A Feast of Many Flavors
They
put red crescents out just to tempt us. More specifically, to tempt
me. Somehow, they must have discovered that the crisp pastries are my
favorite food. But who would have told them? Mami? Luto? Unless that
little tidbit was in my file when they conscripted me, they couldn’t
have pulled it from my family. My mother and my brother are long
dead.
Movement
at my elbow catches my eye: Three reaching for the basket, her
delicate fingers parting steam as she selects the pastry she wants.
Gods, they are fresh from the ovens. I can practically taste the
crust of buttery goodness on my tongue. First a crunch, then the tart
sweetness of the red honey paste inside. My stomach grumbles.
Three
takes the largest and bites into it, crumbs scattering down her
standard issue blue uniform. She closes her eyes—lighter blue, like
the waters of Lake Verala—as pure pleasure crosses her features.
Jealously,
I watch her consume each bite, until a flick of her tongue captures
the last crumb from her lips. My eyes leap up to her hairline as she
swallows. Sure enough, it is already a shade lighter, closer to wheat
than the dried grass brown it was at morning bell.
My
envy turns to cold satisfaction in my gut. Three can eat the whole
basket. She can turn back to her natural platinum-white; her longer,
narrow-framed face; her wide mouth and gap teeth.
I glance behind her, to where the queen sits on her dais. Dark hair
coils over her ears and shoulders, trailing down in long braids that
almost drop into her bowl of plain oats. She pushes the bowl aside,
already finished.
Ruthlessly,
I do the same to mine.
Three
will never be Valya Cara. Chosen. But it takes more than red
crescents to stop me.
###
The
twelve of us gather in the training yard after morning meal, same as
always. Up ahead, the queen is in her dark green and black leathers,
hair pulled up in a massive coil around her head. It looks too heavy
for her, weighing her down. Even as I watch, her shoulders slump.
I
imitate the movement, relaxing from my soldier’s stance. Just a bit
more forward. I drop my forehead a fraction. There.
I
am too far away to see her chest rise and fall, but if I could, I
would match my breathing to hers. Perhaps at luncheon, if I am quick
enough to table. The secret to being Valya Cara is all in the
details.
“Good,”
says Pol Arran, right in front of me. He almost startles me out of my
stance. A slash of eyebrow—yes, one—governs his face, dominating
over small, dark eyes and a sharp nose. Beyond his shoulders, his
twin and fellow Council member Pola Rita hands a practice sword to
the queen. “You will fight me today, Carita Nine.”
He
hands me a practice sword identical to that which the queen holds up
in front of us. More scarred on its edges, perhaps, where Pol Arran’s
bit into it relentlessly over time. But the same weight, the same
make. I lift it before me in synchronized movement with the
two-handed stance of the queen.
A
glint of approval swims through Pol Arran’s murky eyes. Then he
springs at me.
He
adopts the heavy-footed style of our enemies, the forest-dwelling
Rorkans. As a result, I crouch lower, putting my weight on my heels
the way the queen favors. Despite this preparation, the clash as I
bring the edge of my sword to meet his vibrates through my bones. A
cross-body parry, then a backhanded twist as I block his thrust. His
blade slides down mine with a harsh scrape until the hilt crushes my
fingers. I manage to avoid the point by dodging left, but my hands go
numb.
Ahead
of me, I hear a scratch and a dull thud as Pola Rita’s sword does
the same to the queen. I spare a glance in their direction as our
fight continues. The queen stops to suck on her fingers, anger
sparking in her bright blue eyes. Blue, like the waters of Lake
Verala.
Warm
pride curls through me. I matched the queen’s moves to the tiniest
detail, just as I’ve been practicing for so long.
But
Pol Arran bears down again. Thus is the way of the Rorkans, fast
combat with heavy-armed swings, their brute strength their greatest
asset. I assume that beyond us his twin does the same. I barely
manage to hold off his thrust with my numb fingers, determination
keeping the sword in my hands. He begins to circle me and I mirror
him, just like the queen up ahead. When he feints, I’m ready.
A
clang as he comes from the right. My arms vibrate like the
timekeeping bell. Two more standard strikes with all the force of Pol
Arran’s not-unsubstantial muscle weight behind them. I stumble
back, a feeling of wrongness searing through me.
Up
ahead, the queen holds her own.
I
fumble. The sword falls from my numb wrist. Pol Arran has me, the tip
of his sword brushing against my throat as I swallow hard.
