The Movement of Crowns

by Nadine C. Keels

  ~~~

  The busyness of the next weeks was reminiscent of a controlled kind of commotion for Constance. Her mind was hardly given time to rest, as ideas about more that needed to be done would still be humming through her head at each day’s end, but with the potential for a plethora of differing emotions to go untidily bubbling over at any moment if she was idle, she was glad that her hands had plenty to do as weeks slid into months.

  She made visits to the marketplace a few mornings out of every week, even if she was only going to pick out fresh flowers, but she no longer rushed through her browsing and purchasing to keep from creating a stir. Uncertain times had a way of stipulating that the smallest of things should not be taken for granted and that human contact should not be avoided or reserved for special trips, for the sake of method. Having a chance to see the people in the market was just as important as her having the chance to see the ones at court, at church, and on her travels, Constance concluded. Thinking of Staid’s grin, she reflected that one never knew how far an authentic smile might go to lift someone’s day, and thinking of her mother’s scarcely responsive, distant glow, Constance reflected on how hard it could become for one who did not know how present someone else nearby truly was. So, Constance was taking more time in the market to look even some of the most bustling fellow patrons in the eye, and whenever she stopped to watch and listen to vendors who continued to automatically hawk at her as if she hadn’t stopped to listen, she stood and waited until they paused long enough for her to say, “A good morning to you.”

  As a result, word gradually spread around town that Her Highness could be found shopping and talking with others in the marketplace on some days, and while she had a tendency to vanish if an excited ruckus over her appeared to be on the verge of starting up, the people found that the more they responded to her as they would to another good neighbor, the more of another good neighbor she seemed to become.

  That little but valuable bit of increased time with the citizens of Topaz fueled Constance for her task of letter writing as she helped the capital’s scribes compose letters of assurance to send to the kingdom’s cities, to fortify the nation’s morale and to calm likely fears about prospective peril. She was also spending more time with the scribes and select scholars in the State Library and the World Annals, assisting them in their scour for more facts and accounts about the Mundaynes. When she returned home some evenings, she felt that her skin and hair were positively laden with a layer of book dust, and her eyes did tire at times from even more hours of reading than usual, but with every small piece of new information that was gathered, Constance felt that progress was being made.

  Progress was reportedly being made in Rêeh as well, as looting in the towns had slowed down since Rêeh had asked for outside help. Nevertheless, it was not clear how close they were to having everything under control over there, and Constance found herself waking up from disturbing dreams on some nights, dreams about the support mission there going horrendously awry. As Constance tried to keep abreast of what was happening overseas, she often imagined, with a sigh, that there would one day be a swifter way for communication to cross between nations. Until then, though, she figured that the world would have to be patient.

  Matthias was also hard at work, in outside discussions with councilmen and in regular conferences with scribes, scholars, and advisors. There was never a point in Constance’s memory when her father had had an overabundance of time on his hands, but she was seeing less of him over these months than she ever had while they were both in Topaz, despite the fact that a decent portion of their work now pertained to a joint mission.

  As their talks were taking place less frequently, the “Junior” matter had yet to come up. While Constance knew that her father had been quite intentional in his public acknowledgment of her in the last Council assembly, she wanted to know further if his action had been meant to serve as an official (or at least the precursor to an official) conveyance of title. Was she to assume now that she was, and would permanently be, the king’s recognized Junior for the rest of Matthias’s life, or was it supposed to be only a temporary way to address her until the Council figured out exactly what they were going to do with her? Constance wasn’t sure about posing the question to her father, as there might have been something he was waiting on before explaining to her what he was thinking, and since he wasn’t bringing it up to her, Constance decided to let the matter sit.

  It was practically summer before Constance’s next meeting with her father, late one afternoon. He sought her out in her sitting room, which was unusual to her since he commonly had her join him in the family parlor or come out riding with him when he wanted time with her, or he would make sure they had supper together, which didn’t happen every night. Constance put a marker in the book she was reading, smiling and rising to her feet when she saw her father appear in the doorway. “Well, Papa, hello,” she greeted him, considering that they might be able to have their much needed discussion on title now, if he was going to stay for a while. However, when Matthias gave her no answering hello, merely standing there with a distinctly grim look on his face, the smile fell away from Constance’s lips. “What is it?”

  Matthias took a step into the room, motioning to his daughter with one hand. “You should sit back down, there,” he recommended.

  “What is it?” Constance repeated, remaining on her feet as a trickle of misgiving worked its way down her spine. “Mama?”

  Matthias’s hand went up to rub at his beard. “No. Nothing has happened to your mother. I just received some bad news from Rêeh. I wanted you to hear about it before the reports go out.”

  When her father came to a pause, Constance could barely constrain her insistence. “Papa, what is it?” she anxiously asked a third time, making her way over to him.

  “Please, Constance, you should have a seat,” Matthias urged, his hand coming out again as she came toward him, and he took a hold of her shoulder. “Even with our progress, we’ve not made as much of a difference in Rêeh as we would have liked to by now. It’s still been chaotic there, with violence popping up anywhere it can. There was an unfortunate confrontation in a town some of our support troops were sent to. Apparently, it started out as merely some hungry chaps fighting over donated rice just as our military men were entering the area. But a few of the chaps turned out to be armed, likely with plundered weapons. Three of our men were shot in the skirmish. That is, Commander Alexander wasn’t a part of the skirmish. He was only close by, on his horse.” Matthias’s voice involuntarily lowered. “The bullet that hit him was a stray one.”

  Constance gasped sharply, her book falling out of her numbing hands. “The commander’s been wounded?”

  “Well, no...” Matthias squeezed at his daughter’s shoulder, reaching out to take her other as well as he slowly shook his head, his eyes reddening. “That is, he was shot in his chest, rather directly. He didn’t survive it.”

