The flight from Senkin’s capital to the new border with the Green Council was a short one. The Council’s troops were still barely over the border into Senkin, but Alari flew on wings conjured by the Pact Spirit of Gallagrin giving her speed beyond the fastest wind in the sky.

“You could rival Haldraxan for mastery of the air,” Haldri said. Alari held her nemesis in her arms, the weight of the former queen of Paxmer and effortless burden to bear thanks to the strength Gallagrin granted her. “Odd that Gallagrin monarchs don’t routinely take the field.”

“Paxmer has always been our rival, but the other realms we share a border with have not always been our friends,” Alari said. “Committing the monarch’s might to any one struggle meant losing it to stand against the rest of the wolves. The tactically minded rulers were aware of that.”

“And the rest?” Haldri asked. The roar of the wind should have made speaking impossible but Alari’s magic shielded them from the worst of its effects.

“Cowards in some cases, or concerned about attacks closer to home in others,” Alari said. “As you saw, contesting a monarch’s reign weakens them greatly and if the monarch dies while weakened they claim is automatically forfeit.”

“So if anyone lays claim to your throne at this moment?” Haldri asked, looking at the hard ground that lay far below them.

“Then we die,” Alari said.

“You need to work on your lies,” Haldri said. “I know you too well now to be taken in as I was before.”

Alari smiled. The bond she shared with the Gallagrin was strong enough to make any counterclaims difficult to mount and the only people with a strong enough case were being held under Dae’s watchful eye. Alari didn’t want to let herself wipe out the Gallagrin Council of Nobles, but if they made another play her throne, she’d be more than forgiving if Dae did the work for her. And Dae would absolutely see anyone who tried for the throne buried in a deep and forgotten grave long before it became an issue to trouble Alari.

“We didn’t lie to you before,” Alari said, thinking back to the delicate and precise choices she’d made during her discussions with Haldri before the rule of Paxmer was changed.

“Of course you did,” Haldri said. “You made me believe you were a rage stricken youngster. Weak and foolish with hurt pride and lost love. You invited me to attack you knowing just how far I would overextend myself.”

“We were rage stricken,” Alari said. “That was no lie.”

Her old rage wasn’t forgotten. Even considering it made her picture dropping Haldri to the the stones below and the small joy that might entail. Once she wouldn’t have hesitated but time changes all things, even implacable fury.

“But you were not lost in it,” Haldri said. “You were not so off balance that you were blinded by that rage then, so I doubt you are quite what you appear to be at the moment either.”

“And how do we appear now?” Alari asked.

“You act as though you are terrified of the change you’ve made in the world,” Haldri said. “To the monarchs of the realms your flight here will appear as the action of someone desperate to maintain control and undo the damage they caused when I was removed from my throne.”

“But things appear differently to you?” Alari asked, hiding a smile. Haldri was old enough to be Alari’s mother, and while Alari could never forgive the former queen of Paxmer for the woman she’d been, there was a certain perverse satisfaction in having someone as accomplished as the old Dragon Queen recognize what Alari was truly capable of.

Where Dae offered support, Haldri offered a challenge. Dae would keep Alari from falling, would shield Alari from the gaps in her plan and take the blows Alari failed to see. Haldri would do nothing of the sort. She would push Alari over the edge in the blink of an eye and strike any fatal blows she could see a clear path to inflict.

Or she would have at one time.

In the intervening month since Haldri was deposed, Alari had seen a change settle over the former queen. She wasn’t friendly, she wasn’t trustworthy, but there was a respect that had grown between the two women. They both knew the weight of a crown of the realms and, unlike any monarchs before them in history, they’d been able to speak of the toll that burden extracted.

“You are young enough to play into people’s misperceptions of youth,” Haldri said. “The panic in you which the rulers of the realms see clouds their vision of the plans you’ve been working on for the last month, just as the control they see you scrambling to attain obscures the influence that you already wield.”

“Do you really think we are so powerful as that?” Alari asked as they flew into the wispy haze of a cloudbank. In their wake, the water vapor coalesced in the first raindrops of the storm the cloud held.

“Of course not,” Haldri said. “You’re far more powerful, but they don’t know that do they?”

“We should find it worrisome that our greatest enemy flatters us so,” Alari said.

“It’s not flattery though, is it?” Haldri asked.

“No, though we cannot tell if your words are meant as a warning or an inducement to hubris?” Alari said.

“And that is why they are true,” Haldri said.

By speaking with Haldri, Alari believed she was opening the former queen up to new ideas and new values. It was a tremendously prideful thing to conceive of – changing the mind of another was difficult enough, changing their soul was somewhere on the other side of impossible – and any evidence that it was working had to be weighed against Haldri’s skills at deception. Alari tried to quell her ego by telling herself that it was a game she and Haldri were playing. An intricate, deadly game, just as they had played before, but where the stakes had once been the fate of realms, in this struggle it was Haldri’s chance at a return to power (and Alari’s requisite downfall to allow that happen) against the redemption of a single greed and hatred tarnished soul.

On Haldri’s side, all she had to do was trick Alari into revealing the right moment of weakness. Even if Haldri couldn’t worm a path free of her confinement, even if she died in the process of destroying Alari, revenge would still be achieved and the broken pride of a queen satisfied. To reach that point though, she needed to make Alari trust her, and that meant behaving as though she could be trusted for as long as it took.

The two flew on together, passing so quickly over Senkin’s lands, that neither could make out many of the details below them. Vast croplands were shot through with streams and small forests before running into low hills and occasional deep valleys before returning to more croplands. Individual dwellings were gone in the blink of an eye, and even whole towns and cities passed from one edge of the horizon to the other without time to observe their unique character.

“You said we are flying to the battlefront,” Haldri said. “And not the Green Council directly?”

“The battlefront is where lives will be lost,” Alari said angling them down out of the clouds.

“Or are being lost,” Hadri said. “We have arrived too late it appears.”

Below them, a massive wall of yellow fog reached up to the sky. In front of the wall, on the Senkin side, a furious struggle was underway. What had once been a farming village was a burning collection of dwellings around which a sizeable troop of Senkin soldiers fought to keep the Green Council forces from advancing

Here and there around the battlefield, huge seeds, as a tall a human, were scattered. Most were blackened and burned but a few were billowing forth a yellow smoke which matched the wall  guarding the Green Council’s new border.

The Senkin army was rallying to destroy the smoking seeds but towering plant creatures, the Green Council’s Warstriders, were fighting them off.

Alari and Haldri watched as the Senkin army assaulted the Warstriders with blasts of fire and javelins of light. Despite the lack of a proper keep for shelter and protection, the Senkin were making a desperate attempt to defend their realm and had marshalled an impressively large force to halt the Green Council’s advance.

Unlike the battle which Captain Suncourt had described, the troops that had rallied to front weren’t the undisciplined force that had been demoted to guarding a border that was never contested. The massed Senkin troops moved with precision and unity, with the casters firing a steady stream of blinding attacks at the Green Council’s Warstriders while the shield guards fended off the attacks of the massive combat monsters as best they could.

Where the Senkin forces held the advantage in numbers though, the Green Council had them overmatched in terms of raw power.

Flares of solar fire burned through the Warstriders, but no matter where the flares hit, the Warstriders didn’t falter. New vines grew to file the holes and new energy coursed through them as the giant monster hammered at the shields erected to provide shelter to the increasingly overwhelmed Senkin forces.

Each Warbringer fought alone, guarding up to half a dozen of the yellow fog seeds. They couldn’t protect all of the seeds, but neither could the Senkin shield guards protect all of their comrades. With each shield a Warbringer shattered, and each moment that a seed got to pump out more of the deadly yellow fog, the Senkin’s lost more people and more ground.

“They should retreat,” Haldri said. “No matter how much they burn the plant monsters the Senkin can’t hold their lines together.”

“We agree,” Alari said. “The situation is untenable from their perspective. They cannot flee however.”

“Why ever not?” Haldri asked.

“They were making for a keep that is now lost behind the fog curtain,” Alari said. “There is nowhere else close enough for them to flee to. The Warstriders are faster than they look. If the Senkin break ranks to retreat they will be destroyed before they make it to the next river bank.”

“You need to think like a Paxmer,” Haldri said. “Not all of the troops are equal in worth and the Senkin stand to lose the entire army they have marshalled if they do not outdistance their attackers.”

“So you would have the commanders expend the weaker forces in a delaying action while the others escaped?” Alari asked.

“There are no pretty choices in war,” Haldri said.

“It would seem the Senkin agree with you,” Alari said. “Look at how their forces are being repositioned.”

Below them the Senkin army was executing a defensive retreat, ordering their forces into a wedge that fell back as the Warstriders pushed forward and more of the fog seeds were flung forward from behind the wall of yellow smoke.

“It’s a poor strategy,” Alari said.

“Only because they executed it too late and without sufficient boldness,” Haldri said.

“No, it’s wasteful,” Alari said. “Look, the troops that are being expended to cover the rear guard are too weak to provide any meaningful resistance to the Warstriders. The Senkin should have used their best troops to make sure the rest could escape safely.”

“But then they would be crippled for future battles,” Haldri said.

“Then they need to make their troops better,” Alari said. “Except not today.”

“You cannot negotiate a ceasefire to this rout,” Haldri said. “The Green Council has won and they know it. They will listen to none of your pretty words of peace.”

“We know,” Alari said. “That’s why we’re going to speak to them in terms that they will  understand.”

With that she pulled Haldri in close and spun into a steep dive, descending towards the battlefield like a comet wreathed in sapphire light.

Jyl wasn’t surprised that her Queen intended to fly to the front lines and try to hold off the war that was beginning to rage out of control. She wasn’t surprised that Alari was bringing Haldri with her either. The Queen of Paxmer was a cunning old serpent and someone Alari was wise to never let stray for her sight too long. What did surprise, and aggravate, Jyl was that Alari had flown to the front lines and left the rest of her entourage behind.

“Why are we still here?” Jaan asked. “I came along on this mad excursion to act as a liason with the Lafli contacts on the Green Council, not to rot in a Senkin jail while we waited for the country to be overrun.”

“You came along because our Queen ordered you to,” Jyl said, forcing herself not to throttle her sister.

“Also, these accommodations are far from a jail cell,” Ren said. “Her Majesty Senkin hasn’t yet decided what to do with us and until she does I suspect we’ll enjoy a suitably posh existence.”

“Is that all it takes to woo you to their side Telli?” Jaan asked. “A little gold on the trim, some nicely burnished wood on the mantle, and your loyalty is bought?”

She brushed her hand along a finely worked silk throw pillow embroidered with the Senkin crest of a firebird rising to catch the sun in its wings. Jyl frowned. Of course her sister wasn’t impressed by the trappings of wealth and power, she’d been coddled and pampered her whole life.

“Well there are these tasty little hor d’oeuvres too,” Ren said. “Hard to find fault with a realm that makes such ingenious use of simple garden vegetables and pate.”

“And yet it makes such poor use of its troops, sending them into battle against a force they cannot beat,” Jaan said. “The Queen has abandoned us on the losing side. If we stay here, our necks will grace the chopping block before this war is done.”

“If you try to disobey Her Majesty, your neck will grace my chopping block before today is done,” Jyl said. Their position was tenuous enough with the loss of the Queen, any further defections from the ranks and they’d lose what little hope they had of negotiating a truce on Senkin’s side of the fight.

“As if you would, or could, defeat me,” Jaan said. “No, you will be the first to run away. Just like you’ve always done.”

Jyl felt a mad rush of heart blaze within her. A thousand unresolved fights and arguments surged to the foreground. When she was younger that anger would have swept away all reason and restraint. As children, Jyl and Jaan had waged epic battles against each other over the smallest of slights. Jyl didn’t remember winning many of those fights, but she couldn’t claim to have lost many of them either. When fighting your twin over petty issues fueled by raw emotions, there was little in the manner of victory to be secured. Such battles were concerned primarily with hurting the other and each of them were far too good at that.

“And you will stay huddled, too terrified of the powerful people around you to ever change anything unless they let you,” Jyl said. As much as Jaan’s words had cut into her, Jyl’s world hit the same sort of hidden fears and shames that lurked in Jaan’s heart. Even with all their armor against each other, no one could strike either as deeply as family could.

“And I will make no choice at all, as I apparently should have done the last time I thought the Queen needed my aid,” Ren said. “And we will all be true to our natures and the whole world will come to ruin and misery and pain because we are no more than beasts with delusions of free will.”

