'We should have gone out earlier.'

Ben drummed his fingers on the window ledge and tried not to sigh too loudly. It had started raining a few minutes ago, and raining was putting it gently. The promenading nobles in the back garden had begun to scatter, along with most of the guards. An encouraging testament to the iron will of Albion's protectors, but to their credit, a few had remained steadfast. The cardboard scaffolding of their hats (Albion's economic crisis had not quite disappeared, and besides, once the cloth's over it you can hardly tell) was starting to wilt a tad.
The library doors were shut, and Ben was glad of it. The sound of the bourgeoisie huddling into alcoves and jamming themselves into the kitchens was growing louder by the minute.

'It is pissing it down,' he added.
Page glanced at him from the corner of the room. She was sitting on the floor, notebook in one hand, heavy text in the other.

'It'll stop. If we'd have gone out earlier we would be stuck in it,'

All sympathy.

'We'll go when it stops,' said the Queen from behind a stack of accounting parchment. 'I need to finish this, anyway,' she added with an apologetic smile.

Hm. It wasn't as if Ben was loath to spend time in a library- after all, he had once been in the employ of Brightwall's and had on more than one occasion been reprimanded for tucking himself in a corner with a stack of maps and memoirs. He was, however, loath to count specks of dust when he knew there was a bloody good quiz going on in the centre of Bowerstone.

To clarify- there are two days of the week when something actually happens in Bowerstone. On the first, which is at the beginning of the working week, someone will get stabbed. Now. This isn't a tradition endorsed by anyone but it had been noted that every week someone does unfortunately get stabbed in the areas between the Market, Industrial, and the Old Quarter. It's unknown whether it's the work of a serial stabber, a flurry of copycats, or just incredible coincidence. It had become quite the trend among certain parts of the population to camp out in busy thoroughfares in the hopes of seeing something exciting. It had also been noted that if you do this, your odds of being the person who gets stabbed raise exponentially.
The second, less depressing event occurs midweek, and it's the stunning combination of avian antics and gentle trivia you never knew you wanted in the form of the chicken catching/pub quiz monstrosity down at the Cock in the Crown. In short, you get into teams and the landlord sets a chicken loose and you all have to scramble to catch it. The chicken's got a little roll of paper strapped to it. The paper's got a question on it. Get it right, your team gets a point. By the end of it, your team also gets a few bloodied noses.
Ben Finn five years ago would have been on the floor with the rest of them, but he was an older, wiser man now. Also, Page and the Queen refused to participate and he didn't have anyone else to form a team with.

Anyway, there's a prize for winning, and it's usually rubbish, but this week it was a rather fancy cutlass (benefactor unknown). Ben had no interest in winning the thing, but he had been informed that a few small-time criminals were planning to mug whoever did, with plans of fencing it afterwards. While it wouldn't be a particularly valuable coup for the crown, the Queen was all about keeping in touch with the community and wanted to go and sort it out herself. Ben had been looking forward to it all week. At this rate, they were going to be late. Admittedly, they had plenty of time to stop the theft and all that, but Ben wanted to go and watch the quiz.

'Go on your own,' said Page, 'we'll catch up.'

'Ah, love,' he said, 'that wouldn't be nearly as much fun.'

And after that, what could he do? His loves were busy and he didn't want to go alone. It was difficult to protest further without imparting a certain air of whininess, so he supposed he'd just have to wait. Occupying himself elsewhere in the castle would be unfulfilling at best and downright unpleasant at worst- of late Logan had been spending an uncomfortable amount of time outside of his room where Ben couldn't ignore him. It wouldn't be untrue to say that Ben's relationship with the former monarch was…strained. Ben was polite to Logan as far as he could muster at the Queen's behest; Logan was civil in return. Of course, that Ben and Page were courting his sister somewhat exacerbated any residual tension between the rebels and Logan, and Ben would be lying if he said he didn't take some small delight at Logan's discomfort when he and Page were at the dinner table. On the other end of the difficult relationship spectrum was Reaver. In light of a few creases in Albion's foreign policy, Reaver had set up shop in the western wing of the castle to consult more efficiently with the Queen. He was also allowing the common rabble the chance to talk to him directly about their grievances. Business hours are 9-5, come along, tell me how terrible your life is and let's see if we can't do anything about it, hm? Since he hadn't actually brought anything of note before the Queen, Ben figured that Reaver just fancied hearing about how miserable other people were. He was also relatively certain that he was scamming people into high-interest loans for fun.
It had been the morning Reaver had turned up without an invite that Ben had reconsidered his habit of popping to the kitchens in the early hours without bothering to put on a shirt. Of course he had moved in without asking the Queen, but wasn't this so much more convenient?
Reaver's stream of appointments usually petered out at about three in the afternoon, after which he would roam about the castle appraising the artwork, demanding to be fed, and rifling through court documents in equal measure. The frequency of Ben's interactions with Reaver was becoming ridiculous, and he didn't much fancy another.

He gave it another go, rain be damned.

