The kings grabbed handfuls of the food. Much fell to the floor. The fox darted in with ears folded down to snatch up a candy. The little beast was watched by the golden eyes of the jaguar knight. The big cat also lapped up the sweets.
Jerani liked this. The kings ate instead of fought, and their eyes didn’t make scouting journeys between their axes and the lord. That would mean battle. With enough food inside them they wouldn’t be quick to jump into a fight.
“Don’t worry,” the lord said to them. “We have toxic varieties for a Green Blood.”
The frog-skinned man spun a candy in a pool of slime that had dripped from his fangs. The honey crystals bubbled and let loose a stinking smoke. The Green Blood didn’t eat, didn’t even look at the lady dancing.
The Talon sitting across from him also didn’t. He tapped his knife point against his tongue. He muttered. “The lady is cruel, to spite the Winged Flame, to spite the world. Burn her! And the Purest, she’ll lead her ever further into the profane.”
The jaguar knight made a clicking noise in his throat. It could’ve meant something.
“You’re right.” The king brute slammed the table, and the bird claws on his gauntlet rattled. “The Purest isn’t above us and the gods. Maybe I take her as a wife, here in front of everyone.”
“Careful, my royal jelly,” the lord said. “The lady won’t thank you for raping her guest.”
Now the men were making axe-eyes, not at the lord but the Purest. Jerani’s stomach had gone sore from clenching, and it wasn’t just about waiting for battle. That music the women danced to, that voice from the singer, it moved through the walls and shook Jerani’s bones. That growling chant beat against his insides.
The air trembled with song. Drums slammed in a frenzy, but this voice had more power. The man lifted a hand toward the flying women and hummed an earthquake. Drinks shook in cups. Knives rattled on tables.
Unless there was another singer hidden behind him, this man split his voice in two. He also shrieked a high whirling melody. He belted out battle cries and whistled the shrillness of wails lost in the wind.
Jerani had trouble listening and remembering to breathe. Sweating came easier. The music had started before the lady had taken the Purest to air. Another woman moved to it with daggers. Her oiled body contorted. She rippled, and her blades did too with coiling edges.
“That’s the incomparable Lyss Oil Bones,” the lord said, “sister to Celaise, who doesn’t want you staring.”
“I wasn’t,” Jerani said. He hadn’t been looking at the flexing woman at all, not as much as he could’ve been.
Celaise stuck him with a glance. She might’ve dug her nails into him if he had been closer, and that would’ve been better than this distance. He was on the ceiling. She was on the floor by Miss Barrows. They were so far. Falling all that way would kill him. Jerani reached one hand toward Celaise. She flickered her feather-glove fingers back.
Candle-flames swung between. The battleaxe lights moved on. The lady and the Purest whirled around the sweeping edge of glass, feet flipping overhead. Any mistake would cut the dancers in half and spray glass shards over Celaise.
Jerani didn’t know how anyone could eat with all this bellowing and whirling and danger. The kings managed it, gobbling down whatever the servers placed in their greasy hands.
The fox also was up to his tricks. He had taken to stealing food and hiding it under a table. With ears back he stalked over the ceiling and behind the kings. In a flash of gold fur and jeweled collar, he leapt up and snatched a candy from the king brute’s hand.
The king clapped his fists together, smashing at the fox. No! Jerani could already almost hear how the fox’s tiny bones would snap. The lady stopped midair, and her jewels flared. The lord reached, his fingers sharpening with darkness. Jerani pulled up his spear, but he would be too slow.
The fox moved faster, fastest. With a flick of tail he was gone. The king’s hands smacked together, catching nothing. The fox’s ears speared up, and he sauntered away with his prize between his teeth. He left Jerani to wonder. Maybe the fennec was really a trickster god.
The lady continued her spin. The lord dusted off his sleeve.
The jaguar knight seemed to be grinning through his fangs. He breathed out a halting purr at the fox. Then he batted a paw at the king brute. The man lurched off his seat.
The king didn’t blink even at all those teeth. He had to be crazy. “Only took a swing because that fox chased the warrior souls. He could’ve eaten one.”
