She didn't announce herself, but she didn't need to. Everyone noticed the soldiers in purple armor surrounding her carriage like a thundercloud. August prevented her entry to the castle when she approached, first sending the royal alchemist to examine the Queen and her soldiers for lingering sickness. Neither she nor her soldiers carried a disease, but there was something else.

"The thing is, it's white."

August and Siles stared at Brigitte and she stared back blankly, at least until August motioned for her to elaborate. She always assumed that everyone knew what she knew, and she was almost always wrong.

She explained, "Diseases aren't white. They're blue. And skin poisons are orange and ingested poisons are purple and so on."

August and Siles exchanged a glance. "What's white, then?" August asked.

Brigitte shrugged and smiled. "I don't know, but I'm excited to find out!" She bobbed in place, as if restraining herself from dancing with excitement. Siles found her joy infuriating. She was immune to every poison she could see, so she didn't share August and Siles' fear. Siles was beginning to understand why his own magic resistance was so frustrating to his peers.

They eventually agreed to a compromise that would keep the danger and the Queen's frustration to a minimum. August met with the Queen at a distance; they bowed to each other, but they remained on opposite ends of the throne room. The Queen's soldiers stood by her side, and Siles stood by August's. Sound traveled far in the echoic space, so neither leader needed to shout to be heard.

"I heard about your kingdom's protests," the Queen explained.

"Their views do not reflect my own," August reassured her.

"I have heard that as well," she said.

Even from across the throne room, her gaze made the hair on the back of Siles' neck stand on end. She looked at them as if they were slugs underfoot, disgusting and destined for a slow death by salt if they dared come near anything she cared about. Or at least that was how she looked at August. When her gaze landed on Siles, it became curious and calculating. She had something up her sleeve, and for the first time Siles began to wonder whether the disease that had landed her kingdom under quarantine existed at all. She hated magicians; he knew that much from when Queen Samira had sent him to spy on her years ago. But her army had been strong, then, so Samira had ceased her requests for information as soon as Siles had returned from that first trip. He knew almost nothing and he hated it.

"My kingdom's quarantine has ended," the Queen continued. "And I'm sure you want to keep your fellow magicians from continuing their protests. So I have a proposal for you. I plan to host a masked ball in a month's time to celebrate the coming of summer. You and the officials of your choice are welcome to come, and together we can stoke good will between our kingdoms."

Siles wanted August to say no, but he didn't dare whisper in his ear with the Southern Queen present. He couldn't make August look like a puppet king. Instead, he looked at him, hoping to convey his concern through expression, only to see an expression on August's face that he hadn't seen before. August was terrified.

"I'll consider it," August said, his voice barely above a whisper but still loud enough to echo across the room. "I will send a messenger to your kingdom with our decision once I have discussed the ball with my Council."

The Queen's confident smile wavered, briefly dipping into a frown. "Surely your Council would disagree. They're the ones who wish for my kingdom's end in the first place, are they not?"

August shook his head. "Fortunately, the majority agree with my perspective, and I have recently given the others a motive to listen to my decisions. So I will discuss your proposal with my Council. Until then, I kindly ask that you depart. My alchemist has described a strange chemical within each of the people you have brought here today, so I would like for you to spend as little time here as possible. Just as you wish to keep your people safe, I wish to do the same for my own."

The Queen's smile completed its descent into a sneer. Siles smirked. Whatever her plan was, it clearly relied on August accepting her invitation to the masked ball. So long as they rejected her offer, they would be safe. The confident Queen wasn't so clever after all.

"Then I will see you in a month," she said, and with her purple soldiers reforming their cloud around her, she left.

August stared at the place the Queen had just left behind, deep in thought. He still looked nervous, like he had at that dinner so many nights ago when he had pulled Siles unwillingly along the royal city streets. There had to be something uncontrollable about the Queen, just as the magicians' fear had been uncontrollable to him back then. Siles could only see what was in her eyes, but August had to have seen her mind. There must have been something terrible there, otherwise August would have had nothing to fear.

"You know that feeling when your leg goes numb and you have to stomp to get the feeling back, but then there are a million little starbursts of pain to work through before it becomes normal again?" August turned to Siles, his distant expression becoming focused.

Siles nodded. He had no idea where August was going with his commentary, but unlike Brigitte he could trust him to elaborate.

"When I try to read her mind, I just get the starbursts. It's not like with you. You're just silent; reading your thoughts is like trying to grab thin air. She's... there's something wrong with her. Something that's actively keeping me out."

Siles understood August's fear, now. If August's magic didn't work on her, the kingdom was in much more danger than he had thought. He looked back to the space the Queen had left behind, then to the servant standing nearby. "Get the alchemist."

The servant fled, rushing to accomplish the task as if his life were on the line. Most of the servants believed their lives really were on the line after they had learned how August had tortured the attempted-assassin. He rarely directed his power towards the servants, but based on their experience with other magicians, they probably believed he would take his anger out on them.

"It could be the white stuff that makes the starbursts. The stuff the alchemist mentioned," Siles said. "We just have to hope they didn't contaminate anything with it."

August shook his head. "If it is some kind of poison, I'll have to go to her masked ball. Whatever she has can block my power. She could easily give it to my enemies, then everything we've worked for will be for nothing. I'll have to stay on her good side."

August's theory explained the Queen's confidence, but not her reliance on the masked ball to achieve whatever goal she had in mind. Siles hated not understanding her motivations, and he especially hated his newly unmasked existence. He couldn't spy anymore, not without a much greater risk of detection. That left only one option. "You can stay on her good side without giving in. We could host the ball instead. And make it unmasked, for safety. We would carefully guard the food in case their starburst pain is a poison, and since the ball will still build trust between the kingdoms, she won't be able to complain."

August grinned at Siles as if he had made a joke. "The guy who spent a decade hiding behind a mask doesn't want the ball to have masks?"

Before Siles could think of a retort, the servant he had sent to retrieve the alchemist tiptoed back into the room, his hands clutched before him as if preparing to beg for mercy. "Your highness?" he whispered.

August nodded to him. "Yeah?"

"The royal alchemist is missing."

~