by K Dowling
“Hello, Whinny.” Roberts inclines his head respectfully. His green eyes scan the crowd above the flat top of her black hat. Discouraged, he realizes that he cannot make out a single familiar face in the gloom.
“Didn’t expect to see you ‘round these parts,” Whinny croons. She pushes herself upward on her toes in an attempt to try and draw his gaze back down towards her. He relents, realizing that he is never going to find his way successfully through the tangle of dark and crowded corridors on his own.
“I’m looking for Lenora,” he admits to her. Her wide eyes are circled with streaks of black charcoal. She bats her lashes, smiling shyly.
There’s nothing shy about her, he thinks dourly. He questions whether or not she’s understood him. It does not appear as though she has. She sidles closer to him, flashing him a bit of pale, porcelain leg beneath the slit in her ruffled gown.
“Would you like to go find someplace more quiet to talk?” She plants a firm hand upon his chest, pushing him a step or two towards the staircase behind him. “Upstairs, ‘haps?”
“No.” He cannot think of anything he would like less.
“We can stay here, if you like.” She is still smiling, and he notices that she has a bit of something stuck in her crooked teeth. “I’m flexible.”
Roberts clears his throat, uncomfortable. “I’m looking for Lenora.” This time, when he speaks, he is careful to enunciate.
“I heard you,” Whinny assures him.
Roberts is about to turn and walk away when he hears another voice call out his name. The familiar sound is a welcome escape. By some stroke of luck, Mamere Lenora has managed to catch sight of him through the crowd. He can see the plump, older woman making her way across the room. She sweeps boisterously through the pressing throng, bumping carelessly into velvet sofas and splintering coffee tables as she attempts to avoid the chattering cluster of customers.
“Never mind,” he says wryly. “Thank you for your help.”
“Of course.” The sour response from the young prostitute next to him perfectly matches the look of annoyance on her face. Her nose crinkles glumly as she watches Lenora’s approach. Shoving Whinny aside, the stout woman draws Roberts into a bear hug. He returns it gladly, breathing in the familiar smell of her perfume. Lenora releases him after a moment, her gaze sliding towards Whinny.
“What are you doing, standing about, girl?” Lenora glares at the girl over her tightly cinched bosoms that protrude from her mauve, laced bodice. Her lips settle into a fearsome scowl.
Whinny shrugs. She fingers a golden coil of hair as she moves closer to Roberts, placing a palm in the crook of his elbow. “I was just making conversation.”
“He’s not a customer, fool.”
“I know that.” The girl does not move.
Mamere Lenora rolls her eyes, shifting her attention to Roberts. “What brings you here tonight, darling?” She steps closer, lowering her voice to a ghost of a whisper. “I’ve heard the news. Awful. Absolutely awful.” She shakes her head and lets a low sigh escape from between her lips.
“What news?” Whinny inquires.
Mamere Lenora fixes the girl with a frightening stare. “Go embarrass yourself somewhere else,” she snaps. She shoos the girl away with an exasperated wave of her hand. “There are plenty of men here.”
Roberts and Lenora watch as the young woman disappears grudgingly into the crowd. Only once he is sure she will not return does Roberts speak again, leaning in close to ensure that Mamere Lenora will hear him over the din.
“I’m looking for Mame Galyria.”
Mamere Lenora nods. “I guessed as much. She’s not taking visitors tonight, dear.”
“She’ll see me,” Roberts promises. “She needs to.”
Mamere Lenora considers this, studying him closely. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” It is mostly true.
“And the girls?”
“Just as horrendous as always.”
Lenora smiles, taking his hand within hers and giving his fingers a squeeze. “You know that they love you dearly.”
He returns the smile. “Lenora, listen, I know it’s late. I need to speak with the Mame.”
She purses her lips for a moment before responding. “Fine,” she assents. “Only do not keep her long, she is not as young as she used to be.”
