No letter ever arrived on the desk of the Emperor of the Tavari unopened, and the envelope from Blåskog was no exception. The aides from the Ministry of External Affairs always very kindly placed the letters the Emperor received back into their envelopes, so Otan could pretend to have the experience of opening mail like a normal person, but there was always that same elegant slice through the paper, cut by the sterling silver letter opener of the Silver Court, to remind him that the government always read each and every item of correspondence before Otan even knew he had received it.
The letter was an invitation to attend the coronation of Wilan I, the new monarch of Blåskog, a country with which Tavaris had no particularly remarkable business one way or another. In truth, Otan would neither have been surprised or offended if they hadn’t sent him an invitation at all, so it was nice to have received one, but of course the decision of whether or not to attend was not only his. The same Ministry of External Affairs that had already opened and read this letter would have to clear his answer, no matter what it was. Oftentimes with letters from foreign governments, the aides delivered a memo outlining the ministry’s stance right alongside the letter itself. They had not done so here—by convention, the Emperor was granted a level of increased discretion when deciding whether or not to attend a function held by a foreign monarch—but of course, ultimately he was not allowed to leave the Tavari Union without a vote of the Council of State, so someone would have to grant permission at some point regardless.
The Emperor of the Tavari stared at the phone on his desk, thinking about how much he did not actually want to call his handlers about this. He wasn’t supposed to call them handlers, but that’s what they were, and while in theory they were supposed to grant him deference on matters of foreign monarchs, he had a feeling he was going to have another headache to deal with this time: the small matter of his recent… “injury.” For the past several weeks the general mood of the Tavari government had been to treat Otan as though he were a porcelain doll unable to handle even a moderately strong breeze without collapsing into dust. While the date of the coronation was well after his projected return to duty, he had a funny feeling his handlers—his aides—would be disinclined regardless.
Otan sat at his desk, suddenly conscious of the tightness of the bandages on his torso, and decided that he may as well call because it wasn’t like he had anything else to do. Really, he ought to be happy they hadn’t just given the letter to Hendrik. With the barest hint of a sigh, Otan picked up his phone and pressed the speed dial button for the Minister of External Affairs.
“Your Esteemed Majesty, to what does this one owe the pleasure?” Avri Takanaš was a young man, a few years the Prime Minister’s junior, though still older than Otan. He was something of a rising star and wunderkind in Irínavi Voi!, the governing party, and was definitely one of the Prime Minister’s favourites.
“I’ve just gotten the letter from King Wilan about the coronation in Blåskog. Did your people have anything they needed to run by me about it? There wasn’t a memo with it.”
There was an awkward silence at the other end of the line. “Oh,” Avri finally said.
Not promising.
“Ah, well… to be honest, sir, I presumed, or, excuse me, this one presumed that Your Esteemed Majesty would have preferred not to attend. How are y- how art the Emperor feeling?”
Avri was clearly not one for State Speech, the formal Tavari dialect traditionally used when speaking to the monarch, though Otan never held that against anyone. Not as long as they tried anyway.
“The Emperor is feeling fine,” Otan said gently. “And this isn’t until April the 20th anyway. I’ll be back on duty by then.”
“Of course,” Avri answered. Then there was another long, awkward silence.
“So… no guidance, then? It’s up to my discretion?”
“Um.”
“Minister, I depend on frankness when speaking with the Cabinet. I really get the sense there’s something you aren’t telling me.” Maybe it was his bandages, but he felt himself coming off more sharply than he might have intended. It was hard not to chafe on the bars of his gilded cage when they made it so, so small.
“We… I… This one…” Avri sighed as he surrendered and gave up on State Speech. “I didn’t think you’d actually want to go. We didn’t prepare anything. If… if you want to go, then o- of course… I- I mean, it is a monarch-to-monarch thing, after all. The Silver Court has that discretion. But we were all pretty sure… I mean, you refused to go to Packilvania, we thought East Borea would be too… controversial. And I guess we figured you’d want to rest rather than travel that far.”
“I declined to attend the Sultan’s coronation due to… well, you weren’t ExtAff at the time but the phrasing I used was ‘I will not step one gay foot in Packilvania.’ Borea, even the east, is gayer than I am. Is there a concern that my presence in Blåskog would, what, endorse something untoward? What’s the controversy? Species relations? Blood sports? Syrtænzna? If I refused to go to any country that uses its military or has skeletons in its closet I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere at all. And, I mean, it’s not like it’s Kæra’zna.”
