Archive of Our Own

Lila knew she ought to be doing something else.

It was the sun's fault, really. Their room caught the morning light, a cascade of sunbeams slipping up from the east, and as a result Lila was wasting time. By now she could have been properly dressed and shod and putting this hour into some useful activity: reading through the list in her hand again, double- and triple-checking what she needed to do today; tidying up the table she and Filena had turned into a catch-all for books and notes and maps; running down to the castle laundry before the early rush to pick up clean linens for their beds.

But for so many mornings of her life she'd been up and moving before the sun even crested the horizon, and now with a soft mattress to sit on and the light soothing as a hot bath on her back and shoulders--well, it was hard not to linger on her bed in the middle of a patch of light, trying to tie her sandals without looking at them so she could watch Filena go through her morning stretches.

That was a new pleasure, too; when they'd been on the road and Filena had arched and twisted in the grass or on the floor of some ratty inn, Lila had spotted movements and thought, Ah, that's how she avoided that Black Devil's's spear yesterday, and that's how she dodged when that thing with all the teeth was charging to take her head off--and then she'd think, What if she tries to dodge today, and misjudges, and-- Sometimes she'd distracted herself by asking Filena to teach her how to do this movement or that one; other times she had simply sat and tried to swallow the worry down into her stomach.

Now those were all worries of the past. Now she had different concerns, and watching Filena was like watching a dancer or acrobat, easy and free in her skin. Her hair turned from yellow to gold and back again as it moved through the light, and Lila saved up the sight of it in her mind.  Later, when the day was starting to feel too long, she'd dole out the memory of it to herself like sugar candy to keep her spirits up.

So when Filena, kneeling on the floor with her torso bent backwards along her heels, said something about Sophika, Lila was not in the most attentive frame of mind.

She'd almost managed to get her right sandal-strap knotted, but as Filena spoke her fingers fumbled and the knot slipped apart, and it wasn't till she'd caught the straps up again that the words settled in her brain.

"Did you really say that," she said, "or was I imagining it?"

Filena's expression, even upside down, was clearly puzzled. "About Sophika?"

"Right." Lila knotted the straps with a yank and sat straight, now alert.

"No, I said it. She wants to paint your portrait." She straightened and peered back over her shoulder. "What's the matter? I told Sophika it sounded like a good idea."

"Well--my portrait?" Lila blinked; the thought was too foreign to absorb at once. "Why now? Why mine?"

Filena rolled her shoulders into a shrug, and then further back. "Why not?"

"What about yours?"

"Mine too, eventually, I guess," Filena said, arms twisted behind her back to press her wrists together. "But everyone knows me already--well, they know my name. They ought to know you too. Besides, you could stand to have something easy to do for a while."

"But doesn't that sort of thing take ages and ages?" She could feel the idea settling now, and it didn't rest comfortably in her mind. "There's too much to do for me to sit around for hours every day," she said. "There's the old road plans to look up, and I need to figure out why we can't get the lights to work half the time, and I still haven't--"

"See? You're running nonstop from morning until night. It'll do you good to have an hour or so off your feet every day." Filena unfolded her legs, kicked them out into a wide V, and reached towards her ankles.

"I spend plenty of time off my feet." Lila lifted her hands above where she'd been perched on her bed. "See? Sitting."

"I mean sitting and not staring at a book or a list or a database screen." Filena's fingertips strained toward her toes. "Come push, will you?"

Lila slid off the bed. "You're doing just as much running around," she said, kneeling and laying her hand on the middle of Filena's back and pressing gently until the other woman's chin was just shy the floor-stones. "And you still haven't given me a good reason why she shouldn't she do your portrait first."

"Er." Filena kept her face turned downwards. "Well, you know, the last one was her grandfather's painting of my father, and she worked on that on so long she was sick of it, and...I sort of got the feeling she'd insisted to Yakos that she get to paint someone who wasn't going to look so similar."

"Ohh," Lila said. Sophika standing up for herself was long overdue, but if Yakos's sharp tongue had bred true, saying that she'd 'insisted' was probably putting it mildly. "I suppose that's hard to argue with."

"Right?" Filena touched her chin to the floor. "And it'll give you an excuse to dress up for a bit--you can wear one of my mother's dresses."

Lila rapped a knuckle against Filena's back, gently. "Let's not start on the dresses again, please. Is there anything you need me to look for today?"

"All right, all right." Filena rose, folded her legs, and sat cross-legged with her shoulders hunched in a way that hopefully wasn't going to undo all the stretching she'd done for the past half-hour.  "Mmm...Nest said a few Biseyla traders showed up in town--they want to know what the trade tax is, and if there are any restrictions on what they can sell. Can you check the library?"

"All right." Lila scribbled 'chk. lbry, Bisl. tax?' on her list, and folded the sheet. "What are you doing today?"

"Going down to the town to make sure no one's trying to sneak anyone else's patch of ground out from under them. Then trying to figure out which of the soldiers are sensible enough that I can send them to keep Lucibeh out of trouble, and then training some more with the ones who aren't." She propped her chin in one hand. "What are you doing?"

"Sorting out the cleaning shifts, I think. Doing another supply count. And then seeing what I can find in the library about trade taxes." She tucked the folded list into her sleeve and sighed. "And then I guess I'm deciding which of your mother's dresses I want to wear so I can sit and do nothing for an hour."

"Don't worry," Filena said. "If you can't find one you like, just wear what you have on."

Lila smiled, and mentally blocked out at least half an hour for sorting through the wardrobes. Filena was a wonder, but not one to take advice from in in matters of appropriate dress.

