At least kinda-sorta. At least chapter breaks for now. :) So, here is your dose of MaeNo excerpts from Chapter 2!

<i>I had expected to leave the capital directly, garbed in secrecy and good intentions, but nothing was farther from what really happened. Instead, day after day dragged by as my wardrobe was prepared, my identity as Anara the dressmaker created and recreated, and my needlework and swordsmanship pulled to shreds by craft masters and rebuilt from the ground upward.</i>
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“Your stitches are too slow, lady,” said the seamstress who had come in to instruct me in the finer arts of dressmaking. “Fine enough for embroidered pillows, but no dressmaker could afford to make seams as slowly as you do. Begging your Majesty’s pardon, of course.”

I waved the apology away and began to hem with determination that greatly surpassed my speed.

“Your technique is considerable, lady,” said the arms instructor who tutored me in dueling. “You have refinement and elegance, but you must learn creativity as well. You have to be able to go against someone who is not required to let you the upper hand.”

I laughed to cover my embarrassment and worked with renewed vigor at my thrusts and parries.

I fell into bed exhausted each night, often morose and questioning my own judgment. Joz’s face was continually before my weary eyelids, uncertainty tightening the lines around his mouth, reluctance in his dark eyes. “I don’t think it necessary that you should go.” And Toran’s, jaw set resolutely: “The Queen makes a wise suggestion.” I wondered how he felt about his words now that the preparations had dragged on a week and did not look likely to conclude before several more had passed by. Did he regret the chance he had given me?

Toran might, but I did not. I knew, even as I moved delicately about the palace to save muscles sore from too much swordplay – even as I squinted in the light, eyes sore from hours of careful stitching – I knew that I must prove myself, and I knew that this was my chance. The taint my father’s reign had left on my country was palpable and sickening. I had to do my part in cleansing it. Besides, I told myself, the situation in Seyant did not yet need immediate attention. It could wait for me to be ready.
At the beginning of the second week a messenger in the brown livery of Pasythe, the city nearest the N’resthas mountain pass, arrived at the palace with an announcement that promised still more delays.

“A delegation from King Hytharan of Arahathym requests permission to wait upon Your Majesty,” said the messenger, handing Geryr a scroll stamped with the red seal of the western country. “His Majesty’s ambassador goes to Periron to treat with the King. His caravan will pass through Alae’kiveth on the second day of Handar by the Aryan calendar. His Majesty’s ambassador will wait in Eralyf for your reply.” The browncoat gave the messenger’s bow, palms up, and stepped back.

I sighed, loud enough for only Geryr’s ears, and motioned for ink and paper. When I had come to the end of a brief note of acceptance I stamped it with the cumbersome seal my father had designed and gave it into the hands of the messenger.

“Tell Arahathym’s ambassador I would be honored to receive his company,” I said, unable to keep a hint of resignation from my voice. “I will expect him on the second day of Handar by the Aryan calendar.”

“Your Majesty,” said the messenger and – after bowing again to both Geryr and I – left the room.

“Well done,” said Geryr with a smile. “And Seyant will wait,” he added at my scowl. “It is your duty as ruler to entertain the King’s man, Mae. You did well.”

“Handar,” I moaned. Handar was the tenth month of the Aryan calendar, and still a full two weeks away. “I could almost travel to Seyant and back by the second day of Handar, Geryr.”

“Seyant will wait,” said Geryr again. I wanted to weep.

<here there's some stuff about Maea going to the market to buy fabric, yaddah yaddah, and Rynn tells her that she would look ridiculous if she took brand new dresses and tried to pass herself off as common, and Geryr says that no way should she wear linsey around the court, that she'll lose respect ...>

After the gowns had hung on the stitchers’ dummies for all of a week I found a balance. I began to leave the palace in the times I would not be missed – between the meetings of the council and the open court, or in the evening before the sun set completely and the bells rang for the late meal. I would slip through the gardener’s gate, dressed in Anara’s clothes with a small basket on my elbow and a wide-brimmed hat on my head, and walk through the markets of Alae’kiveth alone and unhindered. I enjoyed the freedom of anonymity. The dark linen gowns, the wide-brimmed hat let me wander with more independence than I had ever known – no one to question where I went, no one to bow to me, no one to demand an accounting. I liked it.

