There's a girl who works in the inn here who has the most spectacularly beautiful hair I have ever seen in my life. If I had hair like that I would keep it long & loose & not even bother with clothes because no one would notice the rest of me! This afternoon when we arrived she wore a little kerchief & then when she came to our room tonight she had it hidden by a v. pretty scarf—even I noticed it & I'm dim as a door knocker when it comes to that sort of thing tho I was careful not to say a word. But then the scarf slipped off for a moment & it took all my resolve not to scream in envy! Her hair is not carroty at all but just lovely red & it has the most beautiful waves ever. The Montagne wig maker would follow her around like a little lost puppy. I did my v. best not to stare but felt myself growing positively green. She's terribly aware of it you can tell by the way she covered it up at once. Nonna wanted her to travel with us as we are decidedly short of a retinue—a functional retinue that is!—but she said no. So would I in her shoes—with hair like that she doesn't need anything else in the world. Certainly not waiting upon this gaggle of gaggers. Nor would I wish her to join us for my own mousy locks do not come close to hers—& I shan't even begin to describe the difference in our figures!
At least Nonna is diligent—unlike me!—about writing to the Dearly Beloved Sister. Teddy—excuse me Queen Temperance—always complains most intemperately about being left out—I hope that for once she's happy to be somewhere else! Tonight at bedtime I had to help Nonna as no one else could—it makes me appreciate how much work it is to "keep us up" which is a pun on upkeep but it doesn't make much sense the way I put it—there's a joke in there somewhere I think—in any case I made a right hash of Nonna's gown—I had no idea folding was so hard! I'd always thought it'd be absolutely joyous to be free of staff but now I am not so certain—if I am expected to iron or dress hair then we might as well return to Montagne! Normally I would say I do not care about appearance—which I v. much do not!—but even brave Nonna is so fearful of Wilhelmina that now I fear her as well! I know we are royalty—Roger knows—his bothersome mother must know as she sent us cartloads of nonsense to sign—but for all those gallons of ink we must still display our regality to the court!
Just think! By tomorrow night—if we acquire fresh horses enough!—I shall be at Phraugheloch with my betrothed. "The Duke & Princess of Farina"—an awkward style but at least I can flaunt my princess over that conniving duchess!>
Imagine—I am to be a wife.
I do hope I have chosen well.
The Imperial Encyclopedia of Lax
8TH EDITION
Printed in the Capital City of Rigorus
by Hazelnut & Filbert, Publishers to the Crown
FROGLOCK
Occupying the lowest fording point of the Great River, Froglock has served as a center of trade and defense for a millennium or more. Much of the city's great wealth derives from this ford, and more recently from the twelve-arch bridge built in the reign of Clyde, Baron of Farina. (Entitled by him a "Dazzling and Fitting Triumph," the span is better known by its acronym, the Daft Bridge.) It is not surprising that the city's premier industries—weapons and paper—relate directly to the defense and administration of this bridge, as well as to other tolls throughout the provinces and holdings of Farina. According to legend, the city's name was bestowed by residents grateful to the amphibians that would croak an alarm when nocturnal travelers attempted to cross the ford without payment; the frogs were the "lock" to the community's revenue. The name is alternatively ascribed to a local swamp, long drained, known as Frog Loch. The frog-lock icon is emblazoned on both the city seal and the Farina coat of arms; chocolate versions may be purchased at every local confectionery. The city has numerous significant buildings, including the Hall of Taxes, which features fortified windows and a crenelated roofline; the equally imposing Debtors' Prison; and the Ducal Armory, with its wide parade ground and attached Museum of Uniforms and Flags. When Edwig of Farina, then only a baron, married the Countess of Paindecampagne, he sought to mark his newly elevated rank by renaming Froglock with the seemingly more prestigious if meaningless homophone of Phraugheloch. The local populace, in a rare display of subversion, refused to comply, and after several years of escalating penalties and increasingly brazen acts of sabotage, Edwig relented. Today Phraugheloch refers only to the ducal palace, a neoclassical structure of singular dimension and finish even by the criteria of the city in which it stands. >
>
A Missive from Tips
THE BOOTED MAESTRO
Dear Trudy,
We are coming home returning to the Empire of Lax! Finally! The sultans wedding is over at last—I didnt know it took so many weeks + so many festivities just to get married—I am so tired! It will be nice to be back where there are clouds + rain + actual cold. I can barely remember what cold feels like.
