The Movement of Rings

By Nadine C. Keels

Movement of Crowns, Book Two: the chronicle of a beautiful prankster

What lies deeper than fear?
The Mundayne empire has prospered under the rule of King Aud, a ruthless man of war. Naona, a spirited imperial servant who holds Aud’s favor, enjoys pulling pranks on her peers around the king’s estate. But the time for laughter spoils when the citizens of Munda begin to oppose the taxes that pay for Aud’s wars.

After meeting the princess of Diachona, Naona must choose between remaining loyal to her king and becoming another nation’s ally. With the rise of unrest in Munda, how can Naona’s heart survive intact: intact enough, even, for a chance at love with a foreign man?

While this historical fantasy book does not have magical elements, the story is set in a completely fictional world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nadine C. Keels
• Release date: Jul 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301984725

Nadine C. Keels

Nadine. A French name, meaning, "hope."Her lifelong passion for the power of story makes reading and writing an adventure for Nadine C. Keels. She’s driven to write the kinds of stories she’s always wanted to read but couldn’t always find, featuring diverse and uncommon lead characters in a medley of genres. Through her books and her blog (Prismatic Prospects), Nadine aims to spark hope and inspiration in as many people as she can reach."My aspiration is for my words to help people: to bring hope, to change minds, to expand imagination, to provide entertainment, and to save lives—as other authors’ words have done for me."

Book preview

The Movement of Rings

Movement of Crowns Series Book Two

Nadine C. Keels

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 by Nadine C. Keels

Cover Design:

Nadine C. Keels

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is not intended.

Find Nadine online at:

www.prismaticprospects.wordpress.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

~~~

Naona!

Two Years and a Half

Changes: Without and Within

Unheard of and Unforeseen

After the Rainy Season

~

There’s More

~~~

Naona!

~

Naona! a startled, aggravated scream pierced through the early morning peace of the four-storied maidservants’ house, ricocheting against the chamber and corridor walls and being answered by the vibrant laugh of a fleeing offender. A few of the women in the house, aroused prematurely from their sleep, got up and poked their drowsy heads out of their bedroom doorways to see black tresses, a white nightgown, and bare feet flashing by, the accompanying laughter escaping farther through a third floor hallway and disappearing down a stairwell.

Seconds later, those bare feet dashed through a side door and outside, taking off through the dewy grass of one of the gardens gracing the grounds of the sprawling estate, leaving behind more women awakening to a spreading commotion. Mischievous giggles rode the air on the way across the garden and over to the apothecary’s quarters, where slender fingers did not curl up and knock before pressing down the front door latch, pushing the door wide open.

It worked!

The short, balding man puttering about his quarters’ kitchen paused from his breakfast preparations. He turned to look, with a minimal measure of surprise, at the triumphant young woman standing across the way in his sitting room entrance, letting in the chill morning air. What worked? he asked her.

The spices. I had only to sprinkle a pinch under Fauri’s nose, and she shook and sneezed right awake! What a potent mixture. She might still be sneezing, if she has not yet had the sense to stop yelling for me and to go douse her face.

The man issued a groan. Bah—Naona! For the sake of the stars! Why must you use my mixtures to torment your friends so?

And why must you always gripe about it? Naona laughed. You knew precisely what I would do when you gave the spices to me.

Of course I knew what you would do, but again, why must you? Toenails being turned green, bowls of reeking liquids hidden behind curtains and smelling up rooms, itch-inducing herbs being flicked upon the backs of unsuspecting necks, and now sneezing people out of their sleep! You are past full grown. Have not you gotten on in years to continue such pranks?

I have just reached my twenty-third year, hardly an old—

Bah! the apothecary interrupted. And look at you. Barging into my quarters first thing in the morn in your nightclothes and unshod feet! Are you trying to get me killed, nise?

Nothing of the sort, Naona answered, stepping inside the sitting room and closing the front door behind her. Everyone is too preoccupied with the war up north to have any useless thought of killing you. Besides, I never injure anyone or cause permanent damage, and nobody cares about my making harmless visits to a little old man.

I am not a little old man, thank you, and these visits are in no way harmless, the apothecary argued, wiping his hands on the smock covering his tunic and trousers and puttering his way out of the kitchen toward Naona. Not when you constantly use my remedies to wreak your havoc. I am trying to teach you to be a healer, and yet you are only becoming more of a pain in the empire’s backside. Our master has never kept a tight enough rein on you.

Reins are for horses. Naona leaned down to plant a smacking kiss on the hairless crown of the man’s head as he approached her. And a good morning to you too, pilo.

It was, before you crashed in upon it like a reckless hawk. And this mop of yours, flying about. He waved fussy fingers around Naona’s head before he took her hand. Do something with it, will you? I ought not to see your hair unbound, you beautiful thing. I am not your man. Here, come and sit for tea and an egg, he bid her, tugging her toward the kitchen.

Two eggs, please, Naona requested, stumbling at the apothecary’s haste, her free hand going up to her hair. But you will have to excuse my head. I did not bring anything for it.

