kitchen_maid | Marian in Ambergeldar

Marian in Ambergeldar

Amy ran into Marian when she took Mal -- er, Captain Sir Malcolm Reynolds -- back to Milliways after his visit.

And, after hearing about the goings on there, had invited Marian back for a short visit to Ambergeldar. (She would have invited Marian for an extended visit, especially as Marian cannot get back to her own world, but Marian has security duties, and Amy respects that. Still, even security members need breaks.)

After what happened with Mal, Amy gives Marian a letter of introduction, just in case she winds up in Loddingtop or some such place. And she takes the very simple and practical precaution of holding carefully and tightly to Marian's hand as they step out of the bar and into Amy's wardrobe.

"It's not, I fear, the most exciting first view of the kingdom. Do mind the shoes."

It's not the most convenient thing, having a doorway in your wardrobe. Things will get in the way of coming and going.

Once they're safely into Amy's dressing room, she lets go of Marian's hand. "Welcome to Ambergeldar."

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"That's where Perry and I go to hide.

"No one thinks to look for the King in the seventy-third best guest room.

"Merry took his first steps in there, holding onto Perry's hands."

That is a very good reason, for a favorite, isn't it? Marian's smile was soft, a whisper of something sweet and understandable. A window once, and a different life. Also, it was thing she felt no needed to ask or trespass upon the beauty of beyond that.

Instead.

"And, your King-husband? What is he doing, now?"

"Let's see," Amy says, thinking for a moment. "This morning, he is reviewing reports from our ambassadors to Phantasmorania, Plumblossomburg, Crystalvia, Kleptomania, Pantechniconia, and Spain, with the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Then he has lunch with the Prime Minister, and then he's spending the afternoon meeting with the ambassadors from Phantasmorania, etcetera. And then this evening, there's some kind of dinner, which probably also involved ambassadors, knowing the way they like to keep the schedule tidy.

"But we just might catch him after the morning's meeting and before lunch. If you'd like to meet him."

Amy is very good at finding the holes in Perry's schedule. The only person better at it is Perry's personal secretary, Alfred, and that's mainly because Alfred is in charge of creating Perry's schedule.

"I would be glad to, so long as it is not bother or a distraction," Marian nodded, agreeing without a pause. Curios to see who this 'Perry' that matched Amy, Not of the Paintings, would be.

"I wouldn't offer if it would be either of those things," Amy says, standing.

"We'll wander back that way."

Though they can take a different route, so that Marian doesn't see all the same things twice.

The castle has a lot of corridors.

Marian stepped to one side, so that she could follow Amy. Taking a last look at Amethyst and Algernon. The faces of Ambergeldar that so many expected or needed to see. And the girl who lived beneath them, in her quite, what appeared frequently, happy, life.

Amy stops in the hallway to speak to the footman.

"Would you tell the kitchens that I'd like a picnic lunch for four, please?" she asks. "With extra apple pastries, but only if they've made them today. They don't need to make them special."

The footman bows, and leaves for the kitchens.

"They'll probably make them either way," Amy tells Marian, as they head down the hallway. "It's the peril of making a request while royalty. But Norman is very fond of them, and he does tend to turn up at picnics."

"The dragon?" She did remember their last conversation, from only a few days prior. But it was interesting, and a little amusing, to suddenly picture the queen stealing, princess play-mate, dragon as fond of picnics as well.

Another of the things she could repeat at home and no would ever believe.

"Yes. His name isn't really Norman, of course, but it takes about two minutes to say his whole name, and I think it requires a forked tongue to get it right, so he lets us call him Norman."

Parker's idea, or so Amy has heard.

"Norman does sound far easier." Marian grinned. Even as she looked over wall decorations and through doors, casually while they walked, Marian continued her conversation. "Is there anything I need to know about meeting him, if we should?"

"Nothing too particular. I can't imagine you'd be impolite, anyway.

"And be ready for him to be quite large."

Though it is rather hard to be ready for that, even when you think you are.

It take rather quite a lot for her to be rude. Or, well, Robin. But Robin was a grand exception to the expectation for politeness, too, at times.

