Jem
I left Ilyas to stew in the cellar and climbed into the palace proper, dropping off my overly-warm coat and scarf in the tower room. Only then, standing in my abandoned and dust-coated room, did I feel the cold permeating the castle. When I descended, most of the fireplaces I passed were left empty. Fuel was too dear.
The first fire I encountered came from the royal family’s shared bedroom, the light spilling out the open door onto the white flagstone. The royal children giggled inside, and I stopped.
Like Ilyas’ father, the last Lumian king had been too fertile. Every year, the queen delivered more mouths to feed, some dying within months and others surviving, and the villagers had watched in concern. Shouldn’t the king take a male lover instead to prevent more children? They already had more than anyone else. But the king had always sworn he’d loved his queen, and that was the problem.
I backed away from the shared bedroom. The six royal children had been tiny when I’d left, most of them too young to grasp what I was, but they’d still burst into tears in my presence. The intervening years couldn’t have changed that.
I slipped down the stairs, finding an alternate route through the maze of corridors to head to another bedroom. In Nuriya, the king gave each prince their own set of rooms, but Lumians lived and slept in the same beds, some with their families and others with friends and lovers, huddling together for warmth. All except for the prince regent.
A fire had been lit in Prince Hemi’s room, a waste, but nobody had asked me. I averted my eyes from the shrine against the wall, slipping inside to stand next to the door, eyes downcast, waiting for Her Majesty to acknowledge me.
One flick of my eyes made me feel all the more the strange foreigner. In Nuriya, I’d been slim and delicate, my white hair and skin prized as exotic by everyone but Ilyas. But here, I appeared hale and hearty compared to Her Majesty, whose shawl and dress hung loosely over her bones, and her cheeks and eye sockets were hollowed.
An equally frail boy sat in the chair next to her, his hollow cheeks stealing the boyish charm from him. A boy of eight or nine, one of the royal children, but I couldn’t remember the name. No one introduced me to the children, and I had to glean everything by eavesdropping.
The boy bubbled out of his seat as he retold a story about his and his friend Ari’s adventures in a mine shaft, where after much blushing and demurring, he admitted this Ari had kissed him on the lips. I had to glance up again and sucked in a breath. I’d travelled through more prosperous kingdoms for so long, I’d grown used to their standards. He wasn’t a boy of eight or nine. That’s how old he’d been when I’d last seen him. He was only six years younger than me. He had to be thirteen now.
Prince Hemi’s younger brother and the prince heir, Prince Haori.
The prince heir noticed me first, his hazel eyes screwing up in confusion as he stared at my white hair and my pale skin bleached of every bit of colour. I folded my hands behind my back and held my breath, waiting for him to scream. When Her Majesty had seen me off on my search, Prince Haori had huddled behind his mother’s skirts.
He broke into a grin, and after I blinked, I found him suddenly in front of me. “You’re back!”
I glanced at Her Majesty, who only stiffened then nodded.
“Where did you go? What did you see? Ari said they have Oliphant in the southern continent, but I think they’re just a myth, and is it true? Are they there? Did you see sand? Ooh, is it really made of glass? Is it?”
His mother shushed him. “Go back to the others.”
“But Mother,” he whined, his voice cracking. He jerked, as if shocked his voice had betrayed him.
She smiled at him. “Go watch your siblings.”
Haori jumped up, stumbling a bit like Ilyas had on the ice. He must have recently had a growth spurt, although if rations had been reduced so much as to leave them so gaunt, how’d he managed that was a mystery. Haori bounced out of the room, pausing to flash me a smile, as if to prove he was an adult now, and an adult wouldn’t be afraid.
The adult villagers would beg to differ.
Her Majesty glanced at the shrine, an emotion unknown to me tugging at her lips. Sadness, I thought, perhaps despair. She had never been afraid of me.
“I’ve returned,” I said.
“It’s been five years.”
“There’s still time.” The Sentei had suffered a poor harvest, I’d discovered at the port, but now that I’d returned, the plan wouldn’t take much longer. I cupped the back of my neck. “I found him. He’s perfect. None such as he has ever been offered before. He will save Lumi.”
She was silent, eyes trained on the shrine. Unafraid or not, she never looked at me, just like everyone else in Lumi. Everyone but Ilyas and Haori.
“How is Prince Haori?” I asked.
Her eyes flicked, but came nowhere near me.
