At the end of the meal, he pretended to be drowsy and to drop off in his chair there at the table.
“Finally,” said Princess Louisa. Her chair shoved back with a screech as she stood. “Another fool for the firing squad.”
“He wasn’t a fool,” said Princess Mary. A cool hand rested against his cheek for a moment. “He was sweet and funny and an intelligent man.”
“He’s a dead man now.” Louisa’s caustic tone drew at least one sharp gasp.
“Louisa!” hissed one of the other sisters.
“What?” asked Louisa. From the clattering around him, the girls had begun gathering up the remains of the dinner. “I speak the truth, and you all know it. I am sorry that Mary likes the boy. I’m sorry I had to drug him into insensibility, but what can we do? Have him carrying tales to Father about the portal and the demons on the other side? I value his life and regret it will be lost, but I value our souls more.”
On that ominous note, she stormed to the door that separated the princesses’ living space from the rest of the palace. She banged on it until servants appeared. From the noise she made, she all but shoved the dishes onto their waiting trays. When everything had been cleared to Louisa’s satisfaction, the door was shut again. In silence the princesses waited while multiple locks clicked into place and a final thump meant the large wooden bar had been lowered sealing them in.
“That’s that,” said Mary.
“Come, sisters. We must prepare for the night,” said Louisa.
The women filed out past the table until the room sat empty. Cautiously, the soldier waited to be sure none would come back before opening his eyes. Placing his enchanted cup back in his pack, he drew on his cloak and pulled up the hood. He then went in search of the princesses. He found them gathering in a lovely room that must normally be used for socializing, art, and other amusements common among high born ladies. As expected, they had changed into new shoes. He had not expected to see them dressed as if ready for battle. Instead of the gowns they had worn earlier, all of them, even little Elise, now wore clothes reminiscent of a cavalry officer. Each had a crisp white blouse tucked into breeches. Each had at least one sword strapped to her side and more than a few had daggers in convenient sheaths strapped to legs and upper arms. The twins each carried matching bows and three quivers filled with arrows. Louisa was armed to the neck with two bandoliers of bullets and revolvers strapped to the outside of each thigh. She also carried two sabres and appeared to be warming up by thrusting them at a nearby pillow. Feathers fluttered to the floor after each strike.
He recognized the nervous energy filling the room. He had experienced it twice before on the front. He had participated in two campaigns to push the enemy army back. Both campaigns had resulted in gains that could only be measured in inches. The night before both, the trenches had filled with men wondering if that night was their last.
He still didn’t know what Louisa had meant by portals and demons, but one thing was clear. The princesses weren’t ruining their footwear by dancing all night.
A delicate clock on the mantle chimed the eleventh hour, and the girls stopped their feverish preparations. A sigh escaped from one of the girl’s lips, but he couldn’t tell which one. He knew this feeling too. He too had filled with the calm of impending doom when the trumpeter had played the notes that sent his company up over the ladders into a hell of barbed wire, tear gas, and blood.
The mouth of the fireplace seemed to grow larger until the opening stood higher than a man. One by one, with Louisa leading the way, each princess stepped through the fireplace and disappeared.
He stood gaping for a moment. He had thought he could no longer be astonished by magic, not after he’d seen an old woman grow young and a pack that never wanted for food. He stood for so long that nearly all the princesses had crossed over before he found his wits again. Racing over so he would not be left behind, his cloak brushed against the last princess as they crossed the threshold together.
“What was that?” little Elise asked, looking around but not seeing him. “Did anyone else feel that?”
“Feel what?” Mary asked.
“A soft brush as I came through the portal.” Elise rubbed her arm as if still feeling his cloak’s touch. “It was as if I’d been joined by a ghost.”
“Perhaps Mother has finally come to right her wrong.” The bitterness in Louisa’s tone could not be missed, and the soldier wondered at the remark.