“We… uh, don’t really know a lot about Wilan.” Otan could hear the sounds of papers being rapidly flipped and shifted in the background. “He was involved personally in the intervention in Rikevaarland, they called him the Soldier Prince. We weren’t sure if the optics of that-”
“A prince? Involved in the military? Why, I could never imagine such a thing. Who could ever? A prince! In the military! Imagine that! Say, Avri, I don’t know if you knew this or not, but fun fact about me-”
“I… of course, sir… We just didn’t know, if something in the future were to come out about the operation he took part of…” It seemed for a moment as though there was about to be yet another long, awkward silence, but it was quickly punctuated by a low droning noise that Otan eventually realized was Avri groaning. Moaning, even. “I… I’m not supposed to tell you this, sir…” Avri was whispering now.
Otan sighed. “What did Žarís tell you not to tell me?”
“We can’t guarantee your security, sir. We can’t trust the Marshalls. The entire Tavari military is riddled with nationalists and we… we just… it’s so far away. We have no intelligence apparatus in East Borea whatsoever. Literally none. Internal threats, external threats, we just… we don’t know. The Nuvrenon PD is doing fine securing the palace, but they aren’t trained to be diplomatic security. We don’t have any other diplomatic security. We… Žarís was certain you wouldn’t actually want to go. We weren’t prepared to actually have to tell you no. So, I mean, I guess that means the answer is yes. That’s the convention, right? We’ll… we’ll find a way to make it work. But we just don’t… I mean, we couldn’t secure you in your own home, sir, let alone literally the other side of the world.”
It was Otan’s turn for a long, awkward silence. “This… this is humiliating. What are we, a failed state? Has anyone, ever, even once, run a background check on even a single member of the Royal Tavari Marshalls? You can’t guarantee my security. What… what do we have a country for, at this point? Can we ensure the safety of anyone, if not the monarch? Spirits take me. I… you, and Žarís, and every single Minister, and every single damned civil servant in this country should all resign, if you’re admitting the Tavari government can’t ensure my safety. I mean, Spirits above, am I safe even now? Should I leave my house? Should I move to Rodoka full time? Or, hell, even Ilarís! Maybe I should just go to Blåskog and never come back!”
The other end of the line was so quiet Otan began to think Avri had hung up. Only an eventual sniffle convinced the Emperor to stay on the phone. “Is… is that an official advisement from the Silver Court? That… that the government should resign?”
The Emperor did his best impression of the Prime Minister by pinching the bridge of his nose and exhaling a long, bitter breath. “No, Minister, I was not actually asking you to resign. And I couldn’t cause a constitutional crisis even if I wanted to. Hendrik is still Chief. I… Look. If you actually can’t guarantee my safety, then don’t let me go. I’ll tell Wilan I’m not well enough to go. Spirits above. This is an embarrassment. We’re a nuclear power. Are the nukes safe?”
There was a subtle click on the line. “Your Esteemed Majesty, please pardon my intrusion.” The Prime Minister, Nuclear Nevran herself, seemed as if by magic to appear suddenly on the line the moment the nukes were mentioned.
“Prime Minister.” Otan’s voice had gone sharp again.
“This one texted the Prime Minister to join us,” said Avri quietly. “So that His Esteemed Majesty could have utmost confidence in the clarity of the advice provided henceforth.”
“Prime Minister, the Silver Court is disinclined to hear from our ministers that they have been asked to conceal information from us.” The Emperor decided to break out the State Speech himself. Strictly speaking, it was unnecessary for the monarch to use State Speech unless speaking to the State—that is, in an address to the public—but it felt appropriate here, if only as a way of emphasis. “In the future, if circumstances are such that in the government’s judgment it cannot fulfill its obligation in ensuring the continuance of our person, to the degree that our ability to function in such basic, fundamental tasks of our office as visiting foreign monarchs, we should be quite pleased to hear it from you, our Chief Administrator, preferably as close to the moment in time the government reached this conclusion as practicable, and certainly not after having to practically pry it out of the External Affairs minister.”
