The Fifth Queen

by Ali House

  Although Sav never had any trouble telling the twins apart, despite how alike they looked with their tawny skin, short black hair, and green eyes, after a few years of dating, Naydir let his hair grow a little longer, like Sav’s wavy grey hair. Zenyth refused to do the same, and for the first time since Kit had known them, there was a contrast between the twins other than their personalities.

  “Well, I wasn’t going anywhere,” Sav said, giving Naydir’s hand a gentle squeeze. “I just had to make sure that I wouldn’t have to legally marry Zenyth as well, because that would have been a much more complicated ceremony.”

  “Hey, just because you’re dating my twin, it doesn’t mean that I’d want to marry you,” Zenyth said. “I mean, I like hanging out with you two, but I am completely fine on my own.”

  “It’s going to be a small ceremony,” Naydir said, changing the subject. “Our parents, hopefully you two...”

  “Of course,” Vaughn replied.

  “We’re hoping that Bryanna and Cale will be able to make it. And, of course, some of Sav’s friends.”

  “And although the ceremony will be small, there will be lots of celebrating,” Sav added, his orange eyes twinkling as he laughed.

  Zenyth looked over at Kit. “So, are you two going to get married any time soon?”

  The bluntness of the question took Kit aback. She should have been expecting Zenyth to say something like that, but Zenyth had learned some tact over the past decade and wasn’t as blunt as she used to be. Kit knew that the question hadn’t been intended to be hurtful, but the answer wasn’t so simple.

  “Umm...” Kit tried to think of the right thing to say.

  Vaughn saved her by putting his arm around her shoulders and giving her a little squeeze. “Maybe someday we’ll think about it, but there’s no rush.”

  “Well, no offence to you two,” Sav said, “but there’s no way I’d want you pulling focus from our wedding. So, if you decide to get married, you’d better make it a long ways away.”

  The table laughed, and Kit was thankful to Sav for diffusing the awkward situation. Before they started dating, Naydir had been the one apologizing for all of Zenyth’s frankness, but Sav had quickly learned how to deal with any awkward situation. They made a great team.

  The subject changed, but Kit only half paid attention. She was still thinking about Zenyth’s question and how it had been right for her to ask it. Kit and Vaughn had been together for sixteen years and she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, but it wasn’t that simple. She couldn’t marry him, because she didn’t know if she could do that to him. Life with her wasn’t easy – for a multitude of reasons. She’d deceived him when they first met, lying about having more than one element; when he discovered her secret, she’d blackmailed him into keeping it; her secret had led to her disappearing on him for weeks, and when she finally resurfaced she had been brainwashed into someone else, someone who didn’t remember him; she’d also had a relationship during that time, and couldn’t stop calling that person’s name out in her sleep. And then there was the whole being the legendary Six-Elemental thing...

  She couldn’t ask Vaughn to spend the rest of his life dealing with her problems. If he ever wanted to go, she wanted him to have an easy way out – a door to go through if it all became too much. Marrying him would be like locking him into this life. It would make it hurt so much more if he ever decided to leave.

  Chapter 16

  Zenyth made herself a cup of strong tea before going back to her desk. While she could see the purpose of this new directive from the ISS, she didn’t understand why every single police officer had to read through all the newspapers in the Segment. It would have been more efficient to assign the task to one person or share the papers between officers, but she supposed that the ISS had a reason for doing it this way. Whether it was a good reason or not, she had to follow orders.

  Still, going through six island papers and a Segment paper every single shift was a bit much. Things were quiet at the moment, so it wasn’t like she could argue that they had better things to do, but that didn’t make the work any less tedious. After the Second Invasion there had almost been more work than they could handle, rounding up Tecken soldiers, searching for trouble-makers, and making sure the island was secure. These days most of the crime they dealt with consisted of young kids causing mischief. Just a few days ago she had to writeup two teenagers who were vandalizing trees in the park with a small knife. They weren’t even smart about it, doing it in the middle of the afternoon in broad daylight. In fact, they were so occupied with their task that Zenyth had been able to walk right up to them without them noticing. She’d cleared her throat, causing both of them to jump, and then she’d sighed with as much disdain as possible. After taking down their names, she told them to find better things to do and sent them on their way. Their files had a list of other such incidents, but they were all childish pranks, so she added her latest encounter and hoped that someday soon they’d grow up.

  Zenyth knew that she should appreciate these quiet days, because it meant that society was calming down, but instead she felt restless. She needed some kind of new project to sink her teeth into – preferably something that didn’t involve four hours of reading.

  Sitting down at her desk, she side-eyed the newspaper on top. She had saved the Briton Truth for last, knowing that it would be the newspaper that would annoy her the most. Other papers reported facts, but Briton managed to skew everything in a Humanist slant. Taking a sip of her tea, she sighed and started to read. As usual there were thinly-disguised jabs at Elementals and praise for the Church of Humanity – exactly what she’d come to expect. When she reached the crime pages, however, she sat up a little straighter and paid more attention.

