Monasco: The Last Kappolarian
Part I
The New World
The once thriving cities of Calabrecia and Kappolaris were travesties of crumbling stone, buried in a catastrophic silence, all but for the plodding of horses that meandered through the debris. Four members of the Imperial Guard and a squad of eight Monascan infantrymen, including the newly appointed head of artillery, Lieutenant Arehlya Seguro, shadowed Empress Ogami in an exhaustive reconnaissance operation throughout the Kappolarian province. Monascan cavalry had seen its opportunity to lay the smaller city to waste, once Calabrecia’s walls had been breached. The troops certainly did their job, the empress thought, perhaps a bit too well. This twenty-fourth passing after the war showed little promise for survivors, only the need for another extensive, massive, reconstruction campaign.
As she trudged through the devastation, the empress found herself in a critical disposition over General Monasco’s tactics. Kappolaris had been inhabited predominantly by scholars, businessmen, and academics, the minds that fed Calabrecia with philosophy and trade strategies, hardly akin to the ideals of warlords. The Kappolarian military was sparse and poorly trained, having relied for three hundred seasons on the shield of her sovereign sister city. If the General wished to make a statement of the might of Monasco, he had already done so on the battlefield; this annihilation was entirely unnecessary, a fool-hearted consumption of time and resources and money.
The Kappolarian residential district endured less physical damage than it had the terror of the Monascan blade. Broken doorframes and fractured windows exposed an atrocity. Civilians resisted, attempted to fend off the inescapable. But conquest spattered the mud brick and coagulated in corners; it dried in mid-stream over thresholds and emanated into the streets, fermenting under the heat of twenty-four desolate passings.
Tai Ogami dismounted her steed and wandered along the borough, her hands clasped behind her back as she muzzled her indignation. The guards followed closely, carrying pistols for wild dogs and vultures as they strolled through a peculiar opus of a thousand flies against the rattle of armor. Most of what was left behind had already been devoured by predators that required no invitation to any abode; they’d come and gone, but for a single crow that squawked at them from the nearby frame of a twisted shutter.
Her senior officer drew his weapon and shot it, knocked it into a feathering tumult to the dirt.
“Stand down.” The empress held up a hand and glared over her shoulder.
He holstered his pistol.
She was focused on the cedar wood door to the next dwelling. It was splintered and shucked by the force of a battle-ax. Several blows made concave trenches which had driven it off its hinges and slammed it to the floor, whereafter it was trampled by foot soldiers on a mission to mutilate. She could see the blood-dried bootprints scuffed across the surface. But it was closed now, propped back into the jamb from the inside, snug and firm. The shattered adjacent window was also sealed by what looked like a painting, a portrait of a woman of similar descent to the empress herself. At the base of the door were claw marks in an endeavor to dig under and in, but whatever it was had given up and gone to find sustenance elsewhere. She placed a palm on the door and pushed. The guards brandished firearms and cutlery from behind. It was fixed tight, and so she went to window but hesitated at the dignified smile of the woman who reminded her of her mother. She wouldn’t damage the artifact any more than it already was, for she could see further attempts at entry pecked and scratched into the heavily matted canvas. She strolled back to the door, examined it again, then gestured to one of the guards to kick it in, and he did.
The pungency of death burst into the open as a swirl of flies took flight at the entrance and flurried about the darkness inside. Daylight cast a wide yellow column onto limbs and hair and shredded clothing, animated by a frenzy of tiny intruders, industrious enough to have surmounted the desert’s finer scavengers. Crimson had gone brown and pasted the walls, the tile floor, the ceiling. A man lay draped over a very small child, just a few paces into the kitchen area, and on a table to her right Tai saw clearly the face of the woman in the painting, upside down, gaping into the golden shaft of mid-day sunlight. She was on her back, her legs spread and dangling over the table’s edge, her dress torn away with a deep gash from sternum to womanhood crawling with parasites. Tai shut her eyes away from it, searched her memory for which unit had been deployed into this sector, for she would establish legislation toward rules of engagement the moment she returned to Monasco. Whoever was responsible for this would face execution without falter, and without the pacifist sway of the queen.
Then she heard a rustling toward the rear, beyond the sunlight’s reach. Her soldiers had no torches to illuminate the shadows, so when she heard another shuffle the empress tightened a grip around the handle of her scimitar and unsheathed it slowly, quietly. She motioned to her senior officer to remove the portrait that blocked the front window. He stepped around the ravaged woman and pried the picture away from where it had been forcibly jammed into the window border. Another amber stream fell across the interior as a trembling gasp escaped from somewhere around the partition between the kitchen and a larger room. Tai Ogami cross-stepped over a toppled dining chair, sunlight glinting off her blade, reflecting a dancing yellow disk onto the opposite wall as she crept. She hesitated, isolated the origin of the sound, then whirled around the partition and pinned the culprit to the wall at the tip of her scimitar.
She withdrew it at once. A child. A female child. The empress estimated her to be about eight, nine perhaps. The little girl regarded her with eyes wide as plates, a distinctive almond shape like the woman in the painting. A tattered frock hung from her narrow shoulders, stained with the burgundy remnants of all that had happened there, and she recoiled against the wall and shrunk under a worktable, drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around them tightly.
The empress cocked her head in bewilderment. She sheathed her weapon and stooped down to meet her at the eye. The child shifted her eyes from the empress to the guards, seized by a frightful recollection, which Tai interpreted quite clearly.
“Leave us,” she told them, but the troops dawdled, bound by an oath of provision for her safety, and so she restated the command, this time with a bit more fervor. They exchanged wary glances, then exited out into the city, leaving Empress Ogami alone with her discovery.
“What is your name?” she asked delicately.
The child responded with a whisper lower than a whisper, swallowed by gloom and flooded with sorrow. “Tàhti,” she said and watched the empress with a doubtful eye. She tucked her bare feet in close and made herself as small as possible.
“Well, my name is Tai,” Empress Ogami said with a brief smile. “Is this your home, Tàhti?”
The girl did not answer. She rested her chin on her knee and stared at Tai as though the truth might conjure another monster in the doorway.
Tai glanced behind her at the carnage and tried again. “Is that your family?”
Tàhti scanned the kitchen but said nothing.
Tai shifted her weight to the other heel, and when she did, the little girl flinched. “You don’t have to fear me,” she assured and inched back. “Nobody’s going to hurt you, not even those big soldiers outside. I promise.”
The girl was unconvinced, and she let out a tiny sigh as if waiting for the empress to state her business.
“How old are you, Tàhti?” Tai questioned, hoping to establish a sense of trust with a change of subject.
After a moment the little girl held up both hands and spread her fingers.
“Ten,” Tai confirmed with another smile. “Well, I’ll tell you what,” she offered. “I don’t think this is a place for a ten-year-old little girl to be living, do you?” She surveyed the filth and took a mental inventory of the dried beans, corn meal, and pekha juice on which the girl had apparently been surviving for twenty-four passings, too terrified of the New World to search it for assistance.
Tàhti shrugged ever so slightly, and so the Empress held out her hand.
“I know where we can get something to eat,” she coaxed. “There are some very nice ladies there who’ll get you washed up and into some new clothes.” And she waited for the girl to decide between the grisly sanctuary of a home no longer inhabitable or the hand of a stranger with a promise. “I’ll make sure those soldiers outside keep you safe from the soldiers who did this. I know they look the same, but they’re not. In fact, I’ll send them back here myself to gather your family for a proper burial, according to your customs. You won’t be leaving them behind. You have my word.”
The little girl bit her lip with deep temptation and contemplated the proposal. It was either the motivation of hunger or the certain notion of a hapless future that moved her to reach out and take the empress’ hand. Tai helped her up from the shadows and walked with her to the door.
