Prophecies, Libels & Dreams

by Ysabeau S. Wilce

  Tap-tap-tap-tap echoes down the stairs like gunshots, the Pontifexa rat-tat-tatting to her great-granddaughter’s rescue on high red heels of fire, feathers flying off her wrapper in her rush. She is trailed by seven anxious dogs who are braying in sympathy, and she too is now snapping with anger that her afternoon massage has been interrupted.

  “What are you doing to that child, Banastre Haðraaða?” she demands. “You there, sush!” That to the howling dogs, who do sush, for the Pontifexa speaks and is obeyed.

  “She was eating my hair!”

  “Pah! Why did you let her? Stop that caterwauling, my dove, you are giving Grandmamma a headache and Grandmamma already has enough of a headache, she needs no more.” This is said with a suitable guilt-making glance at Hardhands, which guilt it does not induce because he is not going to marry a squalling three-year-old—end of discussion, let us not speak on it again.

  Grandmamma’s Dove has made her point, and now turns all smiles and sweetness, enough to melt heart, if not hands, of stone. Paimon peels her nightgown and plunks her in the soapy water, twisting bubbles into a crown and bobbing her red devil duck on a tidal wave of foam.

  The Pontifexa beams at her sweet wet little heir. “You were never so cute when you were that age, Banastre.”

  “Ha! I had more hair and I was never so fat.”

  “So you say, but I know better.” The Pontifexa links one rounded white arm through Hardhands’ own sinewy forearm, and together they leave the sloshy bathroom, the mirrors now refracting the pink bobbing child and the blue scrubbing butler.

  The Pontifexa and Hardhands have already had the Fight, with the screaming and the cursing and the dire threats: incarceration, exile, defenestration, decapitation. They’ve had the Pleading, the Urgings of Duty, of Honor, of Sacred Trust, of Love & Debt. They’ve had the I Ask So Little of You You Ask The One Thing I Can Not Give. Now they are having the I am Ignoring You You Will Do What I Want Anyway Because I said So Damn Your Eyes if I Will We’ll See Who is Boss.

  Rub two Haðraaða Wills together and you’ll get, well, you’ll get nothing at all, cancellation, void, null, stalemate. But the clock is ticking: they’ve got three days to make up their mind whose Will is to prevail: in three days Julien Brakespeare, Tiny Doom’s daddy, is leaving Califa. As Tiny Doom’s father he has the right to remove her with him—a nasty court battle has settled that question—and the thought of Julien Brakespeare in final possession of her heir sends the color soaring in the Pontifexa’s normally pale face. She is determined that Hardhands’ rights as Cyrenacia’s husband will prevail over the rights of Cyrenacia’s father. The rights of Cyrenacia’s mother, she who would have been Georgiana IV, are null and void for Sidonia Haðraaða ov Brakespeare is six months dead. Died in childbed is the official explanation, but the Pontifexa believes that not at all. Julien killed her granddaughter, she is sure of it, but there’s no proof.

  “Are you still sulking, Banastre?” the Pontifexa demands, stopping in front of Hardhands’ bedroom.

  “No,” he says, although of course he is. He’s trying harder not to show it now, though. No point in putting the Pontifexa further up. He’s pretending to give in to get exactly what he wants.

  “Sulk all you want now, but I expect to see you smile on your wedding day,” the Pontifexa says. She is small, but she has incredibly sharp teeth. This wedding day is scheduled for two days hence; dangerously close to the date upon which the Pontifexa must hand her heir over to Julien, but the delay cannot be helped. The Pontifexa, with much consultation with Paimon, has pored over the Almanack to ensure that the wedding occurs on a day in which all the aspects, portents, and sigils align auspiciously and the Magickal Current is high. This delay has caused the Pontifexa no end of knuckle-cracking but has been quite useful for young Ban.

  The Pontifexa follows her grandson into his bedroom and begins to fiddle with his hair. She has clever fingers, the Pontifexa does, and soon Hardhands’ wayward locks are smoothed and twisted, secured with a wide silver comb. This dressing comes not without its price, and Hardhands’ reflection in the mirror is, despite his best efforts, somewhat scowly. The Pontifexa is serene and deft.

