[Lauchenoiria]

Construction Site, Grapevale
March 1934

The foundations of what was to become the Chamber of the Council of Kerlile were only just beginning to poke out from the ground where the Castle of Grapes once stood. A mixed-gender group of construction workers were milling around the site, though the groups of women and men would eye each other suspiciously when they passed each other. The gender roles of Kerlile were still being formed, and nobody was yet quite sure how to react, or what was safe to say in a state which had become rather totalitarian overnight.

“The Council has requested that we destroy any remains of statues found in the wreckage of the castle,” an out-of-breath teenage girl informed the woman in charge of overseeing the construction, halting the horse she’d been riding up the winding road from the temporary HQ of the newly-formed Council.

“Duly noted,” the woman nodded to the girl, then turned back to gazing across the site. The girl did not move to guide her horse away, instead hovering beside the woman, looking over the site herself from her vantage point.

“This feels wrong,” she offered after several minutes of staring.

“Don’t,” the woman warned softly.

“But-”

“Letitia. The time for that kind of thinking has long since passed,” the woman turned towards the girl, folding her arms. “It will be as it is meant to be.”

“Will it? When it was Hart, I could understand, but not this. Come on, cousin, call it what it is. This Council of theirs didn’t come to liberate us, they came to invade us.”

“Quiet!” the woman snapped, louder than she intended, then looked around to see if she had attracted attention. “Get off that damn horse and we’ll go talk somewhere less open.”

Letitia dismounted, tying the reins to a nearby fence and followed her cousin to the corner of a ruined room, a small fire burning next to a table set up by the remaining brick corner. Her cousin took a flask, pouring two cups of tea into the metal containers sitting on the rickety table. She handed one to Letitia and motioned for her to sit on the low ruined wall. They were far away from any of the workers.

“Letitia, you cannot say things like that any more. Do you know what is happening down in the village?”

“Of course I know Harriet! Do you think my fears are that I will be unable to marry, bear children and live as a servant to my husband? The Council are right that women need to have their own power, they are right that men will never give us it. But what gives them the right to come to Fleura, hang our own people on the branches of the trees and replace them with these masked mercenaries from gods-know-where?”

Harriet groaned, putting down her tea and instead pulling a hip flask from inside her jacket, unscrewing the top and taking a long swig of whatever was inside. “Letitia, I agree with you but you can’t just say it! If we were going to do something, it would have been ten years ago. They surround us, their people outnumber ours, and most of those who could have challenged them are currently rotting in the woods after their executions.”

“Ten years ago I was a small child,” Letitia pointed out. “And besides, you have as good a claim to the throne of Fleura as Hart does.”

Harriet jumped up, grabbing her cousin so quickly that Letitia let out a yelp of surprise, and pressed her face up against her cousin’s. “Never speak who we are aloud again. Our only chance of survival is if they do not know our name. The others are all gone, and unless we want to join them we have to leave that behind. Besides, I’d be a terrible queen.”

“If Hart had taken the throne for herself I wouldn’t mind but she is handing over our land to these foreigners, and we do not know their intentions! What if this is a plot by the South?” Letitia pulled away from her cousin, but lowered her voice nonetheless.

“South Fleura doesn’t exist any more; it’s part of Lauchenoiria now.”

“‘Lauchenoiria’ is just a new name for what we all know is the truth. South Fleura has created its own empire by conquering its own southern neighbours and pretending they joined them voluntarily. You know well that they want the north too.”

“These are wars fought and lost decades ago,” Harriet waved her hands to dismiss her cousin’s assertions. “The world to come will not be as the world once was. There is no purpose in going over the conflicts of states that no longer exist. The South is part of Lauchenoiria, and we in the North are now Kerlile.”

“And you’re just going to let it happen.”

“I’m going to survive, cousin. And if you want to survive also, you will leave the past where it belongs. Now, go back to the village. I have work to do here, and you have messages to carry. I will not hear any more talk of the Fleuran Wars, understand? What was, has ended. What will be, is beginning. Adapt or die, cousin.”

With that, Harriet turned her back on Letitia and began walking towards the main foundations of the new building, shouting at one of the groups of men to be careful with something they were carrying. Letitia scowled at her cousin’s back and collected her horse, mounting and turning to leave, her eyes narrowing in determination as she looked towards the forest.