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Richard scurries up the steps in the castle, almost tripping in his haste.
“Be careful, your Highness!” calls one of the maids, and he forces himself to slow to a slower, more princely walk as he passes his history tutor in the halls.
“Good afternoon, Prince Richard. How was your trip to Gralesyde?” his tutor asks.
“Excellent, Sir,” Richard says. “I look forward to resuming your lessons.”
The man nods. “We’ll be covering the start of the Fendel border wars tomorrow.”
Oh, goody, thinks Richard, but he smiles none the less. “I must see my Father now, sir.”
He waves him on. “By all means. Go on, lad, go!”
Richard takes him at his word, racing up the final set of steps towards the throne room. At this hour today, the King takes petitioners. If he hurries, he can catch him before the council meetings that swallow up his father’s entire afternoons.
One of the knights, a familiar face, nods him in, and opens the great doors to the throne room. Richard slips in with the crowd at the back. He’s just in time– Father is with the final petitioner of the day.
King Ferdinand the fourth sits in his throne, bearded chin in hand, as a man relates the land quarrel he’s had with his neighbour.
Father looks tired. All the same, even in his heavy cloak and crown, he keeps his head up, listening carefully to the petitioner. He’s only thirty five, but already most of his thick golden hair that falls about his shoulders has turned grey.
That frightens Richard, when he thinks about it. The idea of his father growing old.
And one day you’ll be the one sat on that chair, my boy. Don’t let the gold dazzle you. It’s both a blessing and a curse.
At nine years old, the seat his father sits atop seems far too large for him to ever fill.
Richard starts at the hand on his shoulder.
“Just watch. He’ll tell the man that should their quarrel not be agreed on, he and his neighbour will draw a line down their land and share it, half and half.”
Richard follows the voice up to a face he hasn’t seen in years. “Uncle Cedric!” he says, but Cedric puts a hand to his lips.
“Hello to you too, lion cub. Let’s not have my arrival marred by the King publicly chastising me for interrupting his court,” he says with a smile.
Richard puts an embarrassed hand over his mouth. “Sorry, Uncle. I didn’t know you were coming home.”
It’s been years since Cedric has returned from his travels abroad. He and Father had apparently fought, the last time they saw one another. He’s never told Richard the details. But the young prince remembered fondly the uncle who would join in his plays in the drawing room, doing a stupendous part as Rarello, the dishonoured knight. It still brought him to hysterics, some days, remembering his uncle falling about the floor, yowling like an injured dog and falling still, only to open his eyes and wink at the young prince.
Cedric still wears his travelling cloak. Unlike Father, the years seem to have barely touched him. Except for, perhaps, a sharpness around the eyes Richard does not recall.
Richard’s eyes go back through the crowd to the petitioner. “How do you know what Father is going to decide?”
Cedric shrugs. “It’s just my brother’s style. Terribly fair and equitable, even when we were children.”
Richard doesn’t understand why he says that like it’s a bad thing.
King Ferdinand makes his proclamation. “--And shall henceforth split your land in two–”
Cedric smiles knowingly down at the prince. “See?”
Richard frowns. “He doesn't look very happy about the decision,” he sees, watching the petitioner grit his teeth and bow to the King. “Why is that? Father’s decision is a fair one.”
“Well, people don’t always want fair,” Cedric says. The Prince’s frown deepens.
The court disperses, the ushers filing the crowd out of the great doors.
It’s only when the public are out of the room that the King seems to shrink into himself, removing his heavy crown with a sigh and setting it upon his lap.
Richard runs up to the dais, stopping short at the King’s feet, and a brightness returns to the King’s eyes. “Richard! I didn’t know you were back.”
“I wanted to surprise you,” Richard says. His father pulls him into an embrace.
“Well, colour me surprised. How was your uncle Dalen? Did you swim much in the lake this year?”
“Fine, and tons! Uncle Dalen said he thought I was likely to turn into a fish. But I found someone else on the way here, look,” Richard says eagerly.
“Oh?”
Richard pulls back from the King’s embrace and steps aside to reveal Cedric. The King’s smile falters, but only for a moment.
Cedric offers a flourishing bow. “Your Majesty, you look well,” he says.
King Ferdinand exhales, and then he steps forward to offer an embrace to his brother. “Cedric, what a fine thing it is to see you again. How long has it been?”
“Too long,” says Cedric, arm arm squeezed around the King’s back. They step apart, and survey one another.
“I’ve been told you’ve been in Strahta,” the King says.
“Indeed. I hope to tell you and the boy all about it. I have some souvenirs for you both.”
“You do?” asks Richard, bobbing up beside him.
Cedric pats him on the head. “Look at how tall your boy is now, Ferdinand! I swear he was half this size the last I visited.”
“He’s been growing up far too fast,” the King agrees.
Cedric sizes him up. “I see so much of his mother in him,” he comments to the King. It’s not the first time Richard has fielded this comment, and it tightens his throat with each occasion. The Queen was nobility from Gralesyde, a niece of Duke Dalen. In the paintings Richard has seen, she is a fey slip of a thing, with eyes the colour of rain. She died when Richard was two, and he does not remember her.
