Treasures
Title: Treasures
Description: On the eve of their departure for the Moon Kingdom, four princes attempt to come to terms with what they will take with them, and what they leave behind.
A/N: Probably the earliest piece yet, timeline-wise, in the Four Heavenly Queens-verse (use tag for other pieces; Janos = Jadeite, Zavier = Zoisite, Nikodemus = Nephrite, Kasimir = Kunzite). It’s a bit rough around the edges, but we finally some more insight into the men, I hope!
I. Mercury
The announcement that he had been chosen as the next senshi of Mercury was made in a full court session, as much a surprise to Janos as anyone else. But he didn’t pause to consider the tangle of emotions knotting inside him. Instead, he observed the reactions of the court, as he had been taught to from a young age. That was what was required, and those who failed to develop the requisite skills were effectively removed from the line of inheritance.
His parents were serene and composed, as usual. Of course, they had had time to compose their thoughts, but even if they hadn’t received the message beforehand, Janos suspected their expressions would have remained as smooth and cold as the surfaces of the underground lakes were kept for the ice gliders.
But he didn’t really need the tell-tale raisings of the eyebrows, the white-knuckled clasps of the hands, or the slight rise and fall of shoulders in relief to know how the courtiers felt. Some of them would be glad to see him gone. Others would be wishing themselves in his place. The smarter ones would have digested the information in the space of moments and were adjusting their plans accordingly. He had been the fifth heir; now the sixth would take his place, and the others would be repositioned in turn, each one a step closer to the Mercurian throne.
For his part, Janos was glad to leave. Even if his likely fate was to perish in battle against some enemy of the Lunarian queen, it was better than facing one of the subtle, deadly knives of his relatives.
Janos made the necessary response, making sure to relay how pleased he was to be chosen for such an honor, how he would always be sure to behave as a representative of the Mercurian people, and how he would exercise his talents in the best interests of the Queen of the Moon, the head of the Silver Alliance and the most powerful woman in the galaxy.
Under the polite smiles and dignified chimes of the tiny finger cymbals, he knew, they were excavating the hidden layers to his words. His mother caught his eye and lifted her chin slightly, signaling mild approval and allowing the light to sparkle in the mysterious depths of the rows of sapphires ringing her neck. It was no more and no less than what was expected of him.
He endured the murmured well-wishes and barbed compliments, picking the gems out of the dross the way a girl might sort her seashells. By the time he was summoned for a private conference with their majesties, his parents, he had formed his impressions.
Queen Fenia and King Soren received him in the least formal of the formal receiving rooms, which he knew to interpret as a high honor. They spoke quietly, just loud enough to be heard over the tranquil babble of the fountain.
“Your thoughts, Janos?”
He met their gazes levelly, one a rare and luminous gray, the other a paler blue than his own. “Dedrick is disappointed not to be chosen. Hanne will be pleased to see me go. Miro was not entirely surprised, I think.”
“Wasn’t he?” Soren murmured.
Janos raised an eyebrow in response, pleased to have noticed something that had escaped his father. His mother, of course, had noticed it, in addition to a good many more things she would not be quick to reveal to anyone. It might be minutes or decades before she put the information to use, but when it was, it would always be to suit her ends.
“And Saskia?” Fenia inquired.
He shrugged, keeping stubbornly quiet. He didn’t want to talk about Saskia.
“She will miss you,” Soren observed, his deep voice grave but not unkind, “but she knows the way things have to be. You know the way things must be.
“During the years we have had together, you have given us much to be proud of. We are very proud of you, Janos. We too are not surprised that you have been chosen. But now the time has come when we must part ways. It is not our wish to do so, but it is always thus - that the senshi must come to serve the Moon rather than their own people, and if they allow their loyalties to be divided, disaster results.”
Janos nodded, having heard of this severing of ties from a young age. His parents hadn’t told him, or any of their potential heirs, all of their secrets in preparation for just this eventuality. But neither had he shared all of his with them.
The queen said, “We have prepared you for the task that lies before you as best as we could. But we have a final piece of advice we would give to you: since the time of Serenity I, the Moon has led in all things, and the other planets follow her path. You would do well to follow tradition. There have been times when senshi have chosen not to heed her wishes, but the consequences of such action should be considered carefully.”
“I understand.” He knew of some of those stories, and none of them ended well.
“Then we wish you well, Janos.”
They rose together, and his parents dipped their fingers in the fountain’s basin to trace the symbol of Mercury on his forehead. The water would leave a bluish mark on his skin, and it was Mercury’s sacred blessing to her people. This rite was always given on farewell journeys, whether the traveler was leaving the house for an afternoon errand or an exile departing on a journey from which he was not expected to return. Janos classed himself in the latter group.