As Empress Ogami emerged with the child, Lieutenant Seguro approached. She gave the girl a dubious glance and asked Tai, “What are you doing?”
Though she was Tai’s first choice for special operations, her casual posture had been slightly vexing. “I’m taking her out of here, taking her with us.”
“And what do you suppose we do with her?” Seguro questioned lowly.
“We’ll bring her to Monasco, that’s what,” Tai said. “She can’t stay here, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Seguro peered skeptically out across the desert, then settled a troubled gaze on Tai and spoke to her in confidence. “So, we take her to Monasco and then what? Put her up for adoption? Set her loose on the city streets? This isn’t our responsibility. We’re here to do recon, not to be good will ambassadors. Send someone else back for her, if it’s that important.”
“I’m taking her to the palace,” Tai told her as she tightened the straps of Stratigo’s saddle. “And yes, it is our responsibility. It’s my responsibility,” she insisted. Then she turned away from Tàhti and the others and suggested to Seguro, “Maybe if she was a Monascan child, you’d be a little more inclined toward ‘good will’.” She arched a perceptive eyebrow and ordered her back to the group to ride out.
“Have you ever ridden a horse before?” she then asked Tàhti, and the girl shook her head. “Well, that’s all right.” Tai placed a boot in the stirrup and swung a leg over. One of the guards grabbed the bridle and guided Stratigo to the ground and the child was lifted up onto the mantle. She placed the girl’s hands on the saddle horn, telling her in her ear, “You hold on to this, and I’ll hold on to you. All right?” And the stallion shook his head with an anxious bray. Then she maneuvered the animal around and addressed the troops, “This child will be under my care from this day forth. You will treat her as royalty, and you will protect her as you protect me. Is that understood?”
They responded with a unanimous, “Yes, Your Majesty” as the child glanced around at her with renewed curiosity.
With a spur of her heel, Empress Ogami goaded the stallion forward through the broken city, one hand on the reigns and the other curled around an orphan girl, destined to become the Princess of Sähm.
*******
The Queen of Monasco admired herself in a full-length mirror. She turned to either side, smoothed the neckline of a white silk evening gown, smiled at the way the hem swept gently across the marble floor as she moved. It was more of an eggshell cream than a pure white, she thought, as she gazed more closely at her reflection, an image she had seen most often in the Ylles River when the wind desisted. Silver sequins and diamond chips sparkled in the sunlight, embroidered into subtle arrays along the right seam. Queen Seraya Bahan could hardly wait for the moment in which this dress would render the empress helplessly spellbound.
Jun Ogami admired her own handiwork. She strolled around her new daughter-in-law in a broad circle, kept a reflective distance and nodded. Seraya possessed the ideal frame for elegant attire; the fabric--particularly silk--took well to the curve of her waist and the graceful arc of her shoulders. And the color blended richly with her light toffee complexion. She made quite an effortless vision of mere thread and cloth, Mrs. Ogami mused, surprised at how well she took to the refinements of civilized culture.
“Now,” Jun declared and draped the final accessory around Seraya’s shoulders. “Hold it out. See how it flows, how the design catches the light.”
Seraya extended an arm. Additional diamonds and silver, woven into the delicate mesh of a chiffon wrap, glistened and breathed in the blue daylight, and the Queen of Monasco felt less like royalty and more like a seraph of the High Goddess.
“I can’t keep any of this on, you know,” Seraya told her and glanced through the open window at the sun’s position, nearing the Ahagaar peaks. “Tai should be returning shortly, and I don’t want her to see this until next passing at the induction banquet. I want it to be a surprise.”
“Well, then you’d better let me hang it,” Jun chuckled. “I’ll keep it in my room until next sunfall.” And she removed the shawl and draped it over a suede-padded hanger. A procession of boots and armor then echoed through the hall, moving toward the royal suite. Seraya hurried out of the gown.
“I said shortly,” she muttered as Jun eased the delicate dress over her daughter-in-laws’s hips. “I didn’t mean this instant. It’s like she listens to my very thoughts at times.”
Tai approached the bedroom and dismissed the guards. She turned the handle and cracked the door, but her mother met her there with a nervous smile, barring entrance.
“Just one moment, dear,” she assured and shut the door in the empress’ face.
Tai blinked, her nose to the wood, and she glanced down at the curious little girl at her side. “That would be one of those nice ladies,” she said, pointing to the door.
Tàhti peered up at her, bewilderment moving through her huge brown eyes as she waited with her rescuer for someone else to reappear.
After a moment the door opened wide, and Seraya smiled brightly from inside, adjusting the waist of a wispy wrap-around skirt. She wore it with a sea green tunic and matching emerald bangles around her wrists and ankles, her mahogany ringlets gathered into a casual bun. She slipped into her sandals as Jun made a nonchalant attempt at concealing the diamond gown.
“Honey, I’m home,” Tai sang with a smirk, her eyes twinkling with suspicious amusement. She stepped inside with a smile for her mother and a kiss for her wife, then peeked around the door, looking for clues to their odd behavior, but they were riveted on the little girl in the doorway behind her. So, Tai persuaded her into the room. She took her hand and crouched beside her. “These are the ladies I was telling you about,” she said and gestured to them both. “That’s my mother, Lady Jun.” Then Seraya came closer, perplexed and intrigued. “And this is Seraya, the Queen of Sähm,” Tai told her. She looked to her family and said, “This is Tàhti, and Tàhti is ten. She’s from Kappolaris, and I’m willing to bet she’s pretty hungry right now. She needs a good bath and something clean to wear as well, and I thought maybe we could see about that for her.”
“Well, hello, Tàhti.” Seraya knelt to her with a sweet smile. “You’ve come all the way from Kappolaris, huh?”
The child did not respond. She gazed upon the face of the queen, fascinated by the Calabrecian slave’s brand that marred her left cheek, just a shadow of a scar but visible to anyone who stood as close.
“Well,” Seraya said, anyway. “That’s a pretty long ride. I’ve made that trip myself, and I know I was famished by the time I got here. In fact, if I were a little girl as pretty as this, I’d want a bath and to have my hair brushed and fixed, too. Would you like that?”
This time Tàhti nodded, and so Jun held out her hand, accepting the task. The little girl stared at it for a moment, then looked to the Empress.
“It’s okay,” Tai assured with a wink.
Tàhti took another moment to consider the idea, then grabbed Jun’s hand to be escorted through the halls.
Seraya had a puzzled frown as she watched them leave. “What’s happened to her?” she asked. “Where’s her family?”
It was more than Tai cared to divulge until she could sift through all the details with her advisors, and so she cautiously refrained. “She’s been through a terrible ordeal. And as far as her family, well, it looks like we’re it now. She’ll need something to wear. I thought maybe you and my mother might work on a wardrobe for her, if you would. But in the meantime she’ll need something to suffice. I’ll see if my mother has any old clothes of mine stored away. I’m sure we can come up with something. But right now I’ve got some business to handle that really can’t wait. In fact, you might have to do dinner without me. I’m not sure how long I’ll be.” She left her with a kiss and disappeared out into the palace.
After a hot bath, steaming with honeysuckle oil and ginger petals and a healthy portion of harira soup, Tàhti’s coal black hair was combed and braided by her newly-appointed grandmother, and she was presented to the queen to be tucked in to bed.
Seraya chuckled at Tai’s old pullover, which would substitute as a nightgown for the time being. “Well, this thing nearly drags the floor on you.” She tugged at it with a smile and inspected the tiny plaits pulled into a ponytail. “My mother used to fix my hair like this, too,” Seraya recalled. “Next passing we’ll tie it up in a nice bun for you, and maybe Lady Jun might have finished a pretty dress for you to wear. What do you think?”