Ren punctuated each declaration as a player on the Grand Stage of Gallagrin would, full of overwrought emotion and sweeping gestures so the people in the cheap seats could still guess as to what the course of the action was. As he finished speaking he collapsed over the side of one of the couches landing face down in a cushion.

“Or,” he added in a conspiratorial tone that was muffled by the fact that he wasn’t looking up from the cushion his face was buried in, “we could step up and play the game before us.”

Jaan looked like Ren’s uninvited theatrics had put her on her last nerve. As much as she wanted to Jyl couldn’t entirely fault her sister for that. They weren’t faced with a situation where simple platitudes and a clever spirit would see them through. When the realms moved, the people caught between them inevitably got ground up. Jyl didn’t mind that. As a Queen’s Guard it was her duty to weather that kind of grinding. She just wished there was a purpose to it beyond allowing Alari to follow whatever mad vision possessed her. Also, she had a feeling that Dae was going to murder her in a new and profoundly imaginative manner for allowing Alari to venture off into extreme danger, not alone, but with her greatest enemy beside her.

“I have to confess, I don’t understand why the Queen left us behind at all,” Undine said. The junior Queen’s Guard spoke in a soft voice which but his question was one that roared loudly in everyone’s heart.

“She will have a better chance at diplomacy if she’s alone,” Jyl said, offering her guess as to Alari’s motivations.

“She doesn’t trust us,” Jaan said. “Too many conflicting agendas, too many unknowns. We represent complexity when she needs to certainty and simplicity.”

Jyl was sure that wasn’t right, but she could see why Jaan would assume it was. The eyes of the Lafli family always measured the trustworthiness of any potential ally or partner. For those outside the family, the judgment, in every case, resolved around when a betrayal would occur and who would be the first to break faith. With a strong partner it was assumed that they would betray you the first moment it was profitable to. With a weak ally it was assumed that a suitable occasion would arise when their help would no longer be required and the relationship could be mined for the fullness of its potential value.

Alliances within the family were fraught with similar calculations of betrayal but they were played out on a longer scale and for more critical goals.

Jyl had spent the early years of her life stewing in the cauldron of her family’s toxic expectations and understandings. She’d spent the years since trying to unlearn those lessons after discovering that they separated her from the people in her life that she truly valued. To some extent she’d been successful in changing her view of the world, so she knew Jaan’s argument was wrong, but she hadn’t come far enough that she could place why.

“I think perhaps she’s hoping to hold back,” Ren said and Jyl saw what he meant. Between herself, Jaan, Undine and Ren, they presented a concentrated amount of force that even a small army of another realm would be hard pressed to match. With such a squad to call upon and add to whichever army she chose, Alari would be that much more tempted to determine the course of the battle directly through arms rather than negotiating terms acceptable to both sides.

“Hold back? By flying into danger?” Jaan said. “That’s not what holding back looks like in any sane ruler.”

“And yet it is what our Queen is known for,” Ren said.

“What do you mean?” Jyl asked, intrigued by Ren’s theory though she couldn’t fit the pieces together quite properly.

“I mean that if you observe the pattern of our Queen’s choices over her life, she has only rarely used the full extent of the power available to her,” Ren said.

“She raised half the realm to fight against the half that was loyal to the crown,” Jaan said. “How is that refusing to use the full power she could call on?”

“Her father presents a special case I admit, but even there; what do you know of her battles?” Ren asked.

“That she was saved by the alliance with the Paxmer prince,” Jaan said.

“And did you learn that from your family?” Ren asked, amusement lighting his lips into a smile like a bear trap.

“It is common knowledge,” Jaan said, her pride ruffled at the insinuation that her view of history was not the inarguably correct one.

“Not so common outside a narrow circle of those most loyal the Butcher King,” Ren said. “If you study Queen Alari’s battles though what you observe is that many of them occurred days or weeks after her forces were in place.”

“She was afraid to commit to action even then?” Jaan said. “How did she ever win?”

“She won because she wasn’t afraid,” Ren said. “She focused the timing of each battle in order to maximize the impact her forces had on her father’s armies while minimizing the damage done to the populace or the towns they lived in.”

“She delayed to spare the lives of those who rallied against her,” Jaan said. “It must have been Paxmer’s influence that changed her fortunes.”

“Halrek of Paxmer did change Alari’s plan for the war, and he did speed it to the final battle, that is true,” Ren said. “But the ending was a foregone conclusion by the time he joined her ranks.”

“Then why would she need him?” Jaan asked.

“And why would she marry him?” Jyl added. From everything she knew, Alari and Dae had been madly in love with each other from well before the Unification War erupted. Whether they’d ever let the other know that was something Jyl was uncertain of, but she’d always wondered how Alari wound up with a sack of scum like Halrek when she had such a better option available to her. The pretty stories of a foreign prince rescuing the brave native princess had always seemed out of character even before Jyl got to know what Alari was really like.

“Marriage to Halrek of Paxmer ended the threat on Gallagrin’s southern border,” Ren said. “It allowed Alari to conclude the war against her father easily a year sooner than she would have had she been required to fight him and defend the realm at the same time.”

“A year earlier,” Jyl said. “That’s a year that Gallagrin got to start rebuilding rather than continuing to tear itself down.”

“And a year when we weren’t murdering each other any more,” Undine said.

“Yes, and I believe that took the realms more by surprise than the marriage between Gallagrin and Paxmer,” Ren said.

“You believe the other realms were planning to join Paxmer in pillaging us?” Jaan asked.

“No,” Ren said. “Or, well, yes, because the realms are a terrible place filled with terrible people. And also good people. Who are sometimes terrible people as well. And the terrible ones are sometimes good. And…what was I saying?”

“Pillaging,” Jyl said, trying to decide how much of the quasi-Duke of Tel’s manners were real and how much they were an affectation to keep people interested in his ideas, thereby preventing a return to the near lethal atmosphere that sprang up whenever Jyl spoke to her sister for longer than ten seconds at a time.

“Ah yes, pillaging. Pillaging wasn’t the problem,” Ren said. “Realms love a good border pillage but it’s very temporary wealth and so no one is too disturbed when is proves to be transient. The problem was we stopped killing ourselves, and that’s something that’s never happened before in the wake of a violent change of the monarchy.”

“Once the war was done, why would we continue killing each other?” Jaan asked.

“I’m not sure,” Ren said. “You’ll have to ask all of the monarchs who gained their thrones through violence why they chosen to execute the losing side. It’s more or less unheard of to spare them as Queen Alari did.”

Jaan looked disturbed at the thought, which gave Jyl a bubble of unkind happiness right in the center of her chest.

“By all rights, you and I and hundreds of other nobles should be sharing the same shallow, unmarked grave somewhere,” Ren said. “But our Queen likes to do things differently than one would expect, which I am quite grateful for. Another queen might not be so forgiving.”

On that cheerful note, there came a knocking on the outer door to their suite and a page appeared with an official summons.

“Queen Senkin wishes to meet with the Gallagrin delegation once more to discuss your fate.”

Alari was pleased with the reaction her party provoked when the exited the Royal Sky Carriage in Senkladel, the capital of the Senkin realm. There was a fantastic flurry of activity as news of their arrival had somehow spread ahead of the fastest Wind Steeds.

“This is most unusual…” Senkin’s Chief Seneschal started to say as Jyl exited the carriage clothed in royal finery but not Pact armor. Alari followed immediately behind her Guard and made it down to the platform before anyone understood who they stood before.

“We would speak with Senkin at their earliest convenience,” Alari said, meeting the Senschal’s gaze with a pleasant smile. The Senschal’s expression rapidly melted from annoyance to pure terror.

Alari didn’t blame the woman. The unannounced arrival of a reigning monarch at the court of another monarch was unprecedented in the history of the Blessed Realms. The Senschal couldn’t be sure if this was the diplomatic event of a lifetime or the opening of a new front in the war which was sweeping up the realms. In a sense it was both, which was why Alari kept her instructions simple and brief.

“Who should I say…” the Seneschal began before the absurdity of the question silenced her. Alari doubted that her face would be recognizable by the majority of Senkin’s populace but somehow as highly placed as the person responsible for greeting new arrivals on the Senkin Royal Air Platform would be familiar with the royalty of the realms and their immediate families via portraiture and glamour facades.

“You may inform Senkin that Gallagrin and Haldri of Paxmer wish to enter discussions with Senkin on the matter of the the Green Council,” Alari said.

The Seneschal absorbed that and twitched as Alari finished, jerking her head to the Gallagrin Royal Carriage from which Haldri was exiting as though prompted.

Alari knew that Haldri was a dangerous choice for an ally. The former Queen of Paxmer was not well loved by any of the other realms. Worse, she still had every reason to hate Alari, and the loss of her realm was recent enough that hope still had to live within Haldri’s heart that she could somehow win it back.

When the former Queen of Paxmer stepped down onto the arrival platform though, she did so without theatrics, instead quietly walking to stand beside and slightly behind Alari in the position a favored advisor would take.

The rest of Alari’s retinue spilled from the confines of the large carriage, forming a small diplomatic strike force. That the two Queen’s Guards could easily overwhelm the entire defensive guard that was stationed on the platform was something neither Alari nor Haldri missed. Under normal circumstances that was a perfectly understandable state of affairs. With the onset of a war though, security should have been tighter. Unless Senkin did not believe that the Green Council posed a real threat to them.

“”I will inform Her Majesty the Queen of Senkin at once,” the Seneschal said and scurried off, leaving the Gallagrin party without oversite or supervision. That was also a testament of sorts. No one rose to the position of Chief Seneschal while being easily flustered. Not in Gallagrin or Paxmer at any rate.

Alari had never made as in-depth a study of her neighboring realms as she might have. There were simply too many problems with her own to leave her with the time to do so. Her instinct towards expediting involvement in the Senkin / Green Council conflict was driven less by her knowledge of her neighboring realms and more from an awareness of the shifting geopolitical landscape of the Blessed Realms as a whole.

Haldri maintained that their conflict had set the world out of balance. Alari didn’t believe that, but only because, to her eyes, the world had never been in balance. Not even before dreams took the Sleeping Gods from them.

History spoke of wars and border skirmishes between the realms. The wars were brought to an end by treaties between the gods. Fighting along the borders never ended though, with each realm slowly nibbling into its neighbors or being pruned back as the tide of leadership and strength for each realm ebbed and flowed.

And there was the Ocean Blue.

No Sleeping God had ever claimed dominion over the ocean’s waves and yet so much lay beyond the farthest horizon anyone from the realm could see.

With Paxmer’s fall, the Sunlost Isles were once again the masters of the Far Waters. The voyages were incredibly dangerous, with the lands beyond the Blessed Realms holding no fixed position to one another, but the rewards were a siren’s call for the courageous and foolhardy. Precious metals, rare spices, medicines of unparalleled potency, and magics the like of which the realms had never seen.

The Sleeping Gods had forbidden voyages to the Far Waters, but even during their reign that rule had been a loosely observed one. Alari imagined her descendants would one day tread those distant shores, but that was only going to happen if she could prevent the Realms from tearing themselves back to ruin and savagery.

“Should we wait in the carriage?” Jyl asked. She was scanning the platform they’d landed on and all of the vantage points around it, no doubt concerned by the variety of positions an assault could come from.

“That would reassure Senkin,” Alari said. “But that is not why we are here.”

She started to march to the door the Senschal had fled through.

“Shall we barge in on her directly?” Haldri asked.

“No, we shall visit the city,” Alari asked. “We wish to see how Senkin readies itself.”

It was a calculated move. Senkin’s Queen wouldn’t want Alari wandering around in the capital collecting intelligence for too long but also couldn’t afford to anger a potential ally. If the Queen of Senkin had planned to have a productive day of meetings with her staff, those plans were going to come tumbling down in flames. Alari didn’t necessarily want to sabotage Senkin’s war efforts, but she felt like the sooner she understood them the better it would be for everyone.

The Queen of Senkin apparently thought along similar lines. Before Alari’s party could reach the exit from the sky platform, one of the Senkin Royal Guard approached them.

“Your Majesty,” he said. “I see that Captain Suncourt has delivered her message to you and produced exceptional results. I am General Skybright Phillip, and I am to escort you to Her Majesty Marie the Queen of Senkin’s reception chamber.”