They take the back staircase to the top floor. The winding steps are uneven—treacherous. Roberts fights to stay within the reach of Mamere Lenoras’s candle. His shadow dances upon the peeling floral wallpaper. His feet whisper against the dusty velvet carpet underfoot. As they reach the top landing the smell of burning incense reaches his nose. Lavender, and something else he cannot place. The rafters lean inward and meet at a point. It is hot up here. Stuffy. The air tastes stale upon his tongue.
There is only one door in the narrow hallway. Mamere Lenora knocks lightly upon the wooden frame.
“Mame? Are you awake?”
Roberts can hear the sound of someone stirring in the room beyond. A muffled croak, like a frog, reaches them from the other side of the wall. “I am now, aren’t I?”
“A man is here to see you, dearest.” Mamere Lenora’s typically gruff demeanor has grown soft—polite. The Mames command respect, even outside the circle of Cairans.
“I told you, I am too ill for visitors tonight.”
Roberts catches Mamere Lenora’s gaze. She shakes her head, leaning towards Roberts in the stuffy foyer.
“She is nothing of the sort. Only old.”
Roberts suppresses a smile as Mamere Lenora leans back into the door.
“He is Cairan,” she calls, speaking directly into the wood. “Roberts the Valiant.”
There is a brief period of silence, followed by the sound of shuffling footfalls upon the creaking floor. The door is wrenched open. Violet fumes billow out into the hallway. Roberts fights the urge to cough. Before them perches a bent old woman. Her long grey hair is piled into a haphazard bun at the top of her head. Her dark eyes are lost within a sea of wrinkles. Her heavy golden earrings pull at her skin, stretching her lobes nearly to her shoulders. Her bony fingers clasp restlessly at one another as she blinks in Roberts’s direction.
“I knew you would come,” she rasps at him.
Roberts doubts that she did. And yet here he is. There is no other response for him to give than to smile and nod. “I needed to see you.”
“You have questions, ah? You want to know why their golden hearts are filled with such hate.”
Roberts hesitates before responding, his brows furrowing over his eyes. “Yes.”
“I don’t have answers.”
Her reply takes him by surprise. He stands uselessly before her—waiting—not knowing what to say.
“Lenora. Leave us,” the elderly woman commands.
“Of course, dear,” Mamere complies. Smiling, she turns to face Roberts. The light of the candle catches beneath the shadows of her eyes. “Leave the way you came, when you are done. Take the door through the kitchens. No use being hassled by that dreadful Whinny on your way out as well.”
“Thank you Lenora,” Roberts says. “Really.”
She flashes him a grin. “No trouble at all, it’s always good to see you, boy. Give my love to the girls.” She saunters off into the darkness without another word. He listens to her steps receding down the stairs. And then he is alone with the old woman.
From her perch in the doorway, Mame Galyria stares at Roberts through wizened black eyes. He stares back at her. The quiet is uncomfortable.
“May I come in?” he asks, after his ears begin to ring.
“No.”
Silence. “Oh.”
She teeters in the doorway. She is so frail that Roberts is concerned she will fall over if she does not sit down. He contemplates offering to fetch her a chair before thinking better of it, instead standing uselessly before her and waiting for her to speak. When at last she does, her voice is reedy—ancient.
“Do you know why I
make Mamere’s my home, ah?”
Roberts says nothing, certain that she means to continue whether or not he offers a response. She takes a breath, validating his suspicions.
“Commoners are like to believe anything one reads upon their palms or sees in their tea leaves.” She chuckles, and the sound that crinkles out of her reminds Roberts of leaves rustling in the wind. “It doesn’t take much to be a seer, boy. Just a little bit of insight and a lot of ambiguity, and one’s customers will do the rest of the work, ah?”
Roberts blinks, surprised. He thinks again of his father, and how Eliot had reacted once upon a time when Roberts’s mother had attempted to talk him into visiting a seer. She proposed that it would be fun, but his father was unconvinced.
Seers are nothing but clever little entertainers for the weak-minded, he argued. All it takes is a little bit of insight and a lot of ambiguity, and the customer will do the rest of the work.
