Nala entered the Council room last. Kestra and Myra were already seated on ocean-blue thrones, Lysandra was lounging luxuriously on black marble and Layla perched on a moonstone throne with amethyst veins. In comparison, Nala's own seat was simple. An oversized chair, really. The picture of humility and democracy. She might as well upgrade to something like Lysandra's throne. The only way she would keep this seat after the election in three years would be to become a dictator.
"Any pressing matters to discuss?" Myra asked, a mere formality at this point.
"Calore's loans." Nala said quickly. Might as well get the pain over with.
"Yes, I see nothing has come into my coffers recently. Don't be too tardy." Lysandra said. Summer, if this was what she was like to her friends...
"We will pay," Nala lied. "However, on behalf of my government, I would like to ask for more money."
"From which country?" Myra asked. There went all Nala's hopes out the window; Myra wasn't sound at all interested. And if she wasn't in support of this, then Kestra probably wouldn't be either. Not because she leaned on her mother—no matter what she'd told Jasper—but simply because they both knew Miras' treasury and if Myra thought renewing the loan was untenable...
"We are not particular on which country adds to the loan," Nala smiled, ignoring
her disappointment.
"Surely whatever country you want to renew your loan with would want the debts that have already come due to be paid?" Lysandra asked scepitcally. She'd already made her intentions clear to Nala, but it didn't stop her heart from sinking like a stone at her near-outright refusal. Even if part of that absolutely ridiculous, traitorous heart was beating faster when she looked at her emerald eyes.
Idiot. She was an absolute idiot.
"I'm willing to offer a loan," Layla said. "I'd require what's already due to me to be paid first, but afterwards I'm happy to draw up the papers and make the arrangement." Nala breathed a sigh of relief.
Why hadn't she thought of Layla as a possibility? Asriel was possibly the most well-off country in the Alliance; their monopoly on magic and the novelty of their powers meant they could charge extortionate prices for their enchanted goods and magical services. Their abilities had also speeded up their rebuild after Medea's reign. She should have gone to her first, but she'd had no connection with Layla. She'd known that her only chance with Miras and Lysandria was her relationship with Jasper and Lysandra. Even though Asriel had more funds, it still made no sense for Layla to make this offer. Unless there was some sort of catch.
"I'll repay the debt to your account as soon as I can get the order out," Nala promised. She'd have to stretch the treasuary to do it, but once she got the loan, she'd be able to make up for that and use the money to pay off Lysandria and Miras, at least for the moment.
"Queen Layla," someone cautioned. Her advisor. When did that slimball get here?
"Alveron," she answered tightly.
"Your Majesty, this is perhaps not a reasonable investment."
"Asriel can manage the fallout if we have to wait to be fully repaid." Layla replied. "Calore needs this, Alveron. I originally doubted this proposition as well—but just this afternoon Jasper reminded me that Asriel was in a better position than most. And disillusioned me about the state of Calore's economy, no matter what its politicians may claim in order, ironically, to renew these loans." Burning suns. She'd laid into Jasper this morning when in fact he'd decided to do this instead. Not to manipulate and lie to Myra, but go to a friend with simple truths. To go to a country that could afford and weather this, rather than one who needed that money.
Summer, she was a horrible person. She'd brought up Peter, she'd questioned his loyalty to his country...burn it, she couldn't even begin to think about everything she'd said to Jasper, everything she'd called him. A traitor. A coward. Myra Isidore's pet.
She was a truly wretched person.
"Thank you, Layla," Nala said, dipping her head in gratitude.
"You're welcome," Layla replied. "But to be clear, this is not a favour. I expect to be paid back." But she was too busy holding a private celebration in her own head to worry about those words.
In the meanwhile, she needed to apologise to Jasper.
————————————————
"I was horrible to you earlier," Nala said, taking a great big gulp of her pride.
"Did Layla tell you what changed her mind then?" Jasper asked, totally neutral and a touch cold.
"Mightn't I have come if she hadn't?"
"Maybe, but you wouldn't look half as guilty and penitent looking." Jasper replied, his tone still cool.
"Look, I made a mistake. I was stressed and frustrated and under pressure from all sides—no. Scrap that. I made a mistake. I was horrible and unfair and wretched. No excuses. Totally unforgivable. Please, please, forgive me anyway?"