General Skybright led the party, including Captain Suncourt Corrine, into a large receiving room similar to the one Alari used for greeting official guests in Highcrest. The room was neither warm, nor comfortable, nor intimate. Polished marble seats were colored by the stained glass of the windows that bathed the room in a rainbow of light centered on the central dias where the Queen of Senkin awaited them with her advisors flanking her.

Wisely, in Alari’s view, there was also nearly a hundred Royal Senkin Guards arranged around the edges of the room. As a sitting monarch, the Queen of Senkin would be difficult to kill, but there was little reason to allow foreign visitors to even make the attempt.

“We welcome you to our realm, Gallagrin,” the Queen of Senkin said. “Your arrival was not anticipated or announced.”

Marie Senkin had sat upon her through since Alari’s grandmother had ruled Gallagrin. From all of the reports Alari had read the two women had gotten along well. Relations at the time between Senkin and Gallagrin were in a cool period due to some bad contracts between minor nobles on the two sides. Together Marie and Alari’s grandmother had sorted out the mess and returned the two countries to a stable and friendly footing.

The early part of King Sathe’s rule had seen a continuation of those policies but as the Butcher King descended into madness the warm relations the two realms enjoyed chilled until they froze. The lack of support from outside realms had been one of the contributing factors to Alari’s eventual victory, but in the wake of King Sathe’s overthrow Alari had found that her neighbors were still wary of connections with Gallagrin.

It had taken seven years, and a fair amount of gold, to build a new foundation for trust between the realms. Those were seven years Alari refused to toss away.

“We have heard your messenger’s words and we recognize how dire the situation is,” Alari said.

“As yet we face nothing more than a persistent foe at our borders,” Marie said. “A situation not unlike one Gallagrin struggled with until recently.”

Alari heard a faint huff of laughter from behind her. Haldri.

“You face a very different foe than the one Gallagrin did,” Haldri said, speaking out of turn and directly addressing Marie Senkin as though speaking from one monarch to another.

The Senkin Queen’s eyes took on a hard set.

“My advisor speaks the truth,” Alari said, before the Queen of Senkin could object. “Gallagrin and Paxmer skirmished with each other since since the reign of the Sleeping Gods. We knew each other’s strengths and limitations and weaknesses. Between Senkin and the Green Council there has been only peace for centuries. You are not ready for this war, and you never should be.”

“You came here in such haste to tell us this?” Marie asked.

“We came here with haste to listen and observe,” Alari said. “Your Captain Suncourt provided testimony to the start of the conflict. We wish a clearer view of the conflict so that we may help mediate a resolution, or failing that, joining cause with the aggrieved side.”

“This conflict is of the Green Council’s doing,” Marie said. “We have been assaulted and our borders violated. There will be no mediation until redress if made for those offenses. Had we need of Gallagrin’s forces to defend our border, that is the word we would have sent.”

Alari forced herself not to sigh and not to take offense. Senkin’s description of the conflict was like listening to her Inner Lords, the one’s who’s castles defended no borders and who rarely saw the need to draw arms. They, like the Queen, were unused to seeing the depths of violence the Mindful Races could sink to and were quick to deny evidence that any serious problems were occurring. As with them, Alari believed the answer to Senkin’s Queen had to come from a place of calm and patience.

“In times past those forces would have been lent willingly and swiftly,” Alari said. “Even today, there are bonds of friendship between our nobles that might pull some number of Gallagrin’s northern lords across your border to aid their partners and allies.”

She needed Senkin’s Queen to remember, in spite of the chaos of the day, that in Gallagrin she was dealing with a potential ally and not another complication to be resolved and discarded.

“Yes,” Marie said, memories of happier times flickering across the back of her eyes. “We may have aid whether we would call for it or not. As seems to be the case here.”

“If your court could provide us with the testimony and details that we require, we will be in the best position possible to intervene with the Green Council and work out the redresses which need to be made.” Alari didn’t want to promise anything specific until she’d heard the testimony of both of the realms, but she knew that for the war to end and not simply lie fallow waiting to blaze up again when it was stoked, there would need to be some restitution made by at least one of the parties involved.

“That testimony and evidence are being assembled now.” Marie said. “It’s possible that we will have resolved the threat the Green Council presents before the operation is complete however.”

As though in direct punishment for tempting fate, General Skybright reappeared in the room.

“Your Majesty, a message has arrived from the border,” he said. “The invasion is pressing forward and none of our troops can stand against them!”

“Senkin, in kindness, please expedite that testimony collection,” Alari said. “While that is being done, we will journey to the invasion’s front and speak with the forces there.”

“Our forces?” Marie asked.

“And the Green Council forces,” Alari said. “This invasion needs to end today!”

The fire blasted hellscape that surrounded Dae was only a vision. She knew that, but the memory was so strong and clear it wiped the rest of her senses away. The air of Highcrest Castle with its spring time medley of scents from the Royal Gardens was lost to the choking stench of ash. The warmth of mid-day was replaced by an oven-hot wave of residual heat. In an instant, the memory fruit had transported Dae from Gallagrin to one of the circles of Hell.

Except the tableau she looked out on wasn’t Hell. She stood within the Blessed Realms still. Within the Green Council’s lands, but close to the border.

She looked around and saw a broad river as the only unburnt feature of the land around for hundreds of yards in any direction.

“What happened here?” She didn’t expect an answer, but in response to her words the memory shifted. In a blur she flew forward, racing towards the distant treeline where flames still raged.

The Senkin troops at the fire front noticed her and shot her down with a lance of solar fire. As she tumbled from the sky, she saw them conjuring more flame to burn the forest back from the river’s edge.

Before she hit the ground her view shifted again, and she saw the scouting bird she’d been sharing memories with finish its plummet. From her new vantage point, she reasoned that she’d shifted into the memories of a creature that was built close to the ground. Unlike the scouting bird though, this was a creature who had been present when the fires began. It had run when the men wielding the power of the sun came, but not fast enough to clear the flames.

The memory fruit only carried a small portion of the creature’s pain but the burns were still agonizing. It tried to scamper farther away, but the effort of moving forced a hoarse cry from the creature’s throat.

It didn’t see the solar lance that ended its life, but the next set of memories Dae was shunted into had a full view of the small, furry creatures blazing demise.

These memories weren’t like the others though. They had a depth and richness the simple forest animals had lacked.

“What have they done?” a young girl asked. With the words came a flood of understanding.

The animals hadn’t understood the destruction they were seeing on anything more than a primal level. Iana, the girl whose memories Dae was sharing, knew exactly what she was witnessing though.

The Senkins were destroying the forest around the river in order to reduce the Green Council’s ability to control the flow of the waters. There had been disputes over the river for years, but they were small matters settled by people far outside of Iana’s sphere of influence.

Apparently those people hadn’t settled things quite so well as they believed though.

The sick terror that rose in Iana’s belly had nothing to do with the violation of the Green Council’s borders or the loss of their water rights. Those were trivial matters.  What mattered was the area that the Senkin’s had burned and the precious treasure that it held.

Iana strode forward and Dae felt a staggering bifurcation of the memory. Still wholly in its grip, Dae felt Iana bring massive limbs to motion as she crashed across the hellscape. At the same time though she had the strongest sense that Iana’s body was motionless, floating in darkness and security.

Other memories rose, driving that awareness from Dae’s mind.

The Creche.

Iana’s memories were focused on that one concept. She moved her Warbringer at a run, but she was already far too late.

More memories flooded into Dae until she gasped and snapped back to the present, and her own view of it.

“What did you see?” Faen asked. Worry was carved into the deep creases in his forehead and Dae was glad that only the two of them were present in the room.

“The Senkins started the war,” she said. “We have to speak to the Council’s ambassador.”

“Wait, answer me this, why didn’t I throw you out of the training corp the first week you were in?” Faen asked, his eyes searching hers, looking for signs of the woman he knew.

Dae blinked, and then frowned.

“You never threatened to throw me out, not the first week or ever,” Dae said. “You did threaten to throw out Jacyn Kedomal though and I stood up for them as I recall.”

Faen released the breath he’d been holding and relaxed.

“That you did,” he said. “So the memory fruit hasn’t corrupted your mind?”

“If it did, it’s a more powerful agent than a simple question like that can dig up,” Dae said. “Tell me if I start behaving strangely though.”

“Ok,” Faen said. “If you do anything sensible or calm in the next day or so, I’ll know we have a doppleganger on our hands and act accordingly.”

“I should have tried harder to get thrown out of training,” Dae said.

Out in the receiving hall, Gala was waiting for their return with a nervous rustling of their leaves.

“I’ve seen the memory fruit,” Dae said without preamble, forgoing formal speech in favor of dealing directly with the problem at hand. “They burned them all didn’t they?”

“Yes,” Gala said. “We didn’t find any alive. The lucky ones were reduced to ash. The others…the others we have kept preserved as proof of the crime against us.”

“Who was burned?” Faen asked.

“A creche of Forest People young,” Dae said. “The Senkins came to clear the forest away from the river that flows from the Green Council to Senkin. In the process, they burned a huge swath of forest which included a nursery where the next generation of dryads, green shamblers and others Forest People were growing.”

“They burned children?” Faen asked, his eyes narrowed in disbelief as he tried to process the claim.

“And their caretakers,” Gala said. “Elves and dwarves lost their lives in the creche too.”

“Where were these creches?” Faen asked.

“They planted them in hollows beneath earth,” Dae said. “The dwarves made the spaces and their elven parents brought them nutrients and tended to the younglings themselves. They were trapped in the creche when the Senkin fires swept over them.”

“I don’t understand, if they were embedded in the earth, how could fire touch them? And could the Senkins even have known they were there?” Faen asked.

“It doesn’t matter whether their deaths were intentional or not,” Gala said. “Their deaths are a reality in either case.”

“The fires got to them through the root structure of the forest,” Dae said. “The Senkin’s weren’t using any natural form of fire. The solar flares they burned the forest with spread down through the roots of the trees and burst into the Creche from a thousand different points. Nothing they tried could put it out until everything it touched burned to ash.”

“Sleeping Gods, why would they do that?” Faen asked.

“They want our the waters of our realm that flow into theirs and they no longer see a need to abide by the treaties signed before the Sleeping Gods,” Gala said.

Dae felt a wave of rage rise up from her heart in echo of Gala’s words. The memories were too new and too raw for her to deny the feelings that Senkin needed to burn just as it had burned the Green Council. The sheer force of her anger gave her pause though. The memory fruit had been calibrated to make an impact on the person who consumed it. The Council had shared the memories of a young girl and that alone was enough to make Dae suspicious.

Why was a young human aware of what had happened? Why did the Council have children piloting their Warbringers? Most of all though, why give her a child’s eye view of the situation rather than an adult’s?

Iana had a lot of power, but the lens she saw the world through was a simple one. There was good, there was evil and there was very little in between them. Coupled to that was a child’s well of raw emotion. At least half the rage that Dae felt was an empathic reaction to the soul-tearing hate Iana carried as a result of what she’d been exposed to.

“We have to get the Queen back,” Faen said.

“Back?” Gala asked. “Where has she gone?”

Dae weighed the choices of outright lying to the ambassador vs. simply avoiding the question.

“She’s verifying the claims made by Senkin’s representative,” Dae said, deciding that simple and blunt played to her strength more than clever and politic ever would.

“She may be walking into a trap,” Faen said.

Dae smiled.

“You’ve known Queen Alari longer than you’ve known me,” she said. “Picture how things will fare if someone is foolish enough to attempt to trap her or those she travels with?”

Faen looked like he was about to voice an objection, but his expression of outrage fell as he considered the possibilities.

“Yes, I see what you mean,” he said. “At the very best, she might still have a few bits of mercy left to her. The Sleeping Gods help anyone who crosses her if she does not.”

“This is not acceptable,” Gala said and shivered their leaves in a gesture that Dae couldn’t map to any body language she knew.

“Explain,” Dae said. “What don’t you find acceptable?”

“Gallagrin cannot ally with Senkin,” Gala said.

“Queen Alari will not arrange an alliance with Senkin until she has also heard the Council’s version of the events,” Dae said. “She is not interested in another war. We’ve had enough of that in the last decade.”

Gala was quiet for a moment, lost in conversation with the rest of the Green Council, Dae guessed.

“That is not acceptable,” they said.

