I Could Make You Care

[StaolDerg]

Winter.

A soft chill shivered through her bones as Palki stepped out of bed, and she rubbed her palms to try and get the blood flowing as she cracked her tired eyes and disturbed a mind that moored somewhere dark and warm. Small mercy then, that she had bothered to bring wool-lined boots to the foot of her bed the previous night, and with all the haste a half-asleep person could muster, she fumbled about a half-lit room to the end of the bed and succeeded in managing to put both on the wrong foot.

As she squinted irritably at the immediate discomfort, wondering how her footwear had somehow managed to warp in the middle of the night, the door rapped twice, and the voice of a maid called out from the other side of the keyhole.

“Your Highness? Are you awake?”

“I am.” She replied with a stifled yawn. “Do you mind telling me what time it is?”

“Quarter to six, Your Highness. Breakfast isn’t due until seven, but if you’d like, I can have the cooks have it prepared in about ten minutes?”

The inselni queen pushed the curtains aside and peeked out the window. Light had yet to rise to this side of the mountain summit, but the snow was more than happy to roost on her window’s frame, coating it in a dense blanket.

“Very kind, but I’ll wait.”

“Very well. Is there anything you require now that you’re up? Some tea, perhaps?”

“That sounds nice. Can you have a pot brought to the library?”

“Certainly, ma’am.”

“Thanks.” She bent over and started taking off the boots, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

---

Her library would’ve made any minor branch of the Imperial Libraries outside Kelsun green with envy. The Queen had rarely ventured outside of the library as a child, and every month it had seemed Queen Akel would furnish her bookworm of a daughter with another dozen books to add to the shelves, of which only contributed to the further expansion of the Citadel’s library. Though the government now forbade any major renovations of the Citadel, let alone small purchases under the reasoning that she “was too young to handle money on her own,” the diligent servants and staff of the Citadel had nevertheless strived to keep the books fresh, rotating out the old books with what Her Majesty might find interesting to re-read.

Nevertheless, eighty-odd years had made their toll. Most of these books, when they were first provided to her, were at the bleeding edge of the nation’s understanding of their fields, chosen specifically so that they might’ve furnished the heir to the throne with the best knowledge to help her lead. But most were outdated now, and severely so. It didn’t take any sort of genius to look outside from a window at the city lights below and realize that Court Alchemist An Shifeng of the Fifteenth Century was a little off in his assessment that no other light than from that of fire could ever be practical to burn throughout day and night.

Palki halfheartedly paged through one of her ancestors’ diaries on the management of the court. Technically the heavy leather-bound tome was a transcript, partly because the original was buried with that Emperor, but mostly because they had a particularly infuriating handwriting that was almost illegible. Despite the Libraries’ best efforts at reproducing the diary, the contents remained confusing: dozens of entries were missing, and further inspection on the page numbers at the bottom yielded the fact that whole sections, up to whole chapters, were also missing. There weren’t many candidates for why that was: she did recall a letter the Minister of State’s letter had sent to her some decades ago beating about the bush to say that the Regency would be reviewing her library’s contents.

No wonder about that, too. Anything about what the other monarchs had done about a conflict with a regency or their Councils had been removed or censored.

It felt fruitless to even bother going over it. She wasn’t even able to participate in the nation’s politics in the first place– the seat of the Regency was in Aundui Yio, as far as possible from the Queen for the express purpose of preventing her participation in the government. It didn’t help either that Kesternrim was on the summit of a massive mountain range to hamper the delivery of anything that wasn’t a bare necessity, and that they’d changed the definition of a season so they only needed to deliver the world’s most contradictory reports a whole eight years after the fact.

To put it plainly, she was beyond frustrated. Every decade, it seemed, the Regency took something else. If she drank, she’d be in a coma every day of the week, but since she didn’t, Palki resigned herself to allowing the book to drop onto her chest, and slumping into the chair. She glanced at the table next to her, where a large pot of tea was sitting, and her empty cup next to it.

Someplace to her right, the door’s latch clicked open, and the click of boots followed towards her.

She didn’t bother to look up. She knew her Captain-Martial well enough to recognize the black-scaled inselni’s footsteps.

“Breakfast, Your Majesty?”

“Thank you, Captain.” Palki stared at the tall shelves before her, left hand fiddling with the stitches on her dress. “Leave it on the table. I’ll have it later.”

“Of course.” There was a gentle click as the tray made contact with the wood, but to the surprise of the Queen, the Captain only stepped to her side, helmet tucked underneath her armpit.

“...Your Majesty, I cannot help but notice that you seem less happy by the day.”

Palki chuckled dryly. “Well, I would like to be rid of being locked in the Citadel. I do miss the deserts.”

She paused, and frowned, looking at the captain. “Don’t actually.”

The Captain laughed. “Well, planning a breakout attempt of such thoroughness would take a while, anyhow.” But her face quickly sobered. “But no. I can’t help but notice that the books of your library no longer provide much use to you: they’re either outdated, no longer interesting, or plain censored beyond usefulness. If you wished-”

Palki shook her head. “No. Too much of a risk. Some books are not worth your lives.”

The Captain looked at her quietly.

She’d known the Queen since the young inselni Queen had been a child, sharing in her life as she prepared for the duties an Imperial Martial would demand once little Palki became Akel II. She’d played hide-and-seek in the corridors of the Citadel with her, read books to her when Queen Akel was away, delivered her her meals when she forgot, lost in the depths of her books. It hurt then, to glance at the table, absent of the pile of discarded books Palki would’ve normally put the books she finished: she hadn’t even gotten halfway through this one, and the to-read pile was still neatly stacked on her other side. Bored no longer described the posture– she looked empty.

The Captain thought for a moment.

“Humor me for a moment, Your Majesty?”

The Queen turned to her with a confused expression. “Yes?”


“The night sentries have spotted holes in the patrol patterns of the Interior Army. The last three nights have been a cold front: a blizzard is expected tonight. The soldiers will be bundled up and unlikely to patrol far from their camps– not that they could see anything in the whiteout. With one or two opportune moments, a small group could slip through the cracks without anyone noticing, and be back within a handful of hours. It further helps that we know the mountains well. Terrain will not be an issue.”

Palki stared at the Captain. “You are certain? What if you are caught?”

“We are House Guard, Your Majesty. An encounter with a patrol will be more a problem with the soldiers than for us- a knife, after all, does not jam.”

Palki leaned back in her chair. “All over a couple books…”

“Let me reframe the situation,” the Captain gently intervened. “These books are for your education, and knowledge of the outside world. Their obtaining extends beyond the importance of entertainment: they provide information we are otherwise completely unable to access.”

“I grasp that. But a part of me feels that this feels bizarrely excessive for what the end goal is… My education? What good is a book on modern sciences if you can't understand any of the new developments? I'm pretty sure my whole worldview is almost a century out of date, my Ministers lie to me in the five odd years that they actually send me a report on anything that happens, and I… I don’t know.” She wrung her hands in defeat. “What good would any of it do? Am I fit to rule? Could I ever? I am some eighty years behind: years that would’ve been used to learn the ropes, go on Expedition, participate in politics— and I have none of it. My mother had full tutelage, but I didn't! How can I ever expect to lead, ever hope to lead—”

The captain set a firm hand on the Queen’s shoulder. “I suggest you not to overthink it, Your Majesty.”

Palki heaved a sigh. “I suppose.”

She glanced outside: the wind tossed about the snow in gusts, slowly coating the mullions. The clouds outside moved lazily, so slow that they may as well be still paintings. She wondered about the city beneath the Citadel, its sights, its smells: one year’s reports had mentioned a new rail line going through one of the outer boroughs of Kesternrim, at the slopes of the mountain range. She wondered where they’d built it. A repurposed building, maybe? Or one of steel and glass, like some of the building in Aundui Yio now probably had?

Her thoughts brought her to the other House Guards: their names, their faces, their mannerisms.

“...What of the other Guardsmen? I would not ask them to commit to such and adventure unless they were totally willing.”

“Rest assured, Your Majesty: they’ve been itching to get some action for a long time now. One can only do so many drills about the corridors before they begin to itch all over.”

“...Very well, Captain. You have my authorization.”

The Captain bowed. “We’ll be back by morning.” She snapped about-face, and began to make her way out.

Palki looked up. "Captain. One more thing?"

"Of course, Your Majesty?"

“Please be careful.”

The Captain dipped her head. "Of course."

[StaolDerg]

The House Guards drew straws to decide roles. Five persons would serve as the infiltration unit, positioned to drop down from the walls in the middle of the night: in support would be five lookouts on the battlements, with the role of drawing attention away from the away party should the whiteout suddenly clear ahead of schedule. The remaining forty guards were to remain at their normal scheduled posts to maintain a veneer of normalcy, but that didn’t mean their roles were secondary: the schedules of the House Guards had been filled with musket firing exercises. Should the forecast be wrong and the infiltrators be forced to hurry back, the smoke and commotion of the muskets would draw attention away from the infiltrating group as well.

“A simple enough plan,” a Lieutenant Dao chirped. “But I expect that we’ll need to conserve as much time as possible. Why don’t we use skis to expedite our travel down the slope? The whiteout will cover up our tracks.”

“Why not sleds?” a Corporal Iskia added. “Stop laughing, I’m serious. It’d keep us together, and if we follow in one another’s trails, only leaves a single trail to be covered up by the snow.”

“Very good,” The Captain noted. “Three sleds, then, two Guards per sled. Her Majesty has given us until the morning to be back– you are therefore to begin preparations immediately. All equipment is at your discretion, but be practical. Act as the situation demands.” She raised her arm into a salute. “Dismissed.”

The House Guards saluted back, scrambling with gusto in different directions. At once the sentries hurried back to their positions, renewed with a fresh purpose: through the light snow already descending on Kesternrim and the Citadel, they scoured at the ground below, analyzing the best positions for the infiltration group to make to Kesternrim below. Others dashed to inspect their gear, and prepare for the

Meanwhile, the infiltration group had made their way to the armory, engrossed in furious discussion. “There are some white sheets we might be able to ask the Citadel staff to borrow to give us some more camouflage.”

“We also ought to remember we’re moving through a whiteout here,” another House Guard added. “For the duration of moving through the storm, we should tie cords of string to one another’s waists to keep formation.”

“Rope might be better. We’re climbing down a rock face for half the mission.”

“What about weapons? I know Her Majesty would much rather not have us kill anyone, but just in case…”

---

Around seven in the evening, the wind turned from a whistle to a howl, and the snow began to torrent upon the battlements of the Citadel. The braziers that illuminated much of the walls had their shutters slammed shut to prevent them from being blown out, while most of the guards gave up using their lamps as the whiteout barely illuminated their wrists.

As the hours crept towards the night, the infiltrators made final preparations: sliding white masks over their faces and removing their distinctive House Guard insignia from their pauldrons, followed by making last checks to their equipment. A trio of sleds had already been moved to the battlements, but for now the Guards remained in wait, sitting by the roaring furnace one last time.

There was at first what the Guards first took for the wind merely rattling windows, but upon the roar of the wind being let in through the open door, the Guards’ heads shot up, quickly followed by the rest of their bodies as they jumped up into bows.

Palki’s figure was draped in a heavy coat, accompanied by the Captain-Martial at her back. “At ease.”

The Guards relaxed but stayed at attention as she spoke. “I want to thank all of you for doing this. It means much to me. If there’s anything else that you need…” She trailed off, finding herself looking at the floor.

“Permission to speak freely, Your Majesty?”

“Of course.”

“We’re ready. Don’t worry too much. We’ll not be long– it’s not even five kilometers to the city, let alone the fifty kilometer marches we used to do on an Expedition. Anything we encounter, we can handle: we’re Imperial Martials for s reason.”

She sighed, and nodded.

“...Then good luck. You have my authority to act as the situation develops.”

---

They set out just before midnight, dropping from the battlements and piling into three sleds: even though there were only five people, two Guards rode in each sled, save the lead element, led by Lieutenant Ansik, who guided the group from the front by herself. Bound to each sled was a length of roughly six meters of rope that connected each sled to the one in front and/or behind it. To prevent the wind from catching in their wings, they had put on harnesses specifically designed to hold in their wings, and while uncomfortable, it meant no errant gust sending them off the mountain.

Without little other way of direction besides memory alone of both their starting position from outside the battlements and the area outside the Citadel prior to the blizzard, the line immediately took off at a careful pace, applying their simple brakes periodically to avoid going above what most of them estimated to be six to ten kilometers an hour.

Within minutes, they had their first problem. They had no way to tell one another to slow down or stop, and all five members knew full well that they needed to slow down and stop soon, lest they fly straight off a sheer cliff. Granted, they were inselni. They had wings, and they could fly superbly well, considering their backgrounds. Also granted, a whiteout blizzard with winds capable of tossing any flier into a sheer rock face at sixty-something kilometers an hour. Hoping that the other Guards would notice the rope slacken, Ansik slowed to a halt and pulled slightly to the side, hoping desperately that the others would notice and follow suit.

At first the rope pulled past her, but to the lieutenant’s immense relief, it did not suddenly draw taut and drag her own sled with it; instead it completely slackened, followed by a tense minute as she reached out and felt the rope moving again in small tugs. With renewed energy she immediately pulled on her end, and within the following minutes her outstretched face nearly collided with that of one of her juniors. With the wind at such high speed and volume and with so little visibility, Ansik felt she had little choice but to light the mirrored lantern on her belt.

Whatever beam the light normally would have provided was utterly drowned out by the sheer volume of snow, but the lieutenant saw both other sleds now pulled up directly against hers, with her fellow Guards looking quizzically at her from behind their masks. With a rapid flurry of hand gestures illuminated by the lamp, she managed to convey a new plan: from reconnaissance that afternoon, they knew the cliff drop was not that far away after traveling for this many minutes at their current pace. Her plan was straightforward: she would move ahead as planned, but bellyfirst on her sled, moving forward by moving herself by hand against the snow. The rope would be tied to her tail, and she would yank it taut to let the sleds behind her know when to slow or stop.

With quick order, they reformed their column, and the lieutenant cut the light before laying down and gently pushing forward towards the cliff. One hand after the other reached into the snow, clawing and dragging snow into loose packs of icy granules as she dragged herself forwards, keeping a steady pace the best she could. Any powderlike texture of the snow had long gone by this hour: the snow was brittle and crunchy to the touch, and it made her grip easier.

She did not initially realize she’d reached the cliff face: the snow had bunched up into a lip that overextended the ridge of the cliff, and it took her an horrified moment of gingerly backtracking as she pulled her tail as hard as possible in the meantime. As she pulled the sled up and over her back, she felt a grasp on her ankle, and turned to find her colleagues had crawled up behind, patiently waiting for the next move. She glanced at the lip: there was no way to peer over it without the snow underneath giving way, but breaking the lip might give away their position should the storm subside–

“Fuck it,” she muttered to herself, and pulled her sled off her back, using its broad surface to lever chunks of snow out of the way. At first, she assumed her colleagues would follow suit, but then remembered they probably couldn’t see anything either, and resigned herself to hacking at the bank until a final chunk broke away, revealing rock face underneath. At once she slid the sled back over her back and reached into her tailbags for her climbing equipment. With some difficulty in the raging blizzard, she managed to find an anchor point around a large rocky outcropping, and after pulling her ankle up briefly to signal the others, promptly tied herself to a rope that she tossed to the others to tie to themselves (and then to the outcropping anchor point), and dropped over the cliff face.

The rock face was at an angle that leaned in towards the mountain the lower she went, making climbing no easier. Here the blizzard was less severe, with much of the gusts blowing over the lip and therefore giving her respite from sound and blindness as she lowered herself towards a distant ground. Immediately, she made another anchor point, this time around a sturdier outcropping before descending further, and as she did, she looked up to see the other Guards beginning to join her in the descent, using the person above them as a belayer.

It took her some thirteen minutes before the Guard lieutenant hit the snow at the bottom, and she looked up to wait for the other four Guards to join her. This venture, at least, was successful: not a single person had been blown away, and checking her pocketwatch, they were actually slightly ahead of schedule by a single minute.

“No time to celebrate yet,” she barked out against the wind. “We’ve four more cliffs to descend before we’re at the right elevation to sled into Kesternrim. If anyone has any issues, say it now.” The other Guards shook their heads. “Great. Come on then!”

