Swordpoint Diplomacy 13

CHAPTER 13

“I feel gauche. I think it’s terribly awkward to lock my fiancee in Great Uncle Albert’s old room.” Marcel paced the length of the study and turned around to keep going. He couldn’t outpace his distress. “It still smells in there, you know. It smells like an old man. She’s never going to marry me.”

Willame didn’t look. “We could lock her in the buttery instead.”

Marcel gave his knight a sharp look. “Should she curl up around the bottles? That would not be preferable.”

Willame shrugged. “Unlimited wine. That’s where I would want to be held captive.”

“The Princess Rose is not a boozer,” Marcel said sternly. He ignored the mocking “boozer?” from his terrible knight. “And besides that…” He winced. “She has a sharp tongue. In light of how she came to be our guest, I would prefer not to give her ammunition, rhetorical or logistical. I suspect she has already felt tempted to assault me with pottery.”

At that, Willame finally lifted his head. His square-jawed features were painted with pitying disbelief. “Marcel,” he said. “Is your prisoner being mean to you? Did she hurt your feelings?”

Marcel altered his pacing pattern so that he could veer close enough to punch Willame’s shoulder. “You are a wretched little man,” he sniffed. “No, of course not. But you must understand that it would be vastly- no, infinitely preferable if we were to get on well.”

“Would help if the good Castellan wasn’t sabotaging that, then.” Willame sunk down further into his seat on Marcel’s ridiculous sofa. “She doesn’t like your plan.”

“Doesn’t recognize brilliance,” Marcel dismissed immediately. He threw himself over the sofa and ignored the disgusted huff out of his supposed friend. “They can’t have been negotiating wholly in bad faith,” he said. Willame rolled his eyes at the familiar litany. “There’s some type of internal disagreement. If the Princess Rose agrees to it-”

“You can utilize the power of social awkwardness to force an end to the war by marrying her,” Willame finished dryly. He sat up, bumping Marcel’s head with his knee in the process. “I don’t disagree with the logistic potential, I really don’t. I just doubt that she’s interested. It was mad in the first place that anyone was willing to displace the Crown Princess by marrying her off and forcing her out of the succession. Your family would never marry you off to another country.”

The confidence in his voice was almost enough to shake Marcel’s optimism in his solution. At this point, Marcel’s family wouldn’t even want this marriage to happen. Who wanted a woman from a perfidious line of tyrants to marry into the family?

‘I have to try. So many people are going to die if I don’t.’

“They merely had no idea it was a possibility,” Marcel said mildly. “They might try if they get a chance, so I had better follow through with this marriage so I can stay at home. Perhaps the Princess was merely struck by how handsome I am, or seduced by the superior climate and fashions of the capital. Perhaps she wishes to evade the responsibility of becoming Queen Regnant and float at my arm in gossamer gowns, crowned in pearls and flowers and serve only as judge in the court of love.”

“Or perhaps it was all just a bad faith tactic to buy time and obfuscate war preparations.”

Marcel shot Willame a rude look and sat up next to his childhood friend. “You sound like my Father,” he said resentfully. “You always assume the worst of your enemies.”

Willame threw his hands up. “Oh, well then,” he jibed sarcastically. “Clearly that’s a bad thing. Never mind, then. Perhaps she’s madly in love with you. Or perhaps we can bully her into agreeing. That won’t come back to haunt us when we’ve got a Queen loyal to another country.” He sighed and scrubbed his face. “Just be glad we got her off the field. She’s a brute, isn’t she?”

“Willame!” Marcel shot his friend a scandalized look. “Don’t tell such dreadful lies. You saw her as well as I did. She’s a perfectly normal looking lady, and the rumors about the Northerners are just that.” Never mind that he had been fairly certain they were accurate until he saw his fiancee in real life. The portrait hadn’t had fangs, of course, but her mouth had been closed in it.

