Ok, should be back to a more normal posting schedule now that I'm back to school and I'm not in the middle of a fandom week. Enjoy guys.
Emma walked into her council chambers the next day and to her utter surprise Cora was not there. She looked around suspiciously for the woman. Why would she miss this meeting? They were going to discuss the repeal of the magical ban today, which was totally something in Cora's best interest to preside over. And that woman did not miss out on something that was in her best interest.
She stepped back out the door and looked around. A page boy turned the corner at a run. Perfect. She called for him and was met with Henry's hazel eyes. Even better.
"Are you on an important errand right now?"
The small boy shook his head. "Cook sent me to give a message to the Quarter Master, but that can wait if her majesty needs me."
Emma nodded. That wasn't a vital message, probably just the old cook wanting to know the updated count of people in the palace that she had to feed. "Go to Regina and get her for me, please. Tell her I'm in the council chambers and that her prompt appearance would be wise."
The boy nodded and ran off again.
Something about this didn't sit right with her. Cora was always ten minutes early at least, if not more. And she still hadn't showed up and the meeting was due to begin any minute now. She looked back at the closed doors to the council chamber and frowned. What if…?
She closed her eyes and reached out for her magic after a quick look around to make sure no one was around to see her. The magic responded more easily this time, doing her bidding after only a few attempts. It flowed from her hands towards the council chamber and stopped. Well, that felt like a barrier, but Emma had no idea if that was what the barrier felt like before. For all she knew it could be one of Cora's making. She needed Regina to look over everything to make sure that the wards on the chambers still existed and that the room was safe to speak freely in.
She stayed in the hallway waiting for her wife. She knew nothing of real import would be discussed by her councilmen until she actually entered the room. It didn't matter if they had saw her come in and almost immediately depart, she could make up an excuse for that easily enough if the wards were broken and Cora was listening in. She cursed herself for not asking Regina about the wards the night before, but she had been too focused on the copies of the contract and their distribution. She supposed that there were worse things to be distracted with.
Regina showed up a few minutes later. She looked at Emma questioningly. Emma stepped forward and hugged Regina lightly and whispered in her ear.
"Your mother isn't here and I'm suspicious. Can you look over the wards on the room just in case?"
Regina stepped back from the hug and nodded. "Of course, darling, nothing would make me happier." She smiled as if Emma had just asked her to eat a bar of chocolate instead of make sure their safety was intact. Emma had to admit her wife was a wonderful actress when she really tried.
Regina walked into the room with Emma right behind. Almost immediately her eyes glazed over as she walked to her own chair, the one that Emma herself had been occupying in the face of her mother's takeover of the chair at the head of the table. Emma sat down in her rightful chair and sighed. She didn't think such symbolic things would mean so much to her when she was Queen, but right now they were almost like a safety blanket.
She cleared her throat and looked at the men. "Sorry about the delay, I figured that Regina should be with us today since we are repealing a major law and both Queens should be present for such an occasion to make it all the more official."
They all nodded like they accepted this answer without question, but she saw more than a few glances at her wife with questioning eyes. She reached out and gripped one of Regina's limp hands on the table and looked over everyone.
"Now that our guest is gone from the council meetings, I want you to know that this changes nothing." The significant look she shot them was enough to make all the men look at Regina once more. They knew something was up now. "But why don't we start first with normal business. I suspect that the law repeal will take some time, of course, and we don't want to get behind on anything."
The men nodded and started on their normal reports. Emma half listened while keeping an eye on Regina. Her facial expression hadn't changed. Emma didn't know whether that was a good or bad thing, maybe it was just neutral and Regina was still looking. She wondered how long it took to survey a ward on a room of this size. If Regina wasn't done soon the councilmen were going to run out of things to talk about and Emma would have to find some way to distract them further.
