Queen

XIX.

I wasn't given a chair.

Admittedly not the most important thing at the moment, but it was annoying. Other kings and queens were given chairs.

King Ohayo had died the same way King Khoroshiy had, stabbed through the heart with a dagger with a black whip glazed on the blade. His newly widowed wife Queen Tranquilla sobbed on the ground with her son and two daughters. Queen Dobutsu, Khoroshiy's widow, and their four children, two princes and two princesses, comforted them with tears streaming down their own faces.

I stood, still standing, while most everyone else shouted their heads off. Arne sat on the floor against a pillar with his hands cupped over his ears to muffle the shouts. Cook was on my right, holding a pepper juice dipped knife. Prince Kiken stood before his throne, blankly staring at the room before him.

Two kings dead before his coronation and wedding. I didn't envy him for this.

Veleno sat on the arm of his throne and bit her lip. I also didn't envy her. She wasn't even officially royalty yet and this happens.

"Those rebels come near you and they walk away with my least favorite knives buried in them," Cook hissed. I cast a sideways glance at the old woman. "I'm not ruining my favorite knives," she said, "Even for you."

"QUIET!" Prince Kiken roared. Silence fell over the hall, aside from the sobs of the widows and fatherless children. The scarred prince visibly gulped. "I will not let whomever is behind these acts get away," he declared, "And I will not allow these, these cowards to spoil my wedding and coronation. I will double the guard and ask you to lend me your troops to protect us all. All servants will be searched for weapons and all trunks searched for daggers."

I didn't like this.

Doubling the guard may sound good, but it's more men keeping us in if Prince Kiken gives the command to do so. Lending him our guards does the same thing, with the added bonus of inside information should they be bought. Searching the servants and trunks might come up with something, but did Prince Kiken mean to include the now twice as many guards in that search? And where was he getting twice as many soldiers from? Did he already have them on hand?

Many questions and worries danced in my head. It was hard to tell whether the man before the throne had good intention or greedy ones. But it was always too hard to tell that until it was too late.

******************************

A masked guard stood outside my door. I didn't think I needed a guard, Kitten was inside after all, but I had gotten one none the less. "Queen Mathilda," the guard said with a low bow, "I am your assigned guard for the day."

I nodded. One guard for the day and one guard for the night. Prince Kiken just so happened to have these soldiers on hand. And worst, neither of my guards were my guards.

My guards, for all his talk of asking us to lend him our troops, I at least wasn't asked at all and didn't know where my guards were. These masked soldiers, Prince Kiken called the Hara soldiers, were supposedly some of Hanashi Najire's best warriors. I didn't like the fact that I couldn't see the faces of these Hara soldiers. It was unsettling.

I took Arne inside out room for another interrogation by a scribe. I hoped it wasn't suspicious that my alibi was again that I was talking with Veleno and Nevi.

"Mistress," Arne said, speaking for the first time since the second murder happened, "Why do you think this is happening? Are you in danger?"

"Of course not Baby," I cooed, leading him to the couch, "You were there this morning. The scribe said that the rebels follow a men-hating goddess. I am a woman. Why would a group of men-haters come after a woman? If anything, they would come after you," I tucked a blanket around his shivering form, the fires hadn't been started yet, "But I won't let that happen.