“I was referring more to the level of violence,” Willame muttered. “She’s good at violence, isn’t she, Pincushion?”  He rolled his eyes. “Are we going to Great Uncle Albert’s room or not? I know we are, but I have to wait for you to work up the nerve to talk to a girl.”

“A Princess,” Marcel said, a little distressed by how flippant everyone else was. She was clearly not a regular courtier. He knew that from the first few minutes of conversation with her. “The stakes are high! What if she doesn’t like me?”

Willame threw a warm hand around his shoulder and tugged him in for a brotherly hug. “But what if she does like you,” he said gamely. “Let’s go. We can’t have that much time before we need to be on the wall.”

“Can’t have much time in general,” Marcel said, but it was mostly to himself. He’d talked through the timing a dozen times. If they were going to hope to pull this off, it had to be before either his parents or the warmonger king officially ended the betrothal. Gathering enough noble witnesses, sending invitations, and finding a priest who would be willing to make two Kings angry by marrying them had to take at least a week.

The trek to the Princess’s private chambers was a fast one. He’d gone back and forth at least half a dozen times since Willame’s ranging group had brought her back, agonizing over the stakes. As always, the Chamberlain untucked himself from whatever dark corner he lurked in to follow dolefully behind. Willame had a private theory that the man slept upside down from ceilings of unused rooms and that was why he was forever emerging from the shadows.

He paused at the door. As much as he wanted to tell her his plan and get her agreement, he also very much did not want to have to make eye contact and speak with her.

They were already off to a bad start. She’d shot him, then he’d had her drugged and had her leg broken. Also, they were at war. And there was that one time he had tried to assassinate her. She probably didn’t know that was him, though, so he could cling to hope.

‘She really might not want to marry me.’

Marcel winced at his own thoughts. He lowered his hand before it could rap on the door.

Willame sighed loudly.

‘I wish we hadn’t injured her.’ Guilt churned in his stomach. He had been willing to go out and try to capture her without resorting to those lengths, but the Castellan had put her booted foot down about him going off into the enemy camp after he got shot. And yes, she’d killed an awful lot of people, but probably it hadn’t been wholly necessary to injure her. He’d fought her before and came back just fine. Bruises only. Aside from the arrow the second time.

Marcel fidgeted. He steeled his nerves, tucked away his guilt, and knocked on the door.

Princess Rose must have been waiting. Her imperious voice rang out, “Enter,” nearly the same second that he finally touched the door.

‘Her hearing is good. Why is she good at everything?’

Willame scoffed and shot Marcel a smug look under his eyebrows. The place where she’d stuck an arrow in his chest ached again, begging him to go further away from this woman. Marcel casually smacked his friend in the chest and then opened the door. “Good afternoon, Princess,” he drawled. He strode in, refusing to let her see him cringe already. He had the upper hand for the immediate future. He needed to act like it. He needed to impress her. No one wanted to marry a man who couldn’t control his composure.

‘She did something to her hair.’ Marcel noted the braided updo, drinking in the details of her face. ‘She had it loose this morning.’

She was pretty. Intimidatingly beautiful, if he was to be honest. Part of the intimidation factor came from just how jarringly unfriendly her expression was. “Prince Marcel,” she greeted coldly. She hadn’t moved to get up from her seat on her bed. Who even acted like that? She would have studied the same manners that he had. Why was she doing this?

A frisson of awkwardness threatened to bubble up. Here he was, in his bethrothed’s temporary bedroom. There were two other people present to chaperone, yes, but it was still highly irregular. He tried to pretend that she was sitting on something else. Perhaps the purple sofa in the guest chamber marked for visiting royalty, the one he’d put his feet on ten minutes ago.

‘She isn’t intimidated at all. Shouldn’t she be nervous? If she was in my bedroom I would die.’

Possibly of nerves, possibly of blunt trauma.

“May I have a seat?” He indicated the desk. It was a pro forma question. There was nowhere else to sit, really. The bed remained stubbornly a bed and not a sofa. The princess inclined her head in elegant permission.

