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The barkeep who ruled the one and only pub in the town of Calladay – not busy by city standards, but a good-sized pub, enough to serve the whole of the four-street town – was filing his nails one afternoon when he was rudely interrupted by the tall knight who flung open his front door.
The knight stomped to a halt in front of the counter, heels practically screeching on the floorboards, then bowed. The barkeep, whose name was Absalom, watched him with at most a mild interest. This knight – who had arrived during that lazy time in between lunch and dinner during which nobody in town bothered to come; in other words, during Absalom's personal break time – seemed impeccably groomed for a man of battle.
“I do not mean to alarm you, sir, but you shall be host to the Exalt a few minutes hence,” said the knight.
Absalom, who was a dark man with frown lines and a fuzz of still-gold hair, nearly dropped his file. “I'm sorry?”
The brown-haired knight cleared his throat, as though unsure how to simplify his message. Absalom hadn't misunderstood – he only wanted to be sure he wasn't crazy. “The Exalt has recently come to this town, and wishes to dine here,” said the knight. “He has sent me ahead to make sure that you are prepared for him.”
“Well, I have no choice about it, do I?” said Absalom under his breath. Seeing as how he did not, he summoned the girl in his employ from her quarters upstairs; and they quickly set to making the place presentable: wiping the counters, setting the chairs back to rights, and doing up the large table by the window with a placemat appropriated from an old rag (flipped to the cleaner side), topped by a glass with a little sprig from outside in it making a passible decoration. The knight stood to the side, hands folded behind his back and chin down, half-watching the door, but also seeming too polite to watch them bustling about. And then, before they could stoke the fire in the kitchen, in strode the Exalt himself, wearing a nobleman's casual clothes but bearing the face that Absalom recognized from announcements. (It was his late sister who graced new-minted coins.)
From where they were, Absalom and his girl flew to the center of the seating area, before the Exalt, and knelt deeply.
“That will be enough,” he said nearly the second their knees touched the floor.
Without giving them the chance to offer him the window seat, he went directly to the bar and sat. Only when Absalom popped back up behind the bar and tried to send his girl into the kitchen to start something did the Exalt say that he was not here for food, but just for a mug – not a tankard – of common ale. The knight stood at attention behind him, eyes flicking vigilantly over Absalom and every corner of his pub.
“My wife and I have come to stay here for the season,” said the Exalt as Absalom served his drink.
Absalom steadied his face. Playing conversation partner to the Exalt, of all people, had not been in his plans for the afternoon, or for ever. “In town, Your Grace?”
“At the estate to the south. The one that used to be owned by – the Merdens, was it?”
“Yes,” said Absalom.
The Exalt put his elbows on the bar in a very un-Exaltlike fashion and leaned forward. “You can probably expect to run into my wife around town. She is, you see, expecting, and we have come here for her health. You know what she looks like?”
Absalom nodded. He had seen her face on announcements also.
“Good,” said the Exalt, nodding in return. “The first thing I would like to do is open up a tab, in case she should come in here. The second thing I would like to do is ask you a favor. Well, actually, more of a request than a favor.”
“His Grace means to issue an order,” interrupted the knight with a pointed tone.
The Exalt turned to him. “I'm not trying to intimidate the man. But – well, this is indeed important.” He looked at Absalom as intently as a confidant. “My wife can, of course, come in here and order whatever food she wants. But if she orders drink – any kind of it – I must request that you do not give her anything stronger than your weakest ale, and only a mug of it at that.” He raised his own to demonstrate.
“And, yes,” he admitted, “this is an order.”
Absalom nodded, gulping. But in the slight moment of silence after, he let curiosity get the better of him. The knight, after all, had just interrupted the Exalt without reprimand. “Because – because of the child, Your Grace?”
“Yes,” said the Exalt, perfectly happy to answer the question. “Because of the child. So you must not give her any, do you understand? Not even if she tries to overrule me.”
“Which I don't think she would, at least in this matter,” remarked the knight.
“No, probably not,” said the Exalt. “Hopefully not.” He raised his mug, drank deeply, then set it back on the counter. “Very well. Are we clear?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” said Absalom.
“Thank you.” The Exalt finished his ale, tapped his knight on the arm – “You're sure you don't want a mug before we go back?” – and was declined, then paid Absalom in coin from a wallet that he kept in his own pocket. The Exalt and the knight bid a good evening, and left.
