Sigrid raised the cup of hot chocolate to her lips. She gazed at Lord Benwick lazily over the rim of the cup. He was not yet on his knees and it appeared he intended to defy her.
"Kneel or remove yourself from my presence Lord Benwick." Sigrid calmly said.
She lowered the cup into the sofa and sat them both on the table.
Lord Benwick firmly kept his arms at the side of his body and he drew in a sharp breath. He urged himself to remain calm, the princess was just drunk on power. Her reputation was widely known, she liked to play the tough game. To deal with her, he had to be smart.
"Crown princess, greetings." He bowed his head and gave her a polite greeting.
Sigrid nodded, acknowledging the greeting. "What brings you in search of me Lord Benwick?" she asked.
He spread his arms out, and moved forward, intending to approach her but Brolin’s sword stopped him. The knight gestured that he step back. Lord Benwick did not like it but her obeyed anyway.
"If I might offer some advise..." he started.
"Don’t." Sigrid stopped him. "Do not offer me any advise as you are not my advisor Lord Benwick. Your loyalty is questionable. By day, you serve the queen but by night, your loyalty is diverted to the king."
He froze, his eyes narrowed.
"I bet you did not think that anybody outside your little secret council of three was aware of this secret. Even the queen is not aware that her most loyal advisor has been in the king’s pocket for so long. Your kind of treachery fascinates me because you are like a man with no nation, you serve whoever has the power. If Medoris were to conquer Eldoria, you would probably become an advisor to the Medorian emperor within a day." Sigrid picked up the cup again and took a sip.
She allowed Lord Benwick a moment to ponder on his secrets that she had just laid bare.
"I can assure you crown princess that my loyalty is to Eldoria. If it were not, I would not be here offering to lend my expertise to you." He gave her a shrewd look and asked, "How, if I may ask, did you come across this information on me?"
Sigrid raised an eyebrow. "Why, so that you can kill my informant?"
There was no informant but Sigrid would not let him know of that. It was best for him to be paranoid, wondering who had betrayed him and what other secrets of his had been leaked. "So I take it that you are in search of new employment now that both of your former employers are unavailable. Other people would use this time to relax, take a vacation, consider another career."
Lord Benwick smiled. "I am not one of those people."
"Of course you are." Sigrid replied, "Everyone must take a vacation at some point in their life. If you keep jumping from one master to another, you will end up with no master and no feet to use in jumping anymore." She tilted her head downwards and looked at his legs.
Lord Benwick took a subconscious step back. He was not a coward and he was not easily scared but there was something unpredictable about the crown princess. Nevertheless, he was unwilling to surrender easily. "Your highness, I know that you think you do not need my advise but I am more than certain that at some point in the future you will.
The position you find yourself in now is different from the one where you were yesterday. A king controls the kingdom, a queen controls the king. In the final analysis, the queen controls the kingdom. I can help you achieve this."
That little tidbit, she did not need to know for she was aware of already. All of Roland’s biggest decisions ever since she and Roland started getting along involved her. Even when she had nothing to contribute, he told her about what he intended to do.
"And yet the queen you served failed to do that. The dead consort Rina achieved it on her own--to a small extent." She replied.
Lord Benwick did not appreciate the undertones in her statement, it was clearly being called a loser without the word being said directly.
"Also, let’s not forget the fact that you served the king, spilling all of the queen’s secrets to him. So...." She put the cup down and spread out her hands. "What did she control?"
Lord Benwick was at a loss. She had invalidated that reason with excellent points.
Sigrid considered the conversation between them over. "Lord Benwick, come back to me when you have a better reason as to why I should take you in. You should also be ready to kneel and surrender all of your loyalty to me without leaving so much as a crumb behind. I expect nothing less from those who serve me. They are loyal or they are dead__there is no middle ground."
She waved her hand out lazily. Knights stepped in front of Lord Benwick and forced him to leave.
Mauve stepped out from behind an overgrown tree with pink fruits that looked like strawberries. She sat down and shot a glance at Lord Benwick’s vanishing back. "Are you letting that old goat go just like that?"
"Old goat?" Sigrid laughed.
"Papa says that Lord Benwick is as wise as an old goat because he has chewed grass from every grassland in the kingdom. He has friends in every noble house and every brothel, church, shop. From the East to the North tot the West and South. Even in Medoris, he is said to have friends." Mauve explained, twirling the large strawberry like fruit in her fingers around. "Mama says that he is called and old goat because he is lecherous, it is why he has hidden away many secret younger women as his private courtesans. I don’t know which is true or false."
"Both of them are probably right. No matter how impressive his connections are, what I do know is that Lord Benwick is loyal to Lord Benwick. He is not even loyal to his house, only power and whoever is wielding it. A man like that, I cannot take his hand unless I am certain that he won’t drag me to death. Forget Benwick, tell me Mauve, is it true that Galen kissed you or you kissed him."