“Mm, yes, but don’t feel like you have to bow all the way to the ground,” Trajan said as he watched Leon practicing his genuflection. “You’re not a slave, you’re a fifth-tier knight.”

Leon didn’t think that he’d bowed so low, but he straightened up a bit anyway. “What exactly should I be expecting?” he asked.

“Nothing too onerous, I think. Octavius insisted on having the stone giant present himself before the court as is expected of any other foreign dignitary, so this shouldn’t be much more than an introduction. I don’t think there’s going to be any business that either Octavius or August will have for Lapis afterward.”

“Sounds… good, I guess,” Leon said as he stood back up. “I imagined a lot worse, like hours of having to translate in-depth discussions about diplomatic minutiae, or… anything else equally lengthy.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Trajan said with a chuckle. “I’ll be sure to keep it short, and afterward, I’ll see about getting you some extra duties that will keep you out of the capital for a while.”

“Like what?” Leon asked, this not surprising him since Grim had warned him something like this was coming.

“I’m thinking of loaning out about half of my retinue to the local Legions as peacekeepers,” Trajan explained. “Probably just more of what they’ve been doing at the Horns, like hunting down dangerous beasts and dealing with the occasional bandits, though I don’t think either are particularly numerous in the Central Territories. Regardless of whether there’s any actual work you have to do, though, I’ll still be able to deny most, if any, requests for your time using this excuse.”

“I can’t complain about that!” Leon said with a broad smile, though there was a bit of doubt in the back of his mind that this would turn out so easy. He didn’t think that he would have any further business with the Royal Court, but he would’ve thought the same before he was summoned, too. It was best to just take the excuse and avoid the limelight as much as possible while he and Trajan looked into the events surrounding the fall of House Raime further.

“All right, you’re good enough. You’ll survive tomorrow,” Trajan said. Leon’s manners were by no means perfect, but they were as good as they were going to get with so little time to prepare.

“I have my doubts about that,” Leon drily quipped as he stood up.

“Don’t be so pessimistic, I said you’ll do fine and fine is what you will do,” Trajan said with an amused smile. “By the way, how did your meeting with Antonius go?”

“It was very informative,” Leon said, and he quickly filled Trajan in on what he felt was relevant. Passing along a copy of the mural he found was something he struggled with a bit, but he figured that since he’d already drawn Antonius’ attention to it then Trajan would find out anyway, so he held nothing back about the investigation.

“That’s not a hell of a lot to go on,” Trajan muttered as he sat down in a nearby armchair. He had been given an extraordinarily comfortable office, much larger than what he had used back at the Horns, but it was lit with bright white magic lanterns which aggravated him and most of the furniture was just too soft for his liking. He liked chairs and couches with more support. The place was also a bit over-decorated for his tastes, but since his presence in the capital was only a temporary measure—he hoped—he didn’t make a big deal out of it.

“What should we do next?” Leon asked.

“What would you do next if you had the opportunity?” Trajan countered.

“I would check out my father’s old villa, but since that’s been forbidden…” Leon trailed off at the end knowing that him getting access to the villa was effectively impossible.

Trajan nodded, being fully aware of this. “When my brother returns, I will speak to him about this matter. I won’t divulge your secret if you don’t want me to, but I can’t speak for old Bronze. Regardless, I’ll do what I can to get you access to the site.”

“Thank you,” Leon said with genuine gratitude. “If possible, my family’s old palace in Teira might also contain some information that I would like to look into…” He didn’t honestly think that he’d find something in either of those sites that the investigators missed, but he would at least like to have more official access to his family’s Archives beneath the palace in Teira. The last time he had gone there, it had ended with him being nearly caught and subsequently killed by the Legion soldiers guarding the palace against looters and other trespassers.

“I’ll try to make that happen as well so that even if you can’t do much in the way of investigation, you can at least poke around your family’s old home,” Trajan said. “In the meantime, I have people scrutinizing Justin Isynos’ records, everything from his finances to his history. When he arrives in the capital, I’ll also have him put under surveillance.”

“No chance of this leaking to him?” Leon asked.

“I trust the people I have working on this,” Trajan said with a smile. “It’s going to be a waiting game for the time being, especially since there just isn’t much reliable information to go on. So, for now, go get some rest and prepare for tomorrow.”

“Got it,” Leon responded, though rest was the farthest thing from his mind. Instead, he spent the remainder of the day training.

