Chapter 4 #2
She remembered her grandmother in rigid bodices, heavy gowns of linen and lace piled around her waist like petals of a wilting rose.
Her mother’s rule had done away with the compulsory wearing of dresses as a means of feminine presentation.
Under her, they had become a people willing and capable of fighting regardless of gender, a royal as much as a layman.
Their fashion had evolved to one of practicality, if still overdone at the nobility level.
She set off down the hallway again, steam rising off her skin in the cool air as she wondered how quickly she could conclude this business and surprise Nova and Cutter at the inspection.
Before she reached the entrance to the grand hall, she found her mother’s assistant escorting Selah to the front gates where Moss waited with the car.
The witch only ever came here to check on the queen, and after seeing the stone spread across her mother’s back, Yemi felt a pinch of alarm in seeing her here today.
“Orie,” she called, and quickened her pace to catch them.
“Morning, My Light.” Orie bowed. The Bear Queen’s attendant was a mountain of a woman with pale almond skin, more curves than angles, and a close crop of mousy-brown hair. The apples of her cheeks lifted her wire-framed glasses when she smiled.
“Morning, Auntie.” Yemi nodded to the witch. Selah was an old woman, crouched and gnarled, with long silver hair, green eyes, skin the color of red clay. She tended to frown often, which Yemi found oddly endearing.
“Selah’s just finished a visit with your mother ahead of the celebration,” Orie explained. Selah grunted in affirmation.
“All’s well, I trust,” said Yemi. Selah shot her an annoyed look. However her mother was progressing, not once in the last eight years had Selah told anyone anything. The updates came from the queen herself, and even those were “right as rain” or nothing at all.
“The queen is in good spirits. She’s gone to the throne room for her audience with the senators,” said Orie.
“I’m headed there myself,” said Yemi. She bowed slightly to the witch and held out her ring hand. “Thank you for coming all this way. We owe you a debt for the way you’ve looked after my mother.”
Selah kissed the ring without a word, and Moss came up the path to collect her. The witch batted his hand away viciously as he tried to help her down the stairs.
“Did she really say nothing at all about her condition?” Yemi asked Orie when they were out of earshot. “It’s spreading. I saw it.”
“Nothing different from the last few times she was here. It’s almost all surface and hasn’t reached the queen’s heart or brain, so we’re okay,” Orie explained as they made their way to the throne room.
“Until we’re not.”
The grand hall ceilings were almost entirely glass, illuminating the glittering floors in natural light. Open-awning windows let in the rain on stormy days. They showered the strips of water garden on either side of the main path, where small fish darted among the exposed roots of colorful plants.
“The queen wouldn’t blindside you. You know that she would tell you, of all people, if there was reason to worry.” Orie nudged her.
I don’t know that, Yemi thought.
“Have you given any more thought to your animus?” Orie asked, Yemi assumed, as a kinder change of topic.
“No,” Yemi sighed. “Any ideas?”
“Viper?”
“Really?” Yemi raised an eyebrow.
“I heard about the Drakes and the taproom.”
“Nova proposed a mongoose.”
“Did she? Well, there’s a theme here somewhere.”
They came upon a side door so as not to disrupt any proceedings by insisting on a grand entrance through the main door. The queen was in her animus on the throne with the senators sitting at a low table in an arc before her.
“Maybe I’ll stick with the bear. It’s popular enough.
How do I compete with this?” Yemi replied.
She twisted the royal ring on her finger while she looked up at her mother.
There was adoration, reverence, in the way the people spoke of her.
Most of them, anyway. As if she were already dead, some venerated saint with a thousand names to pray to—Bear Queen, Stone Goddess, Sun Shield of Ixia.
And Yemi was her daughter, singular and mortal and invisible and unworthy of even one.
“You’ll know the type of queen you want to be soon enough. You have time,” Orie said gently.
Yemi nodded more in dismissal than agreement and strode alone into the throne room. The senators all rose from their seats and bowed at her arrival, bickering voices hushed.
“Morning, Mother. Senators,” she bellowed, her voice carrying as she bounded up the short stairs to take her seat in a smaller throne beside the queen. “How can I be of service today?”
· NOVA ·
Sanji’s been ill.
