The Queen of Antar
Makes a mistake
Present day. The Chapel.
"But that's not possible." Divorce goes against every value I've learned from Bawo herself.
"It's a little known secret amongst Bawo but it can be done." She assures me but I don’t find it comforting, knowing what I know about our ways.
"Wouldn't murder be against the code or whatever it is that Bawo adhere to?"
"Only if you kill one of them to be divorced. I wasn't going to kill anyone." I hate it when she smiles that way.
"You've killed before."
"Shut your mouth."
17 year ago. The chapel.
Liz sat in the front pew with Danei in her arms and the little prince running about, ruining my chapel. She was too busy asking me questions to chase after him and keep him from ripping the cloths from my altars. "How is he, Bawo? Will he live?"
"It will be difficult. He's not responding to Ava's attempts to heal. I don't know what to do." I avoided meeting her eyes as long as possible.
"But you'll save him."
"I will try." I could see it in her eyes, the very thing I was hoping to see. "I would think you of all people would want him gone. No longer here to interfere with your life. You could mourn for your husband properly. Find another, more suitable man to marry. If he dies, you could stay until you felt your duty done by the children, then go. Wherever you choose. Ava will rule as regent until Avery comes of age."
"Then you've given up hope?" She looked crushed in that moment, tears filling her eyes but not yet falling.
"What do you care? He's an annoying gnat, buzzing in your ear with promises that he can't keep."
"I cannot lose him. Not now. Not after all this." Liz pled with me. "Since I heard the news, I've been beside myself. If he's gone, I don't know what I will do. Save him if there is a way."
A plea if ever I had heard one. What could I do but lay out the possibilities. "Maybe."
"Maybe there's a way?"
"Maybe. It's risky and he would kill me for doing it without his consent." I could only imagine how Zan had felt these past years. Bonded to his wife who had betrayed him and everything he believed in. He was partially bonded to a girl who had given him children but who was just out of his reach. He claimed to love Liz but trusting his judgment was hard for me. I just wanted to do right by him and so I had to be sure. "He'll never forgive me for forcing it."
"Whatever it is. Do it. Tell him that I made you." Even then she knew her influence over the man who ruled us all. "Just tell him that I begged. He will understand."
"I have to make him sicker. I have to bond him to someone else. A stronger bond than he has with his wife. He needs someone strong enough to handle his pains and aches. I need to find someone who will be strong enough to survive this and to do it again if he ever falls ill in the future. It will have to be someone who loves him, unconditionally."
"I'll do it."
She did not even pause to think. At first I thought she was just agreeing because it would save his life. I did not think she had actually heard my words. "You don't know what you're asking."
"I'll do it."
"It may be painful for you. More pain than you've ever felt in your life."
"I'll do it."
"It might not work. We could fail and he might die anyway."
"I will do it." That look in her eyes scared me a bit but proved what I had suspected for so very long.
"You are Tirera. It has never been done across the races. You could die. You could both die."
"I'll be by after I've tucked in the children. We'll get started then."
Present Day.
"You lied to her." I accuse. It was despicable but now I have two parents and several siblings as a result of those lies.
"I bent the truth." She waves me off.
"You lied to her." I shake my head at her. It doesn't surprise me. For such a holy person, Bawo has a way of getting what she wants from everyone around her. "You are a master manipulator."
"I choose to take that as admiration for a strength."
"Did it work?"
"You have seven more brothers and sisters." She shakes her head at me with a small smile.
"Okay. So the answer was obvious but what exactly happened?"
"I nearly killed Ava. She came close but I had confidence the Granilith was with me."
"You couldn't know. Not really."
"I'm the instrument of the Granilith, how could I not know?"
"You just told me that you took liberties with the will of the Granilith… so how could you know?"
"Avery, just listen."
17 years ago.
I used her own trick against her. I baked her a cake, a special cake. Within minutes, she was on death's door. I used a series of salts and powders to keep her bond from reaching for what was left of Zan. Her heart stopped and I slipped her a sleeping solution to keep her asleep for the remainder of the night. I wasn't overly concerned if she would die in my absence but I have seen how the Granilith has dealt my king and so left it in the hands of the gods.
When I returned to the chapel, Liz was following my instructions to the letter. She hesitated only once before swallowing the large dose I had made for her. She helped me to feed Zan his dose. After those two days where Zan was unresponsive to both his wife and myself and then to have Liz whisper his name and have him open his eyes for the first time in four days. I knew. I absolutely knew it was right and so I left them alone. By the time I took my seat between sleeping prince and princess, I was absolutely certain that I had done the right thing. I was so sure that Zan would thank me for what I had done. I had severed his bond to his hateful wife and bonded him thoroughly to his eyes' only sight. A young Tirera woman and the best thing to happen to him in his whole life.
It was two days before they emerged, both looking equally tired and afflicted but much better than Zan had on his arrival. Liz helped him to the basin to wash his face. Ava watched with me and I saw her heart break. She realized what I had done to her and she had lost any hope of ever regaining her husband. She left us alone, her eyes full of tears. Later I heard them described as tears of relief by the house staff.
I was unprepared for the glares Zan sent my way. He refused to speak to me until he was healthy again. He refused to see anyone at all. He slept in his bed in the servant's quarters, alone, and he spoke to no one.
The Queen seemed not to suffer much for the loss of the bond. But she had secluded herself in her rooms voluntarily. She grew even more beautiful as the bond dissipated and her soul settled in alone once more. Then I looked in her eyes on my way to see Zan. Her hair shone in the light from the window, her skin was pale and clear, her eyes sparkled blue… like painted glass windows and equally as empty. That image of her haunted me for months. It was the first time I thought I might have chosen the wrong path.
I entered the bathing room and found Zan having a bath. His eyes closed, the water up to his chin. I did not want to startle him but I had to speak my piece. "Child."
"You've lost any right you had to call me 'Child'." He growled at me like an animal but did not stir in the water.
"I've given you what you desired. I took away her hateful spirit and I gave you the strong soul of a woman who loves you and only you." He sat up and flinched away from me when I reached for him. "Zan, talk to me."
"You forced her to bond to me. I didn't want to take her that way. I wanted her to give herself to me because she loved me." A man of 28 and too old to have his nursemaid in his bath with him. A child in my eyes. "I wanted her to feel she had a choice."
"I gave her choices. There was only one acceptable one to her. You had to live. I told her that you could die and she would be free to go where she chose. I told her that she could stay as long as she wanted to see the children grow. I told her that it was dangerous and might kill her. I told her that it had to be someone who loved you unconditionally."
"What did she say?"
"'I will do it.' I did try to talk her out of it but once she learned it was an option, she saw no other way. She insisted." He allowed me to wrap my arms around him. "She loves you even if she can't say it yet."
"She said it. I thought she was pitying me." He bowed his head to his knees and shrugged off my arms. "I've never felt this connected to anyone, Bawo. I feel like she is inside of me."
"You've never felt that way?"
"Never." He turned to look me in the eye. "What are you hinting at, old woman?"
"This is how you're supposed to feel when you've married the one you love and had the union blessed by the Granilith."
"Married?"
"There was only one way to bond her to you."
"Married."
"Go see her. Go see your children. Then go make an appearance at court so your subjects know that your survival was not just a rumor." I stood to go. I paused at the doorway. I barely heard his voice again before I left.
"Married."
Present Day.
"So they've been married all this time?"
"By the law of the Granilith, since that day." She holds up the blanket for me to see. It's pretty. I promise to take it to Vlastina when I go. "My point of all this. Ava was never the same. She rarely laughed unless it was a child who made her do so. She never left her room without permission. Zan could have taken the locks down years ago and she would have never left."
"So, who killed her?"
"That is your job." She stands and straightens her robes. "I've answered your questions. I have blessings to arrange. You have a killer to find. Go, you've wasted enough of my time."
So, I find myself wandering the palace. I think about how complicated the thing is. It doesn't have to be. My father could clear it all up. He is Liz's alibi. Liz is his wife. Ava spent her whole life repenting and I have no doubt she burns in the inferno now. I can't just blurt something like this out to the court. They would demand proof and I have none. What would the court do if the accused is the legitimate wife of the King? Ava held the title Queen for so long. No one will believe that Liz actually held the honor the last 17 years.
Then I find myself in Liz's room. It's empty but I sit and wait. I cannot begrudge her meeting with her husband. My mother and father meeting in secret. It sounds so ridiculous. When Liz returns, she only nods to me and climbs onto the bed to wait for my questions. "You married him."
"I didn't know that. I was just saving his life."
"How could you risk your life?"
"Something inside told me to do it." She sighs and leans back on her pillows. "It wasn't until I almost lost him that I realized how much I'd miss him if he were gone. That was my concern. It was selfish. I still ached for the loss of my husband but I couldn't deny that not having Zan in my life would make it halfway empty. I looked forward to his flirting. When Bawo put me out of his reach, I thought I'd be happy but I missed him. I needed him here."
"What about us?"
"I had to make it work. I had to will it to work. So that there would be no what ifs. I had faith that I could make it work and it did." She shakes her head at a memory. "He hadn’t been taking care of himself when he left. He'd been building channels to the far reaches, raising villages from floods. They say he fell off his horse and into the mud and the earth welcomed him, tried to eat him."
"Really?"
"A mud puddle probably but that is what they say. That the earth was ready to take him." She smiles to herself. "When he told me what the bonding meant, he was shy as a school boy. He stuttered and stumbled over his words. He wouldn't look me in the eye and he wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell him that it was all my idea. He was insistent that Bawo had tricked us both. I couldn't get him to shut up long enough to tell him what I was feeling."
"I can't imagine Father so…"
"I did the only thing I could to assure him that all was as it should be. I kissed him. A real kiss." She touches her lips and shuts her eyes. "While we stood so close together with our eyes still shut, he whispered, 'She married us, Liz. You're the new Queen.'"
"How did you react?"
"Not well. I didn't want that kind of responsibility. I sealed my own fate when I said that I couldn't be Queen. I may have spared Ava's life that day but I couldn't be one of those people. I was afraid I'd be tempted to act in the horrible ways I was often treated in other noble homes." She smiles at me. "I'm just a poor girl from Parkston. I just wanted to get married and have children. I had already managed to do both twice. I didn't want the crown. I only wanted him and my children."
"Haven't you been miserable all this time?"
"A time or two. I get jealous when we go visiting and they put her in his room and I can't be with him. I trust him. I know him. I reward him when we reunite. Maybe it was a mistake… but I live comfortably. My clothes are made by the best seamstress in the village. My bed carved from one great tree and stuffed with the best down feathers that can be found. Sometimes I feel like a kept lady but I remember. He is my husband and he has duties to perform." She takes my hand. "Maybe I can't take a walk with my children and know they know me as such… but I can get away. I can leave if I want for a bit and be by myself. Without guards. Just me and the sun and God. I can trust that my children will be safe when I return. That they are cared for and educated far beyond myself. Maybe you never called me mother but I always knew I was. I always knew you loved me because I saw in your eyes. I always saw it in your eyes. From the time you were a baby and too young to know who had you. When you looked at me, you knew me."
I feel tears in my eyes. I have always loved her. I do not know other noble children who were ever so attached to their nursemaids and nannies. We sit in silence until Danei enters with Vlastina in her arms. Danei smiles broadly at us. "Look who's awake!" Her eyes glitter in the light from the window. I see my sister and still don't know how she can be the product of our parents and yet look like neither. Maybe Liz's nose. Perhaps Father's eyes in some light. Definitely Liz's stature. Her hair dark, like father's. Danei dances around the room, named after our grandmother without any of the Qeoni traits to mar her in my eyes. "Avery, you're staring. Do I have something hanging out of my nose?"
"No, I was just thinking how much you look like the camel Commander Rath brought home. I wonder if that's why he bought it. To impress you with some of your relatives."
"Liz, Avery's being mean! I cannot marry Commander Rath. That's too gross. Lord Larek's son arrived today." She bounds onto the bed to watch Liz feed Vlastina. "He has blue eyes like Lord Larek but his hair is dark. Is he from Lord Larek's first or second wife?"
"A surrogate of the first wife." Liz answers as she traces the baby's face. "I liked her. We met briefly years after he was born. She was young. Widowed like many in those days. I hope though that he takes after the second wife in his manners. Joliu is your age, I suppose, maybe a little younger."
"Younger?"
"By a month or two." Liz sees what I see. Danei is smitten. "Maybe it is just days. He is 19 the last I heard."
"Oh."
"Shall someone approach him and see if he is betrothed?" I ask.
"Avery, don't you dare!"
TBC
The Queen of Antar MA/AU (Z/A, P/L, Z/L) The End 02/26/08
Moderators: Anniepoo98, Itzstacie, truelovepooh, Erina, Forum Moderators
The Queen of Antar
Has been spied on
Present Day. Royal Chambers, the Queen's bathing room.
I walk around the room and examine the walls, looking for more of those niches. Maybe, just maybe the king and his wife were not the only ones to know of such passageways. I ponder again on if there are many more throughout the palace. The bathing room is much larger than any in the palace. Larger than father's for certain. The many items used to keep the Queen in style are everywhere. Brushes and combs. Lotions and oils. Soaps and shampoos. Some kind of crème for hair that I once saw Danei use. Washcloths of every size and texture. Laces of every color and material to match the many corsets and gowns I know to be in Ava's trunks. Tins of rouge and colored powders that I remember from balls that required costumes and the very best of disguises.
Father walks in and I watch him with his meter. He turns on the barriers and I see what he means. We are effectively trapped in the bathing room until he turns them off. He points to the small windows. "Not a thing I know can fit through those but I put barriers on them as well."
"You kept them on all these years? Even after Liz was moved to her own chambers?"
"Of course. She was not happy to learn about Killae. She was very upset. I always kept the barriers on in here… and after her attempts to seduce me; I kept them on in my bathing room as well. Only Bawo Lodona and myself can come and go through the entrances to the bedchamber. Only her bath maid may enter through that passageway." He gestures to the short hallway to the room where Liz was first introduced to being my hateful Queen's servant.
"Take them down again." I say and once he does, I enter the small space and wonder. The bathing room is far larger than any in the palace but this small room is far smaller than any I've seen. I find it hard to believe that there was once a second bed in the room. The cot and its dresser do not fill the space fully but to have a bed as large as I'd heard described. It doesn't seem possible.
"I burned it." Father tells me without me having to ask. "It might have been where I got you but I could not bear to have it in my home. It also reinforced everything I wanted them to believe about me. That I kept no mistress. That I loved my wife. When Liz was moved out. They were more certain. I kept no bath maid. I kept no fancy bed in my wife's… I was loyal to my wife, I was loyal to my people."
"Why didn't you just kill her all those years ago?" I face him in this small room that somehow makes my Father seem more like just a man.
"Because I promised Liz. 'Two wrongs do not a right make.' That's what she's always telling me." He sighs. "It's also one I believe in. To kill her would be murder. I could not judge her with impartiality. I had to let her live. When Liz said she could not be my Queen, it was best to leave her be. To make her punishment a humane one. To act as Queen but to serve as Liz once served."
We move back through the bathing rooms to his chambers and beyond to his humble bed. Nothing fancy in a room that no one sees. Just a bed, comfortable enough but with none of the fine sheets and blankets as in the royal chamber or in Liz's chambers. The bed is sufficient and I see that it does see use. Father falls onto it and I see how it is abused. I sit on a trunk near the window. The window where I was first shown my land as a newborn babe, according to the stories told by my parents.
"It happened slowly, I think. Liz's realization that she had made a mistake in turning down the right to sit by my side. I was often gone. I could not always be here to watch over things. I trusted Bawo to make sure everything was just fine. It was wrong, I suppose but it kept tongues from wagging behind our backs here in the palace." He sighs and stares at the ceiling. "I understand it was Ava's idea to begin reading to the children. She had a huge chair in the library. It had to be. The books she brought from her homeland where enormous. Fairy tales. Lots of hand painted pictures. You would climb into her lap to see the pictures. You were so quiet. You could be rambunctious but always quiet in the library."
"Her voice was…"
"Hypnotic. I know." He looks half-sick as he says it.
"I loved when Liz would read to us but when Ava read, I was swept away."
"She seduced you. Her stories were more fantastical. Liz's were always factual. Accounts of the land with much less romance and angst." Obviously Father never approved of the fairy tales by the tone of his voice.
"I always had Ava read the same stories over and over." I sigh but pick up my head. "But I always remembered every word of every story that Liz told to me."
"I know." He smiles to himself. "It's her voice. She would read so softly. You had to lean in to hear. You had to pay closer attention. She drew you in and every word she said was true. Sometimes the story ended badly but you understood why. There were no spontaneous arrivals of witches and priestesses. No gallant Kings rushing in to save the damsel in distress at the last moment."
"Why didn’t you put a stop to it?" I regret the question as soon as I ask it because Father smiles so broadly. "Never mind. Don't tell me." I know enough about their appetites with out further blow-by-blow accounts.
"You all never stopped adoring Liz. That was the important part. Sometimes she needed her breaks. Sometimes we needed a moment to be alone. Ava could be trusted so long as she remained inside the palace walls where there are ever eyes and ears to watch. She taught you all those things that Liz could not. Things that are only taught to nobles. Carriage, deportation. You believed she was your mother and you all sought to imitate her manner. I do have to concede that her table and court manners were unparalleled. She always had grace about her in public. If there were ears and eyes, she was the model of composure. A perfect lady who taught all my children to be perfect ladies and gentlemen when in the eyes of others. The task now falls to you and your sister to teach your siblings."
I nod and get up to leave. I am surprised when he follows me. The court is a zoo. There are nobles and guests everywhere. We greet everyone in turn. I keep my mouth shut about the investigation. It is as I sit near the pulpit and watch that I get my idea.
Present Day. The Royal Kitchen.
"Duschi? Duschi!" I call over all the heads of men and women working in the kitchens to feed all the guests who are filling the palace. "I'm looking for a woman named Duschi!"
Suddenly, there is silence and then all are bowing and kneeling in front of me. I don't have time for this. I am so aggravated at how my title can impede my work. "Get up, get up! You don't have time to bow right now. Does anyone remember a woman named Duschi? I need to speak with her. She was a cook before I was born. 20 years ago, does anyone remember?"
"She's my grandmother." A young girl, about 15, tells me in a soft whisper. "She's at home with the little ones."
"Come with me." I tell her and guide her outside, far from the eyes and ears of the rest of the cooking staff. "How is her mind? Does she remember things that happened long ago?"
"Yes." She tells me, her eyes darting around.
"It's okay. I just want to ask her some questions."
"She doesn't talk about royal business. She says that it is none of ours. That if we want to keep our jobs in the palace that we don’t talk about what we see inside." She whispers, her head still bowed.
Relief pours through me. "She sounds like a wise woman." I sigh. "Take me to see her."
"I have duties." She starts to protest.
"I will excuse you from them." I follow her through the courtyard to the village just down the hill where most of our servants grew up and have their families. I always longed to play with those children when I was younger. I was never allowed but I venture in without guard and I try not to notice when the villagers cease their activity to watch me pass. My clothes alone rank me out of their caste. I find myself in a low home. I have to duck to enter, and I hit my head on a hanging plant when I do. There sits an old woman, her sight gone. She doesn't look too old. Not as old as Bawo but not far.
"Come in, come in. The old woman can't see but she can hear." She says as she rocks in her chair. "Clean the dirt if you knocked any from my potter."
"Yes, grandmother." The girl whispers and goes about brushing the dirt from my tunic and sweeps the mess outside with a crude shrub broom.
"Ah, Syda. Who have you brought me?" Her face breaks into a smile and she looks years younger.
"Prince Avery." She whispers.
"Don't lie, brat!" She scolds.
"Are you Duschi?" I ask, unable to keep silent any longer.
Her face freezes for a moment. "Prince Avery in my home? Why?" No formalities. "How would you even know my name? I've been gone from the palace for over a decade. Too young for you to know my name."
"Duschi, I am Championing Queen Ava's death. I have some questions to ask you." I take a seat on a stool and wait for her to decide whether or not she's going to talk to me. I can see the struggle on her face and I imagine if her eyes worked, they would be windows to that struggle.
"Syda, get back to work."
"Yes, grandmother." Syda whispers and walks out the door.
"Vrodi!" Duschi calls out. A moment later, a man ducks into the house. "Vrodi. I have a visitor. I can't have ears in my house."
"Yes, mother." The man nodded and ducked out again. I heard him shout at some children to find someplace else to play and for a few others to get back to work.
"You have questions, your highness, but I might not have answers."
"But you do know something or you wouldn’t have had your son clear the area."
"A precaution. I do not often talk of my work inside the palace. My family has always worked in the palace and may continue to do so. Part of staying in work is to keep my silence about anything I see. Servants come and go inside the walls, forgotten and never thought on because they start gossiping and then gossip gets around and then the nobles hear the gossipers are gossiping and then they disappear. 19 generations of my blood and we have never been without work." She says passionately.
"How did you lose your sight?"
"I hardly think you care about that but it was working early hours with little light and working late hours with little light. 40 years inside the palace, working that way. That is what the priestess says. Not even the nectar could restore it, not even if I could afford it." She rocks steadily, her hands groping for a pair of knitting needles. I have seen pictures but more commonly I have seen the knitting devices that Bawo and Liz have in their kits. Her hands work flawlessly as she talks. Every bit as fine as the blanket Bawo knitted just yesterday. "Things were blurry at first. I had to hold things close to my face to see. And then even that did no good. If I could read, I would have noticed sooner, they say."
"I hope you have help."
"I have several grandchildren. I know them all by their steps on the floor. Just as I know your voice. Giving speeches when our King was away. I have heard you grow up." She pauses for a moment. "She is dead, then. The Queen?"
"Yes."
"I learned never to heed gossip unless it comes from a reliable source but I never repeat it."
"A good practice."
"Yes. What would you like to know?"
I watch her hands work so confidently. I know no such crafts. "Years ago. 22 to be exact. Queen Ava baked a cake in your kitchen. I'm told it was you who saw her bake it."
"Baked a cake. She tried." Duschi snorts and then catches herself. "Pardon me. Allergies… She was asking questions. Ingredients and pots and times. Then I had to show her. She put something else in it. She told me it was honey but I have never seen honey that looked like that." She lowers her voice. "I mixed the batter and I added her 'honey' and I set it to bake. I took it out of the oven when it was done. She made off with it like a bat out of the inferno. I remember the smell though."
"It had a smell?"
"Like… nectar. Not the smell from our chapel. Like the smell from the royal chapel." Confirmation from an unaffiliated party. I sigh and hold my head in my hands. I have more questions but I do not know if I can ask them. "Did I do something wrong?"
"You only did what you thought you should. You couldn't have known." I tell her. Her needles stop. I have said too much but I know she won't ask anything too invasive.
"Should I have stopped her?"
"You wouldn't have known to stop her. Did she ever come down again?"
"No… yes. Once. She did a similar thing. Asked to have some pudding. Wanted to make it sweeter to appease our King's sweet tooth. With her honey. I worked in that palace for 40 years and King Zan has never had a sweet tooth. He tastes but he doesn't eat. I think those years he smoked deadened his tongue more but I can't be sure." She picks up her needles once more. "That was years ago. After the second child. After they moved the children to a nursery. I figured maybe it was to… waken a slow drive."
"Did he eat the pudding?"
"Didn't touch it. I threw it out when it came back to the kitchen. I did not even feed it to the hogs."
"Did you notice anything else? Problems?"
She smacked her mouth. I picked up her cup and gave her a sip of water. "Thank you, your highness. You were raised very well by your nursemaid. She was odd, though. I remember her when she arrived. So different. Didn't talk to the other girls. Her eyes so strange. The maids thought she was a witch. That she bewitched our King. I have seen him rise from a small boy to a strong man and a good ruler. I could never believe that he did anything he didn't want to… and still. That girl. It was years before I knew even her name. Liz. Such an odd name.
"I remember when Vrodi's father was roused from bed one night to go looking for her. They say she was found with a soldier. That King Zan made them get married. I remember her pregnancy. The royal priestess herself looked after her. She had the oddest cravings. Sweet cornballs and spicy mustard dressing. She always had them when she was with child." She turns her face to me but I don't know what she means by the gesture. "Though… I know she only was pregnant twice. No child to show from either. Bad luck. She always had them when the Queen was pregnant as well. Sympathy, maybe. Having to keep up her milk all these years for all those children your parents brought into this world. She would hardly have one weaned when the next would come. I don't envy her life, not for all the fine sheets and dresses she was given to compensate. A widow, that one."
"Yes. I know."
"I guess you would. Maybe you don't know how your father carried on with her. Smiling and touching her. He could flirt with her to no end. Maybe he felt sorry for her. I don't know. The Queen didn't like her. Probably because the King flirted so much. Neither of them would send her away. Treated the lot of you like her own, though. She was no lay-about nursemaid though. She pitched in if we needed it. Made your meals if there was a party or a big state dinner. Made her own meals when she had to nurse two at a time. She must have teats like iron." She froze, her eyes closed. "Pardon me. I'm old. I don't think before I speak."
"It's okay. I've heard a lot worse these past days." I admit.
"You always were a shy one. Hanging onto the skirt of whoever was watching you. Sometimes I thought she had four legs until I saw your face poking out from behind her." She sighs heavily. "I miss the palace. I feel useless. I can't even watch my grandchildren. I have four who I have never seen." She shakes her head and tosses her knitting aside, rising and moving about her kitchen as if she has eyes. "My eyes saw a lot in their day. Some I don’t know if I really saw it or if I imagined it."
"Did Queen Ava have any enemies?"
"Who wasn't?" She laughs to herself. "I don't hold with a lot of hooey that folk spout about. Bringer of Rain. Ha! Beloved Jewel of Gods! The things they say to lift up her image. They never worked in the palace. They never served her directly. Queen Ava was a mean—"
"I know. I know, Duschi."
