Princess Hannah Darigon followed Duke Eddleston down the straight, bronze-plated halls of the palace sub-level. She wore a hot-pressed gray dress suit, fastened down the breast by eight gold buttons, and her dark-gray slacks looked rigid, but they were flexible if she came to blows. Her sharp black dress shoes gleamed and added a crisp tap as she walked with her hand settled over her rapier.
It was an exquisite sword, an heirloom from her mother’s adventuring days. Its silver handle was forged in the shape of a lunging lion, and in the lion’s mouth was a gorgeous ruby that served as its pommel. Hannah had other swords forged of superior mithril, but although its blade was made of steel, it had been enchanted so as to penetrate any material. Even its scabbard was magical, crafted from red drakes’ scales found in the deepest dungeons; so long as the rapier was sheathed inside, it would never rust or turn dull.
The sword swayed gently with her gait and jingled against the mithril chainmail hidden beneath her blouse. Her bright eyes took in everything, from the sealed halls to the burned-away plaques. It had been months since she was first imprisoned and in that time her father’s protocol had been followed to the letter.
“Do you have the time, Sir Eddleston?” She made an effort to speak respectfully, but there was still an edge to her words.
The duke rolled back his sleeve and checked his metallic watch. “We’re almost to the ninth bell, princess.”
“I think I lost track of time down here,” she said. “I’ve been counting the days, but whether it’s the ninth bell, or the eighteenth, it all feels the same.”
“There’s a nice sky today,” the duke said. “Cloudy, but the stratus is high, and you can see for miles.”
“Were these better days I’d take some satisfaction in fresh air and a view from the clock tower,” she said. “But it sounds like all I’d find is devastation on the mainland and an armada on the sea.”
“There will always be better days, princess. Just live to see them.”
“That’s easy for the Swordmaster to say.” She made a pithy laugh. “If anyone survives this siege, it’ll be you.”
“We may find out soon,” he said.
Eddleston led the princess into the domed sonoscope center, where officers listened to the mana-sensitive instruments keyed to Vultheras’ magical barrier. The surface elevator was down the hall on the other side, but they were stopped by a woman’s shout.
“Princess Hannah!” An officer jumped from her seat.
“Hannah?” another officer asked, looked up from his sonoscope screen.
“The princess?”
Uniformed soldiers piped up from their stations and Hannah was quickly overwhelmed by excited faces. The officer that first noticed Hannah smiled as she shook her hand and the duke noticed the woman’s hair was tied back in a bun identical to the princesses own publicized style.
With regard to the princess, she did well in navigating her own popularity. She smiled for her subordinates, answered their questions, and laughed heartily. Her admirers were members of the Army Special Group and trained to be calm professionals, but most of them were women that had enlisted just three years prior, at the opening of the Zenith War.
It was the middle of that war when Hannah made her debut in Bastilhasian society. Her boldness and masculine bravado had instantly captured the imagination of those frustrated youths that waited while the king appeared to hesitate against Atilonia. The princess didn’t stutter, she didn’t shrink, and while her father made plans, she called for action.
If her father hadn’t imprisoned her, the duke thought as Hannah signed autographs. She could have launched a coup. The military certainly had her back. Nothing short of Jessica would have stopped her, and what a tragedy that would have been.
The people of Bastilhas were renowned for their valorous courage, but the king’s edge had turned dull. None knew that better than the duke that was ever at his side. Perhaps it was the might of Atilonia that gave him pause, or death of Queen Mary that grieved his heart, but the popular view was that he was troubled and slow to action.
She’s every bit as brave as Kalen was in his twenties, and even more talented with her mother’s power and good fortune. If Bastilhas could only survive this difficult time, then…. The duke made a long look at Hannah, and in her smile, he saw the woman that had once enchanted the nation. If it was in her hands, there would be better days.
Duke Eddleston clenched his hand and breathed through his nose. His ears twitched and he turned his head, and then he felt it; before the instruments, before the sonoscopes, he sensed the fluctuation in the surrounding mana
“Contact!” an officer announced from his station. “Mana disturbance in the north-west sector, tracking ripples.”
The crowd surrounding the princess broke at once. They returned to their stations and placed their listeners to their ears. “I hear it,” an officer said aloud as she scribbled a note with her free hand.
Details were passed around the room, traded between sonoscope stations as fast as the pages could carry them. “Sounds like a high explosive shell fired from the mainland,” one said.
“Still gathering telemetry,” another said, “but it appears to have been fired from a 4-inch medium.”
“This is why we don’t slack off,” the presiding commander said as he strode around the room. “The damned Duke is here, give your lord an accurate assessment!”
“Yes, sir,” a man said. “Mana fluctuations are stabilizing and we expect the shield will solidify in thirty seconds, but the H-E shell exploded just before hitting the barrier, not on it.”
“They have us dialed in,” a woman remarked.
