At the opposite end of the room, Father sat on the most infamous chair in all of Mirradalia. I don’t mean to say that Chaya was a more powerful kingdom than all the others. We were a long shot from that. Even in sea power, we wavered. I mean quite literally—the second most infamous chair. Where Rhauk’s throne was made of bone, and Panbin’s throne was made of scales from the Leviathan, Chaya’s was made of frozen witchwater. The proper name was bororean ice, but no one called it that anymore, because it did not exist. No one knew how to freeze witchwater. It was the old magic, Taa always said. The kind of magic that could make pieces of the earth float forever and a desert look like it had four suns. The kind of magic that gave way to necromancy and red alchemy.
The first thing I noticed in the room was that another house’s banners stood on level with our own. That meant another king or queen had come, not just their courtiers and nobles. It wasn’t long before I figured out which one.
“Ahhh my beautiful—” Father’s voice boomed from the front, but was cut off by a familiar voice.
“Dinaaaa!” Queen O’nell called. She strode over to greet me. Her Queen’s Guard shifted awkwardly in the front of the room, unsure if they should follow or not. No one was in danger, of course, it was more just a matter of custom. When this much of the nobility and royalty gathered together, manners, tones, and appearances overshadowed the substance of any conversation. You couldn’t hold anyone at fault for that. Impressions mattered, and these people met too infrequently to get second chances at making them.
Queen O’nell spoke so the whole room could hear. “Dina, you turn thirteen today? You have grown twice as beautiful since I last saw you.” She curled one of my blue strands around two of her fingers and stroked downward, thumbing through the color with a careful hand. She made a show of glancing around the room, then bent lower to speak to me, just loud enough so that only the people nearby could hear. “And I hear, from others, three times as clever.” She winked.
“You are too kind, Queen O’nell,” I replied, bowing graciously. “You have grown younger it seems, from the last time I saw you.” I dipped my head into a mystified look.
She smiled deviously, eyes flitting across my sisters.
Iris and Yephi bowed when she turned to them, Iris going a few inches lower than Yephi.
Queen O’nell faced Iris. “Ahh… and you must be…” She raised a single brow, then smirked. “Yephi?” she asked, leaning her head an inch forward.
“Iris.”
“I’m Yephi,” the older of my sisters replied. It was just bold enough for a nine-year-old to be charming without sounding discourteous. She didn’t smile as she spoke, adding to the charm.
Queen O’nell pursed her lips together in delight. Everyone else around us smiled. Yephi’s tone was the kind of thing people would remember for decades. Someday when she grew up, every time she did something audacious they would say: Ahh yes, I remember that girl. She was a daring one, even when she was just a child.
“Tsss!” Queen O’nell scowled. “I should’ve known! My apologies, young princess.” She bowed her head to Yephi. “Your mother told me your younger sister was the taller one. I’ve really got to read her letters more carefully.”
Yephi reached a hand out and grazed Queen O’nell’s cheeks. “It is okay, my dear,” she said, in the most serious tone she could manage. “Just don’t do it again.”
Queen O’nell laughed ecstatically, then ran her hand through Yephi’s blue strands, then Iris’s. She tucked Yephi’s hair behind her ears.
“You have your father’s ears!” Queen O’nell exclaimed.
Yephi turned to Mother, horrified.
Queen O’nell stood to hug Mother. She laid her head on Mother’s shoulder, then pulled her in tightly with two hands from the back. It was more than just a polite gesture.
“My sister from the seas,” Queen O’nell whispered. “The older sibling I never had.”
“Queen—” Mother began, but was cut off by a steely gaze from Queen O’nell as she jerked her head back.
