Chapter 2 #3
“I’m sorry peacetime is so boring for your readership.”
Luc’s smirk turned sour, and Nova headed off the tongue-lashing she knew was incoming by putting up her hands to stay it.
“Uncalled for. I’m sorry for that, too. When we have something, you’ll have something. In the meantime, let’s let no news be good news a little while longer, yes? The queen’s Day of Days is around the corner. Ripe for puff pieces. You’ve got this. We believe in you.”
Rounding the corner, she halted abruptly as she saw Cutter standing outside the chamber door.
“Oh good, another conversation.”
“You know the drill,” he said patiently.
Nova sighed. She was a Grey—the surname given to unidentified war orphans—but Cutter might as well have been her father. He took her training as the incoming captain of the queensguard seriously—deathly so, given his own failures.
“Four vessels and four hundred forty-three souls unaccounted for, plus one… third of questionable origin, returned to the sea. Two shoddy cannons but morale is high, if cautiously so. There is one anomaly: Where we found that body, the Qorrea and I also spotted some thrashing on the north side of the island. They were Mer. Feral type. No impression the other commanders noticed, but we didn’t mention it given the state of things. ”
“The commanders?”
“General air of respect; light coating of fear.”
“And how was she?”
“Fine.” Nova shrugged, searching her memory for anything of note. “Hurand brought up guns again. She was a little tight about that. Otherwise… commanded well, doesn’t want to be here, and so on. The queen?”
“Still herself. Selah’s been here frequently the last week,” said Cutter.
“She say anything?”
“Nothing she isn’t allowed to say,” he offered. The witch who cared for the Bear Queen in her illness wasn’t inclined to say much to anyone except the queen.
“Figures. Alright, well, we caught up?”
“Your assessment?”
“I am certain of no escalating threat against the Crown from within our naval ranks,” she replied. It was more a recitation than anything.
“How certain?”
“I am not uncertain.”
Cutter nodded, satisfied. His demeanor was often gruff, but Nova knew how to detect pride in it and she let that feed her. She stood aside to let him pass her on his way back out of the annex, then sighed to reset herself and push through the chamber door.
Van Grey was short, brown, and full about the hips, lips, and eyes.
Their white hair was long and braided, shades of orange darkening to near red through the tips.
The Obéid dyed their locs regularly with holy fruit according to the depths of their faith.
They stood by a tall window at the opposite end of the room, looking down the north side of the mountain, and glanced at Nova as she walked in with signature fatigue from their traveling.
“About time,” Van sighed.
“I was just assured we were back early. Anything for me?” Nova asked.
They extracted a folio from their messenger bag, mismatched sheets of unfolded paper tucked messily inside.
Nova frowned. She disliked disorder. It showed a lack of care.
“You know these are important,” she told Van pointedly.
“I am not pressing and collating your spy notes for you, cousin. You will heal.”
Nova rolled her eyes and began skimming the notes.
Under the Bear King, Cutter had developed a network of friends of the Crown and Nova had expanded it—mostly service workers, tradesfolk, bathhouse attendants, people placed in the nation’s high houses and in the homes of senators.
She knew each of her agents by their handwriting and could tell their mood by the absence or presence of flourishes, detect urgency by the weight of a scribble or the presence of key words.
“Heard from Illowé?” Van asked as they waited.
Nova started to fake a laugh but remembered she’d received a letter from her sister for the first time in what must have been a year. “Yes, actually. There is a baby on the way.”
“Obé’s blessings—what a gift!” Van gasped and beamed a smile Nova had never seen before in this room.
“Indeed,” Nova replied as she flicked through the pages, taking count. “Someone’s missing,” she said.
“The Drake report. Sanji’s been ill.”
Nova made a mental note and nodded. The Drakes were at lunch with the queen anyway.
“Far as I can tell, all is well,” Van offered. “Conflict in the Senate is petty, chatter about the Day of Days festivities in the Red District is innocent.”
“And in the Rakes?” said Nova.
Van scoffed and shook their head. Most of the Greys, like Nova, ended up “adopted” by the state and ultimately in military service.
Others were adopted by the Rakelands, an anti-state population near the northern coast, and raised Obéid, the faith that declared Arielle a betrayer.
Van was the latter. This made their monthly meetings, well, tense.