  Constance’s brow wrinkled. Her hands came up to grasp at her father’s elbows. “How—wh-what do you mean?”

  Matthias didn’t answer right away, Constance’s eyes hazily shifting around him as she mechanically asked him what he meant, two or three times more. When her gaze came back to cling to his, he told her, “Word is being sent to the commander’s aunt now. And to one of the Greenly families. A cousin of Chieftain Greenly was also killed. Our third man sustained a leg wound. The whole city will know of the incident by morning, but I wanted you to hear it from me. The commander’s been your good friend all these years, and, quite frankly, after he asked me if he could take you to Nonpareil with him, I figured that the two of you might come back here with an understanding. I...I won’t ask now if that was the case, since you and I haven’t talked about it.” Constance’s head was vaguely moving back and forth, her eyes searching Matthias’s with a bewildered brand of pleading that he didn’t know what to do with. He heaved a sigh, a guttural break in his voice. “Daughter, I’m so sorry.”

  It was s
oon made plain that Constance should have heeded Matthias’s words about having a seat, as within the next moment, she’d utterly blacked out, and Matthias had to lift her in his arms to prevent her from dropping to the floor. “Guards! Guards, send for Merry. She should be in the kitchen. We need her in the princess’s chambers!”

  The next thing Constance knew, she was waking up in her bed to hear Merry’s soft voice over her, along with a mysterious moaning sound. “Shhhh. It’s all right, my lady. It’s going to be all right.” Constance, dizzy and nauseous, felt Merry’s hand brushing back her hair, pressing a damp cloth to her forehead, but that moaning noise—was it coming from Constance’s own throat? She didn’t know that there were tears on her face until she felt the back of Merry’s fingers move to her cheek, and all at once, Constance knew that whatever was wrong, she didn’t want to be awake for it. She slipped back into blackness.

  During the following two days, which Constance spent mostly sitting in her chambers, there were several moments when she did not become aware of any sorrow she might have been suffering until she reached up to realize there was wetness along her face. She understood that a formal message had been sent out to the people of Topaz that the young commander of the kingdom’s army had been shot and killed on duty in Rêeh, but as reasonably quiet talk about naming someone to take Commander Alexander’s place and getting his body shipped back to Diachona was being dolefully exchanged among some councilmen and other military officers, Constance was in a wakeful sort of stupor over all of it. She did not snap back into her senses until the third day, while she was standing and looking out of one of her bedroom windows to the south, praying somehow.

  “Oh, dear God. Alexander’s aunt.”

  Constance had Percival and Henri come to wait outside when she made a visit at the home of Staid’s aunt that day. As she sat in this matron’s drawing room, peering at the drained face of the older woman over a steaming cup of tea, Constance could tell that Staid’s aunt had not been well. Whether it was a stubborn aftermath of her previous illness, or if she had fallen sick again after receiving the dreadful news about her nephew, Constance could not determine. What she could determine, on the other hand, was that this last known, remaining relative of Staid Alexander’s had no business living in this small house all by herself, with no one to take care of her. Upon Constance’s return to the palace, she had a message dispatched right away that a larger house was to be found for Commander Alexander’s aunt to live in, which Constance would purchase herself, and the cost to hire and retain live-in help for the woman, a cook and two maids, was to be perpetually covered by the princess’s personal treasury, for as long as the commander’s aunt chose to live on her own. Nothing she would receive from bequests in her nephew’s will would hinder her entitlement to what the princess wrote over to her.

  Constance’s movement on behalf of Staid’s aunt served to break down the barricade blocking her core from her consciousness, and her disbelief turned into distress. How could this have happened? A stray bullet? Constance knew her empathy had a limit, as she had never experienced the kind of hunger that would make one human being willing to shoot another over food. The destruction of one’s home and way of life, the loss of one’s family members or friends or neighbors in a massive natural disaster, could indeed make one fearful and insecure. Sure, relief donations were coming in, but how long would that last? What real guarantee was there that one would ever feel at home and safe again, or that there would be anything to eat and to feed one’s children with tomorrow? Maybe these were the kinds of questions that could lead to a stray bullet firing out of a skirmish, through a man’s chest, and all the way across the sea to blow off a part of a young woman’s heart.

  There was an open book in Constance’s hands, and she was dead set on not allowing falling tears to splash down and soak the leaves of the sprig of laurel that had been pressed between the book’s pages.

  When the sun had made its way over to the west, Queen Grace was sitting before one of the windows in her quarters, looking out at the meadows north of the palace. From her vantage point, a tiny figure could be seen moving in fairly straight lines through the grasses, in one direction, then in the opposite, back and forth with brief pauses.

  Having donned one of her “work cottons,” Constance had ridden out to the meadows alone, and she was now on foot, participating in almost frenzied races. She had no competitors and no audience, no one there to let her win, but still she ran, over and over between undeclared starting and finish lines, until her arms, legs, and lungs screamed for reprieve. And reprieve she gave them, falling first to her knees and then to her hands, gasping for breath, rigidly squeezing the grass and earth beneath her palms, bringing an intense ache to her fingers. The sun was sinking, and she could but imagine how long she might have stayed out there, like that, if Percival had not eventually come riding up to collect her. He had her ride with him on his horse, leading her empty horse along with them on the way back home.

  Early the next week, a request that Chieftain Greenly had made to see Princess Constance at the palace was granted. She received him in a palace tea room, but a ways into their hushed, grave conversation, it became clear that neither one of them was much in the mood for tea.

  “I am sorry for your loss, Chieftain,” Constance told him at one point, setting her teacup aside on the table they were seated at, across from each other.

  “And I for yours.” Before amazement could be registered in Constance’s posture, Greenly went on with, “I understand that the commander was a very close friend of yours. I’ve heard that you two grew up together. It’s hard to lose someone with whom you’ve shared your childhood, and much of your history. It was like that with me and my cousin.”