I know you keep asking when you will see me + believe me I want to see you just as very much but Felis doesnt think its wise for me to return to Bacio given what Hans keeps threatening saying. Even though he Hans signed a contract with Felis, if I returned he could still make me stay + work at the mill. Felis gets so furious angry that Id be wasted like that—I dont know if Id be wasted but I surely wouldnt enjoy working milling the way I enjoy this. Felis got us new uniforms—I wish I could show you. I know think you would like them but I can just imagine what Hans would say!
I think about you every day + I hope you like these earrings they cost me two months wages a bit of money but dont worry, I dont have anyone to spend on but you. I have no one I want to spend on but you. I bet theyll be so beuti beautiful with your hair! Red + green harmen harmonize because theyre opposites—thats what Felis says + while I dont understand how colors can be opposites or how harmony works even in music let alone hair, I think hes right about this one. I wish I could see you wearing them. I will someday, I promise. You are I will always Affectionately—
—Tips
A Life Unforeseen
THE STORY OF FORTITUDE OF BACIO, COMMONLY KNOWN AS TRUDY, AS TOLD TO HER DAUGHTER
Privately Printed and Circulated
TRUDY COULD HARDLY shut her eyes that night, she was so exhausted and worried and—for goodness' sake, they had a queen at the Duke's Arms! A queen! Sleeping in the second-best room!
Which, Trudy could not help but note with a satisfied nod, was precisely how a queen should act, giving the best room to her suffering ladies-in-waiting. Truly, as Trudy pondered it, this old woman did everything as a queen should. She didn't even call herself queen! Her traveling companions—those fit enough to speak, anyway—called her Nonna Ben, an insolence that had stunned Trudy when first she heard it. To think that the queen of a country—or in this case the queen mother—enjoyed the same endearment as Bacio grannies, with that commonplace "Ben" tacked on the end ... remarkable. The queen had scurried for hours about the inn just like a grannie too, verifying that every member of her entourage was comfortable. Trudy hoped she herself would always be as solicitous, particularly (should such an anomaly ever come to pass) to those beneath her.
Princess Wisdom, on the other hand, was ... different. The featherbrained farm girls had described her as graceful and lovely and the best princess they'd ever met—which wasn't saying much given their life experience. They found it astonishing that a young woman of royal blood would enjoy currying manes and polishing harnesses. Hurrying across the courtyard, Trudy at last caught a glimpse of this celebrity laughing with the grooms as though they'd been friends all their lives. Trudy's reaction, however, wasn't amusement or awe or even dismay: it was horror. Misery flooded her so violently that she clawed at her throat for breath. It was her own misery that she saw, looking at the princess. Her own future unhappiness.
She fled the stable yard at once. However charming the princess might appear to others, Trudy wanted nothing to do with her.
So that night, while preparing the second-best room for sleep, Trudy deflected the suggestion that she join the Montagne contingent, much as it hurt t
o disappoint the queen. Simply standing near the princess—who by the way appeared quite unaware of Trudy's existence—made Trudy quake. She excused herself quick as she could and kept busy with countless other crucial tasks until she fell into bed.
No, she could not go galavanting off with these foreigners, no matter how much she enjoyed dear Nonna Ben, how desperately they required assistance, or how pleasant it was (when she permitted herself such vanity) to imagine herself a lady-in-waiting. She needed to stay as far from Princess Wisdom as possible; her sight made that fact abundantly clear. Besides, the Duke's Arms needed her too. Eds needed her, however infrequently he expressed his gratitude. Most of all, Tips needed her. She'd made a promise to wait for him, and wait she would: in Bacio. In two years' time he'd finish his apprenticeship and return to her. And if by some miracle he finished early, she would be here for him, as she'd vowed. Comforted beyond measure by the certainty of this logic, and by the peace of mind that came from knowing she would never, ever in her life eat an oyster, she drifted off to sleep.
