by LeRoy Clary
Before any could speak, I left and slammed the door shut behind me.
Instead of waiting for my meal to be served in my cabin, I walked confidently to the tiny dining room and served myself a helping of two kinds of hard cheese, stale bread, and hard crackers. I filled two mugs with white wine so I wouldn’t have to stand up to refill them.
The table barely held my food and drink. People stared at me. I ignored them. A man approached me. He was tall, handsome, young, and full of himself. He gave a slight bow, more a nod of his head. It was a bow that I considered offensive. If you are going to show respect, do it right. The proper way is to bend from the waist and display the back of your neck so I can use my sword to cut off your head if I feel so inclined.
“Princess?”
“Yes?”
He moved to sit. “May I join you?”
“No.” My sharp answer caught him between standing and sitting, an awkward position. He managed to regain his feet before I said, “Have you anything to say?”
“Uh, I was going to chat with you. You know, like fellow travelers who are being friendly.”
His demeanor had transformed from over-confident to simpering fool. “I don’t chat.”
He retreated.
I was not going to become the focus of a tale he would tell his drunken friends—the time he ate and chatted with a princess. There was too much else on my mind. I slowly gnawed the edges of salted crackers and the centers of hard, bland cheese, while downing both mugs of wine before finishing the food. Then I refilled both mugs. It was that sort of day. After taking my seat again, I decided I was not hungry and concentrated on drinking the wine.
“Why are we turning?” a woman asked loud enough for all to hear, a touch of fear in her tone.
A glance at the window confirmed her question. The captain had decided enough was enough. The ship would sail back to port, drop off some of the passengers in Trager and then continue back to Dire. Passengers remaining in Trager could arrange for later ships. Speculation about the turn came from every table, but mine. It wasn’t my place to inform them.
Will sat down at my table, uninvited, and drew glares from the pretty man who had tried to impress me earlier. He said, “Do we know who is going with us and who is not?”
“So far, only the four of us. I’ve given the scribes an option and ordered a concise briefing of what I should be aware of while negotiating a treaty.”
He scowled. “If it were that easy, someone would have printed a little handbook for princesses.”
That sort of attitude was why familiarity was discouraged by my tutors and mentors. I would accept that sort of statement from Damon. Kendra too, if she ever spoke like that, which she wouldn’t unless talking to Damon. I returned his scowl and planned my biting retort but gave it up. Too much time had already passed. Besides, he would brush aside my words and continue as if he never heard them. He worked for my father, only technically for me.
I said, “Do you have any advice?”
“Age twenty years.”
I furrowed my eyebrows. And bit off another angry retort. Will was not the sort to tease. He was answering my question and I needed to remain calm and listen to him. It was probably as hard for him to tell me as if was to hear.
He continued, “I’m serious. I see before me a pampered girl-woman. A spoiled child who is gracious and wanting to please. One who tells her staff, ‘I will either have my way in the treaty or send you home to be spanked’ instead of directing them with orders. In its place of stamping your foot in anger, you need to take charge like a military commander.”
Will was not an ordinary man in word or deed. When he had been my age, he had fought in a war so fiercely he’d been singled out by my father to be awarded a title and lands bestowed on him. Now he was twice my age and had learned courtly manners and absorbed wisdom along the way. I needed to listen. A wag of my finger told him to keep talking.
“I know you cannot age twenty years in a few days, but you can make changes that will help. You will have to become imperial. By that, I mean you will stop being nice and asking people to do your bidding. You will order them. Your tone of voice will be cutting. No matter how servants attempt to please you, it will not be acceptable. If a pillow is slipped under your bottom as you sit, it will be too thin, the material too coarse, the design ugly. You will make those things known.”
“I’m not like that.”
“And there is your problem. I tell you what needs to be done and you revert to responding like a little girl.”
“I did not!”
I heard the childishness in my answer. He smiled in a way that fueled my anger.
“You are a monster,” I spat.
“So, rush home and tell your father I talked mean. That’s what little girls do, right?”
He was pushing me. Attempting to teach me something about myself. I understood that. I didn’t like it. “What should I do?”
He flicked his eyes to the young man who had attempted to sit with me.
“Oh,” I muttered.
“You destroyed him with a few words. Nobody in Kondor, including your guards and especially me, are your friends. You have none. You have only your duty to your king and Dire. Nobody is going to sign a treaty favorable to Dire with a spoiled princess who does not even know her demands.”
“A bitch. You want me to become a bitch.”
He smiled his agreement.
Maybe he was right.
CHAPTER NINE
Damon
Kendra said to me, “Damon, the desert sun has turned your skin shades darker already. You look more like one born in Kaon daily.”
While we shivered with cold on the bank of the river through the night, my mind had worked furiously. Without a single coin between us, there were five mouths to feed and proper desert-clothing to buy for protection from the sun, not to mention weapons, transportation, lodging, and a hundred other things. What a difference a few coins rubbing against each other can make—or better put, the lack of those coins and the hardships we’d endure because of it.
