That night she dreamt that she was being chased through the empty corridors of the Jade Palace. There were no guards, no Ana, no Dorian. She was alone and hunted. She refused to look back but felt a presence creeping behind her, no matter how fast she ran. Her chest began to tighten, and her legs started to move slowly and sluggishly as if she were underwater. She swayed desperately, but only moved a few inches forward. It’s getting closer. She tripped over a crimson rug and when she gazed up, the man in the iron mask grabbed her. He pulled away his iron smile to reveal his true face. He did not have the burn marks or the black beard. His eyes were white empty balls, and his lips were missing, his gums red and dripping. His skin was grey and when he opened his fanged jaw, he hissed. He tightened his iron grip around her throat.
“Rosamund! Pay attention!”
Rosamund awoke with a scream. She was no longer alone. The Duke and Duchess were looking at her bewilderedly from across the council table. Countess Woodard and Julian Reeve were failing to suppress their giggles and smirks, and her kingly father watched her with his studying green eyes. “Daughter, are you well?”
“No,” she frankly answered.
She felt Ana’s soft hands on her shoulders. “I’m so sorry about this, Your Highness,” she said over the Princess’ shoulder. She then leaned in close to Rosamund and whispered. “You need to pay attention.”
Duke Hugo Barlet was complaining to her kingly father whilst Ada Barlet was clinging to his arm with a look of consternation on her face.
They talked about matters that she did not understand. Increasing tax in the New Jade Duchy, the plague returning, and turbulent relations with the Crimsonarion Empire. She was starting to drift away again when they moved back onto the topic of assassins and a shout snapped across the throne room.
“In my own home!” Hugo suddenly bellowed at the top of his voice.
Rosamund flinched. The sudden shout was piercing hot coals against her ears.
“Men were guarding my manor, but they weren’t enough to stop whatever menace attacked me that night!” The Duke wouldn’t lower his voice. The Adam’s apple under his large throat vibrated as it slid up and down, not too dissimilar to the sight of a stone being thrown into a puddle. “I want these men, these ninjas – no, assassins brought to me. The next time they will be in my home, it will only be their heads!”
“Calm yourself,” her kingly father commanded. His hand was raised and adorned with jade and gilded rings. “We shall increase the number of guards in your home. You may have my personal Jade Knights that guard these very halls.”
“Yes, your Kingliness, but will that be enough?” the Duke persisted, rummaging through his long grey beard. “Who knows how many of them there really are? What if my wife was in the manor that night, too? If she were downstairs that night, her throat would have been slit!” the Duke slammed his fist onto the table and some golden goblets toppled.
Rosamund flinched and felt Ana pat her shoulder. The Arch-Alchemist’s hand was bony and cold. Rosamund hated the grating sensation of Ana’s silk sleeve dragging against her own golden dress. The feeble attempts at comfort only made the Princess more rattled.
The Duke turned his gaze towards Rosamund, noticing her discomfort. “I apologize, child. I am just, quite understandably, stressed.”
“Address me with your problems, Lord Duke,” her father said unimpressed. “Not my daughter.”
“Our problems, you mean?” the Duke corrected with another screeching bellow. Rosamund stuck her fingers in her ears. “A king should know better. Who says they only want me dead? That assassin looked mightily keen on silencing your daughter, too!”
Rosamund did not want to relive that night. If the blue ninja had not appeared when he did… She wondered if she would have joined the guards at the bottom of the stairs. Sometimes she dreamt that she was back at the manor, staring down at the bodies. They would come alive again, despite their slit throats, and smile at her. She found herself whimpering. Ana put a comforting hand on her shoulder again. “It’s ok,” she whispered.
“I don’t want my throat cut,” Rosamund said with a sniff.
“That won’t happen.” Her father stood from his cushioned chair and loomed over the council table. He looked like a giant in his forest-green tunic and green and black tartan cloak that draped over one side of his shoulder. “Lady Aubrey, please take the Princess elsewhere.”
“She needs to know about these matters,” Ana objected. “How else is she to learn?”
Countess Woodard coughed as a signal for attention. Her snow-white hair was twirled around her head like a great ashen beehive and she was dressed fully in scarlet. “I believe the Princess should decide,” the Countess said, smiling but at her own nails rather than at Rosamund. “She is not a cat.”