“Emperor, please, you’re going to make Avri cry.” Žarís, for her part, did sound apologetic. “I… I am deeply… I apologise to you for…” She sighed. “I didn’t want to add more stress to what you were dealing with, especially since it isn’t… well, I mean, this is a problem that we can’t just… fix. I can’t just snap my fingers and…” She stopped. “I know you know that. This one apologises, Emperor, for this lapse in judgment. Your Esteemed Majesty is correct, this information should have been brought to the Silver Court much sooner and with more urgency and seriousness. Your humble servant promises-”
“You know, Žarís, I don’t actually… I’m really more concerned about the state of the military. I’ve been hearing for years now about how terrible our intelligence apparatus is, about how we need to separate the military from law enforcement, about how our military is full of extremists… have we made no progress? Have we fallen so far that the King of Tavaris literally can’t travel? This can’t continue. We aren’t a valid state if we can’t ensure the safety of our officials and if we can’t trust our own military. Are things so bad?”
The Prime Minister was quiet for some time. “We… have challenges. We have a lot to fix. Things aren’t going the way I hoped, or planned, or expected. I… thought it would be easier. I… after the Ranat Accords, after we managed to create such a powerful peace right on the precipice of war, I thought surely that would be the hardest part. I thought everything else would be easy by comparison. But it… it hasn’t been. The Diet can’t settle on a single program of reform. The military is riddled with resistance to any change whatsoever. We’d have to… well, the only word to describe it is ‘purge’ the general staff and… several echelons of the leadership hierarchy, and we don’t have the people to replace them. And it turns out that throwing out an entire national intelligence apparatus and starting over from scratch is, well, enormously difficult and vastly expensive, and all of this is occurring right when an absolutely massive hole has been blown in the military budget and every other budget now that we’ve lost thirty million taxpayers.”
Once again, silence fell on the phone call. It was an oppressive silence, heavy with significance, so heavy no one could even sigh. “Well,” Otan finally said, “at least we know we didn’t kill Carl IX.”
“Ha. Ha ha. Ha.” The Prime Minister chuckled, and then guffawed, and then laughed and laughed and laughed. Avri finally joined her, and Otan did as well, until he had to stop and clutch his chest with a decidedly unroyal strained wheeze of pain.
“Look. We’ll… we’ll get you to Blåskog. It’s a bad look for Tavaris not to go to these sorts of things. We don’t have any intel on or in Blåskog, but also, there’s frankly not a huge chance anyone out there cares enough about Tavaris to present a threat. We haven’t involved ourselves in their issues. Actually, this is a great time to start building a relationship. We… we’ll send you with the Greater Ilarís Executive Security Team and some Rodokans. We’ll say you’re representing the Union as a whole, maybe they’ll think we’re doing it for diversity’s sake. If we’re lucky, the media won’t pay any attention to us at all, there will be plenty of other countries there with closer relationships with and more poignant things to say about Blåskog. I promise, your government is working to restore confidence in our security apparatus. Just… while you’re there, try to keep a low profile. Maybe not so much dancing.”
The Emperor tenderly rubbed the bandages on his chest. “I assure you, that won’t be a problem.”
—
To His Royal Majesty, Wilan I of Blåskog and the House of Torhall:
It is with tremendous pleasure that I received Your Royal Majesty’s recent letter of invitation to your coronation, and I am equally pleased, on behalf of all the nations of the Tavari Union, to accept. The occasion of a throne passing from one occupant to another is always a moment of mixed feelings, but I extend to Your Royal Majesty my most heartfelt hopes that this moment can be an opportunity for a new and most prosperous beginning for Blåskog, Borea, and the world. I am honoured to have the chance to join you in celebrating this moment.
To let Your Royal Majesty know of a logistical matter, as you may know, recent events in Tavaris have caused me to become injured, and I have been recuperating for some weeks while I heal from surgery. Your coronation will be my first international trip since the injury, so in an abundance of caution, my physician has advised me to travel with a small medical team in the event that an unforeseen circumstance arises. While I am unlikely to spend much time on the dance floor during the festivities, otherwise I seem to be in fine condition and I look forward most eagerly to attending the coronation.
With Warmest Regards,
Otan IV
Emperor of the Tavari, King of Tavaris, High Chief of the United Tribes of Rodoka and the Isles, Chief of Nuvo, Chief-of-Chiefs, Lord-Patron of Ilarís and Defender of the Faith
