“May I ask your name?” she asked. “I should have asked before, but the shock of finding that the King was one of you was too great.”
“My name is Leona, Your Highness,” the maid replied.
Ah, so I'm still a Highness, thought Ardria hopefully. That was interesting. “That's a pretty name, I don’t think I've ever heard it before. Is it a common name where you come from?”
“Not a common name,” replied the maid, still scrubbing her back. “But there are others with the same name. I come from Jaccquil, in the north.”
“Ah. I was trying to place your accent. So, you're going to be a Radiant one day.”
“Yes, Highness.”
“Do Radiants have names? Will you still be Leona when you're a Radiant?”
“No, Highness. They identify themselves telepathically. When one speaks to you, you just know which one it is by the feel of their thoughts, like recognising the voice of someone you know.”
“But we still use names, even though we can recognise each other’s voices. We use names for the benefit of those we've never met before, who don't know what our voices sound like. Suppose a Radiant you've never met before speaks to you, and you then have to tell another Radiant which one it was who spoke to you?”
“Telepathy can communicate the feel of someone's thoughts. It is not limited to words.”
“I see. There’s so much we don't know about them! They've always been there, floating around in the sky, but we know almost nothing about them. Their social structures, how they govern themselves. Do they even have a government? A ruling class?”
“All Radiants are equal, Highness. If a number of them have to work together, they may choose one among themselves to co-ordinate, to direct their operations, but it may not always be the same one. They choose the one among themselves that is most suited to direct that particular operation.”
“Your King thinks he'll still be a King when he's a Radiant. He thinks he'll still be able to order you around, that you'll still be his servants.”
There was a full length mirror on the wall in front of her. It was beginning to mist up, but she could still see an amused smile appear on the maid’s face. “The King's wrong?” she asked.
“The Radiants tell me that all are equal in their society, Highness. There is a Radiant speaking to me even now. He is confirming it.”
“If the Radiants speak to the King as well, then how did he come to this misapprehension?”
“I do not know, Highness.”
“Perhaps the Radiants lied to him. They needed him for their plan to work, so they told him what he wanted to hear.”
“Perhaps, Your Highness.”
“If they lied to him, perhaps they're lying to you as well. About this, about other things.”
The towel stopped moving against her back for a moment, then resumed, scrubbing harder than before. “It is not easy to lie with telepathy, Highness. When we talk to them, they can see our innermost thoughts. We can hide nothing from them.”
“But they're higher beings. Perhaps they can hide things from you. Perhaps they can hide what they're really thinking from you.”
“They said you would try to divide us, Highness.” The maid had her other hand, the one not holding the flannel, on her shoulder, and Ardria was suddenly intensely aware that, like all adoptees, she had wizard powers. She could throw her back to her animal form in almost an instant. The woman would have to parent bond her first, of course, but that was something a wizard could do in a single moment. Ardria would find herself suddenly loving the woman, be willing to do anything for her. She anxiously searched her feelings. If she felt herself suddenly feeling warm and tender towards the maid, would she be able to leap out of the bath, break the physical contact, before it was too late? What was there around her that she could use as a weapon? Sponges, towels... Her eyes fixed on the bottle of bath oil. It might make a pretty good club if she could grip the slippery crystal firmly enough...
The maid withdrew her hand and the Princess relaxed. “They did lie to the King,” she said. “The Radiant confirms it. They don't like lying. It requires a special effort to withhold their true thoughts, but, as you said, they need him for their plan to work. They told us the truth, though, and I believe them. It also said that they told the King that it is us that they are lying to.”
The Princess started to speak and the maid slipped a hand over her mouth to silence her. “I know what you are going to say,” she said, withdrawing her hand. “If they told us that they are lying to him, and they told him that they are lying to us... I believe that they are telling the truth to us, though, and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise.”
“You're parent bonded,” pointed out the Princess. “You'll believe whatever they tell you.”
The maid stepped away and towelled her arms dry. Some of the cream wiped off and her luminous skin was revealed. “Finish your bath,” she said. “The King desires your company for breakfast.”
She then opened the door and left the room, leaving the Princess to sigh with disappointment behind her.
☆☆☆
“Why was I not informed about the altered nature of your mission?” demanded Edward Blake angrily.
He, the Brigadier and Private Grey were standing in the club house of Rendell United, Charnox's best kickball team. Blake was the team's manager. A star player in the days of his youth and, unknown to the kickballers and their fans, he and his staff ran the Charnox branch of the Helberion intelligence service, with visitors explained as friends of the manager and avid fans of the team, invited to see what went on behind the scenes. The Brigadier had gotten in by uttering the code phrase “I thought I'd take him up on his invitation,” whereupon the cleaner who’d answered the door, a highly decorated former Helberion soldier, had ushered him through and then gone off to get his superior.
That man was now glaring furiously at the a Brigadier, who met his gaze impassively. “There has been no change,” he replied. “My orders are simply to meet up with the Princess and offer her whatever assistance she might require.”
“So what possessed you to bring the whole country to the brink of armed insurrection?”
