DGO Clipped Wings Chapter 5

The good Princess has an argument.
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He looked much the same as he had last she’d seen him, save the absence of his greatcoat. The warm season was upon them, so Alvenica supposed it was an acceptable breach of etiquette. Without it, the bar of medals pinned to his left breast was visible in the light, and she found herself surprised at the surprising lack of the things. There was only a single row of four, and she found their meaning inscrutable.

"Captain Valiant. It's good to see you again; I trust you've found Midgard welcoming?" Alvenica spoke to fill the silence, lest her mind grow too loud.

"It has. It is quite beautiful; there's no habitat like it in Jovian space," Valiant spoke matter of factly and without inflection, just as he had last they'd met. "The nights are strange, however."

"Careful orbitals were required to get a twenty four hour day, but there's little we can do about Midgard's light." Small talk felt unlike this man; to Alvenica it seemed a probing forward lance, a detachment of deegees designed to reconnoiter her defenses. She thought him incapable of any other thought, not when he carried himself with all the gravitas of his lengthy career.

"I admit the blue night made sleep somewhat difficult."

A beat, one that saw Alvenica shifting her weight from foot to foot. Steady Gawain behind her remained statue-still, a mirror for the liquid ease with which Valiant carried himself.

"Valiant, I must ask; what business keeps you on the Ring?" She asked when her curiosity burned too bright. Perhaps the stress of her day was already finding her.

He raised one gloved finger. "A moment."

She expected something to happen, but nothing did. Was he simply controlling the moment, throwing her off her guard with minor rudeness she could not condemn thanks to his status as an outsider? Or—

The door slid open, the guard outside admitting someone. There was one man who could possibly have that right, or at least be convincing enough that a guard would determine that he did.

"Apologies, but I took the liberty of inviting your seneschal."

She resisted the urge to narrow her eyes and order him out; that she had no desire to talk with the man had nothing to do with the facts at hand. He had been sent away once already, and he had been invited here at the behest of a guest. The amount of face she would lose in doing so...

"Your Majesty," Major-Domo Tevildo Sapphire-Patel floated into the throne room, devoid of any accusation or even affectation beyond floral effusions. "I hope you had a restful night; I was ever so disappointed to hear you were too indisposed to meet with me!"

He was a tall man, with a foot on even Gawain. He wore layers of extremely thin flowing robes, each translucent and colored in clashing hues, but the layering was designed perfectly to expose only his chest, navel, and the occasional flash of deeply tan thigh. He resembled one of the royal peacocks, save for the absence of plumage; he was entirely bald. It had always felt strange and unseemly to Alvenica, though she'd never voiced it. His choices were his own, and she had to accept this.

"Patel," she said, despite the horrible burn his presence put in her gut. He was a noble servant of the throne, she reminded herself. You are being unfair, she told herself. "I find myself in better spirits. Allow me to offer my apologies for my rudeness last night."

"Think nothing of the sort!" Patel curtsied, folds of his robe pulled up just so, and rose to stand beside Valiant, his inviter. "The health of the Mandate is of utmost import."

"Indeed," Valiant agreed, but her mind was already turning, wheels winding down a familiar path. A cleaner for the Empire, and her over-eager seneschal. One led into the other, and she knew for certain why both of them were here. "May I proceed?"

She bit back a sigh. Navigating this would be... difficult.

"Of course, Captain. Please," she gestured, and the game was on.

"You understand why I was sent here, of course."

"I have an educated guess."

Valiant stood straighter, now. The voice that issued from his mouth was different; not in tone or character, but in cadence and solemnitude. "I come to you today as a hand of the Emperor. My actions are his, his motives are mine."

Alvenica narrowed her eyes. It was a piece of intellectual dishonesty, at the end of things; a way to indemnify the agents of the Emperor from the consequences of their actions. A tool cannot act, it can only be used. In acting as the mouthpiece, Valiant had thusly removed himself from the conversation in all ways that meaningfully mattered.

For just a moment, an eyeblink, he seemed to wear a cloak in the shape of the Emperor. But in a breath it was gone, and she steadied herself. "I understand."

"You last attended the Palladium Throne one standard year ago. Thus, an acceptable amount of time has passed, and so I must request an answer."

He spoke in the first person, colored by the Imperial Register. Valiant had taken on the identity of the Emperor in totality, then; his tool in truth. It was enough to curl Alvenica's lip, a disgust response she could barely suppress. "I simply do not agree that this is the best course of action for Midgard. Or for the Empire."

Here, Valiant turned his attention to Patel. As if cued, Patel approached, obsequious as ever. "Princess, please consider. Midgard stands to gain much from such a deal. Proximity to Jupiter is proximity to power, and power can be used to better the lives of so very many."

He spoke with a simper, as if she must be placated. "Midgard is a nation of billions. The Ring is the breadbasket of the Empire. What power could be gained with proximity to Jupiter?"

Patel came level with her, and he towered above. He was great and broad despite the ways he minimized his form with dress and makeup, but Alvenica had little to fear with Gawain behind her. "Your Majesty, please consider," he spoke in a whisper, one that was almost staged in tone. "A request from the Emperor is not easily refused. Imagine what could befall our people if you refuse this... One can barely stomach the thought."

