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On the way, Rod escorted me, while Bruna kept Ceria from grabbing on to my opposite arm. She stayed close to me though. Melione also managed to get close to me, slipping in beside Mireia, who had fallen in behind us. The three ended up forming a row. The others tagged along behind, but I noticed in my fairy sense an oddity among them. Diur was escorting Pasrue just like Rod was doing for me, and she seemed to be enjoying it quite a lot. Unnaturally so. Pasrue is a calm, collected half-elf fairling sage well into her second century of life, not the teenage girl she seemed to be emulating at the moment.
But all the way inside, my mind was a whirlwind, and this detail was just one of the minor bits of debris whirling around within it.
What were they doing here? Why had they shown up unannounced, when most of them were supposed to be guarding Amelia in Bray? Why, in the middle of my castle, did they still feel the need to have a privacy screen before explaining themselves?
The table in my office would be the most appropriate meeting room, but the staff would be preparing to serve a dinner for three in there at that moment. I passed a message to the staff to adjust the dinner size to feed this crew, and expect it to be served later, then led the visitors to a small reception room on the ground floor. It wasn’t a place the Lady of the Castle would normally hold an audience. It was meant as a place for the castle steward and other functionaries to meet with merchants and similar minor visitors.
Rod leaned close and asked, “Shouldn’t we take them upstairs, Ti?”
I had already thought up a good excuse and answered in an equally low voice. “It seems urgent and every more appropriate room is all the way up in the solar.”
Besides, thanks to Mother’s decorating sense, even such a minor room looked extravagant in her castle. With mahogany wall paneling, camphor wood furniture, and furnishings of jade and lacquerware, this place would be the highest status room in the house in any other ducal residence in the kingdom. At least, if it were a little bigger.
Fortunately, it was big enough to fit us. I looked around at the visitors as I sat, noticing in my survey that a certain cat had wandered into the room with us. Well, anything unusual may attract the interest of a pixie.
Uncle Arken, Graham, Melione, Brigitte, Bruna, Pasrue and Diurhimath. The only thing uniting this crew was that they arrived here together. But Pasrue sat next to Diur like she belonged there, so I was already interpreting them as a unit. I had to find out what was up with that. The old guy works fast, if it was really true.
I mean, it looked exactly like how Mireia sat next to Rod, or Ceria claimed the seat beside me, on the other side from him.
“My Lady, may I cast a privacy spell?” Uncle Arken requested, remaining on his feet as everyone else sat.
That caught me by surprise. The staff should be scrambling to bring in refreshments at that moment. Arken had spent more than enough time around Mother and Uncle Owen to know how things work in high society. If he was requesting it now, the matter was extremely urgent.
I looked at the footman who had opened the door for us and switched to Dorian. “Please step outside for the time being. Let the staff know we’ll take refreshments after a short discussion.”
He gave a ninety-degree bow and a crisp Dorian reply, “Understood, My Lady!”
Once he went outside, I nodded to Uncle Arken. “Please.”
It was the same magic I had seen him cast many times before. Holding his hand up like he was saying Benediction, he chanted, “The walls have ears and the doors have eyes / Enshroud the discourse of all within / From the senses of all who lurk without / [Secret Chamber]!”
The Light mana flowed out across the floor and up the walls. Privacy magic is one of those types that I can easily understand with fairy sight. I just can’t cast it. As it flowed across the ceiling to seal us in, I reminded myself I had two Servants with Light attributes between Ceria and Mireia. I should ask Uncle Arken to teach them that spell so I could use it.
“That should be sufficient,” I judged, but Uncle Arken shook his head.
“Please use your fairy sight, My Lady. Look around, very carefully please,” he stated. “Especially, look for any stealthy gidim hiding in the room with us.”
I frowned, wanting to say, Wouldn’t have Diurhimath already spotted one if it was tailing you? But Diur was scanning around the room as well.
I had a better way to find them. Although I did as Uncle suggested, I also released [Blood Mist], in a very thin casting. Diur’s eyebrow went up, but he said nothing.
“The room is clear,” I reported while retracting the blood magic.
Arken finally took a seat, then bowed his head toward Pasrue. “Your Wisdom, I kept you from answering His Royal Highness before. Please forgive me.”
Pasrue nodded to acknowledge him, then bowed her head to us. “Your Royal Highness, Your Ladyship, please accept our deepest apologies for rudely arriving without advance notice. We are well-aware that it is against etiquette and that it is troublesome in military terms. I could defend our transgressions by reporting that they were done by order of the Crown, but they remain ill-mannered.”
Rod frowned, his eyes narrowing. “My brother ordered this?”
“He did, indeed, Your Highness.”
“Then why did he not inform me that you were coming?”
“He ordered this at the highest order of secrecy,” she stated. “That order allows only the use of coded physical messages. Sir Arken?”
Arken performed a magic I had never seen him perform before, pulling a rolled up document literally out of nowhere. Frankly, I had never seen any non-fairy pull such a trick. It looked like someone using a storage treasure in Fan Li’s world.
He carried it over to Rod and went down to his knee to hand it over with his head bowed. A full genuflection is very old-fashioned in Orestania, but still appropriate when handing over a royal missive to an aristocrat of higher rank, or when a royal knight officially reports to the king.
