Leena Likitalo - The Sisters of the Crescent Empress

“Don’t ever say that sort of thing aloud when the guards can hear you!” Elise’s chastisement gives me other, more urgent things to think about.

Because she’s being very unfair! I only told her what I know and what I’ve been taught. But something in her tone makes me control mine. “Why?”

Sibilia holds out for Elise the mint green box that once must have contained hard sugar candies, but much to her disappointment proved to hide only sewing supplies. We don’t talk with the guards in any case, not even with Captain Janlav, unless we absolutely must. But Elise does so out of her own will, and she might have learned something useful.

Elise gingerly picks up a pin from the box and glances at Celestia. Her eyes turn steel gray as if she decided to go on regardless of whether or not our oldest sister is listening to us. “For the guards, joining the imperial army, signing their very lives to be the subject of our late mother’s whims, was the only way out to a better life. Imagine that, Merile, how wretched your life must be for you to willingly give it away in exchange for a few coins and a full belly. No, you can’t even imagine what a hard life our people, even children younger than you, lead in the distant corners of this vast empire.”

I don’t know what to reply. She makes it sound as if being a soldier were a terrible fate. She also talks as if I were somehow very ignorant. Though that I’m not. I really am not.

“It’s an honor to serve in the colors of the Moon,” Sibilia replies before I can. It’s a good thing she did so, because compared to her, I might have sounded just a little spiteful.

“Honor?” Elise shakes her head, the movement enviably graceful. “Dear Sibs, you clearly have no idea how rough life is outside the palace grounds, how the empire treats its veterans!”

“Tell us about the guards,” Sibilia says, completely missing the anger and urgency in Elise’s tone. It surprises me that Celestia has either chosen not to take part in this conversation or then she is too immersed in her own thoughts to really hear what we are talking about. We never really even broach these darker things when Alina and I are present.

Elise speaks very fast, very quietly, as if she were suddenly pressed for time but simply had to get the words out, off her chest. “Before Boots had a name, he worked in a mine up in the north, deep underground, pushing carts of ore until he fell down from exhaustion, being whipped to push more even after that.”

I can’t even think of her words, that’s how fast she speaks. I commit them to my memory, to ponder about them later, during the nights I shiver next to Alina despite my companions snoring between us.

“Boy’s mother cried for joy when he enlisted in the army, though none of the men in his village that went to war ever returned. But she was relieved to see him go because the previous winter two of his sisters starved to death when their lord did not leave them enough of the harvest to last through the long, dark months.”

Sibilia clicks her tongue, tasting the flavor of the stories. I don’t know what she makes of all this. Elise is saying such strange things.

“And Tabard…” Elise swallows as if holding back tears, though that can’t be right. “Poor Tabard—”

“Elise.” Celestia’s voice is mellow and soft, and yet it cuts like a soldier’s sword. “That is quite enough of such evocative tales. I agree we should not forget that the lower classes form the backbone of our empire. But neither should we dwell on the failures of a few personages.”

Elise’s right brow arches as it always does when she’s about to disagree. But before she can say another word, the grandfather clock chimes three times. The swan on the pendulum paddles back and forth, neck straightened, beak tilted up for the silver song.

A mere moment later, the door of the bedroom I share with Alina flings open and Rafa and Mufu burst out, wagging their tails, and I’m so happy to see them, though we were apart for mere hours. Oh, my lovely companions are so very pretty! Their furs positively shine from the dedicated care Aline and I have bestowed on them. We brush them from tail to top after every breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Alina darts to us. She leans over Elise’s shoulder, panting. Rafa and Mufu poke at our older sister’s hem with their glistening black noses. “Is it ready yet?”

Elise’s expression draws blank as she reaches out for another pin. I realize the moment for darker truths is over, and we must pretend together that nothing else is going on than her trying to make my coat less hideous.

“Oh my dear darlings,” I coo at Rafa and Mufu. Rafa stares at me with her big, chocolate brown eyes. Mufu sniffs my knees, her nose wonderfully wet. Both seem just a bit suspicious. “Of course I missed you! I missed you so much!”

Elise shakes her head, but whether at me or at the abrupt end of the conversation, I have no idea. She rises up to her full height, and she’s tall. Not as tall as Celestia, but even so I reach only up to her chest. She takes a step back, and eyes me critically, head cocked to the right. Though sewing usually makes her happy, she doesn’t look that way now.

“Well, will it take long?” Alina shifts her weight, wringing her hands as if she needed to use the pot-pot right at this instant. Though she’s old enough not to need help when it comes to that. She doesn’t look like she’s distraught, either. I’m not sure what’s going on. I need to find out what it is the soonest. My sister’s mind is weak, and nightmares pester her almost every night.

The machine. She insists the gagargi intends to feed her soul to the Great Thinking Machine, no matter how I tell her again and again that there’s nothing to fear. I’ll keep her safe. Rafa and Mufu will keep her safe. Celestia would never allow anyone to harm her!

“A moment more still,” Elise replies. She picks up from the table the slices of velvet that originated from the decorative pillows we brought with us from the train. She places them against my neck. She might be planning on creating a collar of sorts, but I can but bravely persist.

I click my tongue again, and Rafa and Mufu rush to Alina. They think whatever she has in mind concerns them. Which distracts her, and off she goes with them, to play before the fireplace. Sibilia follows them to the divan there and picks up the book of scriptures. But she keeps on glancing at them from over the book’s edge. Worried. She’s worried about Alina, too.

I want something else to think about than the gagargi and his horrid machine. But what could that be? There are days and nights when everything in this house that has fallen in disrepair reminds me of him!

“Coats,” I whisper. Yes. That’s a better topic. “Why don’t we simply ask for coats? Or why don’t we ask mute Millie to sew them?”

“Huh.” Elise lowers the piece of velvet back on the table as if she’d changed her mind about the collar after all. “It’s not polite to call people names.”

I wasn’t calling Millie names, just pointing out the obvious. Maybe Elise is simply having one of those days that she has to know everything better. Maybe that’s what her earlier comments were all about. “‘Mute’ isn’t a bad word.”

“And she isn’t mute!” Alina calls at us from before the fireplace, and then she’s already scampering up. She bounces back to me like a day-old foal. My companions yap at her, wonderful, high-pitched barks. Alina falls on her knees on the undusted carpet, and they roll onto their backs, to be scratched more. “She’s got her tongue still!”

Celestia lifts up her right hand, a sign that we should talk no more. But the routines we followed aboard the train are broken. We’ve reached our destination. We’re where the gagargi wants us to be. The guards no longer rush to investigate every sound and shout. Which is a good thing.