The news that Abderus, Exarch of Philgeonia, had become engaged to a foreign exile spread like wildfire. It was only to be expected that such would be the case, considering such an unusual action being taken by a man of great political power. Shirrin listened in on tavern conversations, servant’s gossip, the senate debates, and every other reaction to the news that she could find, as well as many more reted to her by her servants.

  As was to be expected, reactions were mixed. There were of course the nags and pragmatists, who mocked Abderus’s foolishness for picking his marriage bond so thoughtlessly, and for marrying a woman who had no dowry to provide. On the entirely opposite end of the spectrum were the romantics, those who sang songs and spread sensational stories of the passionate love which was shared between the stalwart old warrior and the lost, helpless princess. The majority of the popution fell between these two extreme ends of the spectrum: shocked and bemused by the choice, but admiring Abderus for choosing love over money, and admitting that such softheartedness was fully in-character for the Exarch.

  None had anything to say about Helen’s character; she was hardly a part of the story at all. This, Shirrin thought, was good; none would suspect that any of Abderus’s actions were the fault of anybody but himself.

  All of this time and effort spent analyzing the reaction to Abderus’s impending marriage, was to distract Shirrin from the fact that her own part of the pn had found itself firmly in the doldrums. Every minute she was out harvesting rumors was one minute she didn’t have to spend brooding endlessly on how to carry out her aims. She spent hours pacing her chambers, staring out over the Sea of Dolphins, frustratedly gazing down at the checkered board and pying round after round of the game of brigands against herself until her eyes burned. And yet still no answer showed itself.

  There were other possibilities, other ways that she could have achieved her end whilst abandoning her pns for Eteocles. Those other pns were more dangerous, more prone in her calcutions to one of any number of potential failures. And Shirrin’s pride would not allow her to give up without a fight.

  As the days went by, as coughing and moans of discomfort from the spreading pgue filled the pace halls, Shirrin could find no solution. Her mood became increasingly fell, and she shunned her staff, too proud to seek their aid in this endeavor. It was as it had been during the early years, when Shirrin’s revenge was but a poorly-conceived fantasy and she stalked the passageways of the chieftain’s compound, thoughts set on death. Once or twice the thought crossed her mind that it might have been best to abandon pnning, and either flee to the farthest corner of the world, or else say to hell with it and kill Peleus with a sword. Such thoughts sted only a moment before she banished them, remembering the vow she had sworn.

  It was during one of those long hours of brooding contemption that Shirrin stumbled into a section of the pace that she had not entered for a very long time. On a practical level, it was entirely unremarkable, merely a long wing of dispyed art accumuted by various Emperors recent or long past and then left to gather dust. On an emotional level, Shirrin had hated that wing of the pace for almost two decades. It was only natural that she seek it out at her lowest moment.

  Near the entrance of the wing, there was a particur marble bust, one of countless thousands of such portraits within the city, and as was common with such busts it was a work of incredible realism. The subject of the bust was a young man, scarcely older than twenty, though in some ways he appeared far older, his skin clinging tightly to his skull. His hair was poorly maintained, allowed to grow overly long so that wavy locks spilled down over his temples. Deep-set sockets stared back at Shirrin with a look of sad disinterest, and a frown was written deeply across the almost lipless mouth. It disgusted Shirrin to look at the bust, and yet as painful memories wracked her brain she could not bring herself to look away.

  “Do you know who that is?”

  Shirrin threw herself off of the bench upon which she had been slouching miserably, standing to sudden and sharp attention. Somehow, Empress Athan’s approach had entirely evaded her senses. Indeed, so had the fact that Athan had any interest in this wing of the pace whatsoever.

  “Pardon?” Shirrin hadn’t heard what was said, only paying attention to the whom.

  “You’ve been staring at that bust this entire time,” Athan said “I was wondering if you knew who it depicted.”

  Shirrin’s heart hammered against her ribcage, and there was a strange tingling sensation at her fingers. Calcutions that should have been instant led her to pause for several moments. What could she say that wouldn’t give away the game? In the end, Shirrin decided that the only fast option was to cim total ignorance. She gestured vaguely at the bust.

