She turned and walked back to the centre of the room, then addressed them all. 'I tire of foolish notions better suited to simpletons. Let the one amongst you who has a worthy idea step forward and advise me.'
After a brief, tense silence, during which the tension in the chamber rose, one of the candidates stepped forward. The Queen's eyes raked the pretty countenance of a girl in her late teens. Curly chestnut hair framed a gentle face in which soft blue-grey eyes lowered respectfully under the Queen's gaze. She lacked true beauty in its purest form, her mouth a little too wide, her eyes over large in a face that did not possess patrician lines, but held a hint of strength. Minna approached her.
'Chiana of the doves, advise me.'
'You must heed the council of Shamsara.'
Minna frowned. 'What is this, you pass your task on?'
'Only he will know the answer.'
'It is forbidden for the Queen to consult with seers.'
'It is the Queen who makes the laws.'
Minna's frown melted away, and she smiled. 'That is correct. But why do you consider Shamsara to have the answer?'
'He can see the future. We cannot.'
'True. I will think on this advice, but what is yours, for my question?'
Chiana bowed her head, considering the grey dove that nestled in her hands. 'If we cannot defeat the desert kings, nor they us, we must call a truce.'
'A truce.' Minna nodded, turning away to retrace her steps to the throne. Seated upon it once more, she considered those before her. 'A truce,' she repeated. 'And should I send you, Chiana, to negotiate it?'
Chiana's shoulders hunched. 'If you will, My Queen.'
'Shandor will laugh in your face, then give you to his soldiers for sport. You would not survive the ordeal.'
'Doubtless, My Queen.'
'A waste. I desire your council. You shall be senior advisor henceforth.' Minna turned to an attendant as the advisors stepped back into their lines, all save Chiana, who replaced Mendal before her.
'Summon Shamsara to me now,' Minna ordered the hovering attendant, who spun on his heel and trotted away. Minna turned to face her audience once more. 'Have any of you anything else to say?'
Mendal stepped forward. 'Shamsara will not come, My Queen. You cannot summon the Idol of the Beasts. If you wish to consult with him, you will have to travel to him.'
'Indeed?' Minna's brows rose. 'We shall see. Shamsara pleases himself in these matters. Do not think me ignorant of the ways of the Idol of the Beasts, Mendal.' She stood. 'This audience is over.'
Minna walked out, leaving her bevy of lords and advisors in the act of prostrating themselves. Some completed the ritual, others straightened the moment she was out of sight.
Mendal was one such, and turned to the man beside him with a frown, plucking at his olive green robes with agitated, bony fingers.
'She takes too much upon herself, she will fail.'
Symion of the horses straightened from completing his prostration and shrugged. 'Perhaps, but if it is her wish to try, no one will gainsay her.'
'Indeed not, yet this is not a good course to be set upon.'
'Ending the war sounds like an excellent notion to me, Mendal.'
'Only if, in the process, we do not lose it. The great Queen Janna-Maru had good reason to forbid consulting with seers. When the queens attempted it, there were disastrous results. Would Queen Minna-Satu, through Chiana's foolish council, plunge us back into those dark days? The future is not set, it may be changed, yet in doing so, often it is changed for the worse. I feel that no good can come of this.'
Symion considered Mendal with gentle brown eyes, his placid countenance reflecting the peaceful nature of his animal kin. 'Perhaps our Queen does not seek to change the future, but merely to be guided by it. Perhaps it is different now. No seer has been consulted since then, and that was a very different time. If our Queen wishes to find a way to end this war, we must hope and pray that she will.'
Mendal shot Symion a hard look and turned away, raising an arm to summon Chiana. 'Chiana, I would speak to you.'
When the new chief advisor arrived, Mendal addressed her in a condescending manner. 'Your new duties include finding consorts for the Queen, and you should set out immediately for the armies. She may take many moons to choose one from amongst them, you know.'
Chiana smiled. 'I know. In fact, the duty is not mine alone, and in this I nominate you and Symion to journey to the armies. The Queen needs me beside her right now, but I doubt that she needs you.'
Mendal paled, stung by her words, and offered an insulting bow. 'Of course, Chief Advisor, I shall do my best.'
'Good. Try to choose plenty of cats, or at least warm-blooded men. You know how she hates snakes.'
His eyes narrowed, raking her slender form disparagingly. 'Well, we all know how much cats like birds. Especially doves.'
Chiana scowled and swung away, leaving Mendal smiling coldly at her back as she strode after the Queen.
Symion gave a soft snort of derision. 'It is ill advised to insult her now; she has the Queen's ear.'
'I said nothing that was not true.'
'Even so, you should watch your step. We have a new queen, who already does not like you. And, with her, doubtless, a new set of intrigues and subterfuges. There will be much jockeying amongst the advisors, and many moons before we know where any of them stand. Perhaps leaving the palace now would be beneficial, for we will not be amongst those who fall foul of a knife in the back.'
Mendal grunted, glancing around at the muttering throng, most of which shuffled from the vast room. 'I know where some of them stand, and now I shall not be here to ensure their continued loyalty to me, which is perhaps worse than the risk of a knife. While we are away, Chiana will have much time to influence them.'
'Or find a knife in her back.'
Queen Minna-Satu reached the sanctuary of her rooms and flopped down on a soft pile of gilt-edged satin cushions. Since her coronation two days ago, her new duties had drained her, coming as they did so soon after her mother's interment and the cessation of the tolling of the great golden bell that had mourned the death of the Queen for the three days it had taken her to die. The sadness of her mother's death was tinged with a hint of guilty relief, for they had never agreed upon matters of importance.
A handmaiden stepped forward to enquire after the Queen's wishes, and Minna ordered a bath. When the girl had left, Minna's eyes drifted to a corner of the room, where a pair of the palest green met them. The huge sand cat lolled on a cushion, her chin resting on her paws. Her pale golden hide, dappled with an intricate pattern of white, dark gold and black, shimmered in the sunlight that streamed through the window. Minna longed to run her hands over that silken fur and caress the sleek muscles that rippled just beneath it.
Shista rose and limped to her, rubbing her cheek against Minna's thigh. The Queen clasped the cat's neck and hugged her, running her hands over Shista's soft coat. The cat, easily ten feet long and weighing more than four times as much as her friend, flopped down like a kitten and batted at her with great paws. One bore the scar that made her limp, a narrow band of bare skin just behind her toes. Minna took the paw and rubbed that scar, remembering its infliction, and how she had found her cat.
Five years ago, Minna had travelled to the desert, where her troops had gained an area beyond the mountains and held it against Shandor's attacks. For a tenday, she had observed the constant battles, which gained a few arid miles one day, then lost them the next. Her presence had spurred the troops to great feats of courage, but the desert King had held his ground in the end, and forced her warriors back.
During the retreat, she and a group of her personal guard had entered a narrow canyon with crumbling walls. Leading them, Minna had almost been unseated when her horse shied violently.
Minna controlled the beast and dismounted to approach the reason for its fear on foot. A young sand cat, maybe a year old, maybe less, lay dying on the rocks. She still had a cub's brown stripes, and her dull hide was stretched over prominent bones. Though she regarded the Princess with blazing eyes and snarled her defiance, she could not flee. The reason for her plight was a front paw trapped amongst the stones, crushed by a recent rock fall
