Spring had come this year, wet and warm.
The Queen sat at her desk, a new commission she had just received from the palace furniture maker, full of ornate carvings, delicate lines, and intricate details. It made her smile. She looked out the window, into the grayness of the spring rainstorm, and she let her eyes trail around her office, admiring the contrast. Here, inside, the walls were a soft, French blue, framed by gilded gold reliefs. The warmth and opulence reflected her own gown, a draped dress of fine, gauzy linens tied with a pink bow around her waist. Her hair sat in an elaborate updo on top of her head.
The court dressmaker had scoffed at her insistence in wearing the dress, telling her that such a simple thing was unbecoming for a queen. You look like a peasant, Marie, she had said. Our queen should always look like the royalty she is, handed down to us by the divine right of God.
She had slapped the dressmaker. She needed no more reminders of the silly constraints of her position. By God, if she wanted to wear this dress, there was no one in the kingdom that would tell her otherwise.
She blinked, and an image appeared of the inside of her gold-rimmed glasses.
“Yes, your Highness?” Her favorite court advisor sank to his knees in front of her, from his own office across the palace.
“Have Madam Bertin’s fingers broken. Do not take her to the infirmary for three days hence.”
Her advisor stole a glance up at her. His eyes were wide. “Yes, your Highness. May I… ask what she has done to annoy you?”
Marie smiled, and it was the empty court smile she had perfected when she was fourteen and engaged to the heir presumptive to the throne.
“She thinks her opinion matters. If she will not make dresses the way that I like, she will not make dresses at all.”
Her advisor bowed his head. “Of course, your Highness. We all serve at your whim. May I take her to the infirmary after her three day sentence?”
“Yes, yes. Of course.” Marie waved her hand dismissively. “I’m not a monster. Besides, I will need a new dress to visit my mother in New Austria on Saturday.”
“Your will be done, my Que—“
She blanked the glass before he could finish. Sometimes she got so tired of the posturing at court. But then again, she would accept no argument from those below her station. Which was, admittedly, everyone, save her husband.
But he had chosen to spend more and more time at his own domicile across the grounds. He was the only one she could not summon with the click of her glasses. She bit her lip. He had told her that he was preparing for a fox hunt the next day, but the Queen’s anxieties got the best of her. Images of her husband, luxuriating in bed with a dozen lithe young women, all desperate to carry his child, plagued her imagination.
She knew what it had been like, in the King’s bed. At least, what it had been like, with her. Maybe with another woman — or other women — he would be different.
She sucked a breath in through her nose, trying unsuccessfully to curb her spiraling self pity.
She looked at the gold leaf fountain pen he had gifted to her earlier this month. It shown in the warm, diffuse light of the room, and she admired the fancy panache of teal feathers that adorned the end of it.
She had hardly seen him since he had given it to her.
She frowned. Such a stupid, antiquated thing. She picked it up. It was heavier than it looked. Who even used these things anymore?
Stupid and meaningless. A stupid gift from her absent husband. She held between her hands, her knuckles white and her jaw clenched. Stupid.
The pen broke in two between her hands, spilling black ink in a pool over her polished desktop. Marie watched it spread across the surface, like her anger and loneliness seeped across her own heart. It seemed somehow appropriate.
She sighed. This was childish. This was unbecoming of a queen, this silliness. She turned her wrist so she could see the face of her diamond-encrusted watch, and she swiped a finger over the blank face. It flashed blue, and a swirl of glittering specks poured out, surrounding the ink spill and broken pen pieces. It was always mesmerizing to watch the nanobots do their work, even now, ages after their first invention. She blinked, and the pen sat back in its holder, the pool of ink a mere memory.
The swarm coalesced around her index finger. A drop of her blood welled where the broken pieces of the pen had jabbed into her. Her skin stitched itself back together under the work of the glittering cloud of tiny things, as if by magic. There were books of the old world, she knew, sitting dusty and neglected in the palace library, that said that any sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic. She had had a tutor as a child who had been fanatical about what he called science fiction, but frankly, it had bored her to tears.
