One didn't go to a royal castle while dressed for the classroom. I went with the suit. When in doubt, always choose the outfit easiest to run in. A black shirt and tie—Charlotte had even prepared matching shoes of the correct size. I did put on the school coat for the trip, and we got going without further ado.

  I thought to feel a certain sense of urgency in the air.

  Thankfully, there weren’t too many other students loitering about to see me march down the school road with a chic maid in tow. That would’ve been somewhat attention-grabbing. Not low-profile at all. Standing out, in the best of terms.

  The automobile awaited at the gate, the engine warmed up and ready. Our house driver hurried over to open the side door for us, and I slipped into the passenger cabin, no longer a student but a weapon of war, all superfluous thoughts shed and left by the wayside.

  I asked no questions, expecting Charlotte to tell me what I needed to know, and only what I needed to know, when the time was right. As if worried about being somehow overheard, she waited until we were far down the highway past Grimons before finally opening her pretty mouth,

  “I'm sorry to hijack you like this on your one day off, Ms Hope, but it came as a surprise for us as well. You've been summoned to the Castle. The orders were to bring you immediately.”

  “Suppose I should be glad it was a day off. This way, I won’t have to miss any classes.”

  Charlotte glanced at me with surprise.

  “Does that mean you actually enjoy your stay at the academy?”

  “...”

  I was a bit dumbfounded by my own spontaneous comment.

  I didn't think so deeply about it, but she may have had the right of it.

  I’d come here like a criminal sentenced to community service, but before I knew it, I’d begun to look forward to each day. Making discoveries. Opening new possibilities. The feeling topmost on my mind now was saying, if possible—I didn’t want it to end.

  Not just yet.

  “Well, it is pretty interesting,” I said. “Finding where I can still get better.”

  “That prospect may appear a little ominous for the rest of us, though…”

  “And then? What does he want this time?”

  There was only one person in the Kingdom who had a mail address on Canelon Hill and was tactless enough to call me over like this without sparing so much as a day to prepare. Like I was a dog in a kennel, to be dragged over at the ring of a bell.

  His Majesty, King Goring of Calidea.

  “It would seem your earlier report on the Tarachian unit and the threat on Canelon interested his majesty a great deal. He would like to hear the details directly from your own lips.”

  “Damn. Did I overperform?”

  Charlotte’s smile turned somewhat pained.

  “I believe most people would be overjoyed to receive an invitation from their King. Even distinguished knights may only have such an honor once or twice in their lives.”

  “You may have noticed, but I'm not ‘most people.’ And having a man like that pay attention to you is never a good thing.”

  “You’ve met his majesty before?”

  “Is that a question? I thought you knew everything there was to know about me.”

  “It's not like there's a comprehensive record of every action you’ve ever taken since birth. And personal meetings with the royalty tend to be kept off the record.”

  “Well, I have met him. And too often, if you ask me.”

  The first time was alongside Couren, many years ago. Yes, it was directly after we liberated Lakewind, in my first sortie. That was when success in battle was still a new thing for Calidea and worth celebrating. Back then, I still lived under the delusion that the King was somebody kind and righteous, like the crownheads in all the old books. But that man was neither.

  As he received us, his majesty spared me only the briefest glance of utter displeasure, and then asked the mage,

  Shouldn't you have that on a leash?

  He didn't even consider me human. Maybe he thought I was some kind of homunculus the mages had cobbled together out of mandrake, moonshine, and siren’s beard. I wasn’t called over to be thanked for my hard work, but as something of a product presentation. Like a new type of light bulb, or a deadly sort of bicycle.

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  And Couren had answered in his laconic fashion,

  Your majesty, she's very well-behaved.

  Thinking back, was that supposed to be a joke? You could never tell, with that guy.

  A couple of hours later, we were cruising through the cold, windswept streets of Canelon, over which the monumental cloud castles had split enough to spare some colorless daylight. Yet, a cold promise of rain was held for the future.

  Nicholas steered us northward, away from the usual route and on towards the royal residence rising above the city rooftops. Coronets of walls and parapets, layer upon layer, assembled upon the precipitious hill, the airy battlements adorned with the blue-white flags of Calidea, and the banners of the Capitol Knight Order and of the Kingsguard, and the ruling House Adorium.

  We had to leave the automobile on the parking lot on the first level and continue from there on foot. I also had to leave the academy coat in the car, so that my academy persona and the real one were a little less easy to connect. Only in the light suit jacket, my hands bare, I followed after Charlotte, a tempestuous northern gale constantly in our faces.

  So damn cold.

