She had met them all.

  The council. The stewards. The magistrates. The tax officials. The overseers of trade, grain, arms, sanitation, architecture, education, infrastructure, bridges, temples, and the schedule for the royal hunting grounds.

  They bowed. They smiled. They explained.

  And then they overwhelmed her.

  The Work

  By royal decree, she was required to attend council sessions twice a week — more often if crisis demanded. She sat at the high seat of the ducal hall, a polished ledger in front of her, the seal of Foher beside her right hand.

  And no one waited for her to catch up.

  They spoke in old legal phrases. In numbers and clauses and references to land agreements from seventy years ago.

  She studied for hours each night — furiously, feverishly — and still it felt like trying to catch rain in a sieve.

  “This document is a writ of reclamation,” someone said, handing her three sheets of parchment and a folded map.

  “This one too,” said another, with six sheets and a different map.

  “They contradict,” she said.

  “Of course,” they said, smiling. “That’s why you sign.”

  Bureaucracy

  She requested updated ledgers from the Eastern baronies. She’d spotted strange inconsistencies — numbers that didn’t align over the last five years.

  Her request vanished into silence.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  She asked again. Politely.

  And again, firmly.

  The third time, they said the ledgers were “being reviewed for archival clarity.”

  Whatever that meant.

  She requested current maps of Foher’s southern river routes.

  The cartographer’s office responded with a note: “Revisions pending grant approval for parchment acquisition.”

  She wasn’t even sure if it was sarcasm.

  “You are the Duchess,” one official told her sweetly. “But the paper always outranks the seal.”

  Audiences

  Public hearings were worse.

  Once a week, the city gathered in the hall for petitions.

  Commoners came with bruises, thefts, border disputes, broken promises and broken fences. They told their stories with bowed heads and callused hands.

  And Fran — seated above them in a high-backed chair with her name stitched in gold — tried to remember how justice was supposed to work.

  “Your Grace, what would you decree?”

  “The law says this, but tradition says that.”

  “What did the Duke do before?”

  “Should we wait for your husband to speak on the matter?”

  That one drew laughter.

  From the nobles.

  Not the crowd.

  The Groom

  They didn’t even wait for subtlety anymore.

  “Lord Arven of Silvercliff has two sons. The younger one is handsome, the elder one is... educated.”

  “Lady Grellan’s nephew is unmarried. Very accomplished. He writes poetry. About birds.”

  “Surely the burden would be eased, Your Grace, if you had a partner. Someone to advise you.”

  They all smiled when they said advise.

  Even the ones who meant control.

  One man — she didn’t even remember his name — had the gall to say: “A marriage alliance could help protect the Duchy’s future, and ensure a steady hand at your side. One with experience.”

  “I’m not looking for a husband,” she had said.

  “That’s fortunate,” he replied, “because you’ll be given one, not offered one.”

  She didn’t speak for the rest of the session.

  The Cracks

  She tried.

  Gods, she tried.

  She read, wrote, revised, consulted.

  She tried to be patient when they mocked her. Tried not to flinch when they spoke over her, tried to ignore the way they leaned toward her seal like it was something she didn’t quite deserve.

  But sometimes she said the wrong word. Forgot a title. Misunderstood a phrasing.

  And every failure burned.

  Every mistake was noticed.

  “She’s overwhelmed,” someone muttered.

  “She was raised among books. Not men.”

  “She’s too proud to listen.”

  “Too quiet to lead.”

  “Too alone.”

  And they were right.

  She was alone.

  She had no steward she could trust. No ally. No voice to lean on when her own faltered.

  And at night, when the court lights dimmed and the city fell silent, the unopened letter still waited on her desk.

  Untouched.

  Unread.

  But always watching.

  "Wings of the Vale"

  By Sir Telmar Grellan, Esquire of Soft Rhymes

  Thou flittest light through Foher’s air.

  Thy breast does gleam, thy eye does shine—

  As sharp as wit, yet twice as fine.

  Thy flight is free, thy grace so lithe.

  O would that I, in feathered form,

  Might flee from court, from custom's norm.

  The heart I’ve penned in poetry—

  Say not “too much,” nor yet “too soon,”

  Just read this verse beneath the moon.

  P.S.: “He has many more. All about birds. Exclusively birds.”