[༺๑۩❆۩๑༻]
"Listen to other people tell their story, but don't believe them. Be skeptical, but learn to listen. You have to trust yourself and choose to believe or not to believe what someone says to you." ― Don Miguel Ruiz
The commissioners marshaled in by the Spanish stallions and Fjord mares, while suspiciously short of seventeen members, were not bandaged or battered, but there was proof that they had been tarred, feathered, and mistreated enough to make washing every ounce of gunk off their flesh inexecutable before docking.
"...What is this...?" Elsa's demand was feebler than a little girl's before it magnified in bass and volume: "Captain, what's the meaning of this?"
Corona's Captain of the Guard ― an ugly bullfrog of a man exceeding what could be presupposed as fifty ― slung his leg over his saddle and plonked down from his mustang, but he did so without answer. Standing tall on the end of her glare, the cuirassier chose to move in to look at her ― to dissect her ― to probe her ― and shed his helmet from his head to let her look at him. She noticed his singed hair first, his greasy cheekbones second, the bloodstained mustache third, and lastly, her hurricanic loss of self-control.
Arendelle's coastal commandant was about to speak before he heard a warble of whimpers and pants. He saw crystal heels come clambering down the steps in trips and wobbles, susceptible to breaking the ankles they shoed, and Queen Elsa's glittery cloak slithering after them faster than a snake.
"My God," ejaculated the Coronian captain. "She is a sorceress..."
Discerning the inappropriateness of his immersion, Archbishop Nidaros, who had broken the man's trance by stomping his crosier staff on the ground, turned red at the gills. "Coronian captain, lower your gaze; Admiral Øyvind, answer to your queen."
"Your Majesty, King Eugene's ship..." At the bottom of the portico that she was nearing, Admiral Øyvind nervously met her on the steps, but she zipped by him.
"Kai―"
―"Yes, Your Majesty." Kai was the only man who understood the conclusion she had reached. "Send for the equerry to get the queen's horse!"
Corona's captain held his helmet against his plackart as he watched Elsa's cape ripple behind her with the beauty of a starlit river. He turned his own toward hers when it dashed past him. "The king is not here...Your Royal Majesty."
Her jog died into a pigeon-toed stop. The heaving of her shoulders, along with the sound of her whimpering between huffs and puffs, did not.
The captain dug inside the neck of his breast plate and pulled out an encapsulated rotulus. "King Eugene is unharmed, but he will not be coming."
Her hands curled into the safety of her chest like injured caterpillars. While clergymen jabbered, Elsa's downturned eyes skated back and forth across the floor before she slued her head over to the man with tears trapped behind them.
"Her Majesty's other commissioners are being evaluated in her wharfside infirmary as we speak."
With all the momentum of a rock tumbling off a cliff, the velocity at which the day had turned could've given a cheetah whiplash:
―"Would Minister Slåke of Foreign Affairs, Minister Solheim of Finance, and Minister Morgenstierne of Children and Equality please explain to Her Majesty and Their Excellencies, in thoroughly clocklike recountals, what happened to all twenty commissioners prior to their arrival?"
From the stage-fright of being the holders of such galactic attention, the trio stood with their heads lopping like bellflowers, trying their damnedest to nerve themselves to deliver the explanation that they owed. The neo-classical treaty room they were sardined into, which was honeycombed with a coffered ceiling and starred walls, was overrun by journalists in bunads and knickerbockers, but the greater number watched them with crossed arms, high chins, and even higher expectations. Rows of housemaids could be seen from the doorway Kai monitored behind the ink slingers.
One green bonnet belonged to Gerda, who'd been following the concourse without being able to get a good eye in. "I can't see a THING with all these beanstalk hats." She hopped and stomped her foot down, wresting with her apron. "Oooh! I want to take a broom to them―"
The royal overseer grabbed the handmaid's elbow to corral her. "Just listen." He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief.
The fourteen Councillors of State, constitutionally known as the statsråds of the Statsrådet, surrounded the bearers of bad news in a rectangle of stern faces and regency cravats. Three lounged on the canapé sofa against the room's drapery, ten rocked back against the cerulean horsehair chairs, and the prime minister sat adjacent to the queen's private secretary at the treaty table.
"Because the following information is a capital concern," the prime minister prefaced, "the press is legally allowed to document your testimonies for print―"
A columnist popped between the maids like a bar of soap. Everyone rocked forward to glare at him. The prime minister waved towards the last available fauteuil. Embarrassed, the man tipped his hat with a woebegone grin before tip-toeing to his seat.
"...―as to give Arendelle's wharfside residents some enlightenment on what they saw," the interviewer resumed.
Like a sparrow sandwiched between two storks, the commissioner juxtaposed to him held his smile in fixed position before parting his teeth to speak: "..."
"Minister Morgenstierne?" The prime minister inclined his head.
Comparable to the others, the bruises on the thenars of the commissioner's palms were not deep enough to be classified as lesions, but his mental wellness had been an uninvestigated casualty.