[StaolDerg]

It took them two hours to descend before they finally reached the forest just outside Kesternrim, and here the storm was somewhat weakened to a raging blizzard instead of a whiteout. Now close to their goal, they climbed aboard their sleds and pushed off towards the city with determination. The lights of the city greeted them with their warm glow, and as the Guards scrambled up a final snow bank to the city roads, they left their sleds behind in a concealed position just within the boundaries of the forest, covered with a small layer of snow.

They ran up to the streets, staying low. It was unlikely that anyone would see them here, especially at this time of the night and during a blizzard, (though they were well aware that exceptions often applied.) They were depending on breaking into a bookstore, but certainly not stealing: Martials were not thieves, and they had brought with them money to pay for books, though they were well aware to keep their identities as House Guards hidden; that had been the whole point of the masks and removal of their insignia in the first place, after all.

Like the Queen, the Guards hadn’t been outside of the Citadel since Her Majesty’s initial quartering within the great battlements, and so they spent the first few minutes of their time in Kesternrim looking confusedly around to find anything familiar. One of the Guards suggested finding a map, and the lieutenant agreed, but pointed out that they still didn’t know where to find a map anyhow. She directed them forwards anyhow, instructing them to look out for any landmarks.

It took a minute, but in time one of their number pointed out an older building they recognized, (ironically it had gone from a much beloved cobbler’s shop to a club of some kind, a fact that peeved the particular Martial to no end) and from the building’s location, started roughly guessing their position in the city: somewhere on the southeast end, just south of where one of the city’s oldest bookstores ought to be.

As they advanced up the road, they spotted a shrouded, huddled figure moving on the opposite side of the street. Even as they dove into a nearby alleyway, they seemed to turn and look towards their direction for an uncomfortable amount of time, before turning the way they had come and breaking into a run. With horror, the lieutenant spun to her colleagues and jabbed a finger towards the retreating figure.

“He’s seen us! No loose ends– Get him!”

---

Bei Songxue was no Regency operative, let alone any sort of individual associated with the government. He was in fact a twenty-one-year-old local technical school Crown human student, majoring in electrical engineering, on his way home from a late night of studying in the library. As far as he was concerned, one of the local political groups was at it with another one of their assassinations or what-have-you, and he had zero desire to end up in a sack on the side of the road to be found next week.

…Not that what he wanted meant much to the four-hundred-something-year-old Martial who tackled him roughly to the floor, nearly slamming his face straight into the snow-covered paving stones.

“I’m not–” Whatever he had to say was immediately silenced by the bag that was rudely shoved over his head, and still struggling, he felt his hands bound around his back immediately afterward. Like some glorified hunted game he was then hurled over the shoulder, and bounced about as the person carrying him broke into a run, he felt that either he would hurl soon or his whole spine would snap in two.

Neither occurred. He was suddenly and forcefully put on the floor, and the bag torn off to reveal a pair of shrouded inselni staring him down from behind woolen masks.

“You’ll speak when told to,” one of the inselni hissed quietly. “Who are you?”

“I’m Bei Songxue, Eilong Community, I’m just a student here, I was just trying to get home, please let me go I haven’t done anything–”

“Enough, please.”

He shut.

The Guardsman looked at the lieutenant, opting to speak in code rather than Motanhua. “[We can’t leave him here.]”

“[So take him with us. We could use a guide.]”

“[What if he’s an agent? We don’t know if he’s lying–]” He was interrupted by Bei suddenly scrambling to his feet, and they watched him repeatedly glance behind himself at them as he ran off deeper into the alleyway. They watched him get as far as the first junction, followed by a muffled smack and the student crumpling to the ground, clutching his gut the best one could with bound wrists. Another Guardsman stepped out from the junction, looking down at him, and then quizzically back at the lieutenant.

“[If he’s an agent, he’s not very good. I think we can take care of him.]”

With a little effort, they dragged the young man to the wall and sat him down. They stuffed a gag in his mouth and tied up his legs while they debated for a minute before the lieutenant decided they would save more time with a guide than not. She turned to Bei, and ripping out the gag, stated quite calmly, “Don’t be too concerned, sir, but you’re coming with us.”

“Wait, what?”

“Keep your mouth shut unless we ask you to speak, and even then keep your voice low. In short, please do as we ask. You do as we say and you get to leave at the end of this, with compensation. Am I understood?”

“yes.”

They unbound his legs, but kept their eye on him as they led him back to the sidewalk. “Wonderful. Pardon the intrusion. Where’s the nearest bookstore?”

“W-What?” The student stuttered with confusion. Were these regency thugs? Were they going to torch a bookstore for having incorrect opinions or something?

The lieutenant grabbed him with both hands on his coat collar, pulling him close to her face to where he could smell the smoke from her nostrils.

“Nearest bookstore, sir.” She repeated in a very threateningly polite voice.

“Oh gods, alright! There’s one at Aotong street, when you make a left turn. It’s uh, right next to the newspaper stand, I think?”

“Thank you kindly.” She released him, and motioning to the others, hurried down the street, dodging the glow of streetlights. Upon arriving at the store, they did not pause to examine the darkened windows, let alone the locked door. One person slammed their leg straight into the door, and wood gave way with a loud crack as the lock snapped to pieces under the force.

Another Guard smashed a window and hurled themselves inside, shortly followed by another. The lieutenant didn’t wait for Bei to stand in shock and stare: she grabbed his arm, tied a piece of cloth over his mouth to act as a mask, and shoved him inside.

The interior was a simple layout of shelves that reached the ceiling-like walls, with movable ladders at each end to assist with moving books from upper shelves, with a display shelf of new publications in the window that the Guards who entered from it had to leap over as they entered.

As they advanced into the bookstore, Bei caught sight of the owner – a rather amiable fellow by the name of Sern– staring at them with utter horror, before the door behind him flew open and a pair of hands caught his mouth before he could cry out, yanking him into the backroom. Bei could only stare in disbelief as the door swung shut behind the abductee, still trying to process everything that was happening.

The lieutenant tapped on his shoulder. “Mister Bei, I need your services. You said you are a student. Please find for me the most modern books on mathematics, the arts, engineering, and the like. You will be compensated for your help.”

Figuring he didn’t really have a choice, he meekly nodded and looked at the shelves. “...Uhh… well, do you have a specific field that you want in any of those?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Specific fields of study? Like for math, trigonometry, geometry, calculus, for sciences you’ve got physics, biology, medicine, et cetera, you know, that sort of thing?”

The lieutenant stared at him blankly for a moment, in total disbelief. Before she could stop herself, she uttered, “They split science up from alchemy and mathematics?”

“I– You bunch aren’t from here, huh.” Bei looked at the inselni for a moment, feeling a little bit less terrified now knowing that he had the knowledge advantage.“...You guys those Free Army fellows from the North then? I mean, I’d heard that the Free Army wasn’t into the business of visiting new places, but…” He stopped himself, remembering the bruise on his stomach and noticing the looks he was getting from the inselni.

One of the House Guards glanced at the lieutenant. “[He’s knowledgeable about current world affairs. We ought to bring him back: either for interrogation or at least a temporary source of modern information.]”

She waved him off. “[We’ll see about that later: Focus!]”

The lieutenant snapped back towards Bei, and motioned at the shelves. “Please select the books that would be best suited for a beginner in each particular field. And hurry.”

He swallowed hard as he glanced back at the shelves. Who were these people, anyway? Why couldn’t they find the books themselves? He knew members of his community who were so old that language had essentially evolved past them and rendered their existing knowledge of language obsolete: was this a similar case? He stepped around the shattered glass on the floor carefully as he glanced at the shelves. Could he even trust these people?

With an uncomfortable awareness that the masked inselni was still watching him, he began to read over the shelves– with some tentative consideration, he began pulling a volume of First Year Modern Physics - 1930 Edition by Soyokama University Press from the shelves. It occurred to him that this tome wasn’t beginner level– if anything, he’d had to rent a ludicrously expensive used copy last semester to learn the principles behind electrical engineering. But to his knowledge, it was the closest thing to a beginner’s guide that existed in this particular field. But wait, a student needed to pass Level Two Calculus to even get to this point–

Strangely, the threat of being thrown around again sort of settled in the back of his mind as he wandered the shelves. It was like he was only picking out new books for a new student as most upperclassmen did, except the price of the textbooks was no problem and he was choosing books for an entire school’s curricula.

Granted, he was technically stealing, and he didn’t feel too good about that, but he found it easier to not think about the assailants beating him again if he just imagined them as confused first-year students, as he picked out the books.

“Well,” he said, noticing the unwavering gaze of one of the masked inselni, “here’s the general range of books for mathematics for a college-level first year. You’ve got calculus and algebra to form the basis of a variety of sciences, plus a variety of engineering fields, and whatnot. And…” He reached for an entry-level textbook on language– specifically Kumo Shusuguris and Elenrian Tanhua– but stopped, realizing that if these were Free Army fighters, they probably didn’t care about language due to being near civilians anyhow.

“No, we need that one.”

“Wait, what?” He turned to them with puzzlement. “Don’t you go outside and visit the library in disguises, or something? Why would you need a language arts book? Do you bunch live under a rock, or something?”

“Just pick the book, please.” There was a note of irritation in the request, and he immediately shut up and got back to work digging at the shelves. He moved on to history books: of a few were your usual Kumo-supervised publications, but after he handed those off, the inselni shook their heads and directed him to find more. More? He was frankly baffled, and tried to explain that the Kumo had banned books from the last era.

“All of them?”

“Well, not all, but–”

“Then please give us those that aren’t.”

The tone left no room for him to argue, and with some reluctance, he reached around and finally dug up some dated books on the last couple of decades from the perspective of some Imperial Library Scholars that had been published some years before the Kumo invasion, containing only recollections and perspectives on the last Queen and her dynasty. It was completely useless to him, and contained only the most common of knowledge about the courts and the old Imperial laws that made up the Queendom’s civil service, but as the inselni flipped through it, they seemed satisfied and directly slipped the book into their coat.

Shaking his head and muttering to himself, Bei found a severely outdated collection of news publications from the past decade. They were old and outdated, but as he began to put it back, there was a soft step behind him.


“That will do.”

Bei jumped at the stranger’s sudden appearance, but as it seemed they were getting impatient, they deftly plucked the tome out of his hands and into a rucksack.

“Thank you for your time,” they said, reaching into their tailbag. “I believe our business is done here. I trust we have an understanding?”

“Huh?” The young man looked around, seeing the other inselni all silently watching him and realizing what the inselni meant, started quickly nodding. “Oh, yes. I was studying late tonight and lost track of time.”

“Excellent.” They took their hand out of their tailbag and into a waist pouch, rummaging for something. Bei couldn’t help but stare curiously, noticing a couple of novels in the bag: old classics, romances, political dramas… Were these rebels trying to build a school? But then why Kesternrim? Wasn’t the nearest rebel cell far north in the deserts? Actually, the more he thought about it, the less this made sense. Why break into a bookstore in full disguise when you could just show up and buy a book normally? These same books were sold up north, too.

The inselni had drawn out a bag of coins. Bei’s eyebrows narrowed as they counted out some amount and set them behind the counter, heavy cast discs. And it took him a moment, but as they drew the cloth over it he realized Takpoe no longer issued coins as primary currency. Actually, wait. Those weren’t even Yairen– those were Imperial Jin of the Queendom. No one paid in old money, unless they didn’t have any of the new issued currency…

Something clicked in his brain. The strange way they talked, the selection of only certain books, usually outdated information that even the most oblivious rebel would know, and now ancient money that no one would possible have still, unless they’d been absolutely isolated before Takpoe started issuing paper currency– and only one person had gotten that treatment.

“You’re not rebels,” he croaked hoarsely. “You’re from the Citadel!”

Perhaps saying it aloud wasn’t the best of ideas. His revelation was met by a solid impact against the side of his head, and his world went black for the second time that night.

[StaolDerg]

“Damn it!” Ansik looked around outside, but thankfully they had remained undetected. The blizzard was actually picking up now, and though that would definitely aid their ability to remain concealed in regular scenarios, Kesternrim had municipal workers monitoring the snow levels to immediately conduct street sweeping duties if it got an inch too high. If they didn’t leave now, they risked detection by roving streetcleaners.

“We’re running of time.” She hissed through her teeth. “Grab the books we came here for and finish counting the money. We need to get going.”

“What about the citizen? We promised him–”

“We promised him restitution on the compact of being cooperative. We did not promise anything about letting him go.” She hiked up her own rucksack and motioned towards the back door. “Whatever Her Majesty says, I will take complete responsibility for when we return back. Now let’s move!”

She scrabbled about for a moment, finishing counting out the money and hiding it underneath bills in the till. Sloppy, but she didn’t have time. As her fellow Guardsmen hurried towards the exits, she found herself beside the historical fiction section of the bookstore. For a moment, she paused, and then gripped by some inscrutable motivation, snagged her claws on a couple of novels despite the furious howling in the back of her brain that she did not have time, could not spare the weight.

She ignored it.

Hurriedly they bound the student with his hands behind his back before slinging him into a tight makeshift sleeping roll, and that was then suspending on the two ends by a pole that one of the guards found in the backroom next to the unconscious proprietor, whom they’d slipped back into bed. Out the back door they went, and over the low property walls into the alleyways did they go, awkwardly shuffling the person-shaped bedroll between two people.

Their feet, muffled by wrapped cloth, had done well to mask the sound their claws would otherwise make on the paved stones of the road as they dashed into the forest, but they could do little but hope that the blizzard would cover the wide footprints they left behind. They found their sleds buried beneath the trees as they’d expected, and laid down on their chests to avoid falling into the tree well as they tugged them up.

The living bedroll stirred now, and with a sort of irritated admiration one of the guards muttered to another, “Dense head, this one. I could’ve sworn we hit him harder than that.”

“Impressive resilience. Told you we ought’ve used tinctures,” the other replied, quickly dusting off the sled. “Would’ve kept him asleep for at least a whole day.”

Lights danced in the distance behind them– no doubt the police had found the broken windows by now.

“Let’s go!” Ansik hissed through her teeth. With a kick, she pushed her sled off, and one by one, they began their course back towards the tall cliffs above.

---

Palki wasn’t able to sleep.

Insomnia had been useful when she was on night watch back in the Shamo, but in the never-ending monotony of her mountain prison, it only served to stretch out the eternal hours of whispering, empty halls. The Kesternrim Citadel was meant to hold at least a hundred people to perform maintenance alone in its main buildings: strewn out that should be at least two dozen servants, cooks, gardeners, cleaners, and butlers, some dozen masons, a dozen masons and builders to keep the walls in shape, never mind at least a company of House Guard at all times. All of this to sustain a building capable of holding up to thousands in deep antechambers and atriums, cellars and halls.

But here, the place was run by just some one hundred fifteen people total, herself included, and most of those were the platoon-sized unit of House Guards she’d been given– or maybe more appropriately described as imprisoned alongside with her– when she’d been made Queen at Aundui Yio.


She appreciated her staff’s efforts nevertheless: the staff had been appointed by- or in the cases of the inselni members, straight-up were– former house staff of her mother’s reign. Most had practically accepted the fact they’d probably not see their families for a very long time, given all of them lived on-site in the Citadel staff’s rooms in the southeastern wing of the complex. Despite this, none of them had ever left: rooms that weren’t needed, like the guest rooms and the ancient offices of various defunct Imperial Cabinet positions were mothballed and sealed off for the foreseeable future to preserve their interiors, while those the butlers deemed necessary for day-to-day operation of the Citadel were kept in well a fashion as they could despite their stretched numbers.

They were careful not to show her their stress and problems before her, always presenting nothing but total professionalism before the Queen– but she’d heard them whispering to one another as they fixed a lamp here in the library, or polished the marble floors in the many halls. Their voices echoed more than they knew in these long and empty corridors, and she’d pause before the corner to hear them murmur.

