“That’s why I esteem commitment, not love.”
He gestured to the dawnstone. “Hence we must never undermine each other’s wishes and schemes.”
She should ask him about his desires for her. They could be of a mind concerning copulation. Hiresha couldn’t imagine he would often wish to take off his coat. He might agree with her. If they did, that would result in her feeling worse should she need to break off the engagement.
“I admit,” she said, “to having doubts about the wedding.”
“If you didn’t, I’d doubt you.”
“It’s only thirteen nights from now.” The blood moon was coming all too soon. “We still have all our bills to pay.”
“Don’t fear. My caravan has already left the treasure vaults of Stillness Resounding.”
He had wanted her to doubt him, at least where others might hear; she had concluded as much. Now the guests coming to her wedding would think themselves suitors. They would woo her. They would place themselves in her power, yet if she should choose one over Tethiel, the Lord of the Feast might try to devour them all. She might have to stop him, for good.
A wave splashed coldness up the backs of her legs. She had forgotten herself. She could’ve willed the sea from touching her. “Tethiel, what are your plans for these last nights?”
“A few men and I might go out for something despicable.”
“Then how will it be different from your every night?”
“We’ll have us a Feast, of those sorry souls who would wager their lives for greed.”
“You mean this would be a murder party?”
“A groom should have one last indulgence,” he said. “The entrées will be willing, for a chance to win a key to our wedding.”
Hiresha supposed many more people died across the world for nothing half so grand. “This once then, as long as you’re explicit as to the dangers.”
She turned to the east. Her dragon was there, and the half-set sails of its wings hung listless in the fog.
“I’ll visit my home,” she said. “Perhaps for the last time in this life.”
31
“Miss Barrows may never forgive me.”
“That I can’t imagine, my heart. She bravely indulges in everything, and of all the temptations, forgiveness is the most dangerous.”
“The wedding won’t have any alcohol. I negotiated it away to the Purest.”
“You monster.”
A battle would’ve been better than this. Jerani kept to the corners of the cavernous room even though the shadows scratched at the back of his neck. Mosquitoes buzzed past his ears. Leeches wriggled at his toes. They might not be real. Maybe none of this was. Yes, he had to believe that. He hadn’t really seen the lord devour that man in one bite.
The lord rubbed a frilly napkin over his lips. “This world has no place for mediocrity. You must either be abysmal or victorious.”
He held up a key to the winner. The man’s chest heaved. He had been dancing forever. All the others had tired. One groaned on the ground, clutching his ankle. Another had passed out. Or died. The last man standing dripped sweat from his elbows. He had a drunken smile.
“You may choose this key, or an armful of treasure.” The lord waved to a glittering heap of crystal honey jars, gold coins, and embroidered cloth of rich reds and purples.
“I … I’ll.…” The panting man pointed to the key.
“Wise. Very wise.” The lord held up the key. This one wasn’t like Celaise’s. But it must open something just as amazing. The handle glinted in a crescent of silver, as brilliant as the Bull Moon, with studs of dark gems. Half the key’s teeth were crystal. “You could sell this to a matriarch and live a life of comfort. Better yet, you could attend the wedding yourself for enough terrible wonder to last a lifetime.”
The winner lifted the key overhead, and the shadows cheered at him. He had a butterfly tattoo on the back of his neck. He stumbled out of the room’s light.
The chandeliers dripped burning globs of red wax. Those cow-fat candles stank of charred corpses. Jerani edged farther from them. The darkness beside him rippled, and there was Celaise. No, not her. Just a woman with a feather dress. Spiky things dangled from her ears. They might’ve been preying-mantis earrings.
The woman touched his arm with a greasy finger. She leaned in close to speak over the stomping loudness, the hyena laughter, and the slapping of flesh on flesh. Only the lord’s whisper pierced through it all.
“Risk is rewarded. Tedium is executed. Now, who will entertain us in the eating contest?”
