She angled her glass downward to the administrative district, where the real work of ruling happened behind marble facades and careful ceremony. The Palace Terraces stretched in orderly rows like settled arguments—each building precisely where it should be, no space wasted, no function duplicated. These halls had absorbed centuries of debate about taxation and trade until the very stones seemed to whisper of precedent and protocol. The chambers where disputes were settled still bore sword marks from the old days when satisfaction could be claimed in blood rather than coin. The archives preserved the queendom's memory in ink and parchment, built with special ventilation to prevent humidity from rotting the records—knowledge guarded as carefully as any treasure.
The scrolls would bear different seals soon—but not yet. Not until she proved herself capable of independent command on her maiden voyage, captaining a vessel alone without her mother or retainers ready to intervene. The thought sent electricity racing through her veins, fierce joy making her fingers tighten on the spyglass. This was what she'd trained for her entire life, what every lesson and lecture had been building toward. One day they would answer to her—clerks and magistrates moving through their careful routines, ink stains marking their fingers like badges of service, their robes bearing the faint shadows of countless words written in pursuit of the order she would one day command.
A flash of deep blue caught her eye—Magistrale Sorina Velara bursting from a side chamber with leather-bound scrolls clutched against her hip. Her robes trimmed with silver threads caught light like fish scales as she moved with unusual haste—almost frantic in her determination to reach what was undoubtedly her evening escape to the Copper Anchor. Aiyara recognized that particular stride: the careful speed of someone avoiding unwanted conversations while maintaining professional dignity.
Then the cluster of white robes emerged, intercepting Sorina's path like a squall line materializing from clear sky. Aiyara watched as any hope of wine and solitude died on Sorina's face. Even from this height, she could see the way Sorina's shoulders tensed—that familiar tell when politics turned predatory. Two Church officials flanked by their templar escorts positioned themselves with practiced precision, using the colonnade's geometry to trap her without seeming to. The templars stood rigidly at attention, hands conspicuously empty per her mother's requirement that all armed visitors surrender weapons before entering palace grounds.
One official stepped closer until his shadow fell across Sorina's face like a veil. He was young, Aiyara noted, with the kind of carefully maintained beard suggesting vanity rather than devotion. Whatever he said made Sorina's posture stiffen further, her scrolls pressed tight against her side. His companion gestured emphatically—demanding something, clearly—while the templars loomed behind them like silent threats.
Heat bloomed in Aiyara's chest, sudden and fierce. In Masan, women were not cornered like prey, not trapped by men who used their size and numbers to intimidate. Sorina commanded respect that these foreigners either couldn't grasp or chose to ignore. The sight of her—brilliant, capable Sorina—forced to endure their presumptuous hovering made something primal and protective flare to life in Aiyara's core.
The brass spyglass grew warm beneath her palms. She glanced up, puzzled to find the sun blazing so intensely despite its low angle. The fading light should have been cooling by now, not radiating such heat.
Below, Sorina's free hand had found the small knife at her belt—not threatening, just resting there, a reminder that Masan's administrators were not the soft clerks found in other kingdoms. A low chuckle escaped Aiyara's throat, dark with satisfaction. Let the foreign priests discover what kind of steel lay beneath silk robes.
The memory surfaced unbidden: herself at fourteen, face burning with humiliation after some visiting lord's casual dismissal. She'd been presenting her first analysis of harbor revenues, proud of the patterns she'd identified, only to have him pat her head and suggest she return to her needlework. She'd stormed into Sorina's office where salt and sawdust drifted through windows from the timber yards below, rage making her voice crack as she'd ranted about the injustice.
Sorina had simply listened, her attention complete and steady as a lighthouse beam, while Aiyara's adolescent fury exhausted itself against her quiet strength. When the storm passed, when tears had replaced shouting, the magistrale had poured wine—properly watered as befitted a girl not yet grown—and spoken words that had shaped every year since: "Patience is often the sharpest blade in politics, Your Highness. Your anger is justified, but anger alone changes nothing. Learn to listen for what people don't say—their fears, their weaknesses, their secret desires. That knowledge becomes power. Let them underestimate you while you catalogue their vulnerabilities."
The woman below was doing exactly that now—reading the spaces between the officials' words, cataloguing their tells for future use. Did the young one's hand tremble slightly? Did his companion's eyes flicker toward the harbor when making their demands? Every detail would be remembered, filed away in the vast library of Sorina's memory where it would wait until the perfect moment to be deployed.
Sorina would handle this—she always did. The magistrale's accumulated wisdom would find whatever leverage was needed to send these petitioners away with their dignity intact but their demands unfulfilled. Still, Aiyara found herself scanning the colonnades for alternatives.
A flash of light caught her eye—polished bronze bracers catching afternoon sun from the shaded eastern colonnades where the Guardia Reale moved through their drills. The sight should have stirred pride, and it did, but weighted with responsibility that sat in her stomach like lead. Tridents thrust in perfect unison, their three-pronged heads catching sunlight like captured stars.
She could hear Kida's voice from years ago, explaining why the Reale trained as they did: "Bronze bracers, never full plate—you sink like a stone if you fall overboard. Curved blades for ship corridors where you can't swing a longsword. And see how they move?" The memory was vivid—herself perhaps twelve, watching these same drills with fascination. "Like water itself. Quick, agile, designed for wet decks where heavy armor gets you killed."
The coordinated movements below still looked like an elaborate dance to her untrained eye, but she understood now what Kida had meant about their effectiveness. Male crew members rushing to distract while the Reale circled—smaller, faster, slipping past guards who expected brute force. On land it seemed choreographed. At sea, with enemies hemmed by railings and rigging, it became devastation.
Each guard carried the Kovorrin shell-hilted dagger that marked their station, each pattern unique to its bearer. "The only possession they're guaranteed to keep," Kida had said with characteristic bluntness, "no matter how they fall."
They trained as if war was imminent because it always was. They'd sworn oaths that bound them tighter than family ties, and tomorrow those oaths would transfer to her. The weight of that loyalty pressed against her consciousness—all these lives that would become currency she'd spend in defense of the queendom's interests. She would have to learn to make that calculation without flinching.