Second Daughter (The Royals of Dharia, Book Two)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  “Aniri.” Her mother’s voice had gentled. “You’re marrying a head of state. It’s not something you can do behind closed doors.” She gave Janak a look that said he was already in trouble and just dug deeper. “The people need to know the alliance is legitimate. If you are married in secret, it will work against the very confidence you are trying to build between the two peoples.”

  Aniri looked back and forth between Ash and her mother. With all their concerns for the politics, they were not so different. No wonder her mother was ready to adopt Ash and so readily agreed to their marriage. Her delight that it had been for love seemed shallow now, rooted less in her happiness for Aniri than in her approval of her choice.

  “Then the wedding will have to wait.” She said it with a tone that she hoped signaled the discussion had ended.

  “Aniri.” Whatever inner turmoil had been roiling through Ash had finally reached his face. “Can I speak with you a moment?” He took her hand, hardly waiting for her agreement, and towed her toward the back of the rehearsal hall. It was sufficiently large that even empty, with his boot steps resounding off the marble floors, they might reasonably have a private conversation in the rear alcoves.

  When they reached as far as they could go and still be in the room, Ash pulled her close and lightly cupped her cheeks. The torment was still plain as he dropped his voice to a whisper. “I would go with you, but—”

  “I don’t expect you to—”

  “Aniri.” He said her name like it hurt him and dropped his hands from her face. “I would go with you if I could possibly go.” His voice was still pained. “I know you well enough to know that nothing I say will stop you, but I can’t help thinking that you’re leaving because…” He paused, then straightened. “Because you’ve changed your mind. About the wedding.”

  “Ash, I haven’t.” But her words made her squirm. They were far too close to her own doubts. “We’ll have our wedding when I return, I promise.”

  He frowned, and she wasn’t quite sure if he believed her. But he only frowned and said, “They’ve already tried to kill you once. And now your sister.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, relieved he was only worried about that. “Janak is going with me. You can send a legion of guards along if you like. I’m only going to check on my sister, then I’ll return.” She didn’t mention that she had every intention of bringing Seledri back with her, but she would meet that challenge when she got there.

  “I’ll send a legion of guards and a skyship as well. With a fully functional burning glass, and a promise of swift and deadly retribution should anything happen to my Queen.” He looked pained again. “Aniri, please don’t do this.”

  “You could come with me.”

  “I can’t,” he said, his voice hiking up. “Certainly not the way I’m going to send you. You’re not yet Queen, and Seledri is your sister. Your arrival by the swift transport of the skyship is merely a concerned sister coming to visit the Samirians’ beloved future Queen. You have no authority to wage war… yet. But if I were to come, aboard the warship we just confiscated from a rogue group of Samirians… while tensions are high… it would be seen as something entirely different. It would be a provocation. Besides, your mother and I truly do need to make preparations, now that she knows about the possibility of war with Samir.” He stopped, looking frustrated. “My duty is here, Aniri. But if you leave, you’re taking my heart with you. Please stay. Marry me tomorrow in front of all our people. I promise we will get reassurances that Seledri is fine another way.”

  “I have to go, Ash.” She said it quietly, hoping he would understand.

  He stepped back from her, biting his lip to hold in words Aniri was sure she didn’t want to hear. Emotions warred across his face, until finally he said, “Of course you must do what you think is right.” He bowed slightly, hands pressed together, but said nothing more, simply brushed past her to rejoin her mother and Janak at the far side of the room.

  Tears burned at the back of her eyes, and the pall of Ash’s anger hung over her in his wake. Doubt fluttered up inside and battered her heart. But when she thought of her sister possibly lying dead in Samir, she couldn’t picture herself doing anything other than seeking her out and bringing her home.

  Aniri stood on the deck of the Prosperity, staring down at Ash on the terrace and hoping she wasn’t making a terrible mistake. The look on his face certainly said he thought she was.

