First Daughter (The Royals of Dharia Book Three)

  First Daughter (The Royals of Dharia, Book Three)

  Copyright © 2014 by Susan Kaye Quinn

  September 2014 Edition

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. For information visit:

  www.SusanKayeQuinn.com

  Cover by Steven Novak

  Developmental Editing by Bryon Quertermous

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio

  Interior Art by NovelNinjutsu.com

  Summary

  The war has begun, and with the Queen of Dharia on her deathbed, Aniri’s excessively-proper eldest sister, First Daughter Nahali, finally sees her chance to claim the crown. Aniri and Nahali have never seen eye-to-eye, not since they were girls running through the palace courtyard, but with Prince Malik and Second Daughter Seledri kidnapped, Aniri can’t afford to fight with her sister.

  So she follows the First Daughter’s orders and prepares for a war she fears will destroy everything she loves. Her sister has spent her entire life preparing for this job—Aniri prays to the gods Nahali knows what she’s doing.

  But when the Queen calls the two Daughters to her bedside, she sends Nahali off to prepare for war… and tasks Aniri with a secret mission. She must go after the power-mad prince of Samir and stop his deadly skyship. It may cost Aniri everything, including a chance to ever return home, but she defies the First Daughter’s orders and embarks on a desperate mission to save the people she loves from a war that will tear all three Queendoms apart.

  FIRST DAUGHTER is the final book in the Royals of Dharia Trilogy. It is told from Aniri’s point of view.

  It says we’re at war.

  Aniri’s own words haunted her. How could she wage war with a single, limping skyship, when the enemy supposedly commanded an armada? How could she fight the Samirians at all while they held her sister and husband captive? It was too great a price. It was too much to ask of anyone. But as she gazed out over the snow-dusted mountain peaks gliding thousands of feet below her skyship, she knew the answer: she couldn’t betray her husband’s country while saving his life. She couldn’t exchange a crown she didn’t want for a man she loved more than anything.

  He would never forgive her for it.

  Aniri gripped the edges of the skyship bridge window with both hands, crumpling the sheer netting that had replaced the glass blown out by the Samirians’ bombs. Her Jungali sailors had hastily patched the ship, using steel beams and wooden planks and yards of royal tablecloths when necessary to stem the loss of the lighter-than-air navia gas that kept them afloat. Their skyship, the Prosperity, was hardly living up to its name—the gas bag was still leaking, the command center was a laughable skeleton, and there was only a half-load of fuel on board.

  “We’re well into Dharia now, Captain,” Master Tinker Karan said from his station at the plotting table.

  “Very good, Mr. Karan.” He had fallen into the habit of calling her captain, even though she was no such thing, and her ship was barely afloat. Yet she had no choice but to hurry aloft as soon as Natesh, Second Son of Samir, made his demands:

  SURRENDER NOW AND I WILL SPARE EVERYONE

  He wanted the crowns of both Jungali and Dharia. In exchange, Aniri could win the lives of both her sister, Second Daughter of Dharia, and her future husband, Prince Malik of Jungali. But Aniri knew it was a fool’s choice: any royal would soon find the point of a saber through their backs, regardless. She would be no exception, being the Third Daughter of Dharia, but more importantly, she knew Natesh would kill whomever necessary to win the crown in his own country of Samir—waging a war was just a means to that end.

  Besides, his message could easily have been meant to stall them, keep them grounded while he brought his Samirian skyship, the Dagger, back to Jungali to bombard the capital with death once again. Aniri hadn’t bothered with a reply—she simply dropped everything and bundled her injured mother, the Queen of Dharia, aboard the Prosperity. The Queen’s Jungali healer made a fervent protest about moving her, but her loyal raksaka protector, Janak, didn’t argue. Given that he loved the Queen and could easily enforce his will with lethal assassin skills, she knew he understood the danger all too well. Once her handmaiden Priya and Master Tinker Karan had boarded, Aniri ordered them up into the sky, where the ship would no longer be a sitting, wounded target for Samir’s black, bullet-nosed bombs. Those bombs had already blown holes in the streets and hearts of the Jungali people. She wouldn’t let them take the only weapon they had left to fight this war—or the few royals left with the authority to wage it.

  “My fix puts us at the capital of Dharia in less than an hour, Captain,” Karan said, still bent over his papers.

  Since boarding, Aniri had changed out of her soot-covered and blood-stained adventuring clothes—partly because they were filthy, but also because they were a too-constant reminder of the carnage wrought on the streets of Jungali. Her ever-resourceful handmaiden had quickly hemmed a spare Jungali naval uniform to fit Aniri’s shorter frame. It was baggy in the middle, and the sleeves were too long, but the twin rows of steel buttons down the front and the uniform’s brilliant blue color—bright as the Jungali mountain sky—fortified her with a sense of military purpose. Only her crisp new attire seemed to encourage Karan in calling her Captain, despite multiple protests on her part.

  “Is there any command I could give you, Mr. Karan, that would keep you from referring to me as the captain of this ship?”

  “Well, ye could stop giving orders and dress like the Third Daughter of Dharia.”

