Erian was beginning to quiet. Llor was still sniffling. He’d most likely forgotten why he was crying. He just knew he was supposed to be crying. Naelin let them rest against her. “You’ve lost people?”
“Plenty.” Her voice was distant, and her eyes fixed downstream. All trace of the water spirit had disappeared. Casting her mind out, Naelin felt it, hunkered down in the rapids, a ways downstream. It seemed to have forgotten them. “All, in fact. Except my sister. I’d do anything for her, anything to make her proud of me.”
Naelin cast around for something else to say. “Sounds like you found important work, being the queen’s guard, working with Ven. I’m sure she’s proud of you.”
Still looking downstream, Alet nodded.
“What’s the queen like?” Naelin asked. She wanted to ask more: Will she listen? Will she understand? Will she help? Will she keep my children safe?
“Noble,” Alet said. “Serious. Driven.”
“Have you known her for long?”
“Long enough to know she’s a good queen,” Alet said, and there was a look on her face that Naelin couldn’t quite name—it was a little like longing. “She wants to protect her people, and she’s willing to give her life for that. She understands duty and sacrifice.”
Holding Erian and Llor close, Naelin wondered if she was being insulted. “Are you suggesting I don’t? I’d give my life for my children.” She felt her children shift in her arms, squeezing her tighter. “But I’d far rather give them a mother than a martyr.”
A brief smile crossed the captain’s face. “Before you, I thought all women of power wanted to be queen. Refusing seemed inconceivable. Your lack of ambition is . . . strangely admirable. You are deeply committed to living a forgettable life.”
“Forgettable is fine. I don’t want fame; I want happy.” She pressed her lips to Erian’s hair. “But I’ll settle for content. I don’t think that’s so strange.”
Alet studied her, as if weighing the truth of her words, and finally said, “I’ll help you, as much as I can.”
Naelin’s eyes widened. She hadn’t expected to find an ally in the stern guardswoman. If her arms hadn’t been full of children, she would have hugged her. As it was, she could only nod her thanks. “I appreciate that. We all do.”
“You must be able to say no to the queen,” Alet said. “It won’t be easy. She’s intense, and she is the queen. In the glory of the palace, you’ll want to say anything to please her. You’ll want her to look on you with approval. It can be hard to remember who you are and what you must do.” She had a look in her eye—that odd kind of sad longing again, regret maybe—as if she’d tried to refuse the queen and failed.
“I have two reminders,” Naelin said. “The palace won’t intimidate me.”
“I hope not. For their sake.” Alet held out her hand toward Erian and Llor. “Come, children, and I’ll show you the proper way to stab a water spirit.”
Tears dry, they went with her willingly.
Chapter 12
Arin had decided at age four that her sister, Daleina, would be queen, but oddly at no point during her calculations had she imagined herself visiting the palace. She’d also never thought she’d need to have her eyebrows plucked to see her sister, but the caretaker who had hustled her away after her arrival had gasped in shock at what apparently looked like two woolly caterpillars who had laid down for naps about Arin’s eyes. Arin thought her eyebrows were fine, and furthermore that Daleina wouldn’t care, unless being queen had changed her that dramatically. Usually Daleina only cared that Arin had all her limbs still attached and functional. But the caretaker looked as if she were having heart palpitations at the very thought of Arin and her woolly eyebrows intruding on the sanctity of the palace, and so Arin submitted to the ministrations without protest.
Besides, it was nice being taken care of.
One caretaker, dressed in an embroidered gold robe and boasting a painted image of a bird on his neck, was scrubbing at the calluses on Arin’s hands, while another, who had leaves painted on her arms, knelt in front of a velvet cushioned stool and was trimming Arin’s toenails. A third was whirling around the room, selecting far more clothing than Arin thought could be worn by a single person without falling over. She pictured her sister weighed down by twenty elaborate robes and suppressed a giggle.
The room she was in looked as elaborate as the people with their painted skin. It was decorated with peacocks and songbirds and streaks of sunset colors. The walls were inlaid with mosaics of different-colored wood, honey and mahogany and cherry, in patterns that made her head feel like she was hanging upside down if she looked at them for too long. The ceiling was laced with strands of firemoss that looked like lit cotton candy, and the floors were blanketed in carpets on top of carpets that looked so plush that Arin hoped they let her stay barefoot after they were done decorating her toes—she had no idea why Daleina would even notice what her sister’s toes looked like, much less care.
At last, they finished, pronounced her acceptable, and stripped off the linen robe they’d given her and dressed her in a soft, satiny blue dress that pooled around her ankles. Her feet were encased in the softest leather she’d ever felt. She wiggled her toes inside it and thought they were absurd for any real work. She’d have them scuffed in less than an hour. Just one climb onto the roof to fix a tile would destroy them, and never mind a trip into town. The forest floor would shred them. She’d heard that the palace courtiers seldom went outside, but she hadn’t believed it.
“May I see my sister now, please?” Arin asked, in as polite and meek a voice as she could, the voice that usually got her what she wanted. Arin liked to be nice to people. It usually resulted in side benefits. Unfortunately, these people seemed to not be interested in hearing a word she said. They chattered to one another, debating the merits of one rouge over another, as if it were of utmost importance. All right, maybe I should just find her myself. Getting out of her chair, Arin began to walk toward a door. “This way?”
One of the courtiers scurried in front of her and bowed. “Only when you’re called for, esteemed mistress. Many apologies for the inconvenience, but perhaps you would like a walk through the rose gardens? Or a tour of the palace treasures? We have many delightful sights and pleasantly appointed rooms.”
“My sister asked me to come.” More like commanded, really, though Mother and Daddy had said, somewhat doubtfully, that she might not have had a hand in the wording. Arin planned to talk to Daleina about that, nicely of course. Just because she’s queen does not mean I’m at her beck and call. Family should be exempt from royal bossiness. “Does she know that I’m here?”
The courtier dodged the question. “She has many demands on her time—”
A soft, firm voice interrupted, “I will take her from here.”