Majesty

by Brooke Vinson

  “But I am not a man. I am a Skypian.” The instant disgust, fear and rage on her face made me sigh and I saw her instinctually reach for a gun she had forgotten how to use. “At least you’re consistent.”

  I grabbed her gaze and with two words, once again scrambled the contents of her brain. I finally understood my attraction to her and only a fool would go after what I saw in her. She was dangerous, I had played with her while she was a babe, but in the few months she had left her city, she had become someone genuinely dangerous to me. During the day, one shot and I was done. At night, she wasn’t fool enough to go in alone and as many people as I could control, if there were more like the people in this town, totally oblivious to my gaze, we would be finished. She was chocolate poison and I knew better than to eat what can kill me.

  “My dear,” I put my eyes to work as I talked. “You need to find a good man, here in this village. You will have many children and never again think of the unrewarding, dangerous profession of the Earth Guard. They’ve hurt people I love for no reason. They are blind in their quest to destroy Skypians. You would do much better as a housewife.”

  “But—”

  “Much better.” I pushed too hard and she fell, completely unconscious.

  “That was quite a show prince of night. Have you finally seen the light?” I jumped as Zuhara O Kande appeared almost out of nowhere. “Jumpy a bit too much, do you have a reason to be such?”

  “I’m not a fool Zuhara O Kande. I know you were listening from the beginning. Otherwise you would have remained silent and let this pass without comment.” She smiled a little and I stared at her.

  “You pushed too hard on a mind already bent; unless I help you, your time will be ill spent. Bring her to my car at half past noon; I will make a concoction to help her mind tune.”

  “Zuhara O Kande…” I whispered as she left, wondering if she knew my feelings or if she was playing with me again. Amica was still very much an injury on my heart, but it had been nearly half a year since our relationship had terminated and my attraction to her was very real. Then again, my attraction to Ado was also real, real but dangerous. We would have spent our entire relationship trying to kill and not to be killed.

  I waited a few moments to let my mind settle before waking Ado. She was extremely groggy, but I managed to shepherd her towards my train with quick words about her fainting and needing to see a doctor. Zuhara O Kande was there and after forcing some foul liquid down her throat, Ado fainted again.

  “Hey!” I yelped in shock. “I thought you were going to help, not knock her unconscious!”

  “Often that which helps the best, knocks unconscious and makes them rest. She’ll wake in a moment and leave this place, and never again will you be besot with her race.”

  “Race? I could very much fall in love with a human!” I protested, but it was weak seeing how my first and second encounters with their kind had ended.

  “Then your feelings for me are only a lie? It is not me you want to lay beside?” My eyes widened in an uncharacteristic show of emotion and her tinkling laugh echoed in the small car.

  “I don’t want your pity, Mistress Sky nor do I appreciate your playing with my emotions.” Zuhara O Kande, when she was angry, was one of the scariest sights I had ever seen. Her annoyance was one thing, but when she had the full force of her emotions latched onto me, even I could only tremble. Then her anger disappeared as quickly as it had come and I was left staring into eyes as deep as the fathomless sky.

  “My prince, I would not lie about such things. I know your feelings, the qualms and pains from your lost love that through your heart sings. I would like to be your last, if you could overcome your past. An equal able to balance your overbearing mind with the electricity of life, to hold you in the presence of strife.” I wanted to accept her, but I thought she may have the wrong idea. I wouldn’t give up my memories with Amica or the happiness he had bestowed upon me.

  “I’m sorry Zuhara O Kande. I cannot forget my Amica, in another life we would have been together. I cannot be someone made exclusively for you.” She sighed and shook her head, her beaded hair jingling.

  “I did not ask you to do that; I know I cannot be your first. I ask for a piece of your heart, to be the one who will satisfy your thirst. I knew when we first met the fate we would share. My people are doomed to love a person rare. When we find them, it is us who are left waiting till our love stops baiting. If you would have one as me, wild and free as the sea. I can occupy part of your heart and we can work together to never part?”