 
They'd stayed the first night on the beach, after all the fighting was over. There'd been no reason not to, after all. The little clutch of rebel soldiers had set up their tents where the tide wouldn't reach and were roasting fish over driftwood bonfires, and everyone had wanted to clasp Filena's hand or spin Lila in a dance around the fire, and eventually she and Filena had tumbled to the sand, laughing, Lila feeling light enough to rise up in the air with the fire-sparks. They'd cut the legs out from under the Empire and it had come crashing down in a thousand pieces, and nothing was ever going to be the same again.

The next morning she'd had woken up with salt-sticky skin and sand down the back of her dress, rolled over, and caught sight of the castle rising up from the sea like a great wave.

That's ours now, she'd thought, and the lightness of last evening had lessened a little.

She had taken longer than she really needed to scrub herself clean as best she could, and picked at some dried fruit one of the soldiers offered her for breakfast. But when Filena had woken she'd shaken the sand out of her hair, run through her stretches at top speed, and tugged Lila towards the castle entrance, and the others had followed behind them in twos and threes.

The main hall had been just as impressive as she'd remembered, high arched windows and deep blue draperies and walls and floors of smooth marble in delicate shades of white and green. They'd all looked around, and shuffled their feet, until Filena had let out a little chuckle.

"Well, we can't stay forever in this one room like mice living in the sideboard," she said. That had pulled a little nervous laughter from some of the others, too. "Everyone pick a direction--I'll go..." She pointed towards the east. "...That way. And we can all meet back here in a couple of hours, and go over what we've found."

"Be careful," Lila had said, without thinking. "That is--everyone be careful, of yourselves and what's here. There probably isn't anything dangerous, but..."

So the little group had broken up and scattered, and Lila had wandered off on her own. She and Filena had roamed through it once before, but then she'd been half-exhausted, overwhelmed with travel and revelations too grand her strange for her to comprehend, and the palace had been a beautiful unreality. Now she had time to see it, and it was all too much. Taken in pieces she could manage it--a pillar with carvings of dolphins leaping at its base there, and a jeweled tapestry of frolicking mermaids with their eyes picked out in emerald and sapphires there, and a delicate whitewood table trimmed with gilt (no, it must be gold) there--but when she tried to put it all together she got lightheaded. And she kept peering upwards--how did they ever get rid of cobwebs with ceilings so high?

Maybe spiders hadn't been allowed inside.

If there ever had been cobwebs in the corners, they weren't there now, and though the castle might have been underneath the ocean for sixteen years it certainly hadn't been filled to the brim with seawater. She'd remembered from her first trip through that the place had been spotless, but it was astounding just how well-kept it seemed. No sign of rust or corrosion or salt-growth to be seen, and the marble was as smooth and pristine as it must have been when it was first built. And--she could feel her mind trying to shy away from the morbidity of the thought--no sign of bodies at all. What had become of the remains of all the people who had lived in the castle? Was there some mechanism that tidied away the bodies until not even a finger-bone remained? Had they tried to flee outside into the distant woods, and been cut down as they ran? Had they gone to the walls and the windows by twos and threes, joined hands, and jumped into the sea?

The image left her a little chilled. She gentled her steps so the thwip of her sandals against the floor wouldn't echo, and pushed open doors with the barest tips of her fingers.

She left herself go where she felt pulled, and it seemed to be downward--through a long hall that must be heading towards the back of the palace, around a couple of turns, down a short flight of stairs to two tall doors that she had to shoulder open--

--into the kitchen.

Oh, she'd thought, and for a minute had thought nothing else.

It was, at the very least, twice the size of their entire house in Dorah. One, two, three ovens; cutting boards the size of tree trunks; pots and pans and paring knives and bread knives and things that looked like they whirred and chopped and that she'd be more likely to break than to every use properly.

Of course, they had so many people living here the kitchen had to be huge--and that touched off another thought that made her legs wobble.

Food. They--she--was going to have to do something about meals, and clothes, and getting everyone settled in. It might only be herself and Filena and Nest, Yakos and Sophika and Krim, and the little group of soldiers, but that was still plenty. Filena would be taking the king and queen's room of course, and Yakos and Sophika might or might not want to stay, but the soldiers would need rooms eventually--no, there had to be a barracks somewhere, didn't there? But they'd all need fresh sheets and clean water and decent meals; they couldn't all keep living off whatever rations they had for very long.

She'd gripped the doorframe to steady her legs and made herself walk through the room. You've got to see what's in here--better to know now if we're going to have catch fish for every meal.

There was a cold-room--everything inside coated in deep frost, certainly no good for eating now--and next to it, a pantry, far less intimidating than the kitchen; it was outsized but not so gargantuan, and most of the foodstuffs were recognizable even if they too were long past edible. Back against the wall were sealed containers of what turned out to be salt and sugar, and bins of rice and beans and barley; those were probably still good, and above them were shelves filled with jars of spices--their potency long gone, she found, after she'd taken a sniff of the cinnamon--and sheets of something green that smelled of the ocean when she brought them to her nose.

Seaweed?, she thought, for a baffled moment, and then, Well, why not? It was a sort of vegetable, and it meant they wouldn't lack for greens. Not that she'd dare to eat this after so long, but she could go--or send someone?--up and down the shoreline to collect some fresh. Heart heart lightened, and the knot that had twisted her stomach disappeared a little. It might not be grand eating, but they weren't going to starve.

At the end of the first night she and Filena had scrubbed the dishes together, and gone upstairs together, and Lila had thought, It will be all right. It will. I can do this.

And for a while, it had seemed like she would be all right. It might have been on a larger scale than she'd been used to, but it was still housekeeping, and that was something Lila could do. Sort out problems of living space and linens, keeping the place straight and bandaging up small injuries, cooking enough to feed everyone, it was all manageable--although for the first week or so they'd eaten far too much fish, and she'd had to be inventive with her recipes until the first batch of 'liberated' supplies had come in from past Lucibeh.

