Except that Ayani isn’t really her friend, nor are Nadi and Lisha, the other two girls braiding Ayani’s hair. They are Saire servant girls who lived in the palace before what has come to be called the Royal Massacre.
They were understandably awkward with her at first, when she came upon them during a solitary walk along the temple’s cloisters, but she settled smoothly into their conversation and proved that her fingers were up to the task, if a little slow. They all lost loved ones to the attack, and the pain is still raw for each of them, but they reminisce fondly about their old lives in the palace.
Ayani speaks at length about how much she misses the palace kitchens, but Nadi whispers to Isa in an aside that kitchens in this context is actually code for “head chef”; Ayani just won’t admit it because the man was married and old enough to be her father. Lisha lost a sister during the attack and at one point has to stop braiding Ayani’s hair to wipe her eyes and recover her composure. Nadi keeps the conversation lighthearted with her perkiness and natural talent for amusing prattle, and she looks and talks so much like Cousin Zenia that Isa’s eyes keep prickling with tears.
Still, the easy chatter reminds her she’s human, and not the only human in the world, for that matter.
A distinctive voice makes them all freeze. “Your Majesty. I’m sorry to interrupt.”
The four of them quickly rise to their feet and give womanly bows, though Isa’s bow doesn’t have to go as low as the others. “No apologies necessary, Your Worship.”
She bids her new friends goodbye and joins Itani Faro of the Arc along the meandering garden paths. The old high priest walks with his hands clasped behind him, his red grand boubou falling to almost sweep the ground.
“It is nice to see you smiling again,” he says. “Truly smile. Given your circumstances, it would be quite easy for you to lapse into gloom and forget what you’re living for. You mustn’t ever let yourself forget.”
Forget? But how can she forget when blood is all she sees every time she closes her eyes? “I’m not sure I know what I’m living for, to be honest.” Itani Faro is one of the few people in the temple around whom she can be her miserable, grief-stricken self.
“You are living for those girls back there,” he says, “and many others like them. You are living to protect them from those who would murder them for no crimes of their own. You are living for your father’s legacy, for the kingdom, for yourself, Your Majesty.”
He gives her a meaningful look as they come to a stop. “You deserve to live a life full of happiness too.”
Suye will never follow me around like a cheerful little gadfly again. I will never argue with Ayo or gossip with Zenia or hide from my mother.
Isa’s eyes fill with angry tears. “I cannot be happy until the day Kola Saai faces justice for what he did to my family.”
“That day could not come too soon, Your Majesty.” The Arc surprises her when he brings one hand out from behind his back and extends two scarlet flowers. “These bloomed on the night of the attack. I was going to gift them to the House of Forms, but I’ve decided to give them to you instead. You may do with them as you wish.”
The flowers are bloodroses, symmetrical and concentric in form, with wispy petals as thin as razors and just as sharp. They are unequivocally the loveliest things she has ever seen.
Her hands tremble as she reaches to accept them. “Your Worship . . . I have no words.”
The Arc gives her the hint of a smile. “Be careful not to cut your fingers on the petals.”
Isa gazes at the flowers with wonder. She has never held fresh bloodroses before—not many mere mortals are ever so lucky. Their delicate scent is strangely evocative; they smell like desire and everything her heart yearns for. “Do they really grant wishes, as they say?”
“The sorcery behind them isn’t something we understand, despite our best efforts. I cannot give a definite answer to your question. Let me say: perhaps, if the wish is reasonable enough.”
Isa already knows her first wish: the Crocodile’s head on a pike. She hides this from her face as they start walking along the stone path again. “Have you learned who helped Kola Saai bewitch the Royal Guard?” she says. “There was magic involved, which can only mean he worked with a mystic.”
The Arc clasps his hands behind him. “My investigations have not been fruitful in that regard, but I can tell you that it wasn’t one of ours.”
Isa knows there are two groups of mystics in the kingdom, the bulk of them clustered in this city: those who receive their educations at the House of Forms and pledge themselves to the covens of the Shirika, as their ancestral talent would dictate, and those who shun the covens, preferring to practice their sorcery in dingy Northtown hovels and unregistered undercity sanctuaries. If Kola Saai’s hired sorcerer wasn’t the former, then they were the latter. “So we’re talking about an independent,” she says.
“Not impossible, but unlikely.” When Isa’s brow creases in confusion, he adds, “The sorcery that afflicted the Royal Guard was delivered through an elixir, slipped into their food somehow, but it is inconceivable that they were the only ones exposed to its power. That the elixir acted on them alone, leaving barely a trace of itself in their bodies, suggests a level of finesse that would be highly uncommon for an independent alchemist.”
Isa frowns at the bloodroses in her hands, her thoughts racing to make sense of what she’s hearing. “Then we’re talking about someone foreign.”
“It would seem so, Your Majesty.”
A headman consorting with a foreign mystic to take the throne. Isa would have thought such a thing impossible only weeks ago.
She finds herself feeling weak and adrift, trapped in the depths of an endless nightmare. She stops to face the old sorcerer, and he turns to her as well. “Forgive me, Your Worship, but I still don’t understand why the Shirika are letting him get away with this. I thought there was a covenant that bound them—that bound you in service to the Saire king. Isn’t that why our clan agreed not to have a standing legion? To appease the other clans because we had the gods forever on our side?”
The Arc answers with characteristic bluntness; he is not a man for coating his words in honey. “It is not common knowledge, but our adherence to the covenant was entirely voluntary, and subject to change should the rule of a Saire king ever become inconvenient to us. As it happens, my colleagues grew impatient with your father’s lack of ambition.”
Isa blinks at the man. She’s never heard anyone accuse King Mweneugo of lacking such a trait. “Please explain this to me so that it makes sense, Your Worship. I’ve always thought my father was a strong king.”
“His strength was beyond question. Mweneugo had firm convictions and a clear vision. He knew what he wanted to accomplish and how to go about it. But he was too comfortable with the way of things, reluctant to project his considerable power beyond the bounds of the Yontai. With all ten legions and the Shirika behind him, he could have extended the Yontai’s reach across the rest of the Redlands, incorporating every tribe into an empire that stretches all the way from the southern cape to the northern desert. This has always been in the Shirika’s sights, but the logistics didn’t become favorable until shortly after your father’s ascension to the throne. Mweneugo, however, was completely unreceptive to the idea of empire.”