He walked the halls with measured steps, taking care not to trod on the edges of his flowing robes even though he would probably never wear them again. By the time he returned, if he ever returned, he would have long outgrown this set.
He was mildly surprised, when he reached the library, to find it sparsely populated. It was a popular destination for Mercurians, but perhaps they were all out enjoying the unseasonably fine weather - observing each other all the while, of course.
Saskia waited for him by his favorite alcove, and he could see the sadness lurking in the corners of her mouth as she smiled at him. She was older, taller, and kinder, and he didn’t want to envision his life without her in it.
“I thought you might come here.”
Janos smiled wryly. “Well, best to pillage the treasures of Mercury before I’m no longer one of her sons.”
“Don’t.”
He could see the tears glimmering at the edges of her eyes, and it tore at him. “You don’t. You can’t show…anything.” The courtiers were quick to seize on weaknesses, among which they included affection.
“It’s only the two of us here.”
She didn’t add the corollary that soon, he would be gone.
“Do you know, of all things, I think you’ll miss this place the most? But you shouldn’t worry. I hear the library on the Moon is splendid beyond imagining.”
Janos looked up at his older sister and said quietly, “I’ll miss you most of all.”
II. Venus
The golden doors often hid many treasures: aromatic spices, captivating dancers, baskets of uncut jewels from newly-discovered mines, not-so-clandestine affairs. On Venus, business was personal, and what was personal was business. Today, what lay behind the golden doors were people he hated - or rather, people he would have hated had he not wanted their approval so badly.
Zavier pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, ignoring the curious glances of passersby. If only he could have put his hands over his ears in time; if only his favorite cloak pin hadn’t come loose; if only he hadn’t ducked back into the throne room to retrieve it.
It was bad enough being sent away to a planet on which nothing happened and where you didn’t know anyone. It was worse being sent away to a planet knowing your parents were actually pleased to be rid of you.
To the casual observer, Zavier appeared to be quite confident, perhaps edging into the territory of arrogant. But what Venusian wasn’t?
Donia, his nursemaid, had once asked him, “Do you know why Venusian women are so beautiful? Because the men are so vain that if the women weren’t so beautiful, they wouldn’t be able to capture their attention!”
So he was vain, and he seemed to have a right to be. All his life, Zavier had been a beautiful child, and his looks were much exclaimed over. He had a wealth of long golden ringlets, brighter than the doors and softer than silk. His eyes were as green as emeralds and even more pleasing to look upon, one lady had claimed.
His mother usually responded well to the compliments Zavier garnered, but not this time. Donia had later explained that Queen Alessandra thought the king and the lady had been spending rather too much time together. Zavier thought he could understand the feeling - he often wished his parents spent more time with him.
But he didn’t want to think about his parents now. They had been so pleased when the summons from Queen Serenity had arrived, but not for the reasons he’d thought. They thought him inept, incompetent, so completely unsuited to be their heir that it was with the utmost relief they were ushering him off the Moon and declaring his sister Suzana the new heir.
He might be closing his eyes now, but Zavier was neither blind nor stupid. He knew he’d been a disappointment in the past. His performance on the practice courts had been deemed adequate if uninspired by the arms master, but he was an utter failure in the eyes of his father.
Zavier’s looks promised he would be a devastatingly beautiful man when he reached his prime, but as his mother constantly reminded him, beauty wasn’t everything, not even on Venus. No, one must also possess wit, and talent, and charisma. At times, Zavier held the fickle attention of the Venusian court, but he didn’t draw it to him. Instead, it came in unpredictable eddies and currents, the way noxious jets of water sometimes burst from the geysers.
Slender fingers closed around his wrist, and he jerked away. “Don’t touch me!”
“It’s just me, your highness.”
He rubbed his eyes, dashing away the tears. “Oh, Donia.”
Her auburn hair spilled over her shoulders in a rich waterfall, and while she dressed as a servant in the royal palace should, she looked nothing like a nursemaid. But she was the one who had nursed him through childhood illnesses, exclaimed over his progress in his lessons, and taught him the ways of the world.
“I’m packing your things now. Why don’t you come up with me so we can be sure you have everything as you like it?”
He ascended the stairs without argument, following in the wake of her wispy, many-layered skirts.
When they reached his rooms and let the silken curtains fall into place behind them, she didn’t move towards the overflowing trunks but instead sat beside him on the bed. “What troubles you, sweetling?”
