When She Reigns

by Jodi Meadows

  “That’s nice of you,” I said.

  “I just mean that I’ve gotten used to having you around, so it would be a shame if something terrible happened because you’re bad at plans.” Gerel opened the suite door to where Ilina and Hristo were waiting for us to give them the news.

  “YOUR BREATH STINKS.”

  Zara, tactful as always, was standing in the washroom doorway, watching me as I peeled off my dusty, sweat-streaked clothes and dropped them into a laundry basket.

  “I threw up.” I was tempted to start gnawing on a bar of soap; it smelled of honey and lala flowers.

  Zara’s eyebrows arched. “You haven’t thrown up in years.”

  I looked at her askance. “One: it’s weird that you know that. And two: Mother said it would ruin my teeth, and you know what it’s like living with her.”

  My sister shrugged. “She never cared about my teeth, or anything else about me.”

  I rolled my eyes and turned on the tap in the tub. Water gushed out, luxurious beyond measure in this desert climate. “Of course she does.”

  “Not like she cares about you.” She said it like a fact she’d learned long ago. Like she’d accepted it. “When are we going to rescue her?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You said High Magistrate Paorah is bad. You said he’s behind all the things you accused the Algotti Empire of doing.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Then we need to rescue Mother. We can’t leave her with that monster.” Her eyes were bright with tears. “I just want to find her. I want to go home.”

  “I know. We have a plan, all right?” Telling Ilina and Hristo—and Zara, who’d been lured out by her insatiable need to know things—had gone as well as expected. No one liked the plan of trusting Tanhe and sneaking into the summit under false names, but like Gerel said, we didn’t have much of a choice.

  Unless we wanted to hide out here until the world finished ending.

  “Your plan is stupid,” Zara said. “And you didn’t once mention rescuing Mother.”

  “Tomorrow. We’ll have a better idea of our options tomorrow.”

  She gave a dramatic sigh, then spun around and went into the bedroom she and I shared. (Ilina had been sharing with her mother, but now that she had left, I was seriously considering moving in. I just couldn’t tell if that would make Zara more or less angry with me.)

  I sank into the tub, water so hot it should have scalded my skin. But, like looking at the sun, it didn’t hurt. Not anymore.

  When I closed my eyes and listened, I could hear Zara move around our room before she flopped onto the bed. Springs groaned. My sister let out a short, hitched breath, and at once I realized she was crying. Because of something I’d said?

  I listened harder, hearing voices rumble in the parlor. The conversation earlier had been quick, because everyone was exhausted, but I knew Ilina and Hristo weren’t happy about my decision to go to the summit. Not as myself, and not in disguise. But I’d meant what I’d told Hristo earlier: If I didn’t go, who would? Who else could? Seven had been willing to talk only to me; we had to assume Nine would feel the same.

  And then I stretched my senses even farther, until I heard—or imagined I heard—tapping. ::Strength through silence.:: Desperate prayers from someone whose god had already abandoned him.

  I listened to his prayers, over and over, and wished more than anything that I could help. But there was nothing I could do to ease the pain of his loss.

  When Zara’s cries quieted, and the voices stopped, and even the tapping faded, I realized I would fall asleep in the tub if I didn’t move. But somehow, the water was still hot, and the jasmine-scented air was relaxing.

  Grudgingly, I finished cleaning myself and climbed out of the tub. Then I noticed it: water steamed off my skin, and before I had finished wrapping myself in one of the plush towels, I was dry.

  A shiver of unease worked through me, but I put on my nightgown and wrapped my hair in a square of cool silk.

  In the bedroom, Zara was already sleeping, the covers twisted around her and half spilling onto the floor. One leg was stretched onto my side, but if I moved her, she’d wake. Zara only looked like a deep sleeper; if my experience these last few days was anything to go by, she startled awake at the slightest touch.

  Or maybe that wasn’t normal, and she was only like this now because she was terrified.

  I watched her a moment longer, my heart softening—and then she grabbed up all the blankets and hugged them to her chest. Greedy. This was why I always tried to go to sleep before her.

