When She Reigns

by Jodi Meadows

  The room was quiet.

  “I brought you all here in my new ships. The Red Fleet. This will be how we reach the Algotti Empire. However, space is limited, and we’ll all have choices to make: Who do you want to bring? There will be room for seven hundred and fifty people on each ship. One ship for each island.”

  Dark dread poured through me. Choosing. How could anyone choose who to save? How could anyone decide between children and doctors? Or inventors or historians? It was cruel.

  Movement from the gallery drew my attention, and I realized at once how naïve I’d been: the high magistrate had already made his choices, and he’d chosen his friends. The wealthy. The corrupt.

  “The empress has graciously agreed to take in a number of us,” he said. “We would not be her subjects, but honored guests, held in the highest esteem.”

  Several people looked as though they wanted to protest, but the body was still slumped over the desk, blood leaking in small rivers across the polished wood until it dripped onto the floor.

  No one said a word.

  “Now,” the high magistrate continued, “I suggest you choose your people wisely. Look for those with skills and wealth. Social usefulness. Use families as a bargaining tool if you must, but get the people we need in order to make a clean transition from our islands to the empire.

  “I know you’re all wondering what we will be giving up by aligning ourselves with the empire.” He pressed his hands against the surface of his desk. “As a gesture of goodwill, I have given the empress seven dragons, for which she is very grateful.”

  Dragons.

  My head spun, and I swayed, but Aaru’s grip remained tight on my arm. Still, I couldn’t help but imagine seven children of the gods sedated and sent away, awakening in a strange land. How frightened they must have been. How angry.

  “Why send the dragons away?” Eka Delro stood, and though one of the guards approached her, the high magistrate didn’t give the order. “We should fight to preserve our islands, and that means we need every dragon to appeal to the gods on our behalf. If we send them away, we’re inviting trouble.”

  “We had our chance for that, First Matriarch. We had our chance, and we squandered it away. We cannot turn back the days and nights and set our nations on a different path. The Great Abandonment is coming, and we must be prepared to save as much of ourselves as possible: our people, our culture, our values.”

  “Our people are our families,” she said, emboldened now. “How can we choose who to leave behind?”

  “Don’t think of it as leaving anyone behind,” he said. “You’ll be deciding who to save.”

  “And who’s not worth saving,” someone else muttered, but that was the only dissent. Everyone, the dissenter included, was already accepting this new direction for the Fallen Isles, and now they were thinking more of the mechanics of the move and what—if anything—they would tell people. Worth saving. Not worth saving. Whether Damina would be allotted one ship or two.

  My chest squeezed with the need to act, but they’d already made their decisions. They would go. They would select a few people, and leave everyone else here to die.

  It was incredible how little time it had taken for them to surrender.

  I tried to tell myself that it made sense; he’d just killed one of them, and survival instincts were hard to overcome. And he was going to do it regardless of their cooperation. If they resisted, that left another spot on the ship for someone else. They saw no other options.

  But they hadn’t even attempted to resist, save the one senator. They outnumbered the guards. Three were warriors—not just any warriors, but the tribunal. I didn’t know much about the selection process for the tribunal, but everyone understood that it involved combat, so the tribunal was always composed of the most powerful warriors on all of Khulan.

  I could do something, a small voice whispered in the back of my head. No, not a small voice. It was enormous. Powerful. Winged. There was something huge inside me, something straining to get out and loose white-hot fire upon my enemies.

  But if I released it, I couldn’t be sure what would happen, only that the last two times I did—

  I sucked in a cooling breath and shook away the memories of debris raining down inside the Pit, and molten wings boiling the theater floor. Yes, I was better at controlling my ability over noorestones now, but I still needed to be careful. I couldn’t risk killing everyone in here.

  Still, if only one matriarch had made a move. One senator. One warrior. If only one had said no, Aaru and I could have helped. And I could have believed they hadn’t completely abandoned the people of the Fallen Isles already.

