by Cara Violet
“Did the Necromancers support King Warlowes with his war against the Gorgon and Giliou?”
“We call him the Defeated King, Liege Brikin. And yes, the Necromancers all thought they had the raw end of the deal in trade.” She wiped her daughter’s face clean. “Thank the Sarinese Gods the Giliou Shielders are here to support and protect us, and the Felrin intervened …”
“The Felrin are required to as your governance, m’lady.” Dersji reminded her. The Felrin wanted votes; they had to protect the people that gave them that, she shouldn’t think the Felrin were protecting the Gorgon simply out of the goodness of their hearts.
“Well, who knows what would have happened otherwise ….” Her eyes stared into the distance. “How did your report go?”
“Oh, its excellent.” Xandou spoke out over Dersji, taking a minute to stop nosily slopping down his meal to answer the queen.
Dersji shot him a heated look.
“Liege Brikin? Is that true?”
“Your Highness, I’ve had time to read it, and my Felrin correspondence, however I can’t make a definitive report on anything just yet. I will need some more time to understand the words, what exactly happened to make them appear …”
“I told you,” Agantha said over the top of him. “The Felrin killed the Defeated King and the plaque appeared—”
“One thousand years ago, yes I know.” Dersji interjected, the Queen’s face horrified.
“Your uncouth manner—”
“Please, Your Highness.” Dersji stared straight at her. He wasn’t being rude. There was just a line she had to know not to cross with a Liege. His calm patience, which he used to hold, was shortening the more he was around her.
She looked away from him. “I’m done with this stew.” The Queen dropped her spoon with a clatter to the fine china and then waved at her maiden. “Seran, please clean Kaianan and Xandou. I’d like to spend the rest of the evening in the Guest Hall with Dersji Brikin. I’d like tea please. Liege Brikin?” Dersji shook his head declining the offer, but he also wanted to leave, not spend any more time here. He needed a proper drink, or else he’d fall apart. Plus, what was she going to get out of this? He’d just rebuked her authority over him. “Could you please bring Kaianan and Xandou to us when you’re finished with them?”
Seran nodded, and another two maidens headed for the children and escorted them out of the room.
Dersji reluctantly sat at the Miry table in the Guest Hall and stared at the Queen sipping on her tea in a white china teacup. Sitting crossed-legged on the cream lounger in front of the big white fireplace, the firelight set her olive skin, auburn hair and green eyes to glow.
“I enjoy tea,” she said whimsically. The fabric of her silk robe radiant as she smoothed her palm over her crossed knees.
Dersji tried to read her. A blank, hollow face of content filled her. “If you don’t mind me asking, Your Highness,” he tried not to frown, “but where is your husband?”
Another sip of tea from her teacup and she let it clatter back on its saucer before she looked around the Guest Hall.
“Do you not love the finer things in life, Liege Brikin?”
This woman was as bad as he was, avoiding questions. No wonder they butted heads. “Your highness, please, call me Dersji, and well, no I guess I’ve never really cared for them.” Dersji took his tired attention to the gold glitter walls, shimmering around him, still utterly drawn to the room sparkling in the firelight.
“Every day, I ensure I am surrounded by things that show me beauty.” Her eyes rested on the Wall of Many Mirrors. “Do you think my Manor beautiful?”
“Well, Your Majesty, I believe beauty is subjective.”
“Subjective?” She mimicked with a gushing giggle.
“All that glitters is not gold, Your Highness.”
“You forget who it is you speak to.” Her words were curt and harsh, but after a few moment’s silence the Queen’s face altered and she smiled. “I commandeer beauty in my Manor, in my leadership …”
“I don’t doubt that, Your Majesty.” Dersji had been addressing her in title out of respect. But if she kept pushing him with her arrogant words, he’d change his tune.
“Liege Brikin, your kind, the Felrin, they indulge in beauty … So for you to deny it or even disregard it … Isn’t your perfect immortal body a signifier of Felrin beauty?”