“Whether you find it acceptable or not isn’t going to change things,” Dae said. “Gallagrin is not going to enter a war without knowing the truth about both sides.”

“My apologies,” Gala said. “I was not expressing my personal sentiment. That was the majority voice of the Council.”

“What does the Council want then?” Dae asked.

“And why is it so important that we not talk to Senkin?” Faen asked.

“It is not the communication with Senkin which is the chief problem,” Gala said. “It is Gallagrin’s stance against war between the realms which the Council objects to.”

“That position is one neither the Queen nor I are willing to waver on,” Dae said.

“The Council claims that you were willing to wage war when it was to your benefit but now seek to deny anyone else the option to resolve matters with your techniques,” Gala said.

“Toppling Paxmer’s throne required rare luck and planning which no one else in the history of the realms has managed to pull off,” Dae said. “Without that, the devastation that you saw at the Creches will seem like a mild preview of what’s to come.”

Gala was silent for another moment.

“The Council says that the devastation will be inflicted on the aggressors, as justice demands,” Gala said.

“The Council has always been the most isolationist of the realms,” Dae said. “Your gods drafted treaties to guard that isolationism. Of all of the realms therefor, you know the least about warfare and have the most distant understanding of the costs it extracts from both the victor and the defeated. You do not want to insist on war.”

“They already have,” Gala said and shook from crown to root.

A long moment of silence passed.

“Damn them,” Gala said at last. “Gallagrin, I must ask for asylum.”

“Asylum? From who?” Dae asked, knowing there was only one real answer.

“From the Green Council,” Gala said. “I must sink my roots apart from theirs. They have lost the sun.”

“Please explain,” Dae asked, certain that she wouldn’t like what came next.

“I renounce the Green Council. I cannot abide by their decision. They have chosen war, with Senkin…and Gallagrin. My embassy is a failure. Now I must look to the future of all the Blessed Realms.”

Dae didn’t want to go to war. Wars were messy, and costly, and in her current state a war would involve her sending a lot of people to die in her place rather than fighting for Alari’s domain like a good Queen’s Knight was supposed to.

“You will want to reword your statement ambassador,” she said, sitting back onto the Champion’s seat beside the Gallagrin throne. “You did not come here to declare war. You came to ensure that the Green Council would not come into conflict with the first and only realm to have successfully conquered another realm.”

“How can you claim to know the Council’s motivations for this embassy,” Gala asked. The dryad was still offended from Dae’s tone and manner of speaking, but Dae didn’t care. Gallagrin wasn’t in a position to be friendly with the Green Council at the moment, but it didn’t necessarily need to be hostile either. The sooner the ambassador could be made to see where their common interests lay the sooner the real negotiations could begin.

“The Council’s motivations in sending you here are clear because, and we are taking this as an article of faith, the Council is not composed of idiots,” Dae said. “You have nothing to gain from opening a new front in your war and likely everything to lose if you do.”

“If Gallagrin is allied with Senkin then there is nothing for the Council to gain from waiting, and everything to lose from allowing you to bring your forces together,” Gala said, their leaves quivering with suppressed emotions.

Dae wanted to bury her face in her palms. She wasn’t meant to be a noble woman. A good noble woman wouldn’t want to set an ambassador on fire.

“You presume that the conflict between Senkin and the Council has no other resolution than war.” Dealing with Alari had spoiled Dae. It was too easy to converse about weighty matters when the person you were speaking with could understand and see the ramifications of the things you said without the need for extensive elaboration.

“War is upon us. The only course open is to bring it to a swift and just end.” There was something odd underlying Gala’s words. Dae grasped at the shape of the sounds and the speed of the fluttering leaves in Gala’s crown.

Reading the body language of the dryad yielded little more than vague guesses as to what was going on in Gala’s mind, but Dae had the prickling sensation that Gala was struggling against the position she was in. They either didn’t want to be an ambassador or they were opposed to the war their realm was waging.

“Gallagrin agrees,” Dae said. “A prolonged conflict will have dire consequences for all of us, not just Senkin and the Green Council, and Queen Alari will not allow injustice between the realms to flourish.”

“And yet she is not here to listen to our cause,” Gala said.

Dae let her head slump forward before her frustration could tear itself loose from her throat. Losing her temper would cost the realms more than they could bear, and, worse, might endanger Alari.

Still though, the ambassador’s attitude grated on her. More than it should. As a yunger woman Dae wouldn’t have noticed that but she’d spent months since reuniting with Alari unraveling the lies she’d told herself that kept them apart. The practice helped her catch the other moments when she was lying to herself, the ones where she wasn’t consciously aware she was doing so.

Gala’s inability to accept Dae as a legitimate voice for Gallagrin was infuriating but when Dae looked at the source of that fury, she saw its roots grew down into her own insecurities.

She didn’t want to take Alari’s throne. Apart from loving Alari too much to ever want to see her diminished, Dae knew she wasn’t cut out to lead one of the realms. She didn’t have Alari’s talent for working with people, or for finding compromises that retained the essentials of what she believed in while allowing the other party to feel they had gained what they desired as well. She wasn’t good enough for the job in her own estimation but she was still stuck with it and Gala’s refusal to accept her as the Voice of Gallagrin made Dae feel the depth of her inadequacy for the role she was stuck in even more thoroughly.

“Queen Alari is not here,” Dae said, taking a deep breath and centering herself. She was afraid of failing, but it was a small fear compared to others that she’d faced. Even small fears though can be stumbling blocks for the unwary. “She is absent but Gallagrin is present. We are Gallagrin’s Voice and We pledge to hear you words and convey them to the Queen. Your claims will be weighed fairly against those brought against you by Senkin. This We declare.”

Speaking for Gallagrin was not a matter of letting the spirit of the realm possess her. Dae’s words were her own, but when she spoke in Gallagrin’s official voice they became something greater. What Dae declared more than a bound herself. Her words bond the whole realm. Alari herself would be required to abide by them or issue a formal declaration denouncing the pledge, which would in turn have unpleasant consequences for Gallagrin.

Gala rippled as Dae spoke, as though each word carried with it the weight of a surging gale. For a long moment the dryad was silent, processing what they had just experienced. When they spoke the tone of their voice was different, quieter and more thoughtful.

“Can you pledge Gallagrin to the Council’s side?” Gala asked. “Not will you, we do not ask that you commit to our cause yet, but is that decision within your power to make.”

“Yes,” Dae said. “Though we will make no rush to judgment without our Queen.”

It was the only sane alternative in Dae’s eyes. Whatever Ambassador Gala told her, Dae had to account for the fact that the Queen of Senkin could be refuting those same claims to Alari and offering a more accurate telling of what had transpired. Making any decisions without hearing both sides of the matter left open a huge possibility of being duped into supporting the wrong side of the conflict.

“The we shall accept you in the role of Gallagrin monarch,” Gala said.

“We are the monarch’s Voice and so act as an element of the throne,” Dae said. It was a bit of flowery verse she’d heard uttered as a refrain on sacred holidays. In passing she wondered how true the claim might be though. Only one monarch ruled each of the realms. If they chose to share that power, did doing so make the bearer of the new authority another aspect of the monarchy. It was a horrible thought since it led to the idea that Dae might already be “the Queen of Gallagrin” in some sense.

“Then we shall present our case to you,” Gala said. “You already know of the conflict between the Green Council and Senkin. As we are the first dispatched from the Green Council we must assume that your knowledge of the war’s beginning was given to you by Senkin or a Senkin loyalist.”

“Senkin has sent a representative to speak with Gallagrin,” Dae said, confirming the statement with a nod.

“And did they claim the attack was unprovoked?” Gala asked. “Or did they acknowledge their crimes and claim their actions as an early victory?”

“The representative we spoke to claimed the Council’s attack was unheralded and that they knew of no reason why it was begun,” Dae said.

“There was nothing unheralded about the retribution which was paid to Senkin,” Gala said. “They were the ones who broke the faith we have shared in each other for centuries. They were the ones who viciously attacked us first. The current state of the conflict, where we have shown them our might, has sent Senkin scurrying to your court, but they must not find support here or there will never be justice between the realms.”

“That is a strong claim to make,” Dae said, pleased to hear that the Green Council at least believed itself to have a legitimate grievance. With that in play, there was the possibility of resolving the conflict by resolving the issues it arose from. “We will need what details and proof you can provide.”

“We knew this,” Gala said. “And so we offer to let you see for yourself what transpired prior to our assault on Senkin:”

They held forth a small red marble.

“What is that?” Dae asked, her reading of ancient Green Council texts having missed a chapter on strange offerings to foreign powers.

“It a memory fruit,” Gala said. “If you ingest it you will see the memories of those who first discovered Senkin’s crime.”

“How can we know that the memories are not distortions or illusions?” Dae asked. The memory fruit could be a poison as well, but if the Green Council was willing to declare themselves irrevocably an enemy to Gallagrin, then Dae felt they’d try to get more out of the declaration than just the loss of one non-royal life. Also, since Kirios hadn’t abandoned her entirely, Dae was reasonably confident she could survive most poisons which Gala might throw at her.

“All memories are distortions and illusions,” Gala said. “In this case however, the memories do not need to stand alone. We can take you to the sites you will see in them. While you are not allied with Senkin, we will permit you to inspect the locations and confirm the memories for yourself.”

That offer was where a trap would lie if there was one, Dae thought, but put forth her hand anyways.

Gala walked forward and passed the red orb to Dae’s waiting hand.

“How long will these visions last?” Dae asked. Trapping her in a magical sensorium for a week wouldn’t count as an attack on Gallagrin but it would be highly inconvenient.

“The memory transfer is instantaneous,” Gala said, “but processing and understanding them may take a few minutes. You will likely be disoriented by the process unless you have experienced it many times already.”

“Please, wait here then,” Dae said and rose, calling Kemoral with her. On cue, guards from the Royal Army stepped into the room from all sides to keep an eye on Gala.

When they were back in the antechamber, Dae turned to Kemoral and asked the question both of them were wondering.

“So, is this reasonably insane or just flat out crazy?”

Faen drew in a deep breath and fixed Dae with a solid stare.

“For anyone else? Complete foolishness,” he said. “For you though? Just normal foolishness I’d say.”

“You’re not going to even try to talk me out of this are you?” Dae asked, please at that turn of events.

“My Lady Akorli, do you mistake me for someone incapable of learning?” Faen asked. “I’ve known you since before you bore most of the syllables in your name. Over time one does eventually notice certain…consistencies in your behavior.”

“Consistency? I suppose that’s an upgrade from ox-headed idiocy,” Dae said.

“Calling a new recruit an ox-headed idiot is done with the hope that it will motivate them to change their behavior,” Faen said. “Once that hope is lost, we simply say that they are ‘consistent’.”

“Well, in that case, I don’t need to ask you to watch over the realm until the Queen’s return if this doesn’t work out well for me,” Dae said.

“You need never ask me to do my duty,” Faen said. “I can be ‘consistent’ too.”

“Here’s to being consistently right then,” Dae said and popped the memory fruit into her mouth.

The world melted away as the fruit melted in her mouth. In its place, visions swarmed up from the dark roots of the earth and swallowed her mind. She’d expected the memories to be unpleasant but what she saw laid out before her was a wasteland and in her heart she felt the horror that gripped the Green Council at the abomination the world had become.

Gallagrin’s throne didn’t intimidate Dae. It was just a chair. A large chair that seemed to hone the craziness of anyone who sat in it to a fine point. But there was no reason to be afraid of it. Nevertheless, she plopped down on the Champion’s seat which stood beside the throne. Fear was a terrible motivator, but knowing one’s own limits was a sign of wisdom, and with Alari gone, Dae felt like she was going to need all the wisdom she could get.

I’m already crazy enough thank you, Dae thought, glaring at the chair she had no interest in ever occupying.

She’d left Eorn and Teo behind at the sky carriage platform. If Alari felt matters were dire enough to race off on the spur of a moment, Dae wasn’t going to delay Teo from performing his ambassadorial duties to Inchesso.

Dae trusted Alari’s judgment in the matter, in part because she trusted Alari and in part because she suspected there was some amount of magical augmentation that Alari was drawing on in her appraisal of the course of world events.

The Pact Spirit of Gallagrin granted physical might and sensory powers but not intellect or wisdom. At least not directly. Alari had plenty of those qualities on her own, but Dae had long guessed that her princess knew the workings on the Royal Pact Bond better than any of her predecessors.

