The reply to Lord Vane took about ten minutes to write, which was appropriate given that it did not need to be long.
To Lord Cassian Vane,
Thank you for your understanding. I will admit I was not entirely certain how the letter would be received, so I am glad it landed as intended. The Vane household's graciousness in this matter is noted and genuinely appreciated.
Three years will pass quickly enough. I look forward to the occasion when it arrives.
Please give my continued regards to Lady Morwenna and to Lyra.
Noctis Valerius Azor
He sealed it, handed it to Maren for the courier, and went to find breakfast. He had been at his desk since before the kitchen had properly started, which meant the bread was fresh but the eggs were not ready yet and he had to wait. He did not mind. He was in no particular hurry.
His mother found him in the dining room while he was still working through the eggs.
She sat down across from him, which was always a sign she had something to say rather than just passing through. She poured herself tea, straightened the cup on its saucer with the small precise adjustment she always made, and looked at him.
"We're going to the capital," she said.
He looked up from his plate. "When."
"End of the week. I've already sent word to Sigurd. Isolde is in her first trimester and I want to be there. She is far from her own family and a first pregnancy in a court you've just married into is not a small thing to navigate alone."
"How long will you stay."
"As long as she needs me. Months, possibly." She held the cup in both hands. "You'll come with me to the capital. Congratulate your brother properly, spend a few days, and then you can come home."
"You don't need me to stay."
"No. But showing up matters. You haven't been to the capital since Sigurd's coronation and that was two years ago. People notice absences."
He finished his eggs. She had a point and they both knew it, which was why he did not argue. In a court environment, not showing up for things was itself a statement, and he had no interest in making any statements about his relationship with his brother that were not accurate.
"End of the week," he said. "I'll be ready."
She nodded, drank her tea, and moved on to whatever was next on her morning. Noctis pushed his plate aside and started thinking about what needed to be done before he left.
* * *
The journey to the capital took four days by road. They traveled with eight guards, two of Elara's personal attendants, and enough luggage for a stay of several months on his mother's part, which meant the pace was steady rather than quick. The roads between the estate and Valdris, the imperial capital, were well maintained for most of the route and the weather held. It was not an uncomfortable journey. It was just long.
Noctis spent most of it on horseback rather than in the carriage, partly because four days in a carriage was worse than four days riding and partly because the road gave him time to think without anyone expecting anything from him. He checked the group chat each evening from whatever inn or waystation they stopped at, which had become habit enough that he did not really think about it anymore. Hestia was in the middle of a minor crisis about Bell attempting something she considered above his current level. Gojo had sent three more pictures of his students, including one of Inumaki looking profoundly tired that Kakashi had described as relatable, which was the most Noctis had seen Kakashi say about his own internal state in the time he had been in the group.
He told the group he was traveling to the capital. Hestia asked how far it was. He told her four days by road. She said that seemed very far and asked if he was alright. He said he was fine, it was just a visit. Gojo said medieval road trips sounded miserable. Noctis did not disagree.
Valdris appeared on the morning of the fourth day, first as a smudge on the horizon and then as something more specific. It was built on a rise in the land, the older parts of the city on the higher ground and the newer districts spreading down and outward from there over the last century of expansion. The imperial palace sat at the highest point, visible from several miles out, its towers catching the morning light. Noctis had grown up making occasional visits here as a child and had attended his brother's coronation two years ago. It was familiar in the distant way of places you knew without having spent much continuous time in.
They were met at the city gates by a small escort, six palace guards in formal livery who fell in alongside them without ceremony and guided them through the city streets. Valdris was busy in the way capital cities were always busy, people and carts and noise in the kind of sustained volume that you stopped hearing individually and started hearing as a single undifferentiated sound. After four days of road quiet it was a lot.
The palace received them with appropriate formality. Rooms had been prepared. A schedule had been arranged. Noctis was informed, politely and with the smooth efficiency of palace staff who had been doing this for years, that the king would receive them in the council chamber in the afternoon, and that Lady Elara had a private audience with the queen arranged for the following morning.
He unpacked what he needed, washed off four days of road, and spent the remaining hours before the afternoon audience trying to remember which council members he was supposed to know by name and which ones he could get away with a polite nod.
* * *
The council chamber was a long room with high windows and a table that sat twenty. About half of those seats were occupied when Noctis and Elara were shown in. The council members stood as they entered, which was the correct protocol when the previous queen and a member of the royal family were present. Noctis acknowledged it with the kind of measured nod he had learned as a child and that still felt slightly unnatural to produce.
