Chapter 1: Salasia
Eleven women hum at me for six full minutes before anyone speaks a word, and this is how I know I am about to be ruined.
Srilex council etiquette is simple. When the information is gay, they sing. When the information is dull, they tap their crystals together. When the information is a catastrophe, they hum, low and dreadful, until the one standing in the center of the Chamber of Quiet Glow begins to sweat.
I am sweating. Princesses should not sweat. 'tis considered vulgar. I do it regardless.
"You are doing the face," says a voice inside my head.
’Tis Zilexa.
She stands beside my mother's throne, perfectly still, her hands folded, the portrait of serenity and I can hear her in my head because I care for her.
When two Srilexians grow close enough for long enough, their minds braid together, and after that they may speak without mouths. It is intimate. It is also inconvenient. She has heard me think rude things about every councilor in this room.
"What face," I send back.
The one where you pretend to be calm and your eyebrows gets queer.
I fix my eyebrows with haste.
"Salasia," the High Speaker says at last. "Heir of Srilex. Daughter of the Crown."
"I am present, Honored Speaker." I bow my head. "And whatever it is thou hast summoned me to answer for, I swear upon the Crystal that I did not do it."
Nobody laughs. The chair beneath the third councilor sighs and curls its moss away from her, disgusted. Our chairs are alive, and very sensitive. They have opinions about tension.
Beneath my feet, the floor pulses pale pink. ’Tis rarium.
The veins of it run through this whole chamber like a heartbeat, the way they run through the whole planet. Every child of Srilex is taught the same truth before she can walk: the crystal is the world, and the world is the crystal. Break the one, and the other breaks with it.
I try not to wonder why such lesson has overcome my thought facility, suddenly.
My mother sits at the head of the council on the Moonglass Throne; Queen Rae. She does not gaze at me.
"Show her," she says.
A councilor flicks her wrist. The air in the center of the room ripples, and a picture blooms there in pale light. A planet. Blue and white and quite smug about it. Clouds. Oceans. A world absolutely drowning in water, as though it hath no sense at all.
"Earth," says the High Speaker. "A human world. Primitive in most respects. Loud. Damp. They also destroy their own planet with enormous machinery and a great many weapons, a habit pioneered by an interesting species of theirs."
"Which species?"
A pause. "Men."
Eleven faces fold into the same expression at once. It is the one we reserve for the Minister of Taxes.
"Men," I repeat slowly. "Pray, what are these men? Are they somehow lesser women?"
"No," says the second councilor, with great bitterness. "On Earth, they believe it is the women who are lesser."
I wait for the jest but alas it does not arrive.
"By what qualification?" I ask.
"Bodily strength, mostly. And confidence."
"Confidence," I say, "in place of competence."
"Precisely," says the High Speaker. "And one of them is trying to destroy us."
The hum rises again, and my abdomen feels like a star ready to explode.
"Exhale", Zilexa sends.
"I do exhale."
"You are doing the eyebrows again."
How could anyone be trying to destroy us? We do not exist. No one can see our planet.
The Veil is what has kept Srilex hidden for ten thousand years. Every great power in the galaxy has hunted our crystal, and every one of them has failed, because none could find us.
"They have found us," I whisper.
"Not yet." My mother's voice is quiet and firm. "But the man specie is close. His identification nomenclature is Russel Bert. He has built a machine to find. He is building a second to infiltrate. And a third to extract." Then she gazes at me, finally, and I wish she had not. "He means to take the rarium, Salasia. All of it."
The room dims. Under my feet, the crystal flickers, as if it has heard her.
I have been told my whole life that I will one day rule this planet. I have been taught diplomacy, war, and poise, and smiling when I wish to raise my voice. 'tis a thing I have never been taught; what to do when a strange species wishes to murder one's entire world.
"What wouldst thou have me do, Mother?"
The High Speaker answers. "Destroy the machines. All three. Or, if that proves impossible, silence all who know of them, and carry the machines home, so that we may be safe."
I stare at her. "Silence."
"Kill," my mother says plainly. "If you must."
Something in my chest cracks, and ’tis not my heart, exactly. ’Tis the part of me that has spent ten annums nodding politely and wishing, quietly, to be anyone else.
"Mother. I have never..."
"I know." Her face does not change. "That is why it must be you. Only you can pass among them. Only you have the mind to do it."
"And if I cannot?"
"Then you do not return." She says it the way one speaks of the weather. "If the crystal is taken, there will be no Srilex to return to, and no throne to be ashamed in front of. You will succeed, Salasia. One way or the other. Or we are all dead."
Silence. Even the chairs hold their breath.
A councilor steps forward and presses something cold into my palm. A thin band of silver glass for the wrist. "The Veil-Band. It will hide thy skin, thy gems, thy hair, if thou wishest. Thou wilt appear as one of them."
"Appear," I repeat.
"Also," says another, holding up a second image, "thou wilt need to wear this."
I look. It is a garment with two tubes. Two. One for each leg. The legs are separated.
"Humans keep their legs apart?" I say, horrified. "In public?"
"Salasia." My mother speaks very gently, for what I will later understand is the last time. "Do not get attached to anything on that planet."
I nod. I bow. I do everything a good heir should do.
"Salasia," Zilexa sends, and her voice in my head is cracking. "Come back to me."
I do not respond.
This is the first time in my life that I have kept silent in that link, and she feels it. I feel her feel it.
I do not know, standing in that glowing room with an entire world on my shoulders, that I have just been given the one order I will not be able to follow.
I do not know her name yet.
But I will.