“A lucky thing,” the King says with a chuckle. “His mother was the better looking one.”
Cedric raises his hands. “You said it, not me.”
“Will you come to dinner tonight?” the King asks.
“Of course. When else am I supposed to bore you all with my tales?”
The King laughs. He smiles easier now. “It’s you, Ced. I doubt we’ll be bored. I’ll have the staff prepare your room. Will you be staying long?”
“I’m not sure yet. A short time, at least. And don’t trouble them– I’ll take one of the guest rooms.”
Richard watches this interchange between the brothers with interest. It’s good, to see his father smile and laugh so easily. As the years have gone by, his smiles have been harder to come by.
But when Cedric bids them goodbye, and leaves them to catch up, that smile dims.
“Perhaps things will be different, this time around,” he says, thoughtful, perhaps to himself.
“Father?”
He shakes his head. “Do not fret, little one. Come, we have some minutes before I’m drawn into the abyss of my council. I want to hear all about what you’ve gotten up to this summer.”
Dinner goes well, at first. The staff bring out roast venison, caught by hunters that very morning. Richard barely eats, so eager is he to hear his uncle’s tales, to make a playmate out of him again.
Cedric laughs with gusto. He’s immediately made himself at home, out of his travelling clothes and into his fine linens. Arm slung back over the chair, goblet of wine in his hand. Eyes sparkling. “Yes, I do remember that! I was some evil knight, or such?”
“You were beaten up by a hungry bear!” Richard giggles.
“Ah, a common fate for such braggart knights,” Cedric says. Richard grins at his father. The King smiles back.
“Will you join in another of my plays, Uncle? You can play a hero next time, if you like,” Richard says hopefully.
“Surely you have a dozen squires and noble children to make playmates out of, lad? You hardly need an old man like me.”
Richard’s smile falters. “Not really…” he says, the familiar curl of embarrassment in his gut.
The King clears his throat. “The other children have trouble relating to Richard. I know not else why he doesn’t have a hundred eager friends. He’s a clever and kind boy, but other children keep their distance from him.”
This is awful and embarrassing. Richard wishes he’d sink into his seat.
“Did you play with your cousins in Gralesyde?” Father asks him. Richard shakes his head.
“I mostly talked with Uncle Dalen and his friends.”
“Perhaps he’s simply too mature for those his age,” Cedric suggests.
Richard wishes it were that. It’s not that his cousins hadn’t wanted to play with him. Only that he knew how it would go; the requests for favours, and then demands. None of them wanted to play with Richard because he was Richard, only because he was the King’s son.
Because of that, he kept his distance… and got a reputation as being aloof. And that made it even harder to connect.
But this was far too hard to admit to. So Richard simply says, “None of them were very interesting.”
“No?” Cedric says, his eyebrows raised. Richard shuffles uncomfortably in his seat. Pokes at his dinner.
If he’d looked up, he would have seen his father give Cedric a pointed raise of his eyebrows.
Cedric clears his throat. “I would happily join you, but I fear the role would be wasted on me. I play such a good villain, don’t I?” Cedric catches the King’s eye with a glint.
“That you do,” says the King, exasperated.
They agree that perhaps it’s better Cedric gives a reprise of his former role, considering he did such a good job playing it.
Richard’s glad, when the conversation turns towards his uncle’s travels. Strahta sounds like a very interesting place, like a city built in the future.
Uncle Cedric is especially interested in their military. “You should see the fleet they have, Ferdinand. Makes our ships look like toy sailboats. Who was it that upgraded our armada, our great grandfather?”
Richard’s father waves this away. “They suit their purpose well enough.” He looks at Richard. “Ced did always love running around playing soldier when we were children,” he says. Cedric ignores this.
“There’s a lot of talk about the new equipment Fendel’s been using. Does that not trouble you?”
“Lord Aston is keeping vigilant watch over the border,” the King says. “He’s not reported any recent trouble to me.”
Richard’s not sure when it happens, but the mood in the room changes. His father and uncle face off against each over across the table.
“Loyal Aston, Windor’s own guard dog,” Cedric says with a laugh. He drinks his wine, and raises it for the cupbearer to refill. His face is rather ruddy. “About as effective as a pup barking across a fence.”
“Be careful, Cedric,” Father says. He no longer smiles.
Cedric leans across the table. “What I’m saying is, why must Windor forever sit upon her hackles, while Fendel takes chunks out of us. Why not strike back.”
“Cedric, we have had this discussion before,” Father says. “My position is not changed. We’ve had peace in Windor for near forty years now, I will not risk the tentative balance for the sake of my brother’s insistence of playing with toys.”
The warmth in Cedric’s face is gone. “It’s hardly peace, brother, when Fendel makes forays into our country unchecked every decade. They should be brought to heel.” He spits his brother’s name like an insult.
Richard shrinks back into his seat as the two of them argue until both men are red faced, the King standing to shout at Cedric, “I am your King and liege, not just your brother, and you will speak to me as such.”