Most of all she’d been eternally surprised, if not humbled by how much they seemed to treat her privately like she was still in her thirties. Some decades ago she’d probably have been a great deal more offended being treated like a child, but looking past indignities she understood how woefully unprepared she was for anything to do with ruling. If anything she was more surprised by their allegiance despite the years: they muttered first about the inadequate foodstuffs delivered being unfit for the CItadel cooks, then the allegiance of the army outside being more to the autocrats in Aundui Yio than to their Queen, and now they excitedly tittered to each other, even the stoic butlers, of the House Guards who were due to return soon.

Sure, they complained about her, but only over the strangest things: her choice of clothing, (something about the silk used in some of her dresses being especially difficult to clean) her choice of reading, (she’d read the same ancient newspaper six days in a row in an especially depressing slump in her mood until one of the servants politely walked up and snatched the newssheet out of her hands, throwing it unceremoniously out a window) but hardly ever her eligibility to rule, and not once her right to.

The one discussion she’d ever heard about her eligibility to rule was one she’d first only heard the aftermath of, a butler furiously chewing out the two servants who’d been talking, and only better known to her after she summoned the butler for an explanation. With discomfort and resignation, the butler had finally capitulated to her pestering and admitted the servants– and even himself and other members of the staff– had been worried about her excessive sense of defeat.

“You’ve got no hope,” he’d said, emphasizing the word. “I don’t mean that as you’re incapable of rule, or don’t want to; rather I think you’re utterly resigned to sitting in a tower for the rest of your days.”

She’d tried to reassure him, but evidently it’d changed no minds.

Personally, she couldn’t understand why they were so invested. Her family’s Dynasty had always possessed a running tradition of sending out its members fairly early on a Path, and so they rarely had the opportunity to ingratiate themselves into court and political life. This was supposed to build a sense of responsibility along with more practical skills, but it had the dual effect of also isolating her completely from any member of the royal government, from the ministers to the house servants. Of course she understood they’d cared for her as a child, and she reasoned that the pay was good, but given their utterly alienated position, now it seemed inane that anyone would retain this level of devotion. Was it even meant for her? Was it guided for something, someone else? Her mother…

What would her mother have done? She’d never really thought about it– that painting in the hall of her ancestors, and the statue of the domineering august-horned inselni who’d been Akel I, Queen whom it had fallen to pick up the shattered remains of the Sanshan Empire. The Queen who had ultimately died in the last clash with the nobles over the legacy of a dying Empire, assassinated in the wake of a victory that had come to mean very little.

It occurred to her she didn’t know much about her mother, outside her childhood. It had always been that she would return home after her military service to rule under her mother, and learn from her there– but that had never happened.

There was a commotion outside of the library, and the glow of lights in the hall peeking underneath the door were carved through by a shadow’s approach, distant footsteps heralding the click of the door as it opened.

Palki sat up in her reading chair instinctively, getting to her feet as she recognized the Captain-Martial’s footsteps.

“Your Majesty. I figured I’d find you here.”

“Forgive me, Captain. I could not sleep. The guards, they are…?”

“I am pleased to report that all five of them have returned, and by the looks of it undetected too.” She turned towards the door and beckoned towards where Palki sat. “Come, enter.”

The lieutenant led the procession, closely followed by the other four guardsmen. Their masks hung from their waists, bouncing in their purposeful strides as they proudly each carried a stack of books, carefully unpacked from their rucksacks and bags. They were still dressed in their bulky winter gear as they bent down to present the books before the Queen on the low table near her seat, separating them by subject.

It was a broad assortment that they unpacked onto her table, ranging mostly of historical and technical textbooks, secondhand though they were. She picked through them wit a sort of hesitant fascination, like they would vanish before her eyes.

“Incredible. Well done, all of you.”

She looked up, but instead of the expected jubilation, the Guardsmen looked restrained, even chastised. The Queen frowned, and stood up.

“Well, what’s wrong?”

The lieutenant took a breath, and held it for a moment, biting their tongue. “There was a complication. We have brought with us an… unexpected guest.”

“Explain.”

---

Bei awoke in a warm room, muffled by a pleasantly dense blanket whose weight pressed against his chest like a comforting hug. He would’ve laid there perhaps forever had a dull pain in the pack of his head not uncomfortably buzzed, leading him to -with some effort- stir and try to sit up. The events of the previous night had not left him unblemished, it seemed.

It occurred to him the crackling of a fire was not some imagination in his head as he turned towards the sound, and that instead the wide yawn of a brick fireplace to his right was radiating a warming glow towards the corner of the room where he lay. He looked down, and realized he was on a bed- a very nice one, at that. It was a complex wrought iron frame paneled with redwood, and a two-layer privacy screen that started from a canopy over the bed to reach the floor, partially drawn back to let light from a narrow, tall window spill in. He tried to recall the architecture course he’d taken for humanities credit as he slowly looked over the side of the decorated wooden panels and at the well-furnished room he was in.

“It’s a nice room, isn’t it?”

He jumped at the sudden voice, and turned around to the visage of an inselni watching him from behind him, only hidden by the fact Bei’d chosen to look at the far side of the room first instead of beside the window behind him.

He recognized the voice as among those who had snatched him off the streets, but now there was no mask molded onto their face to hide their identity, and this time as his eyes tracked down to look at the inselni’s clothes, he recognized the armor they wore as something straight out of a history textbook on the Imperial era, elaborate and decorated with trims of red and gold.

“Where am I?” he asked hoarsely, only just realizing how dehydrated he was and letting out a pained hack. “Who are you?” To his surprise, the inselni reached for a nightstand, handing a rather simple wooden cup to him, and then reached for a silver pitcher and filled the cup as Bei held it.

“You are in a guest’s quarters in the eighth building within the Sepita Campus. I am Sergeant Xü of the Royal House Guard, assigned to monitor you, and answer questions you may have at this time.”

He took a long draught from the cup, nervously looking up at the inselni. It was too much for him to take in. “I don’t suppose I’m in a different part of the university campus?” He sputtered, immediately regretting the question as color flushed his cheeks.

The soldier glanced at him. “No. You are in the Kesternrim Citadel, far above the city limits.”

The palace of the Queen? “I am?”

“You’ll have plenty of time to challenge any assertion otherwise,” the sergeant assertively informed him. “But I urge you to try and finish your cup. Her Majesty wanted you in audience before her when you woke, and now that you are it would not be fitting to keep her waiting.”

Bei blinked in realization and looked around wildly, as if the Queen were waiting behind the privacy screen or the bookshelves.

“But, my community? My studies?”

The guardsman’s demeanor shifted, as if irritated by the student’s incessant questions. “Those will be attended to presently, Mr. Bei, after Her Majesty has seen you. Save your questions until after. Now if you would please, get up so that you may be made presentable.”

With hesitation, the young man got out of the bed. He found his original school uniform dress missing: instead he wore a pleasantly-fitting silk robe that went from his shoulders to his ankles, which themselves were wrapped in linen wraps with some sort of padded sole that allowed him to avoid the cold of the winter-chilled floor.

The guardsman handed him a set of additional clothing that he helped the young man put on: two coats, one cotton, one of insulative wool, and a final robe of decorated silk that covered his shoulders to his waist in the twisting dance of mythological creatures. A belt with a steel buckle bound these clothes to fit a form around his torso, holding the coats and robes in place, but not before the guard made him put on a pair of cotton and silk leggings that wrapped around his skinny legs, and then held up by a another belt under the robes.

At several points the guard made Bei before a mirror, muttering to himself as he made the young man turn like a personal model. “You’ll forgive me,” he answered without query to Bei, (who at this point was buckling a little from the sixteen to eighteen-odd pounds of clothing and sweltering from the roaring fireplace in addition to the additional layers.) “Eighty-some years leave much too much time for a soldier to keep doing the same hundred exercises and drills every single day. One of the palace attendants was happy to teach me court clothing etiquette, and Her Majesty herself was gracious enough to allow me access to her personal library’s collection on proper clothing and fashion of the court. It would be unbecoming to leave that information unused, yes?”

Bei, for his part, was too occupied wondering if his spinal column was in danger of collapsing from the textile mountain currently on his shoulders. He was only more concerned when the guard pulled a set of ceremonial armor from under the table.

By the time they’d finished ‘making presentable’, Bei had relocated much of the pitcher’s contents to his body to prevent dying of dehydration, and could just barely move in the wall of fabrics that somehow had been the craze of seventeenth century Elenria. Sergeant Xü beamed the greatest a royal guard could – a smile that would make a crocodile blush– as he beheld his handwork.

“Right. Let me clarify this matter for you then, Mr. Bei, before we depart for Her Majesty’s presence.” The soldier said more seriously, turning and placing the pitcher on the windowsill. “You are not a prisoner, but not quite a full guest either. Not at this time. You cannot be allowed to go back to Kesternrim at this time for fear of you revealing the successful exfiltration of the House Guard from the Citadel to the Interior Army, nor the Regency as a whole. Simultaneously, you are the first person with any knowledge of contemporary news of Elenria’s general state as a citizen. I think you are well aware that it has been eighty years since Her Majesty has heard the voice of one of her subjects on the matters of the country, and whatever complaints or thoughts you may have on government policy is at liberty to be discussed– that is, at Her Majesty’s discretion. You will not pursue a course of subjects without Her Majesty’s permission. You will not accuse the Queen of anything, understand? Whatever failing is perceived from the last eighty years ‘til now, is best perceived a century onwards by the Libraries’ historians, and even then most blame is likely to be at the feet of deputies and ministers under Her Majesty. Do you understand?”

Bei’s mouth opened and closed like a fish as he frowned in bafflement. “Wait, but… But doesn’t the Regency report to the Queen? What could I know that Her Majesty doesn’t?”

“There are many things withheld by the government ministers from the knowledge of Her Majesty, for a myriad of reasons. Such is the state of national politics: bitter feuds, rivalries, and hidden agendas, all with the Communities and their people tied in the middle of it. Her Majesty is tied up in much of it, and the bias of others are getting in the way of proper decision-making. Thus, she would hear your opinion.”

It didn’t answer a whole bunch of questions he still had, but it dawned on Bei that this was the Queen, and whether or not he liked it he was representing his entire community. The horror flashed across his face, but he was determined not to embarrass his clan and did his absolute best to draw it back in.

“Good,” the guardsman said, watching his expression. “You’ve already learned the first lesson of the court. Maintain composure before Her Majesty. Be respectful. And above all, be truthful. You are in the presence of the nation’s sovereign, and you would do well to be genuine in your thoughts, for she alone can alter the future of your Community. Now, are you ready?”

“I… Yes, I think so.”

“Excellent. Then let us be on our way. Her Majesty has been kept waiting long enough. And Bei? Consider yourself lucky: you have the privilege of serving Her Majesty directly. Most Community elders would’ve killed to have the opportunity you have now.”

[StaolDerg]

The throne room was a dominating structure, filled with so many columns that Bei was wondering if some of them were decorative instead of bearing any load at all. The ceiling and walls were decorated with a hundred dozen frescos, the floor a spotless field of black marble tiles. Light illuminated the room from windows up near the ceiling, filtering between the columns, which themselves hosted carvings of everything from creatures of legend to the faces of a hundred nobles, monarchs, warriors, administrators, and other people of note who Bei could not even begin to recognize. Massive banners hung between the columns, decorated with the colors of armies and Expeditions ages past, with red pennants that dangled from their cloth seemingly emblazoned at random. Upon closer inspection, Bei could see the red tags were marked with names: members of these bygone formations, and their awards, decorations, and orders as ordained by dead emperors and empresses.

At the very end of the grand room was a massive throne made of seemingly solid ornate gold and silver, whose designs stretched the broad length of maybe four large oxcarts lined at the side from end to end. It sat atop a stone platform of what at first looked to be some luxurious kind of wood, only to turn out as masterfully carved stone whereupon the designs and iconography of the heavens above were illustrated entwined in the cold branches. Five sets of steps leading to the seat surrounded the platform, each step’s surface engraved with the landscapes of foreign lands illuminated by purple and azure skies. Four columns accompanied the throne, each one emblazoned with large words that demanded respect and fealty in the old inselni Kapari language’s complex, blocklike characters.

Before the seat was a vast, long covered desk made of solid forged iron, in and of itself a masterwork of metal deliberately and meticulously manipulated and twisted into the form of a hundred distinct roofs and columns, some of which Bei could just barely make out to look like the Imperial-era eaves of the University’s oldest buildings. Upon the desk were piles of books along with papers somewhat messily spread over the silk spread, contrasted by an incredibly neat set of flat brass and steel sticks. Bei eyed the sticks with apprehension: those were orders, thrown by a monarch to cast judgment, and last used by the senior Queen Akel to disband the nobility– an act that had led directly to the civil war that had cost her her life.

Guards lined the room, staring straight ahead at rapt attention. Their armor was a uniform set of colors and layers like the clothes he wore, differentiated by the dense skin of chainmail they wore underneath the studded armored jackets that were exposed by armpits and joints not covered by plate armor. Upon every single shoulder was emblazoned the iconography of the Queen, and hanging from every waist were cast silver and jade pendants that denoted their role as royal guards. One in particular, the captain, wore a green and black cloak, standing right besides the Queen, eyes boring directly in Bei’s as he approached and knelt.

“You lie before Her Imperial Majesty, Akel The Second.” The Captain announced in a sonorous voice that reverberated off the columns of the room. “Ruler of this realm, and alone sovereign of Elenria from which all power is derived. Prostrate yourself before Her judgment, and speak only when given assent to. Speak truthfully and with sincerity, and you will have nothing to fear.”

On the seat sat a tall, domineering green-scaled inselni whose black eyes glared down before her with green slits that beheld Bei’s groveling form as he bowed, doing his very best to stay composed and not show the monarch his intimidated state. The sergeant had thoroughly informed the young man on court etiquette during their way here, but he found he was having trouble remembering now that he was before the Queen properly.

“Rise, Bei Songxue, student of the Ai Zhong Community.”

Bei stood back up, watching the Queen expectantly. His voice had caught in his throat, and he found himself unable to process much more than the fixated gaze of the Queen upon his person. To his surprise, she suddenly smiled.

“Well, I hope you’ll forgive my guards for their enthusiasm,” the Queen said. “How’s your head? The physician told me it was only a bruise and no fracture, but I know it probably aches anyhow.”

Bei was flabbergasted. Was this real? “Er, not at all, Your Grace.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, and suddenly he remembered the sergeant watching him from the back of the room.

“...Well, maybe a bit.”

The Queen nodded. “I’ll have you given some ointment afterwards. Now, business, shall we?” She leaned forwards in her seat, arm on desk. “I understand you are a student at the Imperial University of Kesternrim. Tell me, what is a day of classes like? The curriculum? The teachers?”

“Well…” Bei hesitated, searching for the right words. “They are fair, ma’am. The–” His voice faltered at the Queen’s raised palm.

“You misunderstand me,” she said patiently. “I mean in detail, a day’s routine. If I want to know the performance and status of a situation, I will inform you.”

“I apologize a thousand times, Your Majesty.” Bei immediately replied, nearly shaking. “My class days start out at 7 in the morning, at the school dormitory. I wash up for the morning, shave if there’s soap, and make my way to the dormitory kitchen for breakfast.”

The Queen frowned. “What do you mean, ‘shave if there’s soap?’”

“We have to buy our shaving soap from the school store,” the student explained. “Usually they’re out, and when they do sell it they come in two centimeter cubes that melt away after less than a week of use.”

Her Majesty’s expression upset further, as she narrowed her eyes, seeing past Bei, but she shook her head, and waved for him to continue. “Never mind. What do you have for breakfast?”

“Usually congee, Your Grace, with fish sauce. We buy our rice and sauce from the local stores. I get packages from my Community every month containing some spiced eels or pickled vegetables. We eat in our dormitories before class, and finish before the first classes take place at half past eight.”

“Is the cafeteria hall no longer sufficient for the students to eat in?”

“No, Your Majesty. The school policy says that the Kumo students are to eat in the cafeteria, while Elenrian students are to eat in the dorms.”

“And is this true universally? Do you know who approved the policy?”

“I do not, Your Majesty. Though according to some students…” he paused for a moment, risking to look at the Queen. “Your Majesty, I must confess I cannot attest to the honesty of rumors.”

“Rumors and hearsay grow from the same crop truth sprouts from,” the Queen replied evenly. “Tell me nonetheless.”