Absalom's gaze went to the window seat, done up for nothing. “Take that all back,” he ordered his employee, who had been eavesdropping from the kitchen.
“No, I think you should keep it,” said the girl. “It looks nice. We can offer it to the lovebirds in town, perhaps.” She paused. “Maybe even the queen herself.”
Absalom shook his head. “One mug of common ale. You might as well not come to my establishment.”
The first time he saw her was a couple of days later, when he came back from the outhouse on the edge of evening one day to find a small white-haired woman sitting on a barstool, a big green coat of cotton slouched around her. She looked somewhere in her mid-to-late thirties, and was familiar to him; but he couldn't remember why, so he took his usual place behind the bar. “Can I help you?”
She looked up, silent for a moment as though pondering, and then it hit him. “Your – Your Highness,” Absalom stuttered, and he nearly tripped over himself to get around the bar and go through the kneeling routine again.
“It's fine,” the queen said, her voice light, as he stared at the floor. “It's fine.”
Now feeling ridiculous, Absalom got to his feet, bowed shortly, and shuffled back behind the counter. The queen looked at him, before her gaze wandered to the shuttered cabinets behind him and the tables down to her left. As far as Absalom could tell, she didn't look pregnant. He wondered if he was supposed to keep quiet about the pregnancy and the Exalt had forgotten to mention.
“Do you have food yet?” she asked. “Some kind of meat, ideally?”
As a matter of fact, he had gotten his hands on a fowl today, and it was cooking in the stove. “Yes. I have pheasant tonight, Your Highness.”
“That sounds lovely. Is it done?”
“Not for at least half an hour,” said Absalom. His employee was supposed to be keeping the time for him. He looked over his shoulder and saw her very quickly dart from the open doorway of the kitchen.
“Then you should have some time to talk, shouldn't you?” said the queen. “There's nobody else in here.” And before Absalom could protest her (accurate) assessment, she went on. “Tell me more about the town.”
“About the town. Your Highness?”
“Yes. How long have you lived here? You don't have to keep addressing me like that, by the way.”
Slightly discomfited by the prospect of being casual with the queen, Absalom tapped his fingers on the edge of the counter. “I've lived here since I was a young man,” he said.
“I see. Did you come here alone?”
“With my parents, Your Highness.”
“Are they still around?”
“No.”
The queen nodded. “Do you have other family here? A wife or children?”
“No,” he answered again. And then, without knowing why he was going into detail, “Never been married, or had anything like that.”
The queen gave half a shrug. “No shame in a bachelor.”
With nobody else around to justly draw Absalom's attention, she went on. How many people were in the town? (A ruler with access to the census records should know that better than him.) Was there another restaurant? Who was the tailor? The priest? What kind of livestock and produce did they raise around here? (Again, he would have expected the queen to know that already, but she seemed to want to hear it from his mouth.) Did Absalom have anybody else working for him?
At that one of his regulars came into the pub; and as Absalom excused himself to get the man his usual ale, his employee appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, bowed to the queen, rose, and then with an energetic wave turned back to the stove.
It was the time of day for more townspeople to come in, all of them oblivious to the personage who sat right at the bar. The queen hadn't asked for anything to drink so far. When Absalom cut into the bird he would keep over a low fire and dole out for the rest of the night, and set a plate before Her Highness, she asked for a glass of water, and that was all.
Until she had finished eating. As she lingered at the bar, one of Absalom's regulars came over and asked if he still had the jug of sack mead behind the bar. Absalom poured him a mug, and after he put the jug back in the cabinet and came to stand at his usual spot he saw that the queen had taken interest.
“Sack mead,” she said, her gaze turning curiously from the man with the mead to Absalom himself. “What is that?”
“It's mead,” said Absalom, “with more than the usual amount of honey.”
“May I try some?” She held up her hand in a pinching gesture. “Just enough to cover the bottom of a glass.”
The queen, herself, was asking him something that Absalom knew he couldn't grant. His voice stuck in his throat. “I'm sorry,” he said, “that jug's lasted a long while. I think that was the last of it.”
She pouted a little, a strangely childish expression on her faintly-lined face, and stared down at the grain of the bar counter as though she was at war with herself whether to ask again or let it be. As though Absalom's response had given her an excuse, and it was only whether she could stick to it or not.
“We – we have ale,” he said. He had been about to say “plenty of ale,” but then remembered how he was only supposed to give her so much.
