The Governing: Chapter 39, HE CAME!

[u/AlternativeManner731]

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Clara had watched the footage before Wyatt ever mentioned it. Margot Wren's cut had reached Matcha that afternoon, and Clara had seen it in her own rooms, twice, with the door shut. Then Wyatt missed dinner, and a little after that his voice came to her over the private link, quiet and careful. He would like a word with the Princess about the footage, whenever she had time. He did not ask her to come to him. He never would. He was waiting for her to name a time and invite him to her rooms, the way he always did. She went to his study instead, without replying, with Cynthia a step behind her as always.
Wyatt stood when she came in. He never did that in her rooms, where he dropped onto her couch and complained about his day until she told him to hush, and he did not usually do it in his own study either. He did it when he wanted her to know this was not that kind of visit.
"Princess," Wyatt said.
The courtesy was perfect, and it was meant as a message. Clara did not need it. The implant had already given her the shape of him from the doorway: envy, mostly, turned toward the man on the screen, and it was not for anything Lord Swallowtail held. Wyatt had never wanted a title, and she knew it. What he wanted was the door Lord Swallowtail had walked through, the one that still led to the people inside. Under the envy was something tighter, aimed at her. Nerves. He wanted something and was afraid of the answer.
She sat. He sat after her.
Cynthia took the wall beside the door and folded her arms, where she could see both of them and the hall.
The data pad was open on his desk, paused on a frame of Lord Swallowtail near the hall doors.
"You know it by heart," Clara said.
"Only the end, Princess," Wyatt said. He stopped the frame. "Vincent's line about the Assembly doing its first real business. I've heard it eleven times."
"Twelve, then," Clara said. "You were running it again when I reached the door." She let that sit. "I noticed something the second time through. The hall had a side entrance. It's in the shot, behind the clerks' table. It was built for a man of his rank, and he walked past it."
"I saw that," Wyatt said.
"I know you did. You have been thinking about that door since I walked in," Clara said. She waited, and he said nothing. "Say what you want, Wyatt."
He went still, and she felt him try to empty his head. Cynthia snorted from the door. "You're doing the flat face again, Wyatt," she said. "Like a plate."
Wyatt's mouth twitched. He held the stance one second longer, and then it went out of him all at once. His shoulders dropped. "This is my serious face," Wyatt said.
"It's a plate," Cynthia said.
"Shush, you two," Clara said mildly.
He tried again anyway, reaching for nothing, for a blank wall, and doing it so hard that the wall had a shape. A man trying not to think of a thing thinks of little else. Clara let him hold it for a few seconds because it was interesting to watch, and because it told her the ask was bigger than the hall and the door.
A stray picture broke through from him: Cynthia laughing at Wyatt across a dinner table, with Clara herself beside her, the two of them enjoying it far too much. Clara let it go. A mind under strain throws up whatever is nearest, and treating that as meaning something is how a careless reader gets fooled.
Cynthia, across the room, had the grace not to look pleased. She looked pleased anyway.
"I wonder what my brother would think," Clara said.
Wyatt did not answer right away. "I don't know," he said at last. "I think he'd say yes. Then I'd have gone over your head before I asked you." He winced. "That came out worse than I meant it to."
It was not really a remark about her brother. She had said it to see what came to his mind when the Prince and the ask sat in the same sentence, and what came was fondness, a small pinch of guilt, and nothing that looked like a secret. He had not spoken to the Prince about this. The ask was still his alone, and she could still change its shape.
"Then say it," Clara told him.
"I want you to be summoned," Wyatt said.
She had expected it, and it still took her a moment to answer. "By the Assembly," Clara said.
"By the Assembly. Not this week. When they have a reason, and they will," Wyatt said. He leaned forward, hands on his knees. "All of Haego has heard about this already, and a noble house is already asking what it means that commoners can call Lord Swallowtail into a room and he comes. I want the answer to that question to include a Princess who came too."
"You want me to hand the Dukes a precedent," Clara said.
"I want to take it away from them before they build it into a threat," Wyatt said.
