12.

Inri stared blankly for a moment, forgetting to breathe or blink. The fingers of his right hand twitched suddenly as if bitten by stable flies. Agitation just finding some way to be released.

"You must… Mother." He coughed, his throat suddenly parched dry. He leaned forward. "You must realize no real princess would be cast up into your hands like this?"

Sorgie, tutted. She leaned forward also and whispered low so not even the keenest gossip-ear behind a wall or door could catch what she said next. "Of course, my dear. But if I recognize her now the marriage will go ahead. And if I am proved to be wrong who will blame a woman, a queen, who never had a daughter of her womb for being a little too eager to acquire another one by marriage?"

Their faces close together, he saw the candid expression on her face. A face she only showed when she was sure they were alone.

Inri struggled to find words that would encompass the blank openness of his amazement. "But, why?"

Storgie settled back in his chair. "For the grandchildren, my dearest."

Inri's somewhat rattled brain still managed to grasp the implications of that statement, quite rapidly. Even as a prince by courtesy, it would not be acceptable to the nobility for a son of the queen and king to amarry any but another noble. And if the said wife was found to be a fraud after the marraige, it would not anul the bond. But the children of that union would be commoners. Grandchildren who were commoners. That was what she wanted.

The queen smiled to herself. Already imagining these small directionless babes, from whom--just like her unexpected third son--very little would be expected.

Inri's feelings churned. He wrung his fingers together. He had always known that he had a special place in his mother's heart--and he even knew why. But this is the very first time his mother's love had demanded something from him. The cosseted toy she had wanted him to be, he had no reason to want anything else for himself. But this was….

"Allow me some time to consider the matter, if you will, Mother."

Her eyes flashed showing cold motes deep inside. "If you must," Storgie conceded. "A day. But you should not be concerned. She is beautiful. And from a foreigner and a"--she silently mouthed the word 'commoner'--" besides, that is as much as should be expected. She wants to be a princess, and after a fashion, she will be. What reason will she have to complain?"

"I should…." Inri frowned when he discovered that he had no idea what he should do.

[Instinctively he revolted at the idea that he had been his mother's plaything, and she now meant to use him breed more children to amuse her. It made him think of the little spotted dogs that his oldest brother's wife arranged to procreate. Each generation becoming smaller and spottier and more feeble than the next. But at the same time, he knew the royal family itself was essentially a breed of people domesticated by their duties and breed by those expectations towards what he saw before him now. Perhaps he should be grateful not to be offered some minor pallid princess who would sigh and look at him with disappointment but for whose sake Tellus would get a better deal in the trade of tree nuts for shipbuilding split-nails. But until this morning, against all reason, Inri had not given much thought towards marriage at all.]

"Well, then…" Inri again could not muster a full sentence.

Storgie shooed him away with a wave of her hand. "I do know that men require time to adjust to ideas. But unlike your brothers, you have never been too stubborn to accept a good idea just because it was not your own. It is the lot of women and sages to contest with such things. Perhaps naturally, I struggle more than most."

Because the queen was also the head of worship and represented the Gadis in the palace, that was. It was a complex and often vexed combination of duties. Inri's first burst of doubt about his mother's pure benevolence was met with a responding wave of guilt knowing that she had given him an easy, even idyllic, life so far. If he had chosen to use this ease to grown naive and expect never to have anything asked of him….

He backed out of the room and closed the door. Matron Fortia was still there.

[How did she even know to find me in the library?]

Inri left her standing there and walked slowly out of the house, out of the palace, and to a place at the extreme end of the grounds. It had been designed many years ago as a pleasure garden but been only minimally tended since such things had fallen out of favor.

Under the shade of a small-apple tree, he lay down in the cool grass. It was a nice simple thing to be just lying in the grass, behind the darkness of his closed eyelids.

He watched the now muted sparks of green light danced across his darkened vision. Behind them, the smudges as tree branches bobbed and dipped and moved there shadows across his face. The sounds of a nearby stream jointed in with their sibilant tones, pierced by a piping bird.

The dots trace lines, the lines of a ritual, drawn and redrawn into his unconscious mind. A ritual of magic imprint ahead of time, devoid of it's intended purpose.

Being not quite awake, much distracted, and surrounded by this tesselation of sense and sound, there was one small muffled sound Inri did not mark. A slight splash. A small sigh. Such a small murder. Quite nearby.