Prophecies, Libels & Dreams

by Ysabeau S. Wilce

  No other regiment can put on the Rum Tum Tiddy like the Redlegs, nor do so as noisily. Their gymkhanas and soirées are known for producing revelry so loud that men have been known to faint, horses to stampede, eggs to fry in their shells, flowers melt like wax. The Redlegs are an artillery regiment, and years of standing by their guns has rendered them to a soldier stone deaf, so the loudness does not personally perturb them one bit. Indeed, without the rumble of vibration, they feel lost.

  As high the Redleg noise, so deep their punch bowl. Deep as a well, deep as a hole straight to the Abyss, and many a sporter has fallen into this wetness and never been seen again. The Redlegs Regimental Punch packs a wallop no less incendiary than Florian’s Flute, Califa’s largest gun. The ingredients are secret and speculative, but the Califa Police Gazette once suggested the following:

  Arack

  Ginger Rum

  Champagne

  Whiskey

  Pineapple Juice

  Camphor

  Beef Blood

  Orange Slices

  Horse’s Milk

  Cayenne Pepper

  Nutmeg

  And, of course,

  Gunpowder.

  This libation is served hot, in little glasses, with a twist of ginger peel and a mescal chaser. It smokes, it burns, it causes sweating, swearing, swinging, singing, singeing, and spooning. It can cure you and kill you, or kill you and cure you. It cuts like a knife, hits like a brick, and makes you put your head to your heels and roll around the room like a hoop. It’s only mixed on special occasions, but the Redlegs keep strictly to a calendar laden with Regimental Victories, Regimental Red Letter Days, and Regimental Honors, so special occasions arrive with head-pounding frequency. Tonight, however, is the Most Special Occasion of them All (after the Warlord’s Birthday, of course, long may his staff stiffen): the Regimental Birthday.

  Thus, on this special night, the entire regiment is drunk, drunk enough to piss on the dead, as the saying goes. The Redlegs’ Regimental HQ sits in solitary splendor on a remote section of the Presidio, where sandy shoals are blown against scrubby pines, facing seaward, high on a bluff above the fort that guards the entrance to the Bay. It’s a wind whippy night, not unusual, and shreds of fog trail through the sky. The streetlights don’t extend this far out along the Hansgen Road, but there’s enough light from the stars not yet hidden that the sandy road shows clearly in the darkness. Anyway, there’s no missing the HQ—the building itself burns like a pyre, and the revelry has progressed to the point where some particularly festive artillerists have primed the guns which sit normally ornamental on the HQ’s front lawn and are firing flickering red feu de joies out over the wine dark sea. Their fire is not aimless, but rather an attempt to peg a fishing boat coming in from trawl. Luckily for the hapless vessel, the cannoniers are too punched to hit their mark.

  The rhythmic pounding of the guns plays time-keeping tempo to the Regimental Band, who sit on the front porch, playing a sprightly rendition of “The Siege of Califa.” Somewhere behind all this noise—the guns, the band, the wind, the surf, the odd pistol shot—comes the sound of canine howls—the Redleg Dogs, annoyed at being penned for the night, making their unhappiness known. Above this riotous scene, golden fireworks arc, mixing with the shell traceries to trace a lacy pattern on the night sky.

  As usual, the Redlegs are celebrating in front-page newsworthy style (the Califa Police Gazette, that is; the Alta Califa is a family paper). Were the Warlord not the guest of honor, the fun would be more muted, but Florian Abenfaráx de la Carcaza has swung a few soirées in his time as well, and he’s not shy when it comes to revelry. There he is now, the majestically tall, gesticulating figure upon the highest balcony of the HQ building, directing the fire below through a megaphone. Burn, gun, shout, shoot as ye will, with the Warlord on board, no one for debt will go to jail, it’s all faldera & glory.

  Not everyone shares in the Redlegs’ Delight. Colonel Banastre Haðraaða does not drink, he does not dance, he does not gamble, he does not spoon, and he does not curse. Those uncharitable to the Warlord’s Right Hand are sometimes prone to suggest that Hardhands, as he is called behind his back, also does not smile, love, or even feel, but that is not true at all. At the moment he is feeling quite keenly something which pangs him quite keenly: boredom. He has appeared at the Regimental Ball because good manners so required him, and he is staying because etiquette demands that the Warlord depart first (or at least that no one leaves until the Warlord is too smashed to notice). So here my lord colonel sits in the Redlegs Parlour, a grimly crimson figure. He’s a bright blot of blood in an otherwise black and gold room: the sole Alacrán present.