“Very well. Some of my classmates and friends allege that certain students are allowed to eat in the cafeteria, with comparatively better meals that they don’t pay for.” Bei explained carefully. “I see.” The Queen replied. “And classes?”

“Classes are… well, they used to be according to a curriculum that worked according to a set of standards decided upon by the Imperial Libraries.”

“But no more?” The Queen asked, leaning forwards. “But no more.” Bei confirmed. “As of a few months ago, there was some kind of incident at Kelsun. The news sheets won’t say what happened, but visitors from the communities say there was a revolt against the city mayor and his community. Details are scant, but from what I understand a bunch of people were injured or killed, and the government took out the blame on the Imperial Libraries by making a bunch of new changes to the curriculum: every instructor now has to submit their curriculum plans in gross detail to a new ‘Board of Education’ under the Ministry of State, superseding the Ministry of Knowledge. As with most things that end up having to go through the main Takpoe bureaucracy, those curriculum plans then take about seven months to get approved, and most of the time they simply aren’t. The Imperial Libraries have been trying to negotiate with the government to get things changed back, but to my knowledge most professors chose to ignore the government order, despite the loss of their paychecks. I can’t speak for all professors, but I know at least my mathematics and electrical engineering instructors have taken to receiving direct payments from students for every class, which they split between the rest of school faculty without the assent of the school’s headmaster and main administration– not that they could stop it, anyway. From what I understand the Ministry of Knowledge got back at the Ministry of State somehow, because the education board can’t fire any of their educators, nor can they take any real action against shutting down the Imperial Libraries’ other than blocking the streets with special police and soldiers.”

The Queen started massaging her temple with her thumbs, eyes squeezed shut. “Allow me to get this straight. There’s been a Community conflict that broke out into outright violence, which led into what sounds like government infighting, and to top it all off corruption has managed to wring itself wildly out of hand, partly out of necessity because said government infighting is hampering day-to-day function of the school?”

“That… That sounds about right, Your Majesty.” Bei looked at the floor, pursing his lips.

Her Majesty sighed quietly. “I see. Let me change the course of this conversation, student Bei. I take it this sort of thing isn’t limited to just the schools. I would hear all of your grievances, no matter how severe, no matter how scathing. Anything you can think of.”

Bei swallowed hard, thinking. “I suppose–” He quickly corrected himself. “I mean, I believe the greatest of my community’s immediate concerns are the failures of the Takpoe government to mediate between the communities. The larger communities in my region, particularly Da Seng and Mesita Community, have been making increasingly aggressive and unfair bargains for my home community’s rubber production. Last year it was twenty Yairen for fifteen kilos of raw rubber. Now that the Empress Shiraori is gone and the value of the Yairen with it, they offer only five, and because my community is landlocked between the two larger Communities and must travel through their roads to reach the market, we have to accept them as middlemen.”

“I see.” The Queen paused, turning to speak quietly to the Captain, who muttered something indistinct back. “I take the central government’s suggestions have not worked at all?”

“No, Your Majesty.” Bei sought the words, realizing what weight his words currently carried. “In fact, I would dare to say they haven’t done anything right in regards to the problem, or really many problems in the country, especially the extent to which government corruption is affecting the country.”

The Queen sat up, eyes narrowing. “I was informed otherwise. I want you to list all problems you know of, as if I were a newcomer to affairs in Elenria. Go on, what else?”

“Very well, Your Majesty. There’s no shortage of it, and as I’ve heard my family say, rotten from the bottom to the top. People carry two thousand Yairen to pay off a police man if you’re arrested, and these arrests are completely at random, Majesty! The most law-abiding citizen has been accosted before by an officer looking to make a quick buck, but only ever in the smaller Communities who cannot afford to maintain a standing militia. It’s the same for most government officials, of whom even the most basic of permits to maintain a business require large ‘service’ fees that cost the Community dearly by sheer quantity alone! Even the tax collectors are complicit in taking and giving unwarranted gifts.” He quickly added, “Though of course the tax rate itself is not a problem in itself.”

“Then there are the political factions of the government and dissenters who are constantly at odds with one another to the point of shooting and slashing at one another in the streets, in the fields, and occasionally in the middle of nowhere, anywhere where the Kumo aren’t. There are the student organizations who’ve coalesced in the wake of the central government’s failures too, and their largest performance so far has been organizing protests and strikes that always get broken up by militias and police. The whole government’s split with all the political groups and whatnot to the point where nothing ever gets done. Everyone’s all waiting for funding, or waiting for resources, or waiting for both. And that’s to say nothing about the rebel regions, who’ve extorted and murdered random people on the basis that they’re ‘collaborating with the enemy,’ which is a description that seems to change every single week. In my Community alone they’ve killed six people and kidnapped three, one of whom still hasn’t been returned.”

“Finally there are the wars abroad. A couple months ago, Kumosenkan invaded Franerre to retake and Franerre to retake and annex Gongmenao, in what's been called the Notch War. They justified the resulting military mobilization as necessary to ‘retake the homeland,’ which I'm not that opposed to, but the entire campaign for our half was from beginning to end a complete embarrassment. The wounded troops who came home said that the border army had to take to being equipped by the Kumo rather than domestically produced equipment because of the government's inability to procure any serious amount of support. In fact the whole war’s been basically fought by the Kumo from start to finish! And now there’s talk that there’s been some big battle off Hawaii, and that we’re soon to be at war once more!”


The Queen was silent at first as he finished speaking, watching him intently. “These are incredibly serious accusations and issues you have leveled and highlighted. You understand the weight of your words should they be false, do you not?”

“Sincerely so, Your Majesty. I swear to the honesty of my statements– by the honor of my Community, by myself. Should you find a single statement I have said to be wrong, I would ask my tongue to be cut out.” He bowed before her, his hand and palm wrapped in a gesture of fealty. He hoped she could not see them shaking.

He could hear the Captain saying something, but whatever the Queen’s reply was, it was silent or too quiet to be heard.

“Very well, Bei Songxue. You are dismissed. These are troubling tidings to hear from my subjects and not my ministers, who have been more silent than I would’ve liked.” There was a motion in the face of the Captain, but Bei had no time to process what it could mean as he bowed again and rose to his feet, feeling like an anvil was just taken off his chest.

A storm of thoughts was cluttering his mind. That was the Queen? She seemed utterly separated from the rest of the country, completely uninformed of anything going on, even the bribes and dealings going on quite literally on her doorsteps. Was that truly the Queen he’d met? Or was the corruption and misdirection of the government in Aundui Yio so cripplingly horrific that Elenria’s own head of state wasn’t aware of the rest of the country’s state?

The sergeant was waiting for him outside the throne room, and motioning towards the way they had come from, began to lead Bei back towards the guest quarters. The student noticed the guardsman looked pleased.

“Come along now,” The soldier chirped. “There’s a hot meal and a nice bottle of ointment waiting for you back at the guest’s quarters.”

“What will happen after? Do I go home?”

“Home?”

The soldier glanced over his shoulder at the Crown human.

“Not until we figure out what to do with you.”

---

Palki watched the throne room doors shut behind the student as he left, their latches echoing back to her rigid posture easing back against the Throne.

Corruption and factionalism were destroying the country like a cancer. Petty Community rivalries interrupting the economy. The government was paralyzed with inefficiency and a crippled bureaucracy. And armed rebels somewhere in the country to boot, killing and robbing people.

Of course, this was wholly based on the opinions of a single student who’d been extricated straight off the road in the middle of a wintry blizzard. He could be a spy, an agent of the Regency, an extremist, insane, or ten thousand other possibilities. It was too much for her.

She slumped in her seat. It was too much! How was she supposed to wrangle this, this complete and utter mess? She was a child! A layman or a newcomer was not enough of a description to adequately describe her lack of preparedness: she was a toddler in comparison to this world’s problems! And what was Kumosenkan doing in all of this? Sucking up Elenria’s resources and people for aspirations that did not touch Elenria’s shores! She’d been told the whole point of the capitulation to the Kumo in the first place was to give time for Elenria to develop: well, where was that time going?

“What do I do?” she exclaimed in a trembling whisper, as if the student were still kneeling before her. Holding a face for several hours, days and even months straight was one thing: it was what she’d been raised to know to do, from childhood to her brief military service: regal, composed, authoritative. But it was one thing to read a script, and another to write, think, and believe on her own. She had experience in the former, but only a handful of the latter, and even that had been limited to commanding a platoon.

What was she to do here? She’d been gone eighty years. Eighty! A whole two generations of human lives, maybe more, grown in the shadow of a government who left a rotting stench to every surface touched, a putrid rot that left Elenria a hollow echo of glory days gone by. And this, all of this, signed in her name. She was Queen, and every mistake, casualty, and cruelty inflicted upon her people by her supposed subordinates lay on her neck!

“I thought that when the Regency took over from me, they’d have taken care of the country. Made it under the Kumo, fine. Made it at the cost of the Communities, so be it. But rebels pillaging the countryside? An entire war?” She sputtered for a second, then buried her head in her hands. “What can I even do?! Who will even listen to me, if even the Regency can’t command so much a province right?”

“Did you hear what he said?” Palki nearly cried. “What the hell was the silly point in surrendering to the Kumo if we can’t even get any development? How much have they even done? From the words of Bei Songxue, there is not a damn thing they’ve done right! They struggle with just their own government, and they’re a REGENCY GOVERNMENT! THEY ARE AN EMERGENCY FORMATION!”

She was fully shouting now, shaking with emotion, lost in an increasing yawn of hopelessness’s ocean. Her words trembled, with every word she spoke, she caught the acrid scent of smoke involuntarily shooting out of her mouth. But she was past that now: eighty years of sullen acceptance that the country was doing just fine without her, fed by yearly reports of new railroads being built, statistics of ever-higher economic growth, and piles upon mountains of the same mundane reports cheerily declaring the internal political situation to be completely without problems…

Her surprise and exhaustion, a fatigue that had been with her for so long that she’d become exhausted from being exhausted, finally buckled under the strain of realization. She could forgive being lied to. But for so long, and all of it for naught, served only to transform the exhaustion and frustration of being placed under house arrest for eighty straight years into straight fury.

“WHAT WAS THE FUCKING POINT OF EMERGENCY POWERS IF THEY COULDN’T EVEN AGREE AMONG THEMSELVES?!” The Queen shouted, slamming a fist into the table so hard that the books jumped in the air, and the metal sticks clattered back onto their mat in a jumble.

“WHY PUT ME IN HOUSE ARREST FOR EIGHTY USELESS, GENUINELY WASTEFUL YEARS?? WHAT PART OF NOT LETTING ME LEARN HOW TO RULE HELPS US? HOW DOES IT HELP ANYBODY? WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY DOING UP NORTH, EVEN?”

Angry tears streamed down her face as she shook against the smooth surface, the contents of the table spread to the sides. Her hands hurt. “Eighty years,” she repeated quietly, and slumped back into her seat. A dull pain emanated from her hand, and she glared at it, angrily wiping the tears from her eyes.

The Captain stepped towards her, and to Palki’s surprise, knelt down to gently wipe the tears from her face. It struck the Queen that she’d never really appreciated the finer details of the taller silver-clad Inselni's person. She was substantially older, for one: four hundred years at least, given the appearance of a third pair of horns slowly jutting from underneath her lower two, of which one was chipped cleanly, like a hammer had taken a chunk out of it. Old scars were hidden beneath her armor and the dense fabric of the gambeson underneath, which she only caught the faintest sight of as the Captain dragged her sleeve out to clean her charge’s cheeks.

The woman had been a permanent fixture in her life from as far back as her childhood, shadowing her every step with a steely gaze and a longsword on her waist. She’d been a monolith of composure, unshakable and dutiful to the last, yet approachable, knowledgeable. A safe confidant, and a bastion of reason. And Palki realized that she’d not really wondered much about her Captain’s own life– at her age, she was probably past having a family– hell, she’d never even asked about it once these past eight decades.

Eight decades. This woman was more close of a friend than she ever knew, and she’d never bothered to make sure her family was alright.

“Did you know, Captain? That they were… I don’t know. That they were this… stupid, I suppose?”

The Captain shut her eyes, getting back up to her full height. “No, Your Majesty. I suspected they were lying in their reports, but I had presumed as you had: business as usual, and perhaps more.”

A morose chuckle rose out of Palki. “Perhaps more.” She laughed. “Fuck’s sake.”

A sharp slap echoed through the hall, and for once the motionless guards jumped, unanimously turning to look. Had the Captain struck the Queen? Or the other way around?

Instead, they watched as the Captain suddenly stepped in the way, grabbing and holding the Queen’s hand back from striking herself on the cheek a second time. “Majesty!” She started reproachfully, but Palki wrenched free of her guardian’s grasp, and with full force slammed her head into the metal surface of the table, reverberating with a deep thud.

A flurry of panicked voices and movements followed– Palki struggling against the Captain, hot blood streaming down her forehead as the older inselni held her back and in place, a horrified expression snarled across her face. The other royal guards were a chorus of confusion, some remaining in their positions, just bewilderedly staring, others shouting in alarm and running over, and a number who immediately ran towards one the back rooms for medical supplies.

“LET GO OF ME!” Palki screamed. “WHAT’S THE POINT OF ME? WHY BOTHER WITH ME AT ALL? I’M JUST SOME PIECE ON A CHESSBOARD– WELL COME ON, LET ME GIVE IN AND FUCK OFF ALREADY!!”

“Queen Akel, you are not thinking clearly–”

“AND WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU? WHY’D YOU STAY WITH ME FOR SO LONG? EIGHT DECADES, EIGHT DECADES I’VE WASTED YOUR TIME! WHAT HAVE I GIVEN YOU? WHAT HAVE I GIVEN YOU EXCEPT A CRYING, SNIVELING PIECE OF SHIT WHO COULDN’T BE STRONG ENOUGH FOR THE ONE JOB SHE EVER HAD?!”

She thrashed in the grasp of the Captain, who only barely managed to hold her in place to the throne, struggling to get a better grip. Palki fought, gnashing her teeth while burning tears streamed down her face, but the Captain was just larger and heavier– it took only a moment of Palki struggling less for the experienced soldier to fully wrap her arms around Palki’s, and with her weight pinned her down until she finally stopped throwing herself about, chest heaving with gasping, sobbing breaths.

The Captain looked up as the guards returned with bandages and ointment. Gingerly she released her grasp on Palki as the younger Inselni’s body racked with the heaving of her chest, and began to wipe the blood from the Queen’s forehead. The scale there had been damaged– the Captain knew it’d probably scar instead of heal.

“Four hundred years ago, your mother inherited from her father, the last Emperor of the Sanshan, a collapsed state.” The Captain murmured as she wrapped the bandage around the Queen’s horns. “She took the throne when she was two hundred and sixty-nine, because her brother was a miserable pile of scales more obsessed with numbers on a paper than the people they represented, and the borders on a map than the livelihoods of entire civilizations that they stood for.”

WIth her claw she cut short the white linen tied the two ends off with an uneven knot. She took Palki by the hands, sandwiching them between her own rough palms.

“Your mother spent her whole life trying to repair and resist the total collapse of the nation, as a whole. She was the one who received the refugee communities back into the heartlands, renegotiated the old laws about land ownership, intervened in the tax codes to equalize positions between the nobility and the communities in an attempt to ease rising tensions when the winter of seventeen-forty-one decimated our coffers and granaries both.”

She paused, collecting her thoughts. Palki slowly looked up at her, wiping her tears.

“By the time I became a member of Her Majesty’s House Guard, she was three hundred and seventy six, and was still making mistakes, despite her intentions. She was barely older than you, and had just about as much experience: her only Expedition had been a short abortive military foray into Niaoren lands in a failed attempt to repel them out of the mountain ranges. In one meeting she proposed adding another seventy-one total ministries to the court, and when she was finally convinced against it by the pleading of the court, she went into her chambers and sulked for a week straight. The servants nearly had to blow her door down with a battering ram to make her come out to eat.”

The Captain softly chuckled for a moment, but quickly sobered. Her citron eyes fixated on Palki’s own emerald, looking into the confused and scared expression. She broke off the eye contact, sighing, and taking a seat on the floor beside the throne.

