The war was horrific, in every sense of the word, and to have it resume in the very midst of peace negotiations only made it worse. Even as a diplomat-or perhaps because she was a diplomat-Shalassar found she had trouble thinking of the Arcanans as humans, and then the families of fallen soldiers had written her about their lost soldiers and asked to use the flag. She could hardly say no. But still…
“I’d rather hoped they’d stop writing us,” she said.
Thaminar paused mid bite to give her a look she didn’t need the marriage bond to read.
“Okay. No, not really. I just hoped it would get easier, is all.” She sighed. “They’re really asking us who to vote for?”
“Not at all,” Thaminar said. “They’re asking you. And reading between the lines, they’ve already decided. They’re asking you to endorse him and want to make political contributions as Green Star Mothers. Most of the letters are only to you and not to me at all.”
“Well, I’m not the most famous grieving mother anymore.” She pointed out. None of the other extended family members of the lost portal exploration team were as famous in their own right as Ambassador Shalassar Kolmayr-Brintal. And none of Sharona’s slaughtered children had been well known as Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr.
Until now.
‹Janaki.› Grief over the new losses slipped through Thaminar’s best efforts and she pulsed encouragement of her own back at him.
‹At least there’s a more famous mother now,› she pointed out.
Thaminar snorted. “No one’s going to be writing Emperor Zindel and Empress Varena expecting a reply or wanting to know if they’ve gotten their flag dimensions right. As if anyone would be going around policing grief!”
Shalassar’s wry return smile matched her husband’s. People had tried. None of their true friends were so crass, but the publicity-seeking social commentators who made their livings harassing public figures had reveled in it.
“Speaking of idiots,” Thaminar continued, “a rep from VBS stopped by again asking for a meeting off the record.”
“Not Krethva?” Shalassar gave him a look. Krethva wasn’t the only one to try to market Shalassar’s grief or to try to provoke her for shock value with snippy accusations of grieving in the wrong way. But she’d had the sharpest tongue and had inevitably become the one Shalassar publicly humiliated in a live Voicecast. She dreaded the moment when the woman found a way to return the public set down-not because she expected the reporter to be able to find words more painful than the hurt Shalassar already felt, but because she didn’t expect to be able to stay civil and coherent if Krethva managed to actually get a display of her grief and rage. Shalassar was half afraid she’d emerge from the interview with blood spattered everywhere and no memory of how it all got there other than a deep sense that Krethva has gotten what she deserved. And that Arcana deserved worse.
“No, not Krethva.” Thaminar broke into her red-tinted thoughts. “It was some other VBS Chava-ite. Any interest?”
Shalassar pressed away her emotions. “Sure, why not? Maybe I’ll finally be able to get the VBS to take a reasoned stance on respecting cetacean funeral rites.” She didn’t continue. Thaminar was well aware of her long-standing complaints about the string of Uromathian coastal villages who made toys out of whale bone. She suppressed a shudder. “So creepy.”
Thaminar speared another vegetable and ate it. The whales didn’t seem to care what happened to their remains after life left their bodies, but any market for cetacean body parts concerned the Cetacean Embassy. The Uromathians on Haimath Island also made memorials of their own ancestor’s remains, and Thaminar didn’t bring that up either. But his silence spoke volumes, and tight marriage bond or not, she already knew by heart the points he’d make.
He and Shalassar had feared they might outlive their daughter when she and Jathmar had become portal explorers, but they’d assumed that even in that horrific eventuality they’d have her remains brought home by the Portal Authority and properly buried. The flags were a thing Shalassar had invented because they had no normal way to mark their loss. And other families had had the same need.
Families of the Fallen Timbers portal exploration crew had started it by making their own flags, with Shalassar sending the first batch of them to her friends among the other families. The beginnings of a sob formed deep in her chest and she forced herself back to the last non-painful thing she could think of.
“I suppose we should tell people to support Darcel.”
Thaminar nodded. “He seemed like a decent enough young man. I hate to see anyone like that go into politics, but maybe he can do some good.”
They ate the rest of lunch without much more to say.
Back alone in her office, Shalassar sewed one more flag herself. She sealed the package and addressed it to Tajvana Palace. Empress Varena could display it in memory of Crown Prince Janaki Calirath or not, but Shalassar would give her the political prop if she needed it.
* * *
Campaign travel schedules were always hectic. Making them run smoothly was a formidable task, fit to challenge the best staff, even at the best of times. The New Farnalian winter harvest season, with the railways in high demand to transport food to the more frozen parts of Sharona, was not “the best of times” by any stretch of the imagination, and unplanned interruptions didn’t help at all. Unfortunately, they happened anyway, and at the moment, the backup engine with its bright “Elect Kinlafia Now” paint job was stalled somewhere behind the aquarium train stuck at the Whitterhoo platform.
The news crews who’d been running commentary stories about Darcel since the campaign began had a field day. One crew reported he was providing a gentlemanly right of way to the cetaceans. A competitor news organization claimed he was being pushed around by a few silly dolphins. They all showed the forlorn little engine alone, without any trailing cars, stuck behind a massive glass-sided aquarium train.
Few reports spared even a few moments for the field abutting the train track, shining with ripe winter wheat. The dolphins watched the harvest with interest while their long-suffering young interpreter attempted to explain why humans went to such lengths to eat plant roe when the oceans were so abundantly supplied with fully matured fish.
Chapter Seven
December 13
“Excuse me, Your Highness, but what are you doing at my desk?”
Her Imperial Highness, Crown Princess Andrin Calirath, started guiltily and dropped the page she’d been trying to read in the dim pre-morning light. Her elbow barked the edge of the desk and nearly toppled one of the stacks of paper filling the half dozen in-boxes of her father’s first councilor, Shamir Taje.
The man himself stood in the doorway to his offices in the Tajvana palace, and she felt a flash of guilt go through her. He wasn’t merely her father’s first councilor; he’d also been her tutor in many things related to the power and might of the imperial government back when she’d merely been studying to support her brother’s eventual reign.
“Did you need something?” Taje cradled his first cup of dark morning tea and blinked groggily at Andrin. “Why isn’t the lamp lit?”
Because I was trying to sneak a look at these papers without drawing any attention, Andrin thought but did not say. Lazima chan Zindico, her personal guardsman, stood at the side of the room and waited quite politely for the crown princess to explain. She looked up at her old teacher’s tired face, feeling her face heat, and drew a deep breath.