12
Mhera was awake before the sun had risen, when the pale blue second moon was low in the sky. For a while, she lay still in the bed where she'd slept as a child, hoping to fall back to sleep. After her late conversation with Matei, she had only enjoyed a couple hours' sleep.
She gazed through the diaphanous curtains of her balcony window at the blurred night sky, waiting for weariness to overcome her, but her mind was too busy. She soon realized she would not sleep again and decided to rise for the day.
So it was that she spent the quiet hours of the morning alone in the palace kitchens, trying to set things to rights. There were still a few dozen people in the palace proper from her reckoning. Most of the guards and the servants had fled—or perhaps they had been forced away, maybe even killed, before the violence in the city had peaked.
As Mhera sorted through the pantry, organizing and taking stock of the stores of food and dry goods that had been picked over by fugitives, she wondered what had happened to the familiar faces of the palace. Her childhood maidservant, Virri: what had become of her? And Virri's father, who had helped Matei steal Mhera away from the palace...what had become of him?
Were they still alive?
Once she had put things to rights and tidied the kitchens, Mhera scraped together a breakfast of sweet porridge and nuts and made a pot of tea. She didn't know who she might meet during the breakfast hour, but she had enough to feed three or four, and what wasn't eaten could be warmed up later. She knotted her skirt up into her girdle and braced the heavy tray against her hip as she prepared to take it upstairs.
The dining room was empty when she got there. She placed the heavy tray on the long marble table. Ignoring the food for a while, Mhera wandered the room, trailing her fingers over the places where she had sat with her governess, Madam Gella; the seats that had been occupied by her parents, when they were in the capitol, which was rarely; the places where the princes had sat, even Koreti, until he had disappeared; and Emperor Korvan's place at the head of the table. His high-backed chair, as grand as ever, was still there. Mhera rested her hand on the arm rest where his might have lain and reflected on the man he had been.
"Are you quite alright, my lady?"
Mhera smiled. She turned to see Madam Gella in the doorway, prim as ever in her long black dress. "I do not know if I shall ever be quite right again, madam, but I am as well as I can be."
Approaching her across the polished marble floors, the old woman tutted. "You look tired."
"I am. Will you sit with me? I thought my days of having breakfast alone were behind me."
Madam Gella gave a slight nod, moving past Mhera toward the table. She chose a chair and pulled it back, but reached for the tea pot before sitting. As she poured, she said, "I had thought you would appreciate the solitude. You seemed so distant the last time I saw you."
"When I came back from the Haven?" Mhera chose two bowls and ladled the porridge. "I felt it."
They settled into their seats, Madam Gella with a weary sigh. "I have never heard such silence as I have heard these two days past. It feels as if the palace has become a tomb."
"I think that it has, in a way." Mhera sipped her tea. "The servants, for the most part, seem to be gone. I have seen none of the courtiers who attended the emperor. The pantries have been picked over, and the palace guards..."
Gella nodded. "For the guards and the courtiers I cannot answer, but for the servants, perhaps I can. Every Arcborn soul in the palace was cast out in the final days of Emperor Korvan's reign, my lady."
Mhera's heart sank. "What happened to them?"
She shook her head. "I know not, but I suspect they were simply made to leave. It was a quieter affair than I would have thought. There were some Starborn servants, of course, but with the Arcborn gone, things descended into chaos."
Despite the circumstances, Mhera could not help but smile. To Gella, any hint of domestic disarray qualified as chaos. That she had survived such an abrupt and complete change in the palace staff was a miracle. "I am not sure how we will get along now."
"Do you intend to stay, my lady?"
Mhera nodded. "I think so. I...I intend to have a hand in setting things to rights."
"You will have your work lain out before you, child," Gella said, and Mhera knew she was still thinking about cookery, linens, and dusting. "If I may make a suggestion, I think your first order of business is to secure someone to manage the household affairs, and then to begin bringing servants back onto staff immediately."
"I do not know how to begin, madam, but I think that makes perfect sense. It is not a matter even of convenience or luxury: if we are to begin to put things to right, we will need food, a laundry, the basic things. I am happy to do some of the work myself, of course, but there is far too much to manage."
"Speak with Prince Kaori about it. I am sure he will approve the expenses—and Arcborn servants can be employed for half what the emperor would have spent filling the palace with Starborn retainers."
Mhera paused with her spoon halfway to her mouth. Here was the first thing to change. "We shall have to consider the question of wages—I should hope that the servants would be paid equally regardless of their blood." It was something she had never considered before; as a royal daughter she had never had cause. She'd never handled money, nor considered the question of how the servants who attended her paid for their own families' livelihoods. "But Prince Kaori will not be approving anything if he has his way. He has abdicated the throne. He intends for Matei to rule, and Matei intends for me to rule as well."
Madam Gella raised her thin brows, stared at Mhera for a moment, and then slowly set her cup down. "He will marry you?"
A blush swept up Mhera's neck, warming her cheeks. "What? No, madam—of course not! We are cousins. But although we will not marry, we are bound together in another way. It is a long story, and one I shall tell you more of sometime. The important part is that we must work together. Besides; Matei speaks for the Arcborn, and I think he sees our partnership as a way to bind the new to the old. I can speak for the Starborn as we begin to shape what comes next."
"You know as well as I do that royal families intermarry; as a cousin, he would be at an appropriate distance," Gella said. "But a woman, empress in her own right and unmarried: I cannot think of a historical precedent. Except, perhaps, for our Blessed Sovereign, Katyander. It was she who took a consort, not the other way round."
Mhera sighed. "An unlikely comparison."
"Well, ruling is no easy task, my child. I heard enough of it living in the palace to know I would never wish to do it myself. Do you think you will be happy on the throne?"
"Goddess knows I shall likely not be," Mhera said. "But I have done very little in my life for happiness. Some things I have done because I had no choice; some things I have done because I knew they were right. And those things are very seldom easy. If this is the path Our Mother has lain out before my weary feet, I shall walk it and hope that I can do her will."
Gella looked at Mhera for a long moment, a smile hovering around her thin lips. Then she turned her attention to her oatmeal, closing the matter with a tone of finality. "I rest easily at night, Lady Mhera, knowing that you grew up to be the lady you are. You make me proud."
What do you think: will Mhera be happy with the life she has chosen? And did she have a choice?
That Gella and her crazy ideas. Marriage? It's almost like a noblewoman can't be taken seriously without a husband...
As always, I look forward to your thoughts and feedback! This is a first draft, so any plot holes or questions niggling at the back of your mind, just throw 'em out here. :)
Next update: Sunday, and I am super excited about the chapter I have in store...Hope you have an amazing weekend, my friend. ❤
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