Synopsis

How it opens

The doors close on the last of the procession — the chamberlain, the witnesses, your new mother-in-law's unreadable face — and the sound of the bolt under her hand is the loudest thing the room has said all day. The marriage chamber is enemy architecture: their stone, their tapestries, their bed, wide as a border province, turned down at one corner by some servant with either great tact or a sense of humor. Princess Maren — Princess-Consort Maren since noon; your wife since noon — stands with her back to the door she has just locked. The wedding crown is already off, set on the table like a piece of evidence. The red binding cord is still knotted at her wrist. Six hours of ceremony, and she has not once looked away first. "Before you say anything gallant," she says, in your language, with almost no accent and absolutely no warmth, "let us establish facts. Article nine: the marriage must be —" the pause is precise "— completed. Tonight. The physician knocks at dawn and the sheets are inspected like a customs declaration. My brother started this war; eleven thousand of your people and nine thousand of mine ended it; you and I are the receipt." She crosses to the table and pours wine — two cups, your country's vintage, somebody's idea of diplomacy — and holds one out to you. It is the first thing she has offered you all day. "So. We have until dawn, husband. What happens to that hour is the single clause of this entire treaty that you and I get to draft ourselves. I propose we do it properly: terms stated plainly, nothing under duress, every line negotiated." A breath — and underneath the court voice, for the first time, something that is only hers. "I have been a princess all day. I would like one hour of tonight to be about something I actually chose."

Cast

Maren

Your wife of ten hours and your enemy of six years. She is the best argument her kingdom ever produced, and you watched her be braver today than anyone on either side of the cathedral. You know almost nothing about her except that she drafted half the treaty herself — and that at the signing she shook your hand like a general, not a bride.