Swordpoint Diplomacy 23

Chapter 23

If she could, she would have walked out of the royal camp into the night and away from the shadow of that conversation.

Unfortunately Rose lived in a society, so she accepted an invitation to dinner with her Father and his council. It was a cheerful affair. This far back from any fighting, the command post was really more of a celebration. Plenty of noncombatants flitted around, pretty serving girls and priestesses and witches mingling with rich men and tacticians.

Father lorded over it all with aplomb.

She had to laugh and agree that yes, things were going well, and oh yes, men died as easily as she’d been told. Rose kept a smile plastered on and played her role, the perfect and fierce heir. She was untouchable. She was everything that the kingdom had prayed to receive for 20 nights and 21 days while foreign barbarians were sacrificed to draw the approval of their patron gods.

It all sounded like bullshit to her. But it was undeniable that their family’s gifts were stronger in her and even Etienne than they had been for generations.

‘Why wouldn’t Aunt Aime want me to be the heir? What’s wrong with me?’

The thing that made Rose fear it was true was that she knew Aunt Aime had always liked Etienne better. Of course she’d noticed. Of course it hurt when she was little. But Rose was older now and wiser. She knew that Aime had merely been making up for the lack of love in Etienne’s life. It had never meant that there was something unworthy of love about Rose. It didn’t mean that.

Rose went inside, away from the cheering and the drinking. She wanted her Father to be lying or to be wrong. Either one of those things would be very uncharacteristic. Of course he could be wrong. She’d tricked him (and if he ever found out… well. He had better not find out until she was far away.)

Distantly, she recognized an irony in her hurt. What did it matter if Aunt Aime thought Rose should be married out of the country? Rose even agreed. Rose was actively working to make that happen. So why did she want to cry at the thought that it hadn’t been her Father or some courtier to suggest sending her away?

She’d just.. She’d thought it was just a trick. It was a lie, to lower the defenses before they attacked. The engagement had made much more sense once her Father had ordered an invasion.

‘If my marriage really was on the table and Father didn’t suggest it…’

Well. Most people would be dead for working around his will like that. It .. It fit better than Rose liked. Her own mother had been banished back to her family for the crime of public dissent with Father.  But his own sister? There was nowhere to banish Aunt Aime to, and she was too important to mysteriously drop dead at court.

She could die in battle, though, and it would only engender public support for the war effort.

The fine food just tasted like oils in her mouth. It was a relief to finally judge it was late enough to politely excuse herself to her tent to sleep. As soon as she entered, she fished the metal link out of her underclothes and laid it next to her gloves. It had been pressing against her skin uncomfortably.

She undressed, washed her face, and laid down.

‘...Prince Marcel is still untied, and possibly under a pile of blankets.’

Fuck.

Rose sat up and then cringed when the next thought occurred.

‘He’s definitely not under the bedding. It’ll be laid out by now.’

If the guards had noticed that a prisoner was loose, she would have known. The message would have gone to her or her Father, and she’d been in the same room. That helped her relax a bit, but Rose still pulled a cloak over her sleeping shift and put her boots back on. She had to go and check.

She snuck to the prisoner’s tent and was thankful that she’d had it set up near to her own. The only people to notice her were the guards posted outside. They straightened when they saw her, but she held a finger up to her lips for quiet.

They bowed and held the tent open for her. Rose slipped inside and let her eyes adjust to the darkness.

Fabric shuffled. She turned her face to the sound but it took a second to be able to see that it was the Castellan who had sat up. Rose nodded. “Good evening,” she said quietly.

Slowly, LaGown nodded back.

Rose checked over the tent. Four bedrolls were laid out. She knelt to examine the stake that Marcel and Willame should have both been secured to. Marcel’s chain was laid inside the loop, delicately balanced. She snorted, amused. It would pass a brief examination.

‘Should I attach it for real? It would go poorly if someone realized that he wasn’t genuinely secured. But if I need to hide him again, I might not have time to break it…’

“We simply must stop meeting like this.”

Rose startled at Marcel’s dry tone. She calmed herself and nodded at him. She hadn’t realized he was awake. “Good evening,” she said, a bit formal. “My apologies for manhandling you earlier.”

Willame snorted, so he was awake as well. “Hear that?” he said in an undertone. He elbowed his friend. Marcel huffed, but he didn’t stop looking up at Rose. “She’s sorry she manhandled you, frail thing that you are.”

“I heard,” Marcel said.

“Delicate,” Willame continued. “Are you wounded? T’was a lot of bedding.” The faux concern was annoying even Rose, so she shot him a nasty look.

