The dawn’s mist began to dissipate, and sunshine graced the lush green fields. An armoured horse in gleaming bronze blinders grunted and kicked in protest as it was escorted out of a nearby pavilion. The dark mare was then mounted by a knight in gilded armour. His golden galea was adorned with a mohawk of crimson plumes. Once atop his horse, he raised his lance high, but instead of cheering and hurrahs from the crowd, the Knight was met with insults and curses. Rosamund covered her ears and ground her teeth as the cacophony of yells erupted.
His squire had draped a crimson cloak over his shoulder, an insignia of a snarling wolf made of gold, white light in his eyes, and a red wreath placed over his head. Rosamund knew the symbol well, the Crimson deity Areos. She no longer liked the sight of it. It reminded her of demons.
The shouts and heckles continued, and it wasn’t long before food started to be pelted in the Knight’s direction. The rotten apples, cabbages and various other old vegetables bounced off his shining armour. His squire, a timid boy of fifteen, ran to his aid and attempted to polish the leftovers off the now-stained gold plate. He was yelled at and sternly dismissed by the visibly agitated golden jouster.
Rosamund Greenfire felt sorry for the Knight, but understood the crowd’s animosity towards him. He was representing the Crimsonarion Empire. An empire that drove the original people of the Jade Kingdom from their homes during a long and bloody campaign. Rosamund’s ancestor, Queen Sona led her people further and further north of the supercontinent before finding land that was verdant and untouched by tyrants. There, the foundations of New Jade City were built. The empire had launched several other attempts at invasion and conquest, but by the time the Crimsonarion armies travelled far enough north, it was too late. The new Jade Kingdom’s defences had been fortified and perfected in such a way that the crimson soldiers were driven away each time with tails between their legs. Crimsonaria’s newly sworn-in Emperor, Nerva Narciso, finally signed a peace treaty only five years ago, allowing the Jade Kingdom to keep their new city and land without the threat of further attacks and invasion... for now, at least. Despite his leniency, Nerva frightened Rosamund tremendously. She had overheard troubling rumours from maidens at the palace courts of the sadistic things he would do to his servants when just the slightest feeling of boredom brushed over him.
Her historical musings were cut short by another raucous cry from the crowds. This time they were cheers and praise as Sir Dorian Ambrose emerged from his pavilion. Rather than cabbage and leftover food, roses and bouquets were thrown at the New Jade Knight. He was adorned in jade green armour, the flaming bear of Greenfire brandished on his black and gold cloak. He waved to the crowd and playfully feigned embarrassment from his adoring audience, blowing kisses to screaming maidens and noblewomen.
“Smug prick,” she heard Countess Elizabeth Woodard mumble beside her. Rosamund was sat betwixt the Countess and Anastasia at the front row of a large vibrant gallery. Anastasia was in her blue alchemist robes, unconcerned by the more formal attire that all the other attendees were wearing. Elizabeth Woodard’s exquisite snow-white hair was secreted under a towering green hennin. Despite her headwear, she looked like a woman in mourning in her black flowing dress. The Countess seemed to have a strange fondness for black. Behind her sat the Duke and Duchess, Hugo and Ada Barlet dressed regally enough in red and white wolf-skin cloaks. The Duke wore a puffy beret with green feathers pinned to the side, looking much more alive and well than he did back at his manor. Rosamund thought the Duke was brave to be out here considering there had already been two attempts made on his life. The smiling demon could be here, she thought with a sudden racing heart. Though she could not see any half-burned men in the crowds.
“Come the morrow, I must pay my respects,” she overheard Duke Hugo’s voice whisper to her Duchess.
“Darling, must you?” Ada Barlet questioned with concern. “We shouldn’t even be out here.”
“Nonsense, Darling,” the Duke said confidently, raising a hand in dismissal. He had spoken that confidently about his guardsmen back at the manor. Now they were dead. “It’s broad daylight and we’re surrounded by our adoring audience, and yes, I have been attacked, yet here I breathe. This assassin is too much of a farce to be worth fretting over.”
