"There is not much more to tell, I am afraid," the Calipha continued with her tale. "There is one last 'secret', but I am reticent to call it so as it was as public as my position as the Calipha. Yes, I am finally going to talk about my relationship with my dear Vizier."
Her tone was slow and composed as before, but the truth was, she had never been more afraid in her life. There had been no possible result but to reveal the secrets to Aloe. She was a woman that would do anything to find the truth no matter how horrible it could be. After having spoken with her for three straight days, Naila had realized that her only real chance was diplomacy born of honesty. Her hope was that if she was sincere nothing would happen, and for now, it felt like she had weathered the sandstorm.
"I do not know if you will believe me, and I tried to make myself as clear as possible, but my infatuation with Aya was genuine and not twisted in any shape and form. Sometimes… you just wanted to cradle someone." Naila stopped for a moment, but as Aloe kept an impassive expression, she continued. "It was a fascination that was growing with time, but I speak the truth when I said I wanted to be better than Aaliyah."
"Not even Aaliyah declared wars for the sake of expansion," the bicentennial woman, no longer petite but standing frighteningly tall, spoke casually.
"I told you; I was afraid that the country was going to starve as back then I had no way of knowing that the Evergreen was yet to receive the epithet of 'ever'."
"But once it was clear that was not the case and you had already conquered Loyata, your conquests did not end. Even as of today, your conquest threatens faraway lands."
Naila could see what Aloe was doing, she was testing her. Testing if she was a second Aaliyah-al-Ydaz. She may not be able to claim vengeance on the Sultanah anymore, but if there was a second one… perhaps in her mind it was as good as a vengeance, or just a twisted sense of justice by removing the world of a nefarious person. And even if her life was on the line, Naila could understand it.
It was a nefarious person, if the superlative positive word of 'person' could be used on that monster, who had also twisted her. Both physically and mentally.
"I will not excuse myself there. I am a warmonger," she spoke with honesty before all. A twisted sense of justice was also possessing her. If it was only her death that took, she could be satisfied. But nothing ended in a single death. It only started. "But I brought a better peace with my wars. Deaths were few and quality of life and progress improved under my reign. You have seen it for yourself that my reign cannot exactly called bad, or not?"
"Then why have I found slaves in my wake?"
"Slaves?" Naila uttered in veritable confusion. "There is only criminal slavery in Ydaz, and I enacted such a decree because prisons kept overflowing. It was either that or indiscriminate execution. And I think we all can agree that loss of liberties is better than loss of life. Once the criminals complete their sentence, they can be reintegrated into society. The only way for you to find slaves is in criminal workcamps."
Aloe let out a soft chuckle. "Oh, great heavens, you actually believe that. I had been thinking all this time that you have been a tyrant, but no, you are something worse. You are an incompetent ruler."
"I am not sure I follow."
"Naila, who do you think Xochipilli was when you saw him?" Aloe spoke softly, but unlike Naila's soft tone, hers was horrifying. "Don't tell me you honestly thought he was just my protégé."
To that, Naila-al-Ydaz had no words.
"Are you saying that he was a slave?" That was what she finally uttered after a moment of silence.
"Yes, an illegal one at that."
"But… how?" The Calipha grabbed her head in confusion. "This is… this is not the country I built. I am trying to be better than my mother! Believe me!"
She knew she sounded pathetic, but she was both disgusted and terrified at that moment. If the child she carried with her around all the time had been a liberated and illegal slave, Naila couldn't understand why Aloe hadn't killed her yet. If she had been her, she would have definitely done so. Perhaps Aloe was a better person than her, but at the same time, she was well aware that the kinder a person was, the crueler their violence could be.
"I do," Aloe responded softly but encouragingly. "This whole movement on slavery that is going on at this very moment has been orchestrated for the assassins, and from what you have told me, I don't think you have any ties to them. But if you truly want to be a better ruler and person than Aaliyah, you should fix that soon."
"I… of course!" She almost jumped out of her seat to immediately start working on it. "It would seem I have lost the grasp of my Ydaz after this long, and I must apologize for it."
"Don't apologize to me, I do not need for it. The lives of these people are of no interest to me." The sheer apathy that Aloe's voice portrayed almost left Naila thoughtless. That was the look of a person that had been hurt too many times.
"I will issue a decree and an investigation as soon as possible once we are done, but I owe you an ending to my narration first."
"Please, do so."
"I will be short, I have rambled for far too many hours now," the Calipha took a deep breath before continuing. "Prosperity hit Ydaz like a chill breeze during a hot summer. There was a revolt here and there, but the country was thriving. The army was pressuring me to go to war again to show Khaffat the true military hegemony of Ydaz, but each time the voices got too loud, a revolt sparked. That shut them up for almost a decade. Yes, time went by quite quickly. I did not spend all of those years pregnant, but by the half-point of that decade five years after the end of the conquest of Loyata, I had given birth to seven children in total."
Naila's eyes shone for the shortest of moments before they became focused on the narration again.
"Aya was already an adult by now. It is quite strange that my first daughter was almost the same age Aya was when I became infatuated with her."
"And disgusting."
"There were less than six years of difference between us, Aloe."
"Not all years have the same weight, Naila."