He followed the sisters through a winding cave illuminated by glowing trees. Though the trunks gave off the light, the leaves appeared to be made of various precious metals with gemstone fruits. He pulled a ruby apple off one tree taking a few golden leaves with it. Elise spun around when the apple snapped from the branch, but he stuffed the apple in his cloak before she could see. Eyes narrowed, the girl searched the area behind her but found nothing.
They came out of the cave, and he stifled a gasp. He had thought that the Southern Front was Hell. He had been wrong. The Southern Front had been humankind’s attempt to recreate Hell on Earth. Despite their best efforts, humankind had failed.
Nothing could have prepared him for the landscape he stood in now. The women marched down a beach covered not in sand, but the broken bones of some type of small animal. For once he wished he hadn’t been quite so interested in science; otherwise, he might not have been able to label things like the vertebrae and clavicles scattered on the ground. He tried not to gag as his own steps crunched the bones as if he trod through a pile of fallen leaves.
The bone beach ran down to an underground lake covered in patches of fire. At times, pockets of air above the lake would also catch fire in bursts of light and roars of sound that might have been beautiful if they weren’t so terrifying. The air was filled with the rot of decay and the smell of not so fresh eggs that have been left too long in the sun.
He wanted to run howling back into the cave and back to the woods. He wanted to throw himself at the feet of the witch and cry that he was right and she was wrong and he wasn’t brave enough to save these girls from whatever lived over the burning waters. He wanted to do a number of things, but instead he stood, hiding in his cloak, and watched the twelve princesses prepare for war.
They formed a loose half circle with the youngest princess in the middle. Louisa and Mary stood at the center of the arc while the twins knelt on either side, planting their various quivers in the ground. Mary held a collapsible spyglass up to her eye.
“Nothing in the air,” she reported to her sisters. “It looks like it’s just foot soldiers in the boats this evening. Berith appears to be in command again.”
“Wonderful,” muttered one of the older sisters. She tossed her sword from one hand to the other but otherwise showed none of the nerves she surely felt.
“It wouldn’t be a real battle without the Grand Duke of Hell,” said Louisa. “You all weren’t hoping for one of the easy skirmishes we have when Berith doesn’t attend, were you?”
Grim chuckles answered her.
“There’s something odd,” said Mary. “There’s a large white boat following Berith’s. It’s almost twice the size of the others.”
“Let me see.” Louisa peered through the glass.
The soldier could tell the moment Louisa spotted the unexpected ship. Already tense, her body seemed to stiffen into a block of stone. She unfroze enough to lower the spyglass, but even that movement seemed slowed by her body’s unwillingness to move.
“We are being graced with his Lordship’s presence this evening.”
All the women began to murmur, and Elise shrank back so much she nearly collided with the soldier where he stood behind her still hidden by his cloak.
He didn’t know for sure who the Lord of this place was although he had a very good idea. He stepped around Elise, placing another barrier (even if it was invisible) between the littlest princess and whatever sailed towards them on that boat.
“They’re coming,” Mary warned.
The women
grew silent and held their various weapons at the ready. The twins aimed their bows, and Louisa loaded her revolvers. The rest stood their ground with a grim determination he found nearly as unsettling as their environment. He hadn’t anything other than a dulled pocket knife, but he drew it and crouched before little Elise, ready to join the princesses in their desperate stand.
“Steady,” said Louisa, but her words weren’t needed. No one wept or lost their nerve. In silence they waited.
Mary had raised her spyglass again. She cocked her head to the side for a moment and then peered through it once more. “That’s odd.”
“Odder than Lucifer personally gracing us with his presence?”
Mary shot Louisa a look the soldier couldn’t interpret. “Lord Lucifer appears to be holding a white handkerchief,” said Mary. “He waves it at me every time I look his way.”
“Better and better.” Louisa dropped her head back and sighed as if praying to the Heavens for patience. “Since I doubt he wishes to surrender, he must want to talk.” She looked around at her sisters. “Stay on your guard, and no one, I mean no one,” she looked pointedly back at Elise, “makes a sound. He will twist and turn your words until you have agreed to the opposite of what you wish. Let me do the talking.”
