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As I hurried behind the very rapid Rod, I fussed at him for not answering my question.
“No time,” is the only reply I received as we all but ran the length of the Solar, from my desk at one end to the War Room (what would normally be my private dining room) at the other.
As we passed through the Solarium, the centerpiece and the physical center of this floor, Viscount Amalis, who Rod had also ordered to follow, yelped a hurried question.
“Your Royal Highness, shall my people also come along?”
“Just you,” Rod answered, and I had the sense he found the question annoying. Or perhaps worse.
“Your Highness, what is the matter?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
His voice was firm and calm, but I know my fiancé well enough to know, he was boiling with anger.
A similar half-dome of glass lights the dining room War Room, along with more skylights built into the vaulted ceiling. I briefly considered that spreading our war maps out on the dining table under all this glass was a security issue, then noticed the Light enchantments on all the windows. Likely, the windows were perfectly black, looking in from the outside. I knew that, because the same enchantments protect the windows of Mother’s office. It must have been possible to turn them on and off, because I had not seen them in operation in this room before.
A different map than before spread over the dining table, one that caused my blood to chill. It was a map of the city of Narses.
Colonel Morgas looked bewildered, and embarrassed, as everyone turned to see us entering.
“Your Highness, what was the matter?” she pleaded. “If I have offended you in some way…”
“Not you,” he interrupted, then turned his glare toward a Pendorian Army lieutenant with a buzz cut and handlebar whiskers.
“This woman,” he declared, his voice nearly shaking with fury as held his hand toward me, “is the one you should have informed first. It was her decision whether to bring me in. This city is her capital, and this is a civil problem.”
“Y, Your Royal Highness,” the lieutenant stammered. “I deeply apologize. I thought…”
“Apologize and explain yourself to your liege lord, not me. I’ll tolerate no more disrespect toward this duchy’s sovereign.”
“Rod,” I answered, before the man could speak. “Not everyone knows…”
Rod, there is clearly something significant happening down in the Lower Town. Do we have time for this? is what I wanted to ask, but that was not a question to ask the Royal Prince in front of everyone else.
“These people, at least, were clearly told that you are Acting Duchess” he answered. “The bulletin was read out to all Army Headquarters personnel and the entire castle staff. Anyone who wasn’t present has been separately informed.”
He turned his eyes toward Colonel Morgas and the woman seemed to shrink a little. I absolutely had to get her back to her normal job ASAP; she was clearly not emotionally cut out for this kind of role.
“Or at least I ordered it to be done, last night,” Rod added.
“Your Royal Highness, I assure you, your orders were carried out,” she insisted, managing to somehow avoid wilting completely.
Rod? The civil emergency? Whatever it is?
Well, he got to that subject. More-or-less.
He pointed at the map and declared, “This situation signifies a loss of respect for authority.”
Sending his glare around the room, he continued, “To regain it, we need to establish a respect for the owner of that authority. Those of you who do not turn first to her are disrespecting her. Regaining the power of the crown of Pendor begins with the people in this room, radiates out to the people in this castle, and then to the people in this government and military. Only then, can it reach into this city and this duchy. Is the issue that angered me clear now?”
As best as I could reconstruct from the clues around me, the lieutenant who had sent runners to fetch those in command had sent for Morgas and Rod, and not summoned me, who should have been called first. That lieutenant was now turning pale as a sheet as he began comprehending what he had done.
“Your response,” Rod positively growled at said lieutenant.
Trembling a bit, the man turned to face me and gave me a textbook 90-degree Dorian bow.
“My Lady, I have failed to adhere to the chain of command, and in doing so, I have severely offended against you. Please punish me.”
That ‘please punish me’ is the heaviest version of ‘I’m sorry’ available in the Dorian language. I’m not in the least comfortable with receiving it. Especially since the bow that goes with it is originally the act of offering one’s neck for beheading.
“Have you reflected, Lieutenant?”
“I have, and shall continue to do so, My Lady.”
“Please amend your ways. And raise your head. I’m gathering that something of dire importance has been happening while we were distracted by this.”
I shot a look at Rod that I hope he understood. Something more important was happening here, so why was he wasting his time on this?
Well, I suspect he had just given the reason. I wasn’t sure if it was worth the delay, but I wasn’t going to argue.
Rod asked the colonel, “Do you want the lieutenant to tell her what he was telling us, or do it yourself?”
Morgas flicked a glance at the unlucky lieutenant, then stated, “I’ll do it. However, Your Royal Highness, I have a recommendation to make.”
Looking annoyed again, Rod asked, “What is it, Colonel?”
“My officer just referred to our sovereign as ‘My Lady’, not once, but twice. It was proper, but only because we are still adhering to a fiction that I believe it is time to dispel. For exactly the reasons you just stated, Your Highness.”
Rod nodded gravely. “Very well. I’m saying this at least to all in this room. I think it should be withheld for the moment for everyone else, for operational security. Many people, probably including some in this room, believe the body lying in state is the Duchess. It is not, but she is indeed dead. We know exactly where her body is, and a mission left this morning in order to retrieve it. All that information is to be considered a Royal Secret until the mission returns with the bodies of Her Grace and my father. Her Grace died in the unsuccessful attempt to rescue him. We will keep this secret while the mission is out there, and announce everything once they return.”