“Nothing.”
She rubbed his shoulders comfortingly. “It doesn’t look like nothing, Zavier.”
“They’re happy I’m leaving,” he spat out in a flood of misery. “I was a terrible heir, and now they’re easily rid of me.”
Over the years, she had seen his triumphs go unremarked on and his mistakes turned into failures. The Venusian court was filled with any number of people who would gossip with you or fawn over you, but none of them could be trusted to keep a secret. Donia had kept all of Zavier’s confidences, and he was the only one in the palace who knew that Vidonia Marin, one of his father’s forgotten mistresses, still lived.
“Stop crying.”
“I won’t! Who cares what they think? I’m leaving them all behind tomorrow, anyway.”
Donia handed him a basin of water and a drying cloth. It wouldn’t do, they both knew, for him to show up red-eyed and blotchy-faced at the feast tonight.
“Stop crying,” she repeated, and there was a note of steel in her voice that ensured obedience.
As he dipped up the water with sulky splashes, she asked, “Do you remember the theater performance you attended last week, Zavier?”
“Of course.”
“And how surprised you were to learn that the duke was played by a woman, and the villain who spoke Venusian like a native was born on Pluto?”
His shoulders shrugged sullenly.
“Then take a lesson from then.”
“You mean, be false the way Mama’s friends are to her? Flutter over her one moment and then talk about her behind her back?”
Donia smiled and shook her head. “No, Zavier. This is what I mean: you’re unhappy because you think they don’t value you. The trick is not to change yourself, but to make them believe you are what they wish to see.
“Be nice, sweetling. Be what they want you to be, and they will like you. And remember - it’s not only those who hold the power right now who matter.”
She threw back her cloak of shining hair, and Zavier watched as she unpinned the carved jade butterfly she always wore at the base of her throat. “Do as I say, and you will succeed. But while you’re doing so, don’t forget who you really are - never let them make a moth out of your butterfly.”
III. Mars
The roar from the crowds was deafening, but Nikodemus didn’t mind; in fact, he reveled in it. What true child of Mars did not?
His cousin Nestor, who was seated beside him, elbowed him in the ribs with a wide grin and shouted in his ear, “Nowhere in the universe can the games rival those of Mars!”
“Nowhere!” Niko shouted back, nodding his agreement. He settled back to enjoy the display taking place in his honor - first came the fights, to get the blood pounding, and then would come the dances, to rouse the spirit.
“We’ll be sure to write you and tell you what you’re missing, so far away on the Moon,” Anatole remarked in his cloying voice.
Niko’s eyes, the same royal blue of the king’s standard, narrowed. Another nudge in the side from Nestor made him swallow his retort, even if stung worse than a wasp on its way down.
“Perhaps. But I’m sure I’ll be far too busy doing important things to miss the games,” he said airily.
Ajax snickered. “What, standing outside the princess’s window at all hours? Maybe combing her hair for her, or carrying her dolls when she gets tired?”
Niko clenched his fists, no longer able to concentrate on the bouts taking place before him.
“Perhaps you’ll make a match of it,” Adonis suggested coyly from beneath his very blond lashes. “You can find out what it’s like to serve a Lunarian inside as well as outside the bedroom.”
Niko glanced down the line, but the older boys, his older brother Hector among them, were ignoring the younger ones.
That was fine. Niko preferred to fight his own battles, and on Mars, royal blood didn’t get you special treatment. In fact, in his experience, it made you a target, particularly when there were so many royal cousins jostling at his heels.
Ion’s normally smiling mouth was pinched with worry as he glanced between his cousins and the arena. “They’re just jealous, Niko.”
“Me? Jealous?” Anatole hooted. “Of what? I don’t have to go to the Moon and be at someone else’s beck and call. I don’t have to remain unmarried for all my days. I’m going to stand beside your brother at the Altar of the Gods and be his first general when we go into battle.”
That was the spot Niko had coveted nearly all the years of his life, the thing he most regretted giving up. It was with that ardor that he threw himself at Anatole, and the rest of the cousins became a kicking, punching mass as Nestor and Ion joined his side, pitted against Adonis and Ajax, while Dmitri tried to pull them apart.
The melee ended when the barest touch of fire flicked their heels.
“Boys!” Argus, the fustiest of the surviving great-uncles, glowered at them. “What is the meaning of this disgraceful exhibition?”
Hector, the heir to the throne of Mars, was standing beside him. Niko could tell the fire had been his, and his cheeks burned with shame.
