"Cap'n Westergaard! Sir!"

The illustrious captain of the Southern Isles Naval Forces turned to address the voice. His striking features lit up upon seeing his loyal first mate bounding toward him with great urgency.

"Ah, McMillan! Slow down, old chap! Where's the fire?"

"None, sir! Just wanted to inform you she's been hitched to the deck right and proper! Ready for your inspection!"

His prize was ready for his perusal. The captain broke out into a handsome smile.

"Excellent! I'll inspect her personally!"

He brushed past his shorter subordinate and elegantly descended down the steps to the main desk of his ship, Invictus. He had selected the name himself, knowing both she and he would never once be defeated on the open seas.

And certainly not by what lied motionless in front of him.

The Great Kraken moved not an inch of slimy skin as it sat draped across Invictus. Its multiple eyes were closed, several of them bloodied from where he had struck. It dared to attack his men and his beloved ship, so the captain personally dove into the dark depths and dueled the beast armed with only his shining sword.

The great creature of lore proved no match for his superior skills and intellect. In the end, he rose to the surface victorious. In the time it took his loyal crew to pull the beast in, he had taken a nice hot bath and re-dressed himself in his resplendent uniform, crimson like the proud flag of the Southern Isles.

As the infallible man walked up to the great head of the beast, the members of his crew immediately halted their work and applauded their captain. They whooped and hollered in celebration of his deeds.

But the always-humble captain held up his arms.

"Alright, boys, alright! Enough! I couldn't have done without you! Tonight, ales are on me!"

That only drew louder cheers from his happy men. Some of them even began dancing where they stood.

The captain walked up to the head of the Kraken, smiling widely and nodding his approval.

"Right after we take this beast back to King Westergaard, for the glory of the Southern Isles!"

Another roar of cheers. McMillan bounded down the stairs and back up behind his captain.

"But Cap'n! Should we be cheerin' so much? What if it wakes up again?"

The captain let out a mellifluous chuckle, shaking his head.

"Oh, my good man. There's no need to fret! Why, this beast is dead as a doornail!"

To reinforce that point, the captain gave the Kraken's head three good pounds from his fist.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

The captain started, turning toward the beast. Why, that sounded like wood, like knocking on a door! But that was impossible...

Knock! Knock! Knock!


Knock! Knock! Knock!

The man snorted, rising in a burst from his reading desk with a sheet of parchment stuck to his cheek. A loud knock resonated again and again through his small chamber.

"Prince Nicholas! Prince Nicholas!"

The man blinked and closed his eyes, trying to clear the haze from his vision.

"Co-Come in!" He half-yelled, half-yawned, pulling the page from his face.

The guard threw open the door and stood at attention.

"My prince! I've been sent to summon you."

Prince Nicholas Westergaard stared blankly back at the man. He was being summoned? What on Earth was going on?

"Summoned?" He asked before yawning again. "Summoned where?"

"The King has called together the Fraternal Council."

A council meeting? But Nicholas had checked with the King yesterday and no meeting had been scheduled. Only a very special case would constitute such a...

Suddenly, Nicholas knew why.

"Please inform the King I will be there shortly."

He reached up to touch his unkempt red hair sticking out at several angles. His stomach twinged with self-consciousness in front of the guard.

"I must...erm...prepare."

"Yes, my Prince."

Nicholas rose to close the door behind the guard as he left, turning his back to its wooden surface and blowing out a tired, tense breath. Did that really just happen? Had he really just been caught sleeping in the Royal Library? Again?

Not very prince-like behavior, by any stretch of the imagination.

His brother Haytham...King Haytham...would tell him he should have been found inside his bedchamber, where the weight of being a prince can be felt in the very walls. It establishes the status quo, he would say. It establishes them as the ruling family and ensures no one forgets it, he would say.

Well, hopefully this wouldn't get back to Haytham.

Nicholas crossed back to his desk and looked down at the tome that had served as his pillow. "Marvelous and Malignant Monsters of the Sea." Spots of drool littered the page on the Kraken.

He sighed and shook his head.

His great naval victory had been only a dream.