“He’s grown so much. He’ll be taller than Prince Hemi soon.”
She choked, as if the prince’s name from my lips was too repugnant.
“My apologies.” I bowed low. I had no right to speak of the royal family.
She flicked her hand.
“I travelled all the way to the mythical Land of Fire,” I said. “Nuriya, they call it there. Nuriya is always hot, and there are fields upon fields of fertile ground, and they harvest rice all year round.”
She pursed her lips. I hadn’t been able to imagine it, not until I’d seen for myself the rice paddies dug all the way up the mountain and fruit trees covered the island from shore to shore. Sentei had bigger fields, but their southern lands only thawed for a few months in the summer and had to feed a lot more people.
“Prince Ilyas will satisfy Him,” I assured her.
Her attention flicked to me, even if her eyes didn’t, like a heavy force. “Prince?”
“Nuriya’s prince heir.” Which was part of what made him so perfect.
“We can’t fight a war,” she said. “We haven’t the strength. And if this kingdom is as rich as you say it is, they’ll send thousands to reclaim him.”
“They won’t,” I said. “You haven’t seen Nuriya.”
“Of course I haven’t,” she snapped. “I’ve been here, the only thing standing between our people and starvation.”
I bowed my head to hide my frown and pinched brow at her outburst. “My apologies. I only meant that in Nuriya, the princes are expendable. They have so many that they constantly fight amongst each other to become king.”
She made a disgusted grunt.
“It’s true. Prince Ilyas is a gift, you could say, from his younger brother who wished to usurp him. They’re not like us. They’re barbarians.”
I almost smiled at the last word, the very word Ilyas used to describe us. Lumi might lack in extensive and pointless rituals, it might lack the silks and spices and sweetmeats, but where civility was most important, we eclipsed them.
Ilyas would never know, though. I tilted my head away, as if that act of contrition would ease my heart.
“Regardless, they’re too far away,” I said. “It will take them years to find Lumi.”
Her Majesty pressed her lips together, half in a frown, half in a smile. The queen was complicated that way. But then she undid it all with her next words. “The queen of Sentei sent us an ambassador.”
My eyes fixed on her even as I stiffened.
“Her youngest sister, Dajana. A pretty thing.”
I raised my eyebrows, waiting for her explanation. Had she meant she’d successfully seduced the girl? As much as Her Majesty had loved her husband in turn, he’d passed away three months before I’d left. Her Majesty had been alone for years.
“She’s more clever than she looks, and she arrived shortly before you did.”
The Sentei knew what we were about to do, then. Someone must have spotted me at the port and reported me to Queen Arana. I’d wrapped my hair and face with a scarf as best I could, but a strand of pure white hair must have escaped. If only I really could trade Ilyas for crops.
“Dajana told me she’s been assigned to us because of our latest bid,” Her Majesty said. “Two thousand tons of ore.”
The warehouses could only hold half that. People would have to work double or even triple shifts on empty stomachs to make up the rest.
“They had to refuse, she said. Summer is coming, and the ground will thaw. Their own people are starving after the long winter, she said. As if the Sentei know anything about hunger. Did you know they had a bad harvest last year?”
I nodded.
“Yes, and the year before that,” she said. “Or so they say, but I know for a fact they’re trading with Pyria.”
Pyria lay on the other side of Sentei at the edge of the peninsula. After the Dark God had left this world, they had been the first to secede themselves from the great empire the Dark God had built. Lumi had been the last. Our black iron lasted too long, and snow tubers too little, to secure our survival on our own. We’d only split off from Sentei when the food deliveries had slowed and our people felt their bellies elongating. We’d been slaves in all but name then. Negotiation gave us a slight edge.
“They simply have nothing to trade us.” She pursed her lips, looking pained. “They have nothing to trade, and they’ve sent an ambassador.”
I rose, standing straight. “I’ll keep an eye on Ilyas.”
She nodded. She needn’t command me. I would make everything happen, to save her from having to give such an order.
I started to excuse myself when Her Majesty did the most inexplicable thing. She met my eyes. I froze beneath her gaze, waiting for something. Or nothing. Her features had construed into an emotion I couldn’t decipher.
Her lips parted, as if she wanted to say something more. Something, while looking at me. Something while she wasn’t captivated by the shrine.
Then the moment passed. She rose and stalked out of the room.
I turned away from the shrine, exhaling.
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