Beneath the Crown

Father had warned me not to put my head out of the carriage window. Under normal circumstances, I might have considered this sensible; unfortunately, the capital had decided to place almost everything worth seeing on the other side of it.

I settled for pressing close to the glass.

The streets of the Astrian capital appeared to be incapable of doing one thing at a time. Merchants shouted prices beneath coloured awnings, carriages squeezed through gaps that looked far too small, and people moved between shops in every direction. At the same time, mounted knights somehow passed through without flattening anyone.

“There are more people here than last time.”

“It was the middle of winter,” Mother pointed out.

I thought back to it.

Snow covered half of the market that day, and I had spent several minutes trying to see how many snowballs I could throw at Father before he got mad.

“That explains it.”

“You spent most of the trip looking for the confectioner.”

“Of course. It was very important.”

“You were also very sick afterwards,” Father added.

“I don’t need to remember that part.”

At home, almost everything had a place I understood. I knew which corridor became cold first in winter, which stair complained if you stepped on it a certain way, and exactly how far I could enter the kitchen before Elara somehow sensed that food was being threatened.

The capital offered none of that certainty.

Every road disappeared somewhere I had never been, and whenever I finally decided what deserved my attention, something more interesting appeared beside it.

An Imperial patrol moved along the opposite side of the street, polished armour beneath red cloaks trimmed in gold.

A bell sounded somewhere above the rooftops.

Father admitted he did not know which clock tower it belonged to, which was disappointing for somebody who had visited the capital so often.

The streets widened as we travelled deeper into the capital.

Shops gave way to grand houses, administrative buildings and guarded courtyards, while the crowds thinned enough that our carriage no longer seemed trapped inside a moving wall of people.

Then the buildings ahead separated, and the Imperial Palace rose beyond them.

For several seconds, I forgot to ask anything.

Paintings had given me a general understanding of palaces. They had neglected to mention that seeing one required tilting your head backwards far enough until your neck became a concern.

Pale stone walls stretched behind enormous iron gates, broken by towers and rows of high windows. Red-and-gold banners hung from the tallest spires, shifting lazily above a building large enough to make House Valemont feel modest.

Apparently that was possible.

“How many rooms does it have?”

“A great many.”

“That isn’t a number.”

The carriage passed through the gates. Imperial Guards stood along the courtyard in polished armour, and one remained so still that I watched him until we stopped.

“Is that guard asleep?”

“He’s standing,” Father corrected as he opened the door.

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

Outside, the palace became considerably harder to understand.

The nearest tower stretched so high above me that I took two steps backwards while following it with my eyes, only for Father’s hand to catch my shoulder.

“I had it under control.”

“You were walking backwards.”

“I knew roughly where I was.”

Mother joined us, smiling, and we crossed the courtyard together.

Above the inner doors, a stone relief showed the first Emperor with the four lords who had fought beside him during Astria’s founding.

The silver wolf beneath one figure was easier to recognise than the man himself.

The entrance hall was no less excessive.

Marble covered the floor, climbed the walls and appeared in enough columns to suggest somebody had once bought far too much of it and refused to admit their mistake.

Chandeliers hung overhead, while painted scenes stretched across a ceiling so high that I couldn’t imagine reaching it without several poor decisions involving ladders.

Even the servants moved differently here.

At home, they hurried, talked, laughed and occasionally dropped something loudly enough for the whole manor to know, while the palace servants moved across the marble so easily that they barely seemed to touch it.

One of them approached and bowed.

“Lord Valemont. Lady Valemont. His Majesty is expecting you.”

My attention snapped towards Father.

“You’re meeting the Emperor?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“You asked whether he would be here.”

“He lives here!”

“So you already knew.”

Before I could explain why that was so unfair, the servant turned towards me.

“Master Leon, you and Sir Cedric are welcome to wait in the western gardens.”

Cedric stood several steps behind us, having followed the carriage on horseback.

“Can we see the royal gallery first?”

“No,” Father answered.

“You didn’t even think about it.”