“Not
bad, Carita Nine,” he says, keeping the sword in place. Then he
smiles, a long slash of white. “But not perfect.”
I
step back and bow to him, my eyes dropping to the ground. “I thank
you, pol.” But in my head I’m thinking: next
time.
###
I
make it to the third seat from the dais at luncheon. Like I’ve
practiced, I match my breathing to the queen’s, watching the rise
and fall of her slim shoulders with caution. She eats half her filet
of tria fish and exactly four bites of steamed green sodlan,
unsalted. So do I.
I’m
chewing my last bite of sodlan as slowly as I dare—the queen
sometimes swallows quickly—when the memory of the red crescents
returns to me. Gods, how they smelled: sweet and yeasty, with the
mellow richness of butter on top. My stomach growls again.
At
either side of me, Four and Eight finish up their tria fish. Four
poured some of the creamy white sauce onto hers—a mistake. She has
a long way to go, not like Three, who was born with the advantage of
the queen’s blue eyes. Four is like me, a brown-skinned river
dweller from the low country, and her hair even curlier. She’s been
a Carita for seven years, same as I—probably drafted after the same
massacre. Probably lost her people the same way. And yet she remains
square-jawed and wide shouldered, only a few shades lighter in skin.
Weak-willed.
I
swallow my sodlan. Up on the dais, the queen’s throat bobs at the
same time.
A
rush of rightness, like a spike of adrenaline through my veins.
I
can’t wait to get in front of a mirror.
###
My
chance comes after needlepoint, when we sit in two rows of six and
match the queen stitch for stitch. She always pricks her finger about
three minutes after her movements slow, and she grows weary sooner
than usual today. Strange, how this concentration exhausts her, but
wielding a sword is what our queen was born to do. Watching closely,
I wait until she makes a clumsy stroke and prick my finger at the
same time. The pain wakes me up, and I lick away my blood, just as
she licks hers. It tastes salty.
She
sets aside her needlework, raises a hand to her forehead, and stands.
This time, she wobbles a bit on her short heels. My shoes have no
heels—our uniforms are standard issue, to avoid unfair
advantages—but I force myself to wobble upon rising just the same.
It isn’t hard. I feel a bit dizzy, my pulse racing, as another rush
of adrenaline surges through me.
The
twins step forward, a matched pair. They take the queen by her elbows
and help her right herself. I stand taller in pale imitation of the
movement, but by then, she is already leaving the room.
A
collective breath goes out of us when the door clicks shut behind
her. For a moment, the silence swells, all of us standing like
statues in our last positions. Then the spell breaks, and we dig in
pockets and boots and breastbands for our mirrors.
Like
all the others, mine is palm-sized and round, just large enough to
show my head and shoulders. I hold my breath as I lift it into place,
but I needn’t have worried. I’ve more than compensated for the
slip-up against Pol Arran with my breathing tactics today.
My
hair falls straight and heavy in one long braid. If I were to unwind
it, it would be wavy not like it was when I lived in the river house
and Mami brushed it at night, but wavy like the queen’s when she
combs it before bed: something waiting to unkink. I achieved a sheen
today, the bluish tint that shines from the queen’s braids when the
sun catches them at just the right angle. It is the right shade of
black, too, far darker than it once was.
My
face is better too—pale cream, with the spots of warm blush that
are often high on the queen’s cheeks of late. My chin comes to a
point like hers, my dark hair peaking in a crown between my eyes. My
nose is right—a slight point, small, the nostrils barely flaring as
I breathe.
It
is only my eyes that are wrong today.
Still
a bit slanted, and muddy brown at their center. The blue is coming
in—just a ring of it—but it blends into the color of riverwater
during flood season as it reaches my pupils. The lashes, long and
curled, are like the queen’s, so that’s something.
Relief
and disappointment mingle as I put the mirror back in my pocket. We
still have afternoon tea—three cups, black, not a bite of
sandwich—when I might eek a bit more blue out of the day.
But
it is not to be. Pola Rita finds us in the stitchery room five
minutes later and tells us afternoon tea is cancelled.
“The
queen called a meeting with her Council,” she says, both her
slender brows lowering in a severe frown. (Unlike her brother, she
plucks.) “You will return to your quarters for the remainder of the
day.”
