Daughters of Ruin (22 page)

His curses on their heads were the last words she heard before the long, silent journey.

As Cadis entered the common hall, she did not anticipate such a flood of memory to wash over her—a cold and bracing reawakening of insecurities she had long outgrown. Immediately, she spotted the black fisherman's cap Cousin Denarius was so fond of wearing.

Cadis took off down the aisle to the front row.

“Cousin,” she said, as she stepped into his view. “Cous—”

The wizened old man drooped in his seat as if the center mast had broken. His chin rested on his chest. He was fast asleep, or so she gathered by the spittle on his shirt. “Cousin Denarius, awake,” said Cadis. “It's Caddy.”

But even as she said it, she knew something crueler than years had assailed her cousin's body. The crook of the brow, the jagged lip, and limp cheek all spoke of the collapse. He was good only for feeding seagulls and filling theater seats now.

“Hmm,” he said, tongue like a beached jellyfish.

“Cousin,” said Cadis, kneeling before him. She hesitated to touch his arm—thin and brittle as it seemed.

The old man's eyes stayed closed. Perhaps the twitch of his mouth was a smile, but it could have been nothing.

“He's had the collapse,” said Iren, when she reached the stage. Cadis's hand shook, hovering over Cousin Denarius's arm, still unable to touch.

The guildmasters filled the common hall, many taking their seats in the back to view the proceedings, while the larger guilds took rows in front. At the cardinal points of the stage sat the four equal—but perhaps a little more equal—parties: the archon, Terzi of the caravans, Kallis of the captains, Muto of the shipwrights—north, west, south, east.

It was time to begin.

In Findain they had no heraldic ceremony, no courtly oaths or magisterial show, nothing that lessened the dignity of any man or woman in favor of some continued notion of royalty.

Every man.

Every woman.

Made Findain together.

This was the reason that generations ago, the Emperor of Tasan had famously remarked, “A Fin at court has as much grace as a fish flopping on the deck of a boat.” To that the Findish playwrights had replied:

A Fin can be as much a fish

As any man or woman wish

And flop upon a deck till dead

Better that than be instead

The wooden boards nailed in the prow

A Dain would never deign to bow.

Though they had no courtly ritual, the Findish were never short of pageantry. To begin any session in the common hall, the Archon Basileus would stand upon the stage and recite a portion of
The Bones of Pelgard
and say at the end, “Findain together.” The audience would reply with the same. And the floor opened to any who asked for it.

Cadis stood up and away from Cousin Denarius, expecting that he would rise and recite out of some miraculous duty to his position.

The old man hardly moved, even to breathe.

“You may begin,” said Lieke Terzi, sitting in the front row.

Cadis was only half certain that the woman was speaking to her—and that only because she was staring directly at Cadis with the studious and dispassionate glare of a magister studying a frog's belly.

“Does the archon not speak?” asked Cadis.

“Not for two years hence,” said Lieke.

Beside her sat Hypatia, her daughter and younger twin—annoyed already by the delay.

How could the office of the archon be empty for two years without me knowing it?
Cadis wanted to ask, but noticed Iren standing erect before the masters of Findain and remembered a comment she had once made. “Never ask a question to which you don't know the answer.”

Iren read constantly from the academy scrolls on elements of power. She believed it to be like a game of shatranj. Cadis rarely listened, believing in nobler truths—that she could win the respect of the masters if she proved herself wise and capable.

But there, standing before the common hall, she decided to heed Iren's advice. Cadis stepped onto the stage. She almost bowed, as she had done for ten years in the court of Meridan, but thanks be to Myrath, caught herself.

Her training—for stage and combat—took over. She whispered the words that calm and breathed the rhythm of a ship at sea, a metered verse, an even fight. In her chest was a full orchestra—tuned, tamped, ready.

“Masters,” she said, “we've come bearing news of—”

She was interrupted by Hypatia. “Findain together.”

“Ah, yes,” said Cadis, cursing herself for falling into the double bind. Either she would have opened as the rightful Archon Basileus and disrespected Cousin Denarius, or this. She pushed forward, “Findain together,” she replied.

