Chapter 15
· NOVA ·
“Shit. Sorry! Sorry.” Nova raised her hands in the air and made no sudden movements.
“She broke my fucking nose!” one of the men spat. Bobbing lantern light revealed a dark slick of blood streaming down his face as one of his compatriots ushered him to sit on some nondescript patch of dirt among the trees.
“Would you believe I’m a friend?” she said quickly, bending to place her folded fans on the ground in front of her.
She’d been stumbling through the night and down the mountainside with no sense of when she’d crossed the border until a cadre of Murisin border guards surprised her in the dark.
Neither party being able to see the other properly in the dense forest, a small scuffle had ensued, resulting in some wounded pride and apparently one broken nose.
“Commander Ennova Grey, queensguard to Yemaya of Ixia.”
“If you’re the queensguard, then where’s the queen?” a third man asked.
Nova scoffed. “You know, friend, that’s an excellent question with a very implausible answer. Kuro around?”
“Commander Kuro.”
“Yes, him.”
The guards exchanged wary glances and reluctant conversation just out of earshot before she was instructed to kneel with her hands behind her head. Kuro would be sent for, and then she’d be in for it, they assured her.
Nova waited, twitching the fingers on her left hand, the balmy Murisin breeze sighing through them.
“Playing keys,” her sister called it: a tic that often preceded the reach for her weapons and the violence that came after.
She was exhausted, sweaty, starving, and just barely in a kind enough mood to continue waiting.
Headlights flashed around a winding embankment until two cars came to a halt near the checkpoint.
A man stepped out of the lead one but left the engines of both running.
Nova squinted at him in the dark, noting the difference in what she knew to be Kuro’s gait as he checked in with the assembled soldiers.
One of them approached and held a lantern to Nova’s face.
Once she could see him clearly, she sighed relief.
Kuro was not one to smirk. His twin brother, Shiro, on the other hand, was rarely found without a smile.
“You here to rescue me?” she asked him. They gripped one another’s forearms in the aggressive salute of soldiers and went in for a brisk hug. They hadn’t seen each other more or less since they were children. He commanded Luzon’s Gold Guard and so had rare reason to travel in peacetime.
“To rescue them,” he scoffed.
Nova collected her things beneath the irritated gaze of the remaining guards before joining Shiro in the lead car. The man with the bloodied nose followed in the second.
She could have fallen asleep in the warm leather seat as they wound their way back to Luzon’s palace. Shiro put the windows down, she hoped, because he enjoyed the fresh air and not because she smelled ripe.
“It’s just you, then,” he said over the wind. She supposed it was a question.
“Yeah. Her Majesty will be joining us in a couple of days, I think. I’ve lost track of time,” she answered with her eyes closed.
“Hmm. Cutter’s here. And another woman. Older.”
“News?”
“Harpy’s looking for you. King’s been running diplomatic errands, assuring them we haven’t seen you. Border guard’s on alert in case they stop believing him.”
“Did I fuck that up back there?”
“Nah. They know what’s at stake. But next to nobody knows you’re here. So there will be no access to front doors, no public appearances.”
“Won’t hear me complaining. When she gets here, it’ll be by sea. She knows better than to just pop up in the harbor, though. I’ll want a lookout staged on a particular beach, a bit to the east.”
“We can manage that,” he assured her. “How are you? Soldiering without a country and all.”
“Oh, you know. Starving, tired, dirty. But my queen is my country.”
“Heh, yeah. Salute.”
The road left behind the reedy forest, and the Red City of Muris came into view.
Even in the dark quiet of night, the rust-colored stone that comprised every structure made itself evident.
Buildings were tipped and accented in glittering gold.
The arid breezes whispered through scattered chimes and towering cypresses.
Nova scanned the bay line—just in case—as they wound their way to the palace, a series of tall, severe, and ornate rectangles carved high into the side of a mountain.
Shiro stopped at a secluded entrance near a gate to one of the palace’s rear gardens.
Nova wobbled a bit as she stepped out of the car.
Her legs hadn’t forgotten all they’d been through, even if she wanted to.
Shiro led her up a cobblestone walkway shielded from view by rows of swaying cypress trees and into an arched corridor effectively in the bowels of the palace.
