Roskvir tapped his knuckles thrice on the door to the locked chamber, as was becoming his routine. Not expecting a response, nevertheless he waited a few seconds to be polite, then entered.

  She was lying on the floor, as she always seemed to be. He couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t just use her bed and pillows, if she wanted to rest.

  She stared daggers back up at him, as he stepped inside, like she always did. But those points had blunted as the days passed, perhaps with weariness. It was a great amount of effort to hate, he knew.

  On one side of the chamber knelt two of her ladies-in-waiting then on duty. Their expressions were downcast, as if ashamed. Hildr had created a rotating shift that always left at least two of their number in the girl’s chamber, leaving her alone only to sleep through the night. Whenever they were present, though, it seemed the child insisted they do nothing more than kneel on the floor in silence without exception or interruption.

  Strewn elsewhere across the floor were the other things that brought to the princess those past days. Candies, toys, trinkets, all still remained untouched. Among them lay the old laurel wreath that had crowned her head when Thjali had first taken her from the library, its leaves by then withered and brown. The only item she’d touched at all since his last check-in was a plate of dinner, but even that had no more than a handful of tiny nibbles.

  “Hildr told me that… we haven’t managed to make much progress, so far,” Roskvir began. “I imagine that hasn’t changed since I spoke with her?”

  The nearest lady-in-waiting shook her head, and Rosvkir pitied her anxious fright.

  “Well, Hildr was telling me… the girl seemed like she’d showed signs of having endured a traumatic experience. Hildr asked if I knew anything about that, since… I’d been somewhat party… to the circumstances of the her… retrieval.” Roskvir suppressed a grimace. “Hildr thought that maybe you lot could get your foot in the door with her, by counseling her, or relating to her about it, or something. I’m not too sure how much I can help you that way, but Hildr said I should come over. I could describe the events of the retrieval mission to you, at least.”

  He was met with unenthusiastic silence.

  “Alright, well–”

  “Kapitanleutnant Englihavt, sir?” one of the ladies-in-waiting interrupted. “We’re not soldiers. I don’t think we’d do a good job… ‘relating’ to her, about some soldier thing.”

  “Well, I’m no lady-in-waiting, and yet here I am,” Roskvir retorted.

  “The truth is, kapitanleutnant, sir… she won’t even speak with us. At least she acknowledges you, when you lead her around the ship.”

  “My domain is purely her security—”

  “That’s not how Hildr made it sound, when she was explaining things to us” the second lady-in-waiting interjected. “She said that the shogun told both of you that you were to assist each other, if there was a way you could.”

  “That’s — not…”

  He’d assumed that the shogun had intended to mean that the girl’s ladies-in-waiting would assist him in matters related to the child’s security.

  He glanced back at the child on the floor.

  “Please, sir? Could you just try?” the first lady-in-waiting begged.

  Roskvir met her pleading eyes, and felt stronger the sway of his pity. He, if anyone, could sympathize with the anxiety that entailed the service of an influential, demanding, eccentric superior.

  He sighed, then at last gave the two women an acquiescent nod.

  “Err— Hallo… prinzess,” he began, navigating to where she lay. “You… sick? Feel bad? Why… on borden — err — floor?”

  The girl continued to stare at the ceiling.

  “Might she actually be sick?” Roskvir asked the ladies-in-waiting. He knew diseases would often spread like wildfire among foreign populations after their first encounters with forces of Albion.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Well— Hildr hasn’t said anything about that, at least…” offered the first lady.

  “Can… check… for sick?” he asked the princess “Okay touch head? We have… medicine… if you… have sick.”

  Once more, she didn’t react.

  “Okay… I will…” Roskvir said, cautiously extending his palm toward the child’s forehead.

  But just as his hand came within an inch of her, she twisted toward it without warning, and he yanked back at a sudden sharp pain. A semicircle of small pink teeth marks throbbed on the side of his palm.

  Seems healthy enough, he thought to himself dryly, as he wrung out the lingering ache.

  He regarded her once more. He tried to think about what to say, how best to string together what few words he knew in her tongue.

  “We… want… be your friend, prinzess,” he gestured to the various toys and candies they’d brought for her. “Why not can? Please?”