“An airburst causes more damage,” the man continued. “It looks like they’ve identified the shield’s outer perimeter.”
“I have a hypothetical question,” Eddleston said and the room fell quiet. “If we were attacked from all sides by airburst shells like that one, how long would the shield hold?”
“It depends on the number of critical junctions,” one lad answered.
“If they just fired indiscriminately, it could hold for hours,” another said.
“A critical junction is a place where two ley lines intersect, my lord,” a woman spoke up. Coincidentally, it was the one with a hair bun that had approached Hannah. “The shield is projected like a web and the ley lines rely on each other for gravitational support. If those intersections were targeted simultaneously, the shield would buckle.”
“In seconds, possibly.”
Duke Eddleston nodded. “I understand,” he said coldly. “I’ll advise the king on that possibility now.”
He turned to continue to the next hall and Hannah grabbed his hand, she tugged him back.
“We can’t leave yet,” the princess said.
“It’s just become all the more urgent that we do,” the duke answered, pulled on his hand. “Your father must see you, now.”
“Take me to lady Jessica,” she said and refused to budge.
“The First Sorceress?” he asked.
“Your daughter!” she shouted.
He frowned and pulled his hand free. She didn’t think about how this would look, he thought. The rebellious heir to the throne and the one called the stalwart loyalist at odds among tense soldiers. If I carry her away, I’ll look like a bastard, but I can’t lose face to a child. I’m still a duke!
Eddleston’s fist shook with aggravation, but Hannah held her ground. She straightened her back and rested her hand on her sword as she stared him through with fierce and familiar eyes.
“You can do as I say, or you can die, and we’ve lost far too many men,” the duke recalled Mary’s strict voice. “So, shut up and follow my lead.”
“She is protecting the city,” Hannah said and tears pricked in her eyes. Her hand trembled softly on her sword. “And I—I want to see. I deserve to see, her.”
The duke’s hand relaxed. Almost, he thought. She’s almost there, but not quite. He made a clarifying breath, relieved his mind of his troubled thoughts and made a thin smile. His gloved hand fell on her shoulder.
“For one moment,” he said. “Then you must go.”
Hannah nodded and dropped forward, caught her fall with her foot. The duke tried to assist her, but she pushed him away. The princess looked pale and unsteady. It had taken all of her moxie not to buckle under his baleful gaze. He was a man known by his various titles: The Hidden Hand, the Shadow King, the Swordmaster, and the Stalwart Loyalist. He was a legendary warrior in the flesh, the second—and by many sources, the first—among all swordsmen in Adohas. But before those things, he was her teacher, and sometimes her ally.
Duke Eddleston let his hands rest at his side while the princess recomposed herself, wiped her eyes and cleaned her face with a cloth. He wasn’t offended that she didn’t want his help. Gods willing, she will rule Bastilhas, and when she wears the crown, she will have to stand on her own, he thought. If I can forgive her outrage, I can forgive her impertinence. It’s… not always a bad quality.
“We’ll go this way,” the duke said and motioned toward a different hall.
Hannah nodded again, stowed her cloth. “After you.”
Jessica Eddleston, the First Sorceress, was near the sonoscope center, below the palace, and in fact directly beneath the clock tower from which the Clockwork Palace took its name. The shield matrix that protected Vultheras was not a natural, intuitive spell. It required many moving parts, miles of sturdy cable, and enormous coils called Ley Projectors. The spell was cast by a machine that spanned the length of the city, and Jessica was its heart; she made it possible.
Hannah was taken to a blue-lit room. The princess turned her head up, and above the white-coat scientists hunched at their terminals, inside a massive aquarium, floated the First Sorceress. Bubbles of oxygen escaped her breathing mask as she stared through the glass, suspended by a tangle of mithril wires.
“W-What is this?” the princess asked as she approached the aquarium, her face cast in the blue glow of Jessica’s Eyes of the Sorcerer.
“Its code name is chrysalis,” Duke Eddleston said from where he stood at her side. “It’s not Bastilhasian, or from Yamahei. We’re not even sure if it’s Olmenite in origin.”
“Speak plainly, please,” the princess said and turned to glare at him. She was scowling, and again there were tears in her proud eyes. “What is Jessica connected to?”
“It’s a system that draws mana from the Eyes,” he said. “It converts that mana into the shield that protects the city. We’re not entirely certain how.”
A man in a white lab coat approached the duke. “My lord,” he said and made a respectful nod. “Welcome to the control room.”
“What’s her status?” the duke asked.
“Her?” the princess muttered.
“The subject is stable,” the man said. “The automated systems indicate her power output remains at a steady 75%.”
“Subject?” Hannah seethed.
“Very good,” the duke said.
“Don’t talk about her like she’s an animal!”
“Calm yourself, princess,” the duke said and gestured to the man. “Let him explain.”
