At His Majesty's Pleasure

Authors' note: First foray into writing for this site, so hope you enjoy! A note - this story will focus a lot on plot, characterization, and the nature of power dynamics, so it may start out slow at first as the groundwork is laid. Definitely some steamy action coming in later, and tension and sensuality before then, but just wanted to give adequate warning to those who don't enjoy slow buildups. ;)

*****

"He's not going to be pleased." Andre cast a look over the aftermath of their chaos - a splatter of Vvarian soldiers, prone and crumpled, and four dead minstrels sprinkled among them. He exhaled deeply, looking past his own group to the horizon. "This was a mistake."

"You're being melodramatic." Gustave, their commander, was far more at ease, as he worked a cloth over his sword - each wipe staining it redder. "Complications happen. Now get those costumes on."

The other half a dozen Obsivians crouched by the fallen minstrels, deftly depriving them of their outer garments, which, as fortune would have it, were only slightly battered.

"Yes, complications that wouldn't have happened if we had only followed orders," Andre said under his breath, though he too complied, straightening out a thing of colorful cloth and tassels. His sole consolation lay in that - although they had now deviated from what should have been a simple plan - the consequences were mercifully few; the ambush had taken place in relative seclusion, and they were a fair distance from the palace still. No one had noticed or would notice, and all they had to do now was ride the carriage they'd commandeered and waltz into the capital under their minstrel guises, as planned. But they were waiting for their King first, and it was that which filled the little clearing with unease.

"What does a deviation matter if we get to the same result?" returned Gustave, with an air of assurance. "A body count will hardly bother him."

"Perhaps, but he is..." Andre searched for the right word. "He is particular, sometimes. And we've made far more of a mess of things than we needed to."

Gustave scoffed. "I won't hear any more of it, Andre. The method won't matter to him."

The distant thundering of hooves sounded in the hillside, and they all quieted, eyes turned in unison to the figures on the horizon drawing closer and closer. Andre felt his fingers clench and unclench, ill at ease, and few of the others were not disposed to some fidgeting.

Finally, a great warhorse cantered into view, more beast than animal, and sitting high atop it was King Alexander himself. He struck a towering silhouette against the scant illumination of the moon and starlight, his features currently shrouded by the same long shadow he cast over them all. A small contingent of other riders - the Chevaliers, the King's elite guard - fanned out behind him and surrounded the small clearing.

Gustave bowed hastily, as did the others. "Your Majesty - please allow me to explain. Nothing but the circumstances could have led me to deviate from the plan." He remained a little stooped while giving his explanation, despite it being quite needless; Alexander was tall, and on the horse he was a giant. "We attempted to target an unguarded troupe, as you commanded, but - "

"But you grew tired of waiting, is that it?" Alexander said lazily, as he dismounted, his boots striking the ground with a heavy rattle of armor.

"No," said Gustave quickly. "That is - I did think, perhaps, it was better to risk targeting a guarded carriage than wait any longer, lest we run out of time - "

"Even though the ball isn't for hours yet?" continued Alexander. He turned over one of the corpses with his foot, looking over it with a critical eye. "And judging by the state of these bodies, they must have been dragged here from quite a distance away. So your attack was sooner still."

"Yes," admitted Gustave, though he hurried to add, "but it was by no means a brash move, Your Majesty. The road was deserted and there were no witnesses. It seemed - " His bravado had faltered a little once in the King's actual presence, and it dwindled more now that Alexander stepped closer. "We could easily take on a couple of Vvarian soldiers. It seemed the same to me, either way."

The King didn't respond immediately, and the silence that drew out in the aftermath could be justifiably described as unsettling. Then he smiled, indulgently. "Of course," he said. "An entirely rational decision."

Gustave looked up, the beginnings of relief flashing across his features. "Your Majesty - really?"

"I would never oppose efficiency," Alexander responded lightly. "And, as you say, it does seem the same. Doesn't it?"

"Yes," agreed Gustave. "Just the same."

"Of course," continued Alexander, "the absence of these soldiers will be noticed, once they fail to report to their commanding officers. And once you arrive, doubtless they will ask what happened to your guard. But I suppose you've thought of this too."

