Despite her mood, Sorrow smiled. “You’re right. I’ll save it for Samad, then.”
Irris gave an unladylike snort. “Indeed. Well…” She began to rifle through Sorrow’s wardrobe. “For tomorrow… Might I recommend something in … black?”
“What else?” Sorrow reached for a tunic and matching trousers.
“Why don’t I send for some wine, and I’ll help you draft some ideas on what we want the new Rhannon to look like?” Irris said.
“We?”
“I said you didn’t have to do it alone. I meant it,” Irris replied. “Besides, the sooner you’re all settled, the sooner I can get back to university.”
“You’ll leave, once I’m chancellor?” A new surge of panic gripped Sorrow’s heart.
Irris’s eyes sparkled as she replied. “Well, that all depends on my pay rise.”
Sorrow jostled her friend out of the way. “Perhaps I’ll make a law that means all students have to wear salmon pink and lemon yellow,” she said slyly. “Salmon-pink and lemon-yellow wool.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Irris said.
“Watch me. If you thought my father was bad, you just wait for the hundred and fifth chancellor.”
Hoping her words weren’t tempting fate, Sorrow sashayed out of the wardrobe, leaving Irris laughing softly behind her.
But Sorrow couldn’t help wishing that Mael had lived. That he was standing where she stood now, facing what she faced.
Wants and Needs
The lamps had burned low, and the wine was all gone by the time Irris rose to leave, some two hours later. They’d started out well, talking about disbanding the Decorum Ward, redistributing money back to the universities so they could teach art and literature courses again. Reopening libraries, theatres, dance halls. But they abandoned writing their plans when the ideas got increasingly silly, and Sorrow declared there would be a national cake day, where everyone had to send her cakes.
“You’ve never even had cake,” Irris said.
“It doesn’t matter. I already know I love it.”
“It is lovely,” Irris admitted.
“How do you – oh, of course.”
“I’m older than you.” Irris smirked. “I had three whole years of cake. And you would love it. Will love it.”
The clock on the wall gave a soft chime, and Irris looked up. “I should go. We’ll both need to be up very early tomorrow.”
The two girls embraced, and Irris left Sorrow humming tunelessly to herself as she prepared for bed. She washed her face and hands, pulled her nightgown over her head and slipped under the sheet.
As soon as she did, the glow from laughing with Irris faded, and fear took its place. This time tomorrow she’d be chancellor presumpt… Preparing for an election… Responsible for all of Rhannon…
Adrenaline forced her out of bed, and into her dressing room. She shoved the endless hangers of black clothes aside, until she found what she was looking for.
There was a hole in the wall the size of a coin, and Sorrow pushed a finger into it, pressing until the hidden mechanism inside released and a section of the wood panelling detached from the rest, revealing a door. The same door Rasmus had used to sneak from her rooms when the stewards had arrived earlier, and the way he’d crept back in after they’d left.
She returned to her bed, picking up the small lamp from beside it, and lit it. Then, in silence, she entered the passageway.
She and Rasmus had found it by accident years ago, before they became more than friends. They’d been messing around in the corridor of the diplomatic wing, mocking a bureau of old artefacts that seemed to have been hidden down there, out of sight of the rest of the palace. Sorrow had reached for a particularly ugly vase, fashioned like a kind of dolphin, but as she’d tried to lift it the bureau shifted instead, revealing a passageway behind it.
They had slipped into it and, holding hands, followed it all the way along until they’d found themselves, to their surprise, in her wardrobe. They’d never discovered the real reason for it, hadn’t wanted to ask in case someone blocked it off, though Sorrow fancied it was for some ancient ancestral chancellor to sneak out to see his mistresses. It had made for great fun when they were children, and become even more useful as they’d grown, and things had changed. Not even Irris knew about it.
Moments later she had reached the end, stepping into the corridor where Rasmus’s room was.
He was lying on his bed, still fully dressed, reading, when she entered the room without knocking, and he looked up in surprise.
“Row?”