Tàhti sat cross-legged on a feather bed in the guest room closest to the royal suite. She uttered not a word but gave the queen the slightest nod, and Seraya urged the little girl under the satin down blankets and pulled them up to her chin.
“I know you’re very confused right now,” she cooed. “All these strangers. This big palace in a far away city. But you know what? I know exactly how you feel. I’m almost as new to all this as you. But one day the empress showed up and changed everything, made everything colorful and safe. I have a feeling you and I are two of the luckiest girls in all of Sähm right now,” she smiled. “So, you sleep well tonight and don’t you be afraid of a thing.” And she lowered the flame on the oil lamp and began a bedtime story about the woman who was a commoner and became a princess. But this time she changed the ending, and the princess became the queen of her own land, grew old and content and smiled upon her children and grandchildren each passing. And with that the little girl fell asleep. Seraya extinguished the lamp, pulled the window shut and returned to the royal suite.
Two halls away in the war room, Empress Ogami, Prime Minister Lior, Captain Olanga, Lieutenant Seguro, and three members of the Imperial Council deliberated over the outcome of the soldiers in the Monascan 4th Infantry unit. Olanga produced a registry with the names and ranks of thirty-seven troops, each a member of 4th Infantry’s 2nd platoon, which, according to the Captain, had been ordered to secure the Kappolarian sector once the battle had ended. Nothing more. After what she’d seen that afternoon, the empress hadn’t enough compassion to consider the various interpretations of that order. And so she arrived at her decision without reluctance.
“Send a security squad in to Camp Vallone, immediately after this meeting,” she directed. “Arrest them and charge them each with disobeying a direct order, with dereliction of duty and a violation the Warrior Code. How many victims were there? Do we know?”
“So far there seems to be close to a hundred and fifty,” Olanga said.
The empress breathed an irritated sigh and leaned back in her chair at the head of the table. “A hundred and fifty,” she muttered. “All right. Then charge them each with one hundred and fifty counts of murder as well…and one count of attempted murder,” she appended.
“One count of attempted murder?” Lior questioned. “I’m not sure I understand, Your Highness.”
The empress gave him a faint smile and said, “I know. But you will next passing.”
Lior shrugged. “As you wish, Your Majesty.” And he noted the charges for permanent record.
“Once they’ve been detained,” the Empress continued. “Have them brought to the city and scheduled for execution by archery squad next passing. And I want it public. I want the entire city to bear witness, to be made aware that this regime will not tolerate martial impudence of any kind. This is my military now, and there are going to be some changes as to the way we conduct ourselves, laws that will be followed in a professional manner by soldiers and citizens alike. The only way we’re going to unify this region is through a common appreciation and respect for the tenets set forth here and now. This is a new era, and we’re going to enter it in a righteous and qualified fashion. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the table resounded, all but the Captain who responded with a desultory nod to which the Empress took notice but said nothing. He had his orders as well, and she had very little concern for what he thought of her personally. Next passing’s events were to send a message to everyone in her charge, not discounting the individuals at that very table. She rose, and they rose with her. “I have some related issues to discuss with the queen before next passing,” she said and dismissed them for the evening.
Inside the royal suite, the lamp flames were doused and all the candles extinguished but one that flickered on the mantle. Seraya was tucked under the sheets asleep, and the candlelight threw amber shadows across her bare shoulders. Before the empress settled in for the night, she chose first to check on Tàhti, just down the hall. She shut the bedroom door softly and went to the next guarded room with her finger to her lips. The soldiers that flanked the doorway remained at parade rest as not to rattle the little girl from her sleep. Tai peaked inside to find her wide-awake, fidgeting with a rag doll, watching the moon through the stained glass window. She opted to leave her to her thoughts, rather than keep her awake with idle conversation, and so she left her be. She could remember her first few sleepless nights at military school, haunted by uncertainty, homesick and disorientated. It would be quite an adjustment period, but at least she would spend it in the care of the most gracious women Tai had ever known. And with that she gently shut the door and she headed back to the royal suite.
Seraya turned groggily to face her wife as she took a seat at the edge of the bed to remove her boots.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Tai whispered, shedding her uniform. “I just wanted to check on Tàhti before I came to bed. She’s still awake, but I left her alone.”
Seraya frowned. “Well, when I left her she was asleep. Do you think she’s had a nightmare? Maybe I should go see about her again.”
“No, no,” Tai insisted. “She’ll be fine. She has to learn to trust the darkness.”
Seraya was unconvinced, but she settled back into the sheets and said, “It’s a bit rigid, don’t you think? To leave her alone in there. She’s only ten, and she’s obviously been through an awful time.”
“She’s fine,” Tai said as she kissed her forehead and took her in her arms for the night. “She’s a survivor, believe me. And speaking of, there was something I wanted to talk with you about, since you’re awake.”
“And what would that be?”
“I need a minister, a holy man from your culture to perform a burial ceremony. Calabrecians and Kappolarians share the same spiritual beliefs, so I thought maybe you’d know what to do about something like that.”
Seraya nodded and snuggled close to her. “Well, of course,” she uttered. “I’ll see what I can do.” Then she peered up at her with concern. “Is it for her family?”
Tai heaved a sigh, telling her, “For them and about a hundred and forty-seven other Kappolarians.”
Seraya held her breath as an awful notion fell across her face. “The war?”
“You could say that,” Tai mumbled. “There’s something I have to do next passing, something to which you’re probably going to be greatly opposed, but it has to be done.”
“Greatly opposed?” Seraya questioned. “Well, so far I think I’ve been very supportive of your decisions. What exactly would I be so opposed to?”
“An execution,” Tai told her flatly. The queen said nothing for several beats, and so her wife continued. “When the battle at Calabrecia ended, the General ordered an infantry platoon to make rounds through Kappolaris to look for survivors,” she explained. “And today we found them. Slaughtered. All of them. A hundred and fifty civilians in their homes, women and children, infants, elderly. It was senseless enough what was done to the city itself. But then a few dozen soldiers went in and eradicated what was left of an entire culture of people. All but one. And so, next passing they themselves will be put to death in the city square to ensure that this empire and its military have a clear understanding of the laws concerning the rules of engagement.”
“And I suppose those rules can be bent when it suits the regime,” Seraya countered quietly. “Murder them for committing murder.”
“I knew you were going to say that.”
“Then why did you tell me?”
“Because you’ve got just as much influence over this empire as I do, an equal stake. And besides, it’s a public execution. It’s not like I could hide it from you if I wanted to.”
“And there’s nothing else that can be done? Life imprisonment? Expulsion from the military? Nothing else? It must be a death sentence?”
Tai exhaled noisily and told her, “Under the circumstances, yes. I’ve got to make examples of these soldiers to establish some respect from the people and the army. In fact, they’re not even soldiers; they’re criminals who were left to govern themselves and made a massacre of Kappolaris in the process. There’s absolutely no honor in that. None whatsoever.”
The queen shifted onto her back with a sigh. “Well, you’re right. I am greatly opposed, however, it seems my influence only extends so far, since you’ve apparently made your decision.”
“This time, yes.”
“I see,” she breathed. “Well, I’m not going to be present for it, just so you know. I’ll take Tàhti and we’ll make a trip to Gaddis or to the Ylles for the day. I don’t think she should have to see that, do you?”
“No, I don’t want her to be here,” the Empress agreed. “It’s a good idea, Gaddis. It’s likely she’s never been there, so she might enjoy seeing the ocean.”
Queen Seraya’s response was indistinct, and she shut her eyes and tried to sleep.
“Will I still have your support for the burial ceremony?” Tai asked.
“Yes.”
Seraya said nothing more and turned to her side. Tai didn’t push. She expected this, and she hoped to avoid it in the future, to find ways to keep order that would make her queen happy. Perhaps next passing’s events would be the first and last of their kind, and then she might begin to build the utopia that Seraya dreamt about.
