The Crown Princess's Script

The chair in the Crown Princess's small drawing room did not look like a thing made for its owner.

The back rose higher than her shoulders, and the footrest sat a hand's span too far away. Adela Roen sat with her spine pressed to that tall chair, but neither foot reached the floor. Every time her toes swayed a little in the air, the corner of the script card in the lady-in-waiting's hand trembled with them.

"Congratulations to the duke's daughter of Avern on registering her marriage to His Highness the Grand Duke without incident."

Adela's voice was even and thin. Sentences learned too early came off the tip of her tongue cleanly.

"The petition for joint hearing rights rests on Volume 27 of the royal code, the exception clause in the section on house preservation. The Crown, in accordance with due procedure..."

The lady-in-waiting turned to the next card. Half a beat behind, Adela said "in accordance with procedure" again. With the same words set down twice, the lady's finger pressed against the edge of the card.

Lydia did not correct the broken sentence. If she began correcting in this room, Adela would only have another adult's answer to memorize. Instead she looked at the distance between the saucer and the chair's footrest. Someone had wanted the heir seated high, and no one had asked where the child's feet came to rest.

Cassian stood near the door. The Crown Princess's request had won him permission to attend, but his place was somewhere between guard and guest. He did not cut in, even when Adela repeated the broken line.

"This is a sentence I would like His Highness to hear as well," Adela said.

Cassian raised his head.

Adela looked at the bottom of the card. "Crown Princess Adela Roen trusts in the faithful support of the candidates for regent, and will humbly hear all counsel for the stability of the kingdom."

Cassian's hand stopped on his scabbard. Lydia did not ask which word he had reacted to. "All counsel" was a courteous phrase, but it sat too close to saying she could not refuse.

"We agreed that meetings in the small drawing room would be recorded only when Her Highness wishes it," Lydia said. "Is this sentence to be recorded?"

For the first time, Adela did not look at the card. "Do not record it."

The lady-in-waiting set the pen down at once. Cassian left the door open and stepped back a pace.

"Your Highness." Adela called to him. "Please wait outside the door."

The air in the room stiffened briefly. The lady-in-waiting gripped the stack of cards harder, and Cassian looked not at the Crown Princess but at the guard beyond the open door. If he stayed, safety grew stronger. The questions grew weaker instead.

"I will not close the door," Cassian said.

"Please do that."

Instead of answering, he stepped past the threshold. The toes of his boots stopped outside the door line, and his shadow did not reach the floor inside. Lydia confirmed that small boundary, then turned to Adela.

Adela laid one script card face down on her knee. On the back, small handwriting ran off the ruled lines. It slanted like something a child had written in secret, and there were not many sentences a child in the palace could write in secret.

"Did you refuse His Highness the Grand Duke's orders?"

Lydia did not pick up her cup. "I refused the things that could be called orders."

"Were you safe afterward?"

The boots beyond the door did not move. Lydia decided not to use the fact that Cassian was listening as a shield.

"It was not the contract that made me safe," Lydia said, choosing her words slowly. "A resonance stone does not guarantee safety either. It only preserves the sentences that were spoken. Afterward, His Highness chose not to retaliate, and he let the people around him see that choice, and that is why I am safer than I was yesterday."

Adela repeated the word "choice" quietly, as if rolling it around her mouth.

"And if he does not make that choice?"

"Then the record becomes evidence. It is not safety itself."

For a while Adela held the arm of the tall chair. Her knuckles looked white, but her voice tried to return to the copybook.

"The stability of the kingdom comes before the heir's private unease."

"Who wrote that sentence?"

"Her Highness the Queen Dowager Beatrice corrected it for me. The first version was longer."

Lydia attached no judgment to the Queen Dowager's name. "Did Your Highness agree to it?"

Adela's toes swayed once more. "Agreeing makes me safer."

The question had been pushed aside by the answer. Lydia did not say so, and waited.

Adela looked again at the back of the overturned card. One of the original lines had been struck out there. Beneath "will humbly hear all counsel," small handwriting continued.

"I will hear the counsel I need, and I will verify any dangerous order."

