by Victor Milán
Uma, self-proclaimed Queen of the Fae, showed a look of surprise and hurt on her face. It was almost convincing. As was her very human allure.
Karyl knew better than to be fooled by either.
“Why, Karyl, my love,” she said, “surely you know? You’re not a virgin. We know; you have no secrets from us.”
“I gave no permission.”
She laughed. It was music, but also malice.
“When did any Faerie need to ask permission from a mortal? Much less the Queen of all.”
“You’re not the Queen of all the Fae.”
“As far as you’re concerned, I am. Or might as well be.”
She stood up and ran her long, slender hands with their long, pointed nails down her naked counterfeit of a body. It was slender, muscles limned beneath silken skin. Her breasts were small, the aureoles a darker blue against the general silver-blue of her shining skin. The hair on her mound of Paradise was of similar color to her nipples. It looked as fine as vexer down.
“And as far as you’re concerned, I am also a woman. I can give you the same pleasures as the most skilled courtesans, with the fervor of the most besotted.” She smiled. Her canines looked unusually long and sharp. “As I have before. Don’t you recall? The memories are as close as your dreams.”
“You also gave me pains unimaginable, both in body and soul,” he said. “I remember some of both, now, the pleasure and the pain. It makes the dreams easier to endure.”
She laughed again. “Ah, your weather-witch told you, did she? We played with you in Venusberg. It’s our right, after all. Especially with those whom we generously rescue, take in, and heal.”
“What’s your purpose in doing this?”
“Besides pleasuring myself? As I assure you I was doing. Your cock may be unexceptional by human standards, but the uniqueness of the rest of you gave it remarkable savor.”
She wiped the back of her hand across her lips. “I wish to experience the tang of the actual semen of a man whom other mortals call a hero.”
“Yes. Besides that.”
“Why, did you not miss your pet when she strayed?”
“Not in this particular way, no.”
“Still, you feel affection toward her, and sadness at the separation.”
“I did. But we weren’t separated voluntarily on either of our parts, Shiraa and I. Whereas you dumped me on the road somewhere in southern Alemania, as devoid of wealth as of memory.”
“But alive! And healed. Yes, yes, without your hand—no need to be tedious, and Aphrodite gave it back to you, so what’s the difference? And with that most remarkable sword you’re waving about in lieu of your now-shrunken cock. You may put it down, by the way. I won’t approach closer without your permission. And don’t be sure you won’t grant it.”
She cocked her hips back so as to flash a glimpse of the pale lips in the fine thatch where her legs met.
“I won’t.”
“Which? Put down your sword, or allow me to fuck you as you’ve never been fucked before?”
“Either. So the sword will harm you.”
“Would I have entrusted you with an implement which could do me harm?”
“You’re a Faerie; you’d do anything. And it already killed one of your kind. Much to my surprise, I grant.”
“Of my kind in only the broadest terms. As far beneath me in power and status as a maggot is below yours.”
“In the end, the maggots eat us all.”
“Ha! Why, yes, I forgot how delightfully, disgustingly temporary your physical forms are.”
He laid the weapon down on the bed, crosswise, and climbed off to the hilt side. Then he stood.
“Tell me why you really came.” He realized his heart was racing and his breath coming short. He chastised himself mentally for poor discipline and began to draw in deep, slow breaths from his diaphragm. At once he felt his pulse settling toward normal.
“Well, one form of oral persuasion failed to convince you to give in to the inevitable. So I decided to try another. Because it pleasured me, of course. But also in hopes you would realize you had to make common cause with me.”
“Now that I know what you’ve done, that will never happen.”
She frowned, and purple lightnings seemed to run like bright serpents through her hair. Her eyes glowed.
“Do you imagine your pitiful world-witch can protect you? She’s as powerless to harm the Grey Destroyers as they are against her. And she’s no more like you than am I. What makes you think her thoughts and aims are any more comprehensible to your mortal mind, contained as it is in a wet, greasy lump inside your skull?”