  I hesitated, then went into the parlor. I could stretch out on the sofa and sleep.

  The noorestones had been covered already, so the space was all shadows when I entered. But one shadow seemed off—not a sofa or chair, but a person, I realized, as my eyes finished adjusting to the darkness.

  Aaru.

  I kept my footfalls as soft as I could make them, but of course he heard me. He looked up, eyes round with questions. He didn’t speak. He didn’t even tap in the quiet code. He just . . . looked.

  “May I sit with you?” I kept my voice to a whisper, but even that seemed too loud in the strange hush that smothered the city.

  He moved a pillow to make room.

  Carefully, as though he might run, I perched on the edge of the sofa. “My sister was taking up the whole bed, and I didn’t want to wake her. I thought I’d be less of a bother out here. I didn’t realize you had already claimed it.”

  He glanced at the door to the room he and Hristo shared.

  I wished I could interpret that look. Did he mean he might go in there now, leaving the parlor for me? Or was he saying he had come out here to be alone? My heart wrenched with not knowing. “Aaru,” I whispered, and brushed my fingertips across his chin. “I wish I could help. I wish I knew what you needed.”

  Grief crashed over his expression, so raw it hurt to look.

  There were so many things I wanted to know. What did it feel like to have one’s god abandon the world? Empty? Hollow? Or like some incorporeal and previously unknown limb had been ripped off?

  At home, I’d sometimes felt a pull toward the earth, deeper into Noore, where my gods rested in the seabed. I’d sometimes felt rooted there, filled with a powerful sense of belonging—not to the people around me, but to the very gods whose bodies gave us life. I couldn’t bear the thought of never again feeling that—of knowing there were places lost to me forever. The sanctuary. The temple. Because, yes, terrible things had happened there—the sanctuary had been plundered and the temple was where I’d been arrested—but those places still existed. I could make new memories in them.

  But for Aaru . . . Idris, as he knew the island, was gone. His god had raised himself up, casting countless people into the sea.

  I couldn’t imagine what that felt like.

  Even if there had been an evacuation, it seemed impossible that everyone would have been saved. Thousands of lives had surely been lost. Tens of thousands. And Aaru, for all his importance to me, did not come from an important family. He came from a disgraced family, one the community leaders wouldn’t prioritize.

  Then, slowly, as though he’d forgotten how to move in front of other people, Aaru put his arm around me and drew me closer. We sat there stiffly, but soon our breathing synced and our muscles relaxed.

  “Can I tell you something?” I whispered.

  He didn’t respond.

  Maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe it wasn’t right to burden him any more.

  But then he tightened his arm around me. Slowly. Gently. I let in a shaking gasp. He hadn’t spoken a word—not in quiet code, and certainly not aloud—since we’d first seen Idris on the horizon. Well, maybe those prayers I thought I’d heard earlier, but maybe not. When we’d come to the hotel, he’d gone straight into a room and closed the curtains, the door, and sat alone for three hours until Hristo had gone in there with his bags. And later, Altan.

  So this—a soft squeeze—was
more than anything I’d gotten from him in five days.

  I closed my eyes and switched to quiet code, my fingers tapping softly against his wrist. ::I’ve been having dreams since we escaped the Pit. At first, it was only after I used noorestones. I dreamed I was flying.::

  Silence. Stillness.

  ::I dreamed I had great wings and fire.::

  Again, nothing.

  ::But it’s changed since then. Since the ruins. I still dream I’m flying, but I see things. I know things.::

  Another faint squeeze, this one in question.

  My heart pounded.

  ::Do you remember when Gerel told us about the Celestial Warriors?:: I left a space for his reply, but he didn’t offer one. ::On Khulan, after the god’s eye, we stopped at an obelisk, and Gerel told us how the Celestial Warriors flew to the mainland on Drakontos titanuses to fight off the clans and kingdoms. I dreamed I was there. And I dreamed I saw the Algotti Empire.::

  Aaru was as still as ever.