  “If you can accept that Amica will forever hold a part, I can give you the rest of my heart.” When Zuhara O Kande touched her lips to mine it felt like my body was shocked into following the rhythm with hers. My heart started beating at a rate too slow for a Skypian, but as Zuhara O Kande’s body warmed up, my body seemed to follow its pattern eagerly.

  “Careful my prince, I am not like your puppy. My power is quite jumpy. Even a drop of my blood will fill you to the brim, if you’re not careful it’ll overflow your rim.” I was excited to try her blood and my canines pushed through, but she only pricked her finger and held it to my mouth.

  “I know you prefer to drink deep, but I don’t want to put you into a cationic sleep. Maybe in the future you will have grown immune, then you can drink more than a teaspoon.” I took a lick and my body curled in a painfully pleasant way. It took me a moment to regain my ability to see just from a few drops of her blood.

  “Zuhara O Kande…” I muttered, but my mind had wandered to this horrible city.

  It was worse than Skypia, insanely worse and I couldn’t help but want to help them. I shouldn’t care about the strange Skypians I had never met but… that child. The child had given me his last piece of bread because I had stopped someone from stomping on him. There was something strangely meaningful about his actions. He didn’t have to give me that small piece of food, I was obviously better off than him and it’s not like I would have chased him down and beat him for not thanking me.

  “This city is evil…” I had called other places evil, but this place was a different kind of evil. I had burned down Vanguard’s lab and the thought of what I had found there still haunted me… but this place wasn’t much better. There were so many people barely surviving, being treated worse than animals simply because they were Skypian. “It hurts to be here. If only I could destroy this place… but even I can’t do that.”

  “There are things you can do, but you aren’t ready yet. You don’t have a fire under your buttocks set. All in good time you will save many people and this evil system you will annul.” Zuhara O Kande muttered what she said under her breath and I wondered yet again where she was getting this type of information. Many things she had said to me had come true and others I felt were powerful and impending.

  “Zuhara O Kande, is it the future you see? Or do you simply believe in me?” Her lip twitched a little at my rhyme, but her face remained as mysterious as it always was.

  “Maybe, maybe not. There are many futures and many paths. I only do some basic math.” I knew she had avoided my question, but there were some things that shouldn’t be pried into.

  “I’ll go grab the others. We’re not staying here a minute longer. I’d rather reach our next stop than stay another day in this place of hell.” Something sparkled in Zuhara O Kande’s eyes, but I couldn’t identify what it meant. My second love may not be orthodox and no one could know how long it would last, but how it would end… that was as mysterious as the woman of my affection.

  Departure

  “Nihilo, I need your opinion.” The silent man looked up from where he was meditating and uncrossed his legs, showing I had his attention. “What is going on with Zuhara O Kande?”

  Nihilo widened his eyes in surprise then shrugged. “We’re supposed to be together, but she’s acting like she always does. What am I supposed to think?”

  Nihilo shrugged again and I sighed, rubbing my head. “Books can’t help me with th
is… Why are emotions so finicky?”

  Nihilo made some weird motions with his hands and I felt my lips twitch in a small smirk. “You know, you’re a very impressive guy. You just spouted a paragraph of wisdom without ever opening your mouth. And you’re right too. I wouldn’t like Zuhara O Kande if she wasn’t acting like she usually does.”

  I stood, dusting my pants before heading back towards the kitchen and the poker game I had been kicked out of. “This is between you and me.”

  Nihilo folded his legs and went back to his meditating. I shook my head and laughed a little to myself.

  “Bullshit!” I stared at Dexter who was yelling as she busted out again. “You’re cheating! There’s no way in hell you can be getting such damn good cards!”

  “Check it! You’ve been watching me the whole entire game, I haven’t once cheated!” Magnus was lying and wasn’t even cheating well, Dexter just hadn’t thought of how she was cheating.

  “I don’t…. You—” Before Dexter spat some things out that she would regret, Siniste grabbed her, laughing.

  “You just suck at cards and you know it!”

  “Bullshit! I used to win when I played with Raven and Eris.”