Hypatia sat back in her seat, arms crossed, with a grin that pinched her face.

“Welcome home, Archana,” said Arcadie Kallis, sitting in the front row, opposite of the Terzis. Cadis had to turn around to acknowledge it. Next to Arcadie was the stout Genio Kallis—famed captain with his famed black beard and markings on his arms, neck, and face that spoke of the many exploits that had enraptured the poets of Findain for so many years.

Arcadie sat shoulder to shoulder with her father as his second-in-command. Both nodded to Cadis.

“Tell us the news, sister, that we might fight with you,” said Arcadie.

Cadis felt a rush of gratitude for the kindness even as she heard a click of the tongue coming from behind her, where the Terzis must have been sitting, disgusted.

“Meridan has been attacked,” said Cadis. She made sure to turn as she spoke, to include all the masters.

“At the Revels, a ballista smashed through the wall of the ballroom.”

A murmur from the crowd indicated the sheer improbability of such an attack.

“A boarding party entered through the breached wall and another flanking party through the east gate—”

“Would you like to sit?” said Hypatia Terzi, interrupting once again. She was speaking to Iren, who stood beside Cousin Denarius, at the foot of the stage.

But Iren seemed far less interested to win friends. “No,” she said. “Let her speak.”

Across the way, Pentri Muto leaned in to his aunt, Artesia of the shipwrights' guild, and whispered—no doubt a venomous recount of his and Iren's exchange in the marketplace.

Hypatia had no intention of letting Cadis speak, it seemed, and her mother had none to curb her daughter. “It's just that
we
are all equals here.”

“Good for you,” said Iren. “You don't have the floor.”

“But by standing, you elevate yourself.”

“I don't elevate myself above you,” said Iren.

“
Above
me? Even seated I'm taller than you.”

Cadis whirled around to take on Hypatia. She was standing in the crossfire and refused to let Iren fight alone. But Iren needed no help. “You misunderstand,” said Iren. “I don't elevate myself, because every aspect of our existences does so for me. I'm the queen-apparent of Corent, first vice magister of the academy, and three of
you
would still fall to
me
in combat. So I will stand where I please, above you all, who may equally look up the mountain that elevates me.”

Every mouth in the theater hung loose. Then Iren continued, this time sweetly. “But we are in the common hall of the great nation of Findain, and customs are courtesies. So you need not bow to me today, Hypatia Terzi, but you do need to quiet yourself so we can get something done.”

Behind the scorching hate of Hypatia Terzi, Cadis spied Jesper, sitting as if on a hill of anticores.

Cadis waited a moment to relish, and another because the first felt nicer than she'd expected. If she was honest, she was also fearful of the next part. “The attack was assassination. The court of Meridan is dead, also the Findish envoy and the dons of Houses Sprolio and Sesquitaine. We don't know the fate of Declan, Rhea, or Suki of Tasan, but they were surely targeted.”

Here came the crescendo.

“The assassins were Findish rebels,” she said, as steady as she could make it. An uproar from the back rows and throughout the hall.

Everyone spoke at once, interrogating their future archana.

“How do you know?” demanded Hypatia, standing.

“I know.”

“It could be anyone presenting our colors,” said Pentri.

“They didn't wear our colors.”

“Then you don't know,” said Hypatia.

“Three of them were marked with the Munnur Myrath.”

Another outcry.

To many, the Munnur Myrath was just a spook story of a secret society of revolutionaries fighting to dissolve the Treaty of Sister Queens and win independence for Findain. They took their name from the last work of PilanPilan—a minor tragedy. “The Mouth of Myrath” was the prominent feature of the goddess of change. The goddess's mouth was often described as two goldfish hooked to either end of fishing wire. When they darted up and down, and past one another, the line of her mouth twisted from grimace to grin, a horrified circle, a queasy wriggle—shifting every second.

