Fairest

“And this is a problem?”

“Well … perhaps not, Your Highness.”

Annotel spoke up. “In the past, there has been concern of civil unrest when the people spend too much time being idle and … having ideas.”

Levana laughed. “Unrest? What reason would my people have to be unhappy?”

“None, of course, Your Highness,” said Haddon. “But I wonder if we have yet fully recovered from the murders on your parents. It is only that there will always be a few … bad seeds, in the outer sectors. We would hate to give them too much time to infect the others.”

Levana folded her hands in her lap. “While I cannot imagine the people deciding they’re unhappy with our rule, I concede to your point. Why don’t we implement a mandatory curfew after work hours? Give people time to go home, and let them stay there. That’s the time to be with their families, anyway.”

“Do we have the manpower to enforce that?” one of the nobles asked.

“Unlikely,” said Haddon. “As a guess, we would need a forty percent increase in sector guards.”

“Well then, hire more guards.”

Looks were traded across the throne room, though no one argued the simplicity of this solution.

“Of course, My Queen. We will see that it is done.”

“Good. You said there was another problem as well?”

“Not an immediate problem, but all of our projection reports show that this amount of production isn’t sustainable in the long term. If we continue at these rates, we’ll drain our resources. The available terra-formed land we have is already working at near-maximum capacity.”

“Resources,” Levana drawled. “You’re telling me that we cannot continue to grow our economy because we are living on a rock.”

“It is disheartening, but it is the truth. The only way to continue with this output is if we reopen trade agreements with Earth.”

“Earth will not trade with us. Don’t you understand that this is the entire point of developing the disease and antidote that we discuss at every meeting? Until we have that, then we have nothing to offer the Earthens that they do not already have.”

“We have land, Your Highness.”

Levana bristled. Though Haddon’s voice didn’t waver, she could see the hesitation in his eyes. With good reason.

“Land,” she repeated.

“All of the sectors together still take up only a fraction of Luna’s total surface. There is plenty of low-gravity real estate that could be quite valuable to Earthens. They could build spaceports that would require less fuel and energy to conduct their travel and exploration. That is what we could offer them. The same arrangement that the Lunar colony was first formed on.”

“Absolutely not. I will not return us to the political strength of a colony. I will not be dependent on the Earthen Union.”

“Your Highness—”

“The discussion is over. When you have another suggestion for how we can get around our dilemma of taxed resources, I will be open to hearing it. What next?”

The meeting continued amiably enough, but there was a tension in the court that never fully dissolved. Levana tried to ignore it.

She was the queen Luna had been waiting for. She would solve this problem too—for her people, for her country, for her throne.

*   *   *

“I’m telling you, I’m good at this,” said Levana, pacing giddily around the bedroom.

“I’m sure you are,” said Evret, laughing as Winter brought him a pair of Levana’s shoes from the closet. “Thank you, darling,” he said, setting the shoes aside. Winter gleefully darted back toward the closet. Looking up, Evret beamed. “This is the happiest I’ve seen you in a long time.”

It was the happiest Levana had felt in a long time. “I’ve never been good at anything,” she said. “Channary was the better dancer, the better singer, better at manipulation, better at everything. But ha! I am a better queen, and everyone knows it.”

Evret’s smile became hesitant, and she knew he was uncomfortable speaking ill of the dead, but Levana didn’t care. It had been almost a year since Channary’s death, and she’d felt like even a day of mourning was too much. She suspected that the poor seamstress who would never walk again would agree with her.

Winter scurried by, handing her father another pair of shoes. He patted her head, where her hair had grown into wild curls that haloed her round face. “Thank you.”

She skipped away again.

“And the people. I think they’re really starting to love me.”

“Love you?”

Levana stopped pacing, caught off guard by the mocking in his tone.

Evret’s smile quickly fell, as if he had caught the derision too late. “Sweetheart,” he said, a name that he’d started using for her not long into their marriage. It simultaneously served to make her heart patter, and to make her question if he called her this so that he wouldn’t accidentally call her Solstice. “You are no doubt a good queen, and doing great things for Artemisia. But the people don’t know you. Have you even been to the outer sectors?”

“Of course I haven’t. I’m the queen. I have people who go out there and report back.”

“You’re the queen regent,” he corrected. Levana flinched—she was coming to despise the word regent. “And while I’m sure that the reports you get are very accurate, it still wouldn’t allow for the people to get to know you, their ruler. They can’t love a stranger. Thank you, Winter. And besides, whenever you do your news broadcasts, you always…”