After the meeting, King Garon left the room, and the advisors immediately dispersed, thankful to finally be free of the tension. Some of them, Kirin in particular, made sure to express their disapproval through their furious glares and upturned noses, all of which Nita ignored. She knew that if not for their respect for her father, she would have long since received a dose of poison in her drink or a knife through the back. That said, the blade of such treason would be double-edged, and any real threat made on her would be returned in kind. She made her way to her room, pulled off her jacket, and tossed it on the sofa as she walked past to the balcony. The large glass doors were still open as she’d left them that morning, filling the room with the scent of smoke. Nita leaned against the railing and took in the Juntian landscape.
It was midday, and the sun was high in the purple cloudless sky, bathing the land in radiant light, a rare sight these days, when smog and ash had become the norm. The capital city sprawled beautifully before her, bustling with activity just outside the castle walls. She could hear the sound of the people milling through markets, driving, and brimming with life. Even with the pitiful state of the planet, the people had not yet lost hope. The unshakable faith in the throne was a testament to her father’s wise rule, and that faith fueled her desire to raise them up to even higher standards. Sighing and leaning forward, she carefully considered her father’s words from earlier about not letting the fire in her blood burn her own allies.
It was an interesting thing to say, considering she didn’t have many real allies. She was raised and educated in the palace most of her life, and while she had a short stint at Herulin Academy, where most of the most prominent families sent their children, she never developed any close friendships besides the one she made with her current secretary Pendan. It wasn’t for a lack of trying, but her peers at Herulin were soft to say the least, almost like they had forgotten the blood that had been poured into unifying the plant just a generation ago, perhaps because, unlike her father, then a prince, most of their parents had the luxury of sitting at home while soldiers fought in their place.
As for Nita, she was never spared the harsh reality of what her father had done before and during his thirty-year rule to take the planet from a poor farming colony suffering from fractured governments and the type of civil wars that most other planets had done away with thousands of years ago, to a united planet finally under one ruler. Where other such planetary governments had failed within a couple of years, King Garon reigned steadily. Juntia had grown under his rule into a bustling industrial center, while the diverse agriculture that had always been its crowning glory had flourished to unexpected heights.
By all accounts, his rule was already considered an unprecedented success, but Nita knew that more could be done, and she felt like the incumbent advisors were holding them back. Her father often reminded her that the advisors were the voice of the people, elected to allow the will of the masses to be heard by the throne, but to her, it didn’t ring true. She saw it at the academy, in their spoiled children, and in the council meetings, where the advisors’ complacency was on full display. They were all too comfortable with the status quo. Her father was aware of it as well, and he’d expressed it to her many times when they went riding or sat together in his study, drinking and talking as he prepared her for her future duties as queen. The only difference was that he was much more patient; perhaps he was waiting for something, some sort of justification to start a major reform, but now they had run out of time, and she did not have the ability or inclination to be patient with fools. This was perhaps another indication that she still had a long way to go before she was ready for the throne.
A flicker in the distance caught her attention, and her chest tightened as she saw thick black smoke rising from another field being set aflame to stop the blight from spreading. Each day, more of Juntia’s glorious red fields were being turned to ash. She heard someone approaching from behind, but did not turn away from the smoke rising to pollute the clear sky.
“Are you taking one last look?” Pendan, her secretary, asked. Most council members’ staff stayed in a separate room during meetings, where they were able to listen in and take notes on the discussions. He was fully aware that her proposal had been accepted, and she was sure he had already taken several steps to get things ready. His voice was barely above a whisper and laced with tenderness. Even though he was a couple of years younger than her, he always had the air of a doting mother about him. She smiled at him affectionately. Besides her father, he was the only other reason people weren’t completely fed up with her temperament.
“I’m not sure when I’ll see this landscape again. The trip to Marak will take four months, and who knows how long it will take to convince the World-bearer,” She shook her head and leaned over the railing. “If all goes well, this may be one of the last times I will have to see Juntia in this state,” she said, looking at how, just within her line of sight, over half the earth was blackened with burnt crops and soot, when just a year ago they were endless alizarin fields and forests.
The blight had started small, easily managed by uprooting the diseased ground and burning the traces away, but soon, the contamination began to rapidly eat away at the land until acres and acres of farmland and forest were burned down daily just to slow down the spread. The way the blight spread felt almost systematic in a way… Nita clenched her fists and her lips pressed into a thin line. One thing at a time, she thought, not ready to follow that line of reasoning to its conclusion just yet. The King was not a fool, and she was sure he was attacking this issue from every possible angle. She only needed to focus on her task.
“What if you can’t convince him?” Pendan asked, joining her by the railing.
Nita was silent, and she closed her eyes as a slow wind brought the nauseating scent of flowers and burning crops to her nose. “That is not an option,” she said firmly and turned away from the view. “I won’t need anything else for today. Ask the mechanics to complete the final checks on the shuttle, then I’ll see you tomorrow. It will be a busy day.”
“Understood,” he said, then bowed and left the room.
Alone, Nita leaned against the railing once more and looked up to the sky. Large orange clouds were now moving gently against the lavender sky, where large black plumes of smoke rose to meet them. I cannot fail. She inhaled deeply, that horrid combination of scents, then closed the doors.