by Chris Howard
"Kassandra.” Aleximor whispered the name, liking what it meant. “And she is not a queen, this Wreath-wearer?"
"No,” said Klonassa. “She is the king's granddaughter, the spawn of the king's first wife, the first queen's hidden daughter."
"What twisty lives,” said Aleximor in a voice too light to keep Klonassa's suspicion asleep.
"Who are you, Corina of the ostologoi?” Her lance wavered, but this time the tip stood three-fingers from Corina's nose.
"I have given you my name, my family, even my purpose. Perhaps you would like a taste of the strategy that builds inside me, that grows with this news of an enemy of the king—and from the king's own blood no less. Is that what you desire, border guard?” Aleximor lifted his head. “I do not hear your answer."
Aleximor grabbed the lance from Klonassa's grip, tugging it free and releasing it into the open water over the fortress’ edge.
"I still hear no answer from you.” Aleximor pushed the guard's sleeve up, revealing the gold name bracelet. “Klonassa?” He slipped the chain off her wrist, placing it around his own. “What a pretty name."
And Aleximor took on the new role he planned to play in the Nine-cities—and beyond that if it suited him ... or her, since he already had the perfect costume. He became the pale woman, and she bent her wrist back, fingers fanning, a dainty gesture to show off her new trinket. “I think I shall play the part of Klonassa for a while. What fun!"
Klonassa, like a statue in her saddle, a cold glare frozen on her face, made a thin gurgling noise in her throat.
The pale woman snapped the reins from her fist, and taking Klonassa's stiff outstretched hand, eased her from the orca's saddle onto the wide stone of the battlements.
Aleximor's familiar had its spiky crab claws into Klonassa's spine, cutting nerves, snipping through bone to reach the core. Klonassa shuddered once, as the crab hollowed out her spine. She felt nothing below her neck, but her eyes moved in jerky shots of focus.
The pale woman spent a moment weaving a spell of obedience on the orca, then turned back to her prey. She kneeled over Klonassa, looking closely at her face. The pale woman's fingers slid over the guard's throat to the first buckle in her armor and unsnapped it.
"I have changed my plans, dear Corina."
You are going to enter the city? Dressed as Klonassa and riding her killer whale?
The pale woman smiled. Still looking into Klonassa's frightened eyes, she answered Corina. “I believe I will someday grow tired of finding I do not have to explain my plans to you, dear."
You talk too much. It's clear that this Kassandra isn't working alone. And since she hates the king, she's our friend. She's organized a revolt, probably has her own army, and will certainly have spies inside the walls of the city. We must find them.
The pale woman stood up and made her way to the edge of the fortress wall, a puzzled look on her face. “Are all surface women this..."
Strategic?
"Yes, strategic."
Where do you think our new friend, Kassandra, learned to destroy armies?
Aleximor slipped out of character for a moment, caught himself, cleared his throat, and became the pale woman again, asking with a sour tone. “Is this mockery?"
Of course it is, you dolt. You think they take all girls aside when they're fourteen for an intensive study of Clausewitz?
"I do not know. Who is Clausewitz?"
A military strategist.
"How do you—a music student—know about war? Are you perhaps related to the war-bards, the Kirk?latides?"
Corina didn't know what that meant, but she knew the answer to the question. My uncle went to West Point. The military academy. He has all these books on military history, huge books with maps of Napoleon's campaigns and the Civil War. I like maps. I read a lot.
The pale woman kept her features relaxed because Corina would be able to read something in them from the inside, but Aleximor's hidden thoughts rolled and punched around in his soul, plots unfolding like wings, only to fly away a moment later. He hated knowing Corina could help him—had helped him—in so many ways, hated his dependency on her, even hated her dependency on him.
Over the last month, she had grown more and more familiar with him, accustomed to his presence, his moods, his plans, and—even worse—she understood them. She urged him on. She pointed out weaknesses in his scheme for revenge. She understood his world far better than he understood hers ... and she could sing. She'd memorized many of his spell songs, many of his dances and incantations. She was becoming more like him than he liked.