—

The audience was scheduled for late in the morning, and Leon arrived at the Royal Palace in all his finery at ten a.m. sharp. Lapis was waiting for him at the front of the palace as he’d been doing since their arrival in the capital.

“Ready for this?” Leon asked the giant, though he didn’t expect Lapis to shy away from something he’d essentially been doing for his own leader back in the Crater Tribe.

“I am,” the giant simply replied. “It’s only meeting with the Bull Chief, isn’t it?”

Leon looked a little shocked for a second before he realized that he hadn’t had an in-depth discussion with the giant about what was going on. “It’s actually meeting with two of the King’s sons. And his brother, Trajan, who you’ve already met. The King himself is currently indisposed. Doing some solo training, I believe, and he hasn’t been back in years.”

Lapis ground its bones in a manner that Leon thought indicated displeasure, and Leon’s thoughts were confirmed when Lapis said, “A Chief that abandons his people is no Chief, even for greater magical power. If he was going to leave for such a long time, he should’ve relinquished his position to someone more suitable.”

“I… don’t disagree…” Leon said. He hadn’t put much thought into it as the matter didn’t really concern him, but now that he was thinking about it, he couldn’t say he approved of the King leaving for such a long time. Not that it was his place to judge the actions of a King, though, since he was only a lowly knight. Still, he didn’t like it.

The two were waiting outside for the palace seneschal to come and get them. The audience wasn’t the only piece of business going on in the throne room today. If Leon remembered correctly, there were a few petitions from minor nobles for Royal aid of some kind, and then after that were trials for the two Legates who took their Legions with August to the Horns. As soon as they had left the city, the Consul of the Central Territories quietly charged them with treason and desertion. However, in practice, this wasn’t anything more than a complicated way for the Consul to make a formal complaint since the Legates were being judged by Trajan, August, and Octavius rather than an Arbiter, as they would’ve if they weren’t in the Royal Legion. With two of the Princes on their side, the Legates would have no need to worry.

Of course, these charges would still remain on their record, and it would likely block them from receiving Consulships in the future, but at least they wouldn’t be brought before the headsman to be made a head shorter for treason.

About twenty minutes after Leon’s arrival where he and Lapis watched from a corner of the courtyard the various well-dressed men and women file in and out of the palace, one of the junior seneschals finally came outside to get them. Fortunately, the front door was large enough for Lapis to comfortably enter, so they didn’t have to make any detours. Just as they were entering the atrium, Leon saw the two Legates who had been on trial leaving the throne room, one with a triumphant expression and the other with little more than a bit of subdued happiness, indicating that their ‘trial’ went about as well as Leon suspected it would.

“The Prince-Regents will see you two, now,” the seneschal said with the utmost professionalism. In fact, Leon suspected that everyone in the palace had been informed to expect the company of the giant, as Lapis attracted nothing more than a few inquisitive glances from the nobles and officials in the atrium going about their business.

Leon took the lead and walked into the throne room. The sides of the room were packed with hundreds of people, leaving only a relatively thin path for him and Lapis to walk through, though the path was at least wide enough to allow the giant to pass. Many of the people to the sides of the path were extraordinarily well-dressed, to the point that Leon even felt a little under-dressed in comparison.

Colorful silk, cotton, wool, and even some silkgrass here and there of the highest quality woven into the latest fashion drew Leon’s attention the most, as did the rings on most of their fingers and ostentatious pendants and amulets made of gold, silver, and precious stones around their necks. What made them even more ostentatious was the fact that, to the best of Leon’s ability to sense, few of those pieces of jewelry contained any enchantments, which was a waste of good gemstones if ever he saw it. Surrounding these nobles were people who Leon assumed to be bodyguards or other members of a noble’s entourage, with most wearing spotless white tunics and green sashes around their waists.

Leon also saw a number of Legion knights, fifth and sixth-tier mages who were mostly wearing their dark green Legion dress uniforms, which Leon genuinely wished he was wearing rather than his black and silver ensemble. In the upper galleries were the less important members of the court in much less varied outfits and styles, though no less colorful overall.

The people that Leon paid the most attention to were those at the farthest end of the throne room, those closest to the throne itself, which sat empty. To the left of the throne in a chair made of white granite sat the thin, pale August, and to the right in an identical chair was the tall, well-built, handsome figure of Octavius, each dressed in the green and gold of the Royal Family. They were joined by a number of other high-ranking individuals upon the raised platform. Trajan, who was one of those officials, notably both sat next to August and was dressed in Legion red rather than the Royal colors, and when he glanced back at the crowd, Leon noticed that most of the Legion knights had gravitated over to that side of the throne room.

