A long, snow-white hallway. Mana lamps shedding a soft, orange glow. A velvet carpet unfurled, vividly red like the last setting sun of summer. An endless succession of faces staring down at him from gilded frames. Zephyrin glanced up at his tutor, then looked away just as quickly as the bearded man smiled encouragingly. “This, Your Serene Highness, is the Hall of Memory, and these are the portraits of your ancestors, from King Serégir I, great-grandson of Kaul the Uniter, to your beloved grandfather in our own day.”

Zephyrin gazed, and even to his untrained eye the resemblance between the countenances—including his own, child though he still was—was unmistakable. He walked slowly forward, studying one portrait and then the next.

“See you the noble features? The limpid eyes, blue as the tranquil, cloudless azure for some, and gray as mountain mists for others, but always eagle-keen? The hair unfailingly tending to gold, the fair skin, the slender, finely wrought limbs? Though the First Empire is no more, still the glory of our people endures, as it always will in your line.”

Zephyrin nodded gravely, pride swelling in his breast at the thought that the blood of all these great kings flowed in his veins. Then, as a thought occurred to him, he asked, “Was there a Second?”

“...I beg your pardon?” Oddly enough, Margrave Tiélo’s broad smile wavered.

“You said the ‘First’ Empire had fallen,” said Zephyrin. “Does that mean there was a Second?”

“Well...” Now his tutor was visibly flustered. “I suppose one could consider the... er, later empire... as the Second Empire, yes. But it was very short-lived. No trace of it remains today…”

“Oh.” Zephyrin considered this. “Is there going to be a third one? One that won’t fall?”

Zephyrin’s tutor looked at him, seeming almost regretful, and let out a sigh. “Perhaps,” he said softly, almost as to himself. Then, after a pause, he spoke again. “Time will tell. In the meantime, I would sound Your Serene Highness’s opinion: to which of your ancestors do you find your eye most drawn?”

Zephyrin looked up once more at the royal faces on the wall, frowning. “I think...” He peered closer at a portrait of a blond youth with a debonair yet noble air, dressed in a military uniform and easily leaning upon a saber. “Him.”

Margrave Tiélo smiled. “Your great-grand uncle the illustrious general, Duke Serenissimus d’Esterhahz? I am glad to hear it. May you follow in his footsteps and be a bringer of peace.”

“I will do my best,” said Zephyrin seriously.

“I have no doubt that you will. Now, if it pleases Your Serene Highness, we shall return to...”

Zephyrin’s expression tightened as the queen’s words revived memories that he would rather not dwell on. Yes, the blood of Elysia ran strongly in his veins—so strongly, in fact, that during his adolescence he had contemplated a smuggled portrait miniature of the Emperor in vain, spending hours searching for a likeness that did not exist, before finally taking refuge as best he could in the consolation that his ties with ‘The Tyrant’ were not the less real for being invisible.

“No, Madame,” Zephyrin replied at last, conscious of the queen’s expectant gaze upon him. “For generations has my family dwelt in Gaulyria’s south.” And he briefly detailed the history of his adoptive family, such as he had learned it from Abbé Beauvran.

“But how is it possible!” exclaimed a disbelieving Queen Adelaide-Estelle on more than one occasion during his narrative, obliging Zephyrin to repeat multiple times that he did, in fact, hail from a far-flung rural village, and that his parents were of plain, stolid Gaulyrian stock. “That hair! Those eyes! Dear child, you’re the very picture of my father in his youth!”

“The Goddess’s ways are inscrutable. If it has pleased her to reproduce in Gaulyria the image of Her Majesty’s father as a comfort to her, I shall be all the more grateful to her.”

This answer seemed to please the queen, who then requested that Zephyrin furnish with details on life in the village. Running her fingers along the harp while Zephyrin spoke, she listened in rapt attention as he recounted his rural upbringing in abbreviated form. This he apparently did with great success, as Queen Adelaide-Estelle startled him by declaring her intention to summon Judoc and Mari Calon to court, from which course of action Zephyrin was only able to dissuade her with difficulty, pleading the general destitution of Estrelti, whose farmsteads had suffered greatly from the recent string of crop failures, and depended upon Judoc’s neighborly assistance to eke out a bare subsistence.

“Why, this Judoc Calon must be a prince of a man, the very picture of virtue!” the queen exclaimed. “How noble he is to assist his neighbors while he himself labors to earn a living, and how well he brought up his son!” And she would have ordered a lackey to begin making preparations for the shipment of a convoy of gold to the Calon farmstead forthwith, had Zephyrin not managed to convince her that his father and mother, being terribly affrighted by such a prodigious sum, would in all likelihood entrust it hurriedly to the parish priest, who in turn would (it was to be hoped) pass it on to the diocesan bishop.

“Oh no, that wouldn’t do,” sniffed Queen Adelaide-Estelle, as the notes coaxed out by her tapering fingers took a turn for the discordant. “The Church… her clerics earn a comfortable enough living as it is; I would have the money go to your parents directly—ah, but if you’re quite certain they would decline it…” The queen frowned as she listened to Zephyrin’s fervent assurances. “Very well. If you insist…” she trailed off, her doubting tone lingering in the air along with a final note, before addressing the industrious stylist wrestling over his creation. “Faramond, are you quite finished?”

