“Not a good morning, my boy,” he replied, taking one second too long to decide what kind of mood to portray on this occasion. And then he settled into his character. “The rain was a strange color today, Ebrai, my boy. Looking outside, it painted the cobblestones red. Come with me up to the garden, and I can show you. At least my flowers were untouched, thank heaven.”
“There was no rain this morning, father,” said Ebrai in a calm voice, but looking at him with eyes that were wrung of all life.
“No rain? How strange, then. I could’ve sworn I saw droplets of red flying every which direction. They made rosy rainbows in the sun, for it rose quickly, just now, and it shone so very brightly through the downpour.”
“Let’s go up on the roof, father and see your garden.” Ebrai then picked up a few pieces of parchment lying in the corner and a quill and inkwell. “Here, let me carry your drawing pages with you, and you can sit and sketch your flowers in the sun.”
“Very thoughtful of you, dear boy. And how have you been, son? I don’t see you much these days, what with you having to attend the lovely young woman who rules this country. Where is she, by the way? All in good health?”
And they went through the dark small apartment into an even lesser cell, then up a narrow spiral staircase of iron and wood planks, emerging on top of the world.
All around them, slanting gilded rooftops and ornate cornices. Only here, in this tiny spot under heaven was a green niche open to the sun and partially enclosed from the elements with a retractable translucent awning of fine fabric that kept moisture away but allowed most of the sunlight through like a fine sieve.
Under the protection of the awning stood pots of roses, irises, gardenias, fuchsias, trellises with climbing vines, and blossoms of every shape and color, blooming year-round and emanating heady fragrances upon the cool morning breeze. A few loud cooing pigeons flapped wings and scattered from underfoot, flapping up and away into the pale blue winter skies.
“Her Brilliance is quite well, father, in perfect health as always, and has today embarked upon a new campaign. And she has instructed me to travel on an errand for her, which shall take me away from the Palace for some time. Since I will not be able to visit you again for many days, I thought I might sit with you now, before I depart. Now, come, sit down and sketch something for me.”
“Very well! Would you like a rose or maybe a narcissus? An orchid!”
“You know I am not so expert in all the different blooms you keep so well. Their names escape me for the most part. Why not make a few sketches and I will tell you which I like best. Make sure they are all the best and prettiest ones, large and fully open.”
“Of course,” Micul replied, and grabbed a small pinch of seeds from a little pot nearby, tossing it on the floor, at which point a small grey pigeon hopped dutifully forward and started to peck at his feet.
“Now, first, my father, I would like to see an open rose, the greatest and most fair one of all.”
“How about this one?” And Micul Fiomarre pointed to a nearby rose of the deepest musk burgundy, the color of blood, wafting forth a powerful perfume.
“Yes, this one is beautiful,” his son replied. “And the color is precisely right.”
It was time to send the birds.
The Royal study was crowded. King Roland Osenni of Lethe sat behind his large mahogany desk strewn with parchment and abandoned vellum-bound tomes from his library. Next to him, at an upright standing podium desk perched his secretary, with a number of quills and inkwells ready.
All around had gathered courtiers, military officers, and high-ranking advisors, pressed closely around His Majesty’s desk—several rows thick—each one straining to find a place nearer the King.
A few steps away, in a deep wing chair, sat the Grand Princess Claere Liguon, with her back perfectly aligned with the straight back of the chair, wood to upholstered wood. Next to her, like her invisible sentinel death shadow, stood Vlau Fiomarre, grave-faced as always.
The King cleared his throat. “First, Your Imperial Highness, be so kind as to dictate a letter to His Imperial Majesty, Your Father. Inform him of your health—that is—”
“I am well aware how to proceed with a letter, Your Majesty,” interrupted the Infanta’s measured, bellows-driven, mechanical voice. Every advisor and military man in the room turned to stare her way.
The King cleared his throat again, in a combination of chagrin at his faux pas comment regarding her “health” and in his general frustration with her.
