Jala's Mask (9 page)

Azi came to Jala's room two hours later. He leaned against the wall near the door. “Are you glad the ceremonies are behind us? There'll still be a feast tonight for the other families. They'll all drink to your health until they can't walk straight, but it should be low on speeches. They'll be saving that for tomorrow.”

“For the Sectioning?”

Azi nodded. “I've never had to preside over it before. But you won't have to worry about it. Just don't drink too much, or all the shouting will make your head hurt. But I don't want to think about that right now. How do you like the First Isle so far? You haven't seen much of it yet, but you will as soon as things slow down a little. Just wait until there's a cold wind blowing and you sit in the hot springs. You'll never want to leave, I promise.”

“Iliana already told me about them. They do sound nice.”

Azi's face fell a little. Did he really think she was dependent on him to learn everything about her new home? “Oh. Well, there are other things I can show you. How about food? We have so many different things. There's food in the cellars that no one's even tried yet, from all over the coast and far into the mainland where there's no river to carry our ships.”

“Hmm, I don't think I want to be the first to try something no one knows how to cook.”

“I want you to like it here,” Azi said. “What can I do to make your stay here better? I haven't given you a wedding present yet. I'm king now, might as well do something worthwhile with it all. Tell me what you want and it's yours.”

“Oh,” Jala said. “Thank you.” She fell silent. What did she want? The question had caught her off guard. Before, she would have said,
I want to be queen
, but she had that now.

I want him to love me.

Where had that thought even come from? She wasn't supposed to want his love, not like this. Not if it meant she might love him, too. She'd been taught from a young age that love was something you felt for your family, and with that love came duty. While her cousins could hope to build love out of their marriages, and the villagers and sailors could marry whoever they wanted, her father always said romantic love would only blind her.

She didn't feel blinded. She felt free for the first time, giddy to be feeling something that wasn't supposed to be for her. But love wasn't something you could just ask for.

“Well?” Azi said, smiling expectantly. “There must be something you've always dreamed of having.”

She wanted him to love her, but she couldn't ask for that. If he could give that, he'd give it freely. And if not . . . she tried not to think about that and instead concentrated on something else. Jewels, clothes, she had all that. She had an exotic bird, even if it did sing the worst songs. Maybe a storyteller to recite all the Forty Tales of Love for them. She'd heard most of them already from her cousins, laughing with Marjani the whole time, but she'd always tried to imagine what it would be like to hear them in some sailor's arms.

But no. They could have that too easily enough, if he wanted it, and asking now would only be a frustrating tease if there wasn't anything they could actually do.

A kiss? Simple and heartfelt, something she could have at any time but worth the price of a precious jewel. It would be a nice gesture, at least. A better start than they'd had so far. Just a kiss, nothing more, and it would be enough for now. Maybe it would help them start over.

But even as she opened her mouth to say it another thought came to her, souring her fantasies like a bad smell. Jala's excitement vanished. Her parents would never forgive her if she wasted such a perfect opportunity. She knew what she had to ask for. What she was supposed to want. “I want you to give my family the city of Two Bones at the Sectioning tomorrow.”

Azi laughed. “What? I can't just take the Rafa's city from them.”

“You can, if you make it a present. Tomorrow, at the Sectioning.”

Azi's smile was gone now. “You've only been here a day. Don't you want to . . . can't you wait for your clothes to be unpacked and your bed to be slept in before you start making enemies?”

Jala shrugged. “My father says we're all enemies, we just haven't fought in two hundred years.”

“Well, my uncle says the Bardo are like sharks only without the good manners, but I don't always listen to him.”

“You asked what I wanted,” Jala said. “And I told you. You can't keep throwing the fact that you disobeyed your uncle to marry me back in my face.”

“Yes, and I thought I married you, not your father.” Azi stopped speaking and took a deep breath. “I don't know how we managed to turn this into an argument. That can't be what you want, not really. It's what your family wants. I want to give something to you, not for Jala of the Bardo or Jala the queen of the Five-and-One.”

Jala was silent for a moment. “I'm all of those things. I never pretended not to be. This matters to me. My family matters to me.”

“I thought you were different,” Azi said. “Not just a tool for your family.”

Jala flinched but didn't let her gaze waver.
I am different!
she wanted to say, though a part of her wondered about even that. She made herself respond. “You mean you thought I'd just sleep through all the parts where we actually rule. If that's it, I don't know who you were walking with on that beach when we met. But it wasn't me.”

“That's not what I meant—”

Jala shook her head. “You asked what I wanted, not what you wanted to give me. If you want to take back your gift, just say so.”

“No, you're right. I offered you anything you wanted, but I expected . . . it doesn't matter. Are you sure this is what you want?”

No
, Jala thought. “Yes,” she said.

“As you wish, my queen. If you'll excuse me, I'm tired from the journey, and I haven't seen my mother in weeks.”

Then he was gone.