She tugged her nightgown over her head and dropped it, releasing her hair from its crown. Rasmus put down his book and stood.
“Row, what’s—” he said, but she gave him no time to talk, tugging at his shirt, unlacing it and yanking it over his head. She pressed into his body, warm and living, and felt a peace begin to spread through her, beneath the wildness of fear and need. She pushed him back on the bed, silencing every word he tried to say, and soon he stopped trying, responding in the way she needed him to. Somewhere beneath the wanting, she knew she wasn’t being fair, that she had to tell him what had been decided, and what it meant for them, but she couldn’t think of that then.
She reached across to the drawer beside the bed and pulled out a small bag, and he took it from her, emptying the contents into his mouth and chewing, his hands stroking at her the whole while, his rings cold against her rapidly warming skin. When he bent to kiss her, his lips tasted bitter and green, and she licked the flavour away. He made a sound deep in the back of his throat, and she closed her eyes, pulling him against her, into her.
Her hair was damp when they separated, her mouth sore from kissing. He’d curled himself around her, one hand stroking her spine.
“Are you all right?” he asked, and she nodded against his chest.
“Are you?” she murmured.
Above her head he gave a soft snort. “Well … I suppose so.” She could hear the smile in his voice and it made her ache.
The first time she’d seen Rasmus smile, it had terrified her. It wasn’t the first smile she’d seen, but it was the first one that was wide, and full, with no guilt or fear behind it. It was so open she hadn’t known it for a smile at first.
She was eight years old, as was he, newly arrived there to live with his father, Vespus, the then Rhyllian ambassador, after the death of his mother back home. When he’d found her in the nursery, his face had changed, widening, his eyes narrowing as his lips had parted and he’d bared his teeth at her. She’d punched him in the nose and run from him, her short legs pumping down the corridor as she tried to put as much distance between them as she could. But his legs were longer, he’d grown up on milk and honey and fresh air, and he easily caught up to her in the old ballroom.
“Why did you hit me? Why do you run from me?” he’d asked in halting Rhannish, tucking his fair hair behind pointed ears. She’d remained mute and staring, balled fists ready to hit him again if she needed to. “I only want to be your friend.”
He’d raised a hand, long slim fingers pointing towards the ceiling, and eventually she’d uncurled her own, her pudgy fingers spread like a starfish as she mimicked his stance. He’d pressed his palm to hers, and the feeling sent a spark of something new through her body. Joy, she would realize later, when he gave her the word for it. Peace.
“Now we are friends,” the Rhyllian boy said solemnly.
“You won’t growl at me any more, then?” she’d asked.
“I never did growl at you.”
“You did. Like a dog. But silent.”
“I smiled at you. Not growled.”
Sorrow shook her head. “You mustn’t smile here. It’s forbidden.”
As though she’d said something funny, the boy smiled again, then clapped his hand over his mouth, violet eyes wide.
Sorrow frowned, chewing her lip, as she came to a decision. “Show me,” she’d demanded.
And Rasmus had smiled for her
on command.
The Jedenvat
Sorrow slipped out once he’d fallen asleep. In the dim light, he looked almost Rhannish. With his ears hidden by his hair, there was no sign of his Rhyllian heritage.
They’d first kissed a little over a year ago. One moment they’d been playing a Rhyllian card game Ras had smuggled to her rooms – she’d complained he was cheating, he’d tried to explain the overly complex rules – and then her mouth was on his, their lips the only parts of them touching in a frozen kiss.
They separated, and laughed, not quite meeting each other’s eyes, and continued with the game as though it hadn’t happened. And three nights later, Sorrow had found herself kissing him once more, but this time with confidence, curiosity, his hands on her shoulders, hers at his waist. It happened again the next night. Then again. And again, until sliding her arms around his neck and pulling him close when they were alone was almost a reflex. Things might have been different if Lincel hadn’t made it clear she didn’t need the aid of a fifteen-year-old boy who now spoke Rhannish better than he spoke Rhyllian. And if Irris hadn’t been occupied taking over from her brother on the Jedenvat, leaving Sorrow and Rasmus alone more and more.
