Page 9

Chapter Nine

Sliming needs

I grunted as Valetise fastened buckles up my thighs. I was a display of hundreds of buckles, all the way up my legs and down my arms. They fastened around my middle too. “Valetise, dare I ask for what reason I am dressed in buckles?”

“You are a queen and might dare to ask what you wish,” she replied, flashing a grin before resuming her woeful expression. Her needles did droop so. Unrequited love had that effect. I wagered she had not managed to convince Picket away from his duty.

Needless to say, I did not dare to ask the reason for the one hundred buckles. I already knew that buckles existed to be unbuckled.

Princess Bring slimed into my personal chamber. “A delightful dusk to you, my queen. Did daylight slumber treat you well?”

“My slumber was unmoving and all-consuming,” I answered, taking in her wonder. She had torn away more of her cloak again, and now a strip of material covered her top blob, and then a short skirt covered her third blob. Perhaps these areas equated to breasts and her hips, but I could not be exactly sure as while an elephant might cover its trunk, a porcupine might cover its spikes. I should not assume that a blob princess held the same form as me.

Those ponderings aside, I could appreciate more of her today. Much more.

“A slumber of that nature is what I would have wished for you.” Her blob pushed high as she beamed. Blobs did not have teeth that I could see, so her smile was wonderfully gummy, like that of an elderly human.

I smiled back. “Thank you for your good wishes, Princess. Do you come to enlighten me to matters of queendom, lady’s maid?”

“Just so, my queen. After breakfast, you will meet with your pawns, of course. For your interest, I wished to convey that Gangrel, Sanguine, and Vassal have been sneaking into your queendom just before dawn and pretending to wake here.”

I arched my brows. “Indeed. They do not wish me to know how often they are away. What does King Take attempt to hide?”

I had not been asking the question of the women around me, and they understood that.

“Any other matters of pawns?” I said.

The princess murmured, “Your blobbing pawns seem particularly listless in recent days, my queen. Stress can lessen our shine, and I wonder if they suffer from the state of affairs between you and my ex-king.”

I nodded. “I will check in with them. Anything else?”

“Yes, I wondered if you would not mind me engaging in daylight activities with some or other of the pawns? I am a princess with needs, and these were not met by a king for a long time. I am rediscovering myself with such warm support as I receive from yourself and my friends that I feel fiery rekindling of lust in my nether blob. Might I be carried away by them?”

Valetise had frozen in fastening the last buckle on my slightly longer left leg.

I considered her feelings as I answered Princess Bring, “I am to understand you wish to become intimate with my pawns?”

“Yes, my queen.” She squelched.

“Any pawn in particular?”

“Many of them intrigue me in different ways.”

Goodness. “Princesses should always tend to their needs, as should any monster. Please contain your efforts to pawns, and take care not to inspire jealous feeling between them.”

Valetise released her exhale. No doubt she had worried about a princess setting her sights on Picket.

“Thank you, my queen. I shall take care, and only look to pawns. I shall let each know that they might have me whenever they wish.”

Her king might not love to hear such from his princess—even despite wishing to murder her—but Princess Bring was a grown monster, spurned by her king. Their indifference in company and heart and body was well established.

Princess Bring gargled slime in the act of clearing her throat. “My queen, our two last items. You have tutorage in war with King See at midnight?—”

I glanced down at the buckles, then at Valetise, who was doing nothing to hide her grin.

“—and then you have a walk amongst growing grains with King Bring before dawn.”

I grimaced. “I forgot about that.”

“That is why I am here, my queen.”

“Before you go, I thought to pass knowledge onto you, dear princess. Before slumber last night, I learned King Change’s rhyme and reason. Princess Bring, you were a victim of ruin. King Change attacked you in secret over decades and centuries to alter your confident views of yourself. He did this in a bid to tear apart the union between yourself and King Bring.”

She froze.

I said, “I am furious that he treated you so, but I wondered if telling you what transpired might offer some… explanation. Perhaps there was confusion in losing love for yourself that you never understood. I have heard you and other princesses voice how unexpected the altered state of your union was, as you and King Bring had been very much attracted to each other once. I wanted to know that none of that arose from you , so you need not fear this in the future.”

The princess started to tremble.

I pulled a face. “But I have upset you, and that was not my intention at all. My sincerest apologies, Princess Bring.”

She unlocked enough to shake her blobs. “I am upset, yes, but there could be no way to avoid upset when delivering such information. I was a victim of ruining power, you say? There was not something wrong in me, you say? I was not to blame for the altered state of my union and self.” A sob escaped her, and she covered her mouth with slime to muffle her cries.