  ::I dream about an eclipse a lot—both moons passing in front of the sun, one after the other. And it seems like I’m supposed to know something. Be somewhere. Do something.::

  It was impossible to explain the feeling of urgency present in the dreams. Everything seemed so immediate. So imperative. But trying to articulate it always fell short.

  ::And I’ve dreamed about islands. Ships. People moving toward coasts and building ships. And the other night, I dreamed about dozens of tiny boats dotting the ocean, a little girl inside each one. The girls didn’t speak out loud, but I thought I saw . . .:: My fingers stilled as I reconsidered telling him that I thought they’d been using the quiet code. It might upset him more. ::They’re just dreams, though.::

  His breath hitched, like he’d felt all the words I’d kept trapped inside my fingers, and slowly he pulled back to look at me.

  Three stuttering heartbeats. Four. Five. His eyebrows were drawn in, his lips parted with a question he couldn’t speak.

  “Sorry,” I whispered. “They’re just dreams. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  He took my hands in his and tucked our tangled fingers beneath his chin. His pulse thumped against my knuckles. One, two, three . . . He studied me, like he could see all the ways those dreams of stars and flight and ancient past were tugging me forward.

  But that was all. After a moment of looking at me—looking for the first time in days—he just leaned back on the sofa and pulled me with him.

  I rested my cheek against his chest and didn’t mind that our position was a little uncomfortable. He wanted me nearby. That was enough.

  And then the dreams came again.

  THE DRAKONTOS CELESTUS

  AFTER THE GREAT GOD OF SILENCE ROSE, THE OCEAN dipped and swelled, rushing outward to flee such wrath. But a knot of stillness hung in the tormented waters nearby, shadowed by great wings and an angry god. In a space where everything was chaos and movement, this quiet was out of place.

  Closer inspection revealed a dozen small humans in tiny boats, hands clasped fast around one another’s. None of them spoke aloud, but their fingers tapped and tapped around their circle, relaying information and passing on encouragement.

  They were so little. So determined. They were a testament to humans’ desire to survive against all odds.

  Higher up again, they became mere specks of life on a vast ocean of chaos, notable only for their stillness and silence.

  So strange.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DRAGONS, AS IT TURNED OUT, WERE NOT VERY GOOD at doing nothing.

  In the morning, while we waited for Tanhe to get back to us, Altan got the bath he’d been promised, and then the others went out to listen for gossip about the summit, the explosions, or anything else that might affect our plan.

  That left me with the dragons.

  They hadn’t been able to do much flying over the last few days, since we didn’t need anyone wondering why two small dragons kept going in and out our window. So LaLa and Crystal were restless, and over the course of the morning, I had to stop them from chewing on the curtains, lighting fire to the chairs, and stealing noorestones to add to their nest.

  Zara was just as bad. She roamed the suite, restlessly moving objects just out of place, like she was a particularly bored cat. She tilted a painting, nudged a vase off center, and left cabinet doors ajar.

  Aaru, at least, was easier to manage. When we awakened this morning, I was still pressed against his chest and our fingers were laced, but it almost seemed his heart beat a new rhythm. He stood at the window now, curtains parted just enough to allow him to look outside. For a little while, I stood with him, watching people bustle about, shouting and waving, darting through the busy market nearby.

  Shortly after lunch, the others returned, faces shining with the heat of the day. Chenda dropped an envelope on the table. “Tanhe came through.”

  I clicked for LaLa and gathered her up in my arms. My sweet dragon weasel pressed her nose against my breastbone and puffed smoke, then snuggled onto my lap when I sat on the sofa.

  “I don’t like this,” Gerel growled. “I don’t know what he had to do or say to get this information. If he told anyone that the Hopebearer is staying in his hotel—if he even hinted—we’ll be in trouble.”

  “I’m not worried.” Chenda sat beside me, her expression thoughtful. “If word were to get out that he doesn’t care about his guests’ privacy, no one will stay here. Not with the prices he charges. It would be too big of a blow to his business to betray us.”

