Chapter 18 #3
A chill ran up her spine, so she pulled the fur collar of a gold brocade duster up around her ears.
The tea satchel still throbbed in her trouser pocket.
It was eerily warm, like a living thing.
Sunset in a few hours would mark the end of her first day, leaving two to decide whether she trusted the sea witch enough to use her power.
She hadn’t slept well. Her driven nature wouldn’t allow her to risk losing the daylight.
Her body was still tired, and the morning was spent feverishly devising a plan.
She would take her tea and summon Ursla’s armies to sack Chairre.
Maybe send word ahead through Derring to have the faithful sort themselves from her betrayers so she knew who to target.
She knew better than to believe her only enemies were within the palace walls.
But she was either two days from home or two days from being an indiscernible speck in Ursla’s endless garden of the dead. Or worse somehow, two days from being exactly where she was now.
Boot clicks echoed from the stone tunnel leading back toward the lower levels of the Murisin castle, and Yemi turned to see Luzon striding toward her, his long crimson coat billowing dramatically behind him in the updraft.
He wore a determined expression, which brightened slightly as he came upon her.
“Gods be praised, you made it,” he said breathlessly as they embraced.
“Was there ever any doubt?” she asked, unspeakably grateful to see him.
“Not about you, just the company you kept.” He pulled back and inspected her.
Sumire appeared at his side, panting for having had to keep up on considerably shorter legs.
“See? She’s fine,” Sumire bragged defiantly as Yemi knelt to hug her tightly. “They told me you went to Abyssa, so I thought you’d have fins.”
“Not anymore, thankfully,” Yemi laughed.
“You look a little down, love. A bit grim in the gills,” Luzon said. “Have you seen a physician since you arrived?”
“Oh, I’m fine. Tired, but a meal away from fighting shape, I promise.”
“Well, with any luck, there will be little of that. Fighting, I mean. The food, we can accommodate.” He lent her his arm as they walked the garden path at her tired pace.
“We met the Harpy woman,” Sumire announced.
Yemi raised an eyebrow. “Did you? Thoughts?”
“Not queen material.”
Yemi and Luzon exchanged expressions of fighting smiles.
“Sum-Sum, why don’t you let the kitchen know our guests are hungry?” Luzon suggested.
“Because you have people for that,” Sumire replied, deftly missing the point. Luzon waited for her to get it, and she rolled her eyes and headed back toward the palace without another word.
“Tenacious, that one.” Yemi snickered.
“Somehow more so every day,” Luzon replied, continuing their walk.
“I’m told you and the group devised a plan.”
“Well, we had to do something while you were off on your adventure. The others are already gathered.”
“Thank you for letting us borrow your space.”
“No thanks required. I’m sorry I can’t show you more of the new upstairs. Only so many people know you’re here.”
“That’s for the best.”
“So. How did it go?” he asked as if bracing for something.
A wave of exhaustion struck her just from trying to figure out where to start. “Would you believe there isn’t enough time in a year to tell that entire story?”
“After your coronation, then. We get you home and settled, and then every night for the next year, you get to tell me. Or on whatever nights Nova generously decides to allow you a free moment.”
Yemi laughed, something she hadn’t done or witnessed anyone else doing in days. She was hard pressed now to even remember a time she’d laughed without it having been directly Nova’s doing.
A vision of the kiss with Lirik blinked across her mind, and she squeezed Luzon’s arm tighter as if he’d seen it himself and needed distracting.
“I owe her everything,” she said quietly. “The both of you, really. More than I think I’ll ever be able to repay.”
“Lucky for you we are family, then. We don’t repay one another so much as we each see to it that the other has what they need to thrive, yes?”
“Of course.”
“Good girl.” He patted her hand. “Now, this plan. Cutter initiated it, and—”
“Of course he did.”
Luzon gave her a sideways look. “Did something happen between you two?”
Yemi huffed. She knew it wasn’t rational to be this irritated by a simple question.
She recognized the feeling as something her mother might have chided her for.
But she was tired and impatient and itchy, and everything, everything, was riding on these conversations she had no real desire to have.
“Nothing happened. It’s just… it’s evident how little he trusts me.
Much more than the trust, the respect for me, for my position—it isn’t there. ”
“Paternal instinct, maybe?”
“Yes, and I am not a child,” Yemi snapped.
“Alright, alright,” Luzon soothed. Neither of them said another word until they reached a round room within the bowels of the castle.
Its rough-hewn walls appeared crude and clay red in the light of a towering fire.
Nova, Cutter, Selah, and a man who resembled Luzon’s guard Kuro but was not, in fact, Kuro stood around a great round table with an atlas strewn over it as they entered.
“To business, then,” Luzon declared, taking a seat in a high-backed chair and steepling his fingers. “Cutter, if you dare.”
“I appreciate it, Your Highness,” Cutter said gruffly. “I was hoping, My Light, that you might debrief us first on your experiences. Did you find what it was you sought? With the uncertainty of everything, we’ve put together a plan that can work with our current resources alone.”
“I’ve heard and expected as much. Interesting that you had so little faith in me to begin with.”
“Yemi,” Nova groaned.
