Queen of the Sun

by J A Armitage

  “Only because you asked me to,” she countered. It was true. I had so many proposals of marriage, most of which were from men I’d never met or worse still, men whose parents had written letters to my parents. At least Jamal had the guts to actually come to the palace.

  “I like him,” I admitted.

  “I knew you would,” she answered with a smile. “Tell me what you think.”

  “He’s smart,” I started, thinking back to everything he’d told me about his business. It wasn’t just bluster. He was widely versed on the Badalah trading routes. “He’s kind, he’s interesting, he’s...”

  “Not too bad on the eye,” my mother added.

  “Yes, he’s very good-looking,” I admitted. “The townswomen were practically drooling over him. I rather got the impression they thought I was a very lucky woman to be with him.”

  My mother put her hand to the side of my face. “They are wrong. He is the lucky one. Do you think you’ll go on a second date?”

  “I think I’ll have to as you ended the first one so abruptly,” I said with a smirk.

  “You can take more guards next time, or you can go somewhere not quite so public. It might be nice to spend some private time with him.”

  I blushed at her words. “We’ll see.”

  It was all I could say. I’d had a wonderful date, but I barely knew Jamal. “I’m not going to rush into anything, just because everyone else thinks he’s hot.”

  “If everyone else thinks he’s hot, you might not want to wait around. Let me tell you. Men like Jamal don’t come by very often. You have to take your chance while you can before some Kisbu girl snags him right from under you.”

  “Weren’t you just telling me that he’s the lucky one to be with me and not the other way around?”

  “And so he is, but I still wouldn’t keep him waiting. What really is it you are waiting for?”

  A picture of Genie flashed in my mind. I still hadn’t spoken to him after what he’d said to me the day before. Maybe I didn’t need to. My mother was right. Jamal was a great catch. What did I even need Genie for?

  “Nothing,” I said. “In fact, I was going to have dinner with him tonight in the gardens.”

  “That’s nice,” she said, picking up the cloth and putting it back on her forehead. She laid back and let the cloth slip over her eyes. “I’ll join you if this headache ever lets up.”

  “Headache? Are you alright?”

  She waved her hand, dismissing my worry. “I’m fine. Just a small headache. The summer heat always gets to me.”

  Badalah was a hot kingdom, especially in the summer months. I’d never known the heat give her a headache before.

  “Is father ok still? I haven’t had time to go see him since this morning.”

  “Who?”

  “Father. He was acting strange this morning. What did the physician say?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Gaia.”

  I furrowed my eyebrows and pulled the cloth from her face so she’d have to look at me.

  “Father was ill,” I said slowly. The same puzzled expression I’d seen on my father only that morning was now in the eyes of my mother. “I’m asking you if he is alright.”

  “Oh,” she said, coming round. “Your father. For a second there, I thought you were talking about my father.”

  My grandfather had been dead for over ten years. How could I have been talking about him? There was something going on in the palace that was much worse than stress and heat. Both my parents were acting weird now. I left my mother and went straight to the one person that should know why.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” The physician said when I cornered her in her office. “It’s just a touch of stress. He’s the sultan. He’s bound to be stressed.”

  “And my mother?” I countered. “Is she stressed too?”

  “She could be. If she was worried about your father, it could manifest itself in a little forgetfulness.”

  “A little forgetfulness? She forgot who my father was and this morning he forgot who I was. He was looking right at me at the time. I don’t think this is stress.”

  The physician sat up straight in her chair. “If they are not better tomorrow, I’ll request an audience with them both. You have to remember my position. They are the sultan and sultana. I can’t demand they see me.”

  “Then please request it,” I said.

  The physician had no more idea of what was happening than I did. I’d been waiting for something to happen for a while. After everything I’d seen happening in the other kingdoms, especially to the other royal families, it seemed inevitable that whatever it was would find its way here.

  Aside from Asher, who had enough problems of his own and couldn’t help me even if he wanted to, there was only one other person I could speak to about what was happening.

  My nerves almost got the better of me as I made my way to Genie’s suite. I’d never been nervous in his presence before, but things had changed and not for the better. My feelings for him had changed in the past few months and had grown to the point where they were unbearable. His dismissal of them the other day should have been the slap in the face I needed to wake up and smell the Jamal-flavored coffee, but it wasn’t Jamal I needed to see in the middle of a crisis.

  I knocked quietly on his door, half-hoping he wouldn’t answer. When he did, I found I didn’t know what to say to him.

  “Gaia. I was hoping you’d come and see me. Please, come in.”

  I followed him into his office. It was as neat as always with thousands of books lining the shelves of his bookcases. I‘d spent so many hours here as a child reading those books. Some of my happiest memories were in this room.

  “I’m an old man,” he began before I’d even sat down.

  “You’re not old,” I interrupted. It was a lie. He was so old, he couldn’t even remember how many years he’d spent trapped in the lamp. Hundreds, possibly thousands of years, had passed before my father had freed him over eighteen years ago. “You can’t count the years you were in the lamp.”