Lights dimmed when the lord frowned. “You saw the fox running after ghosts? We’d planned to save them for later in the festivities.”
“Then they got away, and you’re blind.” The king brute pointed to a butterfly. It fluttered past with white wings webbed in black. “The warriors are all around.”
“Oh dear,” the lord said, “you mean butterflies are the spirits of your sacred dead?”
The jaguar knight grunted.
“Had I but known.” The lord lifted a candy. “You will mourn to hear that you’ve been dining on caramelized butterflies.”
The king brute asked, “But where are the wings?”
His fellow coughed and reached beneath his golden collar. “The wings were plucked off, were they?”
“By the Chef,” the lord said. “He will be punished.”
The king brute bowed forward, clutching his belly. “I’ve eaten the dead?”
The jaguar rumbled deep in his throat.
“My orange delight, I did announce the course in a clear voice, so you must not’ve heard. We only listen to whispers.”
“How could we’ve known souls would taste like that?” The king brute grimaced at the tray of candies. He licked the corner of his lips. “All sweet and crunch.”
“Like honey nuts,” the potato king said. “Couldn’t taste the souls.”
“We’ve all eaten of this shame.” The lord rested a hand on the red blaze of his vest. “We must swear an oath of secrecy. No one else should know how we dine tonight.”
The kings glanced toward each other, none meeting eyes. They looked to the Talon, but he was still staring at the dancing women and muttering.
“Then we must swear.” The king brute drew his knife across his thumb. All the men dripped their blood together, and even the jaguar scratched the pad of his paw and joined. The frog-skinned man really did have green blood.
Strange to make an oath over eating a few bugs. Jerani had thought the lord knew most everything, and he had somehow offended them all with butterflies anyway. He could’ve started a fight, thrown Jerani into battle to defend him.
The lord pulled off his dragon-stitch glove and asked Jerani for his knife. Jerani slipped it from his belt.
A longer blade swept in, a dagger glistening with bronze curves. It cut through the lord’s finger before Jerani could move. The finger fell off. It dropped, hit the table edge, and flopped to the floor. The rest of the hand blackened then shriveled to dust. His sleeve ended in emptiness. He had been attacked.
A woman had swiveled herself past Jerani to reach the lord. She was the contortionist, the Oil Bones, the one Jerani shouldn’t look at, but he had to now. Had to stop her, kill her. Save the lord, save him, save him, or it would be death for everyone.
Jerani jabbed at her. She snaked her head around and beneath her right leg to dodge. Then she snapped back upright. She spine-wriggled closer with a freezing smile
He saw he couldn’t beat her, not without help. The other guards, the leper knights had to step in. Soon. Now!
The lord laughed. “Put up your spear, my pear pudding. It’s only a game.”
Jerani risked a look. The lord’s hand had shriveled off, but now it was back with all its fingers.
“A tradition,” the lord said. “Anyone in the family who marries has to watch their fingers or lose one or two.”
“Thought I had a juicy one.” Her daggers snapped around in her hands in away that should’ve broken her wrists.<
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“You nearly did, my daughter.” He flexed all his fingers at her.
Cutting off pieces of people was something Feasters did at weddings? Jerani could never marry Celaise then. She had only just gotten back her hands from the lady’s magic. How fit and nimble. Jerani could look at them stitching for hours. She mustn’t lose so much as a finger.
“That girl in the flower dress.” The Talon pointed to the tables below with his blood-specked knife. A guest was wearing a dress of pink petals. “She has the gem of favor. Will she take the lady’s kiss for herself or give it to the Purest?”
“The Purest’s influence bought the diamond,” the lord said.
“She mustn’t have both favors.” The Talon’s feathers thrashed as he beat his hands in the air. “The Purest is leading the lady from her calling.”
“I will have it.” The king brute stood with his axe.
“No.” The word sounded more like a croak. Black-thorn fingernails clicked against the table, and the Green Blood pushed himself upright with a dripping groan. “I should.”
“You want her, you have her.” The king sat back down. He might have axed many a warrior, but he wasn’t talking back to the Green Blood.
