Caudin snorted awake. His head hurt and his mouth tasted like he’d eaten pig tripe in a shoe trencher. As he peeled his eyelids open and looked up at the ceiling, he had a very queer feeling take over. It was two different decades, his first and his third, warring as to which was correct.

This was his bedroom. Belisant would be in any moment with his morning tea and…no. Belisant was dead. He was a trirec…no. He was Caudin, yes, but he was not a boy, but he was in his childhood bedroom. There had been a party. The Kalronists…

He moaned as he shifted. It was too much to consider when his head pounded behind his eyes. Anla moved into his vision, smiling. “Morning,” she said. “Shall I see if I can get someone to make you something?”

“Mnyah,” he said. He thought it would come out more erudite, for some reason. He sat up, smacking his lips as he tried to clear the old wine taste from his mouth.

“Are you two decent?” Al asked, his head popping in through the crack in the open door.

“We are,” Anla said.

“I had the staff make you breakfast and tea. I think the head, the Master of the Household, would like to speak with you immediately as well as a long list of others. We wanted to give you your privacy.”

“Who’s still here?” Caudin asked.

“There were quite a few rooms that were empty. I believe most of the Royalists stayed.”

“Okay, good. I think if the Master wants to speak while we take breakfast, that will be fine. After I’m dressed I’ll speak with my short council. I’ll need you there for that. Tell them we’ll need to discuss the most urgent issues, including what to do with all the prisoners and the aristocrats that turned to the Kalronists, starting with Denitore.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” He grinned, bowed, and left just before a cart was wheeled in and man in a worn uniform kept as clean as possible entered.

“And it begins,” Caudin said to his wife under his breath.

His headache was still pronounced when he sat at the head of a table his father had used for more intimate gatherings, like for cards or cigars. There were two copies of a newspaper being read by Jemerie and Esquieth, who closed his and handed it to Caudin. It boldly proclaimed on the front page that their prince has returned.

“Commres used some of his own money to print enough copies that everyone in Eri Ranvel knows,” Jemerie said.

“As if ringing the bells wasn’t a big enough clue?” He’d heard every single clang.

“The Kalronists rang that bell so often, I’m surprised it didn’t crack and then remain that way since they never cared for anything.”

“Speaking of which, I’ll need to do a walkthrough of the palace today,” Caudin said soberly. “I’ve already spoken to the Master of the Household about it. Now, to first order of business: the prisoners.”

“We’ve transferred all the members from the other ball to the jail in Hemrikel. It’s quite full, even though we did release anyone who seemed caught in a bad situation. We’ll be conducting interviews with higher priority people.”

“Good. The next order of business, then is…” he looked at his notes.

“The coronation.”

“Yes, wait, what? The coronation? No, we have some very pressing issues, like how to deal with the rogue peerage and getting the supply lines enacted. The coronation can wait.”

“It can’t,” Jemerie said, putting his hand on the table and leaning forward. “We will take care of those problems soon, but planning for the coronation needs to happen immediately. Having our king sitting on the throne with legitimacy will solve a lot of problems. It will give us a figurehead. It will renew the faith of the people. It will project strength to other countries.”

“But, coronations don’t come cheaply and money and supplies are something we have little of,” Caudin argued.

“Traditionally, yes, they are exceedingly lavish. But, we think it would be a great opportunity to show the public that we are willing to cut expenses to help the nation recover.”

Caudin sighed. “Fine, I suppose you’re right.”

“And we’ll tie it together with the wedding.”

“Wedding?” he said, tensing. “I’m already married, surely you’re mistaken.”

His mood had changed so drastically that it took a few moments for Esquieth to find the right words to say. “Your Highness, we don’t mean for you to marry anyone other than your wife. This will be more like a renewal of vows so that the Arvonnese people can claim the marriage as their own, hopefully also embracing your wife as their queen.”

“We’re envisioning it as a three-part ceremony, again to save money,” Jemerie said. “Your coronation, followed by your wedding, then our queen’s coronation.”

“We’ll have to start very early in the morning,” Caudin said and the room laughed as the tension broke. “I think it would be fair to ask my wife if she wants to marry me.”

“Let me think on it,” she said, tapping her lip with her fingertip. She stopped and smiled. “Yes, ainler. I’ll marry you again.”

They broke for lunch after a few hours of discussing a small fraction of the long list of high priority things that must happen immediately. Caudin felt beaten down by the sheer scale of the work, then reminded himself that this was only the first day and it was only going to get worse.

