Now that I’m watching, I realize that Faladel doesn’t break that character after we arrive back at the castle. If anything, he gets even more aloof and formal than he regularly is. It’s worrying that he spends so much of his time in his office doing paperwork and studying. I can’t even get him to come out to help me look for Albert, who escaped when Zydon was looking after him. Apparently, Zydon had let him out of his cage for a bit of exercise after closing the office door, and Albert lost him in all the paperwork. Zydon had planned to find him in the morning, when he could use daylight, instead of burning oil lamps that an excitable mongoose could knock over. But a new maid who hadn’t been told to ignore the mess in my office yet came in in the middle of the night… and, well, the rest is history.
Technically, it's not Zydon’s fault. Technically.
At least he volunteered to help me find Albert. But my hopes sink with every passing day. I think my mongoose might be gone for good.
I sigh, running my rough hands through my curls. Nothing seems to be going right. Faladel’s ‘break’ only made him more stressed, Adamar isn’t sure his parents will let him come to the seventh peace anniversary festival because politics, Albert is missing, and I still haven’t forgotten about that dratted pile of books full of nonsense.
I try to concentrate on paperwork for a while, but have no patience for it. I’m supposed to be out in the field, collecting information, spying, carrying out undercover missions of utmost importance! Not filling out endless forms and reviewing agreements! But since there is no war– which is objectively good– there are also much fewer missions of utmost importance, certainly not enough to be shared between all the King’s Archers. Which means I’m stuck on paperwork duty for an indefinite time. I groan loudly, but nobody is here to listen to my complaint. Not even a mischievous mongoose.
After reading the same paragraph three times, and understanding less of it each time– something about an avalanche in the mountains?– I give up and wander off to the stables to find Myrddin. He nuzzles me sympathetically as I plop down next to him and tell him all my problems. When I get to the part about Albert his big brown eyes look a little too pleased by my problems with the mongoose, so I just skim over them. Best not to make the horse jealous.
“All in all, everything seems to have hit a dead end, everybody is too stressed out, it’s all so boring, and this hay is too itchy.” I finish, as he snuffles my hair in a moist, comforting way. “You wish we were back on adventures too don’t you buddy?” I ask, craning my head backwards to stare up at him. His whinny of agreement makes me smile and snort through my nose. “You always have perfect timing don’t you?” Myrddin tosses his head.
“Well, thanks for listening to me ramble. Want a sugar cube?” After Myrddin confirms that he does indeed want all the sugar cubes, I feed him a few and then get started grooming him while continuing my diatribe.
“Really, I should talk with His highness– The king, not Faladel– and see what he thinks of all this. I mean, he and the queen should have noticed that something is off with their son, right? They might have some ideas of how to help him. And if they don’t, my ideas will certainly take their approval before I’m allowed to put them to use. Do you think I should put in an official request for a meeting?” I pause. “No, Faladel might attend that, and that would be awkward. ‘Your Highnesses, have you noticed something is off about His Highness Faladel? Yes, the one who is sitting over there?’” I gesture over to an empty pile of hay, imagining the wooden stables as the courtroom. “Yes,” I continue the pantomime, “he’s been too perfect of a prince and that’s quite disturbing. Even he’s not normally that perfect. Nobody should be that perfect. Should be expected to be that perfect.”
Myrddin licks his teeth, savoring the last bits of sugar.
“You’re right.” I sigh, “It sounds completely ridiculous when I put it like that. Definitely a closed audience then.”
----------------------------------------
The days pass by slowly, and as happens with these sorts of unpleasant tasks with no due date, I end up procrastinating quite a bit. Two weeks of pudding making and paperwork pass by before I even start thinking about how to go about requesting a private audience. I barely see Faladel that entire time. Court functions, most meetings, some public events, once when he was grabbing lunch. He’s there for those things, but he’s not really himself. He’s Prince Faladel Mithrandir, not my friend Faladel. It’s like he’s expecting a body blow, and is using the formality as his armor. Every time I see him, the bags under his eyes and his impersonal smile grate on my mind. Even my new spinach and apricot pudding can’t make him chuckle. Comment on how I should have made a salad with those flavors instead of a pudding? Yes. Chuckle? No.
One of the endless meetings though catches me off guard. I’m stuck on note-taking duty for the King, a complete waste of my infiltration talents, but my doodling skills are quite handy when I need to lambast a particularly dumb comment. I am paying only slightly more attention to the meeting than I normally would, sitting at a desk far enough away to make it clear I’m not an official attendee while the councilors and court officials chatter away at the large ovular table nearby, when I spot the Queen clicking her fingernails against her throne in an interesting pattern.
Two taps, a small scratch, three quick taps. Then it repeats. She looks just as bored with the meeting as I feel, but is managing to keep a smile on her face while her fingers do their dance against the lower left side of her throne. Suddenly, out of the shadows behind me I hear a few soft clicks. Not the click of a door unlocking, not a returning code, but something else… My brain races to identify the sound, and then a soft chirup and squeak identify it for me as Albert scampers towards the throne, his claws making a little click click sound on the wooden floor. He clambers up her throne, hops onto the queens lap, circles for a bit, and then sits down and releases a soft chitter of delight as she begins stroking him absentmindedly. I knock over my inkpot in shock, and am barely able to save my clothes, much less the notes. The little traitor is completely hidden from the council by the big oaken table and is cuddling– cuddling!– with the queen. Here I’ve been wracking my brains and worrying my heart out trying to find him, and he’s spent all this time evolving from mongoose to momgoose?!
