The Queens of Ida

5

Soon the girls are ready, dressed in simple dresses, and cloaks, like Raya's. They meet her outside their room.

"Do you have any idea when you lost your ring during the tour?" Mara asks. She's glad she can help this foreign queen in some way. Everyone was being so uptight during the tour today, she's glad she has the opportunity to loosen some of the tension.

"I think it was in the throne room, but it could have been in some of the rooms before and after," Queen Raya replies.

"Well, then we can start there," Mara says kindly.

"If you think you lost your ring in the throne room, why were you searching our room?" Penna asks. "We never even went there on the tour!"

Mara knows Penna doesn't trust the Idean royals, but does she really have to be so suspicious? "She probably got lost looking for the throne room," Mara says. It's a simple explanation, but one that also makes a lot of sense. Queen Raya just got here today, how would she be expected to know her way around the castle?

"No, that is incorrect. I could've found my way to the throne room," Queen Raya says as if it's nothing. "I thought one of you might've stolen my ring, that's why I came to your room."

"Why do you think we stole it?" Penna asks, narrowing her eyes.

"Because somebody did, and you were with me on the tour."

"How do you know somebody stole your ring?" Mara says. "I thought you said you lost it in the throne room!"

"It's not the kind of ring you just lose," Queen Raya responds. "Somebody stole it. However, I think I was in the throne room when this happened, so we might as well look for clues."

"Ohhhhh, that makes sense," Mara says. Penna still looks doubtful, but who cares. Her sister must just be hyperalert. Mara's heard the same rumors about Ida that Penna has, and if you were someone who took those kinds of rumors seriously, then being paranoid when Ideans visited would make total sense.

Penna is still anxious, but she keeps quiet as Mara leads the way to the throne room, which is the second biggest room in the castle. The walls are tiled in swirling mosaics and the thrones stand erect and prideful on their six-inch dias. Queen Raya smiles as she enters the room, her gaze sweeping it appraisingly and...a little longingly, in Penna's opinion. She decides that she will be even more careful in the days to come. Even though the queens have come to make an alliance with Udle–or so they said in their letter–Penna doubts that a queen of Ida who admires another kingdom's castle would settle for just visiting it every once and a while to renew an alliance.

Seeing Penna watching her, Queen Raya wipes the look off her face and settles on her usual mysterious smile. "I noticed my ring was missing soon after I left this room. I know there were about twenty or so guards in here when we came through on the tour, but other than them, there was only us and you. So those are our potential suspects. Are any of them known to be untrustworthy?" Queen Raya says.

As much as Penna wants to say the only two people among those mentioned who seem untrustworthy to her are Queen Raya and her wife, Mara speaks before she can, and, honestly, it probably wouldn't be a good thing to say in this moment, anyway.

"Well, all the castle guards I know are trustworthy, but I don't know them all, and I don't think I know all the ones that were here when we went through on the tour," Mara says, her brow furrowed and her head tilted a bit to the side.

"Hmm, so one of them could have stolen my ring. And of course even people you trust can't always be trusted...so we haven't really narrowed it down. It could have been any of us, really," Raya says. She's clasping her hands behind her back, looking slightly up.