An Island for a Cloud

8.2 How to love your family like the royals do

Thank you very much for reading this chapter. If you spot any spelling mistakes or awkward sentence structures, please be nice and let me know :)

The palace of Aleuta

"My Queen, Minister Phorsis is here to see you," said a Flizer girl. The Queen looked up from her book and eyed the girl critically. Under the Queen's gaze the girl began to tremble. She had not been Aleuta long yet and was terrified of everything and everyone.

"Let him in, you stupid wench" the Queen told her. She was extremely edgy today and already had made two of the Flizer servants cry. Forgetting the protocol for accepted behaviour before the Queen, the girl darted for the door almost knocking a small tea table over.

The Minister entered the Queen's chamber with his usual silent steps and bowed to her.

Not deep enough, the Queen thought in displeasure.

She never warmed up to her brother-in-low. What irritated her most was that she could never read the man. His face had a usual still expression plastered on it. He made her feel as if he knew all her secrets and behind that straight line of his lips was suppressed laughter. He had showed her only curtesy since they had become kin. Everyone thought that it was her husband, with his books and inventions, who was the genius in the family. But she knew that the Minister was the real master behind the curtains. And nobody navigated the muddy waters of the Aleutan government better than him.

She would never admit it out loud, of course, but deep within she was glad to have his loyalty. With time, she learnt to tolerate him. If only he warmed up a bit more toward her son. Without a family of his own, she hoped to have the Minister at her son's side when she was no longer around. So far, he had done everything to protect Jule and advance his prospects to remain in power. But his heart was not in it, she knew.

"Are you bringing me news of the thief, Minister?"

"The boy..."

"No, no, no! Not a boy. A thief! My son is a boy. Don't call him anything other than what he really is - a dirty little thief! This is something my son will never have in common with him!" The Minister almost cringed at the absurdity of it, but since he knew his sister-in-law very well, he nodded.

"I apologize, My Queen. The thief does not remember anything about the last four days before we caught him."

"Did you torture him?"

"Yes."

"By fire?"

"Yes"

"And by water?"

"Yes. He barely made it out alive."

"Splendid." She smiled thinly.

"We were unable to get anything useful out of him. He says that on the day of his disappearance a stranger came to town. A Wizard of Pain, as he calls him."

"There is no such a thing!" she said with annoyance.

"Of course not, My Queen. It seems that he stole the man's coin bag and now the thief believes that the man had something to do with his disappearance. He says the man was clad in black and did not have a face."

"What nonsense. It must have been a Skault in disguise. Only they have a reason to hide their face in our lands."

"It could have been a Skault. The thief lost his memory. The symptoms are those of the sleeping plant that grows around the Skault's forest. It is hard to get by as it is almost impossible to retrieve it. Only Skaults can to do it and they guard their secrets well."