Outside, Rabert addressed the fleeing Princess. "Your Highness, I need to assign you extra guards before you leave."
"Please don't.." Rose stopped, realizing her request would get the Captain in trouble. She was trying to coax the wrong man. Her anxious shoulders relaxed in resignation.
"Are there any guards that you would prefer?" Rabert hoped to soften the blow. He also learned that giving the princess some say in her father's orders made her more likely to follow them.
The girl thought for a moment. "What about the two who searched my room with you last night? Would you recommend them?"
"I would, Your Highness. You will not find better." The Captain trusted Philip and Cole with his life, and he had already planned to put at least one of them on the detail. He motioned to one of the other soldiers by the door and gave him instructions to fetch Cole, Philip and a dozen other guards. Rose's eyes grew wide at the number of names on the list.
"You are creating a wall of people around me, Captain!" she cried.
"That is the idea, though you can have most of them stay by the door of wherever you go inside the palace," he added the last part as an afterthought. Many rooms were not big enough to accommodate so many. "But I plead with you to keep someone with you at all times."
"Am I to be the new attraction at the village carnival to be stared and gawked at?!" The princess had been to such a fair with the king once when she was younger.
Rose remembered seeing many strange and wonderful sights. Back then, the king had been far more lax toward security and did not have the deep lines of worry that he now carried. It seemed the more she aged, the deeper the king's wrinkles burrowed and the whiter his hair became.
"Don't shoot the messenger," Rabert bowed. "My orders are to protect you."
Inhaling deeply through her nose, the princess conceded defeat. The longer she argued with the Captain, the more he would have to dig in his heels and possibly get the king involved. She would find other ways to make this new arrangement tolerable for the time being.
When things cooled down in a day or two, she would find a time to ask her father to remove the new restrictions. Of course, she would need to wait until he was in a good mood. Hopefully that would be enough to sway him to see that he was being too protective.
"Captain Rabert," a servant whispered as he peeked out of the king's chambers. "Commander Borit has decided that he would like to rest for the day. His Majesty would like you to take over the commander's seat so that he can discuss the reports further."
"I will be there right away, thank you." Rabert gave a short nod. "Your detail is arriving, Your Highness," he motioned to the approaching soldiers. "May I present Cole and Philip. They will take care of your protective detail. Now, I must go join His Majesty. Commander Borit needs to rest."
"Make sure you hurry," the princess said politely, though her tone reeked of sarcasm.
Rabert understood. Unless the Commander was truly in enough pain to head to his quarters, he would be quite interested in wherever the princess was going. "I will do my best," the captain answered.
While he turned slowly on his heel to enter the king's chambers, Rose exited expeditiously. "Come on, my shadows," she mumbled, hurrying down the hall. The princess would avoid getting cornered by the commander at all cost.
While with the king, Rose pushed aside her feelings for Borit. If she had thought about Silver's claims, she would have had difficulty being civil to the commander. Though she had no idea if the claims were even true.
Borit was a hard man and he made her uncomfortable. But that did not mean he was a murderer, did it? He had probably killed a man or two while protecting and serving the crown, but that was certainly not the same.
Yet she could not dismiss the stranger's words. He was a Guardian and, unlike Borit, she instinctively trusted him. Part of her wanted to blame the Fates for that trust, since they seemed to trust him as well. However, she had trusted him before she knew his identity, so she was only fooling herself.
Rose needed to know the truth. She needed to know what had happened. "That is why we are heading to the library," the princess said aloud.
"Excuse me, Your Majesty? Did you need something?" the soldier nearest to her asked politely. He had light brown hair to his shoulders that was pulled into a low ponytail. He was thin but muscular, and there was a kind intelligence in his eyes. The soldier was one of the two that Rabert had introduced, but she could not remember which one.
"I just said that we are heading to the library," the princess answered.
At her words, another of the soldiers rushed forward ahead of the group, his short dark hair suddenly blurred in Rose's peripheral vision before she knew what was happening.
The woman traced the soldier's path with her eyes. "Where is he going?"
"To clear a path to the library," the man with the ponytail answered. "Philip will ensure that we will not encounter any difficulty."
'So that was Philip and this must be Cole. The one with the lighter hair has the darker name,' she thought, reminding herself of the dark coal that was sometimes mined from the mountains.
It was a long walk from her father's quarters to the library, which was on the opposite corner of the keep and two levels down from the King's lofty suite. A thousand thoughts had run through the girl's head as before she finally reached her destination, so many that she barely knew what to believe any more. Her mind wavered between reason and intuition.
Reason stated that surely Borit was not capable of such atrocities, yet her intuition said otherwise. The two pulled and pushed against her mind, tugging her in two. 'Just wait until you can see what you find...' she dismissed both of the warring factions.
"Your Highness?" the dark haired soldier, Philip, bowed as they reached the library door. "Everything is secure.
"Thank you Philip," Rose answered. "I am grateful for your service. You all may wait out here while I spend some time in the world of books."
"Very good, Your Highness, except..." Philip paused, his serious brow knit in concentration. "Who would you like to escort inside the library?"
Rose remembered Rabert's request that she not be alone. It was best to oblige. "Cole may join me."
She strode forward, and the shocked fair-haired soldier barely had time to react. Philip glared at his comrade's sluggishness, but was too busy stationing the other men at each entrance to actually comment.
With Cole a step behind the woman, the pair entered the home of human knowledge.
The library was not one room, but many, each filled with books and resources on most every topic known to man. Some of these books were nearly as old as time itself, or so it seemed to the princess. She had spent many an hour here to escape the daily routine of palace life and dive into an epic myth or legend.
Rose particularly enjoyed the tales of an Empress long ago. What great quests that powerful woman had completed with her cohort of amazing characters! Reading the stories as a child, the princess had been inspired to go on great adventures of her own. Yet, as she grew older, Rose realized that if any of the tales were in fact true, then they must have been greatly exaggerated. True or not, they held a special place in her heart and imagination.
Looking for a little heavier reading, the princess sought out help in her self-appointed quest. Seeing Rose, the scholar's apprentices scattered, looking for their boss to help the royal with her request.
Very soon, the librarian appeared in a long flowing black robe, the typical garb of a scholar. She had her hair tied up neatly and wore strange round panes of glass around her eyes that were said to help her vision. A female who could read was uncommon and one who had risen to the level of scholar was nearly unheard of. But thanks to the influence of his only daughter, King Rhodri could recognize talent in either gender, and had appointed the librarian to her post a few years prior.
In a combination of a bow and curtsy, for her robes would not allow much else, the librarian acknowledged the princess. "Your Highness," she said formally, "how may I be of assistance to you?"
"Good morning, Mistress," Rose gave the scholar's formal title in return, "I am in need of the historical records of the past twenty years."
On the way over, Rose had decided to begin her investigation by seeing if there were any accounts that supported Silver's claims that Borit had killed his parents or destroyed his village.
In that line of reasoning, she decided to start looking at the records from when Borit was a young man. It would be much easier to hide those kind of crimes either before he was a well-known soldier or after he was well established. By the way Silver had told her the information so calmly, her guess was that a considerable amount of time must have passed.
The librarian's eyebrows creased, but she swallowed her obvious question. "I will take you to the records room, Your Highness. Follow me," she answered politely.
"You cannot bring the reports here?" Rose asked.
The mistress allowed a ghost of a smile. "No, Your Highness, I am afraid I cannot carry quite that much."
Rose nodded, though she was slightly disappointed. She had hoped to take the documents with her and peruse them in her room. If the librarian could not carry them, neither could she.
"Then please, lead the way." And that is how the princess began the second long walk that day.