  He gave me a soft smile and sat in his chair. The way he looked at me almost broke my heart, and I suddenly found I didn’t want to hear what he had to say.

  “It doesn’t matter anyway. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here about my parents.”

  He was silent for a minute, studying me. I hated it when he did that. It felt like he could see right through me. If he truly could see through me, he’d see the pain, just being near him caused.

  “What about your parents?”

  “They are behaving oddly.”

  “I know. Your mother told me she wasn’t feeling well earlier. I told her to rest. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. Just a headache.”

  I shook my head, feeling frustration building up inside me. It was a damn sight better than the pain I’d been feeling before, but it was still an unwelcome emotion.

  “So people keep telling me. It’s just a headache, it’s just the heat. It’s just stress. She’s forgetting things. I spoke with her today, and her eyes glazed over as though I wasn’t there. I think it’s something to do with magic.”

  Genie shuddered at the word. “You think this has something to do with what’s been happening in the other kingdoms?”

  I nodded my head. “It’s all a bit coincidental. My parents becoming ill in the very same week I find out I can conjure fire. The queen of Draconis was fine one day, and then she was asleep the next. The same with the queen of Atlantice. She’d shown no signs of being a mermaid before she turned into one.”

  “It’s hardly the same as having a headache and forgetting a few things,” Genie pointed out, ever the voice of reason.

  “She didn’t just forget a few things,” I said softly. “She forgot the sultan.”

  “The sultan of where?”

  I looked at him incredulously. “The sultan. My father. My mother’s husband.”

  He knotted his eyebrows together. “Gaia, are you feel
ing ok?”

  “Yes, I’m fine, why?”

  “Because your mother was never married. There hasn’t been a sultan since your grandfather died ten years ago.”

  21st June

  Sleep didn’t come. How could it? Everyone in the palace was losing their minds, and yet, I felt perfectly fine. My mind was as sharp as ever. After an agonizing night of tossing and turning, I decided to head to Genie’s office area to study neurological diseases in his vast library of books.

  Genie wasn’t there, so I found a couple of books that looked like they had something to do with the brain and sat down in my usual spot.

  There were so many things that could go wrong with the human brain and so many things that affected memories, but in none of the books I looked at could I find anything about group hallucinations, for this was almost certainly what it was. My mother and father were usually inseparable, and Genie was my father’s best friend. The trio was together every day, so how was it possible that both Genie and my mother had forgotten my father? And father himself. He was the first to come down with memory loss, but he’d seemed to have forgotten everything. Genie’s library had never failed me before, but it had failed me twice in the past week. This was the second time. The first time it failed me without my even trying. I had wanted to look up magic, or at least why I’d suddenly come down with the ability to produce fire, but I knew Genie’s loathing of anything to do with magic would extend to books.

  In the end, I gave up and decided to go and see how my father was doing. He might have been forgotten by two out of the three people that loved him the most, but he still had me, and I was going to make damn sure he was recognized in his own home.

  The guards were no longer at the door, which I took to be a good sign. Maybe this had all blown over, and everything could go back to normal. A quick glance outside the window told me it was dawn. I’d been awake all night, and yet I didn’t feel tired.

  “Father,” I called, knocking lightly at his door. When he didn’t answer, I knocked again and opened the door.

  A feeling of foreboding hit me hard as I walked through the suite to his bedroom. He wasn’t there. Not in his room, nor on his terrace. My mother wasn’t there either, but she was always an early riser. My father, not so much.

  “Father,” I called out, panic filling my every word. Normally, my father not being in their suite would mean nothing, but what with the way he had been, the way everyone had been recently, his disappearance was a cause for concern.

  I ran through the palace, looking in all the usual places, his office, the throne room, the gardens. He was nowhere to be seen.

  After scouring the palace and coming up with nothing, I ended my search in the dining room. I didn’t find him there, but I did find my mother eating breakfast as though she didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Mother, Father has gone. I can’t find him anywhere.”

  She cocked her head to the side slightly and knitted her eyebrows together. I knew what she was going to say before she opened her mouth, but it was still a punch to the gut when she spoke.

  “Are you alright, Gaia, dear? You know you don’t have a father. I adopted you as a child. I suppose you must have a real father out there somewhere, but I never met him. It was two women that brought you to the palace as a babe.”

  Frustration bubbled up in me. Only a few days ago, they’d been completely in love, dancing in the gardens. Now, it was as though my father had ceased to exist completely. But he hadn’t. I knew him. I remembered him.

  “I’m not talking about my real father. I’m talking about the sultan, Aladdin.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind,” I snapped back and ran out of the dining room. There was no point going to see Genie. He didn’t remember my father any more than my mother did. I ran through the palace, asking every member of the staff I could find if they knew where he was, but the response was the same. No one knew who he was, let alone where he was. Whatever had happed to my parents was now affecting everyone but me.

