Her first year as queen was coming to a close, Queen Evinda stood at yet another reception for the seemingly endless stream of dignitaries, noble lords, and diplomats who came to Karmand to seek favors. Lohs told her that these visitations had been far rarer before she made them more fruitful. King Rohmhelt detested granting favors, however small, to his subjects. It was not so much any moral objection or insistence that they stand on their own two feet. It was merely that he couldn’t be bothered to spend the time on it.

Standing proved difficult, however, as she was now in her final month of pregnancy. Her swollen womb put strains on her back and feet. Her prior pregnancies had prepared her for it, but it still was an immense burden. Lohs had offered to act on behalf of the royal couple, but she insisted that one of them must attend. The old man understood the matter as she did. The presence of the royal couple was integral to their power. Should they disappear, their power would diminish.

That day especially she could not afford to be absent. She had been attempting a meeting with the Gadisian Confederacy’s almost hopelessly intransigent ambassador, Ovga Percot. He finally sent word that he would be arriving in Karmand at perhaps the most inopportune time, but Evinda was not about to allow this chance to lapse.

“Your Majesty, the ambassador will be here in two minutes,” a messenger relayed to her as she paced in the reception hall.

“Thank you,” she responded, holding her back tightly.

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” Lohs asked.

“That’s not relevant,” she bit back.

Lohs sighed.

“What I mean to ask is, do you think you can remain conscious for all of this? The Gadisians are very long-winded, charming southern folk that they are. This could take some time.”

“I’ve put up with worse,” she retorted.

“As you say, Your Majesty.”

Were it not for Lohs’s unquestioning loyalty toward Rohmhelt, and also the Emperor, she would have immediately thought that perhaps he was attempting to push her aside so that he could conduct the diplomacy himself. As it was, she was happy that such thoughts were idle paranoia. Lohs was utterly incapable of such maneuvering.

Her relief came at last when the ambassador, a man of seemingly equally impressive height and girth, strutted in. Ambassador Percot perfectly symbolized the stylings of the southerly Gadisians. Puffy seafoam-colored pants, a gold-thread doublet, and a wildly plumed hat. Evinda almost laughed. She contained that urge while the ambassador strode right up to her.

“Yer Majesty,” he said in his deep drawl as he removed his hat to bow. “I’m so happy to be here.”

“Likewise, ambassador,” she smiled. “I would like to…”

“Sit? Yer expectin’ der I see,” he interrupted, reaching his hand as though he intended to stroke her womb.

Surprised, she reached out and swatted his hand away.

“Expecting that certain courtesies will be followed to the letter, ambassador,” she scolded him.

He laughed and made a dismissive gesture toward her.

“Ah, it’s all in good fun, right?”

She smiled and endured several more rounds of perfunctory courtesies, none of them fun, before they were seated for the actual substance of the meeting. She chose her own reception hall in the castle’s west wing to host the ambassador. From there she could lord over him in an imperious throne she had constructed by the city’s craftsmen to communicate her expansive authority.

The whole room was draped in a menacing red and black scheme, the colors of the Adrenyk house. She often found that it served to appropriately intimidate belligerent dignitaries or noble lords. When she knew them to be more hospitable, she hosted them in friendlier chambers.

“Ambassador,” she said after still more vague and useless words from Percot, “I would like to move to the business at hand.”

“Sure, sure, Yer Majesty,” he pretended to be polite. “Say whatever ya gotta say.”

“And please stop talking like an idiot in my presence,” she commanded.

At once Percot’s jovial demeanor fell into its own stern visage.

“Alright. Go ahead,” he said, motioning to Evinda.

“We are prepared to give you the Trobek Marche and the Glintstone Isles, but…”

“Now you’ve finally come around,” Percot interrupted, cackling.

“But,” Evinda continued, scolding the ambassador, “we would receive Esmerand Province, duty free access down the Horvjin River, and a firm alliance, the strongest the Empire has ever had with the Gadisians.”

A suspicious Percot stroked his fleshy chins.

“How firm are we talking about here?” Percot asked, still in a friendly drawl.

“Total commitment to each other’s defenses,” Evinda immediately rejoined.

“Is there anything you know that I don’t about a loomin’ war?”

Despite shaking her head dismissively at the notion, inside her she knew that the idea was not entirely preposterous.

“Not to my knowledge or anyone else’s,” she smiled. “We are not committed to defending the east from Bohruum, if that is your worry.”

“Dat wasn’t the one I was thinkin’ of,” Percot said in his more affected tone, as though he was mocking himself.

“Does that settlement sound agreeable, ambassador?” Lohs interrupted, clearly interested in keeping the negotiations moving.

Percot puffed and straightened himself in his chair.