Sigurd was at the head of the table.
He was seven years older than Noctis, which meant he was twenty-five, and he looked it in the way that the last two years of kingship had added something to his face that had not been there before. Not age exactly, more like the particular quality of someone who had spent a sustained period being responsible for things larger than themselves. He was dressed formally, as he always was in the council chamber, and he had their father's way of occupying a room without appearing to try.
He stood when they entered, which he did not have to do and which was a gesture that the council noticed.
"Mother," he said, and there was genuine warmth in it even framed in the formality of the room. "Noctis. Welcome to Valdris. We're glad you've made the journey."
"The occasion warranted it," Elara said. She crossed to him and he took her hands, which was as close to informal as the room was going to get.
Noctis inclined his head. "Congratulations, your Majesty. On behalf of myself and the household."
"Thank you." Sigurd's eyes held his for a moment in the way that meant he had registered the letter Noctis had sent and they would talk about it properly later. "The council was just discussing the supply logistics for the northern garrison reinforcement. Since you're here, your perspective on estate resource capacity in the region would be useful, Noctis, if you're willing."
It was smoothly done. An invitation that was also a way of including him in the room without making it a formal summons. Noctis took the indicated seat and spent the next hour listening to the council work through the practical problem of reinforcing a northern garrison line that had been running at minimum capacity for the last decade and now needed to be substantially enlarged in a short time.
He contributed where he could, which was less than some of the more experienced council members but more than nothing. He knew what the estates in his region could supply in terms of grain reserves and draft animals because he had been paying attention to that information for years out of general interest. It turned out to be relevant. One of the council members, an older man named Lord Parev who handled imperial logistics, asked him three specific questions about regional road conditions between the estate territories and the northern supply routes, and seemed genuinely satisfied with the answers.
The council session wrapped up in the late afternoon. Members filed out with the practiced efficiency of people who had other things scheduled. Sigurd exchanged brief words with Lord Parev and two others before they left. Elara had been in quiet conversation with the council's senior advisor, a woman named Lady Cress who had served in that position since before Sigurd took the throne.
When the room had cleared to just the family and two attendants standing at a discreet distance, Sigurd looked at Noctis with an expression that was noticeably less formal.
"Lord Parev will probably write to you," he said. "He does that when he finds someone whose regional knowledge is actually accurate."
"I'll write back," Noctis said.
Sigurd almost smiled. Almost was about as far as it went in this room. "Come to dinner tonight. Isolde wants to meet you properly."
* * *
Dinner was in Sigurd's private dining room rather than the great hall, which meant it was just the four of them, which was Noctis's strong preference. The great hall required a different kind of attention that he found tiring in sustained doses. The private dining room was small enough that the conversation could be actual conversation.
Isolde Valerius Azor was not what he had expected, which was his own fault for forming expectations based on secondhand accounts and one brief introduction at the wedding two years ago when he had been present for approximately four hours before finding a reason to leave early. She was twenty-two, dark-haired, with the kind of directness in her eyes that suggested she had opinions and was capable of keeping them to herself when necessary but preferred not to. She had grown up in the Thalassic family's western estate, which was a considerable distance from the capital, and she had been navigating the Valdris court for two years with what appeared to be competence, based on the fact that Elara had described her as capable and Elara did not use that word lightly.
She greeted Elara warmly. She greeted Noctis with a look that was openly curious.
"I've heard about the letter to Lord Vane," she said, before they had even sat down.
"Good things, I hope," Noctis said.
"Interesting things." She sat, arranging herself with the ease of someone who had made peace with the fact that formal dinners were just where she ate now. "The court has a few different opinions about it."
"They usually do."
"The older lords think you're being eccentric. The younger ones think you're making some kind of political statement about the Vane alliance. Neither of them has considered that you might just mean what the letter says."
"I just mean what the letter says."
"I know," she said. "Sigurd told me as much. He also said you would say exactly that whether it was true or not, because that's how you are."
Noctis looked at his brother. Sigurd was examining his wine glass with studied neutrality.
"That's fair," Noctis said.
Isolde looked satisfied. Elara, who had been watching this exchange with the expression of someone who had anticipated it, began asking Isolde about how she was feeling, which shifted the conversation to the pregnancy and away from court opinions, which Noctis was grateful for.