Mame Galyria is rocking upon her heels before him. Crow’s feet crease around her eyes as she smiles. Her mouth is riddled with black gaps where her teeth have fallen out.
“But I don’t need to tell you that, do I, child? You aren’t a believer.”
Roberts realizes there is no use in lying. Not to her. “I’m not.”
“Prophecies are vastly different than fortune telling.” Mame Galyria’s shriveled face grows somber. One withering hand shoots out and grabs his wrist. Her flesh feels like sandpaper. “Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“If one has visions of a prophetic nature one cannot control them. One cannot call them up at will. Most often, one is not even aware that the revelation is occurring.”
Roberts says nothing. He is suddenly eight years in the past, watching Nerani pace back and forth with urgency. It was hours after her naming ceremony and she had been distressed all afternoon. Accustomed to the young girl’s tendency to fret, he had teased her relentlessly.
What’s wrong with you, Nerani the Elegant? Don’t like your new name?
Do you believe Mame Galyria can truly predict the future?
What? Her question threw him off-guard. Why?
She told me something today, at the ceremony. Her eyes got all funny.
What did she say?
Nerani swallowed. She leaned in closer. Gold blood bleeds red.
Before him, Mame Galyria is nodding at him through slotted eyelids. Her expression seems to suggest she has somehow managed to read his thoughts. The idea rattles him slightly—more than it should. “You know what it is I mean,” she croaks. “You understand.”
“I think I might.”
“Then you know why I cannot answer your questions. The things you are going to ask me do not yet have an answer. They must run their course. You have work to do, boy. The blood of Saynti runs deep within your bones. Fate has long foretold your destiny. It is a precarious path that lies before you, and it is not I who is meant to send you off on your journey.”
Roberts hesitates in the dark hallway. He feels a sudden chill in the air that has nothing to do with the cold rain pattering against the roof overhead. He opens his mouth to speak, but she holds up a hand to silence him.
“No questions. You will understand everything in due time.”
“But—”
She cuts him off again, her eyes narrowing. “I can tell you this much—you must visit Mame Noveli.”
“The storyteller?” Roberts had thought the old woman to be dead and gone. She was older, still, than Mame Galyria, if such a feat were possible.
“Yes. You see, child, sometimes our past tells us more about our future than a seer ever can. She will help you.”
Roberts nods, unconvinced. He chews at his lower lip, thoughtful.
“Now,” declares the Mame, rubbing at her brittle knuckles. “I am going back to sleep. I am not young anymore, and time does not take pity on an old woman’s bones. I trust you will see yourself out, ah?”
She is backing into the room, closing the door. A thousand questions dance upon his tongue. Only one reaches his lips.
“Mame—wait. Where can I find Mame Noveli? There is no one alive who has seen her in years.”
At this Mame Galyria laughs. The sound leaks out through her pores. It swallows the air whole. Her black eyes glitter with a source less light.
“You are quite right, my boy. Nobody has seen her. Nobody knows.”
The door is slammed shut.
CHAPTER 6
General James Bryon
Corporal Thomas Anderson is asleep when James Byron enters the barracks. He has not even bothered to turn down the itching grey wool sheets. His golden cloak is draped over him like a blanket. It rises and falls along with his breathing.
“Get up,” Byron barks. He kicks the base of the cot with the toe of his leather boot. The corporal is up in an instant. His cloak falls away from his uniform as he leaps to his feet. His silver hair, normally carefully maintained, is mussed from the lumpy pillow at the head of the mattress.
“Sir?” There is no trace of sleep in his voice. Byron wonders if he was even slumbering at all, or if he was merely pretending. He thinks, do snakes sleep? A frown deepens upon his face as he stares into the bright eyes across from him.
“You know exactly why I’m here, Corporal.”
A smile. “But I’m afraid that I don’t.”
“You were to await my orders regarding torching Toyler’s tavern.”