  “I am sorry, my darling, that I cannot let you do as you will in this matter,” she says.

  “Um,” says Hardhands, for he’s already said everything else.

  “We can’t let Julien Brakespeare have Cyrenacia.”

  “Why not?”

  “Ha!” says the Pontifexa, an explosive ha that has a myriad of meanings in it, none of them good. “He’s already ruined one of my heirs; I’ll not have him ruin the other. Had he not induced your sister to throw over her duty to her city and run off with him, she should be safe within our House still, and the stability of our City not in doubt. He’s a crawling serpentine fancy man, and goddess knows what he’ll do to her if he keeps her.”

  She puts the last hair pin in Hardhands’ chignon and places narrow hands on his wide shoulders. Their reflections stare back at them, one sullen, the other a tad bit sad. She slides feathered arms around her grandson’s broad paisley shoulders and says, in a softer voice: “Don’t think, my baby, that I don’t know what I am asking you to give up. It is a lot to suddenly ask, when I’ve asked nothing before.”

  So she says, and she is right. Until six months ago, Hardhands was nothing but his grandmother’s darling boy, who could do whatever he wanted and whom no one dared gainsay. Now suddenly he is the hope of the Haðraaða line, and he wants none of it. Hardhands cannot hold the Steel Fan that is the scepter of the City, for that honor is passed only through female blood, but he can protect the Heir Apparent—which means marrying her so that, during her minority, her father can have no claim of influence over her. Hardhands does not want to marry Little Tiny Doom. He has other plans, in which a dynastic marriage does not figure. He has other loves, too.

  However. For the moment, Hardhands wipes the scowl off his face and turns about to pull his sweet little grandmamma, the only parent he has ever known, onto his lap. He kisses her white forehead and says: “I bow to your Will, madama. In this as in all things.”

  The Pontifexa smiles. “You are my darling boy.”

  “I am,” Hardhands agrees, and they embrace. His grandmamma’s hair smells citrusy smooth, like orange blossoms, and this fragrance remembers him when he fit in her lap rather than the other way around. Sometimes he is a wee bit sad those days are gone. For a moment he wavers and then he sternly straightens himself up. He has no choice. Him or her.

  The Pontifexa removes herself from Hardhands’ lap and clicks to the door. There she pauses, and turns back, patting her mussed coils of sunset-colored hair back into place. Hardhands is leaning over his dressing table stripping a thin line of black paint along his eyelid when she speaks again:

  “How is the helado at Guerrero’s these days?”

  His hand jerks, and he almost puts his eye out with the eyeliner brush. He looks beyond his reflection, to his grandmother’s serene steely blue gaze. Paimon has apparently finished with Tiny Doom because he now stands behind his mistress, an enormous blue shadow that seems to darken the room. The Pontifexa is still smiling, but that is not necessarily a Good Thing.

  “Yummy, as usual,” he says, pleased that his voice does not even quiver.

  “With the wedding so near, and Julien still in town, darling, I think it best not to take chances in such a questionable neighborhood. Perhaps I should ask Godelieve to detail you a guard.” The Pontifexa is very subtle, but our boy gets her drift.

  “I go armed,” he says. “And anyway, Julien has no reason to challenge you now. He knows that he has won.”

  “Still, there is always the possibility that he could learn of our plans, darling, and in desperation take desperate measures. Don’t underestimate him.”

  Hardhands smiles his most boyish carefree smile. “Never mind Julien. He’ll never know what hit him. And it would look very odd if suddenly I was bristling with armed lackeys everywhere I went. We don’t w
ant to put his nose up, do we?”

  “Of course, you are right, Banastre, but still, I cannot rest until the baby is safe. I do so worry. You will be careful, no? I have borne all the loss I can.” The Pontifexa’s expression, however, belies her words. He’s being warned, and he knows it. But a warning will not change his mind.

  “Of course, Grandmamma.”

  “Thank you, sweetness—yes, Paimon, I can hear you breathing down my neck. What do you want?’”

  Paimon says, in his gentle rolling voice, “Madama Brakespeare is in bed, awaiting her goodnight story.”