With a supremely complicated expression, Rod accepted it, confirmed Ged’s seal, then pulled the thread in it to break it. He read silently, scowling deeper as he went, then wordlessly handed it over to me.
It really was Ged’s squarish, almost typographic handwriting, and it was short. After the official greetings that gave Rod’s full name and title as well as mine and went on for a full paragraph, the real letter began.
Sorry to spring this on you suddenly, but I refuse to risk Milly’s security even in the slightest after everything she’s been through.
My face probably twitched a bit. Was calling his sister by his nickname for her in a Royal Missive Ged’s way of adding assurance the letter really was from him, or just an added level of security? It would be hard to say how many people in the kingdom knew he called her by that name.
The enemy has made a third attempt to kidnap her, and it was very nearly successful again. And the nature of the attempt this time is such that I can no longer permit her to be away from our side.
I confess, my jaw dropped a bit. I had been told nothing about this, either. But Rod shook his head when I shot him an accusing glance. This information was news to him as well.
Unfortunately, the progress of the war in Atianus has been troubling lately. Unlike the Hamagaar front and your viceroyalty, we have not been doing well. For security reasons, we are not publicizing the facts of the situation, but Atius is now hemmed in on three sides, and the rebels have been making significant progress across the front, both the east and west of us. Ti, I would recommend evacuating your estate if, for any reason, you think its defenses cannot hold up to full military attack. At the very least, I would advise withdrawing non-combatant personnel even if you think it will hold. It would be better to lose a year or two of vintage than your precious vineyard employees.
The way we had been rolling through Parna’s rebel forces lately, I was genuinely shocked at this. Was the reason for our recent success that the enemy was concentrating on taking the capital, gambling that the psychological blow would be worth the losses in the South? But we were about to invade Parna’s duchy itself. That would be a blow to his side on the level of crossing the Rhine or marching to Atlanta. Wouldn’t that be a worse blow to his side, especially when he really should know that, Pendor having its own national identity and pride, the fall of Atius wouldn’t slow my army down a bit?
Sir Arken and Lady Ceria, who were present for the events, can describe the situation in Bray that prompted my decision. I will simply state my official confirmation of my decision to have them convey Milly to you and place her in your safekeeping.
Normally, I have to suppress a giggle whenever I hear ‘Lady Ceria’, but this time I was too worried.
I consider it probable that she would be in as much danger in Atius as she has been in Bray, while it is my strong suspicion that, even should the forces supporting the rebel Cullen prevail in the north, they will only succeed in losing the south and splitting Orestania in two. Indeed, I suspect that the ultimate outcome would be you and Ti eventually expanding your viceroyalty to overrun Orestania, repeating history in reverse. Rod, if that should come to pass, I feel confident in leaving the Kingdom in your hands, so trust in yourself and move with determination, relying on your wife to keep you from acting with too much haste.
Ged seriously sounded like he was considering these possibilities as likely, not idle speculations. Did he really think he was going to lose Atius? No, more to the point, did he really think he might die in the process? He could only ‘leave the kingdom in Rod’s hands’ through death or capture.
If you hear about a Privy Council meeting in Atius, please know that we have intelligence that Cullen intends to convene such a council, composed of his supporting lords, if he conquers or successfully encircles the city. You can ignore any decisions that come from there. The true Privy Council is now seated in Dava, and will remain there until I command otherwise.
Dava is a city roughly half-way between Thuriben and Bray, being one of the three great cities of the Far North. Four great cities, once Swarth, the capital of Hamagaar, is added.
That’s as much as I wish to include in this letter. I will leave the rest for Sir Arken and company to communicate.
The rest was standard flowery royal language, closed with Ged’s meticulous signature. I handed the letter back to Rod and frowned.
“So when will you be bringing Her Highness to us?” I asked Uncle Arken, who Ged seemed to be placing in command of this outfit. Since Pasrue was neither an Orestanian, nor under Ged’s command, that made sense. Rod had deferred to her due to her rank as a sage before. And it had somewhat made sense, since she was commanding the boat that had landed in my courtyard.
Arken smiled and raised his eyebrows. “Your Highness, she’s here already. She’s in the airship outside.”
Rod’s eyes grew and he immediately blustered, “You left a royal princess of Orestania cooling her heels in the courtyard all this time?!”
“Rod!” I scolded him under my breath. He shot me a cross look, but pressed his lips together and held anything else he had been about to say.
Then I glared at Uncle Arken. “However, I agree that His Highness has good reason to be upset, Uncle. Who is even guarding her?”
Pasrue was the one who answered. “Six royal knights of Orestania, my fully-armed crew, and all the magic defenses that Talene built into her marvelous machine, My Lady. And she is inside a special saferoom below decks that is especially secure. Given the facts of the situation, we don’t want to reveal her presence with us at all. Lady Allia Destia is maintaining an illusion of her continued presence in Bray right now, and we are hoping it is still fooling the enemy. But they have been clearly suspicious of my vessel. A demonic presence has been tailing us all the way from Bray. We assume that they are trying to find Her Royal Highness.”
