Now, Thanh rubbed his eyes, and I realized I didn’t want to wait a moment longer. I turned to the priests and opened my mouth. Before I could utter a single word, the doors opened.
“Crown her,” my adviser said, breaking into the hall. His face had the paleness of a man who had looked into a mirror that morning and seen his own death. His sandals clicked on the polished earth floor. “Prince Rayyel Ikessar left last night.”
You could hear the weight of the words echo against the walls. In the silence that followed, I thought I could make out the rising heartbeats of every man and woman in that room. Not a day goes by that I am not reminded of what was lost to my father’s war; even bated breaths could signal the start to that old argument, that old fear that I, too, may one day plunge the land into blood and fire once more.
Eventually, the Kibouri priest cleared his throat. “We must delay until the prince can be found.”
“This day was approved by our order, set in stone years ago,” the Akaterru priest replied. “It is a bad omen to change it.”
“Every day is like any other,” the Kibouri priest intoned. “You and your superstitions…”
My adviser stepped up the dais to face them. Both priests towered over him. His mouth, which was surrounded by a beard that looked like a burnt rodent, was set in a thin line. “Warlord Lushai sent a message this morning, congratulating Jin-Sayeng’s lack of a leader. He will march against us by tonight for breaking the treaty if we do not crown her.”
I didn’t bother to pretend to be surprised. “Rayyel is hiding there, I assume,” I said. It was such a bald-faced move: put me in a situation where I could not do anything but create trouble. Throw the wolf into a sea of sick deer—whatever will she do? Warlord Lushai once considered himself my father’s friend, but daring me to make trouble in front of the other warlords was one step too far.
My adviser turned to me and bobbed his head up and down, like a rooster in the grass.
I gritted my teeth. “Get that crown.” I didn’t want to give them a reason to think I wasn’t fulfilling my end of the bargain.
The Kibouri priest was closer to it. He didn’t move.
“My lords,” I said, looking at the warlords, the select few who were not too ill or infirm or couldn’t find the right sort of excuse to avoid the coronation. “You agreed to this alliance. You all signed it with your own blood. Do you remember? Years ago, you all cut your arms, bled into a cup, and drank from it to mark the joining of Jin-Sayeng as one. Not even Lord Rayyel and I have the power to stop this.”
There was a murmur of assent. A whisper, not an outcry, but I went with it. I turned to the priests. The Akaterru priest had already dropped his head, eyes downcast. The other eventually forced his knees into a bow.
They took the smaller crown. It was made of beaten gold, both yellow and white, set on a red silken headpiece. My father had it made not long after I was born, commissioned from a famous artisan from some distant town. I stared at it while the priests began their rituals, one after the other. I could have done without the Kibouri, but I didn’t want to risk offending the Ikessar supporters in the crowd.
They crowned me with reluctance. No spirits came to crest a halo around my brow or send a shaft of light to bless the occasion. In fact, it was cloudy, and a rumble of thunder marked the beginning of a storm. I wondered when they would discover the body, or if they already had and were just too afraid to tell me.
Even after I became queen, the rumours continued. I was powerless to stop them. I should have been more, they said. More feminine. Subtle, the sort of woman who could hide my jibes behind a well-timed titter. I could have taken the womanly arts, learned to write poetry or brew a decent cup of tea or embroider something that didn’t have my blood on it, and found ways to better please my man. Instead, Rayyel Ikessar would rather throw away the title of Dragonlord, king of Jin-Sayeng, than stay married to me.
It changes a woman, hearing such things. Hardens your heart. Twists your mind along dark paths you have no business being on. And perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t loved Rai, but I did. More than I understood myself. More than I cared to explain.
I don’t like to talk about the years that followed. Even now, pen in hand while I splash ink over my dress, I find it difficult to recall anything past the cloud of anger. All I know is that five years passed, quicker than the blink of an eye. I was told the anger could do that. That it could rob whatever sweetness there was in the passage of time, add a bitter tinge to the little joys in the life of an unwanted queen. “Will my father come?” my son would ask on his nameday without fail. Each year he would grow taller, stronger, more sure of himself, and each year the question would lose a touch of innocence, be more demanding. “Will my father come?” Soft eyes growing harder, because we both knew that wasn’t what he was really asking anymore. When will he be home? Why did you send him away? Why didn’t you stop him?
And each year, I would struggle to find an answer that wouldn’t make the courtiers turn their heads in shame. They knew I couldn’t have thrown him out—I didn’t have the power to lord over the heir of the most influential clan in Jin-Sayeng. Yet I could not allude that he abandoned his duties. I could say it easily enough to the Oren-yaro, but not in court—not in front of his family’s supporters. As if the weight of the crown wasn’t heavy enough, as if I wasn’t spending every waking hour fending the warlords off each other, off of me. After centuries of Ikessar Dragonlords, I was the first queen of Jin-Sayeng, and all the difficulties didn’t bode well for my rule.
In late summer of the fifth year, I returned after an afternoon riding my horse through the rice fields, where I had been surveying the damage caused by last year’s storms. There was very little a monarch could do about such things, but it gave people strength to see me, or so I liked to think.
Arro stood by the gates, waiting. I slowed my horse to a walk. It was always amazing how I could predict the future simply by my adviser’s expression. If it was going to be a good week, he often greeted me with a smile, his eyes disappearing into the folds of his face. That meant most provinces had paid their taxes, there were no land disputes (or at least none that people had lost their heads for), and every single warlord was accounted for.
He didn’t smile now. His lips were flat—not quite a frown, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to expend his energy all that way yet. I dismounted from the horse, allowing a servant to take her back to the base of the mountain to the stables. Arro wiped his hands on his beard and held out a letter, which had been opened. No doubt it was checked thoroughly by the staff, in case someone tried to poison me by sprinkling dust on the inside of the scroll that I might later inhale. The Ikessars loved to use such tactics—I had even lost a great-uncle to it during the war.
“What’s this?” I asked, just as my dog Blackie appeared between the trees. I whistled, and he bounded to me, ears flopping while his tail wagged so fast it felt at risk of falling off. I patted my tunic before taking the letter.
I read it once, and then a second time. I could feel my heart pounding, my mouth growing dry. I wanted to ask if this was a dream. It must be. I had so many others like it before. The details were always different: Sometimes it would come from a messenger, his horse slick with sweat. Sometimes it would be a falcon with a note attached to its leg. Sometimes a hooded Ikessar would come bearing gifts before revealing himself to be my husband, years changed and begging for my forgiveness. In each dream, I had fallen to my knees and wept with joy. It felt odd that I now couldn’t muster any emotion beyond cool detachment.