Imperial Capital of Pendragon, June, a.t.b. 2013
It was increasingly rare that Friederike el Britannia, Second Princess of the Realm and Prime Minister of the H.B.E., would find an occasion in which she was idle enough that her mind could turn to tending to the withering ruins of what had once been her social life—rarely more than cordial, but usually sufficient. The number of people the second-eldest of Charles zi Britannia's daughters could count as acquaintances was one that shrank by the year, to say nothing of friendship. With the passing of each year, it seemed as though her duties doubled in size, as His Imperial Majesty continued to shove matters of state he deemed 'trivial' off to her to take care of; at this point, she felt as though she was not only serving as the prime minister, but also as empress-regent, and no matter how charitable she decided to be with her speculations, nor how wild she let her imagination run, she could not conceive of any matter of such gravity that the reigning emperor would think nothing of putting such critical decisions directly into her lap, on top of the previous batch of similarly critical decisions.
It was her job to set Britannia's foreign policy agenda. It was her job to direct the diplomatic corps. It was her job to meet with the chief general and the minister of war to budget funds to the war chest; it was her job to know when to order tax audits, and to see it done, it was her job to have the peerage of the realm in hand—why they still maintained the trappings of the institution of Parliament nearly two centuries after the abolition of the Magna Carta was something that continued to make no sense to her—and to parcel out noble titles every time some war or other expanded the empire's borders (though that particular dutyjust happened to have came in handy a few years back, since she'd been able to at least give the Ashfords a leg up with Area Eleven). Not only was she the Prime Minister, and so the Minister of Laws, the Blackstaff, and the Minister of Coin all fell under her authority de jure, but as the position of Minister of the Interior as well as that of the High Chancellor were themselves both vacant, she filled those roles as well. Some days, and at this point it was in fact most days, it seemed as if the empire was kept aloft by her labours alone; and even though she'd managed it admirably thus far, the fact remained that she was burning the candle at both ends.
She was exhausted. She barely slept these days: her caffeine consumption was at an all-time high, the amount of concealer she went through in a month continued to skyrocket, and every day, she had to try to force morsels of food down her throat, because though her appetite was crushed under the constant weight of the stress she was under at all hours of the day or night, she still needed to eat. She was starting to discover white hairs in her brushes after her morning and evening hair care routines, her lover Priscilla had taken to fretting over her more and more by the day, and she felt herself starting to go mad in the face of it all.
So when her half-sister Juliette turned up at her main residence, Malebranche Palace, to visit her for luncheon and then afternoon tea, the elder royal was given to wonder if this was what it was like to surface from drowning for a few desperate lungfuls of air.
As this was Juliette, who was one of the names on the vanishingly short list of people with whom Priscilla corresponded often enough that one might tentatively call their relationship 'friends', Friederike didn't bother getting herself properly dressed, throwing a comfortable pair of house slippers on her feet and a gold-embroidered violet silk tea coat over her white nightgown, before settling herself down in one of the palace's many parlours, this one being her current favourite. Broad windows and skylights set the chamber awash in sunlight, catching upon her unbound, unstyled flaxen hair in such a way that she knew it gave her head the illusion of being crowned with a halo, and the furniture was built to look like it was made for the outdoors, perhaps decorating some garden party or afternoon social or somesuch nonsense. Granite tiles made up the flooring, and the openness of the space seemed to complete the impression the room gave of 'outdoors, inside' that was the source of Friederike's recent fondness for the space.
It was, all in all, the exact sort of sanctuary she needed at a time like this.
The door to the parlour opened, revealing Priscilla at the threshold—her man Andrew had chosen to take his annual holiday this month, unfortunately, which left her lover and aide to pick up her majordomo's slack—and the countess stepped aside right after to admit the pair, in the form of her favourite sister's little sister, and the man who would be her favourite sibling's Knight of Honour.
Jeremiah Gottwald, she observed, was in good health; he cut a very dashing figure indeed, attired as though he had stepped out of the pages of Byron and Shelley. His charcoal-grey coat sported a high collar and was cut back into tails at the waistline, his matching breeches loose enough to bunch at the knee, while his tall black boots covered his legs from the knee down. The entire thing featured gold piping at the edges and seams, and altogether lent the athletic, broad-shouldered man a distinctly Prussian silhouette, martial in its sensibilities almost, while remaining appropriate for a gentleman of his stature to be seen wearing while on an outing about town. His maroon waistcoat was single-breasted and striking, especially in combination with the magenta hue of his cravat, making him look fashionable without leaning into any of the foppish excesses and eccentricities that characterised Clovis's atrocity of a wardrobe, and the striking of that fragile balance led Friederike to suspect Euphemia had had a hand in the continued attiring of the good margrave. She had a surprisingly sharp eye and deft hand for such things, and it never ceased to amuse her, how much of a difference the support of Justine and company had made in sweet Euphy's life.
Juliette was in the process of setting down her seafoam-coloured parasol off to the side when at last the elder princess's gaze turned to behold the younger, her light brown hair pinned up into an elegant bun which, unlike the normal braid Juliette wore in court or even some of the faux-relaxed styles she'd seen her sister wear in more casual contexts, left the nape of her neck bare, while enough remained free to frame her face and dust across her forehead. The muslin dress she wore was high-waisted and forest green, with long sleeves and slimmer shoulders, and her coral-hued shawl was light and gauzy, its inclusion much more of a concession to propriety than utilitarianism; speaking of which, she wasted no time in divesting herself of it, folding it and handing it off to Jeremiah to hold for her, as he looked after her parasol. Only when that was dealt with did she take her seat, and Friederike was unexpectedly appreciative that her guest respected her skills at masquerade enough that Juliette didn't even make an attempt to adopt her kind and innocent affect, an act of performance which fooled many and charmed the rest. "Friederike. It's been quite some time."
A ghost of a smile pulled the corner of Friederike's lip upwards. So, that is how she means to play this, hmm? Very well; I'm not opposed. "That it has, little sister. Yet I am myself gladdened nonetheless to see you in such excellent health."
"Would that I could say the same for you," Juliette returned, her voice lined with what seemed to be genuine concern. "Your position taxes you. It scrawls its bill all across your face…"
Friederike sighed, her impeccable posture sagging for a moment as she let herself feel the weight of her circumstances, though she was careful to put them away again before they crushed her. "Our honoured father, His Imperial Majesty, in his infinite wisdom, has seen fit to delegate to me yet more of this country's administration—as though he thought my hands idle being responsible for only half of it. I dearly hope you can find it within your heart, little sister, to excuse me if I seem perhaps a touch fatigued."
"Under the circumstances, rest assured that I would be given to consider it far stranger were you not so," Juliette replied, her bearing prim and immaculate as she sat tall in her chair. "You have my sympathies, sister. Truly."
Friede felt the half-smile on her face subside into a rueful one, and the knowledge that for once, she didn't need to conceal the expression before it ever properly took shape lest it expose even the slightest hint of weakness or vulnerability was liberating to an extent that defied easy or concise description. Letting her favourite sibling's younger sister see all of it play out across her face felt like a thrilling act of rebellion.
And yet.
"Let us speak now of fonder things, shall we?" prompted Friede, as she did her best to construct a cheerful disposition without resorting to the aid of the gallery of dramatis personae she'd collected over the years, so as to better meet the many and varied demands of her line of work. "I actually have a gift I've been meaning to give you for some time now. I acquired it from a European general, a man by the name of Gene Smilas, on my latest trip to address the Hemicycle a few months ago. You'll recall I couldn't be there for Justine's birthday celebration because of it."
