Ch. 2 – Hollow Spy

"Have we been here before?" Zoro asked aloud to no one in particular, his head cocked to one side as he surveyed the scene.

"Honk honk honk honk honk?" Cygnus asked, his head cocked the same way as his son-in-law's, stroking his feathery beard.

"Nah."

"Hahnk…"

"Couldn't be…"

"Honk honk…"

"It just looks the same…"

"Honk honk honk honk honk…"

"YES!" Perona shrieked. "This is OBVIOUSLY the beach where we washed up! We've been going in circles."

Zoro and the goose exchanged confused glances while Perona felt the need to point out the obvious to the two dunderheads:

"See, beach covered in debris?" she said, pointing to the sand. "Caved in cave?" she pointed to the cave. "Breaching reef?" she pointed out into the ocean.

Comprehension dawned in both of their faces, but slowly. Perona groaned.

"UGH! You two are hopeless!" she informed them, then continued sensibly. "Look, the sun's practically down. It's a new moon. We won't be able to see anything at this rate. I say we hunker down for the night."

"What's the matter, Ghost Girl?" Zoro asked, "I thought you liked the dark."

Perona knew he was only yanking her chain, but he still managed to get the rise out of her he was looking for. "Even I'M not stupid enough to go hiking through underbrush in the pitch black, you jerk! Now get us some dinner. You too, goosey."

"Why us?" Zoro asked.

"Because you're the ones who got us lost, idiot," she snapped. "I'll set up camp here."

"A pampered "princess" like you knows how to build a fire?"

"Actually, I do," Perona retorted. "And I bet I'll do a better job building it than you will at getting anything to cook on it…"

"HONK!" Cygnus cut in, holding his wings crossed over his face.

"What is it, King Goosey?" Perona asked. "No fire?"

Cygnus nodded vigorously.

"But…but we haven't eaten in ages!" Perona insisted. That was a bit of an exaggeration. They had brought food on their boat. What she meant was that they hadn't eaten anything since breakfast.

"Is someone after you or something?" Zoro asked Cygnus.

The goose made no move to respond, and instead disappeared into the brush. Zoro and Perona exchanged bemused glances until the goose reappeared a moment later with a wild peach in his beak. He dropped this into Perona's hand.

"Fruit for dinner, huh?" she said. "Well, I guess it's better than nothing." She scratched Cygnus's feathered head. The goose seemed to melt happily beneath her fingers.

"What about me?" Zoro asked.

Cygnus pecked his toes.

As Cygnus had implied something about enemies, Perona had set up her hollow ghosts to act as an alarm system should they be attacked by night. That meant they could all get some much needed rest. Of course, rest for her body didn't mean she needed rest for her spirit. While the other two snoozed, she projected herself into the night.

"Time to get an idea of the lay of the land," she murmured to herself, floating above their fireless campsite into the tepid night air. "Those stupid boys couldn't navigate themselves out of a lidless coffin."

Taking to the sky, she quickly spotted at least one recognizable landmark. – They were a few miles walk from the big, walled city they had seen when the storm had rolled in. She knew by now, from conversation with Zoro, that it was called Ilium, and it was capitol of the island, also called Ilium.

"The Kingdom of Ilium on the Island of Ilium set in the City of Ilium," she giggled. "How…original. At least it's easy to remember."

Just outside the walls was a portside town with quaint, clean, gabled houses. Though outside of the main city, it was by no means a poorer district – an enormous mansion graced the port itself. This town Perona had learned was called Mycenae, and it was mostly populated by sea prism miners and craftsmen.

"I can't believe Zoro's married to the queen of the country that produces most of the world's sea prism," Perona gushed as she flew, remembering more of what Zoro had told her. "Or that such a country would be so…small."

She didn't have to fly very high to see the island in its entirety. Ilium and Mycenae weren't the only populated areas, but together they comprised the majority of the island's population to be sure. In the distance, Perona could see a handful of towns, a city or two, and some agricultural communities with huge, sweeping fields. None could compete with the grandeur of the capitol.

Bu then, an enormously tall mountain did take up much of the middle of the island and mostly blocked her view of the other side. Some of the city of Ilium sloped up onto the side of mountain itself, which helped raise the palace to a point of prominence.

"Speaking of Zoro's queen…" Perona eyed the pillared palace with interest. "I wonder what she's like."

Guided by her ghost spies, Perona's first thought was to look for Her Majesty in the throne room. She had forgotten the late hour, as both Moria and Mihawk had a tendency to conduct their business well after dark. When she did find the throne room, she found it occupied, though not by the queen.

Peeking through an enormous circular window set into the roof of the marbled throne room, Perona's brow furrowed. If Queen Helena wasn't there to conduct state business, why was her throne room full of soldiers? Were they soldiers? Their clothes certainly weren't uniform, but all the men were armed.