“I’ll stay,” Rosamund blurted out, hoping to sound more confident than she was.
“We shall break anyway,” her kingly father declared as he placed his jade crown over his golden mane of hair. “We’ll return in a few moments. My guards will call for you all.”
“I will not be attending,” Hugo bellowed in a braggadocious tone. “I have promised to attend breakfast at Lord Fostmoore’s residence. He is doing great things in Drakelyn, especially with his donations to the borough’s local City Watch department.”
“Fine,” her father said icily, “and when you return to your home, there will be so many guards around your manor that you will feel uncomfortable using the privy.” Her kingly father paced away. Ada helped lift her husband to his feet and escorted him away down the hall as he coughed and mumbled to himself.
“You made a good decision,” Ana said approvingly as the throne room doors wailed shut, leaving just Rosamund, the Arch-Alchemist, and the Woodards alone together. “You need to start learning about what troubles this city.”
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“But it’s scary outside the palace,” Rosamund protested, fearing not just the smiling demon but plagues, Crimsonarions, and monsters. “Can’t I just stay here?”
Countess Woodard started chuckling, “What lies outside the city itself is much scarier, my dear. You should be grateful for where you are.”
“And you must learn how to keep this city safe from what lurks outside its high walls and country,” Anastasia concluded with a frown.
“How goes the vaccine, Lady Aubrey?” the Countess asked out of nowhere. She was smiling, but when Rosamund turned to look at Ana, she noticed that her tutor was not amused.
“It would be going better if my new apprentice had shown up,” Ana replied bitterly.
The Countess grinned, but Rosamund did not like it. There was something about her freckly face that made the Princess feel uneasy. “Treating the Shards is hopeless, my dear. You are treating a mortally wounded animal. I say put it out of its misery and rebuild.” The Countess spoke candidly whilst sharpening her index finger with a file. Her nails were a dark shade of green and were so shiny that Rosamund could see her own confused face in the reflections. “When a man’s arm is infected, the doctor cuts it off so that the rest of the body may heal and thrive.”
“Such a thoughtful and considerate viewpoint, Countess Woodard.” Anastasia was sneering when she said the words. Even Rosamund could tell that there was venom in her voice. It was the same voice she used when Rosamund was about to get caned.
The Countess only grimaced. “You’ll come around.”
Lord Julian Reeve fingered his black goatee and coughed awkwardly. “Your apprentice is not the first to be absent from a King’s council meeting,” Dorian jested in an attempt to deflate the tension. “He’ll fit right in.”
Ana did not return the smile and when she heard the nearby door open, she snapped her head towards it with eyes of focused fury. Rosamund felt sorry for Hideo. He was going to get a “bloody bollocking” as Ana called it, but when the door opened, it was not the new Alchemist standing there.
“Dorian!” Rosamund yelled with glee at the top of her voice as she jumped out of her seat. She rushed over to the knight although it was easy to mistake Dorian Ambrose for some everyday noble. He wore an umber jerkin, brown boots that still had mud stuck to the edges and a small dagger that was sheathed at the side of his belt, but his well-cut, short auburn hair made him look like one of the heroes’ bards write about.
The Knight ruffled her hair. “Look who it is!” he beamed. “Rosamund Greenfire, defender of Dukes and scourge of assassins!”
Rosamund blushed at the remark. She let go of the Knight and scratched her arm, staring at the floor. “I didn’t…the blue n-”
“Nonsense.” Dorian raised a gloved hand. He lifted her chin and gently turned her head from side to side, studying her. “You’re bruised. You must have had some sort of physical altercation with the masked lunatic, yet you and the Duke still breathe. You defended him.”
Rosamund felt a warm glow. For a brief moment, the world did not feel so scary. Sir Dorian Ambrose approached the remaining royalists. Reynard Woodard stiffly raised a goblet full of wine up at the Knight in icy respect. Julian Reeve merely nodded and stroked his forked goatee. Sir Dorian Ambrose came to a halt in order to bow at Countess Woodard. “My Lady,” he addressed gallantly.
