The Queen of Quill

by Philip Hamm

  Faux-Zizania looked puzzled, “Why not? Everyone there will want to wish her well – shouldn’t she be happy?”

  “I’m sure she should – but that’s not the way she is.”

  “Rimmon did say she could be a little bit ungrateful – he mentioned all your hard work and the trouble she’s caused you. But he told me to be myself. He said it would be as though this Zizania had suddenly had, what did he call it? An epiphany – that she had realised, on the eve of her coronation, that she needed to mend her ways and be a better person. Does that make sense?”

  “Perfect sense,” Nacyon agreed. “But don’t be too nice or people won’t believe it.”

  “I don’t think anyone can be too nice,” she smiled. “That would be like saying you can have too much joy. But thank you for your advice.”

  “My pleasure, Your Majesty,” he said and really meant it; she was lovelier by far than the real Zizania.

  When the men had finished their water, they lifted the sleeping queen off the bed and into the sarcophagus. They put the lid back on and thanked the new Queen for her kindness. Then they hefted the crate onto their shoulders and prepared to leave.

  “Don’t drop her,” she smiled.

  Nacyon wanted to stay behind. He was worried she would give herself away. He said to Melanitta, “What if she doesn’t recognise somebody who ought to be familiar?”

  “Komtur Rimmon has extensive files and pictures on all the members of the Royal Household and all the people Zizania is likely to have met; he has been through them with her endless times.”

  “What if she makes a mistake?”

  “A coronation is a great occasion; she will be nervous and people will forgive her if she doesn’t remember their name.”

  Nacyon had to hope she was right. He said to faux-Zizania, “Good luck.”

  “Will I see you at the banquet?”

  “Only if you have binoculars, Your Majesty; they usually put me on the other side of the room.”

  She laughed, “I’ll ask if you be next to me, my Parrot.”

  Just for a moment, he thought the wrong Zizania was in the box. But it seemed Rimmon’s research was just as thorough as Melanitta said it was.

  He followed his friends out of the door and they began their slow descent of the stairs. Going down was even harder than coming up; they were tired and the crate was no lighter than it had been before. Nacyon took a turn, relieving Quail who was struggling the most. When they finally reached the bottom, they still had the long walk back to the wharf but at least the way was flat and they could carry the crate on their shoulders.

  The chamberlain approached them as they were leaving the hall. “Where are you going with the Queen’s gift? Why haven’t you put it with the others?”

  “The Queen has told us to take it to the Nidus,” Nacyon replied.

  “Whatever for?”

  “It’s a scared relic – that’s where it belongs.”

  “Shouldn’t the rest of the Household view it first?”

  Nacyon snapped, “This is what the Queen has instructed me to do. This is Her order and I will see it done. Or are you going to stand in my way and force me to disobey?”

  The chamberlain backed off, “No, my lord.”

  “She also wants you to change the seating arrangements,” he added. “She wants me beside her during the banquet.”

  The chamberlain looked shocked, “You’re not a close relation...”

  “No – but I’m the only friend she has. I didn’t spend all those years travelling across the Third Sphere for nothing; she appreciates what I’ve done for her and wants me by her side – or is that too much for you to cope with?”

  In truth, the chamberlain didn’t care where anyone sat. If Zizania wanted to sit next to a Poa-bird, that was fine by him – so long as the rest of the family didn’t complain. “I’ll make sure Prince Rhatany knows,” he said. “He was planning to sit next to her himself. And the table is set for fifteen – not sixteen...”

  “You’ll just have to squeeze an extra chair on the end,” Nacyon replied, turning away from him. “Or sit Prince Rhatany next to the door to the cloakroom – where you usually put me.”

  *

  Fratris asked, “Did you go to the banquet?”

  “I did,” Faam replied.

  “Was it very grand?”

  “It was very noisy – the hall was packed and they had an orchestra playing.”

  “Was the food good?” asked Crotal.

