by M. D. Laird
“I will kill your father,” the prince raged. “It is one thing to have me evicted from my guild, but to have me dragged to the pits of Hell in the process is another matter.”
Eleanor took a breath and looked at the prince who slumped on the seat opposite. “You only break your decree if I deliver a child,” she said nervously. “My father probably hoped that you would not discover the stone was not an opal until after I’d conceived and then you would breach your decree by ending my pregnancy in your rage.”
“I would have,” he muttered. “If you had refused to end it I would have taken steps to do it, even if that meant losing my guild. I would have done it to save myself from the fire.”
Eleanor swallowed anxiously.
My father truly meant to kill me.
She knew that already but it didn’t make the truth any less painful. It was pointless to be angry with the prince, he could not help his demonic nature, but she was furious with her father. Just when she thought he couldn’t be anymore vile, anymore brutal, anymore evil, then he ventured to a new low.
I will make him pay for this.
“We need an alchemist,” she said calmly. “I need a tincture to prevent conception. We should go to Arkazatinia. We can’t be confident that Axandria’s alchemists are not under my father’s direction.”
“We should fix the window too, I suppose,” said the prince moodily. “We’ll speak to Nathaniel first. We may as well stay at Verrine for the night.”
The world’s light shines; shine as it will,
The world will love its darkness still;
I doubt though when the world’s in hell,
It will not love its darkness half so well.
Richard Crashaw, But Men Loved Darkness Rather Than Light
PART THE SECOND
The ancient blood and deeds of gallantry
Of my progenitors so arrogant made me
That, thinking not upon the common mother,
All men I held in scorn to such extent
Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio
Maol’s days continued to be filled with instructing, and sparring with Kyle. He felt some slight pride that Zayn and Karim were making progress. He had them working on drills as well as sparring to improve their strength and speed, and they had improved significantly after the first month. They appreciated his help and had each donated an ale from their weekly allowance after the commander had informed them that he had sent a positive report about them to Lord Rya.
Maol sat with the commander at lunch the day after he sent the report. “You’ve worked wonders with those boys,” said Niall. “They were a pair of layabouts when they arrived on the island. They refused to get involved in anything or learn any skills. They have been here for three months, and the first month I only ever saw them after the sun had set. Then they got bored of sleeping and started watching the training in the pits. In the end, their curiosity got the better of them, and they couldn’t resist having a go, and now you have worked your magic, they can’t get enough of training.”
Maol grinned. “They’re stronger now, but they seem weak when compared to the other hominem here.”
“I think her lordship took pity on them,” Niall replied. “They are brothers. Twins. They were caught stealing food after losing their father in a hunting accident. Their mother had died when they were very young.”
They were sentenced to a life of slavery because they were hungry!
Maol felt the shame that was becoming more prominent each day. Had the boys come to him when he was guard captain, he would have had no qualms about sending them into the sewer.
Have I always been so cruel?
He had always been cruel to hominem. He thought them no better than dogs. He had thought them worthless, weak and a waste of clean air. He had never wasted good food on his slaves. They ate kitchen leftovers, and if there were no leftovers, then they didn’t eat.
But he liked the two boys. He liked their youth and their innocence. He liked the way they listened intently and beamed when they did something right.
Perhaps a lifetime of slavery is exactly what I deserve for how I’ve treated those men.
Maol swallowed. But it wasn’t just the men. He closed his eyes to push away the images from the whorehouse and tried to stop listening to the women he had made cry when he had hurt them.
Maol wiped his mouth suddenly losing his appetite. He recalled a conversation with his father when he was much younger. His father was instructing him how to treat a wife. ‘Treat her like she’ll break, Son. Be gentle, be kind and never raise your hands to her. If you need to hurt her, then see a hominem whore. They are there so we don’t hurt our wives.’ Maol had never taken a wife, but he had never held back his unkindness on the hominem women either. He had thought it was normal. Everyone he knew treated them that way.
Niall frowned. “What pains you, Maol?”
Maol met his eyes before looking around the room. There were too many people in earshot. He shook his head and slid from the table. He placed his tray on the rack and returned to his hollow.
“I think I have a drop of wine in my quarters if you want to join me,” said Niall.
Maol looked up from his bed to see the commander stood at the partition door. He nodded and followed the man to his quarters.
Niall’s quarters were modest in size and furnished simply and practically. He showed Maol to a seat at his desk before removing a pile of papers and taking a seat opposite him armed with two goblets. He found a flask of wine in his drawer and shared it between the two goblets.
“Thank you,” muttered Maol.
“What troubles you, son?” Niall asked.
Maol shrugged. “I don’t know. The past I suppose,” he said. “I’m not a good person.”
“You’ve done things you regret?”
Maol frowned. “I didn’t used to regret them. I thought nothing of them.”