"Never with the children."
"No, but I know who she really was, now."
"Good. You should have no illusions. I preferred to deal with the odd nursemaid than with the Queen. She calmed some after you were born but every time there was to be a child after you… Oh… the servants would feel it in their bones. In our flesh, and rarely, with our blood. I don't like to speak ill of the dead and not to one's own family but I'll have you know that she was a monster." She spits on the floor and goes about making tea. "I spent much time making sure my children would not be assigned to her. Making sure -my grandchildren would serve those who would not beat or misuse."
"I completely understand."
"How your father could remain loyal to that beast and still be a good man is beyond me…" She turns slightly as she stirs her tea. "Of course… maybe that nursemaid being so near helped."
"Is this your polite way of telling me you think my father had an affair with my nanny?"
"Maybe."
"How obvious was it?"
"My daughter never cleaned bed sheets more often than when his highness was in the palace… and those bed sheets rarely came from the royal chambers. How then does a man have so many children if he never sleeps with his wife? I have never been fooled by the charade but I don't talk out of turn, now do I?'
"Did anyone else notice?"
"Too busy listening to the pretty words of a good King. Too busy with their own lives to notice what can be seen if one has eyes to look. I made the gruel that was Commander Kivar's last supper." She sets down the teacup and moves back to sit in her rocking chair. "I baked a cake the day the screams came down the stairwell. I baked a cake the day before the Queen took to bed away from her dying husband." Her mouth tightens and if her eyes could see, I would bet fire lay in them. "She didn't go to him but still he lived. Three days later, I sent the broth to his rooms but only for him. Her highness had geese eggs that morning in the dining hall." She lets go of her anger for a moment. "I know that there are secrets around the royal line. I don't pretend to know them. I only know what my mother told me and her mother told her. Kings don't live long if their wives don't love them. If a King gets ill, his Queen never sleeps without him. If I had eyes to see… maybe I would see the princes and princesses of this land look too much like their nursemaid and not a one looks like their dead queen."
"Have you ever told anyone?"
"No one but my dead Hei. He thought I was seeing things. He served with her husband. Said he didn't know how such a young soldier could advance so far but that he was a good man… with eyes that looked strange in the light."
"How do you mean?"
"Said that his eyes were blue but only in the sunlight. In the candlelight, they were cloudy and dark like thunderclouds. I have seen eyes like that since."
"Have you?" I'm shaking.
"It's neither here nor there. 19 years ago, Bawo had me start boiling honey. Jars of it. When you boil honey, it makes a thick paste. It looks like…"
"Nectar."
"That's what some say. Have I answered enough of your questions?"
"Just this. Who else should I talk to?"
"That is a question. You suspect that she was murdered or there would be no need for a Champion." She smiles at me. "Any one servant would want her dead but last I heard, she was still locked in her tower like in a fairy tale. No man in or out save for her husband but not even him would."
"I have a palace full of servants who served her at one time or another."
"Did you know that Commander Kivar had a wife? He had five children as well."
Present Day. Court.
I do not know what I'm doing anymore. I would love to just abandon my quest but I can't. I sit at the table and hardly listen to what's being said around me. I feel their eyes on me. Everyone waiting for me to make the motion to speak so they can quiet their words to listen to what I might spill about my investigation. Father sits at the head of the table, eating silently. He is in mourning after all. Danei hangs on every word out of Joliu's mouth. Killae is pouting. He's not being included enough. Anson is flirting with a girl his own age but whom I've never laid eyes on before. Bev and Peyta are quiet next to Father. Jaif, Regei and Vlastina are up in the nursery sleeping, I suppose.
Lord Larek and his wife discuss the boundaries with Lady Nikas and her son. They have ever been in dispute of them. Now I know it was because of the outcome of the Owusti Riots that the dispute came about. Commander Rath is saying something to Father that I cannot hear. Father just shakes his head.
"Your highness." Lady Nikas calls out and I wish she would just shut her mouth. She is older than the mountains and half as bright. "I was wondering when you would announce the betrothal of your eldest daughter."
The room has gone absolutely silent. I want to strangle the woman, Lady or no. I had forgotten to mention the absurd idea to Father. I've had more pressing things on mind. Father takes a sip of wine and sets down his goblet. His eyes frighten me when he turns them upward, away from his plate. "There is nothing to announce. We cannot think on betrothals while an investigation is underway. I've had no offers, in any case."
"Commander Rath is in need of a new wife."
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Commander Rath rises from the table and leaves the court. He has had two wives that I remember. There could have been more. He has bad luck with them. I think the second to last ran off when his kids got to be too much for her and the last one either died of a fever or she dropped dead from exhaustion. I forget how many he's got and how old. Maybe ten or twelve but only three or four from a single mother. I rise from the table, kiss Danei's head and follow Commander Rath out the door.
TBC
Has been spied on
Present Day. Royal Chambers, the Queen's bathing room.
I walk around the room and examine the walls, looking for more of those niches. Maybe, just maybe the king and his wife were not the only ones to know of such passageways. I ponder again on if there are many more throughout the palace. The bathing room is much larger than any in the palace. Larger than father's for certain. The many items used to keep the Queen in style are everywhere. Brushes and combs. Lotions and oils. Soaps and shampoos. Some kind of crème for hair that I once saw Danei use. Washcloths of every size and texture. Laces of every color and material to match the many corsets and gowns I know to be in Ava's trunks. Tins of rouge and colored powders that I remember from balls that required costumes and the very best of disguises.
Father walks in and I watch him with his meter. He turns on the barriers and I see what he means. We are effectively trapped in the bathing room until he turns them off. He points to the small windows. "Not a thing I know can fit through those but I put barriers on them as well."
"You kept them on all these years? Even after Liz was moved to her own chambers?"
"Of course. She was not happy to learn about Killae. She was very upset. I always kept the barriers on in here… and after her attempts to seduce me; I kept them on in my bathing room as well. Only Bawo Lodona and myself can come and go through the entrances to the bedchamber. Only her bath maid may enter through that passageway." He gestures to the short hallway to the room where Liz was first introduced to being my hateful Queen's servant.
"Take them down again." I say and once he does, I enter the small space and wonder. The bathing room is far larger than any in the palace but this small room is far smaller than any I've seen. I find it hard to believe that there was once a second bed in the room. The cot and its dresser do not fill the space fully but to have a bed as large as I'd heard described. It doesn't seem possible.
"I burned it." Father tells me without me having to ask. "It might have been where I got you but I could not bear to have it in my home. It also reinforced everything I wanted them to believe about me. That I kept no mistress. That I loved my wife. When Liz was moved out. They were more certain. I kept no bath maid. I kept no fancy bed in my wife's… I was loyal to my wife, I was loyal to my people."
"Why didn't you just kill her all those years ago?" I face him in this small room that somehow makes my Father seem more like just a man.
"Because I promised Liz. 'Two wrongs do not a right make.' That's what she's always telling me." He sighs. "It's also one I believe in. To kill her would be murder. I could not judge her with impartiality. I had to let her live. When Liz said she could not be my Queen, it was best to leave her be. To make her punishment a humane one. To act as Queen but to serve as Liz once served."
We move back through the bathing rooms to his chambers and beyond to his humble bed. Nothing fancy in a room that no one sees. Just a bed, comfortable enough but with none of the fine sheets and blankets as in the royal chamber or in Liz's chambers. The bed is sufficient and I see that it does see use. Father falls onto it and I see how it is abused. I sit on a trunk near the window. The window where I was first shown my land as a newborn babe, according to the stories told by my parents.
"It happened slowly, I think. Liz's realization that she had made a mistake in turning down the right to sit by my side. I was often gone. I could not always be here to watch over things. I trusted Bawo to make sure everything was just fine. It was wrong, I suppose but it kept tongues from wagging behind our backs here in the palace." He sighs and stares at the ceiling. "I understand it was Ava's idea to begin reading to the children. She had a huge chair in the library. It had to be. The books she brought from her homeland where enormous. Fairy tales. Lots of hand painted pictures. You would climb into her lap to see the pictures. You were so quiet. You could be rambunctious but always quiet in the library."
"Her voice was…"
"Hypnotic. I know." He looks half-sick as he says it.
"I loved when Liz would read to us but when Ava read, I was swept away."
"She seduced you. Her stories were more fantastical. Liz's were always factual. Accounts of the land with much less romance and angst." Obviously Father never approved of the fairy tales by the tone of his voice.
"I always had Ava read the same stories over and over." I sigh but pick up my head. "But I always remembered every word of every story that Liz told to me."
"I know." He smiles to himself. "It's her voice. She would read so softly. You had to lean in to hear. You had to pay closer attention. She drew you in and every word she said was true. Sometimes the story ended badly but you understood why. There were no spontaneous arrivals of witches and priestesses. No gallant Kings rushing in to save the damsel in distress at the last moment."
"Why didn’t you put a stop to it?" I regret the question as soon as I ask it because Father smiles so broadly. "Never mind. Don't tell me." I know enough about their appetites with out further blow-by-blow accounts.
"You all never stopped adoring Liz. That was the important part. Sometimes she needed her breaks. Sometimes we needed a moment to be alone. Ava could be trusted so long as she remained inside the palace walls where there are ever eyes and ears to watch. She taught you all those things that Liz could not. Things that are only taught to nobles. Carriage, deportation. You believed she was your mother and you all sought to imitate her manner. I do have to concede that her table and court manners were unparalleled. She always had grace about her in public. If there were ears and eyes, she was the model of composure. A perfect lady who taught all my children to be perfect ladies and gentlemen when in the eyes of others. The task now falls to you and your sister to teach your siblings."
I nod and get up to leave. I am surprised when he follows me. The court is a zoo. There are nobles and guests everywhere. We greet everyone in turn. I keep my mouth shut about the investigation. It is as I sit near the pulpit and watch that I get my idea.
Present Day. The Royal Kitchen.
"Duschi? Duschi!" I call over all the heads of men and women working in the kitchens to feed all the guests who are filling the palace. "I'm looking for a woman named Duschi!"
Suddenly, there is silence and then all are bowing and kneeling in front of me. I don't have time for this. I am so aggravated at how my title can impede my work. "Get up, get up! You don't have time to bow right now. Does anyone remember a woman named Duschi? I need to speak with her. She was a cook before I was born. 20 years ago, does anyone remember?"
"She's my grandmother." A young girl, about 15, tells me in a soft whisper. "She's at home with the little ones."
"Come with me." I tell her and guide her outside, far from the eyes and ears of the rest of the cooking staff. "How is her mind? Does she remember things that happened long ago?"
"Yes." She tells me, her eyes darting around.
"It's okay. I just want to ask her some questions."
"She doesn't talk about royal business. She says that it is none of ours. That if we want to keep our jobs in the palace that we don’t talk about what we see inside." She whispers, her head still bowed.
Relief pours through me. "She sounds like a wise woman." I sigh. "Take me to see her."
"I have duties." She starts to protest.
"I will excuse you from them." I follow her through the courtyard to the village just down the hill where most of our servants grew up and have their families. I always longed to play with those children when I was younger. I was never allowed but I venture in without guard and I try not to notice when the villagers cease their activity to watch me pass. My clothes alone rank me out of their caste. I find myself in a low home. I have to duck to enter, and I hit my head on a hanging plant when I do. There sits an old woman, her sight gone. She doesn't look too old. Not as old as Bawo but not far.
"Come in, come in. The old woman can't see but she can hear." She says as she rocks in her chair. "Clean the dirt if you knocked any from my potter."
"Yes, grandmother." The girl whispers and goes about brushing the dirt from my tunic and sweeps the mess outside with a crude shrub broom.
"Ah, Syda. Who have you brought me?" Her face breaks into a smile and she looks years younger.
"Prince Avery." She whispers.
"Don't lie, brat!" She scolds.
"Are you Duschi?" I ask, unable to keep silent any longer.
Her face freezes for a moment. "Prince Avery in my home? Why?" No formalities. "How would you even know my name? I've been gone from the palace for over a decade. Too young for you to know my name."
"Duschi, I am Championing Queen Ava's death. I have some questions to ask you." I take a seat on a stool and wait for her to decide whether or not she's going to talk to me. I can see the struggle on her face and I imagine if her eyes worked, they would be windows to that struggle.
"Syda, get back to work."
"Yes, grandmother." Syda whispers and walks out the door.
"Vrodi!" Duschi calls out. A moment later, a man ducks into the house. "Vrodi. I have a visitor. I can't have ears in my house."
"Yes, mother." The man nodded and ducked out again. I heard him shout at some children to find someplace else to play and for a few others to get back to work.
"You have questions, your highness, but I might not have answers."
"But you do know something or you wouldn’t have had your son clear the area."
"A precaution. I do not often talk of my work inside the palace. My family has always worked in the palace and may continue to do so. Part of staying in work is to keep my silence about anything I see. Servants come and go inside the walls, forgotten and never thought on because they start gossiping and then gossip gets around and then the nobles hear the gossipers are gossiping and then they disappear. 19 generations of my blood and we have never been without work." She says passionately.
"How did you lose your sight?"
"I hardly think you care about that but it was working early hours with little light and working late hours with little light. 40 years inside the palace, working that way. That is what the priestess says. Not even the nectar could restore it, not even if I could afford it." She rocks steadily, her hands groping for a pair of knitting needles. I have seen pictures but more commonly I have seen the knitting devices that Bawo and Liz have in their kits. Her hands work flawlessly as she talks. Every bit as fine as the blanket Bawo knitted just yesterday. "Things were blurry at first. I had to hold things close to my face to see. And then even that did no good. If I could read, I would have noticed sooner, they say."
"I hope you have help."
"I have several grandchildren. I know them all by their steps on the floor. Just as I know your voice. Giving speeches when our King was away. I have heard you grow up." She pauses for a moment. "She is dead, then. The Queen?"
"Yes."
"I learned never to heed gossip unless it comes from a reliable source but I never repeat it."
"A good practice."
"Yes. What would you like to know?"
I watch her hands work so confidently. I know no such crafts. "Years ago. 22 to be exact. Queen Ava baked a cake in your kitchen. I'm told it was you who saw her bake it."
"Baked a cake. She tried." Duschi snorts and then catches herself. "Pardon me. Allergies… She was asking questions. Ingredients and pots and times. Then I had to show her. She put something else in it. She told me it was honey but I have never seen honey that looked like that." She lowers her voice. "I mixed the batter and I added her 'honey' and I set it to bake. I took it out of the oven when it was done. She made off with it like a bat out of the inferno. I remember the smell though."
"It had a smell?"
"Like… nectar. Not the smell from our chapel. Like the smell from the royal chapel." Confirmation from an unaffiliated party. I sigh and hold my head in my hands. I have more questions but I do not know if I can ask them. "Did I do something wrong?"
"You only did what you thought you should. You couldn't have known." I tell her. Her needles stop. I have said too much but I know she won't ask anything too invasive.
"Should I have stopped her?"
"You wouldn't have known to stop her. Did she ever come down again?"
"No… yes. Once. She did a similar thing. Asked to have some pudding. Wanted to make it sweeter to appease our King's sweet tooth. With her honey. I worked in that palace for 40 years and King Zan has never had a sweet tooth. He tastes but he doesn't eat. I think those years he smoked deadened his tongue more but I can't be sure." She picks up her needles once more. "That was years ago. After the second child. After they moved the children to a nursery. I figured maybe it was to… waken a slow drive."
"Did he eat the pudding?"
"Didn't touch it. I threw it out when it came back to the kitchen. I did not even feed it to the hogs."
"Did you notice anything else? Problems?"
She smacked her mouth. I picked up her cup and gave her a sip of water. "Thank you, your highness. You were raised very well by your nursemaid. She was odd, though. I remember her when she arrived. So different. Didn't talk to the other girls. Her eyes so strange. The maids thought she was a witch. That she bewitched our King. I have seen him rise from a small boy to a strong man and a good ruler. I could never believe that he did anything he didn't want to… and still. That girl. It was years before I knew even her name. Liz. Such an odd name.
"I remember when Vrodi's father was roused from bed one night to go looking for her. They say she was found with a soldier. That King Zan made them get married. I remember her pregnancy. The royal priestess herself looked after her. She had the oddest cravings. Sweet cornballs and spicy mustard dressing. She always had them when she was with child." She turns her face to me but I don't know what she means by the gesture. "Though… I know she only was pregnant twice. No child to show from either. Bad luck. She always had them when the Queen was pregnant as well. Sympathy, maybe. Having to keep up her milk all these years for all those children your parents brought into this world. She would hardly have one weaned when the next would come. I don't envy her life, not for all the fine sheets and dresses she was given to compensate. A widow, that one."
"Yes. I know."
"I guess you would. Maybe you don't know how your father carried on with her. Smiling and touching her. He could flirt with her to no end. Maybe he felt sorry for her. I don't know. The Queen didn't like her. Probably because the King flirted so much. Neither of them would send her away. Treated the lot of you like her own, though. She was no lay-about nursemaid though. She pitched in if we needed it. Made your meals if there was a party or a big state dinner. Made her own meals when she had to nurse two at a time. She must have teats like iron." She froze, her eyes closed. "Pardon me. I'm old. I don't think before I speak."
"It's okay. I've heard a lot worse these past days." I admit.
"You always were a shy one. Hanging onto the skirt of whoever was watching you. Sometimes I thought she had four legs until I saw your face poking out from behind her." She sighs heavily. "I miss the palace. I feel useless. I can't even watch my grandchildren. I have four who I have never seen." She shakes her head and tosses her knitting aside, rising and moving about her kitchen as if she has eyes. "My eyes saw a lot in their day. Some I don’t know if I really saw it or if I imagined it."
"Did Queen Ava have any enemies?"
"Who wasn't?" She laughs to herself. "I don't hold with a lot of hooey that folk spout about. Bringer of Rain. Ha! Beloved Jewel of Gods! The things they say to lift up her image. They never worked in the palace. They never served her directly. Queen Ava was a mean—"
"I know. I know, Duschi."
"Never with the children."
"No, but I know who she really was, now."
"Good. You should have no illusions. I preferred to deal with the odd nursemaid than with the Queen. She calmed some after you were born but every time there was to be a child after you… Oh… the servants would feel it in their bones. In our flesh, and rarely, with our blood. I don't like to speak ill of the dead and not to one's own family but I'll have you know that she was a monster." She spits on the floor and goes about making tea. "I spent much time making sure my children would not be assigned to her. Making sure -my grandchildren would serve those who would not beat or misuse."
"I completely understand."
"How your father could remain loyal to that beast and still be a good man is beyond me…" She turns slightly as she stirs her tea. "Of course… maybe that nursemaid being so near helped."
"Is this your polite way of telling me you think my father had an affair with my nanny?"
"Maybe."
"How obvious was it?"
"My daughter never cleaned bed sheets more often than when his highness was in the palace… and those bed sheets rarely came from the royal chambers. How then does a man have so many children if he never sleeps with his wife? I have never been fooled by the charade but I don't talk out of turn, now do I?'
"Did anyone else notice?"
"Too busy listening to the pretty words of a good King. Too busy with their own lives to notice what can be seen if one has eyes to look. I made the gruel that was Commander Kivar's last supper." She sets down the teacup and moves back to sit in her rocking chair. "I baked a cake the day the screams came down the stairwell. I baked a cake the day before the Queen took to bed away from her dying husband." Her mouth tightens and if her eyes could see, I would bet fire lay in them. "She didn't go to him but still he lived. Three days later, I sent the broth to his rooms but only for him. Her highness had geese eggs that morning in the dining hall." She lets go of her anger for a moment. "I know that there are secrets around the royal line. I don't pretend to know them. I only know what my mother told me and her mother told her. Kings don't live long if their wives don't love them. If a King gets ill, his Queen never sleeps without him. If I had eyes to see… maybe I would see the princes and princesses of this land look too much like their nursemaid and not a one looks like their dead queen."
"Have you ever told anyone?"
"No one but my dead Hei. He thought I was seeing things. He served with her husband. Said he didn't know how such a young soldier could advance so far but that he was a good man… with eyes that looked strange in the light."
"How do you mean?"
"Said that his eyes were blue but only in the sunlight. In the candlelight, they were cloudy and dark like thunderclouds. I have seen eyes like that since."
"Have you?" I'm shaking.
"It's neither here nor there. 19 years ago, Bawo had me start boiling honey. Jars of it. When you boil honey, it makes a thick paste. It looks like…"
"Nectar."
"That's what some say. Have I answered enough of your questions?"
"Just this. Who else should I talk to?"
"That is a question. You suspect that she was murdered or there would be no need for a Champion." She smiles at me. "Any one servant would want her dead but last I heard, she was still locked in her tower like in a fairy tale. No man in or out save for her husband but not even him would."
"I have a palace full of servants who served her at one time or another."
"Did you know that Commander Kivar had a wife? He had five children as well."
Present Day. Court.
I do not know what I'm doing anymore. I would love to just abandon my quest but I can't. I sit at the table and hardly listen to what's being said around me. I feel their eyes on me. Everyone waiting for me to make the motion to speak so they can quiet their words to listen to what I might spill about my investigation. Father sits at the head of the table, eating silently. He is in mourning after all. Danei hangs on every word out of Joliu's mouth. Killae is pouting. He's not being included enough. Anson is flirting with a girl his own age but whom I've never laid eyes on before. Bev and Peyta are quiet next to Father. Jaif, Regei and Vlastina are up in the nursery sleeping, I suppose.
Lord Larek and his wife discuss the boundaries with Lady Nikas and her son. They have ever been in dispute of them. Now I know it was because of the outcome of the Owusti Riots that the dispute came about. Commander Rath is saying something to Father that I cannot hear. Father just shakes his head.
"Your highness." Lady Nikas calls out and I wish she would just shut her mouth. She is older than the mountains and half as bright. "I was wondering when you would announce the betrothal of your eldest daughter."
The room has gone absolutely silent. I want to strangle the woman, Lady or no. I had forgotten to mention the absurd idea to Father. I've had more pressing things on mind. Father takes a sip of wine and sets down his goblet. His eyes frighten me when he turns them upward, away from his plate. "There is nothing to announce. We cannot think on betrothals while an investigation is underway. I've had no offers, in any case."
"Commander Rath is in need of a new wife."
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Commander Rath rises from the table and leaves the court. He has had two wives that I remember. There could have been more. He has bad luck with them. I think the second to last ran off when his kids got to be too much for her and the last one either died of a fever or she dropped dead from exhaustion. I forget how many he's got and how old. Maybe ten or twelve but only three or four from a single mother. I rise from the table, kiss Danei's head and follow Commander Rath out the door.
TBC
The Queen of Antar
Is veiled in shadows
Present Day. Commander Rath's quarters.
He lets me in without a word. I take a seat at his desk. There are maps and models all over it. His weapon in its holster. I have never been inside but I know that there are hallways that lead to his children's rooms. His room has a cot but somehow I doubt he ever shared it with any of his wives. He sits on the cot and tugs on the laces on his boots. "Ask your questions. I won't lie."
"When did you first suspect that my father was sleeping with Liz?"
"When he wouldn't let me look at her. That didn't bother me long as I found my first bride shortly there after but it did make me wonder." Rath stretched his arms above his head. He's no young man but he could not lead an army without being strong. "I knew then that he had some interest in her. I'd seen her around. Her husband ranked above me. I knew who she was. I never made a move until after it had been a year. Then I was blocked."
"You never said anything to anyone?"
"I learned my lessons well, Prince Avery. You don’t talk about sensitive things. It makes a weakness. I couldn't be the weak link. I had a goal. I knew I was born to command his majesty's armies and now I do." He tosses one boot and then the other to the floor. "King Zan makes good decisions in the field and I mostly agree with them in court. If he wants to make it with his nursemaid behind everyone and his wife's back, then he should do it. If I'd were him, I'd take on more nursemaids."
"Oh?"
"My life is very full of important works. I go months without seeing my children." He sighs heavily and shrugs out of his coat. "I've seen him wear himself down to almost nothing. He almost died on us a few times. If he wants to have nine virgins always available to him. He should."
"But he doesn't."
"No. I'm only sure that the nursemaid is offering other services to his highness that no other man is able to receive since the death of her husband." He shrugs and leans back. He begins fiddling with something in one of his pockets.
"Were you in service when Commander Kivar was still alive?"
His eyes turn hard and fix on my face as his hands jerk items out of his pockets. I don't know what I've said but Commander Rath seems to want to take his time answering me. "I entered into service at age 14… the same time as Davi Peyrs, who was younger. We gophered for Commander Kivar for the first year before we were given weapons and told to become our own men because Commander Kivar ceased to go into battles himself."
"Was he old?"
"To us, he was ancient but I suppose he was my age now. No one mourned his sudden death. He was a cruel man, even for a Commander. Commander Odil was next, then Commander Woste before me."
"Why do you hate Commander Kivar so much?" I ask, his face was still a mask made of stone but there was something in his eyes that worried me.
He lit the cigarette he'd been rolling and I had to grip the back of my chair to keep from passing out. "He was my father."
I go very still. My very purpose in asking him so many questions was to have him ferret out the children of the dead commander. "He was your father."
"I didn't count. His wife was not my mother." He shrugs and takes a long drag on his cigarette. "A bath maid in the palace while the King was away. They sent her away. I was born so far out I was almost in the far reaches. She sent me away on the wagon when it came because we didn't have money to eat. She died before I could make something of myself and send her money." He takes a deep breath and I can visibly see him relaxing. "The borders blur out there. Far reaches and Y'Antari rule. You could walk right through a Tirera village and not know it until someone spoke. They're not so much different than us."
"They don't have our gifts."
"Maybe not… but they're smarter. Davi Peyrs didn't speak a word when I met him. Six months later, I couldn't shut him up."
"Did you know him well?"