“Nothing. But her malice, at least, is conjectural.”
“You mean mine? You’ve seen nothing from me but mortal forbearance; hope you never see my malice. But don’t forget the Seven. They have not forgotten you. They have already reckoned ways to overcome their built-in inhibitions against harming you outside of carefully prescribed limits. They will keep coming, and the power they bring to bear against you will grow greater. Until they win, and you and your kind are destroyed.”
“What assurance do I have you won’t do worse?”
She laughed again, her voice metal with anger. “None at all! But since you’re so fond of the term, our bad intentions—mine, at least—remain conjectural. You know that theirs are real.”
The look on her face softened—not to a frown but to one of puzzlement instead of near rage. She raised her head and her pupilless eyes seemed to lose focus.
As if she’s listening to something I can’t hear, Karyl thought.
* * *
“The trap is set,” Margrethe told Uriel. “The bait is being dangled. We’ll all be rid of that pest the Duke of the Borderlands in just a few more minutes.”
“You had best pray the jaws break his neck properly when they snap shut. He seems likely to be a little more forgiving of affront than we ourselves.”
“Not just his, but that ale-sodden wretch of a jumped-up jongleur of his.”
The false Fray Jerónimo raised two fingers in dismissal—a gesture all but wasted in the gloom of the tiny alcove. Then again, she knew it was pointless to curse the dark. It would hardly do to risk discovery, here in the Emperor’s very bedchamber, even if he was lolling about the Fangèd Throne playing at affairs of state. As if any corrupt Southerner could truly understand power, much less wield it effectively.
“He is nothing. But do not underestimate your real prey. His is potent.”
“More potent than thirty skilled assassins?”
There was no realistic way the Grey Angel’s immobile features, which reminded Margrethe of a stripped skull completely covered in fat, petrified maggots, could express emotion. Nonetheless she somehow sensed the creature was surprised.
“Not the Kindred,” he said. “They would never dispatch so many to a single task, whatever its importance. Nor will they soon risk operating within an Imperial residence again, having recently committed an indiscretion on that line and been … chastised.”
“No. A more … secular contractor.” Who whined mightily and demanded all sorts of unrealistic premiums for the effort of assembling such a large team of trained assassins in such a short time. Then tried to double it when they learned who the target was. Margrethe had acceded to the first demand but refused the second, on the principle that to fail to draw some line would suggest too much weakness to an organization professionally interested in exploiting such.
Not that the expense bothered her too much. She would soon be in a position to exact a full refund, should the shadowy proprietors of Acciones Aguanegro wish to continue breathing—much less enjoy the occasional odd bone of work she might choose to toss them. At a greatly reduced tariff, of course.
“It is good,” Uriel said. “Others grow impatient. I wish to be ready to move soon.”
“I believe I can deliver the opportunity to you. As I told you—”
“Wait.”
The grisly head rose, like a Horror
sniffing the air for prey.
“What is it?” she asked, trying to keep her alarm from her voice. What could visibly upset that? she wondered.
“I sense a presence,” the Grey Angel said. “Something wicked. Something … unwelcome.”
The dead, grey-marble eyes rolled as if to fix her with their gaze.
“I perceive that some powerful force, which I will not name, prepares to move against us and disrupt all our plans. You must act quickly, whatever the cost—
and you must not fail.”
* * *
Uma looked at Karyl, and her eyes were wide. They blazed like lightning.
“I must go,” she said. “But I won’t be far. I’m watching over you, sweet Karyl.”
“How reassuring,” he said. His throat was dry.
“Expect betrayal.”
She vanished. She went out like a snuffed candle flame. Or like a lightning stroke ended.
“I always do,” he told the darkness.
For half a dozen deliberate breaths he stood in the blackness. He was waiting for Aphrodite to make her customary appearance.
The room stayed dark. He stayed alone, so far as his senses could tell him.
He padded to the sideboard and poured himself a mug of water from the ewer provided. He didn’t need illumination to complete the operation. He reflexively memorized his surroundings before he surrendered himself to the trials of sleep. He knew where the room’s few furnishings were, his clothes, and, of course, his sword and cane-sheath.
