic. “So I am in the nature of the caged tiger, brought in to astonish the village.”
I should have remembered that I myself have never experienced ennui at the Travellers. Tsan was to speak about the great Manila earthquake of 1863, which he witnessed while, I regret to report, looting a ship in Luzon. But after the marmalade roll as he addressed the meeting, Tsan quickly wandered into what I sincerely trust were the promptings of a lurid imagination: “… at least in the South China Sea. Perhaps in your northern waters mermaids are different.”
My corsets were too tight for me to draw a breath deeply enough. Lord Glenallen, the club chairman, almost choked on a sip of port. “Say more, your Eminence, if you would. Are you certain the mermaids in your islands are not the seals or sea lions familiar to Western science?”
“Pinnipeds, you mean? I trust my stepson supplied the correct term. No, the mermaids of tropical Asian waters are truly half-woman. It is, how shall I put it, obvious to the casual glance, since they do not wear clothing. In fact one can hardly look away, they are so deliciously endowed.”
Oh, that man. He said this with a perfectly straight face. The impact was notable. Glasses of port or brandy halted halfway to lips, eyes widened or bulged, and someone dropped their teaspoon clattering back into the saucer. From the back someone called, “Has anyone other than yourself ever beheld these mermaids?”
“Certainly. Recall that ships do have crew. But in mid-ocean it’s dangerous for the men to be so distracted. Someone always insists upon wooing them, no easy task. Sea creatures have ready access to the treasures of the ocean floor, and so jewelry does not soften their hearts. And fish are readily available. No, if you desire congress with an Asiatic mermaid the most seductive offering is red meat.”
My face felt stiff with the effort to maintain a stoic front. On Tsan’s farther side I could see Walter’s dark eyes glazed with horror. Beside him a member of the committee said, “Great jumping Jehoshaphat.”
“This must be folklore,” someone else suggested. “Native legend.”
“I believe my first mate Mr. Banda’s elder brother actually succeeded,” Tsan said with unblemished candor. “Unfortunately, he didn’t survive the adventure. The creature dragged him into the depths where, we assume, her sisters took matters in hand. Only a single straw sandal rose to the surface.”
This vivid image made Lord Glenallen break in. “Your Eminence shall keep in mind that there are ladies present?”
I did not dare to glance at Laura, farther down on my other side, lest she betray me by giggling. But Tsan’s further elaborations shall never be known. He stared out over all our heads, at the window…