With them had come more rebel soldiers--some wounded and some not--and Clechia, and Amakune, in groups of five or ten. And in the weeks after that there'd been more, older people who'd once been Filoserans and younger ones who'd heard whispered stories of the fallen kingdom from their parents. Some of them stopped outside the castle, where the little clutch of tents was growing larger and larger each day, but some kept going up to the doors of the castle, and inside--men and women who wanted to do something, to help, be guards or run messages or help fetch and carry things in exchange for their bed and board.

So Lila had kept on with her tasks, even if it had kept her up and running from before dawn to the middle of the night, until the day when there was just one basketful too many of laundry for Lila to do on her own. When she'd asked if anyone could lend a hand, just for a bit, a pair of ladies--sisters? companions? she'd never managed to find out--had volunteered, and by the end of the week they had corralled enough additional girls into helping that Lila suddenly realized she no longer had any reason to be there. It went the same way with the cooking, when a husband and wife from Bor offered take care of the meals in shifts, and soon there were enough people around eager to help that for her to insist on cooking and cleaning when she could be working out how much food they could distribute to refugees or chasing down some bit of policy for Filena seemed--wrong.

It must have been a gradual build, but it seemed as though all at once she and Filena had enough responsibilities for four people, which they divided up between them as best they could. And now there were so many other people to deal with, people with problems and questions who knew enough to catch her eye if she passed them in the hall as she rushed from a quick meeting with Filena to the library to the town and then back to the castle again. Was the queen planning to send soldiers to clear the monsters out of the forest? How was the queen planning to distribute land to those who wanted it? What about the docks that had been just north of the castle--were there any plans for rebuilding them?

The first time someone had pinned her with a question that left her fumbling-- a pleasant-faced older gentleman who'd wanted to know about fishing rights--she'd cobbled together a deflecting phrase ("I can't say for certain, but I'll bring the matter up with Queen Filena!") and paired it with wide eyes and the smile she'd learned to practice as a girl whenever she'd passed a still puddle or a pane of glass--equal parts I am helpful and I am harmless. She'd fallen far out of the habit of arranging her face into that expression, but it still seemed to work just as well as it had on cold-eyed Imperials and gruff battlers in Dorah. People nodded, and smiled back, and went away, leaving her to scribble down whatever they'd asked her so she and Filena could talk about it when evening came around.

Nothing's fallen apart yet, she kept reminding herself. It could all be so much worse.

If she went and stood on the grand balcony now she would see, just past the rippled edge of the sand, the pointed tops of tents and even the skeletal boards of a house-frame here and there. The sight of a city and a country trying to build itself again, and herself and Filena--not at the crown of it, but below it, trying to hold it up.

Lila spent the early morning in the pantry totting up the remaining supplies and trying to plan out a schedule to make sure that people would not clean the same rooms three times in one day, and midmorning to early afternoon staring at the screen of the library's database. The electronics were out of date, but the databases themselves were simple enough to use, even if the files had a distressing tendency to refer her to 'block K761' or 'document A10-4:106/912'. Those were held in a frighteningly large and cold room that held only rows and rows of books and paper files and data cubes, and wandering up and down those aisles learning the sorting system was a task she was putting off until she absolutely couldn't avoid it.

An half-hour of punching in combinations of 'trade', 'tax', and 'tariff' and cross-checking them with 'Biselya' turned up a rigorously detailed tariff schedule for the entire kingdom, but calculating how to apply it to a burgeoning economy after sixteen years and various financial upheavals was beyond her. Accountant, she thought. We need an accountant, or maybe a herd of them.

Traders were a good sign, though, since people--people with money, at least--were going to have to start buying supplies sooner or later. Everyone out there was confident enough now, but most of them were still living on what they'd managed to carry off from Lucibeh and Bor. What were they going to eat when fall faded into winter? Fish and seaweed wouldn't last them all winter--years ago they must have traded with other countries, but now they barely had an economy, let alone ships or trade routes....

Was it too late to plant crops? What could grow in winter? All her first-hand knowledge of planting came from the sad attempts at gardens in Dorah's Clechia Quarter--little squares scratched out wherever a person could find a patch of dirt with enough life in it to grow something. But what had people planted in when the weather began to turn cold?

Her mind offered up a memory: stumbling on slippery patch of ground, landing on hands and knees, her eyes level with ragged leafy stalks fluttering in a chilly wind. Carrots. Carrots and leeks and...radishes? And potatoes in the deep winter?

None of which they had to plant, of course, and rebels and refugees weren't going to show up with packets of seeds and farming tools--or with the money to buy them. If we bought them ourselves from the Biselya and distributed them to anyone willing to work the land, in exchange for a portion of the crop...but we haven't got that much cash on hand.

Maybe they could buy them on credit, and pay the Biselya back with produce once they grew. If they grew.

She flipped over her to-do list for today, and began to scribble on the rear.

Half an hour later, the paper full and her head empty, she sat back. It looked like a workable plan—but there were too many factors, too many variables to consider. She'd have to see what Filena thought.

And she still had two hours before she needed to meet Sophika.

Following an idle thought, she dove back into the database and began throwing out search strings. There was a distressingly long series of image files of royal portraits; she tried cutting it down down to the ones painted in Filosera in the past century. That gave her something a little less overwhelming, and as she tapped the keys she could see the ingredients that would become Filena's features turning up here and there. There was her jawline on her four-times great-grandfather, and her eyes on a little girl who became Queen when she was only ten. One of Filena's father when he'd been young, one of Filena's mother in court dress, one of a sandy-haired man who would have been Filena's uncle--

She hit ‘NEXT' again and stopped, breath caught.