“That’s ultimately up to Chancellor Kivren, but it sounds like something he’d be all for. I need to hear it from the King, though.”

“Why?” Evinda asked, annoyed.

“No disrespect, Your Majesty, but Kivren won’t listen to me if I just tell ‘im you told me this,” Percot said with sudden grave earnestness.

“I assure you that the Queen’s offer is in accordance with His Majesty’s wishes,” Lohs said.

That seemed to make the ambassador have at least some pause. Lohs’s reputation as Rohmhelt’s most trusted confidante must have counted for something.

“And whaddya want me to do now?” Percot asked.

“Ask the Chancellor to come here and we will ratify the treaty. His Majesty will be happy to meet with the Chancellor on anything the Chancellor wishes to discuss to make sure that this happens,” Evinda offered.

Percot glanced between the Queen and Lohs, his lips pressed.

“Alright. I’ll be off then. The Chancellor’ll be here next month. Thank ya kindly, Yer Majesty,” he stood and bowed before leaving.

After the ambassador departed, Evinda and Lohs mutually shook their heads at the display they had been subjected to. Being from the Kyosok homelands originally, Evinda had almost never encountered Gadisian customs. She felt that this had been a blessing.

“Tell me, Lohs, if they are so agreeable to the arrangement we proposed, why hasn’t this happened before?” she asked the old man.

Lohs chuckled and scratched under his chin.

“The Emperor never cared before. The Gadisian issues just aren’t very interesting when you’re sitting in Methrangia. Beyond that, the local lords here actually have grudges against the Gadisians and vice versa. Bringing you and the King in here, you don’t have the same investment in that nonsense,” Lohs quickly explained. “There is the small issue now of convincing the King that this was a good idea.”

Evinda had been prepared for that. She knew that Lohs would assist her even though it had not actually been put before Rohmhelt.

“Leave that to me,” she smirked. “And where is he today, anyway?”

“Talking with the marshals, I think,” Lohs sighed. “I have to apologize for that. It was my idea originally. I thought he should get to know more about our armies, but he’s taken it a bit far.”

“I’ve noticed,” Evinda grumbled.

“Again, my apologies.”