I did not touch her, for this had upset her in the past, and I could fathom that she wished to explore colder daylight touches with pawns for a reason. “All that you say is true. None of that arose from your heart and mind, but from an external source. I never thought that I would wish any monster to quit walking in the toothed beast’s yawn, but King Change might deserve such a chilling fate. He is conventional beyond reason.”

And brilliant, I silently added.

The shaken Princess Bring departed soon after, and dusk settled into evening as buckles were buckled and a meeting with pawns was undertaken. Such was the rhythm of my queendom, I was discovering.

From my throne, I viewed my taking pawns. They stood with their spears in hand, betraying no sign of their sneaking in before dawn. The only possibility, surely, was that they were occupied with secret work for their liege. “Any letter from King Take pending our negotiations?”

“No, my queen.”

That was two nights now. “I had thought this a matter of urgency for him.”

“So it was, my queen,” Vassal said.

Sanguine elbowed him in the gut.

Was.

Princess Bring had been right to bring news of their sneaking activities to my attention. Something was afoot. “Taking pawns, tell me true. If doom was upon me from the direction of King Take, would you care for me?”

They fell over each other in a bid to reassure me. Gangrel, who possessed more dramatic flair than the others, kissed the stones while loudly mourning my doubts in their loyalty.

I believed them. However, pawns were easy creatures to trick. A king would simply need to assure his princes that they did nothing that would hurt a queen, and the princes would believe the king. If their reason for sneaking had naught to do with an effort to war against me, then I could only surmise that their reason had to do with caring for their king. In which case, I wished them well.

They could keep their secrets for a time either way.

“That is all,” I declared. “Sliming pawns, please remain behind.”

My dear blobs were listless indeed, as Princess Bring had remarked. I was reminded of how rips appeared in Sign’s cheeks from duress with the state of affairs between myself and his king. Toil, Hex, and Sigil were not in good health. The shine had disappeared from their blob. There was an extra tackiness to their slime, which appeared to drag at them with every glide here and there.

“My valued sliming pawns,” I greeted them. “Tell me how you fare.”

They lengthened in pride at my mention of their value.

Hex said, “We are well, my queen.”

“Tarry not in convention, Hex. Always speak the monstrous truth.”

Hex flushed wetly. “I apologize, my queen. Stress has stolen the ease of monstrous truths from me, but you speak ancient reminders not to lapse into convention, and so I will try again. I am dry with worry, my queen. Evaporated with it. I sandpaper between this queendom and my king’s kingdom, and with each journey, I feel more parched and less vibrant.”

I glanced at the others. “Toil? Sigil?”

“’Tis as Hex says, my queen,” Sigil muttered. “Our state grows crispy. Worry sucks moisture from us so.”

“Might a queen lessen the worries of pawns?” I asked.

“She might not,” sighed Toil. “This desiccation is not of that variety.”

I considered that while a tiny hellebore stroked my hand. My sliming pawns would inform me if doom was directed my way from their liege, so he would take care not to inform them of such. In which case, they would not be so wilted.

So what was amiss with King Bring? Did the pawns react this way to seeing his loneliness, or perhaps a drifting from purpose?

But no. If Bring had drifted from his purpose, pawns would be filled with ancient power to force him back to purpose. They would appear dewy and plump, not the withering opposite.

I was not content to leave this matter alone. They had not uttered enough to reassure me to their wellbeing. Some bait. “I meet with your liege later toward dawn.”

Three gasps.

“My queen, where do you meet him?” demanded Sigil.

“Amongst growing grains.”

They huddled together, whispering in squelches and pops that were rasping and lackluster. Whispers arose in the walls too, and I listened to that until a strong thudding filled my head and soul, beating in tandem with my heart.

King See had arrived.

The cacophony cut off as Toil faced me.

“My queen,” he said. “You have guessed something ails us. We have promised our king with silence in this matter, and while we realize that you could force the truth from our vents”—I squinted at their mouths—“we ask that you do not, so that our loyal silence will bring our liege much-needed good cheer. You will find that… you will see that the reason for our state is… obvious.”

I regarded them. “Your loyalty is to be commended. A queen might sometimes choose to be patient until closer to dawn to learn the truth. You might keep your silence tonight.”

They wilted more in sheer relief.

Hex blurted, “My queen, please do not set one magnificent toe in his kingdom. Promise that you will not.”