“I can’t call you Kriste here,” Mother said, speaking in Angpur. She was fluent, but spoke it with a slight Emel accent, which was a bit ironic because she spoke Emel with a slight Comilla accent. Mother didn’t know much Comilla anymore, but it had been the language of her childhood, and its many accents always clung to her speech. “It would be impolite in front of—”
Queen O’nell drew in a sharp breath, then replied in Angpur. “Who careeees what the people think.” She darted beady eyes around the room. “People will say this, people will say that, must we worry about every little which way the wind blows?” She swung a hand to the right, and then to the left as she spoke. Her last line was from a poem by Dh’hpur. I had read almost all of the prophet’s work. At least, all that I could get my hands on. There were more obscure texts still in Mimenhi that had never been transcribed, and it was said that Narkissa had her own collection of the prophet’s work that had never been read by anyone outside of Rhauk. Most people in Mirradalia were only familiar with Dh’hpur’s religious works, The Eleven Zeniths, which had founded Raathism, the religion of the new gods. But Dh’hpur was a prolific writer and had left behind much more than that. You could’ve filled a library with all that she had written, from letters to friends and rulers to treatises on philosophy and poems about life, death, and time.
Yephi and Iris were both muttering in Angpur to themselves under their breaths, trying to figure out what Mother and Queen O’nell had said to each other. Tonight, I’d hear at least three hours worth of conspiracy theories.
I liked all of the rulers in Mirradalia, but the only one I’d really taken to was Queen O’nell of Xenash. Then again, I might have been fond of the others as well, but Queen O’nell was the only one I saw often enough to feel like I really knew her. She was just under six feet tall, with fair skin lighter than most Xenashi. She had silver-blonde hair that was currently tied up in a weave. She had an angular face, eyes that were sharp and quick, and barely visible freckles on the left side of her face. She had an athletic build; the legs of a ballerina, the arms of a dancer, and the easy, deliberate movements of a fencer. She had small lashes, but large, olive eyes, like Elsa. She was wearing a Genhangya, traditional royal garb for the kingdom in the skies. The bright golden top went down past her knees. Her violet pants were loose, and flowed weightlessly around her legs. Hundreds of tiny crystals lined the front and sides of her clothes, opulent in the way the fashions of the old continent demanded. She used the same perfume as Mother. It had a citrus and resinous scent, a mix of fresh fruit and the air in a forest after a rainstorm.
I had only ever seen the sweet and coy side of Queen Kriste O’nell, but I knew not to let appearances fool me. In Xenash, although they worshipped Raya, they called Queen O’nell otha iu Laila. Angpur for “Daughter of Laila, god of war.” Kriste O’nell was obsessed with war, the way few people could obsess about anything. When she was sixteen, about a decade ago, she’d travelled to Chaya to be tutored in the way by Taa. I was only three then. She had gotten close to Mother in the year she spent here, one of the few people she trusted, even among her blood relatives. Before her tutelage in Chaya, she had been taught by the high priestess of the Sisterhood herself. When she was only a child, she would carry with her a tome detailing the histories of every battle ever fought in Adhib. Her lords and commanders said she had the air of the sultanas of past, the ones who had built the first empires in the old continent more than five millennia ago.
Queen O’nell was a conqueror down to her bones, and played politics only to incite war when she needed it. She was a fierce fighter, bordering on sadistic when she was engaged in battle. Taa undoubtedly had played a role in that. Kriste could hit a sparrow by its tail feather from a hundred meters away with a bow, but her favorite weapon was the double mace. She did not use magic often. She was trained in Riduan, a style of fighting designed to kill alchemists. She also drank a lot. A lot.
Queen O’nell led the w
ay to the front of the room, where Father began introducing us to the many nobles, lords, and courtiers of other kingdoms. He and Mother had not told anyone about what happened in the forest. Word would get out eventually. The King’s Guard would speak, other people in town would spread the word, but it would not feel as important if Father said nothing. The story would get muddled. A different version of it would come out every time it carried from one person to another, and no one would know what really happened. Taa would make up her own narrative. She would say that she had brought the three of us to the forest to show us alchemy, or an old kind of magic in the Dwah Forest that you can only see when the blue moon is up—which might even help my reputation.
