Isle of Wysteria: The Reluctant Queen (39 page)

“Right now, we can’t even pay the salaries of the men and women of the Navy,” Lord Aghael warned. “How long are they going to serve without pay?”

“How about without food?” Lord Ilsacv, Minister of Agriculture prompted. “We don’t have funds to feed them.”

“We'll have to do some emergency appropriations,” suggested Lord Arrish, Minister of Labor.

“We can’t just steal crops from the farmers,” Lord Ilsacv reprimanded, his thick eyebrows twitching. “They'll never do business with us again. Think of our reputation.”

“They'll do what they're told or we'll use the Navy to force them at gunpoint,” Erin threatened, her eyes wild.

“You mean the Navy that we cannot pay or feed?” Lord Aghael reminded.

“That’s not our only problem,” Lord Erryk, Minister of Commerce joined in, raising his long, aged fingers. “We have thousands of commissions for new ships being built that we won’t be able to compensate once they are finished.”

“You must face the reality, My Queen,” Lord Acklew, Minister of the Treasury opined, tucking fresh tobacco into his pipe. “Your power comes from the gold, and the gold is gone.”

Erin’s movements were twitchy. She felt like she hadn’t slept in weeks. She snapped her gaze over to Lord Uncan, Minister of Magic, who sat quietly in his ornate chair, eyes half open, deep in thought. “What about you?” Erin snipped. “Why so quiet?”

“My Lady, you don’t pay me to coddle you like an infant,” Lord Uncan explained calmly. “You pay me to give you the truth, straight and undiluted.”

“I’m listening.”

“You have two options,” Lord Uncan said, raising his finely manicured fingers. “You can either keep this robbery a secret and disband the Federal Navy for lack of funds, or you can decree emergency taxes to cover the losses and deal with the repercussions.”

“We can’t disband the Navy!” Lord Dahool burst out, his long white hair shaking about. “The trade routes will collapse from piracy. Entire island kingdoms will starve without trade.”

“The pirates broke into the most heavily guarded facility in the world, and that was with the Navy guarding it,” Lord Apolinano scoffed, his fat cheeks wriggling about as he spoke. “I tremble to think what they would do without the Navy patrols.”

“Could we not blame the robbery on some other party?” asked the young Lord Hinsekis, Minister of Foreign Affairs, his dark oily hair glistening in the torchlight.

“On who? We blame it on the Wysterians and we make them look even stronger. They already thrashed our invasion force.”

Erin gripped her scepter tightly. She felt the weight of the world, and the world had nothing but blame and excuses to give her.

I can’t do this. I don’t want this job anymore.

“You are the Queen, what is your decision?” asked Lord Ewjell, leaning forward.

The room grew silent.

Erin ground her teeth. “We will follow Lord Unchan’s suggestion, and declare emergency taxes in the form of mandatory war bonds.”

“I'll get to work on the figures,” Lord Acklew announced, lighting his pipe.

“Officially, the reason will be to fund the war,” Lord Uncan explained. “We will promise the public that the money will be paid back to them once the invasion of Wysteria is complete. The Wysterian people themselves will make reparations to pay off the war bonds.”

“That will take them a long time,” Lord Erryk warned, licking his dry wrinkled lips.

“Yes, but the delay will be perceived as the fault of the Wysterians, not us.”

“And the robbery?” Lord Arrish prompted, cracking his knuckles.

“There will be rumors,” Erin said, wiping the sweat off of her cheek with her sleeve, “but we will deny them.”

“That won’t be enough,” Lord Apolinano forewarned, pointing a plump finger. “When someone loses a coin you can just shrug it off. When you lose a mountain of gold, you can’t just pretend it didn’t happen; people will notice.”

“We could deflect it,” Lord Uncan suggested. “Claim the rumor started as something benign.”

“Like what?”

“A stage play. If there was a play where the plot focused on pirates raiding the treasury, we could claim that as the source of the rumor.”

Lord Hinsekis’ eyes lit up. “We could even fund such a project, and have fliers posted about the theater district.”

“Fund it with what?” Lord Acklew touted.

Old Lord Dahool reached over and slapped Lord Acklew in the face, knocking the pipe out of his mouth. “Reach into your own pockets for once, you parasite.”

