The Princess and the Charlatan

Subject: Her Royal Highness, Princess Elara of Oakhaven. Current status: Missing, presumed incompetent.

Subject: Jasper the “Miracle-Worker.” Current status: A glorified pickpocket with an oversized ego.

Narrator: Malakor the Meticulous, Court Wizard. Current status: Suffering from a persistent, thumping headache.

“Blessings upon your harvest! Blessings upon your livestock! And a special, premium-rate blessing upon your eldest daughter’s impending nuptials!”

I watched from the safety of an astral projection, hovering just above the dusty rafters of a barn in the village of Puddle-by-the-Bog. Below me, Jasper—a man whose morality was as thin as his cloak—was currently waving a stick wrapped in moldy rabbit fur over a pile of grain. The villagers, whose intelligence collectively hovered somewhere around the room temperature of a refrigerated turnip, wept with gratitude.

“Truly,” one farmer sobbed, clutching a silver coin as if it were a holy relic, “the Great Wizard Malakor himself couldn’t have sanctified our silos better.”

I felt my left eye twitch. If I were actually there, I would have turned that grain into sentient slugs just to watch the chaos. But my contract—a miserable, ink-stained piece of parchment signed by the King in a fit of piety—demanded that I “monitor and safeguard the royal lineage.” And apparently, the King considered Jasper’s current traveling companion to be the Crown’s greatest asset.

I panned my gaze to the back of the room, behind a stack of hay bales. There, sitting on a three-legged stool and desperately trying to look like a dowdy, illiterate peasant, was Princess Elara.

She was wearing a bonnet that looked like a bird’s nest, and she had smeared mud across her cheek with the grace of a toddler finger-painting. She was currently staring at Jasper with a look of such profound, icy disdain that I was surprised the barn didn’t burst into flames.

“You are a fraud,” she whispered, her voice barely audible even to my magically-enhanced hearing.

Jasper didn’t miss a beat. He slapped the farmer on the shoulder, pocketed the coin with a flick of his wrist that would have made a professional gambler weep with joy, and spun around to face the Princess. His smile was dazzling, disarming, and entirely devoid of sincerity.

“I am not a fraud, my dear lady,” Jasper hissed back, keeping his voice cheerful for the villagers. “I am a provider of hope. The harvest was going to fail regardless. I’m just giving them someone to blame when the frost kills the corn. It’s a public service.”

“You took their last silver piece,” Elara countered, standing up. She moved with the fluid, calculated precision of someone who had spent her entire life studying the physics of a sword swing, despite the fact that she was currently holding a wooden ladle. “That’s not hope. That’s robbery.”

“It’s a luxury tax on gullibility!” Jasper retorted, ducking as a chicken fluttered past his head. “And if you’d like to keep your head attached to your neck, I suggest you stop whispering about robbery. We have a reputation to maintain.”

I sighed, a sound that manifested in the mortal realm as a sudden, inexplicable gust of wind that blew the farmer’s hat into the mud.

My life, as a wizard of the Seventh Circle, had once been dedicated to the study of the stars, the weaving of reality, and the containment of elder gods. Now, I was a glorified babysitter for a girl who could out-think a general and a boy who thought a ‘financial plan’ involved waiting for someone to drop their purse.

The King had sent Elara on this “pilgrimage” to distance her from the palace intrigue—the creeping, oily influence of the Duke of Vane, a man whose ambition was only matched by his lack of original ideas. Little did the King know, Elara wasn’t hiding; she was scouting. She was waiting for the perfect moment to return and dismantle the Duke’s entire power structure.

And Jasper? Well, Jasper had been hired by a desperate, panicked chamberlain to “protect” her. He was supposed to be a hardened mercenary. Instead, he was a street performer with a talent for running away.

“We have to leave,” Elara said, ignoring Jasper’s theatrics. She checked the sun’s position through a crack in the roof. “If we reach the Crossroads by nightfall, we can intercept the messenger from the Northern garrisons. If the Duke has reached them, we have to assume the coup has already begun.”