* * * *
Corina squirmed in a body that no longer felt like hers. She was sharing it with Aleximor, talking like him, becoming more like him, the two of them merging. She felt his thoughts, his reaction to her shift in power. Corina flitted through his dreams, entered them at will, steered them. She moved on a gradually tilting floor, forced to take a step closer to him every day, and she knew he felt the same sliding feeling from his side, the fear of losing part of himself to his captive—gaining advantages she had, but losing control of some of his strength to her.
"It is most disconcerting,” The pale woman said to herself, mirroring Corina's thoughts.
Corina ignored her, sinking into her soul, running her fingers along the neck of her cello.
This isn't even my life anymore. It's not my body. It's some other woman, a dead-pale thing with white hair—who kills people, and takes their souls. I am a parasite, stuck in the corner of this thing's—this woman's—mind—while she plays with human bones, knitting them together.
Corina's fingers plucked the strings, a fevery coil of climbing notes; the last note hit a high G flat that led into a low A, starting the sequence over again.
There is no “me.” I am just something that annoys the pale woman. I am smoke, a memory so thin and a presence so weak that it does not catch her eye.
The pale woman isn't even alive. Even her body knows it's dead. She cannot make life, only death.
Corina cut her fingers on the strings and she stared at the meaty ridges in her ghostly glowing skin.
The music stopped. Her fingers shook on the frets and grabbed the cello, something to hold onto, some piece of her life; she curled her legs and arms around it.
She didn't unfold her body when something punched her in the shoulder. Something hit her again, running up her back. She realized it was her own body shuddering. Her chin hit the smooth curved side of the cello. The strings thrummed. She clutched at the music, shaking and holding on while her body shuddered and tried to free itself.
From what? What would it free itself from?
The pain shook her violently, knocking the inside of her elbow against the soft wood with a low boom.
I am broken.
Her mind shook out a string of related garbage. Glass splinters. Shards. Shattered light bulb. The lamp was broken and her father was going to be angry—the lamp she knocked off the end-table during a game of living room baseball.
Broken pieces. Broke.
Corina let all the thoughts slide out of her soul, all of them except one.
Fix it. She wanted to, but then the pale woman would kill her.
She will kill me anyway.
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Chapter Twenty-Eight
Nine-cities
The three greater “houses” or poleis (pl. of polis) of the Seaborn are Telkhinos, Alkimides, and Rexenor, and the rivalry between these three accounts for most of wars over the last two thousand years. The hatred of Alkimides for Rexenor goes back to the first Wreath-wearer, Polemachos, the bastard son of the Alkimides princess and a minor Rexenor noble—although the rift stems from Rexenor refusing to join forces with Alkimides against the old royal house, Telkhinos.
—Michael Henderson, notes
* * * *
The pale woman smiled pale lips at the Roll Seep Gate guards, eighteen of them in blue-scaled armor, protectors of the rarely used southern entrance into
the Nine-cities. They formed up in two neat rows, passing information to each other with hand signals.
And they were going to die. Not all of them. She would leave one or two alive, bound to her, tools to help her swim deeper into the city, keys to other gates.
She paused just outside the wall to catch the tone of the water, feeling for the wash and wake of any other Seaborn nearby, and when she knew she was alone with the guards, she donned a mien that intermingled impatience and tenderness, a sharp lust for something she didn't make clear.
Her look told each of them that she would like to kiss them all, and that she would like to ram sharp objects in their ears—and then sing of love.
She whispered, “Come bloody, come strong, come along, my pretty soldiers."
She opened one hand with a flourish and brought the inside of her delicate wrist into her teeth, tearing the skin, bright red globules, a spray of life that she sucked into her mouth. The wound closed as soon as her lips released it.
"Come.” She showed them red teeth and a shy girlish smile.
