David Durham - The Sacred Band

“You look very well,” Rhrenna said. “It’s just… the decrees were opened and read before the Senate. They… may surprise you.”

The secretary had her attention now. Not knowing how to read her face, Mena felt a tingling of fear, familiar trepidation. “What’s happened?”

“It’s not anything that you expected.” Rhrenna looked around the empty room. “I feel like somebody should be here with us when I say this.”

“Just speak it.”

“Aliver and Corinn… have made you queen.”

Mena stared at her.

“They both conceded that their children, being illegitimate, should not inherit the throne. That’s how they explained it, at least. You are the only direct, legitimate heir. Only you are married, with the potential to produce a legal heir.” Rhrenna paused, searching Mena to see if she acknowledged that logic. “The Senate agreed. They’ve reratified the decrees already. They had no choice. They had already accepted the decrees Aliver gave them in a locked box. Remember I told you about that? He did that before he flew to meet you. And now, considering the way the people love the Snow King, nobody disputes his and Corinn’s wishes. You are to be queen of Acacia. Nobody opposes it.”

And what if I oppose it? Mena thought.

“There’s more.”

Of course there is.

“You should read it yourself.”

The secretary offered it, but Mena made no move to accept it. After a moment, Rhrenna continued. “Aliver and Corinn have called for an alliance of nations, not an empire. They called it the Sacred Band.” She stopped again. “Do you really want me to-”

“Rhrenna, just tell me, please!”

“It’s a plan to be implemented over time,” Rhrenna said, skimming the pages. “Right now, you are to be queen of the empire. You are to oversee the five provinces as they each form governments. In ten years-or after ten of peace, calm, if all is going well-they gain self-governance. They’ll still be within the empire, I think. But after twenty years the nations are to become truly independent. There are details. More to it than that, but that’s the thrust of it. Eventually, Acacia will be one nation among others. Among equals.” She set the papers down on the desk. “Now that I think about it, I can see why the senators wouldn’t want to interfere with this. Self-rule. You know how many new kings that will make?”

What a grand confusion that will be, Mena thought. But even as she thought it she felt lifted on a tide of relief. It was right. A confusion, but confusion that would no longer rest on a single pair of shoulders. Hers. They trapped me and freed me at the same time. Aliver, you did say you were going to ask a lot of me. Now I understand. Or, I’m starting to.

L ater that afternoon, Mena gathered Aaden and Shen from their lesson with Barad. They took it up at the same open-air classroom in which she and her siblings had received lessons from Jason. Mena ushered them away quickly, thanking Barad but not wanting to stay too long with the memories of the place, or with him. Not that she could escape memories in the palace. Barad’s eyes, though, saw into one. Yet another thing she would have to get accustomed to. Another topic on which she would need to slowly come to trust her older siblings’ wisdom.

The children were unusually quiet as they walked. Only when they reached Elya’s terrace and heard the creature chirrup a greeting did they find voice to ask about what Barad must have told them.

“Is it true?” Aaden asked.

“Many things are true. Which one are you asking about?”

“You’re to be the queen,” Shen answered. She did that sometimes, and Aaden did the same for her, finishing each other’s thoughts as they shared them.

Like twins, Mena thought, looking at them. A pale-skinned boy with light eyes; a brown-skinned girl with dark ones. So different, and yet not. Not for the first time since joining them, she wondered what her child by Melio would have looked like. It was too difficult a thought, though. She pushed it away, knowing that she faced a lifetime of wishing she had had that child with him when she had the chance.

“That’s what I’ve been told,” Mena said. “I never planned that. I don’t… know what it means, really. I don’t know.” She looked at the two of them helplessly. “I’m sorry, but it’s too new. I just don’t know.”

“Melio will be king,” Aaden said, “when he comes back.”

Mena had not had time to consider that. Melio Sharratt, a king. Love him as she did, that was rather hard to imagine. “Let’s pray he comes back, then.”

“I always do,” Aaden said. “Every morning, I ask the Giver to let Dariel and Melio return.”

The boy turned his face away. He watched Elya preen, pretending to be fascinated. Mena knew better. She heard the emotion trying to crawl over his last words. She almost said that she said the same prayers herself. She wanted Melio back beside her so much she walked with a perpetual emptiness inside. It had been there throughout the war, but she noticed it much more acutely now that she was home. Finding Wren here on Acacia when she returned, with a wee babe whom she had named Corinn in her arms, made things both better and worse. Mena was so pleased to be an aunt a third time, so pleased to know that Dariel lived on in the child, and that Corinn would be honored by her as well. What a father Dariel would have been! She could not imagine anyone better suited to it. Instead, though, it was the likes of Rialus Neptos who would soon be arriving back to meet his daughter for the first time. Maybe he would make a good father, too. Mena could not say. Despite the animus she might always feel for him, he had played a part in saving the nation.

How very strange, the turning of fate.

Shen said, “My mother is happy. She said this means I won’t have to worry about being queen.”

“Would you have worried about it?”

The girl caught the question on her lips and paused to consider it. “I’d rather you did it.”

“Me, too,” Aaden said, glancing back. “Don’t tell Mother I…” The words fell from his mouth and dropped out of the air, the sentence unfinished. He began to turn away again, but his aunt did not let him.

“Oh, dear, come,” Mena said. She pulled Aaden in, hugging him tight, and then looked up and motioned with her fingers that Shen should join the embrace. Arms around both of them, she whispered, “You two are good friends now, aren’t you? That would make your parents happy. It makes me happy. Listen, the world surprises us all. Me as much as you. It even surprised Corinn and Aliver. Again and again it finds ways to surprise. It makes things tough sometimes. That’s what it’s been lately. But it won’t always be so hard. We’ve come through so much. We really have.”

“Aunt, what will become of us?” Shen asked.

Mena drew back to see her niece’s face. “What a question to ask! I don’t know the future, child. I only know what’s been, and what I wish will be. And even then I know that I’ll never even really understand what’s been. It confounds me all the time. Nor will what I wish to be ever come to pass exactly as I imagine.”

Shen crossed her eyes. It was such an unexpected, bizarre gesture that at first it alarmed Mena. When the girl’s eyes popped back to normal, Mena saw it for the joke it was. Smiling, she agreed, “You’re right. Life is confusing enough to make you go cross-eyed.”

“But what do you imagine?” Aaden asked. “I know-it won’t happen just perfectly-but still. Tell us.”

“You would have me lay the future before you, made only of my hopes and fears?” Both children nodded. “All right. Here…” Mena took a seat on a couch and motioned for the children to do the same. She had one sit on either side of her, turned them so that they rested their heads on her lap. Elya stopped preening to watch them.