  “Yeah, but Eris was a push over and Raven is like an open book.”

  Dexter took a minute to calm down and then leaned across the table to Magnus. “How did you do it?”

  “Secret,” she purred back.

  “Look behind you.” I contributed, grabbing my nasty blood drink from the fridge. Dexter looked up and swore at the cat Skypian lying on the cabinet behind her. She lunged at him and he transformed lifting his hands with a snicker.

  “You no good—”

  The shudder nocked us all off our feet and as I turned to go to the front, another shudder sent me headfirst into the side of the train. The crack turned my world black. When I next tried to open my eyes, my vision was blurry and people were yelling. I couldn’t tell who was who, what was what, all I knew was that my head hurt and I felt sick. When I finally realized that the man who had grabbed me was wearing the mythril chain mail of the Earth Guard Special Corps, a stinging in my arm sent me back to my dream world.

  I whimpered as I woke up and I felt tears flow from my eyes. My head hurt, my head did more than hurt, I didn’t want to breath, I didn’t want to see, I didn’t want to hear, I didn’t want to exist. I was so dizzy. I was so nauseous. Then people were yelling and I started retching, but I couldn’t fall on my knees so the bile dribbled down onto me.

  Eventually something bitter was forced down my throat and a burning iciness rolled through my body. After a minute, my head seemed to ease off and I could finally look around. Someone had been kind enough to remove my soiled clothes, but had failed to give me new ones. I looked around, my head still pounding but bearably so.

  Poe was trussed up to my right, all his makeup removed and his feathers individually weighted with some odd sort of iron tape. Zuhara O Kande was completely encased in a ceramic cell only her eyes and slits for her mouth and nose were revealed. Lale was sweating, struggling to keep his human form with his hands bound in mythril cuffs. Nihilo was beside him, an uncharacteristic frown on his face. Magnus, Dexter and Siniste were nowhere to be seen.

  “Wash haapehn?” I tried to talk, but my tongue didn’t want to cooperate.

  “Zuhara, he’s awake! Oh, Able, darling, how are you?” Poe was using his male voice, but he wasn’t even pretending to be male at heart.

  “Heah,” I tried to moan, but it didn’t even sound slightly like what I was trying to say.

  “He may be awake, but the drugs they make him take, has messed with his head. I didn’t understand a single word he said.” Zuhara O Kande’s voice was muffled, but it was definitely her and it made me feel slightly better.

  “Able, my dear if you can understand me—”

  “Igh cahn.” That seemed to make Poe feel better and he started rambling off what I wanted to know eagerly.

  “I can’t believe those Earth Guards~! Trapping us is one thing, but they weren’t even going to give you medical attention! Your skull was cracked when the train hit the mythril net. It took all three of us yelling and threatening them with animal abuse to make them give you even what little bit of healer they did. Then they even had the nerve to sedate you when you were already injured…” The Earth Guard… it made sense. I couldn’t help but be pleased by the amount of money and force they had pulled out to stop us, but the whirling of my thoughts sent another wave of pain rolling over my body. A mythril net, I wondered how many thousands of gold coins that had cost them.

  “Sihisshte? Dexsha? Magha?” I asked and Poe jerked his head at the door.

  “Taken to trial. Seems we two have multiple charges and have to be sentenced separately. Nihilo has a whole bunch of stuff they were muttering very rudely about. They didn’t know what to do with Zuhara here or little Lalely pooh. They aren’t Skypian or human. The rest are just getting the whole spill about Skypians on earth, blah! Now, when are we busting out?” I was glad Poe had that much faith in me even though I couldn’t even talk, let alone do anything else intelligent at the moment.

  “Yuu ah whe shey cuum shu geh she nexsh wah.” I slurred out and Lale nodded, his eyes crying out in pain.

  We didn’t have to wait long and they came back in, carrying our three missing Skypians who were all in mythril cuffs. I nearly retched as they slung me down from my restraints, threw a cloak around me and toted me off to somewhere after injecting me with something that reblurred my vision.

