Anonymous Privilege

Valern stood motionless, watching as the boy was consoled by Slania, the pair of them rocking back and forth gently on the seat.  She was barely double the boy’s age and still a child herself yet her actions were so motherly and mature the difference seemed vast.  Not one of the dark or silver-grey hairs on Valern’s head so much as twitched towards them; he could offer no help here.

Huge racking sobs yet ran great tears down the boy’s caramel cheeks and onto his emerald velvet blazer leaving slowly spreading darker green blots on it.  Slania cradled him to her chest whispering words of comfort and crumpling both blazer and brilliantly white shirt beneath.  The drab grey linen of her simple shift stark against his vibrant attire.

A flung tear sploshed onto the gold-trimmed badge on the blazer’s breast pocket.  Valern followed it as it inched forward momentarily then disappeared into the fabric of the motto written in Latin beneath it.

He sniffed once at the juxtaposition of a creed entreating perseverance and defiance being dampened by an adolescent tear.  Once again he mused that this would never have happened with Asthia.  But then…it never had.

He’d instructed the boy be presented to his mother after, and only after, he’d been made presentable.  The last thing anyone needed were more hysterics.

Valern turned away and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.  Down two flights of stairs and through a concealed door, he eased himself onto the back seat of the buggy.  A moment later it started whining its way along the well-lit tunnel, the driver pushing the airport-model buggy as fast as it would go.   8 minutes later and Valern was walking again, his usual ground-eating stride barrelling him along corridors now hung with tapestries and oil paintings on both sides.  In this manner he trudged all the way to the East Wing, scowling all the while.

He simply hadn’t seen this problem coming, he realised, and now it was here he was flummoxed.  For the first time in a long while he had to admit he simply did not know what to do.

He was sorely tempted to let the boy’s father deal with it.

When he got to the Little Library, the guards, well-practiced in his habits, had the doors open in time to admit him without any impression on his stride.  

Inside, in front of the huge French windows that looked out onto the Cellar Gardens, Crown Prince Abel was flipping pancakes.  He stood in front of that blasted red chrome kitchenette he’d had installed last year, with black sleeves neatly rolled up and a pearly-white apron fixed upon his person.

The Crown Prince spared his Political Counsel a quick glance then went back to catching food.

“Ahh, Valern!” he exclaimed. “Crepe?”

A line etched its way onto Valern’s forehead.  He didn’t think the term qualified if the construct was quite so robust.  “No thank you, your highness, I believe I can sustain myself till dinnertime,” he replied smoothly.  The Crown Prince gave the barest shrug of his shoulders and beamed as he thoroughly inexpertly manhandled the pancake onto a plate and set about pouring fresh batter.  Valern marvelled that someone could take such joy from something they were so evidently terrible at.  But that summed up Abel.

His eyes took a quick scan of the room.  That the National Library had once been wholly and solely owned by the monarchy was what rendered this one ‘Little’ by comparison, but it was in fact quite vast and both Abel and his mother had seen it grow.  Though it overflowed with bookcases, leather-bound volumes, substantial easy-chairs and Abel’s huge and hugely-cluttered desk, to Valern’s mind there was definitely something missing.  “And Prime Minister Scotture…?” he enquired.  Abel’s grin broadened.

“I sent him to pick strawberries,” intoned the Prince.  Another line etched onto Valern’s forehead, eyes quickly surveying the gardens beyond the French Windows.

“I don’t believe we have-” he began.

“No! Not a one,” confirmed Abel.  Then he faced Valern fully for the first time, allowing dark green eyes to twinkle out from a cumin face surrounded by a dark mop of slick and shiny hair.  “And yet he hasn’t been to tell me this.  You know I think he might be learning.”

“You do enjoy training a new prime minister, don’t you, my lord?”

Abel shook his head ruefully.

“He’s got to learn,” he decreed.  Valern came and dumped the stack of files in his hands on the edge of the desk.

“I have a lot of things to go through with him.  And you,” he said carefully.  “So can we reasonably assume that he’s raiding the kitchens and should be back soon?”

“I hope so.  He better not have gone shopping.”  Abel muttered.  The Crown Prince slammed down the pan and flicked off the heat.  Gave his hands a rough rub on the apron then stripped it off himself in one movement.  “Why are you keeping things from me, Valern?”  he asked.