***
The next morning, Trudy awoke before dawn. There was so much to do! Could she possibly turn six-month-old pumpkins into a dish fit for royalty—or at the very least a dish fit for breakfast? And the second-best tablecloths (the best had been used at dinner)—what if the mice had gotten into them? She hadn't thought to check! What about the lunch roasts, broth for the invalids, flowers for the tables...
Trudy was pondering pudding recipes with the cook and attempting to get some labor out of the featherbrains—had none of these girls ever folded a napkin?—when the mail rider arrived from Froglock. Normally Trudy would drop every task, but today she was far too busy even to pay the man notice. He, however, sought her out especially and extracted from his greatcoat a soiled, much-stamped package no larger than his cupped palm—a package from Tips!
Almost quivering in frustration, Trudy diligently verified that the cook understood the task before her and that the featherbrains weren't making too great a hash of the linens before she slipped outside for a moment of peace.
She ducked into the laundry shed. No one would dare follow her there—they might get put to work! But laundry had not yet begun that morn, and Trudy, alone at last, studied the small package tied with string, neatly knotted (oh, Tips), and addressed in his schoolboy hand.
Using the wee scissors she carried always for a thousand different emergencies, Trudy cut the string and drew open the paper. Nestled inside, like an egg in a nest, was a dark wooden box carved with leaves and berries. What a lovely, lovely gift! Trudy cradled it tenderly, and it took her some time to realize that the box had a hinge and clasp.
Slowly she lifted the lid. Rich velvet of the deepest blue lined the inside, cupping the most beautiful earrings Trudy had ever seen. Had ever even imagined. Fine-spun gold, so delicate it could be the work of fairies, clasped two tear-dropped jade stones. Trudy held one to a sunbeam to study it more clearly, then exclaimed as the polished facets captured the light, glowing with the brilliant, depthless green of life, and spring.
The stones were not jade. They were—they had to be—emeralds.
Overcome, she crumpled down on a bucket. The bucket, luckily, was inverted, though she probably wouldn't have noticed if she'd ended up hip deep in suds. What girl in Bacio—in all of Alpsburg—had ever been so privileged? Emerald earrings! She would save them—hide them away where no one could ever find them!—and wear them for Tips's return.
Tucking the earrings back into their elegant little case, Trudy noticed at last the scrap of notepaper folded beneath the velvet: he was returning! Not to Bacio, to be sure (though simply thinking these words set Trudy's heart beating), but at least to the empire. Oh, to know he would be that much closer.
If only Hans and Jens weren't so absolutely horrid! Tips had every right to fear being seized; his brothers were lazy and stupid and utterly unsuited to someone as wonderful as he. No wonder Tips never wrote them; it was bad enough that Trudy had to pass along his gifts, which they treated so rudely, and her as well ... At least this time Tips wasted no words on them. Trudy had enough responsibility today without a trip to the mill.
She should return to work; she'd squandered too much time already. But she lingered a moment more. Blushing at her immodesty, she released a curl of hair from her kerchief and held it beside the gem. Red and green did go together; she'd heard this before. But her hair, with emeralds? It was hard to tell. If Tips said it, though, then it must be true. Tips knew everything.
Tucking the letter and box into a deep pocket, and her hair beneath its cloth, she hurried back to the inn.
The disorder she had left not ten minutes earlier was now thrice as loud, the small kitchen seething with people ... Trudy elbowed her way through the crowd, angry now at those silly, stupid farm girls. What had they done, on today of all days, to cause such a ruckus?
The commotion did not center, however, on the featherbrains, who stood to one side with gaping mouths, but—Trudy would never have believed it were she not observing it with her own eyes—on Princess Wisdom and old Nonna Ben, yet in their dressing gowns, looming over the mail rider, who sat huddled on a stool like a snared truant.
"Tell me!" The princess shook the man. "Where is he exactly, and when did he get there? Speak, man!"