“And then one day she got a report that the nobles were moving their treasures out of Kesternrim’s vaults, where they're supposed to keep them where the royal government can mediate disputes and whatnot. Before she can mobilize so much as a battalion, she starts getting reports of revolts in the countryside, cries for her deposal. She sends seven seasoned Expeditions to lead the armies to put them down: two just don't have enough officers left from the collapse of the empire, and the ones that are there are either inexperienced or too old and set in their ways. They're defeated, wiped out completely. Another three are decimated in a series of campaigns that I never got to know enough about, except that they managed to hold onto the cities closest to the capital, and the subcontinent. That leaves two, one led by my brother, and the other led by my husband.”

For once, the Captain hesitated, and fell silent in a dark recollection. Palki looked at the floor. They weren't here, so…

“A third army, the smallest, went into the desert, containing you and I. It was not a strong force– it was a reserve garrison, the kind of rear-line units who you’d put on parade, and not on the field. We spent most of our time exercising, cleaning muskets, repairing abandoned forts, planting rice and barley along the river ditches. There’s not much to fight over there, because invading it is such a pain. By the time the war was over, hadn’t fired a shot. And by the time we heard about your mother’s death, we were still polishing unused cannonades and forging matchlocks from the local smithies.”

Palki nodded. “Your family…?”

The soldier’s shoulders shrugged with defeat. “I don’t know. We were shipped so fast out of the desert that I don’t think anyone knew what was going on until we were in Aundui Yio. I couldn’t get a letter out to them, not while watching over you. And by then, our head was in the lion’s mouth.”

She was silent for another eternity, staring off into space. The other guards stood aloof nearby, themselves simultaneously split between their duties to remain on station, and a curiosity accumulated from eight decades of isolation.

“I never knew if she left a will, you know?” “She wasn’t that old when she got assassinated, and before she attached me to be the Captain of your house guard, she was always saying, ‘when she’s old enough, I ought to tell her this,’ and ‘when she’s experienced enough, I’ll finally be able to tell her that.’ She never got the chance.”

A knot formed in her stomach. Palki could feel the tears choking up her throat again as the Captain turned to her again. “But she always talked about how she wanted you to have everything. She was so adamant about it when speaking to the servants about your birthday presents– ‘I want to make it, I want to make it special.’ She even–”

The Captain suddenly laughed, but it was choked with her own tears as she raised her own hand to her face.

“--She even had a whole plan to give you a tour of the citadel’s ancestral crypts when you were three hundred. She was worried you might find the underbelly of the Citadel too creepy, so she ordered me to keep you out of the older atriums so that wouldn’t accidentally stumble into them and see all those spooky death masks.”

“I never knew that.”

“No. No, I imagine not.” The Captain looked away, ashamed. “It didn’t feel right to do anything of the sort after she was gone. She was this vibrant, ever-burning torch that burned in the windows and the halls of every corridor within the Palace. Wherever and whenever she was administering to the government, she had me hold you in a basket to watch her work, even though you might not know what she was doing. You were so young, you were…”

She stopped herself. Taking a deep breath, she wiped what tears dotted her face and regained that stern composure of hers.

“You are what is left of Her legacy, Your Majesty. She would’ve wanted to leave you an Elenria whose bureaucracy could process a harvest in days and not weeks. Would’ve wanted you to inherit a revitalized economy, and a centralized government unified under you to be ruled with an iron grip. By the time you would take power, she wanted you to inherit a state ready to reclaim lost lands and avenge stricken wounds– perhaps even already in the process of doing so.”

“She did not get the time to impart her vision to you, and neither to the rest of the court, or even me, the servants, or her own guard. Her ideas rest only up in her mind, and in notes which the Regency has almost certainly gone to lengths to destroy and obscure from our use. But revenge and atonement are still within our grasp. 80 years are generations in the pettily brief lifespans of other people across Ouhiri, but a mere drop in a deep well for you, and for me. There is hope yet– we can still fix this. This is the first decision you must make, Your Majesty.” the old soldier explained softly, a fire dancing in her eyes.

“You are the Queen. I know, it feels like so much time has been wasted– but I tell you, I assure you, that we may yet accomplish what is not done, if you should only accept the task before you!”

Palki realized that she had been gripping her dress in a vise. She let go, and taking a deep breath, she looked the Captain in the eyes. She saw, for once, something apart from a Martial’s hard glare: she saw a pleading, desperation, and an unending sadness that stretched beyond lifespans. She saw an unfurled infinity of memories that had been passed down by speech, by writing, and by song– and she saw the eons that preceded her, and the baton that was now hers to hold, as it had been held by those who sat in this seat before her.

In those eyes, she saw the Citadel, when it was a glory of lights and activity, when its windows blazed with uncontrolled fires, and the deafening silence of when it was empty. She saw when it was no more than a pile of stones, and she saw when it was a pillar of ancient stone that stood as a monument to the definition of longevity in days that had long yet to pass.

And above all, she saw a faint glimmer, a distant gold that bounced the tiniest flicker of light from a million candlelights that reflected off the scales, skin, and eyes of an uncountable mass of faces, watching her, asking her, begging her.

In it, she saw hope.

And so despite the knots in her stomach, and the rocking beating of her hearts, even though doubts swam and whispered in her mind, and that uncomfortable tingling in her scales, she opened her mouth and spoke:

“I do.”

[StaolDerg]

The police officer toyed with the coin, gripped with at once both horror and excitement. He looked up again out the window as the buggy bounded across Kesternrim’s stony paved roads, counting the familiar blocks as he rolled past. These were the outer boroughs of the city: less developed satellite settlements built atop and in the narrow valleys between the mountains, but still as ancient as the old city’s main center, given the smaller, less impressive inner city walls he now passed under.

He looked down at the coin again. A sense of urgency gripped him as his eyes examined the silver piece’s smooth finish, and bust of a long-dead sovereign. Above all, the tiny numbers that were marked just over the face’s rim were what made him read it over and over again.

5 - 16 - 1861, Imperial Batch 122.

Traditionally, Elenrian currency was minted and then issued from the Imperial Mint, one of the many administrative buildings located in the Kesternrim Citadel’s complex. After Takpoe’s establishment, any currency issued after 1861 had to be from the mint in Aundui Yio, and even then coins were only minted for a month before they switched to the Yairen, requiring everyone to turn in their old money.

But royal currency had ceased to be issued on the first day of 1861. If this piece of currency existed, it meant either a counterfeiter was somehow totally unaware of Kumo’s occupation of Elenria and replicating an eighty-year-outdated silver piece; or more brazenly it was from the unused stockpiles of the Imperial Mint that had been produced but not issued, which could only mean someone from within the Imperial Palace had placed it on the counter of a secondhand bookstore in the boroughs closest to the Kesternrim Citadel.

The carriage slowed, but the policeman’s feet were already touching the cobblestones before the wheels had halted. The newly-painted building he dashed into stuck out like a sore thumb in the middle of Kesternrim’s lower-class neighborhoods, with its Kumo-styled roof tiles paired with starkly white plaster walls that contrasted rather poorly with the carved stone reliefs of the buildings surrounding it.

Here was the only meetinghouse the Royalists had in Kesternrim, for though the city might be the seat of the Queen’s authority, it still sat under the guard of the Internal Army’s dogmatic soldiers, and unless they welcomed the prospect of being raided by overzealous soldiers and risking certain death, only an official government building of the Regency would do for the protection and privacy the policeman sought.

The telegraph operator sat at her station waiting for him with fatigued, but ready eyes as he half-stumbled inside, coin delicately gripped in a handkerchief. As he unwrapped the cloth fold to the initially baffled look of the operator, the cryptographer sitting behind the telegraph operator’s position shuffled a clean sheet of paper before them and turned to the policeman to await transcription.

“To Number Five, from Keychain Eight,” the policeman recanted. “Urgent message. Potential excursion from within the Citadel. Internal Army presence, directed westwards for unknown reasons, possible precedent. Requesting further orders.”

The rapid scribbles of the cryptographer ended with the flutter of the page as the specialist tore the page out of the notebook and handed the translated message to the telegraph operator. She took a single look at the message, and without skipping a beat began to rapidly tap away on the machine.

---

Sekra’s reaction to the messenger was hesitant.

“Does he have anything more concrete? A coin, however important, is still a pressed piece of metal, and easily forged. This is barely intelligence.”

“The agent is completely adamant that whoever placed it came from the Citadel, ma’am.” The messenger replied. “They’ve the eyewitness’s accounts that–”

“Eyewitnesses are a famously unreliable source of information,” the elderly inselni dismissed. “I will not take it at face value. The Regency has been trying to get us to walk onto their gallows for them for decades, and I know one of their crude tricks when I hear it. Is there anything else?”

“There are reports from other agents, especially Librarian faculty at the Imperial Universities stating that one of their students disappeared in the night, without returning to dorm nor campus at any point between today and last night. Our operatives believe it was a disappearance.”

“Nothing out of the ordinary there, unfortunately.” Sekra waved aside. “Regency does that to anyone who might’ve seen something they wanted hidden, and it so happens there are many things in Kesternrim that they want remained buried. Student’s probably turning up a week from now in a sack. But it does mean that whatever the Regency is doing, they’ve moved it to the base of the Citadel’s cliffs. I worry if they mean to…” She trailed off, darkly frowning.

“No matter. I’ve received reports from General Api that there are disturbances along the Elerian border. With this nonsense overseas with the Kumo fighting some faraway battle in some equally faraway islands, we cannot risk our economy being disturbed. The Empress’s death has already significantly impacted our economy. If we start anything big in Kesternrim, we risk seriously damaging the city’s production.” She mulled over the situation, grinding her teeth.

“Inform the agent to adopt a more proactive stance nonetheless. In the situation that something unexpected does occur, I want us to be among the first to know. Furthermore, have more of our intelligence assets moved South to the capital. If the Regency are attempting to do anything that may threaten the life of Her Majesty, our endeavors of the last eight decades will be placed in jeopardy.”

“Yes, Minister.”

---

The meeting room was quiet as Minister Vakeri slowly read the neat spread of folders before her. Each one was differentiated by colored borders, with five in total. Three of these were green, representing economic affairs, with the other two being white and red respectively, both so thick that they individually composed the density of the green bordered folders stacked together. White stood for bureaucratic matters, so nothing too extraordinary by Takpoe’s ever-changing standards, but red stood for internal political affairs, and the Minister was eyeing the unexpectedly thick album with a sense of concern.

Takpoe’s affairs officially necessitated the participation of every minister, but this building, the Aundui Yio Citadel complex, was the seat of the Regency’s power. As far as she was concerned, this was her house, and she decided who was present at what meetings, and when they were.

And that was it, wasn’t it? Power over others, and the continued eternal monopoly of it had always been her long-term goal. In this way, she was able to stay alive in this rat-race world of theirs, regardless of what happened.

She wasn’t a bad person, per se. She was… composed, dignified. In control, in the know, and always one step ahead of the others. Most were guided by complex, twisting ambitions and goals, from the Greatferns stubbornly trying to remain relevant in a society that was increasingly doing without them, to the Royalists who were always wrenching towards the old ways that collapsed the Empire, but her? All she wanted, all that she ever wanted, was to keep Elenria in one piece. As far as she was concerned, without her the headless government of the dead Queen would’ve helplessly stumbled about in the dark, skin and sinew being torn from its wizened bones as the Shysil and the Elerian, Franerri and Ashinaran all descended to dine upon the dying breaths of their ancient betters.

What set her apart from her peers was ambition. Ambition was what had built the Sanshan Empire: lack of it was what killed it, as far as she saw it, followed by complacency that left only the heartlands.

The Minister opened the dense red folder. It was a mess of bureaucratic troubles, corruption charges, accusations of treason, sabotage by the Royalists from within and interference from Kumo without, and most troubling of all, what looked to be unauthorized military movement and action in the Southwest. Unacceptable. She peered up at her colleagues, and methodically began to piece together the potential causes.

Vakeri fancied herself as a student of history. She’d spent her Expedition scouring the ruins of the Sanshan Empire in the wake of the empire’s collapse, trying desperately to collect leftovers of a massive retreat. Those long years alone in the rolling hills and tundras of what was now Eleria, Shysil, Franerre, and the UST, comparatively newborn states left her with the conclusion that the only way for the sentient races of Ouhiri to advance was through unification by an empire.

Empires built roads and aqueducts, roads and aqueducts fueled the growth of cities. From cities are derived academia, invention, and authority: from these, stability and prosperity emerge, and for as long as the Empire stays in one piece, stability and prosperity remain. Even those states not within the borders of an Empire basked in its glory by proximity: if by cooperation, then immediate gains, but if by opposition, then the competition to remain relevant and defiant would raise that nation’s ambitions to better itself!

Now, the events of the last few years seemingly only vindicated that thought process. Without Elenria, the invaders of the old continent had been allowed to trespass freely and defile the continent to their hearts’ content. Without Elenria, their societies had regressed into backwardness and tribal superstition, prancing around a bonfire with savage dances, shying from the black of the creeping night in pathetic huts of adobe and straw, secluded within the bones of towering Sanshan city walls.

Those who seized the day possessed the claim to dominate, she’d long reasoned. And though many of her colleagues in the Regency of Takpoe were happy to just survive under Kumosenkan, she saw ahead. She saw destiny beyond the mountains of the Yasuhiro. Kumosenkan was the perfect example of this: they had thrown their weight and upstaged the UKUG’s position in the world, and now by right the rich lands of Elenria were rightfully theirs. Her position therefore was to put Elenria into the position it needed to be to reclaim its Empire, first internally through political consolidation, then economic reform and industrialization. Of course, Elenria was behind the rest of the world’s Empires: but as a province of Kumosenkan, just about a century or so of dedicated cooperation would close that gap, she was certain. And al that was stopping that progress was that one crucial first step: controlling politics.

Towards the end of the folder, she nearly brushed past it– a short report stuffed near the end, nevertheless marked with a seal denoting its importance. Less than two pages of tiny text, titled only with “Kesternrim.” It was a copy of a police report from the city’s municipal precinct, and attached was a brief analysis by Internal Army officers with their commentary. She almost dismissed it in the face of the other problems, but as it happened her eyes skipped a word and made her blink and realize she wasn’t retaining information. She forced herself to reread the entire thing from the start.

An overnight break-in at a local second-hand bookstore. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Bums and petty criminals did frequent the capital’s streets at night, alongside the various political groups that vied for influence with the Internal Army. Unfortunate, but not unexpected. Several books were missing, mostly textbooks. Fair enough, could belong to a local student group. She wasn’t seeing why this report needed to be on her desk for how petty the crime seemed.

The till hadn’t been touched. That raised her suspicions– why not take the cash in it, if it sat right in the open? And near the till, hidden under a piece of cloth were a number of coins: old coins, at that. No one paid using currency eighty years out date– all of those coins had been melted down. And what’s more, these were unissued coins from the late Queen’s era. They shouldn’t even exist, outside of the batches from within the Mint of the Kesternrim Citadel.

No, she reasoned. Some senile inselni drunk must’ve stumbled in with an ill-made forgery, and tried to pay using that while tottering on out. But so many books were missing: how could it be just one drunk? And what’s more, the owner was present at the building, shocked beyond words and reason, stammering about masked apparitions, like the characters in a street play. No drugs were found by the crude tests conducted by the police, apparently. What had they seen to drive them to such a state?

An uncomfortable feeling tingled in the edges of her wings, and she unconsciously whipped her tail against the ground in a sudden crack that made the others at the table jump and stare at her distracted musing. She recalled that Imperial Martials used to wear masks to disguise their identities when conducting official business for the Sanshan Empire. And now that organization was scattered to the four winds with the collapse of the Queendom proper, that left either the primary senior corps of Imperial Martials of the House Guard, and the remnants strewn throughout the insurrectionist regions of Elenria.

Could the Queen have sent out her soldiers to start collecting information? She had been so careful to keep the troublesome toddler fenced in her playpen, trying to keep the foolish young Queen from interfering in matters far senior than herself. One hundred and eight patrols on constant watch around the Citadel grounds at all times, to prevent anyone from entering or leaving, unless it was one of the deliveries of food and materials for the building’s upkeep, and even then only after every grain of rice was thoroughly inspected and searched. Two whole regiments were permanently stationed to keep the brat in her playhouse, and countless tens of thousands of Yairen invested in bonuses for the soldiers guarding it to remain vigilant.

