Ten is One-Hundred in Queen Years

Disclaimer: Dove, Ferdy and the 'Trickster's' characters all belong to Tamora Pierce.

By the time Ferdy finds her, hurrying past frightened ladies-in-waiting to her private bedchamber, Dovasary has smashed the priceless silverwood vanity and most of the small crystal bottles that stood upon it. A mixture of sweet confected scents waft overpoweringly through the air. The imported Tusainie-glass mirror has a spiderweb of cracks marring its face. A short, slender woman in a dark silk gown and rich jewels, the Queen of the Copper Isles hears the door open and her head comes abruptly up.

"Dove," he says quietly.

"I don't want to hear it," she hisses, whirling around, eyes like black quicksilver; liquid and dangerous. "She's gone and she didn't see fit to tell me—her Queen! not to mention her sister. Retired to Jerykun Island, after I let her marry that nonentity she wanted against my better judgment, and all I get is a letter!

"She probably did it because she knew that face-to-face you would convince her to stay. She's not good at standing up to you and she wasn't happy here. She never was. Not since—"

Dove flinches.

"What."

Ferdy is silent.

"Just say it."

"Don't do this."

"Not since Winna died, you mean," she says coldly.

Ferdy looks at his Queen-Consort from his good eye, the other an empty socket beneath his trademark silk eye-patch. She's twenty-three, young still for a woman; but ten is one-hundred in Queen Years, and that's how long she has been sole ruler of the Copper Isles.

"It wasn't your fault," he says gently. "It could as easily have been you under the assassin's knife; it nearly was—"

"—I'm sure that's a great consolation to Winna," says Dove nastily.

"—though that's not what I was going to say."

Coolly: "Oh?"

"Petranne hasn't been happy since her father and Elsren died, the year you claimed your throne. And if you try to blame yourself for those two deaths as well, I shall be forced to stray in my affections and take up with Lady Baonolu, who wouldn't know responsibility if it walked up and asked her to dance. Winna was her mother: let her go, Dove."

"She was my mother too!"

An unintentional outburst.

Dove is perfectly still, frozen for long seconds. Ferdy only sees the first crack in her façade because he is waiting for it; because he is the only one she will let see her like this. For as surely as Mithros and the Goddess will come again and Kyprioth, that careless and possessive steward, will kick and howl, once Dove breaks she cannot halt that furious flow of passion, so tightly bottled.

"She's the only one left," she cries, anguished. "Father, Mother, Elsren, Sarai, Winna; and now Petranne too. Everybody leaves me! I can't—"

Ferdy goes to her. He takes her small body in his arms as she shakes and sobs furiously.

"Shh, love," he says softly, into her jewel-dressed hair. "I'm right here."