Her gut roiled at this. Something in voice stank of wretched truth, and she had to wonder what he knew that she didn't. "Your concern is noted, Patel. You're a noble servant of Midgard, and I appreciate your counsel."

"Thank you, Princ—"

"But even so," and this she directed at Valiant, at the Emperor. "Why now, when Midgard has remained most loyal? Why now, when the Empire is at the height of its power? Despite the biters at the gates, we are the most dangerous animal in the galaxy."

"Midgard exists in a fragile state that she never dreamed of; the unanticipated loss of a Mandate so early has put you in a tenuous situation." Valiant spoke as if reading from a prompter, though she had no doubt he had memorized what he was to say and do here today.

So it was a question of her competency, was it? And oh, how it all came back to her deceased mother. When she closed her eyes, there she was. When she opened them, there she was. "My mother's death was, is, a tragedy. But I have every intention of following in her footsteps."

"There is an argument to be made that, were it necessary, this is a step she would take."

Alvenica froze, then. Her mother, Queen Midgard, Mandate of Jupiter, had made many sacrifices for the people of the Ring and beyond. She had scarce understood it at the time - for how could a child understand the reasonings behind signing away land grants, giving away loans at criminally low rates, and downsizing the royal holdings - but here, now, she had to wonder. Would her mother have done what was being asked of her?

She found she didn't have an answer.

"I don't... It is a request of great weight. This requires far more consideration than I've given it."

"Your Majesty, please, it's been three years-"

"I was sixteen, Patel." Here she could barely keep the heat from her voice. "Did you expect me to agree to marriage so young? Bad enough that I had to leave school, bad enough that—"

"I will let you deliberate. Let it be known that the Emperor is possessed of great patience." Valiant shifted, adjusted his uniform, and gave a deep bow. "I will take my leave now, if you do not mind."

Alvenica bit her lip and ignored the heavy gaze Patel had for her. "Of course. My people can bring a car around for you if you would like."

"There is no need," he said, already halfway to the door. "I can make my own way. But, one last thing, your Majesty."

"The patience of empire is not infinite." This echoed, bouncing about the hall with all the finality of a slammed door.

The silence echoed, and painfully so. Alvenica chewed on her fury; it had become physical in the way it clogged her throat and threatened to spill up, out, and across all around her.

Patel sighed deeply at her, and it only infuriated her more. "He's right, you know. Jupiter can afford to wait only so long, and what has been extended to you is more than gracious."

"So I should lie back and take it, then?" She spat, perhaps cruelly. Her gut hurt, but she was too full of memory to do anything else. At her age, her mother had the chance to be a hotshot ace. But it seemed she would be cursed to live a similar life only in her fantasy.

"For Midgard? Yes!" This Patel exclaimed, throwing his hands up in an exaggerated kind of frustration. "Do you understand the position we're in, now that your mother is gone?"

"I understand it well enough. I-"

"No. You don't." Patel's voice dropped a touch, growing more serious, losing it's tone of near playfulness. "Losing a strong central voice such as her was devastating for our status among the other Mandates, let alone the import of our nation to the Emperor."

Alvenica scoffed. "They have much to worry about at home, and we are allies besides. I should hope they will be as understanding as Medici has been."

"The Visconte is many things, Princess, but he has only the interests of the Medici nation at heart. As should any rational ruler, as should you."

"How are my people served by my marriage to some distant man? By allowing them to come more directly under the rule of someone who has never lived as a Midgardian, never known our culture, our values?" She was not a fool; she knew that such a marriage would turn her into little more than a pretty figure head.

"We were lucky, Princess, that when authority passed to you, the Palladium Throne also passed to an eligible man! This offers us a chance to insulate a weakened Midgard from reprisals, from absorbtion, or worse. And you, my dear, are the only one who can do it."

Disgust, at the thought of that man she'd met seated upon that damn throne. He changed little between visits, and indeed his physical form remained amorphous and vacuous in her mind; she remembered more clearly the pressing weight of Jupiter and the horrifying cloak of absolute authority that shadowed every interaction with the Jovian Emperor.

"I will rule Midgard as my mother did. We are a proud tributary of the Empire," this she said in an official voice, the one she took to cast it across a gathering, to be heard by all in attendance. "Our strength is already their strength. The Emperor is a just man. He will understand."

Patel regarded her for a moment, and for a moment she could almost see the shape of his thoughts. They whirled and stormed, sharpened stinging things directed squarely at her. 'Fool of a girl,' they whispered. 'She'll get us all killed,' they said.

But Patel did not voice these supposed thoughts. Instead he spun in a rainbow arc and strode out of the throne room with nary a request for the freedom to do so. She allowed him to go, because calling out and demanding that he submit properly would be unbecoming, and because she did not wish to look upon his face any longer.

Gawain remained silent behind her, and even this infuriated her at this moment. But, this was the closest to alone she could come in her duties as the Princess.

