Hiresha gripped the Bright Palm’s hand. Alyla squeezed back. She had begun to regain command of her body. Her spinal cord was regenerating, nerves reaching out to embrace. As heartless as her magic was, yet Hiresha admired its wonders.
“I shall craft a sword in honor of Fos,” Hiresha said, “and it will endure.”
To this, Alyla had no response. She did manage to dip her chin down in a nod to Tethiel. Their pact was unbroken. Hiresha could count the wedding a success.
The Bright Palm’s chair had been borne on the shoulders of the assassins. They had left their gem-shard blades behind, perhaps out of politeness for Hiresha’s loss. They had tried to help her defeat the dragon.
They had failed. They’d attacked her previously, and hatred for them flooded over her skin in burning agony. This wasn’t right. She wanted to dismember this couple piece by piece. She could think of reasons why she shouldn’t, yet none of them mattered. Only one thing might stop the magma surging within her before it reformed her insides into obsidian. She must torture the assassins to death.
“I told you I would spare you.” She lifted a gauntlet and a system of sharp jewels, ready to shred Sagai. “I changed my mind.”
“No, my heart.” Tethiel pressed down on her arm. “We mustn’t punish people for aiding us.”
“They may attempt another assassination,” she said.
“Then exile them. That would be merciful.”
“And practical.” Yes, Hiresha should have realized it. She would have, if she could still forgive. Tethiel had covered her new deficiency. Merely gazing at him eased the abscess of anger within her. She regripped his arm to keep a handle on her wrath and turned back to the couple. “You would be wise to stay a continent distant. I will know if you approach. These jewels will tell me.”
She touched their brows. A ring of amethysts embedded in their skin in the pattern of eclipsed moons.
“Do not attempt to tamper with them,” she said.
Both assassins held in their tears from the piercings. Sagai even smiled. The couple exchanged a look. Relief flickered between them, as well as fondness, and other things Hiresha expected only they could read in each other.
Sagai turned to bow to Hiresha. “This time, we will take your advice.”
“As far away from you as we can,” Naroh said. She pressed the flat of her hand against Sagai’s. It didn’t even amount to holding hands, but perhaps that was her way. She touched the reddening skin on his forehead and then glared back at Hiresha. “You barnacle-hearted kraken!”
“She’s well salted,” Tethiel said to Hiresha, “isn’t she?”
“Too free with her compliments, surely,” Hiresha said. “Now the both of you had best go, before I force you to sacrifice your devotion to the god.”
The couple must have had a trove of life force. The Winged Flame whirled above them, trilled and warbled like a menagerie freed from cages. Rolling belly up, he arched around in a perfect circle. The two heads met, and their tongues flicked together.
When the procession encountered Elbe, Hiresha had to admit the Purest had been right about the necessity of forgiveness.
The Purest’s aplomb gave no hint she had been recently stranded atop a dome. She must have climbed down by herself, or with the help of some of the many women clamoring around. Elbe leaned on one, favoring the ankle she had sprained.
She stepped forward alone. The Purest risked collapse to rest her hands on Hiresha and Tethiel. “You’ve done all I hoped. This will be a golden age of sweetness and harmony.”
“Of cooperation,” Hiresha said.
“Your marriage has united us all,” Elbe said.
Tethiel said, “A stable marriage may be impossible unless it’s scorned. Would you at least have the decency to feign disapproval?”
Elbe made no such promise.
On the way back to the river, they met the Talon. The blood speckled around him appeared to be all his own. He danced with a swaying grace, gazing up to his god.
“If you stare overlong you may go blind,” Hiresha said.
“I should have more than two eyes to give.” His lips split upward into a smile, and he rubbed his blade over his hand. “Eyes! Oh Lady of Glorious Sacrifices, you are an inspiration.”
“Some blood may still be required, yet fewer deaths, I should hope,” Hiresha said. “Like all things, homage must evolve.”
“Yes, feed him more than hearts. I see that now. More than eyes. Yes, yes. The god of gods must have life force from all, not just the dying.”
After they had left him to his happy babbling, Hiresha spoke to Tethiel. “Should I still cause him to die in torment?”