She cast one more look at Regina before launching into a discussion with Lord Rochester about the prices of grain just to make the time stretch out longer. The grain prices were fair for the middle of winter and she was well aware of it. She just hoped that Cora thought her stupid enough that she really didn't know what a fair price was.
Finally, after the grain conversation had died and Emma had started up a new discussion with Lord Roderic about the soldier's pay Regina came back to life and Emma relaxed just a little bit. She looked over at the other woman and cocked an eyebrow.
"It's safe. There were traces of her mage's magic, but from what I could tell they didn't manage to break the wards, only probe them. No other spells have been laid. The room still remains secure."
Emma truly relaxed back into her chair now. "Thank the gods." She saw Regina swallow hard and sat up just a little bit.
"It may be a bit early to thank them now. Now there's the question of what did my mother deem more important than this meeting?"
Emma sighed and put her head in her hands. "Is there any way to find out?"
"No, if it's more important than a key step to get at the diamonds she will have covered her tracks well enough."
"Of course not. That would be much too easy, wouldn't it?" She looked up at her council members. "I want you to send out inquiries anyway. Need I even say they need to be discrete inquiries? I think you're all wise enough to know what happens if we aren't discrete in this matter. Likely we won't come up with anything, as Regina said, but that doesn't mean we should stop trying. Quite frankly I'll be a little suspect if we do find anything, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it." Emma sat up straight again. "Now, onto business. Lord William, what have you found out about the particular law in question? How broad is it. I do believe everyone knows the implications, but the devil is in the details with laws. I can't recall ever actually reading the law itself, only the surely bastardized interpretations of it in my lessons."
"It's a bit more wide ranging than it's actually thought to be. Your grandfather was very…adamant that all traces of magic be eliminated from the kingdom, to the point of declaring one of the subsections of the law to be the disposal of any and all children born with magic or suspected of being born with magic."
"Gods above," Emma breathed out. "Leading with that might just boost the repeal's popularity, no one likes to see children dead."
"Indeed, the law gave the king a great deal of extra powers that he saw fit to have to 'defend against magic and its evil.' During the first few years of the ban he used them constantly, jailing people suspected of magic for nothing more than sneezing really. He'd seize their property as well to inspect for magical objects and then when the person in question was proven innocent would return nothing. If the law hadn't been so popular it might have caused an uproar. But after a few years he was distracted by other things and the few people with magic who hadn't fled the kingdom had gotten the message and did not advertise their abilities."
Emma's stomach turned at the knowledge of what her grandfather had done. She'd never met the man, but she'd always imagined a kindly old man when she was little. When she had gotten older and had learned about his rule in her lessons, she had been disillusioned. No one who ruled a kingdom could truly be kindly, but this, this was even worse than she thought.
"Will it be much work to make sure that literally every single one of the powers that were instated in the law are repealed along with it?" Regina spoke up, face a shade paler than normal.
"No, it shouldn't be as long as the repeal is written up systematically following the original law. It will take a day at most to complete. The law itself is rather extensive, almost a book as they all seem to be."
Emma nodded, she'd seen the huge tomes upon tomes that contained all of the laws of the White Kingdom in the library. There was a special room just to house them all. Emma was rather sure that there were books filled with laws that weren't followed anymore because they were forgotten by people and ruler and probably a fair number of laws that said and did the same thing for the same reason. It didn't help that each law was almost a book in and of itself, trying to account for literally every contingency.
"Good, good, there will be no mention of children being killed in this kingdom again if I can help it." Emma shook her head. She was infinitely glad now that she hadn't met her grandfather. She had a feeling they would have gotten along even less than she and her mother had at the end.
"What of the peasants, how have they responded to the news?"
Lord William nodded, pleased. "Well, your majesty, when they realized that there is to be another option for steady work with better pay they jumped at it. Not everyone wants to be a farmer or in the army, nor do they have the skills to be a craftsman. It's a good middle ground for them. They're, of course, a little wary, but that's nothing time will not fix. It's nothing that will stop the repeal."
