The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince Read Free Page B

for one is needed, I am sure there will be plenty of candidates,” she said carelessly.
    I wondered that she could care so little about it. It was true that she had cousins, and that they were well aware of the line of inheritance should Caution never bear a child. I knew that eventually her duchies would demand that Queen-in-Waiting Caution take a husband and produce an heir. Yet for now I was secretly well-pleased that she felt no need of a man in her bed. I, too, felt that our current arrangement was pleasant enough.
    Her eighteenth birthday came and went, and then her nineteenth, and she showed no sign of choosing a mate. All the while she was most willful, not only in her own ways, but in encouraging the young women of her court to live as they chose regardless of what their fathers or mothers might say.
    And, as the minstrels have sung, “Still the king and queen replied, ‘Yes, sweet Queen-in-Waiting Caution. So it shall be.’ For it seemed they could deny her nothing.”
    I shall not deny the truth of that song, but I will say that there was far more to Queen-in-Waiting Caution than the tales tell.
    As her twentieth birthday approached, her nobles became more restless. Yet neither King Virile nor Queen Capable would listen to those who suggested Queen-in-Waiting Caution might be better off wedded and bedded. The Duke of Bearns, who had offered a son, said, “A woman bears easiest when she is young and strong of back.”
    The Duchess of Farrow, who had offered a nephew said, “Quench her woman’s passions in a bed before she comes to the throne. She will rule better so.”
    The Duke and Duchess of Tilth, who had offered her a choice of their twin sons suggested, “The throne teeters on just a single heir. Let her wed young and mother many, to be sure the line is strong.”
    The Duchess of Shoaks, who had six daughters of her own waiting to wed, declared, “Let the princess choose a man soon so that others will know the berth is taken and be free to court other fair and noble maidens.”
    Only the Duke and Duchess of Buck were silent in these things. For the Duke of Buck was the king’s own younger brother, Strategy Farseer, and he had been bound well and tight to his name. He looked down on his little son Canny growing strong and straight and made no murmur that Queen-in-Waiting Caution had neither wed nor produced an heir to the throne. If the crown should happen to fall upon his own son’s head, I knew he would not mind the bump.
    These things I saw and knew. More than once, I tried to speak of them to Caution. But even though I was as well schooled as she was she dismissed my thoughts as the gossiping of her servant rather than the warning of a friend. A friend, I might add, who had been as close to her for many years as if I were her sibling, and loved her more truly than any of the ladies who fawned upon her. She dismissed my advice that she should soon choose for herself, or all choices might be taken from her. And that brought pain to me, for I had believed she thought more highly of me than that.
    But willful she was. And still I loved her.
    It was not just in men that the Queen-in-Waiting would listen only to herself, but also in horseflesh. It happened in Buckkeep one summer, in that time when all bring horses and cattle to trade and breed, that a Chalcedean trader came likewise with his wares. On a ship he brought them, for at that time Shoaks was so wroth with the Duke of Chalced that the Duke would not suffer any Chalcedean folk to cross his lands. This trader was a sly fellow, far too thin for an honest man, with a patch on one eye, and a wet way of talking so that he hissed like a spitting snake when he spoke. All turned a wary eye on him and little he sold that first day. So I noticed, for I was there, sent by Queen-in-Waiting Caution herself to look over the Cattle and Horse Fair that year and bring back news of anything worth seeing.
    Now among his wares this odd trader had a spotted