Runesight

28 - Too many Problems

Eliax Lestwood sat beside Illila, wondering what was taking so long. My clone was terrifyingly good at acting like me, sometimes it felt like she was even better at it than I was. But at the moment I was at the northern beach with Niun, trying to coax Turste into a portal. He was amazingly terrified of the thing for some reason. Muttering about 'a betrayal to Alner and all he stands for' whatever that meant. The important thing though was that I couldn't witness this myself.

Illila was vibrating beside my clone, just waiting for Queen Steris to appear. The two of them had somehow gotten spots near the palace, which was a stark contrast to the beaten down husk I'd gotten used to.

Over the past week, the squatters had been whisked away, the floors polished, the cobwebs dusted. Broken doors were replaced and hundreds of magical lights brightened the empty halls. I'd peeked in a few times over the course of the renewal, but despite the grandeur, the feeling that there was no expense spared, I could tell that this wasn't meant to last. In a week or so the queen would go home and her father's palace would once more fall to rot and squatters.

But right now it looked exactly the way I remembered it, it felt like at any moment the Last King would descend from those steps and order an execution. Perhaps that was the real reason Steris hadn't kept Reiaran as the capital city, perhaps she was trying to put the bad memories behind everyone.

My clone was having similar epiphanies as the horns and bells sounded and the people began to cheer. A golden carriage rolled through the southern gate followed closely by seven decorated knights on horseback. Most were young, strong from their youth, but one was only young in my memories, I remembered that face from before.

Eliax smiled at the spectacle, beside her, Illila made some very unladylike noises as she pointed enthusiastically at one of the knights. Looking around, the clone could see that most of the younger women were swooning over that same knight.

She didn't really see the appeal, his nose was a bit on the large side and he looked a bit sloppy, but she had never claimed to understand the whims of the public and neither had I.

The queen couldn't be more different from how the clone remembered her. Where she had once been frail and thin enough that a strong breeze might blow her away, now she was on the chubbier side; a sign of wealth. It was a sign that this queen could afford to feed herself past the point where her body needed it. It was a sign that if something terrible happened, she could outlast it.

Her hair was long and fluffy, the white tendrils curling elegantly in a way that somehow made her seem larger. And atop her head was the only thing identical to how she'd looked in the clone's memories. The two large antennae were longer than Steris' head, thick enough that they barely drifted in the soft breeze and never even dipped upon their own weight.

They were large. Large enough that the clone hastily strengthened her mind shields just in case the legends of antennae granting mind reading powers were true.

Steris looked out majestically from her carriage, the knight all the ladies had been swooning over bowed majestically at a seemingly random girl and winked. Illila was looking like she might pass out.

Now that the clone thought about it, that knight seemed almost too careless to have won his title the true way, but he was still wearing the most decorated armor. Was this one of the princes? Probably the adopted one, he didn't look anything like the Queen.

There were also four young girls skipping along the streets and tossing small papers all around. Whenever the group passed the crowd would surge forward and pick them up, though they seemed eager enough to show off the contents.

The words spread through the crowd like a wildfire, when the carriage passed Eliax and Illila, they wasted no time in procuring themselves an invitation. "Queen's ball, Tonight." Eliax read aloud. Sparks, that wasn't great timing.