A/N: I own nothing but the plot. Enjoy!
The dowager queen smiled darkly at the bound woman before her.
"What a pretty face you have," Amphitrite cooed.
Her red painted fingers clutched Calypso's chin as Amphitrite inspected the young woman's face. This girl was just a distant relative of Amphitrite's, from a branch of her grandfather's brother's descendant. The whole family had always viewed the weakest of them not as relatives, but as tools to gain more power and influence. Therefore, Amphitrite had no feelings for the girl lying at her feet.
Calypso whimpered, but she was gagged. Her dark eyes were now half-listless. In the beginning, those dark eyes had stared with hatred at her captors, but three weeks in dark, solitary confinement and starvation had rendered Calypso more obedient.
Amphitrite had one of her ladies-in-waiting pass her a sheathed knife. The dowager queen smiled and unsheathed the knife. Calypso's eyes tinged with fear as the dowager queen started playing with the blade of the knife against Calypso's throat. If Calypso made a single move, the blade would pierce through her tender skin.
Bored after a little while, Amphitrite dropped the knife. "You know what to do, don't you, my dear niece? Otherwise, the receiving end of this knife will be you. After I let my men play with you, what pieces of flesh would be left from your body? Would you even have a body to be buried?"
Calypso's fearful expression reflected in the dagger.
"Your Majesty, the stewards from the household management department have come to request an audience." A maidservant announced.
"Oh?" Annabeth put down her ink pen. "Have them come in."
Five men and women came into the queen's study. As soon as they made their customary greetings, a bundle of papers were tossed at their feet by the cold-faced queen.
"Why don't you explain these discrepancies?" A lazy voice from the queen asked.
The head steward picked up the nearest document and paled. All along the neat rows of numbers were red circles and marks, carefully delineating where there were discrepancies along the financial budget. Everyone kneeled on the ground.
King Percy may have been too busy to oversee the management of the palace household budget, but she, Queen Annabeth, certainly had the time and expertise to go through the years of budgets. Perhaps Annabeth could turn a blind eye to the small embezzlement here and there of a few silver coins. Calculators and Excel hadn't been invented here after all. But when her keen eyes landed on clear holes where hundreds of gold coins disappeared without logical explanation, Annabeth had to step in.
"Tell me, how much does this cask of tea cost?"
Playing the part of very tyrannical queen, Annabeth dropped her teacup in its saucer with a very audible clink. The people shuddered at the sound.
Annabeth continued as the people kneeling didn't dare to make a peep. "A small cask of this jasmine tea is twenty gold coins? And the wood that was used to repair the stables. Why is it so expensive?"
The head steward mumbled. "Your Majesty may not know this due to being queen, but this tea is of the highest quality imported into Kiran and as a result, is twenty gold coins a cask. Normal people wouldn't even be able to taste this tea in their lifetime. The wood for the stables is sandalwood and naturally costs three gold coins a pound."
Annabeth clicked her tongue in annoyance. Was this steward saying that she was ignorant of market prices as a wealthy person?
"Bring the people in." She ordered.
Four men and women gathered inside, glancing at the stewards kneeling but making no comment.
"You there, tell me how much does a small cask of this tea cost?" Annabeth asked.
"Your Majesty, jasmine tea costs ten gold coins in a small cask. Judging by how Eldoris palace buys the tea in bulk, the price can even be bargained down to eight gold coins." A female merchant replied.
"And what should the stables be constructed out of? Sandalwood or oak wood?"
"Oak wood, Your Majesty."
Annabeth smiled, a devastatingly beautiful but deadly smile to the head steward who had replied that the tea was twenty gold coins.
"Tell me, good sir, are the people of Eldoris palace so horrible at their duties that they cannot properly pay the right prices? Are you so blind that you cannot see what color coins are? Or are you so incompetent that you have been scammed by the tea merchants or construction workers?"
At these damning words, the stewards could only bow their heads lower.
The head steward lifted his head up and scowled. "Your Majesty is of noble birth, and the coffers of Eldoris are overflowing. What do you know of the hardship of commoners?"
"Impudent!" One of the merchants brought in yelled at the head steward.