The guards stared, and the woman with hair the color of bones danced among them, slithering against their armor, pursing her lips, planting a kiss on each of their cheeks, a dab of her blood like a tiny blossom.
She ran bone-white fingers—unmercifully cold fingers—along the throat of the youngest guard. His lips moved, the words caught in his mouth.
"Come along, my pretty soldier."
He gave her an eager nod.
Aleximor's song slithered between the guards, separating them, gliding into their hearts, slippery knives that unhooked their thoughts, plucked at the rigid training in their souls.
Her high voice slid into them, slick fingers in their ears. “Separate and destroy, each piece weak on its own."
She rubbed in seeds of rage, a delicious pain with a shape, webbed branches, a fan spreading, a sharp burn of release, and her slow fingers wandered through their heads.
She left a flavor in their mouths, prickly sweet, candy and puncture wounds and glossy silk, a sugary ache deep in their lungs—and their breathing quickened, fingers flexing, reaching for weapons.
Corina watched as the spell took hold, nailing their souls to their physical forms. What are you doing to them?
"Just watch, dearest."
The pale woman pouted, sinking in the water, her head dropping to one shoulder, her sadness shuddering through their servile minds, and her nimble words urged them to make her happy and whole again.
"If only you can,” she sighed and kicked to the gate's commander, her lips sliding along his jaw line, a gentle kiss beside his ear.
Then she raked her nails over his eyes, cutting though the lids, popping one eye with a gush of fluid. His body went rigid, and the pale woman kicked backward and let the other guards finish the job for her.
The commander tried to scream for help, but the woman had paralyzed him. Blinded, he felt combat motion in the water around him, spears drawn close for stabbing. He tasted blood in the water, his own and others’ gushing from sword wounds; he tasted her blood where her tiny red blossom kiss had burned a hole through his cheek into his mouth, tendrils of it cutting into his tongue and throat and through the fleshy roof into his brain.
The pale woman kicked into the Nine-cities, the youngest guard at her shoulder—in tow—while the seventeen remaining guards of the Roll Seep Gate hacked each other to pieces.
* * * *
Aleximor sank deeper into the role of the pale woman, and went home with the young guard, Theudas, into a poorer area of the city of House Aktaios, to dark tunnels and a single-room with clothes and trash strewn at various depths, most of it drifting around the ceiling. The water inside stank and tasted sour, fouled by the remains of meals and a general lack of cleanliness.
An old Seaborn woman who lived nearby called to see if Theudas had eaten or needed anything from the market; she'd been mothering him for months, plotting to match him with one of her granddaughters. At the pale woman's command, Theudas told her to never return or bother him again. Aleximor lit up the room, glowing yellow, and commanded Theudas to clean while he plotted his next foray.
So much of what he had understood of the world above the waves had changed; so much of the Seaborn world had not.
The cities of each of the greater houses, Telkhines, Alkimides, Aktaios, Dosianax, Rexenor, Lykos, Damnameneos, Megalesios, and Demonax endured in the deeps, and little had changed about their walls, their floating towers, their streaming lights and coral garlands. The Telkhines city remained empty, locked and sealed, asleep as it had been for the last two thousand years—no spell being capable of unlocking its doors. House Rexenor's city had been sacked, its walls crumbling, its lights burned out, and nothing floated in the water above it. Rexenor had been a dead house for nearly twenty years, but it surprised no one that the Rexenors had somehow come back to life, rebuilding their fortress in the north.
Aleximor became the pale woman, sent Theudas out for a cloak with a hood, and then with her white hair and death pale skin hidden, she killed and stole money, and bought gifts for the guards at other gates in the city—gates that led into the king's fortress.
She swam through the Nine-cities, picking up its currents, where the power had shifted in the last two hundred years, picking up any news of the coming war in the north with House Rexenor, and rumors of the Alkimides Wreath-wearer from the surface who was plotting to kill them all.
Days passed, and the pale woman found more paths closed against her, the Nine-cities closing down in preparation for battle, suspicion at every turn.
