by Thomas Green
Mathilde threw her a sharp glare, but Zerae focused on Kayleanne. She did not like the smirk that passed her face.
Kayleanne kept her tone neutral. “The same thing the man with the compass will need your help with. There is a massive fleet of the Palai Order crossing the Fathomless Ocean as we speak and they are not coming in peace. Now, my lands are far from the sea so that does not particularly bother me, but it would change were another Palai armada to cross the Frozen Heights to pincer me.”
This is a ten out of ten level of a disaster. She will goad us into helping her to fight the Order, and I am not sure I can stop it. Zerae rubbed her face with her palm, failing to find words. If the vote went through the full council, Zerae would have enough support to block the motion. But if Mathilde could maneuver the vote to go the council of the matrons, it would pass.
Since Zerae did not speak, Kayleanne continued. “Plus, if we agree on this quickly, I will throw in two favors.”
Favors that mean nothing once she’s at war. How the hell do I stop this? Fiery rage burst from Zerae’s insides, exploding through her organs, but then, as it reached her throat and the darksteel collar at her neck, it receded like a tidal wave in reverse. The skin beneath the collar itched, but she knew better than to scratch it.
“Sounds tempting,” Mathilde said. “I believe we can move the matter to the Council of Matrons.”
Zerae kicked her chair with her heel to make everyone turn to her. “This operation would involve our armed forces and thus I, the War Leader of the Sil Haen, am required to be present by our law.”
Mathilde pierced her with a cold glare. “Since this would be an investigation and a scouting mission, I see it as a civilian matter, which does not require your presence. You may leave, Zerae Hellwind.”
Zerae swallowed the rage, the disappointment and the pain the words caused her. She bowed. “Yes, mother.”
The champions followed her on the way out of the Hall of the Council. She did not need to ask the spies she had among the matron’s guard to know how the meeting went. They would arrange future talks to reach a deal sometime later, which would go on until Kayleanne understood how little she needed to offer.
Zerae crossed the castle to a platform by the side, where she whistled.
Within moments, a humongous bird with red-trimmed black feathers landed before her.
At least someone obeys me. Zerae removed the executioner sword off her back to fasten it by the saddle before she mounted the bird. “All right, Belenus, did you keep an eye on Astril as I asked you to?”
The bird cawed.
“Take me to her.”
As Belenus took her to the skies, Zerae tightened her fur-trimmed coat so as not to freeze. They left Voidspire behind and crossed the valley’s side, arriving above thick, mixed forests. Belenus dove over the trees to land upon a clearing sideways to a creature that was a mixture of a lizard and an eagle.
Tlikk, Astril’s mount. Zerae grabbed her executioner sword, a heavy, flat-tipped blade, and leapt off the saddle, heading into the woods toward the smoke she glimpsed.
She arrived at a chaotic hut built next to a trunk of an ancient oak. With no warning, Zerae entered. In the middle of the shelter burned a fire, around which lay huddled a tall, blonde woman. Zerae wished she had more time to enjoy the view of Astril’s long legs, slender hips, and shapely breasts as her chest rose and fell.
By the side sat stacks of wooden puppets, while by the far corner stood a cot made of furs, inside which slept a young, fair-haired girl covered by bruises. She looked like a field after a week of continuous hailstorms. Next to her sprawled a large tiger which rose and growled as it noticed Zerae. She pierced it with a glare. After a second of direct eye contact, the tiger tucked its tail and huddled by the cot, looking away.
Zerae smirked and stomped her heavy boot into the wooden floor, her voice cold and harsh. “Time to get up!”
The young girl rolled over. “Please, Astril, let me sleep… oh.” She sat up in her bed, petrified.
Astril opened an eye, meeting Zerae’s cold gaze. “Hmm?”
“There’s a disaster heading our way, so I need you back in Voidspire.”
Astril turned her back to Zerae. “I don’t want to. Unless you got chocolate.”
Rage flared within her. “Get. Dressed.”
“How about you undress first and come to wake me up with some morning fun?”