  “It was very sweet – the Quill chefs do like their sugar. But some of the confectionary was truly spectacular; great swans made of icing and eagles made of chocolate. There was lots of fruit, of course, and dozens of roasted birds of different kinds.”

  “Isn’t that like cannibalism?” Fratris smirked.

  “You could say that,” she smiled.

  Fengtai asked, “How long did it last?”

  “Most of the night – my bum ached by the end.”

  The boys laughed.

  “What about the fake Zizania?” said Fratris. “Did you notice she wasn’t the same?”

  “I could barely see her; we were on the other side of the room. But we did meet her briefly as she welcomed her guests at the door and there was a definite change; she was nice and smiled at Taylia and me; that’s not something the real Zizania would have ever done.”

  Fengtai asked, “Did Kalmia notice it too?”

  She spoke to Nacyon and he said the responsibility of becoming Queen had suddenly dawned on her; she was mending her ways and had even thanked him for his kindness over the years. He pretended to be as amazed as we were.”

  “But that was a lie...?”

  “Absolutely – but as far as he knew back then, faux-Zizania was a huge improvement and he didn’t care that she wasn’t the real queen. He was happy the original wasn’t embarrassing his people anymore.”

  “Did he feel any guilt?”

  “Rimmon had promised he wouldn’t harm her and that was good enough for him. He handed over the crate to Naaman and I imagine he hoped that was the last he would ever see of her.”

  Fengtai shook his head, “I don’t think that was right – he shouldn’t have thought that.”

  “Why not?” said Fratris. “She’d made his life a misery.”

  “She was just a girl. She might have changed as she grew older.”

  “Or got worse,” Fratris added.

  Crotal asked Faam, “What about your part in the story? What happened between Zizania leaving you on Kajawah and your arrival on Nidus?”

  “A few days after she left, the Rickobites came to Dulla and told the Government the Meros was closing because of the war between Rickoby and Penti.”

  “So, the mysterious ships really did belong to them?”

  “They did and we might have been trapped in the north except my future husband came with his people and offered to escort us all the way to Quill.”

  Fengtai asked, “Were you surprised to see him again?”

  “I was – he’d been a vagabond when I met him almost a year before but he came to meet me in a ship so alien and powerful it was overwhelming. By then, he had rescued the Kingdom of Cromorna from the Tun Empire and freed the Sagan home world of the IZN blockade. He had over a hundred Sagan among his bodyguards, a role they haven’t performed since the days of the Zarktek. I’d always known he wasn’t from Evigone but to be presented with such evidence was rather frightening.”

  “Did he escort you to Nidus?”

  “Not personally – he had issues of his own to solve and had to come back here to Panadawn. But he left his Sagan commander, Voralia, on the Cissoid and appointed Taylia for my protection. She had volunteered for his comitatus and because she was a former student, he thought she was best qualified to keep me safe.”

  “Were you pleased to see her?”

  “When I’d known her before, we hadn’t been friends. We were very different people; I loved the academic work and she was more interested in sports. Bu
t she shared my cabin as we travelled south and our friendship grew from there.”

  Crotal said, “And you got to Quill safely.”

  “The Cissoid did encounter the Rickobite warships on the Meros but my husband’s forces drove them off. However, even when we got to Nidus, and we thought were safe, Rimmon and his allies among the Quill were watching us…”

  16 - Faam and Taylia

  In her own words, Faam explained:

  I seemed to spend most of that last voyage from Kajawah to Nidus wandering around the upper decks in a kind of daze. It’s difficult to describe what it was like for us. There were less than a hundred students left. Most were hoping their governments were sending ships to Nidus to collect them but the news about Quill’s war with Zamut and Saron had put that in doubt. The other seven hundred or so had been dropped off in their empires during the previous semester, weeks before we returned to the Cissoid’s home port on Kajawah. The students from Xramarsis and other worlds in the north, including my best friend, Felices, had stayed behind when we started south again.