  “Thank you, Paimon. I shall come. Have a wonderful show, Banastre. I will see you in the morning at breakfast.” The Pontifexa sends a kiss winging its way through the air, which her grandson does not try to catch. She closes the door gently behind her. Hardhand grimaces at his own reflection and goes back to his toilette.

  When Hardhands finally gets to the Blue Duck, his resolve is stuck as tightly to his Will as a whore sticks to cash. Forget Springheel Jack. Hardhands has thought of metal more attractive. He has remembered in his readings, always eclectic, a receipt for a topical poison. Made from a variety of esoteric ingredients, this poison is fast and furious when it touches the skin, and it leaves not even the tiniest trace, death seeming wholly natural, although a bit surprising. Along with the receipt for the poison is receipt for an antidote that will allow the poisoner to infect without being infected. Hardhands may not be able to stab his grandmamma, drown her in her bath, shoot her in the head, or crack her soft white neck with his soft white hands, but he has full confidence he can kiss her, having done so a thousand times before.

  III.

  So, here we have Hardhands in the Magick Box. Today he has an entourage suitable to his exalted state: there’s Hardhands’ leman, lips somewhat compressed, and Hardhands’ two hounds, gray as seasalt, and, annoyingly, Hardhands’ Little Tiny Doom, along because the Pontifexa has court cases to sit in on and Paimon is making teaberry jam and does not want sticky fingers messing with his sugar. Since she has dressed herself with minimal adult supervision, Cyrenacia is the flashiest of the trio: pink velvet dress, scuffed cowboy boots, and one of the Pontifexa’s discarded weasel tippets. Hardhands is in a good enough mood to admit that she does look rather doll.

  He is in a good mood because the Tygers of Wrath’s gig the previous night had been incredible, fantastic, amazing, their Best Show Ever. The band had practically engulfed the Blue Duck in an inferno of explosive rhythm. The Siege of San Quentin was not as cataclysmically loud. Hardhands’ evocation was spot-on, terrific, sharp as a scalpel, and the percussion dæmon that had ensued had been an egregore of least the sixth level, as tall as a horsecar, wide as a street. Such a noise had rolled out of its enormous mouth that the avid ears closest to its maw would probably be bleeding for the next week. If the Blue Duck had had any windows, surely they would have shattered. If the Blue Duck had had a roof, surely it would have raised. Ah, what a show. Even being ordered to babysit Little Tiny Doom cannot spoil the afterglow.

  The Magick Box is all darkness and boo-spooky atmosphere, with the usual boo-spooky magickal type stuff hanging on the walls: dried bats, twisted galangal root, black candles, etc. The stuff of which clichés are made, and Hardhands is not interested in clichés, only in pure hard magick, the stuff of Concentration, of Focus, of Absolute Pinpointed Will. He’s spent years working on his Art, and by now it’s pretty Artful, so he requires not the silly props. He doesn’t need dried bats or twisted galangal or black candles, and so he strides by these objects to what he does need, which is kept locked behind the counter, away from amateurs, novices, and greenhorns. The Good Stuff. Expensive and Dangerous as a riptide.

  There’s a servitor behind the counter, an egregore so advanced that it looks just like a woman. Her eyes are a bit flat and her hair has a rather vivid grassy sheen to it, but otherwise you’d pass her on the street and not even notice. Most servitors never get this advanced, too dangerous to give them such power, but the owner of the Magick Box is perfectly in control of all her sigils and she’s more fond of windsurfing than of standing behind a counter selling chicken feet to Adept-Want-To-Bes, thus this incredibly detailed autonomous servitor doing the dirty work for her.

  “Do not touch the Hands of Glory,” says the egregore. She is talking to Tiny Doom, not to Hardhands, of course.

  “Cyrenacia!” barks her uncle. Cyrenacia is barked at so infrequently that she is immune to the bite, but she is bored with the nasty smelling wax thing anyway, so she quits fiddling. “Keep an eye on her, Relais.”

  Relais vaguely makes motion towards the child, but his heart’s not in it, and she knows it. She disappears around a bookcase and Relais lets her go. He’s hung over from the night before, and he is worried that his eyes are looking puffy and red, so he has not the interest in small annoying girls.