The night seemed endless. When the sun finally rose, we were all tired from lack of sleep, cold, hungry, and of course, we were without money to solve those issues. We gathered near the edge of the river where we all drank our fill and allowed the morning sun to beat down and warm us, despite our sunburned skins.
Kendra’s exposed skin was also darker, I noticed. And the girl’s, too. Even Flier was darker, a kinship of birth that bonded us. We darkened with the slightest exposure to the sun. People from Dire with their normally pale skin would turn redder than us, and their skin would have been sore to the touch for days, and probably blisters would have formed if they experienced what we had. For us, I suspected that the passage of a single day would fade even the hints of red in our skin. But that didn’t mean we were free of worry. The sun could easily burn our skin darker, and we’d be sore where it was left exposed.
Flier noticed where my eyes were focused and said, “We need hats for protection.”
“We need a lot of things,” I snapped. His expression of stating the obvious was like me moaning for my lack of coins. It wouldn’t do any good to say the obvious and make everyone feel worse.
“Like food,” Anna said. “I’m hungry. I’d give up a hat for a plate of food.”
I was not sure she agreed with me, but I’d take any help. “Yes, food would be good.”
Emma whispered something in Anna’s ear, and from the frantic antics of her hugging her stomach, it concerned food. Emma’s language skills had advanced at a great pace, but when compared to Anna, she knew nothing. I said to Anna, “Will she ever let me teach her to speak our language with my mind?”
“She’s scared to do it, I think. After what happened to you last time. Scared for you. She’ll come around. But this morning she is angry about everything. If we don’t get some food in her, we’ll all pay the price. When unhappy, Emma makes everyone unhappy.” Anna crossed her arms over her chest as
if that ended the matter. Get Emma food, or we’d all suffer the consequences.
The problems with achieving that meal were obvious. We had nothing to hunt with, and nothing in sight to hunt for. We were in a thin strip of vegetation that lined a shallow river flowing down to the sea in the middle of a desert. If I were a fish, I’d want to avoid swimming in that brown water sluggishly flowing beside us. The salty sea had to be better. The river tasted like the dirt of Kondor, as well as looking like a liquid version of it.
Flier patiently let us all have our say, then he continued as if he hadn’t heard any of us, “As I said, we need hats. A hat can protect us from the sun on our faces, necks and more.”
“Why are you so concerned about that instead of food?” I snapped, fighting the rising anger and losing the battle.
He said, “Because it is something we can do something about instead of sitting here and complaining.” He pointed to the edge of the river where reeds grew. “A little weaving of those and we can help ourselves. We have a long walk ahead, and the sun is going to be brutal.”
“What about food?” Kendra asked.
“I don’t know if there are fish, or how to catch them. I see no animals and recognize no edible plants. Be thankful we have muddy water to drink and reeds to make hats. I suggest we all get moving before the sun rises too much higher and cooks us.” Flier had stood while talking and walked to the edge of the river and went into the water up to his knees. He pulled a fistful of reeds, roots and all, and tossed them to the shore. Then another. When he judged he had enough, he joined us and spread a circle of green reeds as spokes after cutting them about as long as my forearm. He deftly tied a reed to one of the spokes and wove it over and under the others in a circle until he ran out of reed. Then he started on the next.
We joined in, copying his efforts. The results varied from round and well-made to oblong and loosely-made, but as each of us threaded the last of our reeds into place, Flier pushed the center of his construction together to form a pointed hat. Reeds tied under our chins held them in place.
The wide hats protected our faces, necks, shoulders, and threw a little shade down our arms, chests, and backs. Emma and Anna bickered the entire time, mostly about who was making the best hat, which of them walked faster, and why Emma was the hungriest. It wasn’t like them, so finally I said, “What is going on?”
They looked guilty of something, but I didn’t know what. I looked to Kendra and Flier’s blank faces, then back to Anna and the oddly pointed hat she now wore. I expected the answer to involve the hats, so I repeated the question, my eyes locked on Anna since she spoke Common, “What is it?”
Anna hung her head and spoke quietly, after receiving a glare from Emma, “She wonders why you treat the princess so badly. And us, too.”
“Princess Elizabeth? She thinks we treat her badly? Why would she think that?”
“The storm when we were on the ship. It felt like it was tearing the ship apart. People got sick we had to turn back to Trager, and now we have to walk all this way over the mountains.” She threw her arms wide to encompass the bleak desert around us. “And now, this. No food.”
Anna was speaking like an adult, trying to explain something she didn’t understand, while trying at the same time to provide Emma’s meaning. She was struggling to get to her point, but we were all interested to hear it.
Kendra said, “The storm almost tore the ship apart, you’re right. People did get ill. We did have to cross all those mountains, and now we face this desert. What should we have done differently?”
Anna lifted her chin and said in a clear voice, “Emma thinks you should all go home to Dire. I disagree.”
“What do you think?” I asked.
She turned to face Kendra. “I think you should have sent the dragon to sink the sink the ships with mages on them instead of smashing the whole city of Trager apart.”