Cedric goes silent. He has wine spilled upon his shirt. Slowly and coldly he says, “Yes, I am ever present of that unfortunate fact, my liege.”
He strides out from the room, heels clattering on the marble floor. The King slams down his goblet.
“He is not changed. He forever knows the perfect way to rile me, to…”
The King stops, and looks to his son. He sits with an exhale.
“Do you and Uncle Cedric dislike one another?” Richard asks quietly. His heart beats fast.
The King shakes his head. “All siblings quarrel, little one. Ced and I have since the cradle. He is still my brother.”
Richard sits on these words, pushing around the dinner on his plate. There was something in his uncle’s manner he hadn’t liked, the cold curl to his mouth as he’d said the words, my liege. No other would dare to speak to his father with such blatant disrespect.
The King picks back up his cutlery, to try and make something of this meal gone so wrong. “Be glad you are an only child. Cedric will see the value of my words eventually.”
The next morning, Richard finds Cedric in the guest room he’s taken, sent with a message.
Cedric opens the door still in his nightshirt, golden hair tossed across his shoulders.
“Father told me to invite you to breakfast, so long you don’t bring any quarrel with you,” he tells him.
Cedric laughs and opens the door wider. “And spoil our eggs and toast? I wouldn’t dream of it. Thank you for the message, little one. I… drank more than was advisable last night. I would like to make amends to your father.”
It’s a relief to hear. Wine does make fools of adults, at times. It tastes awful, too. He hardly knows why they drink it.
“Father says the two of you argue a lot,” Richard says, probing.
“Your father and I have never seen eye to eye on a number of things. But, regardless, he is still my brother…”
In his play, Richard has often imagined a sibling. Someone always by his side, bound by blood, no difference in station to divide them.
Watching his father and uncle, however, it occurs that there may be drawbacks, too.
He peers across Cedric’s shoulder, to a shield newly adorning the back wall. Clearly, his uncle does mean to stay a time.
“Are those the things you mentioned, Uncle? From back abroad?”
“Indeed. We shouldn’t keep your father waiting, but you may have a small glimpse, should you wish it, Prince Richard.”
He ushers Richard into the room. Richard looks about, taking in the numerous pieces of weaponry, and strange, archaic devices.
“What are these, Uncle?” he asks.
“Relics from the Amarcians,” Cedric says. “I take it you’ve heard of them?”
He nods. His tutor has covered it. “They lived a long time ago, and left behind the strange ruins scattered about the world.”
“And then they disappeared without trace,” says Cedric, picking up a softly glowing orb, apparently some sort of mechanical device. “But they possessed technologies unlike our own, far advanced from our own machines. If only Windor possessed a modicum of such power…”
There’s something like hunger in Cedric’s eyes as he regards the glowing device.
Richard thinks of what his father said. He pulls himself up straight. “Peace is real power,” he says.
“Oh?” Cedric bounces the orb in his hand. “Your father’s words, no doubt.”
“He speaks truly,” Richard says. “Father says power is nothing without a steady hand to wield it.”
Cedric sets down the orb, back onto the velvet cushion it rests upon. He steps up towards Richard, putting a hand on the boy’s head. He smiles at him affectionately. “And here you are, your father’s little golden lion cub. Your father’s heir, his only child. The world in your hands.” As Cedric speaks, he runs his fingers through Richard’s long golden hair. Something uneasy grips Richard’s chest. There’s that same look in his uncle’s eyes as when he’d handled the orb, a look that’s almost possessive. “What a lucky boy you are,” he says.
“Ced?”
Cedric’s hand drops away. The King walks into the room, pausing when he sees Cedric and Richard stood so close together.
“Richard, there you are. I wondered what was taking so long,” the King says.
“Sorry, your Majesty. Your boy wanted to see some of the souvenirs I mentioned,” Cedric says easily, stepping away from Richard, who takes a breath.
Maybe he just imagined that strange feeling.
It lingers, still, a tightness in the back of his throat as the adults talk. He steps closer towards his father’s gravity.
“Listen, Ced, I’ve been thinking,” the King says. “I hate that you’ve just gotten back, and we’re quarrelling. I know we have differing opinions, but I reminded myself last night that just because they’re different doesn't mean they’re wrong. I want to value the opinions of all in my kingdom. To that end, why don’t you take a seat on my council? I want you by my side.”
The look of surprise on his uncle’s face is only momentary, before Cedric steps forward to clasp the King in a one armed hug. “It’s I who should apologise. I’m still the same as I was as a boy– I never know when to stop picking fights.”
“Or drinking too much wine,” the King says, his brow raised.
Cedric laughs wryly. “That, perhaps, too.”
The King slaps his brother on the back. “Well, if you’re to attend council meetings, you won’t be able to stay up all night drinking anymore. We need you to be fresh faced and lively.”
“You won’t regret this, Ferdinand,” says Cedric.
Richard’s eye is drawn back to the orb. There’s something uneasy in the way it pulsates. Maybe that’s why the feeling has gotten inside him, too, although the two men are laughing and smiling as they usher Richard down to breakfast, all light and play.
He just has a bad feeling. That now his uncle’s back, the games are over.