  The Alacrán Regiment and the Redleg Regiment are longtime enemies, whose interactions are normally confined to battlefield or dueling ground. Rarely do the two regiments socialize without moving quickly from scorn to outright insult: Skinners vs. Powderpuffs, the headlines would say. But that same pesky etiquette that demanded Hardhands’ attendance has demanded that the Redlegs unmolest him, and he the same. Although right now, surrounded by sodden soldiers grouped around an out-of-tune pianny, singing “I Tried to Give Her a Diva, but She Only Wanted My Parts,” the colonel is indeed wishing longingly of blood. He’s not much for sentiment, and the drunken warbling is giving him a bad headache. And his thoughts keep drifting elsewhere.

  He’s thinking about a cadet who is out there somewhere in the black night, charged with the black deed required for initiation into his regiment. He’s remembering his own such initiation, many years previous, the scrape of the knife on bone and the peculiar sound of tearing flesh. He’s remembering nerve and sinew and working up the Will, and he’s also remembering that first flush of power, the taste of blood warm off the blade, and the explosion of heart-heat on his tongue, in his head, in his phallus. Ah . . .

  He is saved from such tingly recollections by Cake. Midnight is soon approaching, and the Redleg Ball will culminate with the Traditional Toast and Cake, after which all semblance of sanity will break down. In the drunken melee which shall surely follow, Hardhands should be able to make his leave. He’s had orgies in his time, and now he’s done and looks forward to a last pipe and an early bed, rather than the awkward press of faceless flesh. But before escape, raise a glass to regimental piety and pretend happy joy in regimental pride, although privately Hardhands’ thoughts about the Redlegs are unprintable, even by the Califa Police Gazette standards.

  The Cake is massive, borne on the shoulders of burly privates chosen particularly for their height and width. It is shaped like a star battery, with red fondant bricks and sugar soldiers manning marzipan guns. Chocolate dogs poise around the candy-cane sally port, slavering whipped cream froth. The regimental flag flies high above the parapets, and below, meringue peaks into stiff blue waves. Behind the cake comes a sixteen-pound gun made of black sugar, as heavy and round as the real thing. Six lowly privates strive to pull the monstrosity into the room, ropes straining. Once in place, they stow the wheels and quickly go through the loading drill, ramming a papier-mâché ball down the sugar barrel and tamping it home with a cotton-candy-tipped ramrod.

  Here comes the Warlord and Colonel Melacton, behind them a tide of blackened powdery officers, sweaty in shirtsleeves, dangling on each other like autumn leaves just about to take the plunge. Colonel Melacton is jiggling fore and aft, and his massive wig is askew, showing a sliver of shiny skin, but the Warlord is steady. It takes more than a couple of bowls of punch to put a wiggle in his walk—unlike some, he can hold his liquor (or so is his cherished belief). He’s towing the young Ambassador from the Huitzil Empire, who is up way past his bedtime and who has had far, far too much sugar, and probably a touch too much punch as well.

  “Where’s Hardhands?” shouts Florian. His voice is louder than the music, and that means a lot. “Where is my Right Hand?”

  The Warlord’s Right Hand rises from his armchair in elegant response, bends elegant knee and says, oh so elegantly: “I am your gr
ace’s servant.”

  Florian receives this elegant tribute with a slightly uncertain nod. Hardhands has never given his liege any cause to doubt his loyalty—exactly opposite, in fact—yet sometimes the Warlord cannot help but wonder. Had Florian been born to a birthright, he’d have fought to the death to keep it. Hardhands birthright was impeccable; married to the Pontifexa of Califa’s heir, he should have, upon the Pontifexa’s sudden death some eight years earlier, held Califa in a glove-tight trust until his wife came of age.

  Instead, Hardhands gave over his wife’s destiny to the first pirate that sailed through the Oro Gate and demanded it, handed over his duty as though handing over a piece of pie, yesterday’s newspaper. Swore fealty to a pirate, now warlord, and has since then never by the slightest deed or action made his loyalty suspect. Florian can’t understand the why of Hardhands’ actions, and sometimes (usually late at night when sleep refuses to wait upon him) wondering this answer troubles him deeply.