“His god would approve of us taking revenge.”
“You’re not only saying that because he burned your coat?”
“Mercy has its limits,” Tethiel said.
“Curious. In this moment, I desire nothing more than to take his life. I worry that I’ll not be able to forgive myself for doing so.”
“I will forgive you, my heart.”
“Then that must suffice,” she said.
They met the last of the living guests on a pier. The Green Bloods Ix and Saul crouched dripping over her blue paragon. Her happiness surged in direct proportion to its gleam.
“You found it in the river.” Hiresha lifted the diamond and spun it between her gauntlets. Mud was Repulsed from its facets.
“I did,” Ix said.
“Dishonesty erodes the soul.” Saul sniffed at Ix. “They only spotted it. I swam the jewel here.”
“I would have,” Ix said, “but they tried to drown me.”
“No. I was saving you. The current was too strong for the weakness you’ve invited into yourself.”
Ix dug blue fingers into Saul’s red arm. “Killing you might be worth the pain of dying.”
“My spirit is ready for death, as it is for life. Yours is neither.”
“As much as I hate to interrupt your joy,” Tethiel said, “did the jewel’s poisons enrich the river?”
“Venoms, my dear. Venoms.”
“Quite right, my heart.”
Ix snorted. “I have more control of my bane. It wouldn’t leak away. Can’t speak for Saul.”
Hiresha moved on only after it became clear nothing dreadful would have seeped into the Gargantuan. She judged the two Green Bloods were enjoying their argument. They wouldn’t do each other true harm.
“Those two could spend many a happy day bickering,” Tethiel said.
“They’ve formed some manner of bond. How tempting to sacrifice it to the Winged Flame to study what he makes of it.”
“The best thing to do with temptation is give in at once.”
“For that reason we’ll delay here no longer.” Hiresha stood at the end of the river. She didn’t bother with the dramatics of lifting her hands or any such nonsense. She sent her will into the waters and Lightened the sunken corsair.
The ship grew more buoyant than water, than air. Streamlets sluiced down its crystal sides. All the treasure of her wedding gifts filled the hull with reflected sunlight.
“I shan’t be marrying into poverty,” Hiresha said. “My mother would’ve approved of that, if nothing else.”
“Wealth brings only trouble. Which is why we should all strive to be as rich as we can.”
“The ship may be overflowing by the end of our honeymoon.”
“Yes, we must visit all the lands we now rule and accept the burden of their generosity.”
“It’s past time we left,” Hiresha said. She floated with Tethiel toward the ship, her paragon jewels flying around them. The fox chased their lights through the air.
“Indeed, the dawn is far gone.”
“And I must soon dream of other worlds. Will you watch over me as I sleep?”
“Only if I may leer.”
Hiresha replied by constricting the sides of his breastplate together. She stopped well short of squeezing his ribs to the breaking point.
“Oh, Hi
resha.” He gasped. “You’re breathtaking.”
They stood together at the crystal prow. Hiresha felt a rolling sensation, not from the movement of the gliding corsair but from the wheeling of realities. In her other facet, she sat in ease on the inclined side of a pyramid with Fos. She took comfort that there he still lived. His pet kingsnake, Lord Bracelets III, slid up his sleeve to flick a tongue beneath his chin. A full tea service spread between them on a carpet. Hiresha and Fos enjoyed minutes of peace in the purpling of the dusk.
In the sunrise facet with Tethiel, all the Lands of Loam stretched before them in a horizon of sea green and gold. One world was false, one real. She preferred to think of each as, on average, half true.
“If this is a dream,” she said, “it’s a grand one.”
Tethiel’s buttonhole stayed perfectly composed in his coat despite the breeze. He leaned close enough that their plated shoulders clanked. “So begins a beautiful alliance.”
They kissed. When their lips parted, the red paragon sped between. A flash of facets, an immortal beauty, it settled in the amulet against Hiresha’s chest. Three claws of gold held the jewel fast.