"Good." She looked at the papers in front of her and sighed. "Gods know if the parents of the children within the kingdom now aren't worried about starving, perhaps their children can learn a trade, maybe even get some education instead of working the fields. It does benefit everyone. Though the farmers that remain will need incentive to do so, more land, better compensation, something of the sort, we can't have everyone running off to the mines. Something will have to be thought of at a later date, though the trade contracts with the Dark Kingdom will help us some."
Everyone around the table nodded in agreement.
"A few of you start brain storming ideas. The rest of you work with Lord William to draft the repeal. I will read it over when you are finished at tomorrow's meeting. Lord Roderic, I leave you in charge of finding someone who will start the process of making the mines safe. I don't think I need to stress to you how vital it is that you do so quietly, but also find someone who has a good reputation for such things. The last thing we need right now is a mine collapse."
The men nodded again.
Emma stood for the table. "And I do believe that is everything for the day, gentlemen. If there is something that needs my immediate attention you know where to find me." Regina rose and stood beside Emma as she nodded her farewell. They exited the room quickly and walked towards their rooms.
Emma shut the door behind them and turned towards Regina. "What do you really think your mother is doing?"
Regina sighed and walked over to their couch, tugging on the hem of her shirt. "If anything, I would say that the way you worded your contract yesterday has put a kink in her plans and she's trying to find some sort of contingency. What that contingency is, I can't be certain. She has to protect us against other armies and her own can't attack us, but that still leaves a great deal open. There would be really no need to find all the contracts and burn them, not if there's an easier way. She's probably figured that we've made at least one copy. She should know I have the ability. Why search when you could hire a band of mercenaries?"
Emma paled at that. Could Cora actually hire a band of mercenaries and get away with that under the contract? Had she covered that? She had said attacks both foreign and domestic, wouldn't that cover mercenaries? She thought she had done well with that wording, but was it too broad?
"Could she really do that? Shouldn't that be covered?" Emma bit her lip hard.
Regina sighed. "Mercenaries, perhaps not, but if there is some way around the wording you laid down my mother will find it. She's very good at things like this. It said that she had to defend us, it never said she had to do it well. She could well hire the mercenaries, send her weakest soldiers after them with terrible orders knowing they would be killed, and that would cover her obligation. She could sit back and watch us burn after that. Of course she would never make it that obvious, but it could be something along those lines, or it could be something completely different."
"Gods, just when I think I've gotten one step ahead of your mother, not even one step ahead, really, it's more like I just caught up with her, she goes and runs a mile ahead." Emma threw her arms up in the air and screamed quietly.
Regina hummed, a humorless little sound. "Welcome to being a monarch. There will always be those much more clever than you and you have to fight to keep up and keep your kingdom safe."
Emma walked over to the couch and flopped down. "Yeah, well, I don't have to appreciate it. All the other monarchs I met while growing up were all idiots. Why is it that when I'm actually Queen I find the ones that aren't idiots?"
Regina scooted over and drew Emma down to her lap and started running her fingers through Emma's hair. Emma relaxed slightly at the feeling, but her mind was still going in circles. Just for once she wanted to win, truly win and not have to come face to face with another problem three seconds later.
"I don't know, but that seems to be the way of things," Regina said finally.
Emma sighed and shook her head, dislodging Regina's fingers for just a moment. She stilled and Regina went right back to combing through her hair lightly. Emma closed her eyes and rubbed them with one hand. Gods. Just. Gods. She let herself lay there for a few long minutes, turning into Regina's stomach and breathing in the scent that was wholly her wife's own. They would survive. They had come this far, hadn't they?
She pulled herself up, gathered her things and set to work on another round of paperwork that had to be done, leaning into Regina. Regina grabbed a few sheets and set to work beside her. Yes, they would get through this. She had to keep believing that no matter how many times she got beaten down. She leaned over and kissed Regina on the cheek before settling in to read another report.