And then there were three…the last wrinkle duly took its place on his forehead.

“My lord?” he ventured.

“You must know that I know so not bringing it up leads me to think you simply don’t wish to talk about it.”

“My lord-”

“It is a personal matter so I could understand that, I suppose, but I’m pretty sure we’ve all made it perfectly clear that you’re also family, Valern.”

“I’m not-”

“You’re not telling me that my only son is being bullied at school and has been for the last month,” said Abel flatly.

“Ahh…” whispered Valern with raised eyebrows that these days shared the dual grey-black annotation of his hair.  He took a step back and judiciously lowered himself into a chair angled across from Abel’s desk.  He leant back, eased one leg on top of the other and rubbed his forehead.  “I’d hoped to have a solution in place before it ever got to you.”

“Hah!” rasped Abel as he came and dumped himself into the swivel chair behind the mahogany desk and flung his feet up on to it.  “Parents have been trying to solve this since there’ve been schools, Valern!  And the children fear their involvement almost as much.”  He sprang forward suddenly and lifted a sheaf of papers, put them aside to reveal a bowl of strawberries underneath.  He popped one in his mouth.  “Not very observant yet, our Prime Minister,” he muttered with a smile.

Not really, thought Valern, he just doesn’t know how you think.  He cleared his throat.

“Err…does her highness know of the situation?” he asked tentatively.  Abel stared at him.

“Yes,” he said with some exasperation.  “Goodness Vally, I know you never had kids but you had a mother!  How much did you ever manage to keep from her?”

“A fair point, your highness,” mused Valern.

“In fact, how much does anyone keep from my mother?” Abel emphasised.  Valern frowned as though lions had entered the room unexpectedly.

“An excellent and somewhat unnerving illustration, your highness.  Forgive me.”

“So yes! Faleria knows and she’s terribly upset.” He levelled his emerald gaze at Valern.  “You know what that means.”

Valern closed his eyes.

“Yes.  It means you’re not sleeping.”

“Pah! It means I’m about ready to burn nations.”

This startled Valern.  Abel was coolness and calm personified; he hadn’t been born with the Fire.  No, that was still retained by his mother.

A horrible thought hit him, halting his breath.

“Hold…does her Majesty know?”

Abel splayed the fingers of one hand.

“No idea.  She certainly hasn’t mentioned it.”

Thank Christ for small mercies, thought Valern.  It wouldn’t last though so he decided to voice the most obvious solution.

“Perhaps we should think about revealing Cain’s true parentage…?” he ventured.  Abel sprang up in a second and bounded round the desk.

“Out of the question,” he retorted. “Children of the Royal House, wherever possible, must undertake schooling amongst the masses to breed an affinity with their people.  This can’t be done if everyone knows who he is.”

Valern kept his stare neutral whilst ruminating this reasoned logic that excused lying to a child for a decade and a half.

“But is that still necessary?” he asked carefully.  “Nowadays, I mean.  The monarch has little political power and you’re actively working to ensure you have even less when the time comes.  With such limited influence by the time they’re grown, is it still really necessary to foster such a development?”

Crown Prince Abel thought about it.  He glared when he was considering something extensively and Valern had learned not to be disheartened by it.  As usual Abel blurted out his conclusion before he’d finished piecing all the arguments.

“It doesn’t matter!” he exclaimed.  “It makes you a decent person; a better one than if you’d spent your youth accustomed to people bowing and scraping after you everywhere you went.”

“I think you underestimate the royal character,” said Valern.

“I doubt it,” clucked Abel. “But fine.  We can think about sparing Lucea from it next year.  Of course, if you do anything to disrupt her relationship with her friends, she will hunt you down,” he acknowledged with a smug grimace.  

Valern shuddered inside.  Where Asthia was decorum personified in an elegant package and Cain was still a bundle of bendy-boned shyness, Lucea, at only 5 years, was her grandmother reborn.  There’d been some charged exchanges between the two early on but now they seemed to have recognised the twin soul in the other person and Queen and youngest grandchild were rapidly becoming each other’s favourite person.   Of course, typical of those with the Fire, they refused to acknowledge this.

“That…won’t really address our current issue,” said Valern, swerving past the headache at the end of the previous lane of conversation.