It was all so depressing. She had been happy when he turned twenty-five; she had never seen him again.
Again, she looked around the room, at all the elegance and warmth that her position brought her. Wealth, ease, luxury.
She tried not to pay too much attention to the ache in her chest, where the attention of a husband might live. No, she reminded herself. This is the true burden of leadership. Not dresses, but to maintain the illusion of contentment and control, no matter the roiling reality of her inner thoughts.
She sighed and dropped her head in her hands, as the swarm disappeared back behind the face of her watch. There was, after all, the Spring Rite to plan. She didn’t have time for these nonsense thoughts.
The Spring Rite.
That’s what she ought to be concentrating on.
She blinked, and a row of names appeared in front of her eyes. These were all the men of the kingdom who had become of age this year and had succeeded in their application process, with the names of their betrotheds listed after them. It was a longer list than in previous years, and this brought the Queen a measure of consolation. Even if she was being cruelly ignored, her own marriage virtually unconsummated, there would be others who would be able to have that need met.
She remembered the Rites of past springs, remembered the skin hunger in those men’s desperate eyes. After twenty five years, their desire was very nearly overwhelming, but that was the key to ensuring the continuation of the generation.
She tried to remember the last time the King had looked at her that way, or if he ever had. As a member of royalty, he had been exempt from the standard burning of the vas deferens as a child. He was always expected to sire an heir to the throne, even without the application process that protected the peasants from multiplying like field rabbits.
They still reproduced quickly, and even as removed as she was from the farms and fields, Marie wondered how it had been in the past, with unchecked growth.
What if the harvest failed, with so many mouths to feed? That could get ugly. She herself had only the passing familiarity with hunger; she couldn’t imagine the lengths people might go to if they felt it for more than several hours.
Obviously it was better now. The Rite kept the balance, even if the first flush was often more productive than was anticipated. After twenty five years, the men’s desire came roaring back with a vengeance, often filling up their young brides over and over.
The image of an old-fashioned glue pot came to mind, and Marie laughed, in spite of herself.
She thought about what it would feel like to be so filled up, rutting like animals in the mud. A shiver ran through her body, as she thought of being the object of a man’s pent-up lust. Something low in her body tightened, and her breath came in a ragged hitch. She had presided over three Rites as Queen, and she had seen all that desperate desire spilled into other women. The King’s dribble had never matched the ferocity of the Rite, and she found herself envious of the brides. Their men’s desire was such a precious resource to them, and they took it, willingly and eagerly, smug in their satisfaction of swelling with child. There was something about that first release that almost always resulted in pregnancy; she had only half-listened to the royal physician’s explanation after she had ascended the throne and took over the ceremonies.
To her, like the stitching together of her broken skin, it was all part of the nanobot magic.
She didn’t need to understand the intricacies of it, only needed to observe the effects.
She had a thought, then, a wild thought. Later, she might visit her confessor to purge the part of her mind that conjured this atrocity, for that was what it truly was.
She imagined herself at the center of the Spring Rite, the recipient of every man’s desire. She imagined herself covered, every inch, with that potent, creamy resource, her body the chalice it was meant to be. Her heart sped, at the thought. Surely this was blasphemous.
She crossed herself, and began the ancient chant of a Hail Mary. The words died on her lips as she murmured the second line, full of grace. Indeed, her own longing to be filled up, full of purpose, full of desire and love, was a weight that came crashing down on her. The King would not do it, or could not do it, or cared not to do it. She sat up straighter in her chair, her lips flattening into a thin line of determination. The peasants existed to support the divine right of the monarchy, so by proxy, they existed to support her.
The defense of her own heretical thoughts poured from her lonely, anxious mind.
There was no reason for her to remain empty, when all these expendable chattel surrounded her. She smiled to herself, and it was a true smile, one that felt almost foreign on her own face. They would all title their new husbands to her, during this Rite.
If she was queen, she was going to be queen.
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