of iron and crowns

CHAPTER TWO,

OF IRON AND CROWNS | TWO

MYRINA, ASTERIA AND Danna were her guests for the night. They sat around the dinner table, laughing about the small matters that occurred around the Palace daily, sniggering about the latest gossip and thinking about the futures of all their friends. But never themselves. They never discussed themselves.

Myrina poured Asteria a cup of wine, and the future duchess smiled as she raised the newly filled goblet. "Been an exciting while."

Danna, sardonic and wry as always, said, "It's always exciting around here. The day it's not exciting is the day something is wrong. Gong ju, gang de 'am mm 'am ah?"

It was strangely out of place, the last words said in the dialect of Xiang Zhou. But Danna occasionally used it to accentuate her sarcastic lines, of which she had plenty. For the last few years she'd mostly reverted to using the main dialect, spoken in Hong Cheng and its surrounding cities, but recently she'd seemed to be practicising her Xiang Zhou dialect again. God knew why. Perhaps she was spending too much time around her sisters, Megara and Hebe.

Irina replied, "You know my Xiang Zhou dialect is rusty."

"Not rusty enough you can't understand that," Danna frowned, pushing her sleeve back as she took a long sip of her drink.

"Perhaps not," Irina mused, picking up a piece of fried chicken breast and placing it in her dish. She also took some of the wa wa cai. It was a bit spicy, just to her taste. Everything in her life seemed to revolve around food right now, for some strange reason. Food and marriage. Those two things were currently running her life, and she wasn't exactly sure how she particularly felt about that.

Myrina murmured, "Even I understood that, Irina, and I don't even speak the Xiang Zhou tongue."

Asteria said, "You should learn it. They speak it often in Gira as well."

"I see no point in the foreseeable future where I'd ever go to Gira," Myrina said politely. "I run errands, yes, but not in places like that. There I'm a fish out of winter. A very obvious fish out of water, actually. I'd be dead before an hour."

"Gira's not that bad," Irina frowned. "Depends heavily on the area of town you stay in."

"The ports are in the worst," Myrina pointed out.

"Gira has its own set of rules and laws that none of us can understand," Asteria tilted her head. "But they still have a rule of honour and a moral compass. Most of them, anyways."

"You cannot speak for all of them," Danna said gently. "Some of them are good, some of them are bad. Unfortunately, considering the general scene of the world at large, I'd say they're mainly the latter."

Irina mocked, "Daneira Pang's cynicism at its finest."

"Coming from Gu Longyu, that's rich." Danna's remarks were always scathing. They'd all gotten used to it long ago. If you took offence every time Danna made a jab at you, you'd always be angry, and that was very bad for your heart.

It had always fascinated her somewhat, the way most leaders had heart problems of one kind or another. It was the stress. She'd know.

Asteria shook her head. "Well, it's Myrina's choice in the end. It could be helpful in the near future, but perhaps not in her line of work." Irina rarely sent Myrina into the heart of danger. Her wiccai powers would allow her to survive, most likely, and her training as a priestess of Hongyun might even make her an asset, but Myrina didn't belong on the battlefield. She belonged behind the scene, behind a desk, watching over everything and making sure nothing was going wrong. She wasn't built of the same stuff Justine or even Danna was.