The Royal Guard

You heave a sigh. When you first signed up as a Royal Guardsman, this wasn't exactly what you had in mind. Sure you knew you'd be standing around for hours on end. But you had no idea how excruciating it'd be to stand outside in the scorching summer heat in chainmail. What on earth were you even protecting here in the courtyard? The flowers?

'Could be worse,' you think to yourself. 'I could be that poor sod'.

You sneak a peek over to the guardsman on the opposite end of the courtyard. There stood your best friend, Samuel, covered in full plate armour. Or Sir Samuel, as he's been incessantly reminding you. He was the one who roped you into this job in the first place. "Come on, John! You don't want to work in this pigsty forever, do you?" he had asked you 3 faithful years ago. "Come with me to The Capital! A friend of mine's hooked me up with a great job!".

'Yeah, a real excellent job this shithole turned out to be', you think to yourself. 'At least you get to play at being a knight,' you think bitterly to yourself. John had gotten swiftly promoted to knighthood. Apparently had to do with his uncle pulling some strings in the Court.

"Mr Doe?"

You snap out of your reverie to see Jill standing meekly before you. Jill was a small and timid servant girl who was almost always nervous and in some state of disarray. Today was no exception. Her shoulder length red hair was slightly tangled with bed hair and her French maid outfit was wrinkled, as though she had thrown it on in a hurry and forgotten to iron it. Which was very likely.

Still, despite her constant nervousness and clumsiness, you'd grown rather fond of Jill. Out of all the housemaids working for the Royal Family, she was the only one who ever spoke to you. And she'd once offered you and Samuel some leftover lemonade from the kitchen, which was nice.

"Yes, Jill?"

"Her Royal Highness, Princess Celia is requesting your audience in the dining room," whispered Jill, after making sure that Samuel wasn't in earshot.

The youngest princess? What business could she possibly have with you? You wondered if you had ticked her off in some way. But you'd only ever seen her twice, and never up close. She was a petite and shy girl who's long black hair flowed behind her with some degree of royal grace.

You glanced at the sundial in the centre of the courtyard. It would be noon soon. You recall that your guard duty schedule for the day required you to be patrolling the East Hallway soon. As the bedrooms of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Katherine were located in the East Hallway, it wasn't a trivial duty that you could shirk off.

And yet, this was a direct request from Princess Celia herself. And you don't just ignore a direct request from member of the Royal Family ..