Adela could not read the sentence aloud. She only pushed the card a little toward Lydia.

"If I refuse the regency, who protects me?"

Lydia pressed down the answer rising to her throat. It would have been easy to say Cassian. Saying the Queen Dowager, or saying the law, would all have amounted to choosing on behalf of someone in this room.

"That question must be asked in front of the person Your Highness would give the refusal to," Lydia said. "I cannot choose in your place. I can record the question, though. If Your Highness wishes it."

Adela looked at the pen. The lady-in-waiting held her breath, and beyond the door there was no sound at all.

"Do not record it now," Adela said. "I still get the asking wrong."

"There are no wrong questions. A question only needs a name that will answer for it."

Even after hearing that, Adela did not nod right away. Instead she scraped one line off the script card with her fingernail. The ink had not fully dried, and black dust caught under the nail.

There was no tall chair in the open council hall. Instead, three more chairs stood behind the Crown Princess's seat: Queen Dowager Beatrice, Chancellor Oswin, and the still empty seat for the regent candidate. Adults seated at the heir's back was a more precise arrangement than the chair in the small drawing room had been.

Adela looked at Lydia as she came in. The back of the card from before was hidden inside her sleeve.

"The first item today is the security of Her Highness the Crown Princess," Oswin said mildly. His voice carried to the far end of the chamber without strain. "While His Majesty is incapacitated, the royal guard alone cannot stabilize the north gate and the capital at once. I submit a motion designating part of the Avern Three Ports fleet as emergency collateral."

At the word fleet, Lydia's hand pressed the edge of the documents on her lap. The ships of the Three Ports were not only warships. Vessels that carried salt and wheat and people before the ice came were bound to the same port roll.

"Collateral, you said," Lydia asked.

Oswin nodded as if he had been waiting. "It is not requisition. It is the minimum surety required for Her Highness's safety. The Crown respects the autonomy of the Three Ports. That is why I chose the moderate word collateral first."

A moderate word did not pay a dockworker's wages late. If the ships were tied up, the wages came late.

Adela lifted the card in her hand. "Crown Princess Adela Roen..."

Beatrice spoke very low. "The prepared sentence is sufficient."

Adela's hand stopped. Lydia saw the black ink dust showing at the edge of her sleeve. The child had brought her own sentence, and in an open hall she could not take it out.

"Crown Princess Adela Roen requests the cooperation of the loyal houses for the stability of the kingdom." That was what Adela finally read.

Oswin took up the thread. "If Avern refuses, the Crown has no choice but to reconsider whether a house that turned away from the Crown Princess's safety should be seated in the interim representative's chair."

A low murmur rose from the western row of the chamber. The options were tidy. Hand over the fleet and the ports shook; refuse and she became the person who had abandoned the Crown Princess's safety.

Lydia raised the speaking token. Beatrice's gaze dropped to the token first, then rose to her face. It was a small silver bar not granted to anyone sitting in a spouse's seat. The vote on the interim representative's chair was not finished yet, but yesterday's minutes had left her one right today: the right to ask.

"Please publish the list of the ships designated as collateral."

Oswin lifted a single sheet. "For security reasons, individual vessel names are not disclosed."

"Then the Three Ports do not know which ships they cannot move."

"The Crown will designate them when it requires them. The ports have no need to know in advance."

"Does the Crown set the payday as well?"

Somewhere at the back of the chamber a laugh started low and stopped. Lydia did not look to see whose it was. What she needed was discomfort, not laughter.

"If one ship is tied up, twenty sailors sail late on their next voyage. If a salt ship is tied up, the preserving houses stand empty; if a grain ship is tied up, the sacks bound for the interior go late. I do not mean to haggle over Her Highness's safety. I am asking whose table the word collateral empties first."

Oswin looked down for a moment at the paper in his hand. It was not the face of a man who did not know. It was the face of a man who knew and wanted to move the question somewhere else.

"Does the duke's daughter place Her Highness's safety and sailors' wages on the same scale?"

Lydia did not hurry to choose her answer. The question invited anger. If she grew angry, she became the person who had made light of either the Crown Princess or the wages.

