Part 1: Diplomacy
I stood alone in the mild sun at the prow of a river ship, bound north for sultry Aresia. The river was winding, and the landscape passed slowly. And as the ship meandered forward, my mind wandered back – to my last conversation with Artemis, nine days prior.
“You sent for me, Majesty?” The words sounded absurd – a parody of a subject addressing her queen. How long since I had called her Highness or Princess, even in public? Only a season or two? And yet the word Majesty felt like a sharp-edged rock in my mouth, awkward and painful.
“Thank you for coming, Spellwright” she said, permitting herself to sound tired. She motioned for me to join her at her desk. In spite of all that had passed – her parents assassinated, her court swirling with rumours of impending strife – her manner was calm. As if through a veil stirred by wind, I saw her familiar features: her rounded cheeks, softly curved nose and delicate chin, made firm by her purposeful expression; her mahogany skin glowing like heated wine in the wintry midday light; the depths of her liquid dark eyes, never more unfathomable than now. Only the queen seemed real, and the lover I had lost merely a dream, melting in the light of the waking world. Had I dared think that she would turn to me for comfort? Say my name with tenderness? Be my beloved Artemis once more? “Juno,” she said softly, and my gut flipped with momentary hope. “Juno, I’m so sorry for what I have to ask of you today.” A pit opened up inside me, and all the warmth in my body seemed to fall into it. Better never to hope than to hope and hear words like those.
Artemis picked up a scroll. “As I’m sure you know, the Aresian ambassador’s envoy returned last night.” Of course I knew. Amid all the rumours that the Aresian king was mustering an army, like his father two decades before, the envoy’s return had been anxiously awaited.
The queen tapped an index finger on the scroll. “He brought me a letter from King Amorgo’s own hand.” She leaned back wearily in her chair. “Proposing marriage.”
How long did I stare at her in the echoing silence?
Finally Artemis opened the scroll and read aloud. On behalf of the Realm of Aresia, I congratulate you on your coronation, even as I condole with you for the untimely passing of their most esteemed Majesties, King Eleos and Queen Olympia. I hope you will consider the benefit and prosperity that have accrued to both our realms in the twice-ten years of peace between them. However, I am keenly aware that Your Majesty has never visited Aresia. I beseech you to amend the omission by touring my realm in person at your earliest convenience. I fear I will grieve it as a slight if my court is not graced by your presence within the year. Artemis paused and looked up at me, then resumed. If I may add a personal entreaty to business of state, it is this: I ask for your hand in marriage. She set the scroll on her lap and gazed at me, unblinking. “You understand, don’t you? The ultimatum implied?”
I tried to open my mouth to speak, but it was already open, and there was no air in my lungs. I forced myself to breathe, and stammered “what will you do?” After an awkward moment, I added “Majesty?”
A rueful smile played at the corners of Artemis’s mouth, fitful, and then gone. She opened the scroll again and skimmed her eyes down it, selecting another passage. “Naturally you mourn your parents,” she read drily, “and out of respect for your grief I do not ask for an immediate answer. However, when your affectionate tears are dry, I implore you to fulfill my amorous hopes with all due speed.” She set the scroll down on the desk and waited for a comment. I sought words and found none. She spoke again, now with a metallic edge in her voice. “I count on you to advise me truthfully, Spellwright.”
“Majesty,” I said at last, “I can see no good option. If you accept his proposal, Demeterra becomes a vassal state of Aresia – like Posedi. If you refuse to visit his court…” I ran my mind over the letter, the situation, and what I knew of King Amorgo. “Given the reports that he’s been mustering troops… the business about benefit and prosperity and twice-ten years of peace… and the part about taking it as a slight if you don’t visit…” I inhaled slowly. “That sounds like a threat. If you don’t visit, Majesty, you risk war.” I pushed from my mind the images that rose there: my father, stone-silent before the hearth; the empty road where I had strained my eyes in vain for a cherished one who never returned. Please not another war. “And if you visit his court but refuse his proposal…” I struggled to express the fear that clutched at my throat. “I… am not certain you would be safe,” I said finally.
Artemis gave a bare puff of an exhale that I recognized as a grim laugh. “Safe,” she murmured. “No, I dare say.” She looked at me again. “What would advise, then?”
I shook my head. “I have no advice, except perhaps to stall for time, Majesty. King Amorgo says within the year, but he also says with all due speed when your tears are dry. Given his reputation for impatience…” I trailed off, my throat once again constricted.
“Mmmm,” said Artemis. “My thoughts exactly. It would take extraordinary diplomacy to hold him to a year.”
Extraordinary diplomacy. I understood her words all too well. The diplomacy that had saved the southern provinces from burning. My diplomacy.
“Ah,” I said.
Artemis looked down a moment to set the scroll carefully back in its place. “You are the last person I would have asked to broker a betrothal with King Amorgo,” she said quietly. “But there is no one else I trust. I need absolute loyalty, and…” she fished for words among the scrolls on her desk. “And tact, and… obstinacy.”
This time it was my turn to smile ruefully. Tact I had learned. Obstinacy I was born with.
She picked up a scroll marked with her insignia and paused before unfurling it – holding it motionless in her hand while she gazed at me, unblinking. She had looked at me exactly thus in the moments before she ended our betrothal. Only a handful of people knew Artemis well enough to understand that pause: a wordless farewell. She dropped her eyes, opened the scroll, and read aloud. “To Spellwright Juno Vera: I hereby appoint you Ambassador of the Realm of Demeterra to the Court of Aresia. I charge you with acknowledging King Amorgo’s proposal of marriage to your Queen, and affirming that he will receive an answer in one year’s time, on the nineteenth day after the winter solstice – neither later nor sooner than that day. I further charge you with learning what you can of King Amorgo’s wishes and reasons. Signed this Nineteenth Day after the Winter Solstice by Queen Artemis of Demeterra.” She tipped a candle over the scroll and sealed it, then picked up a second scroll, larger but on rougher papyr and without any formal decoration. “This details the current diplomatic matters you will need to handle. Mostly routine business. There’s a roadworks proposal that the north-eastern provinces are anxious to see realized. But the matters of greatest interest are those not listed.” She dropped her voice to a murmur. “Find out what you can about the rumours – the army, the spies, my parents’ assassination, all of it. Find out how much is true. And Juno…” she looked me in the eye as she handed me the pair of scrolls, and for a moment she was my own Artemis again. “Try to find me a third option. I can’t stand the thought...” A sickened expression flashed across her features, but she clamped her mouth closed and broke my gaze, straightening her back and becoming the queen once more.
My mind finished the sentence for her. “Can’t stand the thought of marrying him.” The woman who had broken my heart now needed me for this? How terrible, that in the face of such coercion she had only a spurned betrothed to turn to. But the lost lover had vanished into the monarch, and there was no one to tell that I understood her desperation.
I stood up and bowed. “Of course, Majesty.”