  The walkplank had been pulled in, and the crew busied themselves with unlashing the tie downs to set the Prosperity free. The sailors were dressed in blue jackets the color of the Jungali sky with twin rows of crisp steel buttons down the front. The uniforms were new since their return from Sik province, and they made the Jungali crew appear a proper royal navy. The sailors’ shouts, the thrum of propellers in the thin mountain air, and the wind buffeting dull thuds against the gas bag above made calling farewell to her husband-to-be a pointless endeavor, so she simply held his gaze as the last ropes were cast off and the ship rose swiftly in the air. The movement was so sudden that Aniri had to grip the wooden railing to keep from tumbling to the deck. Boots pounded their way past her and down below decks as the ship put a hundred feet, then two, between them and the highest tower of Ash’s palace.

  Her future home and future husband. And she was leaving them.

  He had wanted her to stay. Begged her, practically. And yet still she was leaving. The hollow feeling in her stomach wasn’t from the rise of the rapidly ascending ship. It was the haunting feeling that she couldn’t trust her own heart. It seemed no matter where it led her, she ended up the fool for it. The ache in her stomach lasted well after she could no longer see Ash watching her go.

  The ship continued its steady rise, but now the delicate folding sails had fanned out and were turning the ship, pointing the bow east toward Samir and giving her an expansive view of the Jungali mountains. The setting sun in the west tarnished the snow-capped peaks with reddish-orange, and their lengthening shadows drew the valleys deeper and more mysterious. The skyship was fast, but they had to cross mountains and a sea before reaching Samir.

  Karan said the sailors could rotate through shifts, and night travel was possible with a star navigator adapted for air travel from the Samirian Navy, but the main problem was fuel. The ship could fly from Bhakti, the capital of Jungali, to Mahatvak, the capital of Samir, on one load of fuel. But they would have to refuel before making a return trip. The ship simply couldn’t fly when laden with all the fuel it would take to make the entire journey. So the Prosperity would stop at the Dharian coastal city of Chira—it was a shorter flight than to the Dharian naval docks, but still had rich stores of coal for refueling.

  All of which made her wonder about the Samirian’s capabilities: if the Dagger had been built, could it reach Dharia, or Jungali for that matter, without refueling? And if not, where did that leave them in terms of war? The sea between Dharia and Samir was relatively small compared to the breadth of land between the coasts and the inland capitals. The Samirians might be able to cross the water and return without refueling, but they wouldn’t be able to venture much farther inland. Aniri would have to ask Karan for further explanation—Ash had revealed the possibility of the second skyship to him and shared the schematics for the Dagger, but there had been no time to query Karan further about his thoughts.

  The air cooled as they rose and picked up speed, whipping through Aniri’s traveling clothes even with her latched leather jacket, heavy breeches, and knee-high boots. When she could no longer see the granite cliff where Ash’s estate perched, she turned away from the biting wind and followed the rest of the crew below. The hallways were clear as most had already reached their stations, or their bunks to rest before their shift later in the night. The evening air was untroubled, not shaking the ship as much as the last time she was aboard, but Aniri still glided her hand along the brass rails leading forward to the bridge. Gaslamps had already been lit, and their flames quaked with small tremors from th
e engine vibrations.

  When she reached the bridge, it was lit with an odd combination of waning red from sun, dancing yellow from the gaslamps, and white effervescence from the twin full moons. Both Raka and Indu shone through the lattice of windows that wrapped the length of the bridge. In the center of the room, Karan in his tinker clothes, bent over an expansive table, studying an assemblage of sheet maps. Along the back, one sailor in a blue uniform stood by a large brass-belled horn and another manned a bank of needled gauges. At the front, by the windows, a third sailor stood with a strange brass device mounted on a pivoting base.

  The instrument was roughly triangular in shape, but bristled with so many lenses and mirrors and knobs, it was difficult to discern its main function. The sailor using it peered through a miniature version of the aetherscope Aniri kept on her private rooftop observatory. Only he kept tilting the tiny scope left and right and fore and aft, in small motions, as if he were balancing it, all while making minute adjustments to the knobs.

  “Are ye able to get yer fix, Mr. Tarak?” Karan asked in his typical rumbled voice.