The rowdy bunch seemed to be having some sort of a late night feast. Some of them had definitely had too much wine, and lay passed out on the floor, but the majority looked like they were good to party til dawn. They sang and talked loudly with the apparent comradery of long-time friends.

Perona was no stranger to unusual décor. Moria-Sama liked to decorate his walls with Zombies, after all. Still, she couldn't quite make sense of the room's centerpiece. Twelve steel axes ran perpendicular to the throne, held in place by what looked like tree roots. Sure it had its aesthetic, but if the queen were a swordsman as Zoro said, why the axes?

Swordsman! That's what the men all had in common! Swords! – Perona narrowed her eyes. The men weren't dressed like soldiers; they were dressed like princes. Like suitors!

"So much for Zoro and his fidelity," Perona whispered excitedly to one of her ghosts. "She's the one who's not staying true to him! Holo holo holo holo…sucker."

A small, group near the throne caught her attention. A pair of coxcombs dressed to the nines in silks and tall, powdered wigs spoke conspiratorially with a third man, dark of complexion and more humble and pensive in his bearing. Soon a fourth man joined them, this one boasting the figure of a gobslotch, though he deported himself with more propriety than the majority of men in the room. He wore a snappy suit and top hat, and carried an umbrella, not a sword.

Perona floated down toward them, keeping within the walls themselves as best she could until she could properly hide in the shadow of the queen's imposing but empty throne. One of the fancy nancies was speaking:

"You think the queen's been avoiding us all this time?" he asked, his voice foppish and shrill. "The nerve! It is an insult to the entire Kingdom of Macaroni! Is it not, Prince Popinjay?"

He turned to the powdered man beside him, who was so like him they could only be brothers. Popinjay nodded so energetically he almost lost his wig. "Oh, indeed Pompadour, indeed!" His powdered brow furrowed indignantly at the perceived offense.

"I wouldn't go so far as to say that, mon," the swarthy man put in. He had a musical rhythm to his voice, which stood in stark relief to the shrillness of the two Princes. Where they wore ridiculous coiffures and bejeweled rapiers, he had a pair of practical looking machetes strapped to his back, almost hidden beneath a long mop of dreadlocked hair. "Queen Helena must have her reasons for keeping this from us."

"I can't imagine what they could be," the round, mustachioed man said. "And to be honest, I'm surprised I had to come here like it's my job and tell you all this. She's seriously kept this up for two years?"

"Mr. Bags!" Trilled the one called Pompadour. "She said she was making a funeral shroud for her late husband, what were we supposed to say?"

Late? Perona thought, intrigued. They think Zoro's dead?

"I've seen the shroud," Popinjay put in, pulling out a fan and flittering it toward himself elegantly. "It's not like she's pretending to make something that doesn't exist."

"We've all seen it, mon," the rhythmic one said, "I really think there's an explanation."

"What explanation could there possibly be?" the mustachioed Mr. Bags retorted, blowing a few large bubbles from the pipe sticking out of his superb white mustache. "She hasn't been making any progress on it for two years? Really? And let's not forget what I just told you about Iliad royalty. If one of the royal family dies, their body is taken by Hades straight to Elysium. The God of Death leaves a pomegranate in their stead, to be planted in the sacred pomegranate groves behind the castle. Queen Helena's dead husband doesn't need a shroud. There's no body to shroud it with!"

"Just let me go talk to her, mon."

"Hm, indeed. Confront her for all of us, will you?" Pompadour said. "I expect to see her first thing tomorrow morning, acting as the hostess she has hitherto refused to be!"

The self-elected messenger turned from the group, and Perona caught a glimpse of his rather handsome face. Well, he wasn't really Perona's type (she was more into the pale and pulseless), but she could acknowledge a good looking specimen when she saw one. His keen eyes, furrowed in frustration, were a striking shade of cerulean against the mocha of his skin. She followed him out into a hallway as surreptitiously as she could, managing to avoid his sharp gaze.

"She's a smart woman," the suitor murmured to himself. "If I were her, I'd avoid us too."

As they made their way down the hall, Perona's anticipation grew. What would the woman dumb enough to marry a meat head like Zoro look like? She was a Queen, so Perona begrudgingly admitted that she must be beautiful. But she couldn't be intelligent. Zoro's ridiculously enormous forehead being the exception to Dr. Hogback's phrenologic rule of intelligence, Queen Helena had to have a teeny, tiny, itty bitty forehead.

Her unwitting guide appeared to be headed toward a carved wooden door at the end of the hallway. Perona quickly realized that she wasn't going to be able to eavesdrop without being seen unless she found a window. Spiriting herself through a wall, again guided by her ghost spies, she managed to get a glimpse into the room before the suitor arrived.

