In Kuroinu

The palace looked different without an audience.

Last time I'd been here the throne room had been full of guards and functionaries and the architecture had been designed to make me feel small. Today Leonora led me through a side entrance, up a narrow stair that smelled like lamp oil and old stone, and into a corridor I hadn't seen before. Smaller. Private. The walls had tapestries on them instead of weapons and the floor was carpeted and our footsteps went from clanking echoes to muffled thuds.

She stopped at a door. Dark wood, iron bands, no decoration. She knocked twice. Hard.

"Enter."

Sophie's voice. The same carrying tone that filled a throne room, scaled down to a study.

Leonora opened the door and stood aside. I walked in. She followed and closed the door behind us and put her back against it.

The room was smaller than I expected. A desk dominated the center, heavy oak, stacked with documents and a map of the northern territories pinned open with glass weights at the corners. Bookshelves along two walls, half full, the other half given over to rolled scrolls and sealed correspondence. A window behind the desk let in morning light and a draught that made the candle on the corner gutter. There was a tea set on a side table that had been used recently, the pot still steaming.

Sophie was standing behind the desk with her hands flat on the wood. She was wearing a simpler dress than the throne room, dark green, high-collared, her hair in a plainer arrangement. The crown was gone. Without it she looked younger and the sharpness in her face was more visible because nothing was framing it.

Two attendants were in the room. She glanced at them.

"Leave us."

They went. Leonora stayed at the door.

"Sit," Sophie said.

There was one chair in front of the desk. I sat. She didn't.

"You've been busy since we last spoke," she said. The measuring attention was the same as the throne room but the distance was different. Closer. More direct. "We've been training. Preparing for the journey north."

"That's not what I mean." She picked up a document from the desk, glanced at it, set it back down. "The Hero's Blessing requires physical intimacy to activate. We established this. Since that conversation you have been, by my intelligence, quite active."

A guard somewhere in the corridor sneezed. The sound carried through the door and Leonora's shoulders stiffened and then relaxed.

"You're well-informed," I said.

"I'm the queen." She sat down. The chair behind her desk was high-backed and plain and she settled into it with the ease of a woman who'd sat in that chair every day for years. "I didn't bring you here to judge you. The Blessing works as it works. What interests me is whether you understand what you're building."

"What I'm building."

"You have four women whose combat capabilities have been measurably enhanced through their connection to you. A swordswoman, a priestess, an archer, and a civilian whose sensory range now exceeds that of a trained scout." She folded her hands on the desk. "You're building an asset, hero. Whether you realize it or not."

She was right. Four women, each stronger than before, each connected to me through the Blessing.

"The question," Sophie said, "is whether you're building it fast enough."

She opened a drawer in her desk and took out a small leather-bound journal. Old. The cover was cracked and the binding was dark with age and the pages when she opened it were yellowed and written in a hand I didn't recognize.

"The First Hero," she said. "My ancestor. He was summoned to this kingdom four hundred years ago by a ritual similar to yours. He carried the same Blessing. The same mechanism." Her finger rested on the open page. "He was a good man. Brave. Kind. And he waited too long."

I leaned forward. The handwriting was cramped. Ink that had faded from black to brown. Numbers in the margins that might have been dates or measurements.

"He had three partners in three years," Sophie said. "He loved each of them. He wanted to be faithful to each one before moving on to the next. He gave himself time to process, to be sure." The corner of her mouth came up and flattened, but there was no humor in it this time. "In three years, the Demon King's forces had advanced past the outer territories. The hero's power was growing, but slowly. His partners were strong. They were not strong enough. He died in the battle of the Pale Ridge with a kingdom's worth of women who could have been his allies watching from the walls because he'd never reached them."

The draught from the window shifted the candle flame and the shadow on the desk wavered.

"The Blessing grows. The women grow. The hero grows. But the enemies grow faster if you don't seek them out." She closed the journal. "Don't repeat his mistake."

I thought about the First Hero dying on a ridge because he'd taken his time. And I thought about Vault gathering mercenaries in the north and Maou marshalling demons behind them and Dirk cutting deals in Leuven and Guignol preparing to trigger dragon genes in Dragundaala. Seven fortress-cities and seven princess knights, every one of them about to be betrayed by people they trusted.

Sophie's ancestor hadn't known what was coming. I did. And the timetable wasn't four hundred years. It was months.

"I won't wait," I said.

Sophie studied me for a long time.

"Good," she said.

She reached into the desk again and pulled out a medallion on a chain. Heavy, silver, engraved with a crest I recognized from the banners in the throne room. Lesdea's royal seal.