Lady Flora with Lady's-Mantle, In Bloom was the title, and indeed there were clusters of white and green blossoms around the woman's feet. And the woman herself--

That can't be right. That's got to be a different Flora, Lila thought even as portrait's details began to register more clearly to her eye, the shade of the lady's hair and the tilt of the nose and the shape of the ears all the same as Lila's own. Even once her mind started to settle around the idea (mother? that's my--?), she couldn't shake the sense of bafflement, some quality of the woman's manner and carriage as foreign to her as the swirls and waves of Filoseran script.

She sat and stared until the sound of the castle bells ringing the hour brought her back to herself. Then she turned the screen off, gathered up her things, and left, not quite running.

She managed to remember to go by the laundry to scoop up a pile full of fresh bed-linens and headed back towards their bedroom, stopping halfway up the staircase to give directions to the training courtyard to a confused-looked boy carrying a stack of towels.

"Tell Filena 'hello' from me if she's there," she said without thinking, and the confusion on the boy's face turned into slight panic. "I mean, you don't have to--" she began, but he'd bowed and run off before she finished.

She stood on the landing for a moment, trying to resist the urge to call, Come back! I'm not a person who gets bowed to!

Then she climbed the rest of stairs, and shut herself in the bedroom to make up the beds and to confront the wardrobe.

The dresses had been another problem altogether. Lila'd had to browbeat Filena into even putting one on, and after the Disastrous Incident she'd refused to wear another.

"Never again," she'd said, as Lila rescued the dress and stole from the corner they'd landed in. "I know why you wanted me to try it, but I'm not switching to dresses. They make me feel like I'm wrapped in a winding sheet."

"They're so lovely, though." Lila smoothed a wrinkle out of the one of the sleeves. "And all the colors suit you so well. It'd be a waste to just leave them shut up."

"You ought to have them, then." Filena tugged the stole out of Lila's hands and draped it around her shoulder, nudging her towards the mirror. "See? It looks much nicer on you."

"But they were your mother's!" Lila shrugged it off, edging away before she could catch sight of her reflection. "Don't you think she'd want you to wear them?"

"I think she'd rather have them worn by someone who isn't going to make them look ridiculous." Filena folded her arms. "If you want, I'll even make it an official act: I, Queen Filena of Filosera, hereby bestow unto you all of these clothes."

Lila had sighed with theatrical exasperation, but let the matter drop. Filena could be coaxed on other matters, up to and including ones involving potential death and destruction, but the topic of fashion choices was clearly one on which she was not going to budge. She put the dress and stole back in their places and said no more about it.

A week later she'd stolen half an hour between meetings, gone up to their bedroom alone, and pulled the wardrobe's contents out again.

They were beautiful dresses--glorious smooth silk and cloud-soft muslin, cut and fitted and draped in a style that looked effortlessly elegant when worn and had probably taken dozens of hours of construction to achieve. Some of them would never fit her properly without alterations, and others were in shades didn't work with her coloring, but after she'd set those aside she was left with half a roomful of gowns and shifts and wraps and scarves, slithering off of the tables and chairs and into one another.

Lila had stared at the vast array, matching piece to piece and marveling at all the potential combinations. In Dorah she'd owned two dresses (simply made, quietly pretty, made to stand up to rough handling) and at that time had still nursed a childhood ambition to have a different one for each day of the week. She had left Dorah with the one on her back and worn it through sewers and caves and fields, scrubbing out the worst stains when she could. By the time they'd reached Mon Shulay it was near tatters, and she'd used a little of their scavenged funds to buy a new one of sturdy unbleached cotton, and Amanela had pressed another one on her before she'd sent them off towards Bor, with the result that when Lila reached Filosera she possessed exactly as many wearable dresses as she'd had before she'd started out.

They were what she wore now, rolling out of bed and into whichever dress was cleanest, her mind already on taxes and land rights and medical supplies. How could she spend any time or energy deciding what to wear when the minute she woke up she were already busy trying to solve the hundred problems of the day before?

She'd contemplated the piles of clothes that were technically hers now for a few moments longer, running her fingertips over a lace-edged hem. Then she'd folded everything neatly, slipped them one by one back into the wardrobes, and hadn't looked at them since.

Now she threw open the doors and riffled through them in a rush, dismissing them one by one. Nothing too plain, and nothing too fancy. Nothing that's too tight or loose. Nothing that's going to be wrinkled just by my sitting in it. Nothing very dark, and nothing white--though a white accent, maybe....

She stared at them all, and felt the time passing as she wavered, indecisive.

By the time the next hour struck she'd picked out a sea-green gown--more out of desperation than any deliberate decision--and found a wrap of white lawn that would cover her sun-browned arms, and with a small stack of books and papers under her arm she picked her way back down the staircase to meet Sophika in the main hall.

The girl had a sketchboard and case tucked under her arm, and a bright smile on her face. "Thank you so much for doing this!" she chirped, and then, "Um, I guess I should call you 'your Majesty', right?"

"No," Lila said, quickly enough that Sophika blinked at her. "That is--since you knew me before, can't you just keep calling me 'Lila'?"

Sophika shook her head. "That's bad manners to call an adult like that, especially an important one like you." Her small face turned serious. "Grandad probably wouldn't like it if he found out."

"Then, well...maybe just 'Miss Lila'?" she temporized, and let the smile slip onto her face again. "I won't tell your grandfather if you won't." And then, trying not sound too eager to wriggle out of this, "Are you really sure you want to paint me? I'm not sure I'll be very good at posing for something like this."

