Chapter Text
There was a jewel in the Lantsov family vault as big as a goose egg. It was a roughcut diamond mined in the Southern Colonies a hundred years back, and kept as portable wealth ever since. Nikolai had always liked it, because it was a rock which looked like a rock. Most precious gems are carved and polished into their beauty: the goose-egg diamond still looked as if you might stumble across it on the ground, or swimming beside a mountain waterfall.
He preferred that kind of beauty: something that looked like what it was. All jewels were rocks, after all. Why not all rocks as jewels?
Zoya glancing wearily around the vault, a square stone chamber lined with shelves, which were themselves lined with gold plates bearing jewels and heavy coins, said, “Some rocks are simply rocks, formed for walls or paving or just to lie buried in the ground.”
She was endlessly practical. “Function has its own beauty,” he said. “When a thing performs its purpose well, that's beautiful.”
She snorted. “A pig with its snout in a trough. A mosquito, sucking your blood.”
“You're surrounded by treasure and these are the images that come to mind? Why not the beauty of a carriage wheel, or the precise pressure created by the curved glass in a champagne bottle, or the heft of a well-forged blade.” Or Zoya herself, he thought: made for her work, and executing it perfectly.
She shrugged. “I'm only here to protect you. And to stop you getting distracted. Again.”
“Nothing is going to attack me in the vault, Zoya.” Not even you, he thought, not even here, a tree’s-height underground and behind three iron doors.
Her eyes darted about as if suspicious of every gem-laden platter. “Last time you went to choose a jewel, you came back with an idea for carving sound into steel. Which I confess I still don't understand.”
He brightened. “Sound is only vibrations, carried on the wind. If we can make a pattern in steel with the very finest diamond blade, then have a Squaller play the sharpest breeze across the pattern -”
“Your majesty,” she said with perfect deference.
Nikolai sighed. When Zoya was polite, it was time to behave. “All right. I'll choose. Right. This one.” He picked up a large emerald.
“Too big for a ring.”
“Maybe we can make it into a pendant, start a new fashion. Why do weddings need rings, anyway?” He cast it aside. “This would do.” A tiny sapphire.
Zoya said, “I think your queen deserves rather more than This'll do .”
Nikolai flicked the sapphire back into the pile. He rubbed his hands over his face. He wore his court dress, and the lace cuffs itched. He longed for the loose, flowing coat and comfortable, flatteringly figure-hugging breeches of his privateer costume. And to be at sea, free, with nobody making snide remarks about his failure to set a date for a royal marriage, or smirking about how un-Lantsov it was of him to have blue eyes and fair hair. He shook himself. He was the king. He was about to make a very good political match. Get on with it. He turned back to Zoya with a self-effacing smile. “Well, I'm struggling here! Giving Alina the Lantsov Emerald ring was simple. Obvious. And, if I say it myself, extremely romantic.”
Zoya inclined her head. “It was. All of Ravka marvelled at your exquisite choice.”
“Then she gave it back.”
“Fool,” muttered Zoya.
“Sorry what?” Often, Nikolai caught Zoya in such half-voiced opinions. He was never sure if she intended him to hear, or not.
“Nothing, your majesty.”
“Then I gave her my lucky compass.”
“Then she gave it back,” said Zoya.
“Yes.” Automatically, Nikolai patted his chest, where the silver compass lay snugly under his shirt. Zoya’s gaze followed his hand. He folded his arms.
“Could it be,” said Zoya, quite gently for her, “that your future queen is not much for gifts?”
Nikolai pulled a face. “I'm beginning to think she's not much for me.”
Zoya said nothing. She lifted a small silver ring from one of the heaped platters. It held no stone, but was delicately carved with a pattern of waves and feathers.
She held it out to the king. “This might suit. It is modest, and beautiful, and it's made of silver from Keramzin.” She dropped the ring into Nikolai's outstretched palm.
Nikolai turned the ring over in his hand. Yes. Alina would like it. It was discreet.
For a marriage of political expediency, discretion would be necessary. Nikolai fully expected Alina's former lover to return. And he had promised he would not stand in her way. She had said the same to him, that they were tied in name only, and he was free to pursue whatever happiness he chose. Their only obligation was to maintain a public appearance of devotion.
The whole thing made him miserable. And being miserable made him want to go out and find things to blow up.
He pocketed the ring. “Job done. How d'you fancy a ride to the explosives laboratory?”
Zoya shook her head. “You are expected back at court for the trade delegation from Kerch.”
They made their way back out of the vaults, layer by layer, each door clanging shut behind them and Nikolai pressing the royal key to each lock as they passed. He sighed as they reached the stairs up to the treasury. “Ugh. This took far longer than it was supposed to. Tell me you won't give your future husband such trouble choosing a ring.”
Zoya gazed at him for a long moment. “I can't think of a single man I would marry.”
He laughed, and clapped her on the shoulder. “Quite right. No man in Ravka could deserve you. And I very much need you at my side, for protection and also, apparently, for selecting royal jewellery.”
“More of the first, please,” she said, gesturing at him to precede her into the white marble lobby of the treasury, “and less of the second.”
Nikolai paused on the threshold. “You don't like jewels?”
“I don't like wasted time,” she said. Her dark eyes flickered, as if she was about to say something more, but no words came.
As usual, her words lingered with him long after she was gone. Wasted time.
His life, ticking away with Alina at his side. His heart, hurting because he loved her and she cared for him only as a friend, always pining for her own absent love.
Wasted time indeed.