“No,” said the queen. “In that case, I'd like some tea. Elderberry if you have it, otherwise anything.”
Absalom did not serve tea from behind his bar, because nobody ordered it. But this was a request from the queen herself. “Coming right up,” he said, nearly hating himself; and with his face set determinedly still, he turned and went to the back, up the stairs that led to his own quarters, and into his own reading room, where he kept a little plate for the teapot and his own box of jasmine tea. He scooped some out into his teacup and brought it downstairs, where he made it, properly, for Her Highness.
“Thank you,” she said when he set it in front of her. “Oh, this is a nice cup.” She took a sip. Absalom took her lack of any cringe or wince as approval. “I like going out on my own sometimes and gathering things for tea. Berries, mostly. Of course, it's a bit hard in the capital. Do you know of any good bushes or groves around here?”
“I,” said Absalom, “have no idea.”
“Oh, from the city, are we?” said the townsman sitting to her side, the one who had ordered the mead. “Thought you were a new face.” He leaned towards her. “There's a blackberry grove to the west of town, a little whiles off the road when you're comin' from the capital. It's usually my own secret, but I don't have a problem telling a lady like you.”
“Well,” said the queen, “thank you.”
He held out his hand. “Sye,” he introduced himself, with a waggle of eyebrow.
“Robin.” She took his hand, unindulgently. Then she turned back to the bar. “And you?”
Absalom couldn't remember the last time anybody asked his name. “Absalom.”
With a nod, she turned back to her drink. Sye held up his glass. “Want a taste?”
“No, thank you,” she said, politely. She finished her tea rather quickly after that, and left Absalom's cup on the bar. “It was nice meeting you,” she said to the both of them as she hopped from the stool. With how much she was dwarfed by her coat, Absalom was surprised that she was only averagely short. “I'll remember the grove.” And she turned around and left into the night.
“Well,” said Sye.
“That,” said Absalom, “was the queen.”
Sye stared at him. “No it wasn't.”
“Yes it was.”
Sye licked his lips. “Robin,” he repeated. “Huh, I guess it – coulda been.” He still seemed flabbergasted. “That explains why you of all people bent over backwards to get her tea, then.”
“Don't spread it,” said Absalom, who quietly noted that if the queen kept coming in, he would have to start ordering more than his own stash.
She kept coming in every so often over the next several months, long enough that Absalom began to wonder what the Exalt had meant by “staying for the season.” Most of the time she came in alone, as she had on that early spring evening; and sat alone at the bar, ordering food or tea or occasionally ale, and on one occasion coffee (which he then had to tell her he did not keep, whether for himself or anybody else). A couple of times she asked him if he had any more sack mead, as though in jest, and he had to decline – he had even hidden the jug in the kitchen lest she catch sight of it if he ever opened the cabinets for anything else.
“Hello, Absalom,” she had greeted him, the third or fourth time that she came in.
Absalom, who had been turned away from the bar, started. He did not, as a general rule, remember other people's names after only a few encounters. He was very surprised that the queen remembered his. “You remember my name,” he remarked, before he could stop himself.
“You seem surprised,” she said.
He closed the cabinet he had been searching through. “A little.”
“I'm good at remembering names. It's one of the reasons I'm queen, after all.”
Absalom wasn't quite sure what to say to that. “I'm sure there must be...other reasons.”
Her mouth twisted into a wry smile. “That I'm good at killing people, too?”
Absalom went stock-still, staring at the wall behind her.
“That was a joke.” She pulled her coat more tightly over her shoulders. “Sorry.”
The rest of the time, she came in with the Exalt. They would either be bright and talkative, or else sit in the window seat, speaking quietly with their heads close. The tall knight would come in during these times and sit at another table, or at the bar, and keep one eye on them. The Exalt ordered double portions of food, and – Absalom noticed – did not drink ale or any kind of alcohol in front of his wife.
If people did not recognize the queen on her own, then they certainly recognized the two together, and in the first month Absalom could not keep track of the number of times he saw somebody approach them. Or – far too often – somebody would later approach Absalom himself (during a lull, usually, when he had hoped he was making it clear by his body language that he was taking a short rest) and ask if that had really been the Exalt, and what he was doing here. Yet the two of them, the Exalt and the queen, sat and talked and ate and joked with other customers like any other couple, but made it clear that they would not take any petitions or requests during their meals (you could schedule a time to meet with them at the villa about that). If the interest never disappeared, then it died down, enough to quell Absalom's fears of some kind of riot in his bar.