“I have access to the entire Mer army should I need it, yes.” Yemi stopped, her hands wrapped around herself so she could scratch at her itching ribs discreetly beneath the coat. It was as if the warmth was making it worse. “Now, go on. I want to hear, what is the correct way to approach this?”
Cutter hesitated, no doubt withholding a retort.
“This is Commandant Shiro. He leads my Gold Guard,” Luzon said cheerily.
He gestured toward the man who was not Kuro.
He wasn’t particularly tall but had a stocky build with massive tattooed forearms and sleek black hair tied in a knot at the top of his head.
He bowed slightly by way of introduction.
“The Murisin Gold Guard is a sufficiently equipped force for a covert assault on the relevant targets within the palace,” Cutter said.
Yemi raised an eyebrow. It was the Murisin Gold Guard who’d hunted down and carved the face off the Bear King’s assassin. “Any relation to Mr. Kuro?” she asked.
“My twin brother, Your Majesty.”
“An impressive family. How sizable is your team, Commandant?”
“Twelve strong, Your Majesty. But bears, all of them,” Shiro replied.
“In the interest of protecting my people, it’s the largest force I can commit without raising eyebrows. But you know better than anyone that for a targeted campaign, you could do no better on this side of the world,” said Luzon with a pointed look.
Yemi nodded.
“I recommend an incisive approach, using General Cutter’s knowledge of the tunnels beneath the Rock to infiltrate the palace from within,” Shiro offered.
“There are access points beneath certain structures in the city. The basilica avenue will be the least suspicious,” Nova added.
“And how will we get into the city, much less the basilica?” Yemi asked.
“Muris still has stable commerce relations with Chairre. The Guard can smuggle themselves in as crews of merchant vessels,” said Shiro.
“Hmm, sailing is no longer an option, not with this bizarre havoc on the waves now,” said Cutter, drawing a hand over his face.
Yemi studied the map on the table and wondered why Selah said nothing. Surely she had some knowledge of why the ocean was so unsettled, even if she had no solution for it. But she stood silently against the wall next to the fireplace, arms crossed over her chest.
“We go by land, then, and bypass the city altogether,” Yemi said.
“Holicrane, my family’s country summer home, is about the same distance from here as it is to the Rock.
We take the Coral Road here, base our operations there, sticking to the coast and using the same tunnel that we used while escaping to get back in. ”
“There’s not enough air in that tunnel for a dozen people,” Cutter said.
Yemi waved it off. “Half use the tunnels, half smuggle themselves in by some other means.”
Shiro nodded. “What are the odds Holicrane is in use?”
“We haven’t used it since my father’s murder, and it’s too soon after a coup for the Drakes to be vacationing yet. Any security contingent will likely be small enough for half your men plus mine to handle.”
“So you approve, then? This is our course?” Nova asked with that tinge in her voice that suggested this seemed too good to be true.
And it might be. But Yemi had meant what she’d said, that she owed Nova more than she could ever repay.
The plan would not quash the entire rebellion.
But it was sufficient to put her back where she belonged, with the resources to root out the rest of the poison at her leisure.
And it was less risky than whatever havoc the tea burning through her pocket might wreak.
She needed Nova to know she was still sensible. She wasn’t the monster she had become on her trip. She wasn’t a pawn of Ursla. This would be the course. At least until it wasn’t. Ursla would still have a stake in Dahlia Drake’s success if Yemi chose not to do her bidding.
“It depends. I confirmed the sea witch’s meddling on the Drakes’ behalf. It will be a problem if they still have use of her power.” Here she turned to Selah, who was all but fidgeting in the corner. “Is there anything you can do to counteract that?”
The room was silent. Yemi knew what she was asking. Selah would have to either agree to confront her past or break the deal she made with Yemi’s mother and contend with whatever consequences that wrought.
Selah set her jaw but bowed her head. “I am as ever at your service,” she said.
“Good,” Yemi replied, though of course she didn’t trust her.
It just meant they would need to get underway immediately.
If Selah went back on her word, they would need to be in position for Ursla’s tea to come in clutch.
“We leave at once. Send word to Derring to meet us. They are our intelligence,” she declared.
Cutter bowed and took off quickly. Shiro followed. Selah took her time as she moved to the hallway but stopped within whispering range of Yemi.
“You are playing a dangerous game,” she hissed.
“Don’t worry,” Yemi replied coolly. “You do what you’ve agreed to do, and I will release you from our arrangement. You’ll be free to flee your destiny anywhere in the world.”
Selah’s eyes narrowed. “If your mother could see you now,” she scoffed. “Just remember that only one of us has paid a price for our dealings with the witch. And a price must always be paid.”
She let her menacing gaze linger in her wake as she disappeared up the stone hallway.
Nova grabbed Yemi’s face and kissed her hard on the lips, as if she’d been waiting for weeks for a good reason to do that.
“This is going to work,” she said gleefully.
“I know,” Yemi assured her. It felt good to be able to give her this, to relieve her for once instead of compounding her duties and fears.
Nova kissed her again before turning to Luzon as if forgetting he was there. “Oh. Apologies, Your Highness,” she said.
“Oh no, don’t mind me.” He smiled impishly as he watched them, chin propped on a hand piled high with gold rings.