One silver chain had gone to the old woman, one gold to the warrior of the Empire. Jerani was down two golds. Had he given another to someone? He might have, but who? He should be able to remember. He ran his nails along the warrior marks on his brow.
A face half white and half black, a smirking mask, that’s all that came to mind. But what did that have to do with anything? He hadn’t seen anyone wearing a mask tonight. He must’ve dreamed of it some time ago. His heart was beating so hard that his eyes were pounding, flashing black-white, black-white.
No, he’d lost a gold chain. That meant he would have to send away a king. Or worse.
He had to kneel before the jaguar guest to put on his chain. Those royal-orange eyes had flecks of red murder around the edges. The jaguar didn’t blink. Jerani didn’t let himself either. The giant cat padded up the hall and away. Jerani rubbed his bracer of the Obsidian Jaguar and tapped it against his brow in thanks. If only he had charms for all the guests.
The women guests raked him with their eyes. The kings sized him up then dismissed him with a glance. The cold-glow stare of Bright Palms set him on his heels. He snapped up his spear.
Two of the Bright Palms looked much like any other. The third was his father. Had been his father. Bright Palm Gio hadn’t dyed his hair with the grassland’s red. He didn’t wear his warrior’s robe. Even his warrior marks had gone. Nothing was left of his old self except his weapons.
“Jerani,” Bright Palm Gio said, “how many Feasters are inside?”
Thank the breeze that Celaise wasn’t inside yet! But she would be. Maybe Gio had come to kill her. Tonight Jerani might have to kill the living ghost of his father.
Bright Palm Gio had braided his hair in spiral plaits. It must’ve taken all day. “Jerani, why does the enchantress wed the Feaster lord?”
Jerani had forgotten to answer the first question. Maybe he had better not say anything at all. His skin felt on fire, and he was gagging on his own tongue.
He lifted a silver chain, swallowed once, twice. “You’ll need to wear this.” He didn’t call Gio “father.” Jerani would not.
Bright Palm Gio didn’t nod or show any other sign before leaving. A woman Bright Palm headed the group up the crystal ramp, no hesitation, no fear. She had the leanness of a gazelle. Jerani had given her a gold chain for her gold key. That left him with only one, and there had to be more guests left.
Jerani held his breath while dropping the last gold band over a hairless man-thing with a scalp of speckled blue. ‘My daring dumpling, if you want to die well, don’t touch the Green Blood.’ Even without the warning, Jerani wouldn’t have made that mistake. The Green Blood looked like any other creature too poisonous to eat.
And Jerani had thought giving a chain to Bright Palm Gio had been hard. If Jerani’s thudding heart had horns, it would have bucked around his chest and gored him to death.
The Green Blood never glanced at Jerani with his snake-slit eyes. He plodded up the glass wall. The others had gasped or laughed. He made a long rattling sound that might’ve come from a throat clogged with venom.
Jerani had to admit he’d lost a chain, before the next king came. He turned to the glass side passages to speak with the Feaster knights. Jerani opened his mouth.
The lord stepped beside Jerani in a surprise of black coat. “Don’t trouble yourself, my berry biscuit. All the kings are arrived.”
Jerani yelped on the inside. No warning at all and Celaise’s lord had come at pounce speed. Jerani asked, “Then I missed a gold chain?”
“In a sense. The unaccountable necklace went to one of my guests.”
“Who was it?”
“Guile.”
“Is that a name?”
The lord wrapped an arm around Jerani’s shoulder. The silver stitching in the lord’s gloves sent spines of chill all the way through Jerani’s chest. A wilted flower was stuck in a buttonhole of the lord’s coat.
Jerani strained his neck looking at the pale flower. It might’ve been one the merchant had dumped in the filthway. No, it must be.
“Do you like it?” The lord sniffed the tattered flower. “Only the fleeting can be beautiful.”
Would the lord kill Jerani for letting the flowers go to waste? The dark-sleeved arm wrapped around him felt like an iron collar. It wouldn’t let him go, not ever.
“My crisp crumpet, this is the happiest and most dreaded day of my life. Is it fair or right that I be the only one overcome? No. I mean to devastate you with generosity.”