While the Spirit of Gallagrin didn’t speak directly to those it was bonded with, it did contain the memories of all the former rulers of Gallagrin, and it seemed to be closer to Alari that it had been to the Gallagrin monarchs for several generations. That may have been due to Alari being the first monarch in several generations who fought for Gallagrin – both the realm and the spirit. Her father, grandmother and great grandfather had all inherited their rule without any particular effort on their part. The spirit was passed to them because they were the chosen successor. In fighting for and defending Gallagrin, Alari seemed to have won a connection with the Gallagrin Spirit that was missing for a long time.

That connection didn’t extend to a spoken dialog from what Alari said, but she did have the sense of a broader perspective than- her own when she considered matters outside of the scope of her experience.

“I can’t picture the details, or hear the voices of my ancestors, but when I observe a poltical situation, or consider how the realms might act overall, I get a sense of what feels right, and if I ponder it for a while, I start seeing the reasons why. It’s not enough to trust on its own but it helps me work things out faster than I could without those insights, I think,” Alari had explained when she and Dae were discussing the matter one lazy winter afternoon when the snows howled and there was little work to be done.

Those memories plus Alari’s native wits were a foundation Dae felt comfortable basing her own actions and thoughts on. That didn’t mean she felt comfortable trying to take Alari’s place however. Negotiating with the representative from the Green Council was one of the duties she’d never expected she would need to fulfill as the Queen’s Knight.

“Why exactly am I here?” Sir Faen Kemoral asked. “I’m not a negotiator, and there are roughly a thousand things I need to see to in the Royal Army since the Queen has gone off to wage a solo war without giving us time to keep up with her.”

Dae was happy to see that Kemoral was as uncomfortable about playing international receptionist as she was. Neither of them were suited to the role but he had more of the Charisma of Command than she did, and they both knew it.

“Think of this as doing the army’s job proactively,” Dae said. “If we can deal with the Council’s representative properly, we may not need to involve any other part of the army to clear this mess up.”

“Do we even know what they’re here for?” Kemoral asked.

“They wouldn’t say. They would only demand an audience with the queen.”

“And they will be pleased to see you instead?”

“Probably not,” Dae said. “But that’s going to tell us something too.”

“So this is a fact finding mission?’ Kemoral asked.

“Yes, though the representative is protected by their diplomatic credentials,” Dae said. “So our facts will probably come mostly through inference.”

“This is insanity,” Kemoral said and straightened his posture.

“Welcome to Highcrest,” Dae said. “Hell, welcome to Gallagrin, or maybe even the Blessed Realms in general.”

“Is there a reason we haven’t brought the Council representative in yet?” Kemoral asked. “The soon we start the sooner I can get back to things that actually matter.”

“They’re acclimating to the realm,” Dae said. “So the delay is on their part.”

“Acclimating to the realm?” Kemoral asked. “The Council’s not that far away by sky carriage, how could they still be travel-sick?”

“Because the Council’s representative is a dryad,” Dae said.

“A tree-lady?” Kemoral asked.

“No.” Dae said. “They are a sapient wood elemental. Regardless of the form they take, they are still a dryad and neither a tree, nor a lady, not a gentleman.”

“Dryad, tree-lady, what does it matter?” Kemoral asked.

“One will make them feel welcome, the other will construed as an insult,” Dae said. “They may hear that sort of insult from people on a daily basis, but they will not hear it in Queen Alari’s court.”

“Sweet Merciful Sunrise,” Kemoral said. “This is why I shouldn’t be here. I’m going to put as at war with the Council before five minutes is up.”

“Don’t worry,” Dae said. “I’ll run interference for you. You’re here primarily to address questions of Gallagrin’s military readiness. The Council knows about the situation with the nobles being held on for an extended Grand Convocation, and they know the Ducal armies outnumber the Royal army significantly. That could have factored into their calculations about attacking Senkin.”

“So, I am to make it seem as though our armed forces are one well organized whole and not the fractious lot of bickering malcontents I actually have to deal with every day?” Kemoral asked.

“Nope. Your job is to explain how, with just half the Royal Army, you would break the Green Council like a piece of kindling if they tried to expand into our lands.”

“Half the Royal Army? Why would I need that much?” Kemoral asked.

“Yes, excactly,” Dae said and signaled the page at the other end of the room to summon the Green Council’s representative.

Dae had chosen to meet with the Council’s lackey in the castle’s Grand Reception Hall, thinking that the seat of Gallagrin’s power would give her the advantage she needed in dealing with a foreign power. She looked over the room and began to question her choice though. Without the nobles and without Alari, the room was still physically grand, but it was the grandeur of a great past rather than a reflection of the realm’s present power.

“Their Humble Embassy, Gala Ragranprimort of the Green Council,” a page said, and stood aside to allow the ambassador to enter.

Dae had read of the Green Council, but the ancient texts hadn’t prepared her for meeting a dryad in person.

Gala Ragranprimort’s form only suggested a resemblance to the common morphology of humans and dwarves and elves. Their limbs curved away from the central trunk of their body as a branch springs from the body of a tree rather than through any complicated shoulder or hip mechanism.

Gala’s central trunk was long, making them easily eight feet tall by the time it formed a vaguely head shaped area which was crowned by a canopy of leaves which was similar to hair only in terms of being atop the dryad’s body.

Where a face would have been, the wood of Gala’s body bore features that looked like they’d been stamped into the wood by a mighty pressing machine. Eyes, nose, and mouth were all cast from the same wood as the rest of the body but there was an animation to them which no natural wood could have possibly mimicked.

That same unnatural quality captured Dae’s attention in the dryad’s movement. Gala didn’t so much walk as flow, rolling like a supple tree caught in a wind which blew it long, steady, gusts.

Dae weighed the idea of rising to greet Gala as they moved down the wide aisle leading to the throne. It would have been a friendly gesture, but Dae stayed seated. Gallagrin wasn’t necessarily interested in retaining the Council’s friendship. Not if Alari decided Senkin was the victimized realm.

“What insult is this?” Gala asked. “I come before the throne of Gallagrin, but Gallagrin will not treat with the Council?”

“Ambassador Ragranprimort,” Dae said, remaining in her seat but leaning forward. “Gallagrin will hear the Green Council’s petition. We speak with the Voice of Gallagrin in our queen’s absence and have been given full license to treat with you until her return.”

“When is Gallagrin expected to return to her throne?” Gala asked.

“Queen Alari’s has instructed us to treat with you,” Dae repeated. “She will return in due time, but the matter you have to bring before her is one of some urgency is it not?”

Dae felt the confines of Royal Speech twisting her tongue. She knew she wasn’t quite managing to sound properly royal but under the circumstances that might play in her favor.

“I bring news of greater import than a simple seneschal can be entrusted with,” Gala said. “You must urge for your queen’s immediate presence.”

A tremor ran up Gala’s body and shook the leaves one their canopy.

For that, and for their words, Dae stood.

“Have care, Ambassador,” Dae said, letting her voice drop low and dangerous. “We are no seneschal. We are the Queen’s Knight, We are Gallagrin’s Champion, We are the Crown Successor. Present your petition before you try our patience further.”

“You carry many titles, but you do not carry the weight of the realm,” Gala said. “If we treat with you, we will be forced to assume that Gallagrin places the Green Council as being of secondary importance.”

“Good,” Dae said. “Because you are.”

A tremor rippled through Gala’s body and was followed by a rigidity which Dae couldn’t interpret as anything other than shock and rage.

“The welfare of Gallagrin and its people is, and ever will be, of primary importance to Queen Alari,” Dae said. “The concerns of the Green Council will take second place to that. That does not imply however that the Council’s concerns are unimportant to Gallagrin, or that Gallagrin is unwilling to balance its own needed with the broader needs of all the Blessed Realms.”

“And what of the needs of Senkin?” Gala asked. “Will Gallagrin place the Green Council’s needs ahead of those of that traitorous realm?”

“No,” Dae said.

Gala’s reaction was muted this time. They learned quickly it seemed, which worried Dae.

“Gallagrin makes no judgment at this moment between its neighbors,” Dae said. “We would listen to your testimony on the conflict which has erupted before reaching a decision on who, if anyone, we will support.”

Gala went silent in response to that, but Dae could see the leaves on the ambassador’s canopy swaying independently of each other and their roots twitching in tiny motions.

If Dae’s research was correct, Gala was speaking which someone, or even a group of people, back in the Green Council. Via her Pact Knight bond, Dae knew how to eavesdrop on distant conversations, but that was a result of enhancing and refining her hearing. There was no magic she knew of which would allow her to tap into the Green Council’s distant speech magics.

“We cannot allow that,” Gala said, emerging from their conversation. “Gallagrin must not side Senkin. We will declare war to prevent the possibility from occurring.”

Dae watched the Royal Carriage depart and felt a great weariness steal over her. She’d expected to be smothered in anxiety thanks to Alari exposing herself to danger, or enflamed by anger at her own inability to join the entourage, but neither came easily. Within her swirled a chaotic storm of every color, each flash of emotion washed out by the next before Dae could piece together much sense of where she really stood or how she really felt.

It wasn’t surprising, she decided, that she wasn’t terrified for her love’s safety. Alari was stronger than anyone knew, including Alari herself. With the Pact Spirit she carried, Alari had almost overwhelming mystical might to call on, but her strength went well beyond the magic she was gifted with.

Gallagrin’s Queen was a driven woman and had been for as long as Dae had known her. This flight of seeming-insanity was every bit in keeping with the princess Dae had grown up with, and if there was one thing Dae had learned in those years it was that when Alari put her mind to something, the safe bet was on her winning the prize she sought, no matter how long the odds looked.

The separation still left a hollow pit where Dae’s heart should have been though but pride in Alari rushed in to fill that void. The thought of Alari at her best, pitting herself against all the realms of the world brought a wry smile to Dae’s face. The realms would have to be very careful or they would never know what hit them.

“I have to confess, this is not how I imagined things going when I awoke this morning,” Teo said. The vampire stood beside her on the platform as the squad from the Royal Army scrambled to fall in for a last second inspection before being loaded onto a transport carriage that would pursue the queen and act as backup for her, should the need arise.

“It’s the problem with Royals,” Dae said. “Ask them to do something and occasionally they will.”

“I don’t recall asking to be made ambassador to Inchesso,” Teo frowned as the sky carriage requisitioned for his use began to fill with supplies, brought on board by the honor guard assigned to him.

“You were the one who picked today to come before the court,” Dae said, her gaze remaining on the rapidly departing Royal Carriage.

“That was Ren’s decision. I thought we should have fled the castle today.”

“You are a man of insight and intellect then.”

“I hope not,” Teo said, his frown deepening as he snuck glances at the far distant carriage bearing his husband. “My insight told me the queen would rule against the nobles soon and that her verdict would not go over well.”

“Insight, intelligence and ignorance then,” Dae said, amending her words. “The queen wasn’t even close to working out what she was going to do about the nobles.”

“Perhaps it’s due to my upbringing, but I have a hard time believing executions have been ruled out.”

“There are certainly nobles who deserve it.”

“And certainly ones who don’t.” Teo turned to face Dae, eyes narrowed and jaw hard set.

“You’re worried about what she might do with Ren?”

“I’m terrified. And enraged.” Teo said, biting at his lower lip. “He tried to help her. He tried to stand in her defense. And this is how he’s repaid? He wasn’t even supposed to be the Duke of Tel!”

“I know,” Dae said. “I think I owe him an official reprimand for that. He was supposed to be working for me. Now the Dawn March has no Commander in Nath.”

Teo rounded on her, pulling Dae’s gaze away from the vanishing Royal Carriage.

“How can you treat him like this, when he has been nothing but loyal to you and the Queen?” The vampire was teetering on the brink of losing control, but Dae made no move to resist him or defend herself.

Eorn took a step forward, but Dae shook her head, warning the recruit off.

“I need my Commander in Nath.”

Dae knew she was pushing Teo, and knew she was in no position to fight back if the vampire lost his patience. Against that though stood his lack of faith in her or Alari. Dae needed to push Teo, needed to get him to bring all of his fears to the surface before they could be addressed. He wasn’t going to believe her when she told him that Alari wasn’t going to slay the man he loved, that his queen wasn’t the monster that the former king had been.

“He’s more than your damn Commander,” Teo shouted, grabbing Dae by the front of her tunic. Eorn started forward but Dae waved her to stillness.