  Hardhands and the egregore have a brief consultation. He knows what he wants and she gives it to him, measuring strange smells and stranger colors into little twists of paper, small smoked glass jars, and, in one case, a pearly vial that is sealed tight with a tiny but powerful sigil.

  Jingle-jangle at the door, and though Hardhands does not turn around, he does not need to turn around, he can tell from the sound of the footfalls, from the scent of the cologne, from the burn in the bottom of his belly exactly who has just walked in.

  “A pound of bear grease,” Hardhands says calmly. He is not his grandmamma’s beloved grandson for naught.

  “Black bear or cinnamon bear?” asks the egregore.

  “White,” says Hardhands.

  The egregore looks at Hardhands. Grease from an albino bear is rare and as volatile as a fifteen-year-old-boy, which the egregore has suddenly remembered Hardhands is. For all his concentrated Will, he is not an Adept. But he is the Pontifexa’s grandson.

  The egregore hesitates.

  “Well, have you not got it?” Hardhands asks impatiently.

  The egregore decides. “Ayah, I have it so, but it is locked. I must dish out, wait here.”

  The egregore disappears into the darkness at the back of the store. Hardhands then realizes voices behind him: a tiny lisping voice and a lighter adult voice engaged in conversation regarding the sweetness of little puppies.

  He jerks around, but the voices are hidden by a bookshelf, which he fair vaults around because he had totally forgotten Little Tiny Doom, and obviously so too had Relais, damn his eyes.

  On the other side of the bookshelf, Hardhands’ small niece and fiancée is sitting on the floor with a slick dog head in her lap, pulling slick dog ears. Next to her a man leans, elegant in blinding white, also petting a slick dog. Child and man have identical brilliant red hair, although Tiny Doom’s color riots through squashy curls and her companion’s hair is sheared short to his skull, thus sticks up in tiny pinprick spikes. The man is staring down at the child, avid.

  “Cyrenacia!” says Hardhands sharply.

  Cyrenacia looks up and waves. “Hiwya, Bwannie! This puppy has twinty nears.”

  Sometimes it is impossible to understand what the hell she is saying; not that Hardhands cares what she is saying, but not caring doesn’t make it any less annoying. He would snatch the child up, but he can’t because her father is blocking his grab, and also because his knees are somewhat weak.

  Julien Brakespeare releases the dog ears he is fondling and smiles at Hardhands: “Ave, your grace.”

  Hardhands is not, as previously noted, his grandmamma’s grandson for nothing. Though Julien’s smile makes his heart flip-flop, he returns a wintry frosty cold smile that will later make battle-hard soldiers weep like little babies but which at this moment, on this person, has null effect.

  “Ave, Lord Brakespeare.”

  Relais appears at Hardhands’ side, glaring in an ugly way and clutching at Hardhands’ white silk elbow. Both Hardhands and Julien Brakespeare ignore him, and he tightens his grip on Hardhands, not that that will make any difference.

 
; “As it is so,” Julien Brakespeare replies and the two men bow and touch clenched fists gently together. The only reason that Julien Brakespeare’s lungs are still on the inside of his body, instead of flapping around outside, is because the Pontifexa has bound herself to the rule of law. She is a liberal tyrant with specific ideas regarding the self-imposed limits of her own power and her place within the framework of justice. The Superior Court of Califa upheld Julien Brakespeare’s right to his own child, and the Pontifexa will not move against that—at least not publicly.

  “Grrrrr,” Cyrenacia growls, yanking on the hem of Hardhands’ kilt. “Grrrrr . . .”

  The two men stare at each other. An outside observer could think that their eyes are locked in hate, but they would be wrong.

  Cyrenacia growls again, and whines a little, trying to scratch her ear with the tip of her cowboy boot, just like a puppy can. She has decided recently that being a puppy is more fun than being a little girl, and she has been driving Hardhands, her grandmamma, and her grandmamma’s suffering staff wild with her yipping, gamboling, barking, and insistence on lapping water out of a dish. Right now her whine is not driving anyone wild; it is being totally ignored.

  “How are you, your grace?” Julien asks.