"The flame of my heart is pledged to you, heir to the Pyro throne," Amarante murmured from where she knelt at Minerva's feet. Behind the kirukist, the ranks of highborn began to make their re-entrance to the assembly hall. "I will serve you until my life flame dies. This I swear."
"Rise. I accept your oath," Minerva intoned. On either side of her throne, a row of guards kept watch over the proceedings. Though her father had offered her the Blackguard, she'd asked Matsudo to handpick from among his former soldiers instead. She didn't care to be assassinated today.
They'd gone so far as to paint a white circle on the right shoulder of their armor, black sun still showing on their left. One of their number—Pyra if she remembered correctly—leaned forward from her post directly at Minerva's elbow to whisper a warning. "Heir Apparent, I would advise caution. This woman is not known to be ... stable."
Minerva winced. Inside her sleeves, she ran her fingers along the scars that had formed on her hands.
She couldn't have been more surprised when Amarante only grumbled, "This is what I get for not leaving the mountain this decade. You'd think being thrown in the pond would be enough for the week." But then the kirukist stuck her tongue out at Pyra and any credibility she'd just garnered for being somewhat normal burned to ash.
"We appreciate your loyal concern, Pyra," Minerva said, "but it is unnecessary."
The woman bowed and withdrew, though out of the corner of her eye, Minerva caught sight of Pyra's hand gripping her sword hilt.
Amarante stood with a huff, brushing off her chima. She held out her hand.
Minerva hesitated before pulling back her sleeve and opening her fist. Her mouth opened in a silent, anguished cry when Amarante snatched the gem from her palm, the kirukist's bone fingers brushing her palm for the briefest of seconds.
They were warmer than Minerva would have expected bones to be.
"My, what a beauty," Amarante cooed. Not taking her eyes off the kirukkan stone, she unlatched the case at her side.
Leaning forward in her seat, Minerva watched with interest as the kirukist fastened a device to her head with a metal arm that focused multiple lenses over her right eye. "The clarity is flawless. No imperfections," Amarante said in an awed whisper.
As minutes burned by—fed to Amarante's inspection—the nobles waiting to give their oaths grew restless. When Brenna pushed through the crowd amidst glaring prefecture rulers, Kaolin moved to bar her way. Minerva waved her back. She supposed she should be grateful for her guards' hyper vigilance, but it was also beginning to wear at her.
"They don't like to be kept waiting," Brenna said in a low tone. She glanced at the preoccupied kirukist. "Especially not by a commoner."
"She's not a commoner, Bren. Not when in imperial employ," Minerva answered, though she glanced worriedly at the people continuing to funnel into the hall.
"Alright, but we may have some bigger fish to fry," Brenna said, resting her hands on her hips. She'd braided her long white hair into braids and twisted them into a crown about her head.
Minerva frowned. "You've said that phrase before. I still don't quite understand it means."
"Bigger fish mean bigger problems, bigger people," Brenna explained with semi-patience. She held her hands out, the space between them widening with each "bigger" she added.
"And why are we frying people?" Minerva asked.
With a sigh of disgust, the Hydro noble spat at the air. Her hand whipped out to catch the spittle before it struck the ground and a second later, it dissolved to vapor.
Minerva tried to disguise her chuckle as a cough.
Brenna caught it regardless. "No respect—" the rest of her complaining spiraled into a Hydro dialect, but Minerva was sure it wasn't flattering.
"Finished." Amarante held out Minerva's kirukkan stone, now encased in a thin silver backing on a matching chain. She snapped her fingers and pointed at Kaolin. "You."
Kaolin didn't argue—Minerva attributed it to her being around the same social rank as Amarante. Instead, she accepted the heart stone and took upon herself the task of weaving it into Minerva's hair.
"You have my thanks, Amarante," Minerva said.
The kirukist grunted. She continued to stand directly before the dais, staring at the portraits on the wall and oblivious to those waiting behind her. Finally, she seemed to come to herself. "Send some dumplings up to the mountain if you can't come for a visit."
Before Minerva could say another word, Amarante shuffled down the steps and past the waiting ranks. Kaolin drew her hands away and the feather-light weight of the stone rested on her forehead.
The next nobleman in line didn't hesitate to ascend the steps and give his pledge—albeit with no emotion in his voice or gaze. He reminded Minerva of the poetry recitations that took place at sakura festivals. Noblemen were supposed to write original works and deliver them to the crowd of fawning noblewomen—often dedicating the poem to one or another of the ladies—but more often lines were stolen from several classical poems and compiled into a lackluster presentation.
Even her sleeve would not be enough to cover up the yawn that threatened to split her mouth open like a ripe melon.
"Amarante would have a place on the weather council if she were Hydro," Brenna said thoughtfully, as if she sensed the sleepiness threatening to be Minerva's undoing.
Minerva nodded her head to dismiss the latest oath-giver. The tendons in her neck felt as if they'd been worn to snapping and might give away at any moment to send her head rolling down the steps and across the carpeted floor.
"And what is that one supposed to mean, Bren?"