Tai turned to her and kissed her shoulder, but Seraya kept her back to her. And so she rested an arm in the curve of her sleeping form and invited the scent of jasmine in her lover’s hair to soothe her to sleep.
********
Tàhti awoke to a tender voice, bidding her good morning. Queen Seraya sat at the edge of the bed and smiled as she smoothed a hand over Tàhti’s braids, but her eyes held traces of disappointment that were not there last passing. In fact, sadness in any form seemed an unusual quality for this woman, and the little girl wondered if it had anything to do with the recent war. Tàhti herself hadn’t become quite so acquainted with gloom until all the fighting and commotion began. And it wouldn’t have surprised her if this Queen of Sähm had been touched by the turmoil as well, having come from Calabrecia where most of the chaos had taken place. She wasn’t even aware that there was a Queen of Sähm until last passing, nor an empress, and she pondered over their separate functions—an empress and queen over the same land. Where was the emperor?
“I was afraid you didn’t sleep well,” the queen said with an expression of sympathy. She didn’t. The moon made her anxious, and it had been glaring at her from just over the dunes like an all-seeing eye, not of the High Goddess but of something sinister, the way it spied through the cracks in the picture frame that blocked her window for so many nights. She took comfort, however, in that the wolves had gone and hadn’t followed her here. She took comfort in the downy mattress and the stone walls on all sides and in the blue gems sewn onto the face of her doll as the eyes. They had charmed the ill-starred moonlight and spun it into tiny sparkles, and now they did a similar trick with the morning sunshine.
The queen grinned, took the doll with a chuckle and toyed with it. “You like this thing, huh?” she remarked. “It used to belong to the empress, if you can believe that. To look at her now, you’d think she slept with a hunting knife instead,” she laughed and handed it back to her. “Well, we should get you dressed, little lady. I thought you and I might go on a trip today. Have you ever been to Gaddis?”
She hadn’t, and so she shook her head.
“Well, all the better,” the queen said. “Then it will be even more fun to take you. I’ve been once with Empress Tai, and I had no idea how beautiful a place could be. The water is breathtaking, endless, as blue as the eyes of your doll.”
And filled with monsters, Tàhti was always told. Fish the size of a dôcha with teeth like a carpenter’s saw. Bigger, even. Sharper. She wondered if they had the ability to walk on land, and if so, how often they breached the shores.
She climbed out of bed and was dressed in the empress’ old clothes, her hair twisted neatly into a topknot, adorned with a white lace ribbon. She took the queen’s hand and as they entered out into the hall, the guards at the door shifted to attention, giving her a start. They remained at the doorway and gave no chase, yet the little girl watched them cautiously until she and her new caregiver turned the next corner.
Palace workers chiseled at the walls and painted the borders. Then they suddenly halted at the sight of the queen and knelt to a knee with their heads bowed, and Tàhti wondered if she should do the same.
“No, no. As you were. Please,” Seraya insisted as if it discomfited her to be revered, and they all returned to their tasks, like a complex apparatus that had been shut down and then restarted. The queen stopped at a fresco in progress on one of the facades and admired it. The artist, a young man not much older than the queen herself, folded his hands against his chest and took a step back with a slight bow. She smiled at him and his work—plush trees with leaves of red and gold in a bursting canopy above a winding brook, over which was a red wooden bridge like the one at the palace entrance, and in the background stood an enormous blue and white mountain, bigger than any mountain Tàhti had ever seen. She was inclined to think this painter had quite an imagination until Queen Seraya grabbed an old picture book from a nearby worktable. The text was a series of symbols in a language unfamiliar to Tàhti, nothing like her native L’ghälii.
“Remarkable,” Seraya whispered, comparing the image on the tattered page to that of the young man’s work. “What has the Empress offered you for your time?” she then asked him.
“Twenty-five rikks, Your Highness,” he responded.
She nodded and laid the book in its place. Then she gazed up at the mural and told him, “Well, I’ll see that she doubles it. And your name?”
“Odion, Your Highness. Of third-colony-Monasco.”
“Well, Odion,” she smiled. “My compliments. And I’m sure the empress will agree. Carry on, please,” she encouraged him, a former slave who would go home with as many rikks as Tàhti’s father made in five passings as a school teacher. Her world had made a quite a turn while she cringed in the rancid darkness of her ruined home, and she took the queen’s hand to venture forth into more intrigue.
Drums soon resounded from the city square, a distant thunder that shot a flash of dread across the queen’s face, and she hurried Tàhti along.
“We need to move quickly, sweetie,” she urged with a brief smile. “There’s a carriage waiting for us out back, and we don’t want to keep them.” And she was whisked away through the halls in a rush.
They were greeted by five soldiers at the end of a long conduit that led from the rear of the palace to the outside. A horse-driven transport wagon awaited there, decorated with golden baubles and red silk fringe on a white sheer canopy. One of the soldiers held out a hand to assist his queen into the carriage, then he did the same for Tàhti, but she shrank away from him. The queen encouraged her forth, but Tàhti found her feet had turned to granite as she was struck with the sudden recollection of bloodstained iron and the wails of her infant brother. It was all revisiting her as if she had fallen through some crevice in time, flung backward to the final hours of the war itself. When she finally shook it away, her dress was damp with sweat and she was on the ground in a ball, trembling.
The queen had gotten out of the carriage and tried to soothe her with gentle strokes and pitiful words, but to Tàhti it was as foreign as Odion’s picture book, and she cast her off. She wanted her mother. She needed to feel the largeness of her father’s arms, lifting her from the floor into a cosseted embrace, but there was only this young strange woman and the rattle of armor and shuffling of boots. How had she gone from a fearless city girl with thick skin and a thirst for adventure to this cowering mad little imp? The question turned her fear around somewhat, and she stopped shaking. The reality of the present slowly returned, and she dared peer up at Queen Seraya whose face was a pale blank sheet.
“It’s all right,” she cooed. “Nobody’s going to hurt you.” She repeated that several times as she helped Tàhti to her feet, bewildered and cautious. She stayed with her, crouched before her with wide brown eyes that seemed to be searching for what to do or say next as the drums from the city bounced around the walls and crescendoed. One of the guards stepped close again, and Tàhti flinched at the broadsword that dangled off his weapon belt, which shot the queen to her feet with a stern and rather crude stipulation.
“Just back away,” she snapped. “Can’t you see you’re scaring her? Now, go! Move back!” The men obeyed and stepped away, but she still wasn’t satisfied. “In fact…” and she went over to horse closest to them and began unfastening its bridle from the carriage. “We can manage just as well on our own, I think,” she uttered. When the animal was free of its equipment, she held out a hand to Tàhti and beckoned her over. “Come on. Just you and me, okay? Just us girls. To the Ylles for the day? It’ll be closer, not so many strangers,” she promised.
The same soldier who’d sent Tàhti reeling into the past then spoke up. “Your Highness, I really wouldn’t advise you to go off on your own. The desert isn’t safe, and—“
“Has it ever been?” she quipped. The execution cadence rumbled in the distance as she secured the horse’s stirrups. “There’s certainly less iniquity out there than here, this passing. We’ll be fine. You’ll return to your posts in the palace and report to the empress when all this…” And she waved a hand around at the goings-on out in the city. “….all this madness is finished.”
The guards exchanged a wary glance and beseeched her once again, but she refused and ordered them to stay behind as she and Tàhti set out for the eastern Ylles River.
*********
The Monascan city square was packed with spectators, awaiting a mass execution, anticipating an appearance from the empress. Thirty-seven relegated soldiers trembled against heavy wooden posts, bound at the wrists and ankles, blindfolded and stripped of their uniforms. To each prisoner an expert archer had been assigned, positioned exactly ten paces off, and they tugged at their bowstrings and examined arrow tips for lethal accuracy as the drums thundered throughout the city.
