“I don’t think royals can take time off.”
“If we do it before you’re queen, no one will even miss us. We can stay close. Holicrane House, maybe.”
Yemi winced. Her family’s summer home. They hadn’t been back there since… Well, since there’d been family. “The current queen would kill us both. Give me a boost.”
“I think she’d see the romance in it.”
Yemi paused in her climb to shake her head and kiss Nova quickly. They’d been planning their wedding casually over the course of the fourteen years or so they’d known each other, twelve of which they’d spent together as royal and guardian. But holy law dictated no marriage before ascension as a gesture to the Old Gods, that no human union could come before a sacred one. It was one of many painfully absurd rules Yemi found herself forced to adhere to or risk a third war over her right to the throne.
“Idolove you,” she assured Nova. “Wewillbe married, and youwillbe my queen. But if we arrange anything my mother cannot be part of, she will kill you first, and quickly, just because she likes you more.”
“Could be worth it,” Nova replied and hoisted Yemi onto the rock.
The top of the rise gave way to cooler wind and a view of the entire leeward side of the island. Much of it was covered in long, soft grasses and tall, thin trees. Yemi snapped the pictures that would help her piece together its topography later. It was a shame the excursion was so brief. She wouldn’t get all of it. Each click of the shutter felt like a successfully passed moment. It was an earned breath, a bookmark in some page of her life she could return to when times inevitably got worse. She found herself delaying going home whenever she could now, because those times promised to find her soon. She’d been fortunate to stave them off this long.
She sighed and scanned the island for anything remarkable she may have missed, when she caught sight of the bubbling sea beyond the tops of a cluster of trees near the opposite end. She squinted and made out what appeared to be a wide spot of thrashing white among the waves.
“Come up here,” she told Nova. “West, between those trees and the mountain. What is that?”
It took Nova a moment to find the spot, but after some time, she shrugged. “Something spawning?”
Yemi adjusted her camera lens as best she could and was able to make out broad tail fins before a trio of ostensibly human heads attached to mottled human torsos appeared. They seemed to be talking. With any luck, it wasn’t about the Ixian fleet.
“No. Mer,” she said grimly.
“That’s… not ideal.” Nova frowned. “Hell of a coincidence, though. Do we notify the commanders?”
“No. If that rumor about the body has spread through the ranks already, they’ll be looking to hunt. We can’t fight an ocean.” She stowed her camera and hopped down from her perch. “We’ll say nothing and hope they’re minding their business. But we should leave before anyone notices them.”
“What if they strike first? And the body was to lure ships here?” Nova asked as they headed down the hill.
“Then I did my best. But that’d solve your boredom problem.”
“Heh.” Nova smirked. “You’re not wrong.”
The proper send-off for any Ixian was a burial at sea. A priest from the Kept cleaned the body of the deceased. They wrapped it in muslin soaked with cloying, aromatic oils and adorned it with bright floral wreaths meant to ward off the ocean’s predators and let its Old Gods—from whom the Mer were allegedly descended—know this was someone returning home.
They set the nameless remains afloat on a small raft made of driftwood from on board theDulce Periculumjust after sunset. It was the dead king’s ship, jewel of the fleet, and Yemi would sail on no other while her father’s ghost lived here.
Brother Lain, robed in white, uttered his prayers to the wind over the port beam while soldiers stood in silent, reverent rows on everydeck of the flotilla. He poured anointing oil through Yemi’s open hands into an abalone shell and mingled it with seawater before tossing it overboard after the body.
“From the seas we came,” the collected masses echoed after him in a somber monotone. “And to the seas we return.”
A young page by the name of Aidin presented Yemi with a white rag to clean her hands while the assembled soldiers were dismissed to their evenings.
Lain was a relatively young priest and much less of a zealot than many of the others keeping residence at the palace. He was tall and lean, with a prominent brow and kind eyes framed by wire eyeglasses. And he was funny. He’d been charged as Yemi’s head tutor most of her life as well, and that job required a certain amount of wit and patience, neither of which he seemed to possess in the performance of his duties. So when Yemi jokingly (half jokingly, anyway) remarked that maybe he could go easy on the oil next time, he didn’t stop the rambling prayer that would continue until the body was out of sight. He did, however, cut his eyes at her in the familiar way that suggested the prayer was also a curse and that she should leave him alone before it bore fruit.
She took the hint and returned the rag to the page before heading to the captain’s quarters with Nova close on her heels as guardians tended to be. Sun-draught sails were stored, and the engines powered by the sunlight they drank were ordered ready as anchors retracted as they prepared for home. There was a lurching sound and the creaking of warming metal as they got underway.
“This has to be what a bee’s ass smells like,” Yemi groaned, holding her hands as far from her body as possible.
“So do I get you alone now? In the dark, away from prying eyes,” Nova mused, maddeningly close to Yemi’s ear.
“Calm down,” Yemi replied behind a grin. “I still have my briefing. I need you to find me resistible for at least another hour.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, gorgeous. I’m mostly looking forward to a nap and a shower.”
Yemi stopped to look at her, unsure if she was joking.