  Constance’s hands folded together in her lap. “I really must make a visit to your cousin’s mother and father. I’ve not been staying on top of everything as I should, these past few days.”

  “It’s more than understandable, Your Highness. Even leaders need time to themselves. My family has received condolences from yours, so you needn’t feel rushed to do more, especially since we haven’t gotten...” Greenly came to an awkward break, glancing downward and clearing his throat. “Since their bodies aren’t back yet.”

  Constance’s stomach sickeningly turned over. Greenly must have seen a change in her face, because he hurried on to say, “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t speak on that.”

  “It’s all right.” Constance blinked firmly and took in a breath, sitting up straighter. “No need to apologize. Those are the facts. It’s just life. It’s all right.”

  Greenly stared at her, his head faintly shaking. “Have you always been so strong an individual as you are, my lady? Even before I met you?”

  “Strong? Do I appear to be?”

  After a moment, Greenly watched his hands as they set aside his own teacup. “Life is so fleeting. We hate to be so closely reminded of it, as times like these inescapably do for us. And the way mankind still too often opts out of living to the utmost is criminal.” His hands lowered from the table as his eyes returned to Constance. “But you inspire me, your being a person who has obviously chosen to live as much life as the Almighty has blessed her with, never to take it lightly. I admire you for that.”

  Giving the chieftain a nod of thanks, Constance yet felt a churning inside of her, but Greenly was not finished, his words complemented by a passing smile. “I know it can typically seem like I’m looking to spar with you, whenever you and I encounter one another. But I’ve never found another woman anywhere I enjoy encountering more. I do admire you, Princess. Greatly, and for many reasons.”

  Constance’s hands tightly squeezed at each other under the table. She said nothing in response, and Chieftain Greenly sighed, rising to his feet. “A period of mourning like this does not permit me to say any more on it now, perhaps. Still, I wanted to take the chance to tell you at least that much, my lady. I might not be living my own life to the utmost, if I neglected t
o speak much longer.”

  Constance sat looking at the man, her face and neck growing unpleasantly hot. After the chieftain had taken his leave, Constance all but fled up to the secluded quarters of the palace, entering the sitting room to see her mother lying out on her settee in an afternoon gown, gazing up at the ceiling. Constance went over to her mother and sat on the floor, resting her back up against the front of the settee. She did not speak, and her mother did not look at her.

  Hours elapsed. Constance sat there on the floor, then over in a chair, then stood up against a wall, staring out of a window. She was later lying on her back on the floor before the settee. Her mother had drifted off to sleep, so Constance took over the chore of watching the ceiling, and she tarried in rumination. She wondered if there was a specific instant when someone could identify that distress, grief, or despair was morphing into madness, a specific instant when someone might knowingly wash his or her hands of the struggle, the fight to keep on inwardly fighting. For hours, Constance loitered in her mother’s sitting room, and then she left and retreated to her own.

  Upon her entrance, she found that the room was brimming with bouquets of assorted types of red flowers. She hadn’t been to the marketplace to pick out blossoms since before the latest news from Rêeh had come. “Where are these from?” Constance asked the attendant who was dusting the room.

  “Chieftain Greenly sent them with his condolences ahead of his visit today, my lady. He said to have them brought up and arranged in your chambers while you met with him.”

  Constance was dumbfounded. She moved across the room to study one bunch of the fiery red blossoms on an end table while her attendant went on dusting, and Constance’s fingers reached out toward the petals of one, and stopped. Her fingers hovered in mid-air for a second prior to drawing back, going up to massage at her temple. Passionately red flowers—of condolence. Her hand moved down to hold her stomach, which was now stirring with something more like butterflies in mystifying flight. She would have to remember to send the chieftain her thanks. Later on.

  In due course and far too soon, the day came when two securely boxed coffins that the kingdom had been expecting arrived in a shipment from across the Eubeltic. Rêeh had said they would do their best in terms of preparation and preservation of the bodies that would have to journey those miles over the sea in coffins that were specially made. Members from the Greenly clan were given permission to come out and claim the coffin of their loved one at the docks, so that they could hold a private vigil before the soldier’s public military funeral. Commander Alexander’s aunt was too ill to leave home, and his coffin was delivered over to the city undertaker’s to be held while his funeral arrangements were finalized. After ascertaining that the commander’s aunt would not be able to venture out, Constance announced to her guards, some of her attendants, and Merry that she would go to view Staid’s body first, alone.

  “With all respect, Your Highness, I would advise against that,” Merry doubtfully told her, the lines on her seasoned face deepening with worry. “It might be a little too much for you.”

  Constance’s look was virtually imploring. “It might? And having to wait to see him for the first time at his army funeral might not be more, when I’ll have to be strong in front of everybody? He was my closest friend, Merry. I want to see him by myself.”

  Constance took Percival and Henri with her to the undertaker’s, and the men stayed behind in one room while she went on to the one where the commander’s coffin had been unboxed and set up on a table. The coffin’s inner lid of thick glass was sealed down tight, but the top half of the outer lid was open. Constance turned and closed the door of the room, tipping her head against it, breathing shakily. It could have been another lifetime ago, the last night she had seen Staid alive, and she had never been alone in a room with a corpse before. Merry might have been right. Even so, when Constance felt that she’d gathered herself as well as she could be gathered for the time being, she slowly moved away from the door and over toward the coffin, blood pounding its way through her ears. Then, Constance’s brown eyes became as large as they ever had, the pounding in her ears reaching a deafening peak as she became motionless, staring so hard into the coffin that her eyes protested from the strain.

  Percival was immediately at the door, Henri not far behind him when they, and the undertaker, heard a scream, short and shrill, come from the other room. Percival was just reaching for the doorknob when the door suddenly flew open, and Constance burst through it, running right into her guard, her eyes wild with shock.