The lord rode in with the sunset. Three horses followed, two carrying swordsmen. Jerani saw it had happened at last. This time wasn’t a dream. Jerani wouldn’t wake gasping beside Celaise. He wouldn’t be able to wrap an arm around her and fill himself breath by breath with peace. This was the end.
“Set down your weapon, my young delicacy. It’ll not serve this evening.”
Jerani slid his fingers over the acacia wood of his war club. His thumb rubbed over the hippo carved for his brother, the heron for his sister. Jerani wouldn’t see any of his tribe again. He would never know how the herd had grown.
His nail beds whitened from gripping the club harder. He had to fight. Jerani couldn’t let them hurt Celaise. He faced the lord and his men.
Jerani was on his own on the street. Not even a candle shone behind shuttered windows. The town had changed. None of the homes were familiar. Their sides were too sharp. The nearby mountain cliffs leaned too far. Shadows stretched over the town. Darkness wormed between the cobblestones, crawling outward from the lord’s boots. Some had already wriggled up Jerani’s legs.
His knees wobbled. His arms were too shivery cold to even lift his war club. If only he could remember the volcano heat of the Angry Mother, but he couldn’t. It was already over. Jerani dropped his weapon. It clattered against their shop.
“This will be our last meal together,” the lord said. “Don’t worry. I brought us the best cup of bitters.”
One of the swordsmen lifted a chest from his saddlebag. He looked like one of the Feaster knights, a man Jerani had fought beside in the jungle and at the wedding. Except he wasn’t a leper. He had once covered his missing nose with gold plates. Now he had a whole one, with a gold nose ring. He winked.
The second man who had also been a leper now had all his fingers. The third figure flipped off his horse and landed on both legs and two crutches. He scuttled after the other men. Jerani had never imagined this in his dreams. This couldn’t be one. Even if that sick floating feeling in Jerani’s stomach made it feel like a nightmare.
From the street he ducked inside the shop. Celaise crouched in the corner. She clutched a sewing needle. With her free hand she grasped Jerani’s with a death grip.
A swordsman swept a worktable clean. In the back, the stove blazed. A cauldron bubbled. The man on crutches loomed in the doorway. Each of his fists had a six-sided tattoo.
“Hexer,” Celaise said, almost too soft to hear.
He balanced on one crutch and reached into the travel chest. Out came plates and cups, bone white. They shimmered on the table. One swordsman set out pastries. The other poured darkness into the lord’s cup.
“You must join me,” he said. “Life is too short to waste on anything but simple pleasures, and too meaningless.”
Jerani and Celaise had to sit across from him at the table. The porcelain had designs around the edges of bats flying toward jasmine flowers.
“Terribly thoughtful of you,” the lord said, “of not making me ride all the way into the savanna. I’m also surprised. Did you wish for death to find you sooner?”
His silver knife hung above a pastry. He would soon slice it in half.
He asked, “Are you not happy together?”
Jerani looked to Celaise. They would have to answer. He said, “Couldn’t lead you to my tribe.”
“So we came here.” Celaise’s hand shook in his, but she met the lord’s cavern-dark stare. “Where women buy more dresses.”
The lord’s knife rang off the porcelain. “You opened shop in the shadow of the Mindvault Academy. The enchantresses must be selling their souls for your work. And all it cost you was Jerani’s hopes for home.”
“She gave up her magic,” Jerani said. “I gave up the grasslands.”
“Ahhh!” Steam from the lord’s cup coiled around him. “True love is true sacrifice. Too few your age understand that. Beauty is wasted on the young, and wisdom is wasted on the old.”
Jerani knew he had to do something. He couldn’t just sit here and wait for the lord to kill them. Celaise had hid her hand with the needle beneath the table, but the swordsman beside her was watching.
“Do you love each other,” the lord asked, “too much to marry?”
“Didn’t know how long we’d have,” Celaise said. “Together.”
Every day had been sweet to Jerani as the year’s first rains. He couldn’t give that up. Maybe the lord would change his mind. Celaise had told Jerani not to beg. The lord wouldn’t like it. Jerani had promised not to, but he had to say something.
“I’m sorry we—”
“Never apologize,” the lord said. “Anything can be forgiven but apology.”
