Thank you for the terrific reviews of: lilymoore,TL G-Wooster, Bickazer and mikedb1492. Small changes have been made to the story - the little ones. But all your suggestions are tucked away in a separate folder, and will most certainly influence the bigger picture. Please PM me with links to what is to be reviewed if you haven't already!  

Also: Part B is up.  

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The summons from the Kalagat came in the middle of the morning, sun peeking from behind clouds. But much like an owl seeking out her prey in complete darkness, so Lady Arianna Isina swooped down onto the unfortunate messenger. She took in every detail of his unsatisfactory appearance – dusty apparel, more than a whiff of horse and human sweat. With a haughty raise of an eyebrow she acknowledged his stammering explanation that the letter was to be delivered to her hands, and hers only; then she sent him on his way. Only when he left did she fall limply to her armchair, one hand clutching the missive with a drowning man’s last grip, the other pressed against her forehead.  

Two girls watched the proceedings with slightly dazed expressions at this extraordinary disruption of routine. Nor was it the first. Another such messenger had arrived barely a fortnight ago, stating that Her Imperial Highness was to learn to speak Meriadossan, write Meriadossan and dance Meriadossan dances: that she would marry a Meriadossan prince. Now, needles poised in hand, they looked at each other every bit as incredulously as earlier. Hastavat Castle, it had seemed, was at the very end of the world – but that was before the messengers, three physicians tasked with examining the health of Her Imperial Highness and a painter commissioned to paint her in the best possible light.  

“Rinnie!” shrieked the elder of the two, recovering first. Looking up from a messy array of lopsided stitching, Her Imperial Highness Anat Halan Palealias pushed it off her lap, scrambled to her feet and attempted to pry the letter from her governess’s hands. “Let me see, Rinnie, oh do let me see! Is it the Kalagat? It’s the Kalagat, isn’t it? Oh-”  

“Mother?” asked the other girl hesitantly. Isabal leaned forward only slightly, but hands clutching the arms of her chair were white.  

“Rinnie!” screamed Anat.  

A stricken expression continued to paint Rinnie’s face, but she collected herself quickly. With a sharp, authoritative voice she commanded Her Imperial Highness to settle down, told both girls there would have to be silence for her to ever read the letter, and that in the meantime they should return to their needlework if they did not wish to continue embroidering until supper.  

They complied, Isabal with silent resignation and a sullen look from Anat, hiding a flicker of something other than defiance of a ten year old child ordered to do something she would rather not. In clear blue eyes there was fear, panic as she stared at the letter as if it contained the very mystery of existence, as if it held all possible answers – why the sky was blue, the grass green. And it did, she knew it did: it would answer whether she would marry and go overseas or not, if she could see Nikalas and live at the Kalagat or stay here at Hastavat and go nowhere at all. Her whole future was in that letter, and she thought she might faint.  

“What if it says – what if it says …” Her voice broke. “… that I can’t – cannot go…” She grabbed Isabal’s hand and held on so strongly that the latter winced in pain. Without thinking Anat mirrored her governess, raising the other to her forehead – little shimmering droplets of sweat appeared on her skin, and blood rushed to her cheeks. “I’ll die, Rinnie, surely I’ll die!”  

The governess looked into starved eyes, hungry eyes, desperately seeking any for the slightest sign that she was wanted at her father’s court. Rinnie had assumed the post over two years ago, after the death of her husband, and was the closest thing to family Anat had – two years also marked the last time Anat had seen either the Emperor or her brother, before she had been moved to Hastavat Castle suddenly and abruptly. Two years, two years of walking through the gallery times counted in hundreds. So many months of gazing at portraits, never touching, living on memories and then dreams when those first began to slip away.  

And then Rinnie looked at her eight year old daughter, who was old enough to understand her situation and understand what summons to the Kalagat would mean – that she, Isabal, would have to stay at Hastavat Castle while her mother went with Her Imperial Highness. Two little girls, each wishing, praying for something completely different with all their heart: one letter. Lady Arianna Isinas broke the seal, read a dispatch made up of scarcely three sentences and said,  

“His Imperial Majesty, may he live forever, wishes for his daughter to attend him in a month’s time.”  

A stunned silence. Then Anat let out a little cry of joy and jumped to her feet. “Will Nikalas be there, Rinnie, do you think?” Her smile, at first small and insecure before Rinnie spoke the magical words, became larger and larger, and cheeks flushed with happiness. Her next words were spoken in a rush; when left breathless, she sucked in air audibly and continued as rapidly as she began. “How long shall we stay? Did His Imperial Majesty, may he live forever and ever - did he really say that he wishes for me to attend him? Did he say he wants to see me, really? Did he write the letter? Should I write back? Oh Rinnie!”  

