Chapter 24
Melia
There was no approaching the Seragian embassy, not from the crowded street that led to the main entrance.
In the distance, a flash of red and black: her father’s guards spreading rumors and lies, inciting the mob.
Ferisa was there, too, poison flowing out of her mouth.
The air stank of burning resin and fear.
Melia didn’t want to see the writhing mass of bodies rolling towards the embassy, didn’t want to hear their chanting, didn’t want to feel their rage. She had her own black pit, and if she joined those wretched people, the darkness inside her would explode, swallowing everyone in her way.
No, she was sick of rage and despair.
Abia was a maze of streets, houses, gardens, and courtyards.
Melia turned a corner, and then another one.
The street was quiet, the windows dark under the pre-dawn sky.
Fifty paces or so was probably enough: No street in Abia lay parallel to another, but Melia guessed she was somewhere near the back of the embassy.
Most of the houses had nothing but sinister facades and barred gates turned towards the street, but one had a garden wall.
The wall was high, but its stones were rough, with gaps wide enough for her feet to find purchase.
She prayed no one would spot her—no nosy neighbors peering from behind the curtains, no late revelers or early birds stumbling upon the improbable sight: a woman in full court dress, blue silk, silver embroidery, white veil with gold pins, climbing over a wall like a thief, her skirts rustling, rough stones snagging the fine fabric.
She hauled herself over the wall and landed on the grass, hoping there were no guards waiting for her.
Nothing moved but the leaves gently fluttering in the wind.
Somewhere in the distance, the crowd roared.
There was a narrow staircase leading up to a terrace with a well.
She climbed up: From there she could see the embassy roof.
Over another wall, to the terrace of the neighboring house, down the stairs into the courtyard, onto the roof of the stable, and over yet another wall and into the garden of the embassy.
A hand grabbed her as soon as she landed, a cold blade kissing her throat. “What do you want?” a voice whispered in her ear.
She stood very, very still, until her heart stopped beating like mad. “I mean no harm,” she whispered. “Please, I’m unarmed.”
The hand pushed her hard and she fell on the gravel, scratching her palms.
A young guard in the Seragian uniform stood above her, a dagger in his hand. “Is this how you’re trying to sneak in now?” he asked. “How many of you are there?”
“I’m alone,” she said, “and I have important news for the carevna.”
The guard seemed agitated—who wouldn’t be in those circumstances?—but he was trained well enough to listen and look. He must have noticed her dress, her jewelry, her pleading tone.
“I am Princess Melia, Prince Amron’s wife, and I need to talk to the carevna urgently. She knows me. Please tell her I need to see her.”
“Come,” the guard said, his tone noticeably more polite than before. He helped her get up and steered her, holding her elbow, towards a small door in a deep nook.
When he knocked, a small spyhole slid open.
“Princess Melia is here to speak with Her Imperial Highness,” he said.
The spyhole closed.
“Is that a yes or a no?” Melia asked.
“We need to wait.”
She leaned on the wall, trying to clean the dirt from her scratched palms. They burned as she pressed them to the cool silk of her skirt.
For some reason, she remembered playing with Rovin when they were very small, running after him and falling, scratching her hands and knees.
She wailed then, and she felt like wailing now, not because the pain was great, but because she felt equally helpless and frustrated.
She eyed the guard in the weak light; he was younger than her, growing his first pitiful mustache.
And yet, he gripped the dagger like he meant to use it, and she was certain he would have cut her throat had he believed she posed a threat.
How weird it was, this readiness to kill a complete stranger for no reason other than following orders.
Would she kill him just because he was a Seragian, an enemy, a soldier bearing the collective guilt for her mother’s murder, for her brother’s death, for her miserable life? Could she hate him?
She dug deep into her heart, remembering the brigands, the curved blades, the blood soaking into the red dust, but all she found was grief.
What did her mother’s murder have to do with this hook-nosed, sad-eyed boy who probably drew the short straw and had to stand here all night?
He was nothing to her, least of all an enemy.
He wasn’t the one who’d made her life miserable, who’d destroyed every possibility of happiness, every semblance of home for her.
No, her quarrel was solely with her father. The Seragians had nothing to do with it.
