Three Meetings
I barely managed to swallow the laugh bubbling up in my throat. Who wouldn't be delighted to hear the very words they'd been waiting for?
But if I blurted out what I wanted here and now, the goodwill I'd so painstakingly built could turn to foam. I studied Karman, weighing exactly what—and how much—I could extract from this deal. Ask for more than he had in mind, and I'd be greedy; push one step further than that, and I'd be nothing but a spoiled brat.
Just how far is he willing to go?
I scrutinized Karman down to the finest detail, but his expression alone gave nothing away.
"Your Majesty, if you could tell me what you're able to offer, it would help me reach a decision."
I demanded a hint.
"A very good answer just now—if you thought it through before speaking, that is."
Karman's eyes, which had stayed cold through our entire conversation, softened just a little.
"I'll pay double what you paid for the timber, Lady Diana."
A mere double. Money meant little to me.
Once I'm head of the family, I'll have enough coin to move a nation. Becoming family head comes first, whatever it takes.
"I have no need for money, Your Majesty."
Besides, the first rule of negotiation is to turn down the opening offer. No one is desperate at their first proposal—everyone surrenders only the modest concessions they can afford to lose. I needed to draw out something bigger, and I wanted to.
Karman moved straight to his second offer. "Would triple do? Tripling one's money through investment or trade is no easy feat, you know."
"Your Majesty, I did not do this for money."
I refused on the spot. If it were coin I was after, going to the King of Brooke would have been far quicker than dealing with Karman—the man was desperate for war, after all.
"Your Majesty, if there is nothing further you can offer, may I make a proposal of my own this time?"
Karman gave a small nod of assent.
"I'll provide shipwrights along with the timber—men who know how to build ships. In exchange, write me a permit granting me free entry and exit of the royal palace."
Karman's brow furrowed.
"That's... all?"
It might be a trifle to him, but for me—who had been forced to ride in a covered cart just to set foot inside the palace all this time—it mattered a great deal.
And I do have promises to keep to Loomdrax, too.
"There is one more thing."
"Lady Diana, exchange is one for one. You may not hand me a single thing—timber—and take two things back."
To think he meant to wrap this up with one flick of a pen and a signature. Karman was stingier than I'd expected.
"I only just told you, Your Majesty—I'm lending you shipwrights as well. As you well know, Ehrenberg's shipwrights are counted among the finest on the continent."
"Since when does Ehrenberg build ships? Is there anything you people don't do?"
Karman was feigning ignorance, though he knew perfectly well.
"So I've now given you two things. Surely that entitles me to ask one more favor of Your Majesty?"
"You're not about to ask me to let you marry Cassion, are you?"
That was a request Karman had already refused once. Bringing it up again would earn me nothing but another rejection and a worse impression of me besides.
I'd look like a child whining for a toy.
Not that a marriage to Cassion was remotely comparable to a toy.
"No. What I want is something else entirely."
"Speak."
"Give me a proper evaluation of whether I am fit to be Prince Cassion's match."
"What?"
As if he'd been certain that this time, at last, I would demand something truly grand, Karman even twisted his head sideways as he repeated the question.
Petrora stood to gain little from the naval war, because Karman had no intention of committing to it outright.
But there are plenty of ways to claim a share of the spoils without ever joining the fight.
Direct participation was difficult given Petrora's circumstances—but indirect support? More than possible. And I knew precisely what kind of support each nation needed.
And I have the means to deliver it.
I would move only far enough that when the naval war's victor was decided and the fruits of victory divided, the Kingdom of Petrora would not be shut out entirely.
I have to be careful about reshaping the whole continent's board.
Still wary of carelessly rewriting the future, I resolved to pull back once I'd secured a reasonable profit. So—what could I demand of Karman in return for results of this scale? I turned the question over and over.
Demanding marriage outright might make everything I'd shown him seem inadequate.
And I've only demonstrated it once, after all.
Choosing a consort for the prince was, on the premise that the prince might one day be king, a matter of enormous consequence. I could understand—coolly, rationally—why Karman was so cautious, and why he had flatly opposed my marriage to Cassion.
So instead, I asked him to seriously consider me as Cassion's match. If Karman weighed it in earnest and concluded that I was a match he could not afford to lose, then he would be the one to hold on to me.
"Merely consider it? What am I to do if I say so and never follow through? The conditions you've laid out, Lady Diana, cannot be confirmed with the eye. Would it not be wiser to seize something you can plainly see?"
Because I was confident, that was why.
I had no intention of laying my whole hand on the table, so I offered a different answer instead.
"I do not believe Your Majesty would strike a bargain with a child of thirteen and then break his word."
Karman appeared to mull it over for a long moment, then nodded.
"I accept. But I cannot wait on you indefinitely. A king is not a man with time to spare."
"Yes, which is why I would ask Your Majesty for three meetings. Three—and within them, I will show you that I am more than enough to be Prince Cassion's match."
"Three, is it. And what am I to do at these meetings?"
"To begin with, take tea with Prince Cassion."
"Cassion as well? Why?"
I needed time with Karman—and Cassion needed safety, and a deterrent.
Julia was far too consumed by the Minister of Finance affair to spare attention for anything else at the moment, but once that matter was settled, she would come for Cassion and me in earnest. Once the marriage was approved I could shield Cassion in the name of House Ehrenberg, but that was out of reach for now—so Cassion needed an umbrella, and that umbrella was Karman. No one has the gall to openly torment a prince who takes tea with the king on a regular basis.