Claere was strongly aware of this frustration and displeasure, and had been in fact expecting it as soon as she had discreetly given her order to Lord Beltain Chidair the night before, to remove Percy from Letheburg. The knight had complied and disappeared, together with the village girl. And Claere spent the dark hours of her sleepless night not in mere contemplation of her personal eternity—as had been her pastime every night since her life had been taken away from her together with any other human function such as sleep—but also in the visualization of the highly unpleasant consequences that would manifest the next morning. She had expected the King to send for her in anger as soon as he awoke, but instead there was noisy action in the Palace, and a constant hive of activity in the square below, illuminated by golden street lanterns and occasional torches carried by running convoys of soldiers on their way to the city walls. From what she could gather by inquiring from a harried servant, there had been a breech in the wall, or possibly the walls had merely manifested the strange disappearing act that Grial had talked about. Whatever it was, new defenses and barricades were hastily being erected in the vulnerable spots along the walls. There was also mention of someone who had ridden outside, and was seen from the battlements. . . . And, rumor had it, there were many fallen dead, each one a true corpse, gone in the same permanent way as had the old Queen.
Claere could only suppose it was Percy’s handiwork.
In the pre-dawn twilight, with only a candle and a useless warm fireplace illuminating the fine boudoir allocated to her, Claere paced, moving her desensitized limbs like clockwork. At some point a soft knock came, and she uttered: “Come in.” She expected a Royal summons, but instead it was the tall slim figure of a familiar dark man. Vlau Fiomarre entered her bedchamber and stood at the door, columnlike and peculiar.
“You,” she said. It simply came out of her, unexpected. And because she did not make the conscious effort to draw in the breath needed to inflate her lungs for speech, the utterance was a silently mouthed whisper.
“Forgive the intrusion,” he said. “But I thought you might want company, before the King’s inevitable summons came.”
“Marquis,” she said. “My thanks. Though I am not sure what is to be said now. I am not afraid of Lethe, merely resigned to an unpleasant exchange. There is nothing he can do to hurt or punish me.”
“He can lock you up and forget where he keeps the key. That would be the worst indeed,” Fiomarre said, taking the steps to approach her. “However, you can be sure he will have far better use for you. You are his leverage with the Emperor.”
“My father will not stand for blackmail.”
“Ah,” said Fiomarre, and the firelight cast moving shadows along his austere face and its sardonic expression. “But it is not blackmail he will wield, Your Imperial Highness.”
“What then?”
“Love,” replied the dark man simply. And his absolutely black eyes were full of demonic liquid flames, barely contained shadow-fire.
And as she stared up at him, her great haunting eyes in their sunken hollows watching him with their soft, tragic intensity, he continued: “Love is the force with which he will manipulate the Liguon, and it will be a subtle, legal manipulation, quite within what is permitted a loyal vassal king merely asking for his liege’s aid. Osenni will ask the Emperor to come to the rescue of his own beloved daughter who happens to be safely ensconced at Letheburg. ‘The King of Lethe is merely acting as your protector now,’ he will insist,
‘with the forces of the city and the entire Kingdom at your disposal.’ ‘This siege must be broken on your behalf,’ he will inform the Emperor.”
“And my father of course will come.” She nodded, her delicate cold neck moving stiffly to indicate her understanding.
“So you see,” Vlau continued, “there will be no need to hide you away or do anything that might appear punitive. So, be not afraid for the dawn to arrive. . . .”
“Thank you. . . .” She continued to look at him, at the strange, unblinking, boundless depths of his gaze. “As I said, I am not afraid. But—had I been—your words offer comfort indeed.”
“I regret . . . I can offer little more.”
And he stood then, at her side, silently, with infinite patience, while the windows slowly filled with a pale bluish glimmer of dawn. It was infinite patience and possibly more, to thus attend the dead.