"You brought up a whole lot of things you shouldn't have." Jasper added. "You were unfair, and you were cruel."
"Yes. Yes. I think—I think we both said things we didn't mean."
"I meant some of them." Nala was silent as she waited for him to continue. "I meant what I said about being tired of you expecting me to just keep taking your anger because I was just so, so guilty. I meant what I said about finally having some self-respect. And I'm not proud of it, but I meant what I said about sometimes wishing you weren't my aunt."
"Okay." She said, taking a deep breath. "I guess I warrant that."
"Do you forgive me?" Jasper asked, his voice low and quiet. He said those four word with all the fear of a man terrified of the answer and yet filled with too much of a need to know to stop him asking that fateful question.
"I'm the one who's here apologising—" Nala replied.
"I don't mean that," Jasper replied. "I meant—you know what I meant."
He wasn't begging for forgiveness like he had in the past. He was simply asking a question. Nala took a deep breath and looked at him—in the eyes this time, for the first time since she'd come.
"Partly." She answered. Honesty. She owed him that much. "Mostly, maybe. But a part of me...no." He nodded. No worse than what he'd expected, she supposed. "I think I should," she continued. "But I can't. Would you forgive someone who'd done what you did to Myra? Who felt just as bad about it?"
"Don't ask that. Nala, you know that's not...that's not a fair question."
"It still warrants an answer."
"Partly. Mostly." He echoed. She nodded. There was so much more to say and yet...the words were so hard. Just like always, they had to settle with this. With this distance, because bridging it was just too hard. Maybe even impossible, after everything they had both said and done.
"Jasper," she began. "What you said about me choosing my cause above everyone else—"
"Don't. I've known it for a long while and so have you. I've accepted it and moved on, Nala."
"Yet you married a woman who might have to do the same thing I did to you." Nala countered.
"Please, please don't." Jasper said. "I don't want to argue again. You've made
your choices; I've made mine. Let's not dwell on it."
"I love you, Jasper." Nala said.
"I love you too," he replied. Then she closed the door and left.
As always, she yearned to go back. As always, she knew that it was impossible.
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Myra
Myra looked at the pitiful collection of spies who had come to brief the War Council on their findings. About half of what she'd expected. They certainly weren't meant to all have come; information would be relaid to spymasters who would then come to tell the council what they'd managed to uncover. But still, there should have been more spymasters present. She tried not to think of that as a bad sign.
"Summary, Twyla?" She asked. Twyla was the unofficial seventh member of the War Council and Head Spymaster of the Alliance. Alice of Calore, Thorn of Lysandria, Tesso of Asriel and Cora of Miras all reported to her.
Twyla did not appear terrifying. The first requirement of being a spy was to be unremarkable, and she passed that test with flying colours. She was petite, brown-haired and brown-eyed. That was, until you looked too deeply into those eyes. Twyla was a Hypnotist, a rare kind of MindWeaver that could force you to tell the truth with a look. Myra had been careful to avoid looking into those deadly eyes. She'd paid attention to the rumours of those who had not been so careful.
"Well, to start with, the Western Marshes made me envy those with nice, dry desk jobs for the first time." Twyla grinned. "Oh, and half our spies didn't come back."
"What?" Myra blurted. Zara dropped her pen.
"Half?" Scarlet repeated. "Half of them didn't come back? Why? Did Diaz get them, or did they perish in the Marshes?"
"Oh, we can be pretty sure that about a third are Diaz's handiwork. They left the bodies in Topaz's main square with a delightful little note."
"Reading?" Myra asked, still trying to take in everything.
"Something about 'this is what working for the liar queens gets you' and so forth."
Twyla had an unusual (and frightening) cavalier attitude when it came to
death and dismemberment.
"How did they even get into Topaz?" Mireia demanded. "We've had our people at the walls, guards everywhere in the streets. The city is crawling with officers. Has been ever since the riots, which were worst there. And still, there's no moving dead bodies into any city in Miras, at any time." Twyla tapped her feet as she waited for whatever brilliant discovery she'd made to click for the rest of them. Scarlet was the first to catch on.
"Ah. The riots." Scarlet grimaced. "That's why they were worst there. Diaz must have agents in the city, who—"
"Set off the rioters so people outside could use the distraction to smuggle the
bodies in while everyone was distracted." Myra finished. "Which is the reason
everything went down that day. Well, that's one mystery solved. And the riots in
other cities?"