Revinpel was the name of the Master of the Household. Caudin remembered him in a fairly high position, a Page of Chambers or Palace Steward, when he was younger. Apparently he’d been groomed by the Deputy Master to take over some day, not knowing that the job would land in his lap when everyone above him refused to work for the Kalronists and were fired or jailed. Revinpel was just as patriotic as everyone else around him, he just interpreted it as doing his job as well as possible instead of protesting. He was no-nonsense, bland, and held no opinions about anything other than keeping things traditional. The man kept combing his balding hair straight back because it was the style that the Head always wore. While he was not a man Caudin was going to befriend, he hired him partially because he fit his job well and mostly because the palace would fall apart without the steady order he brought to the place.

“Many of the rooms were disused, stripped, or wrecked over the years,” he said as Caudin, Anla, Al, Rogesh, and Jemerie took the post-lunch tour with him. “I can personally vouch that none of my people were responsible for any theft or damage done, Your Highness.”

“I believe you,” he said.

Revinpel pulled out his set of keys and opened large double doors. “After the fourth or fifth year, we began reducing the amount of the palace used. I personally made monthly checks on those areas and we did a yearly cleaning. I apologize, Sire, since they were done in the beginning of spring last year.”

“You couldn’t have anticipated this would happen,” Caudin said as they walked down the corridor. A thin layer of dust coated the floor and furniture, at least what was left of the latter. There were conspicuous areas where banquets, chairs, and benches were missing. Even more obvious were the shredded portraits and shattered busts that were handled with as much care as possible.

“It’s an outrage,” Rogesh said as he stared at a statue of Caudin’s great-great-great grandmother, Queen Bidelia, whose head laid in front of the pedestal and whose white marble body was splattered with stains so dark red they were almost black, save the thinner, smeared handprint that told the tale of a man’s final moments as he clung to her dress’s hem.

“I don’t even know what the appropriate thing to do would be.” Caudin took a step towards the statue, examining it more. “Do you clean and repair to wash the tragedy away or do you keep everything as is to preserve the history?”

“Something that can wait, Sire,” Jemerie said.

He nodded and they continued.

The corridor to the monarch’s apartment was unlocked and well-used. “The former Chancellor took these as his own shortly after the Coup,” Revinpel said.

Caudin sneered, then said, “Of course he did. Well, let’s see what he did.”

They entered another hallway and Caudin went immediately to the Queen’s chambers. He stood in the doorway as he took everything in, the garishly ornate curtains and bedspreads, the change in furniture, the smell of foreign perfume. He couldn’t decide which was worse: someone using his mother’s things or someone replacing them with their own tacky pieces.

He walked inside and opened the door to a large inset and was met with a brick wall. He fumbled for a moment as the Royalists shared a worried look with each other. “Could have sworn there was a servant’s staircase there,” Caudin said, laughing nervously.

“There was, Your Highness,” Revinpel said. “The former Chancellor was worried about people using it without his guards being able to vet visitors, so he bricked this one and the one in the King’s apartments.”

“Good,” he said. “Well, not good; we’ll have it unbricked to make things easier for the staff. I meant ‘good’ since I thought my memory was off. I recollected playing in there and bothering the staff until they gave me pastries.”

“It does lead to the kitchens, Sire.”

He nodded and walked through his mother’s dressing room to his father’s. “Smells like cheap cigars,” he said.

“The former chancellor was fond of smoking them.”

He opened the window to his father’s balcony to air the room out and was met with cheers. Blindsided by a crowd of several dozen if not a hundred that had formed on the streets outside Dilvestrar, he smiled weakly and waved to the crowd.

“Well, I think we need to have a speech today as well,” Jemerie said, poking his head outside quickly. “At the very least a greeting.”

“Let’s finish this quickly; then. I’d like to see what shape the Paradiv dri Arvron is in.”

Anla stepped out of the chambers with her husband. “What are all the other rooms?”

“There are bathrooms on the other sides of the bedrooms, then private dens, offices, reading rooms, solariums, and collection rooms.”

“This whole wing was your parents’?”

“And now ours, I suppose. You’ll get my mother’s rooms, about seven in total, and then we’ll share another eight, no nine.”

She looked sad for a moment. “Do I have to sleep in my bedroom?”

“If you want any rest,” he murmured close to her ear, then kissed her temple. “They will be your rooms. Whether you use them is up to you.”