“Your brother will most certainly be there, as will you sister.” Out of the corner of her eye, Rinnie saw her daughter flinch as if struck, crumpling within herself. “The letter was not written by His Imperial Majesty’s hand, may he live forever-” now Anat’s smile wavered slightly, but did not disappear “- although those are his express wishes. Your Imperial Highness will most certainly write back.”  

“Oh, Rinnie!” Anat repeated in a voice full of wonder. She looked at Isabal, whose hand she was still holding, and let go. “Rinnie, may I be excused?” Her Imperial Highness was glowing, restless as she twirled on her foot and ready to burst.  

“One daughter?” Isabal asked calmly when Anat left. Her hands were folded neatly on her lap, and she did not move when her mother hugged her. Their tears mixed together, cheek against cheek, and Rinnie nodded with a heavy heart.  

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Disclaimer: Reviews will be returned within the Fiction forums.  

PART B  

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Over the next month, arrangements for the move to the Kalagat were being made. Servants scurried to and fro, packing and repacking in the final stages, and in the meantime Her Imperial Highness went from one extreme to the other: laughing out in sheer joy, then bursting into tears, saying she won’t be allowed to go anywhere again, like last time, and the time before that. Dipping into the more miserable moods she would hide in her chambers and refuse to go out for hours at a time, rejecting food and wailing and crying that she wasn’t as smart as Isabal, or as beautiful, and that the Emperor, may he live forever and ever, will not like or love her, and that surely she would be sent back to Hastavat Castle. She would respond neither to Rinnie’s soothing or Isabal’s unusually decisive counterarguments, only to suddenly leave her rooms with an off-key song on her lips, laughing at nothing at all.  

Anat would then plunge into a joyous mood, chattering constantly, telling everyone who would listen – housemaids, the horsemaster, Rinnie, Cook – that she would be dancing before His Imperial Majesty and the Meriadosssan ambassador, that she would meet her brother, who looked like Nav the stable boy, but who was, of course, His Imperial Highness, not a stable boy. Jumping from one leg to the other, in an excited voice she would explain the splendors of the Kalagat, distant memories of towers reaching the sky and walls as thick as she was high. And they listened to her, the servants of Hastavat Castle, with a certain loving indulgence that manifested itself in sweetcakes in the kitchen and smiles in the hallways for liquid gold impossible to remain at odds with – until fits of hysterics could be heard down those same halls, yells that a maid had put her paintbrush in the bedroom and not the sitting room.  

But whatever feelings inspired the Hastavat household to look upon their little lady with a half-closed eye, no matter what she mischief she might have been up to, much to Anat’s distress had clearly ceased doing so to Lady Arianna Isina. The governess was determined to educate her resisting pupil, having woken one night with visions of horror: dismissal because of her failures, without means of supporting Isabal or herself.  

The thought was enough to reach for her smelling salts, and with owls hooting about, Rinnie wondered grimly how Anat was to speak a second tongue when she barely knew how to read and write in one. It was not so much a question of lack of intelligence, the governess reflected woefully, but of a flightiness, an inability to concentrate on one subject for more than a few minutes. No amount of threats or cajoling could change that. Even her marriage prospects, a distant Meriadossan prince, was reduced to just that – distant, then absent after the initial excitement.  

And so letters, scribbled down in a hasty and reluctant hand, products of horrible suffering and anguish, left parchment splotched and full of crossed out and misspelled words – in a last desperate attempt Anat had been given a diary, which promptly disappeared and was not to be seen again. Sums were not much better, Her Imperial Highness declaring a dreadful headache at the very sight of them, or with a sweet smile coaxing Isabal to do them for her.  

Those same feelings of lenience cultivated by everyone else most certainly did not stir Rinnie to release her young charge from the hardships of lessons. But end them Anat would, whether it be by sending Rinnie into vapors with her sullenness or sweet-talk her into postponing whatever they were to do, leaving herself free in pursuit of more leisurely activities, such as painting or music-making, or, as was often the case, begging a few more dancing lessons from Master Nevis.  

“Charmed, charmed by you will be all, charmed, Highness my Imperial!” the small Meriadossan man would declare on numerous occasions, corpulent and fleshy but graceful as a swan when accompanied by music. Anat learned to love that elegance, the knowledge that when she danced, she was not walking but gliding, flying. In between she listened to his raptures about Meriadossa, of wonderful gilded buildings, golden gates, courtiers like painted butterflies in so stunning a court, to which Anat nodded, deep inside thinking that it was nothing, nothing compared to the Kalagat. But not wanting to hurt his feelings she nodded again and laughed, listening to more stories of glittering balls, beautiful ladies and full of gallantry gentlemen.  

Nevis succeeded where Rinnie had failed so miserably: he taught Anat Meriadossan if not Imperial history, details snuck in through tales of fantastic battles and dashing princes. And so Anat learned of nobles and their coat-of-arms, and who was who and what rank they held, and of the reigning King Isander, who succeeded to the throne at the tender age of sixteen, the same King Isander who made Meriadossa great.  