“I expect to be reimbursed,” Lord Acklew complained, picking up his pipe off the royal carpeting.

“And the disruption to the capital?” Lord Aghael advanced. “The curfew, the looting? How do we explain them? We can’t say they were part of some stage play.”

“We claim there was an attempt on the Queen’s life,” Lord Uncan suggested. “The death of the former King and Queen is still fresh in everyone’s minds, so we can claim the two may be linked. Blame it on some fringe political group, have them all publicly executed to restore order, that sort of thing.”

The long-nosed Lord Onovad, Minister of Housing, lifted his head, awestruck at the suggestion. “Who then?”

Lord Dahool snorted. “Anyone have a special interest group they'd like wiped out?”

“I wouldn’t mind the potters union taking a hit,” Lord Ilsacv suggested, pulling at his thick eyebrow. “They've been a thorn in my side for years.”

“We could always blame the Tomani living in the capital; no one likes those filthy foreigners anyway,” Lord Hinsekis mentioned.

“That’s right,” Lord Unchan said, a gleam in his eye. “It doesn’t even have to be a political group. Just pick an affluent family with a politically connected member and chalk it up to unchecked ambition.”

“What has happened here?” Lord Onovad decried, standing up from his chair. “Look at what we are talking about! We are talking about murdering innocent people just to avoid public embarrassment for this...” he pointed at Erin. “...this...child. She’s not even from a noble family; she’s only here because The Eye of the Storm landed in her lap. Don’t you see? This is ludicrous!”

Everyone looked at each other.

“And we have our volunteer,” Lord Uncan mused to himself.

Erin motioned and the guards to either side of her seized the Minister and pulled him away from the table. “What are you doing?” Lord Onovad protested. “Let me go! Release me!”

The man was unceremoniously dragged, kicking and screaming from the hall while the others watched. When the doors closed again, Erin looked at them grimly. “Okay, you know what to do, make it happen.”

With a bang, the doors broke off their hinges and slid into the hall, knocking over statues and forcing old Lord Erryk to scamper out of the way.

A raven-haired young woman walked in, revealing a pile of unconscious guards in the corridor behind her.

Two more guards drew their swords fearlessly and ran up to attack her. The first stabbed his blade at the woman’s head, but she caught the tip with her fingers, effortlessly wrenching the blade from his grip, then kicking his feet out from underneath him, slamming his head against the marble floor. The second guard slashed at her midsection, but she was too quick. She grabbed the blade with her bare hand. The metal grew red-hot in her grip, forcing the guard to release it. The man dropped to his knees, coddling the burnt flesh of his hand.

“What is the meaning of this?” Erin snapped.

“Surely you remember your adopted daughter,” Spirea chided, fingering the Eye of the Storm necklace that hung around her neck. “I’m going to have to get accustomed to having a mom barely older than I am.”

“Oh, the foreigner,” Erin griped. “Look, I’m way too busy to deal with you right now, so if you could just...”

“Just what?” Spirea interrupted, walking up to the table and tossing Lord Aghael out of his chair with one hand as if he weighed nothing more than a pillow. “As the heir to your throne I have a right to be here. What’s more, you need me.”

“This is outrageous!” Lord Ilsacv groused.

“We don’t need this foreigner,” Lord Ewjell inveighed.

Spirea picked up a stack of papers and turned up her nose at them. “THIS is your plan of attack?”

“We're going to finish what we started, The Navy will burn Wysteria’s forests to the ground,” Lord Apolinano defended.

“You're an idiot; don’t speak to me again,” Spirea commanded, flicking her fingernail across his cheek, drawing blood. “You can burn the forests a hundred times, and it won’t accomplish anything, they will just grow it back.”

“Once we take the capital...”

“It doesn’t matter if you remove the Queen. It doesn’t matter how many troops you land, you'll never be able to occupy an island covered with hostile trees and people who can regrow them with a wave of their hand.”

“My Queen, why should we listen to this woman?” Lord Hinsekis inquired.

Spirea smiled wickedly and looked at Erin with her black eyes. “Because I’m the one who can show you how to beat the Wysterians permanently.”

“My pile,” Athel sang to herself as she took out a pair of Navy trousers out of the washbin and placed it on the table.

“Alder’s pile,” she sung as she took out a Navy shirt and placed it at the far end of the table.