"Don't worry," Sophika said. "It's me who has to do all the work. And I just want to do studies first, so we don't have to worry about everything being perfect today."

There went that excuse. "Well--" She held out the books. "Would it be all right for me to bring these along? I could set them on a table or something so I can read while you paint, but they won't be in the way of your view."

Sophika peered at the titles on the spines; Lila knew she was seeing A Complete History of Filosera and The Principles of Kingship and Of Courtly Manners and Morals. "Are you sure? They don't look like much fun to read."

"They aren't, but they're important." How to explain it to her? "I don't know much about being...about how a kingdom is run, and I'm trying to learn to help Filena, so I have to do a lot of studying. Would that be all right?"

"I guess so," Sophika said. "So we'll need a table, and--do you want to pose sitting or standing?"

"Sitting," she said. Filena was very clear about that.

"A table and a chair, then, and a stool for me." Sophika nodded.

They wandered up and down the halls a little until they found an antechamber that would keep good light for most of the day. Lila flagged down a round-faced man with an orca patch sewn clumsily on his tunic, and with his help they hauled in a little low table and an elegant chair and stool carved out of pale maple.

"Is this really all right?" Lila said. "When we first met you, you were so upset over that portrait...."

"It's fine!" Sophika was already unpacking her sketchboard. "I really do like to paint and draw, it was just that one I was so tired of working on. So you should be fine." She opened a little case of graphite and charcoal with a snap. "I asked Grandad if he wanted to do the portraits of you and Queen Filena, but he said I should try to do it myself first. 'A new artist for a new Filosera'."

"Ah." Lila pulled her wrap a little more tightly around her. "I guess I can't argue with that." She hovered next to the chair. "And I just...sit?"

"Mm! You'll have to hold still for a little bit, but I'll let you know when you can move."

So she propped a book—The Principles of Kingship—open on the table, and sat. All once there seemed to be too much of her to arrange neatly--hands, feet, elbows, skirts. Lady Flora's portrait still loomed in her mind—she'd no idea how to mimic the expression she'd had, but the pose itself had looked simple enough to imitate. Lila straightened her head, drew her shoulders back--no, that made it seem like she was trying to stick out her chest. A little more relaxed, then. Hands folded just so.

"All right," she said, and heard the gentle scratch of pencil on paper as Sophika began sketching.

"How was it?" Filena said that evening. She had an empty tray in front of her and a stack of books each thick as bricks spread across the table beyond it, and was leafing through one book in her lap, her bare feet propped on another stack of volumes on the floor. Most of the clutter on the table had been nudged away to make room, turning the far half into a drift of decades-old blueprints and folded scraps of paper. "I brought you some dinner, too." She nodded to where a covered tray sat beside rolls of nautical charts.

"A little rough on the shoulders," Lila said, rubbing at the slight ache just below her nape. Trying to keep herself relaxed had somehow had the opposite effect on her muscles.  "How was your day?"

"Rough on the feet." Filena wiggled her toes and leaned back further in her chair. "I keep forgetting what it feels like to sit down."

"What happened?"

She gave Lila a tired look. "I wasn't in town half an hour before a man came running up with word that they'd found some guy selling counterfeit herbs and healing waters, if you can believe it. He'd been there three days already."

"Are you serious?" Lila dropped into a chair across from her with a quiet thump.

"That's what you get in situations like this. A bunch of bright-eyed eager people ready to build a glorious new life, and lots and lots of opportunists ready to take advantage of them. So now--" She lifted the book; Lila saw the spine said Civil and Criminal Code of Filosera, Volume Fifteen.

Lila raised her eyebrows. "It's the monarch's job to hand out fines for small-time fraud?"

Filena heaved through another handful of pages. "It is in the absence of any other body of judgment."

"Wonderful." Lila peeked under the lid of her tray. Rice and chicken, it looked like--where in the world had someone found chicken? She had an awful thought of some refugee hauling a squawking chicken over five hundred miles just to offer it up to the castle kitchen. "What did you do with him?"

"Locked him one of the empty storerooms for the night, with a guard outside in case he needs anything." She rubbed her fingers together; they were a little dust-stained. "You know those holding cells down on the lower floors? No one's been able to find the keys or the access codes." She shut the book with a heavy whump. "And you never did answer my question."

Lila scooped a bite of rice into her mouth to give herself time to answer. "Sophika's doing studies," she said, when her mouth was clear. "Planning sketches. Looking to the left, to the right, straight ahead. The actual painting comes later, according to her."

"But you were off your feet?"

"Definitely. Long enough that I might need to get another cushion for that chair." She tugged her paper out of the seam of her dress, where she'd folded it. "I did find something about the taxes for Biselya. And something about that idea you had about distributing farmland to people who want it--about three hundred years ago, one the Filoseran kings broke up a lot of land owned by the nobility and handed it over to commoners." She checked her notes. "'So apportioned, one sheh to every citizen and their family willing to farm it.'"

"Sheh." Filena wrinkled her brow. "I know that's a measurement. What would it be to us?"

"From what I could figure, I think it's about twenty acres. But I don't know this or that about farming, so I don't know if it might be too much or too little. Or how to choose who should get which bit of land." Lila stared at the piles on the table and felt herself drooping even more. "We can't be doing this right. How did your parents manage?"

"I guess...they delegated. They had people they relied on to do important things for them." Filena pressed the heels of her hands over her eyes. "All of whom were probably executed by the Imperials sixteen years ago. Or they stayed with my parents and died that way. As much as I'd like to think some of them are still alive and'll show up one day to give us instructions on how we're meant to run things..."

"We could wait for the sea to dry up, too." Lila poked at a bit of chicken with her fork.