  “I can’t believe we’re relying on other people’s greed for safety,” Ilina muttered.

  Chenda gave a quick shrug. “Money is a powerful motivator.” She turned to me. “Interested in taking a look?”

  Careful not to squish LaLa, I leaned forward and pulled Tanhe’s envelope off the table. There wasn’t much inside, just two sheets of paper: a schedule and a note.

  On the ninth day of Suna, in the 2205th year of the Fallen Gods

  Sunset, Upper Gardens—Memorial for Idris and the Idrisi people.

  Immediately following, Great Hall—Ball: fancy dress, light refreshments provided by the high magistrate.

  On the tenth day of Suna, in the 2205th year of the Fallen Gods

  At the ninth hour, Council Chambers—Summit to discuss the events on Idris, and how to prevent the Great Abandonment from affecting the other Fallen Isles. Lunch will be provided by the high magistrate.

  The note accompanying the schedule was brief, in a long, slanted handwriting:

  Most esteemed guests,

  Enclosed is the schedule I’ve acquired on your behalf. Unfortunately, the summit will be quite impossible to attend, as attendees are limited to government officials only. However, I was able to acquire two invitations to the memorial and ball, and I can offer transportation in the hotel horsecarre.

  Below you will find a list of dress shops and tailors, if you need suitable attire. You know where to find me if you require anything else.

  Yours sincerely,

  Tanhe

  “Who throws a ball at a time like this? It’s so insensitive.” Zara threw a glance at Aaru, who was still standing by the window. He wasn’t moving. He didn’t seem to notice that attention had shifted to him.

  “High Magistrate Paorah does,” Chenda said. “It’s a way for him to show off his wealth and power.”

  “If he is truly the one behind the lie of the Mira Treaty”—just the words hurt my throat—“then he needs to be seen as doing something kind and generous. He needs his people to believe he is good, and any measures he takes that limit their freedoms, like enacting martial law, are because he cares about them.”

  Ilina nodded. “It’s a long, carefully planned act.” She frowned at the schedule. “It’s a shame we can’t get to the summit, but the memorial and ball sound promising.”

  I leaned back and crossed my legs. LaLa huffed and readjusted herself, this time with her belly up for scratches. I obliged. “If Nine is at the mem
orial, perhaps they’ll be able to help. There’s not a chance in all of Noore that they’d miss the summit, so they must have a way in.”

  “Agreed.” Chenda tapped her chin. “With the invitations Tanhe procured, getting into the memorial and ball is a matter of altering residency papers and having our false names added to the guest list.”

  “Oh, is that all?” Gerel shook her head.

  “I didn’t say a simple matter.” Chenda smirked.

  Gerel turned to me. “It’s dangerous. What if Paorah recognizes you?”

  “He won’t. It’s been three years since I last saw him. I look different now.”

  Chenda snorted. “That scar isn’t as good of a disguise as you imagine.”

  Ilina nodded. “You still look like you. And you’ll still look like the Hopebearer if you go in dressed appropriately. Not a hunting dress and leggings, but something nice.”

  “Something like one of the gowns you told me not to bring because they required too much effort.”

  “Exactly.” A smile touched the corner of Ilina’s mouth.

  My fingers drifted over the ridge of scar tissue on my left cheek. It felt like it should alter my entire appearance, but they were right. Wearing hunting dresses or cheap clothes, I could usually hide who I was. People expected the Hopebearer to dress a certain way, so they rarely noticed me otherwise.

  “We could ignore the invitations and I could go as a servant,” I said after a moment. “Like you did, Ilina, in the Shadowed City. No one would expect me like that.”

  She shook her head. “Even more impossible. The high magistrate is paranoid, so all his servants have been with him for years. My father said he employed entire families, not out of generosity, but to ensure he always had the right kind of pressure over the people who worked for him.”

  I rubbed my temples. I believed her, of course, but it was difficult to comprehend someone so thoroughly awful. “Then what do we do?”