He shut the book and hastily returned it to the shelf he'd retrieved it from in the dark of the night before. He knew he didn't have much time. If what was happening today was what he thought was happening, then this afternoon would prove to be quite tumultuous, indeed.


Nearly an hour later, after bathing and dressing at speeds exceeding his comfort, Nicholas trotted quickly down the steps from his tower chamber to the Throne Room. A heavy satin sack was slung over the shoulders of his heavy crimson robes. He hoped he had filled the bag with as many of the Scrolls of Business as he would need. Nicholas had a sneaking idea about what this meeting of the Fraternal Council would be about, but he wanted to be prepared just in case. He had stuffed his sack with the Scrolls of Trade, of Maps, of Infrastructure, of History, of Inventory and, of course, of Laws.

And the lot of them hung from his back like a dead weight. The big scrolls were thick with the extensive historical records of the Southern Isles. In a way, Nicholas carried part of the weight of his kingdom.

Searing sweat trickled down his face as his body swam in the sweltering heat of his robes on a hot island morning. Nicholas began to question why he had even bothered bathing if he was just going to smell nasty all over again.

At least all of these swirling thoughts kept him distracted during his descent. Before he knew it, he had arrived at the bottom of the staircase. Reaching out a trembling hand, he threw open the door and stumbled into the Throne Room.

"Oi! If it isn't Good Ol' Saint Nick!"

"With his bag of goodies! We've been nice, Santy! Give us our presents!"

"Enough, you two. We're grown men here."

Nicholas leveled an icy glance at his brothers on the other side of the hall. Hendrick and Kendrick. The Twins. They were younger than him only by a year, but by the way they talked to him it was like they were all school kids in the Royal Yard again, pushing and shoving each other in the hot sand to see who would cry first.

They both stood a good inch taller than him too, well over six feet. They had the same red hair that all the Westergaard brothers were graced with but the Twins sported short-cropped brighter heads, almost like pumpkin heads. Just don't ever call them that when they're within earshot. They liked to call themselves enforcers out in the kingdom, but Nicholas knew that to be only a fancy term for their royal antics. The people of the Southern Isles looked at them like nuisances, Pretend Princes, but that didn't matter to them. They knew they had power over everyone in the kingdom and they loved it.

Nicholas decided to turn away from them and walked up the steps to his much older brother, Haytham Westergaard, King of the Southern Isles, who had graciously quipped at the Twins in Nicholas' defense.

He set his bag of scrolls to the side and kneeled before his brother.

"Your Majesty," Nicholas greeted, as was custom.

"We're all brothers here, Nick. Stand by my side."

Nicholas nodded and rose, bringing the scrolls with him up to the large, wide wooden podium at the scribes' post which would be used for unfurling the scrolls. As he stood to the King's right, he looked around the Throne Room, noting a particular oddity.

"Wait," Nicholas said. "Where's Roderick?"

"Indeed, I was just wondering the same," Haytham replied with poorly hidden annoyance.

The Twins broke out in a snicker like a pair of hyenas.

"Oh don't worry your kingly head, Hayth," Hendrick purred.

"He might be a little….busy….at the moment!" Kendrick cackled.

Haytham rose from his seat, his fists clenched.

"If the two of you have information you'd like to share, now would be a good time to be out with it!"

That just made the two cackle more. Haytham sighed, shaking his head. Nicholas knew his eldest brother's plight. He was charged with being King and having his youngest brothers for attendants. There was reason for that, but that didn't make it any easier on Haytham.

Finally, dispelling the Twins' banter, the front doors to the Throne Room burst open and the heavy steps of another man thundered in the hall.

"Get off me! Away with you, you buzzing knat!"

"But my Prince, you're in no condition-"

"I'm in perfect condition! Now, I said sod off!"

There was Roderick after all, indeed looking worse for the wear. He was batting away a Southern Isles knight, clearly the one Haytham had sent to bring him in from…..wherever it was he had been.

That was Roderick for you, Nicholas thought. Every family had a rebel and he was it. He had let his red hair grow long and curly until it hung to his shoulders. Today, it even stuck out in some weird angles. His usually pristinely groomed red goatee looked bushier than usual.

He also had a small stumble to his step. Nicholas sighed loudly and closed his eyes.

