My chambers had become the silent heart of a secret government. While my father and Kareem planned parades, I waged a war of ink. My primary obstacle was not a spy or an assassin, but a man named Lukan.
Lukan, the palace exchequer, was a creature of pure bureaucracy. He lived and breathed for ledgers, seals, and the unyielding sanctity of proper procedure. He cared nothing for the Legion at the gates; his only concern was that the accounts were balanced and the correct forms were filed. He was the perfect, unwitting gatekeeper.
I approached him in his stuffy office, a requisition for the monument in my hand. "Lukan," I said, affecting an air of royal duty. "The Council has issued a logistical modification to this order."
He peered at the addendum I had written, his thin nose twitching. "Irregular, Your Highness," he sniffed. "The original order was sealed by the King. An addendum requires a counter-seal from the royal treasury, and the forms must be filed in triplicate."
"Of course," I said smoothly. "But I assume you are familiar with the _Civic Safety Act_, Codex 14, Article 7?"
He blinked. "I… believe so."
"It states that in a declared state of emergency, any sitting Council member is empowered to modify logistical supply orders vital to the city's defense. Such modifications require only the Council's own seal and a single annotation in the daily ledger for the sake of transparency." I tapped the Council's seal I had stamped at the bottom. "The Council has declared a state of emergency. This order is for five hundred bolts of rough-spun linen for sandbags. A matter vital to the city's defense."
Lukan was trapped. To defy me would be to defy the letter of the law he so revered. He stared at the scroll, his wheels spinning, not with suspicion of treason, but with the horror of an improperly filed document. He finally gave a tight, pained nod, stamped the order with his own seal, and made a fussy note in his ledger, muttering about the decline of procedural discipline. He had just armed our rebellion, and his only concern was the paperwork.
My network remained fragile. A loyal scribe in Lukan's office who would place my modified orders at the bottom of the pile. A cousin of the Captain's who was a foreman for the weavers' guild and could ensure the right materials were sourced without question. Smora, my handmaiden, who moved through the servants' quarters, listening for whispers of suspicion, her ears my first line of defense.
The strain was a constant. I slept in two-hour increments, my mind whirling with logistics, troop movements, and the terrifying arithmetic of how many days' worth of grain we had left.
One afternoon, Akram found me hunched over a map of the city's aqueducts, tracing their paths with a charcoal stick. He didn't speak, simply placed a cup of chilled wine on the table beside me.
"You look like Father when he's counting his gold," he said, his tone lacking its usual mocking edge.
"I'm counting lives," I replied, not looking up.
He was silent for a long moment. "I saw them," he said quietly. "The boards. In the market square." He traced the rim of the wine cup with his finger. "It is an elegant system. Simple. Difficult to corrupt." He looked at me, his eyes for once clear of their usual bored detachment. "Be careful, Aliya. Kareem is a fool, but he is a suspicious fool. And Father… Father is building his own tomb. He will gladly bury us all in it with him."