Empress Tai Ogami gazed out across the red desert from the window of the palace watchtower. She lowered her eyes to the marble with a sigh and wondered if Seraya would return in time for the inauguration banquet, as she was quite poised to stand her up without regret.
“The prisoners are in place, Your Majesty,” Prime Minister Lior informed her from the doorway.
She nodded and lifted her eyes out to the empty sand as a reverie sailed through her mind; the banks of the Ylles; the horizon a spectacle of orange and lavender; a question hanging on the silver splinters of fading sunlight—what if you could be a queen?
Well, if I were your queen, there’d be no more war, no more bloodshed. There‘s already been enough of that.
Her lover’s eyes were glistening pools the color of molasses that passing, imagining this New World as if it already passed her by in a lifetime forgotten.
Ten hide beaters pummeled a death cadence to the roar of the crowd as Prime Minister Lior abided patiently at the door. “Your Majesty?”
The Empress nodded. She straightened the sash of her uniform and followed him out to the terrace.
The citizens of Sähm erupted as she approached the banister and gazed down upon a thousand faces. The accused were lined along the main thoroughfare, facing the palace, facing her. The executioners readied themselves on the opposite side of the concourse as citizens were ushered aside by security soldiers.
“Citizens and nobles of Sähm,” the event herald then announced from the opposite end of the terrace, and the crowd noise dwindled as the drums rolled softly. “You have all been called to witness the sentencing of these men and women for war crimes against the Monascan Empire.” And he read their names and ranks from a long roll, read them slowly with explicit pronunciation—thirteen corporals, nineteen sergeants, five lieutenants, and a captain. “For the crime of murder, one hundred and fifty counts, these prisoners are hereby sentenced to death on this passing, the eighty-first of Lumina in the season of one thousand and three. For the crime of attempted murder, one count, the sentence is also death as decreed by Her Royal Majesty, Empress Tai Ogami, ruler of the Monascan Empire of Sähm.”
Tai glanced around to find her mother had joined the terrace entourage, but Jun stood back and gave her daughter a vanguard at the railing and observed without interruption.
“Archery squad, draw your weapons!” the head of security then commanded, and thirty-seven assassins stretched their bows in practiced unison, pointed them toward a pale blue sky as the drums began to build.
Empress Ogami raised a hand high above her head, the preliminary signal to proceed, and the cadence quickened as the crowd chanted in resolute favor of death.
“Ready!” the commander bellowed. The archery line lowered their weapons and took simultaneous aim at their respective targets.
She had promised to use her authority to create a land undisrupted by hostility and turmoil, to make reforms that ensured a peaceable future, free of butchery and oppression. She was fully empowered with the option to pardon these criminals, possessed solely the fates of thirty-seven lives, god-like in that respect, tyrannical in the eyes of her wife. Three-dozen prisoners waited below for Empress Tai Ogami to honor her commitment to change as a thousand more lobbied for their demise.
She abided with stoic detachment, unwilling to display her conflicting emotions as she kept a hand held high in limbo. And as the rumbling death cadence strengthened, the Empress of Sähm sliced the air with the order to fire at will.
Thirty-seven arrows whizzed across the thoroughfare in an unmitigated instant and pierced the chests of their targets. Knees buckled, shoulders slumped, and heads hung. The crowd exploded and chanted her name, adoration for the merciless intolerance of their new leader. Then it grew quiet as they awaited an oration, but the Empress had little to say. She took a final account of the scene below, then turned away into the palace, hoping her decision would find her in better spirits for the ceremony at sunfall.
Captain Arturus Olanga shook his head at the spectacle. He strolled inside with the other officers and found Lieutenant Seguro who approached with a pall of disapproval.
“So, I guess we’re in the business of killing our own, now,” she muttered, and Olanga gave it an ineffective shrug.
“Well, we’ve got plenty of enemy soldiers in prison, ready to replace them,” he said as they walked together. “How many are there? Five hundred or so? All of them poised to give their lives, certainly not for Tai Ogami, but for their beloved and beautiful new Queen Seraya, I’m sure.”
“The beloved Seraya who hasn’t got the stomach to call them into battle, even if she had to,” Seguro said. “She wasn’t even present today. Makes you wonder what the Council proposes if the fate of this empire is ever left to that bleeding-heart dreg.”
Olanga smiled with a humorless chuckle. “Well, Seraya Bahan has more sway than either you or I care to contemplate, and I’m willing to bet her influence began long before this regime ever existed. How else could she have finagled her way into power? To have advanced from a slave colonist to a comfortable seat at the throne in…what? A season or two? Perhaps she truly is a force to be reckoned with,” he said with affected unease and a smile.
Seguro rolled her eyes. “I think the only force at work was Tai Ogami’s libido. She’s always had a weakness where women were concerned, and I’m not so sure that’s changed. Believe me, I’m all too familiar with it.”
Olanga gave that a smirk and laughed lightly. They had come to the main foyer, and he stopped and said, “Well, whether it was by lust or calculation, it certainly was no fluke that an enemy dreg found her way from Calabrecia to Monasco, into the Imperial palace, and into the arms of a Monascan deserter as our most gracious and noble queen.” His words were tinged with irony and defeat, but Seguro shook her head and stepped up close to him.
“Yes, but you see, Captain, that’s the difference right there,” she told him irreverently. “She’s not my queen.” And she turned away and swaggered out into the city, leaving him with his thoughts and queries.
*********
When they reached the river, Queen Seraya found a comfortable patch beneath a baobab tree for them to sit. The Lumina sun fanned out across the desert and sparkled the river plane, and Tàhti recalled her neighbor, Mr. Salaambo, a reed boat captain who used to fish along the Ylles and often brought her family fresh tilapia and butterfly fish.
“This is my favorite place in all of Sähm,” the queen smiled. “The empress and I had some very interesting conversations on these banks.” Then her smile waned and she said, “Seems longer ago, now, than it actually was. A lot has changed in a very short time.”
Tàhti leaned against the tree trunk and said nothing. She picked up a chip of limestone and drew circles in the dirt. The queen took no slight from her silence and continued the unaccompanied conversation, telling her, “I used to be afraid of them, too, you know. The soldiers. And for similar reasons. They came into our colony when I was a girl, not much younger than you, and they killed my father for no reason at all, really. I didn’t actually see it happen; my mother turned away and kept my face buried in her shoulder, and the next thing I knew they’d taken him, and then it was over. My brother suffered the most, I think. He watched it all and never really got past it, not that it’s a thing to get on with, but he’s had a fire burning in him for twenty seasons, and it’s been devouring him, little by little, each day since.”
Tàhti glanced up at her and wondered how she’d made such a remarkable leap in social status and what the empress’ role had been in that promotion. She thought back to when Empress Tai had brought her to the palace last passing; she met the queen with a kiss, a lover’s kiss, and Tàhti was beginning to suspect there was no emperor over this land. She couldn’t figure how their lives had intersected to a romantic extent, but she imagined a love between an empress and a queen was like any other. It seemed so, anyway. She took the stone and carved another design into the earth.
The queen said, “There’s going to be a formal burial for your family next passing. The empress and I are working together to see to it, for everyone in Kappolaris.” She gazed at her for a long moment and said, “I’m so sorry you had to go through something so awful. It was a different ruler then. You need to remember that, and things are going to be different now, I can promise you.”
