The Resurrectionist of Caligo

by Wendy Trimboli

  The crowd bobbed in elation.

  At the sound of a shrill trumpet, servants around the courtyard released floating lamps made of paper soaked in tree gum resin and infused with rose essence, then dried and crafted into bird-shaped lanterns. The heat from stub-candles gave them lift. The paper lamps rose like a flock of petrels on the low wind, climbing above the heads of the crowd. As they drifted ever higher, even the emperor tilted his head to follow their ascent. The paper-birds blotted out the sun, and Sibylla followed the queen and Crown Prince Elfred’s example in illuminating her skin with a royal glow.

  Near the front of the crowd, a boy of about two or three fixed his eyes on her and wailed, his face mushed with tears and snot as he clutched his mother’s arm. Sibylla winced, but no one else paid attention. All eyes were lifted to the sky.

  Her translucent skin prickled from the growing electric charge in the air – wisps of hair, already turned white, stood on end. Beside her, the queen pulsed the muscles in her fists and raised her arms to form a “V”. Once the paper lamps had drifted to the appropriate apex, the queen clapped her palms together in an explosive sizzle. White sparks crackled upward and set the paper-birds aflame. Ash blanketed the crowd, leaving behind the scent of smoked roses. The sky dimmed and the crowd stared, blank-faced with awe, at the royals glowing on stage.

  Men wept. Ladies clapped. Scholars and farmers alike anxiously laughed. All the while, Sibylla waved her luminous hand until the ash settled and she dropped both arm and glow. For his part, the emperor did not stare at her like the boy near the front of the crowd, whose horror slowly turned to fascination as his mother stooped to scrape ash into a biscuit tin.

  Sibylla was grateful when a Black Stallion came to escort her into the Great Gallery where formal introductions to the Khalishkan delegation had commenced. She curtsied to Emperor Timur without stumbling, but he still showed no marked interest in her and moved on to meet her cousins with a muted expression.

  “What do you think, Weed-eyes?” Edmund hissed in her ear. “Are your loins girded?”

  “Better watch out,” Edward whispered from behind Edmund’s back. “I heard the ol’ Archbishop’s commuted another felon, a true monster they say.”

  Edmund carried on in a singsong voice: “He’ll catch you in a stranglehold, they say he likes his women cold.”

  “Old, he likes his women old.”

  “Old? Like Granny?” Edmund grabbed Edward’s bum. “He is a monster. He’ll grab as much queen as he can hold, I dare say he likes his women old!”

  They tittered back and forth.

  “Your highness. Mr Maokin, the Minister of Culture and Administration.” The palace aide motioned Mr Maokin forward in the receiving line to meet her.

  Sibylla ignored her idiot cousins and focused on the advisor. Easily one of the oldest Khalishkans there, Mr Maokin wore a lilac sash cinched around his waist and a pair of circular spectacles slouched across his nose. She needed to make a strong impression if she wanted to be taken seriously.

  “May I?” he asked, lifting a tiny pink vial shaped like an orchid. “It’s only water,” he assured her.

  Sibylla closed her eyes, and Mr Maokin splashed the vial’s contents in her face. Water dripped down her chin.

  Thank the Lady of the Stream, she’d read beforehand about the Khalishkan custom of “damping” a potential bride, or she might have reacted with a whistle-click to Mr Maokin’s watery assault. Her cousins’ giggles rang in her ears, but she refrained from smacking them both and kept her composure with a tight smile. The water was supposed to lay bare any concealments or unclean motivations she may have toward the emperor, though no magic existed in Khalishka to accomplish this feat. She was glad not to have her agenda exposed.

  After Mr Maokin finished studying her face, he offered her a raw silk kerchief with a masterfully embroidered violet-blue iris in its square center. He tapped the inside of his wrist, and said, “Matches your colors, no?”

  “Yes, it does. How kind.” Sibylla admired the stitching, and at Mr Maokin’s prompting, dabbed the water on her face. If only she had something to offer him in return. Then it struck her. Recollecting a passage from her protocol guide, she stood on her toes and touched her cheek to his thrice, left, right, then left again, as a sign of friendship.

