Anticipating war
"Your majesty. These are the recent letters." Mircea's lady-in-waiting brings her the new stack of letters that are addressed to the court of Slyve. Keeping the letters on her desk she bows deeply and waits for Mircea's response.
"Did anyone check any of these?" Mircea demands with a high voice.
"No, your majesty."
"Good, you are dismissed." Mircea doesn't spare her another glance. She starts regulating the letters all by herself. There is a letter from Lilith. Another one from King Diomedes. However there was no letter from the court of Cetus.
Mircea sighed. There was no movement on the borders or anywhere in the kingdom after the last one. Even so, the attack took place only yesterday. The likeliness of attacking perpetually was more. It was a hindering technique, but that required more manpower.
Cetus was a powerful kingdom led by werewolves. The ruler of Cetus was an old werewolf King who had been sitting on the throne for more than eleven decades. Mircea was no match for him as a ruler. Even so Mircea wouldn't let him or his great army unnerve her.
There has to be some old connections between the kingdoms on which the secret alliance was formed.
Mircea's eyes wandered to the letter from the court of Gyyza. She gazed at it dumbly. Their seal was rather a fancy one. Magic, she thought. Everything there had a touch of magic.
As a child she was always told about the relations between the five kingdoms. She always mused how sad it was, that she had to study the history of something that didn't belong to her. Every so often she would bunk her lessons and go practice swords with soldiers that were present on the practice grounds.
She picked up the letter from King Diomedes when her door was knocked on again for the nth time this day. "Come in" Mircea huffed, tearing the seal off of the letter in her hand.
The very same lady-in-waiting enters with another letter in her hand, however, Mircea is focused on the letter in her hand.
"Your majesty. I missed one letter from the stack." She bows.
Mircea gazes up to her, she scans it's cloak. "Bring it to me." She orders keeping the letter in her hand down. The servant bows again before handing her the letter. "I apologize for not bringing this the first time, your majesty."
"Now that you mention it, why didn't you hand it over earlier?"
"It accidentally slipped off, your majesty." Mircea arches an eyebrow at her answer, not believing her excuse.
"Who had this letter?"
"The new letterhead." She whispers afraid Mircea might fire her.
Mircea inspects the letter, it was sealed. Nevertheless that didn't guarantee no one knew about it. "Summon Lord Athos." She commands her.
It was a letter from the King of Cetus, Kirill, himself.
Perhaps this letter would be the key.
Mircea tore open the envelope.
Your Majesty Queen Mircea,
His Royal Highness King Kirill is once again disappointed by the way your decisions are shaping all kingdoms. To unveil his dismay he arranged the little show on your broder. Prince Pyron did not heed to our warnings, he hopes at least you will. His highness has a big heart and would like to give you a chance before bringing your kingdom on your knees. This is the second and the last warning, the court of Cetus will be giving the court of Slyve.
By the end of this month we expect you to end your little alliance with the kingdom of Gyyza. Else we will surmise the alliance between our kingdoms is over.
His Highness King Kirill sends his regards.
Mircea reads the letter once again, and again, and again.
"Fuck!" She exclaims to herself.
War is deliciously appealing when you are a soldier with a kingdom to save, however, it is substantially appalling when you have to lead thay kingdom's army with your people's lives on line.
Mircea recalls her mother's words War doesn't guarantee anything but death.
She gets up from her seat. Taking the letter with her, she strides out her room, the guards follow her closely. Mircea's satin red gown flows fast kissing the ground as she moves in a haste.
When the servants see her coming through, they move aside and bow at her. The anger is evident on her face.
She strodes past the council members who are strolling together towards the south-east wing of the palace. It's plausible they might be meeting every now and then without her to discuss HER kingdom. She does not second glance at them.
Mircea finally enters the restricted area of the palace, the north-east chambers where her father, and sister used to reside. "Bring me father's chambers' keys." She commands the guards that are following her like a shadow.
One of them scurries off the next moment, Mircea stands in front of the same door she was standing a month ago waiting to hear from her sister. When she told Mircea to go on the quest to find Urban.
Mircea could hear fate laugh at her from above.
How naive she was to believe she could save her father. She still hasn't found the killer of her father let alone avenge his death. Mircea sighs.
Revenge is a luxury she can't afford right now.
"Here." The guard comes running with a set of keys. "This one." He points at a long key that he has picked aside from the set. Mircea takes the heavy set in her hand and pushes in the key he told her. The door clicks open.
"Stay here, don't allow anyone in." She orders.
The room is the same as she left it one month ago, the only difference is the herbs, the royal healers are gone with her father. Her father must have the answers to everything, she will just have to find his hidden coffer. Her mother once told her it holds her family's most valuable things, Faustina didn't know about it.
The scent of the herbs still lingers in the eerie stillness this room has. Mircea scans the room, everything here has gathered dust. The empty bed is made neatly with silk covers, and all the curtains are closed. The room seems more gray than it ever has been.
Her father was a simple man, he must have camouflaged the coffer in plain sight.
Mircea keeps the letter she received from King Kirill on the little table that is perched next to closed windows and starts searching every corner of the room. His chambers were the second most luxurious place in the palace, the first was her mother's. Like her father's, her mother's chambers had been shut after her death.
She gathers her gown and stands on the dusty bed to touch the ceiling. There were no hollow walls. There were no secret passages. She wondered how her father survived in these chambers.
"There has to be something around here." Mircea mumbled knocking on the ceiling. She will not sleep tonight unless she finds the root cause of the war King Kirill was so eager to have.
Mircea jumps off the bed and walks to his study. She stares at the big frame of their family. It was a family portrait, drawn by the most talented painter of the decade. Mircea was only a baby and Faustina was roughly five to six years old. Their mother was young and beautiful like their father. The frame hung above his chair he used to sit on. He wouldn't locate the coffer near his desk.
Mircea gazes around touching his stuff here and there. She looks up at the specially fabricated wall opposite to the frame. It has always been very attractive for a wall in the study room. Mircea drags the heavy wooden chair to the wall and stands on it.
She knocks on the wall to check, "Finally!" She smiles
Mircea gets down from the chair and looks for a sword. Her father wasn't a big fan of swords like her but he ought to have one somewhere in his chambers. Not too late she finds a sword below his bed. It doesn't take long for her to guess the lock that he put on the coffer. It was a combination of her mother's and Faustina's birth dates.
The coffer is different from the one Mircea has in her chambers. There is a stack of papers on one side of the coffer and on the other side there are random things. Mircea realizes the coffer is made of silver and not cheap but strong steel. She withdraws the stack of papers from the coffer leaving behind the random things her father has collected.
She skims through papers looking for anything that is related to the kingdom of Cetus. After going through each and every paper from the stack Mircea gathered five papers, they didn't look like they were letters.
However, they were related to the Kingdom of Cetus.
She sat down on her feather's chair to check what exactly the papers said.
Mircea gasps "These are the alliance papers!" She stares at the date mentioned at the end of the paper perplexed.
"Why are they signed exactly one month after mother's death?" She muses to herself.