you?

Quincy

“So hey,” you said as the door opened, and I, you, were tugged inside. You obliged, allowing yourself to get tugged. Though surprised, you not unpleasantly allowed the manacles to restrain your hands behind your back, and were led to a closed door. The door was opened, and I, you, were pushed through, fell to your knees, were lightly dragged to a banister, and had a second set of manacles restrain my neck to it.

“I’m happy to see you too,” you said, nonplussed.

“Recalcitrant bastard,” said Joan.

She wore a soft black dress, with suspenders, with a puffy white shirt underneath. Apparently, she got enough of a wage from Vanguardism to live alone, was delusional enough to think I’d been led to your current position by her strength alone, and thought her current station in life was sufficient.

“Well yeah,” I said, you said, dammit. “Categorically yeah. If you’re making a normative judgement, water off a duck’s back. Unless this is foreplay. Should I act frightened?”

“I knew it,” she said, impatiently pacing. “We all knew it.”

“I thought you all thought there was an assassin. I thought Hendrik made that clear.”

“Samantha was broken up for weeks,” she said. “She tried to hang herself.”

“I can’t really be blamed for that,” I lied, but that couldn’t be a lie, categorically. Rather, I said, rather, you choked, rather, you said. “But I expected better from h”

“It doesn’t matter what you think anymore!” said Joan, bending over, impotently leering. “You ass! You…”

“Getting angry at me won’t accomplish anything. Dad is the problem. Picking me as the heir, not giving me a way out.”

“You could’ve been a great king!”

I was taken aback. “Uh. No. I couldn’t’ve. And I didn’t want to. And it shouldn’t be my problem how other people think and react. But, regardless, I came here for a reason.”

“I don’t care, I’m getting Anisa, she’ll decide what to do with you.”

“So much for the Vanguard’s independence. Hey, shouldn’t you pat me down to make sure I don’t have a wand? Forget I said that. I’m here to plan Samantha’s freedom. She’s set to be executed in oh okay,” as Joan began patting him down, grew satisfied I didn’t hold any weapons, and got angry at herself that it may have just been an excuse to have her physically touch me (it wasn’t initially, but you’d now claim it was).

“Ass.”

You were proud of the fact that you’d earlier swallowed some silverweed and blackroot to use as a makeshift wand, but escape required potentially dislocating an arm, shitting into your hand, and flipping 4D, of which always held the risk of complete exsanguination.

Huh, maybe you didn’t think this through. Uh.

“The Plan definitely involves Anisa,” you said, “if only because it’d give us some cover of legitimacy. I assume you don’t want Samantha executed?”

Silence. She glared.

“Excellent, I’m glad I didn’t make a mistake there,” You were never stressed, or worried, of course. Of course Joan didn’t want Samantha dead. Samantha was great! Joan thought she was great!

“Fuck you. Why would Northpoint even want to execute her?”

“Impotence? Agarma pissed she always beat him in the dictionary game? Probably something about setting an example. Which, really, you’d think you could start lower on the tower than a princess. But I guess princes and princesses are ‘just people’, too…”

Did her eyebrows de-crease? Yes, probably.

“I wasn’t asking why Agarma wanted to kill her, I was asking about Northpoint,” she said.

“Agarma is in charge of Northpoint,” I said.

“No he isn’t. He’s on the city council and the academy council,” she said.

“Huh,” I said. “Okay, step 1, figure out why they want to execute her.”

“You’re useless,” she said.

“When I see Anisa, do you think she’s going to be more or less pissed than you?” I asked.

“I don’t think she’ll care,” she said.