"Naturally," Juliette agreed, nodding.
"It was incredibly peculiar, being reminded of just how very…quaint the Europeans can be," Friede mused, leaning her head back to tilt her gaze up towards the skylight. "It was perhaps the most transparent overture I've ever received. I mean, really—a painting, of all things?"
"Like something out of a bad drama," said Juliette, seeming to cringe at the thought of it.
"Yes, exactly!" Friederike declared, leaning forth across the table enthusiastically. She might prefer Justine even now, for the elder of the two vi Britannia sisters possessed a mind like nothing she'd ever seen before, but it wasn't as though she disliked Juliette, or was even particularly ambivalent in her feelings with respect to her; indeed, there was something to be said for how the younger of the pair just seemed to get it. "You might as well be advertising to the world that you're looking to defect! And to make matters worse? The man's a dyed-in-the-wool Bonapartist."
"You've got to be joking," Juliette groaned.
Friede shared a long-suffering look with her second or third favourite sibling (not that there was all that much competition; the list of brothers and sisters she didn't detest for one reason or another was short, and the list of those she liked was even shorter), and shook her head sorrowfully. "I very much wish I could say that I was, believe me. On the bright side, at least the painting was well-sourced! It also displayed a distressing lack of research done on its intended recipient, of course, but honestly, I'll take what I can get at this point. Thank Heaven for small mercies, and all that."
"Hell save us from the blundering of idiots and amateurs," Juliette sighed, shaking her head.
It was at that point that Priscilla re-entered the room, balancing on one hand a large tray laden with plates covered by cloches. Jeremiah moved forth to offer aid, but her lover held out a hand to warn the man off, and then began laying out the plates on the wrought-iron table between the sisters with a practised sort of deftness and dexterity. She laid out their utensils, spun the tray around, and then proceeded to tuck it under her armpit as she left them to begin eating.
It was an hour past noon, and the sun was high in the sky, so nothing all that heavy was really at all appropriate—lifting the cloches, they found a bowl of vichyssoise staring back at them in one dish, and in the other, what looked to be summer rabbit.
And yet, neither of them made so much as a move to begin eating from either of their plates.
Neither of them believed, truly, that they'd have arranged to poison each other's meals, and even if either of them had any reason to suspect such a thing, each knew the other to be very diligent with their mithridatism, and so they knew that no lasting harm would be done—outside of the most dire of unforeseen circumstances, at least. But it really was the principle of the thing, this game of chicken they so easily slipped into with one another; neither of them would ever be caught dead displaying poor poison discipline before the other, and so the stalemate continued…
…Right up until Priscilla came tearing back into the parlour, empty-handed; she took a bite from all four dishes in quick succession, gave Friederike a glare that promised that the princess would be paying for this act of flippancy with her health in the bedroom later (Friede felt her cheeks flush—she couldn't wait), and then left the room as quickly as she'd come into it.
"…So, where were we, exactly?" Friede asked her little sister a moment later, picking up a fork and a knife and beginning to cut into the rabbit.
"The painting General Smilas gave you," Juliette supplied, as she mirrored the motion and followed suit. Both of them were hungry, after all, and neither of them particularly wished to bother with putting on airs around one another—at least not when it was, for all practical purposes, just the two of them.
"Yes! Yes, that business with the painting," Friede recalled, clearing her throat to shake free some of the more…vivid thoughts that being on the receiving end of her beloved Priscilla's ire set to dancing gaily in her mind's eye. "Well, it's really much too lurid for my tastes, as you could probably see coming in, but I thought that Justine, at the very least, might enjoy it. I suppose that we might even consider it something of a belated birthday present."
"Really?" Juliette asked, her curiosity piqued. She bit off, chewed, and swallowed down the forkful of cooked leporine flesh she'd had on the end of her utensil, and then continued. "What's the scene?"
"Oh, it's a moderately famous piece, though said fame has admittedly been on the rise since its loss some fifteen or so years ago," Friederike explained, shrugging a single shoulder as she leaned down to start into the vichyssoise. "The Triumph of the Hel-Queen, as a matter of fact."
"The Florian original?" Juliette asked incredulously, astonished as she was.
"The very same," Friede confirmed, nodding. "Gene Smilas gifted me with the original canvas of The Triumph of the Hel-Queen, by Edmund Alexandre Florian."
"Well then," the younger princess huffed, amazed. "I suppose I can certainly understand how that all would seem a bit out of place around here, shall we say…"
Friede gave a brief chuff of mirth, bemused. "Quite."
"Well, Justine has been talking about perhaps obtaining a Hieronymus Bosch painting for one of the parlours in Belial Palace," said Juliette, her lips pursing as she mulled over the situation. "Where is it?"
"In the storage closet, alongside all the other highly valuable bric-a-brac people have attempted to bribe me with over the years," Friederike returned drily, surprising herself at how easy she was finding it to eat right now—perhaps, she mused, having the sort of company Justine and Juliette each provided in their own ways was a greater relief than she'd previously given either sister credit for (which would have been, perhaps it went without saying, an extraordinary claim coming from anyone else. She readily admitted that). "I had it re-packed after having its authenticity discreetly verified. I keep an appraiser on retainer for these sorts of things. It was Priscilla's idea, admittedly, but it nevertheless takes a massive weight from off of my shoulders. Not to mention, the few times someone has attempted to bribe me with a forgery, the act served to forecast how the rest of our association was going to go, in one way or another."
"I suppose it would, at that," Juliette conceded. "Anyone who tries to bribe you of all people with a fake is obviously a fool, but they could be any of several different kinds of fool, each of which requiring a very specific method of precise handling. I mean, a person who is themselves duped by a fake, forgery, or reproduction poses a very different set of potential threats to any designs you might have in the works than someone who believes they can dupe you with one such item, after all."
"Precisely," Friede sighed happily, leaning back into her chair to display both empty plates. She had to have been hungrier than she'd originally thought. "Ah, I don't think there are words to express just how profoundly refreshing it is to talk to someone who understands, you know?"
"Ugh, tell me about it," Juliette replied, rolling her eyes dramatically as she, too, leaned back in her chair, leaving both of her dishes empty of food on the table between them. "It's a nice change of pace to not have to explain every little thing in excruciating detail. Like, I certainly don't mind laying it all out for the sake of Euphemia and company every now and again, but doing it every time just gets tiresome."
"The absolute worst are the ones who think they're good at it," said Friede, for once letting herself enjoy the nuances of the conversation. "They fancy themselves webweavers, with all their plans and plots and plots-within-plots, which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't then turn around and try to apply what little of their amateurish acumen they can then bring to bear. It gets to the point sometimes where I wonder if the true aim of their attempts at assassination is to kill me through sheer force of secondhand embarrassment. And if that were actually the case, I think I'd have been more impressed—the secondhand embarrassment came an awful lot closer to actually killing me than any of their contract killers or two-bit would-be 'assassins.'"
"Honestly, I'm just glad Justine's willing to just let me handle these things in her stead," confessed Juliette, giving a smile that was half a grimace as she looked down at the table. "She's actually quite atrocious at all this."
