Saving the Immortal

Chapter Twenty-Eight: What Ivy Knew

The messenger arrived at the palace in some haste, bearing word of a legal and economic matter requiring immediate resolution — a dispute over trade agreements with a neighboring province, complicated further by the sudden absence of every man in the royal family who might ordinarily have addressed it.

With the king and all four princes away at war, the matter fell, by default and no small amount of desperation, to the women left behind.

We were summoned to the council chamber that afternoon — myself, Delia, Rosalind, and Marrow's own wife, a quiet woman named Genevieve I had exchanged scarcely a dozen words with since my arrival. The steward who presented the matter did so with the particular anxiety of a man entirely unaccustomed to seeking counsel from anyone but the crown itself, and I watched, with some concern, as the details of the dispute unfolded before us.

"The provincial merchants refuse the current tariff arrangement," the steward explained, his voice tight with strain. "They threaten to withhold grain shipments entirely unless terms are renegotiated within the week. Without His Majesty or any of the princes available to address the matter directly—"

"Surely someone among the council can simply decide," Delia interrupted, though her tone carried more irritation than any genuine solution.

"The council requires royal authority to enact any binding agreement," the steward said. "And that authority currently rests, in the king's absence, with the ladies of this household."

The silence that followed carried a particular helplessness. Rosalind glanced toward Genevieve, who offered nothing but an uncertain shrug. Delia examined her own hands as though the matter might resolve itself without her participation.

I found myself, rather to my own surprise, the only one in that chamber inclined to actually consider the problem.

"May I see the tariff figures," I said.

The steward looked at me with visible surprise, though he produced the documents readily enough.

I studied them for a long moment, the familiar shape of numbers and terms settling into place with an ease that felt, in that chamber full of uncertain faces, almost like coming home. My father had never shielded me from such matters, whatever else he had failed to consider regarding my own wishes in marriage — my brothers had studied trade and treasury from boyhood, and I had sat in on more council meetings than any of them likely remembered, absorbing lessons meant for their education rather than mine simply because I had always found the subject genuinely interesting.

"The merchants are not wrong to object," I said finally, "though their proposed solution serves them rather better than it serves the crown. If we simply lower the tariff as they demand, the treasury loses considerable revenue at a moment when war already strains it thin."

"Then what would you propose," the steward asked, something cautiously hopeful entering his voice now.

"A tiered arrangement," I said, tracing the figures with my finger as the solution assembled itself in my mind. "Lower the tariff on grain specifically, since that is their primary concern and the one most likely to cause genuine hardship if withheld. But raise it slightly on the finished goods they import in return — cloth, tools, the luxuries their own merchants profit from reselling at court. It costs the treasury less than a full reduction, and it gives the merchants precisely the concession they are demanding without unraveling the entire agreement."

The room went quiet for a different reason now.

"That is," the steward said slowly, examining the figures I had marked, "remarkably sound reasoning, Princess."

"How do you know such things," Rosalind asked, staring at me with an expression that mingled surprise and something almost like suspicion, as though I had produced the solution through some trick rather than genuine understanding.

"I paid attention," I said simply. "As a girl. My father never barred me from his council chambers, even when he assumed I attended only out of idle curiosity rather than genuine interest. My brothers studied such matters as their birthright, and I studied alongside them, whether anyone thought to notice or not."

"You are full of surprises, Princess," Delia said, though her tone had shifted now, the earlier mockery replaced by something considerably more careful.

"I am simply someone who was never given the chance to prove such knowledge useful until today," I said. "Most assumed a princess's education ended at needlework and courtly manners. I found the ledgers rather more interesting."

The steward implemented my proposal within the hour, drafting the revised terms with a haste that suggested genuine relief at having found any solution at all, and by evening word arrived that the merchants had accepted the arrangement without further complaint.

Genevieve found me later that evening, in the quiet of the corridor outside my chambers.

"I did not expect that of you," she admitted, her voice carrying none of Delia's earlier sharpness, only genuine, quiet curiosity. "Forgive me for saying so plainly, but you seemed, until today, simply another ordinary bride brought here for treaty's sake."

"I understand why you thought so," I said. "I am not offended. But I have spent my whole life being underestimated for precisely that reason, Genevieve. It is, perhaps, the one advantage of being so consistently overlooked — no one expects you to be capable of anything at all, and so they are entirely unprepared when you prove otherwise."

She studied me a moment longer, something like respect settling into her expression now.

"I begin to understand," she said quietly, "why Ruselon chose to keep you so close, whatever his brothers' cruelty made of the arrangement."

I said nothing to that, though I felt a small, private warmth settle in my chest regardless, and returned to my chambers that evening with a satisfaction I had not expected to feel — the particular, quiet pride of having proven, at last, that I was considerably more than the ordinary bride this court had assumed me to be.