  With a delighted smile, Mr Maokin squeezed her shoulder in return before he moved on to greet Edmund, who hid behind his hands while his brother Edward raised his fists like a boxer. How embarrassing for themselves and Myrcnia. It was a wonder the queen remained fond of them. But then, their behavior never had the consequences hers did. The rest of the introductions continued uneventfully, and by the time Sibylla smiled and nodded at the last Khalishkan, she had to change her dress for dinner.

  As Sibylla finished preparing for dinner, an apologetic junior maid entered her room with a curtsy.

  “Your highness.” The maid lowered her head and shoved a letter forward.

  Sibylla glanced at the envelope. Her pet name was well known throughout the palace. Close family members often called her Sibet, but none of them would have the gall to address a letter that way. Only one person would have dared thus.

  Dismissing the maid, Sibylla took care to conceal any emotional reaction. Once alone, she rubbed her thumb across the macabre skull imprinted in the wax seal. Compared to this afternoon’s performance, opening Roger’s letter should have been easy, yet she trembled at the sight of his chaotic handwriting as if his words could bite.

  The tips of her fingers whitened as she read, then her hands glimmered blue. The letter fell from her grasp.

  Roger, her Straybound?

  A joke. No, not even Roger could be so foolhardy to invent such a lie. She took a deep breath, but a glow spread throughout her veins, popping purple-violet beneath her once-again translucent skin. The tension she’d restrained all day flooded through her blood like a river of light. Her Roger was a Straybound. Impossible. He’d have to have killed someone – not accidentally, but with purpose.

  “Ma’am?” A timid knock followed.

  “A moment.” Sibylla’s chest rose and fell as the luminescence spread throughout her body. Another knock. She stamped the letter with the tip of her shoe and slid it beneath the side table. Sibylla squeezed her eyes shut. She took short, shallow breaths and at last opened her eyes.

  She swung the door open before the maid called a second time and stepped into the hallway. Clenching her jaw, Sibylla tried to hold back frustrated tears.

  The maid stumbled after her. “Din- dinner will be ser- served in the Grand Dining Hall,” she stuttered, half out of breath.

  Dusk had fallen and the hallway window captured Sibylla’s frightening reflection, with her brightly lit organs and veins visible through her translucent skin. She had lost complete control. She offered the frightened maid a hand, but the girl flinched and disguised her fear with a hasty curtsy. Sibylla dismissed her with a wave and moved away. As she exhaled slowly, her skin lost its translucency until only a faint afterglow remained in her eyelashes.

  Harrod had lied to her about Roger. Or at least, he hadn’t told her the truth. She blamed herself for giving him that prerogative of service without understanding the full gravity of the matter. She’d been so giddy with her newfound freedom she’d not paid his words attention.

  A Straybound was a convicted murderer. A Straybound was royal property. A Straybound could be discarded at a royal’s whim or tortured on the moors. And somehow Roger, that milksop studying to be a surgeon, was her Straybound.

  Hers.

  Racked by these thoughts, she blundered into the dining hall without an escort. Startled footmen scurried to their positions. She paused, looking down the long table set with plates and polished silverware. She couldn’t flee. If she did, she might not return.

  One dinner: just another performance.

  The footmen averted their stares as Sibylla circled the table in search of her seat. The emperor’s place card sat at the head of the table and,
dauntingly, Sibylla found her own card placed beside his. Mr Maokin would be seated to her right, while a Dr Kaishuk had been placed across from her. Guests trickled through the doors, and by the time the queen and emperor arrived, no one dared note her breach of protocol.

  Once the emperor and the queen were seated, Sibylla swept the hem of her gown to the side and perched on the edge of her chair. Footmen served bowls of peeled grapes soaked in wine and drizzled with almond oil. To her right, Mr Maokin started a polite conversation with Lady Brigitte on seasonal vegetables, while the woman across from her remained silent. Hadn’t a doctor been assigned that place? Her cousins’ dirty jokes about female Khalishkan doctors sprung to mind. No wonder the woman looked put-upon. Female doctors were unheard of in Myrcnia.

  Sibylla swallowed a grape. Sitting on Lady Esther’s left, Edgar glared at her from the other side of the table. Only recently informed of the queen’s unusual matchmaking designs, his ire seemed equally aimed at the emperor. Sibylla reached for another grape, then stopped. The queen gestured to her from the other end of the table, pointing to the emperor.