The mail rider stuttered, overwhelmed by this onslaught.
Trudy's eyes met the queen's, and in that instant she knew what the mail rider had told them, what the queen would ask of her, and what—inevitably—her answer would be.
The Gentle Reflections of Her Most Noble Grace, Wilhelmina, Duchess of Farina, within the Magnificent Phraugheloch Palace in the City of Froglock
Well! My frail nerves cannot—simply cannot—survive such trauma!—I would collapse were it not abundantly clear that without my firm hand this duchy would dissolve into chaos.
The emperor—Rudiger IV himself!—has appeared at the gates of Froglock with his entire ridiculous menagerie!—which Farina is expected to feed!
Tigers and elephants—and soldiers!—and accountants! And we're to feed them!
All those prying men with their prying questions—as though the wealth moving through my duchy belongs to anyone but myself !
I am of course already on tenterhooks awaiting Roger's betrothed—who has still not arrived—she cares not a whit for the lengths to which I have gone to prepare Phraugheloch for royalty.
Poor Handsome is so overcome that he was finally provoked into a small nip—and while the surgeons assure me they can reattach the boy's finger, my son had the nerve to demand that my poor little dog be locked up!—and furthermore claimed that he had been inspired to this insolence by the thought of Princess Wisdom!
It is a woman's duty not to inspire a man but to submit to him, and a man's duty to command his wife—a dictum which I was forever commanding of my late husband, and which he was utterly incapable of enforcing—I will not see that Montagne minx dominate my son so!
That the Kingdom of Montagne lords itself over the Duchy of Farina—though we have ten times the land and peoples—burns me like a brand.
I will have that throne.
The Imperial Encyclopedia of Lax
8TH EDITION
Printed in the Capital City of Rigorus
by Hazelnut & Filbert, Publishers to the Crown
RÜDIGER IV
The rule of Rüdiger IV, the Spindle Kaiser, culminated the struggle between the Empire of Lax and its most powerful domains. The grandson of Wilhelm VIII on his mother's side, Rüdiger had no aspirations to the throne and was declared heir only after Wilhelm's sons—the Three Disappointers, as they were subsequently known—fathered nineteen girls. > Rüdiger took the throne at age thirty-two and ruled for fifty-eight years. While maintaining a permanent campaign on the northern frontier and leading his empire in multiple wars, Rüdiger made significant advances in diplomacy. He formalized relations with the Sultanate of Ahmb, surveyed Lax's eastern boundary, and negotiated with his many s
ubject states to reduce the tolls that jeopardized imperial trade. The widespread popularity of the names Roger, Ruggiero, Rutger, Hrothgar, Rogelio, Rufiger, and similar derivates of Rüdiger speaks to the nobility's efforts to curry favor within the imperial court and should in no way be considered a demonstration of affection.> In his later years, Rüdiger IV traveled throughout the empire and beyond with his private circus and military escort. It is not unthinkable that this "Circus Primus" may have served as a façade for covert proceedings, as the emperor and his troupe were present for the Feldspar Assumption, the Mar y Muntanya Border Crusade, and the Fourth Altercation of Scampi; Rüdiger's role in Wisdom's Kiss, much parsed by scholars, exemplifies the tumult that often shadowed the Circus Primus ensemble. Perhaps not surprisingly, his later reign was tainted by charges of irresponsibility, even senility, accusations that Rüdiger did not or could not dispute, and his legacy does not adequately reflect his earlier achievements.>
>
A Life Unforeseen
THE STORY OF FORTITUDE OF BACIO, COMMONLY KNOWN AS TRUDY, AS TOLD TO HER DAUGHTER
Privately Printed and Circulated
TO THINK! For so many years Trudy had burned to reunite with Tips, and now it was about to happen. And not sitting in lonesome Bacio twiddling her thumbs, but by traveling to Froglock—where Tips was this very minute, guarding the emperor with the other soldiers!—and she was traveling in a coach, with a queen, as (Trudy could pinch herself!) a veritable lady-in-waiting!