"Admittedly, it was something of a struggle to keep from laughing during that whole fiasco with the late boy-emperor," Friederike remarked airily, and she noticed the door open again to admit Priscilla, come to bus their plates back to the palace kitchens. They'd taken to washing them together later during the day, after supper; it was nice to have some quiet time together, away from all the mounting chaos that otherwise had come to haunt her every waking moment. Approval was threaded into the smile Priscilla flashed her on the approach, and Friede found herself flushing crimson at the warmth in her lover's bright blue eyes; she faked a cough to attempt to rally her composure, so swiftly blown apart in this, one of her rare moments of weakness, and from the knowing look the elder princess caught in Juliette's face as her closest confidante took the plates from the table, Friede knew she hadn't been remotely successful in concealing her reaction. "That was some excellent work with Carine, by the way. I don't believe that I ever did get the chance to congratulate you properly. Bravo."
"She reacts the same way, you know," Juliette told her conspiratorially, leaning forward to enhance the effect.
"Who does?" Friederike asked, while doing her best to get her blood to cool, for the moment at the very least.
"Why, Justine, of course," Juliette replied, as though it should have been obvious. "Whenever Milly shows Justine any affection whatsoever—which she does quite frequently indeed, with words about as often as through physical touch—our sister gets so hopelessly flustered and so thoroughly tongue-tied that she'll sometimes spend long stretches in complete speechlessness. It's really quite amusing to watch, given how entirely at odds it is with how she is in practically any other situation. I just thought I'd bring it up, you know, since we're on the subject."
"You don't say," said Friederike, her tone flat. Then she leaned across the table, propping her upper body down upon the tabletop. "And what of your own romantic prospects, hmm? Got anyone in mind?"
"Who would want to wed the second daughter of the Commoner Empress?" Juliette returned, and though it was a valiant attempt at maintaining her composure, Friede couldn't help but notice the bitter note in her younger half-sister's tone.
Friede shrugged; truth be told, she hadn't paid much attention to the affairs of the Seasons and their seemingly never-ending stream of highborn debutantes, what with all the mounting demands on her limited time and attention. All the same, she said to her sister: "I think you'd be surprised, Juliette. You're a sharp, intelligent, charming young lady, who even now is growing into the fullness of her beauty. I wouldn't be all that surprised if you had suitors battering down your door come your sixteenth birthday—you'll have your pick of the young lords and ladies of the court."
Juliette snorted indelicately. "No, thank you. I'll leave the dalliances and gallivanting to Euphy. I'll be perfectly comfortable remaining here, in Justine's shadow. It is, after all, where I do all my best work."
"I wouldn't count you out just yet," Friederike remarked mildly. "But very well. Have it your way."
"Not everyone needs romance to be happy, Friederike," Juliette said waspishly.
Friede shrugged. "I suppose that's true. But we're not talking about everyone, now are we?"
The younger princess huffed. "Fine. I think it would be lovely to fall in love someday. Happy?"
"Are you?" the elder shot back without a moment's hesitation.
"It's not something worth holding out hope for," Juliette sighed, and there was a mournful, resigned note to it. "Justine loves me, but she's exceptional—and besides, it's not as though I particularly want that kind of intimacy with her."
"I'd imagine you'd know better than to even think you did, even if you were that way inclined," said the older sister, leaning back in her chair once again. "Carmilla Ashford might not play the Game as we do, but she's quite cunning, in her own way."
"I honestly don't believe I could love a girl like Milly," said Juliette with a mirthless laugh. "So it's not like I particularly envy Justine, either. I certainly don't resent her, nor do I begrudge either of them their happiness. They're both twisted and warped in just the right way for one another. But theirs is a once in a lifetime match, you know, and…and even if I did find a lady to fall in love with, it just… It wouldn't be the same, you know?"
"So you want neither Milly Ashford nor Justine; you want what they have, the bond they share," the Second Princess summarised.
"Desperately," said Juliette. "But Justine and Milly finding one another, they who complement each other so well that their love practically sets the room alight, was nothing short of a miracle, Friederike; and miracles are only remarkable because they're rare. I might as well wish upon a falling star, for all the good it would do me…"
"And nothing else will do, is that it?" Friederike prompted further.
Juliette looked at her sadly. "When you've gazed upon true beauty, sister, how could anyone look at anything else and see aught but ugliness? The comparison would be inescapable, and no matter how sweet a love such as the kind I could find might taste, it would rot upon the vine, sure as the sun shall rise."
"…Don't give up hope, dear sister," Friede assured Juliette softly. "I doubt Justine would want you to languish in misery."
"I'm not miserable, Friederike," Juliette sighed. "A woman must bear her lot, as they say, and mine is not such a terrible one, all told. I shall endure."
Friederike nodded with a sigh of her own. "Very well…"
"Well, that went quite a bit better than I'd expected, all in all," Friederike huffed heavily, stretching hard enough to make some of her joints pop as she stood in the middle of her large walk-in closet, which was kept stocked with outfits and aliases for all occasions—a necessary expense for a woman of her calibre in her field.
"Had you expected Juliette's visit to go poorly, then?" asked Priscilla as she crossed the breadth of the chamber, a pile of garments folded over her arm. She regarded Friede with faux-scepticism, arching her fine, rose-gold brow in the process. "Or has my love become so thoroughly jaded by her work that she has forgotten how to be optimistic entirely?"
Friede coloured: at least when they were alone, Priscilla loved nothing more than to prod and tease incessantly. The woman was incorrigible—but then, that was part of what had attracted Friede's attention in the first place. "The truth, I suspect, is far closer to the latter than the former…"
"And here I had begun to worry you had doubts about my assessment of her character," called out the countess as she left Friederike's immediate field of view, likely hunting down some other garments to make an appropriate outfit from.
"I wouldn't dream of it," Friede replied easily. "Worry not."
"I'm afraid you make it rather difficult to avoid, Friede," said Priscilla, as she emerged with another set of clothes entirely. "Tell me, does the word 'delegation' mean anything to you?"
"Hmm…" Friede mimed pondering, complete with an exaggerated pose of contemplation. "Is that not when you seek civil redress and remuneration for damages?"
"That's litigation," Priscilla supplied as she lifted a gown to hold up in front of Friede's undressed body, before shaking her head and returning it to the pile.
"Oh! It's when structures break down rapidly, often to disastrous effect!" Friederike joked again.
"That's degeneration. Try again," her lover continued, undeterred, as she repeated the process with another gown, which yielded the same assessment as its predecessor.
"The mixing of bloodlines, then?" the Second Princess suggested.
"Miscegenation," declared her partner, the corners of her oh-so-kissable lips lifting into a bemused grin. "You're in a good mood today. It seems you needed the visit this morning more than I'd thought."
"It was good to see her again," Friederike admitted with a shoulder-shifting sigh, closing her eyes to look up at the ceiling as she let a serene smile bloom across her face, her flaxen hair falling free behind her. "It's been some time since I've been able to spend any significant period with either of them, after all…"
"Much to their dismay, I'm sure," her aide added, her tone almost absent-minded. Suddenly, Friede felt a bundle of cloth being pushed into her arms, and she opened her eyes to regard it with a critical gaze. "This one will serve you best, I think."
"Thank you, Silla. You're quite the lifesaver," said Friederike, and the smile she gave her lover was equal parts fond and wry. "So, remind me again, what's the emergency this time, exactly?"
"The Middle Eastern Federation has announced their intent to negotiate with representatives of the Hemicycle on the subject of their joining as a member-state," Priscilla explained patiently, keeping hold of each of the garments that made up Friederike's planned outfit until the princess had need of them. "It seems the overtures that the Richtofen Administration thought we didn't know about have finally borne fruit."
