It must be assumed that those who sacrificed themselves for me foresaw a future beyond my capabilities.

SURI ANEMRO – MEMORY BANK ENTRY 2488. Y’ODD NEXAR STORAGE

Three weeks after the birth of her daughter Suri, Indusa Lady Mona Anemro was woken from much needed sleep by her Beta Ha, Zemar. A letter had arrived from the imperial palace summoning them.  

Assigned to noble households, Beta Ha were considered seers of the planets. Their science-based sorcery, or fractal mapping, as they called it, kept a delicate balance amongst the billions of their worlds.

There Mona stood, watching as a dozen figures emerged from gates of the fourth and weakest pier that led to the palace, their dark garments silhouetted against the hot red setting sun. Along with Mona and Zemar, had come a handful of their household guards.

She sighed, looking up at their domestic hover. It mechanically whined, its engine slowly shutting off.

They dare place us on their weakest pier? Zemar thought.

“You’re being loud,” Mona reminded the newly graduated seer, it was best not to tamper with mind games in the palace.

That did not mean he wasn’t right. They were on the weakest pier. In the darkening night. The pier was designated for tradespeople and foreign market holders. If she weren’t so sleep deprived, she’d have had the energy to be offended.

“Why the informality?” Her Beta Ha whispered in their native tongue. Mona did not want to think too heavily about it now. This was a summon in the night, obviously something was wrong.

Palace guards walked at agonisingly slow rates to greet them … did they not feel the air? Tt prickled her dark skin, and a powerful gust of wind drowned her out as Mona greeted the guards. Although Akuban’s sunset was late, but it took its warmth and calm breeze with it.

“There has been no recorded summoning of a leading house by any Rucanrian queen in the last five hundred years,” her seer repeated, his brown eyes closing and fingers tracing the air. He pointed to the Anemro house being an Indusa house. They were one of five in Akuban, and it was Mona’s job to lead hundreds of smaller houses in her cities. Zemar had repeated the same calculation tenfold that night.

Mona dismissed his unease with a flicker of irritation.

Mona chose Zemar as her new Beta Ha because of his worldly naivete. He would be easy to keep at bay. There were many who were ruled by their seers. Mona was not and would never be.

The Beta Ha fell silent, chastened by her ignorance. “Never listening, nobody listens to young Zemar, if my masters on Shal knew … Zemar cannot love his lady this much, my lady must listen,” his nervous voice echoed, quietening down as the figures came to a stop in front of them.

“Good evening, Indusa Anemro,” the covered and muffled voice of a guard spoke out. “Her imperial highness -,” Here we go, Mona thought to herself as the guard began reciting an array of titles. Thankfully, the wind carried away most of his words. “Queen Nebia Rucanrian the second, Queen of Ladies, Princess of sister planets-.”

She stopped him. “I’m very sorry, but my household would like to know why we are here ser.”

Mona felt his glare from beneath his black helm. “I cannot tell you that, but I may show you to Her Highness.”

Her brows furrowed slightly; she wiped droplets of water from her forehead. “Is it an urgent matter?” Her voice rose as she spoke over the waves. They were getting louder as they hit the stone pier. “I need to know before we remove our shields.”

He shook his head in response, “please follow us.” Any answer except for that one. Mona turned to Zemar, noticing an uncomfortable flush spreading across his tanned skin. Knowing every word beyond the palace gates could be documented, she resisted the urge to reassure him again.

“Very well,” she muttered under her breath.   

The guard turned sharply and led both groups into the palace. The bitter air and cold droplets from the waves below them dried as they passed the gates. Heated air. A city within a city. The low humming of their personal shields silenced as the household unclasped them from their wrists and passed them to the waiting hands of the imperial guards.  

In the dark, the seas’ harsh waves hitting its stone foundations and the cities desert wind made it feel inhospitable.

Mona’s hand instinctively went around her wrist, missing the protection the shield provided her. The air felt colder. Only members of the royal family wore shields in the palace. She did not know if that made it better or worse.

Zemar tutted.

The palace was almost pitch black, illuminated only by sporadic lights that flickered to life as they walked across courtyards and hallways. Statues of sleeping queens loomed from tall white plinths, their serene faces barely visible in the darkness.