“Think nothing of it. You meant well by it. Now I’ve got to remind him that he has other duties,” she declared.

~~~

Are all marshals this long-winded or just mine? Rohmhelt wondered as he finally decided to dismiss his military advisors. It had been noon when they had started and now there was barely any light coming through the window slits in the “war hall” at the southern end of the castle.

He sat alone to gather his thoughts as he looked at maps and scrolls detailing the dispositions and numbers of his forces. His Treasury Councilor had left his own assessment of the necessary expenditures and the current balance of the treasury vaults. Though the West was the most rapidly growing portion of the empire, it also incurred vast new expenditures along with its burgeoning population. It seemed to Rohmhelt to be a race between the needs of the new people and the revenue generated by them, but in any case his kingdom’s coffers were relatively modest. These were the hard lessons his father told him he would learn. And learning them he was.

“Four new divisions, 28,000 men, nearly fifty million Nimors to pay for it all,” he mumbled aloud. “Angels save me.”

His father had sent him instructions that he should continue to grow his army since Duronaht was doing the same. An imbalance would be an invitation to ruin. The East, being more populous, could field a larger army, but at its most recent peak it stood almost two hundred thousand larger than Rohmhelt’s legions. More than that, there was a quality disparity. The marshals were all too happy to let him know about that.

Several knocks on the door interrupted his ruminations. It was a welcome and familiar pattern.

“Yes?” he called out to Evinda, barely looking at her.

“Are you done for today?” she asked as she strode into the hall from behind his throne.

“For today. Still so much to do for the next few days,” he grumbled, placing his head in his hands. At last he looked at her more fully. “You look as though you have something to ask me?”

She smiled and bowed her head, her elegant white hair flopping over her red skin.

“I spoke with Ambassador Percot this morning,” she began in a somewhat gruff tone. “Impossible man.”

“Oh yes, I’d forgotten you had that awful thing,” he grumbled. He walked over to his queen and embraced her. “Thank you for taking that blow for me. What did he want?”

Pushing away slightly, she looked directly into his eyes.

“One of those silly land swaps they’re always pushing for.”

“Is that all? A long way to come for that nonsense,” Rohmhelt scoffed.

“It actually made some more sense than normal,” she said, grinning.

“Oh?” Rohmhelt asked, both curious and concerned.

Evinda walked over to the sturdy dark wood table and pulled off one of the maps, this one of the entire Kingdom of Karmand and its neighbors. She pointed toward the southern boundaries of the kingdom.

“They are willing to give us Esmerand Province and full trade access down the Horvjin River,” she explained, pointing at the south central region.

“How much in return?” he sighed.

“The Trobek Marche and the Glintstone Isles,” she said, pointing to the far southeastern corner of the kingdom and then off the coast to the west. “Both our borders would make a lot more sense than they do now. And trade would benefit.”

He shook his head.

“I don’t know. I feel as though we should get more out of those lands than that,” he grumbled.

Evinda broke into a broad and toothy smile.

“They offered a full alliance. They would be a good ally to have,” she said.

“So Lohs keeps saying,” he sighed. “Really, if we were to have father’s armies on our side, what use are the Gadisians?”

“They’ve got around one hundred thousand men,” she replied in a cadence that sounded like one of his marshals.

“And father has two million. I have almost eight-hundred thousand. Together, we have the finest and largest army the world has ever seen. What would we need the Gadisians for?” Rohmhelt grumbled.

His Queen shook her head lightly. He knew he had walked into a pre-arranged trap. He’d been there before.

“A hundred thousand in your army instead of fighting against you is a big advantage.”

“Why would they fight me?” he asked, irritated at her condescension.

“If your brother offered them a reason to betray you. If you don’t deal with them, it’s a significant risk and one you shouldn’t run.”

He fought his instincts to be defensive and combative in the face of her insistence. For one thing, he knew he wouldn’t win that fight. For another, her logic was sound. Evinda had been the most consistent voice in his court warning of the possibility that Duronaht might one day refuse to recognize the proper order of succession and plunge the empire into civil war. Many had dismissed the possibility altogether. Rohmhelt didn’t. As she had put it, they were only one messenger away from a succession crisis.

“Very well. What’s next? Is the Chancellor coming here?” Rohmhelt asked, eager to move on.

“That was what the ambassador told me. If he uses his usual winged mounts, that means he could be here by the middle of next week instead.”

“So soon?” Rohmhelt asked, annoyed.

“They’re eager to be done with this,” Evinda laughed.

“I’m not! There’s so much to think about with this!”

The Queen shook her head in plain disappointment. Rohmhelt blushed in response.

“What they have offered will not come again, if that’s what you’re thinking. We need this, both for our own people and for securing your crown!” she barked firmly.

“You haven’t already promised them this, have you?” he spat out without even thinking about it.

Her eyes looked down to the floor sheepishly.

“Angels save me!” he exclaimed.

“You will have to have the final say on it and we can always say we were misunderstood.”

Rohmhelt breathed deeply and rubbed his head. His dear wife had always managed to stay one step ahead of his own strategic sense. This dynamic became a routine topic of discussion in the royal court and he had long since acknowledged it was true.

“The situations you put me in…”

~~~

Gadisians, by their nature, loved to make their hosts feel as awkward as possible. At least that had been Rohmhelt’s understanding of the southerly nation from the few contacts he had up to that point. If that was indeed an accurate perception, then Chancellor Kivren was the most Gadisian man alive.

A towering man with broad shoulders and an ample gut, he filled up a room physically as much as he did with his personality. Donning multi-colored ostentatious robes, he commanded attention without even having to ask for it. In all of the public displays where Rohmhelt had to stand next to Kivren, he loathed how the Gadisian would preen and use every opportunity to let the people of Karmand know of his glorious life. Annoyingly, the crowds seemed enthralled with the foreign ruler.

Once in private, his display continued. Rohmhelt spent much of the audience in the throne room rubbing his head in agony. Flanked by his queen to his right and Lohs to his left, he presided over the full Gadisian delegation arrayed before the throne.

“If ya don’t mind, yer highness, I have a story ‘bout mah trip up here ta tell ya if you’ll give me a moment. I can do it right quick,” Kivren offered with a hearty laugh.

“Pardon me, Chancellor, but if you don’t mind, there is an important matter to discuss,” Rohmhelt insisted. He saw Lohs and Evinda tense on his either side.

“The alliance? Oh, those land swaps, too? Don’t ya worry, we’re more than happy ta agree to those terms and…”

Rohmhelt raised his hand to stop Kivren’s endless ramblings.

“Yes, all of that,” he smiled uncomfortably. “Your ambassador drew up the terms of what you are prepared to offer. I must confess that I have thought about your concessions and I’m not convinced that there is enough here to merit attaching my signature to the treaty.”

He anticipated Lohs’s sigh, but the lack of any reaction from the Queen surprised him. The Gadisian Chancellor, however, was far from placid.

“What do ya find so damn upsettin’ in dat?” he asked with an incredulous laugh.

“Your commitment of troops to us. Ours pledges a clear commitment of as many men as needed to secure your nation’s borders. Your pledge to me is simply that it would be the greatest number deemed possible to assist us,” as he finished that argument, he could see Lohs bobbing his head in agreement. “What does that entail?”

