The next day I came to inform Alois and the others about Rena, and discovered they had been successful with recruiting Maximus and Wayde. The faction paperwork had arrived as well, but…

“Faction leader?” Alois muttered.

“What does that even mean?” Rena demanded.

“It doesn’t say.”

Caleb was scowling. “Of course it doesn’t,” he muttered, “That princess said something about a week of surprises. I bet we are going to spend all this time figuring out who to be faction leader only to find out someone else would have been better.”

“Or we could wait until Alois gets his next hint for the next surprise,” Keane pointed out, “That happens before this is due, right?”

“It does,” Alois confirmed.

“Until then, we still have a lot of paperwork to fill out,” Wayde said, flipping through the papers.

Though I had just met him I could already tell that Wayde was the type who was more suited to paperwork than a spotlight. He made a perfect pair with Maximus, who was exactly who I had feared he would be. Even now, I could feel Maximus watching me. If I hadn’t been training so hard to maintain an elegant and graceful appearance at all times I might have gotten flustered.

“I also heard something else,” Alois said, “There are dozens of tiny factions right now. I know that every year there is some sort of event that narrows them down before they head to Nobility. I think we should try to recruit other factions into ours to prevent people from being eliminated.”

“How soon do you find out the next stage?” I asked.

“Tomorrow.”

“So we will be moving blind for a full day,” Maximus concluded. He was a bit sparkly somehow, but he still had the appropriate skill of a king candidate.

“I will recruit the incomplete factions of people that work with me in the healer division,” Keane spoke up. Autumn just nodded.

I had found out later that Keane didn’t have any magic, so Autumn was something like his shadow. He learned all the spells and did the magical part of whatever Keane needed to work. That was why they always seemed so in sync.

After Keane’s suggestion everyone was decided into areas to go recruiting, but were asked not to try too hard with people that didn’t seem like they were worth it. I thought that was perhaps a bit harsh, but then again this was for the future of the kingdom so I couldn’t complain.

We all went various places, but the recruitment wasn’t going so well. No one would listen based on some vague suspicion. We would have to try again once we had more information.

“Territories,” Alois said, after he called us in for another meeting in the morning of the next day.

“Territories?” Maximus asked, seeming confused, “Is it some sort of test of something about territories?”

“No… Territories are what the factions will be occupying,” he said, “The issue is, there are only ten. One faction per territory, and anyone who can’t get a territory won’t be going to Nobility.”

There was a tense silence as we all thought about what this entailed.

“I am going back out to recruit.” Maximus said, rising to his feet.

“What about the faction leader?” Wayde broke in, “We still need to discuss that.”

Alois nodded and agreement with a scowl. “Yes. The factions can only send one representative to negotiate for this territory. The faction leader. But the faction leader will also be in charge at the territories.”

“That is…”

“Not me,” Rena said, peeling an orange.

“It should be one of the four main leaders, right?” Wayde pointed out, looking between me, Maximus, Caleb, and Alois.

“I would, but I have enough to do as it is,” Alois said, “The headmaster is making me help out with my usual duties on top of all of this.”

“I am out as well,” Caleb said, “I am terrible at negotiating. I would rather just study magic.”

Everyone’s eyes bored in on me, Even Maximus’. It seemed he wasn’t going to say it out loud but he wasn’t going to do it, huh.

“Fine,” I sighed, “I will be the faction leader.”

There was a sigh of relief in the meeting. It was the sort of job no one really wanted.

“But we need to hurry and get back to recruiting. We still have to fill out everything in the paperwork.”

Everyone split up again to try another hand at recruitment.