The magic repeal was done a little over a week later. It was entered into one of the huge books in the library and officially announced across the kingdom. Nothing had changed with the announcement, no magic users suddenly started casting spells left and right, but then again Emma hadn't thought that anyone would. She understood where they were coming from. She wasn't any more forthcoming with her magic either, and from what she had gathered, neither was Regina. They both wanted to be far distant from the conflict with Cora before they truly showed the extent of their powers. True love's magic would be obvious to anyone who knew what to look for, she was sure. And the peasants, well they didn't trust the repeal, and after reading the extent of the law, Emma didn't blame them. Perhaps when this was all over she and Regina could come forward with their magic, provide an example of how accepted magic was now, but that would come later.
For now, the entrance to the mines was being unblocked with the repeal, slowly but surely. Her grandfather and not wanted anyone in those mines, not even the smallest rodent it seemed from the reports of just how much rubble had been piled in front of any and all entrances, even the air shafts. Her soldiers were working quickly along with the expert that Lord Roderic had found swiftly and quietly as instructed. He had hired a team of stoneworkers to help him clear and stabilize the mines, the closest Emma's kingdom had to anyone that worked in a mine. They knew rock at least, so they were a suitable enough choice.
When the man had come to her originally she had instructed him to be very, very thorough in the inspection and subsequent safety improvements in the mine. She had shot him a significant look and then a look out beyond, in what she hoped was clearly the direction of the Dark Army. An understanding look had come over the man's face as he agreed to do just that, so Emma hoped that the real message had gotten across clearly.
Now, all there was, was to wait. The bulk of Cora's trade contracts would not start until the spring brought fairer weather. The mine was the only thing that could be worked on. Emma secretly hoped that the other woman would leave until the mine was ready to start producing, but she knew she wasn't going to get such a thing. Cora stayed, though her presence had become rarer. It pleased Emma as much as it unnerved her.
So she threw herself into work, as did Regina. Her first class of soldiers graduated with honors amongst the guard and she was on to training a new class of men. Emma could tell that Regina did not like the new group as well. Apparently the captain of the guard had given her the hard cases considering she had done so well with her first group. They were much lazier and taxed Regina much more, but she still came home with a satisfied, if exhausted look. Emma found the stories of idiotic trainees rather entertaining if nothing else.
And so a month passed in relative quiet, driving them even deeper into the heart of winter. Emma stood looking out on the kingdom from her room's window. The snow was piled high, the paths barely more than tunnels anymore. The only place where you could still see the ground were the training grounds and that was only because the men were assigned shovel duty as their warm up exercise. Something was going to have to be done soon about the piles of snow in the corners of the yard soon, but that could wait for another few days she supposed. When it got up to the tops of the walls then she would worry.
A knock sounded on the door behind her. She turned and looked over her shoulder for a long minute. Who even knew she was up? Or did they know she was up? She hadn't yet emerged from her rooms from the day, choosing instead to pass what little quiet time she had watching her wife from the window leading her recruits in a series of basic drills. It was soothing to a degree, watching the repetitive movements and observing her wife, face flushed with cold, surveying her men with intense focus.
The knock sounded again. She sighed and moved towards the door. Whoever wanted her had a good reason, or at least they should. If they didn't, she wasn't above a lecture and some glaring to get the message across, not when the mornings were the only time she truly got to herself, not when her rooms were her personal haven away from court life.
She opened the door to find the man who had been hired to ensure the safety of the mines, Joseph. He looked at her with the bright silver-grey eyes of those from the northern kingdoms and shifted his burly frame slowly, somehow conveying more nervousness in the slow movements than if he had fidgeted constantly. He cleared his throat and spoke after bowing low.
"Sorry to be disturbin' you, your majesty, but I needed to talk to you as soon as possible. It couldn't wait until the council meetin'."
Emma looked him over, seeing sincerity in his eyes and stepped back. "Come in then."