His skin shone as white as the porcelain and as lifeless. The spearhead tattoo on his brow pulsed. It leaked little spider-legs of blackness then sucked them back in.
“My fallen plum,” he said to Celaise, “how went your metamorphosis? Do you still crave black wine?”
Her shoulders tensed, then the muscles of her needle arm. Jerani thought she might try to stab the lord. She shouldn’t. It wouldn’t work. Then they would be cut up by the swordsmen. Or much worse.
Jerani squeezed her hand. He shook his head. They could live as long as everyone kept talking.
Celaise slumped. The needle plinked to the floor. “I needed all the magic bottles. Could’ve used another. Now I only dream of my old dresses, and I wake up wanting.”
“Such a tragedy to lose a member of the family, wouldn’t you say, my dainties?”
The swordsmen made sorrowful noises. Only one sipped from his cup at a time. The other always held down Jerani with his eyes. Red crumbs sprayed over the tablecloth. The lord urged Jerani and Celaise to eat.
The pastry stuck in Jerani’s throat. He couldn’t swallow. He had to choke down some of the burning coffee drink. It left his mouth charred. Would the lord poison them? Is that how they would die?
“Indeed not,” the lord said, “and I’m afraid you’ve been most disrespectful. Not once this evening have you tried to kill me. Neither have you thanked me. It should’ve been one of the two.”
Celaise ran her fingernails down her legs, leaving scratch marks. “Thanked you for giving me magic all those years ago?”
“For granting you this last year together. It must’ve been exquisite, living each day like it could be your last.”
“That was the worst part,” Jerani said. Maybe he shouldn’t have.
“No, no, what you both should fear is aging.” The lord smeared gloppy red jam over bread with his knife. “How could I doom you to that? No person who was once young deserves to die old.”
“No,” Jerani said, “I mean, that’s what we wanted. To spend our lives together.”
Celaise smiled the darkness of her gem teeth at him.
“You’ve both made this rather awkward,” the lord
said and bore his eyes into Jerani, “but if it’ll lighten the atmosphere, know that I did kill your father.”
“Gio?” Jerani held onto the table’s edge. There went his chance of seeing him again, of hearing his father and not just the dead-calm of a Bright Palm’s voice.
“When?” Celaise asked.
“The wedding night.” The lord dabbed the sharp corner of his lips with his napkin. “Before this is over, I should tell you. The Lady of Gems can never forgive you.”
Celaise raised a tremble-shake hand to her lips.
“She depends now on my bottomless font of mercy. But then, I have my reputation to consider. Even if I wished to forgive my disobedient child, how could I?” The Lord of the Feast stood, and he was a three-headed monster casting his shadow over the world.
Jerani and Celaise backed away. They could never go far enough. All Jerani could do was look at her face one last time, at her black teeth, pink lips, and thorn-tuft brows. He could only hold her. She held him back. The cow-bone necklace he had carved her pressed against his arm. He pulled her in tighter.
The lord’s three voices rumbled down to them, low, lower, and lowest. “I could never allow a child to live who’d defied my deepest wishes. You took the cure meant for me. You forced me to remain the father of nightmares.”
Jerani’s voice was buried in his chest. Not that anything he said would save them. All light had gone. Nothing was left but the gleam of teeth. Rough grinding teeth, sharp stabbing teeth, wedge slicing teeth. They all swooped toward him, to break his bones and strip off his flesh. Jerani wanted to close his eyes, but he mustn’t.
“Did you once imagine, my morsels, I’d let you live, if you had disappointed me?”
“I’m not sorry.” Celaise managed to speak somehow through all the weight of darkness. “I’d do it again.”
“I know, my crafty crumpet. I knew what you two roast ducklings would do with those vials, and I’m not sorry either.”
Blackness clapped around Jerani. But he didn’t think he had been swallowed. Oh no! He had disgraced the Great Hearts. He must’ve shut his eyes. Only, he couldn’t open them. He couldn’t even feel Celaise anymore. This was worse. He had fainted. Jerani would be dead before he woke.
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