Kendra’s wide eyes and frantic expression matched that of Flier, and probably that of myself. Emma sat, face set in a scowl. Anna waited, determined to take whatever punishment we doled out for her impertinence.
“Kendra?” I questioned softly. “Could you have done that?”
“I think so.” She closed her eyes and tears streamed from the corners. “Now, without using the words to say it, you’re silently asking if I can still send the dragon out to the sea to attack and sink the mage’s ships and probably drown dozens of innocent sailors while doing it?”
I knew she was right, but there was still another side to it. “All sailors can swim. Besides, there will be lots of floating wood men can use as rafts and all ships have lifeboats. Besides, they were more than willing to sink the Gallant in that storm and send us to the bottom. The owners of those ships have agreed to sail with the mages, and they placed the lives of us all in danger. Probably more ships, too, because they are blockading all ships from sailing south. Not just our ship. All ships. Ask yourself how many they are placing in danger—or have already sent to the bottom?”
Kendra sat in the sand right where she had been standing as if her legs would not support her. She sat with crossed legs and back straight, and didn’t answer me, but her eyes were closed. Her brow furrowed as if thinking deeply.
That my sister might be in the process of ordering the dragon to sink two ships finally struck me with almost physical impact. I sat down beside her so hard my butt hurt. One thought kept surfacing: What had I done with my words? Did I have the right? Kendra had always been a pacifist, the last of us to fight, the first to compromise, and the one to attempt a peaceful compromise. She avoided the daily practice with the Weapons-Master at Crestfallen whenever she could, was the first to surrender in our mock battles, and turned her head away when anyone drew blood in practice, which was almost daily.
I had braced myself for her refusal, not acceptance.
It had happened. Without Kendra saying so, I looked at her calm face, trying to understand what was going on in her mind. Anna and Emma remained as silent as Flier, all sensing something important was happening. My sister had changed in the last twenty days; I knew that. I didn’t know how much.
CHAPTER TEN
Princess Elizabeth
Will had insisted I must become a bitch of a princess. He wanted me to change my interaction with all those around me as a quick way to enforce my stance and bargaining power. To demand respect, as he said. Like Avery did. He was my example. While it was not in my nature, I saw Will’s point. I was not yet twenty years old. I would have experienced ambassadors sitting across a bargaining table working out the minute details of a treaty. They would think I was barely more than a spoiled child they could mold a treaty around, and they would be right. With my mild personality, they would never take me seriously, and the points in the treaty would be all in their favor.
When reaching Dagger and facing them at a negotiating table, supposing I ever managed to sail there past the storm, I wouldn’t have a staff of people at hand to help negotiate the finer points of a treaty—or to fight for those things that were important. The negotiators for Kondor would see me exactly as Will suggested—and take advantage of the little girl who pretended to be a grown woman. They would not see a competent emissary of Dire sent by her king. They would see me as a coddled princess sent to do a negotiator’s function without any real power.
Will was right. I needed to “age” myself, present myself as a stronger woman with a tougher attitude. That would help, but I also needed to intimately know the details of the proposed treaty—and consider the other information I was sent to learn.
After thinking over what Will said, there was more than just being firm. Being a bitch was not what he’d meant. He had just wanted to draw my attention to the traits I lacked. I needed to be direct and decisive. I also required to know what to demand of Kondor, what to relinquish as offers, and when.
Making a few veiled threats might also help. My staff would need to provide me with that information. But first, I needed to convince them to give me what
I needed, and they also needed to understand they were not in charge of the details of the treaty. I was. My staff needed to change their way of thinking about me.
“I think I understand,” I muttered. “At least, I’m beginning to see the problem.”
Will sipped wine and gave me a sly wink; the same kind people give to children who perform their numbers or print their letters correctly for their tutors. It made me feel about ten. And that pissed me off.
I said in a heated voice, “From this point on, you will act and speak to me with the respect my position requires. Do you understand?”
He smiled wanly. “Your temper tantrum does not impress me. Respect is earned not asked for. It just makes me want to turn you over my knee and spank you, which is exactly what the Council of Nine is going to do to you if you don’t make changes.”
I was really angry and started to hit back by shouting and telling him again I was a princess, and he had to treat me better. The truth was, he didn’t have to. But something, some small kernel of what he was saying penetrated and took hold. I drew in a deep breath before speaking. “What should I be doing?”
He smiled again. “Act imperial at all times. Look down your nose. Keep your chin high. You are better than any of them. You will call their best wine, swill. You will spurn the finest gifts they offer. You’ll demand quarters suitable to a princess and will not settle for less. If they are not seated at the negotiating table before you arrive, you will depart because it is not your place to wait for anyone. You are above them in every aspect. Complain about everything.”
I listened, but in my mind, I rejected nearly all he said. It wasn’t like me to act like that.
He continued, “Let me be more direct. How many times has Avery used those tactics in your presence to get his way? In reality, he is only a servant of the next king. He acts like he is the next king or a member of the royal family. Avery has convinced everybody of his power and position repeatedly, and with the increased power that will be coming to him with the death of your father. He has intimidated you and nearly everyone else at Crestfallen.”