  In the elder ages, the whole city was restricted to this one hill, I'd heard. The rich and poor huddled merrily together in their small wood cabins propped up upon the steep slopes, besieged by a merciless, bloodthirsty world.

  Canelon was the name of this hill before there was a city. But times changed.

  First the poor were chased down to the lower land and the hill was made a district only for the upper classes. Then even the so-called upper classes were expelled in order, starting with the least important, the least rich, and the least meritorious, leaving only the few highest houses, military heads, and the parliament. Then the generals had to go, the elite had to go, even the politicians had to go, until only the King was left on his lonely hill, his family, and servants.

  The flow of time seemed eternally arrested in the castle town, the illusion of a thousand years ago stuck on its face.

  The smooth-paved lane took us past solemn stone mansions with their projected pediments and ornate marble pillars; past ancient temples and shrines raised in the honor of the many gods the pagan nobility once prayed to for favor and protection. But not even those gods could win against time, and in every sanctum, regardless of its original dedication and iconography, now burned only the white flame of Amellys.

  We walked past death-shrouded mausoleums, where the crownheads of the bygone generations lay in their lidded traps, the sleepers' memory recorded in their bloodless, sculpted clones. How many of those monarchs had gone to rest at the hands of their own family before any enemy or old age could have their turn? The history of Calidea's ruling house was like one centuries-long cannibalistic revelry, where anything new could only arise through the consumption of the old, where the one closest and dearest to you was also to be the death of you, and terror and love went hand in hand.

  It was a harsh ascent, in many ways.

  I was older than the last time I was here, my legs longer and stronger, but that didn't make the way one bit easier. If anything, my feet were heavier. Or maybe it was my soul that had grown too loaded for its container? At only nineteen, maybe I already knew more about life than was healthy for me, or anyone.

  The main castle complex in the ultimate heights had to be the most impractical dwelling on the planet. A chilling maze of stone altered and appended and expanded and renovated innumerable times over the course of its standing.

  Instead of a building, it was like a spired, corbeled, buttressed tumor sprawled over the summit. Could anyone claim to have seen all its rooms and know all of its buried secrets? Did even the divinity enshrined in its holiest of holies?

  But the throne room, I was told, hadn't budged an inch in the history of the city. Where his majesty's ostentatious chair of cryonite and white gold stood this day was where the primeval warlords had also held court, when the floor was still trampled dirt and guests sat on pelts, even if no visible trace of that past remained.

  At the wide door of the throne room, Charlotte stopped.

  Only the invited could go in, everyone else at risk of losing their heads.

  “I shall wait here for your return, Ms Hope,” she said and bowed.

  Men of the kingsguard in their flashy ceremonial armors opened the way and I walked in.

  The throne room had seemed stupefyingly grand when I was a kid, and I was now taken aback by how much smaller it looked from my current altitude. Where there may have been an open hearth fire long ago, maybe a boar grilling over hot coals, spread a solid floor of light-blue, mirror-clear tiling, and a long sky-blue carpet leading up to the seat of rule.

  The chair and the room behind it were raised higher than the rest of the hall, a flight of wide stairs separating the guests from the Lord. The throne's high back rest rose to eighteen feet, a golden image of the sun and its rays embedded into the cool-hued stone.

  Basking in the warmthless shine of the gilded sun sat a big man.

  King Goring was among the biggest men I'd ever seen, nearly seven feet tall, and ridiculously bulky. He was not a philosopher king, unless it was some philosophy of violence we were talking about. He favored jousting over poetry, manual labor over bureaucracy, and spent more time with his broadsword than with his wife or any of his many children. They say he wouldn’t even see his sons until they could withstand one unrestrained strike of his blade.

  Maybe this mentality could be understood.

  Calidea had been at war with one mighty adversary or another for most of his majesty's life, even before his accession. He'd been the King through the bad times and the worse times. But no matter how grim things looked, the monarch had to be there to whip his people on, telling them to never give up believing in better. If it came down to it, he'd resolved to take his country to victory by his own two hands, as the last one standing.

  He even looked like a beast on the outside, a lion in a white suit, hair of flaming gold flowing wavy down the broad shoulders, a rich beard of the same style pouring over his broad chest. His eyes glowed piercing under a deep, bushy brow, and there wasn't a glint of human warmth and kindness in their predatory gaze.

  Such was the King of Calidea.

  One who sought to be more than a king, a bodily incarnation of his country’s indomitable spirit, an archetypal human.

  No, with our conquest of Tarachia and the nearby states’ dependency of us, it was probable we’d be soon be calling this man—Emperor.