"Indeed, indeed," Friederike replied, thinking as she dressed. "An official statement from Britannia, of course, is only to be expected—something something 'we condemn this latest excess of Europia United as an act of aggressive expansionism, a clear sign of naked ambition and Napoleonic jingoism,' et cetera, et cetera. Calls for a referendum have been on the rise ever since that business at Gibraltar last year. I imagine the good Mr. Richtofen is beginning to learn why warhawks who lose wars don't tend to last very long…"
"And what then?" asked Priscilla, her demeanour patient as she passed another layer to Friederike. "This can't be allowed to go unanswered, after all."
"Indeed, it can't," Friede agreed, accepting the offered garment and fastening it over her chemise. "An armed response in the Middle Eastern Federation's own backyard would be anticipated, it would be haphazard, and from the perspective of optics, it would be an expression of weakness from us, which would naturally then begin to renew public support for the Richtofen Administration, rather than erode and undermine it… Silla, have you any recollection of when the most recent communiqués from the Secretariat of Military Contracts said the new sixth generation model would be ready for mass-production? I believe the name they settled upon was 'Gloucester'?"
"The RPI-209 Gloucester, yes," Priscilla confirmed, thinking back through her memory. "End of the month, I believe they said, at their most conservative estimate. That new corporation who got the contract, HCLI? They've been rather more consistent on their timetables than SI ever managed."
"There's a reason why Stonehenge Industries went bankrupt," Friederike replied wryly, holding out her hand for another layer. "Well, no, there were several reasons, but their nasty habit of calling unforeseen delay after unforeseen delay is certainly one of them. But the end of the month? Hmm…"
"You're planning something," Priscilla accused teasingly, while handing the princess her petticoat.
"At all hours of the day, Silla," Friederike returned, equally cheeky, as she took the petticoat and began to don it. "And also none of them at all. Plans are, generally speaking, a terrible idea when one has set themselves to playing the Game of Shadows. To excel, one must learn to plan without planning."
"Yes, as you continue to remind me so very often…" her lover sighed, the expression exaggerated and dramatised, with a heavy rise and fall of her shoulders and a rueful shake of her head. "Though I feel I should mention that I maintain that that's really quite an ornate flourish of phrasing for what amounts to an unending procession of small-talk and 'networking.'"
"My dearest Silla," Friederike objected, her scandalised tone only halfway-faked. "If the reality of intrigue was in any way glamourous, then practically anyone would be able to do it."
"At least then you'd stop complaining about how awful everyone you face is," Priscilla needled her.
"As pleasant as that sounds, my workload is onerous enough as it is," the princess sighed soberly.
"…So, what did you settle on as a solution?" the countess prompted.
Friede felt her eyes go wide in surprise, having mostly lost track of the original subject. "Oh! Well, I just thought I'd throw Cornelia at the problem, really. Allocate a few thousand Gloucesters to her forces for use alongside their Sutherlands and then launch her right into the thick of things in Portugal to do what she does best: namely, destroy anything she's pointed at when someone waves a red cloth in her face. Hell, it might even do her some good to get immersed in the local culture."
"And you say I'm incorrigible…" the aide grumbled playfully.
"Hey!" Friederike exclaimed, genuinely offended, if only minorly so. "That one was clever!"
Priscilla made a noncommittal hand gesture as best she could. "If you say so, your highness…"
"It's 'Your Excellency,'" Friederike corrected sharply. "Now give me the damned gown…"
"And here I thought we'd agreed to save the praise for the bedroom," Priscilla flirted back; but she handed the gown over all the same, and Friede snatched it away quickly enough to conceal how flushed she had suddenly become. Such was the way of things with Friederike: she could flirt shamelessly, but she was by no means as skilled at receiving flirtation in return—at least not when it was genuine, that was.
"Honestly," Friede huffed as she donned the gown at last. "However did I manage to find myself in love with such an impossible woman?"
Priscilla Maldini shrugged, and the gesture was a study in insouciance. "Honestly, I'd say you've actually held up rather well, given the circumstances."
"Liar. You've seen my hair's going white as surely as I have," Friederike rebutted with a slight grin. "Now, how do I look?"
The dress, all told, was a beautifully-made pure white silk gown, a shimmering cascade of elegant, finely-spun and translucent layered cloth, decorated with golden filigree. The neckline of it was worthy of any ensemble out of her eldest sister Guinevere's wardrobe, toeing the line of decency, while using Friede's tall, willowy frame to its utmost effect. She looked statuesque where Guinevere would have only managed the salacious, and the cape sleeves flared out at her elbow to billow out, making every motion look flowing and ethereal. A girdle of pure golden chain was wrapped around her waist, the waistline of the dress being at a moderate level instead of high, more appropriate for a full appearance at court than at social calls or at evening events, and she was already thinking of putting on a particular pair of remarkably comfortable slippers she'd had some supplicant or other commission in her honour for her birthday celebration, back in the middle of February.
Priscilla scrutinised it closely, her blue eyes scanning up and down the princess's clothed form as a number of different options surely danced through her mind. "You look ravishing, as always—but then, your beauty has nothing to do with the dress."
"You rogue," Friederike scolded insincerely.
"We'll have to do something with your hair, obviously," the countess continued, now serious. "And it's good that we had Juliette here, because her hairstyle today gave me a few ideas…"
"You think we should pin my hair up, then?" asked the princess.
"Why not? You have a lovely neck, and that dress makes excellent use of it," said Priscilla, without so much as a hint of insincerity.
"Very well," Friederike nodded, shoving her feelings as a woman into the background, buried under her professional mien. Gone was the princess; out came the Prime Minister. "But you'll have to see about my make-up as well. The people they have on retainer at the Imperial Palace are too used to His Majesty's face; they've never quite managed to get mine right…"
"As my princess commands, so too shall I obey," the countess replied with a flourishing bow.
Night was beginning to fall upon Pendragon, the capital of the Holy Britannian Empire, when all of a sudden, a broadcast was transmitted across the world. It was played on every news program (save for the state-owned media under the direct control of the Vermilion Forbidden City's Tianzi, Jiang Shihua, at least in name), and received in every chamber of power in the world. What it displayed was captured in real time from one of several purpose-built rooms in the Imperial Palace, and thus any sort of mistake would be quite costly indeed; but Princess Friederike, veteran of her stressful occupation that she was, was undeterred. On a raised dais, yet devoid of the sort of lectern Emperor Charles preferred to dominate as a prop whenever he made his own state addresses, her bearing was erect and august, her hands folded across her abdomen as she waited patiently for the herald to finish announcing her identity and her litany of titles and accolades. Her flaxen hair was pinned up in a high, deceptively elaborate bun, and from each earlobe hung a diamond earring bevelled with silver, while a pendant was suspended from around her neck on a silver chain to hang beneath the hollow of her slender throat.
Then, he was finished, and it was showtime.
"Greetings, entire world. I am Friederike el Britannia, High Chancellor and Prime Minister of the Holy Britannian Empire, Minister of the Interior, and Second Princess of the Realm," she began, her voice calm and clear and soothing, projecting itself with practised ease. "And I come before you today to address a matter of grave concern, both to myself and to my beloved nation.
"It has come to our attention of late that the United Republic of Europia has sought to consolidate the Middle Eastern Federation into its catalogue of member-states and vassal territories—an initiative with the elected leader of the E.U., President Herman Richtofen, at its head," she continued smoothly, her voice moving from one subject to the next effortlessly. "His doctrine of extremism and Napoleonic romanticism has long been well-known to us, and to say that I am not disappointed that my esteemed colleagues in Paris have elected to accommodate this folly would be to speak a blatant falsehood. Already, he has sought with slavering fervour to attack brave sons and daughters of our glorious empire at Gibraltar, an assault that was repelled with great valour and mettle by our heroic soldiers, and at a tragic cost—both for we of Britannia, and for those widows, orphans, and robbed parents all across Europia United.