Nova replayed Van’s nonchalant words in her mind and read the memory of their body language for signs that they’d known anything about this. Sanji was an attendant to the Drake household. He’d never missed a report before this month. Was he truly ill? Or was he a part of whatever this was?
“Unclench your jaw,” Cutter whispered to Nova.
They stood together at the forefront of the drill pad while their captains finished opening ranks for inspection.
Cadence and calls for facing movements bounced off the terra-cotta training structures surrounding the brick clearing as hundreds of soldiers were marched into precise grid formations.
Row by row, Nova would take in their faces and match them to the memory she had of yesterday’s outing.
She unclenched her jaw but chewed her tongue instead.
She had to remember them all. If she missed even one, they were all in danger.
So much of a guardian’s job was memory. Only she and Cutter knew the interior tunnels of the Rock, and those numbered close to a hundred.
She’d counted maybe a dozen heads surrounding Dahlia, but only five of them in uniform.
The commands halted; the only sound remaining was that of the high wind. The quartermaster approached with a salute and handed Cutter a clipboard. “All present and accounted for,” she declared. There was worry on her face even if she didn’t say as much. The assembly hadn’t been scheduled.
“Bold of them,” Nova muttered as Cutter passed the clipboard to her.
He’d made it clear this was her operation.
Nova scanned the pages of names but took in none of them, only the black dots beside the names of soldiers Cutter now had guarding the place instead of in formation.
They were all older. His generation. People he trusted.
Irritating, because it wasn’t just the young in that tavern, but now wasn’t the time to get into it with Cutter about his bias.
She turned to inspect the loose line of older soldiers blocking the way to the bridge behind them.
They were a weathered bunch. Strong, but much too casual in their military bearing.
Nova frowned as her gaze lingered on one of them. “Shouldn’t they be out there, too?” she asked Cutter. “Pulling out the oldheads is going to leave gaps in our coverage.”
“Someone has to secure the perimeter, and we can’t take the palace guard while the queen is inside. Why? Is there someone I should be concerned about?”
Nova pretended to flip through the names on the clipboard. No sense in making a scene so soon. “Let’s get moving.”
She stepped toward the first order—four columns of twenty—as they were called to attention. Cutter and the ground force quartermaster followed with somber expressions.
First man: a Mr. Oaken. Lanky, mid-twenties.
Boots serviceable if not sparkling. Uniform properly laundered, pressed, bloused, aligned.
She let on no approval or disapproval of his appearance but simply moved on to the next, taking them in casually and keeping her attention somewhat distant and focused on any nervous fidgeting in her periphery.
Some of the faces she knew. She’d grown up with or had been taught by them.
War created orphans, and the military or the Kept provided…
care for them. Nova and her sister Illowé were born into this, but Illowé didn’t do worship or structure terribly well.
So she left, and Nova was conscripted into the queensguard, where she excelled and became singular in her rank.
She was in a position of command and hadn’t had a company of peers in a long time.
Second order, third column, fifth man: Mr. Cherry. Dead-eyed, in need of a shave. Boots passable, missing jacket button. Worthy of a demerit, certainly, perhaps a laundry detail. But he hadn’t been at the bar.
By the twelfth order, the sun was high and the fidgeting among them became more pronounced. Open ranks was a slow, tiresome process under the best of circumstances, but she hoped the tedium this time would make someone restless, sloppy. Someone here knew she was searching.
Nova was grateful both for the breeze and to not have to repeat the exercise with the entirety of the military.
It wasn’t the navy in the bar. They’d all been on exercise.
The poison had taken root in the ground force.
The sea around her was that of stately green uniforms, which also meant that the plans in play were for an attack by land, not water.
She paused long enough in front of the twelfth order’s captain for Cutter to quirk his eyebrow in her direction.
Mr. Caphree. Tallish, brown-skinned. A smooth-enough bearing, but his swallows trended more toward labored gulps and the collar of his sand-colored shirt was damp with sweat.
“Are you ill, Captain?” Nova asked him, recalling vaguely a head of locs that nearly matched his length on the edge of last night’s crowd.
“No, xir,” he replied with confidence.
“Are you sure? It’s a cool day. And you are very sweaty.”