“You do?”
“Yes. Have you given thought to your boon? Ask me for anything. Your imagination is the limit, and for most, it’s very limiting indeed.”
Jerani hadn’t given it more thought. He would need to survive the night or the greatest gift would do him no good.
“You’ll desire something ’ere long,” the lord said. “When temptation strikes, succumb boldly. No need to even ask. Take anything of mine, and soon, everything will be.”
“Ah, thank—”
A shriek filled the hallway with shock and pain. Jerani twitched out of the lord’s grasp. It had been a woman’s cry. Maybe. Not Celaise’s, but Jerani still charged up the crystal ramp.
“That would be the Black Sphinx,” the lord said from below. “Poor morsel. She must’ve asked one riddle too many.”
A guest had killed her, a Feaster. The Bright Palms or the jaguar or a king. Jerani needed to know who’d murdered. Soon Celaise would arrive as one of the bridesmaids. She wouldn’t be safe. No one would.
36
“If Gangral is the greatest kingdom and its king our most critical guest, we have a problem.”
“He fears to come, my heart?”
“He passed his invitation to a royal emissary.”
“Grievous but understandable. Gangral is far and the journey long. The king might be usurped by the time he returned.”
“Have you heard of the emissary? The name was Ix.”
“Ah, Ix, the Green Blood of Gangral.”
“The venom abomination will be at my wedding? My enthusiasm knows no bounds.”
“How deliciously devious of the king. No one dares cross a Green Blood. Ix’s venom is the strength of the kingdom, and sending such a power is no slight to us.”
“We may be satisfied in knowing that we’ve been outmaneuvered and our plans dashed.”
“That I didn’t say.”
“An emissary won’t suffice. Inspiring an envoy to bend the knee would mean little.”
“True. Lesser kings won’t flock to us because we gain the loyalty of an ambassador, no matter how beautifully venomous.”
“As Ix has the true power, we should declare them the king of Gangral. We can supplant the defunct monarch on our honeymoon. Why are you laughing?”
“Ix has no ambition. They’re near drowning in apathy. The last thing Ix would want is the weight of a crown.”
At least nothing was going to plan. Perfect weddings bored Tethiel.
The guests had defied the seating. The men who ruled the Dominion had allied to take over a table. They had built a barricade with their backs. Their axes of office they had arranged around them in a moat. Assailing such a fortress of like minds would take peerless statecraft, or better yet, alcohol. And the matriarchs had forbidden even that.
Tethiel divided himself, one persona in a corset colored by midnight, for Purest Elbe’s eyes, and another wearing a coat embroidered with scenes of battlefield slaughter. Both were ravishing, if he did say so himself.
He grazed the thrones but did not sit. Too early to test the kings. They thought themselves his equal. He never dashed hopes this early in the evening. It would be a kindness, and nothing was so hard to forgive as mercy.
“High guests, we didn’t bid you welcome.” Tethiel lifted a crystal chalice of blue honey to the guests. “Still you came. You came for power. You came for splendor. You came for pleasure, and all of them you will have.”
They had all arrived. Fos the Empire’
s Slave grimaced at Tethiel. Purest Elbe pressed a finger to her lips and frowned. The Bleeding Maiden dropped her knife in a most purposeful accident, and the blade clattered then cut her. Ix the Green Blood trailed greasy fluid across the tabletop with a finger. The jaguar knight yawned his fangs. The Talon gazed with bloodshot intensity as if imagining ripping Tethiel’s heart out. Bright Palm Alyla was even more likely to butcher a Feaster at his own wedding, but her slack face showed not the least sign of it.
By the end of the night, all the guests would heed him, all would swear to him and Hiresha. All those still alive.
“Tonight,” Tethiel said, “we celebrate the marriage of the greatest mortal woman in the Lands of Loam.”
Tethiel motioned forward a server. The man was bent double from a tray carried on his back stacked with red fruit.
“The Lady of Gems will bestow a kiss on the guest who chooses best.” He spoke so that all in the dining room, high and low, could hear. They had no choice. “In one persimmon waits a diamond of favor. Go on, there’s a chance for everyone.”