Their footsteps echoed loudly. No servants were in sight at this late hour, leaving the air heavy with the scent of burning candles and the faint hum of heated walls. A hovering rover pulsated over them, bobbing its head and scanning the humans below. Satisfied at their lack of threat, it continued on its course.                                                                                                                                  

They approached two great doors, their surfaces adorned with intricate designs of golden serpents. Eyes seeming to gleam in the dim light as if they were orbs of polished amber. Each serpent appeared to slither sinuously around the handles, casting flickering shadows that danced across the marble floor. The opened, revealing a glimpse of a study room.

A gentle voice called from inside.

“Only you may enter, Lady Mona.”   

Mona gave a curt nod and hesitant smile to her household, stepping into the study room. The air was stale; the room had a nauseating smell of burning incense and coal. Once she had stepped from the marble floors into the carpeted ones of the study, the door thudded shut behind her. Little specs of sand, or dust, followed in its trail.

She did not need to see the shadowed figure who sat at the desk, the small silhouette engulfed by the bookcases and potted plants behind her, to know who it was. Queen Nebia Rucanrian. The same girl–now woman–that Mona had tutored so many years ago.

“Your highness,” Mona bowed her head, shuffling closer to the desk and sole light in the room. She moved a coily strand of hair from her eyes.

“You may sit, distant aunt,” Nebia smiled gently. They hadn’t shared blood in over two hundred years, still, Nebia was fond of the family. Specifically Mona.

She sat on the opposite end of the desk, her gaze meeting Nebia’s as she inquired, “Is everything alright?”

The younger queen’s response was laden with weight, “I am fine, my lady. Though I have had some distressing news about Anemrolands,” she had a one lock of braids in her hands, flicking the ends nervously between them.

“Oh?” Mona’s greying brow lifted, her gaze steady.

Nebia mocked her own seer, a plump man whose counsel had become a burden inherited from her grandmother. “My Beta Ha instructed I call you immediately –,” she paused, “he said it must be in silence, so I apologize for the timing. My grandmother spoiled him, you see, rotten. But he sees what he sees, and I must take his word for it. He has no reason to lie.”

Mona maintained her composure. “Your grace?”

Nebia, weary and unkempt, acknowledged the weight of her task. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t be more welcoming.”

“Thank you, your grace” Mona’s voice remained steady, her eyes searching Nebia’s for truth. “What is this distressing news?”

“I have a task for you … from my advisors,” Nebia confessed, her tone betraying the weight of her predicament. Nebia’s hands trembled in her lap.

“Who are these advisors?” Mona pressed.

Nebia deflected Mona’s question. “is it in fashion for a queen to explain herself to her subjects?”

Mona resisted the urge to retort sharply. This was the very girl who she had taught in her home. Surely, she had not changed so much. “No, but she should remember she is one, and they are many.”

She scoffed in response. “The queen might take that as treason.” A silence fell over the room as Mona lowered her eyes, the only sound coming from the low chatter outside the doors. “But I cannot grow angry with the woman who held my hand during my coronation.” She smiled softly at the memory.

“Perhaps not,” Mona hummed back.

Nebia inhaled deeply, “well … the task … and the news,” she bit her lip, “I-my Beta Ha–or the Beta Ha … I have been asked, no, I have been advised to tell you–no command you to get rid of the nomadic tribes on your borders.”

“What an elegant way to dress up slaughter,” Mona said, her tone sharper than intended, cutting through the room’s uneasy silence.

“My seer–the Beta Ha–have told me it must be done. That they will cause trouble for us otherwise,” Nebia reasoned. “Their have been stirs of nomadic rebel groups forming at your borders. They have found safety in the mountains that border the south.”

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“Which mountains?” Mona knew the Anemrolands as if it were here own hand.

“Tsani.”

She shook her head in response, “nomads prefer the desert, they cannot handle the highlands. Besides, Tsani has no way to sustain life, it is a pile of rocks on top of rocks.”

Nebia’s hand made a motion, and a small screen propped up behind her. It showed the Tsani mountains, the outskirts a dark blue, but deep inside, hundreds of dots hummed in hues of orange and red.

