Page 3

Three

Duja

The queen hadn’t meant to pry.

Duja trusted her husband more than she did anyone in the world.

She would not have thought to riffle through his correspondence, but never before had Aki been so careless with his personal items.

Carelessness was not a trait anyone associated with her husband.

If he had not been so occupied with feast-day arrangements, he might not have left the letter inside one of the tomes stacked beside his pillows.

Duja discovered it while she was getting dressed that morning, a task that grew more cumbersome each day.

A Gatdula of her age and rank was entitled to attendants who could assist her.

Duja had dismissed them years earlier.

She was determined to dress herself as long as she was able.

But that morning, she’d struggled to fasten her earrings, tiers of golden disks inlaid with freshwater pearls, which she had inherited from her mother.

One earring had slipped from her trembling fingers and disappeared beneath her husband’s bedside table.

When she’d bent over to retrieve it, she noticed the letter.

It wasn’t the letter that caught her eye so much as the swirling symbols that peeked out over the top of the book?— To His Royal Highness, Hari Aki.

Duja recognized, with blistering intimacy, the hand that looped them together.

Her heart hammered in her chest as she tore the letter from the book and pored over its contents.

She didn’t budge for what felt like hours.

She read and reread the letter.

If she could commit the words to memory, maybe they would make sense.

But nothing about this letter made sense?—none of it.

What on earth might have possessed her husband, the Maynaran king, to contact Duja’s exiled brother?

With a ragged breath, Duja folded the letter and slipped it into the pocket of her skirt.

She finished dressing and headed to the central courtyard.

The king was not there orchestrating the final preparations with his pipe sticking out of the corner of his mouth, as she had hoped he would be.

Perhaps it was for the best.

She had a hundred questions for him, but she wasn’t yet ready to hear the answers.

“Your Majesty.” At the soft thudding of Duja’s footsteps, the handful of servants buzzing about the courtyard promptly dropped to their knees.

“Please, continue,” she said, offering them a thin-lipped smile as she passed.

A tall, slender shadow appeared in the arcaded walkway that ran along the sides of the courtyard.

Duja froze in her tracks, the smile melting from her face.

Her hands twitched, and a low rumble rippled beneath the tiles.

When the shadow emerged from behind one of the marble pillars, sunlight glinted off the brass clasps of a breastplate.

She let out a shallow breath?—it was merely one of the royal guards patrolling the palace perimeter.

Her fingers trailed to the letter, which felt hot enough to burn a hole through her pocket.

Duja’s brother, Pangil, had not set foot in the palace in many years, but it wasn’t the first time she had imagined seeing him there.

She crossed the courtyard and stared up at the eastern wing, thrice rebuilt now.

Her hand shook as it hovered over the stone walls of the wing, which stood a half-shade lighter than the others.

During her mother’s reign, the eastern wing had been the grandest in the palace complex.

Its red-tiled roofs still sloped toward the heavens, its spires piercing the clouds like crocodile teeth.

The reconstruction had changed little, but the gold-encased finials and latticed windows, in their third incarnation, had lost their luster.

For Duja, there had always been a certain romance about the place.

After her father passed, it was where her mother had housed her new consort, a younger man with kind eyes who always brought Duja something from his travels.

She remembered his gifts, the bitter chocolate and yellow-haired dolls.

She could no longer remember his name, but she had cried for him, as well as for her mother and the other poor souls who’d perished in the fire.

She had watched the eastern wing crumble twice in her lifetime.

Two decades had passed since the first incident.

Time could not wash away the taste of ash in her throat, could not smother the towers of flames that continued to chase her from the courtyard with their bloodcurdling heat.

His laugh echoed over the sound of crackling doorframes, cold and remorseless.

She couldn’t outrun him, and she’d been more powerful then.

Sister, he’d called her, his voice either sweet as coconut flakes or thick with drink.

She heard it in the silence between prayers, in the rustle of narra leaves.

She heard it as if the eastern wing had never fallen, as if no time had passed at all.

Some days, it shocked her how strongly she remembered.

The dull thumping of a walking stick against the tiles jolted Duja from her thoughts.

She turned around to find that an old woman had entered the courtyard.

Her simple, handwoven clothes clung like seaweed to her slight frame but left her arms bare where tattoos spiraled over the leathery skin.

Her graying hair, threaded with red glass beads, glowed silver under the morning sun, as did the medallion on her neck, which was engraved with the image of the raptor god, Mulayri, the mark of a high shaman.

“Hara Duja.” The old woman bowed her head when she noticed Duja’s presence.

Duja nodded in greeting.

