Part Nine – A hope and a prayer
I came around to a soft rhythmic beeping sound, slowly opening my eyes I see a white ceiling above me right before a sharp pain in my left side reminds me of being stabbed there from behind. A moment later I feel the rush of something being pumped into me and the pain seems to get far, far away. Looking to my right slowly, the room tracking even slower, I saw a young woman with long red hair, leaning forward, her eyes shut resting her head on the side of my bed. I went to go and say something when the door opened and a woman in scrubs entered and turned on the lights when she saw my eyes were open she blinked a couple of times before stepping out of the room quickly and dashing to her desk and picking up the phone.
Willing my right hand to move, and it took longer than I would've liked, I reach over and brush the hair of the young woman, I wanted to know if it was Zara or Sofia at this point. I held my breath as I saw her eyes start to move behind the eyelids, it would only be a moment more before I could tell who it was. When they finally opened and I saw golden eyes looking back at me, I willed a weak smile, just as those golden orbs started to fill with tears. After a moment she got up and leaned over to kiss me before stroking my cheeks as she whispered over and over with tears rolling down her cheeks, "You're awake."
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After being poked, prodded, and examined for what felt like hours, I was allowed to sit upright. As I sat there with Zara sitting beside my bed, holding my right hand in both of hers and glaring at anyone that dared to enter the room, especially if they were there for official business. Once I was sure that no one would be coming in I asked her, "What have I missed?"
Zara looks off to the side and sighs, "The military has been mobilized, no one knows who attacked you, but all bets are on it being the Northern Parliament."
I shake my head slowly and sigh out, "It wasn't them,"
"How do you know? Did you see them?" Zara asked, cutting me off in the process.
With a slow nod I continue, "They spoke to me, right before they stabbed me. I need to talk to Richelieu, fast, before this gets out of hand."
"You are avoiding telling me, Cristiano." Zara says in a warning tone.
"I know, but I need to speak with Richelieu before this turns into a war with the wrong nation that could cost us more than we could possibly gain." I say with a pleading tone.
Zara pressed her lips together before taking out her phone and scrolling through her contacts list, tapping on one of them and handing me the phone. While it started to ring I asked Zara, "Can I get a bit of privacy for this one?"
"Are you going to try and bed her too?" She nearly seethes at me.
With a laugh, I pat her head as I say, "She's not a redhead."
I can see that Zara is trying not to laugh as she keeps her lips pressed together before she got up and slipped out of the room just before I hear on the other end of the phone, "Bonjour, Richelieu parle."
Using English I answered her, "Good morning Richelieu."
She was quiet for a moment before asking, "What can I do for you, you Imperial Majesty?"
Adjusting how I was sitting in my bed I rub my side as I say to her, "You have a problem, Richelieu, a big one that you need to deal with."
"How so?" she asks with her French accent, in the background I can hear the pages of a book turning.
"Jean Bart." Is all I say to her.
Again she doesn't say anything for a moment before asking, "What did Jean do?"
"She tried to have me assassinated. She used a kansen, likely Vichya, to do it when this comes out..." I trail off, leaving the weight of the implications to hang in the air, unsaid.
"Are you sure?" she asks, avoiding mentioning the unsaid thing.
"The assassin said to me, 'Jean Bart sends her regards', moments before she drove the knife in." I say as I reach for the water by my bed and add, "As I fell to my knees and forward, I watched as she lept to the second floor, then the fourth, and finally to the roof of the Imperial Palace. That's the kind of thing that only kansen can do, and we both know it."
In an unexpected tone of explosive anger, Richelieu cursed out, "Merde, Jean ! Avez-vous une idée de ce que vous avez fait !"
I guess she didn't know, in the background, I hear a book slam shut before being tossed across a room and slamming against a wall and I say to her, "I want to stop this before it becomes a war with the Iris, Vichya, Iron Blood, my Empire, and the UK."
Right away she says, "And the Eagle Union or what is left of it is useless and the Northern parliament wouldn't risk war on all sides to come to Vichya's aid."
"Correct," I pause and sip some water before adding, "they would wait till the fighting is done and then push in to finish the victors."