"And now, he seeks to employ the sons and daughters of the Middle Eastern Federation as yet more disposable tools to advance his mad vendetta."
Friederike closed her eyes, her face set in an expression of sorrow, and took a deep, sombre breath, as though she sought to fortify herself before speaking anew.
Then, when she looked into the camera once again, her lilac eyes were steely and resolute. "If his is an agenda my esteemed colleagues upon the Hemicycle are so determined to follow, then so be it. It is not our desire to spend more of our youth to bleed upon foreign fields at the behest of distant warlords, to fight against the lingering spectres of our…chequered shared past, but let it not be said that we who are born of Britannia are wont to forsake our noble and just duty. This latest excess of the United Republic of Europia, perpetrated at the hands of its leaders in Paris, derelict in their duty as they have become, we see as nothing more righteous than an act of aggressive expansionism, motivated by avarice and naked ambition. You may rest assured, whichever of you have thought to watch, to shake yourselves free of this delirious hubris, this peculiar madness of Mr. Richtofen's, that this show of Bonapartist jingoism has not gone unnoticed; and it shall not go unanswered. This do we who are of Britannia so solemnly swear upon the corpses of our fallen dead. I bid you farewell, and suggest that each of you should pick a god, and pray."
With that ominous note hanging suspended in the air like the fabled sword of Damocles itself, the live broadcast came to an end.
For a brief moment, silence lingered in the room; then, as though from out of nowhere, one member of the camera crew began to applaud. Then another, and another, until the entire crew, the director included, were in the process of politely yet enthusiastically celebrating Friederike's performance. Priscilla came up from beside the camera and quietly meshed herself against Friede's side (it wasn't often that Priscilla took it upon herself to speak when it wasn't just the two of them, after all), and it was only a scant few moments before Friederike let a few layers of her performative mien slip from her bearing—the sensation was far too similar to sagging in exhaustion for her liking, especially in this building, in this company, where the act of letting slip any sort of vulnerability was tantamount to signing her own death warrant, but Friede had quite enough on her mind without letting herself get unduly paranoid about something that would have zero significance to anyone else here.
It had been a lesson that took her longer to learn than it really should have—that human beings were, in fact, nowhere near as perceptive as her anxieties often insisted.
Then the doors burst open, and Friederike bit back the urge to groan in dismay.
There stood Cornelia, in all her angered severity. Her uniform, which consisted of a double-breasted black tailcoat with crimson lining and gold trimming, white trousers, black boots that climbed up to about her mid-thigh, a pair of épaulettes and an aiguillette, and a white cravat, clearly denoted both her affiliation as one of Chief General Hargreeves's personal cohort of staff officers as well as her status as a lieutenant general in the Imperial Army; a gunsabre hung from a discreet belt at her waist, her hands were covered by black leather, and her Knight of Honour, Brigadier-General Guilford (a staff officer of a staff officer, how quaint), was currently stuck holding her white cape, which seemed to have been quickly doffed.
"Sister," Cornelia practically bit out, the rancour rolling off of her in heavy waves despite her best attempts at mastering herself (which, while valiant, ultimately and invariably came to naught). "Pardon my interruption, but I must beg an audience with you. May we speak privately?"
'Privately,' which meant the four of them, naturally. And yet Friederike could not help but think it profoundly disconcerting that Guilford was here to accompany her alone—while the elder princess held no grudge against Andreas Darlton, and indeed thought it rather commendably shrewd of him to take it upon himself to seek alternative patronage, she very much found herself frustrated with how Cornelia somehow failed to grasp the value of the officer she'd managed to alienate, undermining the very foundations of what little of a power base she had managed to accumulate in the process, even still.
Yet, there wasn't a reason that Friederike could think of that would let her avoid what was certain to be an abysmal interaction without tipping her hand rather too much, especially for a place where the walls were rather infamous for possessing a full complement of human senses. So, instead, she looked her sister in her indigo eyes for a silent moment, long enough to see the flame of fury begin to flicker and doubt, and then nodded her assent. "Greetings, Cornelia. I'm glad to see you well. I do, as it happens, have some scant time to use at my discretion before my next engagement, and I would be only too happy to field at least a few of your…concerns. Shall we?"
"Thank you," Cornelia replied, and the vocalisation was entirely too stiff really to be of much use in concealing anything at all. It was a trial, dealing with the eldest of her younger sisters, and had only managed to become more so ever since the end of the Second Pacific War. "The palace gardens?"
"That would be acceptable," Friederike agreed with a cautious nod. "Priscilla, attend me."
She was thankful that Cornelia at the very least possessed the good sense to remain silent as they swept out of the broadcasting room with all the regal elegance befitting their station, for all that Cornelia's was more martial, and took clear inspiration from the late Empress Marianne. The journey through the long and lavish corridors of the gargantuan and labyrinthine structure that was the Imperial Palace was spent all in blessed silence, save for the clack of Friederike's heeled slippers, the deeper sounds of Cornelia's heeled boots, and the relatively subtle footfalls from their accompaniment—Priscilla because she had a cutpurse's step, and Guilford from years of noble etiquette being hammered into his broad forehead and stored beneath his awful hairstyle. They didn't encounter much more than servants on their way, but the serving staff was, by itself, more than worthy of the cautious measure: a servant's chronically overlooked existence was, funnily enough, precisely what made them so invaluable in the Game of Shadows, and were rather stereotypically so…for all that it was a stereotype that many a powerful individual the world over continued to fall afoul of time and time again.
All the same, it did not take them long to reach the sprawling expanse of the palace gardens.
The palace gardens were something of a misnomer; in truth, it was an entire forest, contained within the palace's boundaries. Trees and rivers and grass lay sprawling beneath open sunlight, for all intents and purposes an oasis within an oasis, with stables and horses for the sake of more idle pursuits. They had long been a favourite of Empress Marianne's, and it was increasingly disconcerting that this as well as a myriad of other signs all seemed to point towards Cornelia's hero worship of Marianne the Flash entrenching itself to an incredibly worrisome degree. It was admittedly something of a grudge that Friederike bore against the first of her little sisters, that despite spending quite some time in close proximity to the woman who had been rather notorious as the left hand of His Majesty, the truth of her girlhood hero remained somehow hidden from her notice. It made Friederike wonder to what extent Cornelia's naiveté could be attributed to her capacity for imagination and abstraction, and their chronic deficiency, and to what extent her ignorance qualified as willful.
And yet, these thoughts remained rather firmly within the confines of Friederike's mind, as she and the trio she had in tow went on foot across the rolling, hilly expanse of verdant waves of lush greenery. She had no right idea where within this complex Cornelia had decided would serve adequately as their private meeting-spot, but it turned out that she didn't need to, as before long, the Third Princess had taken the lead, going forth in a direction that Friederike recalled to feature a gazebo of some design. Sure enough, after a few extra minutes' worth of walking (between ten and twelve), they came upon a white structure shaped in a vague approximation of what seemed to the Second Princess's eyes to be a pagoda, of all things, nestled at the foot of a river-bank. Guilford took up his post to one side of the entrance, and Priscilla mirrored the man on the opposite side as the two royals entered the gazebo, and took their seats—one of them doing so with far greater elegance than the other, as Friederike's rarely-expressed petty, mean side could not help but gloat over amongst itself.