Finally, a key turned in the lock and the door opened. “Come in,” a voice said.
Melia stepped over the threshold, leaving the boy guard behind. It was the first time she set foot on the Seragian soil, but there wasn’t much to see: a dark corridor and one of Aratea’s ladies holding an oil lamp.
“It is you,” the lady said, her Amrian slightly accented. “I thought it was a trick.”
“No tricks,” Melia said. “Just me.”
She followed the lady through several maze-like passages, climbing narrow stairs that smelled of pine and dust. They emerged in a set of rooms which, even in the weak light, looked perfectly strange.
There were no tapestries on the walls; instead they were painted with the most complex, colorful floral and geometric ornaments.
The floors were covered in soft carpets and there were no chairs, only cushions, low sofas, and little exquisitely carved tables.
The smell of caramelized sugar and cloves permeated the air.
“We must search you, my lady, I hope you understand.”
Melia nodded as two more women dressed in soft gray shirts and trousers, with daggers at their waists, appeared from the shadows.
Their hands were gentle but relentless as they searched through the layers of Melia’s clothes and the corners of her body.
They finished with washing her scratched hands in lemon-scented water that stung her damaged skin, and then rubbed some soothing lotion onto them.
“The carevna will see you now,” the lady said.
Melia walked through a carved door into a lavishly furnished room, with an untouched bed in the corner, two shuttered windows, and no personal belongings strewn about.
It was lit by a single lamp placed on a low table.
The emperor’s daughter sat on a cushion, writing a letter, alone.
No musicians, no ladies, not even the ambassadress to keep her company.
Aratea’s hair was tightly braided and covered with a dark scarf; she’d taken off the exquisite wedding nightgown and was dressed in sensible Seragian clothes—wide pants gathered at the ankle and a soft silk blouse the color of ripe plums. In the shifting light, with a quill in her hand, she looked serious and composed, like a chronicler noting down the events that had happened many years ago.
The carevna lifted her pale eyes to Melia. “I could feign surprise, but that would be insulting for both of us, I think,” she said.
Melia swallowed hard and nodded. Her planned opening words disappeared from her head.
“Please sit down.” Aratea motioned at the pile of cushions on the floor. “Did your father send you? Is he ready to negotiate?”
Melia crashed down on a pillow with an embarrassing lack of grace.
Too cowardly to ask what the carevna knew about her father, she said, “No, I came here all by myself to beg you to reconsider your marriage to the crown prince. He was not himself tonight, because of me, because my father poisoned him.”
“Oh, that?” Aratea did seem a little surprised now, her auburn eyebrows shooting up. “That’s irrelevant. Already forgotten.”
“So you’re not going to ask for an annulment over it?”
The carevna shook her head, a faint shadow of a smile appearing on her lips. “You are a great lord’s daughter, a prince’s wife, you should know how those things work. Do you think that’s possible? An annulment because of your husband’s treatment of you?”
Amron had never treated her roughly, but if he had, there would have been nothing for her to do, except maybe talk to the queen and ask her to intervene.
“Believe me, that was not the worst thing that happened to me during the wedding, nor the worst thing I expected to find here.”
Melia had already felt like a fool when she realized how her father had used her, now she felt like a bigger one.
Of course none of his plans had been aimed at the annulment, it was just a distraction.
She nodded. “There are worse things coming, though. The crowd surrounding the embassy—that’s not spontaneous, that’s my father’s work.
He’s rebelling against the king, and he’s accusing you for everything that happened.
He will not stop until we’re at war with each other again. ”
Aratea acknowledged her words with a light nod. “Tea?” she offered.
“Thank you.”
Melia watched as Aratea poured the dark liquid from a painted teapot into a translucent cup and accepted it, breathing in the fragrant aroma. They both sipped in silence for a little while.
“I know very little about politics, and most of what I know is wrong,” Melia said. “But am I a fool to sit here and think I have no reason to hate you? Does my opinion matter at all, or are we just pieces on a board, moved by some invisible and infinitely powerful hands?”
The carevna smiled into her cup. “Big questions for small hours. May I tell you a story?”
“Please do.” Although the night wasn’t cold, Melia enjoyed the warmth of the tea spreading through her limbs. It calmed her burning nerves.