Two: The Grand Entrance

Of course, a princess would not be going on a date with her betrothed in just any old restaurant. Gods forbid she have to smell a poor person. No, the little princess – whose name was Beatrice, her scroll told me, and not The Mongoose, to my disappointment – was having lunch in the most exclusive restaurant in all of Pansolum.

It was called The Premier, and it was no less than a hundred feet outside the palace walls. Rumor had it that it was run by ex-palace chefs, and you had to pay a small fee just to get a table.

Princess Beatrice clearly had not thought about how the fuck I was going to get in, especially if the place was packed, but luckily for her, I was an expert at getting in places where I wasn’t supposed to be.

And I wasn’t about to pay any fee for it, that was for damn sure.

Half an hour before the princess’s little date, I was waiting a few yards away from the front of the restaurant, across the cobblestoned street at a pub that was also fancy, but not so fancy that I couldn’t afford a beer while I waited. The pub had a nice little outdoor deck at the front with tables. A small half fence went around the deck to keep patrons from tumbling over the edge and getting an owie, but based on the clearly replaced sections every few feet, I was guessing the drunks went tumbling through it anyway.

I kept one eye on the restaurant, waiting for the princess to arrive and getting impatient the longer it took. Isabel had spent a solid hour putting makeup on me to make me unrecognizable, and it was starting to itch.

She’d chastised me quite harshly earlier for taking on this task, and had lacked her usual gentleness in disguising me, roughly smearing creams and such over my skin. Her attitude lightened up considerably when I mentioned how much we’d be getting paid, but she was still frowning when I left.

“This is a princess, Carmen, not some vain playboy refusing to settle down. If anyone in her family finds out that you’re not a jealous love rival, they’ll – ”

“Kill me horribly and painfully, yes I know. But by the time they find out - if they find out - I'll be long gone. I know what I’m doing. Can you make my hair a bit darker? I really want to look like the dark knight charging in, all dashing and mysterious.”

She raised a single finely plucked eyebrow. “You usually don’t care how I make you look. Don’t tell me you have a crush on the little princess?”

I snorted. “On that mongoose? No. But if I’m going to break a royal engagement, I really have to look the part, don’t I? Oh, and bring out my fancy cloak. I have to look at least a little like I’m not poor.”

In Pansolum, royalty usually married royals from other kingdoms, or wealthy nobles. They could marry commoners if they really wished, but considering that they very rarely socialized with the lower classes, the chance to meet one and fall in love with them was very slim. So, if I was going to run in and declare my love for the princess, the only way it would hold any water was if I looked like I was noble.

The fact that this was a royal engagement was tricky for another reason. Given that it was presumably set up by the king and queen, the princess’s betrothed wasn’t going to back off so easily. Not if he didn’t want to face their wrath. Even more of a threat – any man betrothed to a princess risked losing the financial and social benefits of marrying a princess if he gave up. And based on what I’d learned about the princess’s betrothed, he was going to fight tooth and nail to keep her.

Another difficulty was that even if I miraculously got the groom-to-be to give up on the princess of his own volition, once I took my money and left, there was a chance that the king and queen would reinstate the engagement anyway, because it would appear as though the princess’s “mystery lover” – aka, me – had up and abandoned her.

Engagements in Pansolum were typically unchangeable, especially so among the upper classes, unless there were unexpected circumstances. An old history book I’d browsed once claimed that the reason for these strict engagements was because a long, long time ago, some arrogant king got pissed off because a noble lady ran off with some other guy the eve before their wedding, breaking their engagement despite her family backing it, and so he made several laws about the sacred nature of engagements.

Incredibly petty, as all kings tended to be.

So, breaking an engagement simply because you didn’t like your betrothed was highly frowned upon and even resulted in abandonment by your family in some cases, or capital punishment if your status was high enough and the opposing family made a big enough stink. It was risky business.

And because I’m a true businessman at heart, I seized a golden opportunity to help people skirt those engagement laws shortly after my arrival in Pansolum. If an engagement broke because there was a scandal floating about one of the parties, or if there was a love rival, especially one who was a financially or socially better choice, then the families pushing the engagement were more likely to back off without involving the law. Sometimes I started rumors – I was very good at that – to disparage the betrothed of my client, ruining their reputation, and sometimes I pretended to be in love with my client, exuding so much charm and armed with a well-crafted backstory to make the betrothed seem inferior by comparison. Helping a princess would require a little bit of both.

Given that it was so hard to break engagements, one would then wonder, if someone like me came dashing in to break it up, wouldn’t it be fairly obvious who I was?

Surprisingly, no. Because engagements were so strict and unreasonable, there were cases of love rivals and other underhanded means to break engagements going around long before I entered the market. It was actually fairly common for engagements to be interrupted, especially high-profile ones. Sometimes, the offenders ended up executed, sometimes they succeeded and got to marry whoever they’d interrupted the engagement for. It really depended on how the families involved reacted and whether or not the authorities were involved.