  As the tones grew more resigned and people began to discuss which inventor they’d bring, or which banker was the best option, the high magistrate kept nodding to himself, a pleased smile curling the corners of his mouth.

  The hum carried through the chamber, both on the floor and in the galleries above. He let it go on for a few minutes, and then he cleared his throat. “I’m glad we’re all agreed. It is not an easy decision, yet it is the right decision, the only decision we can, in good conscience, make. Now, you may be wondering what the remaining ships will be carrying.”

  Everyone stilled, because they had been wondering, but by now they knew better than to ask too many questions.

  “The remaining ships,” Paorah said, “will carry our armies.”

  Shock pulsed through the chamber, and I looked at Nine, finding only masked fury.

  If the high magistrate had indeed made a deal with the empress, he had lied to her.

  He had ten giant noorestones.

  He’d almost had dozens of large dragons.

  And somewhere—maybe here, maybe Khulan—he had armies?

  “This is madness,” said one of the tribunal. “A true warrior does not seek conflict.”

  “But,” said the high magistrate, “is always prepared for it.” He smiled cruelly. “I know your book as well as mine. And let us not pretend that the empress is taking us in out of the goodness of her heart. Even skilled and wealthy, we will be refugees. No, she will take something from us, and it will be our independence. We must be prepared to fight for it.”

  He wasn’t looking out for our independence. He intended to attack the empire and seize it for himself.

  It was a bold plan. An arrogant plan. Paorah would take select people of the Fallen Isles from the certain death of the Great Abandonment . . . to the certain death of war.

  No one spoke, though. No one could speak.

  My mind whirled. The idea of chasing a war with the very empire the Mira Treaty had been meant to protect us against . . . It was unthinkable.

  “Now”—Paorah’s shoulders rose with a sharp, indrawn breath—“I’ve provided lunch. My chefs have prepared sweet cloudfish rolls, which I’m sure you will all enjoy. But first, there’s one more thing we must take care of.”

  People shifted in their seats, as though they could sense something terrible about to happen, but they didn’t know the true lengths he was willing to go to in order to achieve his goals. They didn’t know what a monster he was.

  He looked at the First Matriarch and smiled. “Eka, you were concerned that we had nothing concrete to replace the Mira Treaty. Fear not: another document has been drawn up, and I’d like to go over the details with you all this afternoon. But before we can sign a new document, we must put aside the old one.” He nodded toward a pair of guards stationed at the door he’d come through earlier.

  As the door opened, everyone quieted and stretched to see what was coming through.

  Aaru and I were at the back of the room, on the far side from the door, so I caught only flashes of red. Then, when those in the front finally began to sit, I could see a fuller view of the floor—but my mind refused to accept the facts.

  It was the gown that struck me first: ruby-red silk, which slid across a young woman’s body like scales. I knew that gown. It was mine. The last time I’d seen it, I’d been trying
to kill the person wearing it.

  She was still wearing it.

  But the girl inside the soft embrace of the Fallen Isles’ finest silk was different now. No longer straight and tall, bright with cosmetics and focused lighting. No, here she was bound and gagged, her shoulders slumped and her head hanging toward the floor. Her skin looked gray, and if she was aware of the crowd of government officials staring at her, she gave no indication. She appeared like an empty vessel, all the life of her poured out.

  Another woman came behind her, older, and just as wrung out. The bindings had cut into her wrists, leaving the skin there red and raw. Her gown was simpler than the other, but just as elegant and expensive—or rather, it had been once. Now, it was torn and stained from everything that had happened to them since Val fa Merce.

  Soft gasps fluttered throughout the room as senators and matriarchs and Mother recognized Elbena, the last surviving Luminary Councilor.

  And the girl with her . . . Tirta looked enough like me to fool some people, especially from afar. But here, she just looked like herself, dressed up in someone else’s clothes. No one here would confuse us.