Sailors at sea knew well the winds of constant change. “One may ask the goddess when she is happy; she may answer when she's not.” And mothers would often call naughty children “As fickle as the fish mouth.” To the Munnur Myrath, change meant freedom from Meridan rule by way of bloody chaos.

Amid the hubbub, Arcadie stood and spoke. “If Meridan claims our part in this, we've got war.”

“We have to get word to the outward caravans,” said Timor from the back, where the textilers sat. “They must return.”

“And the merchant ships,” said Pentri.

“Close the land gate!” shouted several voices.

“It doesn't need to come to that,” said Cadis, trying to speak over the other voices.

“There is no way you could have known they were Munnur Myrath,” said Hypatia, gnawing on the subject like a dog with a bone.

“We can avoid war if we—”

Cadis was interrupted once again.

“How did you know?” said Hypatia.

“She gutted twelve of the cowards,” said Iren, who had stepped onto the stage the moment the audience began to lose its calm.

“What should that tell you?” said Hypatia.

“Nothing beside that they were trained poorly,” said Iren.

Cadis added, “Several had the fish mouth tattooed on their necks.”

“That means you killed your countrymen,” said Hypatia.

The guildmasters erupted into argument.

“The rebels are outlaws!” shouted some.

“They fight for us!” shouted others.

“They fight and endanger us, you mean.”

“How can Findain stand together at such cross-purposes with itself?” shouted a councilwoman from the back.

Cadis lifted both hands into the air—a conciliatory gesture. “Good people. Good people! Now is the time to steady sails.”

Cadis spoke with the same forceful calm of a captain in a storm.

“Soon all of Pelgard will hear of the attack and all the banner houses of Meridan will call for retribution. We are that target, whether justly or no. The killers were either Findish rebels or a party who wishes us ill. It does not matter. We will bear the weight of the blame regardless.”

Another clamor of opinions.

“But—hold a moment more, good people, a moment more—but we can steer away from the shoals of war, where nobler thoughts run shallow.”

“How?” shouted several in the back.

Cadis gathered herself for the blow. She was not so naive as to think everyone would like her plan. “We must hope that Declan survived. His loss would unmoor all of Pelgard.”

“Good!” shouted a master of the lenders' guild.

“Good riddance to bad kings,” said another.

Cadis pressed on. “If he lives, we condemn the actions of the Munnur Myrath, swear fealty, and send aid to Meridan for the inevitable infighting that will claim Houses Sprolio and Sesquitaine as they revise their orders of ascension.”

By this time, Cadis was shouting into a raging squall of voices.

“Piss on that!”

“Help them? Are we nothing but lick-boots?”

“Sprolio was a profiteer!”

“Seize his house and lands!”

They were at full mutiny, thought Cadis, though they would run all of Findain to the ground. Anyone could see that their pride was ruling their better judgment. Did her countrymen hate Meridan so much? Declan was prideful and unyielding, but he had not been cruel to Cadis. He had never harmed her. They must have realized that chaos in Meridan court would harm Findain more than the stability that Declan promised. Or perhaps it was not Declan's rule that they hated so much, but hers.

Cadis looked at the Terzis. If they agreed, then others, like the textilers, would fall in line.

“Surely you see the reason in this,” she said. “The land routes would be cut to ribbons in a war.”

Hypatia Terzi stood and turned around, speaking to all behind her and throughout the theater. “That is exactly why the Terzis understand the stakes, whereas our good archana, long in the lap of Meridan, can never know.”

Cadis would have thrown her glove if she had one, to challenge Hypatia to duel.

“If the Munnur Myrath have struck at the heart of Meridan, then I say they've done us good service.”

A disconcerting chorus of cheers.

“We should not abandon our fellows so easily,” added Hypatia.

Cadis knew the jibe was meant for her. She'd had no choice but to enter the Protectorate, but here she stood, accused by her own as a deserter.

Over her shoulder, Cadis heard the voice of Iren. “Don't acknowledge her,” said Iren. It took Cadis a half moment longer to remember the lesson from Magister Hiram.
A queen cannot be rivaled by any foe unless she first makes the mistake of acknowledging the possibility.