  But when well-rested Florian is not one to worry about things he cannot control, and most particularly not while in his cups. Tonight his control of the colonel appears to be well-in-hand, so all right then, banish unhappy thoughts and let’s onto Cake. (About the thieved-from wife, Florian has not given one thought; she’s a child still, locked safely away somewhere, and how much trouble can a deposed child be?)

  “Let us have Cake!” Florian bellows. The band strikes up a chorus of “Glory to the Guns” in prelude to the Toast, and strikers in black jackets circulate, handing out jorums of smoking punch. The burly cake wranglers set the Cake down gently in the middle of the spectacle, and retreat.

  “Your grace—will you do the honors?” Colonel Melacton hands a lit taper to the Warlord, who has to juggle his jorum before he can accept. The sparkler spits silver sparks, arcing into the sudden darkness as the lights are snuffed.

  Florian shouts, “My darling wife, the Infanta Eliade, often counsels to me to share. Well, I wager, I’ve never felt such a need before, but now I find myself rich with generosity.” The Warlord turns to the Huitzil Ambassador, who is standing next to him, wrapped in a draggle-tailed cape of feathers, his jade mask askew with excitement. “Come on, kid, let her light!”

  The Ambassador eagerly grabs at the sparkler. He loves to set things afire—bedding, his hair, his duenna, the cat. Fire is bright and good, the goddess’s heart, the throne of the soul. In the Huitzil Empire they adore fire, hot as the Sun they also revere. The Ambassador dances forward, feathers close to smoking, and lights the fuse.

  “Fire in the HOLE!” The assemblage shouts, loud enough to shake the stars above. The fuse sputters, and fire races down its length. A sound rolls upward, louder than thunder, louder than bombs, loud enough to ring ear and buzz throat and cause momentary dizziness. The cannon vanishes into a roil of candy-colored smoke, the projectile urges itself aloft in a curving parabola. With another blindingly loud boom, a ball of white light implodes and resolves itself briefly into the sparkling sigil of the Redlegs, hung pendant on darkness’s skin like a scar, and then a sugar rain showers down.

  Officers and courtiers push and scramble, elbows jabbing and spurs scratching, filling skirts, pockets, hats with sweeties. Another fanfare arrests the scramble, and this time attention is turned towards the Cake. The sugar cannons spit a sweet feu de joie, whose light, although smaller than the previous fireworks, burns the eyes all the brighter. When the afterimage fades away, a figure stands in the Cake’s epicenter.

  The crowd roars and gasps, snapping palms together in furious clapping, whistling with raw throats, hollering a huge huzza, for the figure is the Goddess Califa, arms a-flung and drapery billowing. Her lips are the blackest adamantine and her eyes the blue of the twilight sky. Snaky curls dangle around her shoulders, spilling down to hide the abundant roundness of her bosom, the strong sinews of her arms.

  “Come now, good Colonel, and receive my kiss,

  And with that favor thy guns shall never miss,” she cries.

  The Warlord pushes Colonel Melacton forward, and blushing he goes, for although surely the Goddess is only a faux-Goddess, picked up off a corner and then primed with a badly written poem, still, her Authority is Strong. Two of the cake battery lift the Goddess free of Her pastry fortress; although she is short, she seems to tower over the Colonel, or perhaps it is just that today his heels are particularly low, and her hair alarmingly high.

  He leans, puckering, she leans, pursing and their lips meet to another roar of approval and a blast of sound from the band. Later, the accounts differ, but those standing close to Colonel Melacton all agree this much: the Goddess kisses the Colonel, her hands holding his face in place, then she reaches upward with one hand, slashing silver downward, and with the other hand, rips. Another flash turns into a huge puff of smoke. When the smoke clears, she is gone.

  So is Colonel Melacton’s hair.

