Chapter 2 #4
“We could ask you the same! Come back from an adventure, did you?” Dorian Drake asked.
“He means you smell like the sea,” Dahlia Drake muttered into her wineglass.
Her voice had a rasp to it that Yemi could find attractive.
They were about the same age. Dahlia was pale, objectively pretty, statuesque, with curious green eyes and an intelligent, occasionally off-putting demeanor. Yemi could relate.
“Not quite. Naval exercises. Keeping the fleet fresh,” Yemi replied.
“Settle something for us. Her Majesty seems bent on holding the diplomatic position.” Sofia waved her wineglass. “On the matter of roads—”
“Personal conveyance is what she’s against, and for obvious reasons!” Marvel Packard interjected, clearly the least sober of all of them.
“ON THE MATTER OF ROADS,” Sofia began again.
“Which is to be the priority? The maximization of access, meaning more roads designed to reach every possible destination for every possible person, or the preservation of everything we stand for as a country, including its natural resources and the spirit of community developed by a well-run mass transit system?”
“That wasn’t a biased presentation at all, was it?” Marvel grumbled.
“My apparently unfavorable take,” said the queen, “was that balance is required. We cannot stifle progress or independent invention, but there’s a bedrock of tradition and lore in our lands that shouldn’t be disrupted in those pursuits.”
Sofia smiled with pursed lips as she swallowed her wine. “See? Diplomacy.”
“And dodging the actual question.” Dahlia turned to Yemi with a curious intensity. “So which is more important?”
“Ah, well, Her Majesty’s opinions become law, and I enjoy being reckless.” Yemi winked. “Men as a species are fickle. Constantly moving, constantly changing what tradition even is, what’s of value, what can be discarded.”
“You’ve learned how to opine from Her Majesty,” Dahlia prodded.
Yemi disguised her mild annoyance with a focused gaze on the rings her swishing wine left clinging to the sides of her glass.
“No, I’m simply saying, the monarchy was once absolute.
Now there is a senate. The Kept led Ixia for centuries, and now they’re a religious sect.
The dominant one, but small compared with the whims of modern men as individuals.
When the land and lore become less important to the people, things will shift organically in favor of individual preference, for better or worse.
Which is unfortunate for Sofia, but I am personally fond of our packards. ”
Marvel raised both his fists in apparent triumph.
Dahlia raised an eyebrow. “So you don’t believe your opinion as a future leader of the state holds more value than anyone else’s?”
“I am only a future leader of the state because there are men who have told me I was born to do it. I am the last person who gets to decide I am important. The people did that, with the backing of this or that god. We are the preserved here. They can discard us at any time and pave a road right over us.”
“You’d be… amicable to a dissolution of the monarchy?” Dahlia knew better than to appear intrigued by the idea, but it seemed she couldn’t help herself. Yemi wondered if anyone else noticed.
By now the entire table had leaned in her direction. She could feel her mother’s eyes on her behind the mask.
“If you tell someone they’re a god from birth, indoctrinate them, steep them in that reality, give them immeasurable power and influence, and then suddenly tell them they’re not because you’ve changed your mind, thereby fucking up their entire reality, how well do you expect that should go?”
The queen thrummed her stone fingers testily against the table in the ensuing silence. Marvel and Sofia appeared scandalized. Dorian Drake was mildly sweaty.
Dahlia nodded. “Point taken,” she said with a smile.
Around the table, there was an air of cautious relief that the mischief in Yemi just could not abide. Playing provocateur was her only source of fun, and she could only do it until her every word became gospel.
“We did happen upon something remarkable, matter of fact,” she started cheerfully. “A body. Or part of one. Each one of us is familiar with the ravages of war, yes, but have you ever seen the hollow trunk of a man?”
The queen cleared her throat pointedly, but Yemi continued, leaning low into the table. “The soul of him ripped out and washed away, just a block of meat and bone, unidentifiable from a well-cleaned side of pork save for his belly button—”
“Daughter,” the queen snapped.
“Yes, yes, alright,” Yemi relented. A short-lived joy, but worth it for the look on all their faces. She raised her glass in a toast. “To adventures.”
The men present scooted their plates far enough away to prompt the servers to retrieve them. Sofia snorted laughter. She’d always been one for a good eccentric story.
“Well,” said Marvel Packard with some bluster, “wasn’t sure before, but now… yes, that’s definitely indigestion. I’m afraid I might be done for the night.”
“We should be going as well,” said Dorian. “My Light, it is always an honor. My unending adoration to your impeccable kitchen staff for a wonderful meal.”
Here was where the Bear Queen would normally invite them all to stay, but she now had an earful to give her daughter, and Yemi took full advantage before she could change her mind.
“Oh no! Real shame. I’ll walk you out.”
She stood, prompting the guests to do the same. Marvel wobbled somewhat on his heels, and Sofia guided him with a hand on his back.