Rosamund had been informed by one of her kingly father’s servants that he would not be in attendance, despite the many previous promises he had made to her. Instead, it fell to Viscount Reynard Woodard to host the tournament. He stood from the throne. Her father should have been sitting on in a dark black and bronze doublet and red tartan cloak. He approached the dais that her father was meant to use. He announced for the competitors to take their positions.
Dorian donned a helm with blue plumes and mounted his chestnut stallion. His lance was green with spiralled black stripes and when his steed charged forward, the stripes would ripple in the sunlight. He reined in his chestnut at the front of the gallery and lifted his visor, bowing to Anastasia, the Princess, and the Countess from atop his high horse.
“My Ladies,” he amiably greeted, presenting a large white rose. “Hmm, Anastasia doesn’t like me very much,” he pondered aloud. “A Princess is far too out of my league and Lord Julian just isn’t really my type, no matter how much he persists.” He offered the rose to Countess Elizabeth Woodard. “I suppose it will have to be you, Elizabeth.”
The Countess giggled and delicately accepted the token of chivalry. “I’ll gladly accept, Sir Dorian,” she said with a smile. “On one condition.”
“Pray tell?” he asked.
“I’ll take your rose if you take that lance and shove it up your arse.”
Dorian gave her a mischievous look before tipping down his visor and riding alongside the barrier to his position. The interaction confused Rosamund.
“What kind of example are you setting for the Princess?” Ana scornfully asked the Countess.
Countess Woodard delicately took the Princess’ hands and looked deep into her eyes. Elizabeth Woodard’s freckles seemed to sparkle under the sun. “Sooner or later, you’ll need to learn that underneath all the steel and feigned valour, knights are merely just pigs with egos.”
A vuvuzela screeched across the field, the horn’s cries screaming into Rosamund’s soul. She flinched and winced and, much to her chagrin, the Countess noticed. “Rosamund, please,” she snapped. “You’re embarrassing all of us.”
Down one end of the barrier, the Crimsonarion Knight’s steed snorted and grunted, moving from side to side. The Knight rode around in circles and shouted, “For the Empire!” which was met by more curses and rotten vegetation from the crowd, despite the City Watch’s attempts to control the rabble. His stallion had a fire in its eyes that troubled Rosamund. If any horse were capable of hungering for human flesh, it would have been the one belonging to the Crimsonarion.
Down the other end of the barrier, Sir Dorian blew a kiss to a group of noblewomen watching from the edge of the gallery. They were hurling various flowers his way. He rode up to them and started making idle conversation. Meanwhile, the golden knight readied himself for the great charge.
“His hubris will be the end of him,” Anastasia commented as they watched Dorian flirt from afar.
“Good,” Countess Woodard said resolutely.
The cried out again. Rosamund winced but resisted the urge to cover her ears, instead digging her fingernails into the underside of her cushioned seat. The Princess did not attend many tournaments. Only the ones she was forced to. Yet she could surmise that the second cry gave the jousters permission to begin as the gilded Knight immediately started charging.
Dorian broke away from his flirtations and whacked his chestnut stallion into a swift charge. The black spirals across his jade lance danced in the daylight and as the two knights hurtled towards each other, fear and uncertainty began to fill the Princess. Don’t hurt Dorian, she internally pleaded, but to what spirit she wasn’t sure. Her kingly father would often pray late at the night. She did not know who he prayed to or what he spoke of.
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As they collided, the Crimsonarion Knight’s lance knocked Dorian’s steel helm off his head, but it was Dorian’s jade lance that crashed into his opponent’s breastplate, sending him flying from his armoured black mare and rolling across the grass.
Dorian rode on and raised the remains of his shattered lance in victory. The surrounding crowds cheered. All the noblemen and noblewomen in the galleries stood and cried out in joy. Everyone around Rosamund stood and yelled and gave loud and thunderous applause. It was all too much for her. The sound was overwhelming. Her ears began to ring out. Everyone was closing in on her. She slapped her hands to her ears and ran away from her seat and across the gallery, ignoring the yells and protests from Anastasia and the Countess.
Rosamund escaped down the stairs and pushed her way past the hordes of nobles. She reached the bottom of the gallery and took refuge under it. There was shade here and no people. She could hear a thousand boots rumbling above, but the noise was bearable, the cries and yells fainter. She crouched into the grass, hugging her own legs. She was getting mud down her green dress, but she no longer cared. She hated wearing it. The fabric itched around her arms and screeched across her skin.