“Don’t worry, Vally.  I’ll take care of it,” said Abel.  Valern twitched.

“Your highness, that-” he started.  “Does that seem wise considering your previous comments regarding nations and inflammatories?” he cautioned.  Abel paused only briefly this time.

“If you have a suggestion, old friend, now is the time to share it,” he stated flatly. Valern stopped dead still.  In his eyes he’d just offered a blooming suggestion.  Instead he waited for inspiration to strike but it just wouldn’t.  He was stuck on the fact that if the offender simply knew whom he was victimising, the situation would go into reverse appallingly quickly.

He shrugged apologetically instead.  Abel beamed and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry, old friend,” soothed the prince.  “Certain types of problem are beyond all of us.”  He swivelled around.  “Now let’s go ask my mother,” he said.

Valern started violently out of his funk.

“Wha!” he yelled, catching up quickly to the prince.  “That was your plan? To ask the Queen!?!” he spat.

“You didn’t have any other ideas, Vally, and I only know 2 people smarter than you.  Makes sense to ask one of them.”  With that, he opened the library doors, startling his guards, and led them both out.

Valern twitched somewhat as he followed.  Her Majesty could be rather…direct when inconvenienced and this situation certainly qualified.  Matters of the heart like this should always be dealt with by someone who wasn’t emotionally involved.  It might pain Abel to hear it but that person was Valern; he felt little in an extraordinary way for any of the royal brood.

He instinctively envisioned the worst possible edict from Her Majesty...then dismissed it for illegality.  Next best featured night-time paratrooper raids (via helicopter) on the aggressor’s family home.  He felt his eyebrows do a quick jig at the thought.

“We’ll probably have to wait,” muttered Abel.  Valern re-focused on his surroundings and noted the porphyry–shaded, velvet-curtained corridor they currently traversed.  Technically they were already in the Throne Room, ordinarily a grand, suitably-humbling location, but Queen Becialvu had long had it cropped, with movable walls into what Valern now regarded as a dark uncomfortable parlour.

A single door opened as they arrived at it and they were presently surrounded by a dark racing green on all sides.   Still velvet, it inhaled half the ceiling-delivered light and exchanged it for measurable atmospheric texture.

Abel often joked that his mother had attempted to create her own version of the throne room from the Wizard of Oz.  Valern just felt he was inside a giant plant bulb.

Queen Becialvu, a lighter shade than her son now that she ventured out of doors less frequently, nevertheless still wore her years remarkably well.  Yes, you could see she was old but she did not appear even remotely frail; her skin still glowed and her dark eyes shone with undiminished acuity.  She sat on a high armchair, fitted to look as though it had sprouted from the floor, draped as ever in a gold-trimmed dark-green dress that flowed with the chair-stem.  As she was indeed in audience as they entered, both men side-stepped to their left and took a seat on a simple chaise lounge, also of the dominant colour.

At the Queen’s side stood her aide, Lord Fremet, a few years younger though he was completely grey these days, and who'd held the position almost as long as Valern could remember. Queen and aide had   known each other their whole lives. Behind Fremet, on a small dark-wood armchair, sat the Recorder, Hemlun, scratching away at a pad.  Becialvu would not have her voice machine-captured.

In front of them, with his back to Valern and the Prince, was a large man whose creamy, heavy-looking coat stopped at the calves to reveal a dark-grey trouser-leg with a fine pinstripe and brown leather shoes of a high sheen.  His hair, though shorter, was much like Valern’s own light and dark grey mass.  Valern knew an extravagant moustache adorned the other side.

Their discussion, it seemed, was finishing; Sir Robar Glasay, he of the moustache, had been entreating the Crown to allow him, as Chairman of the National Museum, to take the Royal Oil Painting Exhibition on tour.  Several of the pieces on display were on loan from the Queen and therefore required such permission.

Her Majesty, in turn, was explaining that he could do what he wished with the things and she didn’t bloody care.  Lord Fremet was, as usual, shaking his head and telling the scribe to schedule a visit to the Museum for a member of the Royal Legal Counsel Team.

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Idly tugging at the Chairman’s left trouser-leg was a small girl in a brilliantly white dress.  Her skin was the same olive of her father’s but the flowing locks draping over her shoulders were of honey not ebony.  At some point she’d decided against shoes, and though one sock was clutched in her left hand, the soles of her feet were already turning as black as her father's hair.  That she didn’t actually leave prints was surprising to Valern.