“That was not my intention. I tried to move through the country incognito, but I was recognised on several occasions, and each time they assumed I was here to assist them in organising a revolution. I denied it, of course. I am as well aware as you of the dangers of mission creep.”
“The King has a plan for the salvation of Helberion," Blake told him, "but it is dependent on there being a central authority in Carrow we can negotiate with. If this country devolves into anarchy, with dozens of local warlords vying for control, Helberion could be swamped by thousands of refugees fleeing the chaos.”
“I am well aware of the King's plan. It was I who helped him formulate it. I am as aware as you are of what a Carrow civil war would mean for Helberion. I repeat that I have had no part in organising a revolution.”
The Brigadier spoke in a steady, soft voice against which the spy chief's anger splashed like water against a rock. Blake stared at him, feeling his anger dying away without any answering anger from the Brigadier to fuel it, and he turned away to pace across the room. He stared at the trophy cabinet, as if the silver cups and moulded sporting figures it contained held the answers to all his problems. “So what do we bloody well do?” he asked. “I hope you know, because I bloody well don't.”
“I am not here to tell you your job. I am hoping you can help me do mine. I need to enter the palace and make contact with the Princess. To do that I will need the help of Wombat.”
Blake glanced across at Grey, his thoughts transparent to both the other men. This common soldier wasn't cleared for this kind of information. First the Brigadier brings him here, to a secret spy headquarters, then he reveals the code name of Helberion's most important asset in Carrow!
“I trust Private Grey,” said the Brigadier. “You may speak freely in front of him.”
“I will decide who I can speak freely in front of!” replied Blake, his anger returning. “Wombat’s identity must be protected at all costs. The information he's provided over the years has been invaluable.”
“Has it indeed?” asked the Brigadier. “What has he told us recently?”
“He gave us advanced warning that Carrow was about to invade...”
“We received his warning after Marboll was attacked by the Radiants. His warning came too late to do us any good. Also, there are things we desperately need to know that an agent in the palace ought to have been able to tell us. There must be at least one adoptee in the palace. Who is it? Where does he have his private quarters? Have any high ranking members of the King's administration been adopted? Wombat should have been able to find out just by seeing who has powdered skin. Is the King a willing participant of the destruction of human civilisation, or is he an unwitting dupe? Was Wombat unable to listen in on any of his private meetings?”
“There are limits to the risks he can take. If he is discovered...”
“He'll be killed, yes, but what use is an agent in the palace if he's too fearful to gather intelligence? The time has come for him to do his job. I need a guide in the palace. Someone who can tell me where the Princess is being kept, what guards are kept on her. If he can’t do this, then what use is he?”
“I haven't had an opportunity to speak with him since the Princess’s arrival. Our next scheduled contact is tomorrow evening, and I have to see him alone. If he sees anyone with me...”
“You must have a way to get a message to him quickly, in case of an emergency.”
“Yes, but it can only be used in the event of the direst emergency.”
“You don't think the capture of the crown Princess by the enemy counts as a dire emergency?”
“She wasn’t captured. She came voluntarily. She's where she wants to be.”
The Brigadier nodded reluctantly. It was an argument he might have made himself under other circumstances. “We have to know whether she still wants to be here,” he said. “We have no idea how her meeting with King Nilon went. She might now be a genuine captive, a genuine hostage. We need to contact her, under circumstances in which we know she’s not speaking under duress. We need Wombat.”
Blake paced back and forth across the room, shaking his head in frustration. “There are Carrowmen willing to give us information because they trust us to keep them safe, to protect their identities. If we get Wombat killed, no Carrowmen will ever work for us again. If we get him killed, the King will have me hanged in my own forecourt.”
“Have you forgotten that it is the King's own daughter in Greyspike Palace? I think he'd be more likely to have us all hanged if we don't take this risk.”
“I have to think about this...”
“No time for thinking. Decide, now. Either you give us Wombat or the two of us will try to break into the palace and find the Princess without him.”
“You can't take him to the palace!” said Blake in outrage, pointing at Private Grey. “He knows about this place now! If he's captured...”
“He won't be taken alive,” promised the Brigadier. “Neither of us will. I guarantee it.”
Grey stared at him, an alarmed look in his eyes, but then he nodded. “I also guarantee it,” he said. “I won’t risk telling them anything under torture. I'll open my own veins first. I swear it in the name of King Leothan.”
Blake stared at him, trying to read him, to see if he was sincere. Then he nodded. “Very well,” he said. “Just sending the message runs the risk of exposing him, but you know that. I'll do it immediately. We should get a reply within the hour.” He then turned and went to leave the room without looking back, still shaking his head doubtfully.
“There's just a couple more things,” said the Brigadier, though, making him pause and look back. “First, can you please get in touch with our embassy in Farwell. Ask them if there's been any word regarding my batman, Malone.”
“I'll pass on the request,” replied the spy master. “Don’t expect a reply any time soon, though. We rely on riders and pigeons. It might be a week before we hear anything. When you see Wombat, he might be able to use the palace's telegraph to get news from Marboll, if the city's still standing. What was the other thing?”
“I presume you have an armoury? There's something I'd like to take with me.”
“Come this way,” said Blake, and he led the way further into the building.