“People,” Nebia noted, “it has been growing larger by the day.”

“It is their high holiday season. Perhaps they congregate there for a reason? I know their temples change based on the sun-.”

“You cannot be making excuses for them.”

The older woman hummed, “I agree, the crossing of the nomads into our civilised cities would be an issue. Not enough to kill them all, though.” She put it too frankly. Nebia’s lip twitched at the word, pushing her screen away.

To be diplomatic, Mona not only cared for the lives of innocents, but she also cared for her name. The Anemro name. The one that her predecessors carved into history, the one she spent her entire life protecting.

“Vermin,” Nebia reiterated, “who preaches a foreign god and steals our lands?” There was an uncertainty in her words. She wanted Mona to agree with her. She wanted a reason–something to used to justify her request.

“Such can be said for many of our nobility,” Mona indicated to the many families who paid handsomely for their children to avoid conscription.

“That is different,” the younger woman looked away from Mona uneasily, “this is a rebel uprising in the making.”

Mona sighed, tutting. “Is that what you have been told?”

There was a long sigh, Nebia grabbed the handles of her seat tightly and pushed herself up. The yellow lights of the room seemed to jump on her brown skin, hiding parts of her face, illuminating others. “What else could meetings of secret be within mountains and enclaves?”

“Well … research? Send out small groups, guards to remind them they are on imperial lands. You can’t just go about killing people who upset you Nebia.”

It was also obvious; the birth of her twins had not been easy on her. “What am I supposed to do? You know how these creatures get when you refuse their requests. I already have the houses down my neck on stolen and soiled land by the nomads. Now I am to have a fleet of Beta Ha because I refused one measly request, orbiting my planet and questioning my rule when I have barely begun?”

Was this punishment? She felt the voice of Zemar filter in. He should not have been listening. Mona tried to push him out of her thoughts.

Was it? She thought to herself. She looked to Nebia. Surely this girl wasn’t asking her to bring down thousands of years of valour for … calculations? “Will this seer not see any other way? Banishing them to the far north, I can push them behind desert mountains.”

Nebia paced her desk, massaging on her lower back. “He has woken me up to do this very thing. I don’t think the creature even knew about it until a few hours ago.”

My, Mona thought to herself, how much this young girl hates her Beta Ha. It did not go unnoticed that Nebia had not once mentioned his name.

Mona sighed, how she wished her Zemar was with her now. “I won’t help you commit massacre, your grace–if that is what you’re asking,” Nebia scoffed at her words, shaking her head, “your grandmother didn’t need to, neither did the queens before her. The nomads were on Akuban before us. There is a delicate balance to this.”

“You are not listening.” Nebia had now stood near Mona, hands nervously jumping from her stomach to her throat. “this is not a discussion. I called you because you are the only one I trust to be humane in this … role. There was no one else I could–that I will call.”

“You must call Indusa Junius,” Mona suggested, referring to the southern house known for its militarisation and tight grip over conscription. “They would happily oblige.” 

“You know I cannot control them.” it was a meek comment. Perhaps Nebia shouldn’t have made it. But it was true. Junius was unmatched by military power and savagery. Untameable, they made great guards, unbeatable soldiers … but as commanders? Tyrannical would be a complimentary word to describe them.

“Be a leader, and say no. Give them another path.”

“I cannot ask anyone else. It would be held over the imperial line for centuries if I did.”  

“And my line?” Mona shot back, “what would my gods have to say about this?” She did not mean to say that it truly slipped out.

“Your gods?” Nebia repeated in disgust. It was an open secret the Anemro’s did not follow Akuban’s gods. They had one leader, the lion-headed goddess, who only woke to seek vengeance for those who had been wronged. From the Anemro history books, the goddess did not care who it was she sought vengeance for, as long as it was done.

“Yes … Nebia.”

“I know it is an open secret you Anemro’s tame lions in your deserts. That you turn to them even in the nigh-,”

“Enough,” Mona interjected. That was something that hadn’t happened in hundreds of years, and frankly, was a sore spot for her and her family. Why the goddess hadn’t chosen any of them to use as vessels.

That was a worry for another day.