  “Aye, sir,” the crewman at the tiny aetherscope said. “The air’s as smooth as glass tonight. Sighting Raka at 50 degrees, 30 minutes, point six, sir.” He lifted his face away from the scope to look back at Karan. “What’s your time?”

  Karan leaned over the table to peer at a timekeeper in the middle. It had a large dial and a small one, both encased in industrial metalwork like it had just been ripped from the wall of a seagoing ship. “Seven minutes, three seconds past the hour, Mr. Tarak.” He picked up a pencil and made a note in on a slim piece of paper.

  Tarak waited as Karan shuffled the papers, apparently looking for one and not finding it. “Do you want me to plot the fix, sir?”

  “No, Mr. Tarak, I’m quite handy at me tables still.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Carry on, Mr. Tarak.” Karan waved him off without looking. “Go on and shoot the second moon.”

  “Aye, uh…” Tarak stalled out when he finally caught sight of Aniri standing in the threshold of the bulkhead door. Even in the flickering light, Aniri could see he was young, only a year or two older than her. His brown eyes grew wide, and Aniri guessed he knew exactly who she was, although she had never been on the bridge or met him before.

  Karan looked up from his papers. “What’s yer trouble—” He cut himself off at Tarak’s look and twisted back to see what had his navigator searching for words. “Ah, fresh,” Karan said when he saw her. “Was wondering how long it would take for ye to work yer way up to the bridge.”

  “I don’t want to interrupt your work.” Although curiosity was like a physical force drawing her inside the room.

  “Not to worry, fresh. We can work up a line of position even in the presence of royalty.” Karan’s smirk made her both relax and flush a little. He turned back to Tarak. “Do me proud, Mr. Tarak, and take the angle of Indu while I work these numbers.”

  Tarak jerked a little in surprise, then hastily turned back to his instrument. “Aye, sir.”

  Karan returned to sorting through the many sheets. Some were indeed maps, but others were tables of long, precisely rendered numbers. A thick, leather-bound book labeled Her Majesty’s Nautical Almanac sat at one corner of the table. Aniri watched as Karan found a sheet with a large circle marked in degrees that had also been crossed with spaced-out vertical and horizontal lines. Within the circle was a tiny x labeled “dead reckoning.” Karan worked quickly, flipping open the Almanac, consulting a table of numbers, then drawing two intersecting lines across the circle, one marked “Actual Position, Raka” and the other labeled “Line of Position, Raka.”

  “Are you plotting the positions of the moons?” Aniri didn’t understand celestial navigation, but she knew the navies—both Dharian and Samirian—used the positions of the stars as they hung in the aether to guide them. Perhaps they used the moons as well?

  “No, fresh. I’m plotting our position. But, aye, the moons help us find it.” He raised his voice to call out to Tarak. “Ready for the next fix, Mr. Tarak. At your leisure.”

  Tarak replied immediately, “Indu sighted at 40 degrees, 10 minutes, point two.”

  Karan glanced at the timepiece, whose translucent face didn’t quite conceal the multitude of tiny clockwork gears behind it. “Time is ten minutes, fourteen seconds past the hour.” He bent over his tables and the Almanac again.

  “Our current heading gives us good sights for three stars between the clouds,” Tarak said. “I’ve got a good view of Chitra on the port side. Shall I shoot that next, sir?”

  “Aye,” Karan said without looking.

  Aniri kept her voice low, peering at Karan’s plotting sheet as he worked. “I’d like to know more about the skyship, Karan. How she works. Her capabilities. Navigation as well, when you have time.”

  Karan didn’t answer until he plotted another set of crossed lines labeled for the moon Indu. “I told ye, you can have all the lessons you like, fresh.” He glanced up at Mr. Tarak, who was busy adjusting the star navigator to peer out the left side of the bridge windows. “However, Captain Tarak is probably best for teaching navigation.”

  “Captain Tarak?” Aniri asked in a whisper. “But he’s a boy, Karan.”

  “You always were a right quick one, fresh.” Karan chuckled.

  She made a face at him. “I mean he’s no older than I am.” She didn’t realize they would be traveling with a crew who didn’t have much more flight time than she did.