They had no future – they’d known that all along. Laws had been passed centuries ago forbidding Rhyllian and Rhannish relationships, the price death in both countries. But it wasn’t enough to stop them. The fact it was forbidden made it sweeter, another secret, another rebellion, along with laughter, and games, and open windows.
As their relationship deepened, as kisses became much more, Sorrow wanted to know what happened when Adavere Starwhisperer crossed the bridge to Rhannon.
“He married her? The woman he built the bridge for? So Rhannish and Rhyllians could marry once?” Sorrow was shocked when her grandmother told her.
“Well, yes,” her grandmother said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Quite literally once. Before Adavere built the bridge there were no relations between our people and theirs. It was impossible because of the river. So Adavere and Namyra – the Rhannish woman – were the first. And also the last.”
“Why?”
“Adavere had a gift,” the dowager continued. “An ability. He claimed it must have come with the stars when he charmed them down. Because after that, his very presence would soothe and calm. Just to be near him would bring a feeling of bliss. But the gift was a double-edged blade, and while it eased away the bad, it also numbed the good. Adavere’s gift was especially strong, and it drove Namyra mad in the end. Every emotion she had was taken from her by him, leaving her a shell. She stopped sleeping in their rooms, stopped dining with him, even began hurting herself – anything to feel something. It broke her heart to withdraw from him, but it was the only way she could feel at all. Eventually she packed her things and fled in the night.
“She came back here, to Rhannon, and of course, Adavere came after her. It almost caused a war – in fact, some believe it was this that first created the bad blood between our countries – the abilities, and the power it might give them over us. Finally, after realizing the misery he’d left his bride in, Adavere returned to Rhylla, and passed a law saying relationships between his people and the Rhannish were forbidden, on pain of death. And the then-king of Rhannon made it law here too.”
All Sorrow knew of what the Rhyllians called their “abilities”, she’d learned from Rasmus. Neither Charon nor her grandmother had ever mentioned that the Rhyllian ambassador and his son could do things she couldn’t. He, of course, was able to soothe away pain – a skill she later took advantage of when her monthly courses harassed her. And his father was gifted with plants, able to coax them into growing faster than they might, in places they might not naturally, or to yield more fruit than they would normally.
But this gift of Adavere’s sounded different to what Rasmus had told her about his own ability. Dangerous, even. The law made sense to her, in light of that.
Just not sense enough for her to stop kissing Rasmus Corrigan when he lowered his mouth to hers.
Sorrow remembered the story of Adavere and Namyra as she climbed back into her own bed. She’d meant to talk to him after they’d finally sated themselves, to tell him that she was stepping up as chancellor presumpt, and that night had to be the last between them. That from tomorrow she could be his friend, but nothing more.
She tossed and turned for the rest of the night, too many thoughts in her mind to allow her rest. The tentative knocks of her maids at her door were a relief, when they finally came.
“Pardon, Miss Ventaxis, but it’ll be dawn in an hour. Your bath is ready.”
Sorrow shed the skin of her night-time self and became Miss Ventaxis, daughter of a drug addict and a dead woman, sister to a ghost that would not stop haunting her. And soon, the leader of the land.
Sorrow was bathed and dressed within half an hour, refusing breakfast, her stomach churning too much to contemplate food. Unable to settle to anything, she paced her room, marking the minutes in circuits, until word came from the Round Chamber at precisely seven bells, summoning her to them.
When Sorrow entered the Round Chamber on shaking legs, the Jedenvat were seated at the table in the centre of the room. Someone had brought wine, despite the hour, and they replenished their glasses now, pouring one for her. No servants were permitted inside the Round Chamber, no ambassadors or visitors.