Filena sighed. "I know what we could do is pull out some of the people who have come in and find out who actually knows about farming or property rights or tidal dams. And then we can hope that they aren't all just saying they know about it so they can squeeze us out of money and supplies and run off with them."

"So." Lila elbowed the tray out of the way and rested her head on her folded arms. "Who do you trust?"

"To do anything important?" Filena let her hands drop to the table, then her head, mirroring Lila's pose. "You." Lila felt a flush start high on her cheeks, and turned a little into her arms to hide it. "Nest. Amanela, maybe, though I guess with the baby she's a little busy for this kind of thing right now."

"Don't let her hear you say that, or she'll take over the castle just to prove you wrong."

"So we need to hope an obviously trustworthy person who understands the legal code wanders our way."

"And an engineer." Filena nodded at the blueprints.

"And an accountant." Lila sighed.

"Well." Filena reached a hand out across the table. "At least your dress looks nice."

Lila clasped Filena's hand with her own. "You're just saying that because you don't know how many pins it took for me to get it to sit right."

"Doesn't matter," Filena said. "If I can't see the pins, they don't count."

A nice sentiment, Lila thought, but I'm not sure how true it is.

A week later, Lila had the feeling the sittings were not going well. Sophika hadn't said a word of discontent, but each day her expression over the paper grew a little more determined.

She had given up on trying to untangle The Principles of Kingship and instead brought a children's primer, Filosera, Star of the Sea, with words in the common tongue written above the flowing symbols. She was going to have to learn the language eventually, and sooner would be better than later. When she'd asked Filena had written her a syllabary, but even once she had that down there was still the language itself to learn; a children's book had seemed like the best option.

But the symbols were too slippery; every time she glanced away from one and then back she'd lost the meaning of it completely. And now Sophika--

"You don't seem happy," Lila said. The girl's feet, which usually swung between the legs of the stool as she drew, were still and sagging towards the floor.

Sophika peeked at her over the sketchboard, her forehead wrinkled and her expression frustrated.  "It looks like you, but everything's too...stiff. I thought maybe once we'd done this a few times it would settle more, but..." Her frown grew. "Maybe I'm not good enough to do something like this yet."

"No," Lila said, her heart sinking. "It's probably me. I did say I wouldn't be very good at this--"

The door opened before either of them could speak, and Nest poked his head in. "Finally," he said, catching sight of Lila. "You're a difficult girl to catch these days."

Her nerves twitched a little; Nest was helpful, in his own way, but he had a tendency to take Hunter and disappear for four hours or four days then pop back up with suggestions or problems that neither she nor Filena had even considered. "Not that I'm not glad to see you, but please don't tell me you have--"

"A question," he finished. "But only one. For the no-longer-underground newspaper. Unless you want to answer more..."

"Just one, please."

"All right, then. What do I call you?"

She lifted her eyebrows. "Er...my name? Am I supposed to be called something else now?"

"Well, 'Lila' is a little plain--" She gave him a long-suffering look, and he broke off. "No, no, what I meant was, when I--or anything in the paper--mentions you, how should I refer to you? Filena's the queen, and you are..."

He waved a hand for her to fill in the gap.

"Oh. I'm..." Her mind had gone blank as fresh paper

"'Queen's wife'? 'Queen's companion'? ‘Consort'? 'Co-queen'? 'Co-ruler'?" When she didn't speak, he grinned. "Really, all those times you fussed about being Filena's wife, and you won't say it now?"

She could tell he meant it kindly, to tease her, so she forced a smile on while she shook her head. "I don't know. I--she and I haven't really talked about that."

"Think about it, and let me know. Ask Filena too, if you want."

"I will," she said, wondering how long she could put that conversation off before Nest would pester her about it again. "Is it very important?"

"It might be." "Just because the Empire's gone doesn't mean everyone who lived in it suddenly loves Clechia, and you're probably going to have to deal with some of those people eventually."

"'Deal with'," she said. It came out sounding flatter than she'd meant.

"Not like--" He made a throat-cutting gesture. "Hopefully not, at least. Most places are a shambles right now; I don't think they're going to have enough military force to hassle you, or anyone, for a long time. But sooner or later there's going to be issues of trade, and border rights, and diplomatic accords." He shrugged. "It'll go better if they've got a good impression of you already."

"Right," she said. "Of course." What had other papers, less kinder to them than Nest's, been saying? Empire Toppled By Murderous Ex-Battler and Dorah Harlot, probably.

"Mr. Nest," said Sophika, "you can't stay if you're only going to make Miss Lila frown." She poked him with her pencil.

"Think about it and let me know," Nest said. He ruffled Sophika's hair and slipped out.

Lila folded her hands again and turned back to her book. Queen--. No, of course not. Even during the bare handful of times she and Filena had sat beside each other in the throne room she hadn't thought of herself that way. It was ridiculous. That title and this girl did not go together.

She stared at the line of text. The sea is the source of life, she read. Life--I know that one in Filoseran, it's shu, that's the one that's just a loop and a tail. She glanced down at the line of symbols—

--no, she'd gotten it wrong again; she'd forgotten that shu had that little curlicue on the tail of the symbol that distinguished it from su.

I'm never going to learn this. The words and the taxes and the laws and the thousand people who all want different things--I'm never going to be able to keep all of it, any of it in my ahead--there's just too much--

Her hands shook, just a little. Her stomach seemed to have sunk all the way to the floor, and all the will that held her upright was draining out of her.

"Miss Lila?" Sophika was peering at her with a worried look. "You've gone a funny color."

"Excuse me," Lila said, and her head drooped till she was speaking at her skirts. "I don't think I can pose any more today."