He heard a self-important patter of sandaled footsteps approaching down the stone floor of the corridor. He was already reaching for his plain robes when a rapping sounded from his chamber door.
Chapter 41
Spada, sword—The swords most commonly used in Nuevaropa are two-edged and used for cutting and thrusting: spadacorta, shortsword, to 60 centimeters long, half a kilogram, used one-handed; spada, or arming-sword, 100 centimeters, 1 kilogram, used one-handed; spadón, longsword, to 150 centimeters and 1.5 kilograms, used with one or both hands; Spadataliana, rapier, 120 centimeters, 1 kilogram, one-handed and used mostly for thrusting; dosmanos, greatsword, 180 centimeters, 2.5 kilograms, used with both hands.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
“Karyl,” said Rob as Karyl approached at a confident near trot down the carven stone steps. The soles of his sandals made clopping noises like a horse’s hooves. Each step’s echo chased the others up the walls to the groined ceiling of the empty cistern deep in the bowels of the mountain, underneath the Imperial heart. Not that Rob favored thinking of “bowels” and “drinking water” at the same time.
At least he left his Castañera witch back home, to mind the Farm, he thought. A small blessing, but where the likes of Karyl are concerned, I’ll take what I can get and thank the Lady Maris for Her capricious favor.
Rob wore his customary garments: vest, trunks, buskins. Karyl had forgone any concession to courtly garb and was instead dressed in his preferred manner, in loose white linen blouse and black trousers tucked into the rolled tops of riding boots. It lacked only a hornface-leather jack for armor and an open-faced helmet to be nearly identical to what the man was wearing when Rob first clapped eyes on him in person, mounted there astride Shiraa, wading to his doom across the blood-reddened Hassling. It was an outfit more typical of a light rider than a dinosaur knight.
It chilled Rob’s core to see Karyl was carrying his staff-sword, an innocuous act, remarkable only in the incongruity of one of the Empire’s most powerful noblemen bearing such a peasant item.
He knows! He can’t know. How could he know?
“It’s good to see you, my friend,” Karyl said. Twist the knife slowly in my heart. “When did you arrive?”
Two days ago, Rob thought. He realized he didn’t remember much of the time between then and now. And here I thought Bergdahl had a knack for plying me with the booze.
The Duchess’s hospitality had so overwhelmed him with alcohol, herbs, and fucking that it was that great a marvel he was able to navigate, after a mere pair of hours to sober himself up.
“That’s not important,” he said as Karyl walked up to him. “There’s something I’ve got to do—and I don’t want to do it. You’ll not credit this, but I do this from my love for you as a friend. You’ve been enchanted, and that’s a fact. You need to be sequestered, for your own good, and that of the whole wide world. Please don’t make this hard; just hand over that lethal secret you carry in your right hand, and I shall see that you are comfortable and safe until all this is resolved and you can walk free.”
Karyl’s brows lowered, and his dark eyes seemed to go obsidian-black. Rob swallowed hard and made ready to die.
Then his friend’s face relaxed into a look of something akin to pity.
“You poor fool,” Karyl said softly. “You don’t know what you saw. Nor what’s been done to you.”
That prodded Rob’s stubborn nature. “I do know what I saw and heard: you talking to a horrid Faerie. Do you deny it?”
“No.”
“See?” Rob said, and then felt the fool his friend had just called him. It’s a poor time to be exulting in scoring easy points off your friend, he thought. “But nothing’s been done to me, I assure you. It’s you. The demon’s put you in her spell.”
Karyl’s face, which had gone impassive when his anger flashed, both sagged and twisted into lines and contours of such intense sorrow that it rocked Rob back more than his killing anger had.
“My carelessness brought this on,” Karyl said, the words coming out as if they had been written on clay and broken apart—jagged, with uneven rhythm. “I always bring hurt on those I care about. Always.”