Whenever the queen came in by her lonesome, however, she always talked to Absalom. Or talked at him, as it was. About her hobbies and interests. About her family. In the vaguest terms, about goings-on in provinces or cities clear across the country that Absalom would never see. She spoke rather often of writing to friends and old allies from the war, and of the visitors she received at the castle. Here, in a moderately well-off town that could only charitably be described as “busy”, Absalom sensed an acute loneliness in her, one that was only partially alleviated by her husband and children; but being one to prefer solitude himself, he wasn't certain of the remedy, and naturally doubted if he was the person to provide any such thing.
One warm afternoon when he came back from picking up his other shoes from the cobbler's, he entered his pub – which was not supposed to be open yet – and saw his employee sitting casually at the bar counter, chatting to the queen. She shut her mouth the moment he came in.
It wasn't as if she wasn't allowed to talk, but they weren't supposed to be open for twenty or so more minutes. He noticed that there was already a mug in front of their early customer. “You,” he said, tapping his employee on the shoulder as he took his place behind the bar. “Start on the vegetables for the stew tonight.”
“Wendy,” said the queen.
“Wendy!” repeated his employee, looking at him with a kind of vehemence she had never shown before. “My name is Wendy!”
Absalom threw up his hands. “I know your name,” he said. “Wendy, are you going to chop the vegetables?”
“Yes,” she said quickly, then scuttled off to the kitchen.
The queen looked at him over the edge of her mug of chilled tea. At least, he hoped it was tea. Even though they said that the current Exalt and the one before him were just, he wondered occasionally, when he saw the queen looking at him a certain way, what it would feel like to have his head on a pike.
“You should show your appreciation for her, sometimes,” said the queen, quietly. “She does a lot for you.”
“I do,” said Absalom. “I pay her in both coin and board.”
“Both? That's good.” Then the queen's eyes narrowed. “You weren't thinking of convincing her to be your wife, were you?”
This was getting ridiculous. Absalom put both his hands on the bar. “I don't want a wife. Or a companion. Or any such thing,” he said, with a rare frankness. “All I want is to run my pub, so I can earn my keep without breaking my back, and be able to kick up my feet and read at the end of the night.”
At that, the queen laughed. “That's a life plan if I've ever heard one. Hell, maybe you've chosen the better part.”
“I'm banking on it,” said Absalom.
“Well,” she said, raising her glass, “here's to both of us finding time to kick back and read. Anyway, is it just vegetables for the stew tonight?”
“Yes. Sorry.” They were running later than usual. Even though the queen had a tendency to loiter, he wondered if she was really planning on sticking around the entire time until it was done.
She sipped her tea ponderously. “You know what this could use? A shot of gin.”
“In. In the tea?”
“Yes. It only goes well with certain types of tea, and you can't overdo it, but it's good. Do you have any?”
He froze, looking at her.
“Just a shot. Half a shot,” said the queen. “I know I shouldn't have any more.”
“Your Highness,” said Absalom, unsticking his tongue, “you are misled about the kinds of drink we have available here. When I gave that last glass of mead to another customer, it was the last of a rare bottle I have only seen here once every few years.”
“Oh,” said the queen, her face visibly fallen. “And you don't have anything else?”
“Just ale,” he said, plowing forward with the lie. “We're in a bit of a dry spell.”
The queen looked into her mug. She sipped from it, then nodded, as though to herself. “Thank you for telling me,” she said, eventually. “It's probably for the best.”
That evening, as she walked out, Absalom realized there had been a moment – when she laughed – where he forgot he was talking to somebody who could end his life on a whim.
In the middle of summer, when the queen had begun to show a bump beneath her loose clothes, she and the Exalt started bringing in their son, a silent adolescent whom Absalom took to be the crown prince. (Or weren't there a couple of older daughters somewhere? Absalom couldn't remember.) He also saw more of the daughter who had been with them, the girl with curling hair who was, Absalom supposed, currently the youngest. Absalom had never seen the Mark the Exalt bore that told him as royalty, and of course the queen didn't have one; but he found himself fascinated by the daughter's highly visible Mark of Naga that sat in the middle of her forehead, closer in shade to a tanned laborer's or even Absalom's own natural skin, as clear-bordered as if it had been painted there.