  V. A Melee

  Then, oh the skittering and skedaddaling and the whoop-to-do. The hooting and the hollering and the brouhaha. Confusion reigns down on all and the party gives way to pandemonium. There is running and shouting, a few errant gunshots powdering down plaster, skidding of carpet, crashing of furniture. Colonel Melacton is carried out, prostrate with horror, a sympathetic shawl flung over his now bare, but still bloodless, pate. The Goddess has scalped the Colonel of both his wig and dignity. Once can be replaced, but can the other? The Huitzil Ambassador falls from his sugar high and begins to cry loudly for his duenna, hiccupping and gasping. The Warlord shouts: seal off the gates, let loose the dogs, send for a surgeon, sound the alarum, post a reward, shut down the press! Officers slither, careen and skid to carry out his Will. Others scramble to get out of the way, in case the Goddess should return and claim their wigs next.

  Through this rout, Hardhands drifts, a tiny smile hovering around his crimson lips, a teeny tiny smile on the outside. On the inside he’s grinning like a skull. Such is Hardhands’ status that even in pandemonium, people part before him and let him attain the exit with little trouble. Such is his slipperiness, though, that once through the door he fades into shadow before his aides can follow him, and then, finally blessedly alone, he makes his way through the garden and into the sand dunes beyond.

  Behind him the commotion continues, lights flashing upward into the dark sky as the beacons are set afire, the urgent blast of bugles, and the braying of the Redleg dogs. He knows where the path is; he skids down the bluff onto the beach below. Before him stretches a slope of moonlit whiteness, edged by heaving blackness, and beyond that darkness a star-spangled sky. He breathes deep of the salt-heavy air, crisp with night-chill, and feels the pace of the surf fall into time with the pounding behind his eyes.

  Eos Espada, Hardhands’ aide-de-camp, has his phosphates, but there are a few perks to being a colonel and even more to being an eighth-degree adept. The second is being able to light your own cigarillo with a flick of a forbidden magickal word, and the first is not being written up for conduct unbecoming should anyone see you do so. Before Hardhands was a soldier and proscribed from meddling in the unequal advantage that magick can give one, he was an ardent practitioner of the Graceful Art, and even now he likes to keep in tune. Who knows, perhaps someday he’ll quit being a soldier and then the craft will come in handy again.

  The Gramatica word twinkles and alights on the end of his cigarillo, where it sparks a fragrant flame. He sucks a lungful of spicy smoke, and that feels better in his skull, where the night air did not. The sand scrunches under his boots, slippery under leather soles, and soon he’s close enough to the water’s edge that the boom of the surf outweighs the boom of the signal guns behind him. All this hullabaloo for a mere wig—and a particularly ugly overdone wig, too. He feels joyful.

  The coincidence strikes him that it’s interesting that Colonel Melacton should be scalped of wig the same night that a cadet of Hardhands’ acquaintance should be on the prowl for a scalp of hair. But such is Hardhands’ certainty in the sanctity of his regiment, and his
surety of the cadet’s obedience, that he doesn’t consider that the coincidence might not be a coincidence at all. It must all be just chance. Doesn’t the Goddess like her jokes?

  On Hardhands ambles, kicking up spray and relishing the image of Melacton’s shiny bald head. Ahead, the beach curves, sand turning into rock, rock into cliff, cliff into palisade. Far ahead, the palisade curves outward into a high spit jutting into crashing waves, and upon that spit the minarets and spires of Bilskinir, Hardhands’ native home, glitter in the darkness like a hundred fiery eyes. He can’t get there from here, but he’s not trying to walk home, just to enjoy the uncustomary solitude and the Redlegs’ calamity.

  He is reluctant to return to his duty, where he shall be called upon to waste time and energies trying to solve a crime whose commission he applauds. The night is unusually warm, and the water, frothing in moonlight, looks refreshing. Of course, this look is deceptive. The currents riding beneath the ocean’s placid exterior are swift and ripping, and any swimmer who gets caught in their net will be sucked inexorably towards the Oro Gate, to be pulled into the protective maelstrom that seals off the bay’s mouth, and there drowned.

  A weak swimmer, that is, and one whose skin is not well oiled by a magickal protection sigil. Grinning at his own audacity, and the thought of risking his life over a silly whim, Hardhands lights his last cigarillo and strips, kicking his boots off, strewing his clothes on the damp sand, and, lastly, throwing his itchy formal wig (how he hates that damned feathery scalp-lock) into darkness. Revealed, his hair is as silver-blonde as the moon above, and released from its knot, it covers his shoulders and back like a cape. The sand is chill beneath his bare feet, and gritty, skidding his steps until he steps out onto the firm plane of the water’s edge.