He would have us think him calm and collected, Barad mused. He did not fault the young man, but he thought bluntness might crack the façade usefully. As with most things that Barad ever spoke aloud, he had considered what he was about to say carefully. He said, “You arrive on Acacia as a suitor! Flowers in hand, honeyed words on your lips.”
Grae spit out the chunk of carrot. “You’re joking!”
“It has been a long time since I felt mirth enough to jest.” He glanced at Hunt, winked, and looked back at the Aushenian. “I appreciate humor in others—but, no, Grae, I do not joke.”
Elaz sucked his teeth, a sure sign his mind was turning over the possibilities rapidly. “There is a movement in the Senate to force the queen to marry,” he said. “It’s gaining steam, I hear. While she’s away making water flow from the dry ground, the talk in Alecia is about who should bed her and how she can be convinced that she needs a man at her side for the benefit of the empire.”
Lady Shenk laughed. She slammed the table with one of her large, big-knuckled hands. “For the ‘benefit of the empire,’ they say? More like for the benefit of some lecher’s cock. That’s what they’re thinking with. It’s a mass agitation of ambitious cocks! Believe me, I’ve seen it before.”
“Lady Shenk is not wrong,” Renold said, speaking as the scholar he had so recently been, “but the Alecian Senate is not a Senivalian tavern. No, let’s not jest too readily about this. Acacian monarchs are bound by the old laws. Among them is the provision that the ruling monarch should be wed. They should endeavor to produce heirs to the throne, as many of them as possible to keep the royal line alive. Corinn has a son, yes, but a single heir is not enough, and Aaden is not the child of a legitimate union. If the senators push this issue formally, they have a case.”
“It’s about cock,” Lady Shenk repeated. “But you’re right about the Senate being no tavern. I’d not let a senator into a tavern of mine. Poor tippers, they are, and always complaining.”
Barad placed a hand atop the woman’s fleshy arm, to acknowledge her humor while also silencing it. To Grae, he said, “It is rumored that before Hanish’s war Corinn—then just a princess—was enamored of your elder brother, Igguldan. Had things been different, they might have married. You might be linked directly to the Akarans already. I know; things are not different. They are what they are, but there is history here to be exploited. I don’t just propose this because of Grae’s fine jawline and long legs. Those things will help, but what may entice the queen more are the political factors. If I read her correctly, she disdains the Senate. It is a necessary nuisance to her. I doubt that she will wish to marry anyone from that gilded chamber. A union with Aushenia would shut the senators up without giving them any new power. Actually, it would bring her your military might, which would make it even harder for the senators to cause her trouble. I’m sure Corinn will calculate all these things in the time it takes you to bend your knee in greeting. And besides that, the queen is a woman still. She must have womanly needs, just like any other.”