Blossom

“Kleon—you’re fired,” I announce with simple finality.

“Y-you can’t fire me! Do you have any idea who I am?”

“From what you’ve just told me, you’re a slow worker I can easily replace with five minutes of effort. If we’re talking about the palace budget, I’m sure it will benefit from having one less useless person on the payroll. Guards!”

“Yes, Your Highness?” Two burly armored men come through the door carrying doru.

“This man’s got ten minutes to collect his effects. If he’s still in the palace after that, cut off his nose for trespassing.”

“Yes, Your Highness!”

I tip my head back with queenly authority and flick my heavy lidded gaze to Kleon who’s still standing there, wide-eyed and mouth agape like a gasping fish.

“Are you still here? Perhaps ten minutes is too generous. I’ll give him five, guards.”

“Yes, Your Highness!”

Kleon’s feet are spinning out from beneath him as he takes off at a dead run, still wearing the same ridiculous expression. The guards follow him at a businesslike trot. I breathe a faint sigh of relief to see them go, then quit the room without looking back, without giving the accountant so much as a second thought.

So, Father’s in a meeting with the infamous ‘trade prince’ of Rorthage.

Malchus Zenobia, the emperor’s youngest son, I met him once when I was eleven years old. Even when my mother was still alive he had many nicknames: the Trade Prince, the Punisher, Hanno’s strong arm, the empire’s favorite bully.

More of a thug than a prince, the emperor famously couldn’t do a thing with him. While his elder brothers became stellar military commanders, Malchus had serious issues with authority and simply could not rise in the ranks. Too headstrong to be controlled, he always did his own thing, refusing to answer to his commanding officers, usurping the military chain of command and generally causing chaos wherever he went.

At his wits end, the emperor finally gifted him three ships and sent him out to ‘fight pirates,’ essentially dismissing him altogether, expecting nothing really to come of the appointment. But that’s where he underestimated his son.

A born commander and an unstoppable force of nature, now that he was his own boss, Malchus finally had his chance to shine. Rather than fade into obscurity on a pointless venture, the hotheaded admiral got right to work rounding up the pirates that plagued the empire’s naval trade routes. Thanks to his efforts he began taking command of more and more ships, turning pirates into his own mercenary force, hunting down lawless vessels with a fiery vengeance. What’s more, he took masterful command of the loot these pirates carried, trading it for immense profit, supplying the empire with much needed gold to fund its expansion efforts while also building up his own personal fortune, which he’s invested back into trade.

Now at the age of thirty he commands an armada of sixty ships and a successful trade empire. He’s tamed the pirates of the Meddio and the sea is safe again thanks to his military genius. What’s more he’s become his father’s favorite ‘diplomat,’ the man the emperor sends when he wants troublesome political matters handled quickly and right. Which begs the question: why send the prince to Sanos? What could he possibly want from our small island nation except for—that?

“Your Highness!”

Walking aimlessly through the palace, I’m jolted abruptly from my thoughts by the unprecedented sight of Lois rushing towards me, her usually stern expression traded for one of alarm.

Matching her energy automatically, I meet her with the same frantic expression.

“What is it, Lois?”

Bent double, she takes a few moments to catch her breath.

“Your father, His Majesty…”

“What about Father?!”

“The Emperor—raising taxes!”

“Raising taxes? But they’re already taking thirty percent of our kingdom’s tax revenue. How much do they want?”

“Fifty percent! And they want it right away!”

Fifty percent? Already I’m doing the mental calculations, but Lois isn’t finished.

“His Majesty is terrified of what will happen if we can’t pay up. He’s looking for Kleon the palace treasurer to help work out the details, but the man’s nowhere to be found and the king’s in an absolute panic.”

“Did you say Kleon?” I cringe slightly.

“Never mind, he’s around here somewhere. In the meantime, His Majesty needs your help dealing with the Rorthaginians. Your father’s missing several of the financial reports for this meeting and the trade prince is not in a good mood. You’ve heard how he hates to be kept waiting; they say he once beheaded a senator for stuttering too much.”

“Yes, yes, I’ve heard. I’ll go to them at once!”

“Not like that!” Lois yanks me back by the collar just as I was starting away.

“Ack!”