'We could be fighting crime at this very second,' he ventured to the Queen. By this he meant the crime of alcohol existing that was not in his hand.

'Sorry, Ben, I'm carrying a lot of numbers here.' The scratch of her pen was erratic, flustered; if the paper was the man responsible for her troubles she'd be stabbing him in the face.
Two nights ago she'd come blazing into the bedroom, cursing the realm, cursing Hobson, cursing Reaver, before Page pulled her into bed and she stilled, held at Page's chest while Ben kissed her fingertips. They'd spent many a night at the Queen's side like this, after a botched trade or a confidante's betrayal. Albion's weight was immense, and unforgiving, and there were things she would never admit to them even as they hushed professions of love and confidence into her.
This time, it could be fixed. A small error in the shipping charts, a few frigates turned away from ports that were not expecting them, a wreck on a south shore due to sailors unfamiliar with the waters - no casualties but a literal boatload of cargo to be salvaged. Hobson should have found it and failing that, it should not have left Reaver's desk. Of course, the salvage crew would be Reaver's. The profit would be Reaver's. A happy accident for him.
The Queen had spoken to him, of course, steps heavy, voice tight, as he offered her the wine from her own kitchens.

It had slipped his notice.

Ben ran his fingers over the Queen's forearm and kissed her head gently. Her hand was trailing ink over the table's surface.

'Sorry,' he said, 'I'll shut up.'

Page looked over at them.

'Do you want to do something useful, Ben?' she said, propping her books open on the floor and getting to her feet.

'For you, Pagey? Absolutely.'

'Find these for me.' She handed him a page of her notebook. 'Make notes if you can.'

He took a cursory glance at the list. Five or so book titles in Page's neat script, underlined. She'd also doodled a little picture of the Queen's dog in the margin. Aww.

'What are these, then?'

'There's been a few reports of people being savaged up near Brightwood. Really nasty stuff. At first they thought balverines were to blame but the injuries are… inconsistent with balverine maulings. I found the titles of some books on fauna local to the area- I'm not even sure they're here, to be honest. But have a look.'

Book-finding. Oh, he could do this. During his employment in Brightwall he'd had nigh on the whole library in his hands at some point. He knew seven systems of archiving and this hadn't been relevant in over a decade but by the gods these ladies were going to be more impressed with him in the next five minutes than they had been in the entire six months of their relationship so far. They would swoon.
'I can do that. Er, what's the cataloguing system for this place?

The Queen snorted. 'Oh gods, you'll be lucky. I don't think this place has been in any sort of order for fifteen years.'

He took a gander around, and yes, it did look like someone had sneezed the books onto the shelves. A minor setback. Hold fire on the swooning.

'Have fun,' Page said, as she took a seat next to the Queen, tidying some of the papers the monarch had thrown about in her displeasure. The Queen wrinkled her nose and murmured an apology, at which Page was swift to shush her. Page was exceptional in her infinite ability to know exactly which little thing you need to make life a little less shite at any given moment. Ben watched them work around each other for a short while. But it was still raining, and he had work to do.
The first book was actually relatively painless by virtue of being at Ben's exact eye level and bound in an attractive purple-gold fashion. With a triumphant smirk and a bit too much swing in his hips, he retrieved it and slid it over the table to Page. She didn't melt, but she did quirk an eyebrow, and from Page that was probably the best he could hope for.
After a little look around the room, it was evident that that one had been somewhat of a fluke, and he was actually going to have to try for the rest. The Queen pointed him in the direction of a seriously dodgy looking ladder, and off he went to peruse the high shelves. After five minutes he had learned some incredibly valuable life lessons, such as 'if a ladder looks dodgy, don't get on it if you don't want to be grabbing wildly at the shelves when it threatens to pitch you off every thirty seconds' and 'seriously, don't, you'll nearly break your neck if you get a bit cheeky and dare set foot on the top rung'. This exciting activity went on for a while, and Ben actually managed to wrangle a copy of It Stole My Face! One Hundred Cautionary Tales from a distant shelf. Page's other requests were nowhere to be seen, so he struggled down to solid ground, flipped open the book he'd found and started taking notes. Inspiring reading, really, full of little vignettes from people who were for some reason or another missing their faces but were still alive and as well as you can be without it. The causes were manifold yet equally disturbing - balverines, hobbes, occasionally children. Chapter titles: 'the famous faceless of Albion', 'It could be worse, but not much', 'It won't help now, but here's what to avoid next time'.
Ben was rather wishing he hadn't discovered this trend and had started making a list of places to avoid when Page came up behind him and tangled her fingers in his hair.

'Hmmm,' she said, leaning over him and looking at his work, 'what are you reading about?'

'How we can never leave Bowerstone ever again.' He put the book down and craned his neck to kiss her cheek. 'I would absolutely hate to see you get your face chewed off. What a waste.'

She laughed. 'As would I. Alright, come on.'

'Mm?'

'Ben,' said the Queen from behind them, deserting her station and chucking her pen over her shoulder, 'it's stopped raining.'