“Hello, Maiza. Do you mind if I speak to you alone?” Maiza wasn’t her husband, but maybe she was the person Duja needed to see.

The shaman raised her eyebrows and nodded toward the main building.

Maiza had known Duja since she was Eti’s age.

She knew when something was bothering her.

“Let’s go somewhere quiet, Your Majesty,” Maiza said.

“Then you can tell me everything that’s on your mind.”

Duja led Maiza back to her private chambers.

The shaman sat beside her at the foot of the bed.

She took Duja’s hand and rubbed slow circles into the fleshy heel of her palm.

“The tremors,” Maiza said.

“Have they gotten worse?”

With a weary sigh, Duja nodded.

“Much worse. And faster than we anticipated.”

“I see.” Maiza pursed her lips as she kneaded the gracelessness from Duja’s hand.

With these hands, Duja could wield sand and stone and send shocks deep into the yolky center of the earth.

With these hands, Duja protected her family and her people from harm.

She could erect mountains with a flick of her wrist and topple them just as easily.

The power of the gods wound through her fingertips.

She needed her hands to be steady and sure enough to bear the weight of the mantle.

Hara ?—queen.

But for the strength of her bloodline, no hands were built to sustain power of this magnitude.

Not even the mightiest Gatdula could bear the mantle for long.

The power of Mulayri meant shorter lifespans and even shorter reigns.

It bore a hefty price, and Duja was not yet ready to pay it.

“How have the girls progressed?” Duja asked, keen to distract herself from the stabbing pain that radiated from her fingers.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d watched her daughters train.

She’d hired the best teachers in the land?—Ojas for Bulan, Maiza for Laya and Eti.

When they were younger, she used to marvel at how fast the girls learned, at the wealth of power concealed in their tiny bodies.

“Eti has come a long way since last season,” Maiza told her proudly as she reached for Duja’s other hand.

“Her affinity for metal is impressive. She needs to work on her precision, but when she does?—Hara Duja, you will be very pleased.”

Duja nodded, relieved.

The youngest and most timid of her three daughters, Eti had been slow to develop her abilities.

Duja was content to see her blossom under Maiza’s watchful tutelage.

However, Eti’s chief interest lay not in combat, but in embellishment and filigree.

She had inherited her father’s indefectible eye for beauty, over which Duja could hardly complain.

“And Laya?” she asked.

“Oh, Laya.” Maiza drew in a sharp breath, and Duja already had her answer.

“Her power is at once raw and limitless. I need only explain once, and she grasps everything I say by sheer intuition. She is Mulayri incarnate, perhaps the most powerful Gatdula we’ve seen in centuries. But she’s?—”

Duja completed her thought.

“Callous. Unthinking.”

Dangerous.

The high shaman sighed, setting the queen’s hand down lightly on the bed.

“I haven’t seen such a power since...”

Him.

Maiza didn’t need to say it.

Duja swallowed hard.

“Laya will learn. I’ll teach her.”

Maiza hesitated.

She said carefully, “Since the accident, the princess has shown more of an interest in practicing control. That’s a good sign, at least.”

The accursed accident.

Three years before, and Maynara still spoke of nothing else.

In the council room, Duja’s critics hammered on her regime’s negligence and waste.

How could she justify herself?

Twice in twenty-two years, an entire wing of the palace had to be rebuilt.

Both times, they’d paid for the reconstruction from the funds allotted to shipbuilding and the rice harvest and the kadatuans’ dedicated chests.

The blame fell, as it always did, on Hara Duja.

Laya had been a child of fifteen then, wide-eyed, remorseful, and easy to forgive.

If the council had allowed them to move on, it was because they’d gotten lucky.

Since the first fire all those years before, the eastern wing had stood uninhabited, and no one had been hurt in the second wreckage.

Laya claimed to have learned her lesson, but sometimes, Duja wasn’t so sure.

Her daughter was eighteen now, and she was expected to take Duja’s place frightfully soon.

She could no longer afford to make such irreparable mistakes.

If Laya wanted to inherit the throne, to call herself Hara Laya one day, she had so much left to learn.

Duja set her jaw.

She had known of her daughter’s callous nature since she’d been a little girl, yet how many years had she wasted?

“I should have taken greater care with her. After all, I knew better. I saw firsthand what happened with Pangil.” She often avoided saying his name, as if the slight omission would keep the memories at bay.

Maiza shook her head vehemently.

“You mustn’t think that way, Your Majesty. Laya is nothing like him.”

Him.

Pangil, Hara Duja’s older brother.

The fire starter, the spirit who haunted the palace, the man who was once Maynara’s beloved heir.

He’d laughed as the eastern wing burned, not yet knowing that his own mother had been trapped inside it.

