“If the likes of Kola Saai can handle the Meeting Place,” she says, “then so can I, Your Worship.”
The Arc nods with approval. “Good. The stronger your resolve, the easier it will be for you.” He glances at the young men standing in the throne room with them—Jomo in his blue robes, looking freshly washed and shaved, and a contingent of Sentinels in smart green tunics and aerosteel armor—all of them watching carefully. “As I’m sure you know,” the Arc says to Isa, “you are allowed to take two others with you to the Meeting Place by the Sea. They will be unarmed, however, since weapons do not carry into the Meeting Place, only minds.”
Jomo steps forward with his gilded cane, his leg brace squeaking as he does so. “I am the herald. I should go with you. My mother always accompanied your father to the Mkutano in the Meeting Place by the Sea.”
Obe Saai follows him, hands clasped respectfully before him. “As your honor guard, I should come with you, Your Majesty.”
“You stay away from my cousin!” Jomo says, wheeling around to face him with blazing eyes. “Your kind should not be welcome here after what your uncle did.”
“With all due respect,” Obe says, meeting the herald glare for glare, “I am not my uncle.”
“A crocodile is a crocodile.”
Isa has to physically hold in a sigh. She suspected this would happen. “Neither of you shall be coming with me.”
Both young men look at her with hurt in their eyes. “Oh, come on, Your Majesty,” Jomo says. “Leaving me makes no sense!”
“You may accompany me next time,” she clarifies. “Tonight I will take Sentinels Dino Sato and Ijiro Katumbili.”
At this, both Jomo and Obe go from hurt to indignant. Dino Sato is Isa’s other honor guard, and Ijiro Katumbili is probably the youngest warrior in the room, a strapping, bright-eyed fellow with the look of innocence about him. Isa doubts he has yet seen his seventeenth comet.
Both warriors step forward, failing to hide their surprise.
“I need their experience,” Isa says to the indignant pair. “Dino and Ijiro are princes who have traveled to the Meeting Place by the Sea with their fathers before. This won’t be their first time there. I can’t say the same for you two, can I?”
This reason is partly true. The real reason she wants to leave Jomo and Obe, though, is that she doesn’t want their strong emotions clouding her judgment.
“You will respect Her Majesty’s wishes,” says the Arc, ending all discussion on the matter.
He retrieves a moongold timepiece from the folds of his crimson boubou and gives its ticking face a glance. “Are you ready, Your Majesty?”
Smothering a tremble with a heavy breath, Isa dons the mask-crown. As it unfolds itself to cover her face, she feels it working its sorcery to give her the visage of a metallic four-tusked elephant wearing a crown of spikes, with eyes that glow like burning charcoal. Controlling its expressions is instinctual; the mask-crown will reveal only that which she wishes it to.
She senses an immediate change in how the warriors look at her, sees it in their awed expressions. With the mask-crown glinting on her face, they now see the imposing man who wore it not a month ago, not the frightened young woman wearing it now. Good.
She rises to her feet and walks down the dais with the poise of a princess who is now king, holding out her arms for her chosen warriors. With all eyes watching, Dino Sato and Ijiro Katumbili step forward to meet her, each one taking an arm in his.
“Do not forget that the Meeting Place is a construct,” the Arc says to her. “It won’t feel like it, but nothing there is real, and no one can harm you. Your minds will be entangled in the Void, but your bodies will still be here. Should you wish to return, simply will the mask to bring you back, and it will obey.”
Isa takes another breath to put steel in her veins. “Understood, Your Worship.”
He bows his head. “Good luck, Your Majesty.”
While the Arc steps back, Ijiro leans in, looking rather nervous and a little guilty. “I’ve never been to a Mkutano before, Your Majesty,” he whispers. “I have five older brothers, so I never got the chance.”
She tries to look reassuring—as reassuring as a metallic four-tusked elephant can look. “It’ll be my first time, too, so perhaps we can take strength from each other.”
Relief loosens the tension in his shoulders. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
Next to them, Dino smirks. “Relax. Don’t worry. Just don’t think too much, and you’ll be fine.”
Dino Sato is light skinned where Obe is swarthy, with fine-boned, sharply defined features. Where Obe hides his sensuality beneath a rigid guise, Dino wears his on his sleeve. Where Obe’s good looks lie in his secret smiles and intense gaze, Dino will capture the room’s attention the instant he walks in. He is charming and knows it.
Of late he’s been distant with her. Sometimes she worries she’s losing his friendship, not only because she enjoys his company but also because it would be a politically catastrophic loss to her right now. He’s a direct line of communication to his father, the headman of the Sato clan and wearer of the Impala mask. He might be key to securing the headman’s support.
Ijiro’s father, on the other hand, is the Bonobo, one of the Crocodile’s closest allies. The conniving part of Isa is taking him along as her escort mostly for the shock effect. Let them see that she isn’t completely powerless, that she holds their sons by the leash.
“Are you ready?” she asks them both, and they nod.
“Remember, no thinking,” Dino says.
“Will yourself away, Your Majesty,” the Arc says. “Command the mask to take you where you need to be.”
But his voice is fading away because Isa has already commanded the mask, and now she feels it yank her mind out of the fabric of existence and into—
Oblivion. There is nothing here, and yet there is everything. It is a lonely, transient moment of painful immortality, a cold, deathless hell where she has no form, no words to speak, no eyes to see, and no ears to hear herself scream—
She is suddenly whole again. The temple’s bamboo arches and cloisters have vanished. She now stands at the shores of an endless expanse of water that glistens in the starlight. The beach stretches out before her until it curves away, bounded on one side by the seas and on the other by dense jungle.
By her side, Ijiro’s breath comes out in rapid gasps. She squeezes his arm gently. “Are you all right?”
“Shouldn’t we be asking you that, Your Majesty?” Dino says, then shakes his head and sighs at Ijiro. “He’s thinking. I told him not to do that.”
She pulls away from Dino to better attend to the younger Sentinel. “Come on, Ijiro. Breathe. It’s all right. You’re here now. We’re all here. We’re safe.”
She needs to hear those words too. Crossing through that place took a piece of her soul from her, made her feel like she was nothing, or like she was the only person alive in the universe. How anyone can stand repeatedly crossing through such a place is beyond her.
Ijiro fights to bring himself under control. His broad shoulders heave, fists clenched by his sides. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. I’m all right now.”