"I am conscious of that," the Calipha nodded. "I did not lay a hand on Aya or her mother for that matter. Only when she was a fully blossomed flower shining with the full power of spring did I confess the depths of my infatuation to her. Did you know what she said back then?" Aloe swayed her head in negation. "'I know'. I know, she said. I thought I was being subtle, but she had known for a long time."
"But how did she respond?" Aloe didn't bother to hide her repulsion, but she showed no hate or violence in her tone.
"She accepted," Naila nodded. "But I did not want her as just a concubine like my mother had had many people. No, I wanted something more intimate. I revealed to her like how I have done with you about how the flowing stance can be used to make babies without men. Or women, for that matter, but I learned of that way later."
"You know what I am thinking right now?"
"I can imagine it."
"You disgust me."
"I can admit to a degree of blame for having kept Aya close to me for years which may have led to conditioning her. But Aloe, hear yourself, we were two consenting adults by that point. And as a matter of fact, Aya looked older than me by that point as I was constantly wielding my second stance."
"Now I understand why the modern sultanzade have the surname of Ayad," Aloe responded to much of her dismay.
"Yes," Naila nodded. "But please, do not make that gaze when talking about my children. Regardless of what you think, they were a product of love. Both Aya and I impregnated each other after I taught her Nurture. I believe that is the biggest expression of love there can be as both partners partake in childbearing and childbirth."
"I… you might be right," the dark-skinned woman exhaled. "But my disgust doesn't end on that one point, Naila. Truth be told, I have read some books at the imperial library as dread kept gnawing at me. They are all dead, Naila. Why didn't you save them?"
"Save them? You mean to make them age slowly like me?" The Calipha almost chuckled, if it wasn't because she knew she was treading a fine line. "That would have solved nothing, and even if it did, I did try, Aloe."
The bicentennial older woman raised her brows and for a moment it looked like she was going to say something, but she let the younger woman speak.
"What do you think happened when I taught Aya about reaping?"
"Ah."
"Yes. She almost broke off from me, severing all ties, even if by then we already had two children. I had been conditioned since I was young to think that just was the way of life, but she saw it as a complete betrayal of trust. I almost died from agony and heartbreak right then. I made many concessions that day to prove that I was a better person than that like I am doing with you right now. First, I abolished Sulnaya as the official faith, leaving people to still be able to practice it, but no longer enforcing anything. Then I promised that none of my children would be forced to reap like what had happened with my siblings and me. It was the most difficult yet easiest of all promises."
"Did that include the children you had before with her?"
"Yes," Naila nodded. "I was nothing but a faithful spouse, and Aya loved my previous children like her own. They would end up aging, having children of their own, and dying in an ever-repeating cycle, but never once did I force them to reap as Aaliyah-al-Ydaz had done with me. Perhaps they were not ageless because they did not have the vitality to fight against time itself, but that did not make them less valuable to me."
"But you still reaped," the emerald-eyed woman interrupted.
"…Yes," the Calipha added with a tinge of lament. "Aya allowed me to do so as she understood that it was needed for Ydaz to stay strong and united. For better or worse, Ydaz needed a Heavenly Descendant, perhaps not as a god, but as a symbol of power. I have told you already that Aya could be quite pragmatic when needed."
"Yes, she was," Aloe added as her eyes peered elsewhere, or rather, elsewhen.
"With time, as our children became legion and the knowledge of Nurture became open – which was yet another of her petitions for her to stay – the knowledge of reaping became lost. Especially now that pills exist and people no longer ponder how cultivators of yore obtained their vitality, I can argue that reaping has been eradicated. Not only from practice but from the minds of everyone but our own."
"That… you cannot believe me how happy that makes me." Aloe led a hand before her face, her eyes becoming watery, but not a single tear fled from them.
It was impossible to know what the tall and dark-skinned woman was thinking for her dam never broke, but Naila would like to think her words were appreciated. A watery yet thankful gaze of a woman who had suffered the most brutal of reapings in Khaffat. Naila had always tried that hers were 'consensual', even if she knew that was a pathetic excuse as not many people could fight the orders of a princess and later a Calipha, but even in her sins, she considered her mother's crimes to be too much. And those emerald eyes showed it.
"Those are all my secrets and the end of my narration," the Calipha added after a handful of minutes filled with silence and half-sobs.
"I am glad to have talked with you, Naila," the massive woman's smile was so beautiful that Naila's taken heart was almost conquered again. But she had not lied about her infatuation, one which lasted for centuries even to this day, so she stood firm. Finally, Aloe Ayad smiled with comfort. "But I must ask you, how did my sweet Aya die?"
"From old age on our bed. Wrinkled yet marvelously beautiful," Naila responded slowly with a wry smile. "That reminds me that I have one last 'secret'. Her dying words were 'Mother was one of them', but I never did understand what it meant."
"I do."
Naila felt her whole work convincing Aloe was undone as she saw those fiery eyes.
Whilst Rani's reasons were pathetic, Naila's are the opposite. As someone who hadn't recieved a grain of love in her, Naila became drunk on it at the slightest affection. Yet she didn't led herself astray down the wrong path by that zeal, yet instead focused all her being in being the antithesis of her mother. I can't say the way she did it is a healthy mentality, but being better version of yourself definitely is.
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