"So, then, Cornelia. You wished to speak with me?" Friederike prompted. She gestured towards the floor of the gazebo with a restrained, delicate flourish, and then spoke anew. "Well, here I am. The floor is yours. By all means, little sister, speak."
"I have…misgivings," Cornelia began, and the struggle to phrase what she was saying in as close to a diplomatic fashion as the woman who was becoming known abroad as the Witch of Britannia could ever truly manage was written plainly across her pretty face. "Regarding the memo you sent General Hargreeves to shift to war footing, I mean."
"I'd expected that you'd be privy to it, seeing as the man's considering retirement and seems rather keen on having you succeed him—though I confess, I did not think you would know of it quite so soon. It's barely been even two hours since I arranged to have the notice sent out, after all," Friederike remarked in a thoughtful tone. "Very well, then: what about the memo distresses you so? In detail, if you please, so that I might respond to your misgivings with the utmost precision."
"Why am I the one who was chosen to re-open the Iberian theatre?" Cornelia asked plainly, and the intensity of her indigo gaze glittered rather firmly in the subsiding light of the lengthening evening.
"'Why', you ask?" Friederike inquired rhetorically. "Because I believe you're the general who is, to say it plain, best-suited to the sort of war we're going to be prosecuting there."
"And what, exactly, is that?" Cornelia pressed, leaning forward in her impatience.
"Isn't it obvious?" Friede asked, and once again the question's purpose was purely rhetorical. "We lack the flexibility to annex Spain and Portugal outright: the E.U.'s entrenched across Africa, and while we haven't been enough of a thorn in their side to warrant them committing resources to the Saharan theatre to oust us from Morocco, if we do move to conquer and occupy two of their core member-states? It becomes a very different story. Frankly, I wouldn't be inclined to risk such an endeavour even in the ordinary course of events—but right now, with the noble houses of Area Six breathing down our necks, threatening a future attempt at secession? It's absolutely out of the question."
"Scorched Earth," muttered Cornelia, realisation dawning. "We can't hold it, so your plan is to have us destroy as much of the Spaniards' infrastructure as we can during the process of occupation, so that we end up handing over to the E.U. a crippled territory that they then have to spend resources reconstructing. Resources that they then can't lend to the Middle Eastern Federation, member-state application or no…"
"That's certainly half of it," Friederike acknowledged with a patient nod. "And coincidentally, it's the half that concerns your area of expertise. Bravo."
The Witch of Britannia's brow furrowed quizzically. "Then what's the other half?"
Instead of answering outright, Friede elected instead to answer the question with another question. "Tell me, Cornelia, how much do you know about Mister Herman Richtofen?"
"The current president of the E.U.?"
"The very same," Friederike clarified. "How much do you know about him?"
"Not a great deal, admittedly," Cornelia confessed, and by the way her brow remained furrowed, it was clear to Friederike that her sister had no right idea of the purpose the question served. "I don't tend to pay much mind to political affairs. You know this."
"I do," Friederike affirmed. And I maintain that it's one of your most egregious oversights… "But it is, unfortunately, a rather relevant subject at the moment. You see, our dear Mister Richtofen was elected as a war hawk. His faction is characterised much more by its drive to pursue aggressive action against us than it is by its policies of domestic austerity and of, frankly, draconian law enforcement; and yet the fear of our power is so great that the citizens of Europia United chose someone who professed to oppose us, and were willing to accept practically any and all costs to see that opposition come about.
"And it's a shrewd strategy, to appeal to the sorts of public fears that can conceivably be soothed with a judicious application of hard power," Friederike continued, explaining the situation as patiently as she could manage. I swear, if she asks me to explain what I mean when I say 'hard power'… "But there's a fundamental flaw inherent to such political strategies, you see: if a war hawk wishes to maintain their hold on power, they cannot afford to suffer defeat in armed conflict. More so than soft power, hard power is a very clear example of binary outcomes, after all. Our victories at Gibraltar a year ago were decisive, yes, but they all amounted to a few minor skirmishes at most, with the Sutherlands' overwhelming technological superiority over the European Panzer-Hummels making an expansion of hostilities an increasingly foolhardy decision. And yet, already the public calls for Richtofen's head, demanding a referendum, which continues to prod a large portion of the Hemicycle, representatives of the citizenry that they are, into initiating what is called a 'vote of no confidence'. The ground is, to put it bluntly, falling away beneath his feet. Your presence in the Iberian theatre serves my work in that a string of victories and ruin within one of Europia's core member-states will massively undermine Richtofen's attempts to regain popular support while dramatically eroding what scraps of his power base he's currently managing to hold onto—especially if the situation in Spain grows so dire that it triggers a refugee crisis.
"After all, there exist very few things better-suited to exposing the limitations of hard power than a humanitarian emergency, engineered or otherwise. Disease, disaster, displacement…" Friede smirked, gesturing vaguely with one of her hands for the sake of rhetorical effect. "You get the idea, I'm sure."
"So you want me…to be a harbinger of human suffering…?" Cornelia repeated slowly.
Friederike felt her own brow furrow in confusion—this wasn't the sort of order that she'd ever had cause to believe Cornelia would question, but it seemed that the unpleasantness that she'd foreseen coming forth from this conversation was on the rise, for all that it was indeed not yet here. "In summary. Why? Do you have an objection? Have you somehow developed some sense of misgivings with regards to the fates and collective well-being of European citizens?"
"…Not especially, no," Cornelia finally arrived at, shaking her head and pursing her lips as though she'd bitten into a particularly acerbic lemon.
"Then why are you looking at me as though my orders have provoked some realisation of deep and uncomfortable personal truths?" Friederike asked, and she'd meant the question to be glib, but the wince at the corner of one of Cornelia's eyes filled the Second Princess with a sinking dread.
She'd struck a nerve.
"I understand what the plan is, now, to the extent that I need to," Cornelia began, every word passing through her lips as though each caused her some fresh discomfort. "If this Richtofen man gets deposed, and he's replaced by someone with a more peaceable temperament, that staves off the risk of war on a full scale with the E.U.. We'd be sacrificing the lives of a few thousand civilians, perhaps, for the sake of preserving the lives of millions, both our own and theirs, into the future. I get that, I do, it's just…"
"Just what?" Friederike prompted with a patience she really didn't feel.
"It reminds me of something Justine once said," she replied, spitting the name like it was a curse. "I told her that what she'd done was…that it was contemptible, and she said to me that she'd paid in trade the worst day of one girl's life for the lives of me and all of my men, every soldier who'd ever put their trust in me, that I'd see them home and not in a body bag…"
"And you see an issue with this?" Friederike pried gently.
"You mean you don't?!" Cornelia cried, seemingly shocked. "Friederike, Justine is a monster."
"And you, my dear sister, are a hypocrite," Friede replied sharply, her patience thoroughly spent.
Cornelia jerked back, as if she'd been physically struck. With wide eyes, she asked, "…What?"
"Is that what this is about?" Friederike asked rhetorically, already having realised precisely that. "Is your reluctance to do your job predicated on some silly grudge you bear against Justine, our sister?"
"She isn't our sister anymore," Cornelia professed gravely, and Friederike felt shocked to see that it was something the fuschia-haired younger princess truly believed. "Whatever took her over…that thing she became in the wake of Lady Marianne's death…"
"What thing do you speak of, Cornelia?" Friede interrupted, her voice growing very calm as she felt the same protective rage that had seen her open her townhouse to the vi Britannia sisters as a safe haven on that fateful night, over three years past, begin to creep up the back of her neck. "A happy girl? A confident girl? A girl with ambitions, who is loved and valued?"