He ambled past her and stood, waiting for her to show him where to sit. She led him to the group of seats a little farther from the fire than her favored couch. She motioned for him to sit as she walked around the room, gathering two glasses of water and casting simple spells about the room that Regina had taught her to make sure the room had not had listening spells cast on it. When she found none she went back to her seat and sat, handing the other man the second glass. She sipped at her own glass and waited for him to speak.
He took a great swallow of water before clearing his throat again. The man set the glass down on the table between them and looked up at Emma once again. "I know you wanted me to be…thorough with the safety inspection of the mines, and I thought that you would want to know that a new man showed up the day before last, claimin' he was to help me. He was evasive when I asked him if you had sent him. I went along with it until he started to hurry along the men, not quite cuttin' corners just yet, but not doin' the job as you specified. He's not from you, is he?"
Emma shook her head and sighed. She should have known Cora would try something soon. She had been much too silent as of late. "No, no he is not." She debated for a long minute about what to do with the man now in her mines against her will. "Send him to me, say I have summoned him."
Joseph shook his head. "He didn't know I'd come here. I'm not sure I want him to know. He's not right, your majesty. I work with a good bit of men, they're not all there in one way or another, you see, but this one is different. I don't like the feelin' I get from him."
"Then I'll send a missive back with you to my soldiers who are there, they'll be able to give him the message and he'll think nothing of it."
He nodded at that. "That'll do well."
"Good, good." Emma got up and went to her desk, drawling out a piece of her stationary from one of the locked compartments. She scribbled down continuing orders for her troops at the mine and a few added lines about how she wished to see the new mine safety director at the palace as soon as possible. That would get the job done. The other man would be there in two days at the latest. She folded up the paper and sealed it with wax quickly, enjoying the feeling of pressing into the soft substance for just a second before pulling away.
Emma walked over again to Joseph and handed him the missive. "Thank you for coming, Joseph. You were right to do so. In the future if I send anyone to the mines I will send you a letter informing you of such. Anyone else who shows up, tell me of them immediately. Lord Roderic picked the right man for this job. You've done an excellent work so far."
The man smiled at her and stood. "Thank you, your majesty, I try." He took the letter from her and tucked it into an inner pocket close to his heart. He patted it once and continued. "I'll make sure this gets there safely."
Emma nodded. "Thank you. Just make sure you yourself get there safely. My kingdom is not within the safest of times, you understand."
He nodded in return. "Of course, your majesty."
Emma escorted him from the room and sighed as the door shut behind him. Now the only question was, what was she going to do when the man actually got to court? He obviously was Cora's man and Cora was going to know if the man did not report back to her or if he was ejected from the mine by her orders. She needed another game plan for this. She thought hard for a few minutes, returning to her window. Regina was no longer in the yard, or at least where she would be visible. She might be off taking a water break or exchanging out weapons, wooden swords for practice battle axes or something of the like.
An idea dawned on her just as she caught her first glimpse of Regina again. She strode from the window and opened her door. She walked quickly towards the library.
The librarian greeted her with just a hint of surprise. Emma hadn't done any of her own research for anything since becoming Queen. Part of it was resentment of all those days she had slaved away for nothing for her mother, part of it just the lack of time. And maybe there was just a hint of bitterness that her mother was right, there were a great and varied number of things that had to have reports done in order to make the most informed decisions. Which she had known, but she was right about the lower level nobles being the ones to actually do those reports. It was of no real matter now.
"Your majesty," the older woman said, standing fluidly from her chair and curtsied. "What brings you here today?"
"I need books on the diamond mine. Please tell me my grandfather didn't have those destroyed as well." She prayed to the gods for a long minute while the woman thought. Part of her grandfather's anti-magic law had outlawed any books that had to do with magic, and had forced the burning of any books that were found.
"I'm not exactly sure," the old woman said after a long moment. "The books about the mine that would still exist would have to be ones that did not mention the magical properties of the diamonds. Almost all of them would have, after all, it's the most fascinating part of the mines."