Richelieu sighs and asks, "What do you need from me?"
"I need Jean arrested and put on trial for attempted regicide, as well as the one that used the dagger." I say calmly.
"I can do that, but I can't hold the trial, lest it's seen as a show trial. And I can't send her and her coconspirator to your Empire either." Richelieu says to me as I hear her get out of a chair and start to walk around, after a moment she says, "I'll have them rounded up and delivered to the Iron Blood by the end of the week."
Bobbing my head up and down I respond, "That sounds acceptable, make sure it's public, I need this to be all over the media if I want to prevent a war."
"It will be." She says coldly before the line goes dead.
Closing the phone application, I lean back against the pillows and sigh, taping Zara's phone against my chin and wondering if that assassination attempt was meant or will somehow still claim my life like Shinano had said so long ago now, a moment later Zara returned to the room and took her phone back as she asked, "Well?"
I smile at Zara and reach for her hand as I say, "Jean Bart is going to be arrested and sent to the Iron Blood for trial."
"Why?" Zara asks as she blinks at me.
"Because she ordered the attempt on my life and that information will likely be public by the end of the week." I say as I pull Zara down to the bed.
She snuggled in close against me, reaching across my chest as she says, "I want to put all of this behind us, and move forward."
Kissing the top of her head I say, "Me too, my love, me too."
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True to Richelieu's word, Jean Bart and some cruiser kansen called Foch were arrested on charges of attempted Regicide by the end of the week and were shipped to the Iron Blood to face trial, well as fair of a trail as they would get anywhere. Thankfully that happened before the news broke as to who attacked me so it looked like it had been an effort by the Iris to make the final push for the unification of their nation. Now that I was back in the palace, and in my library I had a series of books around me, full of designs for ships that were never built. It was no secret that Sofia had been shown to react wisdom cubes and if that meant she could use rigging, well then I wanted to find the very best thing I could for her.
The door opened and I looked up from one of the books of blueprints to see a young woman approaching me, her long platinum blond hair and shining grey eyes filled with warmth as she smiled and said to me, "You're working too hard, you've only been out of the hospital a week now."
Smiling back at her I shrug as I say, "It can't be helped, Mamma. I want to find the perfect gift for Sofia when she is old enough for the crown."
Vittorio came over and hugged me tightly and kissed my forehead as she says to me, "I worry about you, you know, you're not as young as you used to be."
I sigh and move to take a seat on the couch and pat a spot beside me as I say, "I know, I know. I do envy you kansen, never aging." I pause and laugh before adding, "Well, maybe not the younger-looking ones at least."
My mother sits beside me, crossing her legs and leaning against me as she asked, "What are you doing in here, with all of these books?"
"Trying to find a design that would make fitting rigging for Sofia, but everything I find just doesn't feel right." I sigh out picking up a book and tossing it towards the shelf.
It surprised me when the book hit the shelf and knocked a book out of it, while that new book tumbled to the ground a box came out of it and tumbled free, down to the ground where it broke open and I set of rolled of documents were inside. Getting off of the couch I went over to it and it took me a minute to recognize it, I hadn't seen this in nearly twenty years. It was the box that Shinano had given me for Sofia.
Lifting the box I look at the tag again that was on it and read it out loud, "For Sofia." Just as I did that the documents fell out onto the floor and unrolled to show a series of blueprints for a ship. Then it hit me, this box wasn't meant to be given to Sofia to open, it was for Sofia when she was old enough!
I drop the box and pick up the document and go over to my desk, laying them out this looked like a heavy cruiser, but heavier than anything I'd ever seen before. My mother comes over to stand at the other side of the desk, looking at the blueprints as she says, "It looks like an Italian cruiser."
"It does, but," I point to the name on the prints, project 22 before adding, "the Empire doesn't name designs like that."
"True, so where did it come from?" my mother asks me.
"Shinano gave these to me twenty years ago now, told me that they would be for Sofia when she was old enough." I pause and look up as I continue, "I honestly didn't understand back then." Looking back down at the prints my brow knits together as I add, "But even the Sakura don't name plans like this."