  “The namepte says…” She could not bring herself to say the name. “He resembles Peleus, somewhat.”

  “Very astute of you, yes,” said Athan. “Most people didn’t seem to think Hector and Peleus looked much like each other, but I always thought the resembnce was stronger than they were willing to acknowledge.”

  Shirrin had known Athan for so many years, and never once had Athan told her so. A little secret opinion of the Empress’s, one that she could only reveal to someone who she believed to be a total stranger. All at once, Shirrin realized that she had been given an opportunity. She slumped down into the bench, spending several breaths to formute her next question.

  “Who was he?”

  Athan sighed. “A very complicated person. He was Peleus’s younger brother. The previous Emperor, Pyrrhus, selected Hector to be his heir, which was… controversial, to say the least. He was not the same type of man as my husband.”

  Athan’s gaze scarcely acknowledged Shirrin, focusing entirely on the bust as she slowly walked towards it. Shirrin, in turn, was watching Athan the way one watches a falling star.

  “What type of… man, was he?”

  “An albino, for one thing. Nobody ever called him by his name, they always called him ‘The Pale Prince.’ And that was only the beginning of his ailments. His eyesight was horrible, he was never particurly strong, and there was something wrong with his lungs, he would often fall into coughing fits at unexpected times.”

  An accurate assessment on all counts. Shirrin had to pry further. “An odd candidate for Emperor, then.”

  “Many thought so,” said Athan. She was standing over the bust now, looking down at it with an achingly familiar fondness. “I always thought that Pyrrhus chose him for his temperance. With physical might forever out of his reach, the Pale Prince had no choice but to cultivate strength in other ways. Strength of will, strength of character, strength against temptation.”

  Shirrin had to fight very hard to keep her emotions off of her face. These were words of praise that she had never heard coming from Athan’s mouth, and the knowledge that Athan thought that way of the Pale Prince made Shirrin almost as angry as she was pleased.

  “It sounds as though you were fond of him,” Shirrin said.

  Athan hesitated. Her fingers drifted down and traced the thin pieces of stone representing the Pale Prince’s hair, as though she were about to tuck the errant strands behind his ear. Shirrin could see her throat clench as she swallowed words. The Empress whispered, “Terribly fond.”

  Shirrin’s heart almost broke.

  “We were engaged, as it happens. The arrangement between my family and the chosen Imperial successor was not forged during Peleus’s time. But the marriage never went through before…”

  Shirrin closed her eyes, turning away from Athan. “Before what?”

  “Peleus thought that he deserved the throne, that his brother was a… a sissy and a weakling, too soft-hearted to be Emperor. He spent years trying to sway his father’s mind, but to no avail. So instead he turned to the people. I don’t want to repeat any of the rumors that began to spread around Chrysopolis, each one was more terrible than the st and it would offend my lips to repeat even the least of them.”

  “Even in an Empire, the will of the people has its purpose,” Shirrin said. “I know that all too well.”

  Athan shook her head. “It was more than just the people. It was everywhere. I don’t know how Peleus managed it, but he had co-conspirators in every branch of society. The generals of the army implied that they might mutiny if the Pale Prince took the throne, the Patriarch of the Church gave entire sermons using the heir as a negative example, the very Senate revoked their consent for his rule, even before it began.”

  And through it all, the Pale Prince had hardly noticed. He had already long withdrawn from the world, cursing his own weakness, preferring the company of eunuchs and sorcerers to that of the men of power who looked down on him with utter disdain. Even if he had had any will to fight, what could the Pale Prince have done?

  “You sound upset,” Shirrin said quietly. It was a question almost too sensitive to ask.

  But Athan responded. “Unjust. It was all so unjust. If Hector truly was a poor candidate for Emperor, then Peleus should have at least let him prove that through his actions.”

  “Then why didn’t you say anything?”

  The Empress shrugged. “What could I have done? I was his betrothed. And if the only defender he had was a woman, well, that’s another bit of scandal for the pyre.”

  Fire and ice mingled in Shirrin’s stomach, and there was a part of her that wanted to break down into tears. But she needed to carry through the story to its end.

  “Do you know what happened to him?”