Cornelia appeared ready to object, but looking at her, it dawned on Friede what she was seeing. She spoke, then, and it was quiet with astonishment and sharp with scorn. "No, that's not it. The thing you have come to see in her, Cornelia, that so offends you, is a girl who no longer needs you."
"The girl's mother died, Friederike!" Cornelia exclaimed with wild flung-out gestures of her hands, her decorum thrown to the wind. "She saw the body with her own eyes!"
"And yet, notably, you did not say that you saw the same phenomenon in Juliette," Friede pointed out, the princess and the prime minister taking a back seat to the affronted sister, who'd seen in the younger Justine the same desperate unhappiness that had very nearly swallowed her in her girlhood—perhaps even more profoundly so than she'd ever seen in herself—and wanted so badly to see it erased. "Juliette, I must remind you, who was also there alongside her sister that night, and witnessed much the same horror as that of which you speak. What of her?"
"What of her?" Cornelia spat bitterly. "She's always been a little monster. What's there to change?"
"You know, Cornelia," Friederike remarked, her tone remaining conversational and affable, for all that her voice had grown very quiet. "I don't think you've ever resembled the late Empress Marianne more closely than when you said those words just now."
That brought Cornelia up short; this time, when she spoke, it was every bit as affronted as it was confused. "…What?"
"The way you spoke of Juliette just now," Friede explained. "Marianne often spoke of her daughters in much the same way when she was alive. Little monster this. Difficult child that. Often, such things were not even said behind their backs. Did you know that? More than once, she said as much to them directly. It was never when I was clearly in the room, I'll grant you—but she didn't always know that I was there. I'm certain that most of us, we of the Imperial Family, have some horror story or other to share about fraught relationships, if not outright estrangement, with our mothers—to say nothing of our father, His Majesty. I'd almost be inclined to argue that it comes with the territory of being born as we are.
"But I want you to think back and imagine, Cornelia. I know it's something you find particularly difficult, but try, just for a moment. When Justine was in my townhouse the night it all happened, have you any idea of why she was distressed? Because she certainly was, I'll grant you, but you can rest assured it wasn't because of anything sentimental," Friederike continued, her tone frosty as she stared Cornelia down in a way that made it clear that she would not suffer the interruption. "She was distressed because she had lost the aegis of His Majesty's favoured consort. Justine was so incredibly certain that her own mother did not, and indeed had never loved her, not even slightly, that all she worried about the night she died was the target the woman's death had painted upon her back. Empress Marianne never forgave Justine for the crime of being born a daughter instead of a son, and she never let Justine forget that. Juliette grew up as Justine's daughter more so than as her sibling, and she's never hidden that she loves Justine fiercely and irrevocably because of it; and the Ashford heiress was never so adept at concealing her affections as she perhaps liked to believe she was. In the wake of that night when such things were at last revealed to our sister, she has at last begun to flourish.
"But what I want you to imagine, isthat from your very earliest memories, from your most helpless days of childhood, you knew, as an absolute certainty, that your own mother never wanted you, never loved you, could never love you, and very much wished that you had never been born. Or worse," Friede sighed, and then took a deep breath before continuing. "Or worse, wished that someone else had been born in your place. Tell me, Cornelia, what do you suppose that does to a girl?"
Cornelia stood, her affront worn plain upon her sleeve. She's always worn it there. She really should consider returning it to her chest, where it belongs… "The Empress Marianne you are describing was not the woman I served…"
"The woman you served never existed, Cornelia," Friederike declared outright. "She is a fiction. A performance she put on when she wanted to charm someone or to cultivate and ensure their loyalty. It was only ever skin-deep."
Cornelia's anger was in full force now. Her eyes were wide, her jaw was clenched, her nostrils were flaring like an incensed bull's. "You lie."
"I have enabled your delusions with my silence for long enough," Friederike retorted sharply. Then she herself was standing, towering practically a full head over her younger half-sister, and pointedly looked the younger, shorter princess up and down, her gaze pitiless and critical. "Too long, by the looks of things."
"I…!"
"This conversation is over, Cornelia," Friederike interrupted, cutting Cornelia off in a manner that brooked no contest. "And perhaps it was I who was a fool for entertaining it in the first place. You may be a princess of the realm, but before that, you are a soldier, and as a soldier, you will follow the orders that I see fit to hand down to you. And because it seems I must leash you like an unruly hound, you will refrain from taking any sort of action against Justine, Juliette, the Ashford girl, or indeed anyone in their orbit, including Euphy for as long as she wishes to remain there. If I hear so much as a rumour that you have raised a hand to them, to her, then so help me, Cornelia, I shall forget that we are family."
Cornelia stood there, snarling and nearly apoplectic with anger. "You are not our father."
Friederike gave a mirthless bark of laughter. "Then by all means, go ahead! Seek an audience with His Majesty! Watch as he dismisses the whole thing as a trivial concern and hands the matter down to me to resolve, just as he has done with every other affair of state. And then we will be here once again, right back where we started—but then, I doubt you shall find me so willing to be lenient a second time."
The Third Princess stared at her, as though seeking to cow her elder sister.
The Second Princess stared back, distinctly unimpressed.
Go on, then, Cornelia, Friederike thought vindictively. Give me a reason to make you disappear…
And then suddenly, Cornelia tore her eyes away, turning on her heel and storming out of the gazebo; Lord Guilford started, and rushed to follow in her wake. Like a good hound should.
Friederike came to the threshold of the structure to watch the ball of fury soldiers around the world called the Witch of Britannia retreat into the distance, and immediately Priscilla was by her side; and even without the freedom to touch, not here where anyone could walk by at any moment and see the two of them in love, her aide as much of an Achilles heel as the other woman was a source of strength, her presence did much to soothe Friederike's rancour.
"I suppose that went about as well as could be expected," Priscilla murmured.
"Silla, do you know if Andreas Darlton is still in the market for a patron?" Friederike asked; and the decision had already begun to firm itself into resolution, for all that she'd come to it in a snap perhaps but a few scant moments prior.
"I believe so," Silla replied, patiently awaiting whatever command Friederike was going to give her next. "He's risen far too high in the world for most of the older highborn houses to be suitable in status, to say nothing of the newer."
"Contact him, and arrange a meeting, perhaps over afternoon tea. And be sure to schedule it at his earliest availability," Friederike instructed in a rush. "Capable though the man may be, he'd be a poor fit for Justine, and at the rate things are progressing, especially if Cornelia does ultimately wind up with the office of chief general, I'll soon be in rather dire need of my own man in the ranks."
"As Her Excellency commands," Priscilla assured her. "I'll see it done. Shall we abscond?"
Friederike closed her eyes, and took a deep, cleansing inhale that shuddered around what embers of her previous anger remained. As if I didn't already have enough of these sorts of crises to deal with… "Yes, my love. Let us return home. Right now."