"That's - ah..." Gustave stumbled a little, treading back to uncertainty. "Perhaps we could say that bandits ambushed us."

"Fearless bandits, too, to attack royal soldiers so close to their capital." Alexander's smile was just wide enough to show teeth.

Gustave stilled, feeling he had made a misstep. "It's - believable - "

"And I suppose also that there was not the remotest chance of anyone witnessing your little transgression. I say that since you decided to fight them where they were and dragged their bodies later, instead of luring them off the road before your attack - again, as I had ordered. I'm sure you have a reasonable explanation for this as well." There was absolutely nothing that had changed about the tone of Alexander's voice, which remained placid, but his smile had turned distinctly uncanny for its stillness.

"It - the surroundings seemed secure, Your Majesty, I didn't think - "

Without warning, Alexander's hand - steel gauntlet and all - suddenly wrapped itself around Gustave's throat, constricting further words from emerging. The man attempted to claw the fingers away, but to no avail; Andre and the others recoiled, but none, of course, intervened.

Alexander's voice was quiet, but clearly audible. "I don't like unnecessary risks," he said, watching as Gustave flailed ineffectually in his grip. "It was by luck that you weren't discovered, and luck only."

Gustave wheezed out a plea, which went entirely ignored by his King - only when he began choking in earnest did Alexander, with a dismissive twist of his hand, let him fall to the ground. As Gustave coughed up a storm, Alexander placed the heel of his boot over his wrist, pinning him like an insect. "I give my orders for a reason. Far be it for you to question them, much less think of deviations as 'the same.'"

With a terrible, grinding crunch, Alexander rammed his foot down, breaking several fingers in the process, and causing Gustave to break from his coughing to a yelp of agony. He clutched his injured hand to his chest, as soon as he was allowed, hunching over like a kicked dog.

Alexander merely watched him a few moments longer, a vicious kind of satisfaction betrayed in the glint of his eyes. Then he stepped back, mounting his horse, continuing as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, and in fact seeming to pick up some strange sense of pleasantness again. "But I like your story about the bandits, Gustave. It'll be a little suspicious, but it's passable; they won't have time to investigate. You may continue with the plan."

Something like horror still lingered on the commander's face, like an aftershock. "But my - hand - "

"You can hardly expect to get away from a bandit attack unscathed, Gustave." Alexander had the bad manners to sound casual, as he steadied the reins. "And nothing distracts from suspicion as much as pity."

Without so much as another word, the King and his guard rode off, the rumbles of hooves fading into the distance.

Andre took a moment to recover, though he was well aware that the punishment could have been worse. "Well, you were right," he said dryly, as he helped his commander to his feet. "It wasn't the body count that bothered him."

********

"A rather disappointing showing, don't you think?" Prince Robert was saying, as he returned with two goblets in hand, giving one to her with a gallant air. "Here I was, expecting the King of Obsivia to be some ferocious creature indeed, and we have...that instead."

He nodded over to where the Obsivian King, Alexander, and his congregants were, currently in conversation with his Vvarian counterpart, the King Esterad, and his grandson, the Prince Radvar. King Alexander had been, overall, extraordinarily pleasant and almost docile throughout the night, which went against every word of his reputation.

Princess Alais accepted the goblet with a demure dip of the head, swishing it in her hand, and made a mental note not to drink from it.

"Radvar called him a potato," she remarked in idle conversation, recounting the words of her twin. She was tactful enough speak in low and discreet tones.

Robert chuckled, shaking his head. His youthful, handsome features were overcome with a careless kind of smirk. "Does resemble one, doesn't he - that big head of his?" he said, not seeming to take the same care - though at least he wasn't shouting his censure. "How did that bland fellow there manage to wage all those wars? And win, at that? Such stories of his savagery too, and his ruthless conquests. No, I confess myself disappointed indeed. Do you not feel the same?"

"You'll want to keep your voice down, Your Highness," muttered one of the Prince's entourage, an older knight, in a voice of caution.

"Pah," said Robert, with a dismissive sneer. "We do not fear him."

"You'd be wise to," said the knight, with a shake of his head. "I've heard he has a mercurial disposition. Pleasant one moment, violent another. And very vindictive."