“Look over here!”
Rosamund snapped her eyes to the call. Three urchins were approaching her. The one leading them was a pudgy boy in a tattered tunic and a yellowish coif. The other was an Arkovian girl in a patched dress who was smirking at Rosamund. The third urchin was scrawny but seemed to be of high nobility. He was dressed as a squire with a crimson cloak.
“You’re the Princess, aint you’s?” asked the pudgy one in the yellowish coif.
Rosamund stood and scratched her arm, averting her eyes from the three of them. She did not remember the last time she had talked to anyone close to her own age and knew not what to say to them. “Yes…” she said meekly.
“Glad I’ve found you,” yellow coif said with a look that Rosamund did not like. “You going to make me rich, then?”
“Erm…” Rosamund fumbled about her dress, hoping that some coin-filled pockets would magically appear. “I don’t have any coin on me.”
The Urchin’s round head squinted in annoyance. His face looked like a mangled pie. “What? No coin? Your father’s the king! You should be showering us in Gold Bears right now!”
Rosamund’s eyes darted everywhere but at the questioning urchins. She did not know what to say to them. Her heart started thumping and her legs grew faint and weak. She just wanted to be left alone. Pie-Face walked right up to her, glowering. “Why don’t you look at me, then?” He pushed her into the mud and grass.
“She has Denarii!” the Arkovian girl cried out. “She’s just keeping it to herself, like the rest of ‘em!” “Maybe we should beat the money out of her,” snarled the tiny squire.
“I don’t have any! I don’t have any!” Rosamund kept repeating. She hid her head behind her arms and rocked back and forth.
“What’s wrong with her?” the Arkovian girl asked in disgust as Rosamund continued to avoid their piercing looks and hid within her own arms.
“She’s a freak,” said Pie-face, standing over her.
Rosamund broke from her trance and dug her hand in the mud. She cupped a ball of brown sludge and hurled it into Pie-face’s ugly round head and ran. I don’t care what they think; she told herself, with tears welling in her eyes. I don’t care what they think.
She escaped to the safety of her own private pavilion, where she sat by her mirror, twirling her hair endlessly and weeping. There was no one like her. No one to understand her. She was royalty, yet she never felt so beneath everyone and alone. To make matters worse, Anastasia would be sure to beat her for fleeing.
“Did the reveal of my face frighten you that badly?” she heard Dorian ask out of nowhere. She had not heard him enter, but when she turned, she saw him standing near the entrance of her tent, holding his dented helm. His auburn hair was dishevelled, and he had a fresh cut across the side of his cheek from the Crimsonarion’s lance.
“I’m sorry,” Rosamund said, bursting into tears again. The relief of seeing Dorian there and not the Arch-Alchemist made her cry even more.
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry for.” The Knight placed his dented helm on a nearby table and knelt beside her.
“Are you injured?” she asked through cloudy tears. Her vision was becoming blurry to the point where Dorian appeared just a green and red haze.
“I got off very lightly compared to Nerva’s crony,” he said with a jovial smile. “Why wasn’t your kingly father here to see my glorious victory?”
“Kingly matters,” she quoted with a blubber.
“Ah, that old chestnut,” he said askance.
“I’m glad he wasn’t here to see me,” she sobbed. “What’s wrong with me, Dorian?”
“Nothing’s wrong with you.”
“I’m not normal,” she cried, “and everyone knows it.”
“Maybe to them you’re not, but someday you’ll be queen.” Dorian paused for a moment before raising his jade-gauntleted hand, “and then you can just chop off the head of anyone that makes fun of you.”
Rosamund didn’t find that amusing. “I don’t want to be queen,” she admitted. Her throat felt hoarse and blocked from all the sobbing.
“Unfortunately, it’s what you have been born into, Your Highness,” the Knight said candidly. “But it’s better to be born a Greenfire than born a peasant. At least you’re always protected and watched over.”
“But are we really safe?”
Dorian gave her a confused look. “The assassin seems to have fled, if that is what you’re fretting about? We haven’t heard a peep from him in days.”