If word got out that two of the king’s daughters were taken so easily by a witch, right from the Cathedral in the middle of the day, the war that Father had declared today would suddenly feel much more real to the other nobles and lords. It wouldn’t be an issue for someone like O’nell, but for others, it would make them hesitant. It would create fear and doubt. These were the kinds of games they played in Royal Court. It was not the most noble of practices, but that was the way. The way the world worked, the way kingdoms were built, the way dynasties were made to last. Everything centered around subtle yet important details. What you said, what you didn’t say, what you could say. There was a thrill to it all. It was chutrang, played on a board that stretched across all of Mirradalia, from the old continent to the new.
“You look just like your mother,” a young noble said.
“You look just like your father,” an elderly lord remarked.
“You are a spitting image of your grandmother,” a middle-aged courtier commented.
“Ahh, yes, people often mistake us for each other,” I replied. The woman smiled and nodded blankly.
An elderly merchant from Qashar approached my sisters and me. He had lightly tanned skin, a round face, and a stout build. His neck disappeared into a burly chin. His beard was cut short and trimmed neatly into a thin triangle that wrapped around the bottom of his face. It was well oiled. You could even see drops of safflower still scraping the top side of his neck and the space right under his ears, where his hairline tapered off into evenly cut lines measured to his lobes. He wore a violet silk shirt folded down the sleeves, a silk scarf around his neck, and leather trousers, pulled all the way up to his stomach. He smelled strongly of sour tobacco. His teeth were stained red like Taa’s. They had a gap in the middle, and several were capped gold at the far sides of his mouth.
“Ahh, Princess,” he said, bending down to the floor. He spoke with a thick Comillan accent. He might have been from Qashar, but he must have grown up outside of the human kingdoms. The corner of his lips parted a fraction of an inch as he spoke, just enough for a golden tooth to peek through. His breath smelled like smoke while his clothes reeked of a heavyset perfume, a mix of pepper and rosemary. He gestured toward the corner of the room. At least thirty boxes and chests, most of them wrapped in vibrant cloth, were stacked neatly against the wall. Gifts that other families had brought for my sisters and me. “My name is Sharthac Koomai. I have left a gift for you. A beautiful toy. It is something to play with for children.” He gripped something invisible in the air, then tilted his two hands left and right like he was moving a doll.
I never spoke to old people like they were about to die—so why did they speak to me like I’d just been born?
I bowed to the man. “You are kind. You are from a Serpentine tribe?” I asked, speaking in Comilla. “But now you work in Qashar?”
The merchant nodded, raising a brow.
“Your accent.” I smiled and turned away, pretending someone else had caught my attention. Really, I was hoping not to have to smell him anymore. Taa smelled a similar way, but her scent was mellow. Sweet tobacco, not sour, and it was never overpowering, just a soft aroma that made you feel home. Taa’s scent I could’ve breathed for days.
A few years before today, making all of these introductions and gestures and trying to navigate through small conversations that were going nowhere would have felt painfully tedious. I would have retreated to Mother or Taa and tried to feign a heat stroke or nausea. Once, three years ago, I’d tried to fake an assassination attempt on Father. My parents had gotten unreasonably upset, and I was equally upset in return, because in their rage they would not admit how well I’d pulled it off. Those had been dark times. Of course all of this still was tedious, for Iris and Yephi. Iris was doing a better job of hiding it. Yephi had given up. Someone would say hello, and she would only shake her head in silence, her expression asking for help.
None of this was boring for me. Not anymore. In fact, I think I was enjoying it more than most of the elders in attendance. I used every moment to learn as much as I could about every noble, every lord, every courtier I met. It was a skill you needed to practice. An ability like that was as good as a dagger at someone’s throat. You could pry out whatever information you needed. For sensitive topics, you had to learn how to get answers that you wanted through tangential subjects. For bolder matters, you had to be brazen. You had to be upfront, and you could show no doubt in your boldness. It had to flow naturally. You had to feel the doubt in someone else. You had to see the tension in them. You had to see the way it pressed on their shoulders, the way they held it in their hands. It was all there, if you looked closely enough.