Zerae stepped in and kicked at her, not holding back. With dazzling speed, Astril sprung up to her feet to avoid the strike. “Now!”
“Alright, alright, alright.” Astril picked up her clothes, boiled leather pants, and scale armor, greaves and gauntlets, all fashioned in a mixture of green and brown. “But if you want to play rough, we can do that too. Elizabeth can go get us some apples to eat afterward.”
Zerae gave Astril a look that made her shut up and turned to Elizabeth, who still sat frozen in her cot. “You too, move!”
Her eyes widened. “What’s going on?”
“Get dressed.”
Elizabeth went to dress, picking a mixture of fur-stitched clothes and what was once an attire of a daughter of a wealthy businessman.
Zerae measured her with a stare, noticing Elizabeth packed a lot more muscle than she had the last time she saw her, three years ago. Yet she also had a bruise on every square inch of her body. What training did Astril do with her?
Astril finished dressing and hung her pair of falchions on her back. “Ah well, I guess the training’s over.”
Zerae raised an eyebrow. “Is she ready?”
“No, but she will be fine.” Astril weaved to catch Zerae into a hug from behind.
Zerae slid away. “You will not have time to babysit her. None of us will.”
“She will manage.”
“Elizabeth may have grown up, but she’s still a child so it might be better to leave her here until she reaches the right age.”
Astril clicked her tongue, defiance flaring in her eyes. “She can join the other kids at school.”
“She is too old to start with the young ones, so she would need an exception to get into the higher years, and I am in no position to vouch for her.”
Astril smiled. “This is the point where you tell me you have a plan.”
Zerae sighed. “I will make one. Still, I’m not sure if she wouldn’t be better off living in the wilderness for a few more years… it would be safer.”
“Trouble ahead?”
“An entire storm. Are you certain she will manage?”
“I am.”
Something in Astril’s expression convinced Zerae, as it always did. She wished she didn’t trust her as much as she did. “Once we return home, start by waking up Leena. She’s been doing nothing but dream-walking for the past couple of years so she will need you to whip her back into shape.”
Astril’s face turned into a provocative grin. “I could also whip you back into shape if you know what I mean.”
“This is neither the time nor the place for that.” Zerae spun to face Elizabeth, who was packing her wooden puppets while the tiger rubbed itself against her legs. “You can leave those behind since I had new ones made for you.”
Elizabeth stared at her, mouth gaping.
Zerae glanced at Astril. “What did you tell her?”
“I gave her the letter.”
“And?”
Astril shrugged. “And what?”
Zerae clapped her hand over her face and stepped to Elizabeth, peering down at her, forcing out the kindest gaze she managed, which was an effort determined not to be successful. “All right. I will fill the gaps. Three years ago, your father made a deal with me, part of which was me accepting you among us, the Sil Haen. Another part was that he gave us a set of blueprints of puppets you can supposedly use. As I do not leave things to the last moment, I had the puppets he recommended built two years ago, and they have been waiting for you ever since. Questions?”
Elizabeth smiled faintly. “Thank you...
what did my father give you for taking me in?”
Zerae raised her chin. “That’s none of your business.” Nothing. He gave her nothing because he instantly figured out she wouldn’t leave a child to die and then played her on that emotion. Out of all the negotiations she had in the past decade, the one with Elizabeth’s father, Edward Collward, was objectively by far the worst loss she suffered. And yet she didn’t feel like it was a loss at all.
As she dismissed the thought, Zerae squinted. “While it might be strange to say so, you seem to be suspiciously all right with me mentioning your father.”
“We talked through Limbo after he died.”
Horseshit. But Zerae figured it would be unnecessarily cruel to tell her it was likely Leena, their clan’s dream-walker taking the visage of her father. Did Astril ask Leena to help her with cheering the girl up? Zerae liked the thought. And that Astril taught her about Limbo. She may have been young, but she needed to learn about the dimension that housed the souls of all living beings, of what lay beyond the fabric of reality. Better earlier than later. “Good. Did Astril teach you who we are?”
“Yes,” Astril answered.