“But Dorian,” Rosamund persisted, wiping her snotty nose with a green crinkly sleeve, “I saw him again on our way back from Dorfchester. He was standing there, watching me.”
Before Dorian could respond, Anastasia came storming in with a dark fire in her hazel eyes and a ruby-encrusted goblet in her hand. She would always drink whenever she was vexed. The Arkovian Alchemist followed her in, wearing his loose bifocals that slid down to the edge of his nose. Despite it being a bright day, he was still wearing gloves.
“You certainly weren’t very dignified out there,” the Arch-Alchemist said with flames in every word she uttered.
“I’m sorry, Ana,” Rosamund said with sincere remorse.
“Just stop crying so that we can go back out there,” she said.
“Hasn’t the poor girl had enough, Lady Aubrey?” Dorian protested. “The tournament is over, anyway. I won just so you know, in case you weren’t sober enough to notice.”
“There are still two more jousts scheduled,” she hissed at him and took a deep swig from her goblet.
“Well, the tournament has certainly peaked,” the Knight said in a braggadocios tone. “No one will be able to best the show I put on out there.”
“The Countess was right; It is a mystery how your ego manages to fit inside your head.” She turned to Rosamund and grabbed her wrist and pulled her from her chair. With a scrunched handkerchief, she started aggressively wiping the tear streaks from her face, dragging it with a force that started to burn. As Rosamund winced, she could smell the sharp burning liquor on Anastasia’s breath.
“Perhaps we should just give her some space instead?” the Arkovian Alchemist timidly suggested.
Anastasia then turned her fury at her apprentice. “You are speaking far above your station, Hideo. I’m surprised with myself that I even keep you in my service. You always turn up late, some nights you vanish, and when you do appear you have bruises on your face. Do you think it’s appropriate for someone royally employed to be getting into bar brawls each night?” She then looked back to the Princess and snatched her wrist again, twisting it as she pulled her along. “We’re going back out there and y-”
Anastasia coughed.
She ignored it and continued pulling the Princess along before coughing far more violently. She dropped the goblet, and the green rug was immersed in red. This time, the coughing did not stop. She started to wobble and tip over before Hideo and Dorian caught her. “Anastasia?” Hideo questioned frantically.
Dorian left the Alchemist to delicately lay Ana on the ground. The Knight picked up the ruby goblet and took a whiff. His eyes expanded, and he threw the chalice as far as he could. “Rosamund,” he barked, “get away from the spillage, don’t touch it!”
Anastasia’s coughing melted into a ceaseless, agonising wheeze. Her eyes bulged and her veins turned black as tar. Rosamund ran to her beside Hideo. “You can’t leave me!” she cried out.
Hideo cursed in Arkovian and then yelled to Dorian, “Get the City Watch and a doctor! Damn it to the underworld!”
Dorian grabbed the Princess from the dying Arch-Alchemist despite her protests and screams. “No!” Rosamund cried out, her eyes becoming blurry again. “Save her, Hideo, please!”
Her pleas were impotent. The Arkovian took a medical syringe out of his pocket and injected something into her. It seemed to be just as fruitless as Anastasia Aubrey went from thrashing in pain to seizing, her body becoming as stiff as stone. Rosamund’s last sight of Anastasia was of her desperate wheezes for help, reaching a puffy and green hand for the Princess, the fingers motionless, her face turning blotchy and toad-like.
Dorian covered her eyes as he briskly escorted her out of the pavilion. “You shouldn’t see anymore,” he said sombrely.
When she and the Knight emerged outside, the sunlight assaulted her. Crowds of shouting nobles started getting physical. Some of them broke through the barriers and rows of watchmen, beginning to swarm around the two of them. Rosamund could feel herself being grabbed by a thousand hands, the cries and fanatical screams blurring into a searing white noise. She clutched herself to Dorian’s arm, fearing what could happen if she let go. The Knight was raising a gauntleted hand and yelling for the City Watch, but to no avail. The guards were an ocean away. Rosamund closed her eyes tight and thought of the time Anastasia took her to a picnic out by a secluded and serene lake on the outskirts of the city. Anastasia had found a white rose for her to wear in her hair. She wasn’t always so mean, Rosamund thought, as the crowds devoured them. She just wanted the best for me.