He recovers and finds a new tutor

Several hours had passed before Winston felt sufficiently recovered to resume anything resembling a normal afternoon. He had bathed, dressed, eaten enough to replace some of what Astarte and Theana had apparently considered expendable, and spent a gratifying stretch of time doing nothing at all until his legs stopped commenting quite so insistently on the earlier session.

Arshaxia and Valzarina fell into place when he finally left his chambers and accompanied him through the familiar corridors of the manor. Neither mentioned what they had spent a considerable portion of the afternoon observing from their posts, although Valzarina’s occasional sidelong glance and the faint smile Arshaxia never quite allowed herself suggested that close service to their king had not proved especially tedious. Winston noticed and, after considering what asking about it might encourage, wisely allowed the matter to remain unexplored.

The solar offered the prospect of several quiet hours with books, correspondence and enough respectable scholarship to restore some dignity to the day. Arshaxia opened the door ahead of him while Valzarina remained at his side, and the complete lack of caution from either guard told Winston before he crossed the threshold that whoever occupied the room was expected.

A woman stood waiting near the long windows.

She stood near the long windows rather than behind his desk, late sunlight catching the gold she wore and warming the rich brown of her skin until it took on a deeper, polished sheen. A blue drape passed over one shoulder and around her body, formal without being cumbersome, leaving one arm free while framing the scaled gold cups that sat high and full across her chest. The metal rose and fell with her breathing, the quilted pattern pressing lightly against the soft weight beneath it.

Broad bracers enclosed both forearms, and a thick dark braid fell over one shoulder with enough weight that Winston suspected it could have qualified as equipment in its own right. Red lips, steady dark eyes, and an ease in her posture completed the impression. The light traced the strong line of her collarbone and the smooth curve where her neck met her shoulder, and for a moment he found it difficult to look past the way the armour sat on her. She was wearing the armour of his personal guard minus the helmet, which lay on the desk.

Nothing in her stance suggested the watchful resistance Winston had grown accustomed to from Amazons who had not yet been brought under him, nor did she carry the conspicuous warmth he had learned to recognize in women whose feelings had already passed through his authority. There was simply a settled composure about her, something perceptive and unexpectedly kind beneath the discipline.

One fist came lightly to her breast as she bowed. “My king.” The title came without hesitation or strain, and before Winston could decide whether to ask who she was, she straightened and supplied the answer herself. “Philippus. Captain of the royal guard. And, unless someone has reorganized the command structure without troubling to inform me, captain of your personal royal guard as well.”

Arshaxia and Valzarina had shown no concern at finding her here, so clearly the arrangement was expected. Winston glanced instead toward the tablets already sorted across the table. “You have been here long enough to start organizing things.”

“Long enough to discover they required it.” There was no boast in the answer, only the calm certainty of a woman who regarded competence as something expected rather than impressive. Winston came farther into the room and rested a hand on the back of one of the chairs. “I had imagined meeting the woman responsible for keeping me alive would involve considerably more ceremony.”

“There will be opportunities enough for ceremony.” A faint crease appeared beside Philippus’s mouth. “At present Hippolyta has more urgent work in the city.”

Winston had known his wife had been summoned away, though the speed of her departure had left little time for explanation, and his expression must have given away the question forming behind it.

“Much of Themyscira has adjusted to you faster than its people have,” Philippus continued. “There are Amazons in the capital who know something fundamental has changed because they can feel it in the law, in the temples, even in the instincts by which they understand authority, yet many have never stood before you or heard your voice. Some know there is a king only as an impression they cannot quite explain. Others have heard fragments and filled the gaps themselves.”

Lowering himself into the chair, Winston kept his eyes on her. “That sounds healthy.”

“It sounds like a nation undergoing a change it has never undergone before.” She crossed to the table and rested one hand beside the ordered tablets. “Hippolyta is your regent. Someone has to explain what their instincts have already begun telling them, who now rules Themyscira, what that means for them, and how authority is meant to pass from the old order into the new without half the city inventing its own explanation.”

The image of entire districts of Amazons dimly sensing his existence without yet knowing the man attached to it was difficult to make ordinary. “And she thought it better to go to them than bring them here and leave the matter to your guard.”

“For the sake of your household, yes. Also for the sake of the city.” Enough amusement entered Philippus’s voice to soften the practicality of it. “Tens of thousands of confused Amazons arriving at your door would complicate my first day as captain of your personal guard.”

Winston’s mouth twitched. “Self-interest. At last, something reassuring.”

“A captain should cultivate it where survival is concerned.” She turned one of the tablets toward him, bringing the neat columns of names and rotations into view. “Until Hippolyta returns, she has asked me to guide you through what requires attention here, answer what I can, and prevent three officers from handing you three contradictory instructions before supper.”

Winston bent his attention to the lists. “That last service alone may earn you my lasting gratitude.”

“Keep it for emergencies. I would settle for cooperation.” The answer came dryly enough that the corner of his mouth lifted again.

The dryness of the answer made him smile, but what held his attention was how easy the exchange felt. Philippus treated him as her king without making the title ceremonial every time she used it, and his being male seemed to demand neither apology nor endurance from her. After enough encounters in which one or the other had been unavoidable, the absence of both became difficult not to notice.

His attention lingered long enough for Philippus to look up from the tablet. “You are studying me, my king.”

Resting his hand on the edge of the table, Winston tried to find a version of the thought that would not sound insulting. “I am deciding how diplomatically I can phrase something.”

Philippus regarded him for a moment, then the corner of her mouth curved. “That already sounds promising.”

