Surprise colored Rosalind’s face, but she quickly recovered. “I don’t go back on my word.”
Come to think of it, Sol was surrounded by beauties, both human and not. A little girl doing something at odds with her appearance wouldn’t be all that effective at sparking his interest, especially when all the legendary monsters, whose human forms happened to be those of young girls, already fit the bill in more significant fashion.
Still grinning, Sol said, “Well, Queen Rosalind, how do you feel about joining the Libertadores, then?”
For the first time during this conversation, Rosalind’s mask slipped. “Um...come again?”
What Sol was offering so casually was a position of absolute power that everyone else in the ruling class would give anything to obtain. At the dawn of his new world order, someone with astronomically good luck and outstanding character might have been able to get in with ease, but now, one could not even dream of it without being able to offer something truly worthy of the honor. Even if Sol wanted to grant it on a whim, those who had earned his trust would surely rush to stop him.
When Rosalind had posed her question, the most she had hoped for was a nomination for Sol’s rear palace or to be named assistant to Frederica in her public duties. She was confident that she could make a convincing enough case for either position, and playing coy had been step one in getting there. Even if she wasn’t acknowledged here and now, the ace up her sleeve would carry her to wherever she wanted. But if it wasn’t hidden in her sleeve...
“Did you...already know?” Rosalind asked with trepidation.
Sol’s expression was a blend of apologetic and impressed. To keep the Svendbanians from hearing, he used the window system to whisper directly into Rosalind’s ear. “I’m sorry. There was a copy of a confidential record from the Crystanian royal family in Biblioteca, and it had an illustration. I only half believed it until seeing it in person. Blue Water is quite the artifact indeed.”
The young Rosalind was so embarrassed that she flushed red all the way to her earlobes and writhed. Part of it was due to the whispering directly into her ear, but to what extent was a secret. Unsurprisingly, her body was more reactive to her than to Blue Water, the royal treasure also called Ruler’s Wisdom.
With effort, those within said, as themselves, “You’re not a very nice person.” For the first time in a long while, they were also so mortified that it showed. The crimson flashes running through the jet-black circlet atop Rosalind’s ashy silver hair was practically a light show.
How much Rosalind’s comment was referring to Sol hiding the fact that he knew about Blue Water versus him whispering into the ear of a very young child was also a secret. Despite being an era-spanning aggregate of wisdom, the “we” residing within Ruler’s Wisdom had no way of knowing that Sol hadn’t the faintest idea how to play such complicated mind games.
Although the Svendbanians could tell Sol and Rosalind were suddenly communicating through a whole other method, they had no clue how it worked, even though it was happening right before their eyes.