Page 22 of Black Salt Queen

To the king’s right, the man named Ariel cleared his throat. Her gaze snapped to his. She could have sworn she heard him bite back a chuckle.

“I was about to get to that, my dear.” Hari Aki looked pointedly at Laya, a silent warning sign she had seen over a thousand times before?—Be nice. He drew another puff from his pipe, then guided Ariel to his side of the table. “Dr. Sauros is a skilled linguist, philosopher, and writer, among other things. He’s traveled all the way from Orfelia, so I suspect we have a great deal to learn from each other.”

“Orfelia?” Laya echoed, incredulous. “That pathetic little colony to the east?”

“They speak a wide variety of tongues in Orfelia, including Salmantican, which I hear is rather useful in the Sunset States,” the king said, brushing off Laya’s concerns with a wave of his hand. “I invited Dr. Sauros here to teach you some of them as your language tutor. Notwithstanding, he arrived much earlier than anticipated. We plan to announce his visit after the feast days, when we shall throw Dr. Sauros the celebration he deserves.”

“So, the Orfelian is to remain a secret. At least, until the feast days are over.” Eti, who couldn’t resist a bit of intrigue, perked up in interest.

Hari Aki beamed at her. “Precisely, my dear. And until then, your mother and I are relying on your discretion.”

Laya’s eyes narrowed. “But?—”

“Dr. Sauros may be our secret for now. But in the meantime, I hope you will treat him with the respect he deserves,” her father said calmly. He looked back at her with his inveigling smile, and the last protest died on her lips.

Another lie.Laya knew from the thin crease in the king’s forehead?—the same crease that appeared each time he brushed off the myriad sycophants prowling about court. She gave the Orfelian a cold stare. He was busy pulling at his sleeves, visibly uncomfortable in his borrowed clothes. Her father was too clever. He wouldn’t reveal his hand, no matter how hard she pressed. Neither would Mother, nor Luntok. As for the foreigner?—Laya’s gaze hardened the longer she observed him.

The Orfelian was hiding something. However, it was not the time to pressure him for answers. Laya returned the king’s smile with one of her own. “Yes, Father,” she said, nodding. “I understand.”

Primly, Laya reached for a sweet bun from the center of the table. The Orfelian took a seat across from her. Hari Aki engaged him in cordial conversation, and she let the subject fall for the time being. Out of the corner of the eye, she watched the man. He was more than some bumbling fool, as she had assumed when he’d first appeared on the terrace. Several times over the course of their breakfast, she caught him staring back. He had an inquisitive, nonthreatening gaze, but it was constant enough to make Laya clench her teeth.

A servant swept over with a fresh pot of tea. Laya glanced at the Orfelian over the gold-encrusted rim of her cup. Notes of citrus and honey wafted from the liquid’s surface, tickling her nostrils. The Orfelian’s foreign features blurred in the hot steam?—with time, she might make sense of them.

She frowned into her tea. Her mother and father, and now this Orfelian?—they were playing a game of bluffs, the lot of them. They could lie to her as much as they liked. Laya knew how to play this game too. She did not possess her father’s smile, but she liked to think she had inherited his cleverness. And, unlike the others, she knew who would be the first to crack.

Two

Letters From the East

Dear Nelo,

My comrade, my dream, my love?—

For the hundredth time, I find myself thinking about how much easier it would be if I, like you, were dead.

I sound like an ungrateful, sorry sap?—which we both know I am. Allow me to start again.

I write to you from Maynara, the land of gods and spirits; the same Maynara in the tales they told us when we were boys. I never believed in those myths. I was wrong, as I have been wrong about so many things.

All of Maynara vibrates with a magic too ancient to name. It whispers in the wind that rustles through the nipa palms. It hums through the cracks in the stone walls that line the palace. The queen can erect islands with a jerk of her fingers. She granted me protection in exchange for my services. And I will serve her willingly, as I’ve served so many masters before her.

I sold my soul to buy more time on this unforgiving slab of earth?—a gift, my love, I wish I could offer you.

Has it truly been a year since the rebellion fell? I whisper your names every night as a kind of penance: Nelo, Israh, Elazar, Rufina. No incantation will bring you back from the killing fields. They told me what happened in Orfelia after I fled. How the Salmanticans hunted you down and shoved you in front of King Orfelio’s firing squads. How, unlike me, you stayed true to your word and kept fighting until your last breath.

I was a coward, Nelo. I could not watch you perish, and now I am haunted by your death. When I close my eyes, I hear your rousing war songs and raucous laughter. When I dream, I see you, muzzled like a dog, knee deep in mud before a row of bayonets.

One year since you died, and I have not stopped running since. I have survived thus far by sheer luck and an aptitude for chemical synthesis?—what too many fools have dubbedalchemyand what you used to call myremunerative gift. Precioso is more a curse than anything. Without the money it gave me, I would not have thrust weapons into your hands and dreams inside your head. Precioso is the reason you are dead.

A necessary evil, you once said. But you, who have seen my mind and body bare, you understood my guilt more than anyone. We watched how the precioso stripped even the frailest laborers of their natural weaknesses and turned them into fine-tuned machines. Round the clock, they would toil until their impossible strength faded to mind-numbing addiction. Before our eyes, they transformed into emaciated skeletons while their masters grew fat on blood-won riches.

These masters?—I thought I could drain their wealth and funnel it toward your rebellion. You were my dream, Nelo, the one person who could bring about their demise. But not even precioso could turn the game in our favor. Look at what it has cost us. When I left Orfelia, I vowed never to touch the infernal drug again.

But I lie to myself, as I lie to all those around me. You know this.

Six months ago, I met a man who defies all I know of mankind and divinity. He introduced himself as the queen’s brother, Maynara’s exiled prince. I thought him a swindler, but like Hara Duja, he bears godlike gifts. He suffered from tremors that seized his entire body and caused excruciating muscle stiffness. My precioso is the sole substance that alleviates the pain, and he had been searching for it for decades. He knows it is not a cure, but a costly reprieve from human weakness.

The prince and I have struck a deal. I will produce precioso for him and his sister. In exchange, I have been granted asylum in Maynara, free from the Salmanticans, free from the bounty on my head. I have done nothing to deserve this fortunate end.

---