"Well enough to know that he loved his wife beyond reason. He talked about her constantly. He had plans, big ones. He was going to become Commander. He was going to build her a house and have twenty children." Rath smiles a bit. "I liked him. He talked too much but I liked him. He was a good soldier. The Riots… I only wish I had been there to aid in the fighting but my battalion was left behind. His was taken because his was best. He would be advancing again and farther above me. I was jealous but I never wanted to see him dead."
"Father!" A voice calls from the hallway. A moment later a girl in her late teens appears in the doorway. "Father, the boys…" She trails off when she set eyes on me and she kneels.
"You don't have to do that right now." I try to assure her but people are bent on ceremony around me.
"Off your knees, Ashi." Rath sits up and pats the cot next to him. "Ashi, this is Prince Avery. Prince Avery, my oldest daughter, Ashi."
"It's nice to meet you." I tell her. She nods with a polite smile.
"How was the dinner?" She asks her father.
"A dinner." He tells her.
"Lady Nikas suggested that your father take Princess Danei for a bride." I offer her.
"Princess Danei? She's hardly older than I am." Ashi burst out, her face turning bright red.
"It was a suggestion that no one is taking seriously." I assure her.
"I would hope not." She eyes her father. "Stop smoking geroa, please." He smiles a bit at her, then he puts it out. "Prince Avery, if you wouldn't mind… please pass on a message to Lady Nikas that my father is done marrying." He smiles broader. "If he takes another wife, I'll end up with four more children to look after and I would love to get married myself before the babies are all grown."
"And you will be. Bring home a suitable man." Rath kisses her forehead. "No more potters. They don't make money and they go blind early."
"Father." She scoffs at him before rising and inclining her head to the both of us. "The boys are running amok. You need to tuck them in soon."
"In a bit. The prince and I have some business to discuss." He waves her off and she leaves in silence. "She looks just like her mother."
"Married for love?"
"Yes." He nods and lowers his eyes. "I love my children but all my succeeding wives were found while I was mourning the previous. It's not a habit I recommend." He sighs heavily. "Where were we?" He looks to the ceiling, where I notice is drawn a map of the center of Y'Antari. "Owusti. The Riots. My superior was prime investigator. No one could put their finger on what caused them. I once heard Odil said that he could trace the unrest directly to Lady Nikas but that it wouldn't do any good to call her out."
"Why not? Why hasn't Father put an end to her long ago?"
"Lady Nikas does not stand alone. She has armies. She has loyal followers. If she dies, her son takes over the lands. Her son is not right for the job. Nikas can be petty but she can be kept in line with the right words. Taking her lands away from her would cause a civil war and we've never been ready to fight it." He shakes his head and his eyes slide to the doorway to his children. "We are so tentatively united under your Father. So many would live and die for him but it wasn't always so. A lot of the changes he made when he ascended the throne caused a lot of grief amongst the older sects."
"How so?"
"I'm a good man. I believe that. I do my job as best as I can but I never would have been promoted this far without your father's backing all those years ago. Not with the old rules. My pedigree is dodgy."
"Isn't everyone's?"
He laughs. "I guess you're right but my father never intended to marry my mother. She was never able to step up past her station after I was born. I would have remained a foot soldier… just a pawn to take a hit for our king." He smiles. "I got a recommendation from beyond the grave. I followed your father and he gave me the opportunity and I do have to thank your nanny as well." I tilt my head at him and he nods. "I believe the words she spoke to him were the words her husband spoke about me. Davi and I were friends for almost a decade. A king would have never noticed my performance out of so many."
"I admit it, Commander Rath. I need help. With every person, I talk to…" I inhale deeply. "I find several more suspects. There are so many who would have wanted her dead. I need help."
"You shall have it."
Present Day. Court.
Kylo and Merea Nenti speak in low voices and I am tempted to step closer to overhear but I want their trust. I stride up to them. "Bawila."
"Bawila." Kylo speaks in a firm tone but Merea's is watery.
"How is she?" Merea asks straight off.
"Liz is fine." I assure her. "I am making sure that all her needs are met while she is forced to be in isolation. I don't think she did this. I just need some proof."
"Did you find him? Her lover?" Merea all but whispers.
"No, not yet. It is a delicate thing. I'm hoping another suspect will stand out more plainly than Liz."
"There must be someone who saw something." Kylo demands.
"I am doing all I can but I may need to know more about how you knew her and anything you saw while you were here." I fix my gaze on Merea.
"I hardly know a thing. I talk too much. Liz suggested I shouldn't work in the palace. I didn't stay long. She suggested that I move to Majeir." Merea pleads with me. "I was responsible for delivering meals. That's it. I never heard anything."
"Then Liz wouldn’t have suggested you work elsewhere." I comment.
"I saw her in the field with someone. I only told Qili. Qili told Bawo Lodona. I didn't say a word to anyone else." Merea takes a deep breath. "I never saw his face. I never knew who she was sneaking around with. Liz hardly talked about herself but she never talked about whoever it was she was in love with."
"And you never noticed anyone who was particularly offended by her highness?"
"Only everyone."
TBC
Is veiled in shadows
Present Day. Commander Rath's quarters.
He lets me in without a word. I take a seat at his desk. There are maps and models all over it. His weapon in its holster. I have never been inside but I know that there are hallways that lead to his children's rooms. His room has a cot but somehow I doubt he ever shared it with any of his wives. He sits on the cot and tugs on the laces on his boots. "Ask your questions. I won't lie."
"When did you first suspect that my father was sleeping with Liz?"
"When he wouldn't let me look at her. That didn't bother me long as I found my first bride shortly there after but it did make me wonder." Rath stretched his arms above his head. He's no young man but he could not lead an army without being strong. "I knew then that he had some interest in her. I'd seen her around. Her husband ranked above me. I knew who she was. I never made a move until after it had been a year. Then I was blocked."
"You never said anything to anyone?"
"I learned my lessons well, Prince Avery. You don’t talk about sensitive things. It makes a weakness. I couldn't be the weak link. I had a goal. I knew I was born to command his majesty's armies and now I do." He tosses one boot and then the other to the floor. "King Zan makes good decisions in the field and I mostly agree with them in court. If he wants to make it with his nursemaid behind everyone and his wife's back, then he should do it. If I'd were him, I'd take on more nursemaids."
"Oh?"
"My life is very full of important works. I go months without seeing my children." He sighs heavily and shrugs out of his coat. "I've seen him wear himself down to almost nothing. He almost died on us a few times. If he wants to have nine virgins always available to him. He should."
"But he doesn't."
"No. I'm only sure that the nursemaid is offering other services to his highness that no other man is able to receive since the death of her husband." He shrugs and leans back. He begins fiddling with something in one of his pockets.
"Were you in service when Commander Kivar was still alive?"
His eyes turn hard and fix on my face as his hands jerk items out of his pockets. I don't know what I've said but Commander Rath seems to want to take his time answering me. "I entered into service at age 14… the same time as Davi Peyrs, who was younger. We gophered for Commander Kivar for the first year before we were given weapons and told to become our own men because Commander Kivar ceased to go into battles himself."
"Was he old?"
"To us, he was ancient but I suppose he was my age now. No one mourned his sudden death. He was a cruel man, even for a Commander. Commander Odil was next, then Commander Woste before me."
"Why do you hate Commander Kivar so much?" I ask, his face was still a mask made of stone but there was something in his eyes that worried me.
He lit the cigarette he'd been rolling and I had to grip the back of my chair to keep from passing out. "He was my father."
I go very still. My very purpose in asking him so many questions was to have him ferret out the children of the dead commander. "He was your father."
"I didn't count. His wife was not my mother." He shrugs and takes a long drag on his cigarette. "A bath maid in the palace while the King was away. They sent her away. I was born so far out I was almost in the far reaches. She sent me away on the wagon when it came because we didn't have money to eat. She died before I could make something of myself and send her money." He takes a deep breath and I can visibly see him relaxing. "The borders blur out there. Far reaches and Y'Antari rule. You could walk right through a Tirera village and not know it until someone spoke. They're not so much different than us."
"They don't have our gifts."
"Maybe not… but they're smarter. Davi Peyrs didn't speak a word when I met him. Six months later, I couldn't shut him up."
"Did you know him well?"
"Well enough to know that he loved his wife beyond reason. He talked about her constantly. He had plans, big ones. He was going to become Commander. He was going to build her a house and have twenty children." Rath smiles a bit. "I liked him. He talked too much but I liked him. He was a good soldier. The Riots… I only wish I had been there to aid in the fighting but my battalion was left behind. His was taken because his was best. He would be advancing again and farther above me. I was jealous but I never wanted to see him dead."
"Father!" A voice calls from the hallway. A moment later a girl in her late teens appears in the doorway. "Father, the boys…" She trails off when she set eyes on me and she kneels.
"You don't have to do that right now." I try to assure her but people are bent on ceremony around me.
"Off your knees, Ashi." Rath sits up and pats the cot next to him. "Ashi, this is Prince Avery. Prince Avery, my oldest daughter, Ashi."
"It's nice to meet you." I tell her. She nods with a polite smile.
"How was the dinner?" She asks her father.
"A dinner." He tells her.
"Lady Nikas suggested that your father take Princess Danei for a bride." I offer her.
"Princess Danei? She's hardly older than I am." Ashi burst out, her face turning bright red.
"It was a suggestion that no one is taking seriously." I assure her.
"I would hope not." She eyes her father. "Stop smoking geroa, please." He smiles a bit at her, then he puts it out. "Prince Avery, if you wouldn't mind… please pass on a message to Lady Nikas that my father is done marrying." He smiles broader. "If he takes another wife, I'll end up with four more children to look after and I would love to get married myself before the babies are all grown."
"And you will be. Bring home a suitable man." Rath kisses her forehead. "No more potters. They don't make money and they go blind early."
"Father." She scoffs at him before rising and inclining her head to the both of us. "The boys are running amok. You need to tuck them in soon."
"In a bit. The prince and I have some business to discuss." He waves her off and she leaves in silence. "She looks just like her mother."
"Married for love?"
"Yes." He nods and lowers his eyes. "I love my children but all my succeeding wives were found while I was mourning the previous. It's not a habit I recommend." He sighs heavily. "Where were we?" He looks to the ceiling, where I notice is drawn a map of the center of Y'Antari. "Owusti. The Riots. My superior was prime investigator. No one could put their finger on what caused them. I once heard Odil said that he could trace the unrest directly to Lady Nikas but that it wouldn't do any good to call her out."
"Why not? Why hasn't Father put an end to her long ago?"
"Lady Nikas does not stand alone. She has armies. She has loyal followers. If she dies, her son takes over the lands. Her son is not right for the job. Nikas can be petty but she can be kept in line with the right words. Taking her lands away from her would cause a civil war and we've never been ready to fight it." He shakes his head and his eyes slide to the doorway to his children. "We are so tentatively united under your Father. So many would live and die for him but it wasn't always so. A lot of the changes he made when he ascended the throne caused a lot of grief amongst the older sects."
"How so?"
"I'm a good man. I believe that. I do my job as best as I can but I never would have been promoted this far without your father's backing all those years ago. Not with the old rules. My pedigree is dodgy."
"Isn't everyone's?"
He laughs. "I guess you're right but my father never intended to marry my mother. She was never able to step up past her station after I was born. I would have remained a foot soldier… just a pawn to take a hit for our king." He smiles. "I got a recommendation from beyond the grave. I followed your father and he gave me the opportunity and I do have to thank your nanny as well." I tilt my head at him and he nods. "I believe the words she spoke to him were the words her husband spoke about me. Davi and I were friends for almost a decade. A king would have never noticed my performance out of so many."
"I admit it, Commander Rath. I need help. With every person, I talk to…" I inhale deeply. "I find several more suspects. There are so many who would have wanted her dead. I need help."
"You shall have it."
Present Day. Court.
Kylo and Merea Nenti speak in low voices and I am tempted to step closer to overhear but I want their trust. I stride up to them. "Bawila."
"Bawila." Kylo speaks in a firm tone but Merea's is watery.
"How is she?" Merea asks straight off.
"Liz is fine." I assure her. "I am making sure that all her needs are met while she is forced to be in isolation. I don't think she did this. I just need some proof."
"Did you find him? Her lover?" Merea all but whispers.
"No, not yet. It is a delicate thing. I'm hoping another suspect will stand out more plainly than Liz."
"There must be someone who saw something." Kylo demands.
"I am doing all I can but I may need to know more about how you knew her and anything you saw while you were here." I fix my gaze on Merea.
"I hardly know a thing. I talk too much. Liz suggested I shouldn't work in the palace. I didn't stay long. She suggested that I move to Majeir." Merea pleads with me. "I was responsible for delivering meals. That's it. I never heard anything."
"Then Liz wouldn’t have suggested you work elsewhere." I comment.
"I saw her in the field with someone. I only told Qili. Qili told Bawo Lodona. I didn't say a word to anyone else." Merea takes a deep breath. "I never saw his face. I never knew who she was sneaking around with. Liz hardly talked about herself but she never talked about whoever it was she was in love with."
"And you never noticed anyone who was particularly offended by her highness?"
"Only everyone."
TBC
The Queen of Antar
Hides the truth
Present Day. Liz's Quarters.
"Why were you in her rooms that day?" I ask Liz. It should have been the first question I asked.
"She asked to see me."
"What about?"
"Something about… the baby." Liz shrugs, her eyes out the window where the children are playing. "She wondered if maybe Vlastina was somehow… not right. Vlastina is fine. I told her so."
"What aren't you saying?"
"I don't know. It was an odd conversation. I walked out of the room through the bath maid's room. I walked into my room and met your father. We were… making love all afternoon. When we heard the alarm go up, we panicked." She whispers. "I got dressed and rushed to the nursery using the passageway. Your father followed. He walked out the nursery door and ten minutes later, someone walked in and arrested me. It took me hours to find out just what I was being accused of." Her eyes closed. "I am ashamed to say that I felt a great sense of relief when I heard the news."
"But you were asked in to answer a question about the baby? Did she often inquire about us?"
"Just to see if you were doing your studies and practicing manners properly."
"But she asked about Vlastina?" I don't believe her but I don't know the truth. I reach into my pocket and pull out the book I've been keeping in my possession for days. "Have you ever seen this before?"
"A time or two. What is it?" She takes the book from my hands and then thrusts it back into mine. "Go put it back."
"Then you have seen it."
"Put it back where you found it."
The Palace. Back corridors.
"Isn't it terribly romantic?" Danei twirls about in the sunlight, oranges and reds coloring her dress as she moved. "Forbidden love. Liz must have been so happy."
"Until he died, sure." I gripe as I try to figure out what is it about the book that frightened Liz so much.
"That's romantic, too. She stayed loyal to him all these years. They should have had a child, though." She stares out the window. "To make the pain worth it."
Danei has been so caught up in Liz's stories. With all that is going on, she focuses on what makes her the happiest. I study the pages but I can't read them. Some language that is not Y'Antari. Slowly I put letters together. It doesn't make any sense to me until I say a word out loud. "Jida… Gida."
"What are you doing?" Danei sits next to me and takes the book from my hands.
"Trying to read this but I…" I trail off because I recognize the word 'Gida' from Father's stories about Liz. "I don't read Tirera."
"This is Tirera?"
"This word. Gida. It means Father. But that's the only word I know."
"Where did you get it?"
"From Father's library."
"Why does Father have a book written in Tirera? Did Liz bring it with her from the far reaches?"
"I don't think so. I think it's been in the library for centuries." I sigh. "I know that it was in the library before Liz came here to live. Grandfather showed it to Father when he was my age… and his father before him and his father before him… but Grandfather never really explained, I think. Father started to tell me but I got angry and walked out on him."
"You always do that. Father loves you and you hate him back."
"I don't hate him. I get frustrated because he treats me like a child."
"You are a child." She taunts me. "Whining and moaning when you should be doing."
"You're one to talk. You're back here, hiding from your responsibilities." I point out. I reach for the book but she cradles it against her chest. "Give it."
"I want to read through it."
"You can't read Tirera."
"I can try. If you can read one word, I can read five."
"You've never even heard it spoken."
"Gida." She points out the word. "That's four letters complete with pronunciation. A primer."
"Fine but don't let anyone know you have it."
Commander Rath's War Room
Commander Rath has tracked down all his half-siblings. He's very good at his job. For a whoremonger, Commander Kivar had just the number of children that Duschi spoke of. Just five. Rath, the second oldest. The oldest was a woman who died in the Owusti Riots. The third, a son who holds land in Owusti but has never left the town. He takes care of the Commander's widow. A second daughter holds no memory of her father. The last a daughter did not even know who her father was. He looks to me for further orders.
"I do not understand it." I tell him at last. "I know the prime suspect was not the murderess but I cannot prove it. I cannot find a decent second suspect."
"Queen Ava always had a guard when she was off the palace grounds. When she was on the grounds, the nursemaid or the priestess were always with her. She was only ever alone in her suite." He pointed to the room on a map. "There are barriers on every entrance to the bathing room and the connecting rooms. The only man with the blood to pass through was his highness. Three women had the blood pass. The nursemaid, the bath maid, the priestess. The bath maid found the body. The nursemaid was detained in the nursery. The priestess was in Chapel."
"There's another way in. I don't know if it had a barrier on it. I don't know if it would work." I sigh. I hate to give up my father's escape but it has to be checked.
"What way?"
"Here." I point to Father's bathing room. "You can exit through here. It leads to Liz's chambers."
"That son of a bitch. That's how he did it." Rath laughs, then looks up at me. "You're old enough to know a man needs his woman. I just wondered how he got to her when no one was looking." He straightens. "No man can enter the main entrances to the royal suite or Liz's chambers. Our suspect is a woman. Only the three could get in the main entrances to the royal suite. Cleaning women are cleared to get into Liz's chambers and Lord Zan's bathing room. Lord Zan usually clears them for entry the day before they enter. It's a small window of opportunity."
"When was the last time the royal chambers were aired? Liz's?"
"I'll find out who was on the cleaning schedule." Rath turns when the knock sounds. "Enter!" A half dozen children run into the room and surround him. He kisses and hugs them all in turn. "Noisy bunch. Greet your Prince."
Two by two they bowed or curtsied and stood in a line. I bow my head to them. "Be good for your sister." They all nod and vanish behind the door again. Rath is staring at me. I wave him off and grab my hat. It's raining again. "I have to appease the courtiers with something."
"What are you going to tell them?"
"I'll start to tell them something and then I'll slip some gossip. They'll forget all about the investigation."
"I hope so. We need more time to ask more questions to the right people." He stares. "Did you ask her why she was in the room that day?"
"The Queen asked to see her. She told me why but I don't buy it. She's told me everything so far and looked me straight in the eye. When I asked her that. She didn't look at me. She was lying."
"Why would she lie about that?"
"I don’t know."
The Chapel.
Bawo lights her candles and instructs the young woman beside her. I wait. And wait. Finally, the lesson is done and the young woman bows in front of me. "Bawo Lodona asked me to serve you however you see fit."
"You can go. I don’t need you to serve me." I stare at the woman, she's still a girl. "She's testing you. Your virtue is important. You can't throw yourself on any man just because she says so." The girl looks up at me with wide eyes. "Legs closed." I tell her more plainly.
"You're rude, Avery." Bawo tells me. "She'd make a better bride than priestess."
"Are you hoping I impregnate some poor girl you took under your wing just so you don't have to pass on your secrets?"
"Rude. Rude. Rude." Bawo cuffs me and points to the door for the student to go. "Impudence!" She crosses her arms and stares at me. "What is it you've come to distract me with today?"
"I need to know if you know why Ava asked to see Liz on the day she died?"
"Why on earth would I know that?"
"You seem to know everything else. You have spies everywhere. Gossipers who listen and tell you things. I want to know if the bath maid told you what she heard because no one has seen her since Liz was listed as suspect."
"Insolent."
"Call me names all day. I'm not leaving. The longer you put me off, the more sure I am that you know something."
"Ask your question all day, I can ignore you all I want." Bawo sweeps away from me in a flurry of robes. She leans on an altar and stares at the pulpit for a long time before she sinks into a chair. Slouching in a way I'd never seen her do. "Avery. You make it very hard for me to keep my secrets."
"I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."
"I don't know why Ava asked to see Liz. I suspect but I do not know. What did Liz say?" It is the first time she's asked to hear someone else's side of the turn of events.
"That Ava wanted to know if Vlastina was normal. If the baby was different somehow." I see the blood drain out of Bawo's face. "Is there something odd about Vlastina?"
"No. She's fine. Liz said Vlastina?"
"I don't believe her but that's what she said."
"She knows." Bawo covers her face with her hands. "She knows. She knows."
"Knows what, Bawo?"
"I have to speak to my Zan." She rises out of her chair and rushes for the doors. I beat her there. "Avery. Not now."
"Tell me. What does she know? What does who know?"
"Move!" She screams and I am flying through the air. A burst of energy emerges from her that I have never felt in any combat scenario in the arena. By the time I collect myself, she is gone.
TBC
Hides the truth
Present Day. Liz's Quarters.
"Why were you in her rooms that day?" I ask Liz. It should have been the first question I asked.
"She asked to see me."
"What about?"
"Something about… the baby." Liz shrugs, her eyes out the window where the children are playing. "She wondered if maybe Vlastina was somehow… not right. Vlastina is fine. I told her so."
"What aren't you saying?"
"I don't know. It was an odd conversation. I walked out of the room through the bath maid's room. I walked into my room and met your father. We were… making love all afternoon. When we heard the alarm go up, we panicked." She whispers. "I got dressed and rushed to the nursery using the passageway. Your father followed. He walked out the nursery door and ten minutes later, someone walked in and arrested me. It took me hours to find out just what I was being accused of." Her eyes closed. "I am ashamed to say that I felt a great sense of relief when I heard the news."
"But you were asked in to answer a question about the baby? Did she often inquire about us?"
"Just to see if you were doing your studies and practicing manners properly."
"But she asked about Vlastina?" I don't believe her but I don't know the truth. I reach into my pocket and pull out the book I've been keeping in my possession for days. "Have you ever seen this before?"
"A time or two. What is it?" She takes the book from my hands and then thrusts it back into mine. "Go put it back."
"Then you have seen it."
"Put it back where you found it."
The Palace. Back corridors.
"Isn't it terribly romantic?" Danei twirls about in the sunlight, oranges and reds coloring her dress as she moved. "Forbidden love. Liz must have been so happy."
"Until he died, sure." I gripe as I try to figure out what is it about the book that frightened Liz so much.
"That's romantic, too. She stayed loyal to him all these years. They should have had a child, though." She stares out the window. "To make the pain worth it."
Danei has been so caught up in Liz's stories. With all that is going on, she focuses on what makes her the happiest. I study the pages but I can't read them. Some language that is not Y'Antari. Slowly I put letters together. It doesn't make any sense to me until I say a word out loud. "Jida… Gida."
"What are you doing?" Danei sits next to me and takes the book from my hands.
"Trying to read this but I…" I trail off because I recognize the word 'Gida' from Father's stories about Liz. "I don't read Tirera."
"This is Tirera?"
"This word. Gida. It means Father. But that's the only word I know."
"Where did you get it?"
"From Father's library."
"Why does Father have a book written in Tirera? Did Liz bring it with her from the far reaches?"
"I don't think so. I think it's been in the library for centuries." I sigh. "I know that it was in the library before Liz came here to live. Grandfather showed it to Father when he was my age… and his father before him and his father before him… but Grandfather never really explained, I think. Father started to tell me but I got angry and walked out on him."
"You always do that. Father loves you and you hate him back."
"I don't hate him. I get frustrated because he treats me like a child."
"You are a child." She taunts me. "Whining and moaning when you should be doing."
"You're one to talk. You're back here, hiding from your responsibilities." I point out. I reach for the book but she cradles it against her chest. "Give it."
"I want to read through it."
"You can't read Tirera."
"I can try. If you can read one word, I can read five."
"You've never even heard it spoken."
"Gida." She points out the word. "That's four letters complete with pronunciation. A primer."
"Fine but don't let anyone know you have it."
Commander Rath's War Room
Commander Rath has tracked down all his half-siblings. He's very good at his job. For a whoremonger, Commander Kivar had just the number of children that Duschi spoke of. Just five. Rath, the second oldest. The oldest was a woman who died in the Owusti Riots. The third, a son who holds land in Owusti but has never left the town. He takes care of the Commander's widow. A second daughter holds no memory of her father. The last a daughter did not even know who her father was. He looks to me for further orders.
"I do not understand it." I tell him at last. "I know the prime suspect was not the murderess but I cannot prove it. I cannot find a decent second suspect."
"Queen Ava always had a guard when she was off the palace grounds. When she was on the grounds, the nursemaid or the priestess were always with her. She was only ever alone in her suite." He pointed to the room on a map. "There are barriers on every entrance to the bathing room and the connecting rooms. The only man with the blood to pass through was his highness. Three women had the blood pass. The nursemaid, the bath maid, the priestess. The bath maid found the body. The nursemaid was detained in the nursery. The priestess was in Chapel."
"There's another way in. I don't know if it had a barrier on it. I don't know if it would work." I sigh. I hate to give up my father's escape but it has to be checked.
"What way?"
"Here." I point to Father's bathing room. "You can exit through here. It leads to Liz's chambers."
"That son of a bitch. That's how he did it." Rath laughs, then looks up at me. "You're old enough to know a man needs his woman. I just wondered how he got to her when no one was looking." He straightens. "No man can enter the main entrances to the royal suite or Liz's chambers. Our suspect is a woman. Only the three could get in the main entrances to the royal suite. Cleaning women are cleared to get into Liz's chambers and Lord Zan's bathing room. Lord Zan usually clears them for entry the day before they enter. It's a small window of opportunity."
"When was the last time the royal chambers were aired? Liz's?"