"Minister Morgenstierne..."
"I'm sorry..." The interviewee chuckled as he turned his hat in a circle. "...My...throat it's ― you see ― it's still..." He discontinued, upon hearing in the outback of the assembly, a soft purling by the candelabrums.
Minister Morgenstierne tilted sideways to find the music's maker, as did most of the newswriters abaft him. What he discovered was Queen Elsa's back. He watched the bony wings of her shoulder blades flex and stretch under the skin as she dunked a ladle into a bowl of hot apple juice, cinnamon sticks, chopped cloves, and ginger root.
"Your Majesty," the prime minister nagged.
Elsa shakily tapped the spoon against the edge of a goblet until the last drop hit the brim. She set the silverware down with a clatter. When she looked over her sweaty shoulder, the commissioner was not granted a face glaciered in ice, but a sensitive, rosy thing moist with care, remorse, and consternation, as well as the compassion that had been amputated from politicians in parliamentarism.
As she turned and came forward with a cloud-walking grace, executives caressed their right bosoms and bowed. Minister Morgenstierne kneaded his wrists while the progressive click――clack――click――clack of her icicle heels closed in on his heartbeat. His concentration whizzed up from the queen's swollen ankles to her rouge lipstick, which tried to bend its upside down bridge into a smile. After unfolding the raisiny fingers in his fist, the goblet she held was placed in his palm.
"Please take your time, Minister Morgenstierne," the queen softly advised.
He blinked soddenly and looked down at the reflection that was rippling between the cloves.
Elsa squeezed his wrist in an endeavor to encourage him to hold the cup steady. "You don't have to explain anything to the council and I until you feel able." She dropped her head to see behind the mortcloth of hair palling his face. "And that doesn't have to be right now."
The prime minister flunked his eyes open to the queen's private secretary, who shook his head back at him.
"I...I cherish your goodness, Your Majesty." Minister Morgenstierne closed both palms around the goblet and bowed until his chin was in his jugular. "Her Majesty is...too kind for the tongue."
Although she still smiled, tucked into the navel of her forehead was a frown. For all of her seeming composure, her placid bearing was artificial. The limelight forced her to keep her subjects calm by decanting the equanimity of queenship in opposition to the hysteria she had paced the office with an hour ago, but inside, she was in shambles. Every acre of her body was afraid ― for Corona's sake, Eugene's, and her own.
"If Her Majesty shall permit me, what happened in Corona needs to be revealed for Her Majesty's welfare, not the king's."
She would've questioned the minister's phrasing, but her tongue had a pin in its cushion for claustrophobic reasons. The occasional pressman would peer into the conversation and arm his hand with a fountain pen to squiggle a scrawl of embellished imagery or hyperbolic statements about her behavior. She downed the unavoidability of media exploitation and transatlantic jeremiad taking today out of context. Permitting Morgenstierne to start the gabfest, Elsa collected her nerves at the treaty table. Her chair was latterly pulled out by Kai and dusted by his brush.
―"Corona has gone back on their oath, Your Majesty," blasted Minister Slåke from out of the blue. "King Eugene did not arrive in place of us because he vetoed the union before his patriots vandalized our vessels."
Elsa, with her hand still on her abdomen in mid-squat, immediately locked up in the hamstrings before she could even sit down. Kai, with his hand still on her chair in mid-leave, stared at the minister like he had just axed an infant.
"It's been said that he think you a traitor."
"What piffle is this?" The prime minister entered the monologue with loaded cannons. "A traitor, Minister―"
"Please." Elsa held up her hand in her almost arthritic state.
Minister Slåke loudened his voice to address any and every ear that would receive him, "The rhetoric was that Her Majesty drew him into a web of financial debt and emotional manipulation."
The animadversion fired up the crowd instantly.
Elsa blinked her eyes as if she would faint or vomit, but then shut them tight, shaking her head once to restore her equilibrium. Miserably, she spoke with no conviction, "Minister Slåke―"
"He was dismissive of our allegiance and your affections for him, Your Majesty―"
Outrage skyrocketed. Pens wagged faster.
"Minister Slåke―"
"And more, because what loyalty could be reciprocated by a crowned criminal―"
"Minister Slåke."
"..." His lips clamped over his glimmering teeth.
Elsa peeled her lids apart, which were canopied by a heartbroken frown, and glared at him with pink eyes. "...Please refrain from repeating false allegations made by the Southern Isles in my presence."
Minister Slåke dispatched a heartsick look ― the look men telegraph to a woman when they want to comfort and coddle them like a father does a child.
She battled to discipline her jittery hands and flaring nostrils. "Now I want you to tell me who told you about King Eugene's accusations," she asked it strongly, without belittlement, offense, or vindictiveness, as if nothing but total ethicality and accuracy was relevant here, but her showmanship was pitiful in the optical lenses of Minister Slåke.
"Journalist J. Abelard, Your Majesty." He adjusted his glasses. "He had not written any papers on it yet, but in his notes, he confirms that he was told by one of the king's ministers."