I went most often to the Kiveth market. The clamor and bustle delighted me after the cool, refined stillness of the palace. I took with me enough silver to buy an apple or a fig; sometimes I bought an orange, a rare commodity from faraway Orstyll that cost a small fortune in silver coins. I spoke to no one except the vendors who sold me their wares, and so no one except the vendors remembered my face or my voice. Wandering around the streets dressed as a stitcher might not have been the wisest ideas, but I was clever enough to know that making myself a memorable stitcher could be disastrous: it would have been extremely odd if anyone had recognized a wandering dressmaker in a royal parade.
The streets became my haven, an escape from the old memories and new threats that grew thicker and thicker in the palace corridors. Everywhere I walked I saw my father’s face or felt my mother’s touch, and the name of Alyessa Laranwyn was on the lips of everyone I spoke to. I began to wish that dressmaking truly was all I had to care for. Gowns on dummies
that could not confide or advise seemed infinitely easier to control than a country.

Toran was the only one who knew what I was doing.

“My Queen? Where are you going?” he had caught me at the gardener’s gate, one hand on the latch, the other grasping the straw hat. I was wearing a dress in dark navy with a creamy chemise underneath and cuts in the sleeves, my hair pulled simply and demurely back and loose to my waist. On the authority of the looking-glass in my dressing room, I knew that I looked nothing like myself.

I reddened, as chagrined as I had been when my father had found me drawing on his record-book at five. “Out” was all I could manage.

Toran gave me a long look, taking in the basket, the hat, the dark linen of the dress. “Alone?”

“To wear in the dress,” I said, and slipped through the gate. “Ask Rynn. And please, don’t tell Geryr.”

I left him standing inside the gardener’s gate, looking puzzled and speculative and poised to follow. Giving a quick wave of the hand, I turned and ran down the market road.
The market smelled of spices and autumn air, an exhilarating freshness that made me almost giddy. My basket, heavy with fruit from the large-lipped vendor I liked the best, bumped comfortably at my side: a symbol of this other person I had created. I had become comfortable as Anara, worn into the role as my dark dresses had been worn into use. I slipped easily now into the easy lilt of the street people, so different from the measured cadences of the nobility. As Anara I could forget, for awhile, who I was. As Anara I had nothing more complicated than a poorly-stitched hem to be responsible for.

“Would you buy a flower, miss?”

I gave a silver coin to the vendor, who looked even younger than I, and turned – and fell.

I had tripped over a cloak-hem, a familiar common style that my stitching tutor had set me to sew often as I practiced the art of dressmaking. The basket flew off my arm as I sprawled undaintily to the ground, landing squarely on one ankle, spilling apples into the dust and nearly tripping the flower girl – who looked on in wide-eyed fascination – as well.

“Deepest apologies,” said a voice at my ear. It was the wearer of the cloak: he was on his knees in the dust, rolling apples and figs back into my basket.

I swallowed my surprise and took the basket from him. “Thank you.” Shakily, I stood, wincing as my right ankle gave a weak twinge. The yellow flower in my hand was mashed and wilted and lined with dust from the fall; I sighed and let it, too, fall into the basket on my arm.

With a smile to the flower seller I took a step forward – and nearly fell again. The ankle that had taken the weight of my fall felt strange, lacking sensation, as if it were no longer quite connected to the rest of me at all. Something turned anxiously in the pit of my stomach; it was a long walk back to the palace, and I was entirely alone.
“Are you quite all right?” It was the man in the cloak again, solicitously at my elbow. His voice was unaccented and pleasantly even, tidier than the careless speech of most of the Kiveth marketgoers. A soldier or a merchant’s apprentice, perhaps: a step above the flower vendor with her bouquet.

“Entirely,” I lied politely, limping around to face him.

He gave a deferential nod and stepped away. Drawing a deep breath and gritting my teeth in concentration, I took ten careful steps forward on the road that would lead me to the palace. After ten steps, I stopped: my ankle had begun to throb painfully, sending shoots of fire I could not ignore through my leg. I considered, briefly, fainting from the pain, and decided against it. There was no Queen’s Guard to catch me if I fell.

Laboriously, I stepped forward again, sucking air in sharply through my teeth at the lancing pain that was growing more pronounced with every foot I limped. I choked back a sob of frustration. I could not afford to make a spectacle of myself in the Kiveth market. I could not afford to be remembered.

