Zar lost no time in considering alternate access opportunities to reach the Princess, but none were nearly so reliable nor so direct.

Khaja had learned, and had duly reported to him, just how important Camila was to the Princess’ activities in the capital. Other than the Princess’ official servants, nobody else had the same level of access to her - very few people could even be sure of seeing her more than twice in one visit to Erethnis - and the servants certainly couldn’t rely on getting someone else into her presence with any regularity.

Zar expected to need regularity. He wasn’t sure why Camila had been able to resist the mystic spell he had cast, the cleansing heat that should have melted away suspicions and objections alike.

It was possible that the Princess had similar defences. Possible even, given her reputation as a sorceress, that she had designed them and brought them into being. If that were the case, he would have to be subtle with her, to act carefully.

Magical heat conducted well along physical touch or direct eye contact. It was a much less efficient actor when the caster and the target were simply in the same room. That didn’t mean it was ineffective; what it did mean, though, was that if you were using those methods you had to be much more careful.

His next stop was to pay a call on the guardhouse. A ramshackle old building stuffed with watchmen judged too old, too injured, or too weak to be made into soldiers and sent onto the road, almost impossible to imagine to those of us growing up in the Erethnis of today, the proud vassal of Marisal that we are, where the city guard are still called the Kingsguard in respect to their great historical successes.

This was, of course, long before the men and women who achieved those successes and earned that respect had been born, and it was during a time of war, when Erethnis’ best and brightest were never at home and when the city itself was something the Silver Princess did not care for. It is said that the only worse time to work as a guard in Erethnis was in the reign of Queen Angela, who history calls the Weak.

“I am here,” Zan told the sergeant on the desk, “on behalf of Duchess Khaja of Muchkan, seeking protection for her new home in Erethnis. Who handles such things?”

The sergeant looked back at him with eyes nearly empty of any interest, of any pride in their role, of any willingness to help the citizens of the Empire, and shrugged.

Zar was not willing to be turned aside by this, though, and met the sergeant’s gaze, the better to conduct his flame magic and spark embers of duty and passion back into life.

Like the Princess’ ice magic, flame magic came to us originally through elven wizards passing on what they had learned, and in both cases rumours abound that originally, it was the work of dragons. Not the animalistic species that still exists today, but the wise, almost demigodly race now lost to us for reasons none living can tell.

By the standards of modern magic, these are simple things, but what that truly means is that they are hard to teach and even harder to write about, to catch with words and set down. They are, not so much emotional magic as personality-driven magic. A cold or a fiery passion makes for a natural affinity, if one can only unlock the potential.

The stories of the Silver Princess that discuss her consort usually leave out flame magic. Those few legends that still exist do not talk about how the famous advisor Zar learned it, let alone mastered it. But then, there are few stories that tell of where Princess Aelina came by her own mystical mastery. It is not even certain they had it.

Zar’s eyes met those of the sergeant, and they found within her the few remaining embers of what had once been an idealistic young woman, one who joined the city watch with the intent of making the place safer and offering protection. And his will caused the flame of those embers to rekindle, to find her present disinterest and treat it now as fuel, until it burned soundly and well.

She gasped, and blinked. Swallowed her confusion away. “Pardon, sir,” she said. “You’re looking for protection?”

“I am looking to arrange protection. I need to speak to the watch officer who arranges protection details for the aristocracy.”

And he was directed on to his next meeting with a smile. Behind him, the sergeant went cheerfully on about her day, suffused with a new enthusiasm and eagerness for her role.

It is almost certainly unrelated but that night a prominent figure in organised crime in Erethnis was arrested.

*

It took two more guards before Zar had been able to cast his spells on the head of the palace guard, which he did in a small restaurant in the city, out of the way of prying eyes except for a Muchkan-born barmaid. The closest thing he had to home ground in the city.

The eyes that met his were suspicious, cautious. “You’re expecting a bribe,” Zar said.

“I can think of no other reason you’ve work so hard to speak to me.”

Zar looked into him, between the eyes, and he willed his suspicions to melt. He threw more of the power he held behind it than he would be willing to risk with the Princess; if he did actual damage here, it wouldn’t cause a problem.

Wouldn’t cause him a problem, he self-corrected.

“I assure you I’m just here so we can help one another,” he said. “Wouldn’t that be good?”

“Well, I… ah…” The captain cleared his throat awkwardly. “It… yes. I could always use some support from inside the court.”

“Ah.” Zar raised a finger importantly, though inside he was simply delighted; this was a much better opening for the conversation than he’d feared. “Now. I’m not inside the court yet.”

