walking in a field of fog

[agentlenpc]

Who: You and Fayura
When: Today, a week after the Strangers' arrivals
Where: The Queen's Residence and the Old Town Bazaar
What: Q&A
Warnings: n/a

EARLY MORNING, THE QUEEN'S RESIDENCE
The morning is cold and dark. Inhaling the frigid air is so shocking that those who aren't expecting it cough and wheeze with their first breath. No one really wants to make their way to the training field. Even the Queen's court moves sluggishly, but move they do with muttered recriminations against Allairavar. Cold weather doesn't stop training.

A warming spell around the field keeps it warm enough to practice, and bobbling witchlights and steady e-line floodlights keep the darkness at bay. All along one side of the practice area are weapons with blades live and dulled. The court eases onto the field alongside the Strangers with sighs and grumbles aplenty. No one likes practice on chilly mornings, but they like Allairavar's retaliation against tardiness even less.

Everyone has paired off by the time Allairavar strides out of the manor home with his arm around a woman's shoulders. In the harsh e-line lights and softer witchlight, it's clear she hasn't been well and still isn't entirely healed. Sunken golden eyes scan the field, and her expression is vaguely nauseated. She trembles, either from weakness or discomfort, as Allairavar pulls away and calls in two bladed sticks—weapons caught somewhere between sword and ax.

"Let's go," he tells her, and she takes one stick from his hand as court and Strangers alike look on.

Another male follows them in, sleekly predatory in his slow prowl around the practice field. A dangerous look glazes his eyes, and he circles the whole field once before making a second, tighter pass around the marked off area where Allairavar and the woman square off.

Members of the court trade wary looks, sharing them with the Strangers. More than a few murmur things like, "Verim will go for his throat if he pushes her too hard," and, "Should she even be out of bed yet?"

It seems Allairavar's rule for training is absolute. Even the Queen takes part. Under his watchful eye and tutelage, they run through a warm up that clearly exhausts her, but when he asks if they should stop, she snarls at him and pushes on for another five minutes. Only then does she sit off to the side of the field and begin stretching.

As she lifts from a leg stretch, she catches your eye and offers a small, shy smile. "Would you like to stretch with me? Allairavar's workouts are always hardest the first day back," she says softly.

Allairavar's exercises may be hard, but she looks like she's seconds from collapsing from exhaustion. If she spent this last week resting and still looks so wan and thin and weak, her initial injuries must have been severe.


MID-AFTERNOON, THE BAZAAR PAVILION
Snow drifts lazily through frigid air. Though temperatures hover around freezing, the Old Town Bazaar bustles with activity. Slowly, people rebuild homes and shops burned by the Hunter Guild, and for perhaps the first time in the past fifty years, sentiment has turned against the Hunters.

Strangers out and about in the Bazaar hear:

A landen woman, to her friend: It's not right what the Hunters did, burning down our homes, too.

A well-to-do Blood male, at a food stall: …believe what that pompous Grand Master has to say about a Queen of the Blood.

There's some commotion toward the center of the Bazaar, where the Queen has settled at the pavilion with a group of landen and Blood children. Her only guard seems to be the elegant man seated across from her at the pavilion's wooden table, his eyes watchful as the people pass by.

The Queen herself looks unwell. Though she wears a bright smile and her golden eyes glitter with laughter, they are sunken and dark smudges circle them. Her arms are thin, little more than skin wrapped around bone. In spite of the freezing weather, she wears a tunic with wide sleeves that pool around her elbows as she holds up a small plank of wood and tugs at a ribbon embedded in it. Here, in the chilly winter morning, the woman who brought some twenty Strangers across the vast distances of many worlds looks very human, very mortal, and very fragile.

Her eyes meet yours as she looks up, and you feel a gentle brush against your mind. No matter how familiar or strange mental communication is, no matter how disconcerting or easy you find it, the touch strikes you as incredibly polite. *We can talk, if you'd like,* she tells you over a psychic thread.

Should you join her, you find respite from the cold. A warming spell makes the pavilion pleasantly toasty, explaining why no one wears a jacket and, maybe, the Queen's clothes. She's dressed plainly in a loose, knitted tunic and fitted breaches. She wears no coronet and no visible jewelry except for a golden chain that tucks beneath her tunic.

Fayura offers a quick smile in your direction as she guides the end of the ribbon in her hand through the thin strip of wood in a twisting loop. She offers a soft-spoken explanation to the children before inviting them to try—and inviting the Blood to explain the magic to the landens, too.

As the children turn to their task, Fayura turns to you. "I'm glad to see you made it through the Hunters' attack relatively unscathed." She sets her plank down and taps her mug. Steam beings to rise from it and she lifts it to her lips with a sigh. "And I apologize that I wasn't there to greet you." A wry smile tugs at her lips; her appearance is, in her mind, enough of an explanation for why. "How have you found Draega?"

Comments

[agentlenpc]

There's not as much alarm on either Fayura's face or Verim's as there probably should be. Verim has certainly asked himself this question, and the rush of hot temper around them leaves no imagining his stance. He's pissed someone might be close enough to hurt his Queen. Very pissed.

Fayura's expression is a little harder to read. Reticent, uncertain. She's had this suspicion, too, but hasn't decided how to react to it yet. "I did," she finally says. "Understand, Blood males serve. They crave it. They need it. They are drawn to Queens because of it, and it's our job to give them meaning in their lives and productive ways to unleash their tempers. There's a bond that exists between a Queen and the males who serve her." She pauses and gives Mary a look.

Usually, there's a bond, that look says.

"Prince Verim feels that," she continues. "So does my Steward and Master of the Guard. But there are a handful of males in my First Circle who serve because they need a Queen, not because I'm the Queen they need to serve. If that makes sense." It might not, even though Verim nods along as though this is perfectly understandable and not a loop of self-referential logic at all.