“Lady Anasahara, I heard you speak seven languages?” a courtier with a deep voice called out. Haben Aunrel. I had met him last year. He was an advisor to King Youden of Mimenhi. He was a kind man, but had a habit of always pinching his face into a discontented expression. He had come previously for trade talks. He was tall, rising to almost six and a half feet, a head more than my father. He had grey unkempt hair, wrinkled and hairless cheeks, and a crooked nose he sniffed or tapped or itched every few minutes. Like Queen O’nell, you could tell he was from the old continent just by his clothes. He wore a teal-colored tunic with gems running down the neckline. It had a stiff collar with gold and white engravings on the inside and clear bezels sewn to the edges with glossy teal threads that stood out from the rest of his tunic. I wasn’t sure if that was on purpose or not. The sleeves were ruffled and had flairs stitched up to the elbows. He wore blue silk trousers and had gold speckled slippers with black feathers so stiff and new there was a chance he had skinned an ostrich right outside the palace before coming in.
“Eight,” I replied cheerfully. “I knew Comilla already. Sepenmilla wasn’t too difficult to learn.”
A friendly ripple of conversation started at the tables near us. Sepenmilla wasn’t too challenging to learn, but it had its complexities. It was not spoken by many people anymore. The language had evolved into Comilla more than four millennia ago, when Serpentine tribes began trading with early human cities, incorporating their grammatical rules and the more popular terms they used for trade. Money in Comilla was the same as money in all of the Hulnesh languages and Angpur, but there was no word for money in Sepenmilla. Comilla used a subject-verb setup like the other human languages, but Sepenmilla technically had no nouns, only names. I’d have given someone else’s right arm to be able to speak to a Serpentine tribe that still used Sepenmilla. When they wanted to say I’ll light a fire, they named the campfire and used the name. Different roots would tell you how something should be named, giving a full and descriptive meaning to others in nothing more than a single term.
Haben worked his cheeks, then spoke in Nesha. “How many years old is the young queen?” he asked. He enunciated every word clearly, then rested his head on his chin like he was brooding over the question.
“Thirteen,” I replied. Not in Nesha, but in Hulna. There were a few ahhhhs from the tables around us. Even Iris and Yephi joined in on the excitement. I would have smiled, but it was too easy a question to take any pride in. My sisters did not speak Nesha, but they could have picked up the word age and they would have known what to answer. The whole thing could have been a setup. Not that he knew or was co
nsciously aware of it, but Taa would have told whoever she knew would sit near the front within the center of the Royal Court that her granddaughter spoke several languages, and then an hour later right here in the great hall the conversation would’ve unfolded just as it had, and word would’ve gone out to all the other kingdoms about Dina’s abilities. This was how Taa planted her seeds. Not by digging deep trenches with forceful hands, but by spreading them around lightly where they could be picked up easily by the wind. Taa moved kingdoms with a soft touch.
Most of the great hall occupants were busy amongst themselves, speaking within the circles of their own tables or lining up to trade words with distinguished guests. The front of the room had formed its own group. There were seven tables watching the conversation between Haben and me, and a dozen other people standing nearby, half absorbed in their own talks. No one was speaking of anything urgent anymore; those conversations had already happened. Now they were waiting for food, and passing the time talking of the fashions in their kingdoms, the pains that came with court and politics, and disturbing trends in the youth of their cities. I would have much rather been here earlier in the night and retired by this half, but by the time we had returned from the forest, it was too late for that.
Queen O’nell leaned to the edge of her seat. The sweetness and allure of her expression was gone. Her eyes regarded me carefully, daring me to blink, or look away, or turn to Father. She took a sip of her wine, then wet her lips in a slow manner, stealing back every drop that might have gotten away. She held her glass firmly with two fingers, letting all of her tension rest between her thumb and index. She pursed her lips together, tasting more of the wine, then shook her head like she was thinking intently to herself. Her eyes flickered up and down my dress as she mulled over a thought, considered it deeply, turning it over for a better look. “Hmmm,” she finally said, and then began to speak in Angpur. Not slow and clear like Haben had, but fast and pointedly.
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