Jala shut the door behind him and sat down on the bed.
Queens don't cry
, her mother had told her. “Well?” she said to the bird the Rafa had given her. “Sing me something, one of those beautiful foreign songs you're supposed to know. Or are you just a joke they decided to play on me?” The bird sang, in a language she didn't understand. It was beautiful, just as they said. But it sounded like a love song. Everything the bird sang sounded like a love song.

She finally had to throw a shoe at the bird to make it stop.

That evening, dinner went as Azi had predicted. The wine flowed freely, though Jala noticed that Azi, like her, drank little. They danced together, but Azi held her stiffly and his speech was distant and formal. Jala excused herself from any further dancing and sulked at the table.
He can't stay mad forever. You did what you had to, and he knows it. He would have done the same thing for his family, and everyone would expect as much because he's a man.

Once everyone tired of dancing, they ate the main course. Tonight it was salted meats from the mainland and freshly caught fish, followed by sweet cakes made from coconut milk.

After that everyone settled down to drinking and boasting. A Nongo captain told Jala about how his ship had found the book of tales given to her as a present.

“The winds were weak, and we found ourselves in some kind of strange undertow, pulling us off course. We had no idea at all where we'd landed and were afraid we'd be going home with nothing more than the laundry off some fisherman's lines. Not that we saw any fishermen, even. It was all rocks and mountains.

“But then old Adisa saw something up on the cliff. You'd never see it if you weren't looking at it from the right angle, and if you didn't have Adisa's hawk-eyes. Lucky for us, it turned out. We spent two days trying to find a way up, and when we'd almost given up, there it was, a hidden path with a small spring bubbling nearby.

“We snuck in, and we found old men, books, and gold. More old men than gold, as our luck would have it, but there was enough to fill the holds and bring back something special for my queen. They flung themselves on the book, those old men, trying to keep us from it. We made sure not to get any blood on it, though. You know what they say: blood on the gift makes bad blood between you. And that goes double for queens, I'm sure.”

Jala'd heard the saying before but hadn't really thought about it much. She pictured the old men huddling with their books, imagined Nongo sailors using clubs and sword hilts instead of blades to keep the pages clean. They wouldn't have killed them all, Jala reminded herself. Just the ones who tried to stop them. That was another saying.
Whatever you can take belongs to you, but leave a little for next time.
It was just the way things were. Even before the first king and queen the ships of the Five had raided along the mainland's shores and down its rivers. The shark didn't spend too much time wondering if it was wrong to eat the fish.

The other families' captains all had similar stories, of raiding towns and catching caravans unawares. Even the ambassadors spent much of their time reliving old raids, and the more they drank the more they tried to outdo each other. After a while all of the stories started to sound the same.

When she'd sat through enough of the stories to satisfy politeness, Jala excused herself and retreated to her rooms.

She laid in bed and flipped through the Nongo's book by the light of the moon shining through a window. It seemed so foolish to write stories down like that. Stories were alive. They had to change depending on what someone needed at the time of the telling, and they couldn't do that pinned to a sheet of paper.

She liked the illustrations, though. As she examined each intricately painted page, she tried to imagine what stories might be told about them. After a while, she fell asleep.

During the Sectioning of the mainland the next day the ambassadors and captains sat slumped in their seats. One even rested his forehead against the table.

Jala leaned over to Azi, who seemed much less hungover than the rest. “Are you sure they're alive?” she whispered.

Azi shrugged. “My uncle says if you let them come fresh and awake, they'll argue until the next morning. This way they just want to get back to bed.” He banged his fist on the table to get their attention. Several of them flinched at the sound. “The sooner we begin, the sooner it's over, my lords. Shall we start with the Autumn Lands?”

The Gana ambassador said, “Keen-lay has had a drought. Wan-lay to the south fares better, but they spend their riches on ships to patrol their coasts.”

Somehow, everyone's territories were having a hard time. There were bad crops, wars, plague, and natural disasters. Jala thought it was a wonder that anyone came back with silk and gold at all. It would be a greater wonder still when the storm season was over, and trade fleets set sail for the Constant City loaded down with the very goods that—to hear the ambassadors tell it—had become as hard to find as a dry fish in the Great Ocean.

Of course, when the Bardo's territory came up, she told them about the great flood that had covered the Orange Road in mud, blocking any caravans from getting through. Everyone knew it was an act, but that was how the Sectioning went, and all she could do was play her role.

“What about Two Bones?” Azi asked. He talked differently at the Sectioning, Jala noticed. Slower and more forceful, so that each word carried clearly through the entire room.
More like a king.
It didn't quite sound like
him
, though.

The Rafa ambassador shrugged. “A poor city, long fallen from its former glory. But it has always belonged to the Rafa, and we value our traditions more than gold.”

“Truly, my lord? I hear they still make a beautiful red dye there that my wife adores. Since the city is poor, it should be no great loss to the Rafa if I make Two Bones a gift to my queen.”

The other ambassadors sat up straighter, suddenly paying very close attention.