“We need to talk,” we both say, at almost the same moment. She looks up at me, and I can’t help but smile. She breaks out in giggles.
“Sorry,” I say. “Do you want to go first?”
“I … not really, but I suppose I should.” She takes a deep breath. “If you ask me what I want I’d say it’s to hide in my room for the rest of my life and never talk to anyone again. But that’s probably not practical.”
“Probably not.”
“Okay.” She squares her shoulders, as though she’s marching to her execution. “You … kissed me.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”
“It wasn’t…,” she begins, then stops, swallows. “You shouldn’t have. Not without asking. But I … afterward, I should have talked to you.”
“You’re under no obligation to me,” I say, remembering my night with Zarun. We’ve made no promises.
“I’m under the obligation that I—you and I—” She stops again, collects herself. “Have you ever done that before?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Kissing?”
“With a … a woman.”
“No.” I take a deep breath. “I know you don’t—”
“I have,” Meroe blurts out. “It’s…” She blinks, and there are tears in her eyes.
“We don’t have to do this, Meroe.” I put my hand, tentatively, on top of hers. “Just forget it, all right? Forget it happened.”
“No.” She shakes her head violently. “I’m sorry. This is just … harder than I thought. But you told me about you and your sister.”
“It’s all right.”
“Please just listen, Isoka?”
I nod.
“When I was … twelve, maybe, there was a girl. Sarama. A daughter of one of my mother’s attendants, from a noble family, but wild. She liked to explore the castle, and one day she found her way into my garden.
“I didn’t have many friends by that age. Everyone was so careful around me. My father wanted it that way. Princes and princesses didn’t have the luxury of friends, he said. Sarama was different. She was a little younger than me, and she wasn’t afraid of anything. And that made me feel different. Ever since I was old enough to understand”—she looks down at her hands—“what I am, I’d been careful, too. But not with her.”
She pauses, pressing her knuckles into her eyes. I squeeze her hand, and she takes a deep breath.
“One of the servants caught us. I think my sister Boloi tipped her off. It was the kind of thing she would have done.” Meroe swallows. “We were in the garden, back in one of the flower beds, and we were kissing. The servant told my father everything.”
Her eyes are filling with tears again. “It wasn’t Sarama’s fault. The kissing was … I told her it was a game. I was the one who talked her into it. She just wanted to run around the garden and pretend we were fighting bandits.
“The next day, my father’s guards picked me up from my room and marched me down to the basement. My father had Sarama and her parents there, and he accused her of defiling the Princess. Her mother screamed at her, and her father. I tried to scream, too, but the guards stopped me. I had to watch while Sarama’s parents beat her bloody. All to please my father, of course. They were desperate to keep their station at court, and Sarama was only a younger daughter, and a troublesome one besides.
“Afterward, my father asked me if I knew why he’d made me watch. I called him awful things, said it was me who’d started everything. He said he was well aware, and that was why he wanted to teach me a lesson. He couldn’t beat me, you see. Not without telling the whole court that I wasn’t … what I was supposed to be.”
“It’s not allowed, in Nimar? For two women to be together?”
Meroe shakes her head. “It’s all right for boys to run around and suck each other’s pricks. That’s all just in good fun until they’re of age. But girls have to be pure, and princesses doubly so.” She looks at me, hesitantly. “I heard it was different, in the Empire.”
“I guess.” I scratch my head, embarrassed. “It’s not exactly … usual, but nobody gets beaten over it.”
“In some parts of southern Jyashtan married women are expected to keep unwed girls as lovers,” Meroe says absently. “It’s supposed to keep them out of trouble.”
“That…” I try to picture it, and shake my head. “What happened? Did you ever see Sarama again?”
“No. Her parents sent her back to their estate and kept her there.” She rubs her eyes again. “So when you kissed me, I just…”
“I understand,” I say, though I wonder if I really could. If I’d had a father, and he’d done that to me, I’d have killed him, king or not. “Like I said, we can forget it ever happened.”