Around the half circle, heads nodded, but no one relaxed their fighting stance.
The boats pulled up and ground onto the bone beach. Demon and fell beasts of all manner climbed from the boats, but they remained at the shore. A tall knight rode off the lead boat on a horse the color of congealed blood. The knight stood at the head of the demon army, but they made no move to attack.
The larger boat came into view, but it did not pull up to the shore. Instead, Lucifer proved he had no need to disembark. One moment the fifty feet between the princesses and the demon horde stood empty, the next a breathtaking, beautiful slip of a man stood before them. The soldier’s jaw fell open. He had been expecting a red entity with cloven hooves and a pointed tail. At the very least horns should have sprouted from Lucifer’s head. This man looked like he had once been a classical sculpture a lustful god had brought to life.
Louisa appeared unmoved, and behind the soldier Elise whimpered, but the rest of the princesses stood as if stunned by his beauty. One girl reached out as if drawn to him, while another took a step forward.
“Hold,” Louisa said, breaking the spell Lucifer had woven over her sisters. Weapons came back up, and the women once again became resolved. “He’s only a man of sorts,” she added.
“Only a great deal lovelier,” said Lucifer.
Louisa shifted her weight, clearly put out, but she said nothing.
“You needn’t chastise,” said the Devil as if she’d spoken her disapproval aloud. “It’s not as if I lie. Besides, vain and pride are two of my favorite sins.” He treated them to a smile that dazzled in that underground pit and promised of pleasures unknown in the mortal realm. “Not my absolute favorite though.” He licked his lips. It wasn’t a suggestive movement, yet it suggested things to the soldier all the same. He was obscurely disappointed that the Devil’s tongue hadn’t proved to be forked. Had the clergy gotten nothing right?
Her sisters might shift uncomfortably, but Louisa was unmoved. “Your Majesty.” She greeted him with a small but respectful dip of her head, one royal to another. “To what do we owe this honor?”
“There is a new player on the field,” said Lucifer. He gave a small shiver as if delighted by the prospect. “I came to greet him and collect my winnings.”
Louisa turned to look back at Elise, and the soldier was struck by the horror, and fear, on her face.
“I don’t understand,” said Louisa, her calm assurance lost. Her hands shook, knocking the revolvers against her legs. “There is no new player.”
All of the sisters looked around and at one another in confusion with the undercurrent of fear growing stronger.
Lucifer sighed as if he had just experienced the most delicate caress. “Oh, but this is delightful. Perhaps you don’t realize he’s here. Is it possible you can’t see him?”
With the Devil clearly able to see him, the soldier saw no point in concealing his presence any longer. He drew back the cloak and pulled down the hood.
“Oh no,” muttered Elise from behind.
The sisters turned almost as one, and their shocked dismay could be felt through the heat of Hell. Mary started to move to him, but Louisa held her back.
“You,” Louisa said. The word was innocuous enough, but he flinched as if she’d uttered the vilest of curses. She turned back to the Devil. “We did not bring him nor seek out his help. We have told no one just as you and I once agreed.” Like Lucifer, the soldier could hear the note of pleading in her voice, and it appalled him that a woman once so proud could sound so small.
“And yet he’s here.” The Devil rubbed his hands together like a villain in the silent films they used to show in town before the start of the war. “All of your souls are mine.”
The princesses’ despair was written in every line of every body. Louisa tried to rally, but he could tell from her voice that she knew it was a lost cause. “We did not seek his aid. We did not tell him of the pact.”
“It’s true,” the soldier said, surprising everyone, including himself. “They have neither sought my aid, nor have I offered it. I’m not sure what agreement you brokered, but if the princesses were to forfeit their souls if they sought help, then they have not forfeited them now.”
