by Jean Lee
“Let’s just do it and be done, Keller. He’s a waste of heart’s fire.”
“Look who’s talking.” Charlotte sidles up to Dorjan and cracks her neck. Just look at that stance. Tisk, tisk, Vincent. You’ve no clue how to block a close frontal decently, do you?
Keller’s dagger does not waver, but he doesn’t move forward, either. Charlotte’s sure she can hear his teeth grinding behind that thin-lipped mouth. “Whatever it is the great Lady Artair sees in you, I don’t know.”
Dorjan gives a sick smile. “Yes, that is the question, isn’t it?”
Keller’s whole body changes. His eyes flare, and the odor of bloodlust ebbs away for a mix Charlotte cannot define. There’s a vinegar smell, but it’s overpowered by something else she can’t work out. All she knows is that it gives her goosebumps. “True.” He spins his blood dagger back to his side. “They should have time to speak with you tomorrow night.”
Vincent’s sick laugh is cut short by Charlotte, who adds, “You know, after they’ve already left.”
Vincent hisses, “You bitch.”
Charlotte turns, lobs a raspberry to land right in the middle of Vincent’s forehead, and eats another. “Yup.”
Vincent tightens his grip on the blood dagger. His feet shift away from Dorjan towards Charlotte.
And when Keller sees that, Dorjan smiles even more. “Well, you clearly have your hands full. I’ll just come back later, I think.” He takes a step back, little tongues of black fire licking up his boots and calves.
“Wait!” Keller vaults, but too late—Dorjan leaps into the brush a person and lands a wolf at full run, a howl of laughter in his maw. “Damn.” He spins round and punches Vincent between the shoulder blades so hard he nearly falls into Charlotte. “I told you to control yourself.” He punches Vincent again, this time in the neck.
Vincent grunts in pain as he crumples to his knees. “I’m sorry—”
Keller lands another strike on Vincent’s neck.
“Woah!” Charlotte sticks her fingers in her mouth for a shrill whistle. “Time out. Dirty play. Corners.”
Even with the garden and flowering life around them, Charlotte can’t smell a single plant. To breathe is to take in Keller’s temper, Vincent’s fear. It’s as noxious as natural gas. Jeez, if this is what friendship’s like as a Velidevour, then thank the Aether Liam didn’t have friends. “Y’all figure yourselves out. I’m on Velidevour break.” And she jogs off into the woods before they can say anything else.
Charlotte never thought she’d be thankful to see Lake Aranina again. The sun is slowly drowning in a bank of rain clouds. The water’s ripples shatter the oranges and blues of the sunset into millions of glass shards. When Liam makes another window…if he ever makes another window.
Stay strong, the Voice whispers encouragingly. For him, for Arlen, for Arlen’s family.
Charlotte dips her hands into the shallows. She remembers dipping hands into icy water many times over the years for fights at school, after beatings from her uncle. She had grown numb to the malicious life—she received pain, therefore she gave pain. No different than the ebb and flow of water.
Until Charlotte saw Uncle Mattie begin to groom Anna. Then Charlotte realized that pain can’t ebb and flow. It had to end. And by hell, it would end with her.
But it took fleeing hundreds of miles to stop that pain. Now with the Artairs and Alerons around, it’s like those hundreds of miles have traveled back, gathering up fresh pain, fresh anger, fresh evil, the lot. To beat another over something stupid, to manipulate for selfish ends, to threaten for power’s sake.
Charlotte’s second childhood with her grandmother and uncle, reborn in these Velidevour people.
But you’ve known kindness and love, too, the Voice reminds her. Your parents made sure of that. Liam only knew goodness for the briefest moment from Arlen. You need to find Arlen for Liam’s sake.
Several skips away, two stone-like eyes bob up and out of the water in a tangled web of kelp hair: Captain
Charlotte only shakes her head and looks down. She hears a single flip of the water. She holds six fingers below the water’s surface, hoping Captain takes the number for an enemy count.
And the smells of enemy are not far behind. Beer and bleach.
House, I do not feel like dealing with them. Take me to the music room. Let’s give’em some noise.