Dersji shifted his gaze from her, feeling uncomfortable. Only the Liege gained immortality, the Ferlin led long lives, two-hundred-year lives, but they couldn’t outlive a Liege, who never grew old. Dersji also knew: nothing about everlasting life was beautiful. “The Felrin—”
“Set the trends, Liege. We look to Felrin city as the greatest in the galaxy.”
“Is that the only reason you vote for them too?”
Her answer was avoided by the arrival of the noisy children. Something Dersji couldn’t wait to be rid of. Hopefully the Felrin would let him go home in a few weeks. The battle of status with the queen was making Dersji lethargic and the boy just kept talking. There had to be an ending near.
“Oh, my darlings!” Agantha’s voice boom as Seran placed the young girl in the Queen’s lap; Xandou snuggled up by her on the cream lounger. The maiden departed and the Queen took her eyes to Dersji. “I’ll be expecting another soon.”
“I beg your pardon, Majesty.”
“Another child, Dersji.”
It was the first time she’d called him by just his first name, but the information she gave him, he tried not to grimace at.
“Did the Felrin stipulate how long I would be assigned here?”
It was the only thing that he was worried about. He didn’t want to talk about babies and children and prophecies. He’d be happy to stay for a while, train the boy up in two weeks and leave.
“Well, no, they didn’t. I thought you would be staying for a few years?”
Dersji laughed, it had escaped him, he couldn’t control it. “Sorry, Your Majesty, I’m sure that is incorrect. The Felrin will be in touch with me soon enough about it, I hope—”
“Kaianan!” Agantha shouted. “Ow, she bit me. Look at my finger!” The infant had escaped to the white tiled floor and was crawling her way to Dersji.
The temptation to flare up in aura and throw a beam toward them all ran through his mind.
“Would you get her Dersji, please?”
“What do you mean?”
“Pick her up.” The Queen was squeezing hold of her hand that was dripping blood.
“Oh no, I couldn’t.” Dersji said, complete fear in his eyes.
“Quickly before she reaches the fire! Xandou, run for Seran, now.” The boy nodded at the Queen’s words.
Dersji got up off his chair and reached for the girl. It was at this point he felt something deep inside him burning. Something stirring so strongly, it should have made him stop. His hands gravitated toward the little girl. Inch by inch the feeling got more and more powerful. Until … until he touched her.
As soon as he lifted her in his arms, something happened.
A sound of one spark passed his ear, then one spark developed into multiple electrifying purple flames zapping around them like bursts of fireworks. His feet started vibrating underneath him; it was the floor; the whole Manor was shaking. The noise got louder and louder. Glass began shattering. The burning inside Dersji was becoming unbearable. He looked across to the Wall of Many Mirrors, and mirror after mirror dropped, smashing to the floor.
Dersji’s mind finally clicked in the commotion, flashing back to what he missed leading up to this moment—the Queen’s voice: ‘you’re here to protect the Rivalex Mark, to protect my child,’ and Xandou’s declaration: ‘Protection. That’s why I’m here.’
Then he saw the Mark.
The Rivalex Mark: BI, was glowing on the tiny girl’s exposed shoulder as he held her.
Dersji realised he had it wrong; this was the child with the Rivalex Mark, this is who the Felrin ordered him to protect, and this had to
be a mistake.
He glowered at the infant who had begun wailing in his arms. But there was something else between them. Something had happened …
He hadn’t felt like this since—no, it couldn’t be. Since he last had a—Menial? No way, it had been several hundred years since any Liege and Menial bond had initiated, there would be no way this could be the same feeling. But when all the noise stopped and his focus returned, Dersji, holding Kaianan in one arm, pulled his left tunic sleeve up and gasped. Never in a billion years—never would he believe this could happen to him. He stared at the newly formed arrow tattoo on his left inner wrist, and then looking to Kaianan, who had the exact same one in the exact same spot, knew it was all over. A Liege and Menial bond had just formed in the most uncharacteristic of circumstances and between two of the most unlikely of people—the small girl of a prophecy and … and him, the disorderly drunk.
This bond, it would … Dersji couldn’t think straight. He heard muffled noises, possible voices of the others but he couldn’t hone in on them. Was the Queen shouting? The boy yelling too? He couldn’t hear any of it.