Right. Great then. He turned the chair to face her, immediately regretted that, and sat down anyway because it was too late to choose a less aggressive angle. “How was your meal?” Smalltalk was good. It was always safe.

Her expression did not lighten in the least. The princess looked past him and tilted her head slightly. There was something a little eerie about the way that her eyes glinted when they focused on the men still hovering in the door. The sense of expectation heightened.

He tried to wait it out this time. Marcel fixed his smile on, waiting for her to decide to answer his question.

She had to. She simply had to. The moment stretched out. She said nothing. He could hear one of the other men scuff a foot on the stone.

‘Who even acts like this?’

The Princess blinked slowly. He thought about the tiger in the royal zoo. It had looked at him like that.

“This is Willame of Highcleff,” Marcel introduced. He felt his smile strain. “And then that’s the Chamberlain.” They each gave a polite bow in response to their introduction. Willame had a blank expression. He was definitely going to rib Marcel later for being weak. She hadn't even had to ask him.

“Charmed.” Just like that, the Princess seemed wholly disinterested in the men at the door. She fixed the full force of her gaze on Marcel. He tried not to shiver. She had very intense eyes. They should have been friendly and warm– weren’t brown eyes usually warm? “Might I inquire how long I have been your guest?”

He opened his mouth to say that actually, it had only been about fourteen hours, and then he realized that it was probably better not to give her much information. “Not long,” he said. He gave her his smoothest smile, the one that always greased social interactions. “I would like to know you better.”

The Princess fixed him with the most withering assessment he’d ever seen. “I see.”

‘She is so hard to talk to. Why is she so unfriendly? Is her leg hurting? She does want me here, she said that to LaGown.’

Telling himself that didn’t make him feel much more confident. “Terribly sorry about your leg,” Marcel said. He had been explicitly told not to do that. It just came out. “How do you feel?” He remembered the sickening whoosh of his gut dropping when she’d nearly fallen before. Oh. Of course she hadn’t stood up to curtsy when they entered, she was injured. Guilt crawled in his chest.

“Delightful, thank you for asking.” The words were rote, disinterested, a definite lie. She looked at Willame again. Her eyes might have narrowed.

Marcel swallowed. He hoped that Willame had not been the one to break her leg- no, he couldn’t have been. He would have arrived after. Still, the way that the Princess eyed Willame’s armor was distinctly unfriendly. She didn’t seem to be in a forgiving mood.

“Thank you for your escort.”

What?

He looked back at Willame. He looked gratifyingly uncomfortable. The knight inclined his head again at Rose in what had to be an attempt to bore her and escape her attention. Perhaps next time, he would understand when Marcel tried to plan for a future conversation.

“T’was gallant.” Her eyes bored into Willame. The knight looked like he wanted to disappear.

“Princess,” he croaked out, in lieu of anything stupid like thanking her or telling her that she was welcome for hefting her to an enemy castle. He was trying so hard not to give her anything to use against him.

‘Marrying her is less scary than a war,’ he reminded himself. ‘She probably won’t kill me. She’d have to kill so many people to get out of the country if she did that.’

With that in mind, he cast off the shackles of his nerves. He grinned at the Princess, willing her to give him her full attention. “Would you like to get married?”

Willame actually sucked in a breath through his teeth. The Chamberlain was like a stone. He was absolutely going to go to tell Castellan LaGown as soon as they left the room.

Princess Rose made a fist on her lap. Her face didn’t change. “Why do you ask?”

He blinked. He thought the context was pretty obvious. “Oh…” Marcel resisted the urge to play with his hair. “Better than a war, isn’t it?”

Actual disgust appeared on her face. It shook him. His smile was barely hanging on for dear life. “Do you want to marry me or not?”

What kind of question was that? She shot him last week and they’d barely talked. Of course he didn’t want to marry her, precisely. That wasn’t the point.