Octavius’ side, though, was filled with more of the extravagantly dressed nobles and their followers, making those comparatively few dressed in the Legion uniform stick out like sore thumbs.

It was a lot of faces, enough that Leon’s eyes started to glaze over the more he tried to remember, and everyone was staring at him and Lapis as they walked toward the throne; he doubted he’d know any of these people from a hole in the ground after he walked out of the throne room.

Leon arrived at the platform in front of the throne’s dais and bowed to the empty seat. His genuflection wasn’t as crisp and clean as it could have been, but he at least didn’t make a fool of himself, despite his anxiety from having hundreds of eyes on him and the background noise of the hundreds of people behind him whispering amongst themselves—he might have just been extremely self-conscious, but he was certain they were talking about him.

Lapis, following Leon’s lead, bowed as well as its giant frame would allow. At the very least, Leon hoped that Lapis would be enough to distract everyone from the combination of his obvious youth and fifth-tier power. While age was always hard to tell when it came to mages of his strength, Leon couldn’t even grow a full beard, and it was obvious to the entire court that he hadn’t yet seen two decades of life.

“What a marvel…” Leon heard Octavius say as the Prince’s eyes swept over Lapis’ form. “I have to admit… Lapis, was it? I have to admit that I never once considered the possibility of a stone giant appearing in these honored halls.”

“I go where Sir Leon commands me to,” Lapis responded in its rumbling stony language.

“What is he saying?” Octavius politely asked Leon, his eyes turning to the young knight as he stood up, making the reason for Leon’s presence clear for anyone who didn’t already know.

“He says that it’s a pleasure to be here, Your Highness,” Leon said. He thought he screwed up a bit because the Prince’s mouth momentarily tightened in what Leon thought to be anger, but the expression was gone so fast that Leon almost believed it hadn’t happened at all.

“And it’s a pleasure to receive him,” August said as he gave Leon as pleasant a smile as his tired face could manage. “To hear of peace on our borders is always a wondrous thing.”

“Peace is all well and good, if hardly glorious,” Octavius stated, and the throne room was filled with the murmuring of nobles and knights who seemed to agree, “but we must always be prepared for war. I understand your people are terrific warriors, Lapis, might it be possible to hire some of them into our Legions?”

“My people fight for whoever they choose,” Lapis answered, and Leon relayed the statement.

“Fantastic!” Octavius replied.

“Let’s not get carried away with fantasies about filling the Legion ranks with stone giants, Brother,” August said, “we still have some business to get through today.”

Octavius shot a subtle glare at his younger brother over the throne, though his face never slipped into anything resembling a scowl.

“Lapis, do you swear before all the Old Gods and the Ancestors that your people will never make war upon this Kingdom again?” August asked with as much formality as he could manage.

“So long as the descendants of our Gods reside here, we will not launch raids into this land,” Lapis stated.

“He agreed,” Leon said as he did his best to control his embarrassment and nervousness. That he was currently the center of attention was almost too much already, he could never fully translate what Lapis was saying.

“Is that what he truly said? He seemed to be speaking for a long time,” Octavius said with his eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“The giant language is long and slow and without direct translation, Your Highness,” Leon said as an explanation.

“Sir Leon is my knight,” Trajan stated in warning, speaking for the first time since Leon had entered the throne room, and Octavius sighed and let the matter go. Leon and the stone giants weren’t a worthy enough matter for him to cross his uncle before he was ready.

Fortunately for Leon, there wasn’t much more need for him and Lapis anymore. The giant had appeared, had its introduction, bowed to the throne, and affirmed the peace. There wasn’t a need to continue.

“If there’s nothing else, then…” August said as he glanced around at the other dozen or so officials sitting next to him and Octavius beside the throne. None of them answered him, but when he moved to dismiss Leon and Lapis, Octavius beat him to the punch.

“Thank you, Lapis, and you, Sir Leon. The Royal Court has nothing else for the two of you, today, though I personally hope that you both will be available for further summons if need be,” the elder Prince-Regent said.

Leon glanced at Trajan, who nodded that it was all right for him to go, so he rose and made for the door as fast as he thought he could without throwing away his dignity, and Lapis closely followed. Hardly anyone noticed, though, as almost every eye had turned to watch the two younger Princes, and as soon as Leon and Lapis left, the throne room fell completely silent.