Bloom & Dark

by Regina Watts

  “Sadly,” she said with genuine compassion, “that is not an option here.”

  “But say you and I must leave the Palace together?”

  “Depending on context, you may be permitted to bring your sword…but by and large, you will have to do without it. I am sorry, Burningsoul—I know it isn’t what you’re used to.”

  This was all part of a trial of Weltyr’s design. I moved on, “Be that as it may, the spirit-thief seemed to think it really could get through to me in one way or another. While it knew the task would be ultimately fruitless, I knew better than to shut the door in its face. We had ought to have a damn good reason for revealing what I told you. I think we’d ought to save it.”

  While she lapsed into silence and seemed to genuinely consider my opinion on the matter, I did a brief bit of thinking of my own. “Say we announce a gala of some kind,” I told her. “A public gathering designed to tempt the assassins into making their move. Say it’s to prove to the individuals involved that you won’t be so easily cowed into silence.”

  “An interesting idea…meanwhile, we debrief the guards—”

  “That’s right. A few people who need to know can be informed of the dangers—and you’ll always have me by your side.”

  Drumming her fingers upon her dressing table, Valeria at last stood in a jangle of jewelry. “Very well, Paladin. Let’s continue with the announcement about what happened last dark, and save all mention of proposed spies for the future. A big party, all those people circulating publicly around me…yes, I would be very surprised if any conspirator could resist such an opportunity.”

  Soon she sat in the throne room while I stood customarily apart from her. Valeria looked curiously exposed without the snake to which I had already grown accustomed. Each individual who entered was given cool assessment by her eye as well as mine, and together we silently pondered. Which of these people could it be? A guard? A servant?

  The vizier hurried in at the end of the daily procession of people, producing a noise somewhat like a sigh as she reached the bottom of the platform upon which the Materna’s throne was situated.

  “Majesty,” said Trystera, hand upon her heart, her head bowing. “I am so glad to see you up and about.”

  “Did you expect me to be put out by a little thing like a brush with my own snake, Trystera?” Valeria waved her hand, those same fingers soon reflexively landing upon the thick, bruising line that had disappeared after two swallows of some dark red potion. “I can assure you, I won’t be prevented from serving Roserpine by a little thing like that.”

  Soon, at the nod of Valeria’s head, the doors to the throne room shut. My mistress rose from her seat. As her cool eye swept the room, those that knew the events of the dark prior stared grimly on. Others looked with more confusion at the doors until she declared, “Another attempt was made on my life last dark, and though I very obviously stand before you in one piece, I’m afraid to say that my beloved serpent is no more. All of you here know how long he has been my companion, and my heart is heavy with the loss; I am grateful, however, for Holy Mother Roserpine, and this paladin she has brought into my service. Burningsoul—explain what occurred last night after the departure of our guests.”

  Though I was not exactly used to public speaking, formal settings such as Court were a bit different. Due to their similarity to religious services of Weltyr I felt matter-of-fact as I explained what I saw: from the scream that called me into the bedchambers to the final death of the serpent, I left nothing out.

  All the while, Valeria searched the faces around us. When I finished, my mistress returned to her throne and crossed her legs, the short fabric of her dress riding slightly up her thighs. Ah, she was beautiful! I had to avert my eyes to keep from staring at such an inappropriate moment.

  “As you all are surely aware, this is far from the first attempt on my life. I suspect it will not be the last. However, it also occurred to us last dark that perhaps the point is not necessarily to take my life, but to cow me into fearful submission and in some way impact our ways here in El’ryh. With that considered, I have decided that the only rational response is to throw a banquet at the week’s end.”

  A few breaths of shock were expelled, and more than one voice in the scattered groups of two or three servants, bureaucrats, guards and recorders rose in concern at the thought.

  But one voice that showed no real concern was the vizier, who had listened to all this very quietly from her customary place to the left of my mistress’s throne. When Valeria had at last finished formulating her proposition, Trystera posited, “That is a very fine idea, Madame—perhaps then the conspirators will have a greater respect for your power, and might even accept somewhat that the status quo here cannot, will not, be shaken.”

