Page 5

Five

Imeria

The last time Imeria Kulaw arrived in Mariit alone, she was ten years old.

Her jaw had dropped to the ground when she’d first laid eyes on the kingdom’s capital city and the towering buildings with their sloping, red-tiled roofs and saber-like spires puncturing the heavens.

The capital had been unreachable back then, looming above the rest of Maynara in a nebulous haze.

In the provinces, people whispered of the magic permeating Mariit.

It glowed brighter there than in the countryside, spilling through the twisting roots of the giant balete tree that dwelled in the capital’s sacred center, leaking through the cracks in the cobblestones and the canals, which crawled across the city like veins.

Imeria never cared much for these myths.

Even when she was a child, she had seen past Mariit’s sparkling veneer.

It was as ugly a city as any, bloated with half-civilized laborers who squabbled over whatever crumbs the noble families left behind.

Its canals did not stream gold with power, but rather ran rust-colored from the highland runoff.

And the Gatdulas, its sovereigns, were not the gods’ mighty descendants, as so many Maynarans proclaimed.

Imeria’s father tried to free the island from its ignorance.

But when he was alive, he lacked the power to make himself heard.

He’d died when Imeria was a girl.

What she knew of him, she’d learned from her mother’s stories and from the damning testaments of recent history.

He was more myth than memory, yet her thoughts wandered to him more and more as she aged.

“Datu Kulaw! They told me they saw your sails approaching.”

Imeria turned at the sound of a deep voice.

Vikal, the captain of her family guard, had come on deck.

He was an imposing man, with trunk-like biceps and a boxy face, who came from a long line of warriors who had served the Kulaws for generations.

He had been teaching her son, Luntok, to fight since he’d been old enough to walk.

Vikal loved Luntok?—of this, Imeria was certain.

Unlike with dozens of other individuals under Imeria’s command, she’d never had to buy Vikal’s loyalty.

“You have no idea how good it is to see you, Vikal,” she said.

He was one of the few souls in Maynara whom she greeted with a smile.

“My lady.” Vikal bent low at the waist, planting a chaste kiss on her knuckles.

“You must be tired from your journey.”

“Exhausted.” It took several days to sail to the capital from her ancestral lands in the south.

She would have arrived earlier had they not hit choppy waters crossing the Untulu Sea.

Same as the dirt-streaked provincials Imeria saw milling around the docks, the most important members of Maynaran society flocked to the capital for the week.

This included the other highborn datus, who no doubt had been counting the days until their next opportunity to eat Imeria alive.

Every one of them relished the feast days; for Imeria, they were a bloodbath of a subtler, more sinister kind.

“Where would you like me to put this, my lady?” another voice called.

A young man emerged from belowdecks, hauling behind him a heavy mahogany trunk packed with Imeria’s finest clothes.

He was younger than Luntok and sturdily built, unlike most serving boys his age.

Vikal blinked in surprise.

For the past few months, he had been giving this young man sword lessons at Imeria’s instruction.

She had failed to tell Vikal she would bring him, along with a dozen other battle-trained serving boys, to Mariit.

He cleared his throat.

“I see you brought, uh, reinforcements.”

Imeria cut him a sharp look.

“The town house was horribly understaffed last year, as you recall,” she said airily.

“And I need not tell you, Vikal, that beyond the south, well-trained servants are impossible to find.”

He gave her a tactful nod, then rushed to the serving boy’s aid.

“Let me help you with that, son,” he said, heaving the other end of the trunk in his arms.

Imeria followed them off the deck and onto the wharf, where the carriage was waiting.

Vikal helped the boy hoist the trunk onto the roof of the carriage.

She saw Vikal making calculations.

Imeria had brought twice as many trunks as the previous year.

“Traveling light, are we?” he said, amused.

His remark brought a dry grin to her face.

She knew what he was thinking.

Imeria had arrived in the capital armed to the teeth, and she had been awfully clever about it.

The Royal Maynaran Guard would not blink at Luntok’s impressive collection of weapons; he was competing in the feast-day tournament, after all.

