Ajacii and Demons: The Ingenairii Series (17 page)

He waited outside the castle entrance.
What time did you tell me Rahm would come on duty?
He asked Caitlen.

Just a half hour more
, she replied, puzzled by the question, but Alec said no more, as he stood and watched the gate.

Bethany! Rahm!
He sent a mental message to them as he saw them walking down the street.
I’m in the alley across from the castle entrance.

He watched both their heads jerk up, then look at each other, before they looked in his direction. They altered their path and their stride lengthened as they rapidly approached him.

“
You are right here in front of them!” Rahm laughed at Alec’s impudence, while Bethany simply hugged him tightly, her eyes moist.

“
Come in here and trade clothes with me,” Alec told Rahm.

Five minutes later Bethany stared gap-jawed as two Rahms walked back out. “What is happening here?” she asked.

“
You and I are going to walk into the palace to see the Princess,” said Alec’s voice and accent, emerging from the Rahm dressed in an imperial uniform, while the other stood sheepishly silent. “This uniform is tight,” he complained. “I can change my face features, but I can’t make my body smaller!” Alec was slightly taller and slightly heavier than Rahm, and his body remained the same size, even after the transformation Alec had wrought on his face.

“
Go back to my inn on Canal Street and wait for me,” Alec told the other Rahm. “I’m not sure how long this will take.” Then together Alec and Bethany entered the castle.

“
I’m so glad you came back,” Bethany told Alec as they entered the courtyard of the castle. “Have you been okay? What have you been doing?”

Alec began to recount his adventures for her, beginning with the campaign in Krimshelm, but had only told a small portion of the story before they entered a hallway, where Bethany interrupted him. “That’s Princess Esmere’s room,” she pointed to a room guarded by four guards wearing Valeriane uniforms. “We can go in with her, but if we take her anywhere, they will go with us.”

“
You look bigger today,” one of them said casually to Alec, believing he was Rahm. Alec smiled and shrugged, but kept his accented voice silent as he and Bethany were admitted to the suite. Inside Caitlen was pacing restlessly around a spacious room, and Alec stood still to restore his appearance, and to take in the sight of his dearly beloved pregnant princess, who he had not seen in so long.

Caitlen glanced up at their entrance, then continued her pacing, unaware at first that Alec was in the room. Bethany watched Alec transform his visage, and then watched with amusement as Caitlen continued to restlessly stride in front of the large windows that looked out over the garden below her rooms.

“
I’m sure the exercise is good for you,” Alec said at last, observing her re-enter the room from another part of the suite.

“
Alec?” Caitlen looked at him, as the expression on her face transformed to a radiant smile, and she bustled over to hug him. “You probably can’t even get your arms around me any longer, can you?” she said as they embraced, and she burst into tears.

“
Hush, my love,” Alec whispered gently in her ear. He glanced at Bethany, and spoke. “You can leave us. I’ll stay with her,” he said, and the door gently closed a moment later.

“
What do we do now?” Caitlen asked Alec after a long silence.

“
I will do whatever you think is best for you,” he told her. “I will take you out of here if you want to escape; I will stay with you if you want to stay here,” he said. “I will never leave you again, unless it is to serve you.

“
And I want to marry you Caitlen, if you are allowed to marry a foreigner and a commoner like me,” he knelt before her. “I know you told me the decision is yours, but…”

“
Oh Alec,” she broke into tears again. “Alec no, not now, not like this – not for this reason,” she protested.

“
Caitlen, I’m asking for one simple reason – I love you, and I want to be with you for as long as we can have together,” Alec said.  “I went back to my own land, and when everything happened, when I learned all that I went to learn and everything was said, I had a choice.  My powers to trans-locate were taken away, and I had to pick where I would live, back there, or over here with you.

“
I chose to come back to you – I didn’t come back to this land; I didn’t come back to this war.  I came back to you, and I can never go back to the Dominion again,” he told her, both of his hands wrapped around hers.  “You are my life, and being married to you is what I imagine my life will be.

“
Until I learned the rest of the story of my life, I shouldn’t have asked, but now I know that I am free to marry you, if a foreigner like me is allowed to marry the ruling monarch,” he told her.

“
How do I marry you?  Do I ask someone for permission?  Do we go to a temple?” Alec asked.

“
Assuming I ask you,” Caitlen corrected him with a grin, “we could!  We could ask to go to a temple to be married, and they couldn’t refuse us the request!” Caitlen said excitedly, her beaming face looking down at Alec.  “My answer is yes, of course Alec!  No one can prevent me from marrying you!

“
I may have mentioned once before that here in our nation it is the prerogative of the woman to ask for marriage, not the man,” Caitlin said. “It might be construed as presumptuous of you to take advantage of the circumstances. When the time is right, you need to let me ask you to marry me,” she said, and Alec shook his head gently as she grinned at his confusion.

“
Could we pick any temple we wanted for the wedding?”  Alec asked.  “Where I come from, we had only one God to worship, one temple that we went to.”

“
For royalty, it must be a temple to the sun, the source of light and energy,” Caitlen explained, “or it can be the palace.” 

“
Oh Alec, I love you!” she impulsively said.

“
Caitlen, you know I love you too.  You are my motivation.  From the time when I didn’t know anything about myself to now, you’ve been the reason I’ve kept going.  I’ve followed you, fought for you, come back to you.  Now most of all, I want to marry you.  Even if it means you eventually have to hide me in the basement of the palace to keep my nasty foreign accent hidden from the court, I want to be your husband,” he told her.