The jaguar growled.
“Xochi is right,” the Talon said. “You mustn’t kiss her to death.”
The Green Blood didn’t answer, even when the Talon started shouting after him. Those blue feet of his left wet tracks. The frog-skinned man walked down and took the diamond from the woman. No one stopped him.
Maybe Jerani should’ve tried. His mouth filled with a greasy sourness. The lady would have to press her lips against the slickness of the Green Blood’s cheek.
“You’re not letting this happen, are you?” Jerani asked the lord. “He’s poison.”
“No,” the lord said. “They are.”
“You’ve been changed.” Elbe’s lapis lazuli fingernails traced a line up Hiresha’s cheek. The touch lingered on the sensitive skin lateral to the eye.
“I changed myself.” Hiresha had been right to. Few people seemed able to look away from her amethyst eyes. Their coloration would be a fine complement to Elbe’s amber ones, both striking and distinguished.
“I see you, and I am frightened. By your dress.”
“My headdress won’t cut you.”
“By your height.”
Once they had stood eye to eye. The new difference hid itself with their feet off the ground in flight, yet when they touched against a wall to leap off, Elbe came up only to Hiresha’s chest.
Hiresha hadn’t wanted men to look down on her. Now Elbe had to gaze up.
“I wished to be tall for my wedding,” Hiresha said.
“By your actions.” Elbe gazed down to the drying blood. “I worry Strife has grown within you.”
For this, Hiresha had no good answer. The reception hall stank with a copper tang. Her Lightening spells could not relieve the weight of guilt. She had held the twitching warmth of hearts beating out their last contractions.
Elbe was brave to let Hiresha touch her.
“The tall may still be women,” Hiresha said, “and the strong need not be violent.”
“I would be less afraid,” Elbe said, “if you mingled with women only. Then I could feel you safe from more of Strife’s curse.”
“Interesting. Do you believe a woman can accumulate Strife like a toxin? Can there be a critical point when she ceases to be feminine in your eyes?”
Elbe cupped her hand around Hiresha’s shoulder and hip. Her touch was cool. The exhilaration of dancing through the air had leached blood from her extremities. Black butterflies spun around them in a fluttering gyre.
The Purest yet had the poise of a woman who flew daily. Hiresha reached out, touched the central pillar, and spun Elbe around it. The dead Feaster hung below.
“I wish I never had to harm,” Hiresha said, “yet a gemstone must be cut to make a jewel.”
“The world falls far short of harmony. I know you will strive to be the most pure.” Elbe’s winged lashes brought out the color of her eyes. They pinched at the corners in fear. “May I give you another gift?”
“Are you concerned I don’t deserve it?” Hiresha Attracted herself and Elbe to a crystal wall. They were alone between ceiling and floor.
Elbe touched the collar of her dress and pulled out a necklace of amber beads. She untied it and lifted it over the key invitation and its choker of gold. She held out a pendant adorned with a flower-petal cocoon.
“I worry,” Elbe said, “that you may not accept.”
To the Purests, Hiresha knew the pendant was a sign of devotion. If she took it, her life might become ever so much easier. Elbe would never ask her to appease a bloodthirsty dragon. This woman’s veins didn’t bulge with an addictive magic of darkness and death.
“I am saddened,” Elbe said, “to think you may commit your life to the Lord of the Feast.”
When the chandelier swung closer, the sapphire bee lighted on her cheek. Hiresha might’ve been wrong about the dream sign. The foretelling of the blue bee hadn’t meant that the City of Gold was the right venue for a wedding so much as Elbe the right person to marry. Even now timelessness shimmered through Hiresha along with the throat singer’s throbbing resonance.
“And I grieve,” Elbe said, “that the Lord of the Feast may not be a woman.”
Elbe had a different kind of power, not to kill, but to admit her own fears and still face them. She had come to a wedding full of deadly men. She risked herself for the hope of saving Hiresha.