“No, I suppose not.” The captain’s face visibly fell, but his eyes never left Zar’s. Zar mustered his will and fanned the flames of eagerness within him.

“Perhaps you can help me,” Zar said, ”and I can then help you.”

“What do you need, sir?” he asked, excited suddenly.

“I need to know that Princess Aelina receives the very best advice she can,” he said. “Tell me, Captain, how many advisors are there at court?”

He took a moment calculating and considering. Zar took that for a good sign; the captain was serious about this. His eagerness made him a strong ally now that all suspicion had faded like the winter snows in spring. “I would say, a dozen. Perhaps fourteen. Anyone beyond that has been and gone too quickly to count.”

Zar nodded. Smiled conspiratorially. “And would I be right in thinking, Captain, that some of them have been people you’ve disapproved of?”

The Captain nodded. “You would indeed.”

“Who’s the worst?”

“Countess Mavrai,” the Captain said, without hesitation. “The others, I might disagree with them, but I think they’re trying to do something. All she’s doing is trying to line her pockets, now she can’t just drain all the taxes from that half-starved county she used to run.”

"So… let’s imagine for a moment,” Zar said, “that she were to be caught in possession of something illegal. Especially if the discovery took place in the court itself. What would you do?”

“Arrest her,” the Captain said promptly. Then, after a short hesitation, he added, “and hope that Her Majesty did not object to the interruption.”

Zar nodded. “If I could arrange for such a thing to happen, while I were in a room nearby, then if you could ensure I gained access to the court I think I could distract any wrath from you. And this might benefit us both, yes?”

The Captain nodded. “But how could you-“

Zar held up his finger again. “Let us not speak of it,” he said. “What you don’t know, you don’t have to act on.” He smiled and rose. “It will take me a day to arrange this,” he said. “It would be more, but we have little time, so we must hurry where we can. I shall see you in two days.”

*

He found the Countess in a private back room in one of Erethnis’ most exclusive restaurants, later that same afternoon, dining alone. History does not record how he got past her security, but he sat down opposite her and made eye contact, and he smiled, and in his pouch were just a couple of ounces of dried luchan.

The Countess left the room with a giddy, dreamy smile, smudged lipstick, and her gown in disarray. Tucked away in her decolletage was the little pouch of dried luchan.

The following day, Countess Mavrai produced the pouch while in court, all the while wearing the same contented, dreamy smile with which she’d left the restaurant. She proceeded to crumble the dried leaves and take a pinch, in full view of the other courtiers; while some gave a murmur of admiration, the majority gave vent to shocked exclamations, and attention was firmly brought onto the Countess.

Naturally, the Captain of the Princess’ guard - not yet the Kingsguard - swung into action quickly and decisively, and while Aelina watched, baffled that anyone dared to do this and coldly angry that her speech had been interrupted, the Countess was escorted from the room.

The next time that Aelina happened to glance at the collection of seats where her courtiers were assembled, the Countess’ seat was occupied again, and by someone she was sure she recognised even if she couldn’t place where she recognised him from.

There was something, some strange sensation, as their eyes met. Aelina straightened as if shocked by a spark struck from a flint.

What had happened there?

She extended a finger and pointed it toward him. “You,” she said, and she turned her hand over and used the same finger to beckon him forward.

Slowly and deferentially, as if uncertain he could have meant her, he approached. “Highness?” he asked, and his tone was uncertain. He did not lift his gaze to hers; she couldn’t tell if what had happened once would happen again.

All the same, she was pleased to see his nervousness in her presence. She wasn’t wearing her armour, neither the showpiece back-and-breast she’d worn to open this session of court nor her dependable, effective, tested-in-combat ‘real’ armour.

But the circlet resting on her ash-blonde hair wasn’t what signalled her authority in this room; the short skirt and the loose, sleeveless tunic above it gave her the freedom of movement to fight if she needed it, and showed off the well-developed musculature of her arms and thighs. Nobody who saw her dressed like this would be in any doubt she was a real warrior, like the armies she commanded.

“What is your name?”

“Zar, Highness.”

“Zar what? Or what Zar? This is only half a name.”

“I am used to hearing only half of my name, Highness,” he said. “Zar is the name of my family.”

“And your full name?”

“My full name is Siftan Zar, Highness.”

“An Erethnian name.”

“Yes.”

“But you have not lived in Erethnis?”

“Briefly as a child, and for perhaps the last month, Highness.”

“Let us sit for a while, then, and talk.”

Zar didn’t understand how the one followed from the other, but he didn’t feel the need to; it was either a trap or it took him closer to his goal. He sat on the stool beside the throne, and he kept his head facing forward, away from her, as etiquette required.