“Who is downstairs, then?” one of the more grizzled Army types in the room asked in a baffled voice. Then, as multiple people shot glances at him, hurriedly added, “… Your Royal Highness.”
I decided that I needed to stop acting as a prop, and answered before Rod could. “My older sister Inda. A fellow daughter of Deharè. She had been acting as Mother’s body double whenever Mother needed to secretly be elsewhere. She… wasn’t powerful enough to withstand an attack intended to kill Mother.”
“Can you really be sure, My Lady?” the same veteran asked. “I’ve seen the body…”
Rather than still believing it was Mother, I had the sense that he was hoping none of it was true, and Lady Sasara was still alive and out there somewhere.
“I’m sure Amana has already informed you that anyone with Fairy Sight who knew Mother or Inda can identify them by their mana signature.”
“But Lady Amana…” he started, then frowned and stopped his words.
I’m sure he remembered at that point who he was debating this with. The man had a major’s insignia, but enough years that he was probably a retiree returned to active duty. And he was clearly out of his environment here. I realized he was probably someone brought in, within the last week or so, to deal with the critical manpower shortage in the officer ranks.
“Major, I’m given to understand that my older sister Amana often pretends to be just a fairly powerful fairy-blooded mage. The fairling act gave her more freedom in the past, but it has been working against her lately. The truth is that ‘Lady’ Amana is a full-blooded fairy, and, as one of Princess Deharè’s daughters like myself, she is a granddaughter of the Fairy King. In other words, she is equipped with the excellent Fairy Sight one would expect of a princess of Faerie. You can rest assured that she is not mistaken.”
His brow wrinkled, but he nodded.
“I can also tell you, based upon my own Fairy Sight, that the woman lying in state downstairs is not my foster mother. Her Grace Sasara is indeed the daughter of a fairy, and so, she also possesses a fairy’s mana signature. When her body arrives, I will be able to confirm that it is her.”
While I was speaking, I had to blink a few times to stop myself from tearing up. Rod noticed and caught my hand to give it a squeeze.
Continuing to hold on to me, he looked around the room again and nodded. “So there you have it. You should take note that, once we make this public, you shall be addressing my fiancée as Your Grace, as she is your regnant duchess. In the meantime, for security reasons, you are to continue addressing her as ‘My Lady’. I will soon be her husband, but make no mistake, she is your duchess, even now. The ‘acting’ is just for public consumption, and I will never be your duke. She is already confirmed as Duchess of Pendor by the Privy Council and she is in charge in this room and this duchy.”
Morgas looked a little uncertain. “Your authority as viceroy…”
“A duchess is the sovereign in her duchy, Colonel. I represent the Crown here, but I am only sovereign in the territories beyond the Duchy’s borders. She is your liege lord.”
The mood looked a little somber, and I wanted it to end.
“Your Highness, if we could attend to the matter you brought me here for…” I prompted, then looked at Morgas. “You were going to explain.”
She nodded and did so, repeating out what she and Rod (and probably the grizzled major) had been told by the lieutenant when they first arrived.
A large-scale disturbance had broken out, beginning in the riverfront district around sunrise, a strange time for a riot to begin. It had started with gangs of thugs breaking into shops and destroying the early-morning market, but for some reason it had escalated into a more general uprising. The cause behind the riot was unclear.
The map had been marked up with known points of disturbance, and positions of the city’s constables, who were mostly besieged in their headquarters. She spent some time explaining the nature of the groups known to be in each position. It seemed like every gang member and secret society member was in the streets.
“Is the Upper Town secure?” I asked first, as soon as Colonel Morgas finished.
“Yes, My Lady,” she confirmed. “The lieutenant and his team dispatched additional forces to barricade the access roads, once the severity of the situation became clear.
I frowned down at the map, noting where the airfield was in relation to the riots. “And the airfield?”
“The Army is fully staffed to defend it, My Lady,” she answered. “It is secured.”
After a beat or two, she added, “If you are concerned about the mission, it safely reached the airfield and departed without encountering any rioters.”
I actually hadn’t even thought about it. If they had run into any issues, Serera or Dilorè would already have contacted me.
“I was more concerned that our air defense could be compromised, Colonel,” I told her. “We are still a recently attacked city, and this could somehow be the result of enemy agents provocateurs, in preparation for a second attack.”
“It’s the most reasonable explanation,” she agreed, “although how they could enrage so many people so fast is hard to imagine.”
My first thought was that the masses had somehow already heard about my impending takeover and were rioting. But then my eye caught a detail on the map that gave me a different idea. The positions of many of these rioters had a suspicious correspondence to another recent matter.
I turned to the viscount and asked him, “My Lord, could Mr. Beretin have some influence in the underworld of Narses? No, some influence wouldn’t be enough. Could he secretly be a major organized crime figure?”