Vindictive was the least of it. The King left an unsavory list of war crimes in his wake, among them the humiliation and enslavement of all those who resisted him. It was politically savvy, in some sense, for the precedent led to rare defiance and easy capitulations. Small wonder that Obsivia had gobbled up its southern neighbors so rapidly in its latest greedy expansionism... though that probably also had to do with the unfortunate capabilities of its King as well. For all his brutality, King Alexander's skill in military strategy rose to the level of genius; he was as cunning as he was ruthless, and in all his years spent waging war, he had not yet lost a battle.

The princess's eyes seemed to turn this way and that, nose wrinkling with the stray feelings of impatience each time they met with that of her friend, Bimba. Robert was a boastful one, and proud. He was, however, handsome enough to elicit sighs from the more distant of her handmaidens each time he spoke or gestured with distinct flourish. And even Bimba, especially Bimba, could not resist an attentive gaze.

Robert seemed nothing if not aware of these admiring eyes. "Your grandfather should know that, should it come to it, Vvaria would have the aide of my people," he said, with the same noble kind of bombast.

"Your people are very kind," said Alais, with a smile which knew how to lie its way to reach her eyes.

He lowered his voice, casting a disdainful glance at the Obsivian convoy. "To be frank, I don't understand why you invited him here at all, and to throw this kind of celebration in his honor! Think of Prince Edmure - may he rest in peace."

And that smile, to her credit, also knew when to falter at the mention of dear Edmure, her lithe frame appearing to wilt for subtle efficacy. "No, I think Your Highness is right. He doesn't have the look of a conqueror at all about him."

Robert respected the delicate temperaments of princesses, and looked appropriately apologetic. "Ah, I did not mean to summon his memory so," he said. "I merely mean - inviting the Obsivians here is like inviting snakes into your den. They are not to be trusted, after what they did." He paused, allowing, "Though, of course, the decision was not yours, but your grandfather's."

"They are expansionists, and I don't think I've ever heard of an expansionist snake - rabbits are probably the animal you are looking for. Now if you will excuse me." Alais nudged Bimba's side with her elbow.

At this rate, they were never going to get about to Bimba's all-important affair, and Prince Robert could talk a man to death. Besides, all this political discussion was noxious to the so-called delicate temperaments of princesses. That Grandfather hoped he could make peace with a warmonger over a fancy dinner party was his business, and if he actually believed that that King, with all his ostensibly mild airs, could be trusted - that was also his business. Alais tried not to care too much, because she did not want to be disappointed.

She spared His Highness another smile, one that again reached her eyes, and ushered her ladies-in-waiting away in a flutter of silken gowns.

"But - " Robert began, but she was already leaving him far behind, and he was left to regret that he had not made more of the time.

Vvaria, in Alais's opinion, had lost much of its sense of humor with the arrival of Obsivian dignitaries - to the ever foreboding doom and gloom stuck to their heels. Who could blame them? The presence of these ... dignitaries brought about certain implications of which the northern kingdoms had been made painfully aware. They could not be ignored, not when those of the south and similarly less fortunate areas were literally ablaze in them. Considering what the alternative may be, these perfumed talks for an alliance were as well as a traipsing through a field of roses. This was still a party, after all, and parties were meant for dancing and revelry and joyous union of new friends.

Her fox mask and gown were both suitably pretty but muted in color. Her dark brown hair had been braided and twisted into an elegant but very simple bun to the side. This was not her ball with which to stand out, and she could not have been more relieved for the executive decision to not flaunt this generation's Pearl of Vvaria at their royally imposing guests.

After exchanging a few more words with the vaguely intoxicated Spymaster, she stole off, arm and arm with Bimba, from the well-illuminated dance hall and into the naturally dimmer gardens. Her friend and handmaiden had a very clandestine appointment to keep that night, one with an ostensibly handsome squire with which she had shyly giggled to her princess more than once about.