The safest version remained unsafe enough. “You seem rather less offended by my existence than some of your sisters.”

That drew a low, unforced laugh from her. “Some of my sisters have made themselves very easy to anticipate.”

“You have not,” Winston said, watching her more closely now.

“I have had good teachers.” Her attention stayed on him rather than returning to the tablet. “I have also spent enough centuries teaching others to learn that certainty is often where foolishness begins.”

The mention of teaching connected naturally with something Hippolyta had told him earlier. “She said you trained a considerable number of Amazons.”

“Thousands, by now,” Philippus replied, and affection began to soften the severity of her expression. “One required rather more work than the rest.”

Winston knew who she meant before she said anything more. “Wonder Woman.”

“Diana, yes.” The name came easily from Philippus, carrying the familiarity of someone remembering a girl rather than the woman Winston knew from newspaper photographs. “I taught her arms when she was young, long before the world knew her by another name. Later she developed the inconvenient habit of returning from Man’s World with opinions about what the rest of us ought to reconsider.”

Trying to reconcile that girl with the woman who had stopped invasions and fought monsters left Winston smiling. “I assume she was an easy pupil.”

Philippus laughed at that. “Absolutely not. Talented, certainly. Curious beyond endurance, proud whenever she believed she had earned the right to be, and impatient with anyone who expected tradition to answer a question merely because it was old.” The affection running beneath the complaints robbed them of most of their severity. “I taught her a great deal about fighting, and in time she returned the favor by teaching me several things I had mistaken for wisdom.”

Winston shifted his attention fully away from the tablets. “Such as?”

Resting one hand against the edge of the table, Philippus took a moment before answering. “Preparing for the worst in someone is not the same as knowing them. Suspicion becomes laziness when you stop looking at the person in front of you because an old belief has already decided what they must be. Diana had seen more of men than most of us had by then, good men and foolish ones, cruel men, frightened men, brave men. She had very little patience for Amazons who wished to treat all of them as though one word settled the matter.”

The admission carried enough self-awareness that Winston found himself wondering how willingly Philippus had accepted the lesson when it was first offered. “I take it you embraced this correction with perfect grace.”

The look she gave him made the answer clear before her mouth curved. “Eventually. Diana was very persistent.”

“That sounds considerably more believable,” Winston said, his smile lingering as he looked back toward the tablets.

What stayed with Winston had less to do with Philippus’s joke than with the fact that she had reached her judgment of men, and now of him, without his authority forcing the issue. Whatever assumptions she had once shared with her sisters had been worn down by experience, argument and years of being challenged by Wonder Woman, which made the distinction harder to ignore after everything he had learned that afternoon about how easily magic could reshape another person’s feelings.

A faint smile remained as he looked back toward her. “So Hippolyta has left me with the woman who helped train the person most likely to object whenever Themyscira becomes too pleased with itself.”

“Among other qualifications.” Philippus’s mouth curved as she gathered the nearest tablets into order. “Your wife might also remind you that I have commanded the royal guard for rather longer than you have been alive.”

Winston watched her arrange them. “There it is. I was beginning to worry modesty might consume you.”

“I try not to let virtues become debilitating,” she replied, and the dryness of it pulled a laugh from him before she turned the conversation back toward the work waiting between them.

Three tablets came together beneath her hand. “Your personal guard is in the middle of reorganization. Penthascara and Xanthibarqa have been vetting women for close service, Aurascyra has opinions about corridor coverage that I intend to survive hearing in full, and Helisparga has already sent structural concerns involving the outer additions to the manor. None of them are wrong, which is unfortunately why the matter requires attention.”

Rather than simply announce what ought to be done, Philippus walked him through the overlapping rotations and the new approaches the expanding palace would soon create around the eastern rooms. “Penthascara’s present schedule will exhaust half your close guard within a fortnight. Aurascyra has solved that problem by creating another in which two women would need to occupy the same doorway, while Helisparga has quite sensibly noticed that the palace works will soon give us three additional corridors to cover.”

Winston studied the arrangement for a moment. “And here I had thought being king meant other people solved things.”

“They do,” she agreed, settling one hand beside the lists. “The danger begins when you stop understanding how.”

That answer held his attention longer than the rotations themselves. There was no challenge in it, only the patient certainty of someone accustomed to teaching people who would eventually have to function without her. “How much of this guidance did Hippolyta actually ask you to provide?”

“The practical parts? Most of it. The rest I intend to judge as we go.” Philippus shifted one of the tablets closer so he could see the next rotation. “A captain who keeps her king alive while allowing him to remain helpless without her has done a poor job. I can tell you what I recommend and why I recommend it, but the decision remains yours. Eventually I would prefer you understand these matters well enough that nobody can hide a bad decision behind the fact that you are new to ruling.”

Winston looked over the columns again. “You could simply reorganize the guard yourself.”

“Of course I could.” The certainty in her voice made him glance back at her, and the faint curve at the corner of her mouth suggested she knew exactly why. “I am very good at my work.”

“There is that modesty again,” Winston commented dryly.

“I told you I try not to let virtues become debilitating.” Philippus tapped the first column with one finger. “For today, my king, keeping you from accidentally exhausting your own guard will be sufficient ambition.”

Winston leaned closer to the tablet. “A modest beginning.”

“I am known for my restraint,” she replied, already guiding him into the first rotation.

By then Winston was beginning to understand why Hippolyta had trusted Philippus with more than his safety. She was not merely arranging guards around him. She was making certain that, eventually, he would understand enough not to need someone else to think for him.