I rose from my throne. “I do no such thing. Now leave with your loyal silence. You are tasked with caring for yourselves today, sliming pawns. Time must be set aside for wellness by all monsters. I expect you to hydrate appropriately.”

I swept out of the throne room ahead of them, dipping my head in response to their hasty bows and murmurs of “Yes, my queen.”

Out in the courtyard, I winked at mother, then sifted through the various nightly noises in my queendom. Picket was picketing. Valetise was speaking to him in tight and hushed tones.

Princess Raise listened to the radio in the rooftop gardens. Princess Change riffled through the couch cushions in the small lounge that used to be a laundry. She clearly assumed that since payment had been made, she could spy her heart out. A damp orchestra from the end of the first level informed me that Princess Bring had leaped straight into daylight activities—and during night hours, too—how brazen.

With Will Be, no less.

And through all of those noises, there was also a king whose heart thudded with mine. He lurked in my private lounge.

I blinked in that direction, then paused in front of Has Been and Is, who were meant to be guarding the doors of my personal chambers and to the aforementioned private lounge.

“He had seen that he would enter your chambers,” explained Is, grimacing after.

Pawns. “I am sure that saying so suited him.”

The seeing pawns stared, then stared at each other.

“Did he lie then?” demanded Has Been.

I entered the room and left pawns in an endearing kind of baffled state.

“King See,” I called, striding through the larger lounge to where he waited before the fireplace in the smaller sitting area. “Personal chambers become less personal when they are more public in nature.”

“This is our space within your queendom for now,” he answered.

King See turned from the fireplace.

My chest tightened at the towering chalkiness of him. The inky contrast of his hair, and even the simplicity of his circlet crown. Amongst all kings, See exuded the most regality. The most intrigue. He inspired the least uncertainty in me, and the most too.

I was enticed. Struck speechless as always since I had grown powerful enough to view him in fullness.

He walked forward and took my hand, and the nearness of him robbed my senses and air. His gaze dragged over the buckles covering my arm, but he did not comment on them, instead pressing his lips to the back of my hand.

King See ran his thumb over the stitch at the base of my third finger, and I gasped at the shock of resentment that blasted me. That mother held a grudge against her ancient purpose, truly.

“Has dusk treated you well?” He stood tall again.

I tilted my chin to keep his face in my sights. “Dusk has seen me engaged in queendom, sir.”

“In queendom and in buckles.”

I sucked in what air I could in his proximity. “In buckles too. And you?”

“In kingdom, of course, though no buckles. You meet with King Bring near dawn.”

Not a question. “I do. I must delay his war efforts a while longer.”

See had not released my hand. He flipped it, and started to trace the stitches of my palm. Hope, determination, sadness, cunning. I felt each stitch in turn, and the barrage of emotions on top of what this king inspired all by himself pressed at the confines of my ancient mind.

I parted my lips to ask him to stop, but he interlaced our hands.

“You believe meeting with him will achieve this,” See murmured.

I understood Bring’s rhyme and reason, so yes, I knew a meeting would achieve what I wanted. “You are here to tutor me in war, I remind you. Or do you mean to seduce me to avoid it?”

“I had wondered the same of your buckles.”

Their purpose was obvious to me. King See had to be unhinged to reveal what I needed. But I must take care not to be unhinged by him too.

I untangled from him and strode to the couch. He could view the buckles covering the back of me that way. And I could breathe for a moment. “It occurred to me that this learning of war need not be a chore. I will unbuckle buckles as you interest me. So interest me, See.”

His thin lips curved. “Indeed. I am filled with the desperate urge to do so.”

We paused at a whispering in the walls.

I perched on the armrest of the couch after. “You may begin.”

See focused on me. “What is your game, exquisite queen?”

“Must I have a game?”

“You are ancient and wear a crown. The answer is yes. I respect what you are created for.”

I frowned at the surge of warmth in me at his words. “Thank you. And what are you created for?”

“You. As for my action—my game—I feel the building of my final calling, a heaviness under my ribs that heightens at each growth in your power and queendom. I must surely alter against and soon, but I have no grasp on how I will interact with the full version of you. My purpose is to belong to a queen, but what is my purpose for a queen? I had thought for a time that there was none beyond me providing pleasure and keeping other kings away, but the heaviness in me speaks otherwise. There is something for us beyond what we are now.”

I did not move, not even to breathe. King See rarely offered so much.

He blinked. “So my game for now is still that of being your only king. We must enjoy such simplicity.”