  It had taken her four days to notice the pattern, but now that she had she couldn’t un-see it. Every single crime report in the paper involved an Elemental – and never on the innocent side. Any act of vandalism or theft or mischief was always attributed to someone with a non-Humanist hair colour or eye colour, or someone with a noticeable elemental Tattoo. Although Zenyth had never been to Briton, she knew that this ratio didn’t make sense. There had to be a vast amount of Humanists living on the island, so how was it that they never caused any trouble? Were reports being left out to make the Humanists appear infallible? Were reports being falsified to make the Elementals look worse? Or was it both?

  “Lei,” she called out. “Have you finished your papers yet?”

  She looked across the room, to where Officer Else Lei was sitting at her desk. Lei looked up from the folder she had been writing in and turned to Zenyth.

  “Yeah. Passed them on to Kyron half an hour ago. Why?”

  “Notice anything weird about the Briton crime pages?”

  Lei let out a breath as she thought back to what she’d read. “Well, they’ve got more crime than any other island. Their police force must be run off their feet.”

  “Did you notice how all the perpetrators are Elementals, and how not a single Humanist causes any trouble?”

  Lei shook her head. “I mean, it would make sense for Humanists to lie low. They got the spotlight pretty bad after the Second Invasion, and with the hate laws now officially on the books, it wouldn’t be smart for them to be causing trouble like they’ve done in the past.”

  For a second Zenyth wondered if she was reading too much into the crime reports. She didn’t like Humanists, so it wasn’t hard for her to find fault with them, and Lei had made some good points. Then again, something felt off. The Church of Humanity had done nothing after the Second Invasion, other than quieting down. They hadn’t revised their ideals or apologized for past actions or made a comment about how maybe it was okay to be an Elemental after all. It was entirely possible that the only thing they’d changed was the volume of their hatred – turning it from maximum to minimum.

  Maybe it was because she’d heard Kit’s stories about growing up on Briton, but Zenyth doubted that the Humanists would s
imply roll over and play dead. It was more likely that they were lying low, hoping to go unnoticed while they continued their wicked ways.

  She wasn’t surprised that Lei hadn’t thought too hard about the Briton crime reports. Heck, before this assignment, Zenyth hadn’t given much thought to any island other than Stanton. When the ISS reports came out after the Second Invasion stating that Briton seemed to have calmed down, everyone had nodded in relief and moved on. But maybe that was exactly what the Humanists had wanted.

  Zenyth checked the clock to see how long she had before her rounds. There was just enough time for her to start pulling together a report. A few years ago, she’d have gone straight to the Chief’s office, but these days she knew that a well-thought-out report was the way to go.

  Sometimes it was tough to be an adult.

  ≈

  It was late when Zenyth arrived home from work. As soon as she was through the door, she kicked off her shoes and headed to the kitchen to get a beer. She’d spent the last hour of work going through Briton’s newspapers and needed something to help turn her brain off.

  Leaning against the counter, she noticed that the dishes were piling up. It wasn’t an immediate problem, but the dirty dishes were starting to outnumber the clean. Eventually she’d run out of clean spoons and have to jump into action, but today wasn’t that day.

  Living alone had been an eye-opener. Although she’d had her own room many times, she’d never had a whole apartment to herself. It took just over a week for the mess to start reaching critical mass and for her to realize how tidy Naydir was and how often he’d picked up after her or cleaned up a little mess before it became a big one. She’d never realized how exhausting it was to keep things clean all the time. In a moment of weakness, she’d considered hiring her brother to come in once a week and keep things clean, but then thought better of it – mostly because she didn’t want him to think that she couldn’t handle living alone. Although Naydir and Sav had been dating for eight years, they’d only been living together for the past three. They probably would have moved in together sooner, but Naydir put off telling her that he wanted to live with Sav for so long that Zenyth eventually caught on and had to bring it up to him.

  That determined stubbornness was what got her through the first year living alone. She didn’t want to admit that she missed her brother, so whenever she found herself feeling lonely she’d turn the television on or go for a walk or look up groups to join. She’d played a lot of different sports during those months, most of which she’d never play again. A lot of time had been spent hanging out with Kit and Vaughn, who never said anything about her sudden and frequent appearances. Naturally she’d visited Naydir and Sav, but had been careful not to be there too often. At first living alone had been, well, lonely, but then she learned how much she liked being by herself. She’d always enjoyed having time to herself and being in her own apartment meant that she didn’t have to deal with other people in the morning.

  She also learned how to deal with untidiness, letting things go their natural way until the urge to clean hit her. Looking at the dishes, she didn’t feel even the slightest impulse to clean, so she took her beer and wandered into the living room.

  Her mind went back to the report. It wasn’t enough that she’d spotted a problem with Briton’s police reporting, she also needed to come up with some kind of way to address it. Why bother pointing it out if she couldn’t figure out how to fix it? It wouldn’t be enough to go down there and ask for every police report from the past year – they’d need some kind of way to infiltrate either the police station or newspaper, or both. Maybe they could plant spies.