Official business done, the Queen now appeared to notice her, yet as she stared, Becialvu talked at Sir Glasay.

“Robar, do you know you’ve gathered a limpet?” she enquired.  Sir Robar Glasay peered at the girl and smiled.

“Yes, your Majesty.  She’s under the impression I’ve got ice-cream.”

Silence followed that.  Until Lord Fremet patted his forehead and said:

“Your surname!”  His eyes flicked to the Queen.  “She’s just begun instruction in the Latin languages.”  Becialvu nodded.

“It’s meant to be at those lessons now…” she muttered.

“I could get some ice-cream,” offered Sir Robar.  Becialvu stared at him.

“Are you trying to keep it, Robar?” she asked.

“I’m not a thing, you know,” piped up an extremely juvenile voice from around knee-height.  All eyes turned down and Valern felt Abel quake with pride beside him but only the Queen spoke.

“Pardon?”

“I’m not a thing,” repeated the girl as though being helpful.  “You keep calling me ‘it’ but that’s wrong.  I'm a person not a thing.”

“That depends on whether it proves itself useful or not,” countermanded the Queen.  “Running away from lessons and getting its feet dirty aren’t helping.”

Lucea peered downwards and inspected her insteps with genuine surprise.

“They weren’t like that before,” she muttered.

“Of course not, my dear, they were in your shoes before.”  The Queen then lifted her gaze and pointed it straight at the two of them on the chaise lounge.  Her eyes were darker than her son’s, and with the same shade all around they actually got lost in this room yet Valern could clearly feel her gaze.  “And what have you two come to tell us?” she asked.  “Obviously you weren’t looking for it,” she said gesturing at her granddaughter.

Lucea spun round at the reference to her.  Upon spying her father she automatically beamed, then forcibly hid it away as she remembered where she was.  She was just like a doll, Valern conceded. A ridiculously cute, obstinate, fiery-tempered doll.  Among her grandmother here, he’d literally never seen her so restrained.

“We came to talk to you, mother,” Prince Abel announced, still smiling as Robar offered a deep bow and edged out of line.  Lucea had turned her back to him in an effort to retain her composure.  Yet seemingly against her will, she was inching back towards him.  Daddy’s hugs clearly outweighed the possibility of ice-cream thought Valern.

“Hmmm,” considered Becialvu.  “Before that, could I ask something of you?” she said sweetly.  Valern began to shake.

“Certainly, mother,” said Abel, playing along.

“So kind.  Tell me…is there a reason the nation’s newly-elected first minister is harassing people about strawberries?”

Lucea yelped a laugh then immediately clapped a hand to her mouth.  Behind her, her father had broken into a huge grin at the same time.

“Training,” he rasped mischievously.  His mother rubbed her chin as she stared at him.

“Yes,” she drawled.  “No attempting to climb the ivy this time I hope.”

“None. Scout’s honour,” pledged a grinning Abel, holding up the salute.

“You do remember being kicked out of the scouts, yes?  I certainly do.”

“Ahh.  I promise, then,” said the prince.

By now Robar had managed to inch his way back to the curtained doorway they’d entered.  Then, like the polished statesman he was, he paused for a moment before removing himself from the room in the blink of an eye.  Valern applauded internally.

“And instead of admitting to the poor man that strawberries will do nothing to make your cooking edible,” continued the Queen.  “You’ve come to talk to me?”

“Yes, mother.”

Queen Becialvu flicked eyes to her granddaughter for a long moment.

“These days you only come to me about your brood, Abel,” she said ruefully.

“I wouldn’t want to bother you with anything else, my Queen.”

Becialvu waved it away.

“Save it for Faleria.  Tell me...which one has disappointed us again?”

At this point Abel’s face did fall and his voice went flat.

“Cain,” he said.  “Cain is being bullied at school.  One boy in particular though there are others.  I’m unsure what to do.”

The mood in the room had changed with those words.  Valern was impressed that Hemlun the Recorder  didn’t attempt to force a dark corner to swallow him but sat precisely where he was, immobile.

