>>5421064“Regardless of anyone’s feeling about matriarchy or patriarchy, it seems the season dictate a king WILL be taking control soon… Is this not so?”
All eyes are on you again as you speak these words, though the Queen takes her time for her next mushroom-cup of red-brown elf-wine to be poured. You sip your own, to steel yourself for that silver weight to settle once more upon your soul.
“In a time of crisis, when signs are right, a season can be longer, or shorter. Spring comes when it comes; some winters are long.”
She hopes to extend her rule for a time. You’d heard as much. So too do you know that this ‘spring’ and ‘winter’ she speaks of are not literal—they last years, maybe decades, not months.
“Corandiirn, of House Sambra, must home that his springtime is coming sooner rather than later.”
The Queen’s eyes widen only slightly, then narrow, as you name-drop the rival whose witch-servant approached you in the slums.
“I have heard some float the idea,” Queen Myrymma acknowledges.
“What are your feelings about him?” you ask. “What are his chances?”
“If you’d accepted his invitation, you could have judges them for yourself,” she notes softly.
You tilt your head. Has she been reported to by Jazkarmel’s spies? You suppose you gave them no instructions to hide THAT event from the princess, or their Queen.
“Prince Corandiirn has more supporters than some, maybe most,” the Queen acknowledges, when you remain silent. “He or Minothel of Tlintear. One is the better diplomat and rumoured to be a skilled assassin, with a mage’s touch. The other is a higher-born, better-connected, probably the smarter.”
“Which do you prefer?”
The banquet grows tense. The other elves, male and female and intermediate, remain still as they can, avert their eyes.
“Neither,” the Queen answers truthfully, with perhaps her first genuine smile—though she still shows no teeth.
“An elf of Yvonlace, then?” you ask with neutral tone.
“Nothing of the sort,” she says quickly. “We are a Queenly house. Our daughters here are wise, our sons strong and supple. It does not do to raise Kings and Queens together in the same household. A strong man produces, enforces, a weak woman… And vice versa.”