No one answered - not even Adonis, that little worm, or Anatole, the ever-present thorn in Niko’s side. They had all been bent on causing each other as much pain as possible a few minutes before, but the bond against outsiders (of which the definition was flexible, depending on the situation at hand) was stronger than iron. They all knew it, and so did Hector and Argus.
“All of you are dismissed. Immediately,” Argus ordered.
Niko turned to go, his nose bleeding and his fine clothes ripped.
“Let them stay.”
His heart leapt with hope when he heard his uncle Tarus’s voice.
Handsome and strong, with his thick black hair and flashing purple eyes, Tarus was the pride of the previous generation of Martian princes and the current king’s right hand.
“The servants can clean them up,” Tarus said, gesturing at the cluster of men who stood waiting with wet cloths and fresh garments. “After all, this celebration is in Nikodemus’s honor, and we couldn’t proceed without our guest of honor. I’m sure the boys will behave themselves from now on, won’t they?”
They all nodded fervently.
Hector was still frowning in a way that promised Niko one last lecture before he boarded the airship bound for the Moon, but he agreed to let them stay. With one last grumble, Argus departed to find a seat in a less rowdy area of the stands.
After he slipped the clean tunic over his head, Niko felt the pressure of his uncle’s hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you sit with me for awhile, Niko?”
“All right,” he agreed, ignoring Adonis’s sneer.
He followed Tarus down to a lower box, near where the betting was held. Here the spectators paid the arrivals no mind, for they were intent on the outcomes of the bouts and their gains and losses.
Tarus took a moment to settle himself in his seat, nodding in satisfaction as the latest victor raised his javelin triumphantly. “Excellent. I’m looking forward to the staff matches, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Niko agreed eagerly. Archery was the sport of the royal house, but his personal strength, as Tarus knew, was with the staff.
“Will you be bringing your staff with you?” his uncle asked, nodding towards the length of dark wood clutched in his hand.
Niko looked too, as if he had forgotten he was holding it. Two years ago, he had collected the wood from Starcatcher Forest on his first solo overnight, after a night spent in meditation. Upon his return, Tarus had helped him carve the sleek wood into a peerless staff. Niko had used it to be beat Ajax, the biggest and brawniest of them all, for the first time this year in practice combat, and it had almost never left his hand since.
“I wanted to, but they said I am to leave it here,” Niko said regretfully. “We aren’t to come with any weapons of our own, from home.”
“Who said?” Tarus asked, still smiling, his eyes on the matches. “Your lovely mother? Or the Lunarian queen?”
There was a strange note to his voice when he spoke of the Moon Queen, and Niko didn’t know quite what to make of it. Mother liked Queen Serenity, whom she knew from her girlhood.
“Well, both, I suppose. And Hector, too.”
“I see.” Tarus stroked his neatly trimmed beard, which Niko eyed with no little envy.
As he ran his hand hopefully across his chin, he heard Tarus ask, “And your father?”
Niko shrugged. His father was as busy as he was unfathomable, spending many of his hours before the Eternal Flame that burned at the Altar of the Gods. “I didn’t ask.”
“Hm.” Tarus finally turned his attention to Niko. “You see that warrior there, in the purple? He was last year’s champion. I don’t think his weapon is nearly as fine as yours.”
“I don’t, either,” Niko said proudly.
“A weapon like that should always be kept at your side, don’t you think?”
“But…”
“And your father didn’t forbid it, did he?” Tarus asked smoothly. “I’m sure it was friendly guidance that came from the Moon rather than a hard rule - after all, who is she to dictate how things should be on Mars?”
It did seem to make sense to Niko, and his heart leapt at the thought of being able to take one thing with him from home.
“Listen to me, Nephew.” His gaze was caught by the fierce violet of his uncle’s, and he found himself unable to look away. “Family is the most important thing in the world, and that is where all your loyalties must ultimately lie. Isn’t that what you boys are taught?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“Believe me, Niko, I was raised in a time when that wasn’t widely held, when such strong bonds of brotherhood and fealty did not exist. I know the evil that can result when such principles are not followed.” His mellifluous, storyteller’s voice caught at Niko’s mind as deeply as the first archer’s arrow plunged into the target center.
“Promise me you will always follow them, Niko.”
“I promise.”
Little else of import passed between them that night, and Niko left the next day, supposedly bearing only the clothes on his back and few other trifles. But when he entered his new rooms on the Moon, he found the staff lying boldly at the foot of his bed.
