Before any objections could be voiced, Prince Heiko turned on his heel and slipped out of the room. He knew Jurgen would be quick to follow. He was a lazy man, at heart, which made him forthright and impatient. Squandering an opportunity to take an early leave was not in his nature.

“Do not provoke the ealdorman,” was the first thing the seneschal said when he shouldered past Heiko in the hallway to open their chamber door for him in a sheer act of habit. If he had realized what he had done - and the prince presumed he had, a moment too late to stop it - he did not display it in his scowling expression. “His voice vexes me more than Dries’.”

Heiko slipped past him, entering the apartment. It was small – purposively, if the prince had to guess – and east-facing, which did not bode well for the northern men seeking refuge from the contemptibly bright sun. It had been furnished and cleaned for their arrival, adorned with a scattering of potted sand-lilies meant to purify and freshen the stagnant air. A small door on the south wall led to an even smaller recess of space with nothing but a cot to occupy it. Likely meant for the seneschal, but Heiko knew better than to expect anything beyond the man draping himself like a blanket over the Ilysian-style chaise in the center of the room and snoring loudly enough to make the foundation shake.

“Did you think,” Heiko began, turning to watch the seneschal shut the door behind them, “entering into the Republika would somehow change my disposition, Jurgen?”

“Whyever would I think myself that lucky, my lord?” he quipped, crossing for the balcony door and yanking back the linen curtains, inviting in brilliant, midday light. He huffed, murmuring to himself, “This fucking heat.”

“You knew what to expect coming this far south, seneschal,” Heiko countered, catching sight of a small bookshelf to his right. He approached it, perusing the Ilysian letters embossed upon the leather spines of the collection.

“I was told that Ilysian autumns are sufferable,” the seneschal snapped back.

“Who told you that?” the prince asked, cocking an amused brow. “And why were you dense enough to believe them?”

Jurgen had always been short tempered, but never so much as to regret his actions when the heat of his ire was finally snuffed. In other words, he may have been provided the same liberties by King Ingo that Hugo so boorishly flaunted, but he was neither arrogant nor delusional enough to act upon them, even during his most spiteful fits.

Ignoring the prince’s goad, the seneschal tugged the handle of the balcony door. 

“What is this damn- Leave it to the Ilysians to fuck up something as simple as a handle. Why-” He cut off promptly as he continued to shimmy and jiggle it.

“Leave it to your temper to be so dumbfounded by something as simple as a knob. If you are so overheated, Jurgen,” the prince muttered, furrowing his brow as his eyes traced over the title of a particular book, “that you must take your frustration out on something, do so on my brother, upon our return. That door has done nothing but serve its purpose and your flailing is doing nothing but grate on my nerves.”

The seneschal stopped to serve the prince a scathing look. “It is no pleasure to be lashed to your side either, my lord, and yet here I am, suffering all the same.”

“I offered to put you out of your misery back at Reuzen Field, Jurgen,” Heiko argued halfheartedly as he hooked his finger on the spine of a tome and pulled it free, “and you declined. Clearly, you must not be suffering that greatly.”

The seneschal grunted and abandoned his struggle at the door just as quickly as he did the argument, finding the chaise to collapse gracelessly upon and forcing from it an awful creak. He made quick work of shucking the stiff jerkin from his body. 

“Irrespective of it all-” He cut off as he bent over to unknot the laces of his boots, before beginning again, his tone burdened by his knees pressing into his diaphragm. “I needn’t remind you to behave, aye?”

Heiko sighed and retreated to a dark corner of the room, finding in it only minimal refuge from the unrelenting southern heat. “If my brother wished for me to do such a thing, he should have considered that before assigning Dries to my retinue.”

The seneschal muttered unintelligibly to himself in one moment and cast a look of warning towards the prince in the next. “We are here on the behalf of Simo, Prince Heiko, not on the behalf of Ingo.”

“On the behalf of Simo?” Heiko snorted patronizingly. “Spare me your pretentious call to fealty, Jurgen. We are not here benignly.”

“Nor malignantly, my lord,” Jurgen was quick to counter. “If the cyning did not believe that his offer would be enough to entice King Vincente into an accord, then we would not be here. You, above all, know the terrifying capacity for prescience your brother has-”

“Which is precisely why I am on the horns of a dilemma,” Heiko snapped. “I am aware of how formidably ghastly Ingo can be with Alfred in his ear, and so are the Ilysians. We have been their only true adversary for generations and it has served us both. Why would King Vincente ever fall for a ploy so counterintuitive as an Achterecht supplicating for peace?” 

The prince scoured over the seneschal’s expression but, as always, it betrayed nothing. 

“Tell me, Jurgen,” he prodded, “when was the last time my ancestors ever settled for an armistice without the throat of our enemies beneath our boot?”

⚔