A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"Let him know that he shall find allies in the Asabelian Court," the Queen said. "Make sure he knows that for a certainty."

The care with which she handled all of them warmed the old rock that was Lombard. He found his eyes misting over. Three long years that Lord Blackwell had been alone, fighting a fruitless campaign with so few men. So many years of frustration. And now they were over. From the younger generation, there had finally arisen hope.

"Thank you, my Queen," Captain Lombard said, and he meant that truly. Any Queen that would show such favour to his Lord was his Queen indeed.

Soon enough, the audience of Patricks, Blackthorns, Idrises and Blackwells was dismissed, leaving the Queen alone once more with her retainers, in that small, yet echoey audience chamber that she had.

When the doors closed after them, those great men collectively breathed sighs of relief. The stepping away from convention, that was a drain on energy for their likes. What they had grown accustomed to was thrown away, replaced by passionate chaos and the whimsies of the heart.

"Was this fine, Lord Idris?" One of the retainers, lowly enough to only occupy a position on the Queen's steps, asked in a quiet voice. "Did the newcomers not overstep their bounds? I can not help but feel that we've been mocked. They would not dare to speak to another royal like this."

"I understand your frustrations," Lord Idris said calmly. He was having difficulty explaining it to himself. With Asabel being such a young Queen, and one that was Quarter Inherited at that, they had difficulty, at times, getting the proper powers to take them seriously enough to treat them with the respect that they were due. "However, on this occasion, I do think we ought to let it slide."

"Why? They threw away tradition. They trod the line of disrespect. Why make exceptions for them?" The man asked. He was young, and unsure. He clung to the rules like a life raft, hoping that they were the vessel he needed to survive the stormy sea that was politics.

"For the hope that they bring," Lord Idris said. "Look upon your Queen, boy, and tell me that such an expression is not one you wish to see?"

Queen Asabel was practically glowing, as she sat on her throne, sharing a pleasant chat with Lancelot. She still stared at the door where the others had just left, as though thinking back to their meeting again.

The man gulped, overwhelmed by her beauty. When she smiled as such, that beauty was almost unfair. Even her retainers that were around it every day were liable to be smitten. He could not look for long.

"The Queen allowed her emotions to show… She spoke to the Patrick boy directly," the retainer said, finding his calm again through his questions. "Is that not… dangerous? She's always so steady."

"Once more I think it to have been unavoidable," Lord Idris said, entertaining the boy's questions, for they helped him digest what had just happened as well. "The Queen and that boy – or young man, now I should say – were once friends. As a Queen, she can have no friends. That she would step forward, to help her friend one final time – I think we ought to forgive her that fact."

"The news you bring me, Lombard…" Blackwell said, holding the sealed letter that Lombard had just given him, signed by Queen Asabel's own hand. "You've done me a service, beyond that which I ought to have been asking you."

"I can not say that it is my own doing," Lombard said, humbly. "Queen Asabel, she's a different sort. I'm sure we knew that well enough already, when she offered to send men our way these past years…"

"Indeed," Lord Blackwell said. "But with the men of standing that she surrounds herself with, her different pillars, I would not have thought that she could have shown us the same kindness."

"It is a measured kindness, my Lord, filled with belief in our victory," Lombard said. "She entertained young Oliver's request as well."

"He's going to the Capital then?" Lord Blackwell said, heaving a short sigh. "It will not be pleasant for him, I wager. But he insists on going regardless, does he?"

"Queen Asabel is making to travel too," Lombard said. "If there be trouble, then she plans to include him in her entourage. I do not foresee any difficulty with him making it past the gates."

"That is not where the difficulty lies. When he sees the High King, what will he see in him? What will he do? When the order comes that strips away his future so pointedly, will he be able to keep himself calm?" Lord Blackwell asked. "Have the years given him the shielding he needs on those emotions?"

The Oliver Patrick that Lord Blackwell had met all those years ago had been a passionate youth, fresh out of peasantry, and merely days out from the Battle of Solgrim. A more raw creature it could be hard to imagine.

"Well... I can not say that his emotions are lesser," Lombard said. "But I believe him to be more careful in enacting them."

"He has talent, monstrous talent, but lining up a sharpshooter with a target that he ought not shoot… If his finger be too slippery… That arrow will fly, and we'll have a kingslayer on our hands," Lord Blackwell said.

"That you think he would make it that far, despite the Fourth Boundary men that the High King surrounds himself with…" Lombard noted. "It seems that, even without having met him, you weigh him accurately."

"I do," Lord Blackwell said, stroking his beard. "Gods. I ought not to say this, given the effect that it is going to have on that boy's future – but I am glad for this turn of events, if only to have such a youth on my side."

"A mere three hundred men, my Lord," Lombard reminded him. "Do not weigh his shoulders so heavily."