In six years in the High Palace of Mendellia, Ariella Negwen thought she’d seen it all. Diplomatic debacles, formal duels (to first blood, thankfully), political fights that made the duels look tame, scandals about sex, money, or both...in the words of one of the other handmaidens, “everything that makes life interesting.” But then, she saw the Ice Lady crack.
Not that the Ice Lady was emotionless. Ariella had seen her laugh with delight, cry from sorrow, and everything in between. But she had picked up the nickname (behind her back only, of course; what uncivilized backwater did you think the palace was, anyway?) because she always seemed to have a quiet reserve of calm and control. She had always been there, always done that, always seen worse.
The Ice Lady was second senior Lady in Waiting. Actually, technically she had seniority to Lady Henschied also, but for whatever reason, had ceded overall superiority. Not that Lady Henscheid, being only a “part-timer,” was around as much; the Ice Lady ended up doing most of the day-to-day work. (Ariella had heard some of Grace Squadron joking that the Ladies were organized much like a military squadron: Lady Henscheid was the commander, and the Ice Lady was the executive officer. But the one time that joke had been made in her presence, Lady Henscheid had turned a glare on the speaker so intense that Ariella had been surprised he hadn’t burst into flames.)
Still, Ariella had never quite understood what had happened to the Ice Lady to make her like that. She wasn’t all that old, after all--not in absolute terms, anyway. For an unmarried high noble, she was rather old indeed. Then again, maybe that was why she stayed; being senior Lady of the Palace was a good reason to stay unmarried. Or was it the other way around? The Lady had been known to have romantic entanglements, but none had led to the typical conclusion. But whatever she had done, or had been done to her, she always acted like the day-to-day insanity of the High Palace was a simple, restful step down from a life far more complicated.
The day had started like any other, except that Her Majesty was away, visiting friends back in her birth country. Ariella had spent her day calmly going about her business, despite the tense mood in the Palace--the Pacific Monarch’s loss was still weighing on the minds of the Important People, and Commander S’ytsirk’s condition was continuing to worry many of the staff--until word came that Her Majesty was back, and with old friends of Their Majesties to boot...including the now-legendary former Lady Lenka Leannan. That was worth investigating. Ariella had heard much about Lady Leannan--or at least, Lady Cochran, or...was she even a Lady any more? And what was her husband’s term of address? Whichever, she was somebody to see if possible.
To no surprise, there was an all-hands meeting shortly thereafter, called by the Ice Lady herself. It had been pretty straightforward, with the Ice Lady explaining that the guests were personal friends of Their Majesties, to be addressed as Major and Lady Cochran, and to be accorded every courtesy, and so on, and so on, and schedules were liable to be disrupted...
It was a lot like a number of speeches the Ice Lady had given over the years, with the added complication of an apparent Project that Their Majesties and their guests would be taking on. That led to a number of questions--what sort of project (that’s private), how long would schedules be disrupted (until further notice, but hopefully not too long), what was to be done about the reception next week (potentially cancelled--that got a cheer), and so on.
As they were breaking up. Ariella went back to her favorite part of the job--swapping juicy gossip. Truth be told, though, she hadn’t had much to give; all she knew is that there was talk about getting some band back together and sighing. Which made no sense without context--hence the swap. Maybe one of the others could fill in details...
Suddenly she heard a familiar voice from behind her. “Did you say sigh?” She turned, and her face became a duplicate of the Ice Lady’s. Of course, Ariella knew why she had a shocked expression...
Ariella managed to recover and dropped a small curtsy, giving her a second to think. “Yes, my lady. I was outside His Majesty’s private conference room as Their Majesties and their guests left, and Lady Cochran asked about putting a sigh at the top of their list. But then her husband said no, not unless they could dissect him-- my lady?”
“You are positive that they said ‘sigh’? And ‘him’?”
“Quite, my lady.”
The shocked expression changed, to something Ariella couldn’t quite understand. Hope? Fear? Anger? But not at Ariella, she was sure about that. The Ice Lady wasn’t even looking at her. She was staring off into the distance--what had Ariella just stumbled into?
“Where is Her Majesty?” she said abruptly, coming out of her reverie.
“One of the conference rooms, I believe,” Ariella answered, “with Lady Henschied and Lady Cochran.”
“Thank you, Ariella,” said the Ice Lady. “Please return to your duties.”
“Yes, Lady Naira.”
------
Naira didn’t run. She was a Lady-in-Waiting, and for that matter, de facto head of the Neris family, since the death of her father and her mother’s withdrawal from the public sphere. In her were generations of nobility, duty, and composure.
But she hurried.
First, down to her rooms, and into a private drawer, then to the conference rooms. She paused to catch her breath, knocked, and enter.
Her Majesty was there, with Kristy and Lenka. Lenka! Naira couldn’t have helped the grin spreading across her face even if she’d wanted to. She’d been looking forward to seeing Lenka, ever since Her Majesty had said that His Majesty wanted to ask the Cochrans for help. But she’d originally been planning to wait until she was done for the day...
Lenka spoke first. “Naira!”
The embraces and tears that followed managed, almost, to make Naira forget why she’d rushed over. But at the same time, Naira could see in their faces that they probably had figured it out.
Finally Her Majesty spoke. “What brings you here, Naira?”
Naira took a deep breath. “Some rumors have started flying.”
“No doubt,” muttered Kristy. “This is Mendellia.”
“True, but these are becoming disturbing. What’s going on?”
They looked at each other, obviously trying to decide what to tell her. “I understand I was never part of your team,” she said into the silence, “but I think I have a right to know. Please.”
That broke the dam. Naira had heard of the Pacific Monarch attack, of course, but not the details. And this was the first she’d heard of the latest kidnapping attempt on Her Majesty.
“...we flew here the next day, and we’ve decided to try to put our resources back together and stop this,” Her Majesty finished.
“But that isn’t it,” she said. “Is it?”
Lenka sighed. “No, that isn’t it. Josh--he says he couldn’t feel the girl, Grace, through the Force. It wasn’t a dark spot like a ysalamir, it was as if the Force bent around her. Exactly as...”
Naira nodded. “As Sci had.” She saw all three of them wince as they heard her say his name--there had been a time, just after he’d vanished, where the very phoneme brought tears to her eyes.
“I know this must be bringing up some unpleasant memories,” Kristy said into her thoughts. “If you want to take some time--”
“No, thank you,” Naira interrupted, perhaps more brusquely than she’d intended, but no matter. “However...are you going to look for him?”
“Josh doesn’t particularly want to,” Lenka said. “He says we spent months looking last time, and he doesn’t want to do that again. And besides, it’s not that important.”
“You sound like you don’t believe him.”
She shrugged, a very odd mannerism from one raised in the same high nobility as Naira herself. Life with an American had changed her more than she knew, Naira thought. “I think he’s right that in the grand scheme it’s not important--if we were mostly Jedi it might be more of a problem, but it’s not as if we can’t still fight her. But at the same time...it’s an element we’ve never seen before in anything the team has taken on, and it may be significant. And we have a lead on it. I think it might be worth it to find him, if we can.
“The trouble is how to go about finding him. He didn’t just leave, he vanished. We never knew all that much about him in the first place, and he clearly wanted to leave everything behind. Nobody’s seen him since he left Mendellia eight years ago.”
Naira blushed. “Actually...that’s not entirely true.”