The Movement of Crowns

by Nadine C. Keels

  ~~~

  The summer’s surrender to autumn did not turn out to be as seamless as winter’s surrender to spring had been, earlier that year in Diachona. Some of the turning autumn winds held a biting chill when they struck squarely into Diachonian faces in passing, and after little more than a week of this weather, vendors had chosen to pronounce their selling season, in Topaz’s open marketplace, to be prematurely over, as the winds were proving to be a hazard to the vendors’ wares. Increasing rumors of war had speedily dampened the bright spirit of the marketplace anyway, as that long-existent, niggling unease about Munda came to the fore when the news spread that Commander Alexander was ending his rest since King Matthias had decided that Diachona was going to take its soldiers to face the Mundaynes in battle.

  Even with the unease, however, letters of assurance signed by King Matthias and Princess Constance had been taken out and reread a number of times in the hearing of citizens in town meetings and church services in Topaz and across the country, ever since the spring. So, while the talk of war predictably led to its share of rational fears, the idea of overall or outright panic wasn’t given an adequate chance to become popular at any time ahead of the designated day for the fight against Munda.

  When that day showed up, King Matthias, a group of his guards, and Elder Cobalt rode out of the capital and toward the kingdom’s southern border with Commander Alexander and a host of Diachona’s army troops, doing without the number of their soldiers who were still absent from the country, out across the Eubeltic Sea. How Diachona would fare in combat with only a fraction of the available men who would have otherwise been with them had been left up to the people’s speculation. On a different note, what the majority of Diachona’s citizenry did not have the opportunity to think or talk about beforehand, because they weren’t aware of the arrangement, was that when their army headed out of Topaz, Princess Constance was among the company of horsemen from the palace, riding alongside her father. She was not wearing all of the same symbolic battle attire that Matthias was dressed in, but underneath her cloak and over the sturdy material of her dress, she did have on a breastplate identical to her father’s but made specifically for her form, their family’s coat of arms inscribed on its front. Citizens who had come out to watch the army depart were stunned to see a particular flash of bronze tresses and red skirts dashing by on horseback along with the king’s men.

  As it turned out, when the Diachonian scouts that had been sent out ahead came back with details from their survey, the army did not have to ride out as far as it thought it would. King Aud had accepted Diachona’s challenge to come out for the claim of territory, but the agreement had been for the armies to meet on neutral, fairly barren ground, outside of Diachona’s southern boundary.

  “So. They are already on our land,” Commander Alexander observed when the Diachonians arrived to find the Mundayne army waiting for them farther north than they were supposed to be, just as the scouts had reported. “Looks like a directive from Munda’s throne, to scorn us.”

  Diachona’s troops aligned themselves out on the windy field, and Matthias, Alexander, Cobalt, and Constance convened on a low hill to appraise both armies, Matthias’s guards waiting close by on their horses.

  “The Almighty knows I had my doubts about provoking a fight,” Elder Cobalt admitted, looking southward, “but really, what is this? What could Aud be thinking? He would truly bring so small a number of soldiers out here to battle? They’re barely more than we are and have hardly any cavalry.”

  “‘Bring’ his soldiers? It might be more like ‘send,’” Alexander commented, peering through the short telescope in his hands. “Unless he is mixed into one of their lines, clad as a common soldier, it doesn’t look like any king came along with them.” He removed the telescope from his eye, handing it off to Matthias to take a look.

  “Maybe the man is indeed going insane, back at home,” Matthias mused as he inspected the Mundayne ranks.

  Alexander shook his head. “Pity if he is. But I’ll wager that no matter what’s going on in his head, if these are all the men he sent, it’s because these were all he could afford to pay for this scheme. Elder Cobalt, let’s deliver the terms.” The commander and the elder turned their horses and rode down to meet with two Mundayne officers out in the empty center of the battlefield.

  After the terms had been served, Elder Cobalt rode back alone to the hill, but as the Diachonian soldiers heeded Alexander’s signal and unsheathed their swords, there appeared to be some confusion among the Mundayne army. The din that began from their side of the battlefield did not quite resemble the sound of a war cry.

  “It doesn’t appear that they’re taking up their arms,” Matthias told Constance and Cobalt, again looking through the telescope. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say those chaps were over there arguing.”