Whispers
break out as soon as she leaves us. It has been months since we’ve
skipped tea, dancing lessons, dinner. Then, it was because the
Rorkans lured our ships to a devastating defeat near the Freedian
Islands.
Ten
speculates as we move through the halls to our barracks. “I heard
they made it to the Violet Hills.”
“Heard
from whom?” asks Eleven, a sarcastic bite to her voice. A fair
question. We are kept separate from the others in the palace, only
allowed in our barracks, the training yard, and rooms where the queen
is about her day. There are rumors that a few girls break that rule
to sneak out and fraternize with the groundskeepers.
As
Ten blushes and says, “I can’t remember,” I look at her with
new eyes. Her hair had been turning brassy of late, despite her not
unskilled efforts of matching the queen during the day. A secret
liaison could be the reason. Who knows what she does to her precious
body at night? True, our time apart from the queen doesn’t affect
us as much as our mistakes in her presence. But the tangling and
thrusting of sweaty bodies in the hay is drastic enough to add that
red back into her braid.
“Doesn’t
matter,” says Seven, bringing me back to the discussion. “It’s
impossible. The Rorkans would never make it so far north.”
The
Violet Hills are just a day’s march south of the palace. A few
girls exchange worried looks, the fear in their eyes matching that
uncoiling in my gut. Many nights, I close my eyes and see the river
running red. We fight a brutal enemy.
But
the queen gives her people hope. The Rorkans’ Lo-Suriel,
spirit-speakers, have nothing on our spellworkers, who gift the queen
with immortality. Or so the queendom thinks.
The
realization hits me hard as we turn the corner to our barracks. The
queen’s ever-lessening bites of food. The way she holds her
trembling hand to her head at embroidery, a bead of blood on her
fingertip. The twins’ hands at her elbows, helping her stand.
The
queen is dying.
###
I
was ten when they found me in the river behind our house, washing
Rorkan blood off my arms. I remember the way the brown surface of the
water rippled and changed, and suddenly I saw not only myself, but
another: a tall pol with hair like fire and lines in his freckled
skin. If he ever told me his name, it’s lost now. Buried deep, like
my own.
The
fiery pol must have searched our house before he found me. Either
way, he didn’t ask about my brother, curled around a pike inside,
or my mother, hair dragging in the ashpile where she fell. Instead,
he looked at me closely in my bath of blood and riverwater and said,
“I have a place for you.” Little did I dream that place might be
the throne of the queendom.
But
they didn’t give us that detail, not at first. They had to weed out
the twelve of us from the other war orphans. Some of them were pale
northerners, fathers lost at sea, mothers lost to the promise of
soldiers’ coins. They favored those, except when they started
marching us toward the palace. Then they saw how the cold-weather
ones couldn’t last.
We
were called by the villages where we were found. This made it easier
on the march for us to band together with our closest neighbors.
Other river rats made the best nighttime companions, because they
would sing the same hushed stories that Mami used to keen into my
ears at night. But when we made it to the Amari Fields outside the
palace walls, they gave us wooden swords as heavy as our arms and
twice as long and made us knock each other down.
The
other river girls fought like the wild creatures we were, nails
biting hollow cheeks, toes jabbing into shins, fists around curls.
But none of them had ever washed blood from their arms. I was left
with a scar that has long since disappeared, straight like a reed
across my chest. The fiery pol wasn’t happy about that, but I’d
still won.
They
waited until the moons had risen and took twelve of us, the victors,
up a dark tunnel into the back of the palace. One from each province,
they said. It was fair that way.
When
we were lined up in a squat, dark room, they turned their backs and
told us to strip. I thought we would be killed, some kind of ritual
sacrifice for the spellworkers to gain power. Mami used to whisper
about them, after Luto was asleep. She said if you angered them, they
would put a bad-luck mark on your soul.
But
it was good luck for us that day: instead of death, they brought us
blue uniforms. Each one was the same size, so the sleeves hung over
some of the girls’ hands. My sleeves were an inch too short, the
tunic tight around my hips.
When
that was over, they lit the lanterns in a ring, and we saw that we
stood before a black stone altar. Behind it was a woman who had been
in shadow before—who perhaps appeared from shadow, coalesced, while
we weren’t paying attention. I remember her eyes, the same dark
flecked with gold as the silt beneath the river. She smiled, and a
part of me grew rapt.
“Daughters,”
she said. “You have been alone. You have struggled. You have been
brave.”