  “That is not Alexander,” was the rasping declaration that found its way out of the princess’s throat.

  “My lady?” Percival spoke, taking Constance by both of her arms.

  “It’s not him,” she choked out, her head shaking frantically. “He’s bigger than that. Wider. More robust. He—”

  “Your Highness,” Percival gently interrupted her, drawing her away from the door, his eyes clouding with concern. “No, that is not Commander Alexander. It is only his body. He’d spent months on a stressful mission since you saw him last. Working under that kind of pressure can sometimes make a man leaner. And the commander’s body had to make a journey. Even with the best that can be done to prepare them, when a person’s remains have been lifeless for some time, there can be changes that—”

  “Alexander does not have red hair!” Constance shouted, making both of her guards and the undertaker freeze. Her head was still shaking, her eyes flashing with conviction as her words spilled rapidly out. “He has black hair. Thick and black. You know that. And death would not have changed his face so completely. I don’t think that’s even a commander’s uniform on that man in there. The undertaker here never saw the commander before, and God help whatever family the body in there rightfully belongs to, as I don’t think it could be the Greenly soldier. But as surely as I breathe, Percy, it is not Alexander.”

  Before she’d finished, Henri and the undertaker had rushed into the room where the open coffin was, and when Henri came back to the doorway, his astonished gaze meeting his comrade’s, Percival quickly let go of the princess’s arms, running into the room to get a look for himself.

  Constance’s trip back to the palace was a swift one. Her father was in an advisory meeting, but she adamantly requested to see him at once.

  “What?” Matthias exclaimed, jumping up from his desk when his daughter had relayed the news to him. “Weren’t they sent a portrait of the commander before he arrived there for the mission? How could they have delivered us the wrong body?”

  “It is likely the body of one of our men. The uniform is Diachonian. It just isn’t the commander. His portrait must have been lost.”

  Matthias asserted that the army would find out which soldier it was, there at the undertaker’s, and urgent word and another portrait would get to Rêeh as soon as possible. After a pause, Constance stated that she would personally write to the prince of Rêeh herself, in hopes of receiving the timeliest response they might be able to obtain. Constance did wrestle with a qualm or two while she composed the letter in haste, petitioning this royal suitor of hers to conduct a thorough search in Rêeh for the one man she’d actually been aching for, even if the prince didn’t know who Staid was to her. Yet, by the time she’d signed her name to the petition, she’d resolved that all amorous issues aside, this was a critical matter of state, and the matter of state aside, what kind of lifelong friend would she be if she didn’t do everything in her power to locate the commander, or at least to locate his body?

  In a way, the long days that Constance was required to await an answer to her petition were more agonizing than the days she’d spent in a stupor, and then in more definite grief. Her emotions were now hanging in an all but unbearable space of suspension. When she finally received a reply back from the prince of Rêeh, she opened the letter and read it in a flurry that was almost aggressive in nature, feeling herself in potential danger of blacking out as she had the day she’d heard
that Staid had been killed.

  With his deepest apologies on behalf of his nation, the prince of Rêeh confirmed that at Diachona’s request, a search had been conducted for Commander Alexander. The prince explained that in the midst of the chaotic conditions in their land, there had indeed been a mix up of information. The commander had not been present at the location of the skirmish that was reported on before, and the second military man who was killed there with the Greenly soldier had been a lower ranking member of the Diachonian army. Various areas had actually calmed down and looting had lessened in towns when Commander Alexander arrived and traveled through them to work, leaving portions of his men behind to keep the peace as he moved on. But then he’d reached a town where the post-earthquake sanitary environment was one of the worst, and a virus he’d somehow contracted there was probably owing to it. As the nearest hospital was too full to properly treat the feverish commander, he’d been taken to be treated in a prison infirmary, where he’d been laid up in delirium when the partially erroneous news about the skirmish over rice in another town had broken out.

  The commander had been found, still in the prison infirmary. The virus had taken its toll on him before it left him, but he was recovering. As soon as he was well enough to be put on a ship, he would be sent back to Diachona.

  The letter slid out of Constance’s hands, drifting down to the floor. She wanted to believe it, but she was afraid to. Was there a possibility that this report might be just as incorrect as the first one had been?

  When, weeks later, the day arrived for Commander Alexander to be received back into his country at the Eubeltic docks, not all of Constance’s doubts had been allayed, not even as she stood up on a hill a ways off from the docks beside her father, with some other members of the Council close by. Once she eventually spotted a familiar sable head in the midst of others disembarking from a ship down there, however, her pulse jumped, and her doubts evaporated into the wind blowing in from the sea. She knew she was, on the side of protocol, supposed to wait for a coach to bring the honoree up for the king to issue him an official welcome, but after a beseeching squeeze on her father’s arm, Matthias gave her a light, consenting push, and she took hold of the skirts of her gown, making her way down the hill on hurried feet.

  She stopped herself from running all the way toward the uniformed man she’d set her sights on, who was wandering from a dock on sluggish legs with his hat under his arm, his eyes questioningly darting around him. No, he was not as robust as the man Constance had parted with those months ago. He’d lost some weight, and there was something curiously somber in his expression, but when his probing blue eyes landed on Constance and halted for a second prior to his mouth breaking out into a grin and lifting his whole countenance, Constance released a spontaneous little cry and went to him.

  Staid had barely a chance to bow and to take his hat into his hand before Constance moved right into his arms, her hands going up to hold either side of his face. “It’s you,” she exulted, having to otherwise keep a fixed grasp on her composure, lest she should lose control of it.

  Staid’s grin slackened somewhat. “To an extent, Your Highness. I haven’t felt like myself in quite a while.”

  Constance’s thumb stroked thoughtfully at one of his cheeks. “Are you still ill, then? You don’t look it.”