Another accident, he’d claimed, back then.

Subconsciously, Duja rubbed the faint scar on the side of her neck, dark specks that stood out against her brown skin in the morning light, the ghost of a burn Maiza had healed many years earlier.

Her brother was prone to accidents.

“Yes, Maiza, you’re right.”

She closed her eyes, and Maiza began chanting in the low, somber cadences of Old Maynaran.

The pain in her muscles subsided, flushed out of her body in a great wave.

The stiffness wouldn’t trouble her for the rest of the day, and the enchantments should stem the tremors until the following evening.

Any reprieve the shaman could grant her was only temporary.

Meanwhile, the tremors would not wait for Laya to learn control.

The power of the gods would continue to wear away at Duja’s body at alarming speed.

For her daughter’s sake?—and for the rest of Maynara?—the queen needed to maintain her hold on the throne for a while longer.

But how?

Duja’s thoughts flitted to the letter in her pocket.

Her husband knew of her misgivings when it came to Laya.

He loved their daughter, but even he agreed that Laya was not ready to ascend to the throne.

For months, he had been searching for a way to buy Duja the time she needed.

He wouldn’t have contacted Pangil without good reason.

At least, that’s what Duja wanted to believe.

Twenty-two years since her brother had last roamed the island.

He couldn’t be allowed to return?—not after what he’d done.

Duja’s mouth flooded with bile at the mere prospect.

Nothing like him, Maiza had said.

Duja wanted to believe her, but the memory of her mother’s death was still fresh in her mind.

Between her brother’s flame and Laya’s wreckage, she could not wash away the haunting resemblance.

Duja did not see the king until it was nearly suppertime.

She happened upon him in the library, where the peppery scent of pipe cloves announced his presence.

She made out his distinguished profile as she rounded one of the tall mahogany bookshelves that stretched to the gilded ceiling.

Hari Aki carried no despotic airs.

If anything, he radiated intelligence?—more scholar than king.

He was a surprising breed of handsome, with attentive eyes and warm brown skin, and a pleasant face that grew more bewitching the longer you gazed at it.

He hadn’t been Duja’s first love, but she had always admired him.

Before they’d courted, Aki had been the gentlest man she’d known.

His intelligence and political acumen, she gleaned much later.

She fell in love first with his hearty laugh, which sent pleasant vibrations throughout every inch of her body.

After their daughters were born, she saw how tenderhearted he could be.

He was the sole man she would have chosen to father her children, and now he was the only soul whose counsel she could trust.

Until that morning, when Duja had found the letter, that was.

The damned letter.

She still did not know what to make of it.

She frowned as she studied her husband?—her clever, gentle husband.

A memory flashed of two young men strolling in the courtyard, Pangil’s arm slung around Aki’s shoulders.

Aki had been her brother’s friend long before he’d become her king.

What had Pangil promised him, exactly?

Duja could hear from the murmurs echoing across the quiet library that Aki wasn’t alone.

She craned her neck.

Curled up on one of the window benches next to a stack of books was Bulan, their eldest.

A faint smile spread across Duja’s face when she peered at the title in Bulan’s hands: The Art of Maynaran Swordsmanship.

Even when Bulan wasn’t in the courtyard sparring with General Ojas, she was busy training.

The queen watched as Aki leaned over their daughter’s shoulder.

He pointed at the page she was reading, whispering something that made Bulan laugh?—a rare sound, like crinkling paper.

It filled Duja with a tenderness she often didn’t feel for her other daughters.

Beneath those sturdy muscles built up from hours and hours of sword training, Bulan suffered from the sting of comparison.

She tried to drown it in sweat and sacrifice and duty, but Duja saw the envy in Bulan’s eyes when she gazed at her younger, more powerful sisters.

Over the years, Duja tried to console her.

The power of Mulayri may not flow through Bulan’s veins, but that did not make Duja love her any less.

Those words meant more coming from the king, a normal man who drew from a deeper source of strength.

Aki understood Bulan’s insecurities more than anyone else in their family.

Duja’s heart swelled when he planted a kiss on Bulan’s forehead.

Duja cleared her throat.

Aki and Bulan looked up in surprise.

Before the queen could speak, Bulan clapped her book shut and shot to her feet.

“Mother, about the ship?—I can explain,” Bulan began, worry creasing her brow.

Duja raised her hand to silence her.

Her heart had nearly stopped when Laya had told her about the ship.

At the moment, however, she had more pressing worries to address.

“Never mind that, darling,” she said.

“Would you mind if I spoke to your father alone?”

Bulan nodded and gathered her books in her arms.

