CHAPTER 444: 444: A PRINCESS PICKS A ROAD

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The Hall of the Wise was not made to be beautiful. It was made to be stern. Pillars held up a long roof of white stone laced with old bronze ribs. The throne was a plate-backed thing with a ridge like a shield wall; no cushions, only the hard lines queens learn to love because getting used to them means not getting used to anything else.

Hoorius sat on the throne lawful and neat. She did not spread like a ruler drunk on the spot. She perched like a hawk that knows the branch belongs to the tree, not the bird. A long iron rod rested on her left, the regent’s sign. She wore no crown. She did not need one while the crown slept in heat and incense three halls away over the Scarlet Queen, who had shut herself away to climb to nine stars and did not require the world’s sound to do it.

Thea stood one step down and to the right, a pool of red-lacquer plates and pearls that would have looked soft on someone else and looked like knives on her. She had a parchment roll tucked into her belt like a spare threat.

Ministers stood lower: Quartermaster Kesh with his counting beads too loud for the room; Marshal Jyr with the old campaign scars that had learned to keep quiet but never forgot how to speak; Whisper-Archivist Pell with her thin set mouth and the way her eyes were always six inches to the left of your own. Captains, messenger runners, a pair of old judges who had been stone long enough to forget how to bend — every face wore that thin strain the court gets when a part of the world is happening without asking its permission.

The hum that followed Mia to the door dipped and then snapped tight.

Hoorius did not smile. Hoorius did not frown. Hoorius looked, which is older than either. "Princess," she said, not loud. The rod lay like a sleeping snake beside her hand.

"Regent," Mia answered, crossing the engraved line that marked the place where words change from yours to ours. She sank to a knee—not the prostration for a crowned queen, but the respectful drop for the one who holds the key while the owner is in the inner room. She stayed there the length of a breath and stood. "I ask for leave to serve."

Thea’s head tipped, slow. There was a smile beside her mouth that did not move her eyes. "To serve whom?" she said softly. It was not her place to ask. She asked anyway because being the Elder Princess meant you got to ignore rules when it suited you.

Mia didn’t look away from Hoorius. "To serve the Kingdom."

That answer was both too big and exactly right. The hall noted it.

Hoorius propped a knuckle under her chin. "Speak."

Mia spoke as if she were laying down reed mats over a bog: one at a time, neat, firm. "We sent two teams to the rift gates. Nobody returned. Our queen mark was gone. She can’t tell if they were dead or alive. I want to find out what happened to them. Bla Bla Bla....

Don’t we care about our own people?"

Kesh coughed in his beads. Jyr’s jaw went hard in the kind of way that says thank you for saying it out loud so I don’t have to. Pell’s eyes shifted their invisible six inches and then slid back.

Thea’s smile stayed near her mouth. "A princess," she said, "wants to run to the front to count heads like a clerk."

"No," Mia said, and it was not sharp. It was clean. "A princess wants to bring back their names. Vexor. Shale. Flint. Needle. Names. Men. Our men." She let her eyes meet Thea’s for one steady second. "We say we are not a kingdom that forgets its dead when they fall on the other side of a line drawn by sand."

Thea’s teeth showed a fraction. "We also say we are not a kingdom that misplaces princesses because they wanted to see the world."

There. The line drawn.

Hoorius rotated the iron rod half a turn on the arm of the throne. The sound of metal on metal made the hall go flatter than silence. "You will propose a number," she told Mia. "You will propose a route, a cover, and an end. You will propose a leash we can yank if we decide to pull you back. Then the court will speak."

Mia nodded. She had expected this; she had built for it.

"Number," she said. "Twenty. Not a show of force. A show of intent. I will take a lens-runner from dawn blade," she added, with a nod toward the archivist whose job it was to make sure when royals saw things they did not later say they had not seen them, "and a text-bearer. If I find lines that need cutting, I cut them. If I find lines that need binding, I bind them. If I find graves, I mark them and bring back what belongs here."

Hoorius let the rod click another hair. "Route."

"South gate," Mia said. "Old caravans cut for three spans so men with bad glass think we went obvious. Then we step off into reed hollows and hug the forest line until the air changes. We use bark-wrap to dull shine. We walk into the streams and out of them."