[thequitecontrary]

Mary nods as she listens, glancing at Verim and then back at the Queen. "It does, my Lady. If there is but one Queen, then it is she whom they will serve. I suppose that it would make the First Circle not as close of a group of advisers as you would hope for."

She hopes she's not speaking out of turn here. Verim looks angry, but she's fairly sure it's due to indignation at someone betraying his Queen and not at the questions Mary is asking. Then again, looks can be deceiving. Perhaps his upset is manufactured in order to hide something.

[agentlenpc]

Fayura nodded. In truth, things were a little more complicated, but Mary drilled down to the core of it: Blood males often chose service to bad Queens over no service at all. And Mary was also right about the First Circle.

"It should never be blind loyalty," she said, "but there's a difference between a Blood male serving a Queen, and a Blood male serving his Queen. Some simply want to serve, but the leash is never comfortable and the yolk is always heavy no matter what the Queen does to ease it for him. Most of my First Circle is mine, but some aren't. It's better that they serve to see how a Queen should be, but they'll never be comfortable with me. I'll never be what they're looking for. What they need."

Verim growled softly. Being Blood, he understood, but that didn't mean he liked the situation. "I wish you hadn't accepted them at all."

"A First Circle must have twelve males," Fay said, as much for him as for Mary. "If someone leaves now, the court won't break, but it needed twelve at the start for the Blood to accept us."

[thequitecontrary]

Mary does understand what Fayura is getting at. She needed twelve men and apparently those twelve were hard to come by and she'd had to settle.

"Being a Stranger in this land, I am still learning about how society is structured." And the politics of the land. That, sometimes, takes the longest to learn, and Mary knows that she's going to have to do it through keen observation.

She's not nearly gauche enough to ask the Queen which members of her Circle she does not trust, nor does she think that the Queen would necessarily give her an answer. "So, if one of these men decides to leave, you will still be Queen?" Mary asks.

[agentlenpc]

Fay gives Mary an encouraging smile; the fact that the Strangers are trying at all to understand Draega and Terreille and the Blood is a relief. From what she's heard of their own worlds, society sounds strange and alien. They must feel utterly adrift here, and she wants to ease that if she can.

"Oh, no, that's only true when a court first forms. If you had to have twelve males all the time, courts would never survive. No, like any other job, people come and go. The court is strong enough not to break if someone leaves now," Fay explains. "We're well enough established. And if it were an issue, there are Blood males who would step forward."

She taps her chin. "And perhaps a few landens. That would be interesting. Hmm. Suffice it to say, my court won't crumble if someone steps down." Or is required to step down.

[thequitecontrary]

Perhaps the Queen ought to ask a few of them to leave if she does not quite trust them and there are others to take their places. For now, Mary does not suggest this. It's not her place to come in here and tell royalty what to do. Besides, she's fairly sure that at least some of the advisers surrounding the Queen are smart enough to have thought of the same idea.

"Landen can be in your Circle?" Mary asks. She wouldn't have expected that.

[agentlenpc]

"I don't see why not." Fayura pauses, considering the question. "A First Circle is typically made up of Warlord Princes, but no one turns away a Prince or a Warlord who might want to serve when there aren't enough Warlord Princes. And perhaps the addition of a landen male would be a good faith overture to the landen community and the Guilds." The only trouble with that is that landens don't feel any connection to Queens. They aren't Blood. For them, there is no bond.

But maybe that doesn't need to matter. If someone wants something enough...

"If nothing else, it's worth a try. I think, at least."

[thequitecontrary]

It's surprising to Mary that a Queen in this land might feel that way. From what she can tell, the landen are considered a lesser class. To be concerned with their views does speak of a benevolent ruler though, one who would welcome their opinions.

"If you aim to improve your relations with them, my Lady, then it certainly could be worth a try."

She glances up Verim, wondering what he thinks about that.

[agentlenpc]

Verim responds to that with all the prickly dislike of a male who doesn't want other strange men near his Lady. Expression flat, he says, "If they serve my Lady and can perform the duties required of them, it's fine." Brittle tension keeps him still and neutral.

Setting her mug aside, Fay leans across the table and runs her fingers through the hair at his temples. The physical touch relaxes him somewhat, and he catches her wrist before pressing a quick kiss to it.

Fay settles on the bench once again. "The Blood will probably pitch a fit, but if you're not pissing someone off, you're not making big enough changes. It's a careful balancing act, changing things just enough that you upset someone and know you're moving in the right direction but not so much that they actually come after you with a knife."

Snorting, Verim looks at Fay and then very pointedly in the direction of the landen Guildhalls.

"Oh, well, they came after us with Breakers," Fay protests. Because that's so much better.

[thequitecontrary]

She watches the display between Verim and Fay with no small amount of interest. Perhaps it is because she is British, but such a display between a monarch and one of her advisers back home would be the cause of a huge scandal. It's quite amazing to her how different things are here.

"Ruling and diplomacy is always a balancing act," Mary says. "I do not envy you in that case." Mary stands up and nods at both Fay and Verim. "I thank you for allowing me this audience, my Lady. Hopefully you, myself and the other Strangers can help to save this world."

[agentlenpc]

Fay doesn't envy herself, and the weary expression on her face proves that out. Mother Night, if only she could have a single day of rest that doesn't make her bedridden and useless.

Lifting her hand, she gives Mary a small wave. "That's the hope. Enjoy the rest of your day."

[thequitecontrary]

Mary can't help but curtsy in response, though it is much more casual than the first one she offered. She leaves the tent thinking about how different this monarch is from His Majesty back home. As of now, she doesn't quite know what to make of it.