"Do you see any way out of this?" She asked, rather than hurl the ungracious thoughts storming in her head at her knight. "This would be the death of the Midgard we know."

"It is not my place to say, Princess."

There was a time that she knew a Gawain who would not have said that to her, a Gawain who would have offered an opinion. Perhaps not a way out, but words that might distract her for a moment. So what was she to do but try to reach out to that Gawain, see a knight other than the one who offered her criticism of her piloting and little else?

"I hesitate to see a marriage of the Palladium and Empty thrones," she admitted frankly. "I was... okay with the idea of a Prince Consort. It was a duty I was ready for."

And not one that she'd given too much thought to, she knew. It was expected of her, of course, and she even understood the necessity of it. The Imperial Mandate demanded an unbroken line down which power would be passed, so she would need to take a consort to have a daughter.

But she had avoided the thought, despite the necessity.

"Ruling is sacrifice, is it not?"

"Do you believe I should do it?" Alvenica wondered, for a moment, why the consort must be a Prince. Consider, if you would, Gawain. Even through her frustration, Alvenica could catalogue the way her uniform fell over hard muscle, the harsh lines of her ramrod-straight back leading into her spring loaded hips and thighs, the warmth burning behind her browned skin. She adored her father, but she had never understood what her mother saw in him, even as a child.

"I do not envy your position, but I will support whatever you choose."

"You are my knight, aren't you?" She murmured this question, and did not turn to see Gawain's answer. Times such as now it was so easy for her to nearly buckle under the weight of her knight's gaze; in so many ways it was simpler to endure her oblique attempts to teach her how to fly, because at least then she did not have to think of their history over much.

"I'm going to return to the estate. I'm hungry." She did not turn. She did not.

"Of course, your Majesty. Shall I attend you?"

She felt the expectation anyways.

"No. I'd like some time alone to consider Sapphire-Patel's point."

*

She had told no lie. She did return to the estate; she simply didn't stay there. One should not belabor the point of her escape, as she knew the patterns and schedules of her household quite well.

More remarkably, Alvenica had found that it was a trifling thing to pass among the civilian populace unnoticed. When one went looking for a Princess, they went looking for her retinue, for her resplendent garb, and most importantly for the flash of royal importance in her eyes.

Defeating these expectations, she'd found, was startlingly simple. She could wear her hair loose, pinned away from her face by long spiralled metal sticks, but otherwise left to flow down to her mid back. Linens and silks were replaced with denim and polycotton cut loose and revealing; she found the roughspun blue jacket that ended well before her hips fascinating. Most importantly, mirrored sunglasses to hide eyes she was ever constantly reminded were striking and memorable.

Perhaps notable during the waning evening hours, but less so than otherwise.

So dressed and so hidden, she purchased a bullet train ticket heading anti-spinward. Thirty minutes at several hundred kilometers per hour, across multiple bridges and through one sub-oceanic tunnel, would take her to Kalindi Atoll. It was a beautiful crescent of sandbar and coral, home to a thriving bed of nightlife.

In fact, just outside the train station she found an open air bar full of raucous patrons and pounding music. Raving beams of light raked the sky beyond, picking out more venues for the visiting party-goer to peruse.

And peruse she did. This first establishment - called Passion in Paradise - felt strange and odd to her, like it was at once too much and not enough. So she left, winding through the snaking town and following her whims. The cool ocean air carried the smell of salt and fish to her, Midgard shone down brightly from above, and after passing several stumbling couples and laughing drunks, she found it. It was perhaps unassuming at first; she'd heard some officers call places like this a 'dive', before.

It was a place that started on shore and terminated over the water, held aloft in this stilted way by long poles driven deep into the waves. It was low slung, a single story of torch lit whimsy, its door guarded by a burly woman in black fabric that would have been loose fitting on anyone else. She wore paint across her exposed skin, reds and yellows and burnished oranges that added slashes of femininity to her form.

There was a rigidity to her that made her a wall in Alvenica's path. Her authority would get her inside, but tonight she had abdicated every indicator of that authority. And that meant she would have to argue her way in, something that may be within her power...

But then her eyes caught on the jut of the balcony that came around the side of the dive and just barely touched the lip of the sand. Standing there was another woman, her neck painted in blue and white, her off-duty Spacy Marine Detachment uniform worn open wide to reveal the paint that also crested over the curve of her breast, and her hair cropped short and parted messily down the middle.

Perhaps she had another way in. She waited, just long enough that the bouncer's attention became dominated by a young man trying to pass a fake ID, and when there was time, she moved.

The off duty officer — revealed on closer inspection by the double rings on her collar — noticed her approach and started, drink splashing across the sand before she could get control of herself. Alvenica, possessed by some strange demon that demanded she remain as unprincess like as possible, closed the gap in several great strides. She took the railing in one hand and yanked herself over in a long arc.

"Who the hell are you?" the cavalier — her uniform had shifted, revealing the pinned golden lance on her breast pocket, and this sent a thrill of excitement through Alvenica — asked.

"Are you going to complain, or are you going to buy a pretty girl a drink?" That terrible illicit thrill said through Alvenica's mouth.