 
He rose from his knee.  “What do we do now?”

“
You need to take me to the assembly of nobles and let me announce my plans to marry you,” Caitlen answered.

“
And what do we do if they say no?  It seems likely that they’ll refuse the request,” Alec answered.

“
I can offer to let you challenge them to battle,” Caitlen.

“
That sounds easier,” Alec replied with a smile.  “How many of them are there?”

“
Twelve,” Caitlen told him, a serious expression on her face.

“
So we need to force out way into a Council meeting, then I fight them all.  Once we’ve beaten them all, won’t we have won the war?” Alec asked.  “Can we just go back to Vincennes and get married there?”

“
The other claimants to the throne aren’t all united.  This Council is under the control of two of them, but there are others down south, including in Birming.  That’s the stronger group of pretenders to the throne.  They are the dangerous ones, the ones who want to allow slavery in the empire.  They are the ones the rumors credit with controlling strange, unstoppable monsters,” Caitlen answered.

“
If you can defeat this Council for me, then we can go back to Vincennes to gather our forces for a march on Birming, and after you win that battle, we’ll just need to go back to Valeriane to make sure there’s no opposition left there,” Caitlen said, then shook her head ruefully and laughed.  “Maybe you’d like to go find a less challenging honeymoon?”

“
So how long will it be until we’re married?” Alec asked, exasperated.  “Two years?”

“
We can get married as soon as you defeat this Council,” Caitlen smiled.  “Once we have freedom in the city, we’ll be free to be married!”

“
Will we be able to have a ceremony of our own, one that makes me feel my God knows?” Alec asked.

“
Of course, Alec,” Caitlen said.

“
Shall we go right now?” he asked.

“
Go?  Where?” Caitlen asked.  “To the Council?”

“
That’s where we have to start, isn’t it?” Alec asked.

“
I don’t even know if they’re meeting right now,” Caitlen replied.  “I haven’t spoken to them in two weeks.  I don’t go out of the suite very often now that my pregnancy is showing so much.”

“
Guards!” Caitlen called suddenly and loudly.  She walked to the door and opened it.  “Is the Council meeting now?” she asked.

The two guards looked at each other, then one spoke.  “I think they meet this afternoon,” he said.

“
Thank you,” Caitlen replied, then abruptly shut the door.

The two of them lay together on the bed, talking tenderly as the day passed, and Alec recounted many of his restored memories to his princess, and Caitlen recounted the circumstances of her capture by a group of noblemen who had claimed to come to meet with her on friendly terms.  And then they held hands and lay quietly, letting their Spiritual energies intertwine with each other, their spirits finding intimacy and affection.

“
We should be going,” Caitlen said wistfully.

They rose, and stepped out into the hallway.”Who are you?” the guards outside the suite asked, never having seen Alec before.

“
This is my new guard,” Caitlen said breezily, and began walking away, leaving the guards with no choice but to awkwardly catch up.

They walked for several minutes around a number of corners, down stairs and through open courts until they stopped in front of a pair of large metal doors, highly ornamented. 
Bethany, Rahm, I am with the Princess.  We are about to challenge the Council
. 
Please bring all guards to the castle immediately,
Alec broadcast a message.

“
Let me do the talking,” Caitlen said softly, as Alec opened the door, and he followed her into the chamber beyond, followed by the bodyguards assigned by the Council.

The setting was an informal one, in a room that had not been designed as a hearing room for a council with several members.  The group of men sat at chairs drawn around a large table that sat awkwardly in the middle of the room.

“
I have come to announce my intention to marry.  My fiancé, Alec, Duke of Valeriane, has joined me, and we have decided to wed.  I expect you will acknowledge our right to do so immediately,” Jeswyne spoke to the men, not all of whom had even turned to look at her upon her entrance.  All eyes did turn to look at her as she and Alec proceeded to the front of the room, and the Council’s guards following Caitlen were joined by other Council guards in the room.  Alec examined the men at the table as he and Caitlen passed by.  Many of them were elderly men, against whom he could not imagine the necessity to swing a blade.

They stopped at a spot in the front of the room and faced the table.   “It will be our intention to leave in two days,” she told them.

“
Aren’t you forgetting something?” one of the younger men at the table said.   He was perhaps thirty years old, Alec guessed, and had a wiry build.

“
I know of nothing else,” Caitlen replied.

“
So you’ve found someone to hide your shame,” an old man at the table sneered.

Alec pulled two knives from his bandolier and threw them, both of them sticking to the back of the chair the man sat in, one on either side of his head, just hair breadths from his ears.  Alec uncovered his sword handle, and partially withdrew the blade.

“
Apologize,” Alec said in a low voice.

“
Guards!  Take that man into custody,” another voice from the table shouted urgently.

“
You didn’t have to do that,” Caitlen told him in exasperation as a quartet of guards walked towards Alec. “We might have been able to talk our way past some of the violence.”

I doubt it,
he told her mentally, putting space between the two of them as the guards drew closer.

All four guards had drawn their swords, and Alec stood still, his sword still on his hip.

“
You’ll need to come with us,” the closest guard told him, reaching out a hand to take Alec by the arm.

Alec’s hand flew out to grab the guard, pulled him forward, and he raised his knee into the man’s midriff, then pulled the guard’s sword from his limp fingers as the man fell to the ground.  He threw the sword high into the air, so that its point was buried deep in the wooden ceiling, while the unconscious guard lay at his feet.