“What has changed?”
Maol snorted. “Everything has changed. I’m a slave now.”
“Do you miss your old life?”
Maol started to say yes, but then he thought about the question. Did he miss it? He felt surprised by his lack of surety. “I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t thought about it. I suppose I miss having money and being able to go where I please, but I don’t even think about my work much anymore. I miss my mother, but I don’t get along with my father and my sister anyway so I don’t miss them.”
“Do you think you’ve had a change of perspective now that you’ve come here?”
Maol bit his lip. “I was in charge of the king’s slaves as part of my role as captain. I did not treat them well.”
“And you regret that now?”
Maol nodded slowly. “Amongst other things. A lot of other things.”
“You’re almost seven hundred years old, Maol. It is impossible to get through life without having some things that you regret. If you are only regretting things now, then it is because your recent experiences are changing you as a person—that’s a good thing.”
Maol nodded again. “How often does Lord Rya come here?”
“Once every few months.”
“When is she likely to visit?”
“She came not long before you came here so perhaps another few weeks.”
“Do you think she’ll decide to keep me?”
“I give her my reports, and she will make her decision. All of my reports have been positive.”
“She might decide that the money is better spent on saving other men,” said Maol, sipping the wine. “She’d be right. I deserve a life of slavery for the things I’ve done.”
“Does anyone deserve a life of slavery?”
“I think I do. I think I deserve to suffer.”
“And what would that achieve? Who would that benefit?”
Maol shrugged.
“Perhaps trying to be a better person is a better use of your life,” said Niall.<
br />
“How can I do that? Are you going to tell me to serve Lord Rya’s great cause? I don’t want you using me feeling down on myself as another opportunity to mould me. I want to get to the island, but I’m not working towards her secret cause unless I know what it is.”
“If she can trust you then she will tell you.”
“She’s met me once, and I threw a cup in her face. She doesn’t visit me so how’s she ever going to know if she can trust me?”
“Just keep up with what you have been doing. She’ll be pleased that you’ve made progress with Karim and Zayn, and if they decide they want to go back to the island then that will work in your favour. Perhaps we can set you up with a few more trainees to keep you occupied.”
“Okay. I can take another group in the afternoons. Are you still happy for me to train with Kyle?”
“Yes. It’s good for both of you. Kyle has had no one to challenge him here for a long time.”
“I’m just going to speak to the queen whilst we’re here,” said Thomas to the princess who lay groggily on the vector’s seat.
They had just left the alchemist who had given both her and Thomas an opal stone and given the princess a tincture which had made her very sleepy.
“Okay,” she replied.
Thomas summoned one of the queen’s guards, an angel, and told him to guard the princess before heading into the guild.
“May I speak to you in private, Your Majesty?” Thomas asked Queen Genevieve. She nodded to her demon guard, who left them alone.
“Fine,” she said. “As long as you don’t try to get me into bed.”
“You sound just like my wife.” Thomas smirked.
The queen smiled. “I’m sorry about what I did to you the last time we met, Thomas—can I call you Thomas? I should never have inflicted pain upon you.”
“It’s forgotten,” said Thomas. “And I suppose you can, you are a queen after all.”
“Your wife doesn’t call you Thomas.”
“No. I outrank her.”
“She’s a princess.”
“She’s just the daughter of a king; I’m the master of my guild and High Prince Sonneillon’s representative on earth.”
“That seems a little cold.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Perhaps,” said the queen. “Though, you don’t appear to treat her too badly.”
“How did you imagine I would treat her?”
“I don’t know. You surprise me, though. You always seem to want to spend time with her and you do things to make her happy.”
He shrugged. “I give in to her whims to stop her whining at me. It is actually rather easy to keep her happy. I have learned to recognise her scent when she is content, annoyed or sad and I tweak things to make her smell better. I don’t know why people have such difficulty with marriage—it is really quite simple.”
The queen grinned. “It is like a game of olfactory Sims.”
“Should I know what that means?”
“Probably not. She says you have not consummated your marriage. That must be difficult for you… I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”
“You’re right, it’s not,” he said. “But as I have pried enough into your affairs I will answer your questions. I did have male and female thorian who I met regularly, and I stopped seeing them once I married. It was frustrating on occasions, but she has consented to me now. I hope our marriage will be satisfying enough and I won’t miss their company.”
“You’re bisexual?”
“I see no reason to define myself as anything.”
“I meant no offence,” she said. “I support equality.”
Thomas snorted. “Equality is nonsense.”
“Why is it?”
“Equality is a paradox; its very existence is divisive.”
“How so?”