I trust that you have brought room to put something in it though, no? I have a mixture to teach you after we eat. It is for pallid fever.

Once the unlikely but enduring pair of them sat and began chatting over breakfast, Naona giving the apothecary a teasing wink over her steaming teacup, the man shook his head. He thought as he often did that this maidservant favorite of their master’s, King Aud of Munda, was much too appealing for her own good. Her facial structure was reluctant to give up its last, lingering trace of childlikeness on behalf of her womanhood, but her large, obsidian eyes could entice with their sparkle or cloud with mystery in a given instant, arresting the attention of onlookers. With a rich, rosy brown complexion, full lips, and lengths of dark, silky hair that gave off elusive hues of indigo in the sunlight, she was the envy of many an eye at the imperial estate.

The most notably envious eye was that of Aud’s austere queen. She’d given her husband five strong sons back in her childbearing years but had lost her youthful bloom long ago, never quite picking up a matronly beauty or lively spirits to replace it. More than once, the apothecary had observed how the queen eyed Naona when the imperial servants were called to formal reports at court in the palace.

In private, the apothecary warned Naona to be wary of possible intrigues against her and to be mindful of the way she conducted herself in the queen’s presence. The apothecary had often worried that Naona’s habitual shenanigans, coupled with her favored status with the king, would draw on loathing from her peers. But either her scheming ways made the other servants too nervous to challenge her, or she provided their demanding lives with too much entertainment for them to resent her beyond their bouts of exasperation.

However, even if no one else was entertained by her, Naona amused Aud greatly, and he summonsed her every week whenever he was home at the palace. He sometimes stopped there for only a month or so before heading back out of the country to carry on with one of the wars he’d started, as he had been on unbeaten campaigns to expand the wealth and borders of his empire for a number of recent years. While Aud did not hide his partiality for Naona in Munda, he was unwilling to include her in any company of servants he took with him out of the country. Among the servants, he was known to have said that no other nations were worthy of Naona’s glance, but the apothecary imagined that Aud might be afraid that he could somehow lose this impressive womanly possession of his in a foreign land. It seemed that the king’s deliberate oblivion to Naona’s bending or breaking of one maidservants’ rule or another was his compensation to her for never taking her anywhere, and the apothecary was not the only servant to wonder if such leniency would not one day prove to have spoiled the young lady.

Yet, the apothecary wasn’t too distracted by her beguiling eyes or frequent mischief to perceive her intelligence. Four years ago when she, as a newly acquired servant, had first expressed her interest in his work, he’d begun tutoring her on ailments and medicines. He’d done so despite his niggling concerns that such cleverness and beauty without the proper reins could lead to trouble for Aud, or for Naona herself. She, apparently, was no fool, as her comportment was subdued and stately for appropriate occasions and conditions (so much so that visiting foreigners unfamiliar with Mundayne ways sometimes mistook her to be a member of the royal family.) But how conscious was she of herself, of her influence? She’d always deemed the apothecary to be a little old man she caused no harm by calling on so often. Did that mean she was ignorant of the fact that he, like any other man, might find her tempting—the more so when King Aud was away, as he was now, and, as she’d indicated, many minds were too occupied with news about the current campaign up north to have room left to think much about the country’s chief apothecary, a busy introvert nosing through books and mixing remedies in his quarters?

Presently, he shook his balding head again, taking a bite of his meal. He would’ve been proud to have sired a daughter like Naona, if he had ever married, and he would’ve tried to think of Naona as a daughter figure, if he’d ever allowed himself the intimate privilege. As it was, he contented himself with regarding her as an unofficial pupil and a welcome companion, and it delighted him to share his work with someone who appreciated it, even if she did use portions of what she learned from him to wreak her havoc around their master’s estate.

The apothecary never allowed himself a second to contemplate potential perils surrounding the reality that, on account of the nature of his work, a healer was not at all the only thing he was teaching Naona to be.

After breakfast, the two of them were in the workroom, one relaying details on pallid fever and the other intently listening and assisting in the mixing and boiling of herbs when a knock sounded on the front door. Naona ran out of the workroom before her instructor could protest, and it wasn’t until she answered the door, seeing the gaze of the servant messenger there sweep down the length of her, that she remembered the nightgown she was yet wearing, visible around the edges of the smock she’d put on.

There you are, nise, the messenger greeted her with a bow, and she glanced at the horse behind him, wondering if he’d intended to go riding beyond the estate to find her, if he needed to. You are to report to the palace within the hour. The king will be here as soon as tomorrow, and he has summonsed ahead for you to help prepare for high outlander reception.

The campaign in the north? It is finished? Naona asked with amazement, thinking that the conquest had been speedy, even for Aud.

No, but the campaign will go on without the king, the messenger answered, backing his way to his horse. The princess of Diachona is coming to Munda.

~~~

Two Years and a Half

~~~

No outside nation had alighted friendly footsteps on the thriving soil of the Mundayne empire or its colonies since the onset of King Aud’s martial campaigns. Any foreign dignitaries brave enough to show up in Munda, with their revulsion thinly veiled, came with plans for negotiation in hopes that their countries