We
waited. The girl nearest me, from the province beside mine, shifted
on her feet. I wanted to grip her shoulders and hold her still.
“Not
in vain,” said the shadow woman. She lifted her arms and smiled
again, and I saw that they were twined with the thin gold wires of a
spellworker’s sleeves. “Today you will be consecrated as Caritas,
and we will entrust you with the secret of our land.”
We
gasped as one, as if the ceremony had already been completed and we
were tied inexorably to the same body. But then whispers broke out
across our ranks, like bubbles in water, and the spellworker waited
for them to quieten before she explained: the queen was not immortal
as we believed. She was a body reborn from her own people, from
hardship and trials, and we twelve would compete to become her. The
ceremony performed that day would tie our bodies to hers, and each
move she made that we matched would transform us into her, the
spellworking trick that kept our people in belief for a millennium.
One of us would become the perfect match. We would be tried, and
should we fail, the shame of our defeat would stop our tongues.
Forever.
A
few of the girls traded looks at that, an expression that I well
remembered: wide eyes, tight lips. Fear. But something else awakened
in me, something fierce as the girl who had washed in the river.
Determination.
###
Once
in the barracks, we strip off the blue uniforms—larger now than
they were seven years before—and wash ourselves in the basins
beside our beds. Some Caritas work quickly, modesty urging them into
the black clothes we sleep in, but I don’t bother with that any
more. Instead, I trace my wet rag over each rib, checking for the
deeper hollows that I should have by now. I swoop the cloth across my
flat chest and concave stomach. Close.
“There’s
something I don’t understand,” says Seven, already dressed, head
propped on her hands as she lies in bed.
“What?”
Eight turns to her, still naked. Her ribs only show when she sucks in
a long, deep breath.
“If
we’re supposed to become her—” Seven lets the doubt creep into
her voice “—why aren’t we at those meetings? The war councils?”
Eight
snorts. “You think they want to risk her top advisors finding out
about us? We’re secret. That’s the point.”
“But
we never have any sort of lessons,” says Ten, sitting beside Seven.
They looked like sisters with a couple of years between them. “Not
even the twelve of us, alone.”
“I
heard Pol Arran talking about it,” says Eleven, lowering her voice.
She needn’t—the room is empty, save for us—but we all gather
closer anyway. A drip of cold water slides down my naked legs. “He
said he doesn’t want to waste resources on any old Carita. You have
to win. Then you learn.”
“When
did he say that?”
“Last
month. To Pola Rita. She was asking if we should be training on
archery, too.”
Four’s
brow furrows in a frown. “Does that mean the queen is doing it?
Surely, if she is, so should we?”
“No.”
All eleven of them turn to face me when I speak. It’s like looking
in a fractured mirror. “Haven’t you noticed? She’s too tired."
They
all fall silent, the implication of my words hitting them. Perhaps
I’m wrong to reveal my hand. But there is no harm in letting them
know. They will lose anyway. I swore it to myself, to that girl in
the river who has forgotten her name.
Three
breaks the silence when she sighs. “I guess I should’ve skipped
the crescents.”
###
There
are more of them at breakfast the next morning. My head aches just
smelling their sweetness, but I grit my teeth and imagine my oats
taste as sweet as Mami’s recipe. It is a trick I used with Luto,
when rations were low before the end. He always complained that it
didn’t work. Now that I can see how right he was, my lips quirk at
the thought of telling him so. A moment later, I realize my mistake.
Up on her dais, the queen is pale-faced and stoic.
I
force my expression to behave. Perhaps a bit of brown has already
leaked back into my eyes. Storm and blast. I will have to be more
careful, especially if my suspicions are correct and one of us will
soon be Valya Cara.
Pol
Arran doesn’t choose to fight me. He chooses Ten, despite the hint
of red in her hair. She’s good, stumbling more than usual, as the
queen does, and I taste jealousy instead of the emptiness in my
stomach. It fuels me. By the time stitchery comes, I’m ready.
The
tiredness rises faster this time. Not just a prick, but a hard jab. I
suck the blood up from my finger like sweet wine. The twins, dressed
in the green robes of Council, carry the queen out.
Another
mirror check. The rusty flavor of my blood still lingers on my
tongue. I smile, and my teeth are red from it. But the rest of me is
almost perfect.
Thin
face. More red in my cheeks, a contrast to their paleness. And eyes
of blue, blue, blue like the river reflecting a summer sky. So close.