  Sibylla nearly laughed. Apparently, she was expected to engage Emperor Timur in conversation immediately. People had fitted and stuffed her into gowns, but no one had briefed her on his interests. And living in an isolated valley had not, in fact, turned her into a social wit. Still, if she wanted to accomplish her own ends, she’d need to give it a try.

  Dr Kaishuk, who was smashing grapes with the prongs of her fork, seemed to share Sibylla’s lack of enthusiasm for small talk. She might make a better target than the emperor. Perhaps one conversation would start the other.

  “Are you a reader, Dr Kaishuk?” Sibylla asked.

  Dr Kaishuk’s eyes narrowed. “I can read.” She wore her hair in a bun, austere by Myrcnian standards. Her outfit, with its wide sleeves, brass buttons, and narrow epaulets, was more reminiscent of a chef’s kirtle than any evening gown. “We have universities in my country. My accreditation is in the alchemical arts. What about your highness?”

  “I’ve been extensively tutored.”

  “Ah, of course. Very practical.” Dr Kaishuk squashed another grape beneath her fork. “Would her highness care to show us? Perhaps arrange the flowers or fold our napkins.”

  Dr Kaishuk’s hostility left an uneasy knot in her throat. Sibylla glanced at the emperor. A black mark on her social performance tonight might hurt more than her standing with the queen. She’d try again – this time with something more exciting: plays.

  “As a girl, I attended the Rose Theater in Minq where they were performing Lin’s Parade of a Thousand Sins. It was my first Khalishkan play, and I’ve been addicted to them ever since. Have you been?” Not only was Minq the capital of Lipthveria, Khalishka’s closest ally and southern cousin, but Lin’s Parade of a Thousand Sins was also considered a true Khalishkan masterpiece – enjoyed by schoolchildren and scholars alike. If Dr Kaishuk had sentiment at all, she’d respond to one or the other.

  “Strong words. I’ve never known anyone to care so much for our theater. Foreigners call it dry.” The woman had no sentiment. “As a devotee of Khalishkan works, your highness must have a deep appreciation for the oppressed. And here I understood it was Myrcnian policy to ignore the plight of your lower classes, but your highness is practically a prawn’s manure.”

  Mr Maokin censured Dr Kaishuk by harshly tapping his middle two fingers on the table in a distinctive one-two rap before slitting his throat with his other hand. As the cream of barley soup arrived, he turned to Sibylla to explain, “Your highness might not be aware of Talchi’s poetry. She compliments your kindness.”

  “I’m aware of the poem.” Sibylla lifted her spoon. If compliment in Khalishkan meant insult, then Mr Maokin may have been right. “The prawns’ manure saves the village from starvation, but the villagers – blinded by the beauty of the golden rice fields – celebrate the sun. It’s a testimony against giving false praise.” No doubt a jab at Myrcnia’s divine royal family.

  “A poet most often overlooked by foreign readers. Especially Myrcnian princesses.” The emperor’s voice, deep and unreserved, startled her. “How diverting. I am also a fan of your theater. One playwright in particular: Richard Salston.”

  Sibylla’s cheeks grew hot. Unless she believed in the Lady’s providence, Emperor Timur had been briefed on her preferences. She should have been happy for the attention, but now felt uneasy at the prospect of an actual alliance. She took a long gulp of wine.

  “If you enjoy tales of revenge,” said the emperor after finishing his soup, “you must read Curse of the Pretty Pelican, the saga of a wronged whore and the man she sets out to destroy. Its ending is worth the effort.” The emperor turned to Dr Kaishuk. “Has it been translated?”

  Dr Kaishuk shook her head no. “Your imperial majesty can’t expect a Myrcnian lady to appreciate such a treasure when those women are treated so poorly in her country.”

  “No society’s laws are perfect, nor is any leader’s will.” Sibylla found herself defending her nation instead of currying their favor. Apparently, her tongue had an uncooperative mind of its own.

  The emperor nodded as he flaked the newly arrived lemon-broiled cod with his fork. “At least your country’s food is faultless, if not its ruler.”

  “I hope we have more to present your imperial majesty than good fish.”

  The emperor leveled his eyes at her. “Am I looking at what else she has to offer?”

  “We also export a number of tantalizing sows,” Sibylla answered. “And our cheeses, mustn’t forget those.” She caught his slight grin, though he quickly hid it behind a forkful of cod.