There was a little clatter as Sophika set her sketchboard aside and stood. "Should I get a glass of water? Or a bucket for you to be sick into?"

"No," she said, and struggled not to laugh, in case it set off a flood of other, less dignified emotions. She managed to get her feet under her and stood, carefully. The world had suddenly grown too thin, and if she moved too quickly she might rip it to shreds.

"What should I do?" Sophika's eyes were huge, on the verge of spilling over with tears.

Lila took a breath, and willed herself not to fall down. "Just help me back to my room."

She kept her hand on Sophika's shoulder—not leaning on it, the girl wasn't really strong enough to hold Lila up, but the solidity of her and the feel of her dress's cloth grounded her enough to stay upright as she wobbled up the staircase and down the hall to her bedroom.

"You don't need to worry." Lila nudged the door open, clutched at the doorframe with one hand and with the other gave Sophika's shoulder what she hoped was a comforting pat. "I'm just a little tired. I'll be all right, really," she said, and stepped over the threshold, and gently closed the door on Sophika's concerned face.

Then she staggered across the room and fell facedown onto her bed.

Only a minute, she thought. She'd just stay like this for a minute, until her heart settled again.

It was lovely just to lie still, though, to feel the cool sheets against her skin and the mattress sinking a little against her weight and listen to the faint sound of the sea tumbling against the walls below.

Five minutes, then, she told herself, and then another five, and then she stopped counting and lost herself in the pleasant blankness of being awake and thinking of nothing.  Maybe no one would come looking for her. Maybe she'd sink so far into the mattress she wouldn't have to get out of bed ever again. She was so tired--she always woke too early these days, no matter how exhausted she'd been the night before. Filena had a battler's instincts, so though she slept lightly her body soaked up all the rest it could never jolted her out of sleep before it was necessary. Lila was the one whose eyes cracked open one hour or two before the dawn-light began to peek through the windows, half the time expecting to find herself in that drafty dormitory with nineteen other girls, the house-mistress shouting them all awake.

Then she'd remember and her mind would be off and racing, running and re-running through all that she needed to know as she lay still, waiting for Filena to wake too. In Dorah the refrain had been remember everything we teach you; a girl could never tell when knowing a thing will get you a reward, or when forgetting it would earn a beating.

Now there were worse consequences than a slap across the face. For her, and for everyone. People were counting on her. If she forget the wrong thing at the wrong time--

She'd realized, during one of these before-morning periods of wakefulness, that the expression on Lady Flora's face had been confidence. Confidence and some quality Lila still couldn't put a name to. Self-assurance, maybe. Not arrogance, and not cruelty, but--surety. Whatever sort of person Lady Flora had been she had known herself and where she stood in the world, had gotten up every day and gone to bed every night knowing just how everything was and would continue to be, until it had all fallen apart.

And Lila--

I'm standing on sand, she thought. Standing with my feet in the waves and ground flowing away from under me. She was only herself, that girl who'd spent all her life in one city and would've counted herself lucky to ever leave it. When that girl had let herself dream it had been of security, a hazy picture of being paired to some up-and-coming gladiator who'd win them a nice little house--maybe even one in the capitol--and enough money to live on after he got killed. That girl had never held a spear in sweat-slick hands and braced her feet against an enemy's charge, or felt the ticklish coolness of the sea-spray on her face.

She turned her face deeper into the pillow, and stopped thinking for a little while.

After a long, long time, the door creaked open. She didn't need to lift her head to see who it was.

"Lila?" Filena sounded worried--Lila ought to say she was all right--but all she could manage was a half-muffled "mrph".

She heard the click of the door as it closed, and then footsteps coming closer. "Sophika came running in pell-mell to tell me that you'd fainted."

Lila shifted her head a little to the side to clear her mouth from the pillows. "Did she?"

She felt the mattress dip as Filena sat. "Well, what she said was that you looked like you'd eaten a bad fish and she'd had to drag you here from halfway across the castle."

She cracked one eye open, saw Filena's concerned face in the dim light, and let it close again. "She was exaggerating."

"Not much, it looks like." "I knew you'd been working too hard, but I didn't think you were working yourself literally to death."

"It isn't that." She couldn't make herself say I'm all right.

"It is that, but I know that's not all of it." Filena pressed a warm hand on her back, just above the drape of her collar. "Lila, what's the matter?"

Lila pressed her tongue against her teeth, fighting for the best way to say it.

"I have fifty dresses," she managed at last.

"You don't have to wear the dresses if you don't want them," Filena said. She began to smooth her hand up and down, her sword callouses faint rough against Lila's skin. "What happened to the Lila who was always telling me not to give up? And spitting fire after we fought those Black Devils?"

"I'd be happier with a troop of Black Devils to worry about right now." Lila forced out a laugh, a little wobbly. "What am I doing?" she said into the pillow. "I can't help you run a country. I don't know anything about diplomacy or road funds or deep-sea fishing rights. I can't even read the language."

"Plenty of the people here can't read the language." Filena's hand stilled. "It's not like I know any more about it than you do. I thought that was pretty clear."

"But you were meant to be here. I..." She turned her head to the side, opened both eyes. "Filena, what if you'd ended up with a different girl, that night back in Dorah? Wouldn't she be here now, and not me?"

Filena's expression "If I'd ended up with another girl in Dorah, I might be dead, or worse. All the others might have cared more about what they could get from turning me in than helping some woman in disguise." She squeezed Lila's shoulder. "Besides, you're a Filoseran too, remember? I couldn't have even gotten into the palace without you."

"Couldn't you?" "Yakos couldn't have made it all the way back to the palace then, but what about Sophika, or Krim?" "Was there ever anything that said it had to be me?"