"Probably inside agents as well, to make sure Topaz didn't get reinforcements from Zerena, Citirne or Azul to calm things down sooner." Thorn mused. "It's artistic, when you think about it. And right where everyone can see those bodies too and spark more riots."
"Absolutely beautiful," Twyla agreed. "Honestly, even if you hate her guts you have to admire her strategy."
Together, Thorn and Twyla terrified her.
"I'd prefer to admire her strategy when her head's spiked on a pole in front of the Hawk Mountains." Myra snapped. "No time for admiring the enemy. We need a counter-move. Now. What information did your surviving spies get? And who did we lose?"
"No one major," Twyla said. She rattled off the names. A couple of painful blows, but she was right. No one in the Inner Circles, and the spymasters they had lost weren't vital."And as for information...well, we'll never know if the dead discovered any helpful little nuggets, but those of us who got out found almost nothing. Sightings of campfires in the distance and the like."
"Did your spies know where they were in the Western Marshes when they saw the campfires?" Myra asked.
"Some of them do. But all have reported them in different directions and different distances into the marshes. We imagine Diaz set some fires all across the place to distract our little eyes. Once again, I must express my admiration for this woman, murderous nut-job as she is."
One of the other spymasters coughed.
"Do you like your job, sweetie?" Twyla asked fake-casually as she turned to the offending spy. "No, let me rephrase that. Do you like breathing? Because if you don't, there are options. Alternatives, involving knives and five feet worth of dirt." The spymasters bowed at the waist and murmured his apologies.
Twyla reminded Myra of Lysandra, minus the fur coats and high-heels, but even her casual death threats couldn't amuse her right now. Half their spies...gone. And two weeks of searching adding up to nothing, nothing at all.
Myra could feel the gears in her head beginning to spin'    . She let the others talk amongst themselves as she traced her fingers along the map of Miras and lower, to the Hawk Mountains. The conversation around her faded away. Everything narrowed down to numbers, facts, figures. A thousand strategy books she'd combed through.
Yet they were all useless. Myra was made for the open battlefield, the plain and honest conflict of steel on steel in a fight when she knew where—and who—her enemies were. Not this. A war when her army's loyalties were in doubt. When her own court was ripping itself apart.
"Don't send any more spies in," Myra declared. "It's clearly useless. I want the guard in the cities doubled, so even if there's another riot, we still have the best security possible. Search for Diaz's agents who have left the Western Marshes
everywhere—the cities, the country, the mountains, in our own ranks. Actually,
look beyond Miras. They could be hiding in Asriel, Calore or Lysandria. Get the information out of those we catch instead of our spies. Don't let them take poison like the last lot did.
"And investigate the Western Marshes. When we know where Valkyrie Ascension is, I want to be able to send my army in without losing a third of them to that place. I know Diaz. She's a general, not a spy. We'll find her. And once we do, we'll outnumber her. As soon as she's under control, the rioters lose their leader. The spark to the flame. Without her, they'll have no direction."
"She's the head of the snake," Twyla agreed cheerfully. "Cut it off and then snakie dies."
"She's not a snake." Myra corrected. "She's a tiger. That's her elkor, and her nature. I spent decades fighting alongside Juliet Diaz, and I know her well. She paces in any cage and she's aggressive. She'll want to strike. She'll be itching to. Soon, we'll find her out in the open, in an honest battle. And when we do...well, battlefields are my speciality. It'll be nice to be the one who outnumbers the enemy for a change."
But Diaz knew her. After half a century as her general, Diaz knew her well. She knew there was no beating Myra Isidore on an open battlefield. The elves had tried, Medea had tried. But Diaz knew that wouldn't work. She knew Myra's every weakness and she'd engineered a war that struck at them all.
Poison instead of fists and steel. Her daughter. Jasper. Striking from the
shadows instead of in the light of day. Turning her people, the one ally she could always rely on, against her.
Though of course, it worked in reverse. That was the key, she thought to herself. She knew Diaz. Knew her as only someone who'd fought beside her for fifty odd years could. That, in the end, was the key to winning this. She'd wield her pride, her anger and her longing for a fight. She'd wield her arrogance and expectations.
Diaz had been using Myra's weaknesses for a while. It was time for her to get a taste of her own medicine.