“Yes,” Dae said, unperturbed. “He’s also the Duke of Tel, and he abstained from voting against the challenge to Alari’s reign.”

“He didn’t abstain! They blocked him! And the others! The one’s who didn’t believe Sanli’s ridiculous story.”

“We know,” Dae said. The nobles who’d remained loyal to Alari, of which there were a sizable number, though far from the majority, had been physically restrained from entering the Convocation chamber when Sanli put the proposal before the assemblage to allow herself to contest for the Pact Spirit of Gallagrin. Ren had been one of those nobles, and had only been a noble because he’d claimed the fallow title of the Duchy of Tel at the last moment in order to block Sanli’s efforts against Alari. It was a valiant effort which had come to nothing, and one which Alari and Dae had only learned the particulars of well after the events were sorted out.

“Then why haven’t you freed him?” Teo’s eyes had a glassy sheen of tears covering them. “If you’re going to murder the Dukes who plotted against the queen, why haven’t you freed the ones who remained loyal to her?”

“No one’s been imprisoned,” Dae said. They were drawing a bit of an audience from the troops who were preparing to go after Alari, and the ones who would be supporting Teo’s mission into Inchesso.

“Like hell they haven’t,” Teo said. “We haven’t been able to leave the palace in a month! The lodgings are very nice, but this castle is still a prison.”

“The Grand Convocation isn’t done yet,” Dae said, repeating the explanation that had been offered to one and all since Alari’s return from the God’s Hall.

“That’s because it’s going to end in a river of blood,” Teo said.

“Is it?” Dae asked, and allowed herself to smile. She couldn’t have built a scenario like this if she’d tried. Alari could have, probably in her sleep, but people weren’t Dae’s forte.

“How else can it end?” Teo said.

“How else indeed?” Dae asked. “What do you imagine you would see if the Queen were asking herself that same question?”

“She would arrest the nobles who worked against her and release the ones who supported her,” Teo said.

“Arrest more than half the nobles in the land?” Dae said. “She could. Since taking care of Paxmer, Gallagrin’s Spirit has been solidly united behind her. But what of the Ducal armies? How would the ones loyal to the disloyal nobles take their masters imprisonment?”

“Poorly,” Teo sagged and dropped his hands to his side.

“And with only the rebellious nobles in custody what might people assume their fate to be?” Dae asked.

“Execution,” Teo said, understanding burrowing through the thick haze of worry and anger that clouded his mind.

“And the Ducal armies would do what in the case of their master’s imminent deaths?” Dae asked.

“There would be rebellion,” Teo said. “But you said the queen was in control of the realm more firmly than ever.”

“She is,” Dae said. “But its people are still free. The Ducal armies could chose to oppose her, they are simple unlikely to win, or even survive.”

“It is a problem which resolves itself then, isn’t it?” Teo asked.

“It’s a problem that resolves into a variety of new problems,” Dae said. “The queen would win if it came to another civil war, but Gallagrin would lose. Every death would be a blow against us. Every injury would be a wound the entire realm would need to recover from.”

“So what is the queen going to do?” Teo asked.

“Keep all of the nobles here to start with,” Dae said. “If she retains both those who were her allies and the ones who worked against her, there’s less support for the notion that she’s gathering victims for a massacre.”

“But she can’t keep everyone here indefinitely,” Teo said. “They’ll rebel just the same.”

“I know,” Dae said. “And she has a plan for that too.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, apparently she noticed that if the world is in crisis, she could fly off to deal with it and leave the problem of our nobles to me.”

Dae offered Teo, and those who were eavesdropping, a wolfish smile.

“And you were in favor of executions?” Teo asked, his uncertainty over the turn the conversation had taken plainly evident.

“For those who deserve it?” Dae said. “All I need is a sword and I’d be glad to start on them myself. Today.”

A hush fell over the load platform as people abandoned even the pretext that they weren’t listening. If Dae was willing to lead them into another civil war, then everyone present would have a personal and immediate interest in how it began and how it turned out.

“But that’s not what we’re going to do,” Dae said, drifting faintly into the formality of Royal Speech. “We’re going to respect the Queen’s kindness and mercy. We’re not adverse to spilling blood in her name or for her cause, but neither will we stain her reign with more slaughter or diminish the realm by the destruction of its children.”

Dae glanced away from Teo and took in the small assembly that had gathered around her.

“At least not while our patience lasts,” she said.

“Was the Queen serious when she said you’d be the next queen if she didn’t return?” Eorn asked, voicing the question most of those present had as to whether Dae could make good on her implied threats.

“She’s going to return,” Dae said. Alari’s declaration had been every bit as official as it needed to be. Dae had no doubt that the Gallagrin Pact Spirit would seek her out if Alari was slain. She also knew that Alari wouldn’t allow that to happen.

“Can you be sure?” Eorn asked. “No one’s ever done this before have they?”

Dae frowned. Eorn’s concern was true. They lived in an age without precedent. It didn’t help Dae sleep to think of that, but it wasn’t the hardest problem she faced getting through the night.

“Nothing that happened today was a surprise to her,” Dae said. “She’s known this was going to happen, sooner or later, since Paxmer fell.”

“Why didn’t she warn us then?” Eorn asked. She looked even more worried than Teo had, which Dae hadn’t expected. Teo’s spouse was at risk, but Eorn…

Dae blinked at having missed what should have been an obvious connection. Eorn wasn’t worried about Alari, or the fate of the Royal entourage. She was worried about Undine. Alari had selected the two of them to join her personal Guard, but Eorn and Undine had known each other for years before being called to the palace by Royal Request. Alari knew they would be loyal to the realm and to her, but their loyalty to each other was something Dae knew would be a foolish thing to discount.

“Because she’s evil, and enjoys tormenting us,” Dae said. “Also, because there was no point discussing the broad ideas she could see forming without specifics that we could act on.”

“We could at least have had her carriage ready,” Eorn said. “And the guards prepped to go with her.”

“That’s likely one of the reasons she held off telling us,” Dae said. “Not everything the queen does is deliberate or part of a greater plan, but arriving with unexpected speed and without an escort strikes me as sending a deliberate message to Senkin, the Green Council and all of the other nations who are watching this play out.”

“I still wish she’d taken us with her,” Eorn said, plain disappointment undisguised in her voice.

“Same here,” Dae said. “But we have work to do that’s not in Senkin.”

“The sooner begun, the sooner completed, I guess,” Teo said, regaining his composure. “I just hope she brings Ren back.”

“And all the rest,” Dae said.

“Lady Akorli?” a breathless page said as she raced to stand at attention before Dae. “There is an ambassador here who wishes to see the Queen.”

Dae sighed.

“Let me guess, they’re from the Green Council aren’t they?”

“Yes Lady Akorli.”

“Well this should be interesting then,” Dae said. “Let’s go see if we can avoid setting fire to a tree-person, shall we?”

Alari always found the Royal Sky Carriage pleasant to ride in. It was pulled by the finest Wind Steeds in the realm. It was lavishly appointed. It was the perfect get away from the insanity of the palace, and despite the reclined seats, the heavy layered curtains that keep out the high altitude cold and elaborate silver-inlaid engravings which held spells to provide both comfort and entertainment through the song, she hadn’t been able to enjoy using it in years. Since she’d won her throne, her life had been focused on the heart of her realm. That Gallagrin still stood, and had risen in power from the ruins of its civil war to be capable of toppling other realms was a testament to the work she’d done, but as she flew faster than the wind away from Highcrest Castle, she felt the toll of those years.

Absently, she ran a hand along the knotwork trim of the carriage, tracing the tiny animal carvings on the edge of the window. The carriage was a gift from the Green Council to a distant ancestor of Alari’s but the magics they’d laid on it were still vibrant and strong. Its ancient pedigree spoke to its more primitive design than modern conveyances, but the carriage took to the high winds with ease and Alari was able to watch the miles race by below them through windows that were undimmed by time.

“Is the squad from the Royal Army going to be able to catch up with us?” Jyl asked.

Alari knew that the answer was ‘No’. One of the benefits of having the finest Wind Steeds in the realm was that no one else could match them. She also knew that, tactically speaking, racing ahead of the people who are assigned to keep her safe was extraordinarily foolhardy. Dae had been on the verge of outright begging Alari to stop and wait, but as that tactic had never worked in the past, Dae had swallowed her worry and in heart breakingly few words extracted a promise from Alari that she would return. Alari, in turn, gave that promise willingly and truthfully. She wasn’t eager to fly to her own destruction. She knew that, just as deeply as she knew that she couldn’t stay safe, locked away in her castle any longer.

She told herself the unfolding crisis was too large for any one realm to resolve. That as a monarch of one of the Blessed Realms, she had to intervene because there was no one else who could. Those rationalizations had the benefit of being true, but from the way her spirit took flight as the carriage raced onwards, told her that there were other, unseen, motivations driving her as well.

Being away from the castle felt wonderful and liberating. Nestled in the bright blue sky, and caught in the action of the spur of a moment, Alari was struck by the idea that the only tie in Highcrest that she coudn’t, and didn’t want to, slip free from was Dae. That then lead to the thought of sneaking back into the castle, kidnapping Dae and vanishing into the night. It was a disturbingly tempting thought. It was a ridiculous one, true, but still her imagination was all too willing to begin drafting plans around the idea.

All her life, Alari had wanted to nurture her realm, she wanted it to be amazing and wondrous and could see so many way for that to come true, but in her six years of ruling over her realm she been struck time and again by how bent on destroying itself Gallagrin seemed to be. Simple compromises designed for the benefit of all were rejected time and again, because the participants believed that they had to stake the widest claim possible and extract the most revenue that they could from any arrangement, rather than looking for mutually beneficial terms which would create a stronger and better society for all, including themselves. Nobles consider those they ruled to be unworthy scum, and commoners invented divisions purely so they could hate each other more efficiently.

“You can always count on people to desire more power.” Haldri, the former Queen of Paxmer had told her. “Commoners believe power will bring them security, nobles have power and know they are not secure and so desire even more.”

Alari couldn’t agree with Haldri’s  appraisal, even though her own life looked like it bore out the truth of it. She’d plunged Gallagrin into a civil war to take the throne from her father, but no matter how history would see her, Alari knew it hadn’t been power that she’d sought. The fighting during those long months was hideous, but even a battlefield full of the dead was less of a horror than the terror that her father inflicted on his people.

They’d cheered her when she overthrew him. Even his allies. At first. Then, as she moved to change Gallagrin, to move it away from the decades of internecine rivalry that had fed the Butcher King’s madness, her nobles and her people had started to turn on her. Her policies were too forgiving, or too punitive. Her efforts to direct aid and reconstruction were fought by ally and enemy alike, based solely on whether they were benefiting from the it directly rather than any appraisal as to need or overall impact.

With the Wind Steeds carrying her ever farther from the nexus of insanity that was her throne, Alari felt shackles falling away from her. The nobles that she left behind were the better for her departure she felt. She knew that killing the lot of them wasn’t an option. She would never allow herself to become the regent her father had been, but a part of her could see no other path forward. Her enemies like Duke Lafli would never stop opposing her and her allies could turn on her at any moment when she didn’t give them what they wanted. Getting rid of the lot of them seemed like the only sane course of action.

“Will the Queen of Senkin see us when we arrive?” Jyl asked. She looked uncomfortable, swallowed up in the pillowy seats of the Royal Carriage. Beside her, Jaan wore an expression of poised aloofness. Alari didn’t think Jaan was any more comfortable than her twin sister, but a lifetime as a courtier had schooled her in how to conceal discomfort to a degree that Jyl’s years as an adventurer had never managed.

“My Queen will be honored to receive you,” Corine said. “If you had allowed a messenger to precede our arrival, you would have been met with the utmost in hospitality.”

“That is one reason we did not wish our arrival to be heralded,” Alari said. “This is not an occasion for pomp and ceremony.”

“What are our orders if the Queen of Senkin is unhappy with the surprise visit?” Jyl asked.

“If Senkin will not treat with us on the matter of the Council’s invasion, then we shall depart and treat with the Council instead,” Alari said.

There was something delicious about playing a political game where she held no responsibility towards any of the other parties. With the Gallagrin nobles, even her enemies represented her people, and however much the nobles infuriated her, Alari was determined that her people would not suffer from her wrath. She clung to that and ground it into her self image as a shield against her father’s madness. In too many reflections, she saw pieces of him in the impulses she fought to control. She had to believe she was different than he was though. Nothing else could excuse what she had done.