No, no. She fought the gnawing paranoia. Senseless. But the chances of the Queen potentially breaking out of her restraints… She read the report on the coin again, praying to see evidence that it was a forgery, only to be further unsettled when the report noted the fine workmanship of the coins. If this was a forgery, the only thing the counterfeiter had messed up was the issue date, and with numbers so large, it seemed that it could only have been deliberate– or it was legitimate.

There was no way the rebels could’ve gotten this far to the Capital. A rebel cell, quite literally just beneath the Queen’s front door? Impossible. She dismissed the possibility out of hand. No, something serious was going on. This needed serious investigation. She’d need to deploy at least another brigade to shore up the surroundings of the Citadel. Finally, she looked up from her isolated world at her colleagues, a little frantic.

“Honored members of the Regency,” she stated. “We have a potential crisis on our hands. Her Majesty, Akel the Second, may be plotting to break free of the Citadel’s protective confines, and risks capture and manipulation by hostile outside forces. We must immediately redeploy forces to contain the Citadel.”

“Another two million Yairen in bonuses?” Minister Kerapa chided. “That is not something that the government coffers can be wasted on.”

The Minister of State resisted the urge to snipe at the Minister of Economy. “I urge you to realize the direness of this problem. Read the report for yourself, Minister, and behold in your understanding the severity of a situation were the Queen captured by rebels or some such.”

“You delude your vision with baseless fears.” Minister Kerapa laughed. “Really? A bag of old coins? Hardly evidence, Minister. I feel that perhaps this is not something that needs the attention of the Regency; rather this is the work of a career officer within the Internal Army trying to raise their credibility to net a promotion, or the like.”

“I must agree with the Minister of Economy here, Minister Vakeri. This seems more petty crime than anything more serious.” The voice came from Minister Melfani– Minister of Development. “If anything, shouldn’t bureaucratic reform be the more important focus at this time? Our estimates of initiating the sixth National Industrial Program have shown that we’re likely to effectively procure only some 24% of the projected goals in the form of expanded construction programs–”

“We can’t build anything if the basis of our political authority is undermined!” Vakeri snapped harshly. “We must redeploy soldiers to ensure that!”

“Well, there’s also the problem of the border, Minister Melfani. Our soldiers disobeying standing orders to maneuver on their own is a clear sign of weakening authority. We must assume that the situation is deteriorating.” Minister Avrin pointed out.

“Perhaps there is merit in both arguments. And it is not impossible to do both at once,” soothed Minister Vo. “I suggest we move reserve personnel from the city of Kuyan to investigate the disturbances in the Southwest, while we order the artillery and standard troops of the city to move to Kesternrim. If there is any sort of disturbance in social order, canister shot will sort it out.”

“You buffoon, you can’t blast the goddamn Queen–” Vakeri sputtered furiously.

“All in favor…? Well! I count three hands to two, out of five attendees! I do believe the motion passes.”

The others at the table looked more eager to proceed with other matters as they looked away at their own papers, the red folder passed back to Vakeri with disinterest. Muttering furiously to herself, the Minister shoved the file aside, and the chewing feeling in her stomach with it.

“Besides, Minister.” Vo cooed. “Even were the Queen to break out of her little castle, it would take her days to prepare. I highly doubt that redeploying the soldiers will be a complex affair within the boundaries of a few days.”

[StaolDerg]

Palki peeked out the window at the jagged mountain summits beneath her, and at the distant lights of the city’s highest buildings that only just peeked over the edges of icy cliffs that otherwise obscure Kesternrim. She could feel the bitter cold through the several panes of glass, and appreciated the hot smoke that flooded the floor she stood on.

“Your Majesty?”

She snapped back to reality, and to the servant diligently helping her pack up her office. The Queen wasn’t moving out, per se, but given the plan that the Captain had presented her to retake her authority, she’d need the important furnishings of a Queen’s authority: things like her personal seal to sign orders and approve laws, and copies of Elenrian and Imperial Sanshan laws. These were supposed to follow the Queen under the protection of retainers and servants wherever she went, secured in cast iron cases securely locked under armed guard. Her servants were as ever doing their best, but traditionally they’d been at least three hundred in number, and not scarcely over a hundred servants and workers that actually occupied the gigantic servants’ quarters.

It didn’t help that the logistics of what normally was a much larger operation for an excursion were hampered by the Captain’s insistence to keep the lights lit as routine, maintaining the ruse of normalcy as long as possible. This split the staff between their usually already extensive chores, but despite it the staff seemed almost wholly exuberant between their breaths as they hurried between the halls, arms filled with important texts and cases to pack.

The Captain had recommended they complete preparations to descend the mountain as quickly as possible for two reasons: one was the obvious risk that every moment risked their plot being discovered, but the other was a growing concern that the longer they remained idle, the more the country fell into ruin. The Captain had had a further talk with that Bei Songxue, and the good young man had remained cooperative after being assured he would be taken good care of, if a little hesitant given he was asked to report further on the ills of the current Takpoe administration, of which he knew plenty.

Bei Songxue. Palki needed to make a note of that young man. He was an innocent student as far as it seemed, but you could never be too careful. As valuable as the information he had provided was, there was only one real way to confirm his claims, and it was in person. Scouts had been dispatched the previous nights, and they had noticed that the guards patrolling the outside grounds and road up to the Citadel had seemed confused and disoriented, moving up and down from their positions, setting up, breaking down, and then setting up camp in a carnival of movement that seemed to frustrate them more than it confused the House Guard.

This wasn’t the first time this had happened, naturally– they’d seen it happen plenty of times these last few decades– but it was a little concerning for it to happen exactly within the timeframe the Queen was to escape the Citadel. The Captain had earlier confessed her concerns that their earlier excursion was almost certainly now known, and that they ought to take an alternate route.

Kesternrim Citadel was old enough as a Sanshan construction to feature plenty of side routes and escape tunnels throughout its building from more dire centuries, but the greatest concern was that most of their exits were also incredibly old, which meant they tended to be known by the soldiers, who kept them under guard. The House Guards had avoided using such tunnels for that express reason, but given the Queen was not as athletic and dextrous as her bodyguards, scaling cliffs for several hours was not exactly an option either.

However, since last night, the House Guards had begun to stake out the surroundings of these routes’ exits, and found the confusion of the surrounding troops was not limited to just higher up: here the soldiers’ officers were actively arguing over the specific meaning of words on a piece of paper, and refusing to let their soldiers unpack their camps. They’d even seen a platoon stand around awkwardly for an entire seven hours in formation because the commanders could not figure out whether or not they were supposed to move out.

In the process, the exits to several of the routes had inadvertently been left wholly unguarded, and the guardsmen were swift to immediately begin noting down which routes to take. To save time and preserve their ability to remain concealed, the guardsmen were to carry all of the Queen’s important effects, and most of the ceremonial symbols of authority, like the heavy clothing of royal clothing, were to be left behind until after the new government could be secured.

She looked at her desk. Most of the things on it, her pens, her drawings, ink blocks, good luck charms, and other personal effects would be staying here. There were a number of notes she’d made for herself to remind herself of what she needed to look for when she did get back to the cities, and back into power. She folded the thin packet of paper and slipped it into her dress.

“Ready, Your Majesty?”

“Yes, I believe so. Let’s get going.”

They had only walked down two floors when she thought of something, and paused mid-step. The servant heard her steps stop, and turned around to puzzledly watch the Queen abruptly turn and run into a side room.

The garden was waiting for her, ransacked though the metal arboretum was, but right as she’d left it. Just as she’d remembered it. She found the flower still planted into its bed, and with gentle hands cradled it in her hands, gingerly securing it in a spare pouch on her waist.

As she turned to leave, her eye caught on a figure standing nearby, and she reflexively jumped, turning to meet the unexpected visitor, only to relax when she realized it was her own reflection in a small mirror on the wall. There was a large cloth covering something next to it, some five foot by four and half, and through morbid curiosity she stepped forth and took it down.

Underneath was a painting– or rather, an incomplete one: it was a portrait of her, cropped at the waist, with most of the clothing and background unfinished. But her face was mostly complete, and as she compared it to the face in the mirror, she saw the gaunt eyes with dark circles under them, and scales that seemed less lustrous in color. They looked to be two wholly different people: one in clothes too big for her, in shoes too big to fill, in a house too large and cold for a little thing like her. For some reason, it seemed funny to her, and as she began to cover it back up she looked at her reflection, and remarked,

“You look like shit.”

She turned and headed for the door.

The servant had started to follow, but the Queen immediately returned, motioning towards the stairs they still had to go.

“Don’t mind me,” she said in a hurry. “I’ve dallied enough. Let’s go.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

---

The dense forests of the mountain slopes meant the procession could move in relative comfort and ease without fear of immediate discovery, but no matter how well the sentries knew these woods, the Captain would accept only the highest degree of safety. This formed a sort of loose ring of people, with Palki at the center as its nucleus, wholly surrounded by guards who were doubling as servants hauling various artifacts of her office in large saddlebags hanging from their sides. They communicated quietly, only moving the Queen when they saw a signal from up ahead the path was safe.


There were several Guardsmen that were sent to move well ahead of the procession, scouting and screening the path ahead for soldiers, and though at first Palki believed that they were lucky enough to have dodged perhaps a whole brigade’s worth of soldiers, she was soon proven otherwise. A whole patrol of soldiers were laid to the side against the trees, so still that at first the Queen thought they were dead, until she saw the shallow condensation of their breaths in the cold air floating out of their mouths.

“I hope they’re not dead from the cold before they wake up.” She mused to the Captain.

“They can afford to lose a couple fingers and toes for the sake of the Queen,” the old inselni replied gruffly. “Even a nose. But if they wake up, I’m putting both of my claws into their throats and ripping out their voice boxes. We cannot risk being discovered.”

Palki smarted a little at the visualization, but she seemed to accept it as she walked around the unconscious soldiers.

“City’s not too far ahead now,” whispered one of her Guardsmen. “We ought to find the Community’s citadel and summon the aldermen so they can start the process of declaring a Council of the Communities. A single person might do the trick.”

“We’re wearing full armor and rank in the middle of broad daylight.” A sergeant reminded him. “And even if we were to strip to our underclothes, remove our badges, and disrobe our equipment, there’s the problem that we haven’t the foggiest idea how modern law systems work. They might have checkpoints that we lack passports to get through.”

“Enough, you two.” The Captain snapped. “We’re coming up on the main road now. Unfortunately, we exited using the Southwestern tunnel system, which places us at the part of the city with the least imaginable forest cover. Luckily, it’s not a far walk to the city’s old gardens from the Imperial times, whose irrigation network is large and complex enough for us to hide in until we can assemble the aldermen. You all know better than to run off.”

The trees indeed were beginning to spread apart in density: ahead was an old paved road, well traveled at some point, but long unused, and now only permitted the most minimum of attention. Instead, the road was poorly maintained, with only the bare minimum of snow cleared to allow anyone to walk down a half-metre wide length that wound towards a wall of comparatively well-hedged trees whose bare but neatly organized branches bobbed in the wind above elegant stone walls.

It occurred to Palki that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen this place, if indeed she had ever been here. “Captain,” she asked as she made her way over a snow-covered log. “Was I ever taken out of the Citadel to the city’s surroundings when I was a child?”

“I became Captain when you were twenty-two,” the old officer replied matter-of-factly, motioning for the Queen to duck under a branch. “Back then you were barely able to walk, but I recall you did visit these Gardens, though not the part we’re headed to, which are the canals. I think the matron was worried you would squeeze through the railings and fall into the water.”

“They are that deep? How much water do the gardens need?”

“Not that much.” The Captain refuted. “The gardens were built over the city’s old sewage system sometime after the Ninth Emperor moved his capital back north to Kesternrim. They were originally designed to ferry fresh water into the city from the mountain springs near the University, and seeing how the streets haven’t flooded, the Regency hasn’t totally neglected the drains built to funnel waste and rainfall out. They connected the pipes to the new system…” She trailed off, making a face.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just remembered that the sewage network is only new to me, and not to you because the city’s communities started constructing a new network of drainages and pipes to run down the slope of the outer city cluster sometime in 1832. The one I’m thinking of was connected to the garden’s network in 1702.” She shook her head. “In any case, they were connected to a bunch of wells that go throughout the city. As soldiers stationed in the city, we were taught to know where the entrances and exits to the narrow maintenance tunnels were in case of an invasion from the sewers, and how to drain the city’s emergency wells to flood the tunnels as a last resort, though those mechanisms were permanently disabled during your mother’s reign. Alternately, and the reason we’re going there now, is that they were also intended by Emperors and their spymasters to house saboteurs and agents in the case of the city being occupied by invaders, ostensibly Niaoren.”

Palki rubbed her scales. The cold was making the skiing under it feel raw, and she tried to get the blood moving. “How do we know the Regency isn’t already waiting for us there?”

“Good question: because the tunnels and side rooms were supposedly filled in or collapsed during the civil war, and I was the one in charge of doing so. There were a hundred and fifty safehouses throughout the city’s sewer system in this part of the cluster– and all we did was change the access routes, collapse or fill in the original entrances, and add weapon caches. Your mother was seriously worried about the possibility of the Capital being invaded by the nobility, and the spymaster, Leng Suigong, considered this the best way to block invasion from under the streets.” The Captain’s voice on the spymaster’s name seemed to peak a little, and Palki couldn’t help but feel that the two must not have shared a good relationship.

Now eager to change the subject, she perked up at the sight of one of the Guardsmen who were screening the procession suddenly pelting back towards them at full speed, gesticulating wildly towards the road. The entire group immediately tensed up, half already going for their muskets as the soldier slid to a stop against the snow-dusted stones, grimacing.

“Get into cover!” He hissed, waving them towards the thin cover of some trees besides the stone walls. “We’ve got soldiers marching this way!”

The procession immediately scrambled to the side of the road, into a scant clearing of snowy bushes and snowdrifts, far from any of the larger trees. And though the coniferous needles of the trees provided a fair amount of shade, the sun lay at an uncomfortable position that risked illuminating some part of Palki poking out the shrub she had just dove behind.

No sooner had she smacked straight into the snow did she hear the snapping of marching boots against the stones, and it was a echo that grew only louder as the soldiers approached. She risked a quick peek: they were no more than a company, a few hundred soldiers in a long column whose beige uniforms barely stood out in the road against the backdrop of snow.

At their head was an officer, a human. In comparison to the soldiers, the officer’s thin frame was animated and energetic as they practically screeched in the ears of their soldiers, gesticulating wildly down the road. For their part, the soldiers looked tired: most marched with their eyes half-closed, and others looked more irritated than scared of the officer, who himself was so busy throwing orders that he proceeded right over the fresh tracks of the royal procession.

There was an unfamiliar rank on the officer’s badge and uniform– it looked nothing like anything the old Royal Army had used to signify ranks, so she assumed it was inspired by the Kumo. But still, this soldier was clearly not from Kumosenkan: they wore hardmarks, for one, and for another she could hear a heavy southwestern accent as they spoke to a subordinate. With some luck, Palki hoped, maybe he’d completely miss them!

But as Palki peered through the bush, it seemed that some god had chosen to punish her insatiable curiosity, as the officer suddenly looked at something in the snow, and with a final shout, the column halted not six meters from where she was laying behind the bush. At once she turned on her back, praying and huddling in her curled tail and tucked wings, but with growing horror she heard the crunch of snow as boots approached where she lay, following the messy footprints she’d left behind.

The officer’s eyes widened as his eyes met that of Palki and for a moment there was an awkward exchange of eye contact between them. But the officer’s eyes locked onto the royal armor and regalia just barely visible under Palki’s cloak, and only then did he go for his gun, raising it towards her forehead. “Idiot sentries–”

Before he could finish the sentence, one of Palki’s balled fists smashed into his face, knocking him backwards and his visor cap flying as he stumbled onto his back upon the hard stones of the road. She was foremost surprised by her own sudden burst of strength, but that quickly transformed into horror as the entire column whirled towards her in a chorus of guns clacking and urgent shouting. At the same moment, there was a commotion of rustling from behind her as the royal guards jumped out of their own hiding spots with their weapons drawn and raised.

The soldiers’ reactions were of surprised shouts, and seeing already drawn muskets of the guardsmen, began to raise their own bolt-actions in turn. The guardsmen dashed before the Queen as she whirled about to the sight of an infantry column transforming into a firing line right before her and her guards, arms raised–

“Wait! Don’t shoot! Look, it’s the Queen!”

The soldiers immediately wavered, their concentration immediately shattered and organization thrown in chaos as they collectively turned towards Palki’s face a moment before the Captain stepped in front of the Queen, protectively spreading her body to shield as much of the sovereign as possible.

But the soldiers had seen her, and they recognized the face that decorated their bonds, government buildings, and books. Astonishment and confusion erupted from the firing line as they eyed the still-raised muskets of the guardsmen, and as Palki spotted the officer sitting up bellowing orders, the soldiers started racking the bolts on their guns and taking aim. She realized in that moment she might only have an instant to try and prevent a gunfight.

“Stand down, Guardsmen!” She hollered at the top of her lungs, placing a hand on the Captain’s shoulder as she tried to step around the larger inselni, trying to physically push her way forwards to the front of the formation.

The House Guard seemed surprised by the sudden command, and even the Captain’s eyes flashed towards her for a moment, but they nevertheless reluctantly lowered their arms to their shoulders, cocking their guns back to safety, though they remained close to the Queen as she emerged from behind their armored bodies to the front of the formation, purposefully pulling back the cloak she wore to expose her silk dress and ceremonial armor underneath the heavy cloth.

The effect was immediate, even as the officer reached the front of the formation, gesticulating wildly at Palki as they tried to issue orders. They were stunned– some even dropped to their knees, bowing and presenting their palms against their fists in respect, while others simply dropped their aim and gaped in astonishment.

“That’s not possible! The Queen should be in the Citadel–” Someone shouted, only to be cut off by the officer. “An imposter! Shoot her!”

“Are you blind? That’s the Queen, dumbass!”

“You question orders, private? Shoot her!”

“That’s quite enough!” The Captain said in a loud, but not shouting voice. The old soldier strode aside the Queen, her own musket, slung across her chest. “You are the presence of Her Majesty Akel the Second. You will dignify her as the soldiers in her uniform, and under her command, not as a rabble of untrained bandits. And you, officer, are out of line. State your name and rank.”

“I owe you no such gratuity, House Guardsman. By order number Zero-Three of the Regency Council, the Queen is for her own safety to remain within the Citadel! This excursion is unauthorized, unapproved, and your participation is tantamount to treason–”

“Captain! That’s the Queen’s Captain-General of the Royal House Guard, you can’t just–” A Martial shouted furiously, pointing at Palki.

“Quiet, you fucking worm!”

The soldiers paused bickering just long enough for the Martial to open their mouth again, but the Captain interrupted, declaring sharply, “I am Captain-General Se Imiat of the Queen’s House Guard. Captain, I no longer want your name: I hereby charge you with the crime of attempted regicide, and strip you of rank and position. Stand down, both of you!”

The officer didn’t even entertain the Captain’s words for more than a second before raising the revolver towards the Captain, but the Inselni’s arm was already in motion as the sword slashed up in a sudden blur, splattered the ground with fresh blood and the cold air with piercing screams as the entire arm was lopped off in a single, smooth movement. He barely had time to hit the ground before the Captain stepped forwards and plunged the sword straight into his throat, terminating the scream with a gurgle, followed by a silence. Many stared in horror as the Captain returned the red-soaked blade to her side, and even the ones who were already on their knees flinched as the blood hit the snow.

“Anyone who raises an arm against the Queen will be met with death.” The Captain shouted, bringing the sword to her side, inadvertently leaving a thin trail of blood splattered along its path. “

“We aren’t associated with him! We were not aware Her Majesty had departed the Citadel,” a soldier on his knees shouted. “We aren’t traitors!”

The Queen stepped forwards, waving down the Captain. “You did not hear of my excursion because I was confined to the Citadel involuntarily,” she explained evenly. “And in the eighty years since confinement, I have not received a drop of information from reports not colored by misinformation, books not garnished with censors, and any attempt I made to leave was met with extreme resistance from the new Regency government.”

The soldiers looked baffled, but she continued. “It is thanks to the good graces of fortune that their patrols weakened enough for me to finally leave of my own accord, but unless something drastic has happened in the last eighty years, this road should’ve been abandoned, no? This road wraps towards the southernmost districts, but I remember that new paths allowed them to be accessed from less roundabout roads as this by way of bridge. ”

By now the soldiers seemed to finally realize or accept that the person before them was indeed the Queen, and whether by the urging of a neighboring soldier or their own volition, the entire column had dropped to their knees with hands together in fealty. One such soldier was the one who next responded to the Queen, bowing his head deep.

“Indeed, Your Highness. But we’ve been receiving conflicting orders from Aundui Yio: in the same orders we’re being told to march west and reinforce a corps moving to discipline some rowdy troops of the Border Army for insubordination, while others are telling us to stay put or start setting up checkpoints to check for assassins plotting to kill you, your Highness. We set out on this road when our battalion’s major told us to march around the entire mountain so he could write in to his superiors to tell them that he’d patrolled the entire city for spies and infiltrators, but he also told us we were not to inspect any buildings or touch any property, just march around on the roads until told to stop.”

“You did not question this?”

“It’s not our place to question it, Your Grace. We’re not supposed to, on the pain of lashings, fines, or even execution. Our field commanders go up to only the divisional level before the Government directly instructs our units where to go!”

Palki blinked for a long, excruciating second. She honestly was surprised to have gotten this far: when that officer had recognized her, she’d feared the worst, but instead to see that the soldiers before her seemed far more confused than she was a relief that she gated behind her practiced face of regality. But her Captain’s plan regardless, these soldiers presented the chance to march into Kesternrim’s major neighborhoods without hiding like a cornered rat, and without the threat of being suddenly yanked back into the cold halls of the Citadel. She couldn’t miss this chance– not this time.

“I’m minded to ask what happened to the military’s command structure and rules of hierarchy, but never mind. I need to get to the center of the city, and meet the Communities’ aldermen. I am informed that the Regency has failed its purpose to stabilize the government: According to the laws of the Nine-Volume Codes, the Regency is a temporary establishment meant to to rule until a monarch is of age: I am five years past that point. By birthright, I claim my throne and its responsibilities of state; and by my responsibilities I am inclined to end the Regency’s tenure and reestablish a proper government. In pursuit of this task, I would commandeer the bodies and will of this unit to assist me.”

The soldiers’ demeanors changed as they listened, occasionally glancing at one another, stunned. One raised his hand, and the Queen, foolishly, nodded and permitted the question.

“With all respect, your Majesty, but we swore an oath to the Regency. We can’t act without specific orders by our commanders! Most of us are here either because we swore an oath, or because we owe something to the government! What if we’re ordered…” They trailed off, biting their lip as the felt the uncomfortable gaze of the Captain upon them.

The soldier didn’t need to finish that sentence for Palki to realize what they meant: What if the Regency order us to arrest you? She hadn’t thought of that. For a brief moment panic fluttered in her mind, but then composure kicked itself back in control.

Flying by the seat of her pants, she scrambled in her head to come up with something in the split second she had. Maybe should convince them that she outranked them– No, no time! Just do something! Say something! Anything!

“Not… necessarily,” the Queen replied, tilting her head towards the soldier. “By law, the Regency is supposed to involve my participation in the affairs of state. I am obliged knowledge of all government affairs, whether or not I am of age, and I am to be accompanied by a minister of the Regency to be tutored in the running of state affairs, a position officially filled by the Captain-General of the House Guard, but effectively non-existent, for she has been as isolated as I.

Oh Palki, you idiot! This wasn't an explanation; this was exposition! These were just quotations from the Nine-Volume Codes! Say something that reinforces your point, something that actually affects these soldiers!

“Moreover,” she continued, trying to salvage this garbage fire of an argument, “Since I have discovered that the reports I have received these last couple decades were little more than forgeries of an optimistic present far detached from reality, I feel there is little other conclusion that the legitimacy of the Regency government has been little more than a ploy to coup the royal government –my rightful authority– from power.”

Alright, now this is going somewhere! The soldiers perked up at the notion of the Regency’s treason, their concentration now unbroken upon the Queen’s words. And she was noticing something: the soldiers didn’t seem happy with the prospect of arresting the Queen. If anything, they kept looking away, uncomfortably stealing the smallest glances at each other, as if asking or rather, trying to mimic their neighbors for an example of what to do. If anything, their expressions seemed to be pleading– please don’t make us do this. Give us an excuse not to do this.

“For you non-commissioned and commissioned officers,” Palki started out, addressing her statement towards the Martials she spotted within the ranks, “Your oaths of allegiance are to the Queendom, not the specific individuals of the Regency. And as the Queendom’s head of state, I hold the sole authority to alter laws without question: whatever oath you have sworn yourself to in service of the Regency, I relieve you of now. Whatever charges are leveled against you, I hereby forgive and forget now, in the guarantee that your service returns to me, and me alone.” She adjusted her sight to the enlisted ranks as the officers snapped to attention, their chests breathless with excitement.

“Of you enlisted, I understand the matter is more immediate: you owe money, you owe favors. Whatever it is you owe, I will take responsibility for it: join my service, and I will pay your debts, fulfill your favors, and provide you amnesty for whatever you are accused of– as long as you remain within the total authority of my appointed officers. Your pensions, I guarantee. Your leave, your equipment, and the welfare of your families, I guarantee.”

That seemed to do the trick: the column of soldiers erupted into raucous cheers as they threw up their arms in celebration, some throwing themselves to the ground in a grovel; others proclaiming her glory at the top of their lungs as they thrust their rifles in the air. The Queen raised her hand to calm the crowd, and with a brief moment they quieted long enough for her to get down to business.

“From this point on, you swear your cause to me, and I alone. You will abide by my subordinates as I appoint them, and act appropriately, confidently, and competently. From this very minute, you are no longer soldiers of the Regency: You are Royal troops, and at the first opportunity, you will fly Royal banners, and wear Royal ranks. You represent my will made manifest, and my confidence, and my first order is to escort me to Kesternrim’s city center, where I may officially reassume authority by a Community Council. I appoint Major Sipyen of my personal guard as your company’s captain.”

Rolling with the Queen’s sudden orders, one of the House Guard officers hurried forwards to join the column at the lead, uncovering the stark jade-green ribbon on her horns that denoted her position. The older Martials in the company looked a little surprised to see the old style of leadership as the Guardsman reached the front and began to bellow out orders.

“You heard her!” One of the Martials hollered at her fellow soldiers as they turned to her. “Company, get in formation! Third Platoon, move to the rear and back up Her Majesty’s Guards!”

The crowd of soldiers rapidly transformed into a flurry of movement as they hurried into positions, tired eyes brightened by the promises of their Queen.

The Captain drifted up alongside Palki as the Queen stared in partial disbelief at her luck. “My congratulations, Majesty. You have your mother’s charm.”

Her eyes shot over at the old Guardsman’s thin smile. “I didn’t think that’d work!” She muttered under her breath as the column consolidated around them. “I thought that someone would interrupt me and call out my bullshit, or that I’d be shot in the middle of it! I wasn’t in control for a single moment of that, I made half of that shit up! I guessed what I could and couldn’t do! I didn’t even ask what the terms of their oaths were!”

“Hardly bullshit if it’s true,” the Captain retorted. “Even more so if they already believe in it. I think your social skills, dire though they seem to you, are of immaculate talent. If anything, soldiers appreciate confidence. And you, dear Majesty, radiated nothing but confidence in that declaration.”

“Pui!” Palki made a face. “I’m barely holding it together! Luck! It’s pure luck!”

“Not at all. How do you think other monarchs felt when they first took power? You’ve demonstrated remarkable growth and initiative in a span of time that normally takes leaders decades. You might call it bullshit– but I think your mother called it politics.”

[StaolDerg]

Kesternrim was not built as a capital in the millennia ago when the city’s founding communities first began to quarry stone from the narrow gorges and valleys of the Insera Mountain range. Kesternrim was originally existed as a handful of smaller fortified towns, each owned by different and often opposing Communities, who used the high altitudes and remote locations of their settlements as easily defensible fortresses from both one another, as well as the Communities of the lower elevations.

It would take the Sanshan Empire to bury the hatchets, and the diplomacy and mediation of the first Sanshan imperial dynasty to turn a collection of heavily fortified towns into a proper Elenrian city, worthy of the wealth and glamor that the ancient cities of Pactstei or Oplia Si. In celebration of the peace’s centennial anniversary between the once-warring communities of Kesternrim, an ancient Dynasty had arranged for the then nine communities to connect their roads to one central point in the heart of the city, where these local roads and their varying standards of width and construction would all terminate at the start of a new imperial-standard road that ran through the city and down the slopes to join the rest of the empire.

The Nine Crossroads, as it had become known as in later millennia, had evolved to become the heart of the city’s leadership: here, the leaders of the communities converged and settled low-level disagreements, coordinated the expansion of the city with the city’s government, and so important was it that the municipal government was based around the square there.

It was the perfect location for proclaiming her new government, the Queen had surmised with the Captain. If nothing else, it was the one place where they were guaranteed to find the local community, and thereby begin the process of a more proper transfer of power.

There would be challenges, no doubt. The Regency could very well obstruct the Communities from trying to convene the council at the risk of throwing the country into a second civil war, but she doubted the possibility of such a direct approach. No, these were court officials: they were more likely to rely on soft factors like influencing public opinion with the news sheets and intimidating local leaders than just blockading roads.

The soldiers she’d just picked up had been totally cooperative, providing her with the full list of the Regency’s leaders, some whom she faintly recognized, others not at all. Eighty years was still a fair length of time for mindsets to have adjusted, and Palki expected that whatever she knew of these officials from the past was almost definitely outdated: thus she'd have to rely on the testimony of supporters and her own interactions.

As they began to exit the gardens for the neighborhoods, curious onlookers began to recognize the armor of the House Guard, and citizens opened windows from upper stories to gape down in astonishment as the Queen passed by.

It occurred again to her in the back of her mind that Bei Songxue could've been lying about the public opinion, but that gnawing thought was shattered as the soldiers screening her column began to shout at the growing crowd in front of them.

It was a discordant, disunified chorus of shouts that first reached her ears, and so much so that she could not tell whether it were threats that were being issued or simple warnings. Major Sipyen was a competent and organized officer, but these soldiers looked little better than rabble in many places. She could see him now, just barely, pushing to the front of the formation, spreading out his arms to attract the attention of the crowd, who quieted to hear him speak. She wished she were taller to see the faces of the crowd as she tried to peek over one of the House Guards’ shoulders, even though people were still watching her from above.

The procession had stopped, too. She spotted her Captain’s hand reaching towards her scabbard. She was getting concerned herself– years of being trained from childhood about the dangers of being stopped in the streets without a proper guard locking down the city. A stopped procession, distracted guards, boxed in in the streets by crowds…

There was a response from the crowd, and by glancing at the people towards her left and right, she saw their similarly confused expressions as they observed what she could not see. She narrowed her eyes. Perhaps– wait, was that… cheering?

“LONG LIVE! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!”

The crowd had begun to chant, throwing their arms up in jubilation as the Major waved to the soldiers behind him. Before the procession, the crowd did not so much as part as moderately scatter enough to end up crowding the soldiers and the House Guards both as they formed a sort of outer layer of celebration and commotion around them. The squeezing left her with about two-thirds of a meter between herself and the cordon of her guards, a little less room than she would’ve liked to have to move in.

But her discomfort was unfounded. In short order the House Guards clarified their position on the matter, barking sharply and pushing firmly against the eager crowd with their swords, though they kept the sheaths on to prevent accidentally harming anyone.

With some difficulty they were underway again, but as they passed the next block, Palki noted her Captain worriedly eyeing the growing crowd around them. These were a lot of people around them, and while it was good for legitimacy, Palki was herself growing wary of assassins and spies– that was the way other sovereigns had ended their reigns, after all. Plus, these people were so busy trying to get a glimpse of her that they were actively slowing down the march to the city center. If they were too slow, and word spread quickly enough– it always did– then they might not meet the city’s Elders, and instead a battalion of guns and grapeshot to escort her back up into the Citadel. And for a bird finally free of the cage, Palki was not eager to look through bars once again.