Stunned, he lost the grin entirely. “Uh. Not really,” he admitted. He blinked at her. “I want to marry your state, I suppose.”

“What’s wrong with me, then?” The way that she tilted her jaw up was a challenge. It exposed more of that long neck.

‘I think you want to hear my last breath. I think you’d break my fingers one by one and throw me off the balcony to see how many more bones that would break.’

“Nothing, as far as I know,” Marcel lied desperately.

She pounced on that. “Then why don’t you want to marry me?”

“I just said I did,” he protested desperately.

“You just said that you didn’t want to,” the Princess parried. She seemed actually angry now. “Why are you really here?”

“It’s my country,” he said dumbly. He didn’t know what was happening anymore.

She swept an arm out elegantly, indicating the bedroom that they were currently in.

He flushed painfully red. “I apologize.” Marcel held his back very straight and tried not to move when he breathed. “I will arrange for our next conversation to happen outside of your bed- your sleeping chambers.” He made for the exit, chair scraping in his panic.

“You didn’t mind that the first time you came to my bed,” the Princess said haughtily.

Marcel walked directly into Willame. That was odd because Willame was supposed to move when he got close. His childhood friend was giving him an expression of confused horror.

“With a very large…” she seemed to be savoring the moment, choosing her words with care. He was having a heart attack. “Knife,” the Princess finished.

He was very glad that he couldn’t see her face. He had to leave, now. “Tents are different from bedrooms,” Marcel argued shrilly, shoving at Willame. “I apologize for the knife. I will bring something nicer next time.” Why did he say that. Why. Now he needed a present. “Goodbye,” he added, a bit desperately. He whirled around and accidentally made eye contact on his way to shut the door. He didn’t know what her expression meant. He shut the door a little too hard and locked it immediately.

Marcel made eye contact with Willame. “I didn’t,” he mouthed silently. “I was just trying to kill her.”

Willame nodded slowly. He was wide-eyed. He glanced warily back at the door, as if he thought the princess might see if she could punch through wood and continue the conversation against their wills. “I know,” he said. He cleared his throat, talking quietly. “Just… the phrasing was unusual, wasn’t it.” He cleared his throat again.

Marcel punched his friend in the arm again, so weakly that it was pathetically obvious as a cry for non-frightening physical contact. “I think she really might choke me,” he said dully. “Or stab me with the decor.”

‘She is so impressive. Mother would be transcendently happy if I was more like that.’

“Probably,” Willame said. He perked up a bit. “No wonder you were running scared.”

He eyed his asshole friend. “You can guard her chambers,” Marcel said flatly. “It would bring me comfort, given the state of affairs that are about to descend. What if the enemy army truly does break in?”

Willame gave him an incredulous look. It said something like “Then she would probably kill and eat her own soldiers.”

He couldn’t exactly disagree. No wonder the Princess was the chosen heir and not her twin brother. She seemed a lot like her Father. It occurred to him that maybe the proposed marriage was the big problem and not the solution for the conflict. Maybe the tyrant King had chosen war rather than be left with his son as an heir.

No. He shook it off. The plan would work.

“Perfect,” Marcel said, cheered that someone else was going into danger. “It’s settled then. I’ll be off to the wall to see the siege ladders and trebuchets, and you can stay here.”

“My lords,” the Chamberlain interrupted. He was frowning down the hallway. “Do you not hear that?”

Marcel strained. “...Swords,” he said, stunned by the thought. “They’re in the city?”

“The castle itself,” the Chamberlain said tersely. His eyes were wide. "The floor below us. The sound is coming through the windows on the East side, which are open at this time of day.

They froze for a moment. Marcel needed to think. He needed-

“Grab the princess,” he ordered Willame. “They’ll come for her. We need to go.” Go where? He didn’t know yet. His mind was racing.

Willame gritted his teeth and nodded. The key was still in the door. “I’ve decided to be your escort again,” he called into the room. “Get up, Princess, unless you prefer to be carried.”