Pola
Rita comes in again. “The queen is busy with her Strategists of
War. You will return to your barracks for the afternoon.”
Though
her sharp features betray no falsehood, a powerful lick of excitement
heats my core. I stay in the center of our pack as we move through
the halls, one body of twelve. A pair of clear eyes here, a jutting
collarbone there. To my left, One’s perfect mole beside her nose, a
twin to the queen’s; to my right, Eight’s spattering of freckles
on her forearm. But also square jaws, wide shoulders, flaxen hair.
None of us are perfect. But none are as close as I.
###
The
next morning, I’m late to breakfast. I haven’t slept well,
plagued by the same old nightmare of dipping my hands in the river,
watching the current carry away eddies of blood. It will be no easy
task, being queen.
Because
of my lateness, I overhear the twins as they whisper at the dining
room doors. They can’t see me where I hide around the corner.
“You’ve
seen her. It has to be today.”
“Please
tell me you’re certain.”
I
strain to hear the rest over the pounding of my heart. “—wait and
see. Trust me,” says Pol Arran.
I
retreat silently and come forward again with heavy footsteps. By the
time I emerge from the corner, they stand straight and tall, their
padded armor covering all. They keep their gazes ahead as I pass
them, and I try to match their stoicism, burying my excitement down
deep. I’m distracted as I take my seat—farthest from the dais—but
I soon come back to the present when the queen never arrives at
table.
The
Caritas around me exchange looks of confusion. Some of them shrug and
spoon oats into their bowls, adding blackspice and red honey, taking
advantage of a meal when the queen isn’t in the room. But a meal
apart still matters. No queen at breakfast means she likely isn’t
eating. I push away my bowl.
An
answering wash of energy makes my heart beat faster, blood rushing
from my head.
The
sense of rightness grows as we head out toward the training ground.
Today is the day I will be selected. The certainty guides each step I
take, each breath. I don’t need the queen before me anymore. I will
become her.
###
“Nine.”
Pol Arran and Pola Rita stand before me, equal in height and build.
Without the plucked eyebrows and Pola Rita’s longer hair, they
would almost be identical. The pola hands me a practice sword.
“You’ll be fighting us both today.”
A
jarring note interrupts the song of adrenaline filling my veins. “But
. . . my pol, my pola—”
“Do
it.” Pol Arran raises his sword, clearly indicating he isn’t
planning to wait. He will strike, whether I defend or not.
This,
then, is another test.
I
fall into the queen’s stance: both hands firm but relaxed, sword
raised. I don’t need her over his shoulder. I know what she would
do.
He
feints left while his twin comes from the right. I spin left and
block him, putting her on his other side. Divide them—that is the
way to defeat an enemy. Pitch them against themselves. Now they are
in a line, Pola Rita out of my way, and Pol Arran’s eyes shine.
What would the queen do next?
The
pola is always teaching her to move her feet in time with her
breathing. I match the two, my heartbeat dropping in as a third
flavor to subtly alter the dish. Our swordplay becomes just another
meal, when I let my will overcome my sense of self. Cease to exist.
Become the queen instead.
Shoulders
slump a little forward. Hands grow clammy on the hilt of the practice
sword. I’ve seen the wood darkened by her sweat. I’ve seen the
way she glares at the pola when things don’t go her way. She fights
with a grudge, to hide her nervousness. I let my own creep forward,
matching my hunched stance to hers.
The
Pol’s eyes grow even brighter. He sees it. I fight off the pride—a
distraction. I spin as he bears down and knock him back into his
sister, who struggles to right herself and attack me again. It is
almost clumsy, the way I batter forward, clumsy like an angry and
sloppy fighter would be. Spunk, not style. Pola Rita swings her sword
in a chopping motion toward my neck, and I duck beneath it, rolling
in the dust. My own sword I use to chop off her
ankles—metaphorically. She falls to the dirt.
I
spring up, the tip of my sword at her throat. She has dirt on her
face, a smear across the bridge of her nose. It makes her look like
her brother, the way it fills in the space between her brows. I
almost smile.
But
the queen never would. My arm trembles a little from the effort, from
my rapid breathing. Pola Rita opens her mouth—
--and
I feel the point of a sword dig into my back. I leap aside to find
Pol Arran wearing his slashed grin. “Well done, Carita Nine. You
fight like a queen, and we need that now more than ever.”
