They get to Casasha. Shara gets her cream puff and her fruit. Strangers incline their heads to her and call her "pennon"; a few recognize her personally or just know that there aren't any other Swanpennons her age and call her "princess". Casasha is pretty densely populated - there's farmland in parts of it, but the place the wilds spit them out in isn't it; it's a largish city by the source of the river they've been following, and after they spend a night in an inn there - and their horses are more thoroughly seen to than is possible on the trail - they'll be proceeding on a well-trafficked highway to the royal household.
And after their night in the inn, on to the capital they go.
"When we get to the palace my parents are going to want to meet the people I rescued, especially if it counts," says Shara. "And, um, considering how they met, they might be looking particularly close at you."
"Yeah. They might ask. But I'm not under any particular pressure to get married in spite of the princess thing because the succession doesn't have to be traditional. So that's the most they'll do even if they adore you, promise, you aren't going to be subject to pushy crowned people."
"It was him. He wasn't a prince, before, he wasn't even in the principal Swanpennon branch - full-on pennon, no tricky commoner ancestry making it awkward for him to try on the crown when it came up, but not living in the Swanpennon estate most of the year. He was - I think the nearest foreign equivalent is a knight? They're just called blades, here - flag blades if one disapproves of state-sponsored violence and likes to call anybody with a sharp object a blade. And he went around the town he lived in doing that policing misbehavior as it cropped up and then there was a flash flood - people think it was a weather raveler, but it's not clear - and Karaz got everybody who couldn't swim or who'd got hurt in the original wave out of the low-lying area. Including Auriny, my mom."
"Not painting!" he agrees. "Reading, I love books. Uh - I sort of lost a lot of hobbies, and I forgot about the ones that I had when I was younger, so I'll be vague rather than specifics. Introverty, some board games, some card games - I'm really not a party person. I like thinking, though - and I'm good at math."
"Most of them, honestly. I think poetry's about the only thing that I get bored of reading, and that's because a lot of it tends to meander around and waste my time. History, fiction, non-fiction - it's basically all fine, but I do have a fondness for storybooks with clever protagonists."
"I'm actually terrible at violence, personally. Until I was eight I was the clumsiest little girl of all time, and then my parents found me a chronic-healer and now I'm not nearly that bad but anything really complicated is still not going to happen. So Kayam fills in."
Shara rides up to it, is recognized by the guards, vouches for "my rescuees", and hands off the horses and proceeds into the building proper on foot.
"Let's grab my parents, they'll want to watch me making my try," she says. "In case it takes this time."
Shara asks the nearest palace staff for the last known whereabouts of either monarch and follows their directions to the king's study.
There, in his study, is the king! He is wearing his crown and everything.
"Father, I'm back! I brought rescuees! There were more of them but only these ones wanted to come along. This is Adarin and that's his sister Zeviana."
"Some kind of raveler I don't even know what to call her - she was raveling people, their - liking for each other. She had a bunch of them kept more or less like pets in a house in the wilds. I noticed her casting a spell as we rode by, figured out which of the occupants was her, dropped my flashball to signal Kayam, shredded one of his shields to let her knife the raveler," she gestures at Adarin, "and then we just barely had time to explain instead of having to bail, they were really upset, it didn't wear off when she died."
"Of course we will," agrees the king. "I think she's in the aviary."
Off to the aviary!
"Mother, I'm back, I rescued some people and brought two home with me, come watch me try the crown."
"Of course, darling!" exclaims Queen Auriny. "Hello, it's so nice to meet you both."
There, she proves that she is herself both by looking like herself and by demonstrating that she can do metaravelry and therefore cannot also be doing shapeshifting (she turns her back and Kayam makes a tiny space fold, which Shara finds unerringly on the first try and pokes her finger through to tap a guard on the nose from four feet away). They let her have the crown.
It looks like an inch-tall half-inch-thick ring of mirror-bright platinum, no diamonds at all.
Till Shara goes and ceremoniously kneels before the heir throne to the right of the regnant throne, and puts it on her head.
Then an invisible seam opens up, dividing the ring into a top and a bottom, and it proves to be hollow.
Well, hollow of platinum, anyway. It contains quite a lot of radiant-cut flawless diamonds, which float between the two rings, rolling in a slow languid circle clockwise around Shara's head.
"Is - is it working? I can't see," Shara asks, shaking with excitement.
The guard bows to her and says, "This way," to the twins.
Zeviana looks at her, coldly.
She's low born, certainly, she's pretty sure she hasn't seen a garment formal enough in her life. But despite that - the way she's looking at the maid, she's a fucking queen.
"If I go anywhere," she says archly, "you can be damn sure I'll be dressed for it."
"Shara's party's going to be in four days to allow time to invite a few hundred stuffy pennons and other important personages and if I should happen to faint dead away when I see her in that dress they've got socked away for the occasion please claim that I had been neglecting to drink enough water to all witnesses," sighs Kayam.
"Well - my head's still something of a mess when it comes to - personal space and how I should act and how platonic feelings work." He fidgets, a bit. "But nothing I had while I was there was - in a romantic sense. So in a disturbing way I seem to be absolutely fine on that note."
"Your highness!" exclaims the same maid who was previously assigned to the rescuees.
Shara looks up. "Hm?"
"Oh - I'm sorry to interrupt, Princess - it's only the wardrobe mistress wants you newly measured for the party."
"Sure, can you do that here or does she want it comprehensive enough that I have to go to her?"
"I can do it here, Princess."
Shara kisses Adarin again and gets up and holds out her arms in the prescribed manner for re-measuring.