Isolde was forthcoming about it in a way he had not expected. She said the first weeks had been difficult, that she had been tired in a way that was different from normal tiredness and that the palace physicians had opinions about everything she ate, which she found manageable but mildly exhausting. She said Sigurd had been hovering, which she described as sweet and also occasionally too much. Sigurd did not deny this.
"You're feeling better now though," Elara said.
"The last week has been better, yes. The physicians say the worst of the early symptoms usually pass by the third month." She glanced at Elara. "Is that true from your experience."
"Broadly. Every pregnancy is different. With Sigurd I was exhausted for four months. With Noctis I was fine by the second." Elara paused. "Though Noctis was a more straightforward child in general, which I suspect started early."
"That's a compliment," Noctis said.
"It is," his mother agreed.
Sigurd set down his wine glass. "The border situation," he said, which was how he transitioned topics when he had been waiting to raise something. Noctis had noticed it at twelve years old and it had not changed.
"What about it," Noctis said.
"You received the notices. I imagine you've been thinking about it."
"I have. New leadership in the Confederacy making a statement, or the Varnek pushing a council they've spent forty years building influence in. Probably both." He kept it brief. Sigurd had advisors who had given him the same analysis in considerably more detail. "What does the council think."
"That we reinforce the northern line and wait to see if they advance. If they hold at Caldren, we open a channel through the treaty office and see what they want." Sigurd turned his glass in his hand. "Personally I think they'll hold. Taking the fort was a message, not an opening move."
"I think so too."
Sigurd looked at him. "You've been talking to someone about this."
It was not quite a question. Noctis held his brother's gaze for a moment. "I have a correspondence with someone who has military experience. Got a second perspective."
"Anyone I should know about."
"Not currently. Just someone with a useful way of looking at things."
Sigurd considered that for a moment, then nodded. He knew Noctis well enough to understand when he was being given what was available and when pushing would not produce more. "The reinforcement will take three to four weeks to be fully in place. Until then we hold where we are. I don't want to escalate without a clearer read on what they actually want."
"That seems right."
"If it does escalate," Sigurd said, and left it there.
"I know," Noctis said. "I'll be ready."
It was not a comfortable exchange. It was not supposed to be. They looked at each other across the table for a moment with the particular understanding of two people who had grown up in the same house and knew each other in the way that did not require sentiment to be real. Then Isolde asked Noctis something about the bicycle, because apparently Sigurd had mentioned it in a letter, and the dinner moved on.
"He said you were building something with wheels," she said. "He was vague about what it actually was."
"Two wheels, a frame, and a mechanism that lets you push yourself forward with your feet. No horse required."
She frowned slightly, working through the image. "That sounds like it would fall over."
"It will, repeatedly, until whoever is riding it learns to balance. That's part of it."
"Why is that preferable to a horse."
"Horses need feeding, watering, care. They get sick. They have opinions. This doesn't."
Isolde looked at him the way people looked at him when they were deciding whether to take what he said seriously. Then she looked at Sigurd.
"Is he always like this," she said.
"More or less," Sigurd said.
"I mean it as a compliment," she said, to Noctis. "Most people in this palace talk around things. You don't."
"It saves time," he said.
She raised her glass at him slightly, which he took as the toast it was intended to be.
They stayed at the table until the candles had burned down to their second thirds, which was longer than Noctis had expected and longer than he usually lasted at formal dinners. The conversation was not formal by the end of it. Isolde had opinions on court poetry that she expressed without softening, Elara had stories about the capital from thirty years ago that made Sigurd look mildly pained, and at one point Noctis found himself explaining to Isolde the basic rules of football well enough that she asked two follow up questions that suggested she actually understood it.
When they finally stood to leave, Isolde said goodnight to Elara and then looked at Noctis with an expression that was direct in the way he had already identified as characteristic.
"Come back when you can. Not just for occasions."
"I'll try," he said, and meant it more than he had expected to.
Sigurd walked them as far as the corridor and then stopped, as he always did when they were about to part, with the slightly unresolved look of someone who had more to say and had run out of time to say it.
"Thank you for coming," he said. It was simple. It was also what he meant.
"Of course," Noctis said.
He walked back to his rooms through corridors that were quiet and well-lit and thoroughly unfamiliar in the way of places he visited rather than lived. The palace was impressive the way capital palaces were supposed to be impressive. It was not home. He did not want it to be.
He had three more days here before the road back. That was enough.