"I just need anything, anything at all. Mine manager's logs would work. I just need to know something about where they should start digging." Emma's stomach sunk. The woman in front of her always knew where everything was, to the most obscure little piece of paper. This didn't bode well for her search.
"Well, if there is anything left, I know where it would be. Give me a few minutes, your majesty, the records are squirreled away so the general populace can't get to them. At least they had the sense to keep up the organization system or it might be days before I would get back to you."
Emma nodded her understanding and the older woman walked off. She walked over to a couch and sank down, listening to the quiet bustle around her. No matter if there were fewer people in the palace know, information was still a drawl and was always needed. She felt eyes on her and hoped none of the people watching her were Cora's. The odds of that were probably slim. Someone in the room probably reported to her in some capacity. It was a good thing she'd had the presence of mind to cover up what she really wanted to do with the records. The librarian was trustworthy, but gods knew how well sound traveled in a quiet library.
Emma twiddled her thumbs for a good long while before the librarian came back, a few cobwebs coating the skirts of her dress, holding a thin book, yellowed with age. Emma stood quickly and walked over to meet her. The older woman set the book into Emma's hands carefully.
"That's all I could find on first look. There's a great deal down there, if you would like I can keep searching, but that seems to be a manager's log from the last few years of the mine's operation. I don't know if that will help you in what you're looking for, but it's something to start."
Emma bit the inside of her lip. No, she was quite sure that she could get what she wanted out of this book if she tried hard enough. She just had to do it quickly, Cora's implant safety inspector would be there soon. "Go ahead and keep looking when you can. The more information the better, but I'll see what this little book contains. Oh, and while you're down there, if you see anything at all about magic that wasn't burned, bring it up. There's no need to keep books of information from the public anymore. If there are spell books, though, make sure Regina says they're ok for public consumption. Information is good, another dark wizard on our hands isn't quite so great."
The woman nodded. "Of course your majesty."
She turned to go. "Thank you for finding this," she called over her shoulder and she walked from the room.
She walked as quickly as was seemly back to her room. When she was back on her couch she opened the book carefully and started to read. The writing was barely legible in places with misspellings and words she didn't think existed scatted throughout. Obviously whoever the mine manager had been, he hadn't been very well educated, only well enough to get by it seemed. Emma's head started to hurt after only a few pages of trying to decipher the words in front of her, but she pushed on. She had to find what she was looking for.
Halfway through, she found the words she'd been looking for. In the man's stilted script read 'pulled team from branch C, ran dry six months ago, no exploratory digging has yielded any results, probably run dry.' Emma sighed and closed the book. Thank the gods. She massaged her temples and sat back. Branch C, she would assign the man to oversee that branch and then, even if he did deem it 'safe' and started to mine he would find nothing. Meanwhile her man and the branches that actually would yield diamonds would still be working at a slower pace. It wasn't fool proof by any means, but it would be something as long as the other man didn't get impatient and call the branch dry too early. Perhaps she would throw in a few tidbits about it being a special assignment for him, that she had read in old mine logs that the branch had shown signs of a huge vein about to open up. That would keep him busy for at least a little longer she supposed.
She set the book aside on the end table. She would hide that later. It wasn't going to be out of her sight for a good long time, at least until the deception had passed, or until her man actually produced diamonds in his own sweet time. She idly thought about burning it, but decided against it. There could be other useful information in there that she might need. For now she would just hide it in her magically warded cabinet as with everything else.
She sighed heavily. When would be the tipping point? When would she ever be more than one step ahead of Cora? Was she ever one step ahead of Cora? It certainly never felt like it. Cora still had her grand plan, whatever it may be, and Emma was only just keeping up with the little tidbits Core felt like revealing. The older woman had to be miles ahead of her. No, she'd never been one step ahead at all. She put her head in her hands and just barely kept from cursing the world.