  At that thought, she felt the start of a smile. It brought her back to sixteen years ago, when she’d been recruited by the ISS to located Tecken sympathizers and spies. Hiring a bunch of civilians to go around looking for suspicious things didn’t sound like the best idea, but the team had managed to do a pretty good job. They’d identified a Tecken soldier – mostly thanks to her – and even though Kit had gotten herself kidnapped and brainwashed, they’d managed to rescue her before too much damage could be done. It had been a strange, crazy time, but these days Zenyth found herself missing the sense of purpose it had given her.

  Of course she never wanted another war, but the thought of going on a secret mission was exciting enough. Maybe she’d be sent to Briton to investigate. It would make sense, considering the work she’d done for the ISS. Then again, there was a very real possibility that nothing would happen. The Chief would read her report, think that she was making a fuss over nothing, and life would go on as usual. But even if nothing became of this, she wanted to know that she’d done all she could.

  Falling onto the couch, she turned on the television and started flicking through the channels. After settling on a movie she’d already seen a few times before, she shut her mind off and tried to relax.

  Chapter 17

  The next day was Kit’s bi-monthly meeting with Augusta Frederick, the Leader of Stanton. Or, as she had started referring to it as, her bi-monthly waste of time because she still didn’t want to work for the ISS. It had been one of the concessions when Kit moved into the apartment building, and she’d considered it a small price to pay for personal safety. When they first started negotiations, the ISS wanted to have weekly meetings, while Kit didn’t want to attend any. Eventually both sides settled on once every two weeks.

  In the beginning she’d try to get out of these meetings by pretending to be ill or having to work, but Frederick would insist that another meeting be scheduled to make up for the one they missed. Eventually Kit learned that it was easier to give in. The one consolation was that she didn’t have to travel far. The meetings took place in Frederick’s office on the top floor of the ISS building, which was only a few blocks away from the apartment building.

  The meetings were disguised as ‘Segment Updates’, with Frederick filling Kit in on how things were going on each of the islands. In the beginning they used to be more informative, with notices about rebuilding that still needed to be done or rumours of possible uprisings in Tecken and Briton, but as the years passed the Segment quieted down. Now they weren’t much more than thinly disguised attempts to get Kit to join the ISS.

  Today she was feeling especially terrible, as her dreams last night had been filled with confusion. For the past five days she’d been getting letters with cryptic messages like: Everything is false; Don’t trust anyone; and They’re all lying to you. Kit had no idea who this Eon-Sun person was, but the letters they were sending were really getting annoying. In the past she’d received letters from Sixers praising her and others who were angry with her, but never before had she received anything so strange. It was weird enough that she’d started saving the letters, hoping to find some kind of message hidden within. On her way to the meeting she wondered if she should mention the letters to Frederick, but wasn’t sure what would it accomplish. Would the ISS be able to find some meaning that she couldn’t? It was more likely that they’d offer to investigate, but only if she agreed to work for them.

  As Kit walked up the six floors to Frederick’s office, taking the steps two at a time, she tried to look on the other bright side of these meetings – they were a great source of exercise. When she reached the top floor, she took a second to slow her heart rate before leaving the stairwell.

  Entering the room outside of Frederick’s office, Kit said hello to Teya, Frederick’s receptionist.

  “How are you doing today?” Teya said warmly.

  Kit smiled. “Pretty good, considering. How’s work?”

  “Well, Frederick’s got me sorting through some files, so that’ll be a fun task for the week ahead.”

  “I wish you the best of luck.”

  They chatted for a few more minutes before Teya buzzed Frederick to let her know that Kit was here. A reply came immediately, telling Teya to let Kit in.

  “Wish me luck,” Kit whispered before going through the door. Frederick’s office had
been designed to meet and greet guests, being larger than any other office in the building. It was almost half of the floor and was long enough to have glass windows on three sides. Kit recalled the first time she visited the ISS building, meeting with the coordinator for the civilian team, Triton Kolsovar, and how she’d enjoyed the view from his office on the fourth floor. The view from Frederick’s office put that one to shame.

  Frederick greeted her as she walked in, gesturing to the informal sitting area to the left. She looked much older than when Kit had first met her, with more grey in her black hair and more wrinkles around her orange eyes – all side effects of having a leadership position during a war. Kit walked over and took her usual seat, a comfortable stuffed chair upholstered in dark green, closest to the door. The sitting area had two chairs and a small couch, all in the same dark green, arranged around a small table.

  “Tea?” Frederick asked.

  “Yes, thank you,” Kit replied.

  Frederick walked over to her small kitchenette and poured two cups of tea, carrying them over to the sitting area. Kit took one of the cups and thanked her.

  “Have you seen the newspaper today?” Frederick asked, launching straight into it the second she was seated.

  Kit nodded. “They might have found a small island nearby that they can use for farming. Sounds like a good idea.”

  Frederick frowned. “Did you read the opinion page?”

  “I stopped reading that a long time ago. Why?”

  She stood up and walked over to her desk. “Well, there’s a rather interesting anonymous piece in today’s edition.” She picked up the paper from her desk and walked over to hand it to Kit. “It’s all about regulating Elementals and bringing in mandatory registration with proof of Acceptance.”