Jasper scoffed, adjusting his ridiculous velvet hat. “Coup? You’ve been reading too many cheap romance novels, Elara. The Duke is a pompous windbag. He doesn’t have the spine to overthrow a chair, let alone a monarchy.”

“He has three hundred men-at-arms, a stockpile of siege weapons, and an ego that occupies three dimensions,” she said, her voice dropping into a tone that was terrifyingly regal. For a second, the mud and the bonnet vanished; she was standing in the throne room, commanding the respect of a hundred lords. “He doesn’t need a spine. He has money.”

Jasper blinked, clearly caught off guard by the sudden shift in her demeanor. He stepped back, tripping over a bucket of milk. “Watch the stance, Your Highness! You look like you’re about to declare war, not buy a loaf of bread. Stay hunched. Remember: we’re nobodies.”

“I am sick of being a nobody,” Elara snapped.

“And I am sick of this barn,” Jasper grumbled, grabbing his bag of “blessed” trinkets. “Let’s go. The locals are starting to look at us like we’re actually going to perform a miracle, and I left my miracle-performing wand in my other pants.”

As they stepped out into the blinding afternoon sun, the tension between them was so thick it practically crackled with static electricity. It was the friction of two people who had absolutely nothing in common, forced into a partnership by a royal decree that had been about as well-thought-out as an umbrella made of sugar.

I followed them, invisible and perpetually irritated. As they rounded the corner of the barn, I saw the shadow of a figure watching them from the trees—a mercenary, likely from the Duke’s “elite” guard. He was wearing chainmail that looked like it had been salvaged from a scrap heap, and he was currently trying to sharpen a sword on a rock.

It was, as I am contractually obligated to record, the beginning of a very long, very stupid, and very dangerous week.

“Jasper,” Elara said, stopping abruptly. “There’s a man in the brush behind the stables. He’s wearing the Duke’s crest.”

Jasper froze, his face going pale. “Are you sure? Maybe it’s just a fan. Everyone loves a good blessing.”

“He’s holding a crossbow, Jasper.”

“Right. Crossbow. That’s a very aggressive way to ask for a blessing.”

“He’s aiming it at us.”

Jasper didn’t even think. He didn’t draw a blade, he didn’t cast a spell, and he certainly didn’t stand his ground. He did what he did best: he panicked. He grabbed Elara by the arm, shoved her behind a water trough, and simultaneously performed a standing backflip—a move that was statistically impossible for a man of his build—to get out of the line of fire.

In doing so, his foot caught the edge of a heavy wooden post holding up a trellis of ivy. The post, which had been rotting since the previous century, groaned under the sudden shift in weight.

The mercenary emerged from the bushes, aiming his crossbow. “Princess Elara! By order of the—”

He didn’t get to finish. The rotted post gave way, bringing down a cascade of heavy, ivy-covered timber, three terra-cotta pots, and a startled goose that had been nesting in the rafters. The mercenary was buried under a heap of foliage, his crossbow firing harmlessly into the sky, where it managed to take down a very confused crow.

Jasper stood there, chest heaving, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated terror. He looked at the pile of debris, then at the unconscious mercenary, then at Elara.

“I... I meant to do that,” he whispered, his voice trembling.

Elara stared at him. She looked at the wreckage, then at the goose, which was currently hissing at Jasper’s boots. She let out a sound—not a regal laugh, but a genuine, surprised bark of amusement.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes glinting with a dangerous sort of respect. “Of course you did. You’re a tactical genius, Jasper.”

“I know,” he wheezed, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Naturally.”

I groaned from the rafters. If the fate of the kingdom rested on this man’s incompetence, we were all doomed. But as I watched them start walking toward the forest, bickering over whether or not the goose was a personal assassin, I felt a faint, flickering hope.

Perhaps, if they didn’t kill each other first, they might just accidentally survive the day.

Narrator’s Addendum: The mercenary is still trapped under the trellis. I am currently considering leaving him there as a monument to the Duke’s hiring standards. The Princess and the fraud have begun walking toward the Northern Road. I have checked my tea supply. It is dangerously low. This is going to be a long century.