  It was a difficult journey for me too; I knew the Cissoid, my home for so many years, would no longer continue on its travels around the Third Sphere after the coronation and I had no idea what I would do next. Kalmia was hoping to find sanctuary with the Sagan or at least a place to hide until her issues with the Rickobites were resolved. But my future was looking very doubtful indeed. I’d only been a teacher and a personal tutor for a semester and I’d been looking forward to working my way up to becoming a lecturer and maybe a professor in time. I really enjoyed my job and the Cissoid was the only place I could do it; none of the other universities allow women to do more than teach children.

  It felt strange to walk around an almost empty ship. The great library on the top deck was deserted, the lecture theatres were empty and the ballroom was quiet. When we ate in the refectory, we could eat in a single sitting rather than take turns. Most of the domestic staff, with the exception of Security and the ship’s engineers, had remained on Kajawah, hoping to find new jobs with the Sa’ic Company.

  I did my best to keep my tutees busy with researching the history of the Quill Empire and its Royal Household. They were all scholarship students, on the Cissoid by merit rather than because their families had paid for them to be there. Most were orphans and had no homes to go back to and they were more worried than the rest by the closing of the university. I could just about imagine finding a role on Sagan or even joining my future husband in his quest to bring justice to the Third Sphere, but they couldn’t see any future beyond the Cissoid. They were very worried and, like me, seemed to spend most of that voyage in a daze.

  Our one rock at that time was Taylia. All the students admired her. When she jogged around the track on the main deck or swam in the pool, they gathered to watch. The braver ones asked her to teach them self-defence and she began with a handful in the assembly hall. By the time we reached Nidus, she was teaching all the students and even some of the staff. It was the one positive activity on the whole journey.

  We had very little contact with our Sagan protector, Voralia. She wasn’t keen on the students and kept to herself or talked to Kalmia. But she left us, along with our escort, when we crossed the border into the Quill Empire.

  It took another two days to reach Nidus. We left the Cissoid in orbit and travelled down to the Golden Eyrie in boats. It was the middle of the night when we were shown to one of the special guest houses near the Palace of the Past.

  Even though they’re marvels of engineering, I’ve never enjoyed visiting the platforms. Over a mile above sea-level, where the air is much thinner, I always suffer a headache for most of my stay. It would be very easy for them to adjust the Exarch disks to create a field and increase the oxygen levels inside, but there is also the threat of fire to consider. All the buildings, bridges, walkways and beams are made of wood and at that altitude, they get very dry. Unlike us, they refuse to use small boats with Exarch disks so, if the platforms did catch light, there’s no quick way to escape other than by jumping over the side. However, it’s never windy because the platforms float with the breeze, like balloons, and though it was cold outside, the house where we were staying was very warm and comfortable.

  To my great joy, we were greeted by Princess Quillaia. She was my student mentor when I arrived on the Cissoid and helped me through my first year. We stayed friends even after she left to begin training to be the future Rani of Kakapo, a role she inherited officially when her father died.

  “Faam,” Quillaia said, hugging me tightly before I’d even got through the door. “I’m so happy you could come.”

  She was slightly mystified by Taylia’s presence so close to me. Though we shared a Sagan connection, the princess knew we had never been friends. “I have so much to tell you,” I said.

  The house where we were staying was full of the smell of its pine walls and floors. There was an eagle carved on the front door and the bannisters and newel-posts were in the shapes of storks and herons. The bird-theme extended to the beams with robins and tit-mice perched or flying in relief. Paintings depicted scenes from Virgate, the first world the Quill had colonised in the south, showing it as a kind of utopia with the winged forms of the ancestors flying against cerulean backgrounds.

  There were two floors and an attic but with nearly thirty of us from the Cissoid, the small rooms and narrow corridors soon became cramped and crowded. The younger girls were running up and down the stairs and even barefoot, keeping to Quill tradition, they were making a fearful row. Once we’d seen to our luggage and knew where we were going to sleep, Taylia, Quillaia and I left the house and went for a walk.

