*Weekly updates* "There are no leashes now, no bindings," she says, her voice a dark lullaby in the flickering candlelight, "and it is their sacrifice that gave us this. Nothing can ever repay it. No one can ever take it from us. So now, in this hal...
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There are dark storm clouds on the horizon of Solveigard City, lingering out in the east, where the Jarles lies, and Fae watches them from her tower window for a time, thinking, pondering.
Clutched in one of her spymaster's hands is a short, cryptic note. In another, lies a report from their western borders.
"An army," she repeats back to the man behind her.
"Yes... in her own seal, it seems."
"A Paragon has never had their own army," Fae says, still watching the clouds roll and rumble.
"Allayria has never been one to pay much heed to tradition."
A snort issues from her nostrils, flared and almost curling.
"No," she agrees. "That she never was."
She hears him shift behind her, as if weighing his options.
"What do you think of Baulieu's note?" he finally asks, though this is not what he really wants to get at, just setting the ground for it.
Fae thinks back to the note, the request within.
"It's going to be dangerous," she says. "Especially now."
"Yes, but—" More shifting. She doesn't look back, but she guesses he is peering around, trying to gauge by her body language, the sliver of her face he can see, what her true thoughts are. "What of the request?"
The request. Fae's hands brush the windowsill, feeling the cold stone beneath her fingertips.
"I think we can find it," she says. "The blade."
"Yes, but why?" Keno demands, in the thick of what he had really wanted to discuss now, pressing in on what is bothering him. "Why does Hiran want that? What use could he possibly have for it?"
Fae's brows furrow.
"I don't know," she admits and her hands curl into fists. "But it seems he can't tell us over letter, so we will have to trust him and wait and see."
Her spymaster lets out a little huff, obviously not pleased with this option and the Queen of Keesark turns back.
"Is everything ready?" she asks, and Keno nods.
"We should be prepared to march at sunrise, if Your Highness still desires it."
She spares this snark only one glance as she circles around her desk, shifting papers aside to the map beneath them.
"You know I don't, but we will all the same."
More huffing. Her spymaster is quite out of sorts today.
"And are we still very certain Lord Toulonne should be left in charge in Your Excellence's absence?"
"We need a back up plan and a successor," Fae answers, tracing their determined path on the map, through western Keesark to the border, to Bear's Spear. It is a path she has ridden before, but as one of three, not head of an army. "Would you rather I give it to Lady Weitrou, or perhaps Rahul?"