Sand sifts away beneath her feet to a few wooden planks: a trapdoor. Charlotte crawls in and shuts it tight as the princeborns converse in Mawdre. Thanks, House. I guess we’ll be playing Hide and Seek with Keller for…the next several decades. Ugh. The tunnel is cramped and cool. A hollow rectangle of light shines at the far end: a doorway.
Charlotte crawls the distance quickly and finds a door on its side, hinges by her hands. O-kay. She turns the knob and the door flies open, taking her with it—
—leaving her a couple feet in the air above the music room’s floor under her. She falls on her stomach with an embarrassing “Oof!” and kicks the door—right-side up in THIS room, of course—shut behind her. When the doorknob starts turning one second later Charlotte groans. Great, Keller and Vincent are coming in from the garden. But no. Nettle’s there, wrinkles squashed around the corncob pipe.
“Rose House does enjoy itself now and again, doesn’t it?” She shuffles in and eases herself into a chair. “I was on the third floor, picking through glass for any spare velifol petals we missed before, and when I wanted to come down, Rose House flattened the stairs and slid me here. Impish thing.”
Lady Artair sweeps in through the parlor door. “What,” she says with a single finger wagging between them, “are you two doing here?”
“Last check,” Charlotte says, and turns her face right into the floor. “Floorboards are good.” She holds a thumbs-up.
Nettle’s eyes nearly vanish beneath the folds of old skin. “Pondering.” She says, grinning gumfully.
“Treasa, I feel silly keeping the servants in their little coma. Shall I put them to work in the dining room?” In walks the most beautiful woman Charlotte has ever seen. Slightly taller than she, hair long and black, thick and curled. Skin slightly tan, lips full and red, eyes the same powder blue as her dress laced tightly at an angle across her chest and down to the edge that barely reaches halfway down her thigh. Bombshell? Atomic bombshell. Any fashion designer would commit murder for her attention. Hell, they very well could have already.
“The table’s just right size for finishing the train’s embellishments,” she goes on to say.
Embellish? What the hell is there to embellish? All that perfect arm skin. No scars on those knuckles. Calves all soft-toned and not fighter-hard. But…oh, the leg I couldn’t see, she’s got her own little sheath, and another dagger. Oh good. More magical pointy things.
Lady Artair blinks herself into a smiling face. “Of course, of course! We’ll need to finish fitting you before we lose the natural light.”
“Is this the human? Treasa, don’t be rude. Introduce me.” Bombshell’s moves are velvet-smooth with a purr to match. “I am Darra Aleron. It appears you’re the one who’s brought Liam back to us.”
Charlotte stands up and holds out her sandy hand. “Don’t mention it.”
Darra’s smile thins as her perfect fingers graps the outer edges of Charlotte’s hand for a limp shake. “A down-to-earth girl like you will get along splendidly with Keller.”
Charlotte gives a thin smile back. “Already am,” she says.
Though the truth of that answer was shallow at best, it’s enough to get Lady Artair’s fiery eyes off her and back onto Nettle. “And just what could be worthy of ponderance when preparations for my son’s wedding are not yet complete?”
Nettle puffs her pipe. “When you’ve wandered the same woods for years and years as we have, m’dear, you get to pondering lots of things most everyone else forgets. Take that Keller boy. Heard Remus say that boy ran all alone into the Pits. Right foolish, if you ask me, knowing how many nasty trap
s Orna and Cein built down there.”
The air ripens with intrigue. Lady Artair’s nostrils flare. “And you know these traps?”
“Sure I should. I’m from Cein’s litter.”
That’s Cein’s DAUGHTER?! Charlotte spins and sits on the piano bench to hide her look of disgust that someone like Nettle could come from someone like Cein…not that she knows Nettle all that well, but she…well, she isn’t a blunt instrument of death. How could she be with only a dozen teeth in her mouth?
Charlotte hated Cein. Cein helped take her sister, dragged Charlotte here, almost killed the kid Jenny who lives just past the wall. That guy was the monster of nightmares. A legit Bogeyman. She was glad to see Dorjan kill him.
And that cranky sasspot with a pipe is his daughter.
Lady Artair glances at the work outside—Judoc tossing his shovel out of the ditch, panting. Peat poking Ember with a thorny stem while she piles soil, Ember punching Peat for his idiocy. “You speak wisely, commoner. Why don’t you come into the parlor for a moment? Liam, help your mother and bring Keller here.” She leaves the music room without another look at Charlotte.
