(private!!)

Nodding a little, she took a seat, resting her sword on the floor carefully as she did so. She still needed it close, but it could stay there for now. Harper made a note of the way the queen zoned out a little, as if she was somewhere else, and not a good place. Making a mental note not to mention that again, a shocked look made its way across her features. "That just seems... Unfair. It doesn't make sense, I mean advisors are meant to advise, not to make decisions for you." she replied.

The next statement didn't surprise her much, women looked out for each other, so it was only natural that they loved one another, right? Harper is a girl who doesn't even register romantic feelings, it's just 'oh, she thinks we're good friends, sure we can sleep in the same bed!', she's just very oblivious to these things. "If only women could rule things alone, right? Men seem to get very angry very quickly." she observed with a decisive nod of her head. "You said you were trained to be queen. What was it like? I've never been to a school." she asked, apparently not at all embarrassed about her lack of education. It was just her lot in life, and she could read and write, it just took an awful lot of effort and wasn't entirely necessary for her job.

Perhaps hers was an unorthodox view due to her upbringing; her initial upbringing by her parents taught her to be kind and strive for what she wanted, this was then enforced by an aunt who wanted all of her daughters to do well - adoptive children included. Nell Smith was a notorious woman in the merchant's district, making her own way with a shop and blacksmith she had been given by her brother. With four daughters, Harper not included, it was a family of powerful and independent women as far as commoners went. Nobody really knew where that ambitious and outgoing streak had come from, but it appeared not to be leaving the family any time soon.

"No king ever got any fame from obeying others. No queen will either. My mother would say how you're born doesn't have anything to do with where you'll go. But she did spit in the face of a soldier and ask what his status had to do with the price of good steel, so maybe don't take her advice on everything." she suggested. Of course when she said mother she was talking about her aunt, but she was more of an adoptive mother than anything.

While this information was rather difficult to take on, she trusted the word of the queen and was rather honoured that she would be the confidant for this information. Then it hit her - those soldiers, could her father be among them? If they were frozen, not dead, of course. There had never been a body, after all. Harper decided that she would keep that idea to herself for now. "If you know of these gears, then do you know where they were hidden?" she asked. That would make the task of getting them much easier, but something told her that the exact locations had died with the old king and queen, as the focus seemed to be on finding the gears in the first place.

Well, that was one less thing for Harp to worry about for now, though the revelation that the soldiers may not be dead stuck in her mind. Her father had been a blacksmith, a craftsman of weapons where his sister crafted armour, and out of necessity he had learned to fight with what he made so that he could make them more effective. He had promised to teach Harper to do the same, but he had never had the chance. The fact that he might be alive... It brought a soft smile to her features. One that was quickly wiped off as they were interrupted.

"Yes, I remember. If an advisor seems slimy, mention the air. The temperature, or the breeze, or something of that nature." the guard responded, standing and adjusting her armour as she did so before retrieving her weapon from where she had carefully placed it. "Are we ready to go?" she prompted, crossing the room to stand by the door.

There had been a few of the potential advisors that she didn't like, Harper trusted her instincts, and perhaps it was foolish to see foulness in a person from the way they held themselves or looked at someone or spoke about something. She wasn't about to forsake her instincts though, especially not with an important task like this. Satisfied with the choices made, she was about ready for the queen to dismiss them for now when someone burst in. 'Well someone has a flair for the dramatic' she thought, observing the stranger with a frown. He didn't seem particularly threatening in demeanour, but something struck her as odd. Why would the prince of an empire come all that way to marry a queen of a place less powerful? And why was he so assured about it? Didn't men fight each other over this sort of thing? It wasn't her place to speak up about it, but while the queen would have to smile, her guard certainly did not, fixing a cold gaze on the prince.

Harper waited until they were walking the corridors to react fully. "He definitely has a high opinion of himself. That pride is common in their people, from what I know. I think it's because they have an empire and we are small compared to them. That doesn't make us weak, I mean we have better trained soldiers for a start. And they have this alcohol, it's so strong that it burns. I've only really spoken to traders or soldiers, though, so I don't suppose I can make any judgements on royals." she explained. The Russians were a distant land, and that was likely one of the reasons they weren't threatening them with invasion, so it was rare to come across their people here. Traders were everywhere though, and spoke of a land where the snows were twenty feet deep and the people rode places in carriages pulled by bears! Harper didn't think those facts were worth mentioning, as interesting as they were.

Harper had to take a minute to think about that. She was never one to think of particularly cunning ideas, but she did know stories of people who were! She knew many folk tales that she assumed royals didn't bother learning, about intelligent heroes and evil schemers and how one defeated another with clever tricks. It was always far more interesting to listen to someone sing about complicated schemes than outright battles. "Maybe... Maybe you can set a test that you know they can't win. If etiquette gives you enough power to say that you can't marry them unless they prove themselves, then you can use it to stall." she suggested. There was a story about a queen from a distant land who was set to marry a new suitor after the disappearance of her husband, but then set a task that only her missing husband could complete to allow him time to return. Harp didn't know how much power the queen had over these men to request tests of skill from them, but she figured it was worth suggesting as she took a seat on a lounge chair in the room.

She was pleased with the compliment to her idea. It might not be entirely hers, but still, nobody had ever said 'genius' in any capacity about or to her before. With a smile and a nod to confirm that she had heard the other's words, though she seemed startled by the idea of teaching what she knew. Training was tough, and she didn't want to hurt Zania. "I- If that's what you want, my queen. I can't promise that I will be a good teacher, or that it will be easy." she remarked, wishing to be honest about the difficulty of the training she went through to become good enough to claw her way onto the royal guard. She supposed that the queen didn't need to be as good as her, just good enough to hold her own. This was starting to shape up like one of those bard's stories, and the prospect of her deeds one day being sang about made her grin. Of course, if the queen was going to learn to fight, she would need a weapon to fight with. "If you do wish to learn to fight, your first weapon should be gifted, not bought. I can do that." she said, perhaps she was superstitious but it was tradition, and she knew just the person to make the sword.