Page 16 of Black Salt Queen

Bulan cast a wary glance over her shoulder. Wave after wave of servants poured out from the kitchens. Spirited music reverberated through the walls. Back in the great hall, the feast had already begun.

“We should get back,” Bulan whispered.

Laya scowled. “But?—”

“Drop it, Laya,” she said with a terse shake of her head. “We’ll only draw attention to Mother if we try to slip away now. Obviously, she wants to keep this meeting a secret. I say we keep it that way.”

Laya glanced back at the window and saw no trace of the queen. Their mother must have disappeared into the eastern wing.

“Stay behind if you want,” she told Bulan. “I will see for myself.”

Bulan grabbed her arm. “And how do you suppose Mother will react when she finds out you’re spying on her? You never think things through.”

“I do,” Laya said with a huff.

“Then, by all means, fly to the eastern wing,” Bulan retorted. “I’m sure the queen will be more than pleased.”

Laya scowled. Bulan was right, of course, but that did not deaden Laya’s interest.

Grudgingly, she followed her older sister into the great hall. Dozens of heads turned toward her as they entered. Beside her, Bulan shrank back at the onslaught of attention. Laya gave her a small, triumphant smile. Bulan shied away at the slightest beam of scrutiny. Imagine the horror if, in a different life, Hara Duja had chosen her for her heir. Laya, on the other hand, was no wilting flower. Standing in the great hall, under the heat of the scrutiny of a pit of snakes and admirers, Laya bloomed.

“Happy feast days,” Laya said languidly to her sister as she strode into the room. She plucked a wineglass from a passing tray and wove through the throng. If anything, she was doing the queen a favor. No one would notice Hara Duja’s absence as long as her dazzling daughter held their attention. Laya smirked at the nobles as she breezed by, inviting them to stare.

One by one, they flocked to her side. “Dayang,” they called, each in that same kowtowing tone. They bowed low at the waist, offering to fetch her food and drink, showering her with silk-spun compliments.

Laya thanked them demurely. She was only half listening as she looked past their heads. Most of her admirers were young noblemen, who no doubt had traveled to Mariit from across the island to fawn over Laya and her loveliness. But Laya kept her ear trained on court gossip. Half of those men thought her snotty and vile; the other half did not know her well enough to care. A pit formed in her stomach when she thought back to Luntok’s words before he’d jumped from the balcony a week earlier. Each of the men there expected her to select a husband soon.

Laya didn’t want to think about that. She continued to nod and smile as she sipped her drink. Over a hundred pairs of eyes on her, and not one of them mattered. It was foolish, she knew, but she could not help herself. Laya glanced over her shoulder every few moments, hoping to pick out Luntok’s gaze in the crowd.

Seven

Duja

The alchemist was not what Duja had expected. She spied his outline through a crack in the doorway. He was as tall as General Ojas, but half his width. He had a gangly, almost malnourished frame so unlike the brutish guards who once trailed Pangil as he terrorized the palace. Duja wondered, What in Mulayri’s name did her brother see in him?

General Ojas had him brought up to the guest chambers in the eastern wing, far away from the prying eyes of Mariit. No one, not even the servants, went up there anymore. The air that hung in the corridor was stale. Above Duja’s head, dust particles drifted along in slow, lazy currents, reflecting the faint light streaming in through the white-shell window screens.

Duja had scarcely set foot in the eastern wing in over two decades. She remembered, with heart-pounding immediacy, the last time she had made it to the upper floors. How could she forget that fateful afternoon? The air seeping into the guest chambers had been heavy with the promise of torrential rain. It was red-hot and suffocating, but they needed to keep the screens drawn for fear of being seen. The eastern wing?—whose idea had it been? Duja would have been too reticent, too skittish. As she stared down the darkened corridor, Imeria’s laughter, soft as orchid petals, echoed in her ears. Reaching through memory’s haze, Imeria’s slender fingers left trails of gooseflesh across Duja’s skin. Oh, yes, the queen remembered. The air had been thicker than honey that day, but that hadn’t been the reason she couldn’t breathe.

“Are you all right, Your Majesty?” Ojas’s deep voice jolted Duja back to the present, resonating through her bones like a gong.

She blinked. The general watched her, his stoic eyes hard with concern. Duja gave him a small smile of gratitude. Beneath his stern exterior, Ojas was undeniably loyal to the Gatdula family. It didn’t matter to Ojas who the man in the guest chambers was. If Duja or the king gave him an order, he would follow it without hesitating. His left hand rested on the doorknob, awaiting her instruction.

Duja nodded, smoothing down the thin fabric of her skirt to collect herself. “Go ahead, Ojas,” she said. “I’m ready to speak with him.”

Ojas opened the door and strode into the guest chambers. He announced her presence, as if she were receiving any other visitor. “Her Majesty, Hara Duja, daughter of Mulayri and protector of the Maynaran throne.”

But the alchemist wasn’t some highborn son or foreign dignitary. He was standing at one of the closed windows, lost in thought, when Ojas’s voice startled him. He whipped around. His spectacles, crooked wire-framed glass, slid down his nose; like his starched shirt and stiff trousers, they appeared to be of western make. He hesitated for a long, painful moment, which made Duja think he had never interacted with royalty before, then stumbled to his knees. When he lowered his head, he let out a garbled sound that might have been an attempt at obsequiousness. Duja couldn’t be sure.

A frown tugged at the corners of her lips. “Do you not understand Maynaran?” she asked the alchemist as she appraised him. “I’m afraid I didn’t think about that.”

The alchemist looked up in surprise. “N-no, I understand. If you speak slowly, at least, Your... Your Majesty.” He answered her not in Maynaran, but in a sister tongue. His accent had a foreign twang, and his mouth stretched strangely around certain vowels, but otherwise she could understand his speech.

Duja’s eyes lit up in realization. She took in the alchemist’s language and his western clothes. Suddenly, everything made sense. “You’re Orfelian,” she gasped, unable to contain her shock.

Orfelia was one of their closest neighbors, lying about a week’s sail from Maynara. Like countless other islands in the Untulu Sea, they fell centuries before to foreign invaders with faster ships and paler skin. Maynara was the sole kingdom in that corner of the world to have survived conquest. For generations, mighty Gatdula kings and queens had kept the invaders at bay. None of Duja’s ancestors had wished to entangle themselves in the troubles of their fallen neighbors, and for good reason. The western masters were a selfish breed. They’d had their greedy eyes on Maynara’s wealth since their ships first cut through their waters. If the Gatdulas had learned anything from their neighbors, it was that conflict with the west would prove costly. Fortunately, Maynara had steered clear of it thus far.

As for the alchemist, Pangil must have discovered him in Orfelia, that sad little island across the sea. That wasn’t the island’s true name, of course. The conquerors rechristened it in honor of their foreign king, then scorched any trace of its original name from history. From what Duja understood, Orfelia was a land of forgotten names and stolen riches. Its plundered, impoverished villages had nothing to offer the likes of an exiled prince. Duja wondered what on earth had brought her brotherthere.

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