Soon afterwards, the summons had indeed come. The Infanta and Vlau Fiomarre were brought before the King of Lethe in this same study. And here, in snatches, the variously upset and discombobulated King poured forth his grievances. “How could Her Imperial Highness let the girl go? At such a precarious time as now! How, in all Heaven, with the dead rebels surrounding the city, about to storm us at any moment, and that peasant being the only known and effective means of stopping them?”
But Clare found herself more artful and resourceful than she imagined. “Your Majesty,” she retorted, with just the right expression of innocent surprise. “Surely you realize that I have sent the girl out of the city on purpose—with my loyal knight to back her—on my precise orders to find my father and beseech him for aid on behalf of Letheburg. As Your Majesty clearly understands, no one else is as qualified to pass safely and travel the countryside in such turbulent times. My knight will protect her against any threat from the living, while she will take care of the hostile dead. Together they will arrive safely and relay the message to the Emperor.”
The King was somewhat mollified, absentmindedly scratching the top of his head and skewing his fastened wig in the process. “My dear child,” he said, in a much milder voice. “It is a good and noble and caring thing you have done, on behalf of all of us in this wretched, besieged city. But, have you any notion how much we lose now, in our defense capabilities? Could we not have just as well sent messenger birds?”
“Birds may be easily intercepted,” she replied, getting into her role. “A bird can be taken out with one well-placed shot of a marksman, or slain by a hunting hawk. And now that death has stopped, a bird may be damaged enough to prevent its flight or simply lose its living desire to return home to feed. But my Percy Ayren will be unstoppable.”
“Well, it is a clever decision on Your Imperial Highness’s part, I must admit. But, we will send birds nevertheless—must send them in fact, with more details than merely a request for aid. Details of all things must be urgently conveyed to His Imperial Majesty and others.”
Musing thus, King Roland Osenni called for a secretary and all his advisor corps, until in the next hour the room had filled with every courtier imaginable, and several aviary cages were brought in.
And now, here they were.
Claere Liguon was given first courtesy to dictate her formal letter to her Imperial Father. She did so, in a calm voice, powered by her soft bellows of lungs. It was brief and to the point, easy enough to fit in a tiny square of parchment to be attached to the leg of a small carrier pigeon. She was “not a Cobweb Bride, but as well as can be,” and “merely asked for assistance on behalf of Letheburg and herself.”
After she was done, the secretary brought the parchment bit up to her on a tray, and she signed her name with awkward clenched fingers. The King nodded with an approving smile to her and ordered the letter sealed and attached to the most reliable carrier bird in the Imperial cage.
Next, the Infanta was courteously ignored as the King dictated several more missives. The first was to the Emperor, directly from the King of Lethe. “Your Imperial Majesty, your loyal vassal Lethe begs for urgent aid, ere we fall. Your Daughter and Letheburg are besieged by a dead army of Chidair, and supplies are limited.”
The second letter was to Duke Vitalio Goraque. “Gather all your military forces immediately and come to the aid of Letheburg and Your King,” it said, and was signed, sealed and attached to a bird from another, lesser cage, this one of locally bred birds native to Goraque’s holdings and keep.
The next two letters were intended for the neighbors—Morphaea and Styx. Neither of the two Kingdoms were on particularly warm terms with Lethe, or were expected to respond in time, but it was an automatic gesture invoking the bonds of common solidarity to the Realm. “Your Neighbor and Friend, the King of Lethe, begs your swift aid, at a time of siege and despair, on behalf of the Emperor’s Daughter and Lethe,” it said, in duplicate. The mention of the Infanta was intentional—if either Styx or Morphaea needed a stronger reason for action. The young King Augustus Ixion of Styx in particular might want to garner favor with the Emperor by assisting his daughter in her plight. And Morphaea’s King Orphe Geroard would come eventually, out of a sense of general duty to the Realm.
With the birds from the appropriate cages selected, and letters attached, the King sat back in his chair while the bird trainers took up all the cages including the special one with the outgoing missives, where all the selected birds were placed together with their tiny loads. This cage would be taken up to the rooftops and the pigeons released into the fair weather sky of morning.