Some kings took two fruits, or three, or five. As many lower guests would go without their share. Thus life rewarded those with greater appetites.
“We’ll begin the feast with sweet fruit, for some of us may die before tasting dessert.” Tethiel lifted his chalice in a toast. The honey inside turned black. His glass filled with the darkness of unexplored caverns and unspeakable desires. “The gods are cruel. Existence is worse. None of us have souls, so try to fill the emptiness inside you with food. Thankfully, you’ll never succeed.”
The clashing contrast of the red fruit in Ix’s blue hand strummed Tethiel’s heart. Ix picked apart the persimmon with hook-fang fingernails. The fruit was overripe, bleeding juices. Ix ate none of it.
A Green Blood had no magic of their own, but their ability to control their venoms flirted with the preternatural. Tethiel couldn’t believe they shed death from every inch of their body at all times. They seemed to be able to control the potency and the orifice, from sweat pore, to spit, to claw, to fang. The flesh of their fruit had blackened.
“We eviscerated the persimmons and filled them with pomegranate jelly,” Tethiel said. “They’re called Mother-in-Law’s Eye.”
The guests munched and slurped. Their scents told Tethiel they feared him, but not enough. Ix couldn’t be much bothered to care if they fell from the ceiling, was sliced through by a chandelier, and splattered in pieces among the lower guests. Ix might even hope for it. The Dominion men and jaguar at the same table tried to outdo each other with foolish courage. They would have to be separated.
A guest shrieked at a lower table. He spat in his palm and held up the twinkle of a diamond along with a bit of broken tooth. The man was beaming.
Congratulations drizzled in. A waft of raspberry tart came from Purest Elbe. She lifted her chin to catch the eye of one of the lower guests, a woman in a moth-wing dress, who advanced with three others on the hapless man. Soon his prize would be acquired. That was plain to Tethiel. No man could withstand wealth.
Appetites had been wetted for food and for Hiresha’s favor. Everywhere, fingers dripped red.
“Where are our flowers?” The king brute from the Sky Islands slammed his hands against the table. It might’ve broken if not for enchantment.
Tethiel wished men in all lands understood the vital importance of flowers. Servers advanced with the emergency jasmines. The king rubbed his hands on them, crushed them, then inhaled so greedily that a petal flitted against his nose. The safe house roof hadn’t enough jasmine for the lower guests, but again, such was life.
Tethiel stroked the edge of a throne. “The greatest chef in the lands has prepared you his ultimate banquet.”
Servers wafted in with the second course. Their trays were filled with rabbits, neatly arranged with noses touching.
“Their blood was siphoned away drop by drop and replaced with clover honey.”
The Talon flipped over his rabbit and sliced it open from chin to tail. His feather headdress bobbed as he nodded. “Their hearts must’ve still been beating.”
“Until they filled with sweetness,” Tethiel said. “Then the rabbits were flayed, roasted, and served refitted in their fur coats.”
The men looked to Ix. When he showed no interest in the rabbits only then did their fear of poison diminish enough to eat. They trusted Ix to warn them. If a Green Blood had a nose for the noisome, they may smell city sewage as fragrant. Tethiel could ask, were he willing to approach tables full of fighters and boors, a dangerous proposition.
Tethiel sent a premonition to the servers. Lure the Green Blood to his proper seat or you’ll not outlive the dawn.
“Master Ix,” a veiled man said, “the Chef has prepared special courses for you. Hemlock salad with amanita mushrooms, garnished with mandrake.”
The server waved to the right. A place had been set with a bowl heaped with speckled toadstools a brilliant hue of poisonous red. Next to the spot waited a jungle pastiche reserved for a fellow Green Blood. Too little would be gained from introducing Ix to their long-lost friend unless both could sit together.
Ix’s eyes lingered on the fare of leafy poisons, but the Green Blood did not stir. Beside them, the jaguar knight snorted and patted the table with a paw big as a dinner plate.
“I cannot bring Master Ix’s food here,” the server said, sweat darkening his veil. “You are in the wrong seats, and—Auck!”
