Kingdom in The Sand

The Caged Bird

Mercilessly, as much as Zaydan fussed, one of his men dragged him away to attend business in the main palace, leaving Marie-Fey to go back to her rooms and collapse onto her seat out on the balcony, pressing a hand to her forehead and accepting the cool drink Maanah brought out to her.

"This is going to be a long visit," she muttered.

"I'm sure he won't spend much time with us here," Maanah said as Gharam stepped out to join them.

"Maybe it might be an idea to open some of the gifts though, so he has no reason persist," Gharam suggested and Marie-Fey shot her an annoyed glared, though stood up because it was a decent enough point.

She swept into the room and walked toward the mountain of gifts that were piled in the corner of the main room.

She eyed the various items of jewelled boxes, golden papers and shimmering ribbon, before reaching for the smallest.

It was an envelope and Marie-Fey flipped open the flap, finding a length of string.

Confused, she pulled it and out slid a small disk, hung between two golden strings, at the top and bottom.

On one side of the disk was a songbird and when she turned it over, she saw was golden cage.

"How pretty," Gharam said, leaning forwards.

"What is it?" Maanah asked, tilting her head to the side, frowning.

"It's an illusion," Marie-Fey replied, his lips twisting.

"How so?"

Marie-Fey took the two strings in her fingers, holding the disk up, the strings held taut, then she began to roll the strings between her forefingers and thumbs. The movement caused the disk to spin as high speed and, as they watched, their eyes deceived them into no longer seeing a separate songbird and golden cage, but a caged bird.

"My!" Gharam cried, delighted, "Like magic!"

"To gullible eyes," Marie-Fey said, stopping the spinning and setting the disk aside.

Her ladies glanced at each other.

"I'm sure there's no meaning behind the gift," Gharam said quickly, "Just a pretty trinket."

"Indeed."

"How about another gift?" Maanah suggested.

"I think not. As suspected, I'm not interested in his gifts," Marie-Fey replied, turning and sweeping back out to the balcony and returning to her seat, taking a book out with her and settling in the shade, her ladies leaving her be as they got on with chores, setting the little token out of sight and, hopefully, out of mind.

The sun had set by the time Marie-Fey was roused from her reading.

"Lord Zaydan is here," Maanah said, looking out at her and Marie-Fey snapped her book closed with an annoyed flick of the eye.

"What does he want?" she asked.

"He can hear you," Zaydan called from somewhere inside her apartments and Marie-Fey's eye started twitching at the idea of the man weaselling his way into her private rooms.

He may own the palace, but these were her rooms and she was not his wife.

Slamming the book down on the table, she shot her to feet and Maanah caught her arms.

"Lord of the state, My Lady," she reminded her quickly, deep eyes locking on Marie-Fey's, waiting to see control return.

Marie-Fey looked up at her for a moment, then forcibly relaxed her muscles and Maanah released her, bowing in apology for grabbing her.