IV. Jupiter
Kasimir stood in the doorway, not hovering, simply there. The king’s desk had been cleared of everything save for two crystal decanters. One was empty, the other nearly half full of a colorless drink known colloquially as “Dreamer’s Death.” He knew it was one of Saturn’s most lucrative exports, despite the fact that less than ten casks of the stuff were produced in a given year.
Still, by now Kasimir knew what it meant to be a planetary king, one of the privileged nine who sat on the Ruling Council of the Silver Millennium. It meant you were wealthy enough to afford the most expensive spirits to drink yourself into oblivion and fearsome enough to intimidate your ministers into displaying a nauseating level of obsequiousness, but not powerful enough to keep your wife and son.
He watched his father’s fingers shake as he refilled his glass, sloshing the priceless liquid onto ancient oak. Kasimir couldn’t remember how long it had been since those fingers had run through his hair or held a sword.
The rulers of Jupiter were fighting kings. In the old, bloody days when the empires were being built, they had been glorious and terrifying, and it had been the potent combination of their might and the never-sleeping scheming of the Mercurian queens that had brought the other planets to their knees. By all accounts, Mercury’s queen was still tirelessly weaving her subtle webs around the Silver Alliance, but Jupiter’s king had forgotten how it felt to grip a sword blade.
Instead, he spent his hours fighting with himself, the past, and other things he couldn’t change. Of course, he didn’t have much need to fight, not when his son was widely heralded as the most powerful prince of Jupiter to be born in a millennia. But now it was to be “senshi” before “prince”, and therein lay the problem.
“So.” Despite the potency and amount of the alcohol he had consumed, the king’s words were clear, not slurred. “Tomorrow you will go to the Moon, to bow to the queen, eat at her table, and guard her pretty daughter.”
He paused to empty his glass, and Kasimir struggled to keep the longing and scorn hidden as he looked upon the pouched cheeks and broken veins. His father was still entirely too good at reading faces, and besides, it was what was unseen that Kasimir feared most - the bitter dregs of loss that gave rise to an unquenchable thirst for vengeance.
“You know what I expect from a son of Jupiter, Kasimir,” the king growled.
“Yes, Father.” They were the first words he had spoken all evening, and his voice was hoarse from disuse.
“You will be the leader of the senshi.”
Kasimir opened his mouth to object, knowing full well there would be a vicious competition to see who would become the leader, and closed it again. It was useless to gainsay his father’s expectations.
“You’ve been taught to pick your moment. When it comes, strike hard, strike fast, and most of all, strike close.”
He nodded. “Will that be all, Father?” he asked as blandly as if they had been discussing the weather.
“You may go.”
Kasimir bowed and took his leave, cognizant that these would be their parting words. He made his way to the North tower, the lookout tower, by force of habit. Instead of the longed for solitude, he was greeted by the breathless sobs and ragged sniffs of a child who has been crying for too long.
“Is this where you’ve been all night?”
Radek nodded, trying to snuffle back the last of his tears. Crying, they both knew, was something their father regarded as unmanly. Crying in public was unforgivable.
“I was waiting for you.”
“I see.” Kasimir sat with his back against the gray stones, looking up at the unfathomable night sky and wondering whether his future held as many trials as the sky had stars.
“Don’t go!” Radek burst out.
“We’ve talked about this. You know I have to.”
“But - you don’t want to go, either, do you? And Father always says, ‘No one forces a king of Jupiter to do anything he doesn’t want to do.’” His brother’s black eyes were wide and pleading.
Kasimir looked at him, and for a moment he hated himself, because he understood why the king ignored his younger son. Radek was too much like their mother, for whose death the king blamed Queen Serenity.
“Perhaps no one can force a king of Jupiter to act, but you know what Master Ivan has told us,” he said, referring to their tutor. “Above all, there are two things even kings are subject to.”
“I know, know. Honor and duty, the twinned roots of the Jovian oak,” Radek recited impatiently.
Kasimir nodded, his fingers idly tracing the grooves between the stone. “Very good. My duty will be to protect the Moon Princess, and my honor compels me to do so to the best of my ability.”
Radek persisted, “But Father says the queen took Mother from him; why must she also take you?”
Kasimir shifted so he was kneeling on the cold tiles at eye level with his brother. “Listen to me, Radek. You are the heir now. Do you know what that means?”
“That… I must be like you?”
“No,” he said, more sharply than he intended, for Radek shrank back. “You will be your own man - not me, not Father. You must figure out for yourself where the twinned roots leads, and build on them to the best of your ability. Make me proud, Radek.”
“I will,” he said solemnly.
And that was the image Kasimir took away with him, of his younger brother’s face, pale with strain but eyes alight with hope and determination.