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We stood together, Rod with his arm around my shoulders, while others, including Mireia, stood in a rank behind us. Mir wanted to be next to us to comfort us, but this was a public context where that would cause a scandal. But with her concubinage now official, nobody could object to her standing in the noble ranks, so she stood behind me. No matter what they thought of her, she was now their equal.
I consider it highly fortunate that the Dorian custom required many prayers and praises from the priests and made no attempt to force a eulogy from the children. I don’t know what I would have been able to say.
The Raven Flag of Pendor now covered Mother’s casket. She lay inside it, wrapped in her white kimono, since her mummified body couldn’t be manipulated in order to dress her. Next to her, the Royal Banner covered Owen’s casket, within which he wore kingly Atian garb. Inda, also wrapped in a kimono, still lay in her casket, but it was now moved to one side and draped with a Faerie Flag, a yellow banner of fairy silk embroidered with gold celtic crosses framing a constellation of red dots.
The “whole story” now published in the papers naturally did not mention the part about how Lady Sasara was actually Princess Deharè. We would never reveal that part. But once she came home, the operational security requirements no longer existed and the story that could be told, could be told properly.
Public knowledge already admitted that the attacks that killed Uncle Owen and Lady Sasara were simultaneous, but previously we never admitted exactly where she was when she died. Now we could reveal that Fairy Princess Inda had been Sasara’s stand-in in Narses at the time, and died in the great assault on Narses in Mother’s place, and was the body that had been lying in state. We had to include an apology to all those who had already made a trip to pay their respects to the duchess. In hopes of softening the blow, we recommended they make their second trip to honor the king.
As to how and why such a thing could be possible, we revealed that the Duchess Sasara and Princess Inda were actually twin sisters, and the fairborn daughters of Deharè.
Serera suggested we invent this extra factoid to prevent mortal distress. They might be troubled by many things, such as how they could mistake anyone else for their beloved duchess, or just how good fairy disguise magic could be. But if they were twin sisters, well of course, twin sisters could impersonate each other easily. It tied that question up very neatly. We also now had a birthday and an age for Sasara, at one hundred seventy.
It was nice to be able to reveal at least that much truth, so Inda could get her deserved recognition for the sacrifice she made for the mortals, even if we still had to dress it up with more lies. We absolutely could not tell the world that Pendor’s protector Deharè was dead. Not with a war on, and with her being one of Pendor’s two patron spirits. Besides, in a hundred years or so, according to Gaia, my baby might begin to recover at least some of her previous life memories and be able to resume her role if she wanted.
Our relationship would become especially awkward if she did, not knowing who was parent or child, but even so, I would welcome it. I wonder if she would be able to recover her fairy magic if that happened. If she’s a normal Elder, she will be limited to the spells of her Servants, otherwise.
If not, perhaps at least she could make the leap to blood magic and perhaps spiritual magic early, the way I did, when she recovered those memories.
Weirdly, that thought caused me to remember her lecturing me about raising my daughters equally. When she did recover her memories, she would rapidly outpace her twin, her former daughter. Perhaps I should instead hope she didn’t get those memories back until much, much later.
I knew for a fact that her daughter/sister was a brand new soul in her previous life as Tiana, a creation from scratch who existed because two souls as high-ranked as Mother and Father, virtually Immortals themselves, couldn’t help but generate a new soul the moment they conceived. So she, definitely, had no previous life memories except those same memories I inherited from her when I transmigrated.
This was my mind drifting, wasn’t it? We had been standing like this for the better part of a half hour, after all. I put my hand on my tummy to focus. The ‘presence’ of the babies within, even as a replica of how they were doing in my real womb in Sky Ocean, had a good centering effect on me.
The priests finished at long last. The military details came forward. A group of Pendorian soldiers stepped up for Mother, one of Royal Air Lancers flown in from the North for Uncle Owen, and a group of fairy warriors, led by Falerè, to carry my big sister Inda. They trooped up to the dais single file and lined up beside their respective coffins and that’s as far as I got before Tiana’s tears came pouring out and I could no longer see.
I was so sure I would make it farther than that.
If one of my previous incarnations told me that they took over control of my [Blood Effigy] for me on the long walk out of the great hall to the lineup of caisson wagons in the South Bailey Courtyard, I wouldn’t be surprised. But I don’t see a memory in their thoughts of any of them doing it, so maybe it really was just my brain on autopilot. I do remember the courtyard, though.
My mind was more present when Rod helped me into our carriage. I half-expected steam wagons rather than horse-drawn vehicles, but both the caissons and all the carriages waiting behind them were animal-powered. In retrospect, a huffing, puffing steam wagon would not have been very somber, so I’m not surprised.
The traditionalist nobles had been quietly outraged at the idea of a mere concubine riding with their crown princess (me). Even Rod reminding them that their duchess had been his father’s concubine made no difference. They simply denied that claim and bluntly informed His Royal Highness that she had been Owen’s queen.
Well, really, they weren’t wrong. She did all but take over that role after Sylphana died. But My Lords? It was never official except in Pendor, where the Ducal Council apparently declared it so on their own.
The sentiment that Mireia ought to hitch a ride with a noble family was actually an opening sally for their plots to get her aligned with a noble house, the way most concubines are. And Benedetta appeared to take the nobles’ side. But she then declared that Mireia would ride in the Mona carriage. Thus, she would travel ahead of all other nobles, directly behind the Royal Carriage, due to Benedetta’s position as Lady-in-Waiting and her daughter’s position as Mother’s Lady’s Maid. Mona, strictly neutral due to their history with the Ducal Family, therefore completely thwarted all their plans.