  “Oh, no, I am not ill. And I scrubbed and brushed extra hard this morning to make sure I wouldn’t appear so. They refused to send me back until they were certain the sickness had gone. I’m just not myself, that’s all.”

  “You will be, after you get sufficient rest. You’ll see. It’s so good to have you home. Was the trip back over very taxing? Does anything hurt?”

  “Does anything hurt?” Staid pensively repeated. “Well. It hurts to see you here.”

  “What?” Puzzlement seeped into Constance’s gaze, her hands sinking away from Staid’s face. “You’d rather I hadn’t come out to meet you?”

  “No, no, love—I’d rather that all these people weren’t around us, at present. After being laid up and hallucinating in a foreign country’s prison, and coming back from what I eerily heard was pronounced my own death, am I expected to be able to stand this tantalization?” Constance could have voiced some sort of an answer or could have physically declined him if she’d wanted to, since Staid did provide her with a few seconds before he inclined his head in, whispering, “I’ve missed you,” the end of his comment just avoiding being muffled by his lips touching hers, beginning a profoundly slow, searching kiss.

  The one thing that prevented Constance from melting into Staid was the remembrance that he was fresh off of a ship and might not entirely have his legs under him. Notwithstanding that, there was no resistance in her naturally enthralled response to his tenderness, and she did not ease her head away until she absolutely had to breathe. “Alexander...”

  His look was all warmth as she observed his face, and she gave him a hint of a smile, musing aloud, “A trio of successive dances at my gala this year weren’t ‘altogether proper,’ but he salutes me out in public before the king and the king’s subjects.”

  Staid’s eyes briefly dropped to her mouth, but he did not come in for it again. “‘Shield her with your life and flesh, son,’” he alluded, stepping back from Constance and replacing his hat beneath his arm. “Somehow, I don’t think His Majesty is at all surprised by this, my lady.”

  Constance, with an overflowing soul, wordlessly concurred as Staid gave her another bow, offering her his forearm. She gladly took it, turning with him to head to the coach at the bottom of the hill.

  Most of the councilmen on the hill were too occupied with astonishment at the adored Daughter’s openly warmest of welcomes to the unmistakably living commander of their army to notice when one councilman crept away from the group. Chieftain Greenly had initially hoped, minutes ago, that his eyes might be misleading him, but it had not taken long for everyone witnessing it to understand that more than a gracious and relieved reunion between friends was happening down there, near the docks. Burning and mortified, the chieftain had recoiled from the scene, and it was not until the commander was driven up and emerged from his coach to be greeted by Matthias that anyone silently realized Greenly had gone.

  News and hearsay, giggles and gasps, reiterations and embellishments about Princess Constance and Commander Alexander’s demonstrative salutations at the Eubeltic shore did not take long to spread around Topaz, and ultimately beyond. Many had not previously heard that the commander had been found still alive in Rêeh, so the accounts about him and the princess came as a double surprise. Some were even told that the commander had bounded down out of the ship and had run over to scoop the princess clean off of her feet, some were told that the commander had feigned his own death to make the internationally-desired princess fonder of him during his absence, and still others were told that the princess had sent spies to Rêeh to go and break the commander out of a crowded and hectic prison he’d wrongly been thrown into and had gotten lost in among looters and rioters.

  Whatever the case was, the Diachonians were elated to have Commander Alexander back. It was shared that upon his getting settled in with his aunt in her new home, the woman’s health immediately started to improve. It had to be an impermanent arrangement, though, since the commander was going to marry the princess, and the aunt would duly be given her own space to live in at the palace, wouldn’t she?

  While numerous Diachonian citizens contributed to stories about a royal romance, the kingdom’s government had to concern itself with other matters. The leader of their army had been sent home to regain all of his strength, with an interim commander filling in for him, but the situation in Rêeh was still too precarious to bring the rest of their men out from there. Constance sat listening in the next Council assembly while the elders, chieftains, and military officers discussed this with King Matthias, followed by tempestuous deliberations on the trouble with Munda. Some of the elders and military men expressed that while the pieces o
f Mundayne folklore the scribes and scholars were finding in the Library and the Annals were intriguing, much of it was too far-fetched or vague to base any real war plans or strategies on. A number of the chieftains, led by Greenly, conveyed their distrust that they would be able to keep King Aud merely talking much longer, with all of their evasive negotiation tactics, and some of the councilmen suggested that, to preserve their lives, it might be best to just let Aud farm the land he wanted and to tax him for it. King Matthias disagreed, saying that if they gave a despot like Aud a hand, he would take an arm, and once he had an arm, he’d be looking to take a neck, and a head besides, and with his oceanic mass of an army behind him, he wouldn’t feel required to pay anyone anything for what he took.

  And Constance sat quietly over in her audience stall, thinking that as far-fetched and unreliable the folklore on Munda might have been, and as much as Aud may’ve been growing tired of talking—all the while, both nations were drawing quite close to the threshold of autumn.

  That night, Constance was only going to pass through the family parlor on her way to her chambers, but her father was sitting in the parlor, so she stopped. Matthias was in a chair, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands folded, and his head bowed. Constance did not speak, since he could have been in prayer, but then she heard him mumble, “Destiny. Am I a fool for standing against my whole Council?”

  Constance, perplexed, took a step toward him. “My lord?”

  Matthias’s head came up as he looked to his daughter with weary eyes. “Now, when we’re facing the largest enemy we’ve ever faced, and I’ve got advisors worriedly droning in both my ears, I don’t have one agreeing voice with me on the issue. But I don’t believe we should just hand ourselves on over to anyone, no matter how big they are. Is that foolish?”

  Constance walked over to sit in a chair opposite him, shrugging a shoulder. “I’ve never known you to handle your kingdom foolishly. There may be some councilmen who agree with you but are too afraid to say so yet.”