  I jogged my memory for the stories my father had once told me. The orphanage came up as the place I could start searching. He’d spent a number of years there before moving on to the streets. Climbing out down the trellis I usually took at night was easy. The stale warm air pressed against my face as I moved quickly through the streets until arriving at the children’s orphanage. It was highly secure, an important detail my father had seen to. Along with a huge renovation. I knew the place just as I knew the palace, having spent a lot of my volunteer time there.

  My grandfather had been a wonderful man, but he was wholly unprepared to rule a kingdom, despite being brought up in the palace and destined for the job. Ironically, my father, a street rat, an urchin with no formal education, had done something that centuries of sultans before him had not been able to do. He’d unified Badalah. His upbringing, if anyone could call it that made him the hero, and since he’d come to the palace, he’d changed Badalah for the better. He was the first sultan to implement social housing, food banks, and clothes drives. He donated vast amounts of wealth to orphanages throughout Badalah and especially in Kisbu where he grew up hungry. There was a reason my father was loved by his people, and it wasn’t just because his story inspired people. It was because he was a great man and a wonderful leader. The rich loved him because he championed business, the poor loved him because he provided safety and food and warmth. There were still people sleeping rough on Kisbu’s streets, but only by choice. There were enough beds in the city to house everyone, even those who didn’t have a Rubee to their names.

  Yes, my father was the best leader Badalah had ever seen, which made it all the more awful that no one remembered him.

  The large gates of the orphanage loomed up ahead. Once they had been a necessary precaution to keep thieves out and the children in and, as my father had told me, been kept locked most of the time. We lived in a different era now, and though the wrought iron gates were closed, I knew I’d find them unlocked. The orphanage was a happy place now, where the children were well cared for and had enough food, clothing, and beds to go round. The palace was the biggest donor of money, giving thousands of Rubees a year to the mistress of the orphanage to keep it running.

  At least, the gate had always been unlocked before, but as I went to push it, I found a large padlock linking the two gates together.

  Beside me, the breeze ruffled the leaves of the bushes, giving me a startle. What was going on? Never once had I known this gate to be locked. Not in the daytime. Calming my nerves, I continued my trek around the fence to the servants’ entrance. The small gate around the back opened with a creak, pulling my nerves tighter, though I didn’t really know why. I’d been here hundreds of times. I knew the mistress well. I had no reason to feel panic, and yet stabs of fear needled me. Something felt off, but apart from the lock on the gates, I couldn’t see what.

  I walked around the building to the front door, determined to get some answers.

  A dim light showed through the window. I sneaked a peek through the glass, noticing the light came from the study. The headmistress was in there, looking over books from what I could see. But she wasn't alone. One of the palace guards was there. I should have walked past the window to the main entrance, but something about the expression on the guard’s face made me pause. I pulled back so they couldn’t see me and continued to watch through the window, which was open a crack.

  "I'm not a fool, mistress. I know you have a purse in the orphanage." The guard said.

  She sighed. "For the last time, sir. I do not. I've allowed you to see our books. Everything we need for the facility is done on good credit once the palace approves the budget. The palace handles all of our bills. There is absolutely no need for me to keep money on site."

  He grunted. "And what of your purse? Hmm? I'm sure the sultana compensates you handsomely. Are you going to share some of those spoils with me? Or am I going to have to force these out of you?"

  My breath c
aught in my throat. The guard was threatening the mistress. I knew him. He was one of my father’s most trusted guards. What did he think he was playing at? Ducking down, I crept past the window and ran to the orphanage entrance.

  The large oak door opened silently, and I crept in. Keeping to the carpet to not make any noise, I stopped outside the study door.

  "Sir! What is it that you are trying to accomplish? Surely your earnings are far more than my own. Why is it that you feel the need to come here and attempt a shakedown of a woman who has hardly a Rubee to her name?"

  There was a great sense of fear in her tone, along with pain. I needed to do something; I just wasn't sure of what.

  "Oh, please, woman! I know the palace has always been quite generous to the orphanage. Now, give me all the money you have, or I'll find a way to make your life a living hell..."

  She cut him off. “A living hell? What do you think we do here? We take children from their own living hell and give them a home.”

  "Just give me what I ask for. Or maybe I'll take more than just money."

  I didn't like where his implication was going, and I could feel the fire burning at my core as the energy built up quickly, sending my hands a glowing.

  I ran toward the office, hands blazing in front of me, kicking the door all the way open.

  The flames hid my face as I yelled at the guard, "Leave, or you'll be sorry!"

  The man had no fear. He stood, taking a few steps in my direction, testing me. "And who are you?"

  I sidestepped, avoiding any chance he got to get a look at my face. "Leave!" I demanded.

  Still, he stepped a few more steps closer. "I'll do no such thing, little girl." He drew his sword, and I reactively sent a blast of hot smoke in his direction, sending him hurtling to the ground in a coughing fit.

  "How dare you!" he said, slamming his fist onto the floor.

  Quickly, I sent another blast of hot smoke. This time, I allowed my mind to connect with the smoke, as if an extension of myself, I wielded it to encircle the guard like an anaconda, tightening around him until he could no longer breathe.