Chapter 5 #2
“I’ll take that under advisement,” she told them. “I appreciate your being candid with me. For what it’s worth, a consequence here must be paid. But I don’t believe it has to be the highest penalty in this case. Not for most of you.” She looked pointedly at the other man.
“Give my best to your mother if she’s still here when you get up those stairs. Old girl can’t hold on forever,” he said.
Yemi inspected him momentarily, wondering if these were desperate attempts to goad her into attacking him. But one of the more brilliant things about being a royal was that there was always someone paid for the honor of doing all that on her behalf.
She took a couple of steps toward his cell and smiled. “Get some sleep,” she said coolly. “Dream of all the things you have to look forward to here at the end of your life. I’m sure tomorrow will be very busy for you.”
“Mine will be a noble death,” he called. His voice followed her outside as she ascended the stairs. “Men should never live long enough to be made to bow to beasts.”
Yemi and her mother sat in the sun-dappled parlor of the residence playing a counting game with teal glass tiles while women attended to their hair.
The queen was having her locs retwisted while Enna and another maid took down Yemi’s braids to be restyled for the celebration.
Painted portraits of dead royals hung massive on the walls between windows, looking on either imperiously or bored as Yemi lost the third round in a row.
“You’re still so bad at this.” The queen laughed, her maid smirking over her shoulder.
“I still think there’s a trick to it that you’ve never shown me.” Yemi frowned at the glyphs etched into each tile, certain now that each was a word in another language her mother had refused to teach her. It was the only explanation.
“No, my love, you’re just the worst.”
“At least we’re not playing for money.”
“Oh, definitely. I’d have had your shirt years ago.”
“Cocky. How unbecoming.” Yemi smiled behind a fistful of caramel popcorn. “Daddy ever beat you in this?”
“Ha! Once, the first time we played, and only because I let him. Pretty sure it’s why he married me.”
“So you were a card shark in a past life.”
“Present one, too, by the look of it.” The queen leaned forward as best she could to reshuffle the tiles for another round.
Yemi thought often about her mother as a child, whether they’d have been friends had they grown up together, the ways she’d have used freedom if she had it and wasn’t bound to rule.
She couldn’t envision her mother grown and fully flesh anymore.
All the memories of her from before the bullet were tainted, as if the stone skin had always been part of her.
“Heard anything from Cutter’s investigation yet?” Yemi asked.
“No, but I’m sure it’s coming along. Have you?”
“Why would I?”
“Really?” The queen raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t learn anything at all in the dungeons last night?”
Yemi sighed. “Of course you know.”
“The want of my approval has never stopped you from doing anything before. Why would this have been different?”
“You want me to have all the other experiences with leadership. I don’t understand why sitting in on a prisoner interrogation or two is the limit.”
“I don’t want you getting too comfortable with punitive violence. Treason is the highest crime and has a high price best left to rougher men to collect.”
“But if I’m the one charging someone with it, shouldn’t I know what that entails?”
“What I mean is, I don’t want you to get any ideas. You know your anger.”
Yemi scoffed. “Why is the concern my ideas? Men devised whatever these methods are, because they understand what moves Men. Between torture and war, humanity seeks out and responds to violence. That’s their problem. I’m just interested in answers.”
The queen pursed her lips, and Yemi knew she was in for a scolding.
“Give us a moment, ladies,” she said. She waited patiently for Enna and the others to file out of the room before she spoke again.
“You do realize that every time you rail against humanity, you’re talking about everyone in the room? ”
“They know I’m not talking about them. They’re not the problem.” Yemi waved her off.
“Do they? Have you asked?”
“What? So I should constantly be specifying it’s ‘not all’ humans?”
“When it comes to deciding who is and isn’t an enemy of the state, yes. These people are your people. You either find a way to lead them or you share each other’s fates.”
“And how can you tell the difference from all the way up here? The Green Zone’s obviously been compromised. People we thought were friends turned out to be enemies.”
“There have been threats to power in every realm since the beginning of time, and they’re not going anywhere soon. Your father knew that, which is why we have his network of eyes in every district,” the queen said in a tone that suggested she was tired of rehashing this same talking point.
“He was all human, and he knew what these people were—”
“Yes, and that temper you’ve inherited? It killed him,” the queen snapped.
“No, they killed him,” Yemi bit back. These arguments were plaguing their conversations with increasing frequency lately.
The longer her mother lived, the closer she got to dying, the more important it was to her that Yemi had the right perspective.
But there was only one perspective Yemi would entertain on her father’s assassination.
“You dishonor his memory—” her mother started.
“I dishonor—” Yemi blinked as heat rose in her face. “Daddy loved you so much that preserving your honor became his life’s mission. He would have wiped out every threat in any kingdom if that meant it would be safe for us to just exist. And you want to be loved by the people who murdered him.”
The queen laced her fingers together and took a deep breath, one of the things she did to keep herself calm in order not to exacerbate the poison in her blood. “We did what we had to do so that when you rule, you can do it in peace.”
