“It was never going to be an amicable meeting,” Pietyr says, seated upon Katharine’s sofa. “No one likes to have power wrested from them. And Luca’s choices were . . . unexpected.”
“Unexpected!” Genevieve scoffs as she storms back and forth with her arms crossed. “They were intentionally antagonizing.”
Katharine sighs. Pietyr has poured her a cup of tea and even added a splash of oleander milk, but she does not want it. She has been listening to him argue with Genevieve since they returned to her rooms after the meeting of the Black Council.
“Intentional or not,” says Pietyr, “you squawked like an upset bird. Is that how Natalia would have reacted? You have none of your sister’s composure, Genevieve. Absolutely none of it.”
Genevieve spins. “How dare you speak so to me. I am her sister. Her sister, not some errant nephew. And I am the head of the family now. Not your father.”
“I never said it would be my father.”
“Oh, enough of this.” Katharine rises with a huff and goes to the window to throw open the shutters and let in the warm summer air. She breathes it in and looks down. All that sea and sky. The treetops and bright green spaces. All the good people. All hers. “Can you not see the beauty of these days? The gold in the sunlight? The crown etched into my head?” She turns to them, her smile wide. “We won! You are too entrenched in the chaos of the Ascension still to see it, but we won. And my reign will not be a time of bitterness and contention.” She steps toward them with her hands out. Pietyr scrunches his brow; Genevieve goes pale as if unsure Katharine is not about to fling a knife at her head.
“It will be a reign of ease and prosperity.” She takes Genevieve’s hand, lightly, so she will not flinch. “And new beginnings.”
“Are you so ready to forget the past?” Genevieve asks.
“I am ready to set old grudges aside. And so should you. I will need the two of you in harmony now to make sure Bree Westwood does not get into any trouble.”
Pietyr stands and straightens his cuffs. He considers shaking Genevieve’s hand but at the last moment changes his mind, and they settle on a curt nod.
“The queen is to be commended for her optimism,” he says. “I hope she is right.”
“I hope so, too,” says Genevieve.
“You will see.” Katharine rises on tiptoe to kiss Pietyr fully on the mouth, her mood lifting along with her words, as though that, too, can be changed by sheer will. “To set the tone, we will hold a welcome banquet in the square. A warm gesture for the High Priestess and the Westwoods. To signal to the people that the crown is settled.”
Pietyr cocks an eyebrow. “If Luca and the others will agree to it.”
“Of course they will agree to it,” Katharine says, and laughs. “I am the queen.”
Katharine invites High Priestess Luca on a tour of the capital, to reacquaint her with it after being so long away. It could be taken as a jibe, she supposes. The out-of-touch High Priestess, with her heart still in Rolanth. But she does not mean it like that.
When she arrives at Indrid Down Temple on her fine black stallion, she and her queensguard find Luca already mounted and waiting beside three priestesses. Katharine’s eyes linger on the slivers of exposed blade at each priestess’s waist.
“Is it the practice now that all priestesses be armed?”
“Not all,” Luca replies. “But certainly those who are escorting the High Priestess and the Queen Crowned. Rho insisted.”
“Did she?” Katharine swallows. War-gifted Rho. Somehow Katharine knows that, had the plan to cut off her arms and head after the Quickening come to pass, it would have been Rho doing most of the carving.
And now she serves on the Black Council.
Katharine looks away from the knives and back at Luca. “You look very well on horseback, High Priestess.”
Luca nods, and her horse dances in place as though it understands. “They tried to put me on a white mule.” She snorts. “But I am not that old yet.” Instead of a mule, her mount is a large white stallion. Now Katharine will have to keep their horses at a distance so their stallions will not fight, which is perhaps precisely what Luca intended.
“How are you finding Indrid Down?” Katharine asks as they ride, making their way through High Street past her favorite cheese shop and Genevieve’s favorite dressmaker.
“Hotter than I remember,” says Luca. “And once winter comes, I am sure I will find it colder than I remember.”
“But not more draughty than Rolanth, surely, with its open-air temple and cliffside breezes?” How many times had Natalia hoped through gritted teeth for the damp and draughts to finally kill off old Luca?
“Not as draughty.” Luca cocks her head. “Nor as light. Nor as lovely. The capital craves brightness and beauty. It is a good thing I appointed Bree to the council. For she is both of those things.”
They skirt the Dowling marketplace, which they are unable to enter with their horses, and Katharine points out stalls of particular quality as Luca smiles and waves to the people. They are thrilled that the High Priestess is back in the capital where she belongs. Those closest reach out to touch the edges of her robes and ask for blessings. Katharine, they ask for nothing. To her they only bow.
“They fear you,” Luca mutters.
“Of course they do. But they will love me, too. Natalia always said the island loves a bloody Ascension. I was the only one who tried to give them that.”
They stop at the bluff where the street rises before gradually sloping to the harbor, and the party members lean on their pommels, admiring the view of the sea in the afternoon light. Far to the north, around the curve of the harbor, the early, wooden skeletons of ships rise on the dry land. They are the ships that Pietyr and the council ordered built for the Martels as payment for Nicolas’s death, and Katharine does not mention them.
“I would like to hold a welcome banquet in your honor.” Katharine turns in the saddle as Luca raises her eyebrows. “To welcome you, and Bree Westwood, and Rho Murtra to the city. So the people might see their new Black Council together as one. We will hold it in the square.”
“How very kind.” Luca looks away again, toward the port. “Bree will love that. She is always danced off her feet at parties.”
“High Priestess,” one of their escorts says. “Look. The mist.”
They follow the priestess’s pointing arm, out over the water.
It is the mist, rising above the surface. It is not much, really, and could be easily overlooked by a less careful eye. It is just substantial enough that Katharine can see it swirling, and something in her blood tightens while she watches it.
“It is not often visible,” she hears herself say. “Not from here anyway. Is it often visible in Rolanth?”
“No. Not often.” Luca sighs. “It is only the Goddess.”
“Yes,” says Katharine. And the curdle in her veins is only the dead queens, who have no love anymore for Her.
“Only the Goddess,” Luca says again. “Keeping something out, or something in.”
BASTIAN CITY
A night and a day after seeing the oracle at the inn, Jules cannot stop thinking about the prophecy.
If it can even be called that. It was a feeling, the oracle said. Words that came into her mind. I know only that you were once a queen and may be again. What a vague bunch of half truths. If that is how it always is with the sight gift, then Jules does not envy them.
“I wouldn’t even trade my legion curse for it,” she mutters to Camden, who pricks her ears.
The mountain cat stands up on her hind paws, her forepaws on the ledge of the room’s solitary aboveground window, so streaked and spattered with mud that she can barely tell what time of day it is. Jules pats her shoulder.
“Maybe we should have gone with Arsinoe to the mainland after all.”
“How can you say that, after hearing what Mathilde said?”
Jules turns. Emilia is standing in the doorway. Jules did not hear her approach down the stairs. Nor did she hear the door open. More impressively, neither had Camden.