“No!” Elizabeth shouted, her cheeks flaring.
Astril turned to the girl with a sharp glare. “What do you mean by no? I told you everything important!”
“What you taught me was a pile of bullshit! I’m not a little kid who believes your fairy tales, Astril!”
“That’s not true! I have taught you everything you need to know! It’s not my fault you are a bad student!”
“Me, a bad student? You haven’t even tried to teach me anything! All you did was beat me up in spars over and over again!”
“Enough!” Zerae thundered, and they both shut up. “We go to Voidspire, now!” She stepped out of the hut, and they followed. Zerae didn’t need to look back to know they were glowering at each other.
She led them to the mounts. “Elizabeth, you fly with me, and I will tell you what Astril was supposed to. Astril, you carry the tiger, and keep your mouth shut.”
“Come on, Zerae, you wouldn’t believe a little kid, would you?”
Zerae grinned. “Oh, in your case, dear, I would.” She mounted Belenus.
Elizabeth followed her into the saddle with a satisfied smirk while Astril climbed onto her mount, strapping Elizabeth’s tiger next to her. They flew into the sky, and Zerae couldn’t miss Elizabeth’s trembling as her eyes filled with tears.
Right, she has spent three years in the forest. To fly away must be both sad and terrifying for her. Zerae cleared her throat. “Anyway, there isn’t much you need to learn about us. We are the Sil Haen, the Daughters of Dreams. We don’t age like humans, and all fourteen thousands of us live in our city, the Voidspire.”
Elizabeth stared at her with her mouth wide open.
“I told you it wasn’t bullshit!” Astril shouted against the wind from her mount.
Zerae threw her an angry glare. “Shut up, Astril!”
Elizabeth gulped. “So… is it also true that the matrons eat children who misbehave alive?”
Zerae gaped. “No! Where did you hear such nonsense?”
Elizabeth smiled and motioned her head toward Astril, who was whistling and pretending to be studying the clouds above. “What about the tree of dried shit, upon which the matrons hang the biggest dungs they, and their personal guards, produce?”
Zerae ran her hand through her hair. “No.”
“And what about the public whipping? That if anyone breaks even the tiniest of laws, they get whipped naked in public by spiky whips?”
Zerae froze in awkward silence. Elizabeth’s eyes widened as she realized what it meant. Zerae clicked her tongue. “Anyway, our laws aren’t anything special, so you don’t have to worry about getting whipped.” Her heart sunk a little as she failed to comfort the girl.
The view of Voidspire opened before them. The massive city dominated by a black castle was a sight to behold no matter how many times had Zerae seen its splendor. While chaotic upon the first look, the blend of ruins, new buildings of all types and wild-growing plants had a charm she never resisted. She couldn’t help herself but wonder who built this place before the first Sil Haen appeared inside the city. By what she gathered from the ruins, this was once a marvel of construction, a fortress like none other. To whom belonged the lone symbol of a rose that was once etched on the gate, she never found out.
“What’s this… feeling?” Elizabeth asked, interrupting Zerae’s thoughts.
Zerae focused and realized the girl was shaking. The decades she had spent inside the city made her numb to the once-intoxicating sensation of aether continually blasting through the air thanks to the hole in reality that lay beneath the castle. “It’s the breach. Beneath the Voidspire is a breach from reality into Limbo, which is where aether comes from.”
They landed on a platform by the castle. Since it offered a splendid view of the city square, Elizabeth stared around, breathless. “I see no men.”
Zerae pierced Astril with a glare. “How did you skip that?”
“I told her we are all pretty girls, but you see how impossible she is. She believes nothing I tell her!”
Elizabeth glowered at Astril. “How was I supposed to tell the truth from the bullshit you kept feeding me? Like that we saw the tits off our enemies and build effigies out of them?”