“Cain!?” queried Lord Fremet and Valern understood his confusion; for his age, Cain was not small.  Skinny, yes, but quite tall.  And with his looks, one expected him to be popular.  Just did not seem like an obvious target.

“Why the surprise Fremet?” asked Queen Becialvu.  “After all…” she stared pointedly at the girl now between her father’s knees.  “He does not have the Fire.”

“Of course, but still...unexpected,” claimed Fremet.

“And we know who the culprits are?” she confirmed.  Abel nodded.

“Yes.”

The Queen had turned her attention to Valern before she’d finished her question, meaning when she next spoke, her gaze was waiting for him.

“And what laudable solution did you come up with, Vally?” she asked.

Sudden acknowledgement made Valern’s head jerk her way and then freeze, trapped by her stare.  He stammered:

“I, well, I, just, I thought…”

“Before dinner, my lord,” encouraged her majesty, not helping.  Not helping at all.  He cleared his throat.

“Well, it occurred to me that the situation would reverse itself rather quickly if Cain’s true parentage was known.”

Abel was staring straight ahead and shaking his head before he’d finished.  Becialvu noted this intransigence in silence.

“And why does my son insist on such a thing?” she asked the room.  Abel, still staring at the middle distance, seemed to pump his right fist to build up to the explanation.

“It builds a better man,” he said.

“And are we in the business of grooming mere men?” asked his mother.  Valern had a sudden sense that she tested him.

“The better man makes a better monarch,” Abel replied.

Becialvu nodded slightly, looked off to the wall on the other side of the door and her onyx cane flashed out to point at it.

“D’you see that box over there, my dear?” she asked.  Though Valern swung his head hypnotically, Abel didn’t need to look.

“It’s a tv,” he muttered, staring at his interlocked fingers now and cradling Lucea.

“Yes, it is!”  The cane waved extravagantly.  The woman walked fine, yet she’d taken to using it to point at things and staff had become very wary of its sudden appearance from the folds of her dress.  Valern yet thought her adoption of it was rooted in some perverse desire to appear more fragile than she really was.

“And I’ve seen you on it twice in the last week alone!” she continued.  “Even one accidental glance, Abel,” she emphasised.

“I like tv,” declared Lucea in a quiet (for her) voice.  The only other person in the room who didn’t beg for leave to speak.

“I’m sure you do,” rasped her Queen and grandmother.  “I’m sure you do.”

Valern shifted on the chaise lounge.  The children were limited to the hours when programming dedicated to them was on and perhaps the odd sporting event.  Abel thought this was enough to keep the charade going.  The charade where he was a very minor lord, without land or ancestral seat, who happened to work at the palace for the queen, who happened to like him.

That story had kept Asthia cocooned for thirteen years until she’d made a discreet enquiry and her father had decided to reveal all.

“It still holds,” muttered Abel.

His mother, Queen Becialvu, considered this for a long moment, then:

“Fremet?” she appealed.

The third most powerful man in the country immediately cleared his throat.

“We could let the aggressor alone know of Cain’s parentage.  Make him sign a National Security Bond,” he suggested.  Becialvu shook her head.

“Something tells me my son wouldn’t be fond of that idea either.”

Abel followed it with his own shake of the head.  His mother leaned forward slightly.

“So what do you want, Abel?” she asked.  “Let’s know what will meet your approval.”

The Crown Prince didn’t speak immediately and indeed looked reluctant to do so at all.  Becialvu, statue-like, looked resolved to wait him out.

When it did come, the prince’s voice was strained.

“I want him to fix it!” he gasped.  Queen and adviser both frowned.

“Him who? Cain!? How!?” demanded the monarch.

“However!” yelled Abel, forgetting himself.  “How people usually get through these things.”

Becialvu, staring and nodding very slightly, decided to ignore the affront.

“Fremet?” she called again.

“Tricky, your majesty,” he admitted.  “I believe, barring extraordinary fortune, the victims just cope, however they can, and attempt to wait things out.”

“Wait things out?” asked with a tilt of her head in his direction.

“Yes.  For the aggressors to either tire, or barring that, graduate.”

“Not a great plan if they’re of similar age,” she noted.  Fremet gamely tried to sweeten the pill.

“The onset of puberty, with its accompanied increase in size, can also be great leveller,” he counselled.