“You stand there with knife drawn,” drawled Lucifer, waving at the puny pocket knife still clutched in the soldier’s hand. “You cannot have me believe you didn’t mean to protect these girls.”
“These women need no protection of mine,” he said pointing out an obvious truth. He gestured at their weapons. “I saw an approaching horde of demons and thought only of myself,” he only half-lied. “I am a coward. Ask anyone in my village.”
The Devil seemed to flicker as if he were dividing his corporeal self between many points of time. “You are certainly not held in high esteem. Your cowardly reputation bears you out as does the princesses’ surprise to find you here.” Lucifer sulked for a moment. “Fine. I suppose the agreement was not broken. You may continue to fight for the youngest,” he said to Louisa. “But you,” he pointed at the soldier, “you may not interfere.”
“I will not lift my knife in their aid,” the soldier promised. He folded the knife back up and shoved it back in his pocket. “This is clearly not my fight, and I do not fight for what I do not understand.”
“What a charitable way to look at the desertion of your post.” Lucifer gave him a snide smile, but the soldier realized there was truth in the Devil’s words despite the intent to wound. The soldier had never been comfortable with a war fought for inches of land or for the chance for one nation to prove their technology superior to another. He had resented aiming a rifle at boys like him only born on the opposite side of an imaginary line. The war still felt as wrong on his 428th day on the frontline as it had back when he had refused to enlist. Could it have been more than cowardice that had led him away from the Southern Front and a war he found repugnant?
“I will honor our original agreement,” Lucifer said again to Louisa, “the one which modified the contract signed by your mother.”
Behind the soldier Elise groaned, and several of the princesses seemed to sag for a moment. They quickly marshalled their strength when Lucifer made a quick motion with two fingers on his right hand. The demon horde on the shore began to move forward.
“What contract?” the soldier asked.
“None of your business,” snapped Louisa. “We cannot have your aid.”
“Still not offering it,” the soldier snapped back. “I asked what contract, Your Majesty,” he called again to Lucifer.
Lucifer paused and made another gesture with his hand. The horde stopped advancing.
“Curious, aren’t you?” he said, raking the soldier with a long glance that seemed to take in e
very inch of the man from the inside out. “Curiosity, such a dangerous sin.”
The soldier shrugged, unsure how to answer.
“Very well.” Lucifer struck a pose like an orator in a painting about classical antiquity. “Once upon a time, a beautiful, yet naïve woman found herself queen of a small mountain kingdom. She wished to present her king with an heir, but month after month went by without a child.”
“It was only six months,” muttered Louisa. “She was a fool.”
“Well.” Mary shifted her head back and forth as if the ideas inside were waffling and couldn’t decide which way to go. “Mother’s generation wasn’t taught biological basics like we were. She might not have known how conception works.”
“She made a deal with the Devil. She was a fool.”
Mary couldn’t argue that and didn’t. The soldier began to understand the source of Louisa’s bitterness.
“Ladies.” Lucifer glared at them like a petulant child. “A master storyteller is weaving his words.” He made a gesture. Both Louisa and Mary opened their mouths, but no sound came out. “Better.”
Lucifer resumed his pose. “Months went by without a child, and the queen became increasingly desperate. She consulted soothsayers, physicians, and wise women from throughout the land. Finally, an old but kind looking woman was brought before her.” Lucifer dropped his pose for a moment and stage whispered, “Spoiler alert. That old woman was me.”
“Spoiler?” mouthed Mary. Louisa shrugged, and the soldier too wondered what the Devil had meant.
“The old woman held the queen’s hand and shook her head in a mournful manner. She broke the news of the queen’s barrenness as gently as she could, but the queen still wailed in anguish at the woman’s words.
“The old woman was moved by the queen’s tears and offered her a small potion known to cure all ills including those affecting the womb.”
Louisa snorted, and even the soldier had troubled believing Lucifer had ever been emotionally affected by anything.
Perilous Princesses Page 14
