"Why do you give these to me? Don't you have a wish?"
Ven had been about to vanish back into the twilight, but he stopped and grinned. "Aw, guys like me don't get wishes, Princess. Not really. It's a story thing." And so a princess was enough of a storybook character to be eligible? "Plus my roof leaks. How many does that make?"
"Two hundred and forty-seven are made already." They had overflowed her bedchamber, and the more comely cranes now flocked in the solarium, hanging from the ceiling by strings. Aqua tried to estimate the thickness of the stack of paper in her hands. "With this, perhaps three hundred? Two hundred and eighty?" Her father would have given her paper, of course. In fact, he thought he was. But that seemed. . . easy, to Aqua. As Ven might say, it would never happen that way in a story. And it would not be his present.
"Here. I'll make it one more." He took a sheet of paper and started folding.
Aqua took another, and followed him. She didn't need his example any more - she made a neater crane than he did now - but she enjoyed the help. "You didn't answer my other question. Don't you have your own wish?"
"Doesn't everyone?" He made a fold, then another, until Aqua was about to either ask him again or give up. "I guess I'd wish to get out of here." After a moment, he looked up and added, "'Course, I'd take you with me."
"Get out of where?" He couldn't mean the garden, he could get out of that perfectly well on his own.
"This stinking city." Aqua blinked. The towers of the city had always looked rather pretty to her, especially at night with the lines of lit windows all up their sides. "Maybe you don't see it, Princess, in here with your guards and your money and your pretty garden. But your city's like a pit full of rats."
"But what would you steal, out there in the country?" Aqua teased, for Ven still insisted he was a thief.
"I'd find somethin'," he said. "But they'd find you out in the sticks, no sweat."
Bringing her along had been a polite afterthought, surely, but she played along. "So where would there be for us to go, that is outside the city's power?"
"They say the stars are other worlds."
Aqua looked dubiously up at the sky. "They say many things about the stars, rare sights as they are. But my tutors never mentioned such a thing."
"Well, they wouldn't, would they? Other worlds wouldn't take orders from the Emperor." He leaned back against the trunk of his stolen tree, smiling, as if worlds outside the Empire made a very happy thought. "There'd be someplace people could sleep safe at night, no gangs or Justicar's men. And beautiful - there would be this. . . this light, everywhere, it would be brighter than daylight, and so warm. . ."
Aqua had assumed the source of daylight was a secret of scholars, a thing so strange and far away that only the learned would know about it, or care. But here it was, shining in the dreams of poor children. Or maybe it was just Ven? "It would blind you," Aqua whispered. So she had been taught. "It would burn you. Your heart could not stand the heat."
Ven grinned. "I'm not afraid of the light."
"Step back quickly, your Highness," they heard, and then the rapid clank of steel.
Aqua was too startled to move at all. It was Ven who was quick, jumping from his seat at the base of the tree like a toy on a spring, to grab a branch eight feet above the ground. As fast as Triari Terra moved - Aqua hadn't thought anyone could sprint in full plate armor - Ven would be out of reach in time.
Then he slipped. Just a small slip - instead of leaping up from the branch, one of his feet slipped to hang a few inches below it. Terra grabbed his ankle and yanked. Ven sprawled on the ground, but even as Terra reached for him he was up, he spun. His left hand flailed, and hit Terra's chest, making for some reason a sound like scraping metal. Terra grabbed him, by the throat of his shirt and his left wrist, slammed him against the tree trunk, and twisted the knife out of his hand. Aqua stared at the crude dagger, lying in the dirt.
"Step back, your Highness. I have him." Ven spat on his visor. Terra banged him against the tree trunk again.
"Let him go at once, Triari," Aqua hissed. Ven had made almost no noise, and even Terra had not called the alarm. If the other guards came this would become impossible.
"No, your Highness. I am sworn to protect you from danger."
"From him? He is my friend, Triari. I am in more danger from the squirrels in this garden than from him." Ven actually looked offended at that.
"He is likely a thief, Highness." (Ven raised his chin and gave her a look. She could almost hear him say See?) "And he tried to kill a palace guard officer. That's worth the Emperor's necktie by itself."
"The what?" Aqua asked. Ven mimed being hanged, by way of answer.
Terra banged him against the tree again. "Quiet, brat," he snarled, though Ven had not spoken since he appeared. The shock knocked Ven's other hand open. A crumpled bit of paper fell to the ground. The crane shape was still recognizable.
Terra had seen Aqua's solarium. He looked from Ven's crane to the one Aqua still held. His face became very strange. "And planning to violate a princess of the Empire is treason. For that he will be taken up Cruce Tower, and hung by the wrists." Aqua blinked. This sounded oddly mild, for treason.
"That's disgusting!" Ven spat, breaking his silence. "I'd never!"
"It is also ridiculous. He can't be twelve years old."
"I'm thirteen!"
Did he want to be hung? "Clearly he has some disrespect for the truth," Aqua said. Thirteen would make him only a few months younger than she was. She didn't know many boys, but she knew they were not supposed to be shorter and skinnier than girls of the same age. "But he has never laid a finger on me, nor offered me the slightest insult."
"His intentions are clear. . ."
"Do you think I cannot recognize such?" Terra fell silent. "You have made certain comments, Triari, that I have fortunately failed to understand. But my father is an expert in rhetoric, perhaps he could explain them to me." Terra was a soldier, and no coward - he did not pale or blanch. But he still did not answer. "And speaking of explanations, how does one die from being hung by the wrists?"
"Thirsty," Ven said, grinning, feeling the balance tip the other way. "That's how. Takes about three days. Think they'd string us up side by side? 'Course, I'm a kid, they'd probably tie me loose, let me drop."
"There, Triari. You will see him escape one way or another."
"Well, sort of," Ven said. "Cruce's about sixty stories tall." Aqua flinched. The mercies of executioners were apparently small.
"My men," Terra finally said. "Several of them must have seen or heard something by now."
"They report to you, do they not?" Aqua pointed out. "They have been notably silent before."
Finally Terra gave Ven one more rough shake, and let him loose. "In the end, I swore to die to save her Highness, and death atop Cruce is still just death. I will be watching for you, brat. The next time I see you within these walls, I will kill you myself." Ven scoffed, brushed himself off, and scrambled up the tree. He did not say goodbye, but then, he often didn't.
Aqua bent down and picked up the crumpled, abandoned crane. "That one won't be decorating the solarium, I suppose," Terra said.
"It is the most precious of birds," Aqua snapped, and strode away.