Nearly eighteen years later finds the young prince Cricket much grown, but no less jovial, and mischievous for it. His midnight hair is long, sweeping well past his back, trailing stardust in his wake. His smile...is just the same, though not quite as gummy anymore.
Scrambling over the wall used to be a lot easier, he remembered that much. Before they'd lost that twisting willow that sat right next to it. Why had they lost that again? Oh yes, it'd been struck by lightning last summer. Stupid lightning just had to go and spoil the best escape route along the whole perimeter.
"Great moonbeams and starlight, when did I get so out of shape?" Cricket asked, not expecting an answer as his fingers clung to the top of the wall and his boots scraped against the smooth stone.
"I think it was about the time Lieutenant Chiaki retired to be with her grandchildren," came a sarcastic drawl from behind him. Looking over his shoulder, Cricket could just make out the red clothed figure of Ignacia where she stood, no doubt looking cross, behind him.
"Iggy!" Cricket yelped, releasing the top of the wall and falling to his feet with a soft thud. "What brings—" A few loose pebbles from the wall fell, littering the prince's dark tunic in a fine layer of dust. Cricket brushed it away, laughing nervously. "What brings you out this way?"
"Fumiya is looking for you."
"Is he now?" Cricket dusted his hands off on his trousers, blowing a stray strand of hair out of his eyes.
Ignacia raised one auburn brow, her light brown face taking on a look of impatience. She was going to have a go at him, Cricket could just feel it. If he were anywhere else, he might have tried to step back from her and make a run for it. But there was a wall behind him, and if he tried to run passed her she'd just catch him.
"Whatever for?" He tried to sound innocent. He sounded innocent, right? Nothing to see here. Just a prince skipping out on his lessons to go play in the streets like a common—
"I believe you know whatever for."
Oh. Oh no. She was mad.
"Is this about the history lessons? Because I know all of it, Iggy. I swear I do. And besides, Fumiya is so boring. There is nothing at—"
"You know it all do you?" Ignacia's lips had turned up in a teasing smile. And oh, great Selene, that was worse. That was so much worse.
"Y-yes?" He looked from the corner of his eye to see if there was a quick way out, but it was just wall and yard as far as the eye could see. She'd catch him no trouble, her foot work had always been superior.
"You don't sound terribly sure."
"I'm sure." He nodded firmly.
"Are you?"
"Yes. Positive. I know all the material—"
"Who was the king of Helio when your great great grandmother Jeong was queen?" Ignacia's pink lips were tipped up at one corner, showing off a truly impressive dimple that Cricket might call cute. You know, if he didn't want to live to see his eighteenth name day.
"Trick question, it was twins." Cricket bounced on the toes of his boots, brushing a long dark blue strand of hair from his face. "A brother and sister. Queen Alrika, and King Ajax."
Ignacia narrowed her eyes, lips pursing. "And who was their heir?"
"Their great niece, the lady Kyong."
"What year was the Great War?"
"8902, the year of the Rabbit. And the participants of the war were Helio, Lunette, and to a smaller degree Hermes. Although their ruler, Queen Calixte refused to give her full forces," Cricket recited, his pale blue eyes twinkling.
Ignacia drew down her brows, annoyance painted across her features.
"Did I pass?"
"It was satisfactory." She nodded, uncrossing her arms to pull a little purse from her pocket. "Honestly, I don't know how you can memorize an entire textbook in a week, but you can't seem to recall what you had for breakfast."
Cricket shrugged. "Textbooks are easy. You just read the words, and recite them. People are harder."
"Oh?" She seemed to be counting something in the little purse. He wondered how much longer she'd keep him there before she called the guards. Surely, she didn't intend to drag him back to his lessons on her own. Or at least he hoped she wouldn't drag him back by herself. That always ended in pain.
"Yes. They're all...." He frowned trying to think of a word that could describe them. "Fiddly."
She stopped counting, looking up from the purse to send him an incredulous look. "Fiddly?"
"Fiddly." Cricket nodded. "That's why I need to go into the city. So I can understand them better."
"Is that what you were doing? Going out to learn?" The air quotes were implied, but Ignacia was too refined to use them physically.
"Yes."
She didn't say anything, just went back to counting whatever was in the purse.
"Textbooks aren't going to teach me to be king," he said when it looked like she wasn't going to let him off. He thought perhaps she was going to grab him by the ear and drag him back to Fumiya as she had so many times before. Then he'd spend all afternoon fighting to stay awake. "And honestly, I haven't been into the city since my seventeenth name day. That's nearly a year, Iggy. A year!"
"Here." She held out the purse when she'd finished her inspection of its contents. Still not acknowledging his obvious distress.
"What's this?" He took it, weighing it carefully in his palm. He supposed there was money inside, but he didn't really know how that all worked.
"If you're going out into the city, you ought to have some spending money. And we had better pick up some dumplings for Fumiya to make sure he doesn't tell your uncle." Ignacia moved to the wall, looking up at the top of it thoughtfully. Then she leaped up, her fingers holding onto the edge, and pulled herself up to sit on the top in a motion that seemed to Cricket so smooth it had to have been practiced. Cricket looked up at her dumbfounded. "We need to be back before your meeting with your uncle and Marwa. If you skip another advisor meeting, I fear he might just send you off to the monastery like he's been threatening."