The difference between me and them was that they were truly intervening because they were jealous or seeking the status they could gain from getting married to one of the engaged parties. I was just a love rival for hire. They were doing it for themselves, and I was doing it for my unwillingly engaged clients. And for money, but that was beside the point.

And while what happened after the engagement was broken was none of my business, there was a reason my services were so popular: they had a lasting effect, and this time would be no different. Who was I to leave a princess hanging?

No, I would make sure the engagement ended – permanently. The princess had mentioned there would be chaperones, and that was exactly what I was counting on. Hopefully, the next sad sap her parents offered her would be more worth her time.

Just as I was finishing my beer, a white and gold carriage pulled up outside The Premier, pulled by all white horses. People stopped on the street to point and gawk at the sheer opulence of it. It was clear the riders within weren’t ordinary people.

Showtime.

I took a small sachet of mint leaves out of my pocket and chewed one quickly before rinsing my mouth out with water. Smelling like an alcoholic wouldn’t be very charming of me. I quickly paid my tab and left the pub, taking a leisurely stroll down the street, pretending to eye the shops around me while keeping track of the time, and making note of where the guards decided to station themselves outside the building.

It wouldn’t do to show up too early. No, best to let them get their appetizers before making a scene.

I passed a tailor, a butcher, a furniture shop, and as I was turning to go back up the way I came, I saw something that caused me to freeze in place. A mother leading a small child by the hand scowled at me for disrupting the flow of foot traffic. The child stared at me with its thumb in its mouth as they passed, blinking with the wonder that all small children viewed the world with. I ignored them, my stomach dropping at the sight of a familiar dirty face peeking out of an alleyway, staring at me with wide eyes and waving frantically, clearly ushering me over.

I bit the inside of my cheek, firmly turned my head away, and continued walking as if I hadn’t seen anything. He was going to have to wait until later. I didn’t have time for him right now.

I wiped my palms on my pants surreptitiously, walking a little quicker than normal, almost like I was running away, but I wasn’t.

I wasn’t.

Are you sure about that? The contrary voice in my head chimed in.

Shut up, I told it, and forced myself to slow down.

Well, now I was rattled. How inconvenient.

I took a moment to breathe outside the restaurant. I can do this. I’m fine. Just get this over with, and if I do really well, I could break the engagement with just one meeting, get my money, and get the hell out of dodge.

That was a little optimistic. Something told me this wasn’t going to be quite that easy, but the thought was encouraging, nonetheless.

The guards had chosen to position themselves in three spots - one right by the carriage, chatting with the driver, one by the door, arms crossed as he leaned against the wall, and the last patrolling up and down the street. Luckily, I looked like a noble, well-respected gentleman right now simply looking to get a bite to eat. I nodded to the one outside the door, receiving a polite nod in return.

I entered The Premier, striding confidently right past the greeter waiting just inside to collect payment for tables as though I didnt see him.

He blinked a few times, his sparse brown mustache twitching, like he was questioning whether or not he’d actually seen someone come through or if he’d imagined it, then saw me speed walking further into the restaurant and his face went red with anger.

“Hey! Stop right there,” he shouted, running after me, but I weaved through the pretty polished wood tables with an agility that he couldn’t hope to match. He stumbled through the maze of guests and once he caught up a little, he tried to lunge at me, but ended up bumping into a family’s table, sending their drinks flying, soaking their plates in wine and water.

A child at the table instantly burst into tears and the red-faced host frantically apologized to the parents, temporarily forgetting the little sneak he’d been trying to catch, giving me more than enough time to find the princess.

Given her status, she wasn’t going to be sitting on the ground floor with the regular rich people – no, she was super rich, so she got a nice little private space on the second floor. Her table was up against the balcony railing, overlooking the ground floor and separated from the rest of the second floor by a thin half-wall. A room with a view. I spotted her looking down at me incredulously, her mongoose eyes wide while she clutched her fork with white knuckles. Her left eye twitched.

That look said, I’m going to kill you.

How sweet it would feel when she was forced to pay me for this. I love my job.

Unhindered by the little door guard, I bolted up the stairs and quite naturally grabbed an empty chair on my way over, setting it at the princess’s table, right between her and her date.

Utter silence fell at that table. Two pairs of wide eyes blinked at me incredulously.

Silence was okay; I was quite capable of talking enough for three.

Aside from the princess and her betrothed – a pale man that was at least ten years her senior with a widow’s peak, a sharp nose, and watery blue eyes wearing an elegantly embroidered dark blue tunic and a blood red velvet cloak – there were two women sitting at a smaller table some distance away who both stood up indignantly upon my arrival. The chaperones, I assumed.

“Excuse me,” one of them said furiously, but I didn’t even look at them, solemnly placing my hand over the princess’s on the table. Her hand spasmed, clearly fighting herself not to wrench it away from me.

“Sorry I’m late, my love.” I lifted her hand, pressing a kiss to the back of it. “Will you forgive me?”