“I don’t want to.” Meroe turns to face me, and my heart double-thumps. Goose bumps race down my arm. “I want you to kiss me, Isoka. Gods, I’ve wanted that practically since we first met. I just need to … get used to the idea.”
“You…” Rot, rot, rot. Something is wrong with my brain. “Honestly?”
“Honestly.” She smiles cautiously. “Why are you looking at me like I just swallowed a live fish?”
“Sorry.”
“And stop apologizing.”
“Sorry,” I say, automatically, and then start laughing. Meroe laughs with me, and our fingers intertwine.
“Thank you,” she says, after a while. “For telling me what you did.”
“I felt like an idiot,” I say. “It’s not exactly an uplifting story.”
“It was your story,” she says. “That’s good enough.”
We stare at each other for a long moment. The tension has drained away, replaced by a warm feeling I can’t put a name to.
“Okay,” Meroe says. “Now that the important stuff is out of the way, do you want to explain why exactly you’re sitting in a cell waiting for execution?”
* * *
I start laughing, and when I’m finished laughing I tell Meroe everything.
Somewhat to my surprise, I tell her everything. It comes spilling out of me, like pus from an infected wound, a river of ugly, stinking truth. Meroe takes it all and doesn’t flinch. I tell her about Shiro’s death, and Hagan’s. About Tori, with her perfect house and her perfect life, and what I’ve done to keep her safe. And about Kuon Naga, how he wants Soliton for his war, and how he ruined everything. Her hand tightens on mine.
Then it’s just a matter of explaining what went on between me and the Scholar, the deal we made, and what had happened between me and the Council after I’d been captured. And Hagan, of course.
“He’s a ghost?” Meroe says, her voice a squeak.
“I’m … not sure.”
* * *
“Okay.” Meroe takes a deep breath. I can’t help but think she’s dealing with this remarkably well. “And this ghost-friend of yours agrees with the Scholar that the ship is going to sail to the Vile Rot and kill us all.”
“Yes.”
“And the Scholar thinks if he can get to this Garden he can change course.”
“That’s his theory. Hagan said it wouldn’t work. But he said the Garden would protect us if we got there.”
“Right,” Meroe says. “And the Council is offering you the chance to go with him and find out. In the meantime, Zarun wants you to fight the Butcher.”
I nod. “That would get me out of the execution. But it doesn’t help us if Hagan’s to be believed.” I shake my head. “I think I have to go with the Scholar, Meroe.”
Meroe looks at me, carefully. “Then what happens to everyone else?”
“I told them I wasn’t leaving you behind.” I squeeze her hand. “I said my pack, actually, so Aifin, Jack, and Thora are welcome if they want to come.”
“But what about the others?”
“What do you mean? The rest of the Council?”
“All the people,” she says, patiently. “The crew. The ones who stay behind.”
“Maybe the Scholar can turn the ship around,” I say. “If not … I don’t know. But probably nothing good.”
“Then we can’t do that, can we?”
I stare at her. “Why not?”
“We can’t run off, save ourselves, and leave a thousand people behind to die!”
“What choice do we have?”
“There has to be a way,” Meroe says. “We just have to find it.”
“We’re not in charge of everyone.” I wave a hand vaguely. “That’s the Council’s job.”
“Are they doing it?”
“I—”
She crosses her arms, as though that were a conclusive argument. I sigh and run my fingers through my hair.
“Look,” I say. “I know you were raised in a palace. But things are different in the real world. You’re not responsible for everyone.”
“It’s not about being responsible,” Meroe says. I expect her to be angry, but she’s not, which honestly makes me irritated. “It’s about helping people when you have the ability to help them.”
“But—” I grit my teeth. “We don’t have the ability to help them. If Hagan is right and the Scholar can’t turn the ship, then people are going to die no matter what we do.”
“How many people would fit in the Garden?”
“How many…” I stop. “You’re not serious.”
“How many?” Her tone is gentle, but firm.
“I have no idea!” I’m shouting now. “Hagan said it would protect everyone who gets there, but I don’t know if he meant everyone.”