“And if Senkin doesn’t want to let us depart?” Jyl asked.

“If Senkin wishes Gallagrin to enter the fray on the Council’s side then she is more than welcome to try to keep us from departing,” Alari said, “In that eventuality you will be given full leave to use any and all powers at your disposal to follow the path we shall blaze.”

It was a risk to venture into a foreign land with only minimal guards, but Alari was far from helpless. She carried the Pact Spirit of Gallagrin and with no one casting a counter claim over it, she had access to its full and unrestricted power.

Senkin was aware of that, which granted Alari a significant umbrella of protection. While Senkin could order her forces against Alari’s small entourage, the losses Senkin would suffer would be extreme, and the realm couldn’t afford that when it was already fighting an invasion.

“I assure you, my Queen will be glad for your wisdom and advice,” Corine said. “Senkin did not seek this quarrel and if you can restore justice between the two realms, we will be forever grateful.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Ren said.

Alari glanced at him, raising an eyebrow.

“Justice on its own is a terrible force,” Ren said. “Queen Alari has shown Gallagrin the virtue of Justice tempered with Mercy, but has not been paid back kindly. If you would ask only for justice, she may be willing to grant that to you, but grand issues like this are never so simple that justice can find only those wholly guilty.”

Corine looked as though she was going to protest the notion that Senkin could be in any sense at fault for the invasion it had suffered but stifled the remark. Whether that was due to the knowledge or suspicion of guilt on Senkin’s part or whether it was out of a desire to avoid needless arguments with Alari’s entourage was difficult for Alari to tell.

“Are you suggesting that our Queen would punish the innocent along with the guilty?” Jaan asked.

“Are you innocent?” Ren asked. “Am I?”

“In this matter we do not seek to address guilt or innocence,” Alari said. “We do not stand as judge or jury over our peers, but rather as mediator.”

Mediator was the role Alari would claim, though she knew that in stepping onto the stage of the conflict, her role would be far broader than that of a simple negotiator.

“We sovereigns understand something which our lessers do not,” Haldri had said. “There is no security in having power, only in its use.”

Alari enjoyed the time she spent with her hated rival. Partly that came from childish gloating, though she took care never to express that openly to Haldri, and in part because for all the unforgivable harm that Haldri had done to Alari, they were still sisters of a sort. No one else in all the realms, no even Dae, understood the weight of the crown that bore down on a monarch’s soul.

Haldri had a very different method of grappling with that weight. Where Alari had struggled to hold it up and be the mountain her people could stand upon, Haldri had taken the opposite approach and placed her people below her.

The former queen never offered a word of sorrow for her deed or regret, but there was a weary relief that clung to her in defeat. Some small sliver of Haldri Paxmer had been disgusted with the choices she made. Some far larger piece of her had been exhausted from the constant strain of holding the yoke on those who hungered for her throne. In her destruction and exile, Haldri had found freedom at last from the choices she was called to make and the constant control her rule required.

In some tiny corner of her soul, Alari felt envy for the fallen queen. Had the battle between Paxmer and Gallagrin turned out differently, she knew that Haldri would not had spared her or treated her so kindly, but that would have been Haldri burden to bear. In keeping the Paxmer Queen as prisoner, Alari had spared herself the trauma of more royal blood on her hands and had gained an unusually useful sounding board.

“Your Majesty, if I’m not out of line, may I ask why you brought her with us?” Undine asked, pointing to the former Paxmer Queen who sat silently in the far back of the Royal Carriage.

“I am an object lesson for our peers,” Haldri said. “She wishes to remind people what happens to those who would chose to oppose Gallagrin.”

As the Senkin representative to Gallagrin, Captain Suncourt Corine was able to observe that some facets of dealing with royalty were universal. Despite the differences in their culture, their values and their day-to-day lifestyles, Gallagrin evidenced the same trait as Senkin when it came to dealing with messengers; no matter how urgent the message, or how fast its bearer had traveled to deliver it, there would be an interminable delay before the message’s royal recipient would find time to receive it.

“Are they almost ready yet?” Corine asked, certain in the knowledge that if she tried to burn a path into the royal sanctum with holy fire her message would not receive the attention it required. As Corine was not an especially patient person, the temptation to smash down the door to the audience chamber with a Sun Lance was nigh unto overwhelming. She’d been instructed very specifically however that no use of her magics, except a last resort for self-defense, was allowed as part of her mission.

But still, the door looked so tempting to reduce to ash.

It was saved from that fate, when one of the Queen’s Guards, an elf woman a good foot and a half shorter than Corine, beckoned her to step inside the audience chamber.

“Queen Alari is ready to see you,” the elf said, evaluating Corine with a measuring gaze. The size disparity was a trap. Corine’s first impulse was to dismiss the elf as non-threatening but the casual smile on the elf’s face and the fact that she was directly responsible for protecting the Queen suggested that short woman was not just more dangerous than she looked but more dangerous than Corine could guess.

Pact Warriors were said to be able to shrug off holy fire and shatter sun shields with ease. If that was true of the standard troops, Corine was unhappy contemplating what an exceptional one like a Queen’s Guard could do.

She nodded and followed the elf into the audience chamber, expecting to find only the Queen and her guard waiting within. The message was a confidential one between the realms, and Gallagrin had a history of secrets and betrayals. Rather than the tight, easily controlled group Corine had imagined though, she found a veritable horde of people already assembled in the room.

Several were clearly members of the Queen’s Guard, including the infamous Lady Akorli of the Bloody Blade. The rest were of noble stock, judging by their adornments but not of sufficient renown that Corine could identify them on sight.

“Welcome our audience, Captain Suncourt Corine,” the Queen said. “You have brought us tidings from Senkin. Would you please share them with us.”

“Your Majesty Gallagrin,” Corine said, snapping to a formal posture. “I bring confidential words from Her Majesty Senkin. I have been sworn to deliver them to no one else except you.”

“We have been advised of the generalities of your message,” the Queen said. “Those assembled here must be advised of the details as well, so you may speak freely before them.”

“As you wish Your Majesty,” Corine said, not relaxing her posture but sighing inwardly and accepting that she was still following the dictates of her orders, however strange the Gallagrin Queen’s court was. “Senkin has declared war on the Green Council following an invasion by the Green Council’s forces, the destruction of one of our towns and the murder of those sent to reclaim it.”

“We would hear a recounting of these events from a witness if one is available,” the Queen asked. Beside her, Lady Akorli leaned forward, evaluating Corine in much the same manner that the elf guard had moments earlier.

“I can speak to the events of the original invasion,” Corine said. “I am one of the surviving commanders from our border garrison.”

“Please start at the beginning then,” the Queen said. “We would hear as many of the events as you can bear to repeat.”

The Queen of Senkin had dispatched Corine for this exact eventuality. Apparently Gallagrin and Senkin were on familiar enough terms that Corine’s Queen was able to guess how her counterpart would think and what she was likely to require from an ambassador announcing the beginning of a war.

“The attack came swiftly Your Majesty,” Corine said. “I did not see the initial charge, so I can only relay the reports of other survivors.”

“How many survivors were there of the initial assault?” Lady Akorli asked, with a look of concern on her face that Corine couldn’t quite read.

“Most of the garrison survived,” Corine said. “The attack came without warning, but the nature of the Council’s forces prevented a stealthy approach on the town.”

“What did they come at you with?” Jyl, the elf guard, asked.

“Enormous monsters of wood and vine,” Corine said. “Even our strongest attacks couldn’t fell the creatures.”

“Warbringers,” an elven noblewoman said. An elven noblewoman who was a perfect replica of one of the queen’s guards. “The Council uses them for the same things we use Pact Knights for.”

“Not exactly,” Lady Akorli said. “Warbringers are an active defense army but their efforts are directed almost entirely at the monsters which inhabit the Council’s lands. The Green Council hasn’t made peace with the creatures their gods left behind the way we have, so Warbringers see significantly more combat than the average Pact Knight does.”

“They are more than a defensive army,” Corine said. “It only took a small number of them to invade and destroy our defenses.”

“Did you have any casters present, or was it only regular troops who were on hand?” Lady Akorli asked.

“The garrison was not considered a lofty appointment, due to the long peace we have held with the Council, but it was still staffed with a full compliment of officers,” Corine said. Not the best officers Senkin had to offer, though not the absolute dregs either. Her own appointment to the garrison had been a punitive one, brought on by wine soaked actions she dearly wished she had a better recollection of performing.

“Fully staffed but not prepared, given the circumstances?” Lady Akorli asked.

“Yes, that is a fair statement,” Corine said. “Even with more warning though I do not know if we could have been truly prepared for the monsters.”

“The Green Council fields an unstoppable force?” the Queen asked.

“Not perhaps unstoppable, but their power was beyond anything I could have estimated they would possess,” Corine said. “So even with time to prepare, I doubt we would have prepared enough.”

“What happened with to the townspeople?” Lady Akorli asked.

“Most of them fled as well, though a few weren’t lucky enough to escape the initial onslaught of devastation,” Corine said. “Those of the garrison who didn’t break and run at the first sight of the Warbringers managed to buy enough time for the people to evacuate.”

“So that’s why most of the garrison survived?” Jaan, the elven noblewoman, said. “Because they ran rather than fought?”

Corine’s blood flamed to a white hot pitch. To disparage the honor her comrades, even the cowards and the sneaks and the lowlifes, was an unforgivable sin. That Jaan was largely correct as to why Senkin hadn’t suffered more losses stoked the flames even high as they burned shame, as well as wounded pride.

“They retreated because the battle was lost before it was begun,” she said, forcing her rage into a box labeled ‘why I hate diplomacy’.

“We’re lucky that they did,” Lady Akorli said. “If Captain Suncourt had fought to the bitter end, her garrison would still be lost and we would have no insight into the troops the Green Council was marshalling, or how they were deployed.”

“The Warbringers were not preceded by a Windstrider?” the Queen asked.

“I am unfamiliar with that term,” Corine said, wondering why both the Gallagrin Queen and her Knight seemed to be well versed in the military apparatus of a realm which Gallagrin had little contact with in terms of trade or travel.

“The Windstriders are the Green Council’s diplomats,” the Queen said. “They can move at remarkable speed and can assume the form of one of the eight winds. The council uses them to communicate with monsters who are destructive by nature rather than volition.”

“We were offered no communication, and no warning, Your Majesty,” Corine said. “One moment it was a peaceful morning like any other and then the tremors began and the Warbringers came crashing out of the treeline on the Council side of the border. We threw fire at them, and we conjured our strongest shields but nothing could hold the giants back.”

“Any answer to this question must be speculation,” the Queen said, “but do you have any sense of what provoked the attack? Or what the Council’s aim might be in beginning this conflict?”

“I must confess I do not, Your Majesty,” Corine said. “Senkin and the Green Council have enjoyed peaceful relations since the creation of the realms.”

“Peaceful but not friendly, is that right?” Lady Akorli asked.

“The Council does keep itself at a distance, but Senkin has always respected that distance,” Corine said. “There is no true border between our two countries, just the Silver Torrent river, and that runs straight into my realm without blocking transit between the two at all.”

“The Green Council owns the headwaters for the Silver Torrent doesn’t it?” Lady Akorli asked.

“Yes, though it has never been a point of contention for the realms,” Corine said. “Our gods crafted the river to bring life to both realms and it’s path has been inviolate since it was made.”

“What response has Senkin made to the invasion?” Lady Akorli asked.

“A squad was dispatched to reclaim one of the old forts which stood on the border,” Corine said. “The attempt met with tragedy though. The Green Council is using cloud weapons from their arsenal, with lethal results.”

“Cloud weapons?” Lady Akorli asked.

“Yes,” Corine said. “Delivered by some form of aerial creature. The clouds are contained in a large shell which bursts on impact which releases a cloud of toxins which slay any who even touch the vapors, unless they are from the Green Council it seems. The Warbringers, at least, are refreshed from what we observed.”

“Interesting,” Lady Akorli said.

“Yes?” the Queen asked.

“Pulling out special armaments this early in the conflict,” Lady Akorli said. “That suggests a number of things, none of them good.”

“Chief among them being the conclusion that the Council will have even deadlier devices held in reserve?” the Queen asked.