“Ah.” Anderson yawns, but the general is sure that he is faking. “You were nowhere to be found yesterday morning.”
Byron ignores the annoyance that bristles beneath his skin. He does not immediately respond. He should not have lingered so long on the beach that morning. It is hard for him to stay away on mornings such as that—when the sky is red as blood and the electricity of an incoming storm clings to the air. It is nostalgic for him—soothing. He has been in a terrible need of some sort of escape. Tensions in the city have been high—the people have been prone to riots and looting.
Before him, Anderson stretches his arms wide over his head. “His Majesty did not want us to waste any more time.” Reaching down, he pulls at a fraying bit of golden thread that has unraveled from the rectangular sigma upon his grey sleeve. The number of golden stripes a guardian has upon his arm signifies his status within the golden guard. Byron himself has four. He has risen quickly in the ranks for a young man his age. Corporal Anderson resents that, he is certain. The guardian is older than he, though not by much. His father is the Viscount of Rowland’s court. He feels it is his due.
That is his first mistake.
“I know what the king wants,” Byron snaps. “He and I spoke face-to-face regarding Toyler’s.”
“Then you were well aware that he wanted you to take immediate action should Mr. Toyler refuse to clear out his tavern.”
Byron swallows. He fights the heat that is curling through his veins like wildfire. He thinks of the tavern, and of the flames that tickled the sky. He blinks, slowly, and tries in vain to clear from his head the memory of the screams that pervaded the street.
We were told to burn it down, he thinks, we were never ordered to kill.
“Those Cairans were sent to a slaughter.”
“Indeed,” Anderson agrees. Grooves splinter across his skin as his smile widens. “As they very well should be.”
“There are crimes punishable by death, Corporal. This was not one of them.”
“My men tell me there were no casualties.”
“My men,” Byron corrects. “And there easily could have been. If that had happened, the Cairans would have rebelled. It would have been a mess. Our responsibility is to keep the peace, not to disturb it.”
Anderson sniffs. “They were given every chance to remove their slobbering, drunk carcasses from the premises before we lit the tavern on fire.”
“Then they should have been manually cleared prior to the tavern being lit.”
Anderson’s lips curl into an uneven smile and he meets Byr
on’s gaze head on. The lack of respect in his eyes is palpable. “Is that so?”
Byron swallows thickly, biting back his rage. He allows his hard gaze to remain trained upon Anderson for a long moment before responding.
“Next time, you wait for my orders, is that understood?”
“Of course, sir. You’re in charge.”
There is a clamor from the other side of the room. A throat clears. A plump woman with a mess of graying hair stands perched in the doorway. Her apron is stained with flour. She smiles politely at the two guardians, but it is clear that she does not have the time to spare. Her chest rises and falls as though she has been running.
“Adeline.” Byron inclines his head respectfully towards the kitchen matron, recognizing her at once. He has known the woman all his life, since he was a young boy getting underfoot in the kitchens as his mother kneaded bread. “How may we be of service to you?”
“His Majesty has requested your presence in his quarters.”
Anderson sniffs again, louder this time. “His valet was not sent for us.”
Adeline’s smile wanes upon her face. Her shoulders straighten in a statement of pride. Her stance says, I am somebody. Byron wonders if he, too, fights as hard to matter within the crowded walls of the king’s thriving palace.
“No, sir, he was not,” she assents evenly. “But I was. His Majesty has asked that you come immediately.” She pauses and adds, “He is not in the most pleasant of moods.”
Byron flashes her a genial smile. “Well, then we had better hurry. Thank you, Adeline.”
She nods, backing out of the barracks as quickly as she came. She does not wait for a dismissal. Byron watches her go—watches the fraying hem of her soiled gown sweep against the wooden door frame. At his back, he hears Anderson scoff.
“Rotten kitchen wench. What business has she telling us what’s expected of us?”
Byron glances over his shoulder at the corporal, feeling a grimace settling in upon his lips. “You should show more respect to the palace staff, Corporal.”