  Carefully studying the vizier from the corner of my eye, I replayed again our two brief interactions from the dark before. How standoffish she was, even considering the way durrow tended to regard their mortal property! And how suspicious it was to have found her in the chambers of my mistress a few hours before the ordeal.

  Yet…of course, many others had been in the chambers that dark as well. Not just durrow, but the durrows’ slaves. A great number of women had been coming in and out through the eve, and though I could not think of a one I saw entering my mistress’s chambers unattended, magic did not require such a contrivance as physical presence. There were magicians so great that they only needed peer into a seeing stone, identify the target of their hateful whims, and lay some enchantment from a distance. It was not required that anyone actually enter my mistress’s chambers for her snake to be affected by a curse. It was not required for the vizier to have entered the bedroom for her to have betrayed Valeria.

  After my lady’s work was finished for the bloom, I joined her in the baths. The engagement was by no means as thrilling as our first visit. The elf-slaves who had so eagerly pleasured her before saw her tense expression and seemed to know she was in no mood to be trifled with even for her own benefit. Instead, no doubt having also heard of her ordeal the night before, they more solemnly led her to her private bathing chambers. There, before the slaves, we were free to speak unheard. My lady brooded, thinking frequently aloud of the party, until she lapsed into silence again.

  I took a chance.

  “How long has Trystera been in your service, Madame?”

  “Since before I was even in the service of El’ryh…she has been vizier to three high priestesses of Roserpine, myself included.”

  I whistled, astonished. That would put her over six hundred years old, easily. “And she has been loyal all these years?”

  “To the best of my knowledge, she has been among my most loyal helpers. Of course—her loyalty is to the ring and Roserpine, and not necessarily to me. Trystera has no qualms when it comes to second-guessing my decisions, or steering me into what idea she thinks to be best. She is the ideal woman for the position of vizier. In all the Nightlands, there is none better.”

  I frowned, rubbing my jaw from where I stood near the steaming water, and considered the ring upon my lady’s finger. “Has she ever shown you any envy? Perhaps slipped away for long hours without explanation for her whereabouts?”

  At last gathering the aim of my questioning, Valeria looked up at me more sharply. “Are you implying my vizier is the conspirator orchestrating these attacks on my person, slave?”

  As fond as I already was of her, and as pleased as I was by her praise, I was just as cut by the tone of her derision when she reduced me to little more than her property by only a word. Nonetheless, thinking of how she had just praised Trystera for pushing back against her ideas, I suggested, “You must keep open to the possibility that it is anyone, Madame. You just said yourself that for centuries—for the long lifetimes of three priestesses—Trystera has been adjacent to great power, but never possessed it fully for herself. Not to mention last dark. She was at the party when I arrived and was first to arrive after the attack. Aside from the guards, at any rate.�
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  “Word travels quickly in the Palace,” said Valeria, nevertheless thinking over my suggestions on this matter. Divine lips pursing as she glanced down at her ring, my lady closed her hand into a fist. “But you do make some interesting points.”

  “May I inquire as to the nature of her visit with you when I arrived at your chambers?”

  With the note of a light, humorless laugh, Valeria rested her arm against the edge of the pool in which she was attended by the caresses of the elf-girls. “She has been, from the moment she set eyes on you, completely opposed to your presence. She thinks my guards should be enough and that you pose an unnecessary security flaw—that you are too easily compromised, have too many reasons to betray me.”

  “In other words, the same sense I get about her.”

  Valeria offered no reply.

  “Once, when I was a lad, I loved a girl terrifically.” The story came flowing out of me and as it did I sat upon a nearby bench, hands folded as I explained, “A maiden who was, like me, orphaned and left at Weltyr’s gates. She was witty and funny and charming, and she loved me back in the way of first love—nervous, impassioned, and short. One day, without my understanding why, she began to accuse me of looking too closely at other women. Soon she was questioning my every move. Each absence had to be accounted for, and Weltyr forbid I was seen speaking with a priestess!

