Much like Narvonne, Raetia has historically kept the peace with its native faeries by effectively ceding territory to them.  North of the mountain passes, in the lands where no trees grow and the northern lights shine, only The Winter Queen rules.


    <ul>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Fran?ois du Lutetia, A History of Narvonne</li>


    </ul>


    ?


    3rd Day of High Summer’s Moon, AC 297


    “Is everything alright, Minister Fabian?”  Claire asked.  The Prince of Raetia’s representative had suddenly stopped talking and turned to one side, as if something shocking, or even dangerous, had caught his attention.


    “Perfectly well, Lady Clarisant,” Fabian said, turning back to her and fixing his face with a smile that managed to look both obviously fake, and sincerely predatory at the same time.  She neither trusted the man, nor did she enjoy his company, but he was also the closest she had come to speaking with Prince Conrad himself since arriving in Basilea, and she couldn’t afford to offend him.


    “Good,” she said, keeping a polite smile on her face that she was confident looked more genuine than what the minister was doing.  “I really don’t expect it would take very long,” Claire pressed forward.  “A brief meeting to deliver the letter from King Lionel, and then we can wait for the prince to consider his response.”


    “I will do my best to arrange such an audience for you,” Fabian assured her, but she knew he was putting her off.  “I may be able to find an opportunity sometime next week, I believe.”


    “Thank you,” Claire said, deciding to change her tactics.  “In that case, I look forward to seeing more of Basilea.  Are there any particular places of cultural significance you would recommend for a first time visitor?”


    “Regrettably, with the state of things in the world at the moment, and the uncertainty among our people regarding the sun, I think it would be safer for you to remain our guest at the palace,” Fabian said.


    “Minister!”  Claire gasped.  “Are you implying that the prince does not have control over his own people?  Have there been riots?”


    “Nothing of the sort,” Fabian said.  “You need have no concerns on that account, Lady Clarisant.  Nonetheless, the prince would feel more assured of your safety if you would do him the honor of remaining within your rooms here at the palace.”


    “For the next week,” Clarisant repeated.


    “Indeed.”  The Minister rose from his chair.  “And now, I must take my leave of your company.  There are certain pressing matters which require my attention.”


    “Of course.”  Claire rose as well, and nodded to Henry and Yaél at the door.  The hunter opened it and held it aside for Minister Fabian to pass, just as if Clarisant had been hosting a visitor at Foyer Chaleureux, instead of being kept prisoner in a very luxurious apartment in a foreign land.  As soon as the door was closed, however, the archer spoke his mind.


    “I don’t like him, and I don’t trust him,” Henry said.


    “Right, this is a pile of horse shit,” Yaél chimed in merrily.  “Are we doing the thing now?”


    “Tonight,” Claire said.  “When most of the palace is asleep.”


    “I do wonder,” Dame Etoile said, “how long everyone will be able to keep up any sort of normal schedule without the sun rising and setting.”


    “The guards will keep up their shifts until everything falls apart,” John Granger speculated.  “I can’t imagine it will take much longer.  I’ve already heard the maids talking about food shortages.”


    “I wish we could wait for a riot to break out, but we really cannot,” Claire said.  “It’s become obvious that we’re being stalled here.  They’ve either decided to back Avitus, or they really are staying neutral; I can’t get a read on which without talking to the prince himself.  But in either case, we aren’t going to be able to get what the king wanted just by staying here in our rooms.  It’s time to take our chance on the faerie queen.”


    “I feel that it is my duty, once again, to point out that we do not have an Exarch with us this time,” Etoile cautioned her.  “That bargaining with faeries is notoriously dangerous.  And that these aren’t even Narvonnian faeries.  We hardly know anything about this Queen of Winter.”


    “We know that the Horned Hunter thinks she might be able to help us,” Claire pointed out. “Which is a better chance than we have staying here.”


    ?


    The plan was simple enough.


    John Granger had organized guard shifts for Sir Rience’s manor over the past decade or more, and Dame Etoile and Henry had both done their share of standing watches.  All three of them agreed that the lonely stretch of night between Vigil and Matins was the time when guards were most lax.  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    When Henry gave her the signal - the hunter had been keeping track of the motion of the stars in the sky - Clarisant began to groan and moan loudly, and then to cry out.  She did her best to sound like she was in agonizing pain.  After a few moments of that, Yaél jerked the door to the hall open and poked her head out.


    “We need a surgeon!”  the squire told the guards outside the doors.  “Lady Clarisant is ill!  The baby may be in danger!”


    One of the guards said something in Raetian, and Yaél pointed at her own belly.  “Baby!” she repeated, and pointed into the room.  Claire wasn’t even showing yet, but losing a child to miscarriage was common enough, and the guard seemed to get the hint, for he rushed into the room.


    John Granger, who’d been hiding behind the door, stepped out behind the man, slipped his arms around the guard’s neck, and began to choke him.  The guard’s arms pinwheeled in a panic, and Ettie stepped past the struggle - and Yaél, who’d made certain to duck out of the way - and pommel-punched the other guard in the nose.  A sickening crunch, followed by a cry of pain, made Claire flinch for real.  Etoile dragged the second guard into the room, his broken nose gushing blood.  She stomped on the back of his knee with her sabaton, bringing him down to the ground, and set about choking the second man out using a slightly different technique than the master of arms.  Yaél pulled the door closed.