"I'll find out who was on the cleaning schedule." Rath turns when the knock sounds. "Enter!" A half dozen children run into the room and surround him. He kisses and hugs them all in turn. "Noisy bunch. Greet your Prince."
Two by two they bowed or curtsied and stood in a line. I bow my head to them. "Be good for your sister." They all nod and vanish behind the door again. Rath is staring at me. I wave him off and grab my hat. It's raining again. "I have to appease the courtiers with something."
"What are you going to tell them?"
"I'll start to tell them something and then I'll slip some gossip. They'll forget all about the investigation."
"I hope so. We need more time to ask more questions to the right people." He stares. "Did you ask her why she was in the room that day?"
"The Queen asked to see her. She told me why but I don't buy it. She's told me everything so far and looked me straight in the eye. When I asked her that. She didn't look at me. She was lying."
"Why would she lie about that?"
"I don’t know."
The Chapel.
Bawo lights her candles and instructs the young woman beside her. I wait. And wait. Finally, the lesson is done and the young woman bows in front of me. "Bawo Lodona asked me to serve you however you see fit."
"You can go. I don’t need you to serve me." I stare at the woman, she's still a girl. "She's testing you. Your virtue is important. You can't throw yourself on any man just because she says so." The girl looks up at me with wide eyes. "Legs closed." I tell her more plainly.
"You're rude, Avery." Bawo tells me. "She'd make a better bride than priestess."
"Are you hoping I impregnate some poor girl you took under your wing just so you don't have to pass on your secrets?"
"Rude. Rude. Rude." Bawo cuffs me and points to the door for the student to go. "Impudence!" She crosses her arms and stares at me. "What is it you've come to distract me with today?"
"I need to know if you know why Ava asked to see Liz on the day she died?"
"Why on earth would I know that?"
"You seem to know everything else. You have spies everywhere. Gossipers who listen and tell you things. I want to know if the bath maid told you what she heard because no one has seen her since Liz was listed as suspect."
"Insolent."
"Call me names all day. I'm not leaving. The longer you put me off, the more sure I am that you know something."
"Ask your question all day, I can ignore you all I want." Bawo sweeps away from me in a flurry of robes. She leans on an altar and stares at the pulpit for a long time before she sinks into a chair. Slouching in a way I'd never seen her do. "Avery. You make it very hard for me to keep my secrets."
"I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."
"I don't know why Ava asked to see Liz. I suspect but I do not know. What did Liz say?" It is the first time she's asked to hear someone else's side of the turn of events.
"That Ava wanted to know if Vlastina was normal. If the baby was different somehow." I see the blood drain out of Bawo's face. "Is there something odd about Vlastina?"
"No. She's fine. Liz said Vlastina?"
"I don't believe her but that's what she said."
"She knows." Bawo covers her face with her hands. "She knows. She knows."
"Knows what, Bawo?"
"I have to speak to my Zan." She rises out of her chair and rushes for the doors. I beat her there. "Avery. Not now."
"Tell me. What does she know? What does who know?"
"Move!" She screams and I am flying through the air. A burst of energy emerges from her that I have never felt in any combat scenario in the arena. By the time I collect myself, she is gone.
TBC
The Queen of Antar
Her past unravels the present…
Present Day. Court.
People move past me in robes and gowns. Colors that aren't in rainbows, I'm sure. They are so busy socializing that I even wonder if they know what the ramifications of a dead Queen are. Father is at an age where he will not be expected to take a second wife but many offers will be made by power-hungry men with young daughters. Daughters who were being thrown at me just weeks ago. It means that Danei and I will be expected to provide heirs soon. The offers for her hand will rise the second the investigation is over. Any offer before will be deemed treasonous given Father's mandate at dinner the other night.
Maybe Father was right to shelter me as long as possible because I can see my life unraveling before my eyes. I am ready now to do what must be done. I will have to meet with daughters and choose a good wife. A better one than my father chose. I will have to travel on my own as ambassador for the crown. To stand in my father's stead now that he will be viewed as the sole parent to my young siblings. He will be in official mourning for a year. He will be limited by society's rules.
It will be the perfect time to strike at his regime. Nikas's army will have to be watched. Her son will have to be plied with words to draw him in our favor before a war breaks out that could break the monarchy. I have to protect my family. I have to protect our laws. Our laws that allow so much more freedom for the people who feed and clothe us all. Those whose backs break, whose feet ache, whose hands burn, whose eyes go blind so that I can live my life in comfort while I keep the balance. While Father keeps the balance for us all. Keeping the powerful from having too much power, keeping the poor from becoming too poor. The hungry fed, the naked clothed, the jobless with a purpose.
I feel like a statue for all anyone notices me where I sit on the chair raised on the platform as is my birth rite. If I stand, all those in the court are supposed to kneel and wait until I either exit the platform or make a speech. I'm not inclined to do either but it might be amusing to see it done a few times while I watch to see if Bawo will approach Father in court. He is hiding on the back wall where he thinks no one sees him. He looks troubled but that has been his face since the news broke.
Finally, I've had enough waiting. I cross the room without giving anyone time to kneel and wait for my actions. I reach my father in moments. "Did Bawo find you?"
"She did." Father nods, aware eyes are on us. "She's… upset."
"Do you know why?"
"She asked if I knew about the child. I reminded her that I have several and that she'd have to be more specific. Then she left. No word of why or what for." Father knows his hiding place is discovered and moves to take his seat on the platform. I stop him. "What is it? Do you know what she was babbling about?"
"Not really but I intend to find out. If she's not talking to you, I know where she is."
Present Day. The Nursery.
I opt for a bit of stealth so that I may learn more than if I just burst into Liz's room without warning. I motion to the children to be quiet while I tuck myself into the closet and find the niche. I take the dark passageway to its end. I can barely make out the words. I can only hope no one will notice when I deactivate the barrier.
"She saw it! She saw it! You let me believe all these years!" Liz screams.
"I didn't know." Bawo pleads.
"That's a lie! A lie! I remember. It was long ago but I remember! You didn't want me marrying him. You didn't want me getting pregnant by him. I remember how happy you were to tell me I was pregnant by Zan again. You said it was the Granilith's will. She was born early! I knew she was early if it was Zan's child. You said it was because I was so sick. I wasn't sick." Liz sobs. "I was grief-stricken and maybe if I'd had my wits about me all those years ago, I would have seen it sooner! How could you lie to me?"
"So what if I lied. I lied for our King. Would you rather I had told you and let you go home to that pile of dust and ash? Would you rather I had told the truth and you not have any more of the princes and princesses that you love? You would rather I had told the truth and you be without the one who makes you complete all this while? If I had told the truth, he would have died years ago."
I absorb those words and I know what they are saying though I missed the revelation when it was spoken.
"When will you tell him?"
"You heartless witch. Why would I tell him now? After all he's believed all this time… I cannot take that away from him the way you took it away from me. I can never forgive you for what you've done to my memories. I can't forgive you the bridges I burned based on your lies."
I walk away. I sit in the closet in the nursery for a long time while I let it all sink in. I am thrown. I cannot even think on how others will react to the revelation. When the door opens, it is Danei with a disbelieving face. "They said you were in here but when I looked the first time, you weren't. What magic do you wield that you can appear out of thin air?"
"You were looking for me?" I ask as I climb out, still unsure what to do with the information that I barely have. I think I know but I cannot presume to know anything for certain.
"Yes. I have found six more words based off the one you taught me. I told you I could learn more than you could." She drags me out of the nursery and into the library. It's a long walk with her as giddy as she is and me as ill as I feel. She opens the book and lays it next to her notes. "These words always appear together. I figured it was a grouping. Related like the puzzles Commander Rath used to play with us when we were younger. Gida is Father. Meda is Mother. Nebes is children, I think because there are several variations on nebes. Nebes, nebe, nebei, nebea. Children or child or son or daughter. I don't have gender figured out."
"That's only three and I taught you the first one. The other three don't count if they're variants of the third word."
"You think you're so clever but I do have more." She points to her notes. "This word confused me at first but I think it is first. This one is second. That's two words. Du and Dua."
"And the sixth word?"
"Um… Oh! This one is easy. I figured it out first. Antarian. See. The alphabet and pronunciation rules are different so it doesn't look the same but when you put it together it makes sense… which brings me to word seven. Tirera." She points out the word. "I learned six more words than you did. Ha!"
"Good work." My mind reels. It is such an ancient work but already it mentions both our people. What did the Tirera think of Antarians all those years ago?
"That's all you have to say? I just proved I was smarter than you and you don't care." She scoffs and rises with the book to leave.
"I have a lot on my mind, Danei."
"You could tell me about it. I could help. Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I can't be of use."
"I know. You're right… but right now. I need you to work on the book. That's how you can be of use. Whatever you find out, tell me first. Okay?"
"Avery? Is everything okay?"
"Everything will be." I promise her with a kiss to her forehead. "Be good for Father. Watch after the little ones."
"Avery…" Her voice makes me look her in the eyes. "Promise me that when you find whoever did it, that you'll make them pay."
"Once I find out who it is, I'll tell you and we'll decide together."
Present Day. Liz's Chambers.
I open the door and sit without greeting. Liz is busy putting away laundry. Vlastina sleeps in her cradle next to the bed. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." She breathes out heavily. "How are you? Are they making it difficult for you?"
"Everyone is making it difficult for me." I reply with a smile. If only she knew everything I've learned since the investigation began. "Could you finish telling me the origin story?"
"Which one?"
"The Tirera origin story. You were telling me how they marched up the mountain and were greeted by the Y'Antari on the top." I lead her.
"Don't you have other things to be doing?"
"I need a break and I'm curious." I fix her with my best pout. "Shouldn't I know the stories of both my people?"
She rolls her eyes and sits down with me. "Fine. Where was I? On the mountain, huh…"
Long, long ago.
They say she was quite a beauty, the native that was brave enough to approach Cherin and her children. Eyes like the bluest waters, hair that flamed like fire. It was Max, the oldest of Cherin's sons, who made the first move, holding his hand out to the girl. She was very young in comparison to his fifty or so years. She sniffed his hand, her hair falling all over his arm. She took his hand and placed it on her breast. Startled, Max jerked his hand back. The sharp movement made her cower before him like a struck animal. Cherin tried to remedy the situation and took off her robe to place on the girl's nude body. She introduced her children to the girl. Max, Devon, Alexandria and Lydia. The girl was more fascinated by the robe than the words Cherin spoke.
The girl examined every inch of the robe, sliding the fabric over her bare skin. She reached out and touched the clothes Cherin wore. Touched Cherin's hair and face. This time, Max knelt and let the girl examine his hair and clothes. When the girl turned to her fellow natives, they still cowered in the high mountain jungles. She called to them but they refused to come out. The words sounded to Cherin's children like the calls of a bird. When the girl tried to return to the jungles, her people appeared out of nowhere and blocked her path. She had been cast out of her tribe.
With a heavy heart, mourning her poor decision to clothe the girl, Cherin guided the girl with her family to their camp, half a day down the mountain. The girl was sad and refused to eat when first offered food prepared with one of Cherin's devices. Lydia, having a daughter close to the girl's age, took her into her arms and rocked her gently, singing a song to put her to sleep.
They say it was a difficult trip down the mountain due to the rain. Devon was stronger so it was he who helped Cherin down the slippery slopes, leaving the girl to Max. The four-day trip up, became a six-day trip down. When they rested, Cherin tried to talk to the girl but she wouldn't speak even her own language. Cherin began to call her Selene, as when it came nightfall, she would sing herself to sleep as Lydia had done the first night.
Lydia took Selene into her home as a surrogate daughter. Cherin discussed the tribes on the mountain with her husband. They both agreed that further trips to the top would have to be more careful. They were going to study Selene to decipher as much of her language as possible. To form a primer for future expeditions. Max, the resident instructor, took to the task of teaching the language of Tirera as well as learning what he could of the native tongue.
Present Day. Liz's Chambers.
I wait for Liz to go on but she stares into nothing. "Liz?"
"Oh. Maybe that's enough for today."
"Tell me."
"It's a lot of speculation." She shrugs. "Michael and Edward were the two youngest sons. Unmarried. They headed the future expeditions up the mountain. Selene stayed with the Tirera in the plains."
"Come on. There has to be more to it than that."
"Avery. I'm tired. Can't this wait for another day?"
"Why must it?"
"Impatient." She scolds and kisses my face. "Always impatient, my Avery."
"Please? Then I will leave you alone."
"The expeditions began to last longer and longer with very little to report. Cherin was suspicious but there was so much going on everywhere. Her people were roaming free across the lands, setting up their homes and arguing over property lines… and whatever else it is that people do to destroy the peaceful lands."
"Why was she suspicious?" I press.
"They say that…" She takes a breath. "That her son Max, stopped traveling with his family. His children were grown, starting families of their own. His wife had become bitter but Cherin did not know why. They say that he became infatuated with young Selene, who was by all accounts a beautiful young woman. Too young for the aged and aging Max II. Max III had children more than half the supposed age of the native girl."
"What happened?" I asked softly.
"It depends on who tells the story but… they all end the same. If he seduced her or if she seduced him. They made love and he died. His heart stopped. They all agree that Selene ran screaming from the hut Max used to teach her Tirera ways. They all agree that his body was found nude in the hut. No device could help. He was gone." Liz takes my hand in hers. "Selene was very soon afterward found to be pregnant. Max's widow wanted nothing to do with the child or the one in her womb. Lydia would have nothing more to do with the girl. It was Max's brother David who took her into his home."
"David?"
"A very old name in my world, Avery." She smiles at me. "David had studied the cone his whole life, just like his mother. He took in his brother's mistress and afterward, raised the child as one of his own. Selene died during childbirth. No device could explain why. There was much going on. Cherin greeted her youngest grandchild as she had all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The boy with the eyes that changed in the light. Mostly his father's grey but sometimes his mother's blue."
"Did the boy ever know that he was from two worlds?"
"I don't know. I imagine someone told him."
Long, long ago.
They say it was Michael who finally reported to Cherin that the people on the mountain were not as standoffish as previously believed. They needed only to be shown that Tirera were worthy of their presence. Michael was Cherin's beloved youngest and most impetuous child. 30 years old and embodied the explorer's spirit, almost as proof that he had been within his mother's body when she had made the flight out of their home world.
They say that when he returned from his expeditions, he first visited with the cone. They say that his stays at home were short. His expeditions were long and always began with a visit with the cone. It was months before anyone had an inkling what he was doing on the mountain. Alexandria followed him up the mountain. She watched him visit with mostly the native women. She hid and watched when one took him to her home, barely a nest in a small grove. He took something from his bag and placed it in a bowl. The girl pulled a flower from a vine. It was larger than her head but she pulled it open and poured its nectar into the bowl. She blended the mixture with a rock. Each drank half, and then fell onto each other in a lustful frenzy.
Alexandria fled, meeting Tirera after Tirera in the native village. Realizing what must be going on, she braved the descent to inform her mother. Cherin was not happy when she learned her sons were using the natives for sport. That they had made discoveries about properties on the mountain and not given them proper study before employing them in such a base way.
Max, Cherin's husband, was disappointed when he learned that his youngest son had taken not one but six native wives. Edward had seven, himself. When it was discovered that several other families' sons had taken lovers among the natives, employing the modified nectars to prevent death, as had occurred with Max II, Max forbade any further forays up the mountain.
Several months later, a woman came down the mountain. She was heavy with child. She spoke one word before she fainted dead away. Michael, as he was the father of her child. She was rushed to a home where she was looked after until she came to. Cherin sent for Michael but he refused to sit by his lover's bedside. The woman's yellow eyes seemed to fade and Max took a weapon and forced his son to enter the hut to be with the mother of his future offspring. When the labor had begun, she clutched at Michael's hands and face, screaming as the baby entered the world. A glow surrounded them and Michael began to scream.
Present Day. Liz's Chambers.
Liz rises and paces the room. "I was never quite clear on what it meant but Max doctored Michael. His body had weakened during the labor while the woman's had seemed not to wane at all. They say she walked hours after the birth of a child with eyes somewhere between her yellow and Michael's brown. She said something to Michael in her own tongue and began the journey up the mountain, alone. When Michael had fully recovered, Max saw his youngest son to the base of the mountain and told him never to return to the Tirera. He had broken the laws. He was not a man by Tirera law. He would have to be present in the event one of his other five native wives were also pregnant."
"The woman was a healer." I whisper in awe. In all the records at my disposal, there has never been a woman with the ability to heal. There have never been any healers outside the royal line.
"I suppose so. That makes sense." She shrugs and continues her walk from one end of the room to the other. "I've not really thought on the origin story in years. I suppose that more of it makes sense now that I know the Y'Antari so well."
"Well, how did things progress?"
"Rapidly it seems. Over the course of a few years, Selene's son was rapidly becoming a heart-stealer like his father and his father before him. He learned just as fast as any Tirera. David had no sons and named him David. Max was saddened that he would not be Max as well but David had learned to hate the name. He rarely called his father by his given name, so he rarely had an excuse to use the name at all. Young David grew normal as any Tirera. He was taught only Tirera but he picked out Y'Antari when he heard it spoken."
"How was it forgotten?"
"How any language is forgotten, I suppose. Lack of use. If the Tirera don't interact with Y'Antari, there's little need to know it." She shrugs. She does that often.
"There must have been something more to the rift between my peoples." I prod.
"You're right." She nods. "Michael was exiled to the natives. He began developing their language using the devices he had taken with him. He learned their tongue and refined it to an art. They seemed to revere him as some sort of god. He told them of his devices and of the devices at the base of the mountain where Max and Cherin stood guard. Devices that could increase the comfort of life. If the natives would just acquiesce to the Tirera, then it could be taught. It could be learned. He was a charismatic man who hypnotized the natives with his words of a perfect world. They say these natives were in the infancy of their culture."
"You mean… what exactly?"
"They had their instincts and their abilities and little else. The Tirera had been eons in evolution. Eons since their ancestors were as poor in culture as the natives were."
"So the Tirera changed the natural course of evolution for the Y'Antari."
"That is one way of putting it."
TBC
Her past unravels the present…
Present Day. Court.
People move past me in robes and gowns. Colors that aren't in rainbows, I'm sure. They are so busy socializing that I even wonder if they know what the ramifications of a dead Queen are. Father is at an age where he will not be expected to take a second wife but many offers will be made by power-hungry men with young daughters. Daughters who were being thrown at me just weeks ago. It means that Danei and I will be expected to provide heirs soon. The offers for her hand will rise the second the investigation is over. Any offer before will be deemed treasonous given Father's mandate at dinner the other night.
Maybe Father was right to shelter me as long as possible because I can see my life unraveling before my eyes. I am ready now to do what must be done. I will have to meet with daughters and choose a good wife. A better one than my father chose. I will have to travel on my own as ambassador for the crown. To stand in my father's stead now that he will be viewed as the sole parent to my young siblings. He will be in official mourning for a year. He will be limited by society's rules.
It will be the perfect time to strike at his regime. Nikas's army will have to be watched. Her son will have to be plied with words to draw him in our favor before a war breaks out that could break the monarchy. I have to protect my family. I have to protect our laws. Our laws that allow so much more freedom for the people who feed and clothe us all. Those whose backs break, whose feet ache, whose hands burn, whose eyes go blind so that I can live my life in comfort while I keep the balance. While Father keeps the balance for us all. Keeping the powerful from having too much power, keeping the poor from becoming too poor. The hungry fed, the naked clothed, the jobless with a purpose.
I feel like a statue for all anyone notices me where I sit on the chair raised on the platform as is my birth rite. If I stand, all those in the court are supposed to kneel and wait until I either exit the platform or make a speech. I'm not inclined to do either but it might be amusing to see it done a few times while I watch to see if Bawo will approach Father in court. He is hiding on the back wall where he thinks no one sees him. He looks troubled but that has been his face since the news broke.
Finally, I've had enough waiting. I cross the room without giving anyone time to kneel and wait for my actions. I reach my father in moments. "Did Bawo find you?"
"She did." Father nods, aware eyes are on us. "She's… upset."
"Do you know why?"
"She asked if I knew about the child. I reminded her that I have several and that she'd have to be more specific. Then she left. No word of why or what for." Father knows his hiding place is discovered and moves to take his seat on the platform. I stop him. "What is it? Do you know what she was babbling about?"
"Not really but I intend to find out. If she's not talking to you, I know where she is."
Present Day. The Nursery.
I opt for a bit of stealth so that I may learn more than if I just burst into Liz's room without warning. I motion to the children to be quiet while I tuck myself into the closet and find the niche. I take the dark passageway to its end. I can barely make out the words. I can only hope no one will notice when I deactivate the barrier.
"She saw it! She saw it! You let me believe all these years!" Liz screams.
"I didn't know." Bawo pleads.
"That's a lie! A lie! I remember. It was long ago but I remember! You didn't want me marrying him. You didn't want me getting pregnant by him. I remember how happy you were to tell me I was pregnant by Zan again. You said it was the Granilith's will. She was born early! I knew she was early if it was Zan's child. You said it was because I was so sick. I wasn't sick." Liz sobs. "I was grief-stricken and maybe if I'd had my wits about me all those years ago, I would have seen it sooner! How could you lie to me?"
"So what if I lied. I lied for our King. Would you rather I had told you and let you go home to that pile of dust and ash? Would you rather I had told the truth and you not have any more of the princes and princesses that you love? You would rather I had told the truth and you be without the one who makes you complete all this while? If I had told the truth, he would have died years ago."
I absorb those words and I know what they are saying though I missed the revelation when it was spoken.
"When will you tell him?"
"You heartless witch. Why would I tell him now? After all he's believed all this time… I cannot take that away from him the way you took it away from me. I can never forgive you for what you've done to my memories. I can't forgive you the bridges I burned based on your lies."
I walk away. I sit in the closet in the nursery for a long time while I let it all sink in. I am thrown. I cannot even think on how others will react to the revelation. When the door opens, it is Danei with a disbelieving face. "They said you were in here but when I looked the first time, you weren't. What magic do you wield that you can appear out of thin air?"
"You were looking for me?" I ask as I climb out, still unsure what to do with the information that I barely have. I think I know but I cannot presume to know anything for certain.
"Yes. I have found six more words based off the one you taught me. I told you I could learn more than you could." She drags me out of the nursery and into the library. It's a long walk with her as giddy as she is and me as ill as I feel. She opens the book and lays it next to her notes. "These words always appear together. I figured it was a grouping. Related like the puzzles Commander Rath used to play with us when we were younger. Gida is Father. Meda is Mother. Nebes is children, I think because there are several variations on nebes. Nebes, nebe, nebei, nebea. Children or child or son or daughter. I don't have gender figured out."
"That's only three and I taught you the first one. The other three don't count if they're variants of the third word."
"You think you're so clever but I do have more." She points to her notes. "This word confused me at first but I think it is first. This one is second. That's two words. Du and Dua."
"And the sixth word?"
"Um… Oh! This one is easy. I figured it out first. Antarian. See. The alphabet and pronunciation rules are different so it doesn't look the same but when you put it together it makes sense… which brings me to word seven. Tirera." She points out the word. "I learned six more words than you did. Ha!"
"Good work." My mind reels. It is such an ancient work but already it mentions both our people. What did the Tirera think of Antarians all those years ago?
"That's all you have to say? I just proved I was smarter than you and you don't care." She scoffs and rises with the book to leave.
"I have a lot on my mind, Danei."
"You could tell me about it. I could help. Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I can't be of use."
"I know. You're right… but right now. I need you to work on the book. That's how you can be of use. Whatever you find out, tell me first. Okay?"
"Avery? Is everything okay?"
"Everything will be." I promise her with a kiss to her forehead. "Be good for Father. Watch after the little ones."
"Avery…" Her voice makes me look her in the eyes. "Promise me that when you find whoever did it, that you'll make them pay."
"Once I find out who it is, I'll tell you and we'll decide together."
Present Day. Liz's Chambers.
I open the door and sit without greeting. Liz is busy putting away laundry. Vlastina sleeps in her cradle next to the bed. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." She breathes out heavily. "How are you? Are they making it difficult for you?"
"Everyone is making it difficult for me." I reply with a smile. If only she knew everything I've learned since the investigation began. "Could you finish telling me the origin story?"
"Which one?"
"The Tirera origin story. You were telling me how they marched up the mountain and were greeted by the Y'Antari on the top." I lead her.
"Don't you have other things to be doing?"
"I need a break and I'm curious." I fix her with my best pout. "Shouldn't I know the stories of both my people?"
She rolls her eyes and sits down with me. "Fine. Where was I? On the mountain, huh…"
Long, long ago.
They say she was quite a beauty, the native that was brave enough to approach Cherin and her children. Eyes like the bluest waters, hair that flamed like fire. It was Max, the oldest of Cherin's sons, who made the first move, holding his hand out to the girl. She was very young in comparison to his fifty or so years. She sniffed his hand, her hair falling all over his arm. She took his hand and placed it on her breast. Startled, Max jerked his hand back. The sharp movement made her cower before him like a struck animal. Cherin tried to remedy the situation and took off her robe to place on the girl's nude body. She introduced her children to the girl. Max, Devon, Alexandria and Lydia. The girl was more fascinated by the robe than the words Cherin spoke.
The girl examined every inch of the robe, sliding the fabric over her bare skin. She reached out and touched the clothes Cherin wore. Touched Cherin's hair and face. This time, Max knelt and let the girl examine his hair and clothes. When the girl turned to her fellow natives, they still cowered in the high mountain jungles. She called to them but they refused to come out. The words sounded to Cherin's children like the calls of a bird. When the girl tried to return to the jungles, her people appeared out of nowhere and blocked her path. She had been cast out of her tribe.
With a heavy heart, mourning her poor decision to clothe the girl, Cherin guided the girl with her family to their camp, half a day down the mountain. The girl was sad and refused to eat when first offered food prepared with one of Cherin's devices. Lydia, having a daughter close to the girl's age, took her into her arms and rocked her gently, singing a song to put her to sleep.
