40. Forty - The Guardian’s Council
Forty - The Guardian’s Council
Edric
My chair is an inch further off the ground than it should be. The back leans forward just enough to annoy, without being visible at first glance. And the cushion is lumpy.
One could be happenstance. All three, and the sidelong glances I’ve received since sitting at the ornate, enormous round table…
It’s not an accident.
But I won’t give them the satisfaction of seeing that discomfort.
Perhaps the chair is even less comfortable because I know what Viggo’s plans are for the night and I would rather be at home with them.
The other guardians greeted me coldly when I arrived. If I hadn’t known better, I would have assumed it was because Dorrian made me late. Or maybe because I have Dorrian to begin with.
Half of them are old enough to open portals to cross shorter distances. Some of them traveled the long way by road—wanting a break from their family or their sycophants. Dalius won’t tell how he comes and goes, but he’s the only one of them I trust, so I don’t particularly care.
The others…
I am not just the new man on the council, I’m the youngest elf in the room.
The fact that I am unfamiliar with their particular way of doing things doesn’t help me, either.
They asked me if there was anything to report from my post and when I said no, they looked so affronted, I couldn’t help but wonder what my predecessor relayed about the goings on in the Queen’s Forest.
And then the others began their reports. Troll sightings in the northern reaches, a unicorn hunt near the edge of the icy wastes…
The forest guardianship is the only one that does not have a border to watch.
They call it “easy.”
And that is why they all hate me for taking it when the Queen offered.
Aeler had spent five minutes detailing a possible kraken sighting near the sea wall tower. He’d glanced at me three times in his dissertation. Mostly when using vile words.
I hadn’t mentioned that his recounting sounded like a prank or storm more than an actual kraken. They prefer deep water and there’s already too much ice at this time of year... but then, all I know of them is from texts. And texts can be wrong.
After the fourth report, I realized they were merely trying to outdo each other. They aren’t official reports, just posturing.
It made them amusing instead of worrisome, but only for a time.
Some took notes and I hope they plan to write a wonderful novel, because Icten most certainly did not fight off a bathyon by himself. The man doesn’t look like he could pick up a spear, much less force it through a giant swamp serpent’s skin.
And when it’s done, they hem and haw and congregate in groups and I... am tired.
They show no intention of leaving—no desire to return to their posts, but I don’t care about the table piled high with food, or the servants who have appeared with yet more wine.
I would like to be home before the moon reaches its zenith.
They all pointedly ignore me.
Good.
But when I stand to go, Aeler pounces.
“It must be so nice to be able to ignore the problems in your guardianship,” He says. “One would think you’d had enough time to get settled.”
“There have been no problems, as I said. And I’m not here to tell stories to amuse the rest of you, so I doubt I will have any problems for you the next time we meet, either.”
I did not think it was possible, but Aeler’s expression gets colder. “Your position is a serious one and you should give it more care.”
“I take my job very seriously. Seriously enough that I don’t make up stories about what happens in the Queen’s Forest. Though, I suppose there might be a kraken in the lake. I will have to think up a good narrative for later.”
I stare at him, not openly accusing him of lying, but he knows.
Voice pitched low, he says, “You don’t deserve that position.”
“Maybe not. Do you deserve yours?”
He looks like I’ve slapped him. “I have been a guardian for two centuries. My father was the guardian for five before that.”
“But what did you do to earn it, besides being born to him?”
He goes rigid and I manage to keep the “that’s exactly what I thought” to myself.
I turn and he starts to chase after me, but whatever insults he wanted to potentially hurl at me, he stops short when Kaelen turns into the room from where she’d been lurking just beyond the door.
“Lord Ceylon,” she says, “I am so glad to see you in the palace again.”
If Aeler hadn’t flinched and turned on his heel, I might have been more concerned at the arrival of his daughter.
But Kaelen serves the Queen first and foremost. Unlike Kirra, she does it with the wicked blade belted to her hip.
She wears a highly stylized version of the palace guard’s uniform and the chains on it make soft bell sounds as she moves.
“It is always a pleasure to be in the Queen’s presence, even if it is not immediate.”
She smiles and I wonder what she thinks of that particular verbal dance.
“Walk with me?”
“Of course.” I’m not sure I’m allowed to refuse her if I wanted to.
“They will hate you for at least a century,” she says softly as I keep stride beside her down the corridor. “Use that time to decide which of them you care to be friends with when they change their mind about you.”
“Would you make a case for your father?”
She laughs. “No. He’s hated you from the cradle.”
Kaelen is at least a century older than me. She would know.
“What could I have possibly have done as a baby?”
