Objectively, it was beautiful. All of Ixia was. But just now, the great green mound felt dark and suffocating to behold. As queen, she would be confined to it, behind the mask of a royal animus.
Moss turned over the quiet engine, and they pulled away from the docks. Yemi could hear new orders being barked at the soldiers before they rounded the corner onto a busy waterfront market street.
“How was the excursion, Yemaya?” he asked, winking in the rearview mirror. He was a jovial man of a grandfatherly age but with deceptively smooth red-brown skin excepting the crinkled corners of his oft-smiling eyes. He’d lost a leg in one of the earlier civil dustups, staving off an invasion of the Rock as her child-mother got to safety. He’d been medaled and fitted with a handsome prosthetic and stayed on as a driver for the royal family ever since.
“A thrill, as always. We’re as tight and efficient as we ever were, and I made sure to tell them so.”
“Glad to hear it. You’re shaping up to be a fine commander. Your father would be proud.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Yemi replied absently.
The short caravan wound its way up the pale brick road to the Rock, wrapping around the mountain. Early cicadas droned among the rainbow-bark trees that surrounded them. Hidden within the mountain itself was a labyrinth of tunnels with innumerable ends, each designed for the royals’ secret desires: clandestine meetings, romantic trysts, escapes from the occasional siege.
The palace itself was a sprawling compound in the shape of interlocking squares built from pale stone, adorned with ornate porticos and laced with intricate gardens that told the story of bored royals with green thumbs going back centuries. In the summer, the stone became highly reflective as it warmed, making it seem like the walls were made of forest. Pillars were marked with scalloped surfaces mimicking fish scales to the touch, but the old statues to sea gods that once capped the high parapets had been replaced with cannons. In another concession to modernity, the royal chapel on one end of the courtyard had been converted into an administrative annex.
Moss let them out at the front gates but kept the engine running. The garages of an adjoining hill bore the vehicles of guests she knew instantly she would be unable to avoid.
“You do have company,” he told her. “Ambler, Packard, and the Drakes.”
“Don’t suppose I could just… not?” Yemi muttered.
“Queen’s already expecting you.”
“Of course she is.”
Moss chuckled. “They should be near the end of it. You might get lucky.”
Yemi rapped her knuckles on the hood of the car by way of a reluctant dismissal. “What do you think is the slowest we’ve ever walked?”
“Does standing still count?” Nova replied.
Yemi hated when her mother hosted meals. Custom dictated that the queen did not eat in the presence of guests, and the guests more often than not knew that. She was to remain in animus behind her mask. The royal animus was the creature whose qualities a monarch would adapt to their rule, for the good of the country. Upon ascension to the throne, the royal took on the identity of their animus in the form of elaborate bronze armor, including a mask so heavy the royal crown was simply utilitarian, designed to displace the weight of it. Once donned, no one outside the royal household ever saw the monarch’s face again. The animus became the measure of time and the title of rule. Yemi’s grandparents were Butterflies, and the Butterfly Wars occupied twelve Butterfly Years. Yemi’s mother was never Queen Circe, as she would have been in neighboring kingdoms. She was the Bear Queen—protector, warrior, nurturer—and they lived in the twenty-eighth Year of the Bear. Her mask was at the center of a headdress that saw etchings of bear fur twisted into horns.
Yemi hadn’t chosen an animus yet. But she was certain the day she became queen would be the last day guests ate at the palace.
Much sooner than she’d have preferred, the two of them were in the entrance to the breezy garden hall listening to boisterous arguing. The guests were illuminated by warm lanterns behind colorful glass and ornate metal screens. Along the nearer side of the table sat Marvel “War Breeds Invention” Packard, the inventor of the Packard fleet of royal vehicles and the electric engines on which they ran. He’d oncegotten into a knife fight with Jorge Ambler, good son of the Ambler Inventions dynasty. The result was a narrow X slashed into his cheek and the loss of the right to call them “marvelcars” instead of the considerably less interesting “packards.”
He’d won the contract, though.
Beside Marvel was Sofia Ambler, Jorge’s diminutive and impeccably tailored daughter. Her family built the country’s railways. She was, in her own right, an incredible engineering mind like Packard, but her inherited old-money disposition prevented her from engaging with him as anything other than some foundling tinkerer.
All of this to say, they’d definitely seen one another naked.
On the opposite side, Dahlia Drake sat between Yemi’s empty seat and her father, Dorian. The Drake family had been friends of the Blackgate royals for generations and were responsible for keeping the country in equipment during wartime, and wine blushed all other times.
The queen was seated at the head of the table. She turned her head slightly to acknowledge Yemi’s arrival, killing any plans her daughter may have had to flee. Nova bowed to the queen before whispering “Careful in there” to Yemi and taking her leave.
• NOVA •
Nova waited until Yemi was seated at the table before heading back to the administrative annex. Guards stood stoic in their positions along the vast corridors as she strode by them. The buildings that composed the palace were all old, funds for its upkeep having been diverted for years to the war effort. Artisans had finally begun their work repairing cracks in the ancient walls, the peeling frescoes and crumbling teal-and-coral glass of mosaic tiles featured in the front halls. Channels were dug to hide new electric wiring behind installations of crown molding. Servants shuffled by with antique silver service trays to bring the workers coffee. A fresco of Yemi’s parentsvictorious on some metaphorical battlefield beneath the wordsEver Forwardwas fresh and unfaded near the residential wing, making the ancient disrepair of its surroundings even more pronounced.
The annex had been a cathedral before the wars. Royalty had been a bit more pious then, before the gods actually sat the throne.
Half gods.
Quarter gods?
Now, the building housed the press office and a dozen clerks and secretaries. Another dozen ceiling fans circulated thick cigar smoke through the open stained glass transoms lining the top edge of its long walls. The rest of the space was rows of wooden desks, clacking typewriters, idle gossip, trilling phones, and the intermittent undercurrent of whatever radio sounds were able to rise above all of it:
