He choked to a stop and Yemaya felt the heat of anger rise from beneath her collare.
“Go on,” she insisted.
“Forgive me, My Light. I mean no disrespect.”
“Haven’t committed any out loud yet, only in your heart,” she purred.
“Perhaps if you were to convince the queen to take a more active role in the Kept’s communion processes? Lean on your… genealogical ties to the Favored. At worst, it does nothing, but at best… well, who knows?”
The room was thick with silence for a long moment, save for the crackling fire and creaking rock of the waves. Everyone knew the Qorrea had a temper. Its repression had been widely regarded as miraculous in the years after her mother’s attempted assassination, and seemed most successful when disparaging remarks and implications about her family were avoided.
“Countless battles over twenty-some-odd years,” she began, measuring her breaths and words carefully. “Two wars’ worth of explosive ordnance, of the drowning dead littering the waterways, might have an impact on the local fish population, would they not?”
“Of course, My Light,” Commander Mackey agreed in a petrified sort of whimper.
“The prolonged state of things.” Yemaya chewed the words, tapping a lacquered fingernail idly along the edge of the displayed map as she searched the eyes of every assembled commander in the room. “You all spent months entertaining these civilian disappearances as something voluntary. People were leaving, and you all found itjustifiable, because who could bear the ravages of war and then be expected to rebuild for a queen who can’t be bothered to do more for you thanbleedand thendie?” The words escaped as a growl, and she stopped to take a breath. It wouldn’t do to fly into a rage here—not now, barely ever—if she hoped to be taken seriously as queen one day likely very soon.
“So you ignored it and, in doing so, allowed it to escalate into a military matter we must all now take very seriously. What else will we be blaming the queen for today? I’d like a list.”
“My Light, that was not my intent—” Commander Mackey started.
“Wasn’t it?” Yemaya snapped.
Another breath.You need these people,she calmed herself.If no one else.
“Is there any other business? I’m tired,” she said with a sigh.
“No, My Light,” Nasrin interjected. “We’ll prepare the final report for the generals by arrival tomorrow.”
“Good. I’ll relay all of your… concerns to Her Highness when we return. The Crown thanks you for your diligence.”
As she stood, so did everyone else, and they bowed as she exited. Night had fully descended, and all was dark but what the moon graced. The winds were high and cold; they caught Yemaya’s panting exhale and whisked it away just outside the closed door. The skeleton crew milled about the upper deck while the others caroused in the warmth below. Someone was whistling a shanty as she made her way to her own quarters, passing this or that small cluster of soldiers huddled over piping coffee and torch fires. So many of them were young and new, it was likely the war stories they exchanged belonged to someone else.
But what else is there ever to do at sea but callous your hands and trade make-believe?
Her father had said that once or twice, grinning as he did. For years he’d brought her along on naval training exercises, and she’d kept up with the practice even after he was gone.
Ixia’s relationship with the Old Gods saw its advancement guided by a divine hand, creating the world’s finest navy, its civil infrastructure in harmony with the land. The nation’s arsenal was laced with the Obé’s magic, once imbued by her armorers. The firearm was an aberration, unsanctioned and corrupting and doubtless introduced by somewhere godless. Which meant that the Butterfly Wars had marked a deviation from the Obé’s path. The Kept saw peacetime as a moment for course correction, if only to restore their own power. It was a hard sell. An exhausted populace had little energy to devote to a grand idea. They were finding that the worship of gods required too great a suspension of reality when people had seen the things war was capable of doing to even the most faithful bodies.
It had been a bullet that had stolen Yemi’s father from her. And she had seen it up close, worn his blood warm and cold on her hands. No, she would not make an asset to the Kept’s campaign.
She reached her door and paused, staring down the hallway to where she remembered Nova was waiting. She loved her—her spirit, her smile—and more than likely needed it tonight. But after the day’s events, Yemi felt somehow beyond the reach of Nova’s light. She often did. It seemed unfair to make her work for nothing.
She whispered a “Good night” to the dark hallway and stepped inside, closing the door behind her.
“Evening, Daddy.” She kissed her fingers and pressed them to her father’s feet in the portrait that hung over the fireplace. She’d had it moved here when he died. The Bear King stood in immortal silence, studious, dimpled, and handsome in his favorite blue suit. His spear stood in one battle-gloved hand, the copper bear helmet of the royal animus tucked beneath the other arm. She’d inherited his brownness, his posture, his strong chin. His capacity for righteous anger.
“Found a body. No sign of theClodion, though,” she said aloud to the painting as she unlaced her tall boots. She tossed the violetbrocade jacket over the back of a chaise and dropped her collare unceremoniously onto the coffee table with the leather portfolio. “Exercise went well. Our soldiers are replenishing. Getting better. Hurand still has his head in the clouds half the time, but when he’s present, he’s efficient. And the new guard likes him. He’s still on about his guns, though. I hope it doesn’t become a problem. I want to like him.”
The portrait never responded. Not aloud, anyway.
She collapsed on the chaise in front of the roaring fire Nova had undoubtedly stoked for her, and tried but failed to lose herself in the minutiae of numbers from the training exercise.
It’s entirely possible that the Mer are responsible,she thought, chewing on her lip as she stared into the fire. Her grandmother, fool that she was, had been the sea’s heir before setting her sights on a love that brought her to land. Which made Yemi the second generation of Mer on her mother’s side to in factnotbe a Mer at all. The wars that had been waged over that legacy on land had lasted decades and tainted everything about her world now. Wars that had killed her father and poisoned her mother. Who knew how the sea kingdoms had handled it.
If the Mer were killing Men and disappearing Ixian ships, there would be no way to convince Ixia that she—Yemaya—and more importantly, her mother, weren’t culpable in some way. Kespia to the west had started the first war. The nation had a primordial quality to it, sprawling and ancient but not revered, not beloved by whatever god had possessed it, if indeed one ever had. Arielle’s arrival had undone the long-sought promise of a union with Ixia that would bring Kespia into the light, and their bitter disappointment had manifested in a decade of violence that had decimated both nations. The second war had started at home over the illegitimacy of Mer blood on a land throne and Men bleeding for a Mer cause. The country was still years from shaking the shadow of that one. Roughly half of it hated the throne, but was just too depleted to fight about it anymore.
“Gods, I hope it’s Kespia,” she whispered to the fireplace.