Absalom brought it up one day. “Hey, Wendy,” he called late at night as they were cleaning up. She popped up from under the counter, peering at him suspiciously, as she did whenever he used her name now. “Do you think I could have a Mark like the royal family have on me somewhere and just nobody can see it?”
“Why shouldn't they?” asked Wendy.
“Because it would match my skin, that's what.”
She tilted her head at this. “Wouldn't it just be darker on you? Or light, maybe, like the other way round?”
Absalom felt deflated. “Why should it be?”
“Well,” she said, “it just seems to me that's how it should work.”
He huffed. “You don't know anything better than I do,” he said, turning away to clean a mug.
Wendy watched him for a minute. “Why don't we ask the royal family themselves how it would show up next time they're in?”
“They're all pale,” Absalom answered. “How would they know?”
“The royal bloodline goes back a long way. You don't know how they've all looked.”
This was true. Absalom shrugged at it, and then something stopped him. “And how do you know we can just ask them about the Mark like that?”
“Why...shouldn't we?” asked Wendy, with real puzzlement this time.
“Perhaps there's something secret about it?” Absalom threw out. “Or some reason they can't discuss it with commoners like us.”
“But the queen's our friend, isn't she?”
Absalom blinked. “Our friend?”
“Well, I like to think she's my friend,” said Wendy, waving about a long-necked bottle for emphasis. “She's certainly yours at least.”
Absalom was baffled. He had very few friends in this world, and he was not even sure if his employee counted as one. “This is the queen of the country we're talking about,” he said.
Wendy's voice went quiet. “I don't see why that should matter, though.”
Absalom threw up his hand. “When she says it herself, maybe I'll believe it.”
“Don't you like her?”
“It has nothing to do with whether I like her or not. She'll be gone from town in a month, maybe two. And then unless she invites us to parties and sends us bars of gold every new year, what will it matter?”
“Well,” said Wendy, though he could tell she was thinking sourly of him, “you don't know that she wouldn't. About the parties.”
“I'm getting back to work,” said Absalom roughly, and Wendy was quiet until they closed up that night.
The Exalt and his queen stayed in town until autumn, by which point the queen was very obviously with child. It was around this time that Absalom made his mistake. One evening, the queen was at the bar, sitting by herself with her tea, when Sye came in. Sye farmed a nearby field, and tended to come in towards the end of Absalom's hours. This was probably the first time since the past spring that he had come in early enough to take a seat at the bar while the queen was there.
“Hello, there, Your Highness,” he said, with a tip of his hat. “Long time no see, isn't it?”
“Hello,” she said. “Sye, isn't it?”
His eyebrows shot up. “You remembered my name?”
She smiled, apparently not tired of this reaction. “Is that surprising?”
“I – well, yes. Yes, it is, Your Highness,” said Sye.
The two of them loafed at the bar for a short while. Wendy had complained of a headache earlier, so Absalom was going back and forth into the kitchen this evening to chop vegetables and tend the roast for the customers who were slowly filling his establishment. “Hey, Absalom,” Sye called from the bar, raising his voice to carry through the open kitchen door. “It's been a long day. Can I get some of that sack mead?”
Absalom had given it out every so often over the past few months. “Sure,” he said, putting down his knife. He came out into the main room, grabbed a glass, took the jug of sack mead from where he had moved it back below the counter, poured it for Sye, and passed it over.
This is when he realized his mistake. He turned slowly towards the queen, whose eyes were directly on the jug in his hands, the teacup before her – a new one he had gotten, just for her, so he didn't have to worry about his own – suspended before her chin.
“I thought you were out of the mead?” she said.
Absalom paused. “I was,” he said. “This is a new jug.”
It wasn't nearly full, and she knew it. The queen stared at him in silence for one long, icy moment. “Did my husband ask you not to serve me any alcohol?”
Absalom was too nervous to even put the jug down. “Yes, Your Highness.”
“When did he ask this?”
Every other sound in the bar seemed to have fallen away. “When you first arrived,” said Absalom, his stomach like lead. He swallowed. “Early spring.”
She folded her hands, which were rather worn for a woman of her stature, and coolly placed them on the counter before her. “I am not angry at the direction,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “but I am upset that – all this time – you have been lying to me? You and him both?”
“I can't say whether His Grace is lying, Your Highness –”
“Does he think,” she said, her voice rising, “that I am incapable of making decisions for myself?”