The Talon sprang at the server with a snap of feathers. The veiled man was forced into a chokehold, with a knife pressed against his chest. The weapon’s handle was a gemstone mosaic of a man, holding the blade as he might an engorged phallus.
“You don’t insult the gods,” the Talon said behind the server’s ear. The sacrificial knife was angled to dive between ribs to the heart. “You don’t insult us.”
The Bright Palm steepled her fingers on a table to shove herself to her feet. “He’s Innocent,” she said. Her brother Fos stood beside her, bearing his long sword and short intelligence.
They might fight to protect the server. Tethiel had to stop that. His had to be the hand of life and death. He stepped forward.
All eyes swung to him. Apprehension changed to flavors to undercooked dread. Their fear wouldn’t paralyze but instead give them the resolve to fight. They were different peoples from different lands, united in their wish for his death. All of them had to like their chances with Hiresha better with him gone.
Only one guest wouldn’t join in the uprising against him. She would be content to watch him topple. He couldn’t see the god of cunning, only smell her slight odor of crisp eggshell. Not that he would need her help.
His blood seared through his veins. Dark blood from bitter coffee and black wine. Roiling and heaving through his heart, fuming, boiling, seething. They dared to think they could oppose the Lord of the Feast? Why, he could devour them all as a first course. There were not so many Bright Palms. Tethiel had his dandies and Jerani behind him. Fierce as these guests were, they might yet fear him.
Or they and the Bleeding Maiden might defeat him.
And if Tethiel won, he might vanquish himself. For anything of his to endure, he would need these lords of men.
With Hiresha at his side, he could abash the guests. Until she returned, Tethiel’s jaws were bound.
He waved a hand toward the server. “Bring the Green Blood their lethal delicacy.”
The Talon patted the man on the head before letting go. The tinkle of dining sounds resumed with the murmur of chatter and the slurp and suck of mouths savoring choice flesh. The Green Blood only nibbled at a corner of a mushroom cap.
The king brute lifted a chalice full of blue honey. “What’s this trinket?”
“Honey heightened with mindbloom mushroom,” a server said.
Tethiel blotted out the other sounds in the ballroom for them to hear him. “The blue honey will make you feel emotions you never knew existed. Such as remorse.”
“Ho
w do you hold this cup without breaking it?” The king fisted the chalice then waved it under Ix’s nose. “Enough poison in there for you?”
“Pitiful,” Ix said.
“Can’t be worse than your Sky-Islander beer,” the potato king said. He at least knew how to hold a chalice. His was full of green honey, and he saluted the other king with it. They both tipped back and slurped.
To the table left of the kings, the Bleeding Maiden was whispering poison of another sort into the matriarch’s ear. Tethiel knew that pair also needed to be split.
“Lord Father,” Wane said from behind. The Feaster knight tapped his sword hilt and nodded toward the nearest Bright Palm and those on the tables below. “Why invite the party killers?’
“Because, my dandy, to exclude breeds conflict. Fighting enemies multiplies them, and the only way to eradicate opposition is to make them love you.”
The other Feaster knight guffawed with a clatter of metal mandibles while Wane blinked his gold-eclipse eyes in confusion. “Bright Palms can’t love.”
Jerani beside them nodded and stole a glance down at the Bright Palm tribesman.
“They haven’t nailed anyone yet tonight,” Tethiel said. “There’s a start.”
“Won’t the Lady of Gems crush them?” Pall clenched a bronze-plated claw.
“She will,” the Bleeding Maiden said. She had shadow-stepped into the conversation and twined her arms around Tethiel. “If the Bright Palms kill her groom.”
Tethiel withstood her touch even though the heat of her blood scorched against the small of his back. His coat soaked up her red acid.
“You won’t be safe until she’s here.” The Bleeding Maiden’s faltering breaths scratched at his ear. “When will the bride come? The Purest wants to know.”
The matriarch would not even gaze at Tethiel’s other self, his feminine side. The Purest had abstained from the honeyed rabbit and instead dined on a salad of flytrap plants. One closed its spiky jaws on her fingernail before her lips engulfed it.
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