"Requiem For a Queen" chapter 1 by Rob Queen

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Less than one Moon lay between the King's return and the baby's birth. Less than two fortnights remained of the ungainly maneuvering of the swollen double-life.
"You could always nurse her yourself," Bethraia mocked. "With Pesh's return to the Capital, need for you on the Council will lessen."
"And succumb to the idiot demands of my Provincemen? How progressive is that?"
"I know not about progressive, but there is some truth the sense that a woman should care for her child rather than engage in men's politics. We ain't Visun, after all."
Glancing from the corner of her eye, she found the cluster of councilmen off to her left. Berobed in the ceremonial silk of their station, representatives of six Houses stood by, solidly at attention in silent expectation for the Triumph's arrival at the Great Stair. At the part halfway down their robes, long tails flicked the Visun's only movement. Only the ill-named fool relinquished robes; favoring, instead, the striped habit of the court jester. From under a curly shock of white hair, he found Preaneis' half-gaze. His stare was long and as deep a blue as the sky, and with a wink, released her from the endless expanse of his humor. Smiling despite herself, Preaneis repeated her nursemaid's statement. "No, we are not."
"We're the better for it, I'd wager. What good is a tail in the backside, anyways? Always twitching and curling, but doing what? I bet he down there's got no need for one, either. It's probably poking from his skirt sure as any other's and what's it doing him? Not a Rented thing."
"Him? Who are you talking about?" Preaneis demanded, skidding her gaze over the assemblage working its way up the Square. Behind her husband walked the rank and file of His Majesty's personal guard, the Sukhile. Masked in the expressionless ivory steel of their order, she could not even discern one from another let alone pick a Visun from their uniform pounding of their disciplined march. Beyond them came the Groshire Cavalry, looking fierce and tanned in their red leather armor, and beyond them... she could only see the banners of the myriad factions of the Greater Youlban Legions.
"Your sight's a might worse than the wear for love or want; better, I think, those nubs be spent in another mouth than your child's. Milk carries all the good and bad in a soul, and if we want to champion that husband – gods bless every single one of those hairs of his beard – of yours, we need no weakness of body."
"My sight is just fine, thank you," the Queen snapped, awash in the insult of implication. How bold! Did the nursemaid truly think her so infirm that she could not distinguish some unnamed object within a multitude of the parade? There must be a hundred thousand people present today! "If you doubt my sight, then I challenge you to look upon the second banner in and tell me what number that reads."
"Oh I don't doubt that you can read that, your grace," Bethraia was quick to say, mostly to disguise her inability to read. "I'm only saying that maybe it's love and loss what makes you so blind.