  The guards marched them to the center of the floor, where the high magistrate and the speakers had stood before. They faced the crowd, and Tirta looked up just long enough to find the space everyone had made around the dead senator. Just long enough to see the blood seeping off the front of the desk and onto the chair on the tier below.

  Tirta made a small, strangled noise. She tried to run, but the guard near her clamped down on her shoulders and held her there, and she had no more strength to fight.

  “Oh, seven gods,” someone muttered.

  Another person reached to clasp my mother’s hands.

  Someone whispered a prayer.

  “What have you done?” a matriarch asked.

  ::We need to go,:: Aaru tapped. ::You can’t stay here.::

  But I couldn’t move, either. If I drew attention to myself, someone might look up here and see me—the actual Hopebearer.

  “Before you stands Elbena Krasteba,” the high magistrate announced, “and the Hopebearer: Mira Minkoba.”

  No one here could believe she was me, but as I gazed around the room, I saw people’s hands fly to their chests and more prayers fall off tongues. They did believe, or they were playing along.

  Mother was. She pressed her hands over her nose and mouth, and her shoulders trembled. She was a good actress, my mother, but part of me wondered if this was all acting. Because there was a girl who looked like me, wearing my clothes, bound up and held under guard. There was a girl who wasn’t me, but could have been. Would have been, if I’d given that speech in Bopha.

  I swayed a little, reaching for a noorestone to help steady me. But the lights didn’t flicker; not this time. I was too numb now, too caught up in shock to feel anything else.

  They were traitors, both of them. One who’d scarred me, one who’d become me. They’d tried to make the Hopebearer speak words she could never—not without being untrue to the Mira Treaty—and they’d both fooled me into thinking they were my friends.

  They were my enemies.

  And yet, seeing them here, I couldn’t hate them. I couldn’t celebrate that they were now in the high magistrate’s hands. I could only wish that they weren’t, because neither of them deserved what he would do to them.

  “This is an insult,” one of the matriarchs said. “Elbena is one of us. She should be up here.” She gestured toward the seats left open.

  “Mira is just a child,” someone else said. “What have you been doing with her? Why is she being treated like this?”

  I stared at that last speaker. I hadn’t felt like a child in a long time. Maybe ever. I’d been treated like a doll or a puppet, useful as nothing more than a face and a mouthpiece.

  “She is no child.” The high magistrate’s expression was cool and impassive, as though the two standing below him meant nothing. As though they were nothing. “She is a relic of an old and dying world. She has no place in the new world we are creating.”

  Tirta’s eyes went wide, and my heart jumped. She didn’t deserve this.

  Aaru squeezed my arm.

  Paorah gazed over the room, conviction lighting his eyes. “We cannot destroy the document of the Mira Treaty. That opportunity was already taken when rogue warriors attacked Crescent Prominence. But here we have the living symbol of the treaty. The Hopebearer.”

  “What are you saying?” a man asked.

  “We are putting aside the Mira Treaty.” The high magistrate stood, looming over the chamber as dark and frightening as Idris on the horizon. “We are embracing our new future.”

  My heartbeat thundered in my ears, and I wanted to look away, but the scene below was a magnet, drawing me back every time I tried to pull free.

  High Magistrate Paorah lifted an arm.

  “Stop this!” cried one of the matriarchs. “Stop this at once!”

  He called out, “Now!”

  It all happened too quickly.

  The pair of guards flanking Tirta and Elbena drew their knives.

  My mother screamed.

  Three warriors leaped over the desks, toward the floor, but they were too late.

  The knives plunged into two soft throats.

  Blood.

  Someone grabbed Mother to hold her, but the screams kept coming.

  The warriors met the guards on the floor, killing them with their bare hands, but more guards swarmed in.

  And Tirta and Elbena dropped to the floor, lifeless.

  The whole world tilted as my double died. A girl I’d thought was a friend. A girl I wanted to hate but couldn’t.