Imeria spared no expense on additional arms?—convincing replicas of antique swords with engraved blades and ivory hilts, each too precious to appear useful.

If the guards troubled her, Imeria need only say the swords were part of her generous tribute to the queen.

Hara Duja.

Imeria looked up at Mariit’s skyline.

The sloping, tiered roofs of the palace peeked out over the outer walls.

Her stomach twisted when she remembered the first time she had met the queen.

That had been three decades earlier.

Duja, only a princess back then, had not allowed Imeria to kneel too long.

Rise, Duja had said in that soft, gravelly voice of hers.

She’d given Imeria a shy smile as she pulled her to her feet.

Don’t trouble yourself, she’d added, noticing how Imeria’s eyes had widened in apprehension.

There will be no need for that with me.

Duja had not smiled at Imeria that way in years.

She did not acknowledge Imeria if she could help it.

The Kulaws’ disgraceful legacy aside, Imeria could trace much of the court’s hatred of her back to the queen.

Imeria remembered a time when she’d hungered for any opportunity to see Duja again?—to beg for her forgiveness.

That was when Imeria had been a desperate girl, with a broken heart and without the slightest care for her own dignity.

So there she stood, twenty-two years later, a bitter woman plotting the Gatdula queen’s demise.

“Do you believe this year is the year, then?” Vikal asked, lowering his voice to a cautious whisper.

He helped Imeria into the carriage and climbed into the seat across from her.

“I believe in preparedness,” Imeria said blithely.

She glanced over Vikal’s shoulder.

The driver had finished strapping the last of the trunks to the top of the carriage.

He took a seat at the front bench with the serving boy at his side.

For months now, Imeria had been making promises to the battle-starved servants under her employ.

Like Imeria, they harbored their own hatred for the Gatdulas.

Vikal had warned her more than once about their growing impatience.

How much longer could she count on their loyalty?

If Imeria was going to act, it must be soon.

But for her schemes to come to fruition, she needed every star in the universe to align.

The carriage wheels groaned beneath the weight of Imeria’s trunks as they pulled away from the dock.

She looked at the empty seat beside Vikal.

Maybe the key to the Kulaws’ success was closer than they realized.

“Luntok didn’t accompany you?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

She had sent an earlier ship to the capital?—kitchen staff and scullery maids to prepare the town house for their sojourn.

Luntok insisted on departing with them.

Her son spent half the year in Mariit, far longer than any future datu had a right to.

His frequent stays in the capital did not go unnoticed.

Imeria, along with the rest of the court, knew precisely whom to blame.

Vikal cleared his throat.

“Luntok was occupied this afternoon. He didn’t say where he was going, but, well...”

“That Laya Gatdula.” Imeria let out a dry laugh.

The princess was pompous and impulsive and vain.

It didn’t help that she was beautiful the way a limestone statue was beautiful?—high-nosed, untouchable.

“He’s awfully devoted. I’ll give him that,” Vikal said with a shrug.

Imeria raised an eyebrow at him.

“To the princess, or to the cause?”

Vikal chuckled in response.

“To be frank, my lady, I believe Luntok has yet to figure that out.”

She sighed.

Laya was not the core of the Kulaws’ plans, as Luntok claimed, but a distraction.

Imeria might not be able to save her son from heartbreak, but maybe she could grant him the power he desperately craved.

At the great stone walls that protected Mariit, the guardsmen barely glanced at Imeria and her traveling party.

All she had to do was play the role of the bored noblewoman, unable to part with her luxuries for more than a week.

One look at her dour expression, and the guards waved them through the checkpoint.

Imeria gazed out the window as the carriage trudged deep into the heart of the city.

It was dusk, and the market canal had long since emptied.

Boats crowded its lanes during the day, laden with green cabbages and dried fish and unripe mangoes.

Hundreds of baskets exchanged hands over the water each day?—food and wares as far as the eye could see.

Silence, rarer than snow in the capital, had settled over the market canal when Imeria rolled past.

The only boats docked to the moorings drifted empty, thudding against the wooden planks of the walkway as they swayed.

The carriage followed the canal west before crossing the nearest bridge into the central district.

The buildings there stood tall on sturdy coral stones.

