A member of the palace staff dressed Silas in formal gowns, with colorful trim and chains that hung ceremonially from his shoulders and across his chest, then accompanied him to the assembly hall where the presentation by the Queen and Princess was to be made.
Silas was directed to stand in the wings, out of sight of the audience, while Forna stood with him.
“I can stand here by myself. I promise I won’t go anywhere,” he smiled at her.
“As if we could trust you to stay in one place!” his cousin replied archly, then laughed. “I was told to wait here, at the request of the Princess,” she explained.
There was a flourish of horns, and the chatter in the room diminished. After a moment of building suspense, the Queen and Princess appeared on the far side of the dais and stepped up to the center. Surprisingly, trailing a few steps behind them was Sloeleen, who covertly winked at Silas as she took a position on the stage discreetly behind the royal family.
“Friends and fellow leaders of Amenozume, welcome to this unusual gathering,” Queen Gracious began. “We are pleased to see so many of the luminaries of our nation gathered together peacefully in the palace. Thank you for joining us at our request for this out-of-the-ordinary event.
“This is a belated part of the celebration of our regained freedom as a nation,” the Queen continued. Lumene stood behind the Queen’s right shoulder, watching her mother, scanning the audience, and occasionally sneaking a glance at where Silas and Forna stood off to the side.
“Our freedom came at a heavy price, and the work to restore order in our nation has required much sacrifice by many of you in the room. Thank you,” the Queen said.
“We also have found new friends for our nation during the recent struggle. Today I want to recognize one of those new friends,” the elderly woman continued to speak in a surprisingly strong voice.
“Get ready,” Forna softly prompted Silas
“A Tracker came among us and has become one of the bright stars of our court. I wish to announce that Princess Lumene has selected Forna, the Tracker, to become a member of the court as one of the princess’s ladies-in-waiting. Forna, please join us on stage and be recognized by the court for your bravery, loyalty, intelligence, and beauty,” the queen turned and motioned, as Lumene smiled broadly and clapped enthusiastically.
“I had no idea!” the wide-eyed Forna exclaimed to Silas, before he gave her a gentle nudge. “I didn’t dress for this!” she protested, and then hesitantly walked out into view of the crowd, who increased the volume of their polite applause for a long salute to Forna.
Lumene embraced the girl when she reached the stage, and then held her hand as the Princess motioned for the other ladies-in-waiting of the court to come up on the stage as well.
When the applause died down, Jade whispered to the others, and they stepped back to line up next to where Sloeleen quietly waited.
“Now, our palace Speaker has reported an unusual number of messages have been sent to our court this morning by the rulers of the other nations,” Queen Gracious continued after the crowd quieted down.
“Sloeleen, please bring me the messages you have recorded this morning,” the Queen ordered.
“Here they are your majesty,” Sloeleen demurely handed the stack of papers to the queen. She looked across the stage for a brief moment at Silas and grinned, then straightened her expression and returned to stand back with the other secondary figures on the stage.
The Queen leafed through the sheaf, then spoke. “Perhaps a younger set of eyes than mine should read these reports aloud to the audience,” she passed the papers to Lumene, who was surprised to receive them, and studied them intently as her mother deftly slipped behind the Princess.
Lumene flipped through the four pages of paper she had been given, her expression changing from confusion to intent examination to increasing grins as she glanced back at Sloeleen for a moment, and then at Silas.
“Silas, please step forth for the audience to see,” she spoke towards the side of the stage.
Silas cautiously stepped forward in his robes and stopped once he was upon the stage.
“You can come closer than that – I’m not going to bite you!” the Princess teased, making the crowd laugh with genuine humor.
Silas walked across the stage and took a position just a step away from Lumene. She looked at the crowd, looked at him, looked at the crowd, then sidestepped over towards him, closing the gap and making the crowd laugh once more.
“Silas, this first message today came from the Speakers Guild headquarters in Heathrin. It announces, ‘By order of the acting Head Speaker of the Wind Word Guild, Silas is named as the Champion of the Guild and Protector of Speech, for his bravery and heroism in defeating Ivaric and setting the Guild headquarters free from Ivaric’s rule’,” Lumene read.
“Congratulations Silas on your title from the Guild; you are officially a member of the Guild Council, entitled to participate in their activities when you are present in the village,” Lumene turned to Silas and began to clap, setting off a round of applause.