  Aniri cut a sharp look to him, but the humor in his eyes made her relax more than anything else had managed to since they had left the bombed-out dock of the palace in Jungali.

  “I’ll be sure to don a corset as soon as we arrive, then.”

  Karan’s deep hmpf expressed his lack of faith that she would carry through on that threat, and honestly, she couldn’t stomach the thought herself. As long as they were at war—which may be as long as many of them had yet to live—she would rather be in attire suitable to doing something to end the madness that was spinning out around her.

  The window netting billowed with the wind just beyond it, each gust threatening to work loose the tattered edges hastily bound by nails to the frame. A fog of despair constantly threatened to close in on her mind, held at bay only by the boiling anger that simmered in her chest for all that had been stolen from her and her people. The sad state of her ship only made her situation more plain. And the depths of her heart cried out against it: any war she cared to wage faced terrible odds. They would fight, but it was likely to end in all their deaths, regardless. And then Natesh would gain the thing he wanted anyway: rule over all three Queendoms.

  Why had this burden fallen to her? Why not her sister, First Daughter Nahali, who was raised from birth to bear the weight of the Queendom? Aniri had crumpled the aetheroceiver message from Natesh, but the terse demand from the impersonal wireless device would have to be answered in some way eventually. Even the non-answer she had given was an answer of sorts. One that may have already cost her future-husband Ash and beloved-sister Seledri their lives.

  Their next steps would be critical—she needed to speak to her mother’s raksaka about them before they arrive
d in the capital. Aniri searched the horizon for the pink-tinged sandstone walls of her homeland’s capital city of Kartavya. It was a home she had thought she had finally left—to claim her place as Jungali’s Queen—but that wish was also blown to pieces, along with the bomb that stopped her and Ash from exchanging their vows. The only good thing to come out of Natesh’s threats was discovering that Ash had actually survived the blast and was still alive.

  At least, for the moment.

  Tears that had been strangely absent through most of the trauma suddenly threatened to make an appearance. She blinked them back, gaining her vision just as the first parapets of the Dharian capital showed themselves in the hazy distance below.

  Karan was still bent over his maps, checking the fix of their position. It was nearing eve, but the stars had yet to come out, so he must have sighted the sun with his new celestial navigator. The original aetherscope-like device—which had been destroyed along with the front half of the bridge—had been adapted from the Samirian Navy and modified for use in the sky. Fortunately, Karan had a spare from the time when the Prosperity was a joint, secret project between the Samirians and the Jungali, not an instrument of war between them.

  Aniri cleared her throat before attempting to speak again. “I presume you have things well in hand, Mr. Karan. I’ll be in the captain’s quarters if you have need of me. I need a word with Janak before we arrive.”

  When she turned to him, his intelligent eyes held too much concern. She ducked her head away, turned on the heel of her boot, and strode from the bridge.

  The true captain of the skyship, Mr. Tarak, still kept his station in engines, and with Karan on the bridge, they had no need of a captain anyway. But she had commandeered the captain’s quarters for her mother. In her state, recovering from the Samarian raksaka assassin who had tried to take her life with a bullet, the Queen needed any small comfort the skyship had to offer. Aniri knew Janak would be at her side, as he had remained constantly since the attack.

  The hallways were crowded with tubing and hand rails, but empty of sailors. It was a wonder they had enough crew left to fly, but Karan assured her they were fit. Or fit enough. Aniri climbed the metal-racked stairs and stepped through the bulkhead door to the hallway that held the captain’s room. She paused before knocking on the door. Her mother’s injury still required Aniri to put on a brave face that was nowhere near reflecting the tormented, hollowed-out state inside her. She rested her hand on the hilt of her saber, strapped on one side with a pistol on the other. The sword was Ash’s gift to her—a present for a wedding and a promise for a future that seemed less likely with every passing hour.

  But that was precisely why she needed to speak to Janak. And before they arrived at the capital and had to face her sister, First Daughter Nahali. With the Queen in no shape to command in peacetime, much less in war, it would fall to Nahali to decide how to deploy Dharia’s efforts in fighting it. Aniri feared she knew all too well how the life of a Jungali prince would stack up against the concerns of Dharia in Nahali’s eyes.

  Aniri knocked softly on the door. Janak swiftly opened it.

  The raksaka was dressed in the same royal jacket he had been wearing when the attack occurred, since he had been unwilling to leave the Queen’s side and thus unable to change. Past Janak in the doorway, Aniri glimpsed a nest of mattresses and blankets cosseting her mother on the floor of the small cabin. Given the skyship’s bunks were completely inadequate, it made sense to position her there, but the travel must be aggravating the gunshot wound in her side: her mother’s normally creamy brown skin was ashen, drained of color and life. It was even more deathly than when they departed, and Aniri’s heart seized with uncertainty. Janak slipped through the thin opening of the door and closed it quietly behind him, leaving the two of them in the hall alone.

  “Is my mother sleeping?” It was a demand for reassurance as much as a question. A terrible fear rose up to choke her: that in whisking her mother away from the danger of the Jungali palace, the travel itself might kill her.

  “Yes.” Janak’s voice was grave, his face as nearly as drawn and gray as the Queen’s. “I’ve given her some of the vapors the healer sent with us. She was in too much pain.”