  Constance scanned over the Mundayne lines, listening to their noise as she put her thoughts forward. “They came here at their king’s command, but perhaps now they’re splitting over the report of the terms. Or perhaps they’re not unanimous on a decision about whether to actually fight or not because King Aud may’ve already committed a blaring offense against what’s sacred by sending them in the first place.” Matthias lowered the telescope, his head snapping over to look at Constance, and she turned her own head to meet his gaze. “It probably hasn’t rained in Munda yet.”

  The brisk revolving of ideas through Matthias’s head was almost audible. “Ah.” His head moved slowly up and down. “If that is the case, it may have something to do with what the commander said yesterday could turn out to be his one main order to the army today. It sounded offhand when I heard him mention it, but maybe he was serious.”

  “One order?” Elder Cobalt pondered aloud. “What order would that be?”

  “The order to run.”

  “To run? Commander Alexander wouldn’t have our men run away from a fight. Especially not when enticing the enemy to come see us here was his suggestion.”

  Constance looked to the battlefield, only having to reason for a second before her face illumined with the kind of insight that attachment alone could yield. “No. The commander wasn’t talking about running ‘away,’ Elder Cobalt.” Watching Alexander out ahead of his army down there, calling out some instruction to them that Constance couldn’t hear, she knew that he was as cognizant of it as she was: the Mundayne men opposite them hadn’t wanted to come here. The odds were that many of them were only trying to hang on to some measure of security in the middle of a martial trade that was crumbling around them, with a king at the back of their necks who’d shown himself capable of overtly using his subjects for his benefit, to their detriment. In voicing what sense the accounts in Constance’s letters about the condition of Munda’s army made, Alexander had won over King Matthias’s agreement to call Munda out to the field. In proposing the blatant challenge to King Aud, Alexander had very likely succeeded in getting an imperious ruler, who’d habitually shown himself to be rather devout about his beliefs in the past, to violate his own perimeter of ancient tradition. And here before them was a mass of men who’d been compliant to get the wages they needed from the oppressive hand above them, but Constance understood, in that moment, that Alexander had no intention of punishing them all for it, or pulling them further out of their consciences about it.

  Cobalt was ready to put another question forth, but he didn’t have time to before, at Alexander’s lead, a sudden roar came up from the Diachonian army, causing the horses on the field and on the hill to stir and grunt with alertness, tossing their manes and tails. The Diachonian army’s ensuing, boisterous chants of “You must—leave us! You must—leave us!” served to essentially drown the Mundayne fracas out.

  Matthias and Constance both expectantly prodded their horses to the edge of the hill as their army’s chants became increasingly synchronized. It was now plain to see, without the help of a telescope, that the Mundayne lines were shabbily breaking apart, and when Commander
Alexander lifted his sword and pointed ahead with one long shout, the Mundayne army started running southward almost before the Diachonians did.

  Diachona’s horsemen stayed put, continuing to chant while the foot soldiers took off with their brandished swords, yelling toward the fleeing Mundaynes. Watching the deafening chase move farther across the landscape, Constance wholeheartedly laughed aloud, not caring that none of the soldiers would be able to hear her screaming, “Yes! Run, Diachona! Run Munda away from its misery!”

  When the Mundayne army and the Diachonian foot soldiers pursuing them were several minutes away, Diachona’s soldiers on horseback took off behind them, at a pace fast enough to go propel the chase forward, but slow enough to keep from trampling down anyone on foot.

  “This is ridiculous!” Constance laughed to her father. “What will we even be able to write about this for the Annals? A good chunk of our men still overseas, and none of our firearms used. Just a throng of our soldiers out here, hollering, flaunting friendly swords, and running like wildfire. Can this even be legitimately called a battle?”

  Staring after the path of horsemen, Matthias gave a single nod of contained satisfaction. “We’ll call it whatever we want.”

  Constance looked after the horsemen as well, keenly wishing that she could fly down to the field to catch up with the chase, but on this occasion, she resigned to protocol without any real objection, staying put on the hill with her father and Elder Cobalt, being content with her respect for her commander and his choice.

  That day, the Diachonians chased the Mundaynes across the border and well out onto neutral ground, Commander Alexander’s men not letting up until he signaled that it was enough. He and his army stood watching the Mundaynes in flight for a time, and Diachona’s subsequent, victorious chants of “Diakŏnia! Diakŏnia!” acted as both the pronouncement of the battle’s end and as a nudge to the retreating army’s backs.