“And the King Isander, a brother he had, by all called the Loyal, and his name was Cadeirn. And this Cadeirn, he married the West Marchia-”  

“What?” Anat asked. It was late afternoon and she had escaped Rinnie, as she had done countless times before. She had also fled from Priest, a boring old man who in a quivering voice continuously warned her of Meriadossan heretics. “What?” Anat repeated, defiantly daring the governess to make her say ‘please’.  

“Cadeirn the Loyal married Arissa of West Marchia, which he ruled until Arissa’s brother was old enough to do so,” snapped Lady Arianna Isina, feathers ruffled at this abduction of power by a mere dance master, a foreigner at that, but in raptures that Anat was learning something, anything at all. “West Marchia is the greatest and unruliest of Meriadossan provinces, and claiming a monopoly on trade with the Empire due to its west-most position-”  

“Rinnie! Rinnie, stop it at once! I am not having lessons!” Her Imperial Highness sighed emphatically. “Master Nevis, my governess is so very sorry for interrupting. Do go on.”  

And Master Nevis would, spinning his stories of the magnificent Meriadossa, its ripe citrus fruits growing in beautiful orchards, a land always under the shining sun. He stopped short only of teaching Anat Meriadossan - that she would not suffer through, and finally, after many hours of dancing and storytelling, the dance master asked, “Would Her Imperial Highness like to hear about the Ten Years’ War?”  

“Absolutely not!” cried Rinnie, gathering herself to full height. So ensued war none less epic than the ones woven by history itself, watched by Anat with wide, awe-filled eyes and slightly parted lips, until scolded by Rinnie for such unladylike behavior between the governess’s icy orations to the dance master. Threats of expulsion from Hastavat Castle sounded on both sides, a high-pitched, shrill female voice battling crippled Imperial. But then letters were produced, and Rinnie’s hawkish features reddened and then paled at the magic of the Emperor’s signature alongside words that cast in stone her defeat: “… chosen by Meriadossan ambassador… full support… to teach Her Imperial Highness Anat Halan..”.  

“… a great ball there was, and much there was merrymaking. In attendance was Cadeirn the Loyal and his wife was, and was the new Duke of West Marchia, and was Isander’s two sons, princes most great and heirs to Meriadossa…” Master Nevis paused as tension mounted.  

“Oh, Master Nevis! Do tell what happened! Do tell!” Anat hesitated, then added, “Not if it distresses you, no, but-” She looked imploringly at Rinnie, seeing her incensed expression, pursed white lips, not wanting the governess to interrupt. But Rinnie had been defeated utterly and completely, it seemed. Her rigid back never touched that of her chair, and hands were clenched together on her lap, shaking with strain. Two or three wisps of black hair escaped the usually sleek bun at the back of her head.  

“They were murdered, all.”  

Anat gasped. Even Isabal, who was embroidering on the window seat, always present yet never speaking or dancing, looked up. Only Lady Arianna Isina regarded feigned tears with cold contempt, but kept her silence as the lines on her forehead deepened.  

“The King Isander searched his kingdom wide and far, and he was much heartbroken, until at last-” he paused theatrically once more, and Anat squirmed in her seat, biting her lips to blood in anxiousness, eyes wide and breath held, “until at last, the responsible man was found. Imilian Valkarad.” Triumph on the last two words, pudgy fingers stretching out toward the fire.  

And then Rinnie broke; she snorted, a rare occurrence. “An unreasonable war is ending, began by the caprice of a fool who did not know where to place the blame of a tragedy. It is ending because lands on the other side of Meriadossa are threatening war with it, demanding times of open trade routes with the Empire once more. Enough.” Steel entered Lady Arianna Isina’s voice. Conscience had won with survival instincts. She stood up, gathering her skirts about her, curtly motioning to the girls to do the same. “There will be no more dancing lessons.”  

**  

Such was the atmosphere in Hastavat Castle over the rapidly passing month, until at last one crisp morning found its inhabitants out on the stone courtyard. There was much crying and weeping on behalf of both those departing and staying; only Isabal looked down upon the scene from her bedroom window, having refused to say farewell. Her mother’s face was impassive – she ushered Her Imperial Highness away from the carriage that was to carry their luggage to the passenger one.  

Anat’s small face peeked out behind the curtain before retreating back into the carriage’s murky depths when the last stones of Hastavat Castle disappeared from view. She wept violently, caught between sorrow and the thrill of adventure, perhaps feeling instinctively that this was the last time she had seen Hastavat or Isabal, or any other of its inhabitants.  

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Right. There's a reference to Rinnie's appearance, and Nevis's, but not Anat's - I'm still working on that, trying to merge it with [1]. Priest reference, so generally religion, is still an, ah, open question.