"Lila." Filena's eyes were wide. "I don't know what you're saying."

"I don't know either." Her eyes were starting to water, and she blinked once, and again. If she started crying she'd never get through this. "That's...I don't know anything."

"Are you--" Filena began. Lila saw her swallow. "Do you want to leave?"

"No." The word came out of her mouth, wrenched, without her having to think about it. Her throat ached; she had to gulp against the pain before she could speak again. "I still want to be near you. But...maybe I shouldn't be beside you."

Filena shifted a little. Lila felt her gathering her weight--she was going to stand up--

--and then the bed dipped further as she climbed all the way onto the bed. "Here," she said, pushing at Lila's shoulder. "Move over a little." She flopped down on the mattress.

"You shouldn't climb into someone's bed with your shoes on," Lila said, letting Filena nudge her onto her side until they lay face-to-face.

"And you shouldn't lie around on your stomach. It's bad for you."

Neither of them spoke for a little while. The room was quiet except for the shush of the waves.

"There's nothing that said it had to be me either. No, let me finish," she said, as Lila opened her mouth to speak. "All there needed to be was a Filoseran with the sword to raise the palace and cleanse the sea. I guess being my parents' child makes easier in everyone else's eyes, but...I'm really just good at fighting and staying alive, and beyond that..." She shrugged. "I'm afraid too, you know. All the time."

"But you don't fall to pieces and collapse in a heap."

"No, I go out in the courtyard and hit things, chase monsters off into the woods, and train with the soldiers until they can't stand up." Her smile was a little rueful. "And sometimes I go up on that high cliff, and I sit and look at the palace for a while. And then I look out over the sea at the horizon, or I turn around and look at the woods to the west, and think...I could leave, if I wanted."

Lila half-sat up. "You can't leave."

"I can, though." Filena's face turned serious. "Not just yet, because I'm the person that has to be here. I don't even really want to leave, right now. But if it turns out that I'm not the ruler that Filosera needs, maybe I don't have to try to be one for the rest of my life." Her eyes met Lila's. "Whatever I end up being, I want you to be beside me. Then at least we can be afraid together."

Lila dropped back down onto the pillow. What could she say to that? "I," she said. "I don't want to be anywhere else but with you."

"All right." Filena gave a little nod. "As long as that's settled. And as for the rest--Filosera survived being razed to the ground once and came back; surely two women who want to do their best for the country can't do more harm than that."

"Do you really believe that?"

"I try to," Filena said. "It helps."

The bells chiming, the light fading as the sun sunk down below the edge of the sea.

"I guess this is unusual," Filena said after a while. "Me climbing into your bed."

Lila felt the corners of her mouth curl upwards a little. "It's all right. But if we stay like this much longer, we're going to miss dinner." She let the dip of the pillow carry her a little towards Filena.

"I wouldn't worry about that," Filena said, and drew her closer. "Queens get the privilege of leading raids on the kitchen whenever they like."

"It's kind of you to make the change, Sophika," Filena said a few days later. She whapped at the pale cushions of the little whitewood settee they'd swapped in for the chair.

"It's fine, really," Sophika said. "If I'd actually started painting it might have been a little harder, but even then--" She tried and failed to hide a second's anxious glance at Lila. "Well, I wouldn't have minded."

Lila had a sense that Sophika would have agree to paint Lila sitting with Hunter, his lady-friend, and their entire new litter of puppies wriggling in her lap if it meant not repeating the earlier mishap. "Still, I--we both appreciate it," she said, and tried to give Sophika a reassuring look that conveyed a clear statement of I-am-not-going-to-go-all-wobbly-again. "Do you have a preference for which of us sits where?"

"However you'd like." Sophika clipped a new sheet of paper to her sketchboard.

"I'll take the right side, then," Lila said, sitting and smoothing out her skirts.

"I think this'll be much better all around." Filena dropped down beside her. "This way you can get both of us done in one canvas, save yourself the work of two portraits, and not have to paint me ever again."

"I don't think that's quite how it works," Lila said. "And there'll have to be more portraits of you eventually." She pressed her lips together, trying not to grin. "Someone's surely going to want to do a very dramatic one of you cleansing the sea with the sword, and a portrait in your coronation dress--"

"Not one in the dress." Filena scowled, then looked keen-eyed. "If going to have to suffer through that, you will too. Maybe nice big portrait of you swooning when we opened the palace doors--"

"You'd have to be in it, too," Lila said. "I could be swooning into your arms while you look heroic."

"No one will paint anything if I don't get this one finished," Sophika said. "It's all right to talk a little, but please keep still for a bit."

"See," Filena said, and elbowed her gently. "Now she's irritated with us and she'll paint us looking like hagfish in revenge."

"We'll behave, then. I'm sorry, Sophika." Lila settled a little more into the cushions and tried to look less irreverent, or least marginally less chatty. Although now that she'd have Filena's attention for a while--

"Nest thought I should ask you something," she said. "If you're the Queen, what do you think I should be called?"

"Oh, I hadn't even thought of that." Filena hmm'd for a moment and looked thoughtful, then shook her head. "Really, I don't think it's my decision. Whatever suits you would be fine with me."

Which wasn't helpful, exactly, but wasn't quite as terrifying a response as it might have been a few days ago. All the possibilities fluttering around in her head--queen consort? Lady Lila? Queen Lila?--still felt ridiculous when she tried them on her tongue, but sooner or later one would settle in to a familiar shape.

She let her hand slip under Filena's as Sophika began to sketch, and leaned a little more into Filena's warmth at her side. Yes, the next time Nest asked, she'd have an answer for him. And whatever it was, it would be fine.