"Please enter in the minutes who put them on the same scale," Lydia said. "My position is that the two costs be recorded separately."

Adela's hand stopped above her card. Lydia watched only that small movement. The Crown Princess had the face of someone hearing for the first time that her safety was calculated in other people's ships and wages. Someone had handed the child only the word "safety" and had not told her which harbor's ropes that word tied.

Beatrice cut in gently. "My lady, an heir's safety comes before numbers."

"Which is why the numbers must not be hidden," Lydia answered. "If it comes first, then write first how much it costs."

Adela pressed the back of the card with her thumb. Black ink dust marked the edge of her sleeve. That was still the extent of the defiance a child could manage in public.

Cassian came and stood beside Lydia. He did not rebut Oswin directly. "I request that the vote be postponed."

"Does His Highness the Grand Duke want time?"

"The Avern fleet roll and the north gate ration schedule have been brought to the same session. Neither can be settled with an immediate answer."

"The north gate will not wait."

"Then all the more reason not to leave behind a wrong order."

Oswin did not let his smile fade. "In six hours, the emergency session will put both items to a vote together."

Six hours. Lydia thought the number had been laid down too neatly. The Crown Princess's safety and the ports' ships, the interim seat and the north gate supply, all bound to the same hour.

Outside the council hall, at the military map table, Dorian Kreff was already waiting. One of his gloves was soaked to the wrist, and a red marker was planted on the north gate checkpoint on the map.

"Three north gate grain ships are held up downstream," Dorian said. "If they do not pass before the checkpoint changes watch, the first fortress loses a week's worth of food. We have six hours."

Cassian looked at the map. Lydia felt it was more accurate, in fact, that he had not looked at her first. In this matter the current and the checkpoint and the ships came first.

"Is command on the ground needed?" Cassian asked.

"If Your Highness does not go, the gate commanders will pass the responsibility back and forth. If I go, I will give up one ship."

"Your reason for giving up one ship."

"To save the other two."

The short answer was rougher and clearer than the moderate phrasing of the council hall.

Lydia looked at the session timetable beside the map. The vote on the interim representative's chair was also six hours away. If Cassian rode for the north gate, he could not remain in the voting hall. If he remained, the first fortress went hungry.

"Is there a provision for proxy voting?" Lydia asked first.

Only then did Cassian look at her. "There is a provision for entrusting my vote to a spouse. But it becomes a vote that represents my will."

"Do you mean you would fix that will in advance?"

He took his hand off the map before answering. "No. Can you cast the vote by your own judgment, even when I am not there?"

Dorian's eyebrows moved. Lydia took in that reaction too.

"I need to see the original reports," Lydia said. "Both the north gate grain ships and the fleet collateral motion. I will not accept summaries."

Cassian held out a hand to Dorian. "The originals."

Dorian pulled out a roughly folded bundle of reports. A wet handprint remained on the cover. Cassian passed it to Lydia. The motion was quick, but he did not push it at her.

"In six hours I will be at the north gate," Cassian said. "When the voting clock and the hourglass out there point to the same time, only you remain on this side."

Lydia opened the first page of the report. Beside the red marker, the sand in the hourglass was falling. Inside the chamber, the voting clock moved at the same speed.

"Am I permitted to make a judgment that goes against you?"

Dorian's jaw set. Cassian did not block that reaction. He laid his answer on her side of the table instead.

"If I answer that I permit it, it is not a delegation."

Lydia pressed the damp part of the report with a fingertip. The names of the north gate grain ships had bled, and the ship names in the fleet collateral motion were blacked out. Visible information and invisible information lay on the same desk.

"Then the first thing I check is not your will but the blanks in the signing authority," Lydia said. "Go to the north gate. I will look at the blanks and cast the vote."

Cassian nodded, very briefly. No word like trust attached itself to the motion. Instead he pushed over a second envelope of originals that had been lying on the map table. Its mouth was open, and the sealing wax was broken.

"The same report I saw."

Lydia took the envelope. The paper was heavier than she expected. Beyond the door came the metal sound announcing that the horses were being readied. Six hours now sat in the chamber, and in the river, and in her hands.