Page 7 of Black Salt Queen

Three

Duja

The queen hadn’t meant to pry.

Duja trusted her husband more than she did anyone in the world. She would not have thought to riffle through his correspondence, but never before had Aki been so careless with his personal items. Carelessness was not a trait anyone associated with her husband. If he had not been so occupied with feast-day arrangements, he might not have left the letter inside one of the tomes stacked beside his pillows. Duja discovered it while she was getting dressed that morning, a task that grew more cumbersome each day. A Gatdula of her age and rank was entitled to attendants who could assist her. Duja had dismissed them years earlier. She was determined to dress herself as long as she was able. But that morning, she’d struggled to fasten her earrings, tiers of golden disks inlaid with freshwater pearls, which she had inherited from her mother. One earring had slipped from her trembling fingers and disappeared beneath her husband’s bedside table. When she’d bent over to retrieve it, she noticed the letter.

It wasn’t the letter that caught her eye so much as the swirling symbols that peeked out over the top of the book?—To His Royal Highness, Hari Aki.Duja recognized, with blistering intimacy, the hand that looped them together.

Her heart hammered in her chest as she tore the letter from the book and pored over its contents. She didn’t budge for what felt like hours. She read and reread the letter. If she could commit the words to memory, maybe they would make sense.

But nothing about this letter made sense?—none of it. What on earth might have possessed her husband, the Maynaran king, to contact Duja’s exiled brother?

With a ragged breath, Duja folded the letter and slipped it into the pocket of her skirt. She finished dressing and headed to the central courtyard. The king was not there orchestrating the final preparations with his pipe sticking out of the corner of his mouth, as she had hoped he would be. Perhaps it was for the best. She had a hundred questions for him, but she wasn’t yet ready to hear the answers.

“Your Majesty.” At the soft thudding of Duja’s footsteps, the handful of servants buzzing about the courtyard promptly dropped to their knees.

“Please, continue,” she said, offering them a thin-lipped smile as she passed.

A tall, slender shadow appeared in the arcaded walkway that ran along the sides of the courtyard. Duja froze in her tracks, the smile melting from her face. Her hands twitched, and a low rumble rippled beneath the tiles. When the shadow emerged from behind one of the marble pillars, sunlight glinted off the brass clasps of a breastplate. She let out a shallow breath?—it was merely one of the royal guards patrolling the palace perimeter. Her fingers trailed to the letter, which felt hot enough to burn a hole through her pocket.

Duja’s brother, Pangil, had not set foot in the palace in many years, but it wasn’t the first time she had imagined seeing him there.

She crossed the courtyard and stared up at the eastern wing, thrice rebuilt now. Her hand shook as it hovered over the stone walls of the wing, which stood a half-shade lighter than the others. During her mother’s reign, the eastern wing had been the grandest in the palace complex. Its red-tiled roofs still sloped toward the heavens, its spires piercing the clouds like crocodile teeth. The reconstruction had changed little, but the gold-encased finials and latticed windows, in their third incarnation, had lost their luster.

For Duja, there had always been a certain romance about the place. After her father passed, it was where her mother had housed her new consort, a younger man with kind eyes who always brought Duja something from his travels. She remembered his gifts, the bitter chocolate and yellow-haired dolls. She could no longer remember his name, but she had cried for him, as well as for her mother and the other poor souls who’d perished in the fire.

She had watched the eastern wing crumble twice in her lifetime. Two decades had passed since the first incident. Time could not wash away the taste of ash in her throat, could not smother the towers of flames that continued to chase her from the courtyard with their bloodcurdling heat.Hislaugh echoed over the sound of crackling doorframes, cold and remorseless. She couldn’t outrun him, and she’d been more powerful then.

Sister,he’d called her, his voice either sweet as coconut flakes or thick with drink. She heard it in the silence between prayers, in the rustle of narra leaves. She heard it as if the eastern wing had never fallen, as if no time had passed at all.

Some days, it shocked her how strongly she remembered.

The dull thumping of a walking stick against the tiles jolted Duja from her thoughts. She turned around to find that an old woman had entered the courtyard. Her simple, handwoven clothes clung like seaweed to her slight frame but left her arms bare where tattoos spiraled over the leathery skin. Her graying hair, threaded with red glass beads, glowed silver under the morning sun, as did the medallion on her neck, which was engraved with the image of the raptor god, Mulayri, the mark of a high shaman.

“Hara Duja.” The old woman bowed her head when she noticed Duja’s presence.

Duja nodded in greeting. “Hello, Maiza. Do you mind if I speak to you alone?” Maiza wasn’t her husband, but maybe she was the person Duja needed to see.

The shaman raised her eyebrows and nodded toward the main building. Maiza had known Duja since she was Eti’s age. She knew when something was bothering her.

“Let’s go somewhere quiet, Your Majesty,” Maiza said. “Then you can tell me everything that’s on your mind.”

Duja led Maiza back to her private chambers. The shaman sat beside her at the foot of the bed. She took Duja’s hand and rubbed slow circles into the fleshy heel of her palm.

“The tremors,” Maiza said. “Have they gotten worse?”

With a weary sigh, Duja nodded. “Much worse. And faster than we anticipated.”

“I see.” Maiza pursed her lips as she kneaded the gracelessness from Duja’s hand.

With these hands, Duja could wield sand and stone and send shocks deep into the yolky center of the earth. With these hands, Duja protected her family and her people from harm. She could erect mountains with a flick of her wrist and topple them just as easily. The power of the gods wound through her fingertips. She needed her hands to be steady and sure enough to bear the weight of the mantle.Hara?—queen. But for the strength of her bloodline, no hands were built to sustain power of this magnitude. Not even the mightiest Gatdula could bear the mantle for long. The power of Mulayri meant shorter lifespans and even shorter reigns. It bore a hefty price, and Duja was not yet ready to pay it.

“How have the girls progressed?” Duja asked, keen to distract herself from the stabbing pain that radiated from her fingers. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d watched her daughters train. She’d hired the best teachers in the land?—Ojas for Bulan, Maiza for Laya and Eti. When they were younger, she used to marvel at how fast the girls learned, at the wealth of power concealed in their tiny bodies.

“Eti has come a long way since last season,” Maiza told her proudly as she reached for Duja’s other hand. “Her affinity for metal is impressive. She needs to work on her precision, but when she does?—Hara Duja, you will be very pleased.”

Duja nodded, relieved. The youngest and most timid of her three daughters, Eti had been slow to develop her abilities. Duja was content to see her blossom under Maiza’s watchful tutelage. However, Eti’s chief interest lay not in combat, but in embellishment and filigree. She had inherited her father’s indefectible eye for beauty, over which Duja could hardly complain.

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