Screams made Jerani cup his ears. People scrambled to fill the seats at a table piled high with plates of roasted snakes and skinned iguanas and giant armadillo cooked in its own plating with its head and limbs still attached. One man pushed aside another by the throat. A woman pulled a man away by his cock then sat down to start stuffing her face full of turtle eggs.
“Your stomachs may burst,” the lord said, “but your exploits will live on in legend. A key goes to the greatest eater.”
Each drink on the table held a pair of toads, still alive and mounting each other. Jerani turned away.
The lord stood before him, closer now, too close, a satin flame in the darkness. He seemed to be in all places. Jerani couldn’t escape him. No one could. How could the others eat? Jerani’s cold stomach was sliming up his chest and squeezing into his throat.
“My little sweetmeat, I’m sorry if my dreadful party is boring you.”
“No—no.” Jerani’s head was jerking side to side. Chills now chased hot flushes over his body. He shouldn’t crumple every time to the lord. Jerani should stand up to him. Maybe Jerani could, if Celaise were here.
“Forgive me for inviting you and asking a favor. A good host never asks favors.” The lord reached into his coat pocket. “Because a good guest can never refuse.”
Wait for it. Jerani knew this would be a kick to the teeth.
The lord pulled out his hand. In his grip shimmered six fangs. No, six small bottles, pointed at the end. They flashed between colors, from horizon pink to deepwater purple. “This is wild magic, the most potent delight that money can buy and the only cure for Feasting.”
Jerani shivered when the bottles were pressed into his hand. They wobbled and clinked into each other.
“I can’t partake of them before the wedding,” the lord said. “Temptation is my favorite form of exercise, but this one is too exhausting. You must keep them until I’m ready.”
Holding them didn’t seem too terrible. But maybe the bottles would explode. Or people would try to kill Jerani for them.
“People have murdered for far less.” The lord patted Jerani’s back with a sharpness of fingernails. “Thank you for risking your life to keep them. The Lady of Gems wants me to purify myself of my magic. Because it’s easier to love a man’s future than his present.”
Jerani closed a fist on the bottles. This time his fingers weren’t shaking. Sure, he would hold the bottles. He’d keep them away from the lord, the further the better. He shouldered his way through the party’s throbbing pulse and spoke under his breath.
“How could he love?”
“Selfishly.” The lord stood in the way once more. “Immoderately.”
Mother’s fire! The lord had heard Jerani. “Er, I didn’t mean … it’s only that you two are never together.”
“The hardest thing about love is the closeness. Why, the truest love can only be between those who’ve never met. A priest’s devotion to his god, a boy’s secret infatuation with a schoolmate.”
“Is that love?” Jerani had been away from Celaise for two hours. Two more might kill him.
“Some couples can get along exquisitely, provided they rarely see each other. I’ll be the love of Hiresha’s life, after her fox, her jewels, and her work. No man could ask for more.”
Maybe that was true of the lady. Jerani wouldn’t ever dare touch her. That would be like gripping an obsidian dagger by the razor.
“Revolting,” the lord said from the center of the room. He had reappeared by the table. Maybe he had never left. He leaned over a woman who had stopped eating. She had lost. Her mouth and neck glistened with gravy. Her eyelids were pinched shut, and her cheeks bulged. “You could’ve had the decency to vomit and start again. You force my hand.”
His palm stretched into a gaping pit. His glove burst, threads thrashing then unfolding into an outer layer of bristling fangs. The inner teeth were serrated white spearheads, circles upon circles of endless agony. The lord’s arm was a leathery neck now. He had turned into a giant, looming above all.
His other arm snapped with the head of a dragon. One hand’s mouth chomped on the woman’s head. The other took her legs and ripped her apart. The Lord of the Feast lapped up the entrails.
Then he was a man again, straightening his gloves. “Let that be a lesson to all those content with moderation. Too much of a good thing is barely enough.”
The other eaters returned to their food with a frenzy.
Jerani couldn’t watch anymore. He looked for the way out. The lord found him first. Everything warped and flickered red.