“Madame, your humble servant begs for your comprehension; for mere mortals to uplift divinity’s charms to greater heights is ever a perilous endeavor…”

“Would that his hands were as prompt to fashion as his tongue is to flatter,” remarked the queen, before quickly asking Zephyrin in the same breath, “what did you think of my pouf au paon?” Her eyes shone with a sort of girlish eagerness that would have compromised the dignity of just about any other woman north of thirty, but in her case served only to heighten her easy, gracious demeanor. Not waiting for his answer, the queen supplied one herself. “Ah! I suppose you did not receive the full effect; though Faramond had magically woven a hundred blinking eyes, they were quite faded by the time the opera ended…”

Feeling rather thankful that they had faded, as the sight of dozens of staring eyes would in his state of semi-unconsciousness have surely worked to unsettle his mind, Zephyrin politely replied that the hairstyle had still been very impressive, even if his compliment hardly seemed to console the queen.

“How bothersome it is, that mana dissipates so quickly! Faramond, can you not exert yourself to obtain a longer-lasting effect?”

“Your humble servant has often petitioned the Goddess for such a boon, but remains tragically unanswered,” murmured the baseblood, his brow slick with sweat as he concentrated on weaving another blossom. “Howbeit, he can think of one solution…”

“Which is?”

“…to have recourse to a highborn crafter of headdresses.”

“Which both church and convention censure!” sighed the queen, tilting as she did so a neck which increasingly felt the strain of upholding her stylist’s towering creation. “Madame d’Aurellis, you who are as familiar with council acts and decretals as gentlemen are with the contents of their snuffboxes, pray, what is the canon responsible for eating up two hours of my day?”

“The Third Council of Suessa, canon twenty-nine,” replied that lady in a mild tone, whom Zephyrin had remarked earlier not for the splendor of her apparel, but for the fact that she was the only one present with unpowdered hair. From memory she quoted: “‘Moreover, we unilaterally reprobate that most odious practice which has arisen among the higher classes in recent years, of abusing their gifts, the highest favor conferred to the human race, for frivolous and so-called aesthetical purposes, practices which are most displeasing in the sight of heaven, and in nowise compatible with the dignity of those classes. Wherefore, with the authority invested in Us by the Goddess, We prohibit, under pain of ecclesiastical censure, the abuse of the noble arts for the aforementioned purposes—”

“Yes, yes, that will do,” interrupted the queen with a wave of her hand. “Really, I can’t imagine why Holy Mother Church teaches that commoners can freely dedicate their magic to aesthetical pursuits, while the superior classes must chafe under onerous restrictions.”

“I would venture to say, Madame, that it is the violation of the spirit of the law by its recipients that has given rise to this contradiction, rather than the positive will of the legislators.”

“My dear, even you have to admit that the canon makes no reference to basebloods! You cannot possibly mean to imply that the ban is universal—for, if neither low nor highborn were permitted to devote their mana to beauty, what then would become of enchanted chignons and poufs?”

“What indeed,” replied her companion dryly, and Zephyrin suddenly found himself curious about the identity of this lady, for surely only a princess or similarly high-ranking lady could speak so freely to a queen. Before he could entertain further speculation on this topic, however, the pitiless queen turned her attention once more to him.

“Well, since there’s no helping it, I will have another story from our young friend,” said Gaulyria’s queen, clearly more enthusiastic about the ins and outs of her rural subjects’ quotidian existence than the finer points of ecclesiastical law. “Zephyrin, I wish to hear more of your bucolic escapades; it all sounds perfectly delicious.”

Zephyrin obliged her as best he could, and so short did he grow on material that he found himself drawing on any and all incidents or anecdotes that came to mind, however trivial, including his aimless rambles with Rose, Uncle Erwan’s clumsy and ultimately ill-fated courtship of the miller’s daughter, Old Roderick the sacristan’s overlong and overloud jangling of the bells during the sacred rites, and the time Abbé Beauvran had nearly drowned after falling headfirst in the village well.

“Oh, how absolutely charming!” gushed the queen, whom Zephyrin had begun to think would never be satiated. “How I would like to see your Estrelti, and meet your parents, and speak with dear Rose as well! She and Sophia would get along so well. Has Sophia,” she inquired of a lady-in-waiting, as a thought suddenly occurred to her, “recovered the indisposition that has kept her from meeting her new brother?" Here she directed a significant look at Zephyrin, who could only marvel at this single-mindedness of purpose.

“Though Her Highness is feeling much better, the physician is of the opinion that she ought to remain in bed awhile longer, to ensure that her recuperation is complete.”

The queen nodded, and as the clock struck ten, rose with a last smile in Zephyrin’s direction. “Thank for a most pleasant diversion. I do hope to see you this afternoon...?" she trailed off questioningly, as if there was some doubt as to whether he would be present during her portrait sitting.

“I can think of no higher honor, Madame,” said Zephyrin with a respectful inclination of the head, wondering if it wouldn’t be possible to plead a need for rest after the injury he had suffered.

“Excellent! Until this afternoon, then.” And with these parting words, the queen swept from the room, ladies-in-waiting in tow.

As soon as the footman closed the door, Zephyrin let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, then raised a hand to his brow as Countess Valmont murmured her felicitations on a job well done. That was the mother gratified, at least for a little while, Zephyrin thought; now for the son.