Brenna paused. She stood one step below Minerva's makeshift throne so their heads were nearly level. The Hydro woman's bearing—with her arms crossed behind her back and her feet spread apart in a solid stance—Minerva noted to be close to parade rest.
She stood among the ranks of soldiers in a golden field. Feet apart. Hands back. Head held high. A horn's blast marked the dawn of a new day and a round of whip lashes for anyone caught still sleeping in their tent. When her tongue flicked against the crack in her lip, she tasted the tang of dried blood.
Minerva's back straightened without thought.
"It does not mean anything," Brenna said softly, but Minerva knew those particular words did hold meaning. They signified that Brenna had been unable to find the right ones. That the pieces she had to work with—after being converted first from thought to her native dialect, and from there to High speech, after which she still needed to translate into terms a Pyro would understand—did not amount to many pieces at all and so she chose the trump piece instead.
Silence.
For that reason, Brenna could often be read as untalkative and sullen outside of training mat. Minerva's worries about her being angry about the earlier frying comment were swept away however, when the Hydro's eyes brightened.
"Ah, here the bigger fish are," Brenne whispered happily.
Minerva frowned and turned to look at who was next in line to pledge their undying—but fake nonetheless—loyalty to the Heir Apparent.
Her blood stilled in her veins when the High King of Polara climbed the steps and sank to one knee in front of her.
Both his head and facial hair were shorter than a Pyro male's, but the planes of his face were more harshly cut. The King's blue cape fluttered to rest on the steps below him at the same moment he lowered the azure trident in his hand to the floor—a resounding thud filling the hall as it struck.
His eyes are not like his son's, was Minerva's first thought when their gazes met in a clash of sun and snow. For the Hydro King's eyes were so pale they were almost white—like her dream of the blizzard and its fury.
Once, back when she and Brenna first began speaking, Minerva had asked her of the monarch she'd left. Her Hydro acquaintance had replied with a rare reverence that Minerva had never heard since. "There are many kings and queens and all the people adore them."
"How can you know that?" Minerva had argued. "When you say 'all', you can't possibly mean it."
"I do mean it," Brenna said sternly. "When the High King's coronation is held, a search is sent out for the filthiest beggar in the poorest slum of the city. They are the one who places the crown on their monarch's head. They are the one who gives the command 'The crown must not make the king. The king must make the crown'. Then the king rises from his throne and embraces them."
Brenna's eyes had filled with tears as she defended her home, her country—her king.
Now, the High King's crown glistened like a frozen memory of those tears before Minerva—a crown of ice—and she found she could not take her eyes off it.
If there were a proper protocol, a token she should be extending, Minerva had forgotten it. Time locked her in a silent battle with Taras Nakoya. If one rule existed throughout the four regions, it was that the first one to speak lost the political edge.
He remained a frozen glacier—Minerva less so due to the steady pain in her side and the knowledge that she looked less than perfect with the puckered scars on her cheek.
She dropped her eyes first, but he was the one that spoke.
"I hear you refused my offer."
He did not smile. Minerva thought he'd look exactly like an older version of his son if he did. Kaolin shifted at her side, a subtle reminder of the role she needed to play, while Brenna made a muted salute to her former monarch on the other.
"It was a gracious offer, but one I am not in a position to accept," Minerva answered, trying to soften her voice while keeping it equally firm.
"You keep interesting company," the King rejoined. He nodded to Brenna and asked a question in the dialect the Hydro woman had cursed in several audiences before.
Minerva watched Brenna's cheeks flush with what she could only describe as joy. It was as if she'd been a wilting flower and Taras had graced her with rain. With considerable effort, Minerva kept her nails from cutting into the flesh of her palms.
When their conversation carried on, Minerva knew he'd taken ground from her that she couldn't regain. But maidservants were not useless.
"He displays ill-breeding in ignoring you." Kaolin's swift tongue dealt the blow in Pyro common. The rest of Minerva's guards murmured their assent.
Brenna startled—she'd understood even if Taras hadn't—and Minerva waited while she gave a rough translation.
The High King gave a well-mannered chuckle. "A thousand pardons for speaking of you in your presence, but I had asked Brenna here if she enjoyed the empire."
Minerva wondered what kingdom he came from that he referred to subjects—not even currently his—on a first name basis. She answered her own question. The Polar Kingdom, of course.
"She calls you her greatest friend."
Minerva didn't know what to say, but she knew she had to say something. "I am honored to know her."
The High King nodded, still kneeling on the step as if immune to the affliction of aged joints. "She's watched you all these years and the report is favorable." Without allowing time to process his casual confession, the High King saluted her. Two fingers pressed to the forehead. Fist over the heart.
And he gave his vow.
"I, Taras Nakoya, High King of Polara, Lord of the Moon, Bringer of Tides, do swear an oath of fealty to Minerva Pyroline, heir to the Pyro throne." A breath shuddered in his lungs, a scale on a dragon's hide before it broke free. "To serve, to protect, to fight should she so desire. In the presence of witnesses, this I swear."
Though she often struggled to decipher the veiled language of Pyro nobles, the meaning of Taras' oath could not have been clearer to Minerva's mind. The snow had bowed to the sun.
She now held a King at her command.