The next attempt to rid her court of the Corgi Knight comes in the form of a cooked-up challenge to duel, over some paltry claim to feel slighted. The bicycle cannot be legally challenged as a conveyance, the reasoning must run, without upsetting a great many other apple carts; but it's no substitute upon the field for an actual Steam Armour.
The Corgi accepts the challenge, of course. Attends the field, of course.
"What do you suppose she plans to do, on that bicycle?" Goodboy de Poodle murmurs, at the Princess's right hand in the Royal seating.
The Princess is asking herself much the same, heart in her throat. She sits, hands folded in her lap, and shows nothing. "Win," she says, almost under her breath.
When it comes time for the great Steam Armour facing her to lower its lance and begin its charge, the Corgi stands up on the pedals and races unwavering direct into its teeth; no more than a simple swerve and the Knight sails untouched between the Steam Armour's thundering legs and comes to a neat halt as the Armour's pilot canters to a lengthy, confused stop.1
Onlookers are whooping and catcalling the opponent Knight, even before the Corgi very obviously turns, hooks a pedal into the optimal starting position with her toe, and sets herself ready for the next charge. Nobles who, mere moments before, thought this a splendid gambit for putting the Corgi in her place, are looking in dismay to the Princess, for any sign their proxy humiliation can be called off by Royal fiat.
She sits, hands in lap, shows nothing, allows it to continue. As the Corgi simply dodges around the Armour's feet again, she murmurs, lips barely moving, "For how many jousts can that Armour maintain operating steam pressure, Goodboy de Poodle?"
He is not watching; famously, he never does, sitting at the Royal hand with papers and ink, writing, writing. He doesn't look up. "That, your Highness? That's a show pony, not a fighting mechanism. Three, four; five, perhaps, if piloted with skill and care."
It's slowing visibly through the third; wheezes to a halt in its attempt at a fourth. The Corgi pedals a lap of its stilled feet, calls up for its pilot to yield, accepts his defeat. Approaches the Royal box, as is customary, to bow to her monarch.
"Goodgirl Corgi. The day favours you," the Princess says, chancing a smile.
"I came to win," the knight says, and there's a new iron note in her voice where once there was nothing in her but warmth, and the Princess's stomach falls in a way she cannot let show on her face, nor bear to closely examine.
Goodboy de Poodle puts aside another sheet of paper as the Corgi wheels her bicycle away, under the crowd's adoring roar, dips his pen. "You'll regret teaching her that," he says.
"It will make her invaluable to the Crown," the Princess contradicts him coldly, and he neatly begins writing yet another page as the next pair of belligerents take the field with a matter to settle.
"The Crown," he says, with the slightest emphasis, and nothing more.
The attempt after it is the dangerous one.
"You have asked me for an audience, Goodgirl Corgi," the Princess says. "Speak."
Haltingly at first, the Corgi explains that she has been approached by a scion of one of the noble houses, who has suggested an alliance. That the public's affection for the Corgi makes her far more a force in the Court than anyone had first supposed, and that with access to the resources of a great family....
"What do you seek from me?" the Princess asks impatiently.
"I'm an appointment by arms, your Highness," the Corgi says. "It's only customary, not a rule, I understand, but traditional for the Crown's consent to be sought should a noble house seek to lower itself so into—"
—marriage.
"You cannot mean to—" the Princess says, before catching herself, grinding teeth closed to gate her bursting heart. Hands clenched tight on the arms of her chair, she fights to master herself, chest heaving.
"Your Highness." And there, the cold note of new hardness again. "I am penniless. Not in the manner of a penniless noble with a country estate and a staff of hundreds and business in sailing-vessels full of cargo, but no spending-money for doublets in the season's colours; penniless. My only Armour rusts abandoned in a field. The next time they have me on the tournament green, a prepared opponent with more nimble feet will put paid to that trick you saw me pull; and one foot will see me a broken body on the grass. And so, you see, your Court succeeds in changing me."
The Princess meets the Knight's eyes, with no answer for the bitter set of her mouth.
"I'm here to win," the Corgi says, voice breaking suddenly to a shadow of itself, and she turns away and leaves, head down, ears down, tail down, without asking to be dismissed.
The Princess takes a deep breath, lifts her wine with a tembling hand, and takes a deep gulp.
"Say nothing, Tomas," she says eventually, viciously, to de Poodle; though he hasn't said a word.
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the author, personally, is picturing a classic Akira slide — lovingly, expensively animated, to Ghibli standards, amidst a gorgeous green meadow — by a soft butch puppygirl on an old-fashioned bicycle.