  She turned away from him, sighing with pointed loudness.

  “You not sick, right? Are you feel bad… because… soldiers? You saw… bad… war… things? Those… only one bad soldier. That woman, bad. She will... punished. She will… far away… no danger to you—”

  “Stop it,” the girl interrupted.

  Her voice was so soft, and yet the word somehow conveyed a sense of force that startled Roskvir.

  “Err—”

  “Stop… talking…” she repeated. “It hurts my ears. You make my language… ugly, by speaking.”

  Roskvir shot a glance back at the two ladies-in-waiting, but they indicated no desire to step in.

  “We need… talking, prinzess,” he said. “My job. Have to.”

  “Then don’t do your job,” she said.

  Roskvir shook his head.

  “Have to. I need keep talking. If you… not talk to them,” he said, gesturing to the other two, “then I must talk you. You want… they… translate? I talk them, they talk you?”

  “No. I want them to leave,” she said.

  “Have talk… me or them. Have to. If no talk them, I talk you… forever. Until you talk me.”

  The girl scowled.

  “You can have them leave, can’t you?” she said, after thinking. “If you have them leave, I’ll speak with you,” said the princess.

  “...Just… wait outside for now,” Roskvir said in Albian.

  Without a word of protest, the ladies stood, curtsied, and shuffled out the chamber door.

  “Okay… see? They leave. Now we talk?”

  The child furrowed her brow. She turned slowly onto her side, to face away from him.

  “Prinzess— please—”

  “Don’t talk my way,” she said, without turning back.

  “Prinzess… I did… how you said. Now you help me. Or I talk you forever now… until you talk me back.”

  After another stretch of silence, she sighed.

  “If you have to talk, we can talk your way,” she said.

  “Need… understand, us,” Roskvir tried to explain. “You don’t… understand my way.”

  She sat up, glaring at him.

  “I can learn your way,” she said. “That's the only way I’ll do it. They said you would bring me what I wanted. Bring me a book… what they use to teach people.”

  Roskvir raised an eyebrow.

  Bringing her something she’d requested would be a first. It even resembled progress, something the ladies-in-waiting, and perhaps he himself, soon might like to be able to describe convincingly to the shogun as ‘underway.’

  He almost made to stand, then stopped himself.

  “This… you only want… delay us,” he said, frowning at her. “Waste time. Why no can they… err— translate? Except you want waste.”

  The girl stared at him with a level expression of well–tamed impatience, as if this wasn’t the first time she’d needed to explain things to a simpleton.

  “Your master, the king. The man who orders you. He ordered you to… convince me. Sway me. Give me things until I’m happy here. Right?”

  Roskvir hesitated, off-balance. It was far from the most complicated deduction to make, but its accuracy still surprised him. She was just a child, and spoke nothing of their language.

  “He… not king.”

  “Well, your master. The robed man. He ordered you to sway me, didn’t he?”

  “Err— well… yes.”

  “Tell him you’re giving me things I asked for. And then have all the women stay away. You can come sometimes to give me those things, and then tell your master you’re doing well.”

  For a moment Roskvir was at a loss for words.

  “…Okay, prinzess. I find. For you,” he said, standing to leave.

  He paused at the chamber door.

  The child was staring at him still, without any clear affect beyond a muted disdain. He hesitated, then bowed, and closed the door behind him.

  He at once set off toward the ship’s offices, where there were plenty of language handbooks for the training of officers. Their instructions were written in Albian, and designed for the translation of Albian to Setetic, and not the other way around. But it was the best he could do.

  When he at last returned to her chamber door, he again knocked thrice before entering. Sat upright, expecting his return, she watched as he set the book before her.

  “We learn, okay?” he said. “Both. Both learn. Understand us. Both understand each other. Okay?”

  Staring him down, she simply placed her hand on the book, yielding no further hint of her intentions. But he knew he would get nothing better.

  “I come back later,” he said. “...Thank you, prinzess.”

  He stood, bowing to her as deeply as he would any royalty of his native lands, then took his leave.

  “To have another language is to possess a second soul.”

  Charlemagne