She wasn't speaking to Absalom anymore. He did not know if the Exalt and his knight might expect him, Absalom, to be doing something to calm her down. “For all I know the Exalt had his reasons –”
“I'm sure,” said the queen. “I'm sure he had his reasons.”
And she went silent. She did not look at Absalom, or anybody else in the bar, or anything in particular. She placed her teacup to the side and looked down at the counter in front of her, and seemed surprised that there was no other plate there. Then she got up from her seat and left the building, walking out into the setting sun.
Absalom remained behind his bar. He slowly put the jug of mead back beneath the counter.
“Well,” said Sye, “he's going to get an earful, I bet.”
“Perhaps,” said Absalom, whose eyes still lingered on the door until another patron pulled his attention. He had done what the Exalt had asked him to do. Surely, he thought – now that the matter was actually in front of him – he couldn't be blamed or sentenced in any way for that?
Evening became night, and he did not realize that something more was wrong until he heard a rising of scattered voices outside. Within a moment, the tall knight opened the door to the bar.
“Excuse me,” he said, his clear voice cutting through the conversations of Absalom's late patrons. “Has Her Highness the queen been in here recently?”
A few people looked around, mostly looking in Absalom's direction. The knight strode forward into the room and approached Absalom directly.
Absalom steeled himself. “She was in here earlier this evening, aye,” he answered.
“When did she leave?”
Absalom did not know. He glanced at the small clock on the wall behind him, which of course he had not been reading at the time. “Maybe two hours ago?”
“Two and a half,” called Sye, who was still around, playing cards with the couple who made two of the three other customers. “Stormed out, she did!”
The knight furrowed his brow. “Stormed out? Over what?”
Absalom had to get the real version of the story in before Sye could say anything. “I was forced to tell her that the Exalt asked me himself not to serve her any alcohol.” The words came quickly, and easily, now that he was committed to it.
The knight covered his eyes with his hand. “I see. Thank you for telling me this. If anybody here does happen to see her, then it is my lord's request that you find one of us and report it.”
He turned to go. “Wait,” said Absalom. “I'm sorry for – her leaving. This isn't something that will warrant my arrest, is it?”
The knight looked back at him warily. “Did you do something to instigate it, sir?”
“I told you,” said Absalom. “I told her what His Grace requested of me.”
“Did you serve her any?”
“No.”
“Then...I don't see how you could be arrested,” said the knight. “If you are hiding her in your bar somewhere, then maybe.” He gave Absalom a strange look, then left.
Absalom realized his heart was thundering. With the knight gone, he could hear the voices from outside more clearly: they were gathering more townspeople to go on a search for the queen. He shook his head to try to clear the noise out. After a few minutes, he decided he couldn't take it any more, and went to shutter the windows closed.
Wendy came stumbling from the staircase in the back, clutching her head. She leaned out the door to the bar, and saw Absalom at the windows. “Is that where all that noise is coming from?”
“Yes,” said Absalom. “We're not having a riot, at least.”
“What's going on?”
“The queen's gone missing,” said Sye.
“Missing? Just now?”
“No more than a couple of hours ago,” Absalom muttered.
Wendy slowly moved her gaze from Sye, to Absalom. “Shouldn't you go looking for her?”
Absalom threw up his hands. “You've met her. She's an independent woman. She'll reappear soon enough.”
“Are you being sarcastic?” said Wendy. “It sounds like His Grace has the entire town looking for her!”
“Then why don't you go looking for her?” said Absalom.
“I will, when I stop seeing spots!”
She glared at him, to the best of her ability. Absalom risked a look around the rest of the room. Sye and the card players were staring at him. The man at the corner had stopped eating, and was doing a poor job of pretending to not pay attention.
“Is that what you all want me to do?” he said. “Go find the queen, since nobody else can?”
“You can do whatever you want, mate,” said Sye.
Absalom finished shuttering the windows and went back behind his bar, as Wendy went to sit down on the staircase and lean back into the shadows. He pulled out a rag and started cleaning nothing from the surface of the counter, but it wasn't working to distract him or make him feel any better.
He put the rag back on the hook, sat at the bench in the kitchen to retie his shoelaces, and went out into the cool night himself.
