A servant stepped forwards with a white cloth. Felipe Shah quickly wiped his eyes and then sat with the letter in one hand, the cloth clutched so tight in the other that his fist shook. The rest of him, in poise, manner and expression, remained utterly calm, as though he had transferred his inner feelings over to the cloth as naturally as doffing a hat.
‘Master Stenwold Maker,’ Prince Felipe began, ‘your ambassador has stated that you wish an audience.’
Stenwold was aware of how Gramo, sitting nearby, straightened up proudly.
‘I would owe you the hospitality that I owe to all who visit my court in peace,’ Felipe continued slowly. ‘I owe you more than this, though, for you have brought me the farewell of my kin-obligate, who I shall not see again.’
Stenwold, though bursting with questions, forced himself to remain silent, but something must have shown on his face.
‘You do not have this custom, in your own land, I am sure,’ the Prince said. ‘Here we do not keep our children close to us, Master Stenwold Maker. We ensure, instead, that they reside in the houses of others, to thus learn their ways, their world. So they learn to judge, or to labour, or to peer into the waters. Prince Minor Salme Dien came to me, when he was young, to learn governance. He was not my son, and yet he was a son to me, while my own children were far away.’
‘Did…’ Stenwold waited to see if he would be silenced, but Felipe Shah nodded for him to continue, ‘did you send him to the Lowlands, master – your Highness?’
Felipe inclined his head then. ‘It was my choice that he went.’
‘We have been very blessed in his addition to our people,’ Stenwold proclaimed, aware that he was becoming rather over-florid in attempting simply to be polite. ‘Could I ask why you did so? Otherwise there has been very little contact between our peoples, the ambassador excepted.’
There was a pause then, and it was to Inaspe Raimm that the Prince’s eyes flicked. ‘Two reasons suggest themselves,’ Felipe said at last. ‘But who can say which is the truth? After the war with the Empire, I thought we needed to know more about our neighbours. Also divination suggested that the Commonweal would benefit.’
‘I cannot comment on the second reason,’ said Stenwold awkwardly. ‘As for the first, we are fighting the Empire even now.’
‘We know this,’ Felipe Shah confirmed.
‘And if the Empire defeats the Lowlands, then they will come north.’ Realizing what he had just said, Stenwold smiled weakly. ‘I’m no fortune-teller, but I can predict that, I think.’
Felipe put the tear-stained cloth down and placed his hands on his knees, and from the reaction of the entire court Stenwold saw that this was a significant gesture, as though, back in Collegium, one man around a table had just stood up to speak.
‘Before you came, we had long discussed this,’ the Prince declared. ‘The Commonweal has suffered greatly under the Empire’s advance. Our people have died and been enslaved, in numbers so great they make us weak to consider it. Now you, the new kin-obligate of Salme Dien, have come asking us to join in a common cause.’
Stenwold blinked at the new designation he had been given, but nodded anyway. ‘That is so,’ he allowed.
‘We fought the Empire,’ the Prince said, his voice falling so low that Stenwold could barely hear it. ‘We resisted them with our blood and our bodies. The road their war machines travelled on was made up of the bones of our people. There are those among us who wonder what it was for, all that valour and passion. What did we accomplish, that our sons and daughters bled for?’
Stenwold opened his mouth to retort, as though this was the Collegium Assembly, but the character of the silence told him that his words were not wanted. For a long while the Dragonfly lord stared at the ground, and not a single one of his followers moved. Autumn leaves, came a voice in his memory. Green and red and black and gold.
‘The place is not mine,’ Felipe Shah said at last. ‘I am but a prince amongst princes. The Monarch alone must give you our answer.’
‘It is then possible to secure an audience with… with the Monarch?’ Stenwold felt as though he was walking a fragile tightrope of etiquette. The Commonweal was vast, the Monarch doubtless distant and mighty. How many such baffling audiences would he have to sit through, how much time before he could put his case? Could the Lowlands last that long?
Felipe Shah’s melancholy did not break, precisely, but there was a curious spark in his eye, a slight creasing about his face, as though he nonetheless saw that something in his view was amusing. Looking around, Stenwold saw an identical expression on all the courtiers’ faces, a polite and pointed fixedness of feature.
At last he saw that one Dragonfly face remained composed and still, and then he understood.
With the greatest possible care, Stenwold stood up and made a low bow before Inaspe Raimm – teller of the future and Monarch of the Commonweal.
‘I… am a fool,’ he confessed.
‘That understanding is the first step to wisdom,’ the Monarch replied softly. ‘Perhaps Prince Salme Dien has not spoken to you of the proper role of a prince of our Commonweal. It is not to be heaped with honours and raised high, but to stoop low, to bear burdens for the people that the prince must serve. So it should be for a prince, and so much more for a monarch.’
‘And I am fortunate to come and find you here when…’ His voice trailed off. ‘Or you knew, and came here especially to meet what the Lowlands would send.’ He had no scepticism left. Here in this ephemeral court they had finally drained him of it.
She nodded slowly. ‘I have enjoyed our meeting, Stenwold Maker.’
‘But if I had known… I have requests…’
‘I am glad for your ignorance, then. I know already what you would request.’
‘What I came all this way to ask…’ he put in, feeling that he was teetering on the very edge of propriety. ‘Please, let me ask it.’
‘Even if we are bound to refuse?’ she said, and he gaped at her.
‘But you can’t know what I intend to ask you.’
Her face remained very composed, solemn with melancholy. ‘We already know, Stenwold Maker, but if it would help you, please speak your requests. Let there be no possibility of doubt between us.’
He had by now lost track of Commonweal opinion, whether he was being honoured or just very rude. He was struck suddenly with a great sense of urgency, absurd considering the long journey here, the distance involved. ‘We fight the Wasps even now, as they march on our cities. We lack strength to fight them, our enemies – the enemies of all of us, the Wasp Empire.’ The words came spilling out from him unsorted and jumbled, but still he pressed on. ‘I know from Salma the injuries they did to your own people, the bitter years of war, the principalities they stole from you with their treaties and their demands. I am a fool, perhaps, but not such a fool that I cannot see common cause. The Empire’s armies run thin, for they are fighting on all fronts, pushing outwards. They are mad for conquest. A Commonweal force that marched or flew east now could reclaim all that you have lost, and the Wasps would have no strength to resist you. And while they recoiled from you, their strikes at us would also weaken. They would be stretched until they snapped.’
He finished, slightly out of breath, waiting anxiously for her response.
It was too slow in coming. ‘Help us,’ he begged. ‘Help us, and help yourselves – please.’