“This next message,” Lumene shuffled the papers, “is from the acting administrator of Avaleen, Carlton, who many of us knew when he stayed here in exile. Carlton writes, ‘thanks to his strength, power, bravery, and cunning, Silas is now officially recognized as a Nobleman of the Avaleen nation and is given the title of Margrave of the Eastern Mountains, and holder of the estates at the village of Weckelles,” the princess read.
“Do you know the estates at the village of Weckelles?” she asked Silas, who shook his head no.
“Well, you perhaps better go visit them sometime,” she grinned, “since you are the Margrave of the region now!”
There was a round of polite applause.
“We also have a message from the Speaker of the Council of Traders in Barnesnob,” Lumene flipped to the next page of paper, making Silas think of Vertuco. “The Speaker reports that the Lady Katjen, the leader of the Traders Council of the Republic, has named Silas as the Defender of the Republic, and is given a palace in Barnesnob City as his own to live in or visit as he is able,” Lumene read, provoking another round of applause.
“And here is a most interesting one,” Lumene turned to the last of the pages she held. “Something I don’t believe I’ve ever seen before.
“It’s a message from Faralag’s Speaker. I didn’t even know they had a Speaker down there,” she grinned.
“In recognition of his devotion to the Gods, and his special relationship with the Gods, Silas is named as the Duke of Mt. Inegalee,” Lumene finished with the paperwork, paused a moment longer as she studied the paper curiously, and then folded the papers over in a visual cue that her work was done, causing the crowd in the hall to renew its applause.
“All of these titles and honors make our own little ceremony perhaps slightly anticlimactic,” Lumene said. She nodded to a manservant off stage, who came forward with a wooden box.
“Because you saved all of Amenozume from the threat of invasion by Ivaric, my mother has named you the Defender of the Seas of Amenozume, and added you to the permanent court of our palace,” Lumene said as she opened the lid on the box the servant held, and pulled out a golden chain that held a large medallion.
“Bend down,” she whispered, and when Silas did, she raised the chain over his head and laid it around his neck, then pulled him close and kissed him on each cheek.
There was more applause, and Silas blushed deeply, just before the Princess suddenly pulled him forward and unexpectedly kissed him soundly on the lips, producing loud and deep applause, with a few whistles and whoops audible among the crowd members.
“Well, ahem,” the Queen spoke up to a round of titters after the applause had quieted. “That concludes our ceremony. We’ll have to call the staff to come help Silas walk, because his shoulders must surely be stooped from the weight of carrying so many titles now!” she made the crowd laugh.
The Queen began to walk off stage, and Lumene
offered her arm to Silas, who took it and walked her off stage and out of sight of the crowd.
“Was that real? How did you arrange that?” Silas asked Lumene as they stood behind a curtain and waited for the ladies-in-waiting to finish exiting the stage.
“Me? I thought you arranged it,” Lumene exclaimed. “It was wonderful stagecraft, and statecraft! So well done. Who arranged it?”
“We did,” Forna and Sloeleen replied. “When I heard that titles meant something, I went to Sloeleen, and we sent a few messages around to some friends, explaining the situation. It seems to have done the trick.”
“Done the trick? Silas is going to be the next in line for the throne instead of me!” Lumene exclaimed. “Titles from four nations and a Guild! “Who can match that?”
“Now I suppose I’ll have to decide where to live,” Silas said with a straight face.
“If you don’t think it’s going to be here in this palace, we’ve got a long, long conversation ahead of us,” Lumene growled in a hostile tone. “So come with me and let’s celebrate your new notoriety!”
The couple walked away from the others.
“That boy has upset me a time or two,” Gwen spoke to the ladies in waiting. “He’s starting to grow on me though.”
“That’s good, because I think you’re going to be seeing a lot more of him,” Forna replied.
“And what about you? Are you going to settle into a sedate role as a lady of the court?” Gwen asked the Tracker.
“I don’t know about sedate, but I plan to stick around the court for a while. Maybe the Palace Guard could use a Tracker to help sweep up some of the riffraff from time to time?” she suggested. “Between galas and balls of course,” she added.
“And when your cousin isn’t dragging you off on some hair-curdling adventure,” Sloeleen mentioned.
“I wasn’t going to mention that,” Forna laughed. “At least not today. I thought we could pretend to settle down for at least this one day before his wanderlust takes us our on the next great crusade!”
Table of Contents
Index
List of Characters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Foundations Broken and Built Page 33