“You didn’t do anything. He hates your father. He hates that your mother bore you to him. He hates that she hasn’t smiled at him in the nearly six hundred years that he’s known her.” She glances at me without turning her head toward me. “He drinks too heavily and speaks too loudly.”
“I thought our fathers were friends,” I say.
“When you are as old as they are, sometimes hatred is friendship.”
“I hope I never find out.”
She chuckles and stops beside a panel in the wall that looks like all the others... until she presses her hand to a place on the paper design.
It glows beneath her touch and the wall curls away from the center point, opening to a new hallway, lit too dimly.
“She wants to see you alone,” she says, watching me, waiting.
Kaelen is wasted as an escort, but Aprica doesn’t collect anyone herself.
With a dip of my head, I step through the entrance she’s created and flinch away from it when it unfurls once more, closing me in.
My eyes adjust quickly. The dimness no longer feels too dark.
The hall no longer feels endless.
Elf light bobbles overhead, slowly getting brighter as I walk.
I follow it to its end and the sharp corner that leads me to my queen.
Aprica is an old elf, but she doesn’t look it.
Pink and soft, she’s not wearing her usual court finery. Her long hair, pink and tipped with orange and then yellow, flows down her back, all the way to the hem of her simple gown.
It would be easy to mistake her for someone my own age. A child, compared to her true years.
Some of our kind whisper that she’ll live forever, that she’s found a way to syphon youth from others. They are stories and nothing more, of course. But I have always wondered if the ones about basilisk blood might be true.
If it can heal mortal wounds, why couldn’t it stop her from aging?
“You came!” she says it with relief, as if I could possibly refuse her.
“Always, your grace.”
She comes to me and grips my hands in both of hers. “You look so much like your mother. It surprises me, every time.”
She is the only one who ever tells me so.
“Speaking of Moia’s admirers, I suppose you can guess who came to speak against you this morning?” Her smile tells me it was in vain.
“I don’t think it would be that hard. He has not hidden his disapproval.”
“We will forgive Aeler for his faults until they become too large to bear.”
“Did he put forth any arguments that I should be aware of? Is there anything that concerned you?”
“His family has guarded the sea wall for so long, I think they have forgotten that others can do the job as well, if not better.” She glances past me, as if she expects him to be standing there. “His first mistake was thinking that I would let his family hold two guardianships at once. He wants the forest, but he doesn’t want to relinquish the sea wall to get it.”
“His family is large, if I remember correctly. Is he perhaps running out of room?”
Shaking her head, she says, “Only good sense.”
She laughs a little, squeezing my hand again and then going to a seating area with one chair raised higher than all the others.
She takes it and I sit beneath her.
This chair is so comfortable, I slouch into it without meaning to, but the Queen doesn’t demand formality here.
When I glance around the room again, all soft things and gauzy curtains, she laughs at me.
Kaelen said “alone”, but I still expected some of the Queen’s companions to wait, lurking in the shadows.
“I sent them away for a few hours.” Her smile is soft and sweet. “I love them dearly, but they are distracting, and without Kirra here to keep them in line, they do compete for my affection in more vigorous ways.”
“I do not mind the privacy.”
“How is Kirra?”
“She is well. I believe she is spending the evening with new friends in the village.” I know it has been decades since she’s visited. “Petalfall is—”
I stop when she looks away at the name of the village.
“And the forest?” she asks quickly, her smile faltering. “How are my trees and other leafy subjects?”
“It is thriving. There are a few patches that seem to have gotten out of hand in the time between the previous guardian and myself, but it’s nothing that a little work can’t handle.”
“The forest is precious to me. I hope you will come to cherish it the way I do.”
“I already do.” I almost tell her about Ana and the villagers, but the way she had soured at Petalfall’s name... “I think that this guardianship may have been the best gift anyone could have ever given me.”
That smile returns and she says, “Kirra was right to suggest you. The others can think she did it for her brother, but she made her case well and I don’t see anything to make me think she was wrong.”
What could she have seen? She hasn’t been to the forest or set foot in Petalfall in the time I was there.
“Is Blicks reporting to you as a spy?”
She laughs and it is a bright and cheerful sound that makes the curtains flutter. “He thinks of you as a son. I’d never ask him to betray you. Not even to me.”
“But Kirra will be.”
“She may or may not decide to give her opinions on your stewardship. And I will not stop her from doing so.”
“Of course not.”
“Now,” she says, leaning close. “Tell me what plants you’ve encountered that Moston may have kept from me before he died.”
The previous guardian was a shut-in, but his notes were thorough.
The list is long, but I begin reciting it for her without question.