He was observant. Any who held his rank and status needed to be, if only for the simple reason of keeping assassins from stabbing you in the back. In some ways, that fear had faded, while in others he'd found himself near paranoid over the very idea of relaxing and simply enjoying the comforts that he'd inherited when his father had died. He hadn't been a young man, but he hadn't been quite so old as to turn over the title of king.
There were still stories told in the city about the little girl who had been the last person he'd seen while alive. She'd opened her hands to show him what she held inside… and that was that. The fire hadn't reached the second story witnesses of the interaction, and from there, rumors and tall tales abounded. Less than three years later, a carriage 'accident' had killed his mother. She hadn't even quite reached forty at that point, and she'd been far too brilliant to die that kind of death.
He had no intentions of ending in the same fashion.
Of course, that meant that he took risks with his life, and the lives of others to ensure that those around him, that he could relax near… weren't going to be the end of him. The first had been Zack. He'd had him long before his father had passed on, had, in fact, been a birthday present from that very man. When he'd turned sixteen, he was told he could have whatever one thing he wanted, and he'd chosen an untrained, rude, scruffy little slave boy with unusual eyes. His mother had been horribly appalled. Now though, now he was his Amethyst, his oldest gem, and he knew the man would never do him wrong.
Years after his mother had died he had acquired the pair, his Diamond and his Ruby, his prince and his warrior. They'd caused him a great deal of trouble at first, as the two had hated each other on sight. One was given as a treaty gift and the other was taken as a ransom. That event undercut the efforts that were being made to remove his Diamond as competitor for the Acadian throne. In all, he should have never had trust in them. He remembered, however, the way Rufus refused to return to his homelands as anything but monarch. He remembered him being fully aware of the fact that it was almost a certain death to return as he was, being born the third son had earned him no protection, and being free stood him no better, not in these lands. The people were still far too bitter at the bordering countries to forgive a noble among them, let alone royalty. So he remained, even when his time as a tool had officially passed. The other had never had a place to return to. He'd been a gesture of peace from a vicious people, and had been too proud but to devote his being to his task. If he returned to that country under any guise but the one he now wore, they would return him and beg forgiveness as to avoid a misunderstanding. It seemed that he, at least, had never misunderstood that. At times it took patience to ensure his personal importance was known, but Vincent wasn't unreasonable. He understood, and in that he was quite set in his ways. He'd always been a warrior for his people, and now, he would obey his king. At least he knew that there was honest affection there as well, and that softened any misgivings that at times seemed to spark.
Most recently had been his Sapphire. Younger than the others, magically talented, he'd been a gift from a slave he'd freed many years before. The man had been too intelligent to kill, too wild to sell, and too rough to be a gift, so he'd simply let him leave. It likely was one of the wiser choices he'd made for him. Cloud was a priest. He wasn't sure how he'd come to be with Cid when the tinkerer had presented him, but there was no doubting his talent if he simply touched the wards. Sometimes, if he concentrated, he could see the flicker of symbols over the walls in barely perceptible pulses of white light. It was exhausting, but there were times when one needed unhindered sleep, and that was far better than counting chocobo in the dark. His youngest could have killed him by now, had more than had opportunity, yet he hadn't.
His gems. He didn't give their real names to his enemies, and he wished that his advisers had never need know. He'd inherited most of them from his father, and they were visionless. Most, at least, for when they had vision, the plans they laid before him chilled him to the bone. They were no men he could trust, and was utterly certain that he would never dare risk letting his guard down among them. His father had told him, once when he was still a fairly small child, that the most unnoticeable detail was often what would tip the scale, and that a feather could break a nation.
He watched for those details, and he wasn't alone in his attention. Two sets of eyes at every meeting, and bitterness from the advisers due to the rarity of his attending tactical, even political, meetings without a pet at his side. It was always his longest standing, and most had long since learned to ignore his presence. Others, such as Hojo, were far too keen, far too aware of the secondary reason underlying the slave's presence. He was the one rallying the cry to be rid of them.
He would not be rid of them though. They were his. He knew what they did for him, how many times they'd kept his fate from following that of his parents. He knew, and he would not say for they were breaking more than a few laws. They were not to be involved in politics. They were not to be involved in war. They were involved in both, and he still trusted them with his very breath. His advisers were trying to shake that trust, to convince him of how it should not exist. But he, as well as his advisers, were aware of something terribly important.
He did not truly wish to be alone. He needed to have something to keep him from being a broken king, to keep him from missing something important and being killed, or worse, caught in a spell that would blind him to reality and leave him as a shell. His advisers, however, would be more than happy to have just that. And just as with his gems, his advisors knew he knew.