Her feet swung from where she was perched on the ledge. The heels of her boots scuffing against the stone as she looked down at him, unimpressed. You'd never know that of the two of them, Ignacia was the servant, and Cricket was the prince. And honestly... how in the name of Eos did she make it look so easy?
"You coming or what?"
"Uh... yeah! Yeah, I'm coming. Give me a hand up?" He scrambled to get his fingers onto the ledge again.
"You're a big boy, you figure it out." Ignacia scoffed, and turned to leap off the other side.
They spent the next few hours winding their way through the market of the capital. Zig-zagging from vendor to vendor as they sampled dumplings and the last of the season's strawberries. The day was warm, the company was good, and it was all too easy to lose track of time. Really, Cricket couldn't be blamed for it, wasn't it Ignacia's job to keep him on schedule? He was fairly certain it was.
By the time the bells chimed throughout the city to let all of the capital's residents know that it was three in the afternoon, they were already late.
"Is that the three o'clock bell?" Cricket asked, dread gripping his insides into a vice.
"Hmm?" Ignacia mumbled around the mochi she was stuffing into her face. She stopped chewing for a moment to count the bells, and then her face paled. "Oh no."
"Thank you again." Cricket smiled, bowing to the owner of the little stall selling the mochi. "It was truly delicious. I especially loved the—"
But he didn't get to finish as Ignacia had grabbed him by the wrist and started dragging him back towards the castle. Cricket yelped, feet pounding on the stone behind her. They dodged a vendor moving his cart to the other side of the street to get out of the late afternoon sun, and a small herd of ducklings.
"Excuse us! Excuse me! I'm so sorry! My apologies! Excuse us!" Cricket shouted over his shoulder as they nearly knocked over more than one old granny out shopping for her weekly vegetables. Great moonbeams, where had the time gone? Hadn't it just been eleven?
"Your uncle is going to kill us. He's really going to this time. He'll skin me alive, and then have me sent to a convent. And he'll ship you off to that monastery up in the mountains. The one where the monks beat you with those giant wooden ladles if you speak more than once a week." Ignacia was saying, only half paying attention to the nonsense coming out of her mouth as she dragged him along.
"I won't let him skin you alive." Cricket aimed for reassuring, but when she turned to cut him a look as if to say this is all your fault, he decided it probably wasn't helping. "Or send you to a convent."
Ignacia shook her head, and kept running. T'would appear she didn't have time for his nonsense, and honestly, neither did he. Because she was probably right, Uncle Sunil was definitely going to try to convince Father to send him to the monastery after this.
"This is the fourth meeting you've been late to this month," Ignacia hissed through her teeth.
"I'm sorry Iggy. I really am."
She turned to level him with another glare. Which was impressive when they were still running full speed ahead. And there it was. There was the castle wall. All they had to do was make it over and pretend they'd merely gotten caught up in some discussion or other in the library. Cricket had left the library window open. No one would be the wiser. Absolutely—
One moment Cricket was running, the next he and Ignacia were a tangle of limbs in a mud puddle on the side of the street with another person.
"Why don't you watch where you're going!" The person snarled as the three fought to get themselves extricated from one another. Ignacia was free first, then she helped the irritable man to his feet while Cricket sat in the mud. Because sure, why not, things couldn't get much worse.
"We're very sorry," Cricket said, leaping to his feet and pulling the long braid over his shoulder to assess the damage. Mud. Mud everywhere. There was no time to change, no time for a bath, and little chance Uncle Sunil wouldn't notice.
"Yes, well you shou—" The man stopped mid-sentence when he got a look at the long braid that Cricket was trying to pull the worst of the debris out of. Cricket looked up with a frown at the sudden stop. The man was wearing a truly gaudy velvet tunic (he'd never get the mud out of it, and that thought pleased Cricket greatly), and a rather ridiculous expression of only just now realizing he might have put his foot in his mouth.
"No time." Ignacia grabbed his wrist, and they were off again before the man could pull his foot from his mouth and say anything else.
They made it to the wall in record time, and then Ignacia was crouching down, weaving her fingers together into a basket. Cricket put his foot into her hands, and let her give him a lift up to the top of the wall. He turned back to offer her a hand up, but she'd already made the jump and was scrambling up the side without his aide.
"Don't worry about me," she grunted as her boots scuffed for a foot hold. "Get your ass to the meeting hall!"
"Right." Cricket leaped off the other side into the soft grass, the force of it bringing him to his knees. "Grass stains."
"Add it to the list." Ignacia huffed, dropping down beside him. "Run!"
Pushing to his feet, Cricket took off at a run. There was no point in scuttling through the library window now, he'd only get mud all over the books. The best he could do was head in through the kitchen entrance, and try to think of a good lie on the way.
A good excuse. A good excuse. A good excuse.
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