Page 20 of The Impossible Princess
He gives a short laugh, watching me eat. “Military. Long before Napoleon marched through Sondmark and back out again. Army, then. Navy now.”
“Your father?”
“Oh, Dad’s an insurance salesman,” he answers, smiling as I drag a potato through this heavenly sauce.
“Much more comfortable for your mother.”
He touches the tip of his nose. “I think that’s why she picked him. Your brother served?” he asks, and this time I don’t tense up or wonder what he’s heard.
“Army. He served in Cherkout but he doesn’t talk about it much.” And that is an understatement. If Freja has unusually good boundaries within the family, Noah has an entire border wall. “The logistics it took to make sure he could serve with his unit as an ordinary soldier…” I spread my hands. “The press hasn’t forgiven us for being so tight-lipped about it. Since he turned thirty, Her Maj—my mother,” I correct but it’s too late to head off his grin, “had him scale back his military work and has been having him do more work for The Shop.”
Max takes my plate and stacks it with his by the sink. He grabs me another berrybeer (which is delicious, I am annoyed to find—nothing good ought to come from Vorburg) and leads me to the couch where I scoop up the pillow and sit with it on my lap.
I am not at all comfortable. My stomach is full and there are butterflies in any empty space. I wonder if there is anything in my teeth. But I am loving every second of this.
He settles on the other end of the sofa, crossing his feet and setting them on the coffee table, heedless of provenance, age, or the dead master artisan who created it.
“The Shop?” he prods me back to our conversation.
I smile. “The family business. That’s what Ella calls it. She says living in the palace where we host official engagements isn’t so different from living above a shop.”
“She’s the one you’re closest to,” he guesses and I tap my finger on the tip of my nose.
His eyes crinkle in appreciation. “And how do you like the family business?”
I get asked this a fair amount. People are curious, wondering if I’m like an elephant bred in captivity and oblivious to the tourists tapping against the glass. They think I’ll tell them what it’s really like. It’s rare that I do.
I sit up very erect and say in a careful and cultivated voice, so at odds with our easy banter, “It has its challenges, certainly, but I am proud to carry on the royal legacy of service and sacrifice for my country.” I slump back against the couch with a grin. “That’s what I say if any cameras are pointed at me. The truth is a little more nuanced.”
“Try me.”
“King Frederick VI once beheaded an entire town of recusants—and, statistically, probably a few Protestants. The legacy hasn’t always been one of self-sacrifice.”
He chuckles. “Why sacrifice yourself when you can make some other poor bastard sacrifice himself?”
“Practically Frederick VI’s motto.”
He touches his forehead and begins mumbling. I catch on after a few beats and we recite the rhyme together.
Harald Dragonslayer, he was first
Then Fredericks one through five
Louis the Squat, we stopped at one,
Malthe came next, contrive
Two more Malthes, that’s enough
Frederich the Wary was next
Freddy VI made up for that
Papists made him vexed…
We laughed our way through it, finishing it with:
Magda’s son, he wed a cow