“Now, we pray and wait,” His Majesty announced to the room.
“If I may point out, Your Majesty,” said one military man of high command wearing the cobalt blue colors of Lethe. “We have been rather fortunate so far. The enemy outside the gates has not yet given the orders to attack. Hoarfrost appears to be waiting for something.”
“Or someone,” said the King. “Yes, it troubles me, this calm before the storm. Why has he not attacked? Why not, especially, take the opportunity this past night when the breach occurred and that peasant girl and his own son plowed through their ranks so easily?”
“Could it be he knew it was his son?”
“Knowing Hoarfrost, that would hardly make a difference. Indeed, he would be likely to capture and thoroughly punish his boy in a protracted execution.”
“Then, Your Majesty,” ventured another advisor, this one a civilian diplomat, “we can only hope and pray that His Imperial Majesty sends reinforcements before this mystery of Hoarfrost’s motivation need be solved.”
“I will be praying,” the King said, “at Her Majesty’s funeral tonight. That my late Mother might be laid to her final rest tonight, in blessed peace, before any blood is spilled.”
It was time to send the birds.
Lady Ignacia Chitain of Balmue sat in a small tent erected on her behalf by the orders of Duke Hoarfrost, right next to his own greater one. They were situated on a small rise, just outside the range of Letheburg marksmen. The snow had started falling a few hours after midnight, and overnight had piled on heavily all around, so that the canvas roofs of both tents sagged mightily under the load.
It was serene and yet utterly grotesque to be surrounded by the walking dead in all directions, Ignacia thought—all of them remote and no longer human, and only she and the Domain messenger boy being of the living. She should have been afraid, and yet somehow she had no fear—confident in herself and her effect upon the Duke, she had no true fear of Hoarfrost, and he ruled them all.
The incident with the knight breaching the city siege and blasting through the thicket of the dead army was a thought-provoking thing. Ignacia did not know what to make of it. She had awoken from yet another brief and troubled sleep among a crude pile of furs to the distant sounds of a peculiar commotion. It came, not among the besieging army ranks—for the dead generally remained impassive to all stimuli except direct commands from their newly appointed lord—but far ahead, up on the actual battlements of the city. She had emerged from her
tent and only then observed that someone was riding hard from the direction of Letheburg and directly into the army, and making a significant headway. Apparently the dead were falling.
What occurred next was unclear. Hoarfrost had come outside also from his tent where he’d been brooding like a stump, and he himself had gone very still at one point, together with the entirety of the dead around him. And then, it was as though a single metaphysical breath had been expelled, and they were all released by an invisible hand. . . . Hoarfrost’s roar of fury and impotence was enough to make her put her hands up to her ears, and she prudently decided against approaching him in that moment. Now he stood staring as though he were a boulder rising from the earth, a barrel-chested monstrous figure that had once been a man. There was something peculiar in the obsessive way he watched the receding figure of whoever was on horseback, cutting through the army like butter and then receding into the night darkness of the plain, moving south.
Soon afterwards, the snowfall started.
Ignacia went back inside, huddled in her fine ermine cloak, and slept once more, until dawn. And the young spy from the Domain slept a few feet away, next to the warmly covered and well-coddled cage containing his precious carrier pigeons.
When next the lady awoke, it was to white morning light outside, and tall snowdrifts. After a few brief morning ablutions, she headed directly into Hoarfrost’s tent.
“My Lord,” she inquired, with no preamble. “Did I hear something happen last night?”
The dead man turned to her, creaking his rime-frosted limbs. Then the bellows of his lungs came to life. “You heard indeed. Someone has made a fool of me, pretty bird. Indeed, as I speak of birds, one such bird has flown the Letheburg coop. A very strange feathered thing, I must say.”
“What coop?” said Lady Ignacia bluntly, because she knew it was the best manner to take with this man. “Please be simple with me, Your Grace, for I have no notion of what you speak.”
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