He had just bonded to a girl that would tie them to a life together until basically death. The world became foggy. He felt distant, ill, sick in the stomach. A few weeks had just turned into a minimum of eighteen years training, and this meant no more isolation, no more hiding away in his cabin creating scriptures and planting foliage—and no more excessive drinking.
He couldn’t think of a greater sentence of imprisonment; stuck in this Manor, stuck with this girl … stuck. He was stuck.
The word sat with him. He placed the girl on the cream lounger, and without speaking to anyone, he left the Guest Hall, left the Manor, left his new Menial, and made his way back to his cabin.
Chapter Two: The Menial
It had been almost seventeen years since the night the Wall of Many Mirrors crashed, the night Queen Agantha fainted, the moment Xandou cried and the meshing of a bond between a Liege and a Menial occurred. But that hadn’t stopped the young girl, Kaianan, from trying the best she could to grow up normal.
Dersji Brikin was back to days as a Liege, training a Menial, and Kaianan was exposed to his erratic and obsessive personality on a daily basis. He pushed her in training, in book work, in her ability in the Siliou, in her bladework, the list was endless … if Kaianan didn’t fight for some type of normalcy in her life, away from his constant bickering, then she wouldn’t have it.
It had been over two weeks since the Liege had let Kaianan out of the Manor grounds, and even though she was keenly aware walking the streets of Layos was not ideal, she couldn’t help but venture out to the Layos Markets, busy along Diggers Gap Road, to get a salivating fix of fresh berry pastry.
She’d taken, or in nicer terms, borrowed, a maiden’s robe for her journey through the Layos Markets, keeping the dark emerald hood pulled tight over her forehead to prevent prying eyes working out who was under it.
The few hundred Gorgon stalking Diggers Gap Road would pay her too much attention if they found out it was her and the goal for Kaianan was to eat her pastry and get back to the Manor and suited for bladework with Dersji after second sun’s rise.
Down the long, narrow asphalt streets she quickly strode, her leather boots squeaking against her calves as she walked, and as she passed the inner-city buildings of bluestone, past the smaller houses of mixed timber and bluestone that were becoming visible as the dawn’s light increased, the smell of fresh fish hit her.
The crowd got larger around the first stall in the market where the street widened. It was a fishmonger selling the finest Ebel in all of Rivalex. Ebel, the thick, large and heavy water serpent of the Swamp Lands was the number one source of food supply in the region. This fishmonger had Ebel hanging from the timber stilts and roof, and along his table, maybe thirty more.
Kaianan darted past the stall of loud, bartering customers and kept her head down.
Nudging past preforms, her stomach now rumbling, she made her way to her favourite café, Sprindles, passing her sister’s favourite shop on the way: Fabric Haus. Kaianan had never entered the place with the deep red glittering sign. Dresses and skirts, lace and leather; fabric did not tickle Kaianan’s fancy in the slightest and all she gave the multiple women in the glass-walled shop perusing garments, was a wayward smile.
There had to be something going on inside women’s brains to act this way and it wasn’t as though Gorgon women were any different to Giliou women, who would travel to the Layos Capital from Forsda just to purchase the quality items. They all had this affinity with fabric. Kaianan fathomed it was good for trade, and it helped the Gorgon were known for their seamstresses.
“Twenty-Five Felrin coin for the Miry cabinet, sir.”
Kaianan heard the shop assistant at Stallion timbers say just before entering Sprindles. Furniture was a very lucrative business also in Layos due to the Valley Woods residing so close to the city and if it was up to her father, the whole forest of Miry trees would be chopped down and reaped to progress the industry.
Kaianan, proudly, had put several stops to it.
“Hi madam, would you like a taster?”
She hadn’t realised she was already inside the lively bakery café, already through the bright flamingo arch doorway and glass-front shop of Sprindles, and already smelling the warm bread and pastry, and buns and cakes freshly baked out the oven. This was pure bliss.
“Madam, a taste of our new bread loaf?” The young boy asked again waving a basket of finely chopped bread at her.