Hiresha conceded to herself that the Purest also had a different kind of cruelty. Her neglect of men likely killed a measurable number of them each day in her city. Even the cocoon she offered could’ve required death. The brightness of the petals had been preserved with a wax. Any bee that had been pupating inside might’ve been tweezed out and left to die.
Marrying Elbe might not help matters. The kings of the Dominion would still desire enchanted ships. Hiresha would have to appease them, as the Purests had once yielded their hexers.
Hiresha’s hand cradled the petal cocoon. “Though I accept this now, I may not keep it. I promised no more to Lord Tethiel after taking from him a diamond chain.”
“I ask only for what you’ll willingly give.” Elbe trailed her finger over the softness of the velvet between the glass panes of Hiresha’s dress.
“If we wed, I’d rid myself of this extraneous height.” Otherwise Hiresha would have to bend down to kiss anything lower than the top of Elbe’s head. The feathers bound to her hair would brush and tickle against the lips and cheeks.
Hiresha and she might kiss now, except Elbe didn’t possess the diamond from the Mother-In-Law’s Eye. Favors couldn’t be given away. The jewel moved upward in relation to them with an itching across Hiresha’s skin. The Green Blood had the gem now, of all people.
Tension whirled in Hiresha’s chest, and excitement pulsed. The Green Blood might try to envenom her, or poison her. The abomination had both powers. She could turn the deadly strength against its master. First she would need an enchantment. She had practiced warding herself against various noxious substances, yet Green Bloods were renown for concocting new blends of death.
She left Elbe and met Celaise in a changing room. While Celaise dressed her, Hiresha prepared an enchantment. On a shelf beside the pink hippo statuette waited a malachite. Hiresha summoned the green gem to her.
A scream pierced through the opaque crystal wall. Celaise didn’t stop her work. She might not be able to tell this wail from those of the throat singer. The sound, though, it was barbed with surprise and lacked even clarity to its pitch. Hiresha believed the Feaster girl detected the fear. She started weaving faster amidst the anguish.
Likely Tethiel had resorted to harsh discipline. Hiresha shouldn’t assume the worst. No reason to leap to a conclusion that the Green Blood had stricken Elbe. Why, Hiresha could hardly imagine someone of the Purest’s repose screaming at all.
Come, now. Tethiel’s deep voice invaded Hiresha. Or your guest will die.
Confound this world! Hiresha hurled the wall open. Purple thread tangled after her.
“Wait,” Celaise said.
Fos bellowed from above. “Get your daggers out of her!”
42
“He who rules must be the source of all violence.”
“Then she who reigns must be the center of all good sense.”
Tethiel decided to embrace the spirit of the festivities and allow a child to cut off a finger. One would be a small enough price for indulgence. Ah, he was too generous. A parent’s self sacrifices were altogether too selfish.
The jaguar knight prowled closer. He would have been waiting for the bride to leave. No sooner did she slip into her secret changing room when he came with that deliciously spotted fur coat of his, with its shadow rosettes and treasure hues.
“After you, my milk pumpkin,” Tethiel said. They strolled out to the two posts displaying the betrothal necklaces. “Here we may have a whiff of privacy. And this is the jewel the Lady of Gems stole from a god.”
The jaguar growled with the sound of a distant avalanche crushing a village.
“Yes, I was wrong to serve those butterflies,” Tethiel said. “Souls are ever so fattening.”
A server placed between them a board of the finest purple-blood wood. The jaguar set to scratching it.
“All lands,” the hatch marks read. Xochi then aimed his gold-curse eyes at the Bright Palm sitting at a high table. The jaguar knight clicked his teeth together.
“You’re willing to eat a Bright Palm? Most brave. Their meat is too lean and rotten with dourness.”
A paw tapped against the scratched board.
“You’d eat all the Bright Palms in the lands?”
The jaguar knight turned his ears forward in agreement.
“A mouthwatering ambition.”
How blissful night would be without those Bright Bores. Tethiel believed Xochi might even be able to make good on his offer. He commanded other jaguar knights and could influence the Dominion’s armies. An alliance with this spotted divinity could make Tethiel supreme from sea to sea, from dusk to dawn.
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