Alais wasn't particularly invested in the scandalous undertones of the arrangement, nor did she care to know the details. In discovering it, however, she'd also recognized a very opportune excuse to temporarily remove herself from a party that had been growing rapidly tedious, as far as parties went. She was tired of feigning interest and awe at talks which made her anxious if any emotion at all. She was bored of batting doe green eyes while carefully dodging requests to dance, citing an upset stomach for one reason.

Besides, the currently contesting (though otherwise absent) suitors of bordering states would not have approved. And who would notice her gone for fifteen - twenty minutes?

They passed fragrant flower bushes and marble fountains lining their way. Their destination was immediately in sight. "Go on," she encouraged, flicking her head toward the entrance of the hedge maze. Pressing her lady's hands for a moment, Bimba gave a distracted smile and shrill whisper of a thanks before scurrying off into the labyrinth.

Fifteen to twenty minutes, Alais thought to herself, absentmindedly eyeing her handmaiden's retreating skirts. After Bimba had fully vanished from sight, she trailed her hand along a familiar hiding place in the area of a nearby bench and, finally, withdrew her concealed deck of cards - from where it had always been, since the days where Radvar and Alais were tiny monsters bouncing off one another down the halls.

She took her seat on the bench and began shuffling the deck in her hands, perfectly at ease in her peaceful solitude. (For what a miserable existence that would've made, if she could not feel safe in her own backyard.) She had just managed to progress to the secondary level of her card tower when she was interrupted.

"I see I'm not the only one taking refuge here," intoned a casual voice.

The stranger was clothed plainly, and the styling of his attire indicated that he should have been a fairly distant, unimportant nobleman. An insignia marked him in the service of an army, some officer or another, and certainly he fit the build of this role - his stature was tall enough to be imposing, and his scars, where visible, indicated a lifetime of battles and war. Though he was conventionally handsome, with all the sharp features of an aristocratic line, there was something flinty and sharp to the look in his eyes, and something self-indulgent to the shape of his mouth. His mask was a subdued thing, black and minimalistic, a shadow over the upper half of his countenance.

His smile had a way of being naturally charismatic - probably to do with his easy assurance, and the suggestion of subtle humor in his eyes. Belatedly, he added, "Your Highness." A slant of a bow followed, perfectly adequate, though there was something a little satirical in its performance. He looked her over. It was the deck in her hands drew his comment first. "Do you often prefer to play by yourself?"

The intrusion was unexpected, but not wholly shocking. These grounds, though secluded in their way, were never meant to be cordoned off to those of the main event. Part of her did mourn the premature loss of her, as he described it, refuge. But that was only the very petulant and easily ignorable part, and Alais had to admit that she would not mind some charming (and handsome) company. So far, though, it was more the enigma which prompted her interest than the tall cut of his frame or the sharpness of his jaw.

"Only when the game doesn't require a partner, My Lord," she replied, amiable herself. "It's not a strong preference, and there's more than enough room to sit." Referring to the ample space adjacent to the makeshift tower. Without quite looking back up to him, Alais began on the third tier, the deck in her hands diminishing card by card at an excruciatingly slow rate. The switch in focus was largely to distract herself from staring too blatantly.

To accurately and extensively identify the half-shrouded face of each and every attendee was never within the realm of reasonable expectations, but she had gone through great pains to ensure they were all recognizable to some extent. Nanna had advised as much, and even the old maid when drunk couldn't part with her streak of prudence-slash-paranoia. Where she had no mother to emulate, Nanna served as a sufficient substitute, and her ever-watchful, ever-discerning habits seemed to have rubbed off on her over the years.

Try as she might to put a name, even a family name or anything that could be considered readily specific, to this man, she couldn't place him at all. But that was all well and good considering the nature of a masquerade ball, and the happily insignificant nature of her involvement. Only now it was bothering her and she needed (wanted) to know.

Her eyes were friendly behind her mask. Hers was a cheery, lilting tone betraying no suspicion, but the question itself was nothing if not point-blank: "Who are you?" His behavior was enigmatically forthcoming, and she had no reason not to respond in kind.

The man had accepted the invitation and eased down on the bench. He spoke fluently, but with an unmistakable accent, demarcating him as clearly part of the Obsivian crew. "Of course - where are my manners? Adrien of Surcundy, Duke of Lourbon. A pleasure."