He stopped immediately and put his hands up with a slightly too loud curse. “Creepy eyes,” Willame muttered rebelliously, but he rolled over on his side and looked away.

‘They’re not creepy.’

She felt her jaw tense, but she didn’t argue. She hadn’t come to argue like children. “I assume you understand what happened,” Rose said stiffly.

Marcel let his eyebrows go up. It felt like he was judging her. Yes, she had hidden him from her King. That was treasonous and unfilial. Rose felt her shoulders work their way up. “I understand,” he said, after an uncomfortably long pause.

‘I have to marry him or kill him so that he can’t be a witness against me for that,’ Rose reflected. ‘All of them. And I can't marry all four of them, so I need to start writing condolence letters.’

A problem for another time. For now, they were, in an odd way, her allies. They all wanted Marcel to survive. She knelt in front of him and let her elbows rest on her knees. He drew back just a breath, and then sat up straighter to match her height. “If you’re executed, there is a significant reduction in the possibility of a peaceful resolution,” Rose said. She felt the miserable twinge of hurt that her Aunt wanted this, but she stifled it. “So I hope you can forgive my manners.”

“We do,” the Castellan said with a hint of warning in her voice. Willame grumbled something that even Rose couldn’t understand.

For the first time, Rose realized that the woman was Marcel’s aunt. It put her protective behavior in context. “Wonderful,” she said tightly, and didn’t examine her feelings. “My plans have changed. Obviously, I cannot leave Marcel with my Father, though I’m afraid the other three of you are at his liberty.”

Marcel winced.

“...He probably won’t kill any of you,” Rose added, feeling less certain than she’d like. They were temporary allies, in a way, so she didn’t feel too bad about saying, “He actually mentioned how much he thought he could get in gold for Castellan LaGown.”

She was rewarded by the sight of Marcel relaxing. He smiled reluctantly at her.

Rose didn’t smile back. She stood and cast another look at the metal chain. “I think I should put this back,” she said. “If the guards notice, Father will definitely get a report and realize there’s four prisoners.”

“Oh, this should be good.” Willame stopped pretending to be asleep and sat up again. “I want to see the mountain woman bend metal with her bare hands.”

Rose gave him a confused look. “I’m not from a mountain.”

Willame snorted and put a hand over his face.

“Please ignore him,” Marcel said, sounding pained. “As you say.” He reached out and squeezed her hand.

Rose stiffened. She looked at him. She didn’t know what was on her face, but he slowly pulled his hand back and put it under his blanket. She swallowed. Then she gently disentangled the chain and fixed her fingers on either side of the line where it had been welded shut. It was harder to pull this one open than the last, since she wasn’t frantic. She managed and then fitted it over the head of the stake as quietly as possible. Rose squeezed it to mostly shut and then carefully let it rest at the bottom of the metal loop.

Only then did she realize that Marcel was staring at her with an unnerving intensity.

Rose frowned at him. “What?” she asked, aggressive even in her quiet.

“Nothing.” He sounded a bit weak. “Nothing. Thank you for- thank you. Good night.”

Willame let out a series of coughs that sounded more like laughter. Marcel gradually began to turn pink.

The Castellan let out a long, loud sigh. Her blankets rustled. “Goodnight boys,” she said pointedly. “Goodnight, Princess.” She pulled her cover over her head.

Rose stood in uncertainty for a moment. “Right. Goodnight.” She left that conversation and whatever had gone unsaid behind.

At least when she got back into bed, she had something less charged to think about than the possibility that her Aunt was trying to get rid of her.

The next morning brought problems and very little clarity.

She couldn’t pass Marcel off to her cousin or to her Aunt. Even if she trusted them, they were too far out of her reach for the moment. Neither could she leave him here. Every minute that he spent within a league of her Father was a horrendous risk for discovery.

He had to leave with her. He couldn’t leave with her as a prisoner, because it would be too suspicious. Father would know.

So her options were to get him out in total secrecy or to disguise him.

Rose entertained a brief fantasy of stuffing him in her saddlebag, but she was probably better off finding armor to put him in.

“Definitely going to need a helmet,” she said to herself. Rose frowned at the inside of her tent as she kitted up for the day. “He looks so local. All pale and pointy.” The memory of his faintly purple eyes shining up at her came to mind, unbidden. She paused. The way that he’d stared at her while she broke and bent that metal… it was bothering her. He’d been so still, with big eyes and slightly parted lips.

She frowned. She took her head to shake out the thought and finished getting ready with brisk efficiency. As she left her tent to find an unused set of royal armor that would fit someone so tall and lanky, she silently mourned how simple life had used to be.