"That I can do," Marian smiled. "I have only met a dragon one other time, and that, too, was the cause of Milliways and a completely different world from my own."

"It is rather remarkable, isn't it, the people you can meet through Milliways?

"This way," Amy says, turning a corner.

There's a rather lovely young woman in the hallway, who smiles. "Hello, Am--" She breaks off, though when she notices that the Queen is not alone, and curtsies. "Your Majesty."

"Good morning, Rosalind," Amy says. "May I present Lady Marian? Marian, this is Lady Rosalind, Viscountess Wrennford. And a very good friend, so we can dispense, I think, with ceremony at this juncture."

Marian didn't drop into, but a hand moved behind her back, she inclined her head, gracefully easy, and had lowered, without quiet reaching a full curtsey. "A pleasure."

Any friend of Amy's, is not quite a phrase she would consider using aloud yet, regardless of the fact it would have some small truth to it. But only some. It is still a different world, and one she knows little of, even if she has better knowledge of Amy than it.

"Yes," says Rosalind, with a smile.

"Rosalind was one of my very first ladies-in-waiting here," Amy says.

And is now her best friend.

"And her husband is the Commander of the Palace Guard, and looks after us all.

"And Marian is a friend of my brother's."

It's easier to pay attention to all the first words, noticing the ease between the two women that says more than the words do, than acknowledge the last with more than a slightly more forced, but conceding, smile.

The topic that sat between them somewhere.
An unknown that might remain unknown forever.

Storm-grey eyes and golden hair.

Marian kept her smile firm, not a blink.

"You both much do quite a job," Marian offered, to Rosalind, and her absent, referenced, husband. "Amy has always seemed quite at peace in the times I've been graced with seeing her and her children."

Rosalind smiles. "They are not, generally, difficult to look after," she says.

"Except when we are," Amy puts in.

Which, occasionally, they are.

(See: dragons, missing guests, and Caspian's amazing ability to crawl off, curl up under a table, fall asleep, and send the entire palace into a three-hour tizzy.)

"I'm taking Marian to meet Perry," Amy says.

Rosalind nods her head back the way she came from. "You might want to go around. Lady Cecily is . . . lurking. I only just escaped." Rosalind smiles at Marian. "She's sweet, but she talks more and says less than anyone else I've ever known."

Marian tried not to smile, but it might have shown through in some part. "I think every court has seen the type, far more often than longed for."

Their aims were usually about as transparent, too, which had put Marian off a large portion of any of the girls who fluttered the edge of Nottingham while she was growing up.

"Lady Cecily takes it to new and impressive levels," Amy says, a little drily.
"Thank you, Rosalind."

Rosalind nods. "I'll let you go, if you're trying to catch His Majesty before lunch. Lady Marian, it was an honor to meet you."

"And you, Lady Rosalind."

Marian watched her go some space, before adding.

"Hopefully that does mean she has to detain the girl for your sake, either."

"Oh, no," Amy says, as Rosalind continues the way from which Amy and Marian have just come. "It just means we'll go up the side stairs.

"There are certain favors I try not to ask of my friends."

Marian couldn't see her asking any of them. But rather like the apple commentary, there were things people did out of compassion toward friend and sovereign alike for reasons of esteem above request.

"Is she an occupant? Or a guest?"

"They have a suite here in the palace," Amy says. "And Stefan's father has lands outside Litchlea, that Stefan will inherit one day.

"Stefan is Perry's oldest friend. And they have a daughter who is just a bit younger than the twins."

She had meant Cecily, but she hadn't been specific in her question at all. It wasn't as important either, in comparison to the last words, that made her smile, shaking her head.

"To think, how little time it shall be then, before all of them will be running here and there in a pack through all of these rooms."

"Giving their nursemaids grey hairs," Amy says, rounding a corner to turn down the hall to Perry's study.

And then stopping abruptly, reaching one hand out to catch Marian, and flattening against the wall behind them.

Up ahead, a voice comes echoing out of the open door. A moment later, a rather self-important man in an improbable suit of very green clothing comes into the hall way.

Amy and Marian are just barely hidden from sight by the guard standing next to the door.

"Go that way," Amy mutters under her breath.

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