“You braying ass,” she muttered. “Dorian, would you mind assisting?”
“Not at all.”
They bowed collectively and shuffled off down the hallway. Yemi followed them, pleased with herself for a quick evening. She found herself alongside Dahlia as they sauntered behind Sofia and Dorian guiding Marvel between them.
“Her Majesty looks well,” Dahlia said.
“That’s kind of you,” Yemi replied.
“Is she? Well, I mean?”
“She’s outlived all expectations. I’ll tell you what would help, however. You know the imposition placed on her hosting guests for meals.”
Dahlia nodded solemnly. “I understand. My father wanted to see his friend, that’s all.”
“You might remind him of the strain it places on her, then.”
“Sure.”
Beyond the front doors, their cars waited in the gravel driveway. The breeze had grown stronger and swept the fragrance of early spring blooms from the gardens around them. Sofia and Marvel piled into a bright yellow packard with her in the driver’s seat.
“They arrived together?” Yemi raised an eyebrow.
“No one was surprised, believe me,” Dahlia replied.
After helping Marvel into the car, Dorian made his way back toward them, and Dahlia paused in climbing into her own passenger seat, giving Yemi a thoughtful look.
“I appreciate your candor tonight. What you said.”
Yemi nodded. You’re welcome didn’t seem an appropriate response.
“I hope Her Majesty’s strain doesn’t prevent the two of us from… connecting more often. We are old friends, after all.”
Yemi tried to glean the subtext from Dahlia’s facial expression. Was this flirting? Everyone knew about her and Nova.
“I don’t see why it should,” she replied.
Dahlia nodded, satisfied. “Good.”
“Everything alright here?” Dorian asked cheerily from the other side of the car.
“Of course,” Dahlia told him. “Good day, Qorrea.”
Yemi nodded at them both and retreated back into the palace to find her mother for whatever verbal lashing she was due. She found her still at the dining room table, but with a more relaxed posture.
“That was… colorful,” said the queen.
“Got them going, didn’t it?” Yemi signaled to a pair of attendants standing on the far wall to help remove and stow her mother’s headdress.
“Also wholly inappropriate to speak of a dead man that way,” the queen added when she was free of it. Save for a fine sheen of sweat on the smooth, dark skin of her face, she seemed no worse for wear. And at least mildly amused.
“Mm. Have you eaten?” Yemi dabbed the sweat from her mother’s face until she waved for her to stop fussing, then signaled the servers, who rushed out their dishes of pale green soup and spiced sea bass. Yemi retook her seat beside her mother.
“What about this body you found? I haven’t been briefed yet.”
“Off the coast of a remote island. No sign of wreckage or mayhem. No flotsam, no jetsam, just… the trunk of a person and a tattered flag nearby.”
“Where’s the body now?”
“Had Lain do the rite on the Dulce. It would have been a health hazard to bring back on board, and there was nothing left to identify.”
“Hmm,” the Queen grunted. “Kespia?”
Yemi shook her head. “Doesn’t make sense. The proposed alternative, though, is worse, and I think more people are thinking it than are willing to say it.”
There was a moment of silence between them.
The black stone skin of her mother’s arms rippled like sharp feathers against the dining table as she raised and lowered a spoon.
She was serene, the Bear Queen. Unbothered.
But the faint, infernal scraping noise featured in every one of Yemi’s nightmares.
Yemi twitched. “They blame you,” she told her mother. “For the Clodion and all the other ships. They think the Mer are taking them down. Cerro doesn’t think you’re doing enough to stop them.”
“Heads of state get blamed for everything. It’s as true for me as it was for anyone else,” the queen assured her.
“So you don’t think there’s anything to it? That the Mer aren’t responsible?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m not their queen. I’ve told the Kept as much.”
“But if they are involved, it’s an act of war.”
The queen sighed deeply. Not in dismissal—resignation, perhaps? “No one is going to war with the sea.”
Yemi picked at salad leaves on the edge of her plate. The rate of ship disappearances hadn’t seen a marked increase as far as she knew. It had happened occasionally all her life. But a Mer problem—especially one interfering with commerce—was not one she wanted to inherit. Not as a half-Mer queen.
“You can’t compare human flesh to a pig’s.”
“Hmm?” Yemi replied, distracted.
“You know our history, what immediately comes to mind.”
She knew her mother wasn’t referring to the Old Gods and their demands for human sacrifice before the emergence of the Obé.
More than a few frescoes littered the alleyways and back walls of shops in Chairre’s interior, depicting Her Majesty, gorgeous and victorious in battle, standing amid heaps of mangled bodies with the blood of her enemies dripping from a grinning mouth of jagged teeth.
But Ixia had won the war. She’d been the leader they needed: a Bear Queen. And the people loved her. Some of them, though, could do without the reminders of what they loved.
“It won’t happen again,” Yemi promised.