Chapter 8
· YEMI ·
Yemi put Nova’s ass in the dirt exactly twice before Nova stopped letting her win. The young queen called the breakfast break after the third time being rapped on her bruised knuckles kept her from being able to grip her staff without considerable cursing.
She spent her unsupervised daylight hours in the administrative offices among the haze of cigar smoke, the cacophony of phone trills and typewriters, listening to the radio for tributes to her mother and the speculative discourse surrounding the new age.
What did her people know of her? Little more than her temper, it turned out.
She was cast as an enigma in her mother’s shadow, one capable of joy and levity but not enough to eclipse the fear people had of her as a descendent of the Mer.
The late-night hours saw an increase of interviews with dissenters, people who casually called her the Child/Fish Queen and predicted new wars as she bungled her duties through immaturity and incompetence.
Others would interject, having heard from senators that she was an astute ruler trained in the ways of her blessed mother to care and to fight for the people, and so there was nothing to fear. But those people weren’t as loud.
It had been necessary to her mother that people be allowed to speak freely in a time when they’d put their lives on the line for years to preserve their country.
She’d kept a network of spies to prevent much escalation beyond speech, of course, but this venting was necessary if most people were to sleep at night, she’d said.
The more Yemi listened, the more fevered the ire pitched in her ears. How was it that the Mer were subhuman beasts to be shunned when it had been men who stoked these wars, killed each other, and killed her parents?
She was chewing her lip and watching the trees sway in the tinted wine-bottle windows of the office when a number of feet shuffled in the door behind her.
She glanced up to see Orie and Cutter flanked by three of the elder Kept.
Orie spoke first with a tight, nervous smile.
She’d been on edge since the Bear Queen’s death and had yet to recover.
Yemi made a mental note to apologize for shouting at her in her mother’s chambers.
“My Light, the Kept need your animus,” she said.
“It’s been days, and they cannot even name your year without—” Cutter started.
“My animus is the Mer,” she said firmly.
There was a sudden silence in the room as Orie and the present priests opened and closed their mouths in either agreement or protest. The Mer had never made it into the pantheon of the natural order here.
It was like having the audacity, the hubris, to choose a human.
“What? My mother never let me forget who I am. Ixia’s people apparently never will.
I am the daughter of the Bear Queen. I am royalty on every side.
I am descended from the gods these people have forgotten.
” She jabbed a finger at the radio. “Model my armor after the Mer. Let them take it whatever way they choose, and I will rule as their imaginations dictate.”
“My Light, the precedent—” a bald old priest began with a voice that shook with condescension.
“Your queen commands it, so why are you still here?” Yemi snapped. She tired of the ridiculous traditions, the pomp and pag-eantry that dictated she had no right to a human moment in the face of all the things that must be done. They’d wanted her animus, and now they had it.
They stifled their bluster and bent to kiss her ring before retreating from the office.
“You’ll have your armor in a matter of days,” said Orie, scribbling furiously on her ever-present stack of papers. “You’ll need a fitting, of course, and then afterward we can schedule a meeting with—”
“Orie.” Yemi raised a hand to stop her. Orie blinked. “I owe you an apology. I shouldn’t have come at you the way I did that morning.”
“Grief brain, My Light.” Orie shrugged but her eyes welled with tears.
“Still. My mother loved you. You’re as much family to me as she is. And I hope you stay on with us.”
Orie sniffled, but her tears seemed happy now as she bent to kiss the ring. “It would be my honor.”
She left, still scribbling, somehow deftly navigating the mess of chairs and desks on her way out.
Cutter hung back. “I’m overjoyed to see you’re recovering. But you realize there are some people to whom this might appear to be an act of hostility?”
“It is. I’m a hostile person,” she said dismissively. But he waited the way he always did when he wasn’t sure she was clearly thinking through her decisions.
She sighed. “Anyone who finds it hostile isn’t someone I’d ever be able to convince otherwise. I won’t refuse my own nature to appeal to people who will never accept me anyway.”
He gave her a look somewhere between resignation and being impressed. “Then, long live the Mer Queen,” he said. He kissed her ring and started to leave.
