Page 20

Twenty

Duja

The door to Ariel’s workshop was half-open when Duja strode into the eastern wing.

As she walked down the corridor, her nostrils filled with the sharp, acidic smell of vinegar.

She stopped before the wainscoted wall lining the hall, where she glimpsed herself in the mirror.

Duja wore her finest skirt, a voluminous balloon of viridian silk that billowed with every step.

Her headpiece weighed heavily atop her hair, a magnificent crown of gold plates shooting out from her temples like sunrays.

A handmaid had added some charcoal to her eyelids and a touch of rouge to her lips.

She looked majestic; she felt like a fraud.

High Shaman Maiza had arrived early for the midnight feast and headed straight to Duja’s chambers for a healing session.

The sorcery had worked; her muscles felt loose, and her fingers were free of tremors.

Duja hoped the enchantments would last until the end of the ceremony.

She couldn’t allow herself to appear weak before the Council of Datus, and especially not this night.

Maiza’s enchantments were effective, but unpredictable and weak.

Duja needed a solution more potent than such petty sorcery allowed.

For the first time in years, the solution lay within reach.

With a deep breath, Duja pushed the door open.

Ariel was sitting at the table in the center of the workshop, a magnifying glass in hand.

He held the glass to the tray before him, muttering to himself in Orfelian, his eyes glued to its contents.

He did not notice Duja standing over his shoulder until she cleared her throat.

“Good evening, Dr. Sauros.”

Ariel jumped to his feet and whipped around.

His eyes widened in awe when he caught sight of Duja in full ceremonial dress.

“Oh my?—I mean, good evening, Your Majesty.”

The corners of Duja’s mouth curled up into a shy smile.

“Don’t worry, Ariel. I suspect we’ll have you fitted for your own court attire soon,” she said, peering into the tray before him.

“Would that be the precioso?”

Ariel nodded and gestured for her to come closer.

“I’m monitoring it for now, but it looks like the precioso will be fully set in a few hours. Would you like to see?”

A jolt of excitement wound through Duja.

She swept over to the edge of the table and leaned over the tray.

The precioso lay in a dozen crystal bars of varying lengths, the smallest no bigger than her thumb and the largest measuring from the tip of her pointer finger to her wrist.

The bars were as clear as glass.

Duja marveled at how the light changed as it skated across their smooth edges and jagged tips.

“I didn’t know a drug could be this beautiful,” she said, resisting the urge to run her fingers over the bars’ surfaces.

“Precioso doesn’t always look like this. It’s rare for one to produce a sample of such pure quality,” Ariel said.

Duja thought she heard a faint note of pride in his voice.

“Well, then. I shall consider myself lucky to have one of the best precioso makers under my employ,” Duja said as she appraised the Orfelian.

Her brother was blessed to have found him.

Ariel must have spent a great deal of time with Pangil.

It made her curious.

“You’ve been in my brother’s company. Is he well? Truly?” she asked.

Is my brother a better man?

Duja yearned to know, but she didn’t dare ask Ariel that.

“The precioso has aided him. He lives without pain, healthier than many men his age. His tremors don’t trouble him as they used to. He can wield his powers without endangering himself and those around him. But I have warned him regarding overuse, as I’ve warned you, Your Majesty,” Ariel said.

He never gave a dishonest answer.

Duja liked that about him.

“I know, and I promise to heed your warnings,” Duja said, nodding.

At least once a day, her husband continued to caution her about precioso, citing grim anecdotes from his research.

Both he and Ariel made it abundantly clear that precioso was not the answer to all her prayers.

Duja wasn’t looking for one.

If she could control her powers for a few more years, she’d have enough time?—time to prepare Laya for her duties.

Time to iron out any misgivings the court held about her daughter’s rule.

She glanced at the clock hanging on the wall above the cupboards.

Two hours until midnight?—she needed to make her way to the great hall soon.

He followed her gaze.

“Ah, yes. They are probably expecting you at the midnight feast.”

“Correct,” Duja said.

She straightened, smoothing out the creases in her skirt.

“I suppose Hari Aki has already informed you about the guests we will be receiving tonight.”

