Jocyanë

Jocyanë had already been awake for an hour before she joined her family for breakfast in their private dining room. The gathering felt almost normal, the usual spread of food laid out before them, bright lights shining, cool air flowing to provide comfort in the early autumn heat. Her mother, her uncle, and her grandmother looked more or less like they always did. But her father’s chair was empty, and a new place had been set for the Prince Ethereal, her betrothed. Her future husband.

He wasn’t there, fortunately. He’d been called out in the middle of the night with the rest of the Ethereal Guard to deal with a construct in Bulrisa. Jocyanë sincerely hoped for his success in resealing the construct. The Ethereal Guard were going to have their work cut out for them, protecting him; Suzari had described him as “painfully average” and told her he “might be competent in five years.” She didn’t have time to waste thinking about Adrin, though. The day had scarcely begun, and she was already running behind.

Jocyanë hardly tasted her bread as she read down the newest list of requests for help from various corners of her kingdom. Every day messengers arrived from further and further afield, bringing news of more trouble. New lines of communication were being laid, but waiting on their establishment was almost as tedious as waiting for updates on the excruciatingly slow process of restoring the linecar. Everything was moving at a glacial pace.

“You’re sure you can’t spare anyone else?” she asked her uncle pointedly.

“Not without leaving us vulnerable. I’ve sent two-thirds of the army off to assist with various projects, and even that was against my better judgment. I don’t like how thin our ranks have become, and now we’ve got to deal with a bloody rebellion in Nalla-Bidharac.”

Zafrys had already presented them with that bit of unwelcome news from her dream contact. Awfully convenient, that she could talk to someone with a direct line to the Tresuan and the situation in Nalla-Bidharac. It wasn’t the first time that Jocyanë felt a pang of jealousy for those whom the Ocean chose and their ability to walk in dreams. Why didn’t that ability go to those who were born into the royal family as well?

“Talk to Arneckas,” Vaclan went on. “He’s got his lackeys at the Bharsalli corporation hoarding their engineers, but they’re running out of plausible excuses.”

Zafrys said, “Adrin spoke to him yesterday. He’s promised at least two hundred to go south as soon as the linecar to Bulrisa is running again.”

“And when was he going to tell us about this?” Vaclan asked.

“There should be a report in your stack from him,” Zafrys said.

“I have it,” said Irezan. She passed a single sheet of paper across the table to her brother.

Jocyanë frowned. It still felt like he was going behind her back when he spoke to any of the Assembly members, and she had a feeling that was the reason representatives like Laursal Arneckas sought him out.

“It’s not much of a commitment,” muttered Vaclan. “Arneckas gets to put it off for at least another week while we wait on the linecar repairs, and we’ll see who he actually puts up for us when it happens. I bet he’s put the word out to the rest of the Eastern League to pick out their weakest links for the trip. There’s no way they’re sending their best and brightest down to the Pardrials.”

“And Nalla-Bidharac?” Irezan asked her brother.

“We’ll be ready to march tomorrow,” Vaclan replied. “We’ll be to the northern tip of Lake Nalla in eight days, and then who knows what we’ll run into on the way to Chacry. Damn that man!” He got to his feet and left the room.

Zafrys sighed. “He’s getting more brittle every day. But I daresay the pressure is getting to all of us.”

“You think?” Jocyanë replied.

“And you’re turning out more and more like him,” Zafrys told her granddaughter with a nod after Vaclan.

Jocyanë held her head high. “Is that a bad thing to be?”

“No, no, not in every way, certainly,” Zafrys said. “But I wonder, sometimes . . . never mind. I’ll see you this afternoon.”

Jocyanë tried to leave after her grandmother, but her mother called her back.

“Jocyanë, there’s something else we need to talk about,” said Irezan.

Jocyanë froze, then turned slowly to face her mother. Irezan hadn’t moved from her seat. Her voice was soft but commanding nonetheless.

Other people looked at Irezan Talmuir and saw an echo of the woman she might have been. They pitied her, thought her weak and broken. Jocyanë saw in her mother a woman who had looked death in the face more times than most people could imagine and survived. Yes, Irezan bore the scars of her brushes with mortality, but she lived. She’d even given birth without vitricity, an achievement that had become all the more astonishing to Jocyanë now that she was a grown woman herself, contemplating her own inevitable motherhood. Not any time too soon, but there would have to be a successor to the Talmuir line. The idea of bearing a child without vitricity frightened her more than all the constructs in Elorhe.

