The Noble Queen-A Shadow Slave Fanfic

Time both slowed to a crawl and went faster than Noble could measure.

The search for Nobody yielded no results, with each person laying their unique theory about the mysterious person aside when the next big story hit the news.

Valor demanded the report be banned, but copies of it still circulated in less official capacities.

Even Fort had obtained a printed version of the book, but he knew better than to flaunt the fact in public. 

Things settled into a natural rhythm for the family in Ravenheart. Days turned into months.

Autumn came and was on the verge of leaving when early one morning Noble woke suddenly from a deep sleep.

It was still strange not to choose when she woke after years of never resting, but she had to admit that her sleep was better when her soul wasn't traveling between worlds nonstop.

Opening her eyes wide, Noble felt for her husband. The spot next to her was empty.

Any sleepiness left in her vanished.

"Fort?" she whispered into the lingering darkness.

When no answer came, she summoned the [Lucent Taper] and climbed out of bed.

She felt for Fort's emotional signature before activating her second sight to locate him. He was in the living room downstairs.

Silently she slipped down the stairs to find him sitting on the sofa surrounded by pages and pages of work. One of the family's lamps flickered on the low table in front of him as he studied a page intently.

"Couldn't sleep?" Noble whispered by his ear as she came up behind him.

He jumped, dumping the stack from his lap. It floated back into his hands without a single sheet falling to the ground.

Fort gave his wife a weary smile.

"I have been known to be a night owl," he looked at the clock on the wall, "or an early bird in this case." He sighed. "I had something on my mind, and I needed to work it out."

Noble came to the front of the seating area as she took in the scene.

"May I help? I might not be good with physical puzzles, but I'm rather good at problem solving."

From the feelings Fort was putting off, it wasn't something as simple as where to put the next town square.

Clearing the seat next to him, Fort patted the cushion.

"You know that letter your mother sent for my eyes only the day before yesterday?"

"I do." Noble brought letters back and forth at least twice a week.

More than a few times, Lena had sent Fort a communication directly instead of waiting for the slower government channels. When Noble had gotten another sealed letter the day before, she hadn't thought anything of it, thinking it was something trivial like all the others.

That assumption had been wrong.

Fort pressed his mouth into a firm line.

"Mom noticed something strange about the highway plans between Bastion and the rest of the Sword Domain."

"It must be very strange for her to reach out to you. Roads have never been an area of interest to her as far as I know."

Unlike Noble and Fort, Lena had learned to drive before North America fell, but she hadn't done so in decades. The grandmother cared more about people and let others get her to the places she needed.

"Indeed."

Fort chewed his lip as he searched through the pages of his notes. Finding the page from his mother-in-law, he held it out for the light of the now floating candle to illuminate. 

"In one of their weekly government meetings, someone jokingly said 'all roads in Bastion lead to nowhere.' It struck your mother as a strange thing to say, so she caught the man after the meeting and asked him what he meant." 

"I take it that his joke had some merit to it or Mom wouldn't have written to you." Noble studied the page as she listened. 

"The long-term roadways were revealed to the government so that they could more easily secure the supplies. When Lena looked at the plans, most of the paths are straightforward between citadels." Fort went silent, the thoughts in his head consuming his attention. 

Noble floated the candle in a circle to bring the man back. "And the rest?"

"That's the thing, they do exactly what the agent said. They lead nowhere. They are offshoots that abruptly ended all in the same direction. They all stopped just short of Godgrave." Fort pulled out a page with a rough sketch that Lena had provided. 

A huge skeleton was crudely drawn with Bastion marked out and a few other key points. Sure enough, nodes off of the main trade routes snaked toward ancient bones before ending short of the giant.

"When your mom went to Clan Valor to ask about why the extra supplies were needed, the knight representative vaguely alluded to future plans to connect through Godgrave to the roads of the Moonriver Plain and beyond. He dismissed her concern about the place being a death zone and cut the interaction short with an excuse that he had other matters to attend to." Fort laid out the situation as he understood it. 

"Mom usually has a good sense about these things." Noble chewed the inside of her cheek.

"I know. You both do, which is one of the reasons I am telling you all of this. The letter asked me to check on the road building plans in the Song Domain to see if there was any credence to Valor's claims." The Ambassador lowered Lena's note as he searched through mounds of paper. 

"I spent the day searching through all of the infrastructure records that I had access to. Valor's plans may have been brief and to the point, but Clan Song buried all of their information in a mountain of paperwork. These pages are the copies that Song provided us of supply redirection requests and redistribution of assets. I am developing a bit of a headache wading through it, but I think I have finally pieced it together." In the dim light, the lines on Fort's forehead looked even more pronounced than usual. 

"And?" Noble couldn't wait any longer for his assessment. 

"The Song Domain has roads planned that go from here to the coast to connect Ki Song with all of her citadels." The ambassador nodded slowly. "And, as expected, they also have mapped out roads toward Godgrave." 

Fort scratched his chin as he continued to search. 

"But that's good news, isn't it?" Noble was confused.

If both sides were building roads toward each other then that could only mean good things, right? If Godgrave stopped being a death zone, then perhaps someday she might be able to travel overland to visit her mother in person. 

That would be amazing! 

Yet Fort's emotions kept her from celebrating. 

"It should be good news," the man conceded. "There is just one big problem." 

Finding the page he needed, Fort brought it for Noble to see. 

"Here are the roads that I could find from Song." 

Then he held out Lena's page a second time. 

"And these are the roads proposed from Valor. Do you notice anything peculiar about them?" 

Noble stared at both maps for a moment unsure of what she should see. But then it hit her. 

"Oh!" 

Fort nodded. "You see it too then. I was hoping I was crazy. No matter how I look at it, the problem remains. The roads can never connect. That begs the question: why build them?"