A servant in a pale tunic awaited them in a sandalwood-scented hallway behind a dark wooden door and bowed as Nova entered.
“Not this one,” Shiro chuckled. The girl frowned, confused and likely annoyed given the hour. “This is Commander Grey, Her Majesty’s queensguard.”
“For want of a queen or something to command, I’ll just be ‘Nova’ for now.” Nova smiled at her.
“See that she’s taken care of,” Shiro said to the girl and then turned to Nova. “I’ll let the others know you’ve arrived.”
“Feel free to take your time about it,” Nova told him.
Shiro left them in the hallway.
The servant, a young girl called Ai, gave her the abbreviated tour: bedroom, bathroom, assorted empty rooms that had evidently been only recently reanimated to host guests in hiding.
Nova barely listened beyond the mention of a bath that had been prepared, and stripped as soon as the bathroom door was shut behind her.
She sank into the deep tub slowly, and a week’s worth of dirt peeled from her body like a layer of skin. Pearls of scented oil became tiny iridescent islands floating in a murky film of trekking filth. She closed her eyes and breathed in the steam.
She was finally still long enough to fret over leaving Yemi behind in enemy hands. Her fury over having done it had fueled her march through the mountains, but now she was able to just worry.
Nova’s thoughts drifted to Van. She had never been the target of such a plan before.
An obstacle between a villain and Yemi, sure, but never the endgame herself.
There would be more of this when she and Yemi finally married.
She dunked her head beneath the surface and held it there for the length of a sigh.
“Nova?” Cutter’s deep voice on the other side of the door vibrated into the room.
“Can we pretend I’m not here for another hour?” Nova groaned.
“Where is she?” Cutter called.
That’s a no, then, she thought and climbed reluctantly to her feet, nearly apologizing to what warmth remained in the water for being unable to use it properly.
She was keenly aware of the fine tremor in her hands as she collected a towel to dry off and wrap herself in.
Either food or sleep had been next on her agenda.
Cutter’s inquisition hadn’t even made the list.
“Where is she?” he repeated.
“With Ursla.”
“What?”
Nova groaned and began applying moisturizer from a waiting apothecary bottle. “Yemi went with her voluntarily to Abyssa. I couldn’t follow.”
She could almost hear him breathing fire through the door and opened it before he had a fit and knocked it down. He stared down at her in wide-eyed rage.
“How could you—”
“Not the time, sir.” She gritted her teeth and pushed past him into her room, where she found Selah leaning against the doorframe.
“Oh. Hello,” Nova said.
“Glad you made it,” Selah replied.
Nova discarded her old clothes and wet things in a pile near the door and sat atop a heavy wooden drawing table to tie down her hair while Cutter loomed in the doorway.
A large, square bed stacked with Luzon’s famed gold brocade bedding beckoned her.
She smiled just thinking about falling unconscious in the middle of it tonight.
Selah approached with a worried expression, inspecting Nova’s body for what she was sure were points of concern. “Do you mind?” the witch asked. “You look a little—”
“I look a lot,” Nova said and nodded quickly, assuming that a Selah inspection came with tinctures and potions that made for even grander sleep.
“You don’t understand. She doesn’t understand the Obé’s power.” Cutter seemed beyond unsettled, frantic even, about not having eyes on Yemaya. Nova couldn’t fault him, but she also wasn’t willing to allow him to send her into a panic. Yemi was her job, not his. Not anymore.
“What he means is there is a risk,” Selah said calmly, massaging pressure points along Nova’s arms and neck. “Or there was, when the faith was still strong. Her followers would offer her their bodies, and she would… occupy them, often for minutes at a time. It—”
“She would massacre them from within!” Cutter roared as he paced the floor. “Throw themselves from cliffs, cut their own throats, gut themselves with shards of glass, and the Kept collected the bloodied pieces for temple windows.”
“It was something of a parlor trick,” Selah started again in her more soothing tone. “But they became known as blessings, even the ones that resulted in deaths. The ones who survived, many of them became the priests of the Kept.”
“And by taking her there, you’ve served her up.” Cutter pointed a finger violently at Nova.