Wisdom. Yet how amusing to consider a claiming king a simple matter when not long ago, the matter had felt complicated indeed. “I will heed your words, sir. You see much and mostly consider your choices very well.”

“You respect what I was created for, in other words?” he mocked, but his smirk faded. “This is well.”

Because respect was stronger than love, so he believed. Though I did not voice this aloud. He had tried to seduce me out of tutorage, and now he sought to distract me with romantic musings.

“Begin our lesson on war, sir. I am eager to be intrigued, and you are failing in that regard.”

King See laughed low. “My sincere apologies, maiden.”

He tugged at his sleeve and slipped out of his embroidered coat, then draped this over the couch as he walked behind it. I took the opportunity to enjoy the improved sight of his towering frame.

Another seduction attempt.

I remained silent, and he chuckled.

“A lesson in war then,” said King See. He leaned on the back of the couch. “What know you of war, Perantiqua?”

“More with every midnight, and this will be no different. But you might assume I know nothing of war, sir, and go from there.”

He shook his head. “I cannot assume such a thing, for I have already seen a queen battle. Her instincts are commendable.”

I narrowed my gaze at his appreciation, but said nothing.

“I will start at my beginning instead,” he mused. “That is what interests you truly.”

See was not a fool. I flipped open a buckle on my thigh.

King See flashed a grin, and his teeth were as brilliantly white as his chalky skin. “I remember very little of my training as a human soldier, but one aspect remains. That is that small habits matter greatly. In a human sense: the making of a bed, the checking of equipment, the care of physical ability. In a kingly sense: meeting with princes, observing my subjects, and engaging with my power. Small habits are the difference between life and death to a human soldier, or victory and loss to an immortal. In war, the tally of these small habits is weighed on each side, and that is how a victor is decided.”

I undid another buckle. “I would imagine the number of soldiers and the quality of their weapons have something to do with victory.”

“But what is a man worth? A skilled one versus an unskilled one, and a fit and healthy one versus a weak and sickened one?” he countered. “What use is a quality weapon that has not been cared for nor practiced with?”

He had a point. I freed a buckle over my breasts.

His cruel lips curved. “In an immortal sense, our monstrous physiques need no help to stay strong or agile or fast. Our skills are ever honed. Our power is our power, and instinct readily unlocks its vastness, though I grant that quickness of mind alters its application.”

I recalled how I pulsed heat into slime to free myself, though I had never used my power that way. Another buckle. One over my stomach.

“But.” He ambled along the back of the couch. “The small habits of immortals are weighed just the same as humans in order to discover the victor. Who is paying attention? Who is collecting information? Who is maintaining their subjects and kingdom? Who is forging alliances? Who is pushing forward in purpose? Who is… metaphorically… making their bed.”

He perched on the side of the armchair opposite. “Do I get a buckle for that part?”

I lifted a shoulder and shook my head.

King See hummed. “I offer you tutorage in these small actions which ensure queenly success. For this lesson and two more, I shall coach you in the ruling of your queendom. Everything from pawn to princess, and the inside workings and out. When I am done, you will be untouchable, though never from me.”

I undid a buckle, for what he said did interest me. When I first rose to queendom, this was the mentorship that I had assumed See would grant me. For free. Though queenlier with each dusk, I had much to learn of operating a queendom. This knowledge did seem to arrive when intended, however… and I had a steward now, and a lady’s maid. I was learning how to wield and manage my pawns—just this dusk I had set my stairway pawns on watching King Change, for instance, and the others on watching for sudden ruin experienced by their kings and princesses.

“I am intrigued by your offer, King See,” I said at last. “But that is not what I seek from you. These lessons are to be in war, not in management of queendom. While I appreciate what you say about the crucial relationship between management of my sixth and victory in war, I must consider that we only have three lessons and also that my instincts in managing my queendom come naturally.”

King See had become occupied with the cleavage I had exposed. He said low, “You can always pay for more.”

I walked to him. “The transactional possibilities of our relationship are done, sir. We are rather more than a transaction. You do not need to render us to such coldness out of fear of love.”

“I fear love and I ridicule it. We are not rendered to nothing by transaction, we are a transaction. A series of them. We exist from one to the next, and this is how we must always be. Will we remain together and strong through the next transaction by utilizing the right tools? If so, then we might earn the right to navigate our next transaction and on and on and forevermore. If we are wise, cold, and strong.”