“I’m well aware, Your Majesty, and rest assured that no one will know I’m here. And it was, um, Dayang Laya who warned me,” he added as he braced his weight against the side of the table.

“Laya? Really?” Duja raised an eyebrow at him, incredulous.

“She requested an early Salmantican lesson. We’ve actually had a few lessons this week,” Ariel said.

He took off his spectacles, diverting his gaze as he polished the lenses on the embroidered hem of his shirt.

Duja’s brow furrowed in suspicion.

Laya was far from the studious type, and her distaste for foreign languages was no secret.

The king had introduced Ariel to the girls, and they knew he was living in the palace.

As for the Orfelian’s true purpose there?—Duja’s stomach churned when she took in Ariel’s shifting gaze and nervous fidgeting.

Laya had a way with the opposite sex, a gift she no doubt inherited from her father.

Duja could see she had already cast a spell over the Orfelian, even if he did not seem to be aware of it yet himself.

The realization brought a frown to Duja’s face.

Ariel was not a bad-looking man, with his soft eyes and high-boned features, but he possessed none of the danger Laya sought in her suitors.

Duja knew her daughter; Laya would not have wasted her time with Ariel if she did not have something to gain from him.

The queen stiffened.

Her daughter was too clever for her own good.

When it came to Ariel’s presence in Maynara, Laya could sense something was amiss.

If she did not yet know about the precioso, she would soon.

Duja prayed she would have a better explanation for her interest in the drug by then.

For Laya was as clever as she was impatient.

She would not understand Duja’s hesitancy to pass down the title.

She would assume Duja didn’t trust her to hold that much power, and the discovery would render her furious.

But that conversation, like most of the queen’s worries, would have to wait until another evening.

Duja was almost late for the midnight feast.

“Thank you again for your efforts, Dr. Sauros,” she said as she brushed past Ariel on her way out of the workshop.

“I will visit you again in the morning to see how the precioso has progressed.”

Ariel dropped his head into a respectful bow.

“Of course, Your Majesty. I hope the feast goes well.”

Duja gave him a curt nod before shutting the workshop door behind her.

She hurried downstairs and across the courtyard.

She entered the great hall to find it empty save for the long table spanning the full length of the room.

Despite her detour to Ariel’s workshop, she was the first to arrive, but the datus were expected at the palace within the next few minutes.

This was no ordinary meeting.

The midnight feast marked the end of the past week’s celebrations, and only the six ruling families were invited.

It was a peculiar, closed-door spectacle that felt to Duja as old as the gods themselves.

Once she had been crowned queen, Duja dreaded the midnight feast, because it required her to play a role she despised.

“Are you ready, darling?” Hari Aki asked as he strode through the open doors of the hall.

Their daughters trailed in after him, and for a brief moment, the sight of them rendered Duja breathless.

Not long before, they were little round-faced girls wreaking havoc in the palace.

Those little girls were slipping away fast.

They were growing into beautiful women, each with awe-inspiring powers of her own.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Duja leaned in as he kissed her on the cheek.

They took their seats?—Aki, the king, at the opposite end of the table and Laya, her heir, to her right.

Since they had spoken earlier that week, Laya was noticeably more churlish with her.

Duja sighed, resolving to make amends the following morning.

She did not possess the patience to mitigate another clash with Laya at the moment.

Through the doors strode Datu Luma, Datu Patid, and their respective families.

They bowed their heads respectfully to Duja as they entered.

She straightened her back and greeted them with the distant regard of a sovereign.

She needed to fully commit to her role with the arrival of the first guests.

Duja wished they had music, like at the opening ceremony.

The midnight feast’s atmosphere was somber, almost funerary, the only noise coming from the faint murmur of conversation as the datus and their families filed in.

Before long, servants arrived with platters stacked high with food: pork buns and pan-fried milk fish and sweet sausages on steaming beds of rice.

Absently, she served herself.

As she ate, servants kept her wine goblet full without her asking.

She swallowed its contents, too lost in her thoughts to taste anything.

“Mother,” Laya whispered.

It was the first word she had spoken to Duja since the start of the evening.

Duja looked up.

“What is it, Laya?”

Once again, Duja was struck by how much her heir had grown.

Not even the flickering shadows of the great hall could hide Laya’s beauty.