Julia's gall is bold past all reason and will find a way to torment him regardless, of course.
At the very least, the servants passing in and out of Cassion's palace, and the nobles I would meet here and there from now on, would no longer dare mistreat him so carelessly.
When I made no move to answer his question, Karman laughed. Had he read the hidden meaning woven into my proposal?
Of course he had. He's a clever man.
"You're asking me to make a rather dangerous wager."
From the war, all the way to reining in Julia. The Karman of ordinary days would never have chosen such a road lightly.
But if he doesn't have to shoulder that responsibility entirely alone, his choice might change.
Standing before a road they dare not take for fear, people often wish someone would push them from behind—because even if things end badly, there will be someone to blame, and responsibility to shuffle off.
"House Ehrenberg will bear the responsibility."
I drove in the wedge of words that would end Karman's hesitation.
"For Ehrenberg to bear responsibility, Lady Diana would have to become its head, no?"
I only smiled.
No dangerous pronouncements. No tantrums like a child's. What mattered now was that Karman saw me not as thirteen-year-old Diana, but as a candidate to lead House Ehrenberg.
"Very well. So it shall be."
Karman rose from his seat. As though he had said all he intended, he went without delay to his desk, sat, and took up his papers. I bowed my head before him as he reviewed them, and was just turning to leave—
"By the way, Lady Ehrenberg."
"Yes, Your Majesty?"
"Don't you care for candy?"
Candy? Out of nowhere?
I glanced down at the dish of sweets on the table.
"I can't tell whether you're playing at being a child or playing at being an adult, my lady. Since you insist on performing, see that you do both properly. Now off you go."
"Ah... Yes, Your Majesty!"
Turning his words over and over in my head, I hurried out of Karman's office.
"Carl."
The moment Diana left the office, Karman summoned him. In the knight's hands was a thick report—presumably the findings of the investigation Karman had ordered that morning.
"We won't be needing that."
At those words, Carl looked up at the king.
"Lady Diana has done something rather charming."
Carl studied Karman's face carefully, searching for some other meaning hidden beneath the words. But the king's expression remained placid, as though he meant exactly what he had said.
"Has Lady Diana pleased you, Your Majesty?"
"Hard to say. I'll need to watch her longer to know. But she's entertaining. And she makes me curious. Which brings me to my point, Carl."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"There's one more task for you."
It was hardly the first or second time Karman had set me a task. But appending a postscript meant the errand had no direct bearing on state affairs.
"I will gladly accept any command you give."
Karman smiled as though he had anticipated exactly that response.
"I'll need to learn everything I can about Lady Diana. Set someone on her. Ah—and issue the lady a permit to enter and leave the royal palace as she pleases."
There had already been an order some time ago to keep her under watch. To issue a similar command a second time meant Diana had become a person of extraordinary importance.
"I'll see it done at once."
Without asking the reason, Carl moved.
Left alone in the office, Karman gazed down at his cold teacup and sank into thought.
What proof did Diana intend to show him? Would that child truly prove useful to the royal house? And if the conclusion came back yes—ought he to permit the marriage to Cassion?
No. Not that.
An engagement, perhaps, was one thing. But marriage was far too hasty.
The day after my private audience with Karman, I received my permit to enter and leave the palace.
With the royal palace now open to me, the first place I sought was, naturally, Cassion's palace. I marched in through the main gates with my head held high—my heart fluttered at the thought of walking to Cassion's palace without a shred of shame.
The carriage, which had been slicing through the wind for a long stretch, finally rolled to a stop. I flung the window wide open and hollered at the top of my lungs.
"Oh dear, the carriage is stuck and won't budge. And my legs ache so today that I simply can't walk. Holzmann, be a dear and tidy up those trees along the way, would you?"
"Of. course. my. lady. Since. your. legs. ache. there's. nothing. to. be. done."
Holzmann moved with all the stilted stiffness of a wooden puppet in need of oil. From beneath the driver's seat he briskly produced tools that would never belong in a sweet young lady's carriage—pruning shears and a saw, for instance—and proceeded to clear away the long branches reaching out over the road to Cassion's palace.
Good grief. Having to put on a whole act just to trim back a road.
Julia had her eyes fixed squarely on me; there was nothing to be done about it. The gazes trained on me were multiplying by the day.
Even this morning, riding out in the carriage, my back prickled from all that staring.
Attaching her watchers so conspicuously could only mean she wanted me frightened, didn't it? And yet, what could be done about it—Julia's ham-fisted checks simply struck me as funny.
I knew full well that Julia was busily stirring through everything around me. She was obsessed with uncovering why I had approached Cassion and who stood behind me. But right now she was kicking at empty air. If she truly wanted to learn what I was up to, attaching people to Chona or Loomdrax would have served her far better than attaching them to me. Of course, since Julia knew next to nothing about either of them, there was no chance of her managing it.
With every snip of Holzmann's shears, a branch dropped—thud, thud—to the ground.
Julia, too, would fall to the ground like those branches one day. How lovely it would be to snip her away, clean and quick, just like that. But even a road long neglected takes a great deal of time to set right.
And Julia is a person besides—one who has spent years cementing her position. Patience. No rushing this.
If the fruit won at the end of the wait is sweet, one can wait gladly. I draped my arms over the window frame and propped my chin upon them. Clear birdsong trilled through the air.
I set thoughts of Julia aside for the moment, meant to savor the rare peace and enjoy my five o'clock tea—
"What are you doing out there? Come in."
Cassion's voice rang out.