  Matthias lifted his elbows from his knees, sitting back in his seat. “I wouldn’t blame them, as I haven’t given them anything definite to agree with, at this point. ‘We shouldn’t give into Aud, and we don’t want to fight Aud either’ isn’t anything to agree to.”

  After pondering over that, Constance smiled. “Well. When the time comes, you’ll make the right choice. For you and for our people.”

  Matthias’s brow creased before he smiled back a bit. “Ah. Yes. But, the time for this one is now.” His hand went up to absently finger his beard, his smile diminishing. “In a way, we’re all trying to do what’s right. Not just we the councilmen, or we the Diachonians, but humankind. Even Aud is trying to do what’s right in his eyes, for him and for his posterity. He wants his sons to be rich, his kingdom to be forever, and his name to be great. Very human ambitions.”

  “At the expense of charity?” Constance questioned. “At the expense of general respect for people who are foreign but just as human?”

  Matthias shook his head. “If someone were to ask King Aud, he would probably say that he was indeed acting out of respect. Respect for his own, for the people who matter most to him. Respect for himself. Respect for his gods. I’m not saying that he wouldn’t be at all misguided in his answer, I’m only saying he’s trying to do what he feels is right. Right for his idea of humanity.”

  Constance stirred uncomfortably in her chair as her father went on. “When I tell you that I believe you’ll make the right choices, Constance, I don’t mean ‘right’ merely according to anciently prescribed tabulations of good deeds versus trespasses. What we may do and what we may not do can change with time and circumstance. It may be greedy or excessive to eat every scrap of food that’s on our tables during times of plenty, but it may be ungrateful or wasteful not to eat every scrap when times are hard. The act of eating itself is not the key in either case. The key is the working principle that lies behind the way we choose to conduct ourselves at various times. We have to learn to live according to principle, according to inward truth that does not change as times and seasons do.

  “Because we are so flawed. We don’t always know which way is up and which way is down. We lose our hope, we lose our way, and we need truth to guide us back again—because everyone is busy trying to do what’s right, and everyone is periodically failing at it. I myself follow the one I trust to be perfect, Whose ways I acknowledge as perfect, and yet even in my following, I, in my frailty, am prone to make mistakes. And I do make them. There are days when I think of my father, and I wonder to what degree, now, I would be making him proud. I walk over across our home, I look at my wife, and I wonder if I’ve missed something that I should’ve seen, if I’ve not been all to her that I should’ve been.” Matthias’s eyes narrowed in reflection. “Am I as I should be to you? As I should be to my people, here and now?”

  Constance sat studying her father, not knowing whether he was truly asking anything of her or not. Then, deciding that she didn’t need to know, she softly spoke her mind. “Sir, to her, the greatest husband. To me, the greatest father. To this nation, the provider and protector Providence deemed it would need, when He gave it to you. And to Him, what only His infinite language can say of you.”

  Matthias’s eyes had attentively relaxed, and Constance unwaveringly held them as she said, “Papa, you are who you are. And I honor you.”

  A silent moment passed, and Matthias’s hand moved away from his beard. He sat up in his seat, his head giving a nod, his voice low. “And I you.” He slowly rose to his feet, his hands coming together to steeple his fingers up against each other. “Tell me, if you’re my blood, and my heart, why shouldn’t you be my confidence?”

  Constance’s mouth speechlessly opened. She watched her father come toward her, and he lowered himself, planting a kiss on her forehead, saying, “I love you, Apple,” while he straightened and kept on moving, making his way across the parlor.

  Constance did not turn to look as her father left the room. Her eyes were stinging, and she placed a hand up to her mouth, an unseen weight settling down upon her that was more precious than the weight of any circle of precious metal that graced her shoulder could be.

  The next morning, Constance awoke to a bustling attendant coming over to tell her that a parcel had been sent to the palace for her. Due to the attendant’s unchecked excitement, Constance got up to leave her bedroom without dressing first, her attendant having to throw a robe over her nightgown for her as she headed from her bedroom, through her sitting room, and out to her message table. The parcel there was from Munda.

  Minutes afterward, Constance was seated on the floor of her sitting room, with papers spread on the carpet about her. Once she’d read every single piece, Constance leapt up to her feet, calling for an attendant to help her dress.

  When she later arrived on the front stoop of Staid’s aunt’s house, she was initially surprised when a maid was the one to answer the door. Oh. Yes. Constance asked to see Commander Alexander, and Percival waited behind in the foyer while Constance was led back to a study, where Staid was sitting at a desk, busy with documents.

  “Your Highness,” he greeted her, standing to his feet with a bow as the maid curtsied and left the room. “This is pleasantly unexpected. A good morning to you.”

  “And a good one to you,” Constance replied, feeling her pulse jump as she walked over with the parcel in her hands, setting it down on the desk. “You’re looking well, sir.”

  “I am well, my lady, thank you. Well and raring to be released from this hiatus. I’m sure there’s nothing odd about a man wanting to get back to work after he’s practically come back from the dead. I would burst with impatience some days if it weren’t for my having councilmen’s discussion notes to read, and my being able to go out for exercise.” Staid grinned. “It’s as if dining is supposed to be my new vocation here. Now that my aunt is feeling better, she seems intent upon instructing the new cook to fatten me back up to my normal s
ize in about as much time as it takes to pluck a fowl.”

  The corners of Constance’s mouth lifted with both humor and zeal. “Well, then, my dear Commander, you shall have a chance to take a hiatus from your hiatus as soon as you can arrange an outside councilmen’s meeting with the king. We can’t hold this off until the next assembly.” Her hand landed soundly down on top of the parcel on the desk. “Letters.”

  Staid’s smile altered into a look of sober enthusiasm. “You’ve heard from your contacts?”