They were kind words but futile still. It only brought back the recollection of her mother’s screams as they took her for pleasure on the kitchen table while her father lay unconscious with her baby brother crying on the floor next to him. He’d scooped him up in an attempt to flee through the back door, faced with the unimaginable choice between wife and children. But they knocked him cold with heavy iron weapons and gouged him through the shoulder as he fell. They presumed him dead, and so they left her brother, Leandro, to the same fate, sliced her mother open, and disappeared to wreak similar havoc on Mr. Salaambo’s home. All the while she herself cowered in the shadows, hidden away in a dark corner of the adjoining room. It took almost half a passing for Leandro to stop crying. But she didn’t move, never let a single breath drift across the room until the commotion out in the city finally fell silent and she heard her father groaning. She saw him move to get up and started over to him, but he held up a stern hand and warded her back to the shadows. “No. You stay put,” he wheezed, and then he pushed himself from the floor, lifted the cedar wood door that had been rammed off its hinges, tilted it upright, and forced it back into place with all the strength he had left. Then he slid to floor again, took Leandro into his arms and began to sob. And that was how he left this world, in tears with his murdered infant son in his lap. A formal burial in a sarcophagus of gold could not wipe that away—nothing ever would.
When the memory faded, she realized the drawings in the dirt had made their way to the flesh on her thigh where she had begun the first three letters of her brother’s name, and the queen saw it, too, and she snatched the stone from Tahti's hand with sudden alarm and an admonishment to match.
“What in the name of Méraah are you doing, child?” she scolded. She hurled the rock as far into the desert as it would go and regarded Tàhti strangely. “There’s enough blood drawn in this forsaken desert without us doing it to ourselves. You have to promise you’ll never do such a thing again. Ever.” She waited for a response, but Tàhti owed her no promises and no recants because she was no one’s child, anymore, and the sting of torn skin felt better than the throb of a broken heart.
Queen Seraya was growing flustered with Tàhti’s silence, and she said, “You can only keep your thoughts penned up for so long, you know. Eventually you’re going to have to set them free if you ever want to be free, yourself. And trust me, I know a thing or two about freedom and the lack of it. The way you’re going, you’re no better than I was as a slave to Calabrecia, except you’re bound by pain and loss, and there are no laws that govern that. Only the ones we create for ourselves.” She studied the bleeding cuts on Tàhti’s leg, shook her head with a deep sigh, and tore away a small section of the hem of her skirt as a bandage. Tàhti allowed her to dab the wound clean but remained quiet. She thought about their common sorrows and considered, for a moment, that perhaps she was right. But then it all made another resentful turn and Tàhti shut her out again.
They remained at the Ylles for most of the day as the queen prattled on in a one-sided dialogue. They watched the river boats and fishing canoes float along soft currents and snacked on date cakes and papayas that’d been stored in the horse’s saddle pack. Queen Seraya talked about democracy and an all-inclusive Sähm where every citizen had a voice and no one’s beliefs were discounted. She said it was the empress’ greatest and boldest achievement, the abolition of slavery, but capital punishment was an issue left unsettled between them. The queen’s father would have been opposed to violence in any form, and it was up to her to carry on that legacy, particularly having found herself in the unlikeliest position of power, a position that neither of them could’ve ever predicted. She spoke fondly of his memory, but her expression saddened at the mention of her mother. She glossed over that topic and left Tàhti with an abridged, disjointed account of their estrangement, saving the complicated details for when Tàhti was older. The queen talked and dreamt aloud until the sun rubbed against the mountainside with the reminder to head back to the city before dark, and so they packed up the horse and headed west.
The Ahagaar shadows fell across the plains quickly, and they had only come to what was once Calabrecian territory with another twelve miles to cover. The Queen goaded the horse into a gallop, trying to make up the time as she held Tàhti close around the waist. It was getting cold, and the wind was obnoxious and stole her breath on occasion.
And then at the far southern horizon they saw the silhouettes of four riders, encroaching rapidly. Queen Seraya kept onward but watched them with a cautious eye. They had a hundred miles of open wasteland in which to choose a course but seemed bent on that of Tàhti and the queen, and Seraya chose not to tempt disaster.
“You’re going to have to hold on to the mantle,” she said into Tàhti’s ear and placed the girl’s hands firmly around the saddle horn. “Do not let go, no matter what.” Then she snapped both reigns and gave the steed a kick and a shout that bolted him forth as if shot from a cannon. But the distant riders did the same and kicked up a black dust cloud as they took off in unmistakable pursuit.
There was nowhere to take cover, no ravines to delve into or dunes behind which to vanish, and the riders were able to take strategic routes that soon placed one on at each flank, one gaining at the rear, and another in a boomerang course around in front until the queen was surrounded without escape. When the gap was successfully closed, the five of them skidded to a halt in the center of Sähm’s vast empty tundra.
Seraya swerved the stallion in half-circles and braced an arm across Tàhti’s chest, her eyes shooting around at the faces of four men dressed in the tatters of nomads, armed with batliffs across their backs and khanjars on their waistbands. They hadn’t the appearance of soldiers, despite the military weapons on hand, but they were not arbitrary wanderers, either. Not entirely. They were some new amalgamation of paupers and mercenaries, too skilled at hunting games to be farmers, yet lacking the discipline of a professional army.
“We’ve got nothing of use to you. Just let us be on our way, and you do the same,” Seraya demanded.
The men said nothing. They settled onto their steeds and studied their newest catch with thoughtful consideration.
“I’ve got a child with me, for the love of Méraah,” Seraya insisted. “I would think even bandits have a code of some sort? What threat could she possibly pose? Just let us go.”
One of them wore a ragged bandana and a faded leather eye patch, and he guided his animal up next to the queen and said to the others, “Bandits?” He smirked at Seraya and said, “Well, now that’s a first. Been called many things, and probably fit the bill to most of them, but never a bandit. I kinda like it, though.” Then he reached across and touched a fingertip to Tàhti’s chin, like a sportive big brother, but she recoiled. “Bet you never gone that fast on a horse before in your life, have you?” he said to her. “Your mother’s quite a rider, the equestrian type, I bet, judging from all those pretty gems and trinkets around her wrists. Now, tell me, is that a pure chiffon skirt or the kind they make now with hemp linen to make it look real?” he asked Seraya.
“What do you want from us? My jewelry? Fine,” Seraya scoffed. She reached down and unfastened the emerald bracelet and held it out to him. “Take it.”
The one-eyed man studied the bracelet with a peculiar smile but did not reach for it.
Then the queen said, “If you want the skirt, well then I’m afraid we’ll have to get it resized, seeing as you’re at least my brother’s height, if not taller. And I’m really not sure green is your color, even in the moonlight.”
The man laughed aloud, a genuine hearty chuckle that evaporated into the evening air. One of his cohorts leaned in and said something in his ear about confiscating the jewelry as a means to fund their future ventures, but the one-eyed outlaw waved him away. “I think the lady is correct in that even ‘bandits’ have a code,” he said, looking directly at Seraya. “So, we’ll let her keep her wares. I mean, after all, what would a noblewoman be without her diamonds and gold? Funny thing what defines us, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure I catch your meaning,” Seraya sighed.
The man shrugged and said, “Well, I’m sure you don’t. How could you ever know what it is to live in squalor and watch your oppressors reap the rewards of your labor? I wonder how many slaves died mining for those beautiful jewels that you so easily toss away to crooks, as you say. What do you think? Ten? Twenty? One?”
“I think you haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about and that your grievances are sorely misplaced,” Seraya told him.
He shook his head and sat up on his horse. “Oh, I wouldn’t be so quick to say that, madam. I’ve watched your kind all my life, had the best seat in the house, as a matter of fact. But you’re right. It wouldn’t be wise to take a thing from a helpless mother and child, out here all alone in the desert after dark. There are other ways to make a point.”
“Well, these two have got to belong to somebody,” the third rider then spoke up. He had taken the khanjar from its holster and was cleaning his nails with the tip, and it was through this exchange that Seraya realized her own anonymity. The pale blue half-light had obscured the scar on her face, and they had no idea to whom they were speaking, but the brandished blade still made her uneasy, if for no other reason than Tàhti’s safety. Then the man with the knife suggested, “We can take them with us for ransom. The Goddess knows we need the money.”