    “The two of you are terrifying,” Henry commented.


    “You should wrestle me sometime,” Dame Etoile offered.  “I’ll teach you a few things you’ve never seen before.”


    “Later,” Clarisant said, rising.  “We need to be quick about this.  Get them stripped.”


    Within ten minutes, the guards were naked, gagged and bound in one of the bedrooms.  They’d used the sheets, wound up into ropes.  Henry and John Granger, in the meanwhile, were wearing both the guards’ armor and their livery.


    “Right,” Granger said.  “Henry, you’re in back, I’m in front.”


    “You’re certain you can get us out of here?”  Henry asked.


    “I wrote the turns down when we first got into the rooms,” Granger said, “and memorized it.  If anyone says anything to us, just ignore them and keep moving.  A nod or a shake of the head if it''s needed, but don’t talk, lad, or they’ll know what’s wrong instantly.  Look like you know where you’re going, and like you’re supposed to be here.  Bored is good, too.”


    Claire wrapped herself in her winter cloak.  “Let’s go.”


    They stepped out into the hall, John taking the lead and Henry bringing up the rear, with Claire, Dame Etoile, and Yaél in the middle.  The squire was carrying Henry’s bow and quiver, because the palace guards only wore arming swords at their belts.


    The halls of the palace were quiet, and they made it back down the grand staircase to the first floor.  Lanterns, stocked with whale oil, burned along the walls at regular intervals, casting circles of light and deepening the shadows between them.  Claire felt distinctly better about their odds every time they stepped into the shadows, and felt her heart pound when they walked back into the light again.  If Trist was here, she knew, he would just wrap them in shadows, and that would be the end of it.  She shoved the thought down and focused on what she needed to do right now.


    They were just in sight of the two guards at the palace entrance when their plan fell apart.


    “I do hope your men haven’t killed those guards,” Riddersman Reinolt called across the darkness, and Claire spun to face him.  “It would be most inconvenient, not to mention inconsiderate.”


    Henry and John Granger drew their arming swords, and Yaél followed suit.  Dame Etoile put a hand to Claire’s shoulder, and gently pulled her back, so that anyone coming at them would have to go through everyone else before getting within reach.


    “There won’t be any need for that,” Princess Keterlyn said, stepping into the light at Reinolt’s side.


    “Princess,” Claire greeted her, with a nod.


    “I apologize for my brother’s actions,” Keterlyn said, her unbound blonde hair falling around her shoulders, and hanging down to the breast of her chemise.  “Whatever his political reasons, he should not be holding messengers from another kingdom captive, when you came here in peace.”


    “Something is very wrong here, Keterlyn,” Claire said, from behind her wall of guardians.  “You must know that the war in Narvonne does not affect us alone.  Avitus and his army have allied with daemons.  They are working with the Sun Eater itself, and they’ve freed at least one of the monsters that was bound in Raetia.”


    “I have tried to speak to my brother of this,” Keterlyn admitted.  “But he will not listen to me like he used to.”


    “It’s his new minister,” Reinolt said.  “If you had come here a moon ago, Lady Clarisant, you would have received a very different reception.  Get to your ship, and be gone before the alarm is raised.  It would be best for all of us if you do not return to Raetia.”  The guards at the door stepped aside.


    “We are going now,” Clarisant said.  “Thank you.  Come along,” she told her people, but they did not sheathe their weapons until the entire group was out the door and moving across the snow-swept courtyard.


    “To the ship?” Granger asked, as they left the courtyard.  Claire noticed a lack of guards at the gatehouse, and assumed that Reinolt or the Princess had arranged for that.


    “No,” she said, shivering as they hurried through the city.  “Take us to where we can hire passage.  The plan hasn’t changed.”


    Somehow, the alarm bells from the palace did not ring until after they were all packed into a sleigh, wrapped in furs.  The Raetian who was to be their driver narrowed his eyes at the chimes, but apparently had decided that Claire was paying well enough not to ask questions.  “North!” the man shouted, in his mangled Narvonnian, and used a long whip on the odd beasts hitched in front of the sleigh.


    They were indeed something like Narvonnian stags, though much stranger, with fur that was more silvery-gray and white than brown.  Claire had tried to ask what they were called, and gotten back something that sounded like ‘rentier’ from the driver.


    With a jolt, the sleigh took off across the packed ice, headed out of the city and toward the dark mountains.  Flakes of snow drifted by in the wind of their passing, and overhead the stars glimmered in the darkness.


    Bundled up next to Claire, Yaél let out a delighted whoop and a laugh.  Her eyes were wide, and she was grinning.  “This is amazing!”


    “It is beautiful,” Claire admitted.  Her breath frosted the cold air, but wrapped in the furs, sandwiched between Yaél and Etoile, she was warm enough that she didn’t mind.  “Try to get some sleep,” she told the squire, even though she could not imagine that happening.


    By the time they were skidding across the snow into the mountain pass, the horrible circle of white light that used to be the sun had begun to rise to the east.  “Do you think she will help us?”  Etoile asked.


    “I don’t know,” Claire admitted.  “But I have to try everything I can before we give up.”


    Even if that meant going to the court of a faerie queen.