  It would be some days before the Diachonians would learn that King Aud, who had in fact stayed behind in Munda to avoid being captured in battle, had been startled out of his sleep by a large, terrified mob of Mundayne men, the morning after he’d sent his army out to Diachona. The mob, bearing crude weapons and burning torches, were shouting out pleas for clemency, alternately toward the sky and then toward the ground. The gods had not poured down their blessing of the season yet, as Aud had assured the people would happen in time; the country would therefore be cursed unless it was purged of the rash offender who had elected to send soldiers to combat without being blessed. Aud had quit his palace for a while as a precaution, not knowing that he might be so quickly tracked down in his remote compound miles away until it was ransacked by the mob. Aud’s guards, along with his two remaining sons—who’d been confined in the compound for months—emerged to try to protect the king but were killed along with him beneath the harried mob’s weapons in a sacrifice of reparation. Minutes later, the men from the mob hastened outside and wailed toward heaven while the compound burned, and then they retired from the depressing scene, exhaustedly lugging their weapons with them, heading off for their homes.

  The rumbling bawl of blazing flames licking at the doomed walls of a compound was an immaterial sound only by the time it reached Constance, who was sitting before a neglected dessert at the supper table with her father and Staid in Topaz’s palace, on the evening they received the gruesome report of the slaughtering of Munda’s king. Staid reached over to take Constance’s hand, and she looked at him, knowing that he must have detected her concern. When the declarations of Diachona’s triumph over Munda had gone out after the battle, the news had been tinged with uncertainty for the three at this table, as it was not yet known if the Mundayne soldiers the commander had sent back to their country had been accepted there with a pardon for not taking part in any fighting, or if they’d had to face the same penalty as the king who’d sent them.

  Matthias, who also hadn’t touched his dessert, sat there at the head of the table with the opened letter about Aud in his hand. It appeared that Matthias was on the verge of coming up with something to lighten the pall that had settled over their meal, but whatever it was that he might have said then was never spoken, as an unanticipated sight at the doors of the dining room arrested his attention.

  Holding onto the assisting arm of an attendant of hers, Queen Grace unhurriedly entered the dining room, with a shawl wrapped around her evening dress. She was looking curiously around at the room’s walls, not at any of the three astonished people who rose to their feet when she came in. She seemed not to hear the greetings of “Your Majesty” and “Mama” that were directed toward her, but when Matthias fondly murmured, “Gracie,” her gaze immediately went to her husband.

  “My lord,” she replied, a flush that strongly resembled shyness coloring her cheeks. She released her attendant’s arm, stepping forward. “I asked about you and was told that you’d be having supper. It’s been ages since I’ve been in here. I hardly recognize anything here, except you.” Her eyes searched around her again, landing over on Staid and Constance. Grace smiled. “And my daughter, of course. And, goodness, is this Staid Alexander? My, my. A good evening to you both.”

  Staid and Constance seemed immobile as they returned Grace’s greeting, but Matthias had dropped his letter and was already walking around the table toward his wife while the attendant behind her curtsied to Her Majesty’s back and withdrew from the room.

  Grace glanced down at the table. “Oh, you all are having dessert? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be late.”

  “It’s perfectly all right,” Matthias told her, coming and taking her hands into his. “We would have waited for you if I’d known you were coming. Are you hungry? We’ll have Merry bring you something. What would you like?”

  “What would I like? I don’t know. What did you have? No need for anyone to make something different, for me. I really didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “Nonsense. Never an interruption that has thrilled me more.”

  It was soon made apparent that Matthias had forgotten about the two standing at the table, and Staid, tugging at Constance’s hand, evidently felt no need to make the king remember their presence. Constance was still stunned, but she gave into Staid’s tug, allowing him to lead her away from the table.

  “I’m sorry, my lord,” Grace apologized. “I...I suppose you and I need to talk. I’m so sorry, for so much.”

  “No confessions now, Gracie, please.”

  The last thing Constance saw before she and Staid left the room was her father engulfing her mother in an intimate embrace that sent the woman’s shawl slipping off of her shoulders and down to the floor behind her.

  Staid walked Constance through a lamp-lit hallway, stopping at a window, and the two of them stood watching what they could see of the windy night, outdoors.

  “It’s been some years since I’ve seen her,” Staid quietly reflected. “But you know that.”

  “It’s been some years since she’s had supper with us, or any meal,” was Constance’s staggered answer.

