Herald of Steel-Chapter 1555: Seelima And Ptolomy (Part-5)

Alexander's response to the Queen Mother's light breakdown was quite simple- he asked her to trust in him and simply let what would happen, happen- he promised to deal with the aftermath himself.

It was quite a simple statement, yet so very powerful.

So much so that Alexander was thus blessed with a soft, adoring look he did not even think the haughty Queen Mother could pull off, as Seelima showed her appreciation for bringing some much needed solace to her worried heart.

"....." She did not say anything out aloud, but the small nod she gave proved all that she needed to say.

Pleased with the result, Alexander now turned his attention once again to the black noble lady, curiously posing,

"Lady Inayah, what happened to Her Highness's original influence in court? Surely she had allies during the reign of the former king, right?"

After thinking about it for a bit, Alexander thought it was quite implausible for the Queen Mother to lose so much ground so quickly at the court. She should have an absolute advantage at the beginning, so by all accounts, she should have only progressed, never mind regress.

While the ebony lady first cursed Alexander internally a bit for starting the conversation once again.

'Ahhh… why now! Why this again? I was even just about to praise you for calming Seeli down. Brat, don't you know how to quit when you are ahead? Didn't you say you were tired from your travels? Go to sleep!'

So irritated was Lady Inayah by this that in fact she was seriously off the mind to ask his daughter to escort Alexander to his bed and thus close the meeting like that.

However just as she was about to say this, she sensed her friend giving an aggrieved look and, knowing her for a long time, knew if Lady Inayah did not properly explain this to Alexander, the queen would keep this aggrieved feeling pent up for the whole night.

"Sigh…. Of course she had. How could she have done the things she did without them?…. It is just that when Amenheraft briefly captured Adhan, he…. executed a lot of them. The nobles, he spared most of them, but the maids and slaves….I was not there, but I heard the entire palace was filled with screams that night." Lady Inayah's eyes visibly glazed and flickered as if she was recalling some terrible memory.

This was probably because she had lost a lot of known faces that night- those girls might have been only maids, but Lady Inayah had naturally closely interacted with a lot of them, building up a bond over the years.

Almost the entirety of which was shattered in the span of a few hours.

On the other side, being familiar with the timeline, Alexander also cast his mind back to that time, but found he could not quite remember seeing any such specific massacres.

But then again, by the time he arrived at the palace, the entire place was already dyed with blood by the marauding mercenaries. Almost all the womenfolk there, including most of Alozmer's concubines had been violated, while any men stupid enough to get their way were gutted.

In fact, Alexander half counted himself lucky that the whole palace had not been burnt down by then.

But such chaos also meant that whatever target Amenheraft missed the night prior, Alexander's 'allies' helped make up for it, thus destroying Seelima's life's work literally overnight.

Ah! The tragedy of war and its collateral damage.

"Whatever men she had remaining men then switched sides… now they serve either Lord Assazd or… Pasha Farzah." There was a very clear tinge of embarrassment as Lady Inayah added the last part of her sentence, and Alexander clearly noticed, the Queen Mother's eyes darken with fury. She definitely saw this act as being blatantly stabbed in the back by her ally.

Alexander could only give a small sardonic smile to this- although he did not quite approve the old man's method of poaching, at the same time, he could see the reason.

His aim was to take over the court, and that meant taking over the Queen Mother's influence too. Leaving her to grow would only hamper his own growth.

"Right now, Seelima is trying to build up it all back up again. But many of the original nobles are no longer there. And all the people are wary of her antics. It's not so easy to trick them now. Indeed, progress has been slower than expected." Lady Inayah thus finished her words with a deep frown, causing both ladies to purse their lips.

"Plus, I hear Her Highness has also ran into some financial difficulties!" And then, as one voice chimed down, from Alexander's back, another sweet voice immediately chirped up and it was surprising Lady Ezaya's.

This lady seemed to have decided to insert herself into the conversation for some reason, as giving the Queen Mother a deferential look, posed with a set of serene eyes,

"I heard that previously the mad king used to favor Her Highness with a lot of money. And she used that gold to run her army of informants. However now… His Majesty does not… he seems unable to bear the same expenses. From what I hear from grandfather, the treasury is not in a good shape."

If before the Queen Mother was simply peeved, this reveal made her feel embarrassed. As a royal, the regal lady always wanted to show off, so to be shown she lacked money, certainly hurt her ego. Fortunately, this was said by her friend's daughter and inside closed doors, thus sparing Lady Ezaya any scolding.

"Money…." On the other side, hearing this point, Alexander could not help but subconsciously muse out so, finding he had a blind spot there. ƒreewebɳovel.com

Till now he had been simply thinking in terms of schemes and loyalty… the man was so rich that the matter of paying to actually pay the informants- maids, servants, and guards was inconsequential of him.

"What if I sponsor Her Highness?" Thus thinking like that, Alexander raised his brow to pose so.

And instantly the Queen Mother's face lit up. If she could have that funding, she would not have to go constantly begging anyone else… or worse, sell some of her jewelry on the sly.

Seelima especially hated doing the latter because every time she did that, she would be lucky to get pennies on the dollar. The common pawnbrokers were simply too broke to be able to afford her pieces at anything close to its actual value.

While no noble would ever dare to buy such pieces from her.

First of all because this was highly illegal.

In fact it was a crime considered almost as close as to treason- there was even a line in their holy scripture that stated only the royal family members were allowed to the kind of jewelry Queen Mother possessed, unique in its design and material.

As for those nobles powerful enough to shirk such threats or simply pull the wool over using a weak excuse and thus possess these royal heirlooms… well they were too proud to wear such second hand jewelry anyway.

To wear something another woman had already worn to a formal party, in the eyes of the Adhanian noblity, this was perhaps even worse than turning up to the place without even a single thread on them.

It was that base and shameful- they might as well be screaming to the world they lacked all taste and decor.

Hence it was almost an unwritten law among the nobility that every lady who was anybody would custom make her own set of jewelry at least once a year. They would then show off this marvel during one of the year's large formal gatherings, after which it would be thrown in the family vault and made to gather dust indefinitely.

Because wearing the same jewelry twice in a formal event… this was the equivalent of wearing the same unwashed shirt to work for a straight whole month.

Everyone would talk, thinking that the family's financial situation was not quite so well.

There were even shrewd ladies with hawk like eyes whose whole job in life seemed to be remembering such detail- which lady wore what dress in what event, what color was it, who designed it, how did the lady paired this with her jewelry, what kind of engravings was done on the necklace, earning, bangles, rings, etc, and so many more things that Alexander's mind could not even guess was even a factor.

And perhaps most impressive of all, these ladies had memories as sharp as needles, many being able to recall events as far back as a decade ago.

Thus the young and impressionable Cambyses tended to make such sets three times a year, while her three companions did it biannually.

And the entire cost of such an endeavor came out of Alexander's pocket, the bill for each work reaching the tens of thousands of ropals, if not hundreds of thousands.

It really showed no matter the time or place, maintaining multiple women was expensive, very few men could afford to do it.

The only exception to this stigma was wearing one's ancestral jewelry, so mother, grandmother or even great grandmother's.

These pieces were seen to possess great historical or sentimental values, so they could be worn on special occasions, such as during birthdays or annual celebrations that honored the family's founding.

Then, the older nobles would use that jewelry as a pretext to start small talks.