The Kulaws’ town house stood the tallest, with slanting, gold-tipped roofs that mirrored the architecture of the royal palace.

After the carriage rolled to a stop, Vikal popped open the door and helped Imeria to the ground.

“Welcome back to Mariit, Datu Kulaw,” one maid chimed.

She and a handful of servants had been waiting to receive Imeria in front of the veranda.

“I’m parched,” Imeria said by way of greeting.

She shrugged off her traveling shawl, which smelled of brine and rotting seaweed from her journey, and handed it to the maid.

“We’ve prepared wine for you, my lady.” The maid bundled up the shawl in her arms and gestured to the veranda.

Imeria spied a pitcher waiting for her at the center of the rosewood tea table beside a platter of sticky-rice balls wrapped in banana leaves.

It was one of Luntok’s favorite dishes.

He would have been sitting on the veranda sampling them had he waited for Imeria at the town house as he promised.

“I don’t suppose any of you have seen my son lurking about,” Imeria called, when the front gates swung open.

In stormed Luntok.

His hands were balled into fists at his sides.

Hard lines creased his young, handsome face.

It was too early in the day to invite himself into Laya’s bedchamber.

No doubt he’d tried.

If allowed, Luntok would spend every spare moment at her side.

But that afternoon, the ghastly Gatdula girl must have refused him.

At the sight of Imeria’s carriage, Luntok looked up in surprise.

“Mother, you’re here.” He swept over and kissed her on both cheeks.

“Is something bothering you?” she asked.

The golden bands on her wrists jingled when she reached up and brushed a thumb across his jawline.

The sound echoed over the hollow walls of the veranda.

Imeria thought of those first few months after her husband had died.

Luntok would curl up beside her in bed, and she’d lay a palm on his temple to soothe away the nightmares.

Those moments stood out among her untainted memories, which were few and far between.

Her sweet, foolish boy?—if only he knew how much she loved him.

Confusion flickered in Luntok’s eyes.

He shook his head and drew back.

“No,” he said.

“Nothing’s bothering me.”

She pursed her lips.

A wall had sprung up between them since Luntok had taken up with Laya three years before.

Imeria knew this stemmed from Luntok’s fervent desire to have Laya to himself.

But politics, not passion, dictated the princess’s decisions.

The entire court suspected, even if Luntok was too blind to see it, that Laya would choose another man for her husband?—no doubt one of Hara Duja’s preselected bores?—within the next year.

Instead of subjecting her son to a lecture, Imeria took a seat on the veranda.

She gestured for Luntok and Vikal to join her.

Luntok sauntered over to the tea table.

He removed the scabbard from his belt and leaned it against the capiz-shell screen that walled off the veranda from the rest of the house.

Vikal watched him, a small smile on his boxy face, and followed suit.

“Oh my. Has she tired of your company already?” Imeria drawled as she poured them each a glass of wine.

His gaze snapped to hers.

“Dayang Laya sends her regards,” he said sarcastically.

“I don’t like how she toys with you,” she said, taking a sip of her drink.

“Laya doesn’t toy with me. She’s very fond of me, you know.” This time, Imeria could detect a hint of uncertainty in his tone.

She barked out an unkind laugh.

“Fondness,” she said.

“Surely you can inspire something stronger than that.”

Across the table, she and Vikal exchanged a knowing look, but Luntok didn’t notice.

He crossed his arms and slouched further in his seat.

To avoid an argument, Imeria turned to Vikal.

They went over the schedule for the week of the feast days while Luntok stormed silently between them.

Imeria resisted the urge to hold him to her chest.

He was a man now, and a sensitive one at that.

She wished she could soothe his angry thoughts as she had when he was a child.

Luntok deserved not the princess’s mocking, but a throne of his own.

This, too, is temporary, she wanted to say.

For now, it was the sole comfort Imeria could give him.

Instead, she laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

His brow was still knitted in frustration, but his shoulders softened at her touch.

Rage now, my boy.

Soon, the Gatdulas would toy with them no longer.

Once Imeria’s plans came to pass, the Kulaws would be the ones laughing in the end.