He sighed, composed his face again, and stood upright, apparently calm and relaxed once more.
“Nothing for it, then. Let’s be about it.”
He swung the end of blackwood staff up toward Rob. Rob took firm hold and gently pulled, lest his friend think better of his easy acquiescence.
The blade hidden within slithered free with a serpent hiss of steel. Ah, I seem to’ve overlooked that small detail, Rob thought.
He found he welcomed the imminent kiss of death. Because some might see what he’d just done as betrayal of the best and one true friend he’d ever known but Little Nell—and he suspected he’d be among that “some,” had he ever gotten the chance to reenact this little tableau in his mind. And because, well, he’d failed, and not even the Creators Themselves or their Angels could imagine what great evils a Fae-controlled Karyl Bogomirskiy might accomplish.
But, still, he didn’t appreciate the sudden hard shin in the balls. Nor the way Karyl seized the hair atop his head and cruelly yanked when he bent forward.
Those struck him as plain gratuitous.
* * *
Pulling the doubled-over Rob past him to his right by his short brush of hair, Karyl thrust the staff-sword straight for the black-masked face that hung behind the spot where Rob had stood. It still had a black-gloved hand extended to encircle the bearded dinosaur master’s throat. The eyes in the dark face above the black cloth that masked its lower half were black coins struck in the mint of sheer surprise.
The left eye looked even more surprised as the tip of Karyl’s sword entered the right and struck through to the brain. The right was hidden in a rush of blood and aqueous humor.
He melted into a puddle on the tiled floor as Karyl pulled the blade free.
Karyl pivoted counterclockwise, stepping left as he did so. Had there been no assailants closing from that quarter he would have continued his turn to the one or ones he knew, without looking, were closing from behind. And if they weren’t fouled by having Rob flung at their feet, his sudden sidestep should give them pause.
He felt no fear. If he died, he only hoped it would last this time. He felt focus. As he always did when he plied his craft.
The flat of his single-edged staff-sword clacked against the hardwood haft of a spear
being thrust for his face, guiding its steel head past to the left. He took another quick step into the man, who like the first had his face obscured from nose bridge down by a black mask, though his skin was paler and his eyes were blue. Karyl turned his hips to drive power to the palm-heel blow he slammed into the swaddled chin.
He rotated his hips farther, sticking his right knee forward. His right hand slipped behind the now-stunned spearman’s neck. Karyl stepped back and around with his left foot, tripping the assassin over his knee.
He slashed the man across the back of the neck as he went down. Two dead.
Another spearman rushed Karyl. Approaching from Karyl’s right, the assassin hadn’t been prepared for his target to slip away from him so rapidly. He’d been an eye blink slow in reacting. At the same time the man who had come in behind the one Karyl had dropped with an eye thrust before he could cut Rob’s throat from behind was charging in with twin short swords.
That one held his left-hand blade out before him, angled up to guard against a body thrust. He swung the right-hand sword down. Karyl darted to his own left, slashing the assassin forehand behind the right—forward—knee in passing.
The black-clad man shrieked and went to his knees. He got his left hand down to keep himself from sprawling face-first onto stone, tried to keep the forty-five-centimeter blade in his right raised high enough to guard him. But his own momentum betrayed him.
Karyl’s backhand slash took him across the face. He collapsed in a spray of blood, black by lamplight.
The other spearman was closing. He jabbed at Karyl’s face. Karyl leaned right to slip the glittering head.
It was a feint. The assassin drew the spear back quickly, dropped the head, and rushed to stab Karyl through the body.
Karyl grabbed the spear haft behind the head with his right hand. He turned his hips clockwise to help him pull the wielder off-balance forward. Then rotated them quickly back to deliver, not the usual Zipangu-style draw-cut he favored with the staff-sword but a woodsman’s axe cut to the throat.
The unnaturally keen blade parted skin, cartilage, muscle, and veins with almost no touch of resistance. Karyl felt a shock through the blackwood hilt as the edge struck the neck bone—and then more travel as it cut in.
