"Requiem For a Queen" chapter 1 by Rob Queen

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Absence makes the heart grow fond, after all, and what heart doesn't pine for him that the gods call away? As for him I speak of, he's right there, standing with His Majesty, your husband, in the chariot. I'm new to such cavalcade as this, but to share his chariot must make him something wonderful, yes?"
"Indeed," the Queen replied, wondering how much of her excitement was the desire to feel Pesh's arms about her sides and upon their child, and how much was the relief of council pressure. Of the former there could be no doubt. Their child was too far along for her to be carting it across the Causeway separating the Twin Hills every day of council. She had so much to share, so little of which related to the extended family of the kingdom but mostly the intimate family of their own success.
With such a yearning for Pesh, was it not alright to overlook anyone else for his glory?
Yet, there he was, the stranger Bethraia spoke of. With a jolt of surprise, Preaneis wondered how she did not notice him before. Standing only to the King's shoulder, he could have been a boy with his hairless face. Though his bearing was beyond a youth's; he stood stiffly, as if uncomfortable with the pageantry of the Triumph, but appraising of its spectacle. Where the King stood crowned in the glittering early grey of the Beamer bloodline, this man stood beneath a dark swath of lank black, encircling his round face. The stiff plates covering his chest and the bracers strapped to his wrists marked him for a soldier, but a soldier from whence? Where in Laonic did men breed babies that were tattooed with sword's slashes for eyes? Could he be as Bethraia assumed: a Visun?
"It would seem our king has made a new friend," came the distinct rasp of the jester.
"Is this cause for concern?" she asked, studying the wrinkles parting his forehead.
"My Queen," he replied, blinking lazily against the shadows of their tarpaulin, though she knew it as the pretense to mockery, "you should know better than to ask the advisor to eight generations of the Beamer bloodline if something is cause for concern. You know our only affairs are those of the flesh, mending fabric, the progeny of the line..."
"My great fool, are you suggesting I should redistribute my love?"
"Of course not! When is a Dragon a cuckold? You have the wrong bird there, your majesty. No, the Queen is the Phoenix rather than the cock. To suggest she find another drake to snare in her talons would ill-befit the piece he bears under his banner."
"Peace within the household is just as necessary, Jester."
"If there is really to be any once your tomato falls off its vine."
Preaneis' hands encircled the child within her. Several small drumbeats of excitement rebounded against her diaphragm. Though Bethraia would nurse the babe, Jester spoke true: with its arrival would come distractions of myriad proportions. But those were concerns for the next Moon. "So what can you tell me of the stranger with my husband?"
"Politics are such a spectator sport, don't you think?"
"In what manner?"
"It is the only game where points are scored on the boards of others.