Named for its shape, the Round Chamber had once been a jewel in the Rhannish crown, the walls painted with painstakingly detailed maps of every country on Laethea: Rhannon, Rhylla, Astria, Meridea, Svarta, Nyrssea. The Skae Isles to the north of Nyrssea were rendered so finely that even the fierce water women could be seen frolicking in the grey seas that surrounded them. Whales and sea beasts were painted into the oceans; albino bears dotted the Svartan landscape. Once, a team of five painters had been retained by Sorrow’s grandfather, endlessly painting, erasing, then repainting borders as his battles played tug o’war across the lands, claiming then losing ground so fast the landscape of Rhannon changed almost daily.
The paint hadn’t dimmed, thanks to the curtained windows. The sea-maids’ teeth still glittered in the candlelight; the desert of Astria was still gleaming gold. The only thing that had changed was the scar where the bridge between Rhannon and Rhylla was. Sorrow didn’t know who’d done it, but someone had come into the room and hacked at the wall until the bridge was gone, leaving flaking plaster and paint chips in its place. A lifetime of seeing it never dampened the shock whenever she looked at it. Though she knew the reason for the bridge’s scouring away, and even understood it, it seemed to her to bode ill – that the only land link between their lands had been destroyed on the map, and no one had thought to repair it. Not even her.
“Welcome, Miss Ventaxis. Please, sit,” Charon said.
It chilled her to be addressed so formally by him, and she found herself standing straighter, her shoulders back, in response. When he bade her sit, she moved to the chancellor’s seat, her back to the defaced bridge, her empty stomach churning. When she rested her hands on the tabletop she saw they were trembling, and so she folded them into her lap instead.
Charon was sitting to her right, appearing taller than the rest of them thanks to his wheeled chair; beside him was Bayrum Mizil, merchant councilman and warden of the North Marches, the province that held the Humpback Bridge. Bayrum’s family had defended the bridge for four generations, and next to Charon and Irris there was no one she trusted more.
To his right sat the sea-grizzled Senator Kaspira of Prekara, allegedly descended from pirates and thieves, and round as the pearls that were harvested from the seas beside her archipelago to the north-east; then Lord Samad, minister of Asha, who looked hewn from the sands of the wild desert county to the south. Then Irris, taking the place of her brother, Arran Day, former senator of the East Marches. After being fired by Harun, Arran had returned to his family seat, keeping a low profile, and Irris had represented their family ever since. Finally Tuva Marchant, senator of the
West Marches, bordering Meridea, who’d stepped into power when her husband was killed during the war.
Balthasar’s empty seat was like a punched-out tooth between the occupied ones. Sorrow averted her gaze from the gap and took a deep breath as Charon turned to her.
“Miss Ventaxis. This morning the Jedenvat held an emergency meeting to discuss the situation with the chancellor, Harun Ventaxis, 104th chancellor of Rhannon, and First Warden of the Heart. In light of numerous recent events, I, as vice chancellor, moved to pass a motion declaring no confidence in the chancellor, due to his current mental and physical difficulties. The motion passed, with five votes to one, and one in absentia.”
Sorrow wondered who’d voted against. Samad, she decided, from the sour look on his face.
Charon continued. “Following this, I moved to pass a motion to invest you as chancellor presumpt, until such time as an election can be held and you can legally be voted into office. This motion was denied by four votes to two, and one in absentia.”
Sorrow reeled from the announcement, her emotions changing so fast she didn’t know what to feel. Denied? So she wouldn’t be chancellor… Irris had been wrong…
Charon cleared his throat, drawing her attention back to him. “Finally, I moved to pass a motion to invest you as chancellor presumpt, with a codicil granting the Jedenvat the power to preside with you, until such time as you turn twenty-one and can govern alone. The motion passed with a majority of six. The Jedenvat of Rhannon move to depose your father, and invest you as chancellor presumpt.”
Sorrow’s ears were ringing, and she blinked, hard, trying to collect her thoughts.
Opposite her, Bayrum Mizil and Tuva Marchant were beaming, and beside them Irris was smiling too, and nodding. When Sorrow turned to Charon, he raised his eyebrows expectantly.
She realized they were waiting for her to speak, but her tongue was useless, her brain empty of words.
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