He briefly closed his eyes, reaching out as best he could to sense the mystic temperature of the room, but he didn’t think she was doing any magic. Which didn’t mean she wasn’t trying to sense the same thing.

Of course, neither of them actually knew with certainty that the other had any magical ability at all…

“You are new in my city,” Aelina said, “and newer to my court. You were not here, for example, an hour ago, when Countess Mavrai… did as she did.”

“I heard some whispered rumours,” he returned, keeping his voice level. “But not enough that I am yet sure of the truth of what happened.”

“No?” She looked across at him; he could feel a light chill against his cheek as her gaze came to rest on it. Some kind of perceptive magic? The cold truth? “You are, then, a believer in coincidence.”

He didn’t like where this was going. “If you say so, Highness.”

“I am not. So, Zar.” She left that hanging in the air for just a few moments before she spoke again. “Tell me what part you had in the scandalous detention of Countess Mavrai.”

He didn’t want her to know about his connection to the captain, nor how hard he had already worked to get this far. Without knowing what ice magic might offer its user in supernatural insight and understanding, he wasn’t sure whether going into detail would be a pure confession.

Instead he drew on a little bit of the heat of his own desires and parcelled it out, piece by piece, into the atmosphere around him. Flame magic could be slow to conduct, but in the end everything that didn’t move away from a flame would melt. He hoped that by not directing the power, but simply radiating it, his involvement would be harder for her to identify.

"I was told she is more interested in lining her pockets than the welfare of her people, Highness.”

“And what of that? You are not one of her people?”

“No, Highness. But her people are, now, your people. If they are under-supported due to her actions, then the burden that represents is placed on you.”

He watched the Princess’ nose wrinkle with distaste, and wasn’t sure what she found distasteful; he took the opportunity to send out a little more heat around him. Emotion was something to inflame, and might just be his way in.

“If their Countess will not fight for them, that doesn’t mean their support has to come from the Imperial purse,” Aelina said, but there was a hesitation to her words as if she were trying them out for the first time to see how they sounded.

“That’s your right, Highness,” Zar said. “Of course, an underfed populace without a force to protect them wouldn’t necessarily be a good source of soldiers in your conquest.”

He had, he thought, built up enough heat in the area around him to take a risk in shaping and using it. He kindled two flames within her mind, just small ones but supported by the ambient magic surrounding them, one to warm her heart to desire and one, a similar flame to the one he had used so carefully on the captain, to start to melt away suspicion.

If her attention was on the conversation, he told himself, she shouldn’t notice. Not at first.

Legend had it that some animals wouldn’t notice the rising heat of the flame, so long as it came upon them gradually. He was sure that the human mind could be encouraged in a similar manner, if only you prepared correctly.

“True,” she said cautiously. “So, are you telling me that you intervened to benefit me?”

“I would not dream of intervening against you, Highness,” Zar said, and Aelina, snorted, half with laughter and half with disdain.

“You’re not nearly so slick as you imagine yourself,” she said, but there was a certain warmth to it, and Zar allowed himself to relax slightly. The suspicion was not where it had been.

“Highness?”

She shot him a withering glance. “Don’t play dumb,” she said. “I saw through your move with Mavrai, didn’t I?”

“You did.”

“So we both know you wanted to be seen as less clever than you are. And I won’t have that.”

He considered trying to make light of it, but there was something in her tone that underscored the power this woman wielded. Sorceress or not, there was nobody in her empire who had the right or the authority to gainsay her, and her decisions were absolute. If she decided to expel him from court now, having paid close attention to his face, he would be excluded until long after she led her armies again - and he would have his work cut out for him even if he did regain his current position, just to bypass her anger.

A cold temper was not improved by heat. Anger was the thing he absolutely could not manage with his magics.

“My apologies, Highness. I forgot myself.”

“It will not happen again,” she told him, and he nodded, and this seemed to pass as acknowledgement on his part and acceptance of his apology on hers.

He eased a little of the flame melting her suspicion, adding his power to the flame of her desires. “My hope is to make a good impression, Highness,” he said. “I am here, or I hope to be here, for a long time. I can only expect this to be the case if either I pass unnoticed or I put your wishes and your benefit above my own.”

“And what,” she asked, amused, “do you expect in return?”

She was so much more direct than he had anticipated. It had not occurred to him to prepare an answer - the Duchess Khaja had never asked such a thing, not until well after he had her will afire with a zeal to please him. He opened his mouth, searching for a response, but being glib with his tongue had been a risk earlier, and doing so again could be a disaster.