My mother's brow knits together for a moment before she snaps the fingers on her right hand and goes over to the pile of books I had out and starts pushing them over till she finds a dusty one and opens it to a short page and she reads it out, "The Northern Parliament had requested the aid of the Empire in designing a heavy cruiser, hereby called project 22, though later abandoned and never constructed all documentation for the design are thought lost to time."
She turned the book so that I could see the short line of text before my grey eyes went back to the hull and I smiled before asking, "Does it say who was contracted for the design work?"
"It doesn't." She says with a frown.
I nod and take out my phone and start to look up shipwrights and my eyes fall on one of the most prestigious ones in the Empire and I smile more before I say, "I think I found where this is going to be built."
"Where?" my mother asks as she comes around the other side of my desk to see the address.
"I even think naming it for that place will be perfect, for the Princess of Napoli." I say as I put down the phone.
My mother places a hand on my shoulder as she says, "Then I'll take the plans there myself and make sure they understand the need to get this project started and keep it as secret as possible."
I walk over to my wine rack and pour two glasses of red as I hand one to her and say, "To the Napoli."
"To the Princess of Napoli." She says as we clink glasses and drink.
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Much later in the day, I was still in my study, but I was feeling better having figured out the hull issue for Sofia when another knock came to my door, just as I called for them to walk in I looked up from my desk to see my son standing there, rubbing his right arm with his left hand, his cheeks bright red. Tilting my head to the side I gesture to the seat across from my desk and wait for him to come and sit across from me as I ask, "What's wrong?"
He takes a seat across from me still looking like something was bothering him, it took a while before he asked me, "Do you have any advice I could use?"
"About?" I ask as I lean back in my chair.
He takes a deep breath and sighs out, "Jeanne isn't what I was expecting."
"How so?" I ask with a puzzled tone of voice.
He shrugs his shoulders as he says; "I was expecting someone more…" he trails off and places his hands in front of his chest, palms up like he was holding something.
It takes me a moment before I start laughing before a shot of pain runs through my chest and I reach over to my left side to hold my chest before I take a deep breath while wincing. After a moment and a look of concern on the face of my son I say to him, "Before I met your mother before I even met Zara, I dated a kansen in the Eagle Union, and she was slimmer in build." I take a break to get some water as I add, "The kansen, like human women, come in all shapes and sizes, Umberto, not every one of them will be well endowed. But more importantly, Umberto, it's not the bust size that matters, it's what is under it that matters."
He nodded slowly, his brow knitting together before he says, "She's, hard to get to know, she seems very duty-bound."
I nod slowly before asking, "Is she still here? If she is, would you like me to meet with her?"
His face lit right up and he nodded before saying, "I'll get her to meet you in the gar…" he paused and his face fell before he said, "I'll try to get her."
I raise an eyebrow as I say to him, "Really, I figured she would be outside of the door right now." That was when his cheeks went a little red and he rubbed the back of his head, just like I do when I get caught out, with a chuckle I ask, "Is she outside my office?"
Umberto nods slowly, the blush on his cheeks getting deeper and he mumbles out, "Should I show her in?"
I reach across my desk and wince a little at the pain in my left side before I rest a hand on his shoulder and say, "By all means."
I watch as he gets up out of the chair and goes to my office door, opening it and allowing me to see a blond woman of average height, dressed in tight white outfit that played with see through fabrics and solid in key areas, I found it interesting as it seemed like the outfit was made to suggest innocence, while at the same time trying to be suggestive. When her blue eyes focused on me she bent her knees while her gloved hands went to the edges of her short skirt and gave me a curtsy as she said, "Your Imperial Majesty, thank you for taking the time to meet with me."
I gesture to the chair that Umberto had been in as I say to her, "Of course, Jeanne, you can always approach me directly too." I pause to look at Umberto and give him a reassuring nod while Jeanne uprights herself and starts to step into my study as I add, "I'll send her out to the gardens when we're done."
Umberto gives a little smile as he closes the door behind Jeanne, once she was in the chair; I ask her, "What seems to be the problem, Jeanne?"
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A/N: Here we go, things are likely going to warp up in the next chapter!