“Another thing.” Yemi stopped him. “The move against the Drakes’ malcontents. Did that bear fruit?”
“Thirteen captured, twelve still in holding. The last one shattered his femur jumping out of a window, so he’s in the infirmary.”
“Idiot.”
“All signs point to the Drakes as the root. Dorian specifically, despite that display of his in the throne room. It’s likely he was either buying time or trying to gauge the Bear Queen’s state of mind concerning what you witnessed.”
“So Dahlia is just the face of his movement?” she asked.
“From what we can tell, the daughter is his movement. He intends to see her on the throne, even if he’s the power behind it. No specifics on how yet. Notes are in your office.”
A chill chased down Yemi’s spine. Her mother’s office.
“Well, they’re certainly not planning to seduce me,” she muttered.
It was a good thing the bulk of the conspirators were jailed.
Any time in the past week would have been ideal for a strike if they’d had their personnel in order.
“We may have already wasted too much time,” she told him.
“Collect them for me, will you? The Drakes. I’ll grant them the honor of being my first audience, and that will be the last time I or anyone entertains them. ”
Cutter nodded solemnly and lingered as if there were more troubling news on his mind. Yemi waited.
“You should know, My Light, that once this business is concluded, I intend to offer my resignation.” His tone was apologetic, his gaze steady, if glistening.
Yemi swallowed hard. “Oh?” she replied, certain that what she’d meant was no.
“I have failed your family twice now.”
“Cutter, please,” she started gently.
He exhaled hard through his nose and cast his eyes downward. “This heartbreak… I thought it would make me stronger, more driven. A better protector. It hasn’t.”
Yemi said nothing for a few moments. Of course, she’d suspected how hard losing her parents had been for him. But his words, the promise of his loss, too, now cratered in her gut. And she was already feeling hollow.
“Nova is more than capable,” he assured her. “She has the allegiance of your forces and the… stamina the job requires.”
And there it was. There were no more elders. At twenty-five, she was to be the whole of the country’s wisdom now, too.
She gave him a small smile. “You deserve honesty, so I have to tell you I’m disappointed. But I do understand. For what it’s worth, I don’t blame you for any of this. And I hope that you leaving your station doesn’t mean you’ll be leaving my life entirely. We still need you.”
A small, relieved breath escaped him. He’d no doubt expected her to protest, to pull rank and demand he stay. Without another word, he reached down and kissed her ring, bowing deeper than she’d ever seen before, then left her alone in the office.
Yemi sat in her mother’s office, going over the notes Cutter had produced from his interrogations of the prisoners. The desk was large and scratched on the surface where the Bear Queen’s right arm would frequently have rested against it.
Caphree’s testimony was still proving the most useful. He was described as forthcoming. Lucid. Pragmatic. There was little other information on Wall than his enlistment documents. Hostile. Combative. Tenerive was aloof. Reluctant but flexible.
None was described as remorseful. Just as well. She picked up the phone and rang down to the prison, the receiver still scented like the oils in her mother’s hair. She needed information on what a nonnegotiation might look like. Perhaps Caphree could be redeemed.
She idly traced the scratches on the desk as the phone rang out and no one answered.
She hung up and tried again, chewing her tongue.
Her parents and grandparents watched her from photos set in gilded frames with what she hoped were expressions of secret annoyance that she couldn’t get anyone to answer.
She hung up with a huff. “If you don’t want royals wandering around in the prisons, pick up the damn phone,” she muttered and decided to go down to retrieve him herself.
She made her way through the palace, past household staff wrapping up tasks for the night.
Painters in the west wing worked feverishly to complete a fresco of the Bear Queen on a wall near the library.
Juniper drifted in through open-air porticos and mingled with warm scents of cinnamon and caramel wafting from the kitchen.
There was no sign of Orie, who was usually milling about at this hour, collecting end-of-day paperwork, complaints, and schedules that would appear in neat stacks on the queen’s desk by morning.
Nova was nowhere to be found, either. Not the best quality in a personal guard, but Cutter was taking her training seriously.