After a few moments of silence she shook her head. “Men,” she declared disdainfully. “So hungry for power, and so uncertain of what to do once you have it.”

“My… attention… began chiefly with a focus on survival, Highness,” he said. Which was true, although it left out years of experimentation, building in confidence, manipulation, and power seeking that had followed.

“I found that I had an understanding of human nature in the mass - that is, I could not predict your next edict, Highness, nor could I be confident of the choice any of the others in this room might make for their dinner tonight, but I would feel confident in telling you what a crowd roused to protest would do depending on your decision, or how a nation might respond to a change in its neighbours. And for that, if one is not of noble birth, there are few avenues where the talent may be put to use.”

He still did not turn his head to her, but he was aware that she was now watching him closely. Instead his eyes were on the other courtiers, trying to read which were aggrieved that he was in the seat beside the Princess, which might be allies, which would not care. At that range the little desires and jealousies heating their group were unreadable to him, except as a broad general impression of the way they might lean.

“I begin to see,” Aelina said. Zar nodded.

“Living as I did in the Duchy of Muchkan, I contrived to put myself in contact with Duchess Khaja, and we found, I think, that we worked well together,” he said. “But fate said that this was not to be a long profitable association.”

“By which you mean, I conquered Muchkan about midsummer.”

“You did, Highness. As useful as my advice might be, three thousand militia levy cannot long hold off a professional army of eight thousand with a gifted general to the front.”

She didn’t mind that bit of flattery, he noticed. Perhaps because it was true and she knew it. Or, perhaps…

He exhaled slowly, and as he did he breathed additional life into the flame heating her lusts. Beside him, in his peripheral vision, he saw her squirm, just slightly, upon her throne, her legs uncrossing and recrossing, and he fancied she was pressing her thighs more firmly together in anticipation.

She bit her lip, and did not pursue the topic further. Stayed silent, in fact, and Zar was confident he knew what that meant; she was concerned that if she spoke, her voice would betray something.

He sat a little while longer in their shared silence as her needs simmered, and then said simply, “I believe I can serve you as I served Duchess Khaja, Highness. I am, of course, available to be called on whenever you wish.”

Then he rose, and bowed, and fell back to introduce himself to other courtiers, keeping even his glances toward Aelina as hidden as he could lest she understand he was watching for her arousal.

He had left so much heat around the throne that he knew her desires would not be easily slaked, and when a bare half of an hour later she rose and abruptly dismissed court, causing much consternation in the people around him who had evidently expected to have longer to conduct whatever business was their goal, he knew he had begun his work well.

*

For her part, Aelina was furious with herself. She was not, she told herself firmly, a creature of impulse; she did not break off things she had committed to abruptly; and certainly she did not do so because she was so aroused she had to have private time to attend to her own needs.

She wasn’t even sure of why; it had crept up upon her while she had been talking with the new courtier, the smarmy schemer, Zar. It obviously couldn’t be about him, though; he was decent enough looking but nobody she’d have picked out of a crowd.

She’d had plenty of good opportunities to enjoy much stronger men, both simply looking at them and taking them to her tent at night; those soldiers would go on to fight all the harder from the belief they had their Princess’ favour.

Yet in the confines of her chamber, with nobody to know or snoop or judge, as she lay back in her luxurious bed and closed her eyes, one hand between her legs, the other beneath her singlet, her skin as sensitive to her touch as it had ever been, she didn’t picture any of those great champions of Erethnis.

It was that moment, the strange shocking eye contact that had seemed to spark between her and Zar.

He wasn’t at all like Camila’s report had suggested, she thought. She could imagine his body, perhaps weaker than her own but lean enough from what she’d seen, could picture the roughness of his palms, the callouses formed from whatever job of labour he’d done before finding the more comfortable job as this Duchess’ assistant.

She could imagine his touch, imagine arching her back into it, gasping with delight to encourage soft grunts of excitement, his body pinned against the bed as she enjoyed him.

And oh, the more her fingers fucked herself, the slicker she became, the more ragged and eager her breathing was, the more pleasure she felt, the more clearly she could picture his body against hers, moving against her, taking hold of her, thrusting within her…

She was so close she could taste it. Maybe this would cure her of whatever this strange fixation was.

She could feel her pleasure surge forward, her body carried on the crest of a wave, and then -

- and then -

The wave broke, leaving her ecstasy crashing down, the orgasm she’d been so close to suddenly so helplessly out of reach.

She felt again the strange spark from her eye contact with Zar and seemed for a moment to see him smirking.

With a yowl of frustration, she threw herself backward against her mattress, wondering what, if anything, was keeping her from her pleasure.