  Paorah raised his voice over the cacophony of footfalls and screams. “You have a choice to make. Resist and die, or join me and live. But either way, know this:

  “The Mira Treaty is dead.”

  PART THREE

  NO DISHONOR IN FEAR

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THEY’D KILLED ME.

  No, they’d killed Tirta, the false Hopebearer. But they’d intended to kill me. They thought they had.

  And now the Mira Treaty was dead.

  The tenets that defined my life: dead.

  Everything I’d worked for: dead.

  For a heartbeat, my whole world shifted off center, and a rupture spread throughout my soul. A distant roar sounded in my head, and stars rained down their fury. I wanted to scream. I wanted to breathe fire. I wanted to ruin them the way they’d tried to ruin me.

  Fiery muscles stretched along my back and shoulders. Heat poured into me as a gigantic roar gathered in my throat—

  Everything went silent.

  Screams.

  Toppling chairs.

  My own heartbeat.

  The spark growing in my chest cooled, and I could see straight once more, but what I saw was no comfort.

  Chaos bloomed bright below, made worse by the sudden silence: people threw themselves over desks, trying to reach one of the aisles. It was a futile attempt, though; guards blocked the way, their swords drawn.

  The screams, awful before, seemed somehow louder now that their voices had been crushed under the unrelenting silence. But even as I turned toward Aaru to beg him to bring back the sound, it returned. Not all at once. But in blinks. Lightning flashes.

  My mind felt whiplashed from the silence and noise and that spark of fury fading in my heart. I could hardly comprehend what I was seeing as my gaze fell again to the bodies on the floor, my view of them fractured as people rushed in front of them. But I saw the red of my gown.

  They’d killed me.

  Her.

  Aaru grabbed my hands and pulled me around to meet his wide, worried eyes. ::We have to go.::

  By now, sound had fully returned, and the shouts and scrapes and outright begging for mercy were oppressively loud. Dizzying movement wrenched around the chamber as people fought to escape, but—aside from High Magistrate Paorah surveying the destruction he’d caused—t
here was one bubble of stillness.

  People parted around Mother like she was a rock in a stream. She stood, with her hands pressed to her chest, staring at the bodies on the floor, the picture of a woman who’d just lost a child and didn’t care about anything happening around her.

  Aaru was right: we needed to go, before the rest of the guards either took control or killed everyone. But— “I can’t leave my mother.”

  Heartache crossed Aaru’s expression. He started to turn, but behind him, Nine changed course. “Go,” she said. “I’ll get her.”

  I didn’t have time to respond. Aaru dragged me toward the nearest door, and though I didn’t think the guards blocking that exit would let us out, they saw our uniforms and moved aside.

  My heart was drumbeat heavy as we strode through the ornate corridors of the Red Hall. I wanted to run, but running would draw attention, and already I was waiting for the thud of boots behind us—waiting for someone to realize we weren’t who we’d claimed.

  Aaru and I paused just long enough to grab our bag from the room where we’d stashed it, and then we walked out of the building with as much confidence as we could muster.

  No one stopped us.

  Outside, the air was sticky and still, and clouds dipped low over the city, ready to spill open. My head spun with worry and sickness and cut-short rage as we marched off the Red Hall grounds and dove into the city, scattering civilians who didn’t want to be anywhere near two of the high magistrate’s guards.

  Wet heat clung to us, and sweat prickled down my chest and spine. It was a drowning sort of heat, growing worse as we walked.

  We couldn’t go far like this, not if we wanted to go unnoticed. So I ducked down an empty alley and found a small alcove, and there I stood watch while Aaru changed into his regular clothes behind me. When he touched my shoulder, I swapped places with him.

  With shaking hands, I switched Nine’s shirt for my hunting dress, managing to do it without ever being fully uncovered. Then I shoved off her trousers and pulled on my leggings, and then my boots. Nine’s clothes went into the sack.