  “I believe that’s the next course,” chimed in Lady Esther. She raised her thumb – scarred from performing Straybound devotionals – toward the approaching footmen, and nearly stabbed Edgar in the eye.

  By the time the salad of thinly-sliced raw cabbage with fennel seeds and cherry tomatoes arrived, Dr Kaishuk’s patience for Lady Esther’s questions about Khalishkan winters had worn thin, and she turned to Sibylla almost affectionately. “At least your highness seems to believe in a measure of rationality when it comes to protecting the welfare of your people.” Dr Kaishuk picked off the last tomato from her salad. “And yet your queen claims her right to rule by magic.”

  Sibylla had as little interest in delving into the historical merits of

  Myrcnian divine rulership as she did in performing a concertina recital. If only dessert would arrive for them to stuff their mouths with sweets instead. Having failed to elicit a conversation on foreign embassies and ambassadorships, she’d given up on gaining ground with the emperor tonight.

  Before she could answer Dr Kaishuk, Lady Esther slapped the table, sending a shiver through Sibylla’s plate. “We have no reason to misrepresent ourselves.” Her breath caught shrilly in her nostrils. “The honorable Muir bloodline has survived centuries longer than Khalishka’s elective monarchy and lives strong within my husband and sons.”

  The emperor snorted. “How do you think your honorable magic would fare against iron and steel? I’ve seen many a ‘sacred’ man lose a leg or an arm to a cannonball. Let’s see your son’s magic stop my pistol.”

  “You all witnessed her royal majesty’s display this afternoon,” said a flustered Lady Esther.

  Dr Kaishuk laughed for the first time. “As a doctor in the alchemical arts, I know when I’ve seen phosphorous. Although I admit, it was a… spectacle.”

  Sibylla cringed when Lady Esther elbowed Edgar beneath the table. She needn’t lose her composure over a doubter. After all, Dr Kaishuk wasn’t the first science-minded individual to question the royal family’s magic, even though most did adjust their opinion after a live demonstration.

  Lady Esther raised her voice. “My son’s talent is no mere spectacle.”

  Boys tended to be late bloomers so Sibylla had never witnessed Edgar perform Crown Prince Elfred’s signature rusting touch. Once, during a heated dinner conversatio
n, the crown prince had tarnished every silver fork and knife in sight, including the silver serving trays of the footmen. Ever since, the queen had banned magic during mealtimes. Sibylla’s cousins had never bragged about their divine gifts, and she’d seen Edmund spew water bubbles from his mouth only once – yesterday. He must take after Lady Esther. Did Edgar also, or had he inherited some generation-skipping oddity like her whistle-click? Sibylla eagerly looked on with the Khalishkans.

  Edgar’s expression tightened. He hesitated, searching his pockets for a snuff tin. He took a pinch and very slowly gulped his wine before lifting his hand. Instead of squeezing his fingers into a tight fist like the queen, Edgar rubbed his thumb back and forth against his fingertips until finally a few white sparks fizzled off his skin. This went on for a minute or so before Dr Kaishuk could no longer contain her laughter.

  “How shocking.” She snickered behind her napkin.

  “I’ve been feeling under the weather,” mumbled Edgar.

  Sibylla stiffened. The emperor, too, had joined Dr Kaishuk in using a napkin to politely obscure a smile. At this rate, Edgar would make a fool of more than himself. Her chair scraped the floor as she stood. She had no intention of letting their self-satisfied smirks persist through dessert. With an exaggerated flourish, she lifted her right hand and flexed her fingers while the ink pooled beneath her nails. Growing in form, a snow crane took flight from her hand on wings of black ink. Then held in midflight like a painting, frozen – the slightest flutter in its black feathers left a blur of dissipating ink.

  She tilted her head toward the emperor. “Naturally, this would not stop a bullet.”

  The emperor’s eyes glimmered. “That would depend on who’s firing the pistol.”

  The ink bird diffused into the air until only a slender section of tail remained. Sibylla bent over the table and blew the remaining ink away. She smiled as tiny flecks of black stuck to Dr Kaishuk’s face like freckles. Dr Kaishuk glared while Sibylla seated herself in time for an uncomfortable footman to deliver the custard pie.