  Too much for Janak to endure, not her mother, Aniri suspected. But the ghostly look on her mother’s face… Aniri didn’t want to think about the expression it might have held before Janak had sedated her.

  “The ride is too rough for her.” Janak’s scowl grew deeper. “I’m afraid it may have aggravated her wound, perhaps caused more blood loss. And she’s already lost too much.”

  Aniri’s breath was trapped in her lungs. If her mother died… she couldn’t even put those thoughts into words. Instead, she managed, “I would smooth the air for her if I could, Janak.”

  He nodded tightly, and Aniri’s heart wrenched even more for the pain he must be carrying, watching the woman he loved suffer, with her recovery not at all certain. All the worse that she was his Queen and he was her raksaka… and that he failed to take the bullet himself. Aniri couldn’t imagine the turmoil churning inside him.

  “In spite of the difficulty of the transport, I agree that leaving Jungali was most prudent,” Janak said. “However, I’m not entirely convinced that returning to the capital of Dharia is the same.”

  They had already had this discussion, in the haste of the evacuation, but apparently they weren’t done having it. “We could have flown to Sik province,” she said, “but the Samirians know where the airharbor is. They would, no doubt, go there first, assuming we would seek to repair the skyship. And it is in desperate need of repairs, but that’s no place for the Queen.”

  “Agreed. And she will have the finest healers in Dharia at her bedside in Kartavya. But the capital of Dharia is the first place they will look for her. And it is also a symbolic target, should they choose to strike at the heart of the country.”

  “You can secret my mother away with a dozen of our best healers once we arrive.” Aniri crossed her arms and leaned against the bulkhead wall. The weariness of the day was turning her knees to jelly. “But I also need to speak to Nahali about our plans going forward. And the skyship must be kept in motion, stopping only for fuel and supplies. We must not let it be a target for the Samirians, should they come looking for one.”

  “The entire country is a target.”

  “I realize that.” Aniri sighed, the weariness climbing its way up her bones. “Although I expect them to attack our navy—the sea-going one, not the single skyship we possess—and the capital first. If they attack at all.”

  Janak frowned. “You think they’re bluffing?”

  “I think they only brought one skyship to attack the Jungali capital. And I would like very much to know why.”

  His eyes widened.

  Aniri was sure he would have seen it, had he not been so consumed with worry for the Queen.

  “You suspect the armada is a ruse, in spite of what your father claimed,” Janak said. “That they indeed have only the one ship.”

  “I suspect it’s simply a matter of time before they have an armada. Exactly how much time could mean the difference between a war we can win and one we cannot.”

  Janak nodded. “What are your thoughts on this, my lady?”

  Aniri blinked and was speechless for a moment. Janak mostly tormented her with his wit, and occasionally gave her a grudging respect, but she had never heard him address her so… formally. As if she were the Queen now, instead of her mother. It tore at her, an unwelcome reminder of the tenuous hold on life her mother had. Or perhaps it was merely his concern for her mother that had him looking to Aniri for guidance.

  Still, it took her a moment to respond. “My thinking is that if they have an armada, we cannot hope to prevail by attacking them, either by air or by sea. That leaves stealth. Which, as it happens, could well be the way to free Ash and Seledri as well as restore the rightful leadership to Samir.”

  “You think Pavan could still take the cr
own?”

  Pavan was the First Son of Samir and Seledri’s husband. “I think Pavan should have the crown,” Aniri said. “I think we can’t win this war on Dharian soil with one skyship, but we might win it on Samirian soil with a fight from within. And we won’t need to fight the Samirians at all if the proper Son wears the crown. But I don’t have a gauge on where the Queen Mother falls in this royal family drama. Or the true temper of the people.”

  “Civil war is quite the antidote to a war among neighbors.” Janak’s tone was approving.

  “If it comes to that,” Aniri said.

  Janak’s eyes narrowed. “Working within the country on sabotage would also be an excellent way to rescue the Second Daughter.”

  “And the Prince of Jungali,” she reminded him. Aniri knew Ash’s life was less important to a raksaka committed to defending the crown of Dharia, but he needed to understand Ash’s importance to her. And to any war effort. “It is the prince’s skyship in which we’re flying. And that is the only thing at the moment keeping the Samirians from simply bombing any part of Dharia they wish.”

  “Understood.” Then his voice tempered. “I am sorry, Aniri. That Ash has been taken prisoner. I know that’s a burden that must weigh heavily on you.”

  His soft tone threatened to spring back tears that had no place in this moment. “Then help me, Janak. I need to convince Nahali that subterfuge and stealth are the way attack this problem. But I fear she will not see it in that light.”

  “She would not be unreasonable in this.” Janak frowned. “Your mother—”

  “My mother is in no shape to conduct a war!” It came out harsher than she intended, and suddenly, she had to turn away, examining the length of the skyship corridor as if it held great interest to her, not that she was simply trying to hide her tears of anger. And fear. A cold fire of hatred for the Second Son of Samir burned deep in her chest and beat back those other, softer feelings. She would have time for them later. Or there would be no need for them at all.