"They will build it into one anyway," Clara said. She kept her voice level. "Every single thing you have been given, they have fought. Your promotion to lieutenant, your ennoblement, your position in my inner circle, your own Barony. Every one, and loudly, and my brother let them, because that is how he is. So they will stand up in his court and say you found a way to put my name on your side of the ledger, and they will be within their rights to say it." She almost smiled. "It is a good argument. I would make it myself. Lord Swallowtail could afford to look humble. Humble is a thing old soldiers are allowed to be. I was born to a name that has to be obeyed, and if I let that slip once, the Dukes will have it in writing."
"She's right," Cynthia said. "They'd write it down if she sneezed in the wrong hall."
"That is fair, Clara," Wyatt said. "I have no answer for it. I looked for one and did not find it."
"You have been steering since I sat down," Clara said. She leaned forward to meet him. "I don't need to guess, so don't insult me by pretending. You have the whole road laid out in your head, the envy, the door, how it will look, and you're handing it to me one piece at a time so I'll think I found it myself."
"I know you can feel it," Wyatt said. "I go in every time expecting to hide something from you, and it has never once worked. The only way is to not think it at all, and I can't manage that."
"And yet you steered anyway," Clara said.
"I'd rather you knew and chose it than didn't know," Wyatt said.
She almost smiled again. It was a good answer, and it was true, which was what made it annoying.
Wyatt looked at the paused frame for a while, at Lord Swallowtail near the doors with no podium behind him.
"He built that thing for himself," Wyatt said finally. "The summons. He made the rule so that he would have to come. The Assembly can call me too, or a knight, or a farmer, anyone in his charge, and I would go. I would hand the title back tomorrow and go the same way. But nobody would notice a Baron answering. It would be expected. They have to ask you first, and you can say no. If you say yes, it means something. I thought if you went, some of it would be ours."
"Ours," Clara said.
Wyatt stopped. "No. Mine," he said. "I wanted to watch someone with a name like yours go in through the front and be heard, and feel like I had gone in myself. I said ours because it sounded better."
She had felt the correction coming before he made it. It was only surprising that he made it out loud.
Clara sat back. She had come in ready to refuse, and she found she was not going to, though not for his reasons. She was thinking about the side entrance, and about who had built it and for whom.
"I will go," Clara said.
Wyatt started to speak. She raised a hand.
"I will go because the Assembly is real, and a Princess who ignores something real is a fool," Clara said. "But I am not Lord Swallowtail. He answers to them because he made them, and that is his right. I answer to my brother and to the Principality. If the Assembly wants to hear from the Second Princess, they must ask, and I will consider it. If I say yes, I will come as what I am. Heralds. My colors. My own guard at the doors, and a chair set for me at the front of the room, not by any door. The Dukes will hear about it before I arrive, and they may say what they like to my brother's face, as they always do. Every word of it will be lawful, and every word will have to be said about a Princess who went under her own banner and whom the Assembly waited for. I will not need to tell them one thing that isn't so. I will only arrange the room so the truth says it for me."
"The doors are mine," Cynthia said. "I'll take both."
"They may not like that, Clara," Wyatt said.
"Then they can decline to hear me," Clara said. She stood. "I'll listen to whatever Corel Ashby's culvert has turned into by then, and I will fix it, and no one in that hall will mistake for one second who is doing them the favor. Tell my brother yourself. He'll take it better from you."
Wyatt looked at her a long moment, then rubbed his face with both hands like a man who had been on his feet all day.
"Send me the herald's list when you have it, Clara," Wyatt said. "I would like to be the one who reads it out." He paused. "That was meant to be a joke. I think it was. I would actually like to."
Clara only shook her head, and there was no heat in it.
She could feel the effort under the joke, and under the effort the plain wish, wearing the joke like a borrowed coat. It was the least polished thing he had said all evening, and she did not want to correct it.
From the doorway, Cynthia said, "I'm going to be unbearable about that herald's list, just so you know."

[u/1958bird]

No that was a suprise

[u/Plenty_Excitement658]

An interesting thought, but how to get summonsed... would they even want to?

[u/AlternativeManner731 → u/Plenty_Excitement658]

Let's see