“Yes?” Jocyanë said to her mother.

“We need to begin planning for your wedding.”

That was exactly what Jocyanë had been afraid she was going to say.

“Do we really need another thing to worry about right now?” Jocyanë asked, keeping her voice as level and unconcerned as possible.

“I don’t think we need to go to extremes with the ceremony, but your wedding would be something people could celebrate. A reason for confidence, a symbol of stability and hope for the future . . .”

“But neither one of us is of age,” Jocyanë said, “and with communications as they are, and a rebellion in Nalla-Bidharac . . .”

“It takes time to put a royal wedding together. By the time of the event, after you both turn twenty, we will be able to spread word to the ends of Elorhe, perhaps even send you two off on a honeymoon tour to see how the land fares with your own eyes, and allow people to see the two of you.”

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“You trust him.” Jocyanë was unable to keep it from sounding like an accusation. “He came back just fine while Father’s trapped somewhere, sleeping, not even stirring for almost two weeks. From the same Ocean that killed Raen. And you really expect me to just . . . marry him?”

“Do you think any of that was Adrin’s fault? I wasn’t sure about him at first, but after watching him closely, I haven’t seen anything to concern me about Adrin himself,” said Irezan.

“But he’s not . . .” Jocyanë drifted off. Not good enough, she wanted to say. That wasn’t quite true. Adrin wasn’t what she expected, but he was holding his own surprisingly well. She just had to make herself look at him objectively, instead of letting her opinion be colored by . . . colored by what?

He’s not Raen.

“What concerns you so much about Adrin, then?” Irezan asked. It was a difficult question for Jocyanë to answer.

“It’s not anything specific,” Jocyanë admitted. “But that’s part of the problem. If there was something clearly wrong with him, some obvious reason he was unfit, it would be easy to cast him out. But I can’t shake the feeling that something’s not right. That there’s something deeper going on with him that I’m missing. And I can’t put my doubts to rest until I figure out why.”

“And I don’t want to see you married until you’re comfortable with the idea, but I have to wonder if you’re giving Adrin a fair chance. Not that I blame you for having a hard time accepting him. In any other time I would say yes, give yourself the space and time to accept him for who he is, to grieve for your loss and move on.”

“You still think this is about Raen? I didn’t want to marry Raen, either! Not any time soon, anyway.” I told him not to go. I told him to wait. Jocyanë hated dredging up those memories, those emotions. The ambivalence she felt toward Raen as a suitor didn’t make it any easier to deal with his loss. It just made things more complicated.

“I miss Raen, too, and nobody ever expected me to marry him,” Irezan said gently.

“But at least Raen was competent,” Jocyanë said quickly. “I wouldn’t be worried if it was him on the way to Bulrisa with the Ethereal Guard. And he knew the assembly, he knew how to conduct himself . . .”

“And Adrin’s not what you expected,” Irezan finished for her. “But your father wasn’t what anyone expected, either. He was what we needed.”

“He’s still what we need.” The words tore out of Jocyanë’s throat. She didn’t need to keep her grief and worry buried so deeply when only her mother was present. “If Dad was here, he’d find a way to keep Arneckas and Lady Saiglen off each other’s throats, bring Namai back into the fold, damn it, I can’t—we can’t do all of it without him.”

“I know, Jocyanë.”

Now Jocyanë felt guilty for complaining. Her mother probably missed Gerimon even more than she did, and she wasn’t whining about it. “You know that Adrin has been working with Dacrine Wyess, right?”

Jocyanë shrugged. “Making ceram armor and things. Fine. I know he’s quite brilliant with that sort of thing, you don’t need to tell me. Fixing things, building things.”

“Like our kingdom,” Irezan said.

“Come on, Mom.” Jocyane rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t work that way. You know that.”

“But the Ocean saw something in him that we needed. Just like she saw in your father. People questioned his selection as well, you know.”

Jocyanë sighed. “And sometimes I wonder if they’re onto something,” she admitted. “Not about Dad—I think that’s plain enough. But I wonder about the Ocean, ever since . . . when Raen didn’t come back . . . nothing’s been right since then.”