He found her to the west of town, a minute or so off the road that came from the capital. He could see her, standing next to a tall rough line of blackberry bushes, from across the fields on account of her white hair. With most of her body covered by her coat, she looked almost like a disembodied head; a strange, fairy apparition floating in the darkness.
“Your Highness,” he called, keeping his distance. He cleared his throat. “Queen Robin!”
She turned to him at that, her belly curving outward from beneath the coat. “What is it?”
Absalom took a deep breath. “The Exalt is looking for you.”
“For what?”
“I mean that he's gotten the whole of the town searching for you,” he said.
She held something in her hand; a branch, it looked like, wielded like a sword. She peered at the nearest bush in the darkness, using the stick to swat away some of the shrubbery, then plucked a large berry from its stem and popped it into her mouth. “He didn't have to do that,” she said, her voice mushy over the fruit.
“Well, he did,” said Absalom, “and it's causing a mighty disruption in my bar.”
Horseshoes clattered on the path he had come up, rapidly approaching. The tall knight appeared behind him on the back of a brown courser. “Thank Naga,” he said, his eyes only skimming over Absalom in recognition. “Milady! There you are!”
The queen glanced over at him, holding another blackberry in her fingers.
“Chrom has been looking for you for the better part of the last hour,” the knight tried.
“I've just been informed,” the queen called back.
“I...see,” said the knight. “Are you going to go tell him that all is well?”
“By all means, you can go ahead."
“Of course,” he muttered. He gave a short sigh. “You there, sir – no, wait, I'm the one with the horse.” Said horse shook its head impatiently. “You, sir. I am going to go find the Exalt. Will you keep her here?”
“I'm not going anywhere,” the queen interjected.
Absalom shrugged at the knight, a bit stymied, and the knight sighed. Then he thundered off. Absalom stayed where he was, looking across the small clearing. The queen wandered away from the bushes, off to a cluster of thin birch trees nearby; she walked past them, holding out her branch like a child's hoop-stick and hitting each trunk on the way.
The horseshoes were back. This time the Exalt came first on a sleek riding horse, with the knight just behind. The Exalt in his dayclothes slid from his horse's back and came to stand near Absalom in the grass.
“Robin,” he called.
The queen didn't even stop walking to acknowledge him. “What?”
“We were worried about you.”
Now she stopped. “Am I not allowed to take a walk in an open field by myself?”
“You were supposed to play checkers with Emma tonight.”
The queen looked at her feet. Absalom bet that she had forgotten.
“I forgot,” she admitted shortly.
“It's all right. She got Abel to play with her again,” said the Exalt. He held out his hand. “Time to go back now?”
The queen's face turned sour again. “If it wasn't for me missing Emma, would you have gotten the entire town to go out looking?” The Exalt was uncomfortably silent. “I didn't mean to go far beyond the town,” she continued.
“What's wrong with me being worried for you all of a sudden?” said the Exalt. “I trust you. It doesn't mean I don't worry about you. This is half forest, you don't have a mount – what am I supposed to do, if you go missing on your own?”
“And what's wrong with you being honest with me all of the sudden?” the queen shot back.
The Exalt crossed his arms. “Is this about the alcohol?”
“Yes, it's about the alcohol. Not only do you not trust me to control myself, you had to go behind my back and open up the town to rumors that I'm some kind of drunkard?”
The Exalt was silent for a moment. “I've seen you lose control, Robin,” he said, mildly.
The queen was still not looking at him. “So you trust me in everything except this.”
“For the first couple of months here. Yes.” There was another tense moment of silence. “I was trying to make things easier for you.”
She swatted at the nearest tree. The Exalt was leaning slightly again as though he meant to go to her, but did not.
Absalom cleared his throat. “Your Highness. If it pleases you, I did not mention the Exalt's stipulation to anybody until today. I don't believe my employee did either.”
“Well, but that doesn't matter now,” said the queen, “does it?”
Absalom shut himself up.
The queen finally turned to the group of them. “What have you thought since the start of this, Absalom?” she called. “Do you think I'm a drunkard?”
He barely met her eyes. “I think you're doing a good thing by trying to stay off,” he said.
“Is that so?”
“Would it have been any different if I had told you this from the start?” said the Exalt. “Or would you have resented me then?”
“Yes. I would have liked you to tell me.”
“All right,” said the Exalt. “But...in practice, did it make things easier?”
The queen turned away and swished the stick around a couple of times. It made a sound as it cut the air. “You know I'm angry at myself for the answer.”