“I do not care about your false gods. And be glad I don’t,” Nebia began. “Do not force me to ask you publicly, Aunt Mona.”

“I will say no then too, and it will be worse for you. Then you really would have to turn to House Junius.”

 “Not if I hold your daughter as a ward here.”

Young Rena, her heir. She was currently doing her military conscription, unlike many of her peers…

“You will not.”

“If I have to, I will.”

Mona wiped her nose. She hadn’t even noticed how her body had reacted. She asked the dreaded question, “where is Yara?” it was a well-known fact that Nebia unravelled without her younger sister by her side, often using Yara as a stand in for herself.

“She has gone to oversee some farming disputes for me.”

Mona gave Nebia a disapproving look. “that is the role of ministers and advisors, not a princess.”

“I don’t trust anyone else.”

“Let us call this seer in,” Mona ordered, turning back to the doors, pushing them open. The hallway was now empty of her family. She hoped they were being taken care of at least. Three women stood, priestesses by the looks of it - whispering to one another in the far corner of the hallway. “Which one of you is the Beta Ha for the Queen?” She called out. From the dark wall emerged a plump older man. Like Zemar, his hair was long, forming no more than five dreads down his back. The same tattoos adorned his neck, only his reached his face and arms.

“Talos, my name is Talos.”

The seer did not wait for invitation, marching past Mona into the room. Nebia turned away from it, whispering encouragements to herself. Mona’s head tilted as the doors closed once more.

How could Yara let this happen? Mona’s mind questioned. How could anyone let this happen?

“You will not question us in our own home, Lady Mona.”

“You will not read my mind, Beta Ha,” Mona spat back. How dare it?

“You are on imperial grounds. I can do as I please.”

“Nebia, control your seer,” Mona demanded.

Talos scoffed, a smirk etching on his face. “You dare speak to the Queen like that. Your imperial highness, do you see what I meant? I knew this Anemro lady was far too weak in mind and acceptance of power to play the role that is needed in this path.”

“I have refused the call of my queen to butcher a people, Talos. We have called you in for an alternative,” Mona stated firmly, her voice echoing in the tense silence of the room.

Talos wasted no time in his curt response. “There is no alternative,” his foreign accented voice declared. “I have seen,” he gently tapped his forehead, “there is no other way.”

Mona’s brows furrowed in frustration. “You cannot just see and demand. There is a patience to do these things. There is a way to paths. You of all should know,” she reiterated, standing resolutely beside Nebia, her eyes fixed on the Beta Ha.

Nebia, visibly distressed, attempted to intercede, but Talos’s presence seemed to suffocate the room, leaving little room for dissent.

As the Beta Ha reiterated his orders, Mona’s frustration bubbled into anger.

“You have thought this out clearly?” she challenged, her words laced with accusation. Nebia’s hand rubbed at her neck. Mona pressed on. “What will happen should we refuse this? What is the path, seer?”

The imperial Beta Ha placed his arms behind his back. “Is this how she speaks to a messenger from the past? To those who hold more power than her?”

“No … we are just trying to find another way.” 

“I am not a murderer,” Mona supported Nebia’s words. “Besides, this killing would do no good. It would anger them, create real rebels and freedom fighters … it would give them tangible reason to be angry.”

The wealthier Beta Ha held his hands out in innocence. “let it be the Rucanrian army who spill the blood for all I care. But these are my orders from Shal. I am merely following instruction. There are no freedom fighters if the nomads no longer exist.”  

“Okay, so I do this for you. I take my troops, I ask–no command them–to kill innocents–given they don’t revolt against me for it. We come home, what? Butchers? The outcome is? No more nomads? Until the next group you do not like to come along … now is house Anemro at your whim? Do I let my women and men go home to their families and face sleepless nights?”

“You would be doing the imperial families orders, anyone dares-,” his stomach moved up and down as he spoke in fury.

 “Once your brain fails you, Talos, you are not useful. Your lineage ends with you–I do not have the luxury of being attached to one big entity, faced with no names or repercussions. I think of Anemro. I think of the leaders in ten, twenty, two hundred years. I think of the name my foremothers built for me.”

