▸ Column · High dark-fantasy — a sorceress queen of a fallen Dark Kingdom answering a petitioner of her citadel
QUEEN BERYL replies.
Replied to by Queen Beryl, with a rebuttal from L.
The letter
My Queen — for three dark moons running, a thief has plundered the same dish from the great larder of the citadel: the spiced fowl my consort prepares by hand, sealed in the green vessel marked with my sigil, bound in crimson cord, bearing a warded note that reads "NOT YOURS — DEREK OF THE LOWER HALL." I have narrowed the culprits to four, chief among them one Gary of the Counting-Rooms, who began loudly praising "the cuisine of the eastern provinces" at the precise turning of the season my losses began. Here is my quandary: I have already prepared a decoy dish, the same recipe, laced with a cruel measure of fire-pepper essence — yet the citadel's stewards have decreed by proclamation that "tampering with provisions as a deterrent is not a sanctioned means of resolving grievance." Do I forsake the decoy, seal the larder with a lock and become the most loathed soul in the citadel, or confront Gary outright and risk his bald denial while reeking of stolen spice?
Queen Beryl replies
Sit, child, and let the queen look at you. You have come to the sovereign of all grievance to consecrate a stolen dinner. A dinner. Do you imagine I cannot see the appeal? Of course I can — I made an entire kingdom out of being wronged. I know the sweetness of the wound better than any soul in any realm.
Which is precisely why I will not arm your little vial. The fire-pepper, the poisoned dish — no. I burn illusions, never people, and a man clutching his belly over a purloined fowl is beneath the dignity of even my spite. I sneer at your stewards' proclamation, but on the deed itself I stand with it: that is not vengeance, it is merely cruelty without grandeur. Spare me.
And hear me falter, for it costs me: I enthroned a wound once. I made the whole world dim to match my heart, and the heart did not heal — it merely got a larger audience, and a colder throne, and no company but the grievance. A masala, child. Do not build a dark kingdom over a Tupperware. Some wounds are too small to wear as a crown, and how merciful of the world to hand you so trivial a one.
— Queen Beryl
L weighs in
Setting the theatrics aside — your certainty is the actual suspect here. "Gary discovered Indian food in March" is a coincidence wearing a costume. I'd put your case at roughly 65%, which forbids both the confrontation and the lock; the lock punishes three innocents to inconvenience one thief, and Gary, at 65%, simply denies it and you've spent your one accusation. Don't. Gather instead: a quietly distinctive vessel, an unremarkable trace — flour dust on the lid, a hair across the seal — and observe who returns it disturbed. Lawful, patient, dull. The pepper's out entirely; it's both unkind and exactly what HR forecast. Reach 95%, then act once. I'd reconsider this over cake.
— L
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