A cunning spark pierced through the murky-brown depths of her eyes.

From behind her head, sconces lit her temples in crowning rays.

Regal, Duja thought.

Without even trying.

Duja was queen by blood, but not queen by nature?—not the way a Gatdula was meant to be queen.

If her older brother’s crimes had been pardonable, she never would have sat upon the throne.

In a way, it was a blessing.

To grow up her mother’s heir would have been a heavy burden.

Laya had borne it for years.

That night, when Duja met her daughter’s gaze, she saw the queen she would become?—swift-fingered in the way she shifted her pawns about the court.

Godlike in her justice, as in her cruelty.

The kind of Gatdula their subjects would come to respect and, one day, adore.

Born a queen, in all the ways Duja could never hope to be.

“Look.” Laya nodded toward Aki’s end of the table, where two seats remained empty.

“The Kulaws have yet to arrive.”

“It isn’t like them to be tardy.” Duja kept her voice calm, but her gut twisted with an uneasy feeling.

Her last meeting with Imeria had resurrected painful memories.

Duja knew Imeria resented her, but she had not known that buried deep beneath her bitterness dwelled a tiny spark of hope.

It was the last surviving speck of the love they had felt for each other as girls.

Imeria had clung to it, unwilling to let go.

By granting Laya and Luntok the future they could never have, Imeria wanted to see the sentiment echoed in their children.

If she were crueler, Duja might have played on her love, teased a gentleness out of Imeria, and cajoled her to join her side for once.

Instead, she crushed Imeria’s hope.

She had thought she was being merciful.

Suddenly, she feared she had misjudged her.

She waited as the feast continued.

Servants emerged once again with dessert: pillow-light sponge cakes, sticky-rice balls drenched in coconut sauce, and glutinous rolls wrapped in pandan leaves.

Her goblet was filled and refilled, and time ticked on, and still, the Kulaws did not appear.

As midnight grew closer, Duja’s gut flipped in apprehension.

Imeria’s absence had not gone unnoticed by the other datus.

They could not conduct the closing ceremony without her.

Once the servants came to clear the plates, Maiza appeared at Duja’s shoulder.

“The ceremony must start soon, Your Majesty,” she said in a low voice.

She nodded and met Aki’s eyes at the other end of the table, where the two seats remained empty.

The king’s brow was knitted in confusion.

This was unlike Imeria.

Although she had insulted the Gatdulas with a string of absences in the past, not once had she forgone the closing ceremony.

After all, Imeria was not an idiot.

She knew the evening was too vital for her position on the council, and for the functioning of the Maynaran government, to miss.

The queen thought hard about their last conversation for any hints she might have forgotten.

She would have heard if Imeria had left Mariit, but Imeria would never have dared return to the south before the end of the feast days.

Any other absence could have been forgiven.

This was the one night she needed to be in the palace.

Duja scanned the hall, her gaze landing on General Ojas, stationed at the wall across from her, flanked by two of his men.

He met her gaze and swept across the room when she gestured him over.

He stood beside Maiza, leaning over Duja’s other shoulder.

“Yes, Your Majesty?”

Duja glanced at the guests seated nearest her.

Datu Luma and his wife were sitting within earshot.

Although they were close friends of the crown, she didn’t want them to know the extent of her troubles with Imeria.

She lowered her voice to a whisper.

“Could you sweep the perimeter? See if perhaps Datu Kulaw and her party have gotten lost somewhere in the palace grounds.”

Recognition flickered in Ojas’s eyes.

“Right away, Your Majesty.” He straightened and strode out of the room, a pair of junior guardsmen marching at his heels.

Duja watched him leave, unable to shake the anxious feeling that she had forgotten some dreadfully important detail.

High above the doors, the clock ticked.

Around the table, the datus began to grumble.

Duja kept her gaze trained on the entrance to the great hall, expecting Imeria to appear any moment in a flutter of scarlet and gold.

But the clock hands edged closer to midnight, and the Kulaws remained conspicuously absent.

“Mother,” Laya whispered again.

“Yes, darling, I know,” she said, distracted.

Questions swirled in the queen’s mind, along with the sensation that, by sending Imeria away in the throne room the other night, Duja had done something horribly wrong.