“What?” Nova prompted again.
“I think what you’ll find in all those papers like the ones I dragged my ass out here to present last month and for the last year of months—”
“Fuck me, just answer the question,” Nova groaned.
“—is a trend where people are getting on with their lives and not centering it on some violent obsession with the Crown.”
“Well, does that include the Rakes or not?”
“Yes!” Van shouted. “They’re your people, too. And you treat them—us—with such suspicion.”
“That’s my job! I am suspicious of everyone.” Nova flapped the stack of reports at Van.
“Do you investigate the Green Zone?”
“No, because they’re in the Green Zone. They’ve already been vetted much more rigorously than this. You’re being ridiculous.”
“I’m ridiculous?” Van nearly shrieked. “A god was seated on the throne and rejected us for our faith.”
“Oh, they’re back to being gods now?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass.”
“No no no. You started this.” Nova slammed the folio shut and approached Van with a stern finger.
“You all decided Arielle and her offspring were not, in fact, gods because they did not play into your storybook fantasies of who the gods are and what they do. And then you went to war against them, lost, and had no intention of reconciling but were allowed to remain free to continue your griping and groaning and praying to the Obé for their deaths. And so when I ask you if all is well in the Rakelands, it is a yes-or-no question based on actual history and not me singling you out for abuse.”
Van didn’t move, didn’t blink. Their jaw was set, and they held Nova’s gaze until she backed off. This relationship of theirs was long and familial, for better or worse. But each was aware of the power at play in it.
“I think maybe instead of these little monthly headaches, you’d be better served getting the people’s word from the radio,” they said calmly.
“Now you’re being dramatic.” Nova returned to the desk.
“You don’t take me seriously—”
“I take you as seriously as you take this!”
“You don’t take the faith seriously, so how can you take people of faith seriously?”
Nova shrugged aggressively at them from across the desk.
There was nothing to say here that would be both appeasing and honest. The existence of living gods was as uncontested as the existence of the Mer.
The subject of their relevance, their ongoing interest in the lives of those who worshipped them, was only of interest to Nova as far as it motivated hatred toward the Crown and who donned it at any given time.
But saying as much now wouldn’t be helpful.
“You underestimate your influence,” Van said in a pleading sort of tone. “You should visit the Rakelands. You should know these people as they are, not just as subjects tied to history. There are many who believe you can repair this when you’re on the throne.”
“A thousand things to do before then, though.” Nova hated thinking about the weight of the crown, impossible to avoid in a union with Yemi. She did not consider herself a political figure, though that didn’t much seem to matter.
She exhaled long and slow and held up the purse containing Van’s fee, then gripped their hand when they reached to take it.
“The queen is dying. Every stress is heightened. I haven’t been honoring your position, the time and effort you put into coming here.
I think we would get better sides of one another if I did. I will work on it.”
Van squeezed her shoulder in something like appreciation or an apology of their own.
“I love you, Cousin. Obé keep you,” said Van.
“Yeah. Love you back,” said Nova.
· YEMI ·
Yemi took a deep breath and gathered her voice.
“So sorry to intrude!” she declared in a vaguely disinterested tone. The guests’ chairs scraped backward on the stone floors as they stood for her to enter.
“Not at all, My Light! What a pleasure!” Dorian Drake beamed. He was barely tall but wiry and wore his white hair in a bun. Yemi found him overloud and turned her wince into more of a strained smile before anyone noticed.
“Daughter,” the queen said, tilting her cheek of iron fur upward as Yemi kissed it.
“Mother,” Yemi replied, taking her seat beside her mother at the long table. Knowing she would decline to eat as long as her mother couldn’t, servers rushed a glass of wine to her side instead. It was early for wine, but looking around the table, maybe not early enough.
“What have I missed?” she asked without any real interest. She would use the cover of conversation instead to silently inspect her mother for signs of distress, but the woman was an enigma behind the mask.
The Bear Queen wore black, always now, either in perpetual mourning or to distract from the flaking stone of the flesh along the right side of her body.
Tonight an ornate collar of pearls dripped like a constellation of stars down her chest. The assassin’s bullet steeped in the stone poison had passed through the eye of her personal guard, a woman named Lidia, and carved a short scar into the queen’s left bicep.
It had been enough. Yemi had watched it from mere yards away.