At his side the queen inhaled loudly and turned back to her son, who was now cradling a half-asleep Lucea.  ‘Magic Hands’ Faleria had dubbed him, recognising his ability to put all of their children, as infants, to sleep with an embrace.

“Well?” started the Queen.  “There you have it, Abel.  Are you willing, now that you know what is happening, to put Cain through that every day until such time as he works it out for himself…or time simply steps in and does it for him?"

Silence reigned in the throne room.

It didn’t appear to be ending anytime soon.

Becialvu didn’t let it gather.

“Well, you might, but I can tell you that Faleria certainly won’t!” she lashed.  “So you had better keep thinking.  Tell me, Fremet, which children is it that are never bullied?”

“The popular ones, your majesty.”

Mother and son stared at each other with that answer hanging between them.

Valern wished he’d retreated with Robar but Becialvu wasn’t done talking.

“Perhaps you should consider buying him some friends,” she said.  And Abel’s disquiet, his opprobrium, the closest the gentle man ever came to real anger, was all in his eyes as he folded his now fully asleep daughter up onto his lap.

“Money will just make it worse,” he whispered.  “Give them a real reason to abuse him.”

“I wasn’t suggesting giving the money to Cain,” countered Queen Becialvu.

Valern  interjected here, keen to spare his friend further anguish at his mother’s tongue.

“If I may," he began.  A brief look at the queen told him he could continue. Valern looked away, preferring as always in this room to talk at the middle distance down and off to one side.  "Might I suggest asking a senior boy to offer Cain his protection?” he ventured.  Queen Becialvu effortlessly picked up his advice and flowed on.

“Precisely the sort of useful expense I was envisioning, Valern,” she said.  “We really should have forced you to take the job of Prime Minister years ago.”

Valern knew a man of his age shouldn’t be capable of blushing and yet…

“It’s still interfering,” noted Abel.  “What’s the point of sending him there unknown, only to protect him from its realities?”

Becialvu’s subsequent rearing back of her head alerted both Fremet and Valern that the monarch was finally running out of patience with her son.  She stared, dark green eyes twinkling almost black in this room, and appeared as though she was running through a catalogue of torture devices looking for something suitably appropriate.

“Yes!" she began eventually.  “School is a magnifying bubble of the social context of real life but it is not the whole of it.  Parents send the embodiments of their love there to learn and prepare, not to suffer.  Or at least not to unreasonably suffer,” she tutored.  “Mental and physical abuse do exist in the adult world but as an adult one has the freedom to escape it, to deny it, and finally to report it.  An adult facing such misery would be entreated to seek the authorities, yet an almost helpless infant is vilified, and expected to remain stoic and show a level of bravery they are barely able to read about let alone understand!  Attend me now; your own disappointment in Cain does not warrant such punishment.”

Eyes studied feet after that.  Or pretended to.  Though his face was pointed at his boots, Valern sought out the décor in the dark corners of the room.  The actual convergence of walls behind the throne could not be seen from any distance that remained royally respectful and so rumours had spread that they hid at least one Imperial Marine at all times.  If they were there, Valern wondered how they coped listening to nobles being humbled daily by this woman.

As his gaze came back it flittered over a slumbering Lucea and he realised she was awake.  Listening.  He cleared his throat immediately.

“Err, perhaps my lord should put the young daughter to bed?” he suggested.  That seemed to snap Abel out of his mortified reverie.

“Yes,” he acceded quietly. “You are right, Valern.  Thankyou.”  He stood up effortlessly and met his mother’s eyes.  “Mother.”

Becialvu held it a second before nodding, after which Abel spun on a heel and moved for the door.  Valern moved with him.  Lord Fremet spoke up.

“Lord Valern, perhaps you could remain a little longer,” he suggested.

Valern stopped at the door and held the curtain for Abel to pass.  Then he dropped it and turned round to face them again.

“Of course,” he said taking another step forward, back into ‘audience’ territory.

As soon as he was there he promptly became ignored.

“Well?” asked Becialvu tilting her head in Fremet’s direction again.

“The first two, Addion and Rumsfi, are being briefed now,” he replied.

“Only now?”

“They’ve had their mission since the beginning of the year, they just didn’t know who it was.  Sometimes these things happen naturally and are better for it so we wanted to give that a chance.”

