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It was a fair enough thing not to notice, she thought. They were on the outside of everything, which was lucky, but news streamed in every day with new names and numbers as the Wintersea Republic collapsed.
Their final attempt to bring the Free State into it, to make it a five state republic had killed them and now they were getting to see everything that remained.
Morrigan hadn’t seen Lam for weeks. No one had, not in person, since she had reappeared in Sang, her body double shuffled off somewhere out of sight. She looked worse than she had the last time that she had seen her, but it was possible that that was because Princess Lamya had been ill for over five years and the House of Ra needed some continuity in their coverup.
The rest of Unit 919 had spent weeks pouring over the news from Sang to the point that none of them had been expecting to hear any news from any other states, had not bothered even thinking of Prosper, Great Wolfacre or Southlight. Not even Morrigan, which she was now kicking herself over.
The Elders didn’t come to talk to her about it though, nor did they summon her. They sent Jupiter.
Originally they were going to send a few different people, including Holliday Wu but apparently Jupiter had vetoed that outright before volunteering himself for the job.
“But what is this job?” she asked him. “I don’t understand.”
His eyes widened, “Morrigan, have you not been following the news from Great Wolfacre recently?”
“No?” she said slowly. “Should I have?”
“Absolutely,” he sat down so loudly that the birds outside her window flew away, squawking and squealing. “Morrigan,” he said slowly. “Your father- Corvus Crow that is-”
“Is he dead?” she asked, feeling absolutely nothing about the concept.
“What?” He leaned so far back in his chair that he almost fell out of it and had to wave his hands to keep himself upright. “No, he’s alive.”
“Oh,” she said. “Is he in prison then?”
“Quite the opposite,” Jupiter said. “Or maybe not, depending on your philosophy.”
“Can you talk like a normal person please,” she held out her hands. “What is happening to Corvus and why do I have to care about it.”
He made a face, “I wouldn’t say you really have to care about it, but it’s better you find out here rather than through the papers.”
“You came in here expecting me to already know about it,” she pointed out. “Specifically from the news.”
He hummed, “Well. I suppose there’s no point beating around the bush about it.”
She thought he had beaten around the bush so much that he had invented a new style of topiary but kept her mouth shut.
“Great Wolfacre has opted to become a monarchy with absolute primogeniture,” he said simply.
“Are you serious?” she asked, feeling her forehead wrinkle up.
“I don’t think this would be a very funny time for that sort of joke, Mog,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Well, let me guess who they’ve picked as the king. Is it… Corvus.”
“Bingo,” he snapped his fingers.
“But I’m legally dead there,” she said. “With absolute primogeniture, it would be down to… I don’t know which one of the twins is older, but one of them.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Mog. Squall and Lowry were playing silly buggers with your status before everything collapsed. Or at least Lowry was, I think Squall was an unknowable entity wrapped in a question mark to the end. Maybe they were going to use it as leverage or something else. They’re still trying to crack the code on her personal notes so we’ll be a long time waiting on that, I think.”
“Right,” she said. “So… do they know I’m alive?” Her mind was running a mile a minute.
He hesitated, “We don’t know for certain. There’s been no acknowledgement but,” he waved a hand. “Whichever of the boys is the elder, that one, hasn’t been called anything like heir yet either.”
“Right,” she said. “What do I need to do about it?”
“About what?” he asked. She noticed that his nails had been bitten right to the quick, and were bleeding in some parts.
“Well,” she said, her hands digging into her blankets from where she was sitting on the end of her bed. “What paperwork do I need to sign? To get out of it, I mean.”
“You’re going to abdicate?” he asked. He didn’t seem overly surprised but she imagined that she could see some kind of relief in him.
“Obviously,” she laughed. “As if I was going to take over Great Wolfacre after Corvus,” she said his name with not nearly enough vitriol, but she wasn’t sure there was enough in the realm for that man.
Jupiter nodded at her. He had a few more silver hairs in his beard than he had last year, and the crow’s feet around his eyes were deeper but his eyes were as clear and bright as ever as his smile reached them. “I thought you might say that. We can go down to Wunsoc soon to have all the papers drawn up, it might take a while to cover all of legal, that’s all.”
“Don’t they have a template for when your biological father suddenly becomes the head of a country so you can get out of it without having to ever speak to him again?” she asked.
He rose to his feet, thinking about it for a second, “I’ll have to check. It’s not impossible.”
“I want to know if they can use the argument that he was barely a father to me anyway,” she said.
He sighed, “I know, Mog. But in terms of abdication paperwork it seems to be more of you declaring you have no claim to it from here on out. At least from those that I’ve attended in my capacity as a Captain in the League.”
She groaned, “Please tell me there will be no cameras nor an audience.”
“I’ll do my best,” he promised, coming over quickly to grasp her tightly around the shoulders before running out the door.
“And no Holliday!” she shouted after him.