Page 32 of Black Salt Queen

“Uncultivated fiend,” Laya chided him. She reached for another sheet of paper. “Here, I will teach you, lest you wander my country looking like a fool.”

They spent the next hour going through the Maynaran syllabary. Ariel, admittedly, was a better student than Laya could ever hope to be. He mimicked the swoop of her script with surprising precision and laughed in delight upon writing his name in Maynaran for the first time.

To her shock, Laya found herself warming to him, which didn’t sit well with her. She tossed him a thinly veiled insult to make things right. “For an ignoramus,” she said, “you certainly are a fast learner.”

Ariel chuckled. He didn’t appear to take offense. “You chide me, Dayang, for knowing so little about your country, but how much do you know about the rest of the world?”

Her smile faltered. He was right. She had never left Maynaran soil and never cared to. This was her home, her kingdom?—the only country that had ever mattered to her. But she wouldn’t let the Orfelian make her feel like an ignoramus herself.

She turned up her nose and said, “I’ve heard how people like us are treated in other parts of the world, Ariel. Those places do not interest me.”

“If I grew up in a place as magnificent as this, perhaps I would think the same way you do. Unfortunately, I did not have that luxury.” His expression sobered, and he caught himself. “I apologize, Dayang. Perhaps I have been too forthright with you.”

“You don’t need to apologize. I’d rather you be forthright. I prefer when people are honest with me,” she said, looking at him intently.

The pen fell from Ariel’s fingers with a clatter. Around them, the air in the study stilled.

“Dayang...,” Ariel began, his voice strained.

“Yes?” She leaned forward, wondering if, for once, he decided he liked her enough to tell her the truth.

His eyes snapped to hers. He didn’t say anything, merely stared at her as if she were a puzzle to be solved.

A spark wound through her body then, something wild and stinging that had nothing to do with curiosity. Under the scalding heat of his gaze, a flush crept up the sides of her neck. She stood abruptly, the legs of her chair scraping against the floor.

Through the window, the light outside had begun to dim. Was it dusk already? Laya realized with a start that she had spent half the afternoon with the foreigner.

“It’s getting late. There’s somewhere I have to be,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed. “And I ought to disappear.”

Laya strode to the exit, pausing for a moment as she leaned against the doorframe. “Thank you, by the way, for the lesson,” she said without turning around.

“I should be thanking you as well,” he called from behind her, softly, as if not to frighten her.

But hehadfrightened her, and Laya did not understand how that could be.

Her exchange with Ariel still haunted her an hour later as she stood with her sisters on the deck of a riverboat. The motor chugged beneath the water, an incessant warbling that did nothing to alleviate her headache. Her thoughts were swimming and her stomach was in knots, yet her skin tingled with the euphoria of connection?—as if Ariel had seen her in ways others could not.

“What’s the matter with you?” Eti piped up beside her.

“Nothing,” Laya said, shaking her head. She had enough to worry about without losing her head over a common Orfelian.

Bulan gave her an inquisitive look but said nothing.

Laya leaned against the metal railing at the bow as the riverboat chugged along the main canal. Months had passed since their last trip to the spirit houses, and with half of Maynara in the city for the feast days, they needed to put on their best face. In past years, the king and queen would have gone with them. Hara Duja always said they didn’t visit enough. Their father, frankly, couldn’t be bothered. He often liked to say that Mother, Bulan, Laya, and Eti were the only goddesses he would ever need. Then he would add in a theatrical whisper,I joke more than I should, but this one, I truly mean.

He told them before they left on the riverboat,I believe you’re all old enough to handle this engagement on your own.But Laya wondered if Hara Duja’s furtive behavior at the dawn feast had anything to do with her absence.

There had once been a time when Laya had delighted in their rituals. They made her feel connected to something ancient and unspeakable. These days, however, they felt like showmanship?—a hollow display more than anything else. As her power grew, the less pious she became. That was because she knew if the gods ever deigned to punish them, she could return their wrath tenfold. Laya was as much at the gods’ mercy as they were at hers.

In spite of this, she humbled as the balete tree came into view. It was centuries older than Maynara and nearly half the size of the palace. During one of Laya’s lessons, High Shaman Maiza had sworn the tree was as old as the island itself. People claimed that the first humans emerged from its twisting, snakelike branches. They said the fools who dared climb it got swept inside, doomed to wander the realm of the spirits forever.

For all of Laya’s blaspheming, even she could sense that the gods had touched the tree. Its branches whispered in a chorus of a thousand hushed voices; whether they bore blessings or warnings, she could never be sure.

Beyond the platform at the end of the canal, dozens of spirit houses circled the balete tree. They weren’t uniform and were built of different types of wood. Some were smaller than birdhouses, others large enough to hold three men Ojas’s size. When the boat steered to a stop, Laya followed her sisters onto the platform facing the balete tree. They climbed up to the spirit house reserved for the royal family?—the one with the smooth, sloping roof with finials in the shape of crocodile jaws and the highest dais. One of Ojas’s men stood guard outside while Laya, Bulan, and Eti knelt on the floorboards.

The past few times they’d come, Laya had remained silent while her sisters prayed. The gods couldn’t grant her what she wanted. That evening, however, she found herself speaking to them. She didn’t beg for her mother’s favor or Luntok’s love. Instead, she prayed for answers.

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