“What’s the ‘paradise of Arvonne’?”

“It’s the most beautiful piece of art I’ve ever seen, and you know I’ve seen a lot. It’s a mural in the Summer Dining Room that takes up a whole wall. I will honestly say that if they defaced it somehow, I will be crushed by that despair.”

She squeezed his hand and kept walking alongside Caudin.

The whole Summer Wing had been unused and was in the same condition as the first corridor they had walked down. Caudin stopped in front of a small portrait of his mother and father, circular burn marks about the same size as a cigar over their faces. He scowled, then moved on to the dining room.

A large section of the room was draped in a large curtain. His stomach churned. He took a deep breath, then tugged the fabric off the wall. The group beheld a giant painting of the Twelve interacting with the land of Arvonne, each giving a boon of some kind. Its subject wasn’t uncommon; other palaces had similar paintings on their walls. However, none had one with such exquisite detail. The clouds looked like they were rolling across the sky. The trees of the northern forests had been painted with cat whiskers, if the rumors were to be believed. And faces, sometimes as small as a quarter, looked the same as they would have in a portrait.

“They did one thing right, leaving this alone. Just the one, though.” He turned to address Revinpel. “I’d like a report from you as soon as possible on how many people you will need to reestablish order to this place. We cannot afford to live as lavishly as we once did, but I think we can do better than a skeleton crew.”

“Absolutely, Your Highness. I will have it to you by this evening.”

Caudin stood in front the painting, looking up with Anladet, on the first day of the year. They were there again doing the same thing almost two and a half months later, this time he was bedecked in a blue velvet flared jacket, green satin undershirt, gold breeches, white stockings, and shiny, black shoes. Anla wore a long, blue dress with gold embroidery, a green satin undercoat, white gloves, and one of the few remaining sets of diamond jewelry.

The clock in the hallway chimed pleasantly as the bells for Aliorna’s hour rang a few blocks over in the private temple of the monarchy. “It’s time,” Caudin said.

Anla stifled a yawn. She had been up for four hours already, a flurry of activity for her toiletries and dressing. She nodded and took his arm as they walked to the grand entrance of Dilvestrar. They split at the top of the stairs and took opposite sides down, they way lined with guards. They rejoined and walked past lines of dignitaries, advisors, and all forty-four principals. Al stood stock still, trying his best to wipe the stupid grin off his face and failing. Tel nodded with a smile when the two of them made eye contact.

They waited while the final touches were added by a priest of Magrithon. Caudin received the vestments due to him as a prince: his ermine-lined robe, his circlet, his saber and knife, and a draping sash of gold cloth with a crowned sun and rays embroidered. Anla’s costume had been trickier, since she was technically a duchess married to a prince, but not a princess. She received a plain cloak of purple with a gold embroidered edge, a modest tiara, and the reset wedding belt of Caudin’s aunt to his uncle.

The two turned once more and walked slowly to the carriage that awaited them. Ahead for miles were guards of different orders, delegations from every duchy and island Arvonne inhabited, and representatives of the Twelve. Even though the carriage had panes of glass, he could still hear the crowd roaring from the streets.

It was just the two of them. He peered out the windows and waved, watching the people. “What are you thinking of?” she asked.

He smiled. “A lot. Mostly that this feels exactly the opposite of where Raulin would want to be. He’d hate being the center of attention, exposed and open for attack with no clear goal in mind. He wouldn’t mind some pageantry, if on a spying contract, but this would be far too much for him.”

“You’re not Raulin anymore,” she said.

“I know. Just reflecting.”

She was wrong, he thought, waving at a group of children waving the Arvonnese flag on the ends of sticks. You couldn’t erase eighteen years of your life. Though he knew he wasn’t as sharp as he’d once been, he still used the skills he’d acquired. Along the route, he took in all the people, including one shadowy figure in a cloak who disappeared after the carriage had passed. During his speech after his coronation, he was surprised to see the ambassador from Sayen wearing a disgusted sneer. And during his second wedding, he felt the wine in the cup they shared tasted strangely metallic. He was later told they steeped it in herbs sacred to Beliforn, which he wished they would have told him before the nuptials, since he almost threw the goblet to the ground and spat out the wine.

He was still Raulin. He’d forever be Raulin. This was something he could keep close to his chest and not let anyone know. For while his immediate focus was to be Caudin, it didn’t hurt to rely on instincts.