Jyr scratched the line on his cheek where a blade had once said hello. "Cover."

"Regency inspection," Mia said. "A formal word on the writ so every petty gate captain who loves his ink can feel important when he stamps it. I carry a short letter sealed with the Regent’s red lacquer and a longer one with my own. If I need to turn bowls into orders, I turn them. If someone wants to get in my way, they have to explain to a court later why a princess carrying the regent’s leave needed to show them her teeth."

The hall made the small noise it makes when people imagine some other people trying to block a princess with the law on her arm. It is a kind of noise.

"Leash," Hoorius said. It was the only thing that mattered. It would always be.

Mia bowed her head a fraction. She hated this part. She did not let the hate show. "Three mirror stations. One at the southern groves. One at the old red mine. One at the salt rim. I check each one. If I do not, the station keeper cracks the emergency mica and the rope pulls me home. I carry a pulse-glass that only travels four leagues. The court sets a clock. If I do not sing at each hour glass, the rod brings me back."

Pell made a note with a dry little sound. "Acceptable," the archivist murmured, not to be helpful, but because the sentence had to be carved on something somewhere.

Thea’s smile finally moved to her eyes — but not how a smile should. "You say the right words," she said. "Now say the true ones. You want to go because you want to look for that ant named Kai. You want to see if he is alive or eaten by an animal or became a ghost. You want—" and here her voice went soft and very sweet and very mean all at once—"a story to tell yourself so you do not have to listen when anyone older than you says ’not yet’."

Mia took that and did not look away. The hall tilted toward her. "I know the ant named Kai is dead. I am looking for him. I want the truth about our people," she said. "It is my job. If I stay, I’ll learn it third-hand from men who like to repeat the piece that makes them sound braver than the day made them. If I go, I have to be brave the whole time or come home without the truth. That seems fair."

Jyr smothered a cough that sounded very much like a laugh. Kesh stopped flicking beads for a heartbeat. Pell moved her eyes to their six inches and back again and did not bother to hide the faint curl of something that might have been interesting.

Hoorius had not moved except for the rod. She did now. She shifted the iron five degrees against the stone. The hall’s breath dropped into its lower register.

"You may go," she said.

Thea’s head tilted a little too fast. "Regent—"

"You may go," Hoorius repeated, the iron length of it leaving no thread for Thea to grab. "With the leash you tied around your own wrist. With twenty ants. With a lens-runner whose notes come to my desk at dusk no matter where you stand at noon. With a text-bearer who has the sense to write without adjectives." The corner of her mouth might have moved that last half-inch that means humor in people who do not laugh during work. "You will bring back the truth or bodies. You will leave men where they belong. And you will not mistake curiosity for judgment. The queen sleeps. I am wearing the crown now. I will open and shut doors. I hope you stay safe."

Mia bowed properly, not the pretty bend, the real one, with her eyes down and her neck bare for a second because trust means nothing if it never shows itself. "I serve," she said, and she meant it, even if her service was about to go sideways from what everyone thought it was.

Thea’s mouth showed teeth. Her voice was silk wrapped around a little blade. "The court must vote," she purred. "We do not hang the realm’s safety on one word, not even yours, dear Regent. We have forms."

Hoorius did not sigh. She looked at the two judges whose faces had forgotten the shape of a smile decades ago. "Vote," she told them, because she could afford to humor a form if it cost her nothing and bought her a soldier’s patience later.

The judges did their little old dance—names, titles, counters, and calls. The beads told yes, not because they loved Mia, not because they hated Thea, but because the pattern said so. It was a hunt for names. Hunts need hunters. The hall wanted someone wearing armor to leave and come back smelling like dust and answers.

"Done," Hoorius said.

Thea bowed her head just enough to let the light curve on her hair. "Then I will write your leash for you," she told Mia. "I will tie it with my own fingers. I will kiss the knot" —she did not smile at that, which would have made men laugh and women break their bowls— "and I will pull it if you stumble."

"I will not stumble," Mia said.

"Everyone stumbles," Thea said.

"Then I will not fall," Mia answered.

"Enough," Hoorius said, and that was the end of that piece of the story.