“Just what it says der, clear as day” Kivren responded.

“It says nothing. I will only agree to this if I know your nation will actually stand behind us with its full might should war ever arise,” Rohmhelt declared. “Otherwise this is simply some exchanges of lands of which I know nothing.”

“It’s all der. As many troops as we can spare, right to yer armies,” Kivren declared, seemingly pointing to an imaginary piece of paper as a prop.

“As many as you can spare? That would be some number you determine rather than what we would need. I need something firmer,” the king barked back.

As he sparred with Kivren, he felt an almost imperceptible approving glow from his queen. The Gadisian Chancellor, however, appeared gravely wounded. Rohmhelt wondered what the Chancellor could have possibly expected with such a flimsy guarantee.

“How many men would ya be expectin’?” the Chancellor asked, his face darkening.

“For it to be worth our while, it would have to be the equivalent of one of our armies, so at least one-hundred thousand,” Rohmhelt declared.

The Chancellor exploded in laughter, which Rohmhelt had braced himself for. Even so, it was more obnoxious than expected.

“And wut would I arm ‘em with? We don’t have yer kinda weapons and armor. They’d…”

“I’m so glad you mentioned that, Chancellor. Part of the arrangement would be that we would grant you those weapons and armor,” Rohmhelt said. He paused to gauge Kivren, who had now become dumfounded by what he heard. “Oh yes, the full one-hundred thousand, should you need that much.”

“You gotta be jokin’, Yer Majesty!”

He could feel Lohs’s befuddlement, which seemed to say, “You had better be joking.” Rohmhelt turned toward Lohs and glared back with dire earnestness. Lohs’s eyes turned downward and he mumbled aloud various figures, clearly trying to calculate the necessary funds.

“This is no idle promise, Chancellor. In this respect we will treat your armies as though they were our armies, under one condition. You must be there for us when the occasion calls for it,” Rohmhelt insisted. “And, of course, we will be there for you. Complete reciprocity. I will not accept anything less.”

Kivren wiggled his fingers and looked to Ambassador Percot, who merely blinked in response.

“One thing here, yer brother has da support of a few angels. What can ya do against dat?” the Chancellor asked in a mischievous tone.

“Parlon, the singer? Omonrel, the sculptor? I cannot say that I’m terribly impressed when I regularly speak to the Earth Angel himself,” Rohmhelt immediately retorted. He had braced for such a probe by the Gadisians. “My brother likes to make a show of his links to the angels. In the end, they matter little as they will not be a factor in any potential conflict, even if I were to ever fight him, which I don’t see happening.”

Images of Parlon’s cackling face and the carnage he saw back at Solnaht Citadel from his vision flickered across his mind. He fought back any response to that grisly visage, however.

Kivren whispered with Percot and several other Gadisians behind him before kneeling toward Rohmhelt.

“Yer Majesty, we’d be happy ta sign.”

Rohmhelt grinned and turned to both Lohs and the Queen to gauge their responses. He read from both of them their approval at his conduct, which was better than he had feared. Ordinarily, there was at least some readily apparent condescension.

“Shall we drink on this?” Rohmhelt asked, motioning to his aides at the far corners to fetch imbibements.

“I’d never turn down da good stuff ya have here, Yer Majesty,” Kivren cackled.

~~~

Evinda worked throughout the next day in her private chamber even as her womb ached with her restless child. She was still attempting to extend further invitations to birdmen of Osilintis and the large variety of smaller powers located to the north beyond the reach of the Methrangian Empire. Being from the frontier lands herself, she felt that the Methrangians, her husband especially, lacked the imagination to reach out to those various and sundry realms that lay beyond the Gilfrehn Mountains.

As she penned a letter to the Thuunzian Chieftan, who controlled one of the smaller, but highly respected realms in the far north, Lohs’s familiar knocking pattern fell upon the dark lacquered wooden door.

“Yes?” she asked.

“You should be resting now,” he scolded her as he entered. “You possess the one means of keeping the Empire in good hands.”

“Oh, lay off that, Lohs,” she scoffed. “But you didn’t come here for that.”

“No,” he smiled. “I don’t know if the King knows it or not, but he didn’t exactly come out from those negotiations as well as he thought.”

“I wanted to tell him that at the time,” she sighed. “It took on a momentum of its own, however.”

“Arms for a hundred-thousand soldiers?” Lohs pondered aloud. “I wonder if he appreciates just what a gift that is.”

“He doesn’t, I can tell you that,” she smiled.

“This doesn’t bother you?” Lohs asked, his eyes squinting.

“Not at all,” Evinda laughed, standing to straighten her back. “At least he’s coming into his own.”