They say it was a difficult trip down the mountain due to the rain. Devon was stronger so it was he who helped Cherin down the slippery slopes, leaving the girl to Max. The four-day trip up, became a six-day trip down. When they rested, Cherin tried to talk to the girl but she wouldn't speak even her own language. Cherin began to call her Selene, as when it came nightfall, she would sing herself to sleep as Lydia had done the first night.
Lydia took Selene into her home as a surrogate daughter. Cherin discussed the tribes on the mountain with her husband. They both agreed that further trips to the top would have to be more careful. They were going to study Selene to decipher as much of her language as possible. To form a primer for future expeditions. Max, the resident instructor, took to the task of teaching the language of Tirera as well as learning what he could of the native tongue.
Present Day. Liz's Chambers.
I wait for Liz to go on but she stares into nothing. "Liz?"
"Oh. Maybe that's enough for today."
"Tell me."
"It's a lot of speculation." She shrugs. "Michael and Edward were the two youngest sons. Unmarried. They headed the future expeditions up the mountain. Selene stayed with the Tirera in the plains."
"Come on. There has to be more to it than that."
"Avery. I'm tired. Can't this wait for another day?"
"Why must it?"
"Impatient." She scolds and kisses my face. "Always impatient, my Avery."
"Please? Then I will leave you alone."
"The expeditions began to last longer and longer with very little to report. Cherin was suspicious but there was so much going on everywhere. Her people were roaming free across the lands, setting up their homes and arguing over property lines… and whatever else it is that people do to destroy the peaceful lands."
"Why was she suspicious?" I press.
"They say that…" She takes a breath. "That her son Max, stopped traveling with his family. His children were grown, starting families of their own. His wife had become bitter but Cherin did not know why. They say that he became infatuated with young Selene, who was by all accounts a beautiful young woman. Too young for the aged and aging Max II. Max III had children more than half the supposed age of the native girl."
"What happened?" I asked softly.
"It depends on who tells the story but… they all end the same. If he seduced her or if she seduced him. They made love and he died. His heart stopped. They all agree that Selene ran screaming from the hut Max used to teach her Tirera ways. They all agree that his body was found nude in the hut. No device could help. He was gone." Liz takes my hand in hers. "Selene was very soon afterward found to be pregnant. Max's widow wanted nothing to do with the child or the one in her womb. Lydia would have nothing more to do with the girl. It was Max's brother David who took her into his home."
"David?"
"A very old name in my world, Avery." She smiles at me. "David had studied the cone his whole life, just like his mother. He took in his brother's mistress and afterward, raised the child as one of his own. Selene died during childbirth. No device could explain why. There was much going on. Cherin greeted her youngest grandchild as she had all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The boy with the eyes that changed in the light. Mostly his father's grey but sometimes his mother's blue."
"Did the boy ever know that he was from two worlds?"
"I don't know. I imagine someone told him."
Long, long ago.
They say it was Michael who finally reported to Cherin that the people on the mountain were not as standoffish as previously believed. They needed only to be shown that Tirera were worthy of their presence. Michael was Cherin's beloved youngest and most impetuous child. 30 years old and embodied the explorer's spirit, almost as proof that he had been within his mother's body when she had made the flight out of their home world.
They say that when he returned from his expeditions, he first visited with the cone. They say that his stays at home were short. His expeditions were long and always began with a visit with the cone. It was months before anyone had an inkling what he was doing on the mountain. Alexandria followed him up the mountain. She watched him visit with mostly the native women. She hid and watched when one took him to her home, barely a nest in a small grove. He took something from his bag and placed it in a bowl. The girl pulled a flower from a vine. It was larger than her head but she pulled it open and poured its nectar into the bowl. She blended the mixture with a rock. Each drank half, and then fell onto each other in a lustful frenzy.
Alexandria fled, meeting Tirera after Tirera in the native village. Realizing what must be going on, she braved the descent to inform her mother. Cherin was not happy when she learned her sons were using the natives for sport. That they had made discoveries about properties on the mountain and not given them proper study before employing them in such a base way.
Max, Cherin's husband, was disappointed when he learned that his youngest son had taken not one but six native wives. Edward had seven, himself. When it was discovered that several other families' sons had taken lovers among the natives, employing the modified nectars to prevent death, as had occurred with Max II, Max forbade any further forays up the mountain.
Several months later, a woman came down the mountain. She was heavy with child. She spoke one word before she fainted dead away. Michael, as he was the father of her child. She was rushed to a home where she was looked after until she came to. Cherin sent for Michael but he refused to sit by his lover's bedside. The woman's yellow eyes seemed to fade and Max took a weapon and forced his son to enter the hut to be with the mother of his future offspring. When the labor had begun, she clutched at Michael's hands and face, screaming as the baby entered the world. A glow surrounded them and Michael began to scream.
Present Day. Liz's Chambers.
Liz rises and paces the room. "I was never quite clear on what it meant but Max doctored Michael. His body had weakened during the labor while the woman's had seemed not to wane at all. They say she walked hours after the birth of a child with eyes somewhere between her yellow and Michael's brown. She said something to Michael in her own tongue and began the journey up the mountain, alone. When Michael had fully recovered, Max saw his youngest son to the base of the mountain and told him never to return to the Tirera. He had broken the laws. He was not a man by Tirera law. He would have to be present in the event one of his other five native wives were also pregnant."
"The woman was a healer." I whisper in awe. In all the records at my disposal, there has never been a woman with the ability to heal. There have never been any healers outside the royal line.
"I suppose so. That makes sense." She shrugs and continues her walk from one end of the room to the other. "I've not really thought on the origin story in years. I suppose that more of it makes sense now that I know the Y'Antari so well."
"Well, how did things progress?"
"Rapidly it seems. Over the course of a few years, Selene's son was rapidly becoming a heart-stealer like his father and his father before him. He learned just as fast as any Tirera. David had no sons and named him David. Max was saddened that he would not be Max as well but David had learned to hate the name. He rarely called his father by his given name, so he rarely had an excuse to use the name at all. Young David grew normal as any Tirera. He was taught only Tirera but he picked out Y'Antari when he heard it spoken."
"How was it forgotten?"
"How any language is forgotten, I suppose. Lack of use. If the Tirera don't interact with Y'Antari, there's little need to know it." She shrugs. She does that often.
"There must have been something more to the rift between my peoples." I prod.
"You're right." She nods. "Michael was exiled to the natives. He began developing their language using the devices he had taken with him. He learned their tongue and refined it to an art. They seemed to revere him as some sort of god. He told them of his devices and of the devices at the base of the mountain where Max and Cherin stood guard. Devices that could increase the comfort of life. If the natives would just acquiesce to the Tirera, then it could be taught. It could be learned. He was a charismatic man who hypnotized the natives with his words of a perfect world. They say these natives were in the infancy of their culture."
"You mean… what exactly?"
"They had their instincts and their abilities and little else. The Tirera had been eons in evolution. Eons since their ancestors were as poor in culture as the natives were."
"So the Tirera changed the natural course of evolution for the Y'Antari."
"That is one way of putting it."
TBC
25
The Queen of Antar
Returns to her old tricks…
Present Day. Liz's chambers.
I let Liz rest for the night before returning with questions. How did it happen? Why did the races split in such a way that the Y'Antari seemed so advanced and the Tirera so primitive if it was the Y'Antari who were so new to the universe? Liz is hesitant to answer my questions. I wonder if she really knows.
"I can only tell what I was told. It wasn't a lot and my education about my own history was cut off when I came to live in the palace."
"I understand. Tell me what you do know."
Long, long ago.
David took over for Cherin at doctrine. Cherin only wished to be with all the babies that ran underfoot. She was in her late years. Her husband's health in serious decline. Still, they say she walked with God in the sunlight. The cone did not talk to David the way it talked to Cherin, they say. He tried. He followed the laws of Tirera even as his constituents built grand homes in memory of those places they missed on the home world. They had scattered across the continent, flourishing with all the machines they had brought to make the burden so much easier. Young David, son of Max II, was following in his adoptive father and grandmother's footsteps. A young man, he spent hours with the cone, listening. The gift had been bestowed on him to hear with great clarity the words of God through the cone.
She doted on him. The youngest child of her oldest son. She taught him to listen to the voice outside the cone. She taught him all the small ceremonies that the Tirera keep. Celebrations of life, death and union. Young David was a quick study, surpassing his surrogate father's studies. He took a Tirera wife and had a son of his own by the time he had reached 21. It was he who fortified the Tirera against the coming darkness.
They say, they emerged from the path in twos. Hand in hand, dancing. Fully clothed in elaborate costumes from stories passed down over generations. More beautiful than any Tirera with their gleaming hair and sparkling eyes. Michael was at the end of the procession. Michael and his six wives and his nineteen children. All dressed in high fashion according to the stories he had favored as a child on the ship. Clearly, he sat as emperor over the natives.
Cherin threw her arms around her wayward son. Edward was jealous. He had been kept from his native wives by the mandate forbidding Tirera up the mountain. He had no more wives or children or grand costumes to show for his part in taming the natives. He fired a shot at his brother in cold blood. Michael's wives shrieked in horror and each let loose a blast of energy at Edward, the likes had never been seen amongst Tirera save for energy pistols. Edward was dead before the last blast hit him.
They say a war broke out, right then and there. The Natives had powers that equaled the pistols and canons possessed by the Tirera. A truce was demanded when Cherin stood atop the first boulder leading up the mountain. 'Stop,' she screamed. 'Let me bury my men!' Young David, weary and wounded, climbed up beside her and called out the same in the Native tongue he had learned while all the fighting had gone on.
Cherin buried Michael and Edward next to both her Maxes. Her husband having died during the fighting. Legions on both sides watched her commune with the cone for days. Young David kept watch though his family needed him. His father, David, gave up. He was not as strong a leader as his mother; he was not as spiritual as his adopted son. His father and two of his five remaining brothers were in the ground.
When her meditation with the cone was done, her grandson helped her to stand above all the people below. She said, 'The cone has spoken. The fighting must be done. We have all had our losses. I cannot bear to lose more children before their time. I cannot bear to return to my home and find I've lost grandchildren as well, or even great-grandchildren. My family is great. My friends are many. There are still more of you that I do not know. That speak a language that is strange to me though I struggle to study it as my grandson has done.'
They say young David translated every word into the refined language his uncle had devised with the Natives. The Natives listened to the sorrow in the old woman's voice. They agreed to live with the Tirera as neighbors though they mourned the loss of their Michael, who had shown them the way of civilized life.
Present Day. Liz's Chambers.
"But the peace didn't last." Liz sits on the rocker, her eyes turned to the window. "They say that although everyone tried, there were too few things that the Natives truly knew. About life, about living, about the responsibility that came with the devices."
"Like what?"
"One device that Michael had taken with him. He had used it to record the Natives speaking. It could project the evolution of the language. He used it as a primer for his refined Native-speak. They called it Y'Antari. It's a Tirera word with Native inflections. The word means roughly "native". Antar is planet in the native tongue. Y'Antari means one from planet. Y'Antaru means…"
"Ruler of planet." I nod as I start to understand my own tongue. Words are just taken for granted to mean what they mean. Dirt is dirt. Sun is sun. King is king. "Y'Anri, wife of ruler of planet."
"I suppose."
"Native. Native Ruler. Native Ruler's wife. Native People." I scoff to myself. "What happened? If they agreed to try to be neighbors?"
"It was the machines. The Y'Antari had barely mastered putting on clothes and learning. They didn't know how to do things on their own, much less without the machines. Tirera were no better but we understood the purpose of the machines. We appreciated the comforts they brought. Murders started happening. In the cover of dark, those who had machines were murdered and their machines stolen. Once released from the jungles of the mountain, they didn't want to go back. They wanted to see the planet my people had taken from them while they were too ignorant to know that's what we had done."
"Do you really see it that way?"
"I don't know anymore. The Y'Antari couldn't pick a new representative that they trusted so they communed amongst themselves and ignored any Tirera mandate. They thought themselves better than us." Liz's voice got quiet. "Cherin watched her people dying. She had brought it on her people. She had other planets without intelligent life that she could have kept them on. She had insisted. She had wanted to live on the planet around the star she had seen that night before the sky had been stolen from her 50 years before. She and young David communed with the cone. They spoke with God. There seemed to be no end to the skirmishes and jealous feuds and all the death. Taking weapons from Tirera left them open to attack from those Y'Antari with energy shooting from their hands. Fine houses were fought over even as finer houses were built. It was never ending. It was not what the Tirera were about."
"What did they do?"
"All the technology was based on one thing. The cone. They say she wept for days over her decision but it had to be done. She and young David hid the cone. The Y'Antari were angry the next morning when they found out it was gone. Cherin promised to bring it back after order was restored. There was a relative peace. Then one night, she had a dream. She woke so tired; she made young David commit it to memory. She told him what to do. What was going to happen. She made him prepare even as her body was dying."
I can't interrupt. I have to know what happens next. I have to make myself breathe while she gathers her words.
"There was a young man, no older than young David. His name was Perys. He knew the Tirera language as well as his own. They say he was one of Michael's sons. That he must have been to be so jealous of our David. To do what he did."
"What did he do?"
"The day that Cherin died, David went to the cone and committed her dreams to a scroll. Then he set about destroying the cone. The plan was that the cone would explode and after a few years, the devices would be useless. David had already been training his family and friends in the rudimentary ways of living. They were learning to do without the devices and were becoming quite proficient as is the Tirera way."
"What happened?"
"They say something must have happened. David was wounded when he returned. He told them that he had called a truce. The Tirera had to repent for the damage they had caused. The Y'Antari would kill themselves off eventually. The time would come when Tirera would live in the green lands again. Until then, we had to do without comfort. We had to wait until Cherin's dream had come to pass."
"Well? What was Cherin's dream?"
"No one knows." Liz shrugs at me. "David wouldn't say. He led our people to the far reaches and there we stayed, at first flourishing on the rich land… then dying off when it turned sour beneath us. Then it dried out and still, we persevered. Repenting with every generation's blood, sweat and tears. No one knows what really happened with the cone. No one knows what happened to the scrolls. We have waited for generations for Cherin's dream to be revealed to us. To tell us when we have suffered enough for the evils we inflicted on a naïve people."
Present Day. The Throne Room.
There are still people everywhere. Possibly more than before. Danei is flirting with that boy again. I thought I had left her working on the book but I didn't tell her how badly I wanted it translated and I can't really blame her for taking a break. I needed a break after Liz finished her story. My story. My people's origin story. The Y'Antari origin story is far more edited than hers was.
They say we lived on our sacred mountain until the strangers came. They shared their machines with us. They shared their secrets with our holy ones and then they went away, warning us of the coming plague from the stars. Other visitors who would take our lands from us. Take our freedoms.
I never believed those strangers were the Tirera. It is all ridiculous and vague. A ploy meant to mask the truth of it all. I have the blood of two peoples in my veins. Creators and Destroyers both. My healing powers come from my father, my understanding from my mother. Somehow I must reconcile myself to the ways of my father so that I may preserve the ways of my mother.
It is all too much. I sit and think about the events of the day Ava died. She had a servant ready her bath. She had Liz attend her for awhile after it was drawn. Liz did not kill her but was reportedly the last to see her. A servant is still missing. I have to find her.
Commander Rath's Quarters.
I listen as ten soldiers each report to the Commander. None of them can find the girl. I search my memory for her face. She must have been young. They usually are. Then it hits me. "Did anyone find out where the girl was from?"
"She was sent by her family." The soldier answers my question. "I don't know where from."
"That should be our starting point to find her. She must be scared. She would run to someplace familiar."
"Excusing your highness," Another young soldier steps forward. "Girls her age often visit together at the pond in the lower twenty. I would wager a girl down there would know where she went."
"Then why haven't you interrogated those girls?" I sit up.
"It's a matter of… no one is supposed to know they go there."
"Moron." Rath smacks the soldier behind the head. "Go. Bring them here." They all leave us alone and the Commander looks like he wants to explode. "Sometimes the noble born shouldn't enlist. They have a sense of propriety and manners that doesn't suit this life."
"Maybe there hasn't been too much damage done." I offer without knowing what I'm saying.
"This entire investigation worries me." Rath hands me the list of cleaning women. "They all had alibis for that day."
I shake my head and lean back to stare at the ceiling. With Liz's story in my head, I trace the route that her people must have taken up the mountain. I do not even realize that I have drifted off until a pleasant aroma is wafting below my nose. I pry open my eyes.
"Tea, your highness?" A feminine voice speaks to me.
Finally, I sit up and am greeted by the sight of Ashi holding out a steaming cup to me. "Thank you, Ashi, you are kind."
"Father has gone to interrogate the bath maid. They found her in a hut by the pond. She was waiting for a carriage to take her home." Ashi explains as she walks around straightening the war room, as ill-conceived an action as it seems. "He said you were not to be disturbed but, I would want to know if someone had found the person who knew what happened the day my mother died."
"Thank you." I tell her again.
"In any case, the children are all asleep and I feel rather restless unless I am of some use."
I sip the tea slowly. It is strong and very good. It wakes me up, for which I am grateful. I have not been sleeping much and when I am awake, I feel like I am not myself. I watch her move about. "Why have we never met before?"
"Father never takes us to the palace. We are usually at the mercy of whatever woman he's found fit to drag home." She sits on the cot and hugs his pillow to her chest. "My mother died not long after I was born. He had to remarry just to be sure I would be taken care of while he was off serving our King. I've known four stepmothers. I have several half-brothers and -sisters. I love them all dearly… I never much cared for their mothers. I know Father spent a lot of his leave time with your father. We cherish the moments we have with him. He's a good man. Misguided sometimes in what he believes we need but a good man."
"Yes. That I have seen."
"I have two brothers already enlisted with his Highness's army. Another is chomping at the bit to join. All the others are still so young." She rests her head on the pillow.
"If you find yourself with some free time… Danei is always looking for new friends. She needs someone besides me these days."
"You are much nicer than I thought you'd be." She blushes and buries her face in the pillow for a moment before she sits up and clears her throat. "I'm sorry. I just… I see you from afar. I think you must be like all the ladies and lords that my father complains about but you aren't. Not at all."
"I take that as a very great compliment. They have all been driving me mad since she died." I almost want to tell her the truth. This investigation feels more and more like a nuisance since I've discovered that it is my true mother who sits as the accused murderess. I just want it done with.
"Nothing at all like them." She smiles at me then sits bolt upright. I turn to see Commander Rath standing in the doorway.
"I found her." He tells me. "She's scared that she might be the next falsely accused."
"Say what?" I ask. Confusion surrounds me.
"It seems that she regretted ever saying that she saw Liz go into the bathing room. She says she knows that it wasn't the nursemaid. She didn't see anyone else go in or out. She saw Liz leave long before she discovered the body but there were no sounds of a struggle before then. She is afraid that if she clears the nursemaid that she is the next on the list." Rath tosses his energy weapon onto the table and I just stare at it. There's something about it that bothers me but I can't put my finger on it.
"There's nothing." I whisper at last. "If Liz didn't do it and the bath maid didn't do it? Who did? We are back at the beginning."
"The court will want to see someone hanged for this."
"I realize that but there is no one to hang, Commander."
"They want her head. They don't care if she's the murderer or not. They just want to see her gone."
"Why do so many have issue with her?" I exclaim.
"Because your father never did."
TBC
Returns to her old tricks…
Present Day. Liz's chambers.
I let Liz rest for the night before returning with questions. How did it happen? Why did the races split in such a way that the Y'Antari seemed so advanced and the Tirera so primitive if it was the Y'Antari who were so new to the universe? Liz is hesitant to answer my questions. I wonder if she really knows.
"I can only tell what I was told. It wasn't a lot and my education about my own history was cut off when I came to live in the palace."
"I understand. Tell me what you do know."
Long, long ago.
David took over for Cherin at doctrine. Cherin only wished to be with all the babies that ran underfoot. She was in her late years. Her husband's health in serious decline. Still, they say she walked with God in the sunlight. The cone did not talk to David the way it talked to Cherin, they say. He tried. He followed the laws of Tirera even as his constituents built grand homes in memory of those places they missed on the home world. They had scattered across the continent, flourishing with all the machines they had brought to make the burden so much easier. Young David, son of Max II, was following in his adoptive father and grandmother's footsteps. A young man, he spent hours with the cone, listening. The gift had been bestowed on him to hear with great clarity the words of God through the cone.
She doted on him. The youngest child of her oldest son. She taught him to listen to the voice outside the cone. She taught him all the small ceremonies that the Tirera keep. Celebrations of life, death and union. Young David was a quick study, surpassing his surrogate father's studies. He took a Tirera wife and had a son of his own by the time he had reached 21. It was he who fortified the Tirera against the coming darkness.
They say, they emerged from the path in twos. Hand in hand, dancing. Fully clothed in elaborate costumes from stories passed down over generations. More beautiful than any Tirera with their gleaming hair and sparkling eyes. Michael was at the end of the procession. Michael and his six wives and his nineteen children. All dressed in high fashion according to the stories he had favored as a child on the ship. Clearly, he sat as emperor over the natives.
Cherin threw her arms around her wayward son. Edward was jealous. He had been kept from his native wives by the mandate forbidding Tirera up the mountain. He had no more wives or children or grand costumes to show for his part in taming the natives. He fired a shot at his brother in cold blood. Michael's wives shrieked in horror and each let loose a blast of energy at Edward, the likes had never been seen amongst Tirera save for energy pistols. Edward was dead before the last blast hit him.
They say a war broke out, right then and there. The Natives had powers that equaled the pistols and canons possessed by the Tirera. A truce was demanded when Cherin stood atop the first boulder leading up the mountain. 'Stop,' she screamed. 'Let me bury my men!' Young David, weary and wounded, climbed up beside her and called out the same in the Native tongue he had learned while all the fighting had gone on.
Cherin buried Michael and Edward next to both her Maxes. Her husband having died during the fighting. Legions on both sides watched her commune with the cone for days. Young David kept watch though his family needed him. His father, David, gave up. He was not as strong a leader as his mother; he was not as spiritual as his adopted son. His father and two of his five remaining brothers were in the ground.
When her meditation with the cone was done, her grandson helped her to stand above all the people below. She said, 'The cone has spoken. The fighting must be done. We have all had our losses. I cannot bear to lose more children before their time. I cannot bear to return to my home and find I've lost grandchildren as well, or even great-grandchildren. My family is great. My friends are many. There are still more of you that I do not know. That speak a language that is strange to me though I struggle to study it as my grandson has done.'
They say young David translated every word into the refined language his uncle had devised with the Natives. The Natives listened to the sorrow in the old woman's voice. They agreed to live with the Tirera as neighbors though they mourned the loss of their Michael, who had shown them the way of civilized life.
Present Day. Liz's Chambers.
"But the peace didn't last." Liz sits on the rocker, her eyes turned to the window. "They say that although everyone tried, there were too few things that the Natives truly knew. About life, about living, about the responsibility that came with the devices."
"Like what?"
"One device that Michael had taken with him. He had used it to record the Natives speaking. It could project the evolution of the language. He used it as a primer for his refined Native-speak. They called it Y'Antari. It's a Tirera word with Native inflections. The word means roughly "native". Antar is planet in the native tongue. Y'Antari means one from planet. Y'Antaru means…"
"Ruler of planet." I nod as I start to understand my own tongue. Words are just taken for granted to mean what they mean. Dirt is dirt. Sun is sun. King is king. "Y'Anri, wife of ruler of planet."
"I suppose."
"Native. Native Ruler. Native Ruler's wife. Native People." I scoff to myself. "What happened? If they agreed to try to be neighbors?"
"It was the machines. The Y'Antari had barely mastered putting on clothes and learning. They didn't know how to do things on their own, much less without the machines. Tirera were no better but we understood the purpose of the machines. We appreciated the comforts they brought. Murders started happening. In the cover of dark, those who had machines were murdered and their machines stolen. Once released from the jungles of the mountain, they didn't want to go back. They wanted to see the planet my people had taken from them while they were too ignorant to know that's what we had done."
"Do you really see it that way?"
"I don't know anymore. The Y'Antari couldn't pick a new representative that they trusted so they communed amongst themselves and ignored any Tirera mandate. They thought themselves better than us." Liz's voice got quiet. "Cherin watched her people dying. She had brought it on her people. She had other planets without intelligent life that she could have kept them on. She had insisted. She had wanted to live on the planet around the star she had seen that night before the sky had been stolen from her 50 years before. She and young David communed with the cone. They spoke with God. There seemed to be no end to the skirmishes and jealous feuds and all the death. Taking weapons from Tirera left them open to attack from those Y'Antari with energy shooting from their hands. Fine houses were fought over even as finer houses were built. It was never ending. It was not what the Tirera were about."
"What did they do?"
"All the technology was based on one thing. The cone. They say she wept for days over her decision but it had to be done. She and young David hid the cone. The Y'Antari were angry the next morning when they found out it was gone. Cherin promised to bring it back after order was restored. There was a relative peace. Then one night, she had a dream. She woke so tired; she made young David commit it to memory. She told him what to do. What was going to happen. She made him prepare even as her body was dying."
I can't interrupt. I have to know what happens next. I have to make myself breathe while she gathers her words.
"There was a young man, no older than young David. His name was Perys. He knew the Tirera language as well as his own. They say he was one of Michael's sons. That he must have been to be so jealous of our David. To do what he did."
"What did he do?"
"The day that Cherin died, David went to the cone and committed her dreams to a scroll. Then he set about destroying the cone. The plan was that the cone would explode and after a few years, the devices would be useless. David had already been training his family and friends in the rudimentary ways of living. They were learning to do without the devices and were becoming quite proficient as is the Tirera way."
"What happened?"