  Staid gave a low chuckle. “It might be a few years more, then. Except His Majesty actually gives her a chance to eat, in there.”

  In spite of herself, Constance felt a bit of embarrassment. “Alexander...”

  Staid pressed at her hand, drawing her closer to him. “What? I can’t imagine how I’d feel, seeing you come looking for me for the first time after a long separation.” His eyes were perusing her face, and his free hand lifted, coming to rest alongside her neck. “Unless, needless to say, it would be something like one of us practically coming back from the dead.”

  Constance would’ve shaken her head, but Staid’s hand eased up from her neck to her cheek. “You know,” he said, “we’ll have to go back to Nonpareil together, one of these days.”

  “Will we?” Constance mildly asked, grateful for this moment away from the dark mood that had seemed ready to take over what was left of the night, once that letter had been opened. Moreover, she co
uld get back to thinking about her mother later. “Why do you say so?”

  “Because. Ever since our last evening there, I’ve felt that I was cheated out of the chance to hold you, out beside that pond.” Staid released Constance’s hand so that he could put his arm around her, his head tipping down against hers. “And we’ll have to find that field again to let those tykes know that the leader of the country’s army can run faster than he lets on, before they grow up telling inaccurate stories about me to everyone. But that reason’s a given.”

  “Is it? It doesn’t sound like you’ll need me there for that part.”

  “Hey. Sure I will. I wouldn’t want to run without you. We can just split winning the races, half and half.”

  Constance’s soft chortle was broken off by Staid’s face turning and his mouth seeking out hers. As she indulged her desire to slide her arm up around his neck and to relax into him as she hadn’t been able to do out at the Eubeltic shore, she wondered how she could’ve thought before that her learning to care for him this way had been mistimed. Even if he had not come back from Rêeh, if their first time communicating such affection to each other would have been their last, it had to be better for one to love, and to know that one was loved likewise, than to have never known or been able to express that truth at all.

  On an afternoon at the end of the next week, Constance was summoned to meet with her father in the family library. She approached the desk he was sitting at with his papers and a quill pen, and he took her off guard when he spoke without any delay, not looking up from his writing. “Constance, the mission overseas has made a positive turn, and we have to make a trip to Munda immediately.”

  Constance reflexively turned over the book she had in her hands. “Sir?”

  Matthias peeked up at her but didn’t stop writing. “Rêeh. The mission isn’t over, but it’s caught some momentum. We should be able to bring our troops home from there before the onset of winter. And Munda. We need to make a trip to Munda.”

  “‘We’ who?” Constance questioned, trying to keep the mischief out of her tone. “You and Mama?”

  Matthias’s quill came to a stop. He quizzically brought his head up. “What?”

  Constance’s brows climbed with all the innocence she could display. “Now, now, Papa darling, need I remind you that we, as Diachonians, do not celebrate Donpoerh?” She brought her voice down somewhat, not able to help the smidge of authentic awkwardness that crept into it. “With the way that you and Mama have been shut up in your chambers so much ever since the night she came down to supper, the servants are beginning to talk.”

  “Ah!” Matthias let out a hearty guffaw. “Have no fear, and tell them all to stop worrying. No great siring happening here, and she and I don’t plan on surprising the nation with anything. Your mother and I have just been, um—” Matthias cut himself off, waving his quill in the air. “Having some discussions. As you can see, I’ve therefore fallen a little behind with my menial snippets of business, and I’m in a hurry. But the important thing is that according to the latest information, the Mundayne soldiers that we chased out of here were not harmed when they went back home, and I’m going to need you and Commander Alexander with me in Munda when I make my move.”

  Constance was all seriousness now, relief flooding her at the news about the soldiers. “Your move, my lord?”

  Matthias went back to writing for a minute before he put his pen down and looked up, telling his daughter, “We’re going to see to the fulfilling of the terms we delivered at the battle. The Mundayne people are in need of a king. Commander Alexander undoubtedly won their favor when he liberated their army from the burden of even having to defend themselves against us on the field. You’ve had their favor since the year you went to visit them, and you likely have the most in-depth knowledge of their ways and the greatest empathy toward them as a people than anyone else in my kingdom. I’m calling a short Council assembly, where you’ll be formally entitled as my Junior with the first Diachonian councilwoman’s seat granted to you, regardless of the fact that I’m still alive. And then we’re heading off to Munda.”