  Quillaia is just as beautiful as Zizania but slightly taller and a great deal more modest. She was elegantly dressed in silks with a pashmina shawl around her shoulders. We walked arm-in-arm along the narrow bridges between the rows of guest houses with Taylia following behind.

  We stopped on the edge of the great glass square. A few pilgrims were using the darkness to walk across its black surface without seeing the vertigo-inducing drop below. Near where we were standing, men were stringing wires along the top of the lampposts and connecting them to speakers for the coronation. Though none of the foreign guests would be allowed to attend the blessing on the planet’s surface, it was going to be broadcast by radio.

  “I wouldn’t go on the glass at night,” Quillaia warned me. “It gets very cold and I don’t want your feet to freeze. During the day, the sun warms the surface just enough to make it bearable and as long as you don’t look down, it’s a better experience.”

  Taylia, immune to cold, stepped onto the glass anyway and started to walk towards the centre. As my bodyguard, she was taking a risk by leaving me but as there were so few people about, it wasn’t very great.

  Quillaia asked, “How did you end up as friends?”

  I told her about the new role Taylia was playing on behalf of my future husband. She listened with increasing amazement as I described the ships that had escorted us as far as the border. Of course, I didn’t know much about Panadawn then; I hadn’t been inside the great ark or seen its vast palaces. But the warship James had brought to Kajawah and the presence of a Sagan comitatus had been impressive enough. I told Quillaia about them and concluded, “They’re a new force in Evigone.”

  “But are they here to do good or just seize power?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  She was quiet for a while. We watched Taylia walk out to the middle of the platform to stare down through the glass at the clouds below. I knew I wouldn’t have been that brave.

  I asked Quillaia, “How’s Zizania settling into her new position?”

  “I haven’t seen much of her. Rhatany has been showing her around the new flagship, the Aquila. I doubt if she was in the least bit interested but he’s hoping she’ll just leave him and Quern to get on with the war.”

  “And will she?”

  “I expect so; you can’t stop
a cloud from starting to rain and he made sure none of us were aware of his plans until it was too late. Our aunt, Rani Rhus, is furious. She thinks this will be the ruin of the Empire and I agree.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s much chance of it stopping until Zamut arrives in force and you’re facing defeat.”

  “Rhatany and Quern think our navy can handle theirs but we’ve seen their ships, haven’t we? Do you remember the Navy Day on Paragon when they showed off their new battleship, the Paragon 1-B. It dwarfed the Cissoid. But when our fleet attacked the three Zamut systems, they only faced pickets and light cruisers.”

  “I can understand why you chose to invade Sapadilla, but why Exitine and Damocles? There are no Quill colonies there, just prisoners from the last war...?”

  “Rhatany believes we can reclaim them without contravening the Neutral Zone Treaty because they’re not properly aligned to the Zamut Empire; they were designated as prison planets by the Council of Empires, administered but not ‘owned’ by Zamut. And we do have a prior claim – they were part of our northern expansion over five hundred years ago. We never developed them as colonies but we did leave markers behind.”

  “But what about Sapadilla? They held a referendum of the people and most of them said they wanted to remain part of Zamut...?”

  “Rhatany says that’s because our citizens boycotted the vote.”

  “Would it have made a difference?”

  “No – we’re out-numbered three to one but Rhatany is using their minority position to tell everyone here that our people on Sapadilla are being subjugated against their will. He’s telling lurid tales about unfair treatment and prejudice so that most of the common folk agree with his move to send our ships to defend them.”

  “What about the Rao of Sapadilla – has he returned to rule his world?”

  “Nacyon?” she smiled. “He gave up on that dream a long time ago and, to be honest, I don’t think Rhatany or Quern or any of the other members of their circle have given him a second thought. It was always a joke among them that he was called ‘Rao of Sapadilla’ – like calling a sparrow the ‘King of Birds’.”