My
blood sings. All those meals condensed into bites of focused
attention, all those pricked fingers, all the bruises from Pol
Arran’s sword. They’ve built me into this body, this queen, and
proven I am the one to lead us to victory. A surge of energy fills
me, like it did that day on the Amari Fields. But this time, I feel a
shift, and I imagine my eyes rounding out, that blue shining through
like a jewel from the queen’s crown.
The
other Caritas are restless behind me, trading a few whispers that I
can’t catch. Nothing good, but it hardly matters now. I bow. “I
thank you, my pol.”
He
thwaps my hand, hard, so that I drop my practice sword. “Come with
me,” he says.
I
fight off the sting. My rush of pride helps. “Yes, my pol.”
Pola
Rita stands up and follows us, but the slant of her brows means she
isn’t happy about it. Eleven pairs of eyes trail after me, each a
variation on Lake Verala blue.
###
Pol
Arran takes me into a new wing of the palace, one I’ve never seen
before. That’s how I know it’s time. The room where we stop only
confirms it for me. On the far wall is a mirror as tall as two
Rorkans and as wide as a creek. I can see the shape of my queen in
it.
I
realize a second later that I see myself.
“Wait
here,” says Pol Arran, sounding almost amused. Pola Rita follows
him out, and I wait three breaths before creeping closer to the
mirror. A few strands of hair have come loose from my braid, hair the
blue-black of a raven’s wing. The dark tendrils frame a
heart-shaped face, fevered red cheeks, bright blue eyes. Something
I’ve never noticed before—a cluster of light freckles, almost
invisible, across my nose. I turn my head side to side. A mole on my
cheek.
I
unbutton the top button of my uniform. My collarbone stands out like
the rung of a ladder, broken only by a slight dip at the base of my
throat. That was never so hollow before. Tears could drip down my
cheeks and collect in it, I think. Only they won’t have to—not
anymore.
A
sound from the corner of the room draws my attention away from the
woman in the mirror: the twins returning. Pol Arran holds a chalice,
Pola Rita a small knife. My lungs constrict. “So it’s true,” I
say.
They
face me, side by side. “Yes,” says Pol Arran. “The queen is
weak. The ceremony can wait no longer.”
“And
I’m . . .?”
“Valya
Cara,” says Pola Rita. Ever the inscrutable face, but there’s a
hint of sadness in her tone. What will she do now? Recruit more
orphans? Or does she mourn the loss of the other Caritas, if what the
spellworker has cursed them with comes true? Regardless of her
thoughts, she kneels before me, holding the knife across her palms.
Pol Arran does the same, holding up the chalice. Their faces drop
toward my feet.
I
see my wavering reflection in the clear chalice water. “Where is
the queen?”
“In
the next chamber,” says Pol Arran to the rich burgundy carpet. “Do
you remember what to do?”
As
if I could forget the ceremony I memorized my first day as Carita
Nine. The ceremony that told me I might one day be someone other than
a river rat, an orphan, a survivor.
As
I had that day seven years prior, I lift the knife and kiss the
blade. It’s warm against my lips, like the tender brush of Mami’s
kiss goodnight. I squeeze the hilt in my hand with the same strength
I used as I gutted the Rorkan who lied atop her. Back then, it was
his blood that spilled across my arms. Now, as I lift the knife and
dig it into my thumb, it’s mine.
The
blood flows down my arm, dripping off my elbow into the waiting
chalice. Pol Arran watches the waters turn pink before passing the
chalice into my hands, heedless of the blood dropping in large pats
onto the carpet. Perhaps
that’s why it is burgundy,
I
think. After all, this ceremony has taken place here every few
decades for a thousand years.
I
hold my pointed chin high as I carry the chalice before me, through a
set of gilded doors, into the room beyond, where my queen awaits.
She
lies propped on a stack of pillows in a narrow bed at the center of
the room. Dark hair spills over white silk, all framing her
red-brushed features. Always that heated blush of life, the same pink
as the chalice water. Beside her on a bedside table waits a great
feast. I can see pots of jam and cold-sliced meat and steaming
crescents. My stomach growls as I creep up to her. Not
yet.
I can eat when the spell is over and my bites don’t matter anymore.
When I am queen.
She
opens her eyes. Lake Verala blue.