Calabrecians, Seraya then deduced, and so she looked for a window in the dialogue to lobby for their release. But the ransom proposal was met with the one-eyed marauder’s fierce distaste, and he spun his horse around to his comrade and gave him a heavy shove. “What kind of a cretin are you? That’s not what we do. That’s not how we’ve ever operated, and we’re not gonna start tonight.” And he turned away from with a scowl. “Imbecile.”
“Well, then what is it that you do,” Seraya finally interjected. “Because if it’s not thievery or kidnapping or cross-dressing or anything else of that sort, then you might let us be on our way.” Then she eyed the khanjar in the third man’s hand and added, “And you should know that a crime against royalty carries a certain penalty of death, particularly an assault on the queen and princess of Sähm…as I have not yet been able to convince the empress otherwise.” She raised an eyebrow and stared into the face of the one-eyed man with deadpan severity. He stared back at her, as if she had just grown a second head, and he sized her up again, taking another account of the fineries and gemstones and the black and red-fringed silk riding mantle that carried the Monascan Imperial emblem. And when the moonlight shifted, it revealed, at last, the faint shadow of a slave’s brand on her cheek.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered, and a sly grin crept across his face that Seraya was unable to interpret. “It couldn’t be,” he said, staring narrowly through the darkness at an impossibility. He was turning something over in his mind that left him artfully astounded, and Seraya was beginning to feel like an insect in a jar. “So, then it’s true,” he uttered to himself, then said to her, “I thought it was the delirium of newfound freedom that started rumors of a Calabrecian slave at the throne of an empire. A Monascan empire, at that.” He maneuvered his horse around to get a better look at her and the child and said, “Who’d have thought that Seraya Bahan would stumble into royalty and that I would stumble onto her, all these many seasons later.”
Seraya regarded him with suspicion. She looked him over thoroughly but came to no useful conclusions, aside from the Monascan slave’s brand on the side of his neck, which made the previous Meraavian reference odd, she thought. “I really don’t believe we’ve met, sir,” she denounced. “I’ve never had contact with Monascan slaves prior to the war, which would limit our acquaintance to the last thirty passings, and I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
He gave her a thin, knowing smile but did not pursue the subject further except to say, “Well, Your Highness. That’s too bad. We might’ve been very instrumental in each other’s lives if things had been different.”
“This is a jackpot if I’ve ever seen one,” one of the others then announced. “If we’re ever gonna change our game plan, then now’s the time. We take the queen of Sähm, and there’s no limit to the leverage we’d have. And the child’s just a bonus. Think about it. It’s like chess,” he said. “You’re a chess man. Well, this is an obvious checkmate, friend. We’ve got to do this.”
The man with the patch couldn’t tear his gaze from the eyes of Queen Seraya Bahan. He considered his options with great care and quantity and said, “Or a stalemate.”
The queen tightened an arm around the little girl on the saddle and waited for his verdict.
“Let them go,” he ordered, and the others broke into a gale of discord, thought him crazy for letting the biggest fish of all slip the line and disappear into the abyss, but he ripped the batliff from over his back and swung his animal around at them with the blade sweeping past each man’s throat. “I said we’re letting them go!” he roared. “There’s a better way to get things done, and taking them prisoner is not it. You’re just gonna have to trust me on this.” He glanced back at Seraya Bahan and said to his men, “I know what I’m doing. Just let them go about their business, and I’ll explain everything later.” Then he held out an arm toward the west, granting them safe passage.
The queen nodded once with a polite, “Thank you.” And she spurred the stallion into a trot and headed out across the desert, leaving the one-eyed man to contemplate the encounter in befuddled amazement.
**********
The Empress sat quietly at the banquet table, watching the inauguration festivities with a troubled frown. It was the official celebration of the new sovereignty, and so far her queen was a no-show.
A percussion ensemble of taiko drums, darbukas, and bongos rattled behind veiled dancers as political dignitaries mingled with nobles and military officers, exchanging ideas on how best to organize the affairs of the new regime. Tai Ogami possessed absolute power in the war and conference rooms, yet very little in her own union with Seraya. The empress would give her wayward spouse until the conclusion of the Khintari performance, and then she would proceed without her.
The Khintari rumbled through the hall with a metallic thunder. Musicians traded smaller instruments for huge, elephant-hide taiko drums as acrobat dancers soared in lofty somersaults to splashing gongs and clanging bronze pipe bells. Guests stood around the main floor and observed the performance, shouting them on. Carousing fit for an Empress. An Empress with empty seats on either side. Tai let out a defeated sigh and glanced around the hall for her wife and Tàhti, but she found only formal dress military uniforms, old men in dignitary robes and their wives, raising cups, laughing, calling out kudos to the Khintari dancers. She sipped her wine, toyed with her napkin, fidgeted with her silverware, even engaged in small talk with Captain Olanga to pass the time.
One of the palace guards then approached the table. He came around behind the empress’ chair, and he leaned down and whispered in her ear. Tai threw her napkin into her plate and motioned for the Prime Minister and Olanga to follow her.
On the far eastern side of the city, a flaming kiosk raged as citizens and soldiers formed a water chain, dowsing the blaze one heavy bucket at a time. It had been a rug and tapestry stand, and the scorching fabric sent a pungent odor of charred camel hair through the city. A bolt of fear struck the empress’ heart for having no word on the whereabouts of Tàhti and Seraya, and she dispatched two soldiers into the city to look for them while the fire raged.
“Vandals,” Prime Minister Lior muttered as he and Olanga assessed the scene. “That’s all they are. Vandals, trying to send a message.”
“Well, it’s a point duly noted,” the Captain sighed and watched the flames claw the sky. “Duly noted for the third time, this season. Set the animals free, and they’ll certainly run amuck, won’t they?”
“And some who’ve always had their freedom are little more than animals themselves,” the empress remarked, keeping her eyes on the blaze. “I’m sure you know that as well as I do.” And she folded her arms across her chest and started to walk away but stopped and faced him. “And if I were you, Captain,” she warned, “I’d be very careful when voicing my prejudices, particularly in the presence of myself or the queen.”
He cleared his throat and nodded once. “Yes, Your Majesty.” But in his eyes were pyres of contempt as fierce as the fire before him. The Empress left him there and strolled away to speak with the Prime Minister.
Olanga straightened his uniform and surveyed the area on his own, silently scorning her. He kicked through stumps of charred debris and thought about the outrage that sparked this mayhem. He shared in the malcontent of it thoroughly. Ogami’s lofty aspirations would be problematical to say the least. And as long as this anarchy continued, her unified Sähm would remain the grandiloquent imaginings of a slave girl and her beloved renegade.
There was little that could be done about the incident. There hadn’t been any casualties, only the merchant’s lost property and revenue. And so it was logged for future review as the Empress and her entourage headed back to the palace with yet another disruption to consider.
*********
Seraya and Tàhti were met by a squad of security soldiers a mile outside Monasco, and they escorted them into the city where Jun was waiting at the rear palace entrance.
“Tai has been beside herself all evening,” she warned as she helped Tàhti out of the saddle. “We’ve had trouble in the city again, and no one knew if the two of you were all right.” Then she looked at Seraya straight on and said, “There’s a reason why there are guards assigned to your safekeeping. We can’t afford to have you put at risk. The desert isn’t what it was before the war.”
“No, it certainly isn’t,” Seraya muttered. She brushed herself off and added, “Not that everyone in Sähm had the luxury of a day trip without being run down and accosted. First it was military patrols, now it’s thieves and marauders. Can’t say what’s changed, actually.”