Nettle takes out her pipe to bow her head to Darra. Sticks it back in with a wink at Charlotte.
Charlotte bites the inside of her cheek. She’s going to help those assholes?
Or, the Voice in Charlotte’s heart slides like Nettle’s feet on the sandy floor, maybe she’s trying to do you a favor. Bet Nettle could take her own sweet time talking.
“Do you play, Charlotte?” Darra D-Bombs is still hovering around. “It’d be nice to have a little music before the ceremony, especially for the guests. Ritual’s ridiculously short, if you ask me. What do you say, darling?”
Heavy footsteps behind Charlotte. Depression creeps into the room like a fog.
Charlotte stops breathing. If she breathes, she’ll turn. Don’t you dare look Charlie. Just…share what you can, however you can.
How long has it been since her fingertips danced upon these keys? Days. Charlotte tries a measure or two of Liszt, just to remember the give of the hammers upon the strings. She nudges the bench a few inches to sit better, straighter, taller.
Because when it comes to playing The Who, you got to give yourself some elbow room.
Not that she goes running into one of the angry numbers. No, she lets the harmonies flow, playful and a touch defiant, like high tide riled up by the wind.
“Let me flow into the ocean,
Let me get back to the sea.
Let me be stormy and let me be calm,
Let the tide in, and set me free.”
“That’s enough,” Darra coos—primly. “Darling, maybe we should keep things simple tomorrow. Music seems to make you ill. Why don’t you go outside for some air and find Keller.”
“Plenty of air here.” Keller, grinning. He leans on a frame of an open window. Vincent paces a few feet off, hair now loose over one side of his face. “That’s from Quadrophenia too, right?”
“Yeah.” Charlotte covers the piano keys. “‘Drowned.’”
“What a depressing title,” Darra says with a yawn. “Come along, boys, Treasa’s got an old crone you’re supposed to talk to.” Charlotte peeks over her own shoulder to see Darra ba-bum her hips while pulling Liam by the hand back into the parlor.
Okay, NOW I need to vomit.
But the Voice won’t let her vomit. We must time this just so…
Vincent walks towards the scouts out front, while Keller hops in through the window. “That settles it. First thing after everyone goes, I’m unpacking my guitar, and you and I are going to jam the day away.”
Oh man, so many of these songs would sound AMAZING with a guitar. She can even picture him pulling up a chair, tuning with her, seeing who can out-improv the other, laughing as the harmonies fall in place just so—GAH, Charlie, stop…just stop letting him get you like that! “Yeah, maybe.”
Cursing outside. Vincent, all contorted with raging motions, is facing off with Devyn, who stands quietly with arms crossed, barely looking Vincent in the eye.
“He shouldn’t be doing that,” Charlotte says.
“Absolutely. GET DOWN ON YOUR KNEES AND SHOW SOME RESPECT, COMMONER!” Keller hollers over Charlotte’s shoulder.
Devyn looks into the window, right at Charlotte. Glares. Even as Vincent punches him in the temple, he goes right on glaring.
“The hell?!” Charlotte elbows Keller in the sternum, sending him stumbling back. “Devyn didn’t do anything. Your buddy shouldn’t be messing with him.” Charlotte adds an extra shove at Keller’s chest for good measure, sending him through the door on a collision course with Liam in the parlor. “He’s even doing what he was told! Ain’t any of you ass-borns got manners?” She slams the door shut.
That, Charlotte, was a bit much, the Voice says wryly, albeit deeply satisfying.
But Charlotte’s too busy pleading with the House for the other door to take her into the Pits. Traps be damned. I’m getting Arlen NOW.
35
Nettle Knows
Charlotte’s in the fruit cellar. She hears Lord Artair boom, “Where has that upstart human gotten to?” followed by—
“What does she matter?” Yes, it is Liam, his voice almost strong, almost smooth, almost him. “You’ve got some nerve, Nettle, keeping such knowledge to yourself.”
“Well you weren’t much for speaking to us simple folk before, now were you?”
A series of stumbling thuds, of Vincent’s whine that a scout needs to be whipped to learn proper respect.
Time to go.