“Another time,” Mother promised, touching my shoulder.

Adults had been promising me another time for most of my life. I was beginning to suspect it wasn’t a point in time, but instead a place where inconvenient questions were sent to disappear.

We eventually found a bench near the central fountain, where the rushing water muffled most of the palace noise.

“Have you been here before?” I asked.

“A few times.”

“With the knights?”

“Sometimes.”

“What were the other times?”

Cedric turned towards me, and I recognised the expression immediately. It meant the answer had been locked away until I became older.

“You ask a remarkable number of questions.”

“Only because you answer so few of them.”

“I answer plenty. You just dislike the answers.”

I was preparing a complaint when someone approached from the path opposite us.

The man looked close to Cedric’s age, perhaps a little older, with grey hair beginning to settle in near his temples. He wore neither palace colours nor Imperial armour, although his clothes were fine enough that he clearly belonged somewhere important.

His attention settled on Cedric, then flicked briefly towards me. Cedric moved half a step before I understood why, placing himself between us. The easy laziness that had followed him through the gardens disappeared before his expression fully caught up.

The stranger stopped several steps away.

“Cedric.”

“It has been a while.”

“So it has.”

The words sounded friendly, but the silence around them did not.

“You know each other?”

Cedric nodded.

“Stay here for a moment, Leon. I need to speak with him.”

“I gathered that part.”

The stranger almost smiled; Cedric did not. That alone convinced me not to argue.

They moved towards a narrower path beside the fountain, far enough away that the falling water swallowed most of their conversation.

Following them would have been difficult, and doing it without Cedric noticing would have been impossible. So I stayed where I was and did what he had spent three years teaching me to do.

I watched.

To anyone else, Cedric probably looked normal. His posture remained relaxed, his hands stayed away from his sword, and nothing about the conversation suggested either man was angry.

Even so, he never quite moved out of the line between the stranger and me.

I knew what was normal for him better than most people did, which made the differences easier to find.

The stranger spoke for longer stretches, occasionally glancing towards the palace while Cedric listened. Once, Cedric rubbed his thumb along the side of his forefinger—the small movement he sometimes made when deciding how much of an answer to give me.

I’d never considered it important before; now, it was the most interesting thing in the garden.

The stranger continued, and Cedric’s hand stopped moving. Whatever followed lasted only a minute longer before the man offered his hand. Cedric accepted it, although neither of them looked particularly happy about whatever agreement the gesture represented.

By the time Cedric returned, I had arranged several questions in order of importance.

“What did he want?”

“Nothing you need to worry about.”

That answered nothing.

“Who was he?”

“Someone I knew during my time training with the knights.”

It sounded true.

More annoyingly, it probably was.

Cedric wasn’t avoiding my eyes or hesitating over his words; he had simply taken a much larger truth and handed me the part that he had considered safe.

“So he came over to talk about something that happened ages ago?”

“I didn’t say that.”

There it was—the first useful crack.

I nearly asked again, then remembered the training yard. An opening could be real and still be placed there for a reason.

“What?” Cedric asked after noticing my silence.

“Nothing.”

“That expression rarely means nothing.”

“You said his visit was nothing.”

“I said it was nothing you needed to worry about.”

“That sounds different.”

“It is.”

I smiled. Cedric sighed.

“That lesson may have been a mistake.”

“Because I’m getting better at it?”

“Because you’ve become considerably more troublesome ever since.”

That sounded close enough to a compliment.

An hour later, a servant told us my parents’ audience had ended. We found them near the entrance hall, where Father gave Cedric a glance that somehow felt like a conversation despite containing no words.

During the carriage ride home, Mother asked whether I had enjoyed the palace. I told her about the fountains, complained about missing the royal gallery, and informed Father that his knowledge of the capital required serious improvement.

I did not mention Cedric’s old acquaintance.

For the first time ever, waiting seemed more interesting than asking.

Cedric had taught me how to recognise an opening, and now, I wanted to know what he was keeping behind one.