Annabeth smiled darkly. Hardship of commoners? The original Kiran princess was of half commoner birth and had suffered plenty at the hands of irresponsible royals. But that didn't mean she herself was an irresponsible person.
"Eldoris' coffers are overflowing? And so you feel you can help yourself to gold that could be used to better the lives of the people working here? What about using the leftover gold to repair the living quarters of the servants? I believe the request was put in two years ago yet I hardly see anything being done about it. Not to mention the quality of their clothing has gone down steadily."
Annabeth glanced over the clothes of the kneeling stewards. The quality of those embezzling stewards' clothing was remarkably richer than the others in the same position. In fact, their arrogance at not being caught stealing had led to their overconfidence and thus bragging about wearing clothes that nobles could wear while their peers suffered.
"Lucy, what is the punishment for stealing?" Annabeth asked.
"Your Majesty, twenty whiplashes." Lucy replied.
"Then, so shall it be. Throw them out afterwards. You four can replace them if you'd like." Annabeth said to the merchants who had given her the correct market prices.
"You can't do this! I've been here for years! My family has served the Eldoris family for generations!" The head steward yelled out, thrashing about as he was being dragged off. "The king will hear about this!"
"Ah, thank you for reminding me then. Go and check the rest of his family members who are working to see if they have sticky hands. If they do, give them the same punishment." Annabeth shook her head. "If your family had been working here for years, then where is the sense of loyalty?"
It wasn't as if the Eldoris staff were paid little. Working for the royal family was a position full of esteem and their pay reflected as much. Not to mention there were yearly bonuses. King Percy had been a generous king to his staff.
In a little while, the report of the queen beginning to sort out the palace staff reached the king's ears.
"Who's the one who disrespected the queen? Give him an extra ten whips. Ah, and don't have them be whipped in the dungeon. Have them be whipped in the public square where everyone can watch and learn from their mistakes." The Eldoris king ordered before turning his attention back to the documents. "Then lock them up to find out what they did with the extra money."
"It seems the people I sent over were useful then," Baron Leo Valdez said with a smile.
It was the baron who had initially discovered that some of the palace staff were skimping when the baron was reconstructing Dahlia Palace. But the king hadn't done anything about it yet, intentionally showing it to the queen's eyes to see what she would do. And the queen had passed with flying colors.
"Indeed. I am grateful for your help," said the king with a twinkle in his eyes.
Word soon spread out among the palaces as the cries of pain from the servants who had stolen filled the air. In Marigold Palace, the dowager queen flipped over a table. Though the king had given her a budget fit for a dowager queen, Amphitrite relied on the extra money sent over from these stealing servants to fund her bribery and assassins in order for the spending not to be shown on official documents. Now, where was she supposed to find another source of money?
Another rumor soon spread that the queen had been lenient on the head steward who had insulted her, but it was the king who had ensured extra punishment upon hearing the insult. The queen became kind hearted and magnanimous for forgiving the head steward's irresponsible words when such words could result in execution. It was clear that disrespecting the queen meant disrespecting the king.
But Annabeth knew none of this when she was preparing for the dowager queen's birthday banquet.
Lucy definitely had the best hands out of her personal maidservants, Annabeth felt. Her curls were tamed into a waterfall of golden waves hanging on her back. Another section of hair was pinned into a bun with the special rubies and pearl hairpin set into it.
Hidden in the folds of her dress was the dagger that Percy had given her. Three days ago, the king had come over and discussed some things in private. It had made Annabeth raise her eyebrows at the time. How far did the king's extensive network of information and spies go to predict what would happen?
No doubt, she herself was being kept under constant watch. But in a way, Annabeth was relieved. She didn't know how many attempts on her life had been made and were stopped by the king behind the scenes.
"Are you ready?" The king had come in, poking his head in the doorway.
Annabeth suddenly had a memory of her ex-boyfriends patiently waiting for her to be ready for their dates. It seemed that the men in this historical period were the same.
"I'm ready!" She called out.
Both of them inspected each other up and down, or at least Annabeth felt they did. She always had a thing for men in uniform, and the king was looking quite handsome in his dark blue uniform. Annabeth approved of whoever designed this uniform. Silver chains criss crossed the open lapels of the front, exposing his crisp white shirt. Whoever told him to open a few buttons of his white shirt to hint at his chest muscles should be promoted.