The pale woman passed a funeral procession high in the water, and had to stop and watch, smiling when she discovered it was for a man named Eudoridas who had been a guard at the Roll Seep Gate—but a tinge of anger when the stories of the gate massacre mostly laid blame on the mysterious Kassandra, the Wreath-wearer.
Everywhere she turned, every current he followed, the name “Kassandra” surfaced, the king's granddaughter, plotting revenge, powerful beyond their imagining. Kassandra began to haunt the pale woman's dreams ... when she had dreams.
The pale woman rarely slept, feeling less of the need to as she released more of Corina's life into death.
Every few days Aleximor slipped out of the pale woman role, and tried to become what he remembered of his original manners and behavior. Part of him was already beginning to wonder if it mattered.
"The king will pay,” whispered Aleximor and considered everything he had learned about King Tharsaleos: Lord of House Dosianax, which meant he had been raised to kill. Tharsaleos had the bleed in his family, which meant he had some power. Nothing like his own, Aleximor was certain, but magic nonetheless. Tharsaleos gained the throne by marrying into the Alkimides royal family, first to Princess Pythias, and on her death, marrying Pythias’ sister Isothemis.
Aleximor learned the oktoloi were mostly of the king's own house, Dosianax, which made them a particularly dangerous wall to break through. It would not be a simple task to separate and destroy them, as it had been at the gate.
Every day he chanced more, testing the boundaries around the king, pressing a cold finger into softer layers only to hit stone walls, or whispering enslaving spells into the ear of one guard only to find that he had no keys to the next gate in.
He imagined it might be easier to return to his family stronghold, marshal his own army of the dead, and storm the city.
A new day, and Aleximor woke as the pale woman. She whispered, “Once more,” and gathered up her cloak. “Come, Theudas, put on your armor, let us see how deep—how close to the heart of the king's fortress—they will let us swim today."
* * * *
The pale woman noticed something else that had not changed in the last couple centuries. There were many gates in the Nine-cities. Individual House domains had their own gates. The central fortress of the king had well-trafficked gates that faced west, and a series of “cold” gates facing away from the heat and light of Hel
ios’ Twin, guarded by those still climbing the ranks, small teams stationed up the deserted backside of the fortress.
There were four guards at the Sixth Cold Gate, drifting opposite each other, each taking a quadrant around a circle cut through the wall, talking in whispers. A lip of veined white bricks had been fitted around the cut, capped with a keystone with a carved Gorgon's tentacled cameo.
The pale woman's eyes stopped on the blue transparent bars filling the circle, and then went to the lock—it looked like a fist-sized blob of green foam. She had never seen anything like it, and spent enough time staring that she triggered the guards’ suspicion.
"What is your business here?” One of the Cold Gate guards swam forward, more disappointed than cautious. His eyes glowed faintly, a vision spell he'd cast on himself to augment the faint glow from two white globes high on the wall. The cold gates, a staggered series of seven of them, faced east, and the beams of Helios’ Twin never reached them.
The pale woman smiled because the guard had fixed his eyes on Theudas, assuming that he was leading her.
The single pair of eyes watching the pale woman belonged to the only woman among the four gate guards, an angry pinning stare, her three black braids sweeping around her throat as she approached, sword down along her arm, held like a knife.
The pale woman dropped her gaze, bringing her hands together; her white fingertips touched and when she pulled them apart, a bar of darkness stretched the gap between them, thickening to a soft-edged piece of nothingness shot with threads electric blue.
The water crackled, and at a command from the pale woman, Theudas brought his spear up and charged.
One guard aimed a crossbow just in time and put a bolt into Theudas’ chest. It punched through his armor, a spray of bone and blood exploding from the middle of his back.
The guard didn't get a second shot. A slice of night black spun out of the bar of nothingness the pale woman held between her fingertips and neatly severed the guard's head. The crossbow drifted to the stone floor in front of the gate along with its owner's headless body.