Elizabeth Woodard tilted her head and flickered a freckled smile. “Hello pig,” she said happily.
“Elizabeth,” Reynard called out sonorously, “remember your courtesies.” The Viscount spoke as if he were reprimanding his child. He technically was, yet Elizabeth Woodard was in the midst of her third decade.
Sir Dorian gave out a hearty chuckle. “No harm done. Her animosity is understandable.” The Knight pulled out a chair and sat back, resting his muddy boots on the council table.
The fire in Anastasia’s eyes flared at the sheer brazenness. “Be grateful that King Sigismund isn’t here to witness that.”
“King Sigismund is hardly the type to execute his best knight for getting a bit of mud on the table.” Dorian interlocked his hands behind his head and gazed up at the mural above. The face of a sneering short-faced bear adorned with a jade crown with emerald fires behind was painted across the curved ceiling. It was the symbol of Greenfire. It represented her own bloodline, yet Rosamund still found the crowned beast frightening and tried to avoid looking up whenever she was present in her father’s throne room.
“You missed the meeting, Dorian,” Lord Reeve commented as he stood from his chair to leave, along with the other Woodards.
“Hardly my fault. You lack an interesting life to make yourself late,” Dorian cheerily quipped as he rocked his chair back and forth. The Knight then turned his attention back to the Countess who was gathering the scarlet ends of her long dress before following her brother and stern father to exit. “Be careful not to trip on that thing. You’ve perhaps already swooped over half the Jade Guard and left a dozen unconscious bodies in your wake without realising.”
Elizabeth Woodard gave the Knight another wry smile. “Eat Tyrant Lizard shit, Dorian.” The throne room doors slammed behind the Countess as she left, leaving an icy silence in the throne room.
Rosamund blurted out a laugh. Ana turned her dark look over to the Princess. The Arch-Alchemist did not delight in the buffoonery. She put her hand back on the Princess’ shoulder and Rosamund once again endured the unpleasant sensation of silk clashing against cotton. “Do you understand the troubles we must address in the Shards?” she asked.
Rosamund had not been listening to a word spoken about the ominous borough. “Erm… the Shards is a bad place?” She scratched her arm and looked away.
“It is not that black and white,” Anastasia began to lecture. “That borough has been torn apart not just from disease but from crime.”
“Why aren’t we stopping it?” the Princess asked.
“We’re trying. Well, Sheriff Redtower is trying.” Ana sounded doubtful. Rosamund did not understand why.
“Why do we allow bad people into the city?”
“They don’t come into the city.” The Arch-Alchemist answered. “They grow inside it. Monsters are not born, Rosamund. They are moulded.”
The frozen silence in the throne room lingered until Dorian forced out a cough. “When was the last time you left the Jade Palace, your eminence? I don’t recall a time when you’ve been outside these walls.”
“I’ve left the palace!” Rosamund blurted out defiantly.
“And when was that?” Dorian asked, looking askance.
Rosamund scratched her arm and looked away. Dorian twirled his mud-stained boots off the table and leaned his chair forward. “Nothing will make you understand the city more than going out and exploring it. What the people you will soon rule over want, need, how they live, and what they struggle with.”
“She isn’t leaving the palace when there are assassins lurking around the city,” Ana cut in.
Dorian sighed. “A shame. Showing these assassins that the Royalists are not afraid to leave their comfortable castles will certainly earn them more respect with their citizens.”
“Respect doesn’t guarantee safety,” Ana replied, growing increasingly irritated. Rosamund noticed a blue vein streaking down the side of the Arch-Alchemist’s forehead. “Out of all the Royalists you suggest walk the city streets in the open should it really be Rosamund?”
Dorian shrugged. “She spends so much time painting and drawing the city, yet she hasn’t seen it for what it really is.”
Ana stood and picked up her parchments from the table. “Maybe once these assassins are caught, we can discuss this further.” She turned to leave before looking back at Rosamund. “Are you coming?”
“Erm, I’m going to go back up to my room,” the Princess said awkwardly.
“Very well.”
When Anastasia returned to the alchemy chamber, Rosamund turned to Dorian with a sly grin. “Are you going out into the city today?”
The Knight smiled. “I am your highness. Care to go on an adventure?”