“Are you getting enough sleep, Jocyanë?”

“As much as I can.” She didn’t have the luxury for more than a couple hours each night, just enough to stay ahead of exhaustion and maintain a reserve of vitricity to draw upon. There was no end to the reports that needed to be read, meetings and briefings and updates and demands and now, on top of everything else, her mother wanted to plan her wedding?

“You need to let yourself rest. The world looks a lot clearer after a good night’s sleep.”

“My mind is clear enough.” Too clear, Jocyanë thought. Clear enough to see the contradictions. Clear enough to see that there isn’t any smooth road out of this mess. “I have to go to an appointment. I’ll . . . think about what you said, all right?”

“That’s all I ask.”

***

Sefoni Maisk was waiting for Jocyanë in the south garden, relaxing in the shade of a gazebo. The day was already hot and humid, a final burst of summer heat before autumn set in at last. Sweat beaded on Sefoni’s forehead, though she betrayed no signs of discomfort.

Sefoni came to serve Queen Irezan when she was a teenager and Jocyanë was still a young child, the shared experience of living without vitricity creating a bond between them. Jocyanë felt like she’d known Sefoni all her life. The woman was too young to be an aunt and too old to be Jocyanë’s contemporary, but she had become something like an older sister.

But despite their long acquaintance, Sefoni was still something of a mystery to Jocyanë. Her close relationship to Irezan made it difficult to place her in any hierarchy, and Jocyanë still didn’t understand how she’d come to marry Etherret Maisk, a man at least twenty years her senior and notoriously uninterested in anything that couldn’t be explained with an elegant theory. Jocyanë suspected it wasn’t actually Sefoni herself that Etherret had fallen in love with, but his newfound fascination with the Blight that attracted him to her, though she would never voice that suspicion aloud.

Really, it was none of her business why anyone else got married. Her own fiancé was a matter of much greater importance to her, and Sefoni’s eyes on him had proven invaluable, if also frustratingly inconclusive.

“It’s pretty much like Adrin said,'' Sefoni said with a shrug after Jocyanë asked about Adrin’s meeting with Laursal Arneckas. “I don’t think he promised anything he shouldn’t have, just further progress on a branch of the University in Heniscau, and that’s been on the table for years.”

“That’s what worries me. There’s nothing to justify Arneckas relenting even this little bit.”

“You think he wants Adrin to feel indebted to him? I wouldn’t worry too much about that, Jocyanë. Adrin knows he only tossed him a few crumbs and pretended it was a feast.”

Jocyanë shook her head. “If you say so.” Sefoni painted Adrin as a savvier politician than he let on, which was a little bit worrying, but nothing incriminating in itself.

“I’m more worried about Lord Grais and Lady Saiglen,” Sefoni continued. “If what you say is true about a rebellion in Nalla-Bidharac, I wouldn’t put it past Saiglen to throw in her lot and declare Weslesca independent as well.”

“But we think Norsyff is acting alone. There’s been no intelligence linking Grais and Saiglen to the rebellion—though Saiglen’s been dancing on the edge of the articles for years, she hasn’t put a toe out of line,” Jocyanë said.

“If they cross a line, you’ll be the first to know,” Sefoni said.

“Thank the Ocean she didn’t end up married to my uncle. She’d have found some way to get my mother out of the way and plant herself on the throne.”

“You think the Ocean would have accepted her?” Sefoni asked.

Jocyanë sighed. “I don’t know what the Ocean would or wouldn’t do anymore. But I’m not about to count on it to protect us.”

Sefoni looked at her with concern. “Have you really lost your faith, Jocyanë?”

“I don’t know how you manage to hold on to yours.”

“I’m sure there must be some explanation. It will become clear eventually.”

“I want you to search his rooms again while he’s out. You’ve got time to do a thorough job, he won’t be back for two days. Let me know if you find anything.”

“Will do,” Sefoni replied, and they went their separate ways. Jocyanë envied her faith that things would turn out for the best. Sefoni had been Blighted so young that she couldn’t remember what vitricity felt like, and she regarded the power that had been denied to her with a reverence that bordered on religion. It was getting harder and harder for Jocyanë to see the bright side of anything.

More than anything, she yearned to talk things over with her father.