“Is that really alright?” the man asked. “The king said—”
Duke Eddleston ruffled his mustache and gave him a side-eye. “I will make it alright.”
The man nodded and bowed with his hand across his waist. “Then it’s as you say,” he said and turned to the princess. “Princess Hannah, this is our first time meeting in person, but I am your father’s Chief of Research, my name is Wendel Giles.”
The princess squinted at him. “Giles? Are you Selecezi?”
“Very perceptive of you,” Giles said with a smile. “I see you haven’t slacked on your geography studies.”
“What’s a Selecezi doing here?” she asked.
He turned to face the aquarium and in the blue light the pale features of his fragile face were clearer. Without the glow from the Eyes, even his hair would have appeared white.
“This technology is incredibly old and far more advanced than what we can produce in the modern day,” he said. “Few nations have access to functional examples, so as an expert in archaeo-technology, I was excited for the opportunity to study such a complete device.”
“You’re talking about the age of myth,” she said. “The age that ended when Achlesial killed Chotokhet.”
Giles nodded. “That’s when these devices disappeared from Adohas,” he said. “But they weren’t all world-ending doomsday weapons. Maybe, they never were. There’s still so much we can learn from them.”
Hannah turned to look at Jessica. “Why is she in there?” she asked. “Is she in pain?”
“No,” Giles said. “She’s in the tank as a volunteer.” He pointed at the ceiling of the aquarium. “Do you see those antennae? They capture the mana that the First Sorcerer naturally emanates and converts it into energy for the shield.”
“Wouldn’t that work on any wizard?”
“Yes, princess,” Giles said. “But, our experiments with more mundane subjects were… less than successful.”
“They died, Hannah,” the duke said. “The ancient’s system has mechanisms to prevent its subject from expiring, but the mana our previous volunteers possessed was so low that trial activation killed them, instantly.”
“The First Sorceress bears the Eyes of the Sorcerer, and so she has access to virtually limitless mana,” Giles said. “It’s really astounding, actually. She could stay hooked into the system for years—centuries, even—and not break a sweat.”
“Unless the shield itself encounters something fast and explosive,” the duke said.
“We had never fully deployed the absorbent envelope before the Atilonians arrived,” Giles said to Hannah. “We made some projections, but there was no way of knowing how powerful the resulting shield would be. We’ve thought of improving it—to increase her output—but that’s impossible while the shield is active. Worse still, how does one even improve on perfection?”
“Our eloquent scientist is saying the shield isn’t as powerful as the Atilonians think, but that’s been to our advantage,” Eddleston said. “Their army thought they couldn’t break it, so they had to wait for the navy to arrive.”
“I’ve already heard from our liaison to the observation teams,” Giles said as he glanced at the duke. “Battleships, twelve of them, and at least as many cruisers.”
“You said you had control of the emergency shutdown?” the duke asked.
Giles nodded. “Of course.”
“Pull the plug before Jessica fries herself,” the duke said. “She might not disconnect from the system on her own.”
“What are you saying?” Hannah asked. “She could still die doing this?”
“The shield draws more mana when it absorbs energy,” Giles explained with a slim smile. “The Eyes of the Sorcerer are just virtually limitless. We believe there’s a bottom to that well, and Jessica could suffer if she doesn’t disconnect.”
“We won’t let her die,” the duke assured her.
“Because she’s your daughter?” Hannah asked. “Or, because she’s important to the kingdom?”
Duke Eddleston frowned and turned his head. “I know who she is,” he whispered to himself
“It should have been me,” the princess said as she reached across the terminals to touch the glass. “I should have been the one connected to this horrible contraption.”
“You can’t compare yourself to lady Jessica, princess,” Giles said. “You have your talents, but Jessica was a prodigy that’s seen once in a thousand years. No one could take her place.”
“I don’t care,” Hannah said. “Bastilhas is mine to protect by birthright, if I had to rely on lady Jessica to protect my own people, then how could I ever call myself queen?”
“A queen has an army,” the duke said. “She has trusted subordinates and a loyal sorceress. She doesn’t do everything alone, nor would anyone expect that of her.”
The princess appeared to look into the light of Jessica’s stoic, unblinking eyes. “Can… she see us?” Hannah asked.
“No,” Giles replied. “But imagine how a spider detects movement by vibrations in her web. She can feel everything, in fact; all the people, all the motion, in the entire city.”
“I hope she knows I was here,” Hannah said.
“She will know,” the duke said. “She does know. Her eyes can see the truth in everything.”
“Does she know how I feel?” the princess asked.
“I’m sure she does, Hannah.”
The princess turned away from the aquarium and approached the duke. “I’ve seen enough,” she said and wiped her eyes. “Let’s be off to my father.”
Duke Eddleston nodded. “Giles,” he said as he turned to leave. “Leave nothing behind.”
The pale scientist smiled.
“C’est la vie.”