  “No. He just disappeared one day, Peleus was decred the heir, and nobody particurly cared to look into what had happened. I think perhaps he put himself into exile out of shame.”

  Shirrin knew the rest of the story. Dragged from her chambers, bound and gagged and masked, fed only bread and water during a days-long cart ride to the very edge of the Empire. There in the woods, Eteocles and his thugs beat the Pale Prince to the edge of death and beyond it. It was a bleeding, blind, wriggling creature which remained, crawling through the forest on a carpet of its own blood until the voice of a god spoke promises of revenge into her ear.

  “Are you crying?” Athan said.

  “No,” Shirrin replied reflexively. But when she pressed her sleeve to her eyes, it came back wet. “Well, I suppose I must have been affected by the story more than I thought. I despise injustice.”

  Athan had finally turned away from the bust, and was examining Shirrin’s features with sad curiosity. “That is a good trait to possess in a queen,” she said.

  “Thank you. I like to imagine I did a good job of it in my time.”

  “How did you…” Athan paused, stepping forward. “How does a woman end up ruling a pce as rge as Trabakond? And without any male presence shoring her up?”

  “Now that is a very long story,” said Shirrin. “But the thing you must understand about Trabakond is that it is not so… regimented a pce, as Macaria. There are fewer ws, fewer restrictions. There is no single king of Far Trabakond, not usually, it’s more of a shifting morass of jarls and dukes and so on; whoever can accumute enough followers and strike the right alliances can become king.”

  “Or a queen, in your case.”

  Shirrin nodded, a slight smile creeping back onto her face. Athan sat down next to her on the bench.

  “I ck the time to tell you the whole story, and no doubt you would find such rough subject matter repellent to your senses. But you should know that in the beginning I had nothing at all aside from my magic. I was a sve, in fact.”

  They had found her in the woods, starving but intact. With no home and no family to vouch for her, there was no word in the w-code of the Trabakondai to stop her from being taken as a sve.

  “A sve, becoming a queen!” Athan said, covering her mouth with one hand. “Impossible!”

  “Impossible, and yet it happened anyway,” said Shirrin. “I told you already, anyone who gathers enough followers and forges the right alliances can rule Trabakond. The only difference between a sve and a king there is the nature of those who surround him.”

  “And you who were a sve became the Witch-Queen, purely through the use of your magic? Incredible. I was not particurly interested in barbarian politics, but now you must tell me the story.”

  All at once, Shirrin felt a great embarrassment. Athan was getting so close, and her affect was opening up in a way she had never seen from her before. Whatever was happening was not part of the pn, could not be part of the pn.

  “Perhaps someday,” Shirrin said, rising from her seat. “But not today. As I said, I ck the time.”

  She took two steps toward the door leading back to the main body of the pace before an idea struck her. It was an immensely clever idea, and not one that she fully understood yet, but she followed it to its natural conclusion.

  “Perhaps we might meet someday, somewhere private, when I have all the time in the world? Then I can tell you the story, or at least some of it. We are the two most important women in this pace, after all, it would be good for us to talk.”

  Athan nodded. “That would be very nice,” she said. “Where and when?”

  “Perhaps in your chambers,” Shirrin continued. “And I am busy during the day, as are you no doubt, so it may be best to meet te in the evening.”

  The two of them tossed dates back and forth until they had agreed on one that suited the both of them, at which point Shirrin promptly retreated. The retreat rapidly turned into flight, and in next to no time at all Shirrin had returned to her own chamber to ponder what had just taken pce.

  She had done it. She had found a way forward, a way to complete the pn almost as she had originally envisioned it. Peleus must be made to believe that a liaison had taken pce between his chosen successor and his wife. But he was the only one who needed to be misled in such a way. It did not matter who Athan herself believed she was meeting with, and with Shirrin’s powers of shapeshifting it would be almost effortless to carry on such a double-deception.

  Seducing Athan while wearing Eteocles’s form was never going to work. There were too many variables to be considered, too many opportunities for any of the personalities involved to start interfering, not to mention the basic difficulty of doing something so delicate while assuming the mannerisms of another. The new pn was much simpler. Shirrin was going to do again what she had already done once, and capture Athan’s heart as herself.

  SaffronDragon