  Seeing the unspoken response in Constance’s fervent eyes, Staid quickly reached to grab up and open the parcel.

  The following day found the two of them sitting in a palace meeting room with Elder Cobalt, Chieftain Greenly, and King Matthias. Constance announced that she’d heard from Mundayne residents and imperial servants at last, and that after reading their letters, she was persuaded that King Aud, with all of his threats, was in fact putting up a front: that his intention from the onset had never been to take any of their territory by force, but only by intimidation.

  Aud was noted as saying that Matthias was a nonentity with no successor to speak of (Constance resented having to swallow past the potent taste of offense in her mouth as she shared that part), and that the gods would approve of Aud’s appropriation of Matthias’s land. However, the Mundaynes were saying of their king that he must literally be going insane to think of embarking upon another campaign. Over the past ten years, he’d been increasing the people’s taxes in order to inflate his military, not heeding the complaints that the extra taxation was driving many of the people toward poverty. Frustrated that their grievances were being ignored, Mundayne residents had more recently begun banding together to oppose the military taxes, refusing to pay them. Aud resorted to turning portions of the army, led by his sons, against those bands of residents, to take their taxes or property by bloody coercion, but the bodies of murdered Mundayne soldiers mysteriously started showing up in the streets. Three of Aud’s sons were among the dead, and the other two were simply gone. While it was rumored that the two were being kept in hiding until Aud regained control over the rising crisis, some of the imperial servants doubted that Aud, who bristled at any mention of his disappeared sons, truly knew of their whereabouts himself. Hearing that the King of Munda was using his own people to combat one another, Munda’s colonies began looking for ways to distance themselves from association with the reigning nation. Numerous alarmed and jaded Mundayne soldiers chose to give up their places in the military, stating that their wages weren’t worth the country’s infighting, and little did many other nations know yet that Munda’s notorious army had rapidly dwindled in size, as well as in funds.

  Seeing that his power over his subjects was slipping from his hands, Aud had promised to acquire new superior farmlands as a gift for his people, lands that would be easily procured and only minimally taxed for residents who were willing to go farm them.

  “King Aud is going ahead with the idea, hoping his threats will ultimately forestall any physical resistance from us, but it doesn’t look like his people are behind him on it,” Constance pointed out to the group of councilmen, holding up letters in her hands from the parcel in her lap. “He’s looking for a way to recover the respect of his people and to accordingly rebuild his army before anyone else can find out the real condition his army is currently in. Munda is vulnerable. I believe that if Diachona stands strong now, we can stand King Aud down.”

  Constance looked around the group to see her contemplative father with his fingers perched against his temple, Elder Cobalt with a flabbergasted frown on his face, and Chieftain Greenly with a hint of a skeptical smirk slanting his mouth. “So, Princess,” Greenly began, sitting a bit forward in his chair, “a party of affable Mundaynes just handed all of this vital information over to you, in a box?”

  The letters in Constance’s hands lowered somewhat. She moistened her lips. “Well, this isn’t my first time hearing from these individuals. I’ve been in contact with them since I met them on my past visit to Munda. But when I last communicated with each of them, I told them to stop sending their letters separately. Having them held in the post and then sent in one parcel would minimize the frequency and appearance of letters going out to Diachona, in case our nations became hostile. Also, if the post was seized or lost, I simply wouldn’t get any of it, instead of probably getting some of it and not knowing that anything was missing. A novice idea of mine, perhaps, but it worked.”

  “Ah. Yes. It worked,” Greenly answered with a nod. “And how do you know that these decidedly superstitious Mundayne favorites of yours are brave enough to tell an enemy of theirs the truth about what’s happening in their vulnerable country? And what’s more, isn’t it Donpoerh? Shouldn’t these people be engrossed in their rejoicing and reveling together in bed instead of writing you letters?”

  “Greenly,” Elder Cobalt mumbled disapprovingly, his brow furrowing at the younger councilman.

  Constance lowered her letters completely, placing them back into the parcel in her lap with slow, deliberate movements. “The fact that the King of Munda has chosen to show contempt for our King Matthias, out of the blue, does not mean that the Mundayne people at large have anything against me.”

  “Yes, and besides,” Commander Alexander spoke up, “what else would explain the way Munda strangely quieted down and their campaigns petered out before King Aud started bothering us about our land? The accounts in Her Highness’s letters about the plight of Munda’s soldiers lend clarity to the whole issue.”

  Chieftain Greenly turned his smirk on the commander. “Clarity? Right, sir, you have made it abundantly clear to us all—to the general universe, really—why you might be rather partial to Her Highness’s stance on things. But I would urge you to make certain you’re taking an objective councilman’s view of the issue, if you will, please, so doing us all the honor of acting like you’ve been here before.”

  The air in the room thickened to a near solid at once, and Constance grew warm, her posture instantly stiffening. She, the elder, and the commander sat staring at the chieftain, while King Matthias, with his fingers still calmly perched on his temple, had his eyes on Commander Alexander.

  The commander looked around without speaking for a moment, and then he explicitly cleared his throat. “With all respect, Chieftain,” he said, an ironic smile brewing in his eyes while scarcely touching his mouth, “I am still the leader of this kingdom’s army. The army that protects you, your family, your holdings, and your future. I needn’t remind you that I started commanding the army and was given a seat here some time before you were invited to the Council, but since your natural birth took place some years prior to mine, we won’t engage in presently irrelevant dialogue about who was where before whom.

  “Now, I will say that ever since my appointment as commander, I’ve still been earning my keep, as it were, with the latest evidence of that being shown through my work in Rêeh. I did fall ill there and had to be sent back, unfortunately. But Rêeh’s king and queen could tell you that peace followed me into every town that I worked in there, and had it not been for that wretched bout of sickness, our mission in Rêeh might very well have been more than half accomplished by now. But I trust that my soldiers I left there are continuing the overarching effort of showing Rêeh’s people that even after devastation, all is not lost.”