“We don’t do that anymore.” Zerae stepped between Elizabeth and Astril. “To cut a long story short, we come in three clans, Hellwinds, Voidwalkers, and Darkscreams, which make our surnames. There are about fourteen thousands of us, out of which seven thousand are Hellwinds, fourth thousand Voidwalkers, and three thousand Darkscreams. Our race exists for about a hundred and fifty years, and the first generation wasn’t born, but made within the Void by our Goddess and brought into the world through the breach. Since then, there are two types of us. The half-bloods, like me, who were conceived by a mother after she mated with a human man and purebloods, like Astril, who one day appeared on the altar of the Goddess. As we all originate from the Goddess, we call ourselves sisters. If you ever want a kid, girls go to get knocked up into a human city every week. If you ever bring a man here, he will be used to impregnate whoever desires it and then fed to our beasts. Clear?”
Elizabeth nodded, her face turning pale. “But what if I—”
Astril caught her into a hug from behind, making the girl freeze and blush. “Don’t worry. Learn how to fight, show off, and you will have enough girlfriends to satisfy your every need.”
As rage burst through Zerae, she glowered at Astril so intently it made her break from the hug and awkwardly step aside. When Astril took appropriate distance, Zerae peered down at Elizabeth. “Don’t take Astril as an example for anything. She will now lead you to our blacksmith, who should have your new puppets prepared. Afterward, she will take you to our healer to solve the bruises. You get used to the puppets and sleep for the whole night, for tomorrow, you will have your admission trial.”
Elizabeth's eyes widened. “Trial? What trial?”
“Despite being the War Leader, I do not have the authority to accept new members into our clans. Only the matrons do so the council will hold a meeting to decide your fate.”
Elizabeth’s face turned pale.
Zerae didn’t bother to fake out a kind face anymore. “Don’t worry. I know it sounds scary, but there shouldn’t be too much trouble.” As the words failed to calm Elizabeth down, Zerae shrugged and turned to leave. “Good luck.” Before she passed the corridor through which she entered the castle, Astril caught up to her. Zerae glared at her as she heard her approach.
Astril formed an awkward smile. “It’s not how it looks like!”
Zerae stepped in, grabbed Astril by the throat and pushed her into the wall, forcing her to bend her knees so Zerae could glare down on her. “Did you bang her?”
Astril’s gaze hardened. “No! Of course, not! I would never do that with my apprentice!”
Zera
e’s muscles unclenched. She believed her and not just because Astril was the worst liar she had ever seen. “Did you want to?”
Astril turned red, gazing into the wall. “Maybe a little. A bit more, actually.”
Zerae let her go, happy she told the truth. She may have not liked it, but it was a hundred times better than the sweet lie everyone else would have told her. She hated lies, the more beautiful, the worse they were. Astril stretched her neck, approaching Zerae with a wicked grin. “There’s someone else I would like to shag, also more than a bit.”
Zerae shivered. She wanted it more than anything. Almost anything. She had a string of meetings arranged for the rest of the day, and she needed to prepare for Elizabeth’s trial. She sacrificed too much ensure the girl’s survival, and she would not screw it up in the last two days, especially not because her bottom mouth was starved. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t have time for anything now.”
Astril caught her by the waist and leaned in, hitting Zerae’s nose with the intoxicating scent of her sweat mixed with a flowery fragrance. “It’s not like you couldn’t skip a meeting, you know.”
Zerae ignored her pumping heart and heating body and shoved her aside. “I can’t skip meetings.”
“How about later? When do you finish?”
“I’ve got too much stuff today, so I will have to go sleep straight afterward.”
Astril’s eyes narrowed. “You barely came to visit me in the past three years, you know.”
“I visited you every night through Limbo.”
“It doesn’t count if it’s not real! And you never stayed for long. Tell me, Zerae, will you have time for me tomorrow?
“I will try, but I can’t promise anything. See you around.”
Astril sighed. “Meh. I will go get Elizabeth patched up.”
With a heavy heart, Zerae watched her leave, still feeling the electrifying touch on her skin and the strong, flowery scent in her nose. She shook her head and returned to her office where a fresh brew of black tea awaited her next to smiling Patricia. Zerae grabbed the cup to sniff the tea. The gentle scent soothed her soul.
