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They were letters. Hundreds of them. All different colors of parchment and all different grades of ink. Some were dated almost twenty years back. And each was signed in the same way:
Your loving sister and loyal herald,
- U
Urosina’s cables home! A lifetime of reporting on her quests and travels! Documents of which there were only a single copy, all going directly to the archon.
And as he flicked through the neat handwriting, he was shocked to find not the boring reports he expected of the serious old bitch, but little snippets of gossip.
My Dearest Majesty, I bring news of much scandal in Ondocis...
Lady Morcel left Vaticily that evening in a frightful temper, and I must surmise that the low oracles did not give her the guidance that she sought...
I fear the glass lady has undersold the damage in the relationship. The crown would not meet with me during my entire time in Ardora...
He paused at that one, dated just three months prior. It ran through the things he would expect—movements in high society, updates on weather and expected prices for goods. But at the bottom was something wholly unexpected.
It was an extended and rather detailed passage about the Ardoran royal family: House Viralis, which like many of the oldest northern nobility had its family name drawn from Voresoma rather than Dynosian—an artefact of an age when Mestibian diplomacy and education held rather more sway in the land of fertility than it presently did.
The passage spoke of King Selkus III, wise and popular, still recovering from his poisoning at the hands of a Rinathi assassin five years prior, during the Sama invasion. Of Queen Dimitra, cold as an empty bed, but perhaps the real power behind the throne. Of their younger daughter, Zosime, just twenty-three but already the most impressive Sisterhood captain in the whole land. And finally, of Crown Prince Calix, strategos of all the Brothers and Sisters of Ardora. A distant man and committed bachelor, who despite being pursued by at least a dozen eligible...
Aurelius froze, re-reading the passage.
A committed bachelor...
“That fucking bitch!” he screamed to no one in particular.
Aurelius stormed from the apartment, making his way directly to the palace. Teigra jogged behind, asking questions he barely even heard.
So that was the archon’s game all along! There was a secret reason she’d chosen him for the job of herald. And he had just been too blind to see it.
I got comfortable. I left myself open. Well, not again!
It hadn’t occurred to him that she would use him for something like that. That even she could be this manipulative and hypocritical. But now, it was clear as the finest glass.
And after all she did six years ago? One day she throws me out of the family for who I am, and now she wants to use that part of me for her own goals?
The journey along familiar streets passed in a rush. Soon, Aurelius was deep in the palace, the building he’d been raised in—the marble columns a purer white and more finely sculptured than any other in the city.
He burst into the archon’s private office, a small clutch of modestly dressed attendants scurrying in his wake.
“Did you think you could get away with this?” he barked, brandishing the folio like a shield.
The room was sparse in the way only real power could pull off—a deliberate display of well-fashioned restraint. The archon peered from her desk, the oil lamp flickering with the night breeze, carrying the smell of lemon blossom and betrayal.
“Apologies, Your Majesty,” panted Kufan, his mother’s ancient chief advisor, a man who had haunted the halls of the palace with his sharp eyes and sharper tongue throughout Aurelius’s childhood. “We couldn’t stop hi—”
The archon raised her hand, and the man retreated. There was a moment of silence before she spoke.
“Well, Herald. You clearly came to speak your mind?”
He marched to her desk and slapped the folio down, the offending page face up. “Crown Prince Calix, strategos of all the Brothers and Sisters of Ardora. A distant man and committed bachelor, who despite being pursued by at least a dozen eligible noblewomen since his single-handed heroics in Sama, has not yet found a maiden that has captured his lasting attention. Instead, my extensive inquiries suggest that the fraternally minded prince is more interested in wrestling with the rough and ready menfolk from his own fighting days.”
“And?” said the archon, stony-faced. “I gave you Urosina’s cables to aid your work. I wouldn’t have done so if I’d known it would upset you so.”
“Don’t play coy with me, Mother. Do you think I don’t know Urosina’s little codes? Do you think she didn’t use them on me as well? Committed bachelor? Fraternally minded?”
“What are you implying?”