“My young morsel, you don’t look well. You must stay beautiful and alive or who knows what Celaise will do. Remember, tell no one about the vials, unless you want them to be stolen.”
The bottles, yes. Jerani fit them into the fold inside of his warrior robes. They didn’t glow through the cloth too much. If he lost them, the lord would eat him too. Maybe in front of Celaise. He could eat both of them at once.
The candle smoke pressed against Jerani’s eyes, and all the shouting pinned him in place. Shadow people spun round and round. It was too much closeness, too tight, too many. He needed the openness the savanna and the calm of the cows and the cleanness of the air.
He gasped awake. Had he fallen asleep? Somehow the table had been cleared. Men and women of all shapes were dancing upon it. They thrust their waists around and waggled their butts. Heat crept down Jerani’s chest.
“Disgraceful, isn’t it?” The lord pointed with a finger embroidered with a fanged fish. “Look at that boy. He must not be older than twelve.”
He was the smallest on the table. Half his face was painted red, the other black. His eyes were wide and white.
“What a miserable dancer,” the lord said. “No style at all.”
“He’s terrified,” Jerani said.
“He has lost. My sweetling, bring that boy into the cellar bedchambers. Lock him there. I wish to savor him in private.”
No, Jerani knew he couldn’t do it. Not this. The boy was the same age as Jerani’s brother had been when Jerani had left. When he had followed Celaise into all this madness. He shouldn’t be here. Not him or her. Good people like them didn’t do these things, even if they didn’t have a choice. Jerani wouldn’t. He couldn’t.
He did.
The door wasn’t thick enough to muffle the boy’s sobs. Jerani locked it. Little fists drummed against the wood, and Jerani had to walk away.
Tethiel whistled on his way to the cellar. Like all such melodies half-remembered from youth, it had lost its words. Time had stripped away the meaning and left but a few notes clinging together.
He might think of the lyrics if he put his mind to it. The song could’ve been a happy one, but, no, it was dead and gone. The past burned behind you, and the only way forward was death.
He stopped whistling. It wasn’t seemly, even if Hiresha had made him as young as when he had first heard that tune. Tethiel would have to grow old all over again. Unless he died first. Now there was a pleasing thought.
The world shimmered around him. The manor’s red marble bled into its shivering ebony paneling. Everything was in flux. All melting, all ready to be reshaped. He only needed to sip his black wine. His veins were full to bursting.
It wasn’t enough. It never was, thankfully.
An open garden window bathed him with night breeze and the scent of dying roses.
“Tethiel.” With a glimmer of jeweled fingers, a woman dropped from the ceiling beside him. “This party is despicable. Let’s put an end to all this foolishness and elope. Tonight.”
“My, you seem to become more lovely each time we meet.”
Hiresha had changed the irises of her eyes into the hue of amethyst. He had suspected she’d used bits of real gemstone, and her gaze glittered now like crystal caverns. She latched onto his arm.
He started to lift and whirl. “Wait, if we’re to marry in secret and throw away all our plans, I have but one request. Leave behind that wretched fox. I’m done with its squeaking.”
She folded her glistening lip between her teeth and squeezed its redness. “If you’ll agree to leave that boy in the cellar alone. Celaise’s warrior told me what you were going to do.”
“You’re brilliant.” He leaned in as if to kiss her but squeezed her cheek instead. “I could almost believe you’re really her, Lullai.”
She slapped his arm away. The woman who looked like Hiresha levitated before him, bright with jewels and fury. For a constricting moment he feared it was her after all. Hiresha, not his child playing dress up. Maybe he had made a deadly mistake.
Except he hadn’t. The Bleeding Maiden couldn’t hide the smell of her roses. Scents, those were the strongest memories. It had been decades since he’d smelled a living flower.
The Bleeding Maiden shucked off the enchantress’s shape and transformed into her true self. She reached out into the garden. Her hand grazed a thorn, and she jerked back. “Ouch!”