Malebranche Palace was dark and empty when at last they returned to it, as evening weaned into the midsummer night. There wasn't a sign just yet of whether there'd be a repeat of the Season's End party that Clovis hosted last year hidden amongst the correspondence that Priscilla went through as they walked back into the imposing Rococo edifice of the building they called their home—imitator of the Prussian palace of Sanssouci though it was—but from what had transpired last year, Friederike was very strongly considering attending herself this time if it was already in the works; failing that, she supposed she could always resort to discussing the subject with Juliette herself, who had Clovis better-managed than anyone else Friederike's mind could immediately recall. She'd never precisely been a socialite, herself, but she'd been to the odd party here or there for its own sake instead of attending in an official capacity, before she'd become the regent of the Empire in all but name; and after all the difficult strife that had assailed her life recently, Friederike felt like she was sorely in need of some levity, for the sake of her sanity if nothing else.
The hour was perhaps a bit late for supper in the ordinary course, but when Priscilla made a beeline towards the palace's kitchens, Friederike felt there wasn't really a reason to refuse her. She knew from their previous culinary experiments that she was, herself, quite hopeless in the kitchen, and so she mostly elected to stay out of the way while Priscilla handled everything, taking up a pittance of the space that the kitchens boasted in the process. It was rather akin to the sensation of being in an empty shopping-mall, one of those places where commoners congregated during their leisure time; the kitchens were stocked and equipped to have stations for a full team of cooks and servants bustling in and out, stress-tested as it had been to serve a party of up to two hundred guests, but with Friede rarely seeing the utility in keeping a full complement of staff on hand at any given time, and her majordomo on holiday along with the few she kept around to do all the cleaning and the laundry, only the two of them were there to fill the chamber with sound. So Friede took it upon herself to strike up and carry the conversation between the two of them, the pair talking and laughing as their evening meal came to fruition.
Then, after they ate in the servants' dining area (and how scandalous of them was that?), they set about their ritual of doing the washing themselves, Friederike obviously now stripped down to her chemise to do so, and this was not so filled with conversation; neither felt the need to fill the silence, and instead they enjoyed the quiet intimacy of their togetherness. It was stabilising, and the princess felt more and more of her previous antipathy as it began to slip from her grasp, where it would have stoked until it burned her proverbial flesh; much-needed was the peace that slipped into the spaces that her anger left behind, and much appreciated was Silla's quiet and unobtrusive presence throughout all of it.
They parted ways after that, Priscilla leaving to see to her evening toilet while Friederike elected to check into her office one last time before doing the same; and when she reached the study itself, with all its indulgences in their proper places under the cover of the dark, she found it exactly how she'd left it. In her sheer chemise still, she closed the creaking door behind her, leaving herself in total blackness, before then moving towards where she knew the lamp would be—perched upon her grandiose, exquisite, and expensive desk, where it could illuminate any part of the chamber of which she might have need while working late into the night—and turning it on.
She turned around, then, and her heart leapt into her throat.
"Miss Shinozaki!" Friederike gasped, her hand flying up as if to calm her suddenly galloping heart.
"My deepest apologies for startling you, Your Excellency," the shinobi replied respectfully, bowing at the waist in a manner that let Friederike know that the woman was only partly contrite for shocking the prime minister practically out of her skin entirely. And yet, oddly enough, the alternative note of mirth was conspicuously absent from her demeanour.
Now Friedeike was genuinely beginning to grow worried. "There's no need; I'm just quite a bit on edge from…well, practically everything that I have had to deal with today…"
"I imagine speaking to Her Highness Princess Cornelia may have been especially taxing," said the shinobi, her tone commiserating, though her aim was informative in its nature: that she was being watched.
"Exceptionally so. But why are you here?" Friederike asked, crossing her arms beneath her bust as she spoke. "Shouldn't you be attending to your mistress in Area Eleven?"
The shinobi visibly hesitated. She'd changed her attire from the last time Friederike had seen her in such a role—immediately after the Second Pacific War, when Friede had made sure to personally arrange for the House of Ashford to be granted the viceroyalty of the new Area. What she wore now was a slimmer profile, a mix of black and purple, chainmail and cloth and even a mask in the shape of the maw of a fierce, snarling beast that covered the lower half of her face, and it suited her position altogether much better than the raiment she'd used to succeed her predecessor had. "My shinobi in Europe managed to gather and then corroborate reports on something dire. We haven't gotten the chance to properly expand into Africa yet, as it happens, and right now I'm glad that we didn't. I could have sent a courier to get the information to you, but I… I thought you deserved to hear it from me directly."
"What happened, then?" Friederike pressed, exasperated and bone-tired. "Out with it."
"…The E.U. is just now beginning to report that their garrisons and offices in Cairo have all gone dark," began the shinobi, her voice grave and her deep brown eyes hard with the severity of her tidings. "Their military sent reconnaissance units to examine the situation for themselves. And what they found…was that everything in Egypt, from the trees to the grass, from the livestock to the pets, to the citizens themselves, were all dead."
Friederike blinked, too shocked by the concept to even react properly. "I… They're dead? How?"
The Shinozaki matriarch shook her head sadly. "We have no idea. A few of the E.U.'s preliminary survey teams have determined that the Nile has spontaneously putrefied, and water samples taken from the river have been found to carry an unidentified but astonishingly virulent toxin. The bodies of the citizens… There is more left of the remains of those caught in the blast at Pompeii than there is of those who once lived in the member-state. They've rotted, all of them, to the point where even their bones have largely turned to dust. The wetlands have become vast poisonous bogs, and nothing, not even insect life abides in the desert sands anymore, Your Excellency."
"…If what you're saying is true," Friederike said tentatively, swallowing hard as her mind worked feverishly to try and grapple with all the implications of this. "Then this is truly a disaster of…of untold proportions…"
"And I'm afraid it gets worse," said the Shinozaki woman, seeming for perhaps the first time since the Second Princess had first met the woman to be visibly uncomfortable with being the bearer of such bad news. "The president of Europia, Herman Richtofen? His press secretaries are beginning to leak claims that this was all caused by the deployment of a Britannian bioweapon. He's seeking to spin this as the product of a new weapon of mass destruction deployed by Emperor Charles…"
"The man refuses to ever meet with me, and is indeed so ignorant as to the goings-on of the Empire that he doesn't even know that I'd have had to be the one to issue that sort of order, since His Majesty just cannot be bothered anymore," Friederike mused bitterly, laughing without mirth at the sheer absurdity of it all. Everything I did today, practically every plan I laid out, has been wasted. I'll have to scrap them all. Start from scratch. It might already be too late in Europe, but we need to get ahead of this in Britannia and abroad yesterday. "Well. This must be what it feels like to well and truly have all your plans and designs go up in smoke. I thought I'd known it by now, but…those feelings pale in comparison to this catastrophe…"
"If you have need of our services, the young mistress has put my organisation at your disposal," the shinobi declared, bowing low once again.
Friederike ran a shuddering hand through her hair; and when her fingers came away, she saw a few more streaks of grey in it. I cannot believe this. I'm only twenty-three… At this rate, I'll have hair like His Majesty by the time I'm thirty… "Thank you, Miss Shinozaki, and my thanks to Duchess Ashford as well. Something tells me we're going to need all the help we can get with this mess…"
A creak from behind her alerted Friederike that someone else had opened the door—she turned, and caught sight of Silla there, dressed for bed, her rose-gold hair down in cascading ringlets, and her blue eyes narrowed in faint suspicion. "Friede? I'm done in the bathroom…"
Friederike sighed again, and it felt like it was scraping at the insides of her lungs as it came up. "It seems there's been a development that requires our immediate attention, Silla. And it's not the sort of thing we can afford to let sit until the morning…"
Priscilla nodded, her eyes closing in dismay as she pushed the door all the way open to step into the study properly. "Then let's hear it, I suppose…"