“Lycea’s version of equality, for example, is to group people into boxes based on gender, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation. That very act creates divisions. They’re essentially saying ‘that person or that group of people are different from us, but don’t be a dick about it’. And they have arbitrary laws to protect some boxes but not others. Surely, it would be more effective to do away with the concept of equality and simply have diversity. After all, no two people are the same—even if they are members of the same box—and a more useful message would be ‘everyone is different from everyone else so don’t be a dick.’”
The queen laughed. “You are quite the philosopher, Thomas. And you make a good point. I did not expect you to care about such things.”
“You misunderstand me, Your Majesty. I do not ‘care about such things’—I am merely sharing my observations.”
“Your observations surprise me occasionally.”
“They surprise me too.”
“How is the princess’ revolution progressing?”
Thomas looked at her sharply. “How do you know about that?”
“A bird told me.”
“The princess told you?”
“Not exactly.” The queen smiled guiltily. “I slipped a recording device into the princess’ coat when you first stayed in Arkazatinia. When you left for your walk with the princess, I overheard your conversation.”
“So you knew why I was here in Arkazatinia?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I realised that you were here out of obligation and not loyalty to the king. I resented you for it at first, but I realised that was futile. You had no choice.”
“I was, or I should say am—or supposed to be—here to destroy your relationship with Hallward.”
“My relationship with Mr Hallward is already strained, there is not a great deal of damage you could do,” she said sadly. “So, how is the revolution progressing?”
“Slowly.”
“What does she intend to install?”
“She doesn’t intend to be in charge, there is an established government of a fashion amongst the rebels. They plan to install a democracy like yours.”
“With hindsight, I would never have installed a democracy. It earned me desperately needed favour amongst the rulers, but I feel Arkazatinia suffers as a result.”
“How so? Have you not installed many wonderful things?”
“With a great deal of arguing and a lot of resistance that I would not have encountered with the old Crown.”
“You thought it important that everyone had their say?”
“I thought it was absolutely necessary, but now it is done I am not so sure. Some of the rulers are very greedy and wish to keep their wealth for themselves rather than pay more and improve the lives of everyone.”
“The demons you mean?”
“And the thorian. If I had not rushed into democracy and learned their temperaments first, I might have anticipated this. I installed democracy for the wrong reasons. I had been warned to be less concerned with other rulers’ thoughts of me, and I wish I’d listened. The way it is, even in my capacity as queen I cannot stop them from making decisions that I feel are wrong. Are you familiar with Plato, Thomas?”
“I’ve heard of him.”
“Well, he wrote a text called The Republic and described his idea for a perfect society. Some of his ideas were a little too extreme for me—he thought children should be taken from their parents and raised together. Anyway, he did not believe in democracy, and he thought that it was abused by people who could put forward a good argument even though they may be wrong. He thought that society should be ruled only by those worthy enough to take on the role and these people, the philosopher kings, would have spent years in rigorous preparation for the role. There would be no monetary gain from becoming a philosopher king, and it meant that only those deemed to be worthy of the role could be in charge.”
“You think that was the role of Arkazatinia selecting the Crown? That it chose someone who was worthy to make the d
ecisions for everyone else?”
“I have started to consider that it may be the case.”
“Why not switch it back?”
“I wouldn’t even know how to go about it, I would have a fight on my hands from the quorum,” she said. “There is also the issue of whether I am worthy. How do I know that I’m worthy? I’m likely to believe that everything I suggest is right, but does that mean it is? How many ruthless dictators over the years have believed their own minds? I am planning to take back some control, though I fear it will be a slow process and I am going to be stuck with things the way they are and will have to continue reasoning with the quorum for a long time to come.”
“Do you think Axandria should reinstate the Crown?”
“That is not for me to decide; however, if I were taking my Crown again I would make very different decisions. I hate that I’ve come to resent democracy—as an ideal, I believe in it wholeheartedly, but the reality has created more problems than it has solved.”
“I doubt the rebels will go for it,” said Thomas. “They want change, but they are still motivated by their own greed and fancy themselves in charge.”
“Yet Princess Eleanor does not?”
“It does not seem so. She’s happy to lose her station as a princess and intends to risk her own life for the sake of the revolution. Perhaps she is a worthy philosopher king.”
“Perhaps I have become cynical, but I doubt they will pick the worthiest and most suitable people—they will pick the ones who are the most convincing, the ones who are good at spinning things in their favour.”
“You may be right, Your Majesty. Let us hope the revolution does not replace one tyrant with several more.”
The queen smiled. “Did you find anything out about the magic?”
“Nothing that Hallward wouldn’t already know.”
She hesitated. “I haven’t told him,” she said after a moment’s pause.
“Why not?”
“Things are not…well between us,” she said dejectedly. “Some days are better than others. I find it hard to talk to him most of the time and when he is receptive to conversation it does not seem like a good opportunity to bring it up. I suppose I want to enjoy the moments when I can talk to him without burdening him with whatever this is… What is this?”
