Seeder, Chapter Three

3. Orchid

As the train pulls to a halt, the cessation of motion wakes Atuma Urizen, daughter of the dynastic ruler of Lod but not herself in the line of succession. Her body is adapted to constant movement; the dynastic train rarely stops. Her father says Atuma was birthed in a train car speeding over the East Plains at a hundred miles an hour. Atuma asked her mother to confirm, but her mother refers to Atuma’s birth only as an inconvenience she once suffered.

Atuma looks out the window to see what caused the stoppage. She’s lost track of days. Today is Remembrance Day — a holiday declared a month ago — and the dynastic train is set to enter Belovode for her father to inspect a parade of veterans in Fulcrum, the city’s center. It will mean formal dress, and Atuma imagines there are attendants waiting outside her door, ready to cram her unruly body into corsets and binds so she can appear before the citizens in a shape her mother deems acceptable. When she unlocks and opens the door, there’s only Eliza, her second, Atuma seen in a silverglass.

“Good morning, princess,” Eliza says brightly. Past her, a royal vigilant stand watch. Eliza throws him a smile over her shoulder as Atuma lets her in and shuts the door. “That one’s the worst. Staring down my blouse because he’s not allowed to stare down yours,” Eliza says. “At least I think he’s the one. Fucked if I can tell them apart.”

Atuma smiles shyly at Eliza’s cussing, although she’s no longer scandalized by it. They play roles even when the doors are shut. Eliza was plucked from a farm in Last East when she was nine because word reached Atuma’s mother the girl bore a striking resemblance to the princess. More accurately, word reached her mother’s advisor, the priest — may his bones rot on the tracks — who told her mother Eliza might prove useful. Money was exchanged, sobbing parents left in the train’s wake and Eliza’s been with her ever since. When Atuma started putting on weight at thirteen, the priest ordered the royal menu be served to Eliza in the servant’s mess car. Eliza distributed the rich fare among the other servants. The priest heard, and he had her force fed under his watch like a foie gras goose until she plumped up to match Atuma. Since then, they’re twinned. Sometimes Eliza goes to dinner in Atuma’s place and only her little brother knows. Her father is generally absent and her mother isn’t attentive enough to notice.

“You should go to the parade today,” Atuma tells her. “You can wear whatever dress you want, get a bit of sun on your skin.”

“Be ogled by a regiment of one-legged, one-eyed old men,” Eliza says. “I see how it is. You’re at the ready when it’s the young boys at the front, but for the geezers you wheel me out. Not today, princess. Besides, it’s fucking frigid out there. I’ll be you when we’re in Kitezh or South Shore. Someplace nice.”

“What good are you?” Eliza helps her out of a nightdress. “I could order you to do it.”

Eliza nods, mulling this. “But as soon as we switched, I’d be princess and I could order you to go greet the geriatrics.”

“And then I’d order you back out — ”

“And we’d spend the day swapping clothes while a hundred sets of false teeth chatter in the cold,” Eliza says. “I’m sorry, Tombs, but you’ll have to take the bullet on this one.”

“For those who have already taken bullets in the name of Lod,” Atuma proclaims.

“You’re going to be a brilliant queen some day,” says Eliza. She yanks on a corset string.

Atuma makes a sound that’s a gasp and a laugh at once. “I’ll never,” she says. “Regent, if mom and dad die off before Dwellon’s of age. Otherwise, forever princess.”

“Atuma Urizen, the Forever Princess,” Eliza says in mock-dreaming cadence. “It has a fairy tale sound.”

“You take it then,” Atuma says. “An empty title and everything that goes with it.”

“All that goes with it is parades and this berth,” says Eliza. “You can keep it. Now get your ass to breakfast before your mother has a fit.”

“You won’t even pretend to be me at breakfast?” Atuma pleads.

“They stuffed me already this morning,” says Eliza, patting her potbelly. “You want to know the menu?”

Atuma shakes her head. “Let me be surprised for once.”