“We must get you changed into formal attire—quickly. In the meantime, try to estimate a few totals so we can give Prince Malchus some idea of how much grain and oil we’ll be loading onto his ships.”

Fifty percent…can we afford it?

My brain is working at high speed as Lois ushers me back to my room at a dead run. While she works stripping me and taking down my hair, rinsing my limbs of sweat and dousing my body with fresh perfume, I’m doing my best to recall to mind multiple tax figures from the last few years. 

Sanos is a fertile island with four hundred and sixty thousand acres of farmland yielding on average over three million bushels of grain, about eight and a half bushels per acre. The palace taxes the farmers twenty percent, which two years ago worked out to a total of six hundred twenty-nine thousand bushels of grain and eighteen thousand tons of oil. But last year…

I’m in another world of swirling numbers as Lois throws a fresh white chiton over me and begins pinning it here and there. I don’t see myself in the mirror, I don’t even think when she stops working to disappear inside my vast closet. Already I’m headed out the door, mind whirring.

Fifty percent sounds like a lot, but we can certainly afford to pay it. I must tell Father at once!

I’m running again, straight to the meeting room where I know Father will be. I burst upon the scene to the sight of a handful of flabbergasted males who stare at me, mouths agape.

“Gods, Child! What on earth?!”

Ignoring Father’s greeting, I slam my hands on the table to communicate with him directly.

“We don’t need to worry about the tax, Father. Recall we had a fantastic growing season last year, an increase of nearly sixty-five percent over the past years—that’s fourteen bushels per acre for a total of five million, one hundred and eighty thousand bushels—not to mention an increase of seventy-two percent in our olive crop yield. We received one million, thirty-six thousand bushels in taxes and thirty-one thousand tons of oil. Even if the empire takes fifty percent, that still leaves us with five hundred eighteen thousand bushels of grain and fifteen thousand five hundred tons of oil left over—more than enough! Given the current projection of crop yield for this growing season, we shouldn’t even have to raise the tax on our own people to make up for it!”

I announce this all with a breathless, brilliant grin, then shake my head to get the hair out of my eyes.

Wait a minute. My hair—it’s still down, flowing over my shoulders in thick, pinkish waves. This is a hairstyle for the bedroom, I realize with a sinking feeling. Not for greeting foreign diplomats.

“Princess Delphine!”

Lois’ sudden arrival and subsequent look of horror causes me to look down and examine my attire.

Gods, look at me! I was so eager to communicate the good news to Father I didn’t even let Lois finish dressing me. I’m clothed only in my breezy chiton, thin and nearly see-through, leaving nothing to the imagination as it clings to my curves. It’s pinned at my shoulders and again at my hips, leaving slits on either side that reveal both of my legs up to the highest reaches of my thighs. And on top of it all the dip in the top reveals more than just a bit of cleavage; both of my breasts are half exposed! 

I don’t look like a princess—I look like an absolute wreck of a human being! And I’ve just exposed myself to one of the most powerful, important men in the empire.

Across the room, my eyes find his. Malchus Zenobia sits at the end of the table. Unlike the rest of them with their jaws hanging, he sits with his mouth clamped shut, a look of burning intensity in his eerie, yellow-green eyes.

“How much—” he clears his throat sharply and I straighten, pulling the front of my chiton closed and gripping one of my thigh slits, a move that only leaves the other thigh more exposed and me dying even more on the inside.

“How much did you say we could expect to load onto our ships?”

“Fifty percent of the kingdom’s tax revenue works out to five hundred eighteen thousand bushels of grain and fifteen thousand five hundred tons of oil.”

“I see. And you figured all this out…just now?”

“I have a bit of a head for numbers, Your Highness.”

“Meanwhile these fools couldn’t give me so much as an estimate,” he says, and my father together with several members of his cabinet shrink with humiliation. To my father, he turns the full intensity of his gaze.

“Your daughter?”

“Ah, yes, Sire. Princess Delphine Margaret Alba Vasilias. Though I’m afraid she is a little out of sorts.”

Ignoring this, Malchus gets straight to his next question.

“Is she married?”

Father blanches. “Alas, no.”

“I’ll take her.”

“S-sorry?” I cut in, and Malchus turns his fearsome gaze back on me.

“Princess, I’ll have you for my wife.”