“Sure, why not?” was all Kaianan could get out and popped the piece of loaf in her mouth. The taste was like warm doughy goodness exploding in her mouth. The soft texture of the bread was beyond delicious. Why the Layos Manor never wanted to buy from Diggers Gap Road was beyond her.
“Would you like to purchase one, madam?” The boy, who was Kaianan’s height but with paler skin and lighter brown hair, gestured to a table of bread loafs.
Kaianan moved her hood-covered eyes from the bright flamingo painted walls and Siliou pulsed lamp light, to regard the stand. “I’ll take two, and I’m after a berry pastry please.”
“Oh, yes.” he stated, walking toward the fully stocked glass cabinetry of vivid and intense coloured cakes and sweets, past the dozen or so loud customers at small Miry dining tables eating, and directed an instruction to another Gorgon girl working behind the counter.
With Kaianan’s things all packed up, handed back to her and Felrin coin exchanged, she stepped back out onto the asphalt street of the busy Diggers Gap Road, knowing there wasn’t enough time for her to stay and eat otherwise she would have. Dersji had only given her a late start in training because she practically begged him, explaining her life was in turmoil if she didn’t have a few minutes to herself.
“I’m sorry lady, this is Giliou Gold, you need to offer more coin.”
Kaianan turned her head, in one of the more lavish boutiques alongside the shabbier market stalls, the Giliou Gold trader, standing in the shop door frame was ranting on. Kaianan forgot how much the Giliou relied on their Gold business in the Layos capital to thrive, on the Gorgon buying from them to steady the Forsda economy. Ever since the Necromancers departed international trade a thousand years ago, the Gorgon and Giliou had to do what they could to stabilise profits after losing the Sile capital as a market. And that also meant they could no longer purchase iron ore or precious metals—the main resources of trade the Sile capital offered. Ideal for construction.
Ridding herself of the history lesson and clutching her brown bags of goodies, strolling north through the crowd, Kaianan felt a pang of hunger hit her. The smell of the bread had filled her nose; her tummy was rumbling loudly and her mouth was salivating. She would be home, to the Manor in a few minutes, but the urge to put that berry pastry in her mouth was too great. With stealth like speed and not caring what anyone thought, she opened and peeled back the smaller bag, thrusting the thick spiral sweet in her gob.
&
nbsp; She’d been dreaming of eating one of these all week. The taste was better than she remembered. And when the gooey Vera berry hit her taste buds she groaned in joy.
“MOVE OUT THE WAY!”
A man was screaming, Kaianan barely looked over her shoulder when the huge timber transport—one of the supply vehicles for the city, pulled by two huge and grunting fat, two-horned, grey-skinned Seevaar—cleaned her up and sent her flying through the air.
She tumbled into the asphalt and lost her bags, her half-eaten pastry and her happiness along with it. The vehicle moved on and Kaianan was left with grazed hands in the middle of the street.
“Is that?” A voice said above her.
“No, it couldn’t be.”
“Princess Kaianan?!”
“Isn’t she supposed to be getting ready for her ceremony?”
Kaianan got to her feet and realised her hood had fallen completely off. Long strands of bushy brown hair had fought free and those that had glanced toward her were able to identify who she was. Dammit! She needed to move, quick.
“Sor – ray, no speak – da – er – Vernacular.” She said in a twisted foreign tongue, but it was no use, they kept coming, swarms of them. Leaving her bread loafs and pastry spoiled on the street, she turned on her heel and ran.
She ran through the mass of Gorgon preforms and when she thought the coast was clear, she darted into an ironwork front, long, narrow shop to hide. The bell rung above her head as she entered and the smell of burning incense, perhaps the Giliou Frangipari, was intoxicating the air.
“Hello?” The gruff voice came from the shadows because the place was so dark and hardly held any Siliou pulsing light.
Kaianan, in one swift motion, lifted her hood back up over her head, hid her face as best she could, and in a breathy tone answered: “Hello, sir.”
“Looking for a rare jewel I see?”
She stepped one foot closer, then another, until the sky light, coming from the small top cornice window in the black walled room crossed some natural morning light against the old man’s face. Wrinkly and peppered with freckles, his white hair stood up like semicircles on his head.
