“So, I know you meant well,” Nova started, but looked out over the ocean instead of at her. “But running off to fight Dahlia? Don’t do that shit again.”
“Excuse me?” Yemi scoffed.
“I mean it, Yemaya. You knew as much as we did about what you were walking into. You put yourself at an unnecessary risk, and for what? Revenge? She had one of those hand cannons. If she’d spotted you a second sooner, you’d have run right into her bullet. You saw what one of those rounds does to our steel. She’d have caved your chest all the way in.”
“Listen, I’d wasted too much time not beheading the snake of this thing already—”
“But it’s not a fucking snake, is it?” Nova was nearly yelling now as she looked up at her. “These arepeople. They’re capable of functioning independently. You’d have killed her, and guess what? One of those other clowns could have stepped up to replace her. All they had to do was take you out, and you’d have made it easy for them. He’s not going to say anything, but do you know what that would have doneto Cutter? Losing both your parents andthenyou on his watch? What it would have done to me? The position I would have put myself in if I’d seen them cut you dow—” She stopped, flexing her hands in an agitated strangling motion before appearing to calm herself.
Yemi was silent awhile, listening to the drone of the falls, embarrassed by how foolish Nova had found her. Had she been holding on to this anger their entire walk through the tunnels?
“Look, you’re queen now.” Nova’s voice, quieter, more tired, brought her back. “There is no one else. For the country or for me.”
Yemi sat beside her, watching dolphins jump the glittering waves in the distance, plucking the grass for want of something to do with her hands. She’d rubbed raw the groove of her finger where her ring had been hours ago and it was an angry, flaking red.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I could end it. I was tired of losing… everything, Nova. They’ve takeneverythingfrom me.” Furious tears began to well in her eyes, and she laughed them off bitterly. Nova just watched, letting her speak. “My grandmother was so enamored with these people. She told me every story about how odd and interesting and beautiful they were to a restless sea princess. She cursed herself to be up here, to walk among them. Cursed my mother. Cursed me. But I’ve learned the lesson they never could: These people—Men, Ixians—they can’t be ruled by love or adoration. They don’t want it. They need fear. And I intend to be terrifying.”
Nova nudged her with her knee. “Listen, I don’t know if you’re right. I don’t know if everyone’s hopeless or just most of them, or if we’re better or worse than the Mer. But I told you, wherever you go, I go.Youdon’t end this,wedo. We can get your throne back, we can paint the streets with the blood of your enemies, or we can go on a much easier, preferably extended vacation.”
Yemi laughed, grateful for Nova’s tact. But leaving her throne was never an option. Her entire family had fought and been killed for it, and if she owed anyone anything, it was them.
Nova got to her feet. She looked calm but weary. The night had been a trauma for them all.
“Give me your shirt; I’ll go run it through the river,” she said to Yemi. “And get some sleep. We’ll probably move again at night.”
• NOVA •
Nova had killed before. It was part of her training as queensguard. Alongside memorization of the tunnels and threats of the geopolitical landscape, she was to study the effects of various weapons on flesh. How to extract specific outcomes with different methods, how to break or end people or even just delay them. By age sixteen, she was required to be experienced with taking a life and remain well-adjusted afterward. If she’d failed at either, she wouldn’t have been allowed to become Yemi’s personal guard. The first man she’d killed had been in his forties, and the law said he deserved it. Nova had cut his throat with little urging but didn’t sleep for a week after. She had nightmares where she woke up screaming. Her hands shook. She’d had to relearn wielding weapons afterward.
Yet Yemi had done it all so easily last night.
Nova didn’t know what that meant. She was too tired to pursue it very far, but the thought was still on her mind. Maybe Yemi’s childhood trauma of watching her father’s murder made violence easier to commit. Maybe there was something in Yemi’s Mer blood, the same something that fed the gruesome legends of the Bear Queen. In the years since her training, the experience revealed itself to be worth it. Being Yemi’s protector was worth it. Seeing her every day, being allowed to love her, making her smile, was worth it. Maybe Yemi had simply found the value in death faster than she had.
The Amblers’ train system was the country’s single most reliable means of transport, connecting Ixia’s far-flung towns, agricultural villages, and quarries to the capital. It was clean, quick, and refined. In fact, a train either left or arrived in Chairre’s central station every fifteen minutes.
In the four stops since Nova had joined the 5-car 2:20 to the city, not one train had passed them going the opposite direction. She’d purchased a wide-brimmed farmer’s hat and poncho from a vendor cart at a nondescript pastoral station in the marshes and sat alone on a bench in the rear car. There were few other passengers here, and they were mostly quiet, napping or flicking through books and newspapers. Perhaps wherever they were coming from, the news of the coup hadn’t reached them just yet.
Returning to the city was a risk, but she needed to know what the people knew, and what measures were being taken to find Yemi. And the Bear King had always made a point of keeping friendly eyes in key places.
“What are you suggesting?” a woman seated in front of Nova asked the grumbling old man traveling with her.
“Something less naive, I’ll say that,” he replied.
“You think the Drakes had something to do with the queen disappearing?” she hissed, clearly not wanting to call attention to the conversation.
“Did you ever get the sense she didn’t want to rule? I didn’t,” he said testily. “I don’t see her just running off.”
“That’s grief, though.” The woman shrugged.
“What are you even tal—”
“It’s grief!” She was shrieking now. “The woman’s mother died after a long and valiant fight, and she’s expected to take her place? It might have been too much, too soon, that’s all.”
“Anne, the bridge was bombed. Let’s be serious. If she’s not dead and thisisfoul play—and she’snotdead, given that Cutter and Grey are also missing—war’s coming back much sooner than any of us expected.”
Nova pulled her hat low as they continued to argue. The Drakes hadn’t told anyone anything, then. It meant they had no guarantee that public opinion was on their side. The people might not even care in the end, though, so long as the Drakes were able to maintain stability in the state.
One stop short of the city brought them to the wholesale district. Merchants bearing bulk commodities too cumbersome to transport through tight city streets hosted stalls here, most often to trade with one another. She pressed her face against the window to peer as far as she could ahead, where a commotion was happening near the lead cars. Shouts and a concentration of royal police uniforms told her all she needed to know.