“That’s a certainty,” Lady Akorli said. “But there’s also the matter of the intent and the impact. The Council wouldn’t use a weapon like that without being aware of the impact it would have on their enemies. They want Senkin to be cautious about quick strikes behind the lines, and they intend to continue to pursue this campaign.”

“How can you tell?” Jyl asked.

“They’ve moved decisively to create fear about attacking behind their line,” Lady Akorli said. “Senkin can’t launch strikes that targets the Council’s resources without risking exposure to the Death Cloud or other weapons. If they planned to give up land they’d gained, the Council would have retreated and used the Death Cloud on any who tried to pursue.”

“What makes you think the Council will continue to pursue aggressive action?” Jaan asked.

“Because the area they’ve taken is indefensible, as Captain Suncourt said. The gods didn’t plan on the two realms coming into conflict, so only good positions for erecting solid defense works are deep within both realms. The Council will need to push forward at least until they’ve captured those if they intend to have any long term hope of holding the territory they’ve acquired.”

“In light of that, what call does Senkin make to Gallagrin?” the Queen asked.

“My Queen has bid me to solicit from you news of the stand Gallagrin will take on this issue, whether you will stand with us or allow us to prosecute our claim against the Council on our own,” Corine said. “I am to deliver you declaration to her personally by the most expeditious manner I can procure.”

“You will be traveling by Royal Carriage then,” the Queen said. “My Knight, the realm is in your hands. Vice Commander please procure a squad from the Royal Army for our use. Guardian Undine, arrange with our Senseshal for travel necessities to be gathered and forwarded Senkin by fastest air carriage. We shall not wait longer. We travel to Senkin to begin settling this matter now.”

Eorn thought it was her imagination at first that the temperature had plummeted in the room, but looking around the small Penitent’s Court she saw that there was actual ice forming on the windows, despite the pleasant warmth of the day.

“You’re going to do what?” the Lady Daelynne Akorli asked with a voice as light as a blade that was about to strike.

“We are going to lead the delegation to Senkin and the Green Council personally,” Queen Alari said. “We stand on the brink of a cataclysm greater than the loss of our gods. The world knows what we did to Paxmer and now it watches to see if another realm will fall. We cannot let that happen through warfare, or our world will drown in the blood of the innocent.”

“We can not risk you,” Dae said. “Gallagrin with disintegrate if you fall.”

Eorn wasn’t especially adept at reading social dynamics, but the tension in the room had risen so fast and thick that even she could feel it. The Queen and her Knight weren’t arguing how Eorn’s family would. There were no thundering voices, no creative profanity, just calm words spoken with the greatest of restraint, which was somehow a thousand times more terrifying.

“I’m afraid the Lady Akorli is quite correct,” the nobleman Ren said, bravely entering the conversation. “Without someone holding the Gallagrin Pact Spirit, the noble houses will rip themselves to apart vying for the succession.”

“If you named one of them as your heir, that could be avoided,” Jaan Lafli said.

“Typical,” Vice Commander Jyl said, her contempt for her sister not even thinly veiled.

“I do not offer the Lafli house as a candidate for that title,” Jaan said, dismissing her sister’s anger with an airy wave. “We have been mislead recently and the honor of being the presumptive heir should clearly be bestowed on a House which has remained true to you. House Lafli will look only to support them.”

Eorn thought that sounded reasonable on the surface, but she’d listened to too many tales featuring the corruption of the nobility not to look for the hidden agendas in Jaan Lafli’s words.

Unsurprisingly, she didn’t have to look far. House Lafli had backed all of the attempts to take Queen Alari’s throne. They were lucky she hadn’t executed them all weeks ago. Pledging support for a new House early did nothing to make up for those betrayals, it only served to put the Lafli in a better position if the Queen was killed and the Gallagrin Pact Spirit went up for grabs.

The issue of who would next rule shouldn’t have been in dispute, of course. Gallagrin had, at one time, possessed very clear lines of succession. The Queen’s father had seen to the destruction of that though. Among his first victims were those who held an uncontested claim to the throne should he and Alari be slain. The remaining nobility had to trace their connections to royal blood back a half dozen generations or so, which meant that the specifics of who held priority as the legitimate successor was a murky question at best.

“We have thought of this as well,” Queen Alari said. “As there is only one in this realm who holds our unquestioning trust, the choice of naming our heir is a simple one.”

She turned to her right and Eorn watched the Lady Akorli’s face pale at what was coming.

“You already speak with my voice, and you have given more for this realm than we could ever have asked,” the queen said. “This burden is one we lay on you out of our love and trust, though we fear there is no kindness in our doing so. Lady Daelynne Akorli, Queen’s Knight and Champion of Gallagrin, we name you our successor, to hold in trust the people and spirits of this realm until you pass from this life or find a worthy successor to whom to pass the royal mantle.”

The queen’s words echoed with more than human weight behind them. It didn’t matter that there were human witnesses in the room. The Pact Spirit of Gallagrin had taken notice of Alari’s proclamation and would seek out Dae on its own should Alari fall.

“You can’t be serious,” Dae said, her eyes those of a rabbit discovering itself surrounded on all sides by wolves.

“If the throne would seat two, you would rule beside me already,” Alari said.

“Dammit,” Dae muttered. Then her eyes flew open and she repeated, “Dammit!”

“Yes, we are afraid you are correct,” Alari said, before Dae could speak. “This time you must stay and bide your here while we travel to resolve the crisis at hand.”

“No!” Dae said, jumping to her feet and breaking, from what Eorn was aware of, every kind of protocol in addressing the queen so bluntly. “There is no chance in the Nine Hells you are leaving this castle without me, much less this country.”

Eorn began to sense that being anywhere else, even the Nine Hells, would be preferable to being present for the argument that was to come between the Queen and her Knight. A quick glance around the room told her that everyone else felt the same, but the tempest that was building was broken with only a few quiet words.

“I must and you must,” the Queen said, her voice softer than Eorn imagined ever hearing it. “I need you here to handle so many things.”

Everyone else in the room was sitting silent, listening to the exchange, and it took a moment for Eorn to notice what had caught their attention. It wasn’t just the argument. The Queen had slipped into familiar speech. That was something no one, except apparently the Lady Akorli, had ever heard before.

“Such as?” Dae asked, her eyes glassy with repressed tears.

“We have only received a representative from Senkin,” Alari said. “There must be someone here who can speak with royal authority if and when the Green Council opens an official dialog with us.”

“I’m not the one you want speaking with them,” Dae said, settling back into her chair.

“I believe she does,” Ren said. “And with good reason.”

Dae shot a glance at him that was as hard as a crossbow bolt to the chest.

“And what reason would that be,” she asked, anger grinding the words across her lips.

“The Green Council will listen to you,” Ren said. “And yet your words won’t bind the realm unless the Queen wishes them to be binding.”

“Through you, Gallagrin can address both Senkin and the Green Council without tying our fate to either one,” Alari said. “Together, we can act as arbiters to resolve the underlying dispute which has placed our northern neighbors at war with one another.”

“Is there really a dispute to be resolved though?” the man who spoke was someone Eorn only barely recognized. The Duke’s husband if she remembered correctly. Outside of the Penitent’s Court, he wouldn’t have had the standing to speak directly to the queen. Inside the court, Eorn wasn’t sure he should have either, but Alari recognized his point nonetheless.

“There have been actions which Senkin and the Green Council will point to as the cause and justification for their animosity, but you are correct. As always there will be deeper reasons for the bloodshed,” Alari said.

“Can you, or even all of Gallagrin, address those reasons?” Teo, Duke Ren’s husband, asked.

“Certainly,” Alari said. “Anything we do, even abstaining from the conflict is an answer to the question they raise. If you are asking whether we can create peace between the two realms though, that is not the reason for our conference with the two sides.”

“You want to support the stronger realm in their conquest of the other to limit the damage inflicted?” Jaan asked.

“There’s the Lafli family for you,” Jyl said.

“We’re not going to support either realm are we?” Dae asked.

“It is too soon to say, but most likely not,” Alari said.

“What other option is there?” Jaan asked.

“You crush both of them as a warning to other realms not to try this sort of thing in the future,” Dae said.

“That’s going to be a tall order with Gallagrin in its current state,” Ren said.

“It’s current state can change quickly though, can’t it?” Teo asked.

“Which current state do you mean?” Jaan asked. “At present our realm seems beset by a number of fractures.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Jyl said. “Not with all of the fractures still here for the Grand Convocation.”

“What are you suggesting sister?” Jann’s expression had sharpened like a knife.

“Just that if a pyre needs to be built for our grandfather, I’ll be happy to throw the first logs on the pile,” Jyl said.

Eorn didn’t miss the Vice Commander’s meaning, and from the looks of it, no one else in the room did either. Murdering the nobles who tried to oppose the queen seemed like a brutal step, but under the circumstances Eorn wouldn’t have been opposed to taking a few swings with the axe. There were nobles she’d met who might become much less disagreeable if their mouths were no longer connected to their lungs.

“We will not strengthen our realm by bleeding it out,” Alari said. “Our father proved the failures inherent in following that path.”

“Who are you taking with you?” Dae asked. She didn’t look like she’d given in to the notion of the queen leaving her behind but something had changed in her demeanor.

“Vice Commander Lafli and her sister will escort us,” Alari said.

“That’s not enough,” Dae said. “And don’t tell me you need to travel quickly. Take the rest of the Guard. It’s what we’re here for and we can all travel quickly.”

“We planned to recall Mayleena as well,” Alari said.

“My sister’s not in the palace?” Ren asked. “What is she up to?”

“She’s playing with dragons,” Dae said. “Or terrorizing them. It’s hard to tell sometimes.”

Eorn blinked. She’d heard rumors of the missing member of the Queen’s Guard. Some people had claimed she was lost in fighting to take Paxmer, but Lady Akorli had said she was on a special assignment. Working with dragons wasn’t something she could do in Gallagrin which suggested the Queen’s Guardian had never left Paxmer.

“Okay,” Ren said. “That’s not what I had expected, but…ok.”

“We will take Lord Greis with us as well, to make use of his contacts in Senkin,” Alari said.

“I would be delighted to be of service Your Majesty,” Ren said.

“Lord Greis? I thought you were part of the Telli family?” Jaan asked.

“It’s complicated,” Ren said. “I serve the Queen in two capacities, though in one of them I fear my service has been lacking.”

“If you’re going to Senkin then I am going too,” Teo said.

“About that Mr. Greis,” Alari said. “The crown has need of your services as well.”

Teo looked wary at that and replied in a cautious tone, “And what duty can I serve?”

“We need to send a diplomat to Inchesso to speak with our allies there,” Alari said.

“Your forgiveness Your Majesty, but there are forces in Inchesso who will move against my husband if he sets foot back in his homeland,” Ren said.

“We are counting on that,” Alari said. “That is why we will send one of our own Guardians with you as well as a squad of the Royal Army loyal to our person.”

“Stirring the kettle in Inchesso too?” Dae asked. “That’s not going to make this situation any calmer.”

Eorn noticed a dangerous smile spreading across the Dae’s face, but couldn’t spare the time to decipher it as she tried to figure out who the queen was thinking to send with Teo. With dawning horror, she worked out two terrible facts. First the queen had said she was sending only one of her guards with Teo and second the only guards who hadn’t been assigned a task yet were Undine and herself. One of them was going to Inchesso and the other wasn’t, Eorn felt her stomach twist at the idea, but the gravity of the situation kept her in her chair, silently praying that she was missing something.

“It is not our intention to place a lid on this political cauldron,” Alari said. “Allowing hostilities to simmer will only turn today’s problem into ones which will plague all of our tomorrows.”

“Then I take it I have one other task,” Dae said. “If we’re not going to let tomorrow’s problems come down to roost then we’re going to need the Ducal armies unified as well won’t we?”

“Yes,” Alari said. “We leave that particularly thorny problem in your capable hands as well as one other.”

“There’s more?” Dae said, sighing and slumping into herself.

“The matter before us touches on more than Senkin and the Green Council, and more than Gallagrin and Inchesso,” Alari said. “We need to gather all of our allies”

“You want me to contact my mother,” Dae said, without looking up.

“Paxmer and Gallagrin have centuries of blood between them,” Alari said. “If our world is going to flirt with centuries of war to come, let it be those of us who are familiar with its cost who lead the rest away from that precipice.”