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Princess Katarin of Kordala (Katarin Tavehi) (katarinmiri) wrote in spinningcompass, @ 2022-03-08 22:10:00

Who: Bruno and Katarin
What: Katarin wants to know her future
Where: In the park
When: Late at night
Notes: Discussion of war, death, trauma



It was a short walk to the area of the park where her magic classes had taken place, but by the time Katarin arrived, she could have lain down and slept. She had been fuelled by adrenaline and anticipation since – how many days since they marched out from Amrilat? She should know that. She wasn't supposed to have this flag, either. Dari had been carrying it, one of the girls who had come with her from Privkat, Dari who said days ago that going through the city gates alongside her would be the most exciting thing ever to happen – and that was saying something, for a Privkat messenger girl.

She hadn't let go of that flag even in death.

Katarin shouldn't have been going through the gates either, she should have been safe in some Amrilat palace. Ask anybody, she was a fool. But Katarin hadn't come all this way to let others fight for her. She had been fatalistic for a very long time. If she were to rule Kordala, it would not be as some remote figure who knew nothing of her country. And if she were to die for Kordala, that was something else, and that couldn't be helped either.

What had she done? She had told Ellak Temarin that she was taking those closest to her and going to Amrilat in the south, the last city of free Kordala, not asked him, and she had gone, and called herself Katarin Šarra, using a title that hadn't been used in centuries, from a far more unsettled time. She was a Tavehi, but what she had planned was more than just the restoration of the old line. And in Amrilat she had set the factories to good use, and gathered in the excess from the harvest, and seen that her people were provided for. And in Amrilat she had given the order that every last Delvonian on Kordalan soil was to die, soldier or settler or washer of pots, and that troubled her sleep sometimes, but she didn't doubt that it was necessary.

Katarin was a different woman now than she had been. She planted that flag in the ground by the magical circle, leaning against it. It was bright red, with the yellow sun and black stripes of Kordala off in one corner. Red was the flag of war. Katarin wore a broad sash of that same red around her waist, and a light grey tunic and skirt, because you could operate more easily in the villages if you didn't stand out, but the new Kordalan army – the blend of the old Avtel forces still loyal, the village auxiliary, anyone who would join their cause – that needed legitimacy. Regularity. It was needed if they were going to be recognised outside Kordala. So this was her uniform, with a triangular insignia scored through twice, a line of silver pins – one was missing, fallen somewhere in this world or the other – and perhaps most unusually, that scarlet ribbon round around each wrist, tied off where once she had worn the iron band that stole away her magic. The clothes weren't new, not any longer. There was a tear at her sleeve and mud on her hem. Her hair was braided tightly, pinned close around her head. Her eyes were weary. Katarin was, she thought, eighteen years old now. Perhaps nineteen.

And now, she thought, she would learn if all of these years of work and loss and impossible decisions were going to be worth the cost.