Chapter 322

Athea was straightening the reports on her desk when the door opened and the aide showed the visitors in.

Ambassador Durell entered first, a tall woman in a navy coat, her chestnut hair pinned tight, who bowed with the practiced precision of someone who had done it ten thousand times. Behind her came the two Asterian princesses.

Crown Princess Thalia wore her blue hair in a severe knot. Her sister’s crimson hair hung loose, and she walked with the easy stride of a woman who had never once entered a room she did not already feel she owned. Neither of them looked remotely tired for having arrived two days early.

"Your Highness," Durell said. "Crown Princess Thalia and Princess Claudia of Asteria. We are grateful to be received."

"Ambassador Durell. Your timing is nothing if not memorable," Athea said, rising. "We had prepared for your arrival two days from now."

"Blame my sister," Claudia said, offering a handshake rather than a bow. "She wanted the extra time. I decided I would rather be bored here than sit in that damn palace at home, where every adviser within a hundred kilometers wants a seat at our table."

"Every adviser within a hundred kilometers wants a seat at yours too," Thalia said. "And they are all women with perfect manners, which is worse."

Athea indicated the chairs across from her desk. "You are welcome, of course. My only regret is that you have arrived while the Capital is somewhat occupied. Preparations for the Gala have a way of consuming everything."

"That is partly why we came early," Claudia said, settling into her chair like it was a bench at a dock. "Thalia thought we could be useful. I thought we could be somewhere more interesting than the palace at home. Neither of us expected your hospitality to include entertainment."

Athea kept her expression even. "Entertainment?"

"The palace is lovely," Thalia said politely. "Though we saw only a little of it. There was a male walking through your gallery this afternoon, escorted by two Royal Guards."

"Male?" Claudia turned to look at her sister. "I thought we agreed on robot. That was clearly a robot."

"We agreed on nothing," Thalia said, without taking her eyes off Athea. "You chose robot because it was less trouble." She paused, unhurried, as though remarking on the weather. "We found it remarkable."

Calyra, who had not moved from her chair, said nothing, though Athea felt her sister’s attention sharpen.

"There are many things in the palace worth seeing," Athea said. "I am pleased you found the gallery among them."

Claudia smiled at the answer without any sign of being satisfied by it. "You know, in Asteria we have a smaller male population than Lumina. With that said, what I saw outside, makes me think either you have a very sophisticated construct in a blue shirt, or you have something the rest of the Queendoms would very much like to hear about over tea."

"It is not a matter I am at liberty to discuss," Athea said.

"Not even between two future Queens," Thalia said, "whose mothers have always kept a professional relationship?"

"Especially not between two future Queens," Athea replied, and Claudia laughed out loud.

"I like her," Claudia announced to her sister. "I told you she would give us the polite wall, Thalia, and she has, and yet you look like it’s a personal failure."

"It is a personal failure," Thalia said evenly. She was watching Athea with a steadiness that reminded Athea unpleasantly of her own reflection. "But it can wait. We will be here for some days."

"For which you have my full hospitality," Athea said. "And my word that I will tell you whatever may properly be told, when it may properly be told."

"Then properly is doing a great deal of work in that sentence," Claudia said cheerfully, "and I will leave it to the diplomats to pull it apart. Ambassador, you had a formal schedule to ruin?"

Durell produced her slate with the bearing of a woman rescuing the conversation. "Your Highness, the Crown Princess hopes to discuss the Aegis Division during the visit, and the matter of the joint observation program the Council tabled last season. There are also the cultural arrangements for the Gala to confirm."

"Then let us begin with the arrangements," Athea said. "The Aegis Division will keep."

She guided the conversation through the Gala’s particulars, the seating, the lighting that had failed its diagnostic, the three musical commissions that had apparently become four. Claudia took the lead on most of it, asking sharp questions in a lazy voice, while Thalia listened and occasionally noted something down without a slate.

Once, when Durell paused over the seating chart, Thalia looked up from her notes.

"The escort today," she said, lightly, as though it had only just occurred to her. "Your guards. They were very attentive to him. Construct or otherwise."

"Crown Princess Thalia," Athea said. "You will have your answer at the proper time."

"And you will forgive me for noticing," Thalia said, "that you have now promised me an answer twice."

Claudia leaned back in her chair and grinned at her sister like a woman watching a fish find a hook. For a moment the two of them looked less like foreign guests than like sisters sharing a private joke, and Athea found herself mentally adjusting exactly how much of the next few days would be about the Gala.

When the formalities finally closed and the aide showed the visitors out, Calyra did not even wait for the door.

"Foreign princesses," she said. "On the same afternoon you found him in a gallery. In that same gallery."

"I noticed," Athea said.

"They will not let this go. The younger one especially. She counted your evasions."

"She did," Athea agreed. She gathered the reports, though she was no longer thinking about them. "Which means we will need to settle Zaeryn’s situation before the Gala, not after it. The sooner he’s out of here, the better."

"Or before your proper time arrives without you," Calyra said.

Athea was already reaching for the communication panel. "That is what concerns me."

"You still owe me the rest of that story."

"Tonight." Athea paused, her hand above the panel. "And I will ask him whether he wishes to stay, before anyone else decides for him."

Calyra studied her, and the corner of her mouth lifted. "Ask him," she repeated. "Not decide for him."

"I am learning," Athea said.