  Commander Alexander sat there, looking fixedly at Greenly until Greenly mutely looked away, and King Matthias lowered his fingers from his temple and finally spoke. “So, then, Commander. You must have a suggestion about the issue at hand.”

  “I do, Your Majesty,” the commander replied, his attention moving to Matthias. “Summer is ending, and King Aud has more pride than he seems to know what to do with. I suggest that instead of trying to hold him off any longer or wishing that he would, somehow, just go away, we should take a more offensive approach and tell that man in blatant language if he wants to greedily consume what doesn’t belong to him, Munda’s g
oing to have to get up, come out, and fight us for it now—and if we capture Aud in battle, the Mundayne crown will then be in play and Aud’s head will be missing from the running for it.”

  If there was still a thickness in the room at that point, it was one of a steadily changing essence. Constance was holding her breath, thinking that Elder Cobalt might question Commander Alexander on his reference to the closing of summer, but the meeting remained silent until King Matthias spoke again. When he did speak, then, everyone else there listened until he was finished.

  That evening after supper with her father, Constance bid him goodnight and ambled up to the secluded quarters of the palace, knocking on the sitting room door that was standing ajar, poking her head inside of it. “Mama?”

  “Constance,” she heard her name in response, and she entered the room.

  Her mother was sitting in a chair close in front of the window looking directly out toward the meadows to the north, and Constance pulled up another chair, sitting right beside her mother, leaning over to kiss her cheek. Her mother glowed but did not smile.

  The two women only watched the fading view of the meadows for a while, and then Constance breathed in deeply, coming out with, “I’m in love with Staid, Grace.”

  She felt when her mother turned to look at her, but she delayed before turning her own head to meet her mother’s gaze. “Not that I haven’t always loved him,” Constance went on. “What else is a friend to do? And it’s not as if we’ve never told each other before that we love each other. But I’ve grown. Something in me has grown. And he said he’s been waiting for years for me to come of age. We’re so much as we ever were, but only different now.” She gave a little laugh. “Papa says that he thinks it won’t hurt for me to receive offers from other men, other nations, but I can’t say that I’m up for making a string of consecutive rejections, as I know I would be doing. Papa wants me to have experience, but even if I don’t count the prince of Rêeh, I think I’ve already had all of the experience I can handle, just like that.” Constance concernedly bit her lip before continuing. “I’ve hurt Chieftain Greenly, Mama, and I didn’t mean to. He’s always made his interest pretty plain, but I figured it was part of a challenge. Just a game. I didn’t know he had any real intentions he planned to act on. Then he insinuated his intentions at such a difficult time. Well, maybe he’s been insinuating them longer than I’ve been paying attention, but he came out and said how much he admires me, and surprised me with the most vivid delivery sent to my sitting room. I might have thought it romantic if I hadn’t been grieving, and he said the flowers were for my grief, even though I knew they were for more than that, and he didn’t know I was grieving for more than a lifelong friend. But I didn’t give enough thought to how I was going to respond, since I was busy thinking of Staid, and when I saw him get off that ship out at the docks, I was so relieved and overjoyed that he was alive that Chieftain Greenly’s presence there was so far away from my consideration. Reuniting with Staid was the most wonderful thing imaginable, but I hate the thought of its being a blow to anyone, and I wonder what it’s going to be like on the Council now, going forward. Maybe if I am just more considerate as I go on being myself, the chieftain will come around in time. He’s a good man, I think, but he isn’t for me. Staid is simply...it. And he probably always has been. I just had to grow to see it.”

  As her mother sat there glowing at her, Constance was about to resume speaking, but her next words came to a halt before escaping her mouth when her mother suddenly whispered, “I know.”

  For a second, Constance was too astounded to even blink. Grace’s voice rose a degree, her glow silkily easing, at last, into a sentient smile. “I know about you and Staid, dearest.” She turned her head, looking back out of the window. “I saw you running out there, when you thought you’d lost him.”

  Constance glanced toward the window, stupefied, but she looked back to Grace when the woman carried on. “And however many days it was after that, I don’t know, when you came in and stayed in here forever. I knew what you were doing, Constance. Waiting for your faith to give way. Sitting and waiting to lose your mind.”

  Grace turned her head to see her daughter’s eyes reddening, and Grace’s smile ebbed. “Is that what you think I did? That I sat and waited for my mind to get up and go away?” She averted her gaze, staring past her daughter, one of her hands coming up to rest below her throat. “Do minds do that? Some human beings must, in fact, go mad. Others must just get tired. You were already raised, Constance. Such a young lady. I knew that Merry could give you much of what you would require from that point. Not in my place, but in a woman’s place. And I didn’t want to handle my young lady tiredly. You deserved so much more than that.” Her hand stroked thoughtfully at the base of her throat. “So if I could provide you with anything, I could provide you with space. Space to become yourself, as much as you would by a given time in your life. And whenever that initial moment would come—whether it would come after your rise to the throne or before—when something or someone, or your own people, would impact you so intensely that, all shaken up, you would go find a corner somewhere to wait in, to wait for yourself to go under, and nothing would happen... I wanted you to have that time, and to have that space.”

  The older woman’s eyes returned to the glistening brown ones watching her, and, leaving her throat, her hand reached over to cover one of her daughter’s. Giving Constance’s hand a squeeze, Grace let her voice smooth itself back down into a whisper. “The space to realize, Daughter, that you’re not me.”

  Grace remained there that way, allowing Constance to witness how that present glow in her countenance did not withdraw its way off into the distance, and at length, Constance bowed over, her head lowering into her mother’s lap as she started weeping, as she had never wept before in all of the twenty years, the twenty acceptable years, to her credit.

  ~~~

  The Battle