  “…alleged…assault on the… Ado…Skypians…” I only caught words and phrases that made no sense, but then again the swirling image of Zuhara O Kande with a purple Mammoth trunk protruding from her midriff doing some sort of Russian dance in the middle of the courtroom made no sense either… or did it? Either way… I liked it. “Why… injured…containment… hypnotic…sedate…multiple laws…execution…DNA… section 7… leader…illegal possession…Earth…vandalism…interference…request…able to defend…any…words?”

  “Mah yahm Abul.” I agreed groggily. Then I felt another prick and my world went black again.

  “Able darling? They’ve got him drugged almost to death.” I could feel hands pulling me up and I looked at the weird shiny things with a small snicker.

  “Pwehta…” I burbled and whatever was holding me decided to set me down.

  “He’s not going to be of much help I don’t think. Zuhara O Kande, any ideas? We don’t have much time before they come back with Nihilo and who knows what they’re doing with poor Siniste!”

  “I’m not exactly free and able, especially without my potion’s table. Get me free and we shall see, but a broken skull is not that easy. The sedative will wear off soon I believe, but from my cage you need me relieve!”

  “It’s not that simple! I may be strong, but to break such a thing…”

  “Would you rather us die? The cat can’t release me and no one else can free the others three!”

  “I BROKE MY NAILS!!!”

  “Hush drama queen before we are heard and seen. Help Able to his feet! Or soon we will end’s meet!”

  “Waash couhin ohn?” I slurred as I managed to stand wobbly, but I couldn’t seem to touch the butterfly right in front of me. It was dodging me and as I turned it stuck its tongue out at me. “Thash noh ery nishe.”

  “Able my dear, when the guards draw near, can you repeat after me: everything is fine, continue on your way.” I looked up at my pretty Zuhara O Kande happily.

  “Wheas yah shrunk?”

  “Focus. Everything is fine, continue on your way.”

  “Erishin ish fwih. Coshinue ouhn yah wayh.” I blubbered back, trying to pat her tummy.

  “What about Siniste? We can’t rescue her with him like this?”

  “We can try!”

  Some funny looking people came in the door and Zuhara O Kande lifted my head forcefully to stare into their eyes. I lurched forward to give them a hug and felt a prick. I look
ed at the funny needle thing strangely.

  “No!”

  “Ahhw…” I muttered and looked up into their faces. “Erishin ish fwih. Coshinue ouhn yah wayh…”

  * * *

  “It’s not fucking right!” I felt weird when I opened my eyes and I had a pounding headache even though the sun was down. I actually groaned as I sat up and silence fell on the room.

  “What the hell happened?” I could groggily remember mythril cuffs, something about the Earth Guard and everything being fine… and a purple mammoth trunk, but that last one seemed a bit too weird.

  “You nearly died. When we hit the Earth Guards’ mythril net, it bounced our train back and we hit twice. You were slung head first into the side of the train. Your skull was cracked and you were bleeding heavily inside. Only your Skypian blood, prayers and a little voodoo healing kept you alive.” Zuhara O Kande wasn’t rhyming.

  “We were captured? What…” I didn’t know what to ask so I just let it go. “We escaped though. That’s all that matters.”

  “It isn’t… not this time.” Siniste spoke softly and Raven practically ran out of the room.

  “What happened?” Everyone looked down and my temper for once got the better of me. “Tell me!”

  I couldn’t stand not knowing. I had to know, I had to know what had happened and what I had missed.

  “It was recorded by the train’s transmission receiver.” Siniste handed me the holoscreen. “Watch it.”

  I hit the history and played the tape that was only a couple of minutes long. I was silent as Dexter popped onto the screen, but I couldn’t help but inhale at the thing behind her. It was an electragate, an ancient method of crossing the Skybarrier that was more than finicky, it could be deadly. Why they were sending her across in such a contraption, I had no clue.

  “Hey, you know I’m not very big on pretty words,” Dexter almost sounded normal as she talked, “if they didn’t have this weird sensor thing on me, I’d probably be cursing already. I liked curse words, I mean they suited me well.”