Perona was quite disappointed to discover that Queen Helena had a perfectly normal sized forehead, thank you very much. In fact, whatever she'd been expecting, she hadn't been expecting this.

Queen Helena de Zoro ni Cygnes et Leda of the Line of Prometheus remained oblivious to the gothic spy floating just outside her study window. She had far too much to do to worry about the innocuous judgements of a silly girl, even if she had noticed her presence.

Helena took a sip of hot coffee from a mug on her desk, well aware that the night was warm, but desperate for the boost of caffeine as she tried to get all of the day's work done. Though she'd already dressed down for the day, she knew she had a few hours to go at least. Wearing her very favorite and most comfortable green-striped pajamas, she gazed through a pair of reading glasses at the paperwork before her, muttering to herself before she signed it and marked it with her royal seal.

As she signed and read documents, approving this proposition, rejecting that contract, she also managed another, rather important knitting project. She held it before her as she worked through legal affairs, only her hands were too busy for such a craft; instead she held the pair of sharp wooden knitting needles between her remarkably dexterous toes. If anyone were watching her closely, they'd see that she was in fact unknitting at the moment – removing stitches on the funeral shroud that had served for two years as her excuse to stay away from the army of suitors plaguing her throne room.

If she had been thinking of Zoro at all at present, it would simply be to acknowledge that she felt several decades older than when last she'd seen him. She knew that her cropped platinum hair now held strands of silver, which became more and more visible as the days passed. Before the year was out, she would probably be as white-haired as her father, who'd also blanched young.

Speaking of her father...

Helena glanced at the transponder snail on her desk. She'd been waiting all afternoon to hear back from General Hector about the search for Ilium's former King. That he still hadn't reported in made her antsy.

Cygnus had been missing for several days now at least. And he wasn't the only one. Several of Helena's best men had also disappeared, a few here, a few there, over the past few months. By now it felt like a good chunk of her army had vanished into thin air. Her father had disappeared in search of them. Now she feared that Hector had done the same.

Feet never slowing in their work on the fine silk yarn, she'd just reached out a hand to the transponder snail when a knock came to the door of her study.

"Enter," she said, then regretted it when the suitor cautiously opened the door.

"Mr. Calypso," she said, tearing the reading glasses from before her flashing brown eyes. "Just what do you think you are doing here? I thought I had strictly relegated you and the rest of the suitors to the throne room."

"Ya, mon, I know," Calypso responded, eyes wide in his face. He seemed less shocked by her anger than he was to see her in her pajamas. It wasn't like she ever allowed herself to appear before the princes in anything less formal than her military attire.

"State your business!" she snapped, straightening out of the contorted position she'd been in and lowering her knitting to the floor.

She could see his gaze lingering on the scar on her neck; an old, deep battle wound. Though she didn't hide it intentionally like she used to, she didn't flaunt it either. It was a doozy, and one of her most prized. It ran all the way from under her ear, across her chest and through her hip; not that he could see that. Very few in fact ever had.

"Look, I came to warn you. The others have caught on to your ruse," he said.

"What are you babbling about?"

"That thing you're knitting right now," he said. "Or should I say, unknitting. It's all a lie, no? Your husband has no need of a funeral shroud."

A loud crunch from under Helena's desk announced the unintentional demise of her wooden knitting needles as they met their end between her strong toes. Despite her anger, she managed a genuinely amused, though small smile.

"How long have you known?" she asked.

"Over a year now, mon," he said with a charming grin. The man had beautiful teeth. "I thought that even a Queen who was all thumbs…er…toes at knitting to begin with would have figured it out at least by then. Any time any of us have seen you, it's been with needles in your feet. It can't have taken this long."

"So you told all of your buddies out there that I've been weaving by day and unweaving by night?"

"No," he replied. "Mr. Bags did. It was Popinjay and Pompadour who contacted him and asked."

And why, Helena thought to herself, Would the two Princes of Macaroni be in contact with our World Government Liaison?

"I see…" she started.

"Queen Helena," Calypso started respectfully. "What I don't understand is why you feel the need to lie to us. I always thought you were a woman of integrity, at least that's what your people tell me. If you don't like any of the suitors, why don't you just say so, mon?"

Helena sighed. Back when she had first begun her reign she would have thrown all the suitors out in a heartbeat. Heaven knew she could take any or all of them with a sword. But things had changed. She was a wiser woman now than she was back then; at least, her father thought so.

"Is it because you like being courted this way?" His lip curled at her slyly. "Has someone captured your heart?"

Helena stared at him, unsure how to react to such a blatant comment. Just what did he think he was implying?

