Bearing an uncanny resemblance to a large child looming over an anthill, the mountainous frame of King Rudolf XIII nearly blotted out the central window of his apartments as he contemplated the infinitesimal procession filing across the Great Bridge linking the King’s Isle and greater Lutesse. Gardeners, stable-masters, cooks, the king’s sommelier and the queen’s milliner, palace maids and their children—all plodded alongside carts loaded with baggages full to bursting, hands pressed against possessions hastily rope-bound to prevent their tipping over into the river or under hoof and wheel.

The last of the baseblood servants who had petitioned to be released from service were regaining the mainland, there to be met by rifle-bearing pinpoints whose bearing seemed to threaten even from afar, like horned insects swarming a straggling worm after rain. With their bayonet-tipped flintlocks the militia poked, probed, inspected; only the common-born would be permitted to leave, and even then few among their number did so unmolested.

His eyes fixed on the cannon-lined riverbank teeming with humanity—all desperate, yet for reasons that could not be more conflicting—the monarch opened his mouth. “Why do they wear them?”

The two ministers exchanged a glance. “Why do they wear what, Your Majesty?” one of them ventured to ask.

The king pointed, as if that would cause the specks on the river’s opposite side to stand out in sharper relief against its snowswept banks. “Those red scarves. Why do they wear them?”

“Ah.” A pause ensued, during which uncomfortable expressions appeared on most every face, the king’s excepted. He continued staring out the window impassively as the same minister cleared his throat and answered awkwardly. “Sire, I’m given to understand that the red represents common blood, which the foulards-rouges believe should be valued above the rarer strains. That the cloth is wrapped around their necks denotes their willingness to lay down their lives for that ideal.”

“Their lives, or ours?” retorted another minister. “Fanatics are wont to dress up their barbarism in the guise of altruism. Make no mistake: it is our blood they have come to spill.”

“Be that as it may,” said the king slowly, unconsciously defusing the tensions that would have otherwise flared up, “I will not reciprocate their desires. We hold our ground, but no more.”

Mixed emotions flickered across the eyes of those present. Several ministers betrayed their apprehension in furtive glances shared; only the queen maintained her composure fully. Holding the Cygnon in her lap and flanked by her adopted children, the dark-skinned Tanji among them, her countenance was tranquil even as she must have wondered as to her husband’s dispositions.

Unwilling to yield an inch, yet unprepared to declare war on the rebels, it was clear that this was a state of affairs which could not endure. Doubt had set in the minds of the Royal Guard; ambiguity was sapping its vigor; an adversary needed to be pinpointed for effective resistance.

A rap sounded at the door. “Lieutenant General Évon du Sanct-Yulua, Marquis dy lé Euvarhnal,” announced a liveried manservant—perfectly in accordance with protocol but with some pedantry, as all were more than adequately acquainted with the hero of the Fourth Fleurian Border War.

Saber rattling, muddied calvary boots sinking indifferently in the plush white carpet, Euvarhnal—as he was known to all—strode into the room to plant himself squarely in its center and address his liege without preamble. “Sire, save for your intervention in the upcoming battle, we are assuredly lost. For every man of ours they can count fifteen; under half of their thirty thousand could storm the Isle and still they would succeed in breaking through; your magic is needed to repel an onslaught that, I fear, will soon prove as fatal as imminent.”

“No.” A shadow of displeasure crossed the king’s face, transparently provoked more by the contents of his general’s advice than its form. “By the Goddess above, I swear that not one drop of blood will be shed by my magic this day. The honor of the aureate boon will remain whole.” The king’s mild tone had yet something of inexorability as he regarded the stiff-faced general. “We will dissuade them with conventional weaponry, or not at all. I will sooner lose my kingdom than violate a single commandment of the Church.”

“But Your Majesty—”

“This is a non-negotiable. That which is given for the protection of the people cannot be turned against it. The Goddess deserves better than that we should defile Her gifts in such a way. And as your liege I certainly deserve better counsel. Leave me, Euvarhnal. I will call upon you once I have sufficient proofs of your having regained your senses.”

“Sire, news from…” A hapless soldier in the doorway stood aside and gawked for a moment as his commander pushed past him, eyes flashing fury and mouth drawn to a thin line. The quick, none-too-discreet hand motion of a minister snapped his attention back to the king. “Sire, the latest news from the capital…” He advanced a step into the crowded apartments, only to hesitate at the sight of Rudolf XIII contemplating the agitation outside, lapsed into his cogitations once more. Again the minister motioned; the man swallowed and divulged the latest development in the usurpatory Congress. “All the members of House Ouèsterhâze have just consented to their stilling.”

Aghast, several of the nobles struggled to conceal their consternation; possessing no similar scruples, Queen Adelaide-Estelle openly wore her outrage on her countenance. Though less demonstrative Rudolf XIII also responded, his eyes more animated after his abortive exchange with the general.