  The rush that her father was in did not give Constance time to stop and dwell on how overwhelmed she was by his entitlement announcement. He continued to talk. “So that there will be no later confusion in Munda about exactly who he is, I would like the commander to have one trip there in his current military position before he is relieved of it and the officer who served in the interim is given the position of commander permanently.”

  Constance’s book nearly dropped from her fingers. “Relieved of his position?” she asked. “Do you not think the commander fit enough to go on? I know he doesn’t look quite the same, as far as his build goes, and though he didn’t do any actual fighting in that last battle, he’s strong and healthy, sir. And he’s yet getting stronger.”

  Matthias shook his head with a bit of a sigh. “I know, I know. Come now, Princess, think with me. Staid Alexander is an admirable leader and military man. His predecessor was right in bequeathing that position to him. But he won’t have need of it much longer. I know good and well that the commander aims to wed my daughter.”

  Constance had to take a step forward and carefully set her book down on her father’s desk, to keep her fingers from fumbling with it. “He’s said as much to you?”

  “As much to me? He said as much to everybody, down at the Eubeltic docks. What with that very public demonstration of yours and his, it’s a wonder to me that you would feel at all abashed about my being shut up in my chambers with your mother for days, in private.”

  “Papa,” Constance almost broke into his words, one side of her mouth involuntarily inching upward for but a second. “That’s different.”

  “Not incredibly. It all comes from the same place,” Matthias commented, folding his hands together on top of the desk. “The man is set on you, and after knowing you all these years, he’s not going to let you get away to anyone else. It’ll only be a matter of time before he and I have another dialogue about you.”

  “With your being so sure of it,” Constance began, tilting her head, “what about all of the experience and other offers you think would be good for me?”

  Matthias started twiddling his thumbs. “Chieftain Greenly made you an offer, didn’t he?”

  Constance had not been ready for that direct question from her father, but she managed to reply. “No. Not in any definite terms. I think he would have, but I suppose he didn’t really have a chance to before Staid reappeared from Rêeh.”

  “I see. I thought an offer might have accompanied the multitude of flowers he sent here for you. Quite frankly, I thought the chieftain was going to ask for your hand as soon as he joined the Council, before you came of age.”

  “Oh?” Constance wasn’t sure how she liked the sound of that. “How come you never mentioned it to me?”

  “Should I have?” Matthias asked. When his daughter apparently could come up with no answer for that, he went on with, “I know it might not be the most comfortable situation in the world, sitting on the Council with him, but sometimes these things happen in life. How you each are going to navigate it will be up to you both. And, yes, I don’t think having more offers would hurt you. Most of the country doesn’t know it, but the other prince who came for your royal junior ceremony has long been engaged elsewhere. Still, I know for certain that more notables would soon be following the prince of Rêeh out of the woodwork to make a try for the princess of Diachona, particularly after our newest victory. But since the commander has made his claim on you, and has made it openly, it’s different.” Matthias’s thumbs went still, his voice lowering. “Your mother is not the same woman I married over thirty years ago, and I’m not the same man she married. We’re not even as we were at the time when we lost your brother, before your mother...drifted away. To be honest, a part of her is still, well, relatively adrift, as I’m sure you can tell. Providence willing, if that part of her wants to come back home, I can ensure that s
he’ll know she’s more than welcome.

  “But, even on some days when it’s been the hardest to believe it, I’ve known that in there somewhere lives her love for me. And I love her. That’s a constant, no matter what else changes.” Matthias picked his pen back up, but his attention didn’t move from Constance. “So, then, if you and your young man truly love each other, that’s what is of primary consequence. We ought not to stand in the way of it. I hope I made it clear to him that that would be my stance, when I told him a number of things pertaining to the two of you before he took you to Nonpareil.” The quill was now fluttering in a circular motion between Matthias’s preoccupied fingers. “Now, we’ll all discuss this together, of course, but there is one detail I’d like to ask you about personally first, before any planning gets too far underway.”

  Constance put a hand up to her heart, as if in an attempt to slow the abundance of emotion flowing all through her. She cleared her throat, speaking as calmly as she could. “What is that, Papa?”

  The fluttering of Matthias’s pen paused as his eyes inquisitively narrowed. “How would you, as a woman, feel about having dual residences, internationally?”

  ~~~

  The End of the Following Summer