Charlotte kneels with hands outspread on the floor. House, I could use my bone knife back now, and some sort of light, please. Two cubbyholes form beneath her hands: a lantern, and her knife from Captain. With belt strapped and lantern lit, Charlotte steps into the stone tunnel and makes her way for the atrium. The light gives little warmth as she traces her steps from earlier that day with Keller and Liam.
I just can’t read those two. Liam’s touched on such nasty pain of the past, the parents both are real pieces of work—you’d think Keller would be more like Liam, just needing a little happiness in his life to see things differently. You wouldn’t think he’d…he’d be more like me. Flashbacks to her high school year fights switch on and off in her memory. She had laughed in bleeding faces. Flicked Tootsie Pop sticks at open wounds. Wondered when Suicide by Classmate with a Gun Day would come. Goaded those she knew were loaded for a better payout after beating them to blazes before a crowd. If they weren’t gonna kill her, she’d take’em for everything they had. And she enjoyed it.
That enjoyment balls into a wad of phlegm in her throat. Charlotte spits it out at the tunnel’s edge before it chokes her.
Charlotte keeps her free hand on her bone knife’s hilt as she sweeps the lantern from side to side. The black roots have completed their stitching—the ground above is now sewn shut. One could be in the clearing and never know a white tree grew here. The atrium reeks of decay, bitterness, vengeance, and…something else. Something not right.
“One of these things is not like the other…” Charlotte starts the old Sesame Street ditty as she starts the tricky climb down those stone stairs. “…one of these things just doesn’t belong.” Some of the glass droplets from the dead river’s hole catch her lantern light.
A cocoon hangs from the gap.
Oh shit, Orna’s reincarnated! Charlotte vaults over the last few steps, bone knife out, ready to stab her before she can wake—but Orna’s body still lies on the atrium floor, jellied and putrid. Strips of her snake skin have been cut away, and sloppily, too. Charlotte pokes the carcass. It wobbles like a jello square in a paper wrapper.
A muffled voice finds her ears. Charlotte turns towards the glass-droplet cocoon. It starts thin on top and widens toward the bottom, just like the droplets hanging in little rows from their lines beneath the dead river’s hole.
A sound plays on Charlotte’s ears, quick and soft. Padding. Running. Paws running
.
The Voice in Charlotte’s heart whispers, You’re not the one to save him.
Save—? Oh SHIT no no no. Charlotte races across the atrium and slides to a stop near the cocoon.
Arlen.
Upside down, a few feet from the ground.
Wrapped in Orna’s snake skin. Bound in one of the lines of glass droplets. A small pool of blood is drying beneath him.
The wrapping stops at Arlen’s mouth. His hair’s channeled flat where blood traveled south to drip to the ground. His eyes blink fitfully at the sudden lantern light, but his urgent muffled cries continue.
The padding echoes in the atrium, and a comet of black fire and dust lands beside Charlotte. Dorjan emerges with panting breath. “If you were so bloody determined to come down here, you may as well have met me at the Black Tree. I didn’t mean for you to go…alone...” Dorjan stands alongside Charlotte, mouth open. “Un…Uncle…”
Rage does not burn in Charlotte this time. It freezes her guts, nerves. “Oh, Arlen.” Only the snot dripping from her nose onto her lips snaps Charlotte into blinking again, moving again. She kneels to cut the mouth strip away first. “Those…fucking…bastards. I’ll fucking, fucking kill them.”
“Charlotte, Dorjan, go, please,” Arlen says, voice hoarse and slurred. “Bearnard…”
“Fuck Psycho Santa Clause. You’re not staying here another minute.” Charlotte cuts the snakeskin beneath the line with ease. Arlen’s coat is gone, his shirt in tatters. The injuries he got from Orna in the Wild Grasses have been supplemented, and then some. “Bastard bastard—”
“Mind the glass shards. They’re remnants of the water road,” Dorjan says as he jerks his chin at the glass droplets. “These things shatter, and aaaaall that dead magic’s going to latch onto the first living thing it touches.” Dorjan changes, reels up onto his hind legs, and saws the line holding the cocoon with his claws. Charlotte bears Arlen’s weight long enough for Dorjan to change back and gingerly set him on the ground. “I expect that’s what Bearnard was hoping for.”