“The heads of the Great Houses,” he began deliberately, “who for years have resisted all my overtures and attempts at reform, now eagerly consent to equality of taxation—and moreover, the abolishment of their privileges and to be stripped of their magic. Where persuasion failed, compulsion at swordpoint has succeeded.” Concentration momentarily creased the king’s high brow, before his face resumed its customary bland indifference. “Can you account for this about-face, Monseigneur Mundani?”

If the white-haired priest quietly seated in a dark corner of the room was surprised by the abruptness of this address, he gave no indication of it. Folding his hands in his lap, in fluting tones like air blown over a wine-bottle’s rim he replied, “Sire, the answer is that men are ever gladder to bear the whip of a tyrant self-appointed than imposed.”

The king stared blankly at his confessor long enough for a distant series of gunshots to ring out, before turning to survey the activity below his window. Doing so revealed more posturing by the militia, whose vain gestures nontheless betokened a growing brazenness, a simmering resentment increasingly likely to violate a threadbare truce. “I see.” The silence that ensued caused more than one throat to work noisily. A sallow-faced minister coughed.

Rudolf XIII turned to lock gazes with Queen Adelaide-Estelle, his expression utterly devoid of emotion. “I will now give the princess my final blessing.”

A slender figure slipped from the queen’s side to navigate the crowded and ornately furnished room to kneel before the beleaguered monarch. Rudolf XIII regarded the golden head gravely.

“You will do well, my daughter, to make it your inmost conviction that the faith of your forefathers is your sole support and greatest consolation, for it is the only that will endure, the only sanctuary that will remain open to you once you are forsaken by men and the world. Disabuse yourself of the false notion, if the reverses of these terrible weeks have not yet effaced all lingering traces of it, that the elevated station in which you were born will necessarily shield you from the tribulations that are common to all mortals. You have seen my affliction; you have seen your mother’s tears, and the anguish of those dear to you, the vanishment of the charmed hours that it was my pleasure to vouchsafe you and your siblings.”

“My daughter, the fate reserved for you by the Absolute is a mystery: neither I nor any man can say whether you will serve the Goddess in this country or in another, whether in a resplendent court or in the basest indigence. Wherever the Goddess in Her mercy leads you, beseech Her to obtain for you all the assistance you need to be an example to men, to succor the needy, to bind the wounds of the distraught; in short, to acquit yourself of all the duties enjoined upon you by religion and birth. The Utmost did not raise us as high as we still are for any other purpose than to labor unceasingly for our fellow man, which after his service to the divine is the brightest crown with which a monarch can be adorned. Implore the Benefactress of our forebears that She may grant a perfect resignation to the inscrutable designs of providence.”

Crownless, overweight, eyes vacant, his magical core completely at rest and attired in finery that was but a shadow of the dress to which Gaulyria’s monarchs were accustomed, there was yet an aura about Rudolf XIII that caught at several throats, who perhaps seemed more a king now than in many months.

“Receive now my paternal blessing.”

The child waited for a space after the hand withdrew, then arose with a rustling of skirts in the solemn stillness to gracefully rejoin the queen. Queen Adelaide-Estelle’s hand seemed to hesitate in the air; it then settled on a slim shoulder as she sought out and tried to call into focus the king’s faraway gaze with her own.

“Your Majesty, well do I understand your sentiments in this matter: and yet, once the sacred pact between a sovereign and his people has been violated, can we not envision the means of defending them being applied to another, equally legitimate purpose? If, as the theologians teach, a people can justifiably rise up against a tyrannical ruler in self-defense, then surely a just ruler can—” The queen stopped herself mid-sentence.

Rudolf XIII’s downturned, habitually languorous eyes glittered with rare fire; though he made reply in the same plodding, unvarying tone, that seemed to make his displeasure all the more forbidding. “I am chagrined to discover, Madame, the sad effects your conversations with my brother’s wife have wrought upon your thinking.”

The king said this as if Madame d’Aurellis were distant by a country and not a mere five paces. Her ruddy complexion deepening to a perfect maroon, she nevertheless held herself rigidly still as the king continued: “That the Countess d’Aurellis should break with her established reputation for sagacious judgments is regrettable. I trust you will prefer to honor yourself, Madame, by being beholden more to her past than current example. I tell you that this decision is irrevocable, and as such I expect you to receive it with no less circumspection than was exercised by me in making it.

Rudolf XIII waited for the queen to nod her deference, her features taut in resignation. “Now, before the insurgents resolve themselves to deliver battle to our position, I urge you to retire with the Cygnon and his siblings to your Apart—”

“Sire! Sire!!”

A dull, atrocious cracking sound resounded from outside, as if the firmament itself had suffered a fissure. Screams lacerated the air, shot through with a terror borne of despair—the despair of those whose last moments are such as leave no time to come to grips with the sick realization that their lives are forfeit.

“They’re inside the palace!—”

Another world-lurching crack, and this time the voices outside the room fell silent.