As she said this, Jun took sudden notice to Seraya’s torn skirt and the specks of blood that had seeped through Tàhti’s dress from the wound on her thigh. She looked to Seraya with alarm.
“It’s a long story,” Seraya said. “But we’re fine. Both of us are fine.”
Jun exhaled sharply with a look of reproach and checked over her shoulder for Tai. Then she took Tàhti by the hand and Seraya by the arm. “Come with me.”
She led them into the palace to a side chamber and shut the door. “What in the name of all the gods happened to you?” she demanded in a low voice. “This is precisely the thing that—“
“Do you have any idea how terrified she is of those soldiers?” Seraya said of Tàhti. “We had every intention of going in the carriage, but then one of them reached for her like a piece of baggage, and she…I dunno…she had some sort of episode.”
Tàhti withdrew to a seat at nearby table and watched and listened.
“What was I supposed to do?” Seraya continued. “I couldn’t keep her here, not with a public execution taking place just paces from the palace doors, and she was shaking like a leaf in the wind. She wouldn’t let anyone near her but me.”
Jun took it all into consideration, but she was bound to the statutes of her daughter, and she said, “There are few circumstances, if any, in which the Queen of Sähm should ever find herself miles from the city, alone and unprotected. Now, I’ve said my peace, and you can ponder it as you wish. And I suggest you do, for you own sake.” She went over to Tàhti to inspect the injury on her leg, then gave Seraya a mortified glare when she saw the nature of the wound.
“I think it’s safe to say that whatever she went through during the war is beyond anything you or I could understand,” Seraya told her. “And she still hasn’t said a word. So, we’re never really going to know until she decides to tell us.”
Jun cupped her hands under the girl’s chin and looked at her with dispirited sympathy. “What would make a child so broken?” she uttered. “You’ve got nothing to fear, anymore. You’re in a safe place, and you can have anything you want here. You can have all the toys in Sähm that you could possibly imagine, more food and clothes and games than a child could ask for. But the soldiers have to do their jobs, and the most important one is to keep you out of harm’s way. Do you understand?”
Tàhti lowered her eyes to the floor with a slight nod, which was enough to satisfy Jun Ogami, and she took her hand and coaxed her along to have a proper bandage applied by the medical staff. “Tell Tai I’ll have her back and ready for bed shortly,” she said as she left the room. “And if you don’t care to tell me what happened out there, then I’m sure Tai will be quite the avid listener.”
. . . .
When Seraya came to the royal suite, her wife was seated in the corner of the room, waiting for her. Seraya proceeded to the vanity table and let down her hair. There wasn’t going to be an exchange of pleasantries, so she readied herself for bed in a pensive silence as Tai watched, wordless, motionless. Seraya removed her jewelry and set it on the table. She rubbed jasmine oil into her pores and combed her hair with a peripheral view of the empress in the edge of the mirror, ruminating from the shadows. All that filled their silence was the crackle of the fireplace, and when it became too much to ignore, Seraya opened her mouth to explain but was cut short.
“I gave a speech tonight about the future of Sähm,” Tai announced. “About building a naval fleet for exploration purposes and preparing for the inception of global trade.” She remained in her seat and spoke with unsettling sobriety. “I denounced most of the old military training methods and initiated new ones, and I stood behind my decision to end slavery, which was when I intended to introduce you as a political leader, as my wife and the queen of a new empire. But,” she shrugged, “you were mysteriously absent, so I was forced to turn one of the most powerful women in Sähm into a side note. Not quite the way I saw that playing out, but I’m sure you had your reasons, and I’d certainly like to hear them, if that’s all right with you.”
“I had every intention to be here,” Seraya told her. “But as we were headed back, we were met by a group of gentlemen who mistook me for someone else. And after a very brief conversation, we went our separate ways, but not soon enough to return to Monasco and make myself and Tàhti ready for the banquet. And for that, I’m sorry.”
Tai shifted in her seat and crossed a leg over the other and said, “Maybe an apology wouldn’t be necessary if you hadn’t stolen away across the desert on a military horse and ordered the guards to stay behind, which, I might add, is an abuse of power that not only put your own life at risk, but Tàhti’s as well,” Tai said. “And a group of gentlemen in the middle of Sähm after sunfall have nothing good on their minds when stumbling upon the Queen of Monasco, alone.” The anger in her eyes faded as they traveled over Seraya’s dogged appearance and stopped on the tattered hem of her gown. “What did they do to you?”
Seraya pursed her lips. “Nothing. And if they had—I imagine you’d have them hunted down and crucified to the palace doors,” she chided. “They did nothing to either of us. They stopped us and mistook me for someone else. One of them thought he’d known me under different circumstances, but it was just dribble, trying to impress the others, I imagine. It’s nothing to get alarmed about. I apologize for not being here, and I only went alone because Tàhti was afraid of the soldiers. And I might be royalty in the wake of recent things, but you seem to forget, I lived a very different life until now. I think I can handle a few wayward rogues with chips on their shoulders.”
Tai shook her head and searched the marble floor for how to respond. Then she said, “I understand Tàhti’s afraid of them, and she has good reason, but she’s going to have to get used to them, one way or another. It doesn’t help to take her out of what she thinks is a threatening situation and then put her into one that actually is. I want you to promise me you’ll take the guards with you from now on. I have enough to worry about, and your safety isn’t supposed to be on that list.” Then she added, “And it was likely those ‘chips’ that burned down a merchant stand tonight, by the way. One man’s life savings incinerated before the sun could find its way behind the Ahagaar. You should be thankful they didn’t recognize you, or you and I might be having very different evening.”
Seraya turned back to the mirror. She lit a pinch of incense over a candle flame and let it smolder in a copper bowl. “Well, they knew exactly who I was when I told them. And as it came clear, whatever ill intentions they might have had were put aside for fear that you might have them drawn and quartered by elephants.”
Tai rose from her chair and crossed the room, perturbed. She unfastened the buttons of her uniform jacket and threw it to the bed. “And you don’t see that as reckless and foolish?” she insisted. She pulled off her boots and said, “There are times when your identity can get you killed, Seraya. I’m sorry, but it’s just the nature of things right now. I never intended there to be so much civil instability, but it is what it is, and until I can figure out how to steady the social politics, you have got to promise to keep security soldiers with you outside the palace at all times.”
“Yes, I promise,” Seraya mumbled to the mirror and finished her regimen. The nature of things had taken a remarkable turn in recent weeks, and she felt as confined as when the Calabrecian boundaries had her hemmed in to 2nd-Colony. It wasn’t what Tai had imagined for them. This, she understood. All the opulence and sophisticated grandeur of royalty was supposed to have released her from her daydreams and made them tangible, palpable, real. But it had all become so complicated so fast, and now there was a child to consider, a child with a frightening mystery at the tip of her tongue whose future was as uncertain as anyone’s at the present.
Tai let the issue dissolve into an awkward hush that followed them both to bed but kept her awake and brooding. She stared at the ceiling, hardly able to make out the mosaic through the waning firelight—a tiled portrait of Monascan deities intermingling with honored mortals like herself, offering blessed tokens of prosperity among the ossuaries of an oasis. It was a dichotomy that had narrated a thousand seasons of Monascan culture, a people anointed with all the gifts of greatness but at an everlasting price. And as the primary ruler of the first empire, what she valued most was worth more than anything that could be immortalized in stone. She turned and watched the gentle rise and fall of her wife’s shoulders as she slept, and she touched her face, grateful to be able to do so. She was just like her mother, fiercely independent and courageous without apology, but her naivety was a lethal factor which, if left unbridled, could bring all things of marble and stone down upon them in a cascade of ruin.
When sleep finally came she dreamt of fire and demons and the betrayal of close companions, the loss of her lover’s kiss, the collapse of a pantheon.