"This identifies you as Lesdea's endorsed representative to the Shield Alliance," she said. "It carries my authority. It will get you into fortress-cities, command audiences, and requisition supplies." She held it out across the desk. "Don't lose it."

I took it. The metal was cold and heavier than I expected and the chain was long enough to wear under a shirt. I slipped it over my head and tucked it against my chest.

"Thank you, Your Majesty."

"Sophie." Flat. A correction. "In this room, when it's the three of us, it's Sophie."

I looked at her. She looked back. The morning light was behind her and her hair was catching it and her eyes were sharp and clear.

"Thank you, Sophie."

The corner of her mouth came up. She straightened it.

Leonora walked me out.

The corridor was cooler than the study and the tapestries muffled our footsteps and Leonora's armor clinked softly in the quiet. She walked beside me this time, not ahead.

"The border route passes through three settlements before reaching Shield Alliance territory," she said. "Your party is provisioned. The road is scouted. We leave at dawn in two days."

"We?"

"I'll be joining your party as far as the border."

I glanced at her. Her jaw was set and her eyes were forward and her hand was on her sword pommel. "Sophie's orders?"

"My choice."

She kept walking. Her stride didn't change.

"Someone needs to ensure the hero doesn't die before reaching the front lines," she said. "Your party has a swordswoman, a priestess, an archer, and a girl with a tail. None of them have commanded a defensive line. None of them have fought anything larger than an orc raiding party. The Shield Alliance is a war zone."

"You've read our mission reports."

"I've read everything."

We turned a corner. The corridor opened into a wider hall with windows along one side and sunlight in long rectangles on the stone floor. A servant was polishing a suit of armor on a stand near the far wall and the rhythm of the cloth on metal was steady and mindless.

Leonora stopped walking. She turned to face me. She was taller than me by a good two inches and in her armor she was wider in the shoulder and she looked down at me and her eyes were steady and direct.

"I watched your party train," she said. "You're fast. You read fights well. Your footwork is bad and your guard drops when you commit to a swing and you rely on reflexes that come from the Blessing instead of from discipline. You'll survive skirmishes. You won't survive a battle."

"You're very encouraging."

"I'm not trying to be encouraging. I'm trying to keep you alive long enough to be useful."

She held my eyes for a second. Then she turned and started walking again and I fell into step beside her and the armor clinked and the sunlight moved across the floor as we passed each window.

At the end of the hall, Marie was waiting.

She was standing by the tall windows where the corridor turned toward the main entrance, wearing a pale blue dress, her hands clasped in front of her the way they'd been clasped the first time I met her. She'd positioned herself to look accidental again. She was bad at it.

"Oh," she said. "Haruto. I was just-"

"Your Highness."

"Marie." Quick. Automatic. Her cheeks were already coloring. "I heard you were- Mother mentioned you were coming to the palace today and I wanted to-"

She stopped talking. Her hands unclasped and she stepped forward and her arms went around my chest and her face pressed into my shoulder and she hugged me.

She was warm and smaller than her mother and she smelled like soap and something floral and her arms were tight around my ribs and she held on. I put a hand on her back. She pressed closer.

Leonora had stopped walking. She was standing behind me and the corridor was very quiet.

"Be safe," Marie said. Into my shoulder. Her voice was small and her grip was firm and she wasn't letting go. "Please. The north is- I've read the reports and the things that are happening up there are- just please be safe."

"I'll be safe."

"Promise."

"Marie-"

"Promise." She pulled back far enough to look at me and her eyes were wet and her chin was up and she looked like her mother right then, the jaw set the same way.

"I promise."

She held the look. Then she nodded once and let go and stepped back and her hands went back to their clasped position and her cheeks were red and she was blinking fast.

"Good," she said. "That's- good. I'll- yes."

She turned and walked back down the corridor. Her steps were quick and measured. The handkerchief from our first meeting was visible in her sleeve where she'd tucked it, blue-stitched white cotton, and her hand was pressed against it as she walked.

I watched her go.

At the far end of the corridor, in the doorway of the study we'd left, Sophie was standing with her shoulder against the frame and her arms folded. She was watching me watch her daughter, and the corner of her mouth almost came up and didn't.

She held my gaze. Then she nodded, once, and went back inside. The door closed.

Leonora was behind me.

"We leave at dawn," she said. "Don't be late."

She walked past me toward the main entrance, her armor catching the light from the hall windows. I stood there for a second. Then I walked out after her.

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