Not again….

"Heloooo, family!" Roderick shouted as he approached, spreading his arms wide in the air.

"And how are we all doing this fine, scorching morning?"

"A mite better than you, Lover Boy!" Hendrick cat-called.

"Indeed!" Kendrick followed up. "Did she take the tumble or did you?"

"Ahhhh, a pox on you, you jackals!" Roderick countered with a smile. "Make yourselves useful and bring me some wine!"

"You're not having another drop, brother," Haytham growled from his throne. "You're already late for the council gathering."

Roderick paused before the throne and gave a loose, almost slack bow,

"I do apologize, Your Kingliness," Roderick mocked. "I'll go to my corner now."

Roderick took his place to the right of the bottom of the stairs leading up to the throne and the Twins took their places on the left. Nicholas stood at the top of the steps, next to Haytham. He was the King's Scribe, but deep down Nicholas had wondered why Haytham had made him so. It put him in a position above his brothers and, in a way, Nicholas deduced that was a large reason why they mocked him so. Jealously could make even brothers snarl at one another.

It was just like the passage from Shakespeare Nicholas had read one night:

"Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy. It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on."

His thoughts were thrown for a loop when a strange smell crossed his nostrils. Nicholas gave a sniff. Was that….perfume? Coming from….

He looked down to Roderick and sighed before asking a question he really didn't want to.

"Who was it this time?"

Roderick threw his head back and gave his scribe brother a crooked smile.

"I want to say Sarah. Or Samantha. Wait….Scarlett? Meh, who knows?"

Nicholas' lips curled in disgust. How could he treat women so casually, as if they were objects? Then again, he resigned himself long ago to the fact that he would never truly understand Roderick. The jury was still out on whether or not that was a blessing or a curse.

"Now that we are all here….more or less….we must attend to the business at hand," Haytham continued from his throne. "The reason I have called you all here….is because French ships have entered our harbor."

"Ooh la la!" Hendrick called out.

French ships? Nicholas hastily pulled out the Scroll of Trade from his bag, set it on the podium and unrolled it, waving away the small cloud of dust that sprang out. He ran his finger down the most recent lines he had scribbled.

"But we're not due for trade with France today," Nicholas said. "I would have-"

"There is only one item they carry, Nick," Haytham interrupted. "Our youngest brother."

Nicholas looked up from the scroll, his face frozen. Even the Twins shut up now. Roderick was looking up at his eldest brother much more soberly and solemnly now.

"So you do know the weight of today after all," Haytham said tiredly. "I trust by now you've all heard what happened."

Roderick grunted. "Everyone across the seas has heard it. The youngest Westergaard, an attempted assassin of foreign royalty."

"But he still found a way to muck it up!" Kendrick cawed.

"Never could do anything right, that one," Hendrick followed.

"ENOUGH!"

Nicholas flinched as Haytham jumped from his throne, standing at his full imposing height. He looked down at his brothers with a kind of contempt Nicholas had not seen in quite some time.

"I ought to string the both of you up in the gallows for a night. Do you believe this to be a joke?! At best, our family appears a rabble that can't control its own kin. At worst, our great nation appears a predatory bully preying on other fledgling countries! This is a diplomatic disaster!"

King Haytham hung his head, blew out a breath and sat back down on his throne. The entire room was now eerily silent as no Westergaard brother quite knew what to say. They all looked at one another worriedly. Even the Twins made no sound.

Unexpectedly, it was Roderick who spoke up.

"Hayth, relax. He'll be brought before us and we'll take care of it. We'll give him a slap on the wrist, make an example out of him and soon enough the entire world will forget about this!"

"Arendelle won't," Haytham countered. "The burden now falls on us to make things right. And we shall."

Before anyone else could speak another word, the banging of the Throne Room doors opening silenced their tongues and drew their heads forward.

A group of men now trudged through the hall up toward the throne. One of them with hair more crimson than all of the others' was standing tall albeit bound in jingling black chains. Nicholas knew beyond a shadow of a doubt who he was. He had watched that face grow into its own for all of his life.

The brothers Westergaard stared silently ahead as Hans was led toward them.