"They say something must have happened. David was wounded when he returned. He told them that he had called a truce. The Tirera had to repent for the damage they had caused. The Y'Antari would kill themselves off eventually. The time would come when Tirera would live in the green lands again. Until then, we had to do without comfort. We had to wait until Cherin's dream had come to pass."
"Well? What was Cherin's dream?"
"No one knows." Liz shrugs at me. "David wouldn't say. He led our people to the far reaches and there we stayed, at first flourishing on the rich land… then dying off when it turned sour beneath us. Then it dried out and still, we persevered. Repenting with every generation's blood, sweat and tears. No one knows what really happened with the cone. No one knows what happened to the scrolls. We have waited for generations for Cherin's dream to be revealed to us. To tell us when we have suffered enough for the evils we inflicted on a naïve people."
Present Day. The Throne Room.
There are still people everywhere. Possibly more than before. Danei is flirting with that boy again. I thought I had left her working on the book but I didn't tell her how badly I wanted it translated and I can't really blame her for taking a break. I needed a break after Liz finished her story. My story. My people's origin story. The Y'Antari origin story is far more edited than hers was.
They say we lived on our sacred mountain until the strangers came. They shared their machines with us. They shared their secrets with our holy ones and then they went away, warning us of the coming plague from the stars. Other visitors who would take our lands from us. Take our freedoms.
I never believed those strangers were the Tirera. It is all ridiculous and vague. A ploy meant to mask the truth of it all. I have the blood of two peoples in my veins. Creators and Destroyers both. My healing powers come from my father, my understanding from my mother. Somehow I must reconcile myself to the ways of my father so that I may preserve the ways of my mother.
It is all too much. I sit and think about the events of the day Ava died. She had a servant ready her bath. She had Liz attend her for awhile after it was drawn. Liz did not kill her but was reportedly the last to see her. A servant is still missing. I have to find her.
Commander Rath's Quarters.
I listen as ten soldiers each report to the Commander. None of them can find the girl. I search my memory for her face. She must have been young. They usually are. Then it hits me. "Did anyone find out where the girl was from?"
"She was sent by her family." The soldier answers my question. "I don't know where from."
"That should be our starting point to find her. She must be scared. She would run to someplace familiar."
"Excusing your highness," Another young soldier steps forward. "Girls her age often visit together at the pond in the lower twenty. I would wager a girl down there would know where she went."
"Then why haven't you interrogated those girls?" I sit up.
"It's a matter of… no one is supposed to know they go there."
"Moron." Rath smacks the soldier behind the head. "Go. Bring them here." They all leave us alone and the Commander looks like he wants to explode. "Sometimes the noble born shouldn't enlist. They have a sense of propriety and manners that doesn't suit this life."
"Maybe there hasn't been too much damage done." I offer without knowing what I'm saying.
"This entire investigation worries me." Rath hands me the list of cleaning women. "They all had alibis for that day."
I shake my head and lean back to stare at the ceiling. With Liz's story in my head, I trace the route that her people must have taken up the mountain. I do not even realize that I have drifted off until a pleasant aroma is wafting below my nose. I pry open my eyes.
"Tea, your highness?" A feminine voice speaks to me.
Finally, I sit up and am greeted by the sight of Ashi holding out a steaming cup to me. "Thank you, Ashi, you are kind."
"Father has gone to interrogate the bath maid. They found her in a hut by the pond. She was waiting for a carriage to take her home." Ashi explains as she walks around straightening the war room, as ill-conceived an action as it seems. "He said you were not to be disturbed but, I would want to know if someone had found the person who knew what happened the day my mother died."
"Thank you." I tell her again.
"In any case, the children are all asleep and I feel rather restless unless I am of some use."
I sip the tea slowly. It is strong and very good. It wakes me up, for which I am grateful. I have not been sleeping much and when I am awake, I feel like I am not myself. I watch her move about. "Why have we never met before?"
"Father never takes us to the palace. We are usually at the mercy of whatever woman he's found fit to drag home." She sits on the cot and hugs his pillow to her chest. "My mother died not long after I was born. He had to remarry just to be sure I would be taken care of while he was off serving our King. I've known four stepmothers. I have several half-brothers and -sisters. I love them all dearly… I never much cared for their mothers. I know Father spent a lot of his leave time with your father. We cherish the moments we have with him. He's a good man. Misguided sometimes in what he believes we need but a good man."
"Yes. That I have seen."
"I have two brothers already enlisted with his Highness's army. Another is chomping at the bit to join. All the others are still so young." She rests her head on the pillow.
"If you find yourself with some free time… Danei is always looking for new friends. She needs someone besides me these days."
"You are much nicer than I thought you'd be." She blushes and buries her face in the pillow for a moment before she sits up and clears her throat. "I'm sorry. I just… I see you from afar. I think you must be like all the ladies and lords that my father complains about but you aren't. Not at all."
"I take that as a very great compliment. They have all been driving me mad since she died." I almost want to tell her the truth. This investigation feels more and more like a nuisance since I've discovered that it is my true mother who sits as the accused murderess. I just want it done with.
"Nothing at all like them." She smiles at me then sits bolt upright. I turn to see Commander Rath standing in the doorway.
"I found her." He tells me. "She's scared that she might be the next falsely accused."
"Say what?" I ask. Confusion surrounds me.
"It seems that she regretted ever saying that she saw Liz go into the bathing room. She says she knows that it wasn't the nursemaid. She didn't see anyone else go in or out. She saw Liz leave long before she discovered the body but there were no sounds of a struggle before then. She is afraid that if she clears the nursemaid that she is the next on the list." Rath tosses his energy weapon onto the table and I just stare at it. There's something about it that bothers me but I can't put my finger on it.
"There's nothing." I whisper at last. "If Liz didn't do it and the bath maid didn't do it? Who did? We are back at the beginning."
"The court will want to see someone hanged for this."
"I realize that but there is no one to hang, Commander."
"They want her head. They don't care if she's the murderer or not. They just want to see her gone."
"Why do so many have issue with her?" I exclaim.
"Because your father never did."
TBC
The Queen of Antar
Eludes them all…
Present Day. King Zan's garden.
After I give my report to him, he seems to sink into depression. It seems hopeless. "There is something that we are missing."
"I know." I tell him. "There is something that Commander Rath and I want to consider."
"What's that?"
"Maybe she drowned accidentally but that she, in fact, was murdered before that occurred."
"Explain."
"Maybe she had been poisoned before she went in for her bath. That the poison went to work when she sent her bath maid away. That it killed her or made her sleep and then she drowned."
"How do we prove that?"
"We have to submit her body for tests."
"That's sacrilege." He breathes out but straightens. "But it might be the only way to exonerate Liz."
"My thoughts as well." I start to leave to give the order but I know Commander Rath is already giving it, anticipating my father's decree. "Father…"
"Avery?" He turns to look at me.
"If… the bonding between Y'Antari was so painful the first time, why wasn't it later on?" I only hope I don't have to explain further. There are things I know too much of but there are things I do not know, that I wish to keep from my knowledge.
"I often ponder the same thing. After… I nearly died the first time, when we were married… It just ceased to be an issue. Any conception of a child was done without pain, without all the evils things I was told would happen if ever Y'Antari and Tirera were ever to be together. And we did so without the aid of nectar after the marriage was consummated."
17 Years ago. The Nursery.
I held my daughter in my arms by the window. She napped with her head on my shoulder. She was so big, she hardly fit in my arms anymore. Liz was busy playing with my little prince, teaching him to talk in proper sentences. When she took our child from my arms to place in her crib, I couldn't resist pulling her to me. She blushed like a young girl and moved away. I couldn't help but follow. Then she took my hands in hers. She hesitated to look up into my face. "I have something to tell you."
"Oh?"
"I'm not sure how you're going to like what I am going to say." She hid those beautiful brown eyes from me.
"I like anything you say so long as it is to me."
"I hope so." Her big brown eyes met mine and I almost lost myself. "I am pregnant."
My mouth went dry. We were newly married. We'd hardly had a chance to be together since realizing what we were to each other and then I recalled the images from my recovery. Some I thought were only a dream. Some were more real than anything I had ever felt in my life. I realized in that moment that every single one of them had actually happened. I had created life once more with the angel who had saved my life. In saving my life and joining her life with mine, we had created a new life.
I knelt before her and pulled her close. I pressed my face to her belly, then I felt her hand in my hair. A hesitant touch that soon welcomed me in warm invitation.
--
I watched the grounds as they bustled with activity for some festival or another. That's when it hit me that while Liz being pregnant was a blessing, it was also complicated given the state of affairs. A shared look with Bawo in the chapel, proved that we had our work cut out for us. Bawo demanded that Ava be suddenly sickened and done with. She wanted Liz on the throne next to me. I wanted that but I could not presume that Liz would want that life. It had to be her decision because so little had been left up to her.
It would be complicated if she chose to be my queen. We would have to hide her avoidance of nectar. We would be subject to scrutiny to all those who were just beginning to trust my regime. If ever it slipped out that Liz was Tirera, they could turn on me. My own soldiers might turn against me. Traveling would put us all in danger. Myself, my love, my children. There were now three to think of.
"You will set that field on fire if you do not stop staring at it." The sound of her voice had me captivated. All thoughts flew out of my head. She lifted my firstborn for his kiss. Then he ran off to wreak havoc on the guards. Then my darling girl. With two perfect children, one of each sex… I couldn't even fathom thinking which one I would prefer come next.
We were careful not to touch where others could see us but I couldn't take my eyes off of her. Mother of my third child. My mind kept running over and over that thought. "Every time you look at me, I am on fire."
"Your highness." She breathed out and I closed my eyes. She couldn't call me by name in public. "Your highness?"
"We have much to discuss with Bawo Lodona."
"I haven't told her." She whispered, she avoided my eyes. I could only stare at her. I had assumed that Bawo had told her that she was pregnant. She sighed heavily and turned her eyes to watch the boy run around. "Sometimes I don't trust her. She's been following me around with that crystal for weeks and I've been hiding from her." Then she smiled. "Then my flow didn't come and continued to not come. My people knew how to find that out without the use of crystals… and that's what that means."
I pulled her with me into the corridor, which I found to be empty. I prepared myself for a healing but instead, I placed my hand over her belly. It glowed. That happened the first time. I kissed her forehead. "I had to be sure." I had to kiss her lips and pray no one walked up the corridor in that instant.
Present Day. King Zan's garden.
"You always did spoil Killae." I cut in.
"I have reason to spoil every child of mine. You were the first, I spoiled you most because of the way things happened with your mother. I spoiled Danei because she was first girl and… because things were so… tentative. I spoiled Killae because he was first legitimate. The first pregnancy where she welcomed my touches and shared my bed and I knew she loved me. Bev was the first conceived under desirable circumstances. I spoiled all." He smiles broadly. "Peyta because she happened in Xelan. Jaif… was named after his grandfather. Anson who is so like Bawo. Regei because he is my youngest son. Vlastina because she is likely to be my last child."
"Liz decided that?"
"Yes, she did." He laughs. "I can't hardly blame her. I've fought wars. Died a time or two. She… just… I get tired with more than three of you hopping all over me. She could deal with you all at the same time." Then his face sobers. He turns to me. "We're going to fix this. Then she's going to live out her days as my queen and treated thusly. I love her more than anything."
"She won't let you." I warn him with a smile. Liz never thinks of herself.
Present Day. Queen Ava's Bathing Room.
Commander Rath crosses his arms and sits on the vanity bench. I sit on the rim of the tub. The bath maid paces. "Queen Ava had her rituals. I was instructed implicitly in them and when she wished them changed, I had to keep up with her demands. Six months ago, she decided that she would rather wash herself without me in the room. It was routine for me to wash her hair and then I would leave until she would call for me. Sometimes she calls me immediately. Other times she has me pour oils in the water before I leave and she will call for me after an hour."
"What happened that day?" Rath prompts
"She was late to rise. She insisted on having her breakfast in bed. I brought it up to her. I brushed her hair while she ate. She went out into the gardens and I got her rooms cleaned. It was noon when she came back up for her bath. I washed her hair and poured the oils. Then I called the nursemaid in." She wrings her hands as she paces. "I never saw her leave but I heard her walk out and when Y'Anri did not call me back in for so much longer than usual, I went in to check on her. That's when I found her in the bath… lying face down."
"Was there water outside the bath tub?" Rath asks as he studies the room.
"Only on the side against the wall. I stand there when I wash her hair. I always splash water and she always yells at me."
"Talk to the cooks. Find out who prepared her breakfast and her lunch that day." I tell him and then turn to her. "Do not run away again. I don't care how scared you are. We need you as a witness."
"A witness? But I didn't see anything." She burst out and then immediately fell to her knees. "I'm so sorry, your highness."
"Do not be sorry." I tell her. "Be patient. It may take time to bring anyone to trial."
"But not her. Not the nursemaid." She throws herself at my legs. "Please. She patches me up afterward. Every time. Please. She could not have done it."
"After what?" I kneel down to look at the scared girl's face. I see the marks of fading bruises. "She didn't just yell at you when you spilled the water, did she?"
"I'm so sorry." She cries, tears spilling down her face. "I would never say such a thing if it weren't important. The nursemaid came to me when I first started working here. She knew. She just knew and she helped me be rid of them. She said, it is this way sometimes. If his highness found out, something bad might happen. I promised but I can't let her hang for doing nothing but being kind."
Commander Rath's War Room
Father stares at us in disbelief. "That poor girl. This whole time?" I nod. "And Liz knew about it?"
"She said that Liz was afraid you'd do something terrible if you found out." Rath nods to us both. "It seems that the beatings were not frequent in the beginning. Once a season or so. But of late, they were every day."
"Why wouldn't she tell me if she knew this was going on?"
"What would you have done? Beat her?" I ask. Father has that murderous expression on his face. "Liz was trying to keep you from doing what you've been aching to do all along."
"What are we to do?"
"Confess that you murdered her." Rath clears his throat. "You alone are invulnerable to the courts. You alone can have this be done with."
"Wait for the autopsy." Father orders. "If there is nothing to be found, I will confess everything I did."
"They will ask why you waited so long. It will shine a brighter light onto Liz." I comment. They absorb that. I have to go see what Bawo has found.
"They will ask why I would keep Liz in the dark. What is special about her." Father muses allowed. "They will want to know where she comes from. They will examine all my actions. They will know about the water treatments in Parkston. They will know I did it for her."
"Father. Calm down. No one will know. We just need to stave off the courts a while longer."
tbc
Eludes them all…
Present Day. King Zan's garden.
After I give my report to him, he seems to sink into depression. It seems hopeless. "There is something that we are missing."
"I know." I tell him. "There is something that Commander Rath and I want to consider."
"What's that?"
"Maybe she drowned accidentally but that she, in fact, was murdered before that occurred."
"Explain."
"Maybe she had been poisoned before she went in for her bath. That the poison went to work when she sent her bath maid away. That it killed her or made her sleep and then she drowned."
"How do we prove that?"
"We have to submit her body for tests."
"That's sacrilege." He breathes out but straightens. "But it might be the only way to exonerate Liz."
"My thoughts as well." I start to leave to give the order but I know Commander Rath is already giving it, anticipating my father's decree. "Father…"
"Avery?" He turns to look at me.
"If… the bonding between Y'Antari was so painful the first time, why wasn't it later on?" I only hope I don't have to explain further. There are things I know too much of but there are things I do not know, that I wish to keep from my knowledge.
"I often ponder the same thing. After… I nearly died the first time, when we were married… It just ceased to be an issue. Any conception of a child was done without pain, without all the evils things I was told would happen if ever Y'Antari and Tirera were ever to be together. And we did so without the aid of nectar after the marriage was consummated."
17 Years ago. The Nursery.
I held my daughter in my arms by the window. She napped with her head on my shoulder. She was so big, she hardly fit in my arms anymore. Liz was busy playing with my little prince, teaching him to talk in proper sentences. When she took our child from my arms to place in her crib, I couldn't resist pulling her to me. She blushed like a young girl and moved away. I couldn't help but follow. Then she took my hands in hers. She hesitated to look up into my face. "I have something to tell you."
"Oh?"
"I'm not sure how you're going to like what I am going to say." She hid those beautiful brown eyes from me.
"I like anything you say so long as it is to me."
"I hope so." Her big brown eyes met mine and I almost lost myself. "I am pregnant."
My mouth went dry. We were newly married. We'd hardly had a chance to be together since realizing what we were to each other and then I recalled the images from my recovery. Some I thought were only a dream. Some were more real than anything I had ever felt in my life. I realized in that moment that every single one of them had actually happened. I had created life once more with the angel who had saved my life. In saving my life and joining her life with mine, we had created a new life.
I knelt before her and pulled her close. I pressed my face to her belly, then I felt her hand in my hair. A hesitant touch that soon welcomed me in warm invitation.
--
I watched the grounds as they bustled with activity for some festival or another. That's when it hit me that while Liz being pregnant was a blessing, it was also complicated given the state of affairs. A shared look with Bawo in the chapel, proved that we had our work cut out for us. Bawo demanded that Ava be suddenly sickened and done with. She wanted Liz on the throne next to me. I wanted that but I could not presume that Liz would want that life. It had to be her decision because so little had been left up to her.
It would be complicated if she chose to be my queen. We would have to hide her avoidance of nectar. We would be subject to scrutiny to all those who were just beginning to trust my regime. If ever it slipped out that Liz was Tirera, they could turn on me. My own soldiers might turn against me. Traveling would put us all in danger. Myself, my love, my children. There were now three to think of.
"You will set that field on fire if you do not stop staring at it." The sound of her voice had me captivated. All thoughts flew out of my head. She lifted my firstborn for his kiss. Then he ran off to wreak havoc on the guards. Then my darling girl. With two perfect children, one of each sex… I couldn't even fathom thinking which one I would prefer come next.
We were careful not to touch where others could see us but I couldn't take my eyes off of her. Mother of my third child. My mind kept running over and over that thought. "Every time you look at me, I am on fire."
"Your highness." She breathed out and I closed my eyes. She couldn't call me by name in public. "Your highness?"
"We have much to discuss with Bawo Lodona."
"I haven't told her." She whispered, she avoided my eyes. I could only stare at her. I had assumed that Bawo had told her that she was pregnant. She sighed heavily and turned her eyes to watch the boy run around. "Sometimes I don't trust her. She's been following me around with that crystal for weeks and I've been hiding from her." Then she smiled. "Then my flow didn't come and continued to not come. My people knew how to find that out without the use of crystals… and that's what that means."
I pulled her with me into the corridor, which I found to be empty. I prepared myself for a healing but instead, I placed my hand over her belly. It glowed. That happened the first time. I kissed her forehead. "I had to be sure." I had to kiss her lips and pray no one walked up the corridor in that instant.
Present Day. King Zan's garden.
"You always did spoil Killae." I cut in.
"I have reason to spoil every child of mine. You were the first, I spoiled you most because of the way things happened with your mother. I spoiled Danei because she was first girl and… because things were so… tentative. I spoiled Killae because he was first legitimate. The first pregnancy where she welcomed my touches and shared my bed and I knew she loved me. Bev was the first conceived under desirable circumstances. I spoiled all." He smiles broadly. "Peyta because she happened in Xelan. Jaif… was named after his grandfather. Anson who is so like Bawo. Regei because he is my youngest son. Vlastina because she is likely to be my last child."
"Liz decided that?"
"Yes, she did." He laughs. "I can't hardly blame her. I've fought wars. Died a time or two. She… just… I get tired with more than three of you hopping all over me. She could deal with you all at the same time." Then his face sobers. He turns to me. "We're going to fix this. Then she's going to live out her days as my queen and treated thusly. I love her more than anything."
"She won't let you." I warn him with a smile. Liz never thinks of herself.
Present Day. Queen Ava's Bathing Room.
Commander Rath crosses his arms and sits on the vanity bench. I sit on the rim of the tub. The bath maid paces. "Queen Ava had her rituals. I was instructed implicitly in them and when she wished them changed, I had to keep up with her demands. Six months ago, she decided that she would rather wash herself without me in the room. It was routine for me to wash her hair and then I would leave until she would call for me. Sometimes she calls me immediately. Other times she has me pour oils in the water before I leave and she will call for me after an hour."
"What happened that day?" Rath prompts
"She was late to rise. She insisted on having her breakfast in bed. I brought it up to her. I brushed her hair while she ate. She went out into the gardens and I got her rooms cleaned. It was noon when she came back up for her bath. I washed her hair and poured the oils. Then I called the nursemaid in." She wrings her hands as she paces. "I never saw her leave but I heard her walk out and when Y'Anri did not call me back in for so much longer than usual, I went in to check on her. That's when I found her in the bath… lying face down."
"Was there water outside the bath tub?" Rath asks as he studies the room.
"Only on the side against the wall. I stand there when I wash her hair. I always splash water and she always yells at me."
"Talk to the cooks. Find out who prepared her breakfast and her lunch that day." I tell him and then turn to her. "Do not run away again. I don't care how scared you are. We need you as a witness."
"A witness? But I didn't see anything." She burst out and then immediately fell to her knees. "I'm so sorry, your highness."
"Do not be sorry." I tell her. "Be patient. It may take time to bring anyone to trial."
"But not her. Not the nursemaid." She throws herself at my legs. "Please. She patches me up afterward. Every time. Please. She could not have done it."
"After what?" I kneel down to look at the scared girl's face. I see the marks of fading bruises. "She didn't just yell at you when you spilled the water, did she?"
"I'm so sorry." She cries, tears spilling down her face. "I would never say such a thing if it weren't important. The nursemaid came to me when I first started working here. She knew. She just knew and she helped me be rid of them. She said, it is this way sometimes. If his highness found out, something bad might happen. I promised but I can't let her hang for doing nothing but being kind."
Commander Rath's War Room
Father stares at us in disbelief. "That poor girl. This whole time?" I nod. "And Liz knew about it?"
"She said that Liz was afraid you'd do something terrible if you found out." Rath nods to us both. "It seems that the beatings were not frequent in the beginning. Once a season or so. But of late, they were every day."
"Why wouldn't she tell me if she knew this was going on?"
"What would you have done? Beat her?" I ask. Father has that murderous expression on his face. "Liz was trying to keep you from doing what you've been aching to do all along."
"What are we to do?"
"Confess that you murdered her." Rath clears his throat. "You alone are invulnerable to the courts. You alone can have this be done with."
"Wait for the autopsy." Father orders. "If there is nothing to be found, I will confess everything I did."
"They will ask why you waited so long. It will shine a brighter light onto Liz." I comment. They absorb that. I have to go see what Bawo has found.
"They will ask why I would keep Liz in the dark. What is special about her." Father muses allowed. "They will want to know where she comes from. They will examine all my actions. They will know about the water treatments in Parkston. They will know I did it for her."
"Father. Calm down. No one will know. We just need to stave off the courts a while longer."
tbc
The Queen of Antar
Is trapped…
Bawo's Chambers.
She moves about gathering crystals and powders. "The body will have thawed some and I can do my tests to see if she was poisoned."
"Do you believe she was?"
"If she was, I would be the first suspect." She turns to me with a strange smile. "Would I be hanged if I confessed?"
"You would have taken the credit first off."
"That I would." Her flippant manner would be unsettling even if I knew the depths of which she hated Ava. I'm sure that I have hardly scratched the surface of the old woman's feelings.
I lean on a chest and watch her fiddle with some bowls in her closet. "Something wrong?"
"My… someone has been in here." She moved some bowls around. "I haven't seen my closet in such disarray in…"
"What's that?" I straighten.
"21 years." She tosses a bowl to the ground, it shatters and nectar smears on the stone floors. "That harlot!" She sniffs another and tosses it to the ground. I follow when she storms out of her chapel and into the chamber where the guards part in fear of her fury. She jabs a needle into the body and yanks it out. She tosses a powder on it then places a crystal over her eyes.
"Bawo. What is it?"
"I need to speak to your father."
"I am the investigator. I am the Champion."
"You are in charge of finding a killer. I need to speak to my King."
The Corridors.
I pace and wait. No one will let me into the room where Father and Bawo Lodona are discussing something so quietly, I can hear the field mice over their voices. Danei finds me with a huge grin on her face. "You have no idea what you've found. This is amazing."
"What are you talking about?"
"The book." She drags me down to where she'd been studying. There are pages all over the place with scribbles in phonetics that make no sense to me. "It's a prophecy. It's also a journal but listen to this." She scrambles around the desk on her hands and knees looking for a sheet. "They say our people will rise again. They will come into power with the child. The child will lead our people into the light once again. The child will be of pure blood, descendent of our greatest leaders. Out of the deserts and into the jungles and onto the throne by birth rite."
"Huh…" Riddles. Always more riddles.
"That's from the first few pages. The later pages are clearly a journal of someone who is leaving sanity." Very unladylike moving around the desk like a monkey. She's obviously been obsessed with this text for days. Since I gave her the assignment. "At first it talks about a fight with a close relative but I don't know how close. There aren't specifics. The more it rambles, the more it seems like a war or a feud and not just like a squabble type of fight. Towards the end it seems like the other party was near death and it was only the touch of a healer that he escaped with his life and without the Granilith."
"It says that?" She has my full attention. She doesn't know the specifics and neither do I but I know the back story. "Cousins. They were cousins."
"I think you're right." She starts scribbling. "They wanted possession of the Granilith but only one could have it. The prophecy is one the injured cousin made before he walked into the desert."
"They injured each other during the battles and they were last standing over the Granilith. He showed mercy and let his cousin live."
"How do you suppose it will happen? Tirera walking in from the deserts and into the jungles to rule as they did before." She sits on the floor and stares at the ceiling. "Will they come in droves? Just march in and take over."
"It says one. A child." I point out as I study her nearly illegible notes. "The child will take over by birth rite."
"And not by sword. The child has his or her work cut out. Taking this land from Father will take great spirit indeed."
"It is probably a burden the child does not want." I sink down beside her.
