Willa walked quickly and said nothing on the way back, which Noctis took as a sign that whatever this was, it was not bad enough to require preparation. She delivered him to the door of the solar and excused herself with a small bow before disappearing back down the corridor.
(A solar is a private upper-floor living room or chamber in a medieval castle or manor house, serving as a comfortable, sunlit retreat for the lord, lady, and their family, removed from the noisy, communal Great Hall below. It often functioned as a bedroom, parlour, or reception room and featured large windows and a fireplace.)
His mother was standing this time, which she did when she had been thinking for a while and sitting had stopped helping. There was a letter open on the table in front of her. She looked up when he came in, and whatever she saw in his expression made her almost smile.
"You were playing," she said.
"We were also almost winning," he said. "What is it?"
She picked up the letter and held it out. He crossed the room and took it.
It was from Sigurd. The handwriting was his brother's, neat and slightly too upright, the kind of script that came from being taught by people who took penmanship seriously. Noctis read it through once, then again.
Isolde was pregnant. Early still, barely two months along, but confirmed. Sigurd had written it in the measured tone he used for most things, but even through that Noctis could read the satisfaction in it. His brother had wanted this. An heir was not just personal for a king, it was political, it was structural, it was the kind of thing that settled a dozen quiet anxieties at court in one move. And beyond all of that, Noctis suspected Sigurd had simply wanted to be a father.
He set the letter back down on the table. "That's good news."
"It is," Elara said. She was watching him the way she did when she was checking something.
"I mean it," he said. "Sigurd will be good at it. And Isolde seems capable enough from everything I've heard."
"She is. I liked her when I met her at the wedding." Elara paused. "You should write to them."
"I will." He pulled out the chair across from her and sat down. "Is that the only reason you called me in?"
She sat down as well, which meant it was not. She folded her hands on the table, which was a habit she had when she was choosing her words.
"There was a second letter," she said. "It arrived this morning with a different seal. I've been sitting with it."
She slid another piece of paper across the table. This one was shorter. The seal at the bottom was the empire's administrative crest, the kind used by regional commanders for official correspondence rather than personal letters.
Noctis read it.
It was a general notice, the kind sent to noble households in a region when the empire wanted the information distributed without it being an outright announcement. Border friction to the northeast. Increased movement from the Dravek Confederacy across the Arnoth River. Skirmishes reported. Nothing confirmed as a formal act of aggression, nothing that required immediate response. The tone was careful in the way official documents were careful when the people writing them were not entirely sure how serious things were yet.
Noctis put it down. "The northeast has had border trouble for the last twenty years. This is the third notice like this since I was fifteen."
"I know."
"The Dravek push every few years to see if anything gives. It usually doesn't. They fall back, there's a negotiation, everyone goes home."
"Usually," his mother said.
He picked the letter back up and read the last line again. He had glossed over it the first time. It was phrased as a postscript, almost casual, the kind of thing appended as an afterthought. He read it a second time and it did not improve.
Fort Caldren had fallen.
He set the letter down.
Fort Caldren sat on the eastern bank of the Arnoth River, about two days north of the main trade road. It was not a large fortification, more of a garrison post than anything, built to watch the crossing and send word if something moved through it. But it was imperial ground. It had been imperial ground for forty years. The fact that it had fallen at all meant someone had committed to taking it, and the fact that it was buried in a postscript of a general notice meant the empire was not ready to call that what it was.
"When did this arrive?" he asked.
"Before dawn. The rider had been going through the night."
Noctis leaned back in his chair. The solar was quiet. Outside he could faintly hear the sounds of the courtyard, the usual noise of a household going about its afternoon. It felt slightly wrong, the way background noise always felt slightly wrong when something had just shifted.
He had known, in an abstract way, that his position came with obligations that extended beyond managing household accounts and writing letters to his future father-in-law. He was a Valerius. Second son or not, that meant something when the empire needed bodies it could put in armor and point at a problem. He had grown up aware of it the way you were aware of a door at the end of a corridor you had never opened. It was there. He just had not had a reason to think about what was behind it.
A garrison post falling on the Arnoth was not a reason yet. But it was closer to a reason than anything had been before.
"Father will have received the same notice," he said.
"He did. And Sigurd too."
"Then they're already dealing with it. There's nothing for us to do from here except wait and see what the next letter says."
"That is likely true," Elara said. She was looking at him steadily. "I wanted you to know, Noctis. That's all. Not to alarm you. Just so you knew."
He nodded. He understood what she was not saying, which was that she wanted him to hear it from her first, in a room where he could react however he needed to, rather than from a servant's gossip or a second-hand account that had been passed through three people on the way to him.
"I appreciate it," he said, and meant it.
They sat with it for a moment, the two pieces of news side by side. A child coming into the world. A fort gone on the Arnoth. The empire doing what empires did, which was continue, even when the edges were fraying.
Elara reached over and picked up her tea. Still cold, probably. She drank it anyway.
"Write to your brother tonight," she said. "The good news first. The rest can wait until there is more of it to say."
Noctis looked at the two letters on the table. Then he stood, pushed the chair back in, and picked up the one from Sigurd.
"Yeah," he said. "Alright."