Yemi’s voice rose. “How peaceful am I supposed to be when I’ve viewed my father’s body with half his face blown off and you’re sitting here, half a stone monument?”
“Gods, you’re terrifying.” The queen shook her head, incredulous.
Her eyes glistened with what Yemi knew were tears of frustration.
She’d seen so many of them and always felt the pangs of guilt before they ever fell.
She cursed herself, unable to even remember why she’d flown into this rage in the first place.
“You’re smart. So smart. And you have the capacity for kindness, for greatness, but this evil streak in you… I don’t know, Yemaya. Do you hate me? Is that it?”
“Of course I don’t,” Yemi said. She meant it but rubbed an impatient hand over her face.
“I keep waiting for that moment where something clicks,” said the queen.
“Where I can say, ‘She gets it, she’s going to be okay.’ But what if I’ve steered you wrong?
Let you believe too much that you were human and allowed human moments?
Should I have enforced royal protocols, let everyone elevate you instead of having you relate to them so that you felt some divinity?
The responsibility to be above this vengeance? ”
Yemi didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. Her mother ran her fingers over the symbols carved into the surface of the game tiles.
“It’s possible. It’s not like I had a blueprint.
Your grandmother… she wasn’t great at this,” she said with a sigh.
“Everything was an opportunity to explore this new world and experiment with it. I think that’s why I was born, too.
It was just a new experience for her. I don’t think she thought about what it meant.
She loved me and she did her best, but she didn’t grasp the concept of consequences.
Even by the time she died, well after the first war was underway, I don’t think she understood that her actions had this ripple effect on everyone.
That she was the root of something so destructive.
But I did, and I tried to be the antithesis of everything Ixia thought about us as Mer.
I wouldn’t be incompetent. I wouldn’t be a monster.
I would try to be human, and maybe this place would accept our family.
We didn’t have another home to go to if they didn’t.
I worked, and your father gave his life so that you would have a place in this world.
And you’re going to throw it away because you can’t direct your hate from a massacre? ”
Yemi did remember her grandmother. Her bright red hair had been streaked with swaths of white by the time Yemi could form memories.
They said she aged quickly—something to do with the magic that made her human.
She’d taken Yemi dancing and horseback riding, taught her the Mer language and told her stories of the underwater kingdom at night as they curled up in bed.
They would run on the beach because Arielle loved the sensation of running.
She always smelled vaguely of sea-foam and honeysuckle.
There’d been a manic energy about her, a vibrant love of life that Yemi had never translated into being a reckless parent or capricious queen. But then again, she hadn’t asked.
“I’m sorry,” Yemi said quietly. “And I’m sure you’re right, as usual.
But just like the country made you—through the names they’ve called us, the wars against us—they’ve made me.
I am angry, all the time. And I’m not allowed any space to stop being angry, because every quiet moment is an opportunity for a new attack.
Don’t you see that?” She wanted so badly to choose the right words so her mother would know how to guide her out of this simmering rage, the sickness she felt when she looked at her mother’s stone skin encroaching on her beauty.
The queen looked tired but spoke firmly.
“We don’t apologize for who we are, but we are held accountable for it.
You were born into this, just like I was.
I can’t make you choose a path it’s not in you to take, but I do know that the one you have your heart set on ends in pain.
It ends our bloodline, our history. It ends in Nova dying violently as the last person alive who loves you.
And if you’re lucky, you’ll die before you have to s—”
The queen erupted in a violent coughing fit, covering her mouth with the hand holding the game tiles and gripping the edge of the couch with the other. Yemi leaped to her feet, banging her shin on the table and scattering the rest of the game across the floor.
These fits were happening with increasing frequency lately, and Yemi never felt useful during them.
She crossed the floor to a credenza and poured a glass of water with shaking hands.
Her mother waved it off when she offered it to her, and it sat useless on the table beside her instead.
The coughs were wet and rattled from her throat.
Yemi was worried she was unable to breathe between them.
“Guards!” Yemi called, and Enna and the maids burst back into the room flanked by the two men stationed in the hallway. “Infirmary, now. Call Selah.”
The queen dragged breath back into her body, dropping the tiles as she forcefully grasped Yemi’s hand. Spit clung to her lips, and her eyes were bloodshot as Yemi peered desperately into them.
“I will be fine. Stay,” she ordered, pushing Yemi away.
“What are you talking about?” Yemi shrieked.
“My Light,” Enna said gently. “I won’t fight you. But she means not to have you see her this way.”
Yemi collapsed back on the couch, knees shaking and heart pounding. The impotent fury she felt was with herself. Every word her mother used was a breath she could have saved for herself if only Yemi didn’t insist on arguing.
She moved to put her head in her hand and was horrified to find her mother’s blood in it. Her eyes went to the mess of the rest of the room and fell on the tiles the queen had been clutching. They lay cracked and blood spattered, dotted with flecks of black gravel.