Becialvu snorted.

“Imagining Cain making friends quickly is quite the creative power, Fremet.  Didn’t know you had it in you."

Her trusted friend gave a brief bow.

“Thank you, your majesty.”

“And what of the others?”

“The other four are on standby, ready to go to work over the coming weeks.  Seven ought to be enough of a gang to deter any and all future trouble.  All believe they are lone operatives."

“Humph.  And can we trust them not to chat amongst themselves?”

“The psychologists say yes.  All from households with domineering patriarchal or matriarchal figures who've expressed unequivocally that continued silence and duty are key to the familial welfare.  Besides, they're all rather taken with the idea of being special agents."

"God bless fantastical cinema," muttered Becialvu.  “Okay,” she said in acceptance, “But these things don’t happen overnight.”

“In the meantime,” said Fremet, reading her allusion, “The aggressors will have their homework and sporting commitments doubled.  Even minor, essentially harmless transgressions will suddenly yield detentions.”

“So what’s left?” asked the Queen.

“The only thing left…is to sell it,” replied Fremet as both of them finally looked at Valern, who stood there blinking in shock.  Queen Becialvu addressed him almost conversationally.

“Abel is a curious one,” she noted.  “No Fire, but enough ice to freeze out his only son.”  She leant back on the flower-shaped velvet throne and swung her cane slowly back and forth.  “He will not believe we have done nothing, so it falls to you to tell him we have done something.”

Lord Fremet took up the baton:

“Your notion of buying an older boy’s protection is the best avenue.  I will let you have a suitable candidate’s name.  Meet the boy and make him sign a National Security bond you can show the Crown Prince.  You can tell the lad any made-up secret you desire at that point, but something to do with the school obviously.”

Valern, not for the first time, stared in awe at the pair.  They’d had the solution in place all along, and had given Abel the illusion of a quandary.  It made him think of strawberries.

He knew that at some point in the future, Abel would sit where Becialvu did now, and he, Valern, would stand alongside where Fremet was.  Could they be as thoughtful, as forward-thinking, as adept at seeing all sides of the board as these two in front of him?  Ordinarily the thought of gaining accruing experience in the job would give him hope.  People, ministers, foreign dignitaries and such, had a perception of  Becialvu slowing down yet this was not so.  The pair of them had merely learnt to move in more subtle ways.   Abel was indeed working to shift power from the monarchy and put it in the hands of the people.  Or at least their elected ministers.  But everything he'd done and everything he would do was caveated to begin after his mother's rule was over.  Any reform she'd allowed during her time could be undone with a glare.

That thought proved sentient a moment later as, despite it all, she changed her mind.

"No," she said firmly yet steadily.  "It's not enough."  She bore a gaze into him just then, willing him to take instruction. "Take heed, Valern," she said quietly.  "Your queen is about to justify violence.".

Then she spread her gaze to the room as though a full auditorium awaited.

"We made a good plan. A sound and sensible one, Fremet, but it disregards the fact that my grandson, a prince, has been subjected to needless cruelty.  His tormentors manhandled a royal personage and that cannot go unpunished; else where would be the privilege?"

She raised a finger in pointed emphasis.

"On top of that I find those lessons learned by example are the ones learned best.  Find a troublemaker amongst the seniors.  Such individuals are usually in need of good fortune to aid their academic progress.   Entry to an appropriate higher institution or some such. Guarantee such things and have him and his fellows mete out a harsher version of the same ordeal to Cain's tormentors.  Keep the busier schedules too.  Make life hell.  So they may begin to feel the germs of empathy.  It will be instructive to all concerned."

She tilted towards Fremet again.

"And cancel your team of peers.  We will leave Cain to make his own friends.  Abel is right in that at least; if not what good is anonymity?"  She paused and spoke to Valern though really she addressed them both.

“Can we trust you with such duty, my Lord?" asked the Queen.

“Of course,” he said and gave a deep bow.  “Always.”  Fremet gave an identical one where he stood.

Queen Becialvu returned a small nod and faint smile.

A kindly dismissal, so Valern backed away a step, gave a slight bow in Lord Fremet’s direction, then turned and headed for the curtain.

Was it his imagination or had he seen, had he glimpsed in her eyes that final time, a hint of a flame?