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
I’m too distressed by this betrayal to take notes. I’m too distressed to even think properly. That’s it. That’s the last straw. I’m not going to delay this meeting any longer! I’ll do the difficult conversation, find someway to get Faladel out of his rut, and then politely request that Faladel’s mom give me back the momgoo– mongoose. He’s a mongoose. He doesn’t belong to a mom yet. I can still contest the ownership rights!
When the meeting is over, Albert jumps down from the queen's lap and scurries off again. The other attendees mutter to each other incomprehensibly as they leave and I bring my destroyed notes over to the King.
“Sorry about these, Your Highness.” I say, handing him the notes. “The ink jar fell onto them. If you want, I can try and write up a summary by memory.”
He waves me off. “No need, no need Briareth. I’ll remember it well enough. It’s not like anything important happened today anyways.” The queen chuckles in quiet agreement.
I hesitate. “Is there something else?” He asks, noticing.
“Yes, is it possible for us to meet in private sometime soon? I would like to discuss something rather sensitive.”
His golden eyes– the exact same shade of Faladel’s– regard me curiously as he asks with an easy smile. “On a scale of one to ten, how sensitive?”
I wrinkle my nose in thought. “Seven?” I guess, and then realize that Faladel really really wouldn’t want this discussion getting out, even though he won’t be involved. “No, better make that 8.” Best to go by his wishes since it is his personal life we’ll be discussing.
“An eight? Well then, why don’t we just sit right on down.” The King says with a completely straight face, beginning to pull out a chair for me. I snort at his nonchalance. The Queen however, doesn’t seem to think it’s as funny, and elbows him discreetly. He coughs before continuing. “How long will it take?”
“Hopefully not more than fifteen minutes, and it would be best if Her Highness will join us.” I say, not even trying to suppress my smile.
After thinking for a few seconds, and some silent eye contact with his wife, the King turns to me and says “Alright, Briareth, meet me here after sunset. I’ll take care of any magical evesdroppers.”
----------------------------------------
FALADEL
I walk through the empty hallways, carrying my supper and trying to get back to my rooms without too much notice. Ever since Briareth’s Birthday party earlier this month I’ve been walking on eggshells, waiting for– I don’t really know what– Something to happen. The rude drunkard probably did just forget all about it, like Briareth said. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve done something wrong, and soon everyone will know.
His words resonated inside me, and somewhere they struck a chord. As a prince, I’m not really supposed to have breaks, to have time away from the hustle and bustle of court life. It’s the whole point of the constant surveillance thing, so that people– if they wish– can know me at my worst and best and every moment of my day. I’ve always been fine with that. It makes sense that they would have that right. But after the treaty was struck, after Briareth and I were integral in making peace with the dwarves, expectations for me went through the roof. I could feel people watching and judging and hear them whispering that I didn’t live up to expectations.
That I wasn’t good enough.
So I’ve been trying to be good enough.
And it’s been difficult. Even now, just walking down this corridor, I can count two ‘watchers’ as I call them. The watchers used to be literally people who would watch me and record my everyday affairs in small notepads. But in recent years, they’ve been more and more replaced with small, floating golden balls with a glass lens. Adamar’s parents, the Erhorns invented them. I did some research on them when they first came out. They record up to twelve hours of images and sound that one can play back with a spell, and save those images for up to twenty four hours. They are notoriously difficult to fix, and the enchantments on them are quite finicky, but they’re still a massive leap forward in technology. And in stress.
Human watchers I know have to take breaks. They make noises, alert me that they’re there, get bored and sometimes go find more interesting things to do or people to watch. When I leave Heronmal, I leave almost all of them behind. Mechanical watchers don’t do any of that. They can go anywhere and never miss anything. It’s easy to forget about them. And thus are they dangerous.
I take a left, trying to ignore the ones behind me. I had forgotten about them when I went to Briareth’s party. I was stupid. I let my guard down since we were outside the city. But it wasn’t too far away for them to watch and report back. For people to judge and whisper. Not good enough.
I feel myself start to walk faster, and forcibly slow down. Slow. Quiet. Steady. I concentrate on my breathing. Nothing happened. Nothing will happen. They might not have been there. Maybe they didn’t care that I went to a party for a friend. Maybe the people behind the enchanted balls don’t think people should know the details of a private citizen’s party, even if the prince was in attendance. Maybe they think he doesn’t deserve the same scrutiny.
He doesn’t deserve any of their scrutiny. I think protectively, and then smile ironically, considering those words in a different light. He might be a good friend, but everyone who knows him knows he’d make a terrible king. That alone exempts his actions and his questionable pudding ingredients from any watcher’s gaze.
Although his life would probably be a lot more interesting than my own.
As I turn another corner, going past one of the many meeting rooms in this part of the palace, I hear a sharp ZZXT! from behind me. Glancing back, I see not two, but three golden balls lying inert in the middle of the hallway.
Something just happened. I don’t know what, but it was important. The watchers can be stopped. I feel invisible tension inside me release at the sight of their fallen forms. My shoulders drop, and my breath comes easier. Just in case though, I go back to check them out, bending over and touching them softly, one at a time. All lifeless. All broken. The signature light in the center of the lens is out.
They’re dead.
But before I can stand up, before it even fully processes in my brain, I hear my name in a familiar voice on the other side of the door closest to me. I approach quietly, curious.