I detested his ability to give warmth to cold feelings. I did not want to use tools to navigate transactions with King See. I wanted us to depend on each other undoubtedly—to love one another through eons and ages or to the end of the world. “You speak with an ancient air to cover the utter foolishness of your ideas.”

King See hummed, and I could detect amusement in the sudden brightness of his milky gaze. “You hope they are foolish ideas, Perantiqua. You also know that they are not. Soon you will grow more ancient than us all, and you will see all I do, and more.”

I sighed. “That sounds lonely.”

“Yes,” said the king who had seen all for twelve hundred years. “So, my darkness, do not hurry time along to get there sooner.”

I should not, or I might run straight back to a conventional, human life out of sheer terror. As if that were an option. “Speak to me of how you go about war, See. Talk to me of your small habits that tally up to win you victory. That shall form the basis of this first lesson in war.”

“I see much,” he corrected. “I do not see what a queen does—or I am left to guess why she ventures outside the walls of Vitale, for instance. Did you find anything at the olden rock?” His voice weaved from linen to silk. “Or do you require five sets of keys.”

He laughed at my silence after. “Soon you will be more ancient than I, maiden, so do not begrudge me these last toying moments.”

“They come at the expense of closed buckles, sir,” I shot back.

King See sobered. “Then I shall desist.”

Yet there was a teasing tone in him. Still, King See saw less than he knew, what with the sacrifices of King Change to blind him.

I strode to the mantel above the fireplace and rested my hand upon it.

King See walked up behind me and lingered close, his chest nearly against my back. The fronts of his legs almost touched the backs of mine. “The tutorage you ask for is more personal in nature than simple tutorage in war, Queen.”

He hovered his hands over my skin, moving them over my stomach and sides without actually touching me. I could feel the charge in the sliver of air he left, a tension and a buzz in my body wherever he moved his hands. Not a heat, just a soul-robbing intensity.

King See whispered in my ear, “Am I the only king left whose war you cannot fathom, Perantiqua?”

My jaw tightened. “You are.”

He chuckled darkly. “I do not have a princess to interrogate, and you did not agree to be mine when you might have, so you cannot witness my war either.”

“Will you gloat?”

“I will not. I will thank you because you were wise, cold, and strong when I was none of those things. My foolishness might have seen us restricted to far less than we were destined for.”

I exhaled. “Sometimes I yearn to have made a different choice. A simpler existence.” But you still would not have loved me.

“That is because you are wise,” said See, and then, “So you are to conquer kings, I fathom.”

I sucked in a breath as he hovered his hand over the side of my throat. I arched my neck sideways to grant him access.

“You will be queen of us all.” He spoke the words in wonder. In acceptance. See had suspected the truth long ago, though perhaps not exactly like this. He had viewed me as the missing piece, as a monster designed to be his princess to finally shift the fate of the world one way or another.

I had been what he suspected. That, and more.

So here was the question. I had intended to trick rhyme and reason from him as I had with princesses, and how did I ever believe that would work? I would only learn his rhyme and reason if he chose to give me such a thing.

I asked him plainly, “Do you believe in what I am created for?”

I listened to his unsteady breaths. I sensed the tremble in the charge between his hand and my throat. “I do. And I fear in the next breath that you will shatter everything I am.”

Part of me reveled in that because that is how he made me feel. “You have so little faith in me, See.”

“Never in you, my darkness. Just in the world and every other creature within, including myself, for you must react to our failings and foolishness for eternity. That is what I fear. That is where one thousand unpredictabilities and hardships in our destiny will arise from.”

I spun to gaze up at him. “A wonder you have not turned to ruin with those cynical views.”

He was greatly affected by my nearness, as was I by his.

See’s chest rose. “There is no wonder in the cynical heart of a king, for there is a good reason your fate is not mine. Her pure heart sees our best, and there is the source of her power, and so she drives the fate of all to vibrancy again.”

Very suddenly, the enormity of what I chased by conquering kings hit me.

I was meant to save or ruin the world.

I was meant to save monsters.

Everyone.

What if I failed? Where would I begin?

I gripped See’s arms as my knees buckled, and my eyes widened with every impossible task that crashed through my mind. Millions of them. “How am I meant to do it all?” I gasped, then screamed the rest, “How do I begin?”

“Stop looking, Perantiqua.” See’s voice came from far away.

He shook me a little, then gripped my chin, staring into my eyes, our noses nearly touching.

I became lost in milkiness. He was speaking, but I could not hear him.

I focused on his thin lips.

Still so difficult to hear.