The king coughed once, perhaps feeling a little embarrassed that his wife was clearly eyeing him up. But secretly, he enjoyed it on the inside. He had to please the queen and convince her to abandon that ridiculous divorce clause after all. So the king pulled her up from the chair and naturally praised his wife for being beautiful.
Annabeth knew what the man was doing and shot him a playful glare. But who wouldn't be happy when such a handsome man was praising her?
Meanwhile, the king filed into his store of information that his wife seemed to be weak to compliments and handsome men wearing a certain type of clothing. Granted, other people often praised her work ethic and beauty, but the queen only gave a perfunctory smile in return. For him, she would grin and shoot him an amused glance or two. But the king felt that if he ever lost his good looks, the amount of goodwill the queen had in her heart towards him would diminish by half…
As they entered the birthday banquet hall set up in Marigold Palace, the pair put on their cursory smiles. The state had been set, and the dowager queen had casted them as the main leads. But who said that they had to follow her script?
It was here at the birthday banquet that Annabeth saw Prince Triton in person for the first time. Annabeth bowed her slightly and gave her greetings along with the king. While King Percy talked with his younger half-brother, Annabeth took the chance to observe this brother-in-law who was barely mentioned in Clarisse's novel.
If Percy was an HD picture from the latest iPhone, full of health and vigor, then this sickly half-brother was the low quality and low pixel Kodak camera picture from the early 2000s. Triton was a softer version of his brother with dark hair and green eyes, but much paler and shorter. If Triton had become king, then Annabeth was sure that many people would have their intentions on the throne. Of course, Annabeth had been informed by the king that it was Amphitrite who had tried to kill Percy, then Triton ended up being the ill one as a result of karma.
Fortunately, Triton didn't seem to have inherited his mother's snakey temperament. Unless it was really hidden well behind Triton's sickly demeanor. Living here in this world for over a month now, Annabeth was aware that not everyone was what they seemed.
If the Eldoris king had truly been a tyrannical villain, he might have killed his younger half-brother, then no one would be a threat to the throne. But that might truly set off the dowager queen and leave him with a reputation of killing his own family.
Soon, the dowager queen arrived and the banquet started. The moment the dowager queen's eyes landed on Annabeth's hair where the sapphire and pearl hairpin laid, the dowager queen stiffened. Annabeth gave a small smile and curtsied as though she didn't know why the dowager queen was reacting that way. The dowager queen turned her brief sour expression into smile and quickly recovered her composure. If Annabeth hadn't paid attention to the tightness around the dowager queen's lips, then Annabeth might not have had noticed the fury that had lit up the former queen's face.
Hmmph, Annabeth thought. The whole family was a troupe of actors.
The king gave a generic speech welcoming the guests and wishing the dowager queen good health and fortune. On the surface, the speech seemed kindhearted and filial, but Annabeth could sense the distance between the king and the dowager queen.
Gifts of jewelry and medicine were then presented to the dowager queen. Though the medicine of hundred year old ginseng roots and dried wild herbs were expensive, the medicine was mostly for Triton. A clear message was sent to the dowager queen. All this is for Prince Triton. Know your place.
Annabeth stifled a yawn and waited for the real show to begin. An hour later after the dinner, a troupe of dancers came in. Annabeth felt her drowsiness vanish. King Percy gave a small imperceptible smile as the pair exchanged glances.
The time had come.
End of Arc 1
A/N: Surprise update! Happy Birthday! Or Not-Birthday!
I thought I would update this on Wednesday since it was the last chapter of Arc 1, which should be the last of the slower paced chapters. The first chapter of Arc 2 is shorter than my usual chapters, so updating this in the middle of the week should suffice to balance out the shortness of chapter 24. Buckle up lads and ladies, we're going straight from 0 to 100 with Arc 2. Indeed, this story is a slow paced/show burn novel, probably more chapters than ROTD. Arc 1 is more about setting the backstories. Arc 2 will end past chapter 40, with Arc 3 rounding out the story.
See you all Sunday!