"Let me make something abundantly clear to you," she said, standing. She was a good head taller than he, and used the fact to loom over him as intimidatingly as she could manage in her striped pajamas. "My husband could still be alive. Even if he is not; I have no intention of remarrying."

"I thought you needed to produce an heir…"

"Do you think to counsel me, sir?" she spat. "And just what would a drum-maker know about the affairs of state?"

For that was all he was. All the men in her halls, so far as she could tell, were Princes or Knights. But Calypso was a simple craftsman, a musician, who, so far as she understood, had come to Ilium on a whim and stayed for reasons of his own. Reasons she knew all too well as he smiled becomingly at her now.

"Perhaps as much as a pirate did," he replied with a wink, clearly not stung by her attempt to pull rank. "Or your former Lieutenant General…"

That he even thought to bring up Troy almost drove her to draw her swords. The royal rapiers lay in their sheaths, strapped to the back of her desk chair, well within reach. She'd been doing so well lately, it seemed a shame to ruin a good streak by skewering someone.

"Get out," she said sharply instead, pointing toward the door.

"If you say so, mon," he cajoled. "Just thought I'd remind you…"

"Out."

"…that you deserve more than the pirate who abandoned you for adventure on the high seas."

The door swung shut behind him before Helena could respond. A little flabbergasted at his boldness, she mouthed wordlessly after him for a few moments, before finally saying aloud:

"One day I'm going to chop that man's smirking head off."

"What's holding you back?"

Helena looked up to see her friend and mentor, Lieutenant Andromache now standing in the doorway. That she hadn't bothered to knock didn't surprise her – Ann had probably been eavesdropping on the exchange.

Helena seated herself, schooling her expression into something more neutral. "Father wouldn't like it," she said with composure, taking a sip of her now tepid coffee.

"Last I checked, your Father is no longer in charge," Andromache replied. "Not since you were crowned."

Helena wasn't going to argue with her about this today. Andromache had been something of a surrogate mother to her, and often took it upon herself to act as Helena's advisor. It was out of line, but Ann pressed it because she knew she could get away with it.

"Speaking of my Father, I've been meaning to get in touch with you regarding the search. Have you heard back from your husband, General Hector?"

"I haven't," Andromache sighed, removing the enormous sword from her back so she could drape herself sideways into a comfortable armchair near Helena's desk. "I was hoping you had. That's why I came to speak with you. –Hey, you know that man has a point. If you wanted to drive the suitors out, you could."

"You know very well why I can't."

"So what are your thoughts on Calypso?" Ann asked point blank. "I mean, he is the only man in the bunch who shows any shred of decency. Not to mention he's handsome, decent with a blade, and he sure can dance…"

"Can you please keep to the topic at hand," Helena snapped. "A considerable portion of my men, my father, and now your husband are missing. I have half a mind to go out to the eastern wood in search of them myself."

"Ah, but now that you've been found out, you're going to have to spend your time playing hostess to those sprauncy posers, aren't you?" Andromache reminded her. "Give Hector at least another day. He knows what he's doing."

"Aren't you worried?" Helena asked, brows knit in concern.

"Of course I am," Ann replied, "I have a very capable husband. I trust he'll come through." There seemed to be a subtext to her words, but it was shattered when she again changed the subject, "So, are you in love with Calypso?"

"I am not in love with anyone," Helena said with cool indifference.

"Not even Zoro?" Andromache asked, a would-be innocent smile spreading across her pixyish face.

Helena felt a jolt at direct mention of his name. Andromache seemed to realize her mistake, because she stiffened upright in her chair at the change in Helena's demeanor.

"There is only one person that truly has my heart," Helena intoned with a soft but deadly note of anger. She got to her feet, slinging four sword sheaths across her shoulders. "And if you have followed your orders correctly, that person is waiting for me in my bedchamber at this moment, is that correct?"

Andromache, though normally not one to balk when Helena got angry, appeared appropriately alarmed. "Yes, asleep actually. But that's a different kind of love, Helena. It's something, but it can't fix the hole in your heart…"

"I believe I am finished for the day," Helena said. She kicked the now useless shroud aside, leaving a messy pile of papers and a half empty cup of cold coffee on her desk as she strode toward the door. She turned just before making her exit and met Andromache's gaze:

"Do not mention his name again," she articulated. "I don't care if he's dead or alive. He is not welcome here."

Perona grinned to herself as she hovered outside the study window. She couldn't help herself; the misery of the situation was just too delicious.

"What a complete disaster," she giggled to one of her ghosts. "Zoro doesn't realize she's cheating on him. I can't wait to see the look on his face when I tell him. But I guess first I need to check out this eastern wood. Maybe I can get a clue about King Goosey."

Thoroughly pleased with her now completed clandestine mission, she took to the night sky giggling to herself, a trail of grinning hollow ghosts tittering in her wake.