When it was raining or humid, Alder used this spare bunk room as a clothes drying room. Somehow, he had cleverly positioned the ship’s portholes in such a way that a steady breeze constantly flowed through the room to dry the clothes.

“My pile.”

After bonking heads with him few times, Athel had begun the habit of separating the loads into piles before they hung them up.

“Alder’s pile.”

Athel paused when she came across a pair of Ryin’s underwear. Shockingly white now considering how they began.

Wrinkling her nose, Athel drew her saber and snagged the undergarments by the smallest possible corner and flicked them to the far end of the table.

“Definitely Alder’s pile.”

After separating a couple more items, Athel came across one of Privet’s shirts. Even without leaning in she could clearly pick up a faint touch of his cologne. It lingered even after being laundered repeatedly. The scent was warm, mysterious, endlessly appealing. It reminded her of their sparring matches back on Wysteria.

Athel sighed, taking in the scent. It felt like a lifetime ago.

I wonder if he knew that he was the only person that I ever let into my room?

She recalled being deeply focused as she held her blade, watching his taught muscular arms for the first sign of a lunge, watching his firm, toned legs for the first indication of an advance.

The way the sunlight glistened off of his chest...

Slowly Athel looked at her pile, then Alder’s pile, then back at the shirt.

“Definitely my pile.”

Alder walked in, carrying a basket of folded clothes and some fresh clothespins.

“Hey Aldi,” she greeted, giving him a peck on the cheek and grabbing some clothespins.

Alder watched her curiously as she straightened out Privet’s shirt and hung it on the line, her face so close she was almost nuzzling it. “This is highly inappropriate,” Alder pointed out.

“I wasn’t smelling it,” Athel defended, whipping around.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing, what were you saying?”

“I was saying that while I appreciate the help, and I certainly enjoy spending so much extra time with you, it simply is not proper for a lady to do man’s work like this.”

“I know, that’s what makes it so fun,” she gushed as she grabbed a pair of pants. “Can you just imagine what my mother would say if she found out?”

Alder gathered up the clothes from his pile and began to hang them up. “May I ask you something?”

“You can if you call me Athi.”

“My Lady, why did you choose to do these menial chores with me?”

Athel stopped for a moment and looked at him seriously.

“Because of what you said before. I realized that I couldn’t change any of it. I can’t give you magic, or make you live longer, or any of that. The only thing that I can control is the way I treat you.”

Alder considered her words for a moment, then nodded appreciatively. He didn’t show it much, but she could tell that he was deeply moved. “In that case, may I say that you are doing much better.”

“Thank you,” she gushed, hanging up another shirt.

“But you have to line up the seams when you hang up trousers.”

“Oh, right,” she said, straightening the pants.

The door opened and Ryin poked his head in. When he saw Athel, his expression changed to one of shock.

“Oh no, Athel is doing chores again! Quick, get the doctor!”

“Calm down, Colenat, I’m not under a spell this time,” Athel declared.

Ryin straightened himself. “Oh, in that case I have a complaint. My shirts keep getting over starched. Try to be more careful about that next time.”

“Yes, of course,” Alder accepted with a bow.

“Don’t bow to him, he’s an academy flunkie,” Athel bid. “Just what do you want, anyway?”

“I thought you'd like to know that we haven’t had any sign of Navy interceptors since we picked up Pops and your preggo tree. Looks like we outran ‘em all.”

“That is not surprising, given the strong slipstream Margaret created for us,” Alder told him.

“Ooh, that means I can give everyone their surprise!” Athel said gleefully as she skipped out of the room.

Alder and Ryin looked at each other worriedly. “Surprise?”

A few minutes later, Athel ran up on deck, past where Margaret lay on her podium, immobile from exhaustion.

“Good work Gerstun,” Athel praised as she passed by her. Margaret gave off only the weakest of acknowledgments.

Athel found Mina and Captain Evere standing before Deutzia, her branches sagging all over the deck. Dr. Griffin was there too, his nose bandaged up. On one of Deutzia’s lower branches an oversized blossom was growing, and inside it a large piece of fruit.

“So, the baby is growing in there?” Captain Evere asked distastefully.

“Sure is,” Athel shared, placing her hand on the rind.

“And you're sure it’s a girl?” Dr. Griffin asked, his voice muffled by his bandages.