There
are signs I’ve never noticed before. After all, I’ve never been
this close up. Thin lines of age ripple outward from those
long-lashed lids. Her lips, too, are dry and cracking, not the
full-budded kiuli blossoms they appeared from far away. She has a
spot of brown—an age mark?—beneath her right ear. And then she
smiles.
My
own lips rise in answer.
“Are
you ready to bear this burden?” she asks, in a voice like dry
grasses catching fire.
“My
queen,” I say, “I am.”
She
nods to me. I lift the chalice and drink. It tastes fresh and
sugary-sweet, like red crescents. I savor each drop as it slides down
my throat. Then I hand the chalice to her. Her hands shake as she
takes it from me, but no pink liquid spills over the side. She raises
it with painstaking slowness to those dry lips and wets them, just
barely, with its contents. Then she sets the chalice on the table
beside her bed.
I
can feel it beginning now. My blood stirs, heating within me. It
courses through my veins with a rush of energy, relearning the
pathways of this new, soon-to-be permanent form. Just as they told me
it would. The queen reaches for me, her breath hitching, and I lace
one of my hands through hers.
She
gazes at our clasped fingers, her lashes hiding her eyes from me.
Will she become the person she was before as she departs this flesh?
I watch for signs, and for a moment, I think I see changes. Her skin
begins to darken, the edges first, like shadows creeping up around
her. Something pulls me to her jeweled eyes and I lean forward on my
toes, searching deeper.
Her
fingers tighten spasmodically around mine. My eyes feel dry, and for
a flash of a moment, I blink.
It
is after that blink that things begin to change. No longer pleasantly
warm, my blood heats to searing fire. My guts writhe within me,
nausea rising in my throat. Before my swimming vision, the queen
begins to transform. Her age-spot disappears in a pool of creamy
white. The lines beside her eyes flatten out, porcelain-smooth. Her
red lips plump and stretch into a smile.
A
smile? But she is dying. Something isn’t right.
One
glance at our clasped hands tells me the real story, the lie the
spellworkers protected all those years ago. My fingers grow dark as
hers stretch long and pale. She grips me harder as if she can read
the realization on my face. I am not becoming her.
She
is consuming me.
I
close my eyes. My body revolts against the theft, pain shuddering
through each limb until it’s all I can do to stay upright. My
muscles spasm. My lungs burn.
I
remember Mami. I remember Luto. I remember my reflection in the murky
river waters, sadness already washing away and leaving the cold, hard
bed of survival in its place.
I
will not die like this.
I
open my eyes. The feast is the first thing I see. Without removing my
hand from the queen’s—I can’t, her grip grows ever stronger—I
lift up a crescent in my free hand. There’s no time to savor the
smell, the texture as it crumbles between my fingers. I shove it into
my mouth, eating it up in one bite. It tastes sweeter than honey,
sweeter than blood, and it washes away the nausea in a wave of warmth
and memory. The jam next. I dip my fingers into it and scoop out a
large bite. The queen makes a sound of alarm as I lick it off. Next
to the jam there are tiny bell fruits, and I pop them into my mouth,
one by one. They burst with tart juice that tastes like joy. The
queen’s fingers go slack, but I’m not finished. I lift the cold
meat and lean back my head, lowering it into my mouth, sucking off
the salt like the starving woman I am. It floods me with energy. It
fills me with power.
The
queen’s hand falls away.
When
I look down, swallowing my last bite, she is pale and grey against
the white sheets. Her hair is the color of river water, a murky
sludge that straggles like water weeds. Her eyes flutter once, twice,
and then close forever, but not before I glimpse the look in them.
It’s
something like relief.
###
When
I step out of the room, I enjoy the flashes of surprise that cross
the pol and pola’s features. I savor them, like I savored each bite
of food I just swallowed down. But they are not as sweet as the sight
of myself in the long mirror. I turn and meet the eyes of a girl long
forgotten, a river rat with hair that Mami’s comb could never tame.
My square shoulders and wide hips strain against my too-tight
uniform.
“What—what
happened?” asks Pol Arran, nonplussed. “The queen . . .?”
“The
queen is dead,” I say, turning to them. I can feel the scar I
earned on the Amari Fields puckering against my tunic. Strength flows
in my limbs. I meet their eyes.
They
are the first to look away. After a long silence that roars in my
ears, they speak in one voice, the voice of the Council. “Long live
the queen,” they say.
And
I determine that I will.