“Stop looking so far ahead,” he said from a great distance. “Your mind is not meant to fathom the unfathomable. Come back to the last questions you felt brave to ask, dark beauty. Come back there.”

I could not think of any brave questions, only ones filled with fear. The floor of pretense had fallen away in my mind, and I was hurtling down into the icy depths of future responsibilities I had no idea how to see through or begin. Here I was setting to war against kings. Five kings had not sealed the fate of the world, and how arrogant to believe that one queen might succeed.

I—somehow—was meant to control the saving fate of the world.

“Stop falling, my darkness. I have you here,” See said softly. He squeezed my arms gently. Stroking. “I have you, Perantiqua.”

A crazed laugh slipped from me, but I clamped my lips as firmly together as possible, then forced my mind to the sensation of his touch and his soft murmurs. I focused on making out each of his words, and on how large his fingers and hands felt on my arms. He was telling me to close my mind to a future so distant that it could not be fathomed, even by ancient queens. He was telling me to return to the realm of which I had some control over.

My queendom. My monsters. My obsession.

Me.

Him.

Drawing a long breath, I released the breath in a rush, and was able to shut off the dangerous overwhelm that I had entered.

I hoarsely repeated the last question I had felt truly brave to ask. “Do you believe in what I was created for?”

“I do. I believe it in absoluteness.”

Belief. Who could have expected what force that sentiment might hold.

I thudded my forehead against See’s chest. I could not look ahead to everything that must be done. If I did, the impossible feeling of my fate would drown me. Yet at the beginning of my monsterdom, I could not have seen myself here in this moment with such power and knowledge. I must open myself to the whims of ancients and trust in the unfolding of my path. So, what was next?

I needed the fifth rhyme and reason. Some keys. That was all. That , I could fathom without drowning.

“Good,” said See. “You are well again.”

His hand hovered over my head as though he might stroke my hair. He lowered it without doing so.

Ah, yes. That would be too caring.

I straightened to rub my temples. “How do you look at such things without becoming frozen in fright?”

“With care. Even then a king of seeing might freeze. I was well on the way to doing so when you walked into my palace as a human.” He released me, then stepped back. “You require my knowledge of war.”

“Your rhyme and reason,” I replied. “I have this of all other kings, thanks to princesses.”

“And what shall you do with rhyme and reason of the seeing king?”

There was an arrogant pulse in me that felt annoyed he wished to understand matters of a queen. But I had recently been humbled, so I pushed back the first haughty inklings of my eventual mantel. “That remains unclear to me. I have understood that I am meant to rise above kings, as you have connected too. Other than that, I know not.”

“To conquer us,” he said quietly. “Let us not call this obsession other than what it is. What do you need to conquer kings?”

I met his milky gaze. How much should a queen relay to a king? A king who could draw her back from the cliff of too much burden, but a claiming king. “You are less mad tonight than recently.”

He bowed slightly. “Do you wonder why?”

“I would know why before I answer your question.”

“Because I see much, Perantiqua, and I see much of other kings. You recall that they are my primary concern in that they must never be allowed to come between us?”

King See was a complex creature with towering ancientness. And the contrast of his crude claiming madness against his deep complexities only intrigued me.

I undid a buckle. Not to do so would be dishonest. “I recall.”

His focus lowered. “I currently have nothing to worry about from kings, and so I am very clearheaded. There is no threat to my having you as it stands.”

“Nothing except my own sentiment,” I retorted.

His lips curved.

I undid another buckle, the one at the base of my throat. His conceit did stir my lust, and I could only be honest about such things. “I would know why other kings are nothing to worry about.”

“You will see why soon enough when you meet with King Bring.”

First pawns, and now a king. What had King Bring gotten himself into? My curiosity to know nearly overwhelmed my urge to stay here.

But would I trust a seeing king with the details of my obsession? He had guessed that I would require keys, but he did not know of poems uttered by ancestral mothers and how that poem related to the original poem of kings.

Though King See felt very in control this night, he could be driven to some instability tomorrow night. Either by himself, or by King Change.

“What I require from you is your rhyme and reason, sir.” I whispered the words in a bizarre attempt to lessen the blow of rejecting his question.

Disappointment clouded in his milky gaze. “And so it will be. Then I will tell you how I war, maiden, without hearing the details of your obsession.”

And I waited after, to see what he might demand in payment. This request pushed outside the scope of “tutorage of war” after all.

Such a demand never came.

So perhaps an offer could be made. “Please begin, sir. There are many more buckles to undo.”