As if the gods were listening to her thoughts, there erupted a sudden commotion of shouting and ordering from behind: at first the Queen’s heart jumped and she feared the worst, only to watch the crowd part for a procession of semi-uniformed citizens carrying wooden poles roughly a third taller than a human. They fell in line some distance behind the Queen’s procession, using their sticks to redirect the crowd and give the House Guards more space.

“Subject of mine,” Akel caught the attention of one escorting soldier, “Do you recognize those following us?”

“Aye, Majesty. Those are Community militia– unarmed ‘cept for their long poles and sometimes shields. The police have hell with them any time TAKPOE tries to roll out something new.”

“Is this a common occurrence?”

The soldier shifted uncomfortably, glancing at the floor. “Every month or so, Majesty. Doesn’t always get ugly, but when it does, they bring muskets and spears, not sticks.”

“Thank you, soldier.” She turned to the Captain, who eyed the rooftops with suspicion even as she turned her head a little to listen to Palki. “It’s good to see some people still recall the old order of things.” She muttered privately.

“I doubt that the Nine-Volumes are the only main player in the way of things at this time,” the Captain contended. “The Community look to gain the most from politically positioning themselves with the sovereign: by protecting you, they can confidently declare to you that they are loyal and therefore the best candidates for royal favors: new schools, factories, amenities. Whatever the government has a hand in, they can present themselves as more trustworthy of caring for, compared to another community that was so much as a little less helpful in comparison.

Palki wrinkled her nose. “Is it so terrible to hope for genuinity in politics?”

“It is rare and a good thing, but you should not come to expect it. The first lesson of politics is that everyone wants something, and the second lesson is that they’re always going to be subtle about it before the monarch until the moment they have the best possible position to ask the favor. For example, the soldiers we commandeered perked up significantly when you offered amnesty. Did you notice that?”

“Admittedly not.”

“These soldiers are uncomfortable whenever we bring up their interactions with the Communities. Read and remember their body language: it will always speak more truthfully than what their mouths. There are things they are not proud of, and by protecting you, the soldiers here are hoping for protection by the law from the consequences of their past. If you are offered a gift, think! If you accept, what does it say about you and who you associate with? Whatever someone gives you for seemingly free, always realize that you owe a debt, and that debt comes with interest. If you refuse, who do you snub? Pay it fast, or pay with your life.”

The words stung, but Palki understood their importance as she glanced at the road ahead. The crowd had only grown larger, and she saw word had spread incredibly quickly. Out of windows along the road people hung out and stared, waving, cheering as the Queen’s procession marched past. Many joined, waving old banners of their ancestors’ Expeditions, while others offered things: food, blankets, she even spotted a carried seat out there. The Guards simply shook their heads and shouted at the crowd to be patient as they moved past towards the Nine Crossroads.

“I may not always be around to watch for you, Majesty.” The Captain gently reminded. “But while I still am at my post, I will do everything to arm you for the world of politics. You will make mistakes, and have no doubt, there will be many. Observe. Learn. Speak with total confidence, and you will never fear for disloyalty. Act with consideration, and you will learn. Listen with the intent to understand, and you will never be lost.”

“I will try to remember that.”

“Trying is to start. We must strive to achieve.

[StaolDerg]

They had expected to be intercepted. It was inevitable: this many people, the roads this badly clogged, every single rooftop to the alleys crammed with onlookers trying to get a glimpse of the rare bird named Queen Akel. The Regency would’ve absolutely accosted them had they been alone and trying to sneak through the streets, but with this many people between themselves and any opposing soldiers, it would perhaps take the entire ammunition stock of the garrison to disperse this crowd.

What surprised the Queen was how long it had taken for the Regency’s soldiers to arrive. She had passed nine different intersections, expecting to face a firing line on every street just beyond the sea of people, but the longer the absence had lasted, the more optimistic her heart became that perhaps the soldiers were unable to reach her. It was not an unreasonable assumption: the streets were so full that any soldier would have great difficulty trying to even push and intimidate their way through hundreds, if not thousands of people to even catch a glimpse of her.

But as she spotted the gate to the square of the Nine Crossroads, her heart sank as the already glacial pace they moved at now slowed to a halt.

“We’re sitting ducks out here.” She hissed. “I can see the gate! What’s the holdup?”

Confused and worried murmurs suddenly tittered through the crowd, and with the wave one of her escorting soldiers turned to her with a pursed lip. “Majesty, there are Internal Army soldiers— loyal to the Regency, we think— holding up the advance.”

Remembering the Captain’s words, Palki raised a hand and motioned for the soldiers to make way. “Let me through. I want to speak with them.” Perhaps these soldiers could be convinced to join her as well?

The Captain glanced at her, her hand firmly on her sword. “You are certain, Your Highness?” Balances and compromises. She was depending so much on the soldiers: she already owed them, and every moment she allowed them to make decisions for her she risked legitimacy, and her face.

Not really. “I am.” She could hear a bullhorn screeching at the crowd, and worried. If a riot broke out…

She needed to show that she could lead. These people in the front of the procession were citizens of the community: by the definitions of the Nine-Volume Codes, she was responsible for their stability and safety. Any of them died here, she would be blamed, and the Communities would lose confidence in her, and she needed their support to remove the Regency. She might be able to pass blame of the country’s current state onto the Regency and whatever they’d been mucking about in for the last eight decades, but here her face was in public. People would be writing down everything she said, looked at, motioned, et cetera. Her very presence here in the midst of the crowd may denote her as a popular figure, but unless she could prove herself as worthy of such respect, any power she had was purely superficial.

The soldiers made space for her, and her Guardsmen quickly rushed between them to guard the Queen’s flanks with their hands on their swords, even despite the cargo many were still carrying. The clank and rattling of their chainmail and plate armor seemed lackluster in comparison to the snap and hollow clicks of rifle bolts from the now-royal Internal Army soldiers besides them facing their former colleagues.

A firing line of black-red-gold uniforms faced her, and to the twisting of her gut, the dark bore of four cannons glared into the crowd, one directly at her. They looked like a twisting amalgamation of metal chunks and blocks compared to the cannonades she recalled in the desert. Modern machines, and ones she might’ve described as ugly machines, made for an era of ugly politics made extreme.

She was distinctly aware of the countless eyes at her front and back. A deathly silence now hung over the normally bustling square, between the distance of the soldiers’ barricade, and the vast crowd of her supporters.

“QUEEN AKEL,” the bullhorn bellowed. “THE REGENCY COUNCIL HAS HEREBY ORDERED YOUR IMMEDIATE RETURN TO THE CITADEL FOR SAFETY PURPOSES.”

The speaker was an inselni officer standing atop a makeshift barricade of overturned cart and stalls. Palki noted the distinct lack of community members alongside these soldiers– it gave her hope. It meant no one was willing to risk face against her, and that her position as Queen still meant something. Her crowd of supporters far drowned out these soldiers anyway, and if the previous encounter were any precedent, then their morale and loyalty would be just as easy to flex to her side.

“Lower your weapons,” the Queen ordered, stepping forwards. ”Too long has Elenria dragged itself along the long years of the twentieth century without proper leadership. The madness of the Takpoe Regency government ends here. As my birthright, I hereby summon the Communities to council to raise a proper royal government, and summon the Community representatives to do so.”

The officer’s expression remained unchanged. “THE REGENCY COUNCIL HAS HEREBY ORDERED YOUR IMMEDIATE RETURN TO THE CITADEL.” He repeated, now turning to face the crowd. “ALL CITIZENS ARE ORDERED TO IMMEDIATELY DISPERSE, OR FACE THE TOTAL EXTENT OF LAW AFFORDED BY THE POWER OF THE REGENCY!

There was a pit in her mouth that she’d swallowed, and it rolled with great discomfort as it traveled down her throat and into her stomach. The guns of the Regency soldiers were still pointed downrange towards her direction, but surely they wouldn’t fire on her.

She took a step forward, acting deaf to the officer’s demands. The rifles facing her wavered– soldiers blinked, some turned and looked at their superiors and fellow soldiers for example of what to do. But the Regency officer was undeterred, and shouted something at the artillery crews: she heard the snap of the guns as the crew… loaded metal cylinders into the back, not unlike the whole, one-piece cartridges used in their rifles. A breech, perhaps? But there was no way you could make a breech safely seal, her memory argued, for the engineers when she’d been a soldier had deployed similar weapons, only for the cannons to explode. There was no way these could shoot safely either, right? It’d only been eighty years.

Instinct demanded she glance towards her guards, see what they thought of the situation, but her composure ordered otherwise. She could not break her attention and risk showing herself as unsure.

The soldiers were less than fifty yards away now. Palki was distinctly aware that her own soldiers and supporters were starting to follow, and judging by the increasingly tense looks of the Regency soldiers and the sudden shouting of orders by Major Sipyan, her own soldiers had begun to turn their guns on the Regency.

“I WILL COUNT TO THREE,” the megaphone bellowed. Was there a tremble she heard in that voice? “THIS CROWD SHALL DISPERSE, OR WE SHALL FIRE.”

A bluff. She was at the very front of the crowd. If those guns did fire, they’d blow up. She took another step forward.

“ONE.”

Another step. She was Queen! Their paychecks were signed by her authority, and their communities labored under the protection and structure of laws that depended on her person. No good could come of killing her, they knew that, surely.

“TWO.”

She could hear the rack of bolts behind her, and a sudden start of shouting and jeering. People were calling the bluff. The soldiers ahead were actively wavering now, their rifle muzzles bobbing in uncertainty. Their officers were screaming something indiscernible through the growing cacophony.

Palki never heard the three.

The thin, cold air before her was split by a thousand 10-mm lead balls screaming at seven hundred meters a second, and without thought or realization, she went from seeing the barricade before her to suddenly looking upon the bricks of the road before she slammed into the floor.

Screaming erupted, and a thousand footsteps echoed around her as people began to run for their lives. In a strange shock, she waited for the crack of rifles, but the ones that reverberated through her lower horns were too loud, too close. Her mind seemed to wade through a sea of molasses from thought to thought: Had the regency soldiers advanced? But it surely had only been a couple seconds… how could they have moved so far so quickly.

There was a great weight upon her back, and she struggled to get up as it anchored her to the floor. She tried again, her arm and wing awkwardly pushing against the weight as she tried to roll onto her back through the daze. At first there was no response, and as her mind began to catch up, she realized it might be a body– But the weight suddenly ended as it began, and she felt a firm hand gently help her to her feet.

Only then, did she feel the warm liquid dripping from her face, and the horrific ringing in her ears and pounding in her head. Her vision burned– was she blind in one eye? She tried to stand on her own, only to stumble. A column rushed up beside her as a support, and only differentiated itself from the rest of her blurred surroundings as she distantly felt a hand clasp her left arm and throw it over what she was assuming was someone’s neck.

Her vision went dark, only to immediately return, still blurry. Has she moved? The surroundings no longer looked the same. Before she had still recognized the silhouette of the barricades at the center of the square, but now the light was lessened, and gravity felt stranger.

Was… she dead?

Her head buzzed angrily as she tried to look down, and she found it took great effort to do so. Looking up was almost wholly impossible, for something soft continued to obstruct her head’s movement.

Somewhere she could hear talking, quiet and indistinct. There was a sharp noise at some point, she thought, but it ended as quickly as it had begun. Her limbs had begun to take on a sort of fuzzy numbness, like a sack of grain were being poured across her palms, ankles, and all else to drown out all senses.

A bed. Her eyes snapped open though her mind was slower to catch up. She was laying down in a room somewhere, with light filtering down from a window or opening at someplace directly behind and overhead, but it was the only source otherwise.

What time was it?

Slowly she took stock of her limbs and functions.

She was breathing. That was a start.

Her hands. She moved her fingers, and then her arms and tail. With all the dexterity of a geriatric 82-year old human politician from kentucky, she dragged herself into sitting up, still blinking around confused.

The cheek of her face abruptly buzzed with a dull pain. She reached up to touch it, and it suddenly smarted, making her flinch.

“Ow.”

There was what sounded like thunder as someone– several someones, it quickly turned out– rushed into the room she was in, a great clamor following them. Among the throng of people she suddenly recognized the looming figure of the Captain and several House Guardsmen shoving their way to enforce a perimeter around the Queen, and she felt a little relief as the crowd was moved back to a more respectful distance.

She still couldn’t hear anything more than a muffled, muddy ruckus in her eardrums, and she rubbed her head. She felt thirsty, dehydrated.

Someone offered her a cup of something. Palki accepted it without much thinking or who had given it, or what it was. As she downed it, it scaled the back of her mouth with an icy, mildly burning texture, not unlike ginger, and slowly the fog in her mind began to clear away.

She was in a room, on the large bed of what she could assume was the residence of some local elder. The silk bedsheets were spotlessly clean, but rumpled, as if they’d been in storage for a very long time, and the ceiling was decorated in a mosaic of nature, with cranes and geese soaring through a green verdant valley in the embrace of unending mountains that climbed the heavens into distances unknown.

She finally recognized the clothes of the people present. Community Elders, with hardmarks so complex and resplendent in stories of long-lived and complete lives that it’d take whole volumes to summarize. They sank to their knees in deference as her sharp eyes finally cleared and focused upon them, each presenting their hands in the traditional palm and fist.

“Your Majesty.” The Captain boomed from beside her. “The Community Council of Kesternrim is convened at your order.”

“We beg for our instruction,” one Elder spoke from her spot towards the left of the room. “As we swore to your mother, eternal may she reign, we give you alone our total fealty. The actions of the Regency are inexcusable, and we implore for the right to bring the butchers of the central government before you!”

“There will be no such thing.” Akel rebuked, although she restrained her voice so as to feel more authoritative and not harsh. “The last thing we require is another civil war. By the right of my station, restrain yourselves and your warriors. Send out messengers to spread the word that a meeting of the Communities is in order: I am released from my involuntary restraint within the Citadel, and I hereby suspend the authority of the Regency the powers bestowed upon them some eighty-so years ago. Inform all of the Regency’s magistrates and soldiers, from the lowliest bookkeepers to the Council itself– I am returned, and I demand their total and sole allegiance once more. Give me thus, and for all except the head of the snake, their trespasses upon my authority and laws are overlooked, if not forgiven.”

“As Your Majesty wills it!” The whole room roared, and two dozen heads bowed.

---

Across Elenria, the chirp of telegraphs to the hurried footsteps of postmen and messengers alike began to echo across the communication lines of every ministry and department. From the village to the cities, people stared in utter shock as the messengers from Kesternrim bellowed the word and displayed the written orders signed by Queen Akel, her empirical seal emblazoned upon the signature of every single one.

In Aundui Yio, the Regency’s own soldiers stared blankly at first at the information, not daring to believe. Only as word and confirmation trickled in by passing days did their shock slowly transform to scheming, and their appetite for a steady pay readily evolved into an ambition for power and better positions in a new government that a former puppet of the Regency could never satisfy.

In the end, the seven-thirty train bound from Aundui Yio to the base settlements of Kesternrim was emptied of its original passengers, and a hundred people, formerly the most foremost bases of power in Elenria, were marched abroad and forced to kneel, Royalist and Purist Regency faction alike, before the ancient throne of Elenria by the soldiers who had formerly served under them. Whether it was ambition or fear that drove the actions of the soldiery, Queen Akel would award these soldiers with the generosity of departing to rejoin their garrisons without consequence, for the time being.

A cold day on the 16th of Decallien marked the return of the Elenrian monarch to the central government, as over two thousand delegates from every single community in the country convened to ratify the total dismantlement of the Regency government. But though the Regency’s members still sat at the side of the Throne room at the mercy of the House Guard, not all members of the communities had arrived, and even more worryingly, not every military command had even reported in.

With deliberation, Palki had finally chosen to temporarily pardon the Regency Council, assimilating them into her royal cabinet. It was not ideal, and she still hadn't even met them properly, but she needed them, if nothing else for knowledge of their prior actions.

Nevertheless, she'd been reminded by ecstatic crowds and cheering officers, she was restored. After eighty years, Queen Akel the II was a figurehead, no more.