A bead of darkness welled on her fingertip. It was pure black wine, and it would sing on his tongue.
She lifted her finger to his mouth. “Will you kiss it and make it all better?”
He trapped her wrist in the jaws of his left hand. “What I can offer you is a last chance. You can be the closest of dining companions to the Lord of the Feast. Bend the knee at the wedding.”
“It’s so soon. You must be so frightened. You’re too great a man for any woman to chain,” the Bleeding Maiden said. “None of us are made to be settled.”
“Never seek to know thyself. Instead, surprise yourself.” Tethiel might have to destroy her. Such a waste. She had survived too much only to be eaten. That reminded him. His insides corkscrewed with hunger. “A young cookie is waiting for me. Goodnight.”
She left with a trail of blood.
Tethiel found the boy tearstained. He smelled of fresh pastry dough, gooey, sweet, and not yet baked. It would be wrong to taste him now, and so right.
“We are all slaves to our desires,” Tethiel said, “but you had no wish to indulge tonight. Your mother made you come?”
The boy had a petite stub of a chin. One of his brows was a graceful hook while the other was a mismatched slab. He was flawed and perfect. “Didn’t want to,” he said. “But I’m all stuffed with curse, so I don’t know what’s right.”
“Now you’re afraid your mother will throw you into the filthways because you didn’t win for her.”
“That’s right. She’ll do it too.” His delicate ribs shuddered. “She did for my older brother.”
“You’re rather young to survive on your own, but you could manage. As long as you don’t mind the taste of rats and roaches.”
“No, not living down there. With the Strife men and the click bugs.” He scraped off his tears and stood. “I’ll run from her. I’ll dive into the Gargantuan, and a caiman will gobble me, and that’ll be better.”
“I knew you had initiative. When there’s no hope, when there’s no way forward, there’re always paths downward. Forbidden ways. Suicide is only the most civilized.”
The boy squinted up. He didn’t understand. They never did, no matter the age. “You can help me?”
“Only selfishly.” Tethiel would indulge in anything except self-righteousness. “What’s your passion, my young apricot? What would you do if no one could stop you? Say anything but dancing.”
“I’d jump! Mother never
lets me go between roofs, but I’m the best at jumping.”
Hurt and regret always began with such innocence and joy. But it would be unfair to deny the boy the choice. Tethiel lifted his hand, and between his fangs spun a single droplet of black wine.
The boy stepped back. Perhaps he would refuse.
“I cannot promise you happiness,” Tethiel said. “I can only give you what you want.”
The boy took it, damn him.
He screamed with joy as his legs stretched. His foot became segmented. His thighs swelled, each bigger than the rest of his body. Skin hardened to a brown carapace, and spines bristled down his shins.
“Welcome to your new family,” Tethiel said. “You may call me lord father, and I name you Telas the Leaper.”
The Feaster boy hopped from wall to wall around the room then clutched his stomach. “Something is eating my belly.”
“It’s your stomach. Come, I’ll show you how to sate your new hunger. We’ll find the woman who was once your mother.”
The boy snuffed. “I think I can smell her?”
“She pushed you into the dancing competition against your will, my maple drop. Your loss was hers. The price she must pay.”
Tethiel beckoned through the shadowed doorway. The boy sprang ahead on his cricket legs. The night was not so late, and they would have to make it last. Tethiel wouldn’t have any more binges before the wedding.
32
“Must we invite the empress?”
“I am sorry, my heart, but I already have. Informally.”
“Allow me to rephrase. I’m not having the empress at my wedding.”
“She is dangerously charming. Her voice might overcome our plans. I agree, she should not come.”
“Yet we shouldn’t spurn the Oasis Empire entirely. I’ll send an invitation to the vizier, allowing him to choose a representative.”
“You must hope the vizier can stop the empress from leaping into a land swarming with terror birds and death leeches, teeming with warriors and hexers who’d gladly lose more than one limb in battle to capture her.”
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