"Is that how you feel?" She stares at me with those big eyes. "If something ever happens to Father, you will be the one to take his throne. Does it scare you?"
"It concerns me. I have a lot to learn, still. I may never be ready to do for our world as Father does." I look her in the eyes. "He was a year older than I am now when his father died. When he had to take the throne with his bride. I don't even have a woman in mind."
"Why do you look so worried?"
"Because the pressure is so great, Danei. I have to think the right way. I have to choose my wife the right way. I have to… be everything to everyone at the same time or else there is no point in me doing it at all."
"Don't feel that way."
"We have it easy. Father and Liz taught us all the proper ways to behave. The proper ways to think. Father did not grow up with anything that easy. He had to carve it out for himself." I think about the way it must have been for him. "Hiding in the chapel. Listening to the words. Taking them and finding the rules inside himself. Learning what it must be to be good. To be refine when all around him was disappointing and wrong."
"Why would Father hide?"
"Why do you think that we have never been struck? Even when we were bad? Nothing ever more than a slap on the hand. Why we are allowed to find our own strengths? Why we are never pressured into the courts and into fields?"
I see the tears pool in her eyes and wish I had never opened my mouth. "Was he beaten?"
"And more."
"We are spoiled children." She wipes at her eyes.
"No. We are cherished children." She sits beside me and I hug her to me. "Protected from the evils around us. Shown the good even though we suspect the bad is out there, too. Always directed in the proper ways so that when we fall inside, no one knows outside."
"You sound like Mother." She sniffs. "I miss her."
I find it so hard not to shatter her illusions but it was true. Mother, Ava, had taught us that and not Liz. "Bawo examined her body. She is in discussions with Father now."
A flurry of skirts enters the library and a familiar face freezes when she spots us. "I am very sorry." She bows to us and kneels so that she is not towering over us. "Has anyone seen my father?"
"Not since yesterday, Ashi." I shake my head.
"Dairen and Jili are watching the children but…" That's when I see that she's crying. "Silvi was thrown from a horse. The attendants are with him but he needs my father."
I cannot think. Commander Rath could be anywhere. He had many things he had planned to do. I jump to my feet and pull Ashi behind me as we run down to the arena. Killae is taking charge when we arrive. They lift Silvi and carry him into a stable away from prying eyes. I toss off my robe for his bed.
"What happened?"
"Snake wandered into the arena and spooked the horse." Killae offers. "I was just going to send for you."
"Have you examined him?" I roll up my sleeves.
"My back." Silvi gasps out.
"Of course your back but how is your head?" I ask softly.
"My head?"
"Fine then. Just your back." I place a hand on his head and the other over his belly and concentrate.
"What is he doing?" I hear from behind me.
"He is helping." I know that is Danei's voice.
"Silvi, close your eyes and take deep breaths. Relax." I tell him. "Just breathe." I don’t see the insides of a person the way Father described to me that he does. I can only sense the pain. Spiritual pain is easier than physical pain but I am able to find it. I can fix it. It is more than just the back but I don't know just what. I release a cleansing breath and take my hands away. "Silvi, you will live to fall again. Be careful of your environment."
"Silvi!" Commander Rath's voice booms off the walls.
"Father! Back here." Ashi calls out. "Prince Avery—"
I stand as the Commander's robes reach the stall. "He is okay now."
"Thank you, your highness." He bows to me before he rushes in to help his son get up.
Danei and I trudge back up to the palace. Crisis averted. I feel my heartbeat returning to normal when Lady Nikas steps into our path. "Good day, Lady."
"Has his highness chosen a bride?"
I start to protest that I don't know what she's talking about when Danei squeezes my hand. I made a mistake in the last half hour. I took a young woman by the hand and pulled her with me to the arena in full view of every Lord and Lady in the palace. "We will speak later, Lady."
"What did I do?" I whisper over and over as Danei and I rush to find Father. Crisis upon crisis and I did something so stupid as to put my hands on a girl. Father has taught me well. Since I came of age, I have not danced or played with a member of the opposite sex. Always took such care not to be anyplace where it would be unseemly to be seen talking to a girl.
"Avery? Danei? What's wrong?" I hear Father say.
"Father, Avery's done something."
"What happened?"
"I touched her. I didn't mean to." I blurt out. "I was just trying to help."
"Touch who? Help who?"
Danei beats me to relate the news. "One of Commander Rath's sons was injured. His eldest daughter was searching for him, the Commander. She found us instead. Avery rushed to help, he grabbed her hand and took her with us. Lady Nikas saw. She's expecting an announcement of betrothal immediately following the end of the investigations, I just know she is."
"I will speak to the Commander. You two, stay in your rooms or in court. Do not speak to anyone."
TBC
Is trapped…
Bawo's Chambers.
She moves about gathering crystals and powders. "The body will have thawed some and I can do my tests to see if she was poisoned."
"Do you believe she was?"
"If she was, I would be the first suspect." She turns to me with a strange smile. "Would I be hanged if I confessed?"
"You would have taken the credit first off."
"That I would." Her flippant manner would be unsettling even if I knew the depths of which she hated Ava. I'm sure that I have hardly scratched the surface of the old woman's feelings.
I lean on a chest and watch her fiddle with some bowls in her closet. "Something wrong?"
"My… someone has been in here." She moved some bowls around. "I haven't seen my closet in such disarray in…"
"What's that?" I straighten.
"21 years." She tosses a bowl to the ground, it shatters and nectar smears on the stone floors. "That harlot!" She sniffs another and tosses it to the ground. I follow when she storms out of her chapel and into the chamber where the guards part in fear of her fury. She jabs a needle into the body and yanks it out. She tosses a powder on it then places a crystal over her eyes.
"Bawo. What is it?"
"I need to speak to your father."
"I am the investigator. I am the Champion."
"You are in charge of finding a killer. I need to speak to my King."
The Corridors.
I pace and wait. No one will let me into the room where Father and Bawo Lodona are discussing something so quietly, I can hear the field mice over their voices. Danei finds me with a huge grin on her face. "You have no idea what you've found. This is amazing."
"What are you talking about?"
"The book." She drags me down to where she'd been studying. There are pages all over the place with scribbles in phonetics that make no sense to me. "It's a prophecy. It's also a journal but listen to this." She scrambles around the desk on her hands and knees looking for a sheet. "They say our people will rise again. They will come into power with the child. The child will lead our people into the light once again. The child will be of pure blood, descendent of our greatest leaders. Out of the deserts and into the jungles and onto the throne by birth rite."
"Huh…" Riddles. Always more riddles.
"That's from the first few pages. The later pages are clearly a journal of someone who is leaving sanity." Very unladylike moving around the desk like a monkey. She's obviously been obsessed with this text for days. Since I gave her the assignment. "At first it talks about a fight with a close relative but I don't know how close. There aren't specifics. The more it rambles, the more it seems like a war or a feud and not just like a squabble type of fight. Towards the end it seems like the other party was near death and it was only the touch of a healer that he escaped with his life and without the Granilith."
"It says that?" She has my full attention. She doesn't know the specifics and neither do I but I know the back story. "Cousins. They were cousins."
"I think you're right." She starts scribbling. "They wanted possession of the Granilith but only one could have it. The prophecy is one the injured cousin made before he walked into the desert."
"They injured each other during the battles and they were last standing over the Granilith. He showed mercy and let his cousin live."
"How do you suppose it will happen? Tirera walking in from the deserts and into the jungles to rule as they did before." She sits on the floor and stares at the ceiling. "Will they come in droves? Just march in and take over."
"It says one. A child." I point out as I study her nearly illegible notes. "The child will take over by birth rite."
"And not by sword. The child has his or her work cut out. Taking this land from Father will take great spirit indeed."
"It is probably a burden the child does not want." I sink down beside her.
"Is that how you feel?" She stares at me with those big eyes. "If something ever happens to Father, you will be the one to take his throne. Does it scare you?"
"It concerns me. I have a lot to learn, still. I may never be ready to do for our world as Father does." I look her in the eyes. "He was a year older than I am now when his father died. When he had to take the throne with his bride. I don't even have a woman in mind."
"Why do you look so worried?"
"Because the pressure is so great, Danei. I have to think the right way. I have to choose my wife the right way. I have to… be everything to everyone at the same time or else there is no point in me doing it at all."
"Don't feel that way."
"We have it easy. Father and Liz taught us all the proper ways to behave. The proper ways to think. Father did not grow up with anything that easy. He had to carve it out for himself." I think about the way it must have been for him. "Hiding in the chapel. Listening to the words. Taking them and finding the rules inside himself. Learning what it must be to be good. To be refine when all around him was disappointing and wrong."
"Why would Father hide?"
"Why do you think that we have never been struck? Even when we were bad? Nothing ever more than a slap on the hand. Why we are allowed to find our own strengths? Why we are never pressured into the courts and into fields?"
I see the tears pool in her eyes and wish I had never opened my mouth. "Was he beaten?"
"And more."
"We are spoiled children." She wipes at her eyes.
"No. We are cherished children." She sits beside me and I hug her to me. "Protected from the evils around us. Shown the good even though we suspect the bad is out there, too. Always directed in the proper ways so that when we fall inside, no one knows outside."
"You sound like Mother." She sniffs. "I miss her."
I find it so hard not to shatter her illusions but it was true. Mother, Ava, had taught us that and not Liz. "Bawo examined her body. She is in discussions with Father now."
A flurry of skirts enters the library and a familiar face freezes when she spots us. "I am very sorry." She bows to us and kneels so that she is not towering over us. "Has anyone seen my father?"
"Not since yesterday, Ashi." I shake my head.
"Dairen and Jili are watching the children but…" That's when I see that she's crying. "Silvi was thrown from a horse. The attendants are with him but he needs my father."
I cannot think. Commander Rath could be anywhere. He had many things he had planned to do. I jump to my feet and pull Ashi behind me as we run down to the arena. Killae is taking charge when we arrive. They lift Silvi and carry him into a stable away from prying eyes. I toss off my robe for his bed.
"What happened?"
"Snake wandered into the arena and spooked the horse." Killae offers. "I was just going to send for you."
"Have you examined him?" I roll up my sleeves.
"My back." Silvi gasps out.
"Of course your back but how is your head?" I ask softly.
"My head?"
"Fine then. Just your back." I place a hand on his head and the other over his belly and concentrate.
"What is he doing?" I hear from behind me.
"He is helping." I know that is Danei's voice.
"Silvi, close your eyes and take deep breaths. Relax." I tell him. "Just breathe." I don’t see the insides of a person the way Father described to me that he does. I can only sense the pain. Spiritual pain is easier than physical pain but I am able to find it. I can fix it. It is more than just the back but I don't know just what. I release a cleansing breath and take my hands away. "Silvi, you will live to fall again. Be careful of your environment."
"Silvi!" Commander Rath's voice booms off the walls.
"Father! Back here." Ashi calls out. "Prince Avery—"
I stand as the Commander's robes reach the stall. "He is okay now."
"Thank you, your highness." He bows to me before he rushes in to help his son get up.
Danei and I trudge back up to the palace. Crisis averted. I feel my heartbeat returning to normal when Lady Nikas steps into our path. "Good day, Lady."
"Has his highness chosen a bride?"
I start to protest that I don't know what she's talking about when Danei squeezes my hand. I made a mistake in the last half hour. I took a young woman by the hand and pulled her with me to the arena in full view of every Lord and Lady in the palace. "We will speak later, Lady."
"What did I do?" I whisper over and over as Danei and I rush to find Father. Crisis upon crisis and I did something so stupid as to put my hands on a girl. Father has taught me well. Since I came of age, I have not danced or played with a member of the opposite sex. Always took such care not to be anyplace where it would be unseemly to be seen talking to a girl.
"Avery? Danei? What's wrong?" I hear Father say.
"Father, Avery's done something."
"What happened?"
"I touched her. I didn't mean to." I blurt out. "I was just trying to help."
"Touch who? Help who?"
Danei beats me to relate the news. "One of Commander Rath's sons was injured. His eldest daughter was searching for him, the Commander. She found us instead. Avery rushed to help, he grabbed her hand and took her with us. Lady Nikas saw. She's expecting an announcement of betrothal immediately following the end of the investigations, I just know she is."
"I will speak to the Commander. You two, stay in your rooms or in court. Do not speak to anyone."
TBC
The Queen of Antar
Is absolved…
Present Day. Court.
Everyone is assembled and I have no idea why. I have taken my place as Champion at the base of the dais. My lovely sisters are all lined up and seated just to the side. My brothers, trying to be strong, are to the other side. There is only one throne on the dais this day. Ava's has been removed. My stomach rumbles nervously. I just wish Father and Bawo would appear so that I may know what is going on.
Commander Rath enters the room and stands beside me. His family is gathered near to the dais, a privilege for them. He clears his throat and speaks lowly to me. "Go along with whatever is said."
The room goes silent as Father enters with Bawo, they walk straight up the middle and Father takes his seat. Bawo Lodona stands before us all and lifts her hands to the sky. We all lift our hands and bow our heads in prayer. Afterwards, we wait as Father examines his words.
"I have an announcement. It comes with the aid of our Champion, our Commander and our Bawo." His voice booms over the hall. "We've discussed the matter and examined the interviews and the evidence. We have come to the conclusion that the manner of death was not murder."
Voices begin murmuring all around us. With a wave of his hand, they were all silenced.
"It is in everyone's best interest to let the matter lie. My family aches for the loss. The nursemaid shall be removed from captivity to resume her duties. The matter is closed."
"If that whore did not murder our Queen, then how did she die?" Lady Nikas stands in the pathway.
"Upon examination of the body after all this time, a wound was found on her head." Father lies. I know he lies. "Another found on her arm." He takes a deep breath. "They were not found on initial examinations because of the water. She appears to have slipped in the bathing tub after the bath maid left. She hit her head on the rim. She was unable to keep herself from drowning in the water. It was an accidental death."
"Alibis for all individuals have panned out. There was no one in the room with the Queen." I speak aloud. I have to go along with it. I have to speak my own lies. "Liz Peyrs was nursing the youngest of our Princesses at the time of the event. There is no way she could be in two places at once."
"With that business out of the way." Father rises and gives me a look that I cannot read. I don't know what he's going to say. "I have a betrothal announcement. In six month's time, Prince Avery will wed Ashi Gweron."
I do Father proud and do not let my face show my surprise. Father had said he would take care of it. I wish he would have conferred with me before announcing to all the Granilith's creation that I am to be wed to a girl I hardly know. I take her hand when she stands beside me. She is clearly scared out of her wits. The match is acceptable. Commander Rath is a celebrated soldier. His reputation alone would guarantee his daughters’ well marriage and his sons the pick of all ladies.
The nursery.
Liz moves around with the baby as if she never had any doubt the outcome of the day. She probably didn't have a single one. Her only worries were not about her own life. They were about us. "Father betrothed me to Ashi."
"Ashi?" Liz picks up her head. "Isn't she Commander Rath's daughter?"
"Yes."
"Do you know her? I mean… have you met?"
"A time or two."
She nods to herself, blinks and then looks to me. "You will match well."
"He didn't consult me."
"Why did he have to make such an announcement?" She stills me with her gaze. "Was something amiss that he had to rectify it with a betrothal?"
It was an accident! … but I do know better. I was careless. "Maybe."
"Then trust him and I must remind you to keep your hands to yourself at all times."
"I didn't… I only took her hand but people saw…” I grit my teeth because I sound like a child excusing his way out of being caught in the cookie jar. “There was a life in danger."
"And you had to hold her hand to save someone else's life?"
"My legs are longer than hers and her brother's life was in danger. I did what came naturally. I've done the same with Danei a hundred times."
"But Ashi is not Danei."
"I know."
"Do you like her?"
"I like her fine but I don’t know her well."
She lays Vlastina in the cradle and turns to me. I should realize by now that she knows everything before I come to her for advice. She places her hands on my face as she has always done. "Your father will allot you plenty of time to get to know her before the wedding. He would not have done this if he did not think it was in your best interest. You may have given him an excuse to do something he wanted to do anyway."
"A trick he learned from Bawo?"
"A trick we all learned from Bawo." She smiles at me. A simple smile that conveys all the love she's always shown me. The smile has never changed but now I know what it means.
"Are you ready to go outside, Mother?" I place my hands over hers.
"Be careful, Avery. The investigation is over but there are still ears about."
"I know. I'll be careful."
"Will you carry your sister? She hasn't been outside in days, I think. She needs the sun."
I pick up my sleeping baby sister and follow Liz out the door. All my brothers and sisters are waiting outside. It's a crowd more than a procession but we all escort her outside, the little ones safely in the arms of older siblings. When the sun hits her face, Liz seems to light up. It never occurred to me that she would be suffering in her health from staying inside so long. All my life, and all hers from the stories they told, she loved to walk outside when the sun was bright.
Commander Rath and Father are already outside… with Ashi. I pass Vlastina off to Killae and make my way over. Ashi looks upset. I make sure no one is within hearing distance. "I'm sorry for the position I put us both in."
"No… it is nothing. I would do anything for my brothers and sisters." Ashi rushes to tell me. "It was a surprise."
I look from my father to her father. "Commander, may I have your ear?"
The move surprises my father but I have to make a formal apology to her father for what I have done. We only walk a few yards before he speaks first. "I know that you did not mean anything. It was an accident. Ashi is a good girl. She will not mind being married so well. I ask one thing of you." I wait for him to speak his piece. "When your father passes on the crown, you will refuse it."
"Commander?"
"My daughter will not have the stresses of the crown on her head. She has worked hard all her life because of my responsibilities. When she is married, I expect her duties to be minimal. To care for her children if she so choose to have them but no more. She has spent her life raising children and ruling this land is not the punishment she deserves for it."
"I will take your words under advisement. Father doesn't intend any of us to rule any time soon."
"I would hope not."
I return to my father and then guide Ashi around the garden. We have plenty of chaperones in the forms of our fathers and my family. I am careful not to touch her too much beyond a guiding hand to her elbow. "I am sorry."
She looks up at me with a half a smile. "I never dreamed to marry so well."
"A beautiful girl, such as yourself, would be a prize at any caste."
"Do you think I'm beautiful?"
"Yes. And caring and responsible."
"Why haven't you chosen your own bride, yet?" She stares at me with hazel eyes and I stop walking.
"I hadn't found anyone I liked so much… and I thought I'd mind much more about an arranged match. I'm finding I don't mind so much anymore." We walk in silence. I watch each of my siblings tell Liz about all the goings on in the castle since she’d been imprisoned in her room.
TBC
Is absolved…
Present Day. Court.
Everyone is assembled and I have no idea why. I have taken my place as Champion at the base of the dais. My lovely sisters are all lined up and seated just to the side. My brothers, trying to be strong, are to the other side. There is only one throne on the dais this day. Ava's has been removed. My stomach rumbles nervously. I just wish Father and Bawo would appear so that I may know what is going on.
Commander Rath enters the room and stands beside me. His family is gathered near to the dais, a privilege for them. He clears his throat and speaks lowly to me. "Go along with whatever is said."
The room goes silent as Father enters with Bawo, they walk straight up the middle and Father takes his seat. Bawo Lodona stands before us all and lifts her hands to the sky. We all lift our hands and bow our heads in prayer. Afterwards, we wait as Father examines his words.
"I have an announcement. It comes with the aid of our Champion, our Commander and our Bawo." His voice booms over the hall. "We've discussed the matter and examined the interviews and the evidence. We have come to the conclusion that the manner of death was not murder."
Voices begin murmuring all around us. With a wave of his hand, they were all silenced.
"It is in everyone's best interest to let the matter lie. My family aches for the loss. The nursemaid shall be removed from captivity to resume her duties. The matter is closed."
"If that whore did not murder our Queen, then how did she die?" Lady Nikas stands in the pathway.
"Upon examination of the body after all this time, a wound was found on her head." Father lies. I know he lies. "Another found on her arm." He takes a deep breath. "They were not found on initial examinations because of the water. She appears to have slipped in the bathing tub after the bath maid left. She hit her head on the rim. She was unable to keep herself from drowning in the water. It was an accidental death."
"Alibis for all individuals have panned out. There was no one in the room with the Queen." I speak aloud. I have to go along with it. I have to speak my own lies. "Liz Peyrs was nursing the youngest of our Princesses at the time of the event. There is no way she could be in two places at once."
"With that business out of the way." Father rises and gives me a look that I cannot read. I don't know what he's going to say. "I have a betrothal announcement. In six month's time, Prince Avery will wed Ashi Gweron."
I do Father proud and do not let my face show my surprise. Father had said he would take care of it. I wish he would have conferred with me before announcing to all the Granilith's creation that I am to be wed to a girl I hardly know. I take her hand when she stands beside me. She is clearly scared out of her wits. The match is acceptable. Commander Rath is a celebrated soldier. His reputation alone would guarantee his daughters’ well marriage and his sons the pick of all ladies.
The nursery.
Liz moves around with the baby as if she never had any doubt the outcome of the day. She probably didn't have a single one. Her only worries were not about her own life. They were about us. "Father betrothed me to Ashi."
"Ashi?" Liz picks up her head. "Isn't she Commander Rath's daughter?"
"Yes."
"Do you know her? I mean… have you met?"
"A time or two."
She nods to herself, blinks and then looks to me. "You will match well."
"He didn't consult me."
"Why did he have to make such an announcement?" She stills me with her gaze. "Was something amiss that he had to rectify it with a betrothal?"
It was an accident! … but I do know better. I was careless. "Maybe."
"Then trust him and I must remind you to keep your hands to yourself at all times."
"I didn't… I only took her hand but people saw…” I grit my teeth because I sound like a child excusing his way out of being caught in the cookie jar. “There was a life in danger."
"And you had to hold her hand to save someone else's life?"
"My legs are longer than hers and her brother's life was in danger. I did what came naturally. I've done the same with Danei a hundred times."
"But Ashi is not Danei."
"I know."
"Do you like her?"
"I like her fine but I don’t know her well."
She lays Vlastina in the cradle and turns to me. I should realize by now that she knows everything before I come to her for advice. She places her hands on my face as she has always done. "Your father will allot you plenty of time to get to know her before the wedding. He would not have done this if he did not think it was in your best interest. You may have given him an excuse to do something he wanted to do anyway."
"A trick he learned from Bawo?"
"A trick we all learned from Bawo." She smiles at me. A simple smile that conveys all the love she's always shown me. The smile has never changed but now I know what it means.
"Are you ready to go outside, Mother?" I place my hands over hers.
"Be careful, Avery. The investigation is over but there are still ears about."
"I know. I'll be careful."
"Will you carry your sister? She hasn't been outside in days, I think. She needs the sun."
I pick up my sleeping baby sister and follow Liz out the door. All my brothers and sisters are waiting outside. It's a crowd more than a procession but we all escort her outside, the little ones safely in the arms of older siblings. When the sun hits her face, Liz seems to light up. It never occurred to me that she would be suffering in her health from staying inside so long. All my life, and all hers from the stories they told, she loved to walk outside when the sun was bright.
Commander Rath and Father are already outside… with Ashi. I pass Vlastina off to Killae and make my way over. Ashi looks upset. I make sure no one is within hearing distance. "I'm sorry for the position I put us both in."
"No… it is nothing. I would do anything for my brothers and sisters." Ashi rushes to tell me. "It was a surprise."
I look from my father to her father. "Commander, may I have your ear?"
The move surprises my father but I have to make a formal apology to her father for what I have done. We only walk a few yards before he speaks first. "I know that you did not mean anything. It was an accident. Ashi is a good girl. She will not mind being married so well. I ask one thing of you." I wait for him to speak his piece. "When your father passes on the crown, you will refuse it."
"Commander?"
"My daughter will not have the stresses of the crown on her head. She has worked hard all her life because of my responsibilities. When she is married, I expect her duties to be minimal. To care for her children if she so choose to have them but no more. She has spent her life raising children and ruling this land is not the punishment she deserves for it."
"I will take your words under advisement. Father doesn't intend any of us to rule any time soon."
"I would hope not."
I return to my father and then guide Ashi around the garden. We have plenty of chaperones in the forms of our fathers and my family. I am careful not to touch her too much beyond a guiding hand to her elbow. "I am sorry."
She looks up at me with a half a smile. "I never dreamed to marry so well."
"A beautiful girl, such as yourself, would be a prize at any caste."
"Do you think I'm beautiful?"
"Yes. And caring and responsible."
"Why haven't you chosen your own bride, yet?" She stares at me with hazel eyes and I stop walking.
"I hadn't found anyone I liked so much… and I thought I'd mind much more about an arranged match. I'm finding I don't mind so much anymore." We walk in silence. I watch each of my siblings tell Liz about all the goings on in the castle since she’d been imprisoned in her room.
TBC
Re: The Queen of Antar MA/AU (Z/A, P/L, Z/L) Part 29 02/24/08
The Queen of Antar
Plots her move
Present Day.
I watch the village return to normal. They will not question the edict. The lords and ladies will. Those who won't have gone on to their lands. Lady Nikas still resides in the castle. She wants her son married to Danei, but Father has forbidden them to court until after my wedding. I don't see how Father will allow it. He's a generation older than Danei.
I stand in the court yard when the messengers come. They are breathless and need water badly. My father's mother is two days away. I nod to them and allow them to rest. I carry the message inside to my father. He only nods and motions me closer. He whispers quietly into my ear. I understand though it is hard to digest. I carry that message up to my mother. She only nods. I smile at Ashi when I pass her in the corridor. Attendants titter and turn their eyes away. They are preparing her for a life as my wife. My wife. That thought turns my thoughts onto other things and the look on her face changes, she looks away with red blossoming on her cheeks.
I collect Danei, Killae and Anson. They will be told first. Father and Mother meet us in the private garden. The words are hushed. Their faces turn indignant and all face me. I can only nod that I knew and that it is the truth. Danei rushes into Liz's arms and begins to sob. Then she sits up and looks at me. She tilts her head at me and then rises to her feet. Her eyes still on me, she asks me the question. "When did her husband die?"