  “Then, one day, I found her caressing another boy from our temple. Everything clicked into place. She was jealous because she feared I was doing to her what she was doing to me—or, perhaps, she thought that by accusing me of these things, she might produce a smokescreen by means of which she could seem the blameless victim. I was shocked and broken-hearted. Like every young man experiencing such things, I vowed to never give my heart to a woman again.” I laughed, and even pensive Valeria produced a smirk at that. “You can imagine, I was in love with another girl the next week.”

  “Youth is exceedingly fickle,” agreed my lady. After staring into the indigo gem for a long few moments during which I wondered what she saw in it, Valeria sighed.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” she announced, her fingers drumming upon the edge of the pool. “Perhaps Trystera does bear investigation…at the very least, to rule her out and ease my mind. Loyal though she may be, her loyalty does not exclude her from investigation. If we are going to be suspicious of everyone in the Court of Roserpine, it would be foolish for us to write her off on the basis of years of service.”

  I nodded, adding, “I hope as much as anyone that my instincts are wrong in this issue, but her eagerness to see us separated does concern me—until we can rule her out as a suspect, you would do well to avoid sharing too much information with her.” With a glance toward the door, I confessed, “I must admit I find myself all the more frustrated by my condition as a slave, Madame. It would be far easier to investigate were I capable of moving about the palace with at least a modicum of freedom. Instead I’m left to baseless speculation…a thing I hate. The idea that I may this very minute be accusing an innocent woman of treason is a deep concern for me.”

  With a faint chuckle, Valeria shook her head out of fondness and rose from the water. While droplets sluiced down her curves and dripped from the tips of her plump breasts, she told me, “You are noble indeed, Paladin. However…there may be a solution to this.”

  Speaking in clipped Elvish to the slaves of the baths, Valeria permitted herself to be dried and dressed in a fresh gown. Soon she again led me through the halls of the Palace, but instead of bringing me back up to her chambers, we took a series of twisting hallways and soon found ourselves in a quiet series of offices. Without knocking, she let herself into one and surprised a durrow mage whose terse expression of interruption faded into shock. While the magic-user leapt from her seat, Valeria waved a hand.

  “No formalities, please—I’m here only to give my slave a pass.”

  “Ah!” Looking absolutely relieved that she was not perhaps about to lose her job or in some other way be imposed upon by the most powerful woman in the city, the mage pressed a hand to her heart and leaned back in the seat into which she’d once more fallen. “Well! That’s no trouble. For how long?”

  While the magical clerk removed a blank sheet of vellum from her desk, Valeria glanced at me thoughtfully and said, “Make it seven blooms long.”

  In other words, until the banquet had passed. Such trust seemed particularly generous and bolstered my own resolve. Though I by no means thought I would be able to resolve the entire mystery of the conspiracy in those seven days, it seemed to me that we might make some headway on the issue of these vile attempts. By the time of the banquet I may have had the chance to acquire, if nothing else, a lead.

  “Will it be for the city as a whole, Madame?”

  “Just the palace,” Valeria answered the mage, who nodded and made the appropriate adjustments to the symbol her quill quickly produced with ruby ink. Soon, pleased with it, the durrow said a few words: the sigil glowed, then settled upon the page as plainly as any other rendering. Smiling, the magus dusted it with a brisk coating of powder she then blew away. With the ink set, she then rolled up the scroll, tied it with a piece of ribbon, and handed it to my mistress. In turn, Valeria handed it to me.

  “This scroll will burn up in seven blooms,” she told me. “Until then, anyone who is presented with it will be compelled to let you pass through the palace unmolested. Take heed that you use it only in my best interests, Paladin…and in your own.”

  Nodding, pressing the scroll to my heart, I assured her, “I will see this issue put to rest—you will sleep more easily than you have in years.”