She cast a curious glance at the king on her way out of the library.

Duja didn’t speak until she heard the door creak shut behind her daughter.

“You’ve been awfully busy, my love,” she said.

Aki was an observant man.

He picked up on the sadness laced in her tone.

“I take it you don’t mean with feast-day preparations?” he said.

Duja took Bulan’s place on the window bench.

Her hands quivered when she rested them in her lap.

“I’m worried, Aki.”

“About the tremors?” Aki sat down across from her.

He laid a hand on her arm and lowered his voice.

“I promise you, darling, we will find a solution.”

“It appears you already have,” she said.

Duja pulled the letter out of her pocket.

Her brother’s distinctive scrawl glowed in the afternoon light.

She thought of Pangil’s words?— old friend ?—intimate enough to make her question her husband’s intentions.

Aki’s expression darkened.

“It isn’t what you think, Duja,” he said calmly.

But she could tell by the tightness in his shoulders?—he was ashamed.

“Isn’t it?” Duja asked.

I love you.

I trusted you.

She swallowed her accusations.

“Pangil?—he wrote to me years ago. I ignored him. I would have gone my entire life without speaking to him again. But then?—Laya’s accident.” He rubbed his chin and reached into the pocket of his vest for his pipe.

Duja watched as he struck a match against the windowsill.

The tobacco cloves sputtered when he drew the flame to the pipe bowl.

“Pangil had written to me around that time. Claimed to have found a way to suppress the body’s degradation. At first, I dismissed it as mere rumors. But then, I began to read things?—terrible, fascinating things.” Aki drew in a deep breath.

When he exhaled, puffs of smoke wafted from his mouth to the library’s high coffered ceilings.

“I meant it when I told you I would explore every avenue, Duja,” he said, meeting her gaze.

“And while I hate your brother as much as you do, there is hope.”

Anticipation bubbled in Duja’s stomach?—anticipation and dread.

Her husband would not have hidden the letter from her if he didn’t have his reasons.

He was loyal to Duja, to his family?—not to her brother, the exiled prince.

But what if he and Pangil had struck some perverse agreement?

Would Aki renege on the vows he’d made her based on nothing more than the empty promises of an old friend?

“This man,” she said, thinking back to the letter.

“Pangil mentioned a man who can help me. A kind of... alchemist.”

The word felt foreign on Duja’s tongue.

Alchemy had no place in Maynara.

It was more science than sorcery, and it lay beyond her realm of comprehension.

“The key to abiding glory,” the king said, quoting Pangil’s letter.

Judging by the faint frown at the corners of his lips, a large part of him doubted it.

“I was going to tell you, Duja. I wanted to wait until after the feast days,” he added, a wrinkle of regret between his eyes.

Doubt twisted in her stomach.

She wanted to believe him.

While the king was clever, he was no match for Pangil and his nose for weakness.

She couldn’t believe any promises either man made her.

Duja needed to meet with this alchemist herself.

“No. We shouldn’t wait. How fast can you get word to him?” she asked.

The words flew from her mouth before she could stop them.

Aki’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Duja?—are you certain?”

No, she wasn’t certain.

But what choice did she have?

Her body’s clock was ticking at an alarming rate.

Duja’s control over her powers faded with each passing day.

If a solution was lying out there, awaiting her discovery, she couldn’t afford to ignore it.

Even if the solution had come from her brother’s lips.

“Write to him tonight,” she said, sounding more confident than she felt.

“Let us see what this messenger has to say.”

Who was he, this so-called alchemist?

And how could she know whether to trust him?

Her nerves lit up when she thought back to Pangil’s claim: He can help Duja more than you or I ever could.

The king’s eyes softened.

He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

“Of course, my love.”

He would move heaven and earth for her, her husband.

Duja closed her eyes and breathed in his familiar scent.

The cloves calmed her nerves, but nothing Aki said could quell the doubts swirling in her head.

Duja’s concerns had grown far greater than her daughter’s readiness to inherit the throne.

Laya’s accident appeared trivial wherever Pangil’s shadow loomed.

If there was any truth to Aki’s words, her brother held the secret to long-lasting power.

For all they knew, he could be stronger than Duja, or even stronger than Laya.

This realization didn’t sit well with the queen.

The decades-old fear twisted in her gut when Duja stared out the window at the eastern wing.

She could still picture, with heart-pounding immediacy, the last time she’d seen it aflame.

Duja.

Pangil’s voice reverberated across the rifts of time.

This time, he wasn’t alone.

No, Duja had not forgotten?—another ghost, another threat.

Amidst Pangil’s laughter, she could still hear the echoes of another girl’s screams.