I shut my eyes and listen to her harsh breathing. It fits. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to question. Her skirts slap my leg as she whirls around and begins to sob in earnest. "How could you lie my whole life?"
"Danei." Father raises his hands in an attempt to placate her but she won't have it.
"How could you lie?"
"He didn't know." Liz speaks up. "Neither did I. Not for a long time."
"What is she talking about?" Killae stands up straight.
"Liz was married, once." Father takes a seat. He looks weary but not upset. I do not know how long he's known. "After Avery was born, her husband gave her a child but… we did not know it was his child. It was a tumultuous time. It doesn't make her any less your sister."
"Well, of course not… but…"
"Still a Princess and still my daughter. I am nothing but proud to raise his daughter as my own." Father's voice is nothing but truth. We can all feel it. Still, Danei feels betrayed. I can see it in her face. "Your father was a good soldier, an even better husband and he would have been a wonderful father. He loved the very idea of you and he died honorably, knowing that he was to have a child."
I take her in my arms and sit with her on my lap. "I thought you thought all those Tirera stories were terribly romantic and here you are, one of them."
"But to find out in so gothic a way." She moans. "To dream about it is one thing but to live it is quite another."
"As are the realities of all fairy tales." I tell her. "When Cherin made her flight off the home world, it seemed so dramatic and romantic but she was very pregnant and she was tired and the heat was probably unbearable. She probably ached for days afterward. Probably nearly lost her child in the process. Horribly unromantic but because she endured, we are all here."
When I look up, Liz has a tear in her eye and a smile on her face. "You thought it was terribly romantic about Liz's husband when you first found out, but now it's not?" Danei doesn't answer me. "You're the one that told me that they should have had a child, to make the pain worth it. You are that child. Your father wanted to raise me as his own, thinking I was the bastard child of a malicious rape. So our father raised you as his own, knowing you were a child borne of love."
"But you didn't know." Danei lifts her head to look at Father. "When did you know?"
"I think I have always had my suspicions." Father shrugs. "It makes you no less my daughter, but you and I will be very careful in choosing your husband." He clears his throat. "The reason I have told you all is because my mother is returning to the palace and though we have fooled all those around us before, we shall not fool her. She will know but I do not know her reaction. I imagine that she will stay until after Avery's wedding."
"You're not going to call it off?" Danei stands and faces them. "You're going to force him to marry someone he doesn't know?"
"Danei." I try to soothe her but she won't be quieted.
"You promised that I would get to choose my husband, why doesn't Avery get that option?"
"Because Avery made a serendipitous mistake." Father explains, his eyes glittering as they meet mine. I smile to myself. "Things have worked out for the better. They are a good match."
"I would not ask to be let out of the arrangement." I tell her. She spins to face me. "Ashi and I pair well. I will marry her."
Present Day. Court.
Lady Nikas is watching me. I can feel it. She watches Liz like a hawk, but my mother does as she should. She walks freely through the palace and the fields with her children by her side. Ashi and I are having our dance lessons. Our instructor is getting fed up because we keep smiling in places that we are not supposed to. Anticipating my wedding is driving me crazy. Ashi and I are growing closer through our supervised visits. The wedding is a week away.
A ruckus causes us to abort our lessons to find out what is happening. Tugging Ashi with me, I force my way through the bodies filling the corridors. As they realize who I am, they part to allow me out to the front courtyard where the carriages approach. It's a day early. I stand in the doorway and wait. The carriages pull to a stop and the servants begin unloading the trunks to the hidden entrance, closer to the courtyard. The doorman rushes to open the carriage door.
Her silver hair glitters in the sun and her eyes are blue when they meet mine. Before I can step forward to greet her, Father rushes by me and helps her down himself. "Mother, you're early. We had everything set for tomorrow."
"I could not abide the awful rooms in that awful little town. I simply had to come and see my oldest grandchild as soon as possible." Her eyes find me again.
I remember her letters. I have never met her. I step forward when Father turns. Then I feel lips near my ear. "Avery, you're hurting me." I relinquish my grip on Ashi's hand and face my grandmother.
"Avery." Father greets me.
"Grandmother." I incline my head and immediately feel her hands on my head.
"He is so tall, just like you." She allows me to lift my head but her hands land on my shoulders. "And your eyes." She inspects me from head to toe. "Almost 22. A man already and to be married."
"Yes." I tell her and turn to Ashi, whose face is bright red.
"Ah. Lovely girl. Come here." She instructs and Ashi obeys. She receives the same treatment. "Kivar's line?"
Ashi frowns and turns to me. I rush to save her. "Yes, Grandmother. She is Commander Kivar's granddaughter." I ignore the look on Father's face as he, no doubt, recalls how Commander Kivar died. "Commander Rath's eldest daughter."
"I see." Grandmother turns to Father. "How are his hands?"
"Like to mine but treated much better."
A year ago, that question and that answer would have meant nothing to me. Now, it is all too clear. I clear my throat. "We were having our dance lessons."
"Then who am I to interrupt?" Grandmother bursts out and begins shooing us away. "Back to your lessons!"
Ashi giggles and draws me away from them just as I see my brothers and sisters are rushing out to meet Grandmother. I see her eyes. How confused they are as she examines every face and head of hair. I see her stare at my father. I hesitate so I can hear what she asks him. "Where is the nanny?"
All light and laughter left her face upon the question but Father never wavers. "She's nursing my youngest. Come Mother, let us get you settled in and then all these young ones can pester you with questions."
Present. The Tunnels.
I sit in the hidden passageways and listen to my father explain himself to his mother. I hear Bawo Lodona's commentary. Then I hear something that stills my blood. "You abandoned him to his hateful father. What else was I supposed to do but raise him as I saw fit?"
"He is my son."
"You were too worried about which whore your husband was wearing out, to care if your son was being beaten every day!"
"I was the queen. You, a priestess. Know your place."
"I do know my place. A wife, a widow, a nursemaid… and a priestess. All my titles, my positions… save mother. I was never allotted my own child and you threw yours away. I did try to stop it and then… I saw the benefit."
"How could allowing them to breed on this way be a benefit to the crown?"
"The crown? Old woman, you forget your first duty as a mother… is not to the crown but to your child! All the benefits were to his happiness!"
"Bawo." Father tries to quiet the woman but she won't be silent. She rants on like a doting mother. She may well have been.
"All the manipulations and lies that I told were for him. Every life I took, every person I pushed into place. I wasn't raising some vagabond with simple life pleasures. I was raising a prince, who would be king, who rules over us all. His happiness is more important because it is so fragile; because there is more at stake. I would have slit her throat myself if he would have allowed it."
"Bawo!"
"Y'Slida bearing my grandchildren is a desecration of our ways!"
"Y'Slida would be but she is no whore. She has been the rightful queen of our lands for nearly twenty years! She should have all creation bowing down to her and her sacrifices but her happiness lies in not simpering about a court while someone else raises her children. His happiness is her happiness. I did what I had to do. I was here. I am the eyes and ears of this regime and I'll be damned to the Inferno if I let you disparage what love has put forth. I said it. Love! What our people have forgotten… or maybe we never knew what it was. It is done!"
"Mother. She's right." Father's voice is soft. "The circumstances were not ideal but Liz is my heart and soul. All of our children… we have made together."
"Not that girl… that girl is not of my blood." Grandmother spits out.
"No, but we would be honored if she was. Blessed enough that she graces our halls with her smiles. Danei was named for you… a grandmother not of her blood, just as Avery was named for a grandfather not of his blood. Sacrifices and concessions from a time long ago. We are here now. Help me, Mother."
"Lady Nikas must be… dealt with." Grandmother agrees. "I will… confer with Bawo about what shall be done with that line."
The room quiets. "I will trust that you two will do what is necessary." Father's voice is soft but carries. I rush back the way I came. Liz is sitting on the bed with the baby. Vlastina is bouncing with a fistful of something in her mouth. Liz just stares at me. Seconds later, Father enters the same way I did. He stares at me. "Eavesdropping is an unbecoming trait, Avery."
"Maybe but… I saw her face when she saw us. She doesn't accept us as hers." I shake my head. My mother, the woman I thought was my mother, had felt the same. My true mother loves me, though I often gave her much grief and deferred to my faux-mother's advice to get my own way.
"She will. She was shocked."
"How did she know?" It has been bothering me since her arrival. She only had to look to see.
"My mother was a noblewoman in training before she was a queen. She knows all the noble traits. Even she has despised the Violet eyes of the Valley. Pure but hateful. My mother has held with pride that the nobles are well recognized by their blonde hair and blue eyes. Everyone knows the royal line by sight… by our eyes and our dark hair, the only dark hair in the heart of the lands. She knew by the highlights of chocolate in your raven hair. By the freckles on your brothers' skin that aren't on mine and never were on Ava's. She knew just by looking." He finishes, at a loss at how to explain it further but I get it. Before Grandmother was betrothed to Grandfather, she had made it a point to identify a suitor's worth by his physical traits and thereby revealing his lineage.
"What are they going to do with Nikas?"
"I don't know… and not one in this room should find out until after it is done."
--
I sit and study my vows. Bawo is teaching Danei her role in my wedding. Candles and poses. Danei begins to ask questions. "How did you become a Bawo?"
"I was chosen." I expect that will be all she says.
"How were you chosen?" Danei and her questions. "Will I be chosen?"
"No, never you. You are too valuable to our kingdom. It would be a blessing as to keep you safe from the ways of our people but a Bawo must take vows that a princess would never be allowed to take if she were among those to take the throne."
"Bawo… were you always chosen?"
"No. I was young once. I had a man who took me as a wife. I had his child inside me." Bawo clears her throat. "Then he was lost to me. Taken in battle. The child in my belly soured."
"Bawo, I'm so sorry. I ask too many questions."
"I was motherless from a young age. Father was overbearing and convinced he could marry me higher than my status… Alei was a good man. I loved him more than myself. Our child would have been loved."
"Who does the choosing?"
"I used to believe that the Granilith did the choosing. That the Granilith chose the Bawo and she listened to choose the next Bawo. I… I believe that your father chose me."
"How?"
"I do not know how. I do know that I was chosen. I had lost my child within days of our prince being born. The Queen, your grandmother, asked me to help her feed our prince and I couldn't do it… but that night I had a dream of a man. He was great and I wanted to meet him. I woke and saw your father, a babe in the royal nursery. His eyes matched the great man in my dream. In time, I spoke to the Bawo and she made me to do my duty by our prince. While I nursed him, she taught me her ways."
"You were Father's nursemaid?"
"I was. For many years, I was the skirt he hid behind. I acted as mother to him."
"When did you become Bawo?"
"When I was 35 years old and our prince was 15. I took my vows, renouncing all men. I remember that I asked why I had to do that. Bawo Xerenei stared at me. She told me that becoming Bawo was to serve one man. To serve that man as advisor, to be his conscience. To sleep with that man was to sway his will. To love him in any way was to attempt to make his power my own." Bawo cleared her throat. "Bawo Xerenei took my hands in her hands. She told me that it had always been this way. One only chose a new Bawo to take her place when there was a new King to take the throne."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that your Grandfather had an heir and that he was not long for the world. I took my place as Bawo… a slight six years before your Father became our King. Your Father remembers me as being much older. Remembers calling me Bawo long before I was. I taught young royals to read and write our laws as they were taught to me. It means, Danei, that it is all a lie."
"How do you mean?"
"Bawo Serenei was ancient when she stepped down as Bawo. She was a full 18 years older than your grandfather… and she had only ever loved one man aside from him her whole life."
"How old was Grandfather when he died?"
"King Aperys ascended the throne at 35, married to his second wife… Queen Danei was pregnant nearly immediately. He was… 57 when his faults caught up with him. Queen Danei was only 39 when she was widowed."
"Bawo." Danei makes an exasperated noise.
"I have only loved two men in my life, young Danei. My Alei and my King. My King I love as my own child. I will do and say anything to see him succeed."
"You think that Bawo Xerenei was Grandfather's nursemaid?"
"I do. I believe that it has always been so. Only a woman committed to her King will do everything she can to see him keep his throne. Only a woman who knows her King as a child can be willing to sacrifice him when his time is done."
"Bawo… did you know that a bawo in Tirera is a calculator?"
I laugh and turn to face them. "It would figure, wouldn't it."
"Shut up and attend your lessons, Avery." Bawo shakes her finger at me.
TBC
Plots her move
Present Day.
I watch the village return to normal. They will not question the edict. The lords and ladies will. Those who won't have gone on to their lands. Lady Nikas still resides in the castle. She wants her son married to Danei, but Father has forbidden them to court until after my wedding. I don't see how Father will allow it. He's a generation older than Danei.
I stand in the court yard when the messengers come. They are breathless and need water badly. My father's mother is two days away. I nod to them and allow them to rest. I carry the message inside to my father. He only nods and motions me closer. He whispers quietly into my ear. I understand though it is hard to digest. I carry that message up to my mother. She only nods. I smile at Ashi when I pass her in the corridor. Attendants titter and turn their eyes away. They are preparing her for a life as my wife. My wife. That thought turns my thoughts onto other things and the look on her face changes, she looks away with red blossoming on her cheeks.
I collect Danei, Killae and Anson. They will be told first. Father and Mother meet us in the private garden. The words are hushed. Their faces turn indignant and all face me. I can only nod that I knew and that it is the truth. Danei rushes into Liz's arms and begins to sob. Then she sits up and looks at me. She tilts her head at me and then rises to her feet. Her eyes still on me, she asks me the question. "When did her husband die?"
I shut my eyes and listen to her harsh breathing. It fits. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to question. Her skirts slap my leg as she whirls around and begins to sob in earnest. "How could you lie my whole life?"
"Danei." Father raises his hands in an attempt to placate her but she won't have it.
"How could you lie?"
"He didn't know." Liz speaks up. "Neither did I. Not for a long time."
"What is she talking about?" Killae stands up straight.
"Liz was married, once." Father takes a seat. He looks weary but not upset. I do not know how long he's known. "After Avery was born, her husband gave her a child but… we did not know it was his child. It was a tumultuous time. It doesn't make her any less your sister."
"Well, of course not… but…"
"Still a Princess and still my daughter. I am nothing but proud to raise his daughter as my own." Father's voice is nothing but truth. We can all feel it. Still, Danei feels betrayed. I can see it in her face. "Your father was a good soldier, an even better husband and he would have been a wonderful father. He loved the very idea of you and he died honorably, knowing that he was to have a child."
I take her in my arms and sit with her on my lap. "I thought you thought all those Tirera stories were terribly romantic and here you are, one of them."
"But to find out in so gothic a way." She moans. "To dream about it is one thing but to live it is quite another."
"As are the realities of all fairy tales." I tell her. "When Cherin made her flight off the home world, it seemed so dramatic and romantic but she was very pregnant and she was tired and the heat was probably unbearable. She probably ached for days afterward. Probably nearly lost her child in the process. Horribly unromantic but because she endured, we are all here."
When I look up, Liz has a tear in her eye and a smile on her face. "You thought it was terribly romantic about Liz's husband when you first found out, but now it's not?" Danei doesn't answer me. "You're the one that told me that they should have had a child, to make the pain worth it. You are that child. Your father wanted to raise me as his own, thinking I was the bastard child of a malicious rape. So our father raised you as his own, knowing you were a child borne of love."
"But you didn't know." Danei lifts her head to look at Father. "When did you know?"
"I think I have always had my suspicions." Father shrugs. "It makes you no less my daughter, but you and I will be very careful in choosing your husband." He clears his throat. "The reason I have told you all is because my mother is returning to the palace and though we have fooled all those around us before, we shall not fool her. She will know but I do not know her reaction. I imagine that she will stay until after Avery's wedding."
"You're not going to call it off?" Danei stands and faces them. "You're going to force him to marry someone he doesn't know?"
"Danei." I try to soothe her but she won't be quieted.
"You promised that I would get to choose my husband, why doesn't Avery get that option?"
"Because Avery made a serendipitous mistake." Father explains, his eyes glittering as they meet mine. I smile to myself. "Things have worked out for the better. They are a good match."
"I would not ask to be let out of the arrangement." I tell her. She spins to face me. "Ashi and I pair well. I will marry her."
Present Day. Court.
Lady Nikas is watching me. I can feel it. She watches Liz like a hawk, but my mother does as she should. She walks freely through the palace and the fields with her children by her side. Ashi and I are having our dance lessons. Our instructor is getting fed up because we keep smiling in places that we are not supposed to. Anticipating my wedding is driving me crazy. Ashi and I are growing closer through our supervised visits. The wedding is a week away.
A ruckus causes us to abort our lessons to find out what is happening. Tugging Ashi with me, I force my way through the bodies filling the corridors. As they realize who I am, they part to allow me out to the front courtyard where the carriages approach. It's a day early. I stand in the doorway and wait. The carriages pull to a stop and the servants begin unloading the trunks to the hidden entrance, closer to the courtyard. The doorman rushes to open the carriage door.
Her silver hair glitters in the sun and her eyes are blue when they meet mine. Before I can step forward to greet her, Father rushes by me and helps her down himself. "Mother, you're early. We had everything set for tomorrow."
"I could not abide the awful rooms in that awful little town. I simply had to come and see my oldest grandchild as soon as possible." Her eyes find me again.
I remember her letters. I have never met her. I step forward when Father turns. Then I feel lips near my ear. "Avery, you're hurting me." I relinquish my grip on Ashi's hand and face my grandmother.
"Avery." Father greets me.
"Grandmother." I incline my head and immediately feel her hands on my head.
"He is so tall, just like you." She allows me to lift my head but her hands land on my shoulders. "And your eyes." She inspects me from head to toe. "Almost 22. A man already and to be married."
"Yes." I tell her and turn to Ashi, whose face is bright red.
"Ah. Lovely girl. Come here." She instructs and Ashi obeys. She receives the same treatment. "Kivar's line?"
Ashi frowns and turns to me. I rush to save her. "Yes, Grandmother. She is Commander Kivar's granddaughter." I ignore the look on Father's face as he, no doubt, recalls how Commander Kivar died. "Commander Rath's eldest daughter."
"I see." Grandmother turns to Father. "How are his hands?"
"Like to mine but treated much better."
A year ago, that question and that answer would have meant nothing to me. Now, it is all too clear. I clear my throat. "We were having our dance lessons."
"Then who am I to interrupt?" Grandmother bursts out and begins shooing us away. "Back to your lessons!"
Ashi giggles and draws me away from them just as I see my brothers and sisters are rushing out to meet Grandmother. I see her eyes. How confused they are as she examines every face and head of hair. I see her stare at my father. I hesitate so I can hear what she asks him. "Where is the nanny?"
All light and laughter left her face upon the question but Father never wavers. "She's nursing my youngest. Come Mother, let us get you settled in and then all these young ones can pester you with questions."
Present. The Tunnels.
I sit in the hidden passageways and listen to my father explain himself to his mother. I hear Bawo Lodona's commentary. Then I hear something that stills my blood. "You abandoned him to his hateful father. What else was I supposed to do but raise him as I saw fit?"
"He is my son."
"You were too worried about which whore your husband was wearing out, to care if your son was being beaten every day!"
"I was the queen. You, a priestess. Know your place."
"I do know my place. A wife, a widow, a nursemaid… and a priestess. All my titles, my positions… save mother. I was never allotted my own child and you threw yours away. I did try to stop it and then… I saw the benefit."
"How could allowing them to breed on this way be a benefit to the crown?"
"The crown? Old woman, you forget your first duty as a mother… is not to the crown but to your child! All the benefits were to his happiness!"
"Bawo." Father tries to quiet the woman but she won't be silent. She rants on like a doting mother. She may well have been.
"All the manipulations and lies that I told were for him. Every life I took, every person I pushed into place. I wasn't raising some vagabond with simple life pleasures. I was raising a prince, who would be king, who rules over us all. His happiness is more important because it is so fragile; because there is more at stake. I would have slit her throat myself if he would have allowed it."
"Bawo!"
"Y'Slida bearing my grandchildren is a desecration of our ways!"
"Y'Slida would be but she is no whore. She has been the rightful queen of our lands for nearly twenty years! She should have all creation bowing down to her and her sacrifices but her happiness lies in not simpering about a court while someone else raises her children. His happiness is her happiness. I did what I had to do. I was here. I am the eyes and ears of this regime and I'll be damned to the Inferno if I let you disparage what love has put forth. I said it. Love! What our people have forgotten… or maybe we never knew what it was. It is done!"
"Mother. She's right." Father's voice is soft. "The circumstances were not ideal but Liz is my heart and soul. All of our children… we have made together."
"Not that girl… that girl is not of my blood." Grandmother spits out.
"No, but we would be honored if she was. Blessed enough that she graces our halls with her smiles. Danei was named for you… a grandmother not of her blood, just as Avery was named for a grandfather not of his blood. Sacrifices and concessions from a time long ago. We are here now. Help me, Mother."
"Lady Nikas must be… dealt with." Grandmother agrees. "I will… confer with Bawo about what shall be done with that line."
The room quiets. "I will trust that you two will do what is necessary." Father's voice is soft but carries. I rush back the way I came. Liz is sitting on the bed with the baby. Vlastina is bouncing with a fistful of something in her mouth. Liz just stares at me. Seconds later, Father enters the same way I did. He stares at me. "Eavesdropping is an unbecoming trait, Avery."
"Maybe but… I saw her face when she saw us. She doesn't accept us as hers." I shake my head. My mother, the woman I thought was my mother, had felt the same. My true mother loves me, though I often gave her much grief and deferred to my faux-mother's advice to get my own way.
"She will. She was shocked."
"How did she know?" It has been bothering me since her arrival. She only had to look to see.
"My mother was a noblewoman in training before she was a queen. She knows all the noble traits. Even she has despised the Violet eyes of the Valley. Pure but hateful. My mother has held with pride that the nobles are well recognized by their blonde hair and blue eyes. Everyone knows the royal line by sight… by our eyes and our dark hair, the only dark hair in the heart of the lands. She knew by the highlights of chocolate in your raven hair. By the freckles on your brothers' skin that aren't on mine and never were on Ava's. She knew just by looking." He finishes, at a loss at how to explain it further but I get it. Before Grandmother was betrothed to Grandfather, she had made it a point to identify a suitor's worth by his physical traits and thereby revealing his lineage.
"What are they going to do with Nikas?"
"I don't know… and not one in this room should find out until after it is done."
--
I sit and study my vows. Bawo is teaching Danei her role in my wedding. Candles and poses. Danei begins to ask questions. "How did you become a Bawo?"
"I was chosen." I expect that will be all she says.
"How were you chosen?" Danei and her questions. "Will I be chosen?"
"No, never you. You are too valuable to our kingdom. It would be a blessing as to keep you safe from the ways of our people but a Bawo must take vows that a princess would never be allowed to take if she were among those to take the throne."
"Bawo… were you always chosen?"
"No. I was young once. I had a man who took me as a wife. I had his child inside me." Bawo clears her throat. "Then he was lost to me. Taken in battle. The child in my belly soured."
"Bawo, I'm so sorry. I ask too many questions."
"I was motherless from a young age. Father was overbearing and convinced he could marry me higher than my status… Alei was a good man. I loved him more than myself. Our child would have been loved."
"Who does the choosing?"
"I used to believe that the Granilith did the choosing. That the Granilith chose the Bawo and she listened to choose the next Bawo. I… I believe that your father chose me."
"How?"
"I do not know how. I do know that I was chosen. I had lost my child within days of our prince being born. The Queen, your grandmother, asked me to help her feed our prince and I couldn't do it… but that night I had a dream of a man. He was great and I wanted to meet him. I woke and saw your father, a babe in the royal nursery. His eyes matched the great man in my dream. In time, I spoke to the Bawo and she made me to do my duty by our prince. While I nursed him, she taught me her ways."
"You were Father's nursemaid?"
"I was. For many years, I was the skirt he hid behind. I acted as mother to him."
"When did you become Bawo?"
"When I was 35 years old and our prince was 15. I took my vows, renouncing all men. I remember that I asked why I had to do that. Bawo Xerenei stared at me. She told me that becoming Bawo was to serve one man. To serve that man as advisor, to be his conscience. To sleep with that man was to sway his will. To love him in any way was to attempt to make his power my own." Bawo cleared her throat. "Bawo Xerenei took my hands in her hands. She told me that it had always been this way. One only chose a new Bawo to take her place when there was a new King to take the throne."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that your Grandfather had an heir and that he was not long for the world. I took my place as Bawo… a slight six years before your Father became our King. Your Father remembers me as being much older. Remembers calling me Bawo long before I was. I taught young royals to read and write our laws as they were taught to me. It means, Danei, that it is all a lie."
"How do you mean?"
"Bawo Serenei was ancient when she stepped down as Bawo. She was a full 18 years older than your grandfather… and she had only ever loved one man aside from him her whole life."
"How old was Grandfather when he died?"
"King Aperys ascended the throne at 35, married to his second wife… Queen Danei was pregnant nearly immediately. He was… 57 when his faults caught up with him. Queen Danei was only 39 when she was widowed."
"Bawo." Danei makes an exasperated noise.
"I have only loved two men in my life, young Danei. My Alei and my King. My King I love as my own child. I will do and say anything to see him succeed."
"You think that Bawo Xerenei was Grandfather's nursemaid?"
"I do. I believe that it has always been so. Only a woman committed to her King will do everything she can to see him keep his throne. Only a woman who knows her King as a child can be willing to sacrifice him when his time is done."
"Bawo… did you know that a bawo in Tirera is a calculator?"
I laugh and turn to face them. "It would figure, wouldn't it."
"Shut up and attend your lessons, Avery." Bawo shakes her finger at me.
TBC