  A quite affectionate smile crossing her lips for me, Valeria nodded her thanks to the magus. We were then off again, neither one of us knowing exactly how soon that scroll would be of use.

  It transpired that, as we stepped off the lift and into the anteroom of Valeria’s chambers, the well-mannered guard perked at attention. “You just missed a visit from Trystera, Madame,” the guard told Valeria, glancing at me and (to my surprise) offering a polite nod before she focused again on the freewoman who had become my charge. As my lady and I exchanged a glance at this new information, the guard went on, “Unfortunately, she was disinterested in waiting and made her way off again.”

  “Thank you for letting me know, Fiora. Burningsoul—” My mistress glanced at me, then at the scroll I had slipped into the belt securing my tunic and my Strife. “Would you perhaps be kind enough to use that new pass of yours and inquire about Trystera’s intentions? Her apartment is on the 51st floor of the palace, at the end of the northern hall.”

  Understanding her perfectly, I bowed with my hand upon my chest. “With pleasure, Madame. I will be back as soon as possible with the information.”

  Without delay, I turned right around, slipped back into the lift, and looked carefully at the numbers. Much to my humiliation I, with no knowledge of Elvish, was forced to tarry to count the many buttons presented upon the mechanism before divining which was 51. Upon my finding it, the box lurched into motion made all the more discomforting for the fact that I was the only one within it. Bracing myself against the wall, the mechanism whirring around me, I shut my eyes and wondered if I would ever acclimate to this strange sensation of dropping—if I would ever acclimate to the strange ways of the durrow.

  Maybe it was not the culture of the durrow so much as it was the institution of their slavery. While I was not exactly used to possessing any great power, nor was I used to being so completely powerless. As an orphan in the Temple of Weltyr I had been servant to many, but that was as a matter of education. Each task I carried out was designed to teach me something of living in the world, of maintaining a household, of interacting with my fellow men and women. There was a purpose to it that ultimately benefited me. Now the tasks I completed—yes, even making love to Valeria—were assignments for my own good as much as the plow was for the good of the mule. I was a means to an end: an extension of my lady’s arm an
d no more than that.

  Well…no more than that to anyone but her. Though Valeria did her best to maintain a certain sense of social propriety between us, even when we lay in bed together, I could see in her eyes and feel in the tones of her pleasure-laden gasps that there was far more between us than mere ownership. Add to that her mentions of these dreams, and I sensed that what she felt for me was no mere possession—no mere lust.

  I could not help but admit my feelings were similar. Once I had come into her service thinking I could find some clever means out of the Palace, El’ryh, and the Nightlands as a whole. How quickly that changed! Though I still wished deeply to see my homelands once again and free myself from this bondage amid the durrow, I found now that my priority before any of that was to see to the safety of this splendid woman.

  Perhaps, also, to free her from a bondage of her own.

  The lift jerked to a stop at the 51st floor. I stepped off into a hallway that was empty save for a pair of guards chatting at the end and a series of shut doors on either side. As they noticed me, then further noticed I was unaccompanied, the two exchanged a few more words and parted ways. One went left down the t-juncture where they had stood conversing, and the one who remained came directly for me, calling down the hall, “Halt, slave. Do you have a pass?”

  I removed the scroll from my belt and let it do the speaking for me. The durrow took it from my hand, her mail clinking as she swiftly tore the ribbon from the vellum and unfurled it to see the sigil there emblazoned. Looking it over, then glancing quickly up at the symbol of Weltyr upon my neck, she rolled the pass again and observed, “You’re the Materna’s new guard.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Fiora mentioned you recently. What’s your business on this floor?”

  I had hoped to keep even the vaguest of my intentions concealed, but there was no helping it. Asked so directly, I was forced to confess, “Fiora herself just informed my mistress that she missed a visit from Trystera, her vizier; I was commanded to track her down again and discover what it was she wanted.”