  “Aye.” Karan sighed, throwing a glance around the control room to the other crew, who Aniri guessed weren’t much older than Tarak either. “When Ashoka sent me off to Sik province to get the ship back in shape, he insisted on routing the Samirians from the crew. I knew we’d had a spot of trouble with the ambassador, but I figured it was that fool Garesh who had a mind to start a war. And he was Jungali. Sik province at that. Still, I followed orders. Trust me when I say Tarak’s the best of the lot, and by a nautical mile, too. He’s been navigating and building tables and maps for us from the start two years ago. Sharp lad.”

  Aniri shuffled closer to Karan along the edge of the table and dropped her voice. “What if we were to encounter difficulties in the air?” By which she meant another skyship. “Is Captain Tarak capable of command in that situation? I mean, Karan, it doesn’t make any sense. By all rights, you should be Captain of the Prosperity.”

  He smiled. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, fresh, but my place is in engines. Besides, I’m also a Samirian, in case ye forgot.”

  “But that doesn’t matter—”

  “I know you mean well by it, fresh. And ’course now I understand Ashoka’s concern a spot better. I know I have the prince’s confidence. Wouldn’t be on the ship, if I didn’t. And he’s trusting me to train his new aerial navy officers. Grand honor, that is. But I’d rather train ‘em up while we’re the only thing the sky, if you take my meaning.”

  “I had a few questions about that as well.” Her priority, of course, was ensuring her sister was safe from harm, and hopefully removing her from Samir altogether, but taking advantage of the trip to investigate the Samirian’s skyship capabilities was an opportunity they couldn’t pass up. She glanced at the crew and kept her voice low. “Given our limits on range, it would seem that much of Dharia and Jungali are out of reach—that any unwanted incursion would of necessity be one way.”

  “Aye,” Karan said, keeping his voice low as well. “Which isn’t the best for a war time mission. Range is a tricky thing, but we built the Prosperity for commerce, not war, and her range is from Bhakti to Kartavya, one way. I’ve looked over those schematics from Ashoka. Those plans are no different than the Prosperity, which means any ship built to those specs would have the same range.”

  “So a round trip would be limited to, say, port to port?”

  “Aye.” Karan glanced down at the map spread before him on which he was plotting their course. It showed the ports of Dharia
and Samir relatively close across the short sea, compared to the vast country of Dharia and the distant northern mountains of Jungali. “Which is a fine thing for ruining your neighbor’s navy, but not much for taking over a country. Unless that country is Samir.”

  Aniri frowned and peered at the map again. “Because Samir is so much smaller than Dharia.”

  “Far easier for Dharia to be the one makin’ those unwanted incursions.”

  She looked up. “But we have no intention—”

  “I know, fresh. But I’m not the only one who can read a map.” He sighed. “When we were building the Prosperity, we had all kinds of specialized parts shipped over from Samir. Once we land, those backdoor supply channels are a good place to look for any unusual trade. But schematics aren’t the same thing as a ship, fresh. Even the Prosperity has a few tweaks you won’t find in any plan. And if I was still workin’ for the Royal Guild of Tinkers in Samir, I’d be designing a different ship than the Prosperity. And building it as fast as I could put gears together.”

  Aniri nodded and cast a look around the bridge crew. They were ignoring the whispered conversation at the mapping table, as far as she could tell. A little louder, for the benefit of the crew, she said, “Still, I’d feel better if I knew more about how the Prosperity works.”

  “As soon as we’re done sighting our location, I’ll be happy to turn you over to the Captain for lessons.” He smirked, then pulled back suddenly at something over her shoulder.

  A glance back showed Janak had appeared from nowhere. He was apparently at pains to keep his stealthy raksaka reputation intact, in spite of whatever grief his injuries may still be causing him.

  “If your most royal highness can spare a moment from your aeronautical studies,” Janak said, “we have a few things to discuss.”

  She didn’t know how much Janak had overheard, but their mission wasn’t exactly a secret from him. “Of course. I’ve yet to find my cabin for the trip, but I assume Priya will be there.” She wasn’t sure when, or if, they would make Priya aware of the secret part of their mission.