Eventually, Uncle Owen and Mother would rest in Atianus, in a mausoleum in the Royal Necropolis, outside the ancient capital Oste. Inda would go home to the Royal Grove. We would have no cremation ceremony due to Atian custom, and Inda’s cremation would take place when she arrived home. But the Dorian faith had alternate customs for burial instead of cremation, because rural areas where cremation was too expensive had a tradition of burial, so the priests had it covered.
But we needed a short-term plan, due to the war, and that’s where we headed. On the grounds of the Citadel, in Narses Upper Town, across from my father’s tomb, now stood a beautiful ‘memorial’. It wasn’t a ‘mausoleum’ because eventually it would be empty, when its occupants moved on later.
The design was supposedly inspired by the burial mounds of the ancient Dorian emperors, but to my eye, it looked for all the world like the Jefferson Memorial, sans the Tidal Basin.The grounds also included a number of traditional Dorian shrine buildings, since the plan was for a Dorian priest to form a team of shrine maidens to perform daily rites here and assemble a congregation to maintain it, using their offerings along with support from the Ducal Household and noble donations.
Mother’s, or rather, my personal funds paid for the building materials, and the buildings went up in remarkable time thanks to the Reladorian magical construction crews that were the Fairy King’s donation (sixty days, not including a few finishing touches still remaining to complete on the secondary buildings.)
I had no trouble agreeing to let Mother’s body go to Atianus with Owen later, to rest beside Queen Sylphana, because I knew Mother would actually remain right here in Pendor. ‘Sasara’ would lay in the Royal Necropolis, not Deharè, who rested safe and sound right here with me. Well, metaphorically. She was actually in Sky Ocean at the moment. This memorial gave my people a way to honor her that everyone assured me they would support. It seems their recognition of her marriage to Owen and his proper place as an Orestanian king in the Necropolis added together to them understanding her fit location as next to her husband.
“Are you still okay?” my husband queried, peering carefully at me as he helped me down from the carriage.
Unsure what sort of sound would come out of me, I simply nodded. Even though I was in kimono, I took his arm and let him escort me, Atian style, while we went to take our position for the unloading of the caissons.
Once the Pendorian nobility finished forming up, taiko drums began pounding. More Dorian religious concepts, but I vaguely understood they were frightening ‘evil spirits’ away and alerting Heaven that their VIP children were on the way.
Once that fell silent, the only sounds other than hushed rustling from the crowd was that of the Dorian religious personnel making their funeral music, slow and steady, with hand-held percussion instruments and bells, and the boots of the military detachments bringing the caskets off their vehicles. The somber parade trooped together into the memorial, where a plinth waited for them. In the future, when the caskets departed, the plinth would support a statue of the two patron spirits.
This was where I let go of Rod’s arm, because we had separate places in that procession. I walked beside Benedetta, following Mother’s casket, and Terese, who solemnly carried a huge red parasol to shield me from the sun. Of course, I didn’t need it. It was part of the tradition.
Rod walked with a pair of royal knights behind Owen, and Carson, lacking any better role, became Mir’s parasol bearer while they walked behind him. Meanwhile, Lady Serera and Lady Elhàn, looking rather uncharacteristic in kimonos considering they were present as knights for a fairy princess, followed Amana behind my sister’s casket. Elhàn held the red parasol for her princess.
That had been a tough choice for Amana. She wanted to be with Mother, but her little sister Inda would be without a family member unless Amana did it. Since I was heir and Mother was duchess, I couldn’t switch places with her.
Speaking of sisters…
<How’s Amelia doing?> I asked in my head.
<Not well,> Lydia replied. <She’s crying on our shoulder.>
They were watching via Little Jia’s clever powers. Of course, as soon as I asked, I could see it in Lydia’s thoughts, my sister sobbing uncontrollably, with an iron grip on my kimono. She would have to go through it again someday when her father went home to Atianus and we gathered with Ged and Rod and the Atian nobility to hold an interment ceremony there, and suddenly, I regretted a bit that we set this up for her. Had we made the wrong call?
I guess she would probably be mad at me if I asked that, huh?
The warriors and soldiers finished lifting the caskets onto the plinth and moving them into position. A temple block spoke a slow, steady beat, interspersed with occasional single notes of a gong, as the priest and his assisting juniors began a mournful Dorian chant, him lifting up a warbling, octogenarian verse alternating with the assistants chanting the antiphons. That’s as far as I got before Amelia’s tears, bolstered by Amana’s sniffles, spilled over and out of my eyes again.
The gasps of the crowd brought me back, though. Under the dome of the memorial, three figures had just appeared.
I knew immediately that they were projections. Oberon stood mid-air in the center, while Grandmother gently hovered on dragonfly wings on his right hand and Mother hovered on butterfly wings on his left. But my confusion over Mother only lasted until I saw that the aura on the Fairy King’s left was also Grandmother, impersonating her daughter.
Oberon extended his hand and poured out a golden light, which flowed down and coated the caskets and the plinth like oil.
“This shall protect His Majesty and my princesses from evil until my granddaughter releases it. Take pride, O Mortals, that they loved you so. Let not their deaths be in vain.”
With that, the three apparitions faded out, but the golden mana coating on the caskets and plinth remained.
I don’t know what effect they intended their little prank to have, but it was profound. A cough from the silent crowd had to bring the stunned priests back to their senses before they could continue.