“Excuse me.” It was, once more, the owner of the hem that had caused my fall. No hint of a smile played on his solemnly set lips, but amusement twinkled in his dark eyes. I seethed. I was not used to being laughed at. “Would you allow me to escort you somewhere, please? I would consider it a great honor, and had hoped that you might think of it as a sincere apology. I was unspeakably clumsy, and I fear it is you who have suffered by my lack of grace.” The words were courtly and polite: he was probably a foot soldier, then, and one who took enough care of speech to sound genteel.

“Thank you,” I said. Pride would not do; I would never make it back before nightfall if I did not accept his offer, and if I did not make it back before nightfall Geryr would turn the city upside down in search of me. Neither alternative appealed to me. I chose the lesser of horrors, and let him take my arm.

“Where may I take you?” I did not know where to tell him to go. To demand he escort me to the royal palace would be absurd, but I did not trust myself to go far on my own.
“Karyna’s pond,” I said at last. It was a reflection pool only a short walk from the palace, one that my father had loved and named for his mother. I had spent long afternoons there often as a child, and felt confident that from there I could return unescorted but safe.

If my companion found the destination an odd one, he did not comment. “Of course,” was all he said.

We walked in silence to the market’s edge, I leaning more and more heavily on his offered arm as the pain in my ankle became fiercer and more pronounced.

“May I ask your name?” he asked when we had passed the last market stall, and the bustle and overwhelm of senses of the market was exchanged for the quieter refinement of Norethyl’s main street.

“Anara Tolyer.” My answer had become easy and unhesitant from many days’ practice in the market. “I am a dressmaker.” I waited, but he did not introduce himself. “And yours?” The lilting tradeswoman accent I had adopted for my creation sounded rough and uncultured next my escort’s steady blandness, and I almost laughed. It was not often I was made to feel low or provincial by one who swore allegiance to me.

“Arien.”

“I am in your debt, sir.”

“Less so than if it had not been my hem that stole your footing,” said Arien with a smile. “You owe me no thanks.”

“Owing or not, thank you.”

The rest of the walk to the reflection pool was awkwardly silent. Arien seemed disinclined to too much conversation, and my mind was taken up enough with the pain in my ankle that I had no desire for small talk either. The ache deadened my senses, narrowing my world to two things – keeping myself from tears and making it back to the palace. The sound of carts as they rumbled down the ragged road to the market, the feel of Arien’s steadying arm beneath my elbow, the crisp scent of the air that meant winter was approaching – all of these disappeared, sucked out of being by the throb in my foot. I forgot everything, remembering only to put one foot in front of the other again, and again, and again.

Karyna’s pond sparkled in the bright rays of the predusk sun when we reached it, throwing beams of brilliant white around the glade that encircled the pool and nearly blinding me. Gratefully, I sank down onto one of the white stone benches that had been my father’s contribution to this spot and released Arien’s arm, stammering my thanks through a throat thickened with pain and numbness.

Arien glanced doubtfully around the grove of trees, all exquisitely cared for. “You are sure you wish to go no further?”

“Positive,” I managed, wishing that he would leave and let me crawl back to my home in disgrace.

“Then I thank you for the pleasure of your company, Anara Tolyer, and bid you good day.” Arien bowed elegantly and turned to leave.

“Wait,” I said. Though, in the back of my mind, I knew that it must look ridiculous, habit made me reach into the pocket that hung at my waist for a gold coin. “Here. For your trouble.”

Arien smiled, an unoffensive, unoffended smile of real amusement and shook his head. A moment later, he was gone.

<then there's stuff about the doctor (she sprained her ankle and broke a bone), and her entertaining the ambassador, and Toran giving her very strict instructions on what she was and was not allowed to do in Seyant (primarily, that she had to keep Aldor - one of her Guard - with her most of the time). And then, the trip to Seyant in a public coach with Aldor as her escort.>

“I needn’t fear anything from Alyessa Laranwyn,” I complained to Aldor as we left the inn at Tavin and climbed once more into the by-now-too-familiar public coach. “By the time we reach Seyant I’ll have been thoroughly defeated by poor sleeping accommodations, and there will be nothing left for Alyessa to rebel against.”

“Perhaps not,” said Aldor, a glint of wit betraying keen intelligence in an otherwise militarily impassive face. “You may die of infection from the fleas first.”

“I cannot give up hope,” I agreed.

“No, Your Majesty.”
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