“Did it?”
“Yes. A couple of times.” She took a deep breath, then stepped into a proper battle stance, adjusting her balance on account of her stomach, aiming the branch at an unseen enemy before her.
“Are you threatening me with a stick?” asked the Exalt.
“I'm not threatening you,” said the queen. “Frederick, do you remember how, in the army, we sometimes ran out of wooden wasters for practice sessions, so you and Lissa and I would go around collecting sticks instead?”
“Yes,” said the knight.
“I remember the sticks,” chimed the Exalt.
The queen stared at the one in her hand. “We knew it was war,” she said, “but it felt like a game, sometimes.”
“In some ways, it was easier than ruling a country, wasn't it?” said the Exalt. And the queen nodded. With slow paces, he finally went up to her in the field.
“But you're not going anywhere,” he said.
“No,” she answered. “I'm not going anywhere.”
They stood, maybe saying something quietly out of Absalom's earshot, for a short while. The Exalt put his arm around his pregnant wife's shoulders, and they walked back towards where Absalom and Frederick were waiting.
“Tell the town that I'm sorry for troubling them,” said the queen to Absalom, once she was back by the road. “And...I'm sorry for troubling you.”
Absalom shrugged it off. “I suppose I can tell them,” he said.
“You two go on ahead to the manor,” said Frederick. “I'll also go into town to tell them that all is well.”
The Exalt helped the queen up onto the saddle of his sleek horse. She sat snugly in the saddle, holding the pommel, as the Exalt took the reins in order to guide it. They started down the road at a gentle walk.
Frederick, still mounted on his great horse, was about to lead it into a turn, before he remembered Absalom. He mumbled something to himself about the short distance. “Er...sir, if you can get up, would you like a ride back to town?”
Absalom threw up his hands. “Haven't been on a horse since I was young. But you know what? Why the hell not.”
He wasn't a weak man, but as he pulled himself up onto the back of the saddle, he realized that in order to keep his balance he would have to all but embrace the knight around the middle of his shining suit of armor. Absalom politely changed his mind, and accepted Frederick's offer to walk alongside him back to town instead.
The queen's visits to his bar petered off after that, and, after a couple of final visits that were only slightly awkward, stopped entirely. Absalom wondered if she had begun her lying-in, or if she had been shuffled back to the castle in order to deliver her child. However, there was one more visit from Frederick – the first time Absalom had ever seen him sit in his bar alone – during this quiet period between the incident and when he heard about the newest princess' birth.
“Thank you for your assistance in finding Her Highness the other day,” said Frederick, as Absalom brought him a tankard of ale.
“I don't know what I did,” said Absalom. “You were about to find her if I wasn't there.”
“It was because I heard you and saw you on the road that I came there in the first place,” said Frederick. "Perhaps, but I only know that we found her for certain because of you, so I would be amiss in not giving my thanks.”
Absalom let out a short huff of a laugh. “I can see you're loyal if nothing else.”
Frederick was quiet for a moment at that. “I am loyal to Lady Robin as my queen and the wife of my Exalt, but also as a friend in her own right,” he said. “During the wars, she was the linchpin who held us all together. I always thought she would be a natural at leading the country, but sometimes...” He shook his head. “Sorry. I should not be saying this.”
Absalom knew the feeling. “You can relax. I'm not a gossip.”
“Well,” said Frederick, “the incident hit me somewhat close to home as well. Gods know I can only do so much to keep my own wife home.”
Absalom started at that. “Excuse me?”
“From traveling,” Frederick said quickly. “Excuse me. She's a researcher, and...I don't mean to sound bitter.”
Absalom did not press any further.
Later that week, one day during a lull, Wendy sat down at the bar beside him. “Hey, Absalom,” she said. “Did you hear that there's a family about to move onto that plantation in the east?”
“Is it the people who own it, or somebody new?” The plantation was kept running by workers from town, who the absent owners hired to do the work for them season by season.
“I don't know. I think it's the same people. Well, anyway – Melissa saw a bunch of them on the road, and told me that it's a big family, and they're all – targel, I think the word is.” He frowned at her. “Rabbit people,” she finished by way of explanation.
Absalom rolled his eyes to the roof at that. Regardless of the family themselves, the town was going to make something of this, and Absalom would end up involved again. Of course. So much for a quiet winter. “Rabbit people?” he muttered. “How is that even possible?”