“I am a name, I am Beta Ha-,”

“You are half man, half computer. And men cannot be trusted. That is the whole point of Akuban. Hot blooded,” she neared the door, her hands almost trembled as she spoke, spitting the words out. She felt her own blood rush, “ill mannered, badly tempered and quick to shed blood. You commit treason by ordering your queen around like so.” Mona tugged on the door. “I am going home now, Nebia. I will send for Yara once I reach Anemrolands. My advice, if you want to accept it, is to go to sleep. Be with your husband and children. Send patrols to the mountains. I will as well. Wait at least a month before doing anything.”

Before she could leave, the seer gasped out. Perhaps it was genuine, perhaps it was one final grab at getting Mona’s attention. “There is something in this air,” he admitted, eyes squinted closed and his tone grave. “I have tried to see, but it... There is darkness ahead. I cannot see in it. I did not predict this moment -,” he opened his eyes and huffed at Mona, “there was no room for rejection.”

“Try again,” it was Nebia who commanded this time.

There was a disbelief etched on the seers’ face, but he closed his eyes and traced his fingers again. The air thickened, “I see …,” a whisper, “darkness in the palace.”

 Nebia gave Mona a pointed look. “What is it?.” It was unwise to interrupt a Beta Ha’s calculations, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Deep anger, insatiable hunger and thirst…” Talos tutted at whatever he was seeing patterns of, “a deep desire to free themselves from imperial shackles, they are restless take the Rucanrian empire.” 

Nebia did not wait around to hear anymore. By the doors was a small button lost on a guest’s eye. Nebia pressed on it and left the room in one quick step. Mona followed her. “do you see?” she stressed, clambering up a discreet staircase that Mona knew led to the family’s sleeping quarters. “Do you now see why I listen to that thing?” She huffed, her face red with angry and body frantic. “Look what happens when I don’t!” Nebia snapped.

The first to greet them was the Prince Nebia’s husband, Mikal, who had run into them. “What’s wrong?” he asked, dishevelled from his sleep. Mona had no time to speak let alone greet him, armour clanked as guards rushed through the corridor, their footsteps ringing off the stone floors.

“There are nomads in the palace. Search for them.”

“Where did you hear this?” A guard asked, following Nebia as she opened and closed various rooms’ doors. Family members filtered out in a sleep like state, rubbing their eyes as they were ushered away.

Nebia ignored the guard. “take the Lady Anemro and her family to the safe house with my family,” she turned to Mikal, “where are the children?”

“No, I’ll stay. Tell me what I can do.”

“You can go do as you were commanded,” Nebia’s eyes were wide as she barked at Mona, “go away!”

Mikal rushed to the nursery, flicking on the bright lights. A small cry came from the room–and two children were taken away. One infant, another toddler.

Twins. She had recently twins. One boy–one girl. Where was the other?

It was time to go home. If there really was a threat in the palace, she needed to get back to her household and far away from this place. “Take me to my household.”

An alarm pierced through the low hustle and bustle of the hallway. The already directionless guards dashed past her, the one she had been speaking to pushed her out of the way, her face drawn with concern. None dared to speak the truth that hung heavy in the air. Nebia’s desperate wails echoed by other royal family members who had flooded into the nursery. Some held their hands on their heads, others stared on in disbelief.

The quarters were now alive with people still dressed in their nightwear and barefoot. The noise quietened when Nebia stepped from the room, her eyes bloodshot. She did not care for the formalities. Stepping past those who bowed. Talos followed closely behind her, whispering into her ear.

Between the crowd, Mona could make out Mikal’s legs. He was sitting on a bed. Beside him stood two women, the tallest of the two, tinkered away on a handheld tracker, the soft beeping it emitted filling the air. Indusa Lady Rita Junius. Her long braid moved behind her as she turned, eyes catching Mona’s. There was little love between them. The second woman held a gun close to her chest, moving it about uncomfortably, its weight a fresh surprise in these early hours.

Mona stepped back slightly, looking for the stairs they had come up from.

“Lady Mona,” Nebia’s hallow voice called, “please follow my guards to the safe house.”

Mona shouldn’t have, but she tried anyway. Zemar was not near her; she couldn’t hear him.