The ballroom went still. Fans paused mid-flutter. A duchess nearly dropped her glass. Heads turned in a slow, rippling wave as Dravin strode forward, silver hair loose over his sharp black-and-silver coat, red eyes half-lidded with mild irritation. Hania was held securely against his chest, her silver-and-purple spider-silk dress catching the light with every step.
Dravin did not walk to the children's table. It was in the center of the ballroom, festooned with pale blue ribbons and small golden plates. It was a perfectly nice table.
Dravin walked past it without acknowledging its existence and deposited Hania into a cushioned chair on the high dais, six feet from the Queen's throne, between a floral arrangement and Princess Thalira's birthday seat. Behind them, Hania heard the faint sound of the party planner's careful seating arrangements dying quietly.
Thalira turned to look at her new neighbor. She was two years old and had lavender curls escaping in every direction from a crown of small white flowers that had clearly lost the battle against her hair. Her dress was white silk with gold trim. She had cream from the dessert course on her left cheek. She was holding a small stuffed rabbit by one ear.
She looked at Hania. Her pale blue eyes were very round.
Hania looked back. So you're the reason my father finally came to a party. Anyway, happy birthday. Your palace has terrible wallpaper.
Thalira leaned forward in her chair. She squinted at Hania's silver hair with focus. Then she reached out and grabbed a fistful of it.
“Ow.”
“Pwetty,” Thalira announced.
Hania carefully extracted her hair from Thalira's grip. Thalira watched this process with great interest and then offered the stuffed rabbit as compensation.
Sure, why not. She accepted the rabbit. Thalira looked satisfied. Hania reflected. This was probably the most straightforward diplomatic interaction she was going to have all evening.
She became aware of the existence of a particular boy. How could one ignore him when that boy resembled that man? The moment Hania saw him, she knew who he was. Crown Prince Jareth Valmorin Bumania was seven years old. He was wearing a gold-and-crimson embroidered suit. His dark gold hair was just like the Emperor's, as Hania remembered.
He looked down at Hania. “So this is the Monster of the North.”
Hania held Thalira's rabbit and looked back at him.
You're seven, she thought. You're repeating things adults said within earshot and you think it makes you sound informed. Try harder, boy.
“My father says the House of Noctis is a collection of ghosts hiding in a cold tower.” He tilted his head. “He says the Archmage is so old his magic is starting to leak.”
Hania's eyes moved very slowly to where Dravin was standing, seven feet to her left, ostensibly receiving a report from a court official. His back was partially to the room. His arms were crossed. He was not looking at Jareth. His left hand, the one not visible to the court official, had gone very still.
Careful, she thought at the prince. When his magic leaks, it incinerates three goblins in under four seconds. Your ancestors won't recognize what's left.
Thalira, who had been watching Jareth, held out her hand toward him. “Wabbit?” she offered generously, apparently trying to share Hania's borrowed rabbit.
Jareth ignored her. His eyes stayed on Hania. “Is it true your father killed the Dragon King?” He leaned slightly closer, dropping his voice to a carrying whisper that was definitely audible to the nearest cluster of adults. “My tutor says he waited until the Dragon was exhausted and then took the credit. That the real heroes were the Bumania Knights.”
You fourth-generation fraud, she thought. Your great-great-grandfather proposed and married to Thalindra specifically so his family could claim the throne, and now your tutor is feeding you revisionist history and you're delivering it to an infant at a birthday party like it's a power move. I have a 400-year-old expert informant, you brat.
She looked down at the glowing stone in her pocket. Then she looked at the gold belt buckle at Jareth's waist, perfectly level with her eyeline.
She leaned forward in her chair. Her movements were perfectly baby-calibrated, the charming fumble of a one-year-old reaching for something shiny. She extended her hand toward his belt buckle.
Jareth looked faintly smug at her apparent fascination. He didn't move back. There, she thought, and let a small pulse of mana move from her stone into the buckle's metal clasp, enough to temporarily magnetize the internal mechanism.
The buckle snapped upward. The belt leaped off his waist and wrapped itself enthusiastically around his chest, pinning both arms to his sides.
“Ack—”
Jareth stumbled backward, arms pinned, expression cycling rapidly with the realization that this was happening in a room full of every noble house in the empire.
The children nearby erupted in a suppressed cascade of giggles that spread down the table like a lit fuse. Even Thalira laughed. She didn't know why. She laughed anyway, both hands over her mouth, shoulders shaking.
Lusha placed her hand on Hania's shoulder as if she had been waiting.
“Oh dear,” she said, stepping forward with magnificent false concern, her hands clasped, her expression deeply worried about a child's welfare. “The young Prince's mana seems quite active this evening. Such a shame when the Bumania line struggles to regulate their own... equipment.” She glanced at the belt, wrapped enthusiastically around his ribcage.
The nearest Bumania official called for servants. Two servants descended on Jareth immediately, attempting to address the belt situation with professional discretion while Jareth hissed something at them that was probably not appropriate for a birthday party.
Hania settled back into her chair, retrieved Thalira's rabbit with Lusha's help from where it had fallen during the excitement, and returned it to its owner with great dignity.
Thalira accepted it. She looked at Hania, at the ongoing Jareth situation, then back at Hania.
“Funny,” she decided, and resumed eating from her small plate.
I like you, Hania thought. You have excellent instincts.
The adults had stopped paying attention to the children's end of the dais. This was, Hania understood, not because they were unobservant. It was because adults at court functions made constant, unconscious calculations about where the interesting information was. The children's table had briefly been interesting—the Noctis heir, the imperial prince, and then it had resolved, and now the adults had moved on to their own conversations, and the children were furniture again.
Good, Hania thought. She slumped back in her oversized chair. She let her eyes drift mostly closed. She breathed slowly. She was excellent at pretending to be furniture.
Sounds drifted over from the refreshment table to her left, where two men in Bumania burgundy were standing close together.
“—the Emperor is furious. Thirty-six this year and his mana reserves have started to drop. The healers are lying to him about it but he knows.”
“His hair has started thinning,” the second one said.
“If the Noctis Archmage walks out of here looking like that after two centuries, it makes the Imperial bloodline look like—”
“Hush…”
“I'm whispering.”
“You're not whispering enough. If Leonarth's people hear you—”
“Leonarth's people are watching the Archmage, not us.”
“Everyone is watching the Archmage. That's the problem.” A pause. A careful sound of a cup being set down. “If His Majesty dies before the Prince reaches eighteen, the Regency council will tear itself apart in six months. And Leonarth is already looking south.”
What? What are you saying? Hania filed away. Her eyes were still mostly closed. Thalira had fallen asleep against her shoulder, one small hand clutching the stuffed rabbit, the flower crown tilting at a forty-five-degree angle.
So the Bumania curse is real and the Emperor is running out of time—that's also true. It also seems like my father's apparent age is doing more diplomatic damage than an army.
Another sound came from behind her, near the column at the dais steps.
Lady Sera's voice, lowered: “—she's been maintaining the northern ward line since the treaty, but the tribute demands have increased again. Three shipments of mana stones this year already. The reserves—”
A woman's voice Hania didn't recognize: “She won't ask the Emperor directly.”
“She can't. The contract language—”
“Then she'll ask through channels.”
“There are no channels left. He closed them after the divorce.” Lady Sera's voice dropped further. “The princess has no innate mana. Tested twice. Lady Meren confirmed it.”
“Then what happens?”
“We don't discuss what happens,” Lady Sera said. “Walls also have ears. Stop talking and go prepare the dinner plates. That's all we can do.” Their voices moved away.
Hania looked down at the small child asleep against her shoulder. The flower crown had given up entirely and was hanging off one ear. She was breathing slowly and evenly, her rabbit clutched to her chest.
...Thalira has no mana. How are you going to survive in this magic world? The birthday girl doesn't have the one thing this world measures everyone by.
I really, really hope the story isn't as cruel as the pattern suggests.
Dravin appeared out of the crowd. He was holding a piece of Obelion creambread in one hand, having apparently acquired it from the dessert table without any of the social infrastructure normally required to acquire things from dessert tables at palace events. He looked at Hania and held out the bread.
She looked at the bread. It was a full piece—the cloud of sugar and cream variety, sized for an adult hand, which meant it was the size of her head.
Father. I have four teeth. I weigh as much as a medium-sized dog. This is a structural problem.
“Lusha says you need to eat,” he said.
Thalira stirred against her shoulder, blinked at the bread with sudden interest, and made a small grabbing motion before deciding it was too far away and going back to sleep.
Hania looked at the bread and tried to take it with both hands, but failed.
Dravin seemed to understand and feed her himself. It was the best thing she had ever eaten in either life. She had eaten hospital vending machine sandwiches at 3 AM and convenience store ramen and her grandmother's specific variety of rice that nobody else had ever been able to replicate, and none of it, none of it, compared to whatever Obelion did to sugar and cream that produced this result.
She forgot, briefly, to be the Archmage's daughter.
She opened her mouth to eat more. Dravin continued to feed her. While eating, she rubbed her mouth with both hands and her purple silk sleeves went directly into the cream, and she did not care even slightly.
“She has expensive taste,” Dravin remarked.
“Everything here is political except the bread,” Thalindra said, appearing on his other side. She looked at Hania—cream on her nose, her sleeves, also on her left ear. The Queen's expression softened. “The kitchen staff have been making it the same way for a hundred years. Some things resist politics.”
She crouched down, bringing herself level with Hania. “Don't grow up too fast,” she said quietly. Hania paused mid-bite, cream on her chin. “I know that sounds like the thing adults say because they don't know what else to say. I don't mean it that way.” She glanced at the room. “This court eats children. Especially the ones who can draw sigils before they can talk.” Her eyes came back to Hania. “Take your time.”
Hania held the Queen's gaze. She reached up and touched the cream on her own nose with one finger, examined it, then very deliberately ate it.
Thalindra's almost-smile completed itself, just for a second. Then she stood, and the regal mask resettled.
“The bread is also very good,” Hania heard her say to Dravin, in a completely different register, as they both turned back to the room. “I'll send some back with you.”
“I don't need that.”
“It's not for you.”
"Same thing."
A sudden crashing sound came from across the room. Every head in the ballroom turned.
Jareth Valmorin Bumania was standing amid a toppled decorative dragon statue. One of its wings had separated. Marble dust floated gently in the candlelight.
Jareth was pointing at it. His face was very red. “It moved,” he said to his attendant, to anyone who would listen. “I was standing there and it just—it moved—”
His father's representative was crossing the room toward him. Hania noticed his expression.
It looks like he really regrets coming with this crown prince.
Hania looked at the fallen statue. She looked at the base of it, where a thread trailed across the polished marble floor in